#ant chatters

[pluviatrix]

ive been reading garbage romantasy lately and it's truly truly awful but i've figured out a huge symptom of fantasy worlds that i know i won't like: i cannot imagine old women or children existing in them.

everyone is late teens-early thirties. these are worlds flattened in their demographics to the coveting of sexually available youth. there are no mothers with young children, no sons caring for older mothers, no elderly people who aren't evil and no children that aren't cardboard cutouts instead of developing people.

i knowww this is a symptom of me not being the target audience for this, and i understand that people don't come to these books for complex worlds but for erotica and romance, i know! so this is my caveat before i rant more that i'm not being super serious i'm just discussing something i've noticed i appreciate in more complex worlds

it especially stings in medieval fantasy (and by that i mean largely Western medieval fantasy) settings. it reeks of an inability or refusal to conceptualize a society and communities (or lack thereof) isolated from modern capitalist ideals, particularly the nuclear family. you don't know the kind of labor elderly women did to keep the world running in the premodern era.

who taught your nondescript background serfs to embroider the belts they're wearing? who made their 'roughspun tunics?' who weaved their blankets? who cares for the children while the parents are working in the fields? who brews their ale? who passes on their stories, medical knowledge, songs? why aren't there any older women in your clergy, helping manage your estates, present in your royal court? who are your midwives? who does your teenaged protagonist learn from and look up to?

beyond that, how do you treat your old women? are they all evil witches, all tradition-obsessed backward fossils, all smothering female relatives, all background extras? are they and their bodies cheap punchlines and jumpscares? where do your women go when they're too old for you to imagine them with sexual appetites and complex personalities beyond grandmothers and jealous evil hags?

children exist as infants or late teens only, ironing out the uncomfortable ugly years of a person becoming a person, teens without acne and without social awkwardness and fully developed in their competencies and personalities without the difficult part of growing up and learning included. babies are allowed because they're cute, they're basically props, a goalpost for the main romance of the book to satisfy heteropatriarchal expectations of couples instead of the main characters subverting any expectations. not to mention that most of these protagonists i can't imagine being 12, 13 years old. they sprung up fully formed at 19 before being whisked away by a love interest so overtly sexual he circles around to being sexless and utterly unappealing.

don't get me STARTED on how i hate seeing characters propping up relationships of main characters instead of being complex on their own.

this post is about ACOTAR.

[magp1e-starl1ght]

I had a very weird dream this morning about a webcomic about an older goth guy and his 2 adoptive “ant girl” daughters.

The goth dude kinda looked like if you combined young Trent Reznor and young Peter Murphy. The ant girls were kinda like cat girls but with ants instead of cats, like they looked mostly human but with ant features. They were about the size of the average teenage human. I remember one of the ant girls was like a red ant with long red hair and whatnot, and the other was a black ant with shorter black hair. I think the red girl had some kind of backstory about how she was a parasitic ant larvae that was sent to infiltrate a different species ant colony (???) but failed and got abandoned and that’s how goth guy adopted her. Idk about the other girl’s backstory or the goth guy’s backstory or what any of their names were.

The comic was REALLY popular online, esp tumblr and Reddit for some reason. On Reddit the red girl was more popular but on tumblr people were REALLY obsessed with the goth guy, I think my subconscious invented a new tumblr sexyman.

[frostios]

my ants matilda, maddie, tilda, tempest, juniper, and muddle. growing a colony

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

I just saw your OC’s name on artfight and HIS FULL GOVERNMENT NAME IS CHARLIE D. GERALD?????

HIS FULL NAME IS CHAPPIE DONNEVAN GERALD AND SHE ABSOLUTELY HATES IT FOR NOT BEING A PUN, NEVER EVER CALL HER BY THEIR FULL NAME 💀💀

[delta-warriors]

it's insulating foam

tenna sprayed him with insulating foam

[deaderisbetter13]

Heartbreaking News:

Someone who's art you think/thought was neat hates you cause you enjoy a ship.

[dreamwinged]

girls will be like oh yeah im totally gonna f/o reveal then get scared and not do it

[dooxliss]

I'D LOVE TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR SPLATOONS AND SOME BNHA OCS OF YOUR PICK!! also interested in dragon ball too ngl 👀

i hate tumblr so fucking much i was writing this up for an hour and it deleted

splatoon

i have a set of octolings since splat1 that i really like!

ringo, tako, octavia, mimi, quill, pan

but pan is gonna be revamped so i’ll figure out her deal soon

ringo tako octavia and pan are from octo valley

quill is from octo canyon

mimi is from the splatlands

i also have a budding splatband called out of shoal!

the lead is an octoling who came to the surface after hearing calamari inkantation and got paris syndrome so they made a punk rock band about it

there’s also a pencil urchin who is a vocalist and a shellback crab on drums :] might add a jelly as well

i want to make idols also. someday

bnha

here’s the main gang class 2-b!

(they were 2-a before horikoshi showed 2-a in the manga 💀)

my favorites of each row: atsuko kinzoku, koharu nakamoto, miku ueno, emiri abe

atsuko kinzoku (second to last, first row)—quirk melting point! with a touch of her hands she can melt any meltable object and consequently control that molten mess :] more extreme melting points are harder for her to do and cooling herself down can be an ordeal. she went to a dance school and was well versed in ballet before suddenly pivoting to u.a. and hero work. her hero name is tungsten!

koharu nakamoto (middle, second row)—quirk tear jerker! she can force people within a certain radius to experience certain emotions! she can do negative emotions much easier than positive, and these changes often make her feel the same way. she went to the same middle school as toga. she is also very into decora kei :^) did not give her a hero name oops but she is the magical girl hero

miku ueno (last, third row)—quirk sleepy sheep! her hair is actually clouds that when used makes the target extremely drowsy. as a drawback she herself is also rather sleepy most of the time :( her first hero name is bo sleep, with a themed outfit, but after she graduates and the nature of her work changes, she becomes somna

emiri abe (second, last row)—quirk animate! emiri has charcoal like pads on their fingers, which allows her to draw. once a drawing is completed, it can come to life and then be used as a tool. effectiveness is tied to how clear a drawing is. the medium is water resistant but can be washed away. emiri’s hair is naturally blonde but is more ash colored because of how often they put their hands in their hair 💀 in public, emiri wears gloves. hero name ani!

(bonus! hideyoshi maki + kanon katou)

hideyoshi (second, top row)—quirk lucky lottery! he has bands on his arms and marks on his face that appear when good things naturally happen to him. as its stored, he can then expend them to sort of force events to happen as long as there is a chance of it happening. less likely events requires him to spend more luck. it is also automatically used to keep him out of harms way. unrelated to his quirk, he has doll like limbs :^) he’s the lucky hero—chance!

kanon (right of emiri)—quirk stereo! she gains super speed and strength depending on the qualities of the music she listens to! she is also emiri’s gf :] kanon has vitiligo as well, which is being hidden at that point in time. she fails the hero license test going against her older sister kotone and partner chiyo, who go to seiai academy, but eventually gets her shit together and becomes the wabisabi hero—shuffle 👍🏽

dragon ball

i had several saiyan ocs (maiz, kohn, aspara, pumpki, etc) when i was in hs but i havent drawn them since so here are the ones i have!

nati (from naticidae, genus of moon snail) and kitsu (from tsuki, moon) are my namekian ocs! they are bonded in the same was dende and cargo were.

unfortunately they died in the namek saga, and were later revived on earth. during that wait for the namekian dragon balls to be used again, they explored earth and decided to then explore the rest of universe 7 to see what’s out there :D

nati is a dragon clan namekian! they have a shitty keychain esque set of dragon balls that aren’t capable of much besides wishing for the return of a lost sock. they think its cute but don’t use them often because of the hassle of collecting.

kitsu is a warrior clan namekian! he died protecting nati on namek and as a result has become very guard dog-y regarding them. you know how it is. was initially reluctant about not going to namek with his brothers.

i’m still waffling about who but while hopping from planet to planet one of them gets gravely injured to the point where fusion was the only option available to them. as a result this fused namekian has extreme survivors guilt and is reluctant to return to namek. (though they may eventually do to see if porunga can unfuse them)

since we know that zeno erased like 6 universes before the universe survival saga i wanted to make a set of ocs from one of those erased universes (god of destruction, angel, supreme kai). i did not get far in that all tho 💀 only designed the angel and i don’t think they have a name. but i probably wouldve named them kesa (from sake, doubleish meaning with the negative conjugation of kesu, to erase)

[pluviatrix]

water and fish. fire and wood. sky and birds. i can do this all day

[frostios]

BIRTHDAY!!!!!

AAAAHAHAHAHAH FLIGHTY THIS IS AWESOME THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! barking at him, stay back!!!

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

May I ask what insects in particular inspired your Tur-bug design? I'm seeing a little bit of wasp aspects, like the og, but I was wondering if there was anything else?

There's definitely some wasp in there, you're right anon! Turbo's legs in particular were very wasp/ant inspired. Although his antennae were ripped off the wasps more!

I wanted to imitate how thin and gangly bug legs seem to be in comparison to their body? And how they always look like they're standing on their tippy toes when they walk around? Idk if that makes any sense..

There was also some mosquito action going on! I know an inordinate amount of info on mosquitoes because of an art project i had to do a while back, including their anatomy! So I had to use all that info somewhere.

[crowinahole]

THERE ARE ANTS EVERYWHERE

[curiositykilledtheradiostar]

once again in my Jordan Kennedy era (for the love of fuck someone please help us there are so many ants in our house)

[couriwaytown]

i think im going crazy...

the white light of the training room has started turning yellow...

[viscarrion]

third time ive seen wasp disrespect on the for you page. stop that