#also i don't draw detailed facial features obviously. so you can't really tell in my art. i'm kinda lucky for that because otherwise i-

[kale-of-the-forbidden-cities]

i don't hc the elves as any specific race or anything because they're elves, they're supposed to blend more over thousands of years all able to travel anywhere anytime with one society so they can't be as easily grouped as humans can

[idonttakethislightly]

Matter over Mind

I've never read an X-Men comic, so I feel like I'm not really in The Power Fantasy's target demographic? So maybe this is all just massively missing the point, but...

I'm completely obsessed with Heavy, and I can't tell if this is me forgiving atrocities because it was a hot person who (nearly and/or indirectly) committed them, or if this is something else. I think I want it to be something else, but maybe I'm kidding myself.

Which is not to throw shade on anyone who's fascinated by hot people doing atrocious things! The whole point of fiction imho is that nothing has to work the same as in reality, including moral/ethical judgement. Even if I was going to pass judgement on people for their fictional crushes I sure wouldn't be saying so on Tumblr.

It's just... I didn't always understand myself as well as I do now. Let me tell you something I just recently finally articulated about my relationship to fiction.

Every time I fall in love with a story, it's because I'm repressing something big. There's a feeling or experience that's eating at my life, but it's not safe to let it be real. That's the only kind of time when I can find true fictional love, and it honestly kind of sucks because I don't want my greatest joy to only arrive in moments of acute pain.

It's also a known fact about me that I'm incredibly attracted to long hair on men, and to really good jawlines. So it's almost possible to tell myself a story where I'm ignoring the facts of Heavy's choices and focusing on his physical appeal. Which is sexual, obviously, but also-

I don't like having a body. I don't eat a good diet, or wash my hair enough, or exercise. There's reasons for all those things- a mixture of sensory sensitivities and executive function struggles- but they're all things I hate doing, and hate myself for not doing, and they're all things Heavy definitely does. (Yes, his hair is tousled, but it's got volume and it's drawn with silky strands instead of lanky clumps. Compare the texture of his hair to the texture of Jacky Magus's present-day hair. Do you see how hard I've been thinking about this?)

I'm also very impressed with Caspar's approach to stylizing the human body. He's got an eye for physical details- but not every character is physical in the same way. I mentioned Heavy's hair in contrast to Jacky's, but also look at Eliza's unrealistically-geometric bob- it's sharp and unnatural to the point of being less physically real. (As far as I can tell, that's her deal in general.) Look at how Jacky and Masumi are both (in my opinion) worryingly thin, but you see the cords in Jacky's neck more- for her it's conventional beauty standards, for him it's a clear neglect of his physical form.

I don't think I'd do a great job drawing the cast of The Power Fantasy. I'd struggle with Etienne's wrinkles because I don't understand facial anatomy, and his hair because I don't understand natural Black hair textures. I try to remember to draw folds in clothing, but I don't have Caspar's ability to differentiate fabrics by the way they drape. I can draw the idea of a person... but the physical realities of embodiment are beyond me. Let alone the unrealities. And I feel like my drawing style restricts my imagination, because what's the point of dreaming up things I can't draw?

I've gotten kind of disillusioned with the way I design transmasculine characters. I used to think that I drew them androgynous, if not outright feminine, because I wanted to see transmascs who look like me. But honestly, I think I've always just been projecting my own dysphoria onto every character I draw. If I don't get to be tall, muscular, square-jawed, strong-featured... nobody does. Even the cis men I draw look androgynous. I grew up on manga, not the X-Men, and I think it's cruel and unfair and needlessly stereotypical to say I draw like a girl, but the fact is I could never have designed Heavy.

Heavy's not real. He's not even lines on paper, to me- he's ones and zeroes in a file, that turn into lights on a screen.

I still feel like his body is more physically real than my own.