jaidamack

Jaida R. L. Mack

@jaidamack

AV by @distressedegg

  • they/them

🔞 I say lots of heck words and post questionable smut. Stick around if that's your thing, but if you're below legal age to view such things in your jurisdiction, kindly go someplace else.
🚜 Bob Semple was right.

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jaidamack
@jaidamack
AutomaticTiger
@AutomaticTiger
ponett
@ponett

the actual funniest thing about watching helluva boss for me has been learning that, despite being an astronomically popular character in the furry fandom1, loona's barely in the show

she's a side character, and one who's usually irrelevant. she doesn't go on most of the mercenary missions with the rest of the crew. episodes that seem to be about her usually end up being more about blitzo (her adoptive father and the protagonist of the series). most of the episodes in season 1 where she has any relevance don't even depict her as a furry the whole time, as she uses a human disguise whenever she's on earth. i think she's had speaking roles in exactly two episodes in the second season so far, with several more episodes where she appears but gets no lines. and yet she's so insanely popular among furries that for the longest time i thought she was the main character. i thought she was the titular Helluva Boss. this could not have been further from the truth

  1. to give you some hard numbers to put loona's popularity among furries into scale: she has over 20,000 pieces of fanart posted to e621. she's currently the eleventh most popular character on the site, right between princesses celestia and luna and ahead of furry fandom staples like krystal, toriel, and ankha, despite being around a shorter amount of time than any of them. at this rate she will very likely overtake rouge the bat in a year or so. she's consistently been the most drawn character on the site for the last three years. she has truly just become THE default furry girl for people to draw fanart of

jaidamack
@jaidamack

Loona fulfills the scene girl monochrome goth sparkledog aesthetic that people have wanted since Invader Zim was off the air, and the fact that she arrives heralded by Richard Horvitz in the same show is surely not a coincidence.

Make a Loona standee wearing a GIR hoodie and you'll make enough money to buy the moon.

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in reply to @ponett's post:

the-doomed-posts-of-muteKi
@the-doomed-posts-of-muteKi

I mean you mention Ankha but that's also how I feel about her specific popularity as well, like, oh ok sure but this isn't a major character in the series and I wouldn't say leaves any specific impression on me, and I'm not entirely sure what's going on here with her explosion in popularity

Like the $400 plushie that's being sold as like "helpful boyfriend lucario"? Not my bag, but I get what's going on here; I understand why it's appealing

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ponett
@ponett

i mean, i guess there's some truth to that, but it still feels different to me. like, there are hundreds of animal crossing villagers and over 1000 pokemon, so not everyone is going to have the same ones, sure. you can play those games and never encounter some of them. but if you DO have them, then they're going to feel like main characters to you. you can log endless hours in those games battling with your lucario or running errands for your ankha and grow really attached to them like that

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ponett
@ponett

i mean, she's definitely a major supporting character SOMETIMES, and the pilot (which i think is non-canon now?) framed her as a main character, which likely influenced the fandom's perception of how important she is. erica lindbeck is also always listed as a starring role in the credits instead of as a featured character. but currently she only has a major role in like 3-4 episodes of the 17 that have been released, depending on how generous you are with the definition of a "major role"

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miscu
@miscu

fanart really likes to depict her as a cool bad bitch, but then you get to the beelzebub party episode and she's a total reclusive dork. I'm glad the show so far hasn't leaned into that fandom interpretation of her

(also her VA is doing a lot of jrpg dubbing work in the past few years so I imagine she's just not available a lot of the time)

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ponett
@ponett

it is in fact very funny that the fandom depicts her as the dommy mean girl who will step on you when in the show she's extremely awkward and cagey around anyone other than the main cast

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regnsloja
@regnsloja

it's kinda the same for princess luna though, she became super popular right away but is in extremely few episodes, at least in the earlier mlp seasons.
sometimes fandom latches on to a character with a good design but where there's a lot of empty room for them to fill with their own imagination, i guess.

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ponett
@ponett

i mean yeah, fandoms do just latch onto random side characters and even nameless background extras based on vibes all the time. but like. to THIS extent? this level of ubiquity and popularity even outside of the show's audience, based solely on her design? and then sustaining that popularity for multiple years? it's rare

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DeCosterMakesThings
@DeCosterMakesThings

I think it's that she's at the intersection of several popular character archetypes for fanworks (furry, goth, mean to you) and is voiced by a popular VA with crossover to several other large fanbases (Persona 5, for example). Plus the "human disguise" means that she remains, I don't know, "accessible" to non-furries while also essentially canonizing a casual cosplay look.

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