Conjuring Abominations for Fun and Profit

My life is conspicuously failing to make sense right now, so let’s talk about what I’ve been doing to stave off the encroaching despair marshalled against me by the tendrils of the Endless Void: creating abominations against nature and the divine with a Pokémon fusion generator.

I think there are a lot of people out there who still only know about Alex Onsager’s original Pokémon Fusion Generator that became mega-popular back in 2013, the one you can still find at https://pokemon.alexonsager.net/, which takes the face and colour palette of one first-generation Pokémon and slaps it on the body of another.  If that’s you, then boy howdy, do I have news for you: for there is another.  The Japeal Pokémon Fusion Generator 2 (which is not affiliated with the original generator or its creator, as far as I know) is much more powerful.  It can work with every Pokémon up to Eternatus, thanks to community-made sprites for the Pokémon from the 3D generations (the new Crown Tundra Pokémon are also in there, but paywalled, as are regional variants and most other alternate forms; the handful of Hisui-exclusive Pokémon are still missing entirely).  It does its face splices, in my opinion, a little more elegantly than the original, and can splice some other body parts as well, like feet, wings and tails.  It generates a hybrid cry for your creation.  You can also customise the colour palette of your abominations to some extent, and even play dress-up with them, using a set of props drawn partly from the generation IV-V contest/musical dress-up minigames and partly from conveniently modular chunks of some popular Pokémon (like Haunter’s floating hands or Bulbasaur’s bulb).  It is among the most highly sophisticated tools humanity has yet developed for spitting in the face of God.

Just look at this.  How and why did I even make this?  It is an affront to all that is good and pure.  I’m going to put a little hat on it.

Now that little monstrosity is ready for a night on the town!

Although I’ve known of the Japeal fusion generator for a while, my recent and ongoing journey of discovery begins – like so many horrifying mistakes of science – on the Discord server for I Chews You, the podcast about cooking and eating Pokémon.  A fellow chef posted this image that had been circulating online of all the different kinds of “Goldeen,” “Golem,” “Golbat” and “Golduck” you can hack together in the original fusion generator by mashing those Pokémon together.

I, not to be outdone, went to the newer generator so I could hack together a few dozen different kinds of “Raichu,” “Raikou,” “Rhyhorn” and “Rhydon.”

I also shared my hobby of searching for particularly cursed fusions, such as the unfortunately-named “Megapedo.”

While everyone was on that subject, one of the mods of that esteemed community had the idea of a semi-competitive fusion extravaganza night: participants would generate fusions to satisfy a series of prompts (for instance “roundest boi” or “sounds like a cool band name”), then discuss the best ones, with the I Chews You hosts as the final arbiters.

The results were… felonious.

Some of my own contributions to this depraved event included:

In the “best mashup of Eevee or an Eeveelution” category: Pidgeoveon (Pidgeot/Sylveon) and Vaporpex (Vaporeon/Toxapex).

In the “roundest boi” category (fusions of Voltorb and Electrode forbidden due to their unfair advantage in roundness): Charmseed (Charmeleon/Ferroseed) and Polilyph (Poliwag/Sigilyph).

In the “least edible” category (bearing in mind that this is the community Discord server for a podcast which takes it as a core philosophical tenet that all Pokémon, from Gastly to Garbodor, are edible): Diafki (Dialga/Klefki) and Gastrogross (Gastrodon/Metagross – extra points for a name that appears to mean something like “disgusting stomach”).

In the “make the furry community go ‘awooga!’” category: Mightnx (Mightyena/Jynx) and Lickidum (Lickitung/Beldum).

(for the record, I am very sorry about Lickidum; it’s just going to be that kind of day, I’m afraid)

In the “best RNG” category (just hitting “random” until you find something you like): Wormvysaur (Wormadam/Ivysaur).

(I would die for Wormvysaur)

In the “best name” category (in principle either a pun or just fun to say): Octtricity (Octillery/Toxtricity) and Pyukupup (Pyukumuku/Lillipup).

In the “most edible” category, which I did not do well on: Combupig (Combusken/Grumpig) and Polifarig (Politoed/Girafarig).

(listen, my logic was that one of them is chicken and pork combined and the other one is jumbo frog legs, and I stand by that)

And finally, in the “sounds like a cool band name” category: Magnedoom (Magneton/Houndoom) and Dragozor (Dragonite/Scizor).

Truly, the fun never ends!  We could do something like that here actually, if people were interested and if I came up with a few categories.  I don’t really know logistically how that would work, because you can’t attach images to a WordPress comment, or send them through my question box.  On the other hand, I suppose we could always just do everything through imgur links or something?

But there is still more.  Because the Japeal generator also has a scene editor, where you can pose several of your abominations together against a choice of Poké-world backdrops, jazz them up with more props and some special effects, maybe add a few Pokémon trainers to the mix, truly bring them to life and set them loose upon an unsuspecting world.

Have you, for instance, ever wanted to see a Ludicolo/Wailord wearing a tiara and holding a rose while attacking a gigantic Ash Ketchum with a barrage of Ultra Balls blasted out of a trumpet?  I’ll assume that the answer, until a few seconds ago, was no, but that it is now the one thing you want more than anything else in the world.  And who am I to deny you?

It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.

Or it was, until I made this.

Your Pokémon will be in good hands.  They all clearly know what they’re doing, and they have a tiny scientist if things get out of hand.  And the terrifying spider creature at the front desk is wearing a little flower and has a handbag with a heart on it; it can’t be that bad.

See, here’s the thing: I don’t think the scene editor gets nearly as much use or publicity as the fusion generator itself, probably because it doesn’t really do anything you couldn’t do on your own with a little effort by downloading the sprites of your assorted monstrosities and bringing them into even a fairly basic image editing program.  But I love it, because it represents the apotheosis of the only thing that has ever brought me true joy in life: unbelievably $#!tty MS Paint fanart.

Just look at this scene.  What is even happening?  There’s some kind of lightning storm going on.  That Simisear/Magnezone has a dude with a whip standing on top of it, aiming a dragon skull that shoots flames out of a trumpet.  There’s a Mudbray/Golduck with a shield and a big hammer rolling into town on an Ultra Ball.  A Team Rocket Grunt is abducting a couple of innocent bystanders with his Haunter/Lugia’s Vine Whips.  An Unown/Venusaur has decided it’s had enough of this $#!t and is about to put a stop to everything with a huge Solarbeam.  Shaymin/Sliggoo is ascending to heaven on a fµ¢£ing surfboard.  Why did I do any of this?  What did the world do to deserve what I have inflicted upon it?

At this point it was becoming clear to me that I could not be stopped.  Drunk on power, I began randomly generating fusion Pokémon to see if inspiration would strike.  Before long, I encountered Great Shulga (Shuckle/Dialga), and knew what must be done.

Yes, little humans, bring your treasures before Great Shulga and beg for his wisdom, and perhaps in his beneficence he will grant your request and spare you the wrath of his mighty warriors and mages!  Think not of treachery or deceit, for Great Shulga knows all, his knights are loyal and his beloved pet Salarak is often hungry.

Next I wanted to flex with a huge, chaotic battle scene.  I decided I needed a huge, “Death Star”-like Pokémon that would fill up one whole side of the composition.  Very quickly, I found Ho-oh/Cofagrigus and decided it would be the perfect candidate.

There are a lot of things I like about this scene.  I like that Klang/Lurantis has a massive death ray.  I like that my Weezing/Porygon 2 are covered in horrendous belching Weepinbell mouths.  I like the legitimately terrifying scythe-wielding Tentacruel/Kabutops.  I like that Aurorus’ flappy neck sails become wings in a lot of combinations, and I love the arm-cannons I gave my Aurorus/Electivire fusions.

But I think my favourite thing is Ash and Pikachu flying into battle astride a Pyroar/Dunsparce, while Ash brandishes a Pokéball ready to throw, clearly intent on capturing the colossal fire breathing avatar of destruction that is probably about to kill him.  Because at the end of the day, that’s just who Ash Ketchum is.

The impetus for my next scene was Pimar (Pichu/Magmar).  Thanks to Magmar’s upraised arms and Pichu’s joyful expression, I could tell that Pimar was just itching to start a new religion of peace and love.

And he stood atop the hill, surrounded by serpentine angels sent from on high, and spoke his word unto the masses, and all were witnesses to the divine truth.

Aside from the prophet and his angels, I think the character I’m most proud of in this scene is the Swanna/Toxapex with the witch hat in the foreground, who just keeps reading the book held in her arcane hand, unfazed by all the tumult around her.  I’m also very happy with the pile of offerings left at the feet of the old pagan shrine represented by Regigigas/Stonjourner. Really I think the whole cast of this one is very strong, particularly the Wurmple/Ferrothorn and Camerupt/Fraxure fusions, both of whom I think of as little merchant guys.

I don’t even know if I intended to make this next scene, I just sort of started and it got out of hand.  I randomly generated a Marill/Pyroar and thought “yes.”  Then I gave it sunglasses, a moustache and a bunch of spikes on its tail like a mace, and thought “hell yes.”  Then, following the only logical path available, I decided that two of them would have to be Blue’s bouncers at the seedy nightclub he had turned the Indigo Plateau into.

I think the understated hero of this scene is the Honchkrow/Zangoose talking to Bill in the corner.  He’s got Honchkrow’s big hat, he’s carrying a big black trident, so he looks kind of evil, but he’s also wearing a tie.  What’s his deal?  Is he offering to buy Bill’s soul?  Or perhaps invest in his next-generation laptop?  I think his presence really sells the “den of scum and villainy” vibe, although I also don’t want to underrate the Celebi/Seismitoad offering mushrooms to a visibly tripping Magnemite/Ho-oh.

By this point I had an established method: randomly generate Pokémon until inspiration strikes, then randomly generate more Pokémon until I find ones that seem to enhance the general vibe.  So, I see Florges/Araquanid, think “alien space queen!” and…

Obviously the stars of the show here are the alien queen and her mighty space fleet, but I also love the little miner guys.  They’re Chesnaught/Mudbray, but Blastoise’s shell fits really neatly over Chesnaught’s back and the result is actually pretty seamless at their small scale.  I also want to draw attention to the Steelix/Accelgor overseer in the corner.  Steelix’s size and proportions are such an outlier among Pokémon that its fusions are often too big for the generator to handle, so they get cut off somewhere along the tail.  But that’s fine; you can just generate a second Steelix fusion (here I just flipped from Steelix/Accelgor to Accelgor/Steelix) and patch them together into an even more horrifying two-headed Frankensteelix!  I didn’t even plan for there to be weird alien cows here, I just saw Meowstic/Camerupt and thought “yes, you would make an excellent weird alien cow.”

From memory, I think this next one started with Mothim/(Mega?) Pinsir, whom I decided would make a great mysterious dark sage with a little wooden staff and a lantern.  Just have to stick him in a dark forest and surround him with a council of other mysterious-looking entities.

Brendan is here to face the judgement of the council and accept his fate.

In retrospect, I’m not convinced by Archeops/Carracosta; I don’t think his vibe fits the rest of the council so well.  On the other hand, he has too many swords for me to stop him now.  I also have to point out that, when I went back at a later stage in the composition to add another two of those little Poipole/Decidueye guys, I forgot to give them their little wings (the scene editor can only “remember” a limited number of fusions at a time, so if you want to add another of the same creature at a later point, you have to create it again from scratch, including any props).  But I’m very happy with the rest of the council, particularly the aloof-looking Shedinja/Corviknight and the Chandelure/Ivysaur with his mystical Haunter-hands.  The real standout of the whole scene, though, in my opinion is actually the cute little Kakuna/Finneon critters.  They are wonderful and I love them.

Then I thought, well, I shouldn’t let the Pokémon have all the fun; why not let the humans get in on the action?  And so I created a double-battle between two trainer Pokémon and their humans, with some assorted spectators and a referee.

I think this one simply speaks for itself.

Someone on the I Chews You Discord suggested that I try recreating some famous works of art with horrifying fusion monstrosities – like, say, Goya’s “Witches’ Sabbath.”  So I brainstormed some ways to create a horrible Frankenmon who vaguely resembled the black goat-like devil at the centre of that painting, then started generating some fµ¢£ed-up looking witches.  I think I like my original compositions better, but…

…I’m still pretty satisfied with how fµ¢£ed up all these little witches are.  Particularly the Tapu Fini/Toxtricity witch with the little dangly bois on a spike.  I’m also very happy I managed to get some sprites that could actually look like they were offering up babies to the Mudbray/Morgrem devil.  I think in retrospect I should have played with the colour palettes of all the witches – I changed the central figure to match the black goat in the painting, and I generally tried for fusions that naturally had dull and dark colours, but it might have come together more if I’d nudged some of the witches further in that direction.

And finally, for my most recent creation, I decided I wanted a happy little town.  With a band.

This guy is my favourite.

Just look at him!  I’m very happy with how the whole band turned out, but this guy in particular has such zest for life.  I imagine he plays… jazz?  I don’t know anything about music.

Another somewhat lesser-known tool you can experiment with is the Fakemon Maker, which you can find at https://japeal.com/fmm/.  I haven’t actually spent a lot of time playing with this, because as far as I can tell it doesn’t link up with the scene editor (yet?), so these abominations can’t go out and play with the ones created in the fusion generator.  If you want them to participate in any grand dramas, you’ll have to download them and put them into your own image editor.  However, if you’re just into creating monstrosities, the Fakemon Maker is even more powerful than the fusion generator.  You can create bespoke freaks of nature, independently selecting the face, body, limbs, tail, wings and colour palette.  Take, for instance, this precious little randomly generated abomination, who has Munna’s body, Rain Castform’s face, Crawdaunt’s colour scheme, Palkia’s wings, Croconaw’s feet and Greninja’s stubby little tail.

Isn’t it adorable?  But that tail isn’t very interesting.  We could replace it with something more flashy, like… hmm… how about Haxorus’ tail?

Not bad, but I think we can improve on it.  Another panel in the Fakemon Maker lets you independently adjust the size and positioning of appendages.  Let’s angle that tail downwards so the wings don’t obscure its segmentation, and maybe make it a bit larger.

Could tilt and enlarge the wings too.

There we go!  Still adorable, but looks a bit more capable of imposing my dread will upon the trembling populace.  Like I said, I haven’t spent as much time with this tool because it’s more work to incorporate your Pokémon into complex scenes, but you can create some fantastic horrors by just hitting random buttons, then fine-tune them into truly magical crimes against nature.

FLY, my pretties!

By supporting the fusion generator’s creators on Patreon to the tune of 3 Freedom Bucks per month, which I am now doing, you can get access to a bunch of additional props and backgrounds (including the option to upload your own background into the scene editor), as well as Mega evolutions, regional forms and a few other alternate forms like Rotom’s appliances.  There’s a little button you can press to give a fusion Pokémon a shiny colour palette, which I think is mostly superfluous because you can already change the colour palette manually, but I suppose it’s convenient if you don’t want to take the time to look up a Pokémon’s shiny colours and try to match them exactly.  You also get the ability to “remember” more Pokémon at once for use in the scene editor.  There’s never any limit to the total number of different fusions you can add to a scene, but at any given time, you only have access to the five most recent ones you made, which can make constructing complex scenes a little finicky; if you’re paying, you get to use the most recent fifteen.

To be clear, you don’t need the paid features to have a lot of fun with this thing – everything I’ve shown up to and including the alien moon scene used only free features and assets.  To be honest, I don’t even think the paid features really do anything I couldn’t do on my own, even with the very bare-bones image editing programs I have on my laptop.  But it’s certainly much easier to have all the assets right there in a neat package, and the Japeal team is (in my opinion, which is always right) doing the world a service by providing the ordinary Human On The Street with the tools to create Great Art.  Personally I’m prepared to make a contribution to that.  There is also the matter of getting access to future new features when they eventually arise, like sprites for the generation IX Pokémon.  So, y’know, what the hell; I’m prepared to fork over some cash for the noble cause of bringing more monstrosities into the world.  Someone’s going to have to make those custom sprites, after all.

Anyway, I don’t think there’s really any good reason I should ever stop making these unless I die, which of course I never intend to do, and I hope my words and actions have perhaps sparked inspiration in some of you as well.  If they have, I further hope you will share your creations in any way you can figure out (if I receive several, I might collect them into another post).  Let our abominations spread across the land!