the site's unofficial mascots?!

infodumping introducing the two little guys seen all over the site!

#anime #ramble #WIPoftheweek · posted 03·27·2024

i never really thought about it until now, but if you don't know me from tumblr, you're probably unfamiliar with my biggest interests. or at least how much those interests affect who i am and what i draw. so you probably don't recognize the two little guys on my current homepage, 404 screen, and new 88x31 button!

i'm planning on making a proper shrine for them in the near future, but i figured i might as well make a smaller introduction to them here. consider this the first draft of my shrine!

my biggest long-term interest at the moment is yu-gi-oh! and those are two side characters from the first anime, weevil underwood and rex raptor. they're not even close to being important characters in the series, but when i first watched it in high school i developed a deep attachment to them that has yet to go away, for a few different reasons i'll get into later.

first, if you know anything about the original yugioh series, you probably at least recognize weevil. this is the kid who threw yugi's exodia cards into the ocean, the one with an annoying, grating voice only 4kids could love, the one who once pissed yami yugi off so badly that he got completely overkilled by him in a life-threatening duel. knowing all that, the fact that he's one of my favorite characters of all time can be a bit confusing. he's the character you're supposed to hate with a burning passion! but i think that's where rex comes in.

if not being totally ignored, rex is usually lumped in with weevil as just another incompetent rival, but i ended up sympathizing with him a lot when i first watched the series. sure he has an ego, but unlike weevil, he doesn't cheat in his duels. he's just super unlucky with who he decides to play against; he's never won a single duel on-screen, and half of his losses were due to his opponent cheating against him! (if i had a nickel for every time he lost against a duelist faking ESP i'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.)

i related to him quite a bit as just a guy who tries his best to look tough but always gets the short end of the stick. not to mention he happens to look a lot like i do, and he's a comic relief to match my "class clown" gimmick at the time. i don't know how big "kinning" is here on neocities, but if i had to pick one character that i wholeheartedly identified with in that way, it would be him; i owe a lot of my current interests and gender presentation to how much i liked him as a high schooler. but he couldn't be my only favorite. he was a package deal with weevil, and i grew to like him too by proxy.

and why were they a package deal? you can thank the anime for that. they were introduced together in the second episode as dueling champions, and stuck around each other a decent amount at the starts of both the "duelist kingdom" and "battle city" arcs. but season 4 and onward is where they're pretty much inseparable. despite his seemingly better judgement, rex decides to stick around and follow through on whatever scheme weevil comes up with to win their reputations back. even if said scheme involves following the protags to america by hiding in their luggage, joining an evil soul-stealing organization from atlantis, and sneaking into a competition by stacking on top of each other under a trenchcoat. did i mention yugioh was weird?

the fact that they were always together by that point led me to start shipping them, and i drew them a lot. like a LOT a lot. (their ship name is called shrimpshipping because they're both short, i tend to refer to them as "the shrimps" because of it.) with each drawing and each little headcanon i made, i started to like them both equally and as a unit. i actually happen to sympathize with weevil even more than rex nowadays, partly because he's the one that's constantly getting put down by the fandom and i feel the need to defend him lol. over the years my attachment to them has only grew, and in a hard-to-explain way i consider them a part of myself. i could really go on all day about the headcanons i have for them and how i feel about the ship, but i think i'll save that for the proper shrine. but that's a little run-down of why i made them my unofficial mascots, they're my obscure faves that mean a lot to me!

thanks for sitting through the rambling. as a peace offering, i have my WIP of the week right here, related to today's subject:

this is from may of last year, and the idea was to depict a scene where rex and weevil take the train out of domino city right after their loss at duelist kingdom. they were the guests of honor at that tournament, and losing would be the first real dent in their reputation. they could make excuses and play it off all they wanted in public, but i wanted to show a moment where they were alone in contemplation, finding quiet comfort in each other. that is sooooo cheesy. but IT'S CUTE OKAY WE JUST WENT OVER THIS.

i remember really liking the sketch, and i wanted to finalize it with the "painting" style i was still working on mastering. but the way i was going about it took way too long for my liking, and i ended up abandoning it for other projects. i still love the colors and composition, maybe one day i'll finish it, or at least post the WIP to tumblr!

that's about it for now! i'd love to chat more, but right now the latest splatfest is calling out to me and i gotta get my points in. please look forward to the shrimpshipping shrine i plan to make in the future!! talk to you later!

viviraptor signing off!︎ ❤