most of you will not understand the agony of this outfit. but hey here's fantasy au Howdy!
rambles:
yes. i know. he looks like a gunslinger. but I think it'd be funny if Howdy shows up and he minorly tweaks the genre simply by Existing! plus, he has to make himself useful beyond being a traveling salesman - he doesn't have a scrap of magic in him! so! alchemist gunslinger!
due to much of this "final" outfit design being Miguel's (@indigopoptart <3 thanks for your help homeslice <3) influence, i have less to say than usual! i'll talk about the things i Kept from the first terrible, terrible draft!
i wanted him to have full-coverage gloves because One, gloves fuck, & Two, shooting gloves! plus, he regularly works with dangerous materials! gotta keep his hands as safe as possible! speaking of his guns, they were a Ton of fun to draw. i wanted to make them ornate... Howdy seems like he'd enjoy nice things? fancy stuff perhaps? anyway the guns have his tavern "logo" on them!
the "second safety" mentioned triggers a magic-oriented mechanism that allows him to piece the guns together! they "unfold" into a big ol clusterfuck of a powerhouse weapon! unfortunately, using this immediately breaks the guns and they have to be repaired, so it's a "break glass in case of emergency" ace up the Neighborhood's sleeve!
i like to imagine that his bandolier, while cool, stresses everyone out a little bit. each bullet is full of pressurized weaponized magic. If they break while on the bandolier, well! Howdy would probably be very much Royally Fucked! i also drew the bullets too large here, so imagine that there's a lot more than shown and they're a lot smaller. I didn't realize this mistake until right now! oopsies!
i want to keep elements of the canon outfits in these fantasy ones. hence why his vest is striped and blue, he's still got the reddish brown pants, and! why his cloak clasp is shaped like a tie! and why the inside of his cloak resembles his apron!
i like to think that Howdy got his magic pack by swindling some poor soul out of it! when the buckles are undone, it unfolds into a vendor stand that looks Much different than the tiny scribble provided! said scribble is there to ah... what's the word. Demonstrate? get the point across? it's actually quite a nice stall! he has space to sell, and a workbench to tinker on! the pockets on the bag actually do function as pockets, though.
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i really enjoyed this bit of the chapter. two victims of control stand against each other. one of them made it out, certainly not unscathed but still able to find the good in life; the other is still searching for that control, the safe feeling of having no choice and the promises that were made that will never be delivered now. barem acknowledges that he’s still under makima's control, or at least his heart is, which symbolizes a more emotional connection to his relationship with being controlled. he feels robbed that her forced peace never came about. his anger is directed at denji now, the one who ‘got out’, because he’s been living in peace in barems eyes, while having destroyed barems own idea of peace. they are both victims, but denji is the victim who got to move on and barem cannot do that. i just really enjoy looking at part 2 from the angle of "who made it out and who is still trapped by the dreams of a dead woman", because makima does cast a shadow over the whole narrative.
(p.s. i'm not absolving barem of anything, he still sucks, but it would be so absurdly incorrect to me to not acknowledge that the other hybrids are victims of makima too, even if they dont see it that way, and how that affects their character arcs.)
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Where do your roots start
And where do your roots end?
Something about seeing only the worst of yourself in the mirror. Something violent and terrifying, but knowing you only grew that violence in response to violence against you. Knowing your power comes from a place of trauma, something you don’t remember but wish had never happened. But it did, and here you are. There’s something new in you that isn’t the you that you understand and you wish it wasn’t but it is. Violence begets violence and you are unable to control what grows from the seeds that were planted. So you have to live with it and try not to let that violence spread.
You’ve already failed once.
And you see it every time you look in the damn mirror.
—
For Body Horror Week’s final day, prompt: Roots by In This Moment
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Summer Aoko!! ☀
It's about time I drew her! I love Aoko so much, I can't wait to see her again this year!!
Btw, have a bonus chibi Aoko too..!
(Also, her earrings are supposed to spell out AO-KO.. It's based off a pair of earrings I really like..!)
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