I love this guy so much, there's something so oddly charming about a petite Quiggle that role-plays as a big, strong Lupe... But there's so much about this guy's character I can talk about, and honestly the more I looked into him, the more pissed off I felt. Not at him, of course, but the inconsistency OF his character...
For starters, Morris is a Green Quiggle who hangs out with his friends. They all role-play and play NeoQuest together. His name also rhymes with Boris', despite (Lisha and Kayla's names not having this theme, unless you really wanna say the "uh" sound at the end counts.)
His and his friend's ages are unknown, but it can be assumed they're no younger than 8 since they're able to comprehend complicated rules to games such as NeoQuest.
If you already knew this, great. If not, now you kinda know Morris, and you'll get to learn more about him if you continue reading...
The colour coding in Champions of Meridell sucks ass but you can tell it's Morris talking because his mouth is animated.
He seems very confident that he's going to win this game of NeoQuest, he's so into the game that he's only taken a single bite out of that apple! He was so entranced in the session of NeoQuest that his response to the bullies flipping the board was this,
For whatever reason, his response is blurting out a sentence that would probably confuse them more than help them understand what they did was wrong. They don't know what a "Xantan" is, they don't understand the significance of it to our Quiggle friend...
Please ignore the scary front-facing Boris.
It's not like it matters anyways because he just gets beat the fuck up. Too bad there's no visuals depicting him fighting the bullies, that would've been funny to see a Quiggle with a sword take on a Skeith.
Y'know, his uh. Trusty wooden sword and his oversized sock sheath that gets retconned in future depictions of him. It's not even attached to the red strap around him, which is mysteriously gone as we view him from the back. The sock is just hot-glued to his school uniform...
Speaking of his sword, it has a trading card of its own.
Rather than being named "Morris' Sword" or just "Wooden Sword," it's called a Makeshift Sword.
The description (which reads "What you gonna do with that, squirt? Give me splinters?") could be one of the bullies saying it, despite the art depicting him in Meridell, which doesn't matter much since he did have the sword before the Meridell era.
He was also a Battledome challenger during the Champions of Meridell plot, of which he doesn't have a wooden sword at all, but rather a wooden shield and the Sword of Domar? It can be argued they didn't want to make a wooden sword for his Battledome challenger but Lisha and Skarl got custom weapons, why couldn't they make a wooden sword and give it to Morris? It didn't even have to be "Morris' Sword" for fucks sake. A basic wooden sword could've easily been reusable too.
But that's enough about his weapon-- let's move on to Chapter 2 of Champions of Meridell.
Moving on, we have Lisha and her friends at a school field trip, of which Lisha is very clearly with Morris despite what the image reads. Morris provides no interesting dialogue during this, he just follows her around. Perhaps he also takes an interest in the paintings she's looking at, or he was trying to get her to catch up.
Despite the colour coding, this is NOT Morris' dialogue.
Morris even goes into the room with the painting depicting "Sir Borodere," more commonly known as "Jeran." I think the reason for this might've been to show who Morris was dressed up as, but even if that was the case, it's still not 100% confirmed he's role-playing as Jeran.
It's really not unlikely though, since Boris role-plays as Count von Roo, and Kayla role-plays as Kauvara. For Morris to role-play as a historical knight wouldn't be too unfitting.
Lisha looks at the painting, has flashbacks and has her mental breakdown yadda yadda yadda, whatever. Morris reappears in Chapter 4, alongside the others.
Now we get to this lovely scene where Morris freezes in time, Boris is defying the laws of physics, and Kayla is suffering from PNGitis. Lisha ignores her friends' dire conditions and walks away like she has spinal issues.
They continue to traverse, everyone's previous conditions now magickally cured. However, apparently Morris is the fat kid of the group, as he manages to break the log with his weight. He then drowns, for his friends assume all Quiggles can swim.
Kayla's PNGitis returns as Boris comments on how "boring" it is that they're exploring. Morris flashes both Lisha and Boris a smug smirk filled with sexual tension, letting them both know he's a pure faggot.
Boris and Kayla are left behind as they're busy spontaneously role-playing out of boredom. Lisha begins running to an area she's familiar with, while Morris follows from behind, pretending his surroundings are a full-fledged kingdom and his friends are on their way to rescue a damsel in distress.
After Lisha trips and everyone catches up to her, she finally comes across the old hide-and-seek area. Morris is still horsing around though.
Lisha decides to be a bitch and straight up threatens Morris in this scene, saying she'll "blast him into bits" if he doesn't stop playing around. This is a very serious threat considering she aims a literal weapon at his face and it shoots a laser. It was only by pure chance that this laser caused no harm to Morris, but rather teleported the gang to Meridell.
In the scene where Morris and everyone else are stammering to explain how they got into the kingdom, Morris can only exclaim an "I don't know." With all honesty, this is a valid response just because of how wacky and by-fate it was that they ended up there.
When threatened to the dungeon, Morris acts as the humourous character in their dire situation.
You can only imagine the blood-curdling scream this guy is emitting. It's probably something like the Horrid Henry scream, except more guttural and rough, kinda like the average screaming impression of Toad from Mario.
Their visit to the dungeon is then interrupted by the Darigans barging in. The young children attack relentlessly, and we get to (kind of) see them fighting!
The fighting scenes between the characters aren't very long, but it's clear that Morris is a short-ranged fighter and has a preference to charge at an enemy. The sword wouldn't do much realistically and I'm pretty sure a majority of the damage is caused by his weight rather than the weapon at hand.
At some point, Morris and Jeran are in the same room for the first time ever, and at no point of this time, before, or even after does anything mention Morris is cosplaying as Lisha's older brother.
Now, because this isn't a review of Champions of Meridell in its entirety, we'll skip to the last segment in which Morris appears-- The Finale.
The quality of the GIF differs heavily due to how I originally made these.
This scene is... confusing, to say the least.
Lisha just looks like she's jacking off with her wand in hand, the only one really attacking is Kayla (assuming she's using spells,) Morris and Boris are using... A stick and a wooden sword.
Their choices of weapons could've made more sense if Morris and Boris were seen separately fighting some Darigans rather than actively participating in the battle against Lord Darigan.
Unfortunately there's no other dialogue to go through over, as nobody refers to Morris, nor does Morris speak.
which is a lot better than Champions of Meridell (in my humble opinion.) It features a lot less animation but it's made up with the comic visuals.
Within the introduction, we get to see that retconned sheath I mentioned way earlier in the post. No longer does he have an oversized sock, he now has a red sheath and an explanation as to what the red strap around him is!
Alongside this, he and Boris are now squires! Except they actually get promoted to knights a bit later into the story...
People from across Meridell's kingdom came to assist in the second war, and Morris and Boris were quickly promoted to knights despite the lack of training.
Kinda fucked up that King Skarl casually decides these children should assist in another war. Only Jeran seems to care for their well-being (likely because they're Lisha's friends, it would be quite devastating if she saw her friends die.)
Despite Jeran telling them they cannot come with to the Darigan citadel, they chug some Mysterious Fluid probably made with bull sperm and teleport to the citadel. Where they got it is unknown, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was brewed by the alchemist Kayla.
They do kind of assist as they cause Kass to drop his weapon, but unfortunately this doesn't do much...
...as the time it takes for Jeran to save the poor Quiggle from falling to his death, Kass can easily get the sword back. Boris does absolutely nothing to help his friend or continue distracting Kass. What a pussy.
If it weren't for Morris nearly falling to his death, perhaps Jeran would've had a better chance at not nearly getting killed. Morris and Boris had good intentions but it really seems their efforts were futile.
After these events however, Jeran falls off the edge of the floating island, to which Morris and Boris manage to make these really weird faces that're supposed to represent shock.
They're then cornered by Kass, who mocks King Skarl for sending literal children against him, who's unaware they went to the citadel at their own will, but how's he supposed to know that, really?
It's not depicted as though the boys survived, but I doubt they died either.
If they did die, we probably wouldn't have seen them in the 2022 Advent Calender, where they're depicted as laughing at Jeran as he carries Lisha on his shoulders. This is very debatable as that specific page depicts several other characters such as Rohane during one of the simulation he endures.
And that simply concludes the end of Morris' story appearances.
I want to talk about a bit about how Morris is depicted in art...
It's pretty evident that the ears are supposed to be fake, it's a Lupe hood, and it's cute! But the tie that belongs to the hood is so low down that it ruins the point of it even being there. It could be argued that the hood was originally worn on someone bigger and maybe the knot got stuck, but that seems like a bit of a stretch...
His hood seems to be the part people draw very differently from one another--
I am a huge fan of how the hood is depicted in the Five of Swords card as opposed to the Upper Deck Battledome TCG depiction. The latter would've looked more nice if the rim was more visible.
As you can see, graphic design is my passion.
Alongside this, there's a strange quirk with his Champions of Meridell sprites where one pupil is larger than the other. Unlike the Boris' molar fangs situation though, art after 2002 depicts him as having normal pupils.
Personally I think it would've been hilarious if everyone just collectively agreed he had a single dilated eye.
Additionally, I want to bring up his appearance on the Five of Swords tarot card;
Excuse my horrible camera quality.
As the description says, "A rueful Morris kneels to pick up their discarded toy weapons." Morris isn't shown fighting, neither is he injured unlike Lisha and Kayla, but he definitely feels guilt. Looking over to see how tense his friends are isn't something he wants to witness, but at the very least, the bullies aren't fighting them anymore...
Morris either tries to encourage them to play again, or perhaps helps get his friends some treatment for their injuries. Whatever his choice may be, he just wants to recover from the tense scenario that unfolded in front of him...
BUT! I have a bit more to talk about!
See, earlier I mentioned his Battledome weapon not being a wooden sword, but there's another thing regarding his... err, stats I would like to talk about briefly.
He may be small in stature, but he sure is big on courage.
In Morris' card from the Battle for Meridell by Wizards of the Coast series, he has stats! Interestingly, his intelligence stat is 10, which if we go by Neopets' reading and intelligence levels on the site, a score of 10 is average, but it's one point from being dull/below average.
Additionally, as sourced by The Daily Neopets, Morris had a difficulty of 25, which is the same as his starting HP. Not the strongest character and didn't have the best defences, but it's still very interesting to note.
And because the Battledome TCG - Champions of Meridell by Upper Deck series released very recently, I feel obligated to mention the new alt art for Morris!
I'm not the biggest fan of how his hood was drawn, but seeing art of Morris gets me extremely excited! He IS one of my favourite characters, after all.
But back on topic, it's interesting to see how he was drawn with an alternate sword as well, likely a nod to the sword he has in his Battledome entry (though it doesn't QUITE look like the Sword of Domar.) It's also just nice seeing him drawn in the armour he wore during the Battle for Meridell war. Hoping Kyra uploads the artwork she's done for this set soon, because I'd love higher quality art of her Boris and Morris drawings.
We're finally at the part of the post where I tell you how I perceive his character and my honest opinion on him.
Morris is neither the brawn or the brain of the friend group, but rather, the wit. His character is definitely meant to be comic relief. To put emphasis on this, he's a lot more visually exaggerated than the other members of his group.
His character concept is cute and it's fun to potentially interpret him as having some kind of species dysphoria (Green Quiggle to Blue Lupe transition, anyone?).
Overall, I'm a sucker for this guy's character and I'm disappointed there's not much media where him and his friends interact, because in tense situations, I think he'd serve as the witty peacemaker.
