#also sidenote but i find it sorta funny that most of the recent art was about the latest stream but then its just like

[art--harridan]

[Image one: The first page in a digital comic about Jack Manifold. It starts with the line "he was just a child, they mourned,". This is next to half of a ripped photo, which depicts Tommy, and three panels. They show Puffy shouting, Sam blank-faced and Jack angrily crying. It continues with "building a grave too big" alongside one of Tommy's graves and a poppy. Then, it says "and a statue too grand" over the top of a stone statue of Tommy. Underneath, there's the other half of the ripped photo, this time depicting Jack. It's accompanied by the words ""So was I," you think". Finally, there's Jack with his back turned to the audience, fire around his head like a strange halo. He's surrounded by smoke and the last line is ""and they never built me any grave at all".

Image two: The second page in a digital comic about Jack Manifold. It begins with the line "you buried the child you used to be alone,". This is accompanied by Jack's hand holding two flags above a fire, the L'manberg one and the Manifold Land one. Then, above a drawing of his glasses, it says "your naivete & hope (though you're sure they're the same)". Below there's a fire, fully black, which finishes the sentence with "left behind at the bottom of forever." To it's side, there's a crayon and a stick of lit TNT overlapping. Next to this is the phrase "it doesn't matter in the end". The final sentence says "neither of you could have been just kids, not really,".

Image three: The final page of a digital comic about Jack Manifold. At the centre of the image, there's Jack in his post-hell flame hoodie, face half obscured in shadow. His face is blank. Behind him is a box that shows a thunderstorm, along with a tree getting struck by lightning. The first line continues from the last page, stating "and you are too far gone". There's three black crosses next to Jack, and a book and quill drawn near him. It has a lightning symbol on its cover. Then, there's a drawing of his hand holding one of Snowchester's nuke detanators - the button has the same face as Dream's mask. The line and comic end with "to do anything but think that that's a good thing".]

Who are you really mourning?

(In other words, me and @skelebells did a collab where we swapped poems and made comics with them - go check out their one, it'll be in the reblogs!)

[fantroll-purgatory]

@genesisaberrance

Alternia or Beforus or some type of AU?: Alternia! She straight up wouldn’t work on Beforus.

Name (preferably include how you came up with it and why): Saskia Ivenen. This doesn’t actually have any relevance- Whenever I don’t have any ideas for symbolic troll names, I just kinda… smash two syllables together. While I’m somewhat attached to Saskia now, I’d be very interested in a potential different last name!

I’m really picky about name meanings sometimes, but I know what it’s like to be attached to a name- I think Saskia can be decently kept around. It does happen to be an actual name, but an uncommon enough one that I won’t give you a strike for it. It also means “protector of mankind,” which is a funny contrast to her actual nature. I think it’s a nice call to what her role SHOULD be. Also in the series LOST GIRL, a character named Aife takes on the name Saskia in order to manipulate and trick the main character. So there’s a neat little reference. 

For surname I’m going to do Semele. This is because Semele is the mother of Dionysus, with the added benefit that Semele’s parents, Harmonia and Cadmus, both turned into serpents. 

Saskia Semele also has a nice, snaky alliteration to it. 

Age:Varies, but it’s highly doubtful she lived to be especially old, for her caste or otherwise. She probably died somewhere around 25 sweeps or so, with my personal headcanon being that Rainbow Drinkers are functionally immortal unless something or someone actively kills them and that trolls in general live a lot longer than humans do. Of note is that she’s ancestor-era, not Karkat and crew era.

I definitely agree about rainbowdrinkers being functionally immortal. They’re vampires, after all, and their longevity does make sense. Jadebloods for sure would generally outlive humans, too, but not all trolls do. Burgundybloods, for example, live about 30-60 years, and the lifespan increases in graduated steps. That’s just a little trivial sidenote! But yeah her being ancestor-era would justify her still being on-planet even as an adult. 

Strife Specibus:Undecided, but my current leaning is towards bladekind, with her specifically utilising daggers most of the time. If you’ve got any other ideas, i’d be interested to hear them! 

Daggers are a nice and fast weapon. I think staffkind might be more themeatically sound, because you could have her use a Thyrsus. That’s the neat staff topped with a pinecone that Dionysus used as a weapon. 

Or, hear me out, you could have her use a weighted net like a Retiarius? That’s a gladiator who wielded a specific set of weapons, but I really am mostly interested in the net. You say she likes to avoid fights when she can, so a primary weapon that focuses on escape seems like a good idea. You could still use daggerkind as a Last Resort sort of weapon. I just think she could get into all kinds of neat and unique high jinks with a net. This is a bit of a sloppy connection to draw, but a lot of people associate gladiatorial combat with hedonism- think of the image of the Roman emperor lying back being fed grapes while judging the gladiators. 

Fetch Modus: Literally no idea. No clue. You guys have no idea how frustrating thinking of a fetch modus for my characters is for me, please help, I’m begging, please, snakes have manifested physically in my home, 

Picking a fetch modus is a pretty tricky stumbling block for a lot of people. Don’t worry, it’s why we’re here to help! 

For a funnier jokier modus you could do Peanut Brittle Modus, as a reference to the snake-in-a-peanut-brittle-can goof people like to do. Her item is placed into a can and she has to attempt to open it and get startled by the Fakey Snakes if she picks wrong. …Or real snakes if you wanted. Snakes could literally manifest in her home. You have the power. 

Additionally, you could use a Greed Modus. A modus that requires her to always have something in the inventory and won’t spit an item out if it’s the only thing in there, and that requires her to trade items of equal value. 

Blood color: Jadeblood! She ran away from the Caverns, though, finding them far too restricting and… well, boring. She was pretty young, so it felt like far more of a good idea at the time. 

Symbol and meaning:Her symbol is the alchemical symbol for Sulphur, often associated with Brimstone. My intention was to hint at, but not wholly embrace, a theme of corruption, vice, and sin– Saskia is not a good person, and her hedonism takes some pretty awful forms at places. This is also the intention behind her lusus, and her quirk.

I’ll be updating this to match what we know about the 288 canon symbols, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it down at the bottom. 

Trolltag:dionysusDistilled. Dionysus being the Greek god of wine, fertility, madness, and ecstasy. The fertility part isn’t super important there, and while this association isn’t actually perfect when compared to the literal legends, Dionysus kinda has this place as being kinda-sorta culturally relevant, and the ‘wine and madness’ portions of his domain are far more pronounced in pop culture. Distilled has a dual meaning- both another reference to alcohol, as a sideways reference to hedonism in general, as well as the implication that Saskia takes all the good parts from the god, distilling him down into his core essence. This was intended to hint at her arrogance, but I’ll admit it is a little bit clumsy. 

I do really enjoy the concept behind this trolltag a Whole lot. The meaning and everything is very fitting for the character you’re going for. Another I could potentially recommend might be lilithianApple. Lilith being mythological figure who is sometimes reported as Adam’s first wife and in some tellings of the story might’ve been the serpent to tempt Eve with the apple (thus making the apple a reference to this, but I also intended it as a reference to Eris’ golden apple). Lilith’s name is a reference to being a demon of the night and she’s sometimes portrayed as a cannibalistic spirit, so it fits the whole rainbowdrinker thing, too.

Quirk: Fairly simple one– she doubles every lower-case ’s’, unless it’s already doubled in a word (such as, for instance, ‘unless’, which already has two lower-case s in it)., and she replaces every upper-case S with a dollar sign. The former being to reinforce the snake theme, in turn leaning on the corruption and vice theme, and the latter being an extremely overt and straightforward reference to her enjoyment of material objects and opulence in general.

Special Abilities (if any):Hoo boy, bear with me for a second, because this leans heavily on my own headcanons. So… Saskia has fairly strong hypnosis. It isn’t mind control, and while she can implant suggestions and the like, it typically takes a form more like, uh… you know Kaa, from the old cartoon Jungle Book? That. Maintaining eye contact, she can put people into a trance, and make them more suggestible. Depending on who I’m writing with, this is actually usually a jadeblood thing, albeit not a thing all jadebloods can do- with the Maryams being notable examples of jades who have no latent hypnotic abilities.  Otherwise, it’s just a thing that she can do. I fully expect you might disagree with me on this, but I am pretty set on keeping it.

I dddefinitely have a disagreement with this, but rules Are made to be broken and despite Kanaya stating that jadebloods really don’t get any beneficial psychic powers, it’s Always possible for there to be special cases. I do like the fact that it’s a reference to Kaa. And I DO think it’s an interesting concept. Maybe you could work it as… after she becomes a rainbowdrinker? Vampires in mythology are REALLY OFTEN shown to have charming and even hypnotizing abilities to trick their prey. So she could be a very rare rainbowdrinker who was lucky enough to develop that sort of ability. You could work it as an example of a vampiric power instead of a jadeblood thing. 

Lusus: Giant snake! I flip-flop back and forth between it just being a massive snake, or it having feathers, but ultimately a feathered snake is actually a Thing in certain mythologies, and that thing has nothing to do with Saskia’s themes, so I’ve tentatively dropped it.

Just a snake feels a Little too plain here. I think maybe a hydra? I know they’re very water associated, but they’re still A Snake, so I think it’s alright. The relative immortality of the snake references her rainbowdrinker nature- kill it and it’ll come right back and all that. But the fact that it has multiple heads can also metaphorically represent her being two-faced. 

Personality: Manipulative asshole, basically. She’s pretty much completely amoral, though she shies away from major bloodshed or strife personally due to not wanting to die, and she’s self-serving and narcissistic. Saskia is not a nice person, she makes her living by staying in the hives of the recently-deceased until someone comes around to do something about it, at which point she scarpers. Despite that, she can be pretty charming, needing to manipulate people into just… not killing her, even if she doesn’t succeed all the time in getting them to actively help. Tends to adopt a bit of a drawl, a bit of a ‘giggling flirt’ angle to her demeanour, but that drops the second she doesn’t need it in favour of a more calculating, cold air to her. She’s essentially a scavenger, just one that’s perfected the art of scavenging high quality stuff. Sometimes she’ll stay in high-quality hotels, and simply hypo-charm her way out of paying, but that’s pretty dangerous so she doesn’t do it all that much. 

Interests:  Things. She likes feeling comfortable and wealthy, she likes being pampered, and she likes looking pretty. She’s vain, she’s shallow, and she’s greedy. Also has a fondness for trashy romance novels, more as a source of comedy than wish fulfillment. 

Title: “The Hedonist” fits pretty well, but I admit that it’s fairly generic. I’m interested in ideas! 

You could do The Epicurea for something directly related but a little less generic. Epicurean thought is just a body of hedonist philosophy. The Voluptas could work for similar reasons, Voluptas being the goddess of pleasure/hedonism. 

I’m gonna skip those last two, because she never played sBurb– she died long before the meteors fell.

I’m going to assign her a theoretical title and moon just for the purposes of picking out a symbol for her. I think the game would theoretically REALLY want her to develop and learn… so her role might end up being Seer of Blood. Learning to understand responsibility and relationships, all that fun stuff. She’d also probably be a Dersite player. Everything combined, that makes her new sign: 

Vircen, the sign of the Liable. It’s really fun in contrast with her Behavior And Attitude. 

Art credit goes to carminearts.tumblr.com by the way! Lovely person, I owe her a great debt.

Oh, sorry about this being from an RP blog, by the way– I don’t have a personal, and my OC RP blog is both deeply nsfw and also a sideblog, so I can’t submit from it. 

No worries! 

Thank you for your time, I look forward to seeing your thoughts!

I’ve really enjoyed looking at her! Time to go onto some design notes!:

Horns: I switched them up to match the new symbol as well as the hooked horn for jadebloods rule. 

Hair: I played around with poofing it up a little? I think I still like your original design better, but I do think it could use a little more Troll-brand Spike. 

Mouth: I gave her defined lips because all jadebloods are shown to have them. 

Jacket: So while I was working on this design I realized we’d never really played around with the idea of someone exploiting social rules for their benefit, so I thought this was the perfect place to do that. You said she’s a scavenger who likes scavenging the finer things and I think she could easily use that to get away with slightly more daring fashion approaches. Such as wearing a Violetblood’s jacket to make it seem like she might have a violetblood in one of her quadrants. The jewelry was added for similar reasons, as well as a little Decadence imagery. 

Shirt: And of course there’s her new symbol. 

I like her a lot! Thank you for sharing this rude girl. 

-CD