tbh I wasn’t planning on posting this to my blog at all, this was going to just be a personal notes thing so I could bounce ideas off of an LLM and work from there, but now that I’ve already written this up I may as well yeet it into the blog where the few people who check it can see it?
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Okay, I guess this is going to become my long-running “Naming Stuff” thread??? Maybe???

My LLC is named HeliumSqueeze LLC. There’s all a lot of implied balloon-fetish/bubble-kink themes and some implied inflation-adjacent themes, but on the whole it’s not meant to be an erotic brand so much as kind of an innuendo-laiden playful cartoony furry-friendly brand. The usual visual associated with the logo are balloon fruits. Sometimes an overinflated peach, sometimes tight overinflated carrots.

Honestly sometimes I think about the friends who encourage me the most to really go ahead and pursue these ideas and not be held back by doubt, and I can’t tell if they just have a genuine shared interest in these themes in general because they’re coming from similar inspirations to what they already love, or if there’s a sexual element to their interests, or if they’re acknowledging but fretting over the complex mix of sometimes-kinky sometimes-not themes? Or if they just really really trust in my judgement more than I do. I love my friends. I wish them the best and want to help them and make them proud. I wish I felt the same kind of self-confidence and pride for myself that they seem to feel for me.

Anyway, uh.

The iconic “species” tied to the brand are Squee (sorta like if Mimiga were made out of balloon materials and absorbed microplastics and sunlight to survive) and Squee Helibuster (Sorta like the midpoint between a Fallout Equestria pony and a Yoshi from the Yoshi series. But mostly a heavier, less size-change-y, and more crystal-claws-y counterpart.)

At current, the tentative brand names are:

* aPuzzle: Popping Spree / Jam Blow Blast First Impact – Balloon busting and item breaking puzzle game. Probably takes place in Yozh Hylan or Emmelpi.

* aRogue: Festival Vanguard – A fairly basic multiplayer dungeon crawl with some space elements. Takes place some time in the late future of Yozh Hylan.

* Bouncing Flash – A side scrolling beat ’em up with a Freedom Planet (which I do not own) inspired location and Capcom VS Series inspired mechanics. Takes place in a relatively isolated portion of Yozh Hylan (Gleed, Avarice, and the Rizqi Islands collectively form a countpart to the China and Hong Kong areas of Asia.) Occurs fairly early in the timeline.

* Metal Bubble Dragon / Su Busteberos – A self-serious Mega Man 8 inspired action-platformer game featuring Dr. Metal – a huge cybernetic bear reconstructed by Dalliance Arms Corporation after a should-be-fatal accident- and his created assistants Bubbles (role of Rock) and Ripple (role of Roll). Kind of a companion sister-piece to HOLLOWROUND and its events. Takes place in Yozh Hylan sometime after Bouncing Flash and simultaneous to HOLLOWROUND, using the same nanobubble tech established in Bouncing Flash.

* HOLLOWROUND / Bubble Menace – Action Packed third-person Sin and Punishment style (first-person in the original RAMP version of Bubble Menace) shooter game originally built in GZDoom based on Grand United Nation of States, Texas, during the Lunawakenings of the Bubble Menace, and the Big Boom resulting in instability and earthquakes following the spread of stray roaming Beast Balloons throughout the south-western coasts of GUNS. Takes place in Yozh Hylan sometime after Bouncing Flash and simultaneous to Metal Bubble Dragon, using the same nanobubble tech established in Bouncing Flash.

* CAPTIVE SPACE PUPPY THIGHS – An affectionate parody visual novel of Freedom Planet (which I do not own). Where Freedom Planet is a little dark, mostly family friendly, 90s cartoon inspired, and has a title that has very little thematic relevance to its content. CAPTIVE SPACE focuses on A: Explaining away the awkward inner-thigh exposing outfit Milla had in FP1 by way of a plausibly-unconnected Warhound character who has the same skimpy leotard-hardnes uniform but without the hoodie. B: by asserting these Warhounds were made captives to The Warlord in exchange for not having their homeworld destroyed, their role among the forces is that of Captives in Space… and the player Puppy (well, I guess a Hound since the game starts on her 18th birthday)’s Thighs are exposed. C: Once arriving on the Planet on a secret mission from her mother (against the commands of their captors) to find the missing offspring, the Puppy gets to experience what Freedom is in a sense more real than her long fleeting memories of the homeworld she was captured from. If Freedom Planet gets to have a name that is thematically irrelevant, this entire game is about living up to that name in every possible way without bearing the branding.

* SCALEBEA.STS#0777 / ZEPHYRBEASTS/ aGun: Yozh Hylan – Set in contemporary-future Yozh Hylan, this fast-paced grounded action game takes the high speed grounded action and racing-like vibe of Sonic Generations, Sonic Forces, and Super Hang-On, and mixes it with sweet bouncy colorful vibes of Yoshi’s Island and sprinkles on a little bit of item-based combat inspired by Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep’s command decks, Yoshi’s six shot system, and Sin and Punishments over the top boss fights and on-rails action. This primarily follows the Squee Helibuster trying to make their way in the world and defend their more docile Squee kin while dealing with the reputation left in the wake of the Beast Balloons of the Bubble Menace, the ramifications of their original creators being escaped criminals, various overenthusiastic fans wanting to use them like playthings, terrified long-standing locals fearing resource drain from the multiplying Squee numbers, and just generally trying to survive whatever conflicts may come their way as the island of Caliber continues to expand and define itself separately of its former role as a GUNS territory. Having my own “Sonic Forces” type game to play with and being able to bring in all of the various things from Yoshi’s Island, Yoshi’s Story, and Fallout Equestria that resonated with me the most into its own unique identifiable identity and formula is kind of a dream-project of mine, and one that I don’t truly expect I’ll get to complete within my lifetime.

* Fluff Around and Find Out / Pump Up Or Puff Up / Eidolon Static Compile – A “Bunnylike” inspired by Rabi-Ribi, Tevi, Bunny Must Die, Alice Escaped, and Dust An Elysian Tail. Kazhooey “Zooey” a foul mouthed Zoobe-inspired rabbit lives in a world of docile bunnies until the BloonBurrow Habitable Zone in which she lives is gradually invaded by small flying dragon-fairies from another Zone far across the OoB. Long ago a predecessor of the docile bunnies traveled into the OoB, made friends with the playful trickster Dragon Fairies and the immensely powerful LibraryHounds (implied to be the same creatures as the Warhounds of SCPT) of the OoB wilderness. Their offspring eventually built their own Habitable Zone for the fairies where their kind could grow and prosper. Since then, the fairies grew to know Bunnies and their iconic (playboy) Bunnysuits as icons of power akin to superheros, but the numbers of the bunnies (and bunnyhound hybrids) have since dwindled. A rogue fairy traverses the OoB to find the BloonBurrow to grant those docile bunnies the power to restore the glory the fairy knew their kind could have. Ribbon Badge (welding her iconic Pafu Pafu Hammer/Pump) traces the rogue fairy to the land and takes it upon herself to train Zooey to tame her new powers of Embiggening to expel the rogue fairy, tame the other bunnies going rampant with their new uncontrolled power, and repair and grow their home zone by bringing in fresh Data Bubbles from the OoB to undo the damage done and house their freshly swelling numbers. While there is no clear explanation for it yet, most habitable zones have an aesthetic a lot like a themepark in the middle of a furry convention with fursuit aesthetics aplenty.

* Emmelpi – Audibly a corruption of MLP, this in-world fiction is basically My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, but if all of the ungulates were lagomorphs and dragons were… still dragons, but now quadruped and a little more velociraptor/kangaroo-esque.

* Yozh Hylan / Yohz Hylan – Audibly a corruption of “Yoshi’s Island”, this is the main “series” setting most of the other stories are contextualized into being in in the form of in-world fictions or named events in history.

* Bounce Bounce / bounce Bounce BOUNCE – this is admittedly more of a general tagline than a title of anything specific.

The Systems of Embiggening:

Specific to the Bunnylike, the fairy dragons and the bunnies specialize in a handful of types of power of Big:

* Amplify – Mental and Projectile “growth” of power. Also more “ammo”.

* Bellow – “Bottom” or “Belly” expansion, limited hovering, agility improvements, powers that evoke leg or thigh use.

* Cushion – More typical cartoony “balloonlike inflation”. Works like Dig-Dug’s pump or Klonoa’s Wind Bullet in most cases, though the lightened weight can allow friendlies to take less damage from physical impacts. Also allows floating and being blown and thrown around, ally or otherwise. Can be resisted via Blowback.

* Deluge – Increase size/weight/physical strength as if filled with “juice”. An allusion to Blueberry or Hydro type stuff. Slower, heavier, can use crushing attacks like buttstomps and bellyflops. Easy to be bowled over. No Blowback, but can ricochet on surfaces from hard impacts.

* Embiggen – Uniform growth in size and power, the “ultimate” form of Big power. Can armor through low power projectiles and strikes with fighting-game style grey life. A bigger target, but far bigger threat. Can also be applied to physical objects in direct contact like the Pafu Pafu Hammer if the welder is strong enough to hold and control it.

I used to personally use the username RevelRomp in a lot of places before having the RevelRomp Dalliance and the Dalliance Arms Corporation have a major role in Yozh Hylan. Now I usually go by Ann in honor of my late mother. That was following a relatively short lived transition to AnnieWuzOK, which was a pun on Annie Mae / Anne May from a Havoc Fox “anime” joke Dusky once made. Before that I tried names like Retl (which I dropped because search engines would autocorrect to Retail), Kahli Lh’tail (an audio corruption of my first and middle names), Kilo ( still like that name honestly, but it keeps being associated with drugs), MollyJTG (loosely inspired by Molly Fyde and by Holly Songsteel, a character I had for a short lived DnD Campaign), Travisuped (I barely remember how this came about, I think I was thinking of “Upped” as in powered-up and Travis because of some anime I had seen around the same time I was playing Quake 3 Arena Demo or Unreal Tournament Demo on Dreamcast for my first time with a cousin that was visiting), NTU (a terrible alt name I kinda regret ever using), Mask11US (the first username I ever had), Scalebea.sts#0777 (a name I using as a “band” for the music I made for the games I wanted to work on for my LLC, I haven’t done much with it lately and have since kinda pivoted towards rebranding it Zephrybeasts to better tie in with the Beast Balloons and the idea of Zephyrkin), and Fickle Luminescence (which I feel kinda reflects my actual behavior of jumping around interests somewhat erratically, and a persisting fondness for colorful and pretty glowing lights and holograms and cyberspace digital world vibes).

And I think aside from getting into my weird naming shenanigans with characters like First Post (Pinkie Pinks), Rhonda Thundertits Rubberbreaker the squirrel, Hard Reset (Rez), Mia/Pepper, Jean/Jam, etc, I think that’s most of the relevant important or recurring names one would need to analyze, understand, and recommend new names and titles based on my interests, preferences, and existing tendencies in naming.

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Some bonus thoughts that I will almost certainly never get around to:
A: A sports game where participants are graded on the specific moves and precision of execution used for popping a series of specifically themed large balloons. The closest comparison I can think of are skating competitions with judges scoring the performances.

B: A simulation/modeling game where a music-loving CD-hoarding anthro goat named Casino finds herself in the employ of a fetish club under the ownership of Dalliance Arms Corporation that markets itself as an “adult game center”. At first Casino is bashful and shy about the unexpected balloon-centric nature of her job as an entertainer at the establishment, but in time she becomes a beloved figure of the establishment by customers who trust her to help make decisions and solutions for all sorts of personal goings-ons in their lives… as well as the ever-present customer-taste-specific balloon-show for particular customers to earn generous tips to grow her music collection. (I have no idea how one designs an organic “ending” for these kinds of simulation inspired games.)

C: A series of short novels exploring the day to day lives and adventures of various Squee Helibusters where they get to really show off their personality and how they deal with the good times and the worst times.

D: A fast-paced side-scrolling 2.5D shoot-em-up where dragon-fairies traverse the “Wilderness” of the OoB in search of much-needed supplies and the answers to questions that the LibraryHounds had been trying to solve for many years.

E: A 3D Platform-Racing game along the lines of Rayman Rush / Rayman R / Rayman Arena. The characters come from all over Yozh Hylan bringing their unique skills and interests in an attempt to win the prize money and the opportunity to have an episode of Emmelpi written about _anything_ they wish.

F: A Disgaea-inspired or Fire-Emblem inspired turn-based tactics game following the events of Bouncing Flash where Dazzle Flasher and the Dazzle Buster faction band together throughout Rizqi to rebel against the growing influence of GUNS’s Dalliance Arms Corporation, increasingly authoritarian policy-making from Gleed attempting to strip away the formerly granted “two governments” democracy of Rizqi, and attempts to deny the existence of Rizqi as a separate sovereignty by Alavice. Dazzle still has her signature bouncing-on-bubbles gimmick here, but as this is a tactics game and not a platformer, the utility and presentation is very different.

G: A Heroes of the Storm inspired real-time strategy / MobA type game where fursuit-like anthro characters in skimpy outfits encounter each other among the transfer lines of the somewhat-tamed sections of the OoB. These sections aren’t as high risk as the “true OoB” but because it is so popular to search for resources here, they can’t help but scrap with each other to try to collect the Data Bubbles they need to make their dream Zones a reality. Many of the abilities involve pouncing/pinning/bouncing-on other characters in suggestive ways to make them burst and return to their home zone temporarily, opening up opportunities to push ahead towards high-value objectives. The first team to either clear 5 major objectives or to completely destroy/disconnect all of the lane lines from the opposing Hubs wins.