Nico the Catboy
Nico
Name | Nico |
Gender | Catboy |
Birthday | October 25th |
Age | 19 (debut) |
Species | Catboy |
Occupation | Adventurer |
Introduced in | [redacted] |
Latest Appearance | [redacted] |
Voiced By | Steven Yeun sometimes |
Background
On October 25th, 2020, Marisa posted the first drawings of Nico in response to an ask message on Tumblr. Nothing about how he was presented insinuated he was anything but an original character.
The same day, she posted a comic. This post gained a lot more attention, and despite, once again, nothing in the post indicating it was anything other than fan content, many many people assumed the catboy was canon to the show. He didn't even have a name yet.
After seeing the amount of people who thought Nico was a real character without even trying to fool anyone, Marisa wanted to see what she could do on purpose, so she made fake screenshots.
Over the following months, Nico became widely and well received across Tumblr. He received lots of fanart. Even still, Marisa continuously got messages from people that thought Nico was real. (This still happens to this day.)
A drawing gifted to Marisa by a fan while she was tabling at a convention.
A fake screenshot.
Zine
By February 2021, Marisa had made enough comics and art of Nico to fill 50 pages of a zine. She sold over 200 copies of the physical zine, and even more of the digital zine, which is still available for purchase here.
Nico (full title: Nico the Catboy) is an original character created by Marisa BeBeau (known as by @sabertoothwalrus on Tumblr). He is a catboy and Finn's boyfriend.
The Nico the Catboy zine.
Boxes filled with the first run of the zine.
The zines in the process of getting signed & packaged for delivery.
Polls
In January 2023, Tumblr added polls. Users began creating brackets, mimicking Twitter's "Tumblr Sexyman Poll," including their own "Tumblr Sexyman Rematch."
On February 20th, a blog called @blorbopoll (run by @cherrystrawberrie) created a bracket for the "Most Iconic Tumblr Blorbo," featuring Nico the Catboy as one of 32 contestants. Despite no one regularly posting about Nico in over a year,
Nico managed to beat Taako (from the DnD podcast, The Adventure Zone) with 52.8% of the 35,035 total votes. In other words, at least 18,498 people voted for Nico. In the second round, Nico was paired against Marshall Lee, a canonically not-canon character from Adventure Time, and won with 67.8% of 12,567 total votes (8,520 votes going to Nico). Unfortunately, Nico lost the third round to Miette, a cat from a popular tweet.
Nico started getting featured in other brackets. They include:
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Round 1 of Tumblr President Poll: Nico the Catboy vs Castiel (Supernatural). Won 60.6% of 9,538 total votes (5,780 votes towards Nico).
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Round 2 of Tumblr President Poll: Nico the Catboy vs Theodore Roosevelt (Night at the Museum). Won 71.8% of 4,136 total votes (2,969 votes towards Nico).
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Round 3 of Tumblr President Poll: Nico the Catboy vs Autism Creature. Lost with 39% of 8,497 total votes.
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Nico the Catboy vs Buttons (A Fallout original character by @galoogamelady). Won with 63.9% of total 296 votes.
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Nico the Catboy vs Chat Noir (Miraculous Ladybug). Won with 62.1% of 7,683 total votes (4,771 votes towards Nico).
Promotional art for Nico's campaign.
Nico the Catboy vs Taako results.
Trivia
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You can read all of the comics about Nico the Catboy in chronological order (of their release) here.
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Nico's choice of weapon are his cat paw gauntlets. They can emit blasts of energy that can be used both offensively and defensively, to either to push enemies way or to deal damage, but only when the gauntlets are used as a pair. The gauntlets' claws can also be used to deal slashing damage.
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Nico first met Simon Petrikov while both were exploring the same abandoned temple, and Simon introduced Nico to Finn.
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Nico became Finn's adventuring companion after Jake retired.
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Nico moved in with Finn before they started dating.
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After Finn and Jake's treehouse was destroyed, Finn had a house built in the Grass Lands, and Jake moved in with Lady Rainicorn
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BMO also lives with Finn & Nico, and has a racecar bed.
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Nico comes from a large cat colony consisting of various family members. He has 5 siblings from his litter named Kit, Katherine, Cass, Mariner, and Tape.
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All of Nico's family members were designed by fans of Nico in an aggie.io.
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There's a running gag that Finn and Nico's relationship milestones happen on accident:
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Finn confessed on accident, by slow-blinking.
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Finn didn't realize he and Nico were dating at first.
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Nico proposed on accident.
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Their first child, Flute, was created on accident in a genetic cloning incident.
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Nico can see well in the dark.
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Nico is Korean and speaks Korean fluently.
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Nico had a scene phase as a middle schooler.
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Nico likes to scrapbook.
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Nico has a habit of stealing things, and his pockets are always filled with random junk.
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Nico may or may not have already used 7 of his 9 lives.
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Nico plays the autoharp.
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Nico likes to knit.
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Finn & Nico have four kids:
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Flute, their genetic clone.
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Birch, a cyclops child they adopted a year or two after creating Flute. He's about the same age as Flute.
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Prudence, a problematic possum-preteen who was adopted when Flute and Birch were around 10.
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Meatloaf, a 10-year-old beetle-goat who was adopted when Flute and Birch were around 12 and Prudence was 15.
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Nico, as well as Finn and all their kids, learned Ooo-SL (Ooo Sign Language) to communicate more easily with Meatloaf, who is mute.
Videos
A video by Henry Kathman about the fake film Goncharov, which was created by Tumblr users, which features an interview with Marisa BeBeau about Nico the Catboy.
A fake Adventure Time clip created by Marisa for April Fool's Day in 2023.
An animatic created to campaign during the Tumblr Polls.
An animatic created using audio from a tiktok.
Gallery
