Barok

The future is now, more accurately April 11th, 2023. I started slapping together a plan at around 8:00 PM and didn't get to finalizing it until 10:15 PM so that answers the question of "How long did this take you?" And honestly, that isn't a long time all things considered. Well technically I tried to start putting together a plan for him last night, but got distracted and didn't bother. But I managed to get around to it today so it still didn't take that long! Now it'll be another story about how long it'll take to get genes, missing apparel, etc. But for the most part this was probably the fastest I had put together a dragon seeing as I didn't need to breed for it.

There were at least 14 different scries, and maybe 6-7 variations of this outfit before I finally settled on something. And even then I didn't settle right away because I had to consult the council (some people in Ice chat and Sads). And turns out it was also kinda tricky because the options presented were both pretty good in a way. So let's break down the process I went through to commit to the bit.

Step 1: Figuring out the outfit. Literally just started with the gloves, boots, and eye scar. I would then spend the next 15 minutes experimenting with two different aviator coats (Navy and Black) and the layering. Not only that but every time I finished one variation of the outfit I'd have to adjust it to a different breed because I wasn't sure if I was gonna go with a Skydancer or an Imp for Barok here. There was also the whole issue of me staring at the concept art for way too long and making some small discoveries here and there because of my staring. Apparently his pants have a red stripe going down the side. Didn't know that! The dragon doesn't have that (because the only option would be the uh crimson rogue pants and those are ugly, and not very fitting for a proper gentleman like Barok), instead he's got pants you can't even really see. But they're there, trust me bro. I will say the more I kept tweaking the outfit the more I saw it getting visibly expensive. Cause the sword is one thing whatever, I already had that. But then I added on the golden seraph stuff because well. I like my dragons sparkly and went "This outfit is getting more and more expensive with each edit... OH WELL!" Once I was content with the outfit I had to move on to the second hardest step...

Step 2: Picking A Breed. It was literally between two options. Skydancer or Imperial. And both were pretty good in my opinion. A Skydancer, despite looking like a horse, just seems like a bit more of a regal dragon and I feel like it's general stance would've matched with Barok a lot better. An Imperial on the other hand is huge. And Barok, is Huge. He's 6'4". Why? There are also other things like Imperials just generally looking a lot older and Sads and I are constantly bullying this man and calling him old (he's 32-33 years old in the game). I had asked Sads last night what breed they felt would fit for him and their response was also Imp or Skydancer. Their reasoning was a lil... Well they still managed to bully him: When working on things tonight though and presenting Sads with just the outfits as modeled by an Imp and Skydancer mannequin they then offered me some new wisdom that helped to further decide things: My response to that was that he was most likely "actively harming the empaths in the room." While there could've been some fun lore implications for him being a Skydancer (should I choose to actually acknowledge FR canon for once in my life) I decided to settle on an Imp because again. Large. Though I will say that I did joke around in Ice chat, saying that I could get a second dragon with the exact same colors and make him a Skydancer. Double the Barok... Though thinking about it now the idea of having two Barok's is absolutely insane to me because I don't have two Si- Yes I do. The other one just isn't named Simon and has different genes but he came from the Simon pair. Never mind ignore me! We gotta move onto the next step.

Step 3: Genes and Colors. Sometimes I always think the outfit is the hardest part of a fandragon because how can I properly convey what the character looks like in the form of a dragon with the apparel flight rising has to offer. It's almost like I completely forget that I also need to put a dragon into the outfit... Anyways, this wasn't as tricky as it usually was for me? I will say, I did not start with a Black/Gloom/Grey dragon. I started with something completely different it was like... Grey/Thistle maybe? But I got really hung up on the secondary and how it meshed with the primary color so I continued to fiddle around until I just decided to go with a more basic primary of straight black. There's also the added factor of the faux underbelly it gives with some genes that I really like. Anyways, landed on a black primary and now thistle or whatever shade of purple I picked looked stupid. I then spent the next I don't know how many minutes once again staring at official art of Barok trying to decipher what color his hair was. Eventually the choices were narrowed down to Steel, Smoke, and Gloom. In fact, I was originally gonna go with Smoke but I had showed Sads a scry with Gloom, mentioned the additional smoke scry, and their response was: The opportunity was too funny to not pass up.
So we now have our primary and secondary colors decided on. The tertiary color didn't matter much to me since I didn't (and still don't) plan on giving him a tertiary gene. The next part in this step would be to figure out the genes. This is where the number of scries began to accumulate because everytime I made one for an Imperial, I would still made a mirrored one for the Skydancer just in case I changed my mind (or couldn't find any Imperials on the AH/dragon search with the colors I needed). The first set of genes I went with was Tiger/Seraph. Don't know why I went with Tiger, but I picked Seraph because of the mane being a touch lighter and (to me) it matched with the official art. Not fully convinced though I decided to keep flipping through the other primary genes. The next set I picked was Cherub/Seraph. Cherub had always been one of my favorite genes since day one so I figured I'd return to my roots. Wasn't sure if I was content with this though so I went back to Tiger and tried out Eel. The one stripe that runs along the edge of the wing was literally the only selling point for this gene, and I was buying. Wanting to see how it looked with Cherub I changed the primary and once again was sold on what I was seeing. The mane wasn't quite as light as it is with Seraph but I was really vibing with it. Not to mention that it also worked really well with the outfit plan so thank god for that (I wouldn't have to rework the outfit that already took me some time to figure out) So there were at least 4 imperial scries, which also meant 4 skydancer scries. There were an additional 2 scries that involved Black/Smoke, the genes were I think Cherub/Seraph. And then the other 2 scries that I had started with and never looked back on. Which comes to a total of what? 12 scries I think? That's a lot all for one dragon!
I shared the imp scries with Sads and Ice chat and in the case of ice chat it was a bit of a tricky decision, at least when it came to the Cherub scries. I wasn't too bummed out about the tiger scries not getting any attention mostly because I stopped caring about them after seeing the two potential Cherub scries. And like I said earlier, the single stripe from eel is what sold me on the cherub/eel scry so that's what I settled with.

And that just about does it for the journey I went on for this fandragon! At least in terms of planning. It's a whole other can of worms on how I even managed to care about his character in the first place. I think it was a combination of the bullying (calling him old, he is not), sitting through the sprites of him throwing his chalice and bottle of wine and slamming his leg down on the bench, and then finally going into his office and poking around at things and just seeing what he'd say. Yeah there's also all the back story n stuff but as of writing this I haven't actually gotten that far to see why he is the way that he is.

Thinking about it now though as I wrap up my final thoughts, I can't help but find this whole thing kinda funny. When I started TGAA I knew that I'd come out of that game with at least one blorbo and I knew exactly who it was gonna be. Sholmes. No question about it, I was captivated by his swagless looks and cringe fail personality. I genuinely didn't expect to be walking out of this though with Barok on the blorbo list. Like... Who let this guy in here? (Me. I did apparently. Left the door open and he just kinda walked in... No idea if he plans on leaving, he might just live here now. Like a stray cat or something.)

Also since I hyped up that Skydancer variation so much I might as well include it here: