Drift Away

Promote new and existing shrines. We'd love to know what you've been making!
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Todd
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Re: Drift Away

Post by Todd »

Thanks so much, Fiona and Destinie!

I am so happy to hear everyone is enjoying the shrine so much! I'm sorry if I made Drifloon appear scarier or more demented than you previously saw him, haha.
Stefi
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Re: Drift Away

Post by Stefi »

Congrats on finishing this one! I know you've been working a lot on this, so it's great to see this come together. The layout also really worked out well; I think the color scheme is really elegant as purple and yellow shades can be tough to work with.

Overall, great job, Todd!
Megan A
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Re: Drift Away

Post by Megan A »

Congratulations on finishing! It looks great!
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Emma
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Re: Drift Away

Post by Emma »

Congrats on finishing, Todd! The layout is so pretty, I love the colours and the textures you used.

This was definitely an good read. Drifloon has never been a pokemon I paid that much attention to, and I didn't realise it was quite so dark! It's interesting that Drifloon has so many warning signals to stay away, even though it also wants to lure children to it. (It made me think of aposematic signals a bit, you know how poisonous animals are often bright colours to warn away predators in a way that's beneficial to them both?)

I love the analysis section, you've really fleshed out Drifloon and everything associated with it. (You have also made me think of someone I knew a few years ago who had a phobia of balloons. This pokemon would be her worst nightmare.) This is such a personal and individual site, Todd, great work!

I like the idea of organising the links by type, btw! A nice way to break it up. I'll get your link added to my Sylveon site soon!
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Samantha
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Re: Drift Away

Post by Samantha »

As you know, I'm super excited you finally got this up!! I really like all of your analysis pages, but the pages on colors and being a signpost are probably my favorites.

You do a great job of really exploring Drifloon--especially because it's not a Pokemon with a lot of background in the anime/movies to work with. I love that you bring in mythology, other forms of media, etc.

PLUS GHOST POKEMON JUST ROCK. :heart:
Todd
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Re: Drift Away

Post by Todd »

@ Stefi and Megan A: Thank you so much! It makes me happy to see everyone enjoying this shrine!

@ Emma - The aposematic symbols you brought up are crazy interesting! I can't believe I didn't think of other predators like poisonous snakes. I might work this into my shine! Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the read! I'm glad you like the links page, too! It makes the shrines easier for me to surf, actually! I use my links page as a jump page for myself to visit shrines.

@ Samantha - Thank YOU. I would not have this shrine up right now if it weren't for you. You were an amazing support through the whole process. Bouncing ideas off of you throughout its construction, and being inspired by your awesome shrines made this a lot of fun. I'm so glad you like the shrine, too. <3
dubiousdisc
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Re: Drift Away

Post by dubiousdisc »

I finally went through and read this site and wow! Not that my expectations were low, but this is even better than I was expecting! You managed to make every single page interesting and exciting, even when introducing your subject and the Pokedex entries. I think that's no small feat!

I've even learned a few things through this site. I didn't know that about the number nine and hospitals!

A few thoughts I was having that could be of your interest:

The color yellow in Drifloon's design: I wanted to point out that yellow is the complementary color to purple, so there could also be a more character design-related reason for the yellow elements on its body.

This just me, but wanting to point out: I always thought the x on Drifloon's mouth was two bandaids. I thought it was like, a sign that it wants to look appealing to children - it has a boo boo, poor thing, let's be friends. Any thoughts about that?

In any case, congratulations on finishing this and thanks for the great read!
Destinie
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Re: Drift Away

Post by Destinie »

dubiousdisc wrote: I always thought the x on Drifloon's mouth was two bandaids. I thought it was like, a sign that it wants to look appealing to children - it has a boo boo, poor thing, let's be friends. Any thoughts about that?
I always thought the same thing!! I definitely also read that as band-aids as an attempt to make it look "nicer" or "cuter".
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ritabuuk
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Re: Drift Away

Post by ritabuuk »

I read through Drift Away awhile back and really enjoyed it. I jotted down some notes of things I wanted to comment to you about, and it's about time I passed them along to you. :D

I chuckled aloud at the "Kick ass and take children, I mean names" and the "Pokemon that are almost as cool as Drifloon" and also at your most critical takeaway for the site. :P

I found your experiences with Pokemon in school to be very strange. I was in 6th grade Catholic school when the Pokemon fad hit hard, and in my case, if you hadn't watched the Pokemon anime, you were majorly lame. ...Of course, once the fad died down and I was still enjoying Pokemon, that was majorly lame. So maybe it was just a matter of the timing just not quite lining up right in your case. Though, even in Catholic school, I never heard much of the "Pokemon are Eeeeevil" thing. Odd.

I love how you say you are not much of a Pokemon fan, but then list out so many Pokemon games that you have indeed played. XD

I wanted to ask about this: "The player can catch a whopping one Drifloon at Valley Windworks on Fridays". I haven't played the Gen IV games yet... does this mean you can only ever catch one Drifloon ever, or could you go back again each week and catch another single Drifloon each Friday?

I wouldn't say an inverted cross is so much a symbol of atheism per say... hrm... I'd word it moreso... as a symbol of anti-Christian sentiment.

Just a typo, you say "Drifloon's stormy hair, the inverted crosses" -- too much talk of inverted crosses, you mean the hearts. :P

Another minor typo is "scythe" spelled as "psythe".

I think you did an amazing job of fully analyzing Drifloon from every angle, and making it all personal and very interesting to read. I particularly liked the connections you drew with various cultural beliefs and also with horror movies. I wouldn't have thought there would be so much to say about Drifloon, but I suppose humanity has had plenty of thoughts about death and frightening things, that there's actually a whole lot going on with Drifloon, consciously or sub-consciously. Thank you so much for pointing these things all out and conveying them in such an entertaining way. :)

Finally, with my particular screen resolution, when I glance down at the bottom line, the linebreaks are such that it says "INFRINGEMENT INTENDED" and it keeps catching my eye and making me laugh. Yeah! Take that, Nintendo! Nyuhhh! I am not sure if I should recommend you force a line break before the "NO" or if I should recommend you keep it this way forever. XD

---

Reading through the thread, I want to share my thoughts on the X: When I first saw Drifloon, I thought the X was a patching up of a hole in the balloon. I feel like I have seen cartoon jalopies that have X patches on the tires to cover up leaks... I was thinking of it like that.

Ominously, the X covers the place where Drifloon's mouth would be, so I used to think it was patching the hole of its mouth, and that perhaps Drifloon could not speak, that Drifloon is a silent ghost. The silence is maybe not necessarily voluntary, since tape over the mouth is a gag.

I also wondered, maybe if Drifloon were to open its mouth, it would lose some of its limited remaining air, which is all that it is! It would be critically important that Drifloon keeps its mouth closed!

I then later saw official art of Drifloon that has the mouth just sort of on top of the X, and usually opened and happy... so either the Pokemon Company moved away from this creepy idea, or maybe I just read too much darkness into the design...
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