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Merry Christmas to meeeee from an irl friend.... son boy...

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In honor of the sale: Did Trimmer start climbing Rich or did Rich start picking up Trimmer first? Who started the dynamic?

roach — lol they both insist it was the other guy

Splickedylit, RN, BSN — Trimmer's climbing impulse was probably more in-born than Rich's picking-people-up impulse? I'm inclined to say they both insist it was the other guy but Trimmer is the guy who like, climbed up Rich either out of panic or complaining the whole way needing to fix a light in their shitty hallway

roach — i feel like they did the Scared Primate Clutch the first time and grabbed each other and then given their relative masses it ended up with rich holding trimmer like a kitty

Splickedylit, RN, BSN — and Rich was like. I can steady him with one hand....... he's so light and small............... and trimmer's brain was like "oh this man is climbable, add him to the climbable list"

roach — haha adorable

Splickedylit, RN, BSN — And then the NEXT time something went to shit, Trimmer's brain went CLIMB!!!!!!!

roach — aww

rollerskatinglizard — I want to say the first time Trimmer dived for Rich and climbed onto his shoulder without it being partly Rich's idea, afterwards Trimmer would've been like.... Huh. he let me climb him instead of throwing me down the hallway, even tho I took him by surprise and felt a Way about it before quickly shoving that to the back of his brain to ignore forever

roach — yes neither of them said anything or Thought anything ever!!!

rollerskatinglizard — indeed

Splickedylit, RN, BSN — Trimmer panic-climbed and then realized afterward that Rich deftly and tenderly balanced and supported him even though Trimmer was definitely clawing his way up the guy for the first few seconds and was like I AM NOT REPLAYING THE SENSATION OF BEING HELD I AM NOT RE

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How does the Rich/Trimmer Fusion handle for them emotionally while they are still on the Sympatico? It's gotta be harder to play the "I don't even like you that much this is just for mutual protection" game of platonic-murderboat-gay-chicken when there's also a guy who is the literal embodiment of your mutual love and trust.

Fortunately for them, they're both good at 1. ignoring feelings while they happen, and 2. pretending they didn't happen after the fact lolololol. But also, it helps that the feeling of "I want to protect him and keep him safe", coming from the other half of a being that you're now part of, can be pretty easily explained away as self-preservation! Of course they both feel safer and more comfortable and held and protected and loved they're fuck-off huge and they've got Merrill's muscles//Trimmer's knife and they're safe. And it's normal to feel relieved about being safe. So they're just going to stay fused for a while lmao.

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Out of curiosity, have you ever drawn either Admiral Clearwater?

I drew Beatrix at one point and I thought I scanned the sketch but can't actually find it anywhere! So (appropriately enough) take two lol.

Both admirals have a societal role somewhere between president-mayor and godqueen; Harriet was ex-navy and had a lot of authority and gravitas going for her even before she personally trained most of her next generation of administrators, but Beatrix is young enough (and trying to fill big enough shoes) she has to lean a little harder on the queenliness of it all while she's trying to establish herself, so her outfits and presentation are usually more dramatic than her predecessor's.

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...................................ANYWAY.

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A whole variety of things that have not managed to get posted, of varying significance, completion, symbolism and and canon...nicity. Canonness. Canonitude.

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actually on the topic of old drawings; the first-ever drawings I did of Rich, Liam, and Sol turned up on my deep-dive of old discord messages and I was compelled to redraw/compare!

Rich very much predates the worldbuilding of the Michigan Fleet universe, as one of Key/rollerskatinglizard's oldest OCs, and was originally just a normal amount of un-tweaked big and buff dude, although I also sucked at drawing people with body mass back when I drew these lol. It does make me laugh that the huge crooked nose and sad, downturned eyes have been a constant from sketch one!

Liam predates the Michigan Fleet as well and was originally mine! He..... hasn't changed much actually haha. Although his size/prettiness/temper being a genetic modification is new, from the first lengthy discussion of mods where fourhands and hastings both got established (although not by those names). It looks like I coined the mod name "Babydoll", which I do NOT remember doing.

Sol was the most Group Effort of these three, looking back at the messages: Key invented a salty little gorgeous asshole with modded hearing for a snatch of interaction in a wildly different context than his new introduction; roach was the one who suggested the elf ears and iridescent hair to go along with it, I was the one who suggested he was from New York and threw several large pinches of "a big tsundere about Rich" into the mix, and a lot of the much later patrician worldbuilding was roach.

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In honor of me trolling through a billion pages of discord messages sorted only by "has:image" for unrelated reasons; some roach!Riches from the long-ago that I somehow never ended up posting when I first started this blog. Feat. Rich's cute little mouse cuff tattoo

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in a very old post roach mentioned that a daemon au exists. what would everyone's daemon be?

Oh hey sure! There's lots of little snippets of AUs that include daemons, and lots of scattered chat convos, some of which contradict each other; here's the list as far as I could gather up.

Richard/Rich and Erin Merrill (giant white hero rat)

Joseph/Joey and Maria Trimmer (grasshopper mouse, although at one point in the musings she was a raccoon!)

Basil and Sasha Wright (brown bat)

Liam and Lisabetta/Lisa Beaker (river otter)

Michigan/Mitch and Alaska Ford (lab retriever)

Solace/Sol and Charity King (raven)

Benedict/Ben and Beatrice/Bea Jones (we've thrown around bullfrog vs american badger)

Athena/Thena and Odysseus/Odd/Oddball Merrill (white/cinnamon tiger and yes it's wildly out of place and inconvenient on the fleet. CAN'T BE TAMED!!!!)

Angela/Angie and Theophilius/Theo Merrill (anatolian shepherd)

Belladonna/Bella and Narcissus Beaker (peacock)

Finnegan/Finn and Saoirse Merrill (red setter)

Helen and Troy Bane (leukistic/albino jaguar)

Rich's tech coworker Phil Green has a mole

We didn't determine Nitrogen "Nate" Chau's daemon's species but roach says she should be named Free Radical and that's great.

Liam's PRT sex friend Jordan Levi has a corgi

People with Hastings coloration genes also end up with white or leukistic/albino daemons! Also, while I'm compiling things: some characters that y'all have not met yet, for our own reference.

Rafael and Calliope Caro (mockingbird)

Connor and Delilah Campbell (fox)

Android/Andy and Yaga Strega (black rooster)

Dylan and "Wolf" Ulfric (wolf)

Nitro and Beartrap Goresmith (albino spotted hyena)

Arthur and Morgaine Carraway (black timber wolf)

William/Will and Lavinia/Lav Sandgren (coyote)

Samuel/Sam and Abigail/Bugs Washington (hare)

Gabriel/Gabe and Thalia Caro (barn swallow)

Sofia/Sofie and Virgil Caro (swan)

Phoenix and Stonewall Jett (rottweiler)

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for the record this is one of my favorite series!! it is absolutely wild to me that I don’t see constant fanart, etc????

Aw, thanks so much! That's very sweet of you to say.

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👁️👄👁️🔪

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What are you looking at, outcross

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tummbies U_U

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DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY REBLOG ™️ lol

That suit and tie palette were taken directly from the cover of Taste Of New York--I was thinking of the part where Sol and Rich wander high through the night market but also dudes with their ties undone and buttons open are just hot ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯

We mostly see Liam from Rich's POV, and when they're around each other it's usually to fuck--but Liam spends most of his day either In The Dirt or being a touchstone part of like 30 different social networks and professional projects across the Fleet. Can't stop or you'll die! Like a shark. 😏😉👀💦

The long-haired Riches are just for fun :)

The thought of Ben being in some landside building and having somebody suspiciously go "Hey who are you? are you supposed to be in here?" and having Ben deadpan go "I'm Ben" while wearing a shirt that clearly says NOT BEN on it just delights me. Psychological warfare... spooks are on another level....

(and 6, really) Some guys are big enough a handgun is mostly just going to make them mad. U_U And lykoi can be SO temperamental. 😒

The collapsed subway tunnels under New York City are full of treasure and adventure--or possibly nothing but ghosts and corpses, depending on who you ask.

I find it relaxing to doodle Rich just hanging around when I can't think of things to draw. And I find it relaxing to doodle Trimmer threatening homicide.

If Merrill's face is buried in his chest, and Trimmer maintains his tough guy attitude, definitely nobody can tell he's not actually irritated about this whole stupid situation. You fucking idiot. You loser. 🙄

Facsimile Fact the Know-It-All Cat often plays his Family Fleet episodes opposite Curiosity Cheesewell, a very cautious mouse who's very excited about learning new things--when Facsimile confidently states something wrong or does something that's not prosocial, Cheesewell's catchphrase goes from "Oh wow! I don't know about that! :D" to "ohhh, I don't know about that.... 😬" Rich would sometimes say it as a kid when the metaphorical water got too hot for his incredibly anxious temperament, and all the adults agreed it was very cute anD THEN HE NEVER CHANGED. This has zero bearing on the story but it came together over the course of drawing baby Rich's shirt and I find it delightful.

captiancap asked: I'd like to see any art you have of the Michigan Fleet cast. I do really like them. feral-engineer asked: For art requests: can we get something with trimmer? Maybe a hug, or baby trimmer causing problems on purpose? damnfool-of-a-took asked: for the art prompt request! Michigan Fleet, kid!Trimmer🔪👀?

Y'all are just too kind 🥰 I've been sitting on boatboy sketchbook scans for a WHILE not getting around to them, so here are some folks--some on boats and some not, some from published books and some not! :D

Rich and Trimmer never met each other as kids which is probably for the best because Rich was an impressionable little dumpling and Trimmer was a fast-paced, daring, precocious bump/bruise-magnet, like many fourhands kids lol

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oh hey while I'm posting things.

something a little self-indulgent because I'm cursed to love Steven-Universe-style fusions in every universe including our own

not an especially unstable fusion in the moment but unstable in the sense that every time they fuse he looks different and has different arms/eyes/height/mass

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Anonymous asked: can you draw fencing sol or hoverboarding rich. i love their faces very much and sporty boys are cool

The fact that this is about as much fun as Sol experiences in his life and he's not even aware that "fun" is what he's experiencing tells you a lot about him as a person I think

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all bark/all bite

(fun fact: Hastings supersoldiers growl more like crocodiles than wolves)