The Minion Fanartist

What IS a Minion?

For those of us who've been living under a rock or are generally unfamiliar, minions are a breed of small yellow pill shaped creatures that are signature characters of the Despicable Me series. They are childish but also intelligent creatures, who crave to serve the worst villains they can find. As of current minion lore, minions serve Felonius Gru, a supervillain who throughout the Despicable Me series, grows to become more than a villain into a loving father¹.

The public reception to the minions is varied. Initially they were lovable little creatures, but as Facebook moms started making basic memes featuring them, they have gained a negative press. They've come to be viewed as annoying and "cringe", and any interest of the minions is mostly viewed as satirical. Overall the downfall of the minions can be attributed to the overcapitalization of them. Minion merchandise can be found anywhere and the constant exposure eventually gets grating to the masses.

First Appearance/Foreshadowing

Prior to Aidan's arrival in the lab on July 14th, 2020, there was a discussion about a minion AU³, suggested by Custy ("Dishonored AU where instead of the whalers Daud leads a gang of minions") in response to Lunar saying that the whalers are similar to minions (seeing a powerful figure and following them). Pip then suggested that the whalers themselves were minions. Lunar then put an image of the minions with Gru and an image of Daud and the whalers side by side saying "These spot the difference games are getting hard."

Resurgence of the Minion AU

On November 18th, we sparked another discussion of another minion AU, due to user Whaler showing off a minion advent calendar they obtained from their parents⁴. Blue then asked "are there any cannibals in the minions universe?", leading to the answer of the Evil Minions (also known as the purple minions in the conversation). Custy then said "dishonored au where Hypatia is a regular minion and Grim Alex is her purple state," a seemingly innocuous comment that would presumably lead to nowhere, until Aidan later drew up a sketch of that very prompt⁵. Later in the day in #whiskey-and-cigars, Aidan posted another sketch of more minions as all of the Dishonored 2 villains with the caption "Girl help I’m having too much fun."⁶

On the 21st of the same month, Aidan dropped another minion sketch of Corvo, Daud, and Emily⁷, before going to bed (the full lined and colored pieces of these first few sketches have been posted to Aidan's Tumblr.

Miniondy Emote

On the same day (12/21), Aidan drew out a minion Pepe emoji but with Mindy Blanchard (Dishonored 2, 2016) with the caption "mods pls miniondy emote /j." Custy however decided to actually implement this emoji into the server, much to the chagrin of everyone else, most notably user Chungy.