YIPE!
It's been a while since I last made a blog post!
Fact Checksly and Me!
The Fact himself.
With Tomodachi Life: Livin' the Dream releasing recently, I've been doing a lot of bits in the game involving a certain blue character I made a few years back. This playing with a homonculus of my character has made me think back on him a good bit and I wanted to talk about his silly history and "legacy".
What the fuck is a Fact Checksly?
In 2023, I was very addicted to Twitter. Technically it was called "X" then but only poop chuds that pick their butts call it that. Blaze your fuckin' glory, guys!
At the time I was getting very, very annoyed by discourse on the site and how feral people acted. In retrospect, I was definitely part of the problem in some ways; but that is besides the point of this terminally-online tale.
Around this time; a little indie pilot came out. You ever heard of the Amazing Digital Circus, old man? It was that pilot. It wasn't really for me but had some good ideas.
I am not going to get too much into my opinions of the pilot because it really isn't relevant. What's relevant is that the Amazing Digital Circus dropped the first domino in creating the dumbest character I have ever put to digital ink and paint.
The birth of the Checksly
On November 4th, 2023: there was a disturbance in the Xitterverse.
Discourse on the clown cartoon was very silly. I do not remember much
of the actual discourse because it's a drop in the bucket of worthless
internet drama, but it annoyed me enough that I opened up my desktop
and guided my mouse to the trusty tool known as "Paint.NET".
Like any true internet-addicted swamp rat; I felt compelled to make me a strawman character. A guy so annoying, so arrogant, so confidently-wrong that you can't help but slap your knees and giggle.
That man...
was Fact Checksly.
Fact Checksly's reference; complete with the iconic pose.
I went to Google and looked up Adam Conover as reference. I got nothing against the guy. He just looks REALLY funny and fit the character I was looking to make.
I used to watch Adam Ruins Everything a lot on tv. His character in the show was very much the "Erm, actually!" type of character made fun of commonly online.
Adam Conover would eventually voice a character named "Umbert Actually" which I believe came after Fact Checksly. It's really funny to me because of the Adam Conover connection and his name sounding a lot like Fact Checksly's catchphrase "Erm, Factually!".
Come to think of it; his character in Adam Ruins Everything said "Um, Actually!" a lot... I forgot how much I just took from the show.
Whoops.
(Typing this here later on in writing this, I just remembered Adam Conover has a podcast called "Factually". I never heard him say this before making Fact Checksly. I feel like I am going insane.)
Tony Zaret's word delivery was also a big influence on Fact Checksly. His style of humor in general is to be honest.
Methinkies there's enough of my personal stench to make Fact Checksly unique though!
MOAR Checksly LORE
In the moment I thought putting random numbers on creatures' heads was really funny
The 26 on his forehead was a bit I started with this doodle I made a good while before Checksly. The 27 eventually was used but I will let you know where and why someday.
The next instance of the numbers is in this soyjak image I made sleep-deprived in a crowded Discord vc at like 3 am.
It genuinely means nothing.
I wanted the image to be as confusing as possible. I wanted people to look for meaning there that didn't exist; hence the 26 on the Patrick chud's head.
I believe I was successful as I've seen this image reposted everywhere. I have secretly injected millions with the Fact Checksly virus. There is no cure.
The original paint.net project file. Unfortunately I merged most
layers when making it.
The Fact Checksly comic is very much inspired by other sprite/asset comics like Epic Gamer Comic or Powerup Comics! with a little bit of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff nonsense sprinkled in for an added salty flavor. The Apu Shirt girl's crossed arms is definitely inspired by Epic Gamer Comic and Powerup.
Another influence now that I think about it; are those strange Deviantart collages with a bunch of seemingly-random assets mashed together. I earnestly love that shit.
Guest comic I made for Epic Gamer Comic. I don't know where else to bring this up.
Checksly Aftermath
Shortly after I posted the comic; it got a good bit of attention on Twitter thanks to friends and mutuals retweeting it. The reception was surprisingly very positive and it warmed my belly to see a lot of people enjoying it.
I'm talking here like it was some magnum opus I put a lot of effort into; but I still am happy something I made was received well.
I even got some Fact Checksly fan works! One I cannot show here because it is just straight up porn. Apparently the Apu Shirt lady is attractive or something.
Fact Checksly must have been some friend groups' in-joke cuz there's some seemingly-random occurences of him online.
Random fan stuff
These are things my pal found googling Fact Checksly
MS Paint Fan Adventure comic with Fact Checksly in it.
I feel they captured his personality very well! Got a good chuckle out of me. Thank you.
he looks perfect
The writing is genuinely perfectly in-character
There's also this random Soundcloud audio
Most definitely an in-joke Soundcloud postMy healed relationship with the Chex
Some time in 2024 I deleted my Twitter.
The platform got too evil to use so I downloaded all my data and jumped ship. I will admittedly miss seeing the numbers some of my art got but it ultimately doesn't matter. The actual meat and potatoes still exists. The memories! ...and my art I didn't post anywhere else...
I believe I have matured a lot since I made Fact Checksly. I'm not as invested in silly internet drama as I used to be and I'm really only irked by big boy topics like AI and some more political shiz. Though at the core of Fact Checksly always was poking fun at the fact none of these talking points were that serious.
For a bit of time I resented the blue beast. I just saw it as a reminder of my time on the evil nasty site. My friends on the other hand; always loved him. Thanks to my buds, I have come to love him too.
Fact Checksly as it was on Twitter is something I don't think I can make anymore. But that isn't to say I don't want to use him for anything again. I have plans. Just need some more time and energy. I have many a idea. Wait and see.
uhhhhh
I admittedly do feel a bit silly talking about these shitpost comics like I'm a film director talking about the work that was put into their movie.
Checksly has just been on my mind a lot lately and I feel people that are more new to my online identity won't really understand what I'm talking about if I suddenly start making Fact Checksly-adjacent stuff again.
I worry a bit this blog post has a stink of self-importance and I really don't want to come off that way. I just still find my little character really funny. And I want to do more with him in some way.
I also plan to make an archive of sorts for all previous Fact Checksly comics as I made a few. My biggest regret with Checksly is not also finding a place to post them all in sequence where they're neatly in-order. Some Checksly comics got zero eyes because of algorithm shenanigans. I have posted some to Newgrounds but due to the amount of mixed media I yoinked from google images; I feel dirty posting them there.
And one more thing...
I have been cooking up for the past year a new concept in the Checkslyverse... My pals know what I'm talking about but I haven't peeped about it publicly. Let's just say what Fact Checksly is to internet drama snark, this character is more a spin on people that obsess over canon in fiction.
or perhaps even...
LORE.