#because she's hard to stylize to me

[laugtherhyena]

Ena the freakers

[dissentersbedamned]

an entire doodle page worth of content of just these two waow

art commissions

full page for you nerds

[mizzical]

[welcometogrouchland]

*twirling my hair* do you like cassandra cain? if not, do u have a moment to hear about our lord and saviour cassandra cain?

CASSANDRA CAIN MY LOVE!!! She's definitely the batgirl I've read the most in terms of full issues, the first 30-ish issues of her solo by Kelly Puckett Scott Peterson and Damion Scott had me hooked and I binged them but fell off after Horrocks came on (nothing against him, he was just given an editorial mandate to make the book more romance focused and it turned me off because it felt so ooc for Cass to me lol. I do own some of the issues he wrote tho! I like the ones with art by Rick Leonardi). I'm not really caught up with modern comics (ish??) And I'm not reading anything dedicatedly but I hear she's in a new original book teaming up with a magic user? Neat! Good for her. I love her in the shadow of the batgirl graphic novel (IT'S SO GOOD)

[3motionally3xhausted]

Redesigning the Fentons!!

Hi yes this is for yet another Danny Phantom AU of mine it has nothing to do with the Apprenticeship AUs but unlike that batch I actually wanna turn this AU into a fic eventually once I get through a few other big projects I have *sobs*

Anyway individual files for each character under the cut along with my obligatory rambling about all the choices I made ;)

Jazz! Honestly, when I was a kid, I always thought she was 18 not 16 so it was kind of a shock when I started rewatching the show about a yr ago and heard that. Anyway, she's 17 in this AU but already moved out to college on a scholarship bc living in FentonWorks is kind of hell and she has that Older Sibling Guilt for leaving Danny there. For her clothes, I wanted it to be a mix of tactical and preppy.

Danny! (Fenton) The effects of FentonWorks hell is much more visible on Danny than Jazz because she got out of there as soon as she could. Because of that though, a lot of the chores in the lab got pushed onto Danny, without passing on many safety tips, like replacing the ecto-filtrator, cleaning contaminated tools, organizing ecto-weapons, etc. And because he doesn't know any better when it comes to safety, he has many symptoms of radiation poisoning: visually, this comes through in the discoloration/scarring on his skin (Jazz has some slight scarring on her face and hands as well), the cataract on his left eye, as well as burst blood vessels in that eye. For his clothes, I wanted them to look a bit ragged and worn through ripped seams, tears in the jeans, & duct tape around his shoe.

Danny! (Phantom) I don't actually have a lot to SAY about my choics, but I am really happy with it. There are still a few things. I wanted his hair as Fenton & Phantom to be different but still reminiscent of the simplistic rendering of the original show: Fenton is kind of timid so his hair falls over his face, & Phantom is more active/aggressive so his hair is pushed upward. The only other thing I want to comment on is his skin: it's kind of about how I usually stylize Phantom (and I mentioned this when I redesigned Dani a while back) but a "healthy" Phantom in my style would have more bright cyan skin and an unhealthy Phantom has a more dull/zombie green. And lastly, as a ghost, the radiation poisoning kind of cleans up into more neat scarring rather than the muddy/bleeding look as Fenton.

Maddie! Now, I'm gonna be honest, real vulnerable here,... I hate Maddie's canon haircut. It's ugly, I'm not sorry. But I can modify it, so it's fine: now it's curlier, a bit darker, and has a few grey streaks bc she's a genius and constantly pulling long working hours. And, it didn't come across as much as I wanted, but she's got some biceps, strong lady. Now, I'm not really sure why, but I wanted to shift the color of her and Jack's jumpsuit, making hers much more desaturated.

Jack! Big guy. I don't have many thoughts about him either, but I did give him glasses and some stubble for a little bit more dad energy (?) I mainly changed the color of his jumpsuit bc Orange is an extremely hard color for me to render for some reason, so now it's the classic Hazard Yellow. Finally, the most notable difference is the coat I put on him for a bit more scientist energy but my main reasoning for it is the potential visual of him being an absolute tank jumping from overhead with the ghost gauntlets and his coat flapping behind him. Also, I generally like the idea of him presenting himself as a big, dumb teddy-bear, always smiling, but completely unhinged below that facade: dropping the smile or not while towering over you in shadow. Wild imagery.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Do not count on any actual steps towards creating this fic in the near future, it's just on my mind right now, but I NEED to finish my other projects first 🙏🙏🙏 That said, I will (eventually) get around to a handful more character redesigns for this AU including: Vlad, Sam, Tucker, Valerie, Paulina, and maybe Lancer & Dash

[ckret2]

Bill hates it when people mention Euclydia. Everyone thinks it's because he doesn't want to hear his home's real name; it's actually the opposite.

Here, have some fic. The naming of Euclydia (among other things), the birth of the Nightmare Realm, and the Axolotl planting the seeds of a trillion-year-long plan to keep Bill from the death penalty.

This is the 🎉FINAL PART🎉 of a 9-part plot about the Axolotl in the aftermath of the Euclidean Massacre. If you wanna read the others (or look at the art), here's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight.

####

With the immediate crisis averted and the triangle, for the moment, not attempting to invade and/or demolish the multiverse, most of the god militia pulled back. A group remained stationed near the unstable border between dimensions to watch the triangle; but the less powerful gods could trickle back in to get back to their own work, first and foremost the construction workers doing emergency repairs to reformat and stabilize the neighboring dimensions.

The Axolotl—who, he suspected, would have been arrested himself for interfering if they weren't still focused on the triangle—wove through the crowd until he found the Time Giant; and then swam angrily up to her and demanded, "You used me as a distraction?"

She turned a stone-hard look on him. "That was the agreement."

"No! The agreement was that I'd try to talk him down! We'd only resort to distracting him if I couldn't get through to him!"

"Ya didn't get through to him." The Time Giant nodded at the Axolotl's burned side. "Look at you. Your leg's off."

He looked down at his missing foreleg. He'd been so distracted by the near end of the multiverse, he'd barely noticed the pain. "It's just a flesh wound," he insisted. "I'm an axolotl, it'll grow back!"

She shook her head.

"I would have gotten through to him! You saw me talk him down after an entire army threatened him!" the Axolotl said. "What if I had succeeded, and when we left my tank he found out you already wrote him off?! You never gave me a chance—"

"We did give you a chance," she said testily, "and I saw that you weren't gonna succeed." She hooked a thumb over her belt and tapped a finger on her time tape; the stylized symbol of the Time Giants glowed on the side, an unsubtle reminder that she knew what was coming far better than he did. "So I did my damn job."

So she'd sent him in already knowing that he would fail. The Axolotl was speechless for a second. "But—you couldn't know—I got so close, if I'd had just one more try to talk to him..."

"If I'd let you, I'm sure you woulda kept trying until the end of time," she said. "You seem like a good guy, Ax—but you can't save everyone." She pushed past him to get to work. "There's first aid near where Dimension 2 Gamma was. Get those burns looked at."

"They're fine."

She was wrong. He could save everyone. Because he wouldn't stop until he did.

####

"You're replacing it?" the triangle asked petulantly.

"I'm not talking to you," VENDOR said, turned away from the triangle. "You had your chance at diplomacy and you blew it." The crablike cop was holding up a clipboard with some paperwork for VENDOR to review, and didn't look pleased to have been temporarily reduced to a secretary.

"I'm just asking a question!"

"We're not speaking."

At the top of his lungs—which was, it turned out, very loud and very shrill—the triangle said in the direction of the reporters, "Oh wow, that's a crazy thing to say about Lady Morgenstern! And talk about obscene! She'd be furious if she could hear that—!"

"Shhhhh!" VENDOR rounded angrily on the triangle. "You don't even know who she is!"

"I know her name and I'm not afraid to use it," the triangle said. "You're really replacing my dimension?"

"If I can be left alone long enough to finish signing the authorization paperwork," VENDOR muttered. "The construction crew's already out here and waiting, so if you don't mind..."

"It just seems pretty tacky, replacing a universe just like that." The triangle spoke like dimension he was talking about was just a pawn to be used in a trivial argument about etiquette, rather than everyone and everything he'd ever known. "No memorial or anything? Yeesh."

"So hold a memorial for it," VENDOR said. "We don't have any choice, we have to repair all the fallen walls to keep reality stable. If you'd let us into your hovel to sweep up what's left of your old dimension, it could have at least been incorporated into the new one."

The triangle half reached for his hat, stopped himself, and curled his hand into a fist and thrust it down at his side. "Over my dead body," he said. "Which I'm pretty sure got incinerated! So that means never!"

"You're pretty sure?" VENDOR asked archly.

"It... I had more important stuff to take care of, okay? I'm a busy guy!"

"I'm sure," VENDOR said. "Well, it's too late for any cleanup operations anyway. Enjoy rotting away in your landfill."

"Wow, that's how you talk to a refugee from the biggest disaster ever?" The triangle laughed. "Hey, bet the muckrakers over there would love to hear how sympathetic you are to the—what'd you say I am—the 'last surviving soul from my dimension'—?"

"Let's find somewhere quieter to work," VENDOR said to the cop.

He looked relieved "You got it."

As VENDOR and THEIR impromptu secretary moved away from Dimension Zero, the triangle shouted after THEM, "Hey! How do I vote for Municipalitron!"

Volcanoes on several of VENDOR's planets erupted. THEY whipped around to face the triangle. "You don't! You aren't in my district!"

"Well, whose district am I in? This Morgenstern creep you keep bringing up?" the triangle asked. "How's voting work, do you toss a ballot across the border and I toss it back—?"

"You're not in anyone's district! If you were, you'd have been arrested already!"

The triangle stared in dumb shock. "Wait, so I don't get to vote for which of you idiots I have to deal with?" He hollered at VENDOR's retreating back, "That's fascism!"

Fuming, VENDOR passed the Axolotl muttering under THEIR breath about showing the triangle fascism; then stopped, abruptly turned to face him, and snapped, "You."

"You," the Axolotl agreed.

"You're an optimistic fool."

Yes, well, he knew that already. He'd been voted Most Adorably Idealistic in his law school yearbook for a reason. "I don't think I like you, either."

"No one does." THEIR camera whirred irritably as they looked the Axolotl up and down. "What are you doing here, anyway? I assumed you'd been sent to figure out who's liable for this whole mess—but no, you only handle afterlife cases, don't you? Who sent you?"

The Axolotl was silent.

Furiously, VENDOR said, "Are you serious?! We could have avoided half this mess if it weren't for you!"

"If it weren't for me, he'd have knocked down the multiverse before anyone realized he's setting the fires," the Axolotl snapped. "And if you had figured that much out, you'd have gotten your cops killed before anyone realized he's a god."

"The professionals here to handle the situation could have figured it out faster if you weren't derailing their investigations," VENDOR snarled. "And arguing about jurisdiction! We could have arrested that that little troublemaker the moment we figured out just what he's done—"

"Right after you arrested that kid with the spray can who didn't have anything to do with this?"

THEY growled in frustration. "Forget it! I hope you're happy with your genocidal pal over there—you seem about as concerned with public safety as he is." THEY stormed off, the cop with THEIR paperwork chasing after THEM.

The Axolotl watched VENDOR go; then turned to look ruefully toward Dimension Zero.

When the triangle caught his gaze, he formed a heart with his fingers over his top point and called out, gleefully singsong, "Genocide paaals!"

It wasn't exactly the reaction he'd hoped for.

####

The Axolotl was attempting to distract himself from scratching his itchy leg while it regrew by eavesdropping on the triangle. It seemed like the triangle was entertaining himself by darting around the border of Dimension Zero to start arguments with anybody he happened to recognize (except the Axolotl, whom he seemed to be trying to ignore outside of throwing a few odd quips at him.) At the moment, the triangle and the Time Giant were hollering at each other about her decision to reinforce the second dimensions by making them splinter into multiple timelines.

"So you're really willing to sacrifice zillions of lives by letting me incinerate all their parallel timelines?" The triangle laughed in disbelief. "And everyone here thinks I'm the killer! That's not a good look for you, buddy!"

She glanced up from a table full of paperwork to give him a totally neutral look. "You're the one who's willing to incinerate them. You could not do that."

"When I do it, it's justified."

The Axolotl was distracted from the argument as the storm cloud with the apoc agents gloomily blew past him. It was talking into a walkie-talkie as it went: "Yeah, I know he's a nut. But he's a nut that can't throw fireballs outside the border of his dimension, and I've got to finish this report before we can get outta here." He sighed at whatever the walkie-talkie said in response, and said, "Yeah. We'll rendezvous after I have his testimony." It let its tornado suck the walkie-talkie back in and drifted to the Time Giant. "Mind if I steal your conversation partner for a minute? ATTF business."

She grabbed a binder to try to shield her papers from the worst of the storm's rain. "Please. Take him."

"Thanks." It floated closer to Dimension Zero and raised its voice to bark, "Hey! Magister Mentium!"

The triangle looked over mistrustfully. "What?" As he'd talked to the Time Giant, he'd been playing with the fabric of reality, creating a circle out of raw... stuff. The Axolotl couldn't tell what the stuff was, but it looked like it was some sort of animal tissue, except far too uncannily homogeneous to be natural, disturbing in its uniformity. Like a slice of baloney. When he saw who'd called out to him, he rolled his eye and turned his attention to extruding the circle into a baloney cylinder. "Heeey, Officer Fun Police! Here to rain on my parade again?"

"Rain jokes aren't as funny as you think they are," it said. "No, this is Apocalyptic Threat Task Force business."

The triangle's eye narrowed. "What business? Are you gonna complain about my renovations again?"

"No. If you're not about to knock reality down, I don't care what you do anymore," the cloud said. "It's not my business to punish anybody for previous apocalypses, I just want to prevent future ones. Answer a few questions for our incident report and I'll be out of your life." There was an implicit and you'll be out of mine in its tone.

"All right," the triangle said dubiously. "Fffine. Then we're on the same side. I'm not fond of apocalypses either."

It paused like it wanted to argue with that claim, but said, "Good enough for me." It pulled out the soggy notepad it had been using all day, flipped through it, couldn't find a free page, and with a sigh pulled out a tape recorder instead. "You're from Dimension 2 Delta, right?"

"If you say so," the triangle said, lifting his hands in a shrug. "You guys are the ones who named my dimension."

"Uh-huh." Under its breath, the cloud muttered, "Not exactly a name, but... If you're from 2Δ, that makes you the only direct witness to how your universe was destroyed."

The triangle paused. "Mm."

"Can you explain what happened, exactly?" When the triangle didn't respond, the cloud added, "I'm not gonna arrest you for it. If we want to have a chance of stopping something like this from happening in the future, we need to know what happened here."

"Uhhh, yyyeah. Suuure," the triangle said.  It wasn't clear exactly how Dimension Zero rearranged, but the view of the eternal dance party simply vanished. There was no sign of the millions of shapes. The music had fallen near silent, just a constant distant low thumping noise, like your heartbeat in your ears; quiet enough that it couldn't drown out the whispery hiss leaking out of Dimension Zero. "It's not like I have anything to hide." Whatever he was about to say, it seemed like he wanted to hide it from his party prisoners, at least.

A bolt of lightning shot through the storm's recorder, turning it on. "You said you were an active participant in the end of the world, right?"

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" He eyed the recorder suspiciously. "What is this, some trick to try to get a confession out of me?"

"Again, I'm not a cop. And you already confessed in front of a thousand reporters," the storm said. "If you were involved, you've got a different perspective than some guy ten superclusters away who only witnessed it, that's the only reason it matters."

"Oh," the triangle said. "Then—yeah, I was there for the whole thing. Start to finish."

"Great," the storm said gruffly. "Then could you explain in your own words what happened when the universe ended and, to the best of your knowledge, what caused it."

"Oh. Yeah. Right. The cause," the triangle said. "It... it was a—monster."

"I thought you said you—"

"It was a monster," the triangle said, more confidently now.

The cloud hesitated. "All right," it said. "Tell me what happened."

The triangle took a deep breath. "Okay. So. It uh—started with the third dimension."

"The monster came from the third dimension?"

"No, we were going to the third dimension. But we needed—"

The hissing background static exploded into a roar.

The void filled with the staticky screams of countless dead voices, pleading for mercy, pleading for it to stop. Death rattles, howls of agony, wails of terror. Most of the crowd of gods outside Dimension Zero fell silent, turning to stare at the disembodied hysterical shrieks.

One voice, strained with pain, rose above the cacophony, crackling, "Emergency services! We need medical assistance! Ambulances, or—please—I don't know what happened—it's like everyone's internal organs spontaneously ruptured, there's—there's hundreds of people here! Some of them are missing parts of their body, they just—disappeared! I'm hurt too, I don't know what it is—I can feel it inside me—"

A second voice replied, "We can't send assistance. Everyone's bleeding, the whole city's dying! We can't help you!"

Whatever the triangle said was lost beneath the roar. He didn't even seem to notice it. His eye was filled with static. The word "blood" was just barely audible. The word "mandibles."

Another voice, trying to sound professional, trying to sound authoritative, but trembling with fear, "This is an emergency announcement! This announcement will not repeat! The fire can transmit over radio waves and sound waves! Turn off all radios and TVs! Turn off all radios and TVs and destroy any wireless phones and pagers! Do NOT listen to the screams! Again, the fire is transmitting over radio waves, this message will not repeat, destroy your radio and warn your neighbors!"

The Axolotl saw images flash in the triangle's eye, too fast for him to mentally process one before another ten had gone by: a plane like infinitely thin glass with tiny delicate shapes painted on its surface shattering in a rolling wave; a bleeding body reduced to shards and then the shards reduced to chips and then chips reduced to dust; fire spitting and crackling into every crack split in existence; a light shaped like a triangle. (Was that the light that had blinded the Oracle's seer?)

Another voice gasping, "It's doing something to the gravity, I-I don't understand—we don't even have the equipment to read... it's like gravity's turned in a direction that doesn't exist! Does anyone know how to stop it?! Our universe is tearing ap—" and the words were cut off with a scream; and the scream was cut off with a sudden silence that was swallowed whole by the other voices.

The triangle had peeled open, shining golden panels stretching out like petals, his mandibles unhinged and curling around his eye in a ring of teeth, like a blooming carnivorous flower, sun-soaked and mesmerizing. God, he was so bright. He shot light in every direction like an explosion that never ended. Like a star trapped in the moment of supernova.

Another voice, shaking with rage, "Did you hear that, you monster?! I told you we weren't ready yet! Why didn't you listen?! I can see the destruction from here—the sky's on fire, everything is burning. How could this happen?! YOU killed them all—" and the rage cracked, revealing the fear and grief just barely hidden underneath, "Remember us. If you're the only one left, you have to remember us. Please—"

The static snapped off; the triangle's body snapped back into place; his eye snapped back into focus; "—and then they appointed me their god," he said cheerfully, "and here we are!"

And with only a couple more dying cries of pain and pleas for help, the voices fell back to their constant background whisper.

The storm cloud had started sleeting.

The Axolotl had stopped breathing. Just the sound of the carnage was enough to make him sick.

But the triangle sounded perfectly at ease—more than he had before he'd answered the cloud's question. "So is that all you needed?" He'd resumed playing with the cylinder of meat he'd been constructing—extruding it further, and then, dissatisfied with the results, collapsing it back into a circle.

His hands were trembling as he messed with the cylinder. There was a tightness around his eye.

"What..." The storm cloud let out a low rumble of thunder, ahem, "what... did you say about blood? I didn't catch it."

The triangle blinked blankly at the storm. "I didn't say anything about blood."

It paused.  "All right, then—what about the other voices? Who were they?"

"What voices?"

The storm stared at the triangle, baffled sunbeam fixed on him; then swung the sunbeam over to the Axolotl. "You heard—?"

So his eavesdropping had been noticed. He nodded. Oh, he heard, all right.

The triangle glanced between them. "I think you guys are hearing voices," he said. "The only one talking here is me."

He said it like he meant it. The Axolotl was sure he did. Had he not heard the voices?

"Never mind, forget it," the cloud said uneasily. "You said someone... Who appointed you their god?"

"Uhhh..." the triangle tilted to the side as he tried to think. "Pretty much all my people? Yeah. It was everyone!"

"Your people? From your universe?"

"Yup!"

"They didn't appoint you their god," the cloud said. "They're all dead."

The triangle scoffed. "I don't know what you're talking about. They're all in here with me!"

"You mean the mortals from the other universes?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," the triangle repeated, a little slower, warningly. "They're all from my universe."

For a moment, the cloud just stared at him, at a loss. It glanced again toward the Axolotl. The Axolotl had nothing to offer it.

"Is that everything?" The triangle tried to keep his voice peppy, but there was an edge of exhaustion that hadn't been there earlier. (Yeah, him and everyone else here.)

"I guess that wraps up that part of the questionnaire," the cloud muttered uneasily, trying to recover its professional tone. "Just a couple more questions. I need your name. For the report."

Dimension Zero's hissing background static rose again: "The murderer... The name of the murderer... is—"

"NOBODY ASKED YOU!" The triangle turned and chucked the cylinder he'd been working on into the Dream Realm. He grumbled under his breath, created another circle, and started stretching it out again.

The triangle could hear the voices. Then why hadn't he been able to hear them earlier? Unless he had been able to hear them—and he just... couldn't remember that he'd heard them?

Even if the Axolotl hadn't known about the incomparable trauma the triangle had survived/caused, it would be pretty obvious by now that something was going terribly wrong inside his head. Contradictory stories about his own reality, memories he refused to remember, facts he simply set aside as not relevant. Was he refusing to face them, or was he unable?

From their conversation in the Axolotl's tank, he thought the triangle understood more than he was willing to admit. But the Axolotl might be the only one who knew that.

And that was beginning to give the Axolotl an idea.

"Just—put me down as the Magister Mentium, okay?" the triangle told the cloud. "Everyone'll know who you're talking about."

"If you say so," said the cloud. "What was your universe's name?"

"Its name?" The triangle glanced up from his new cylinder and gave the cloud a perplexed look. "You asked already. You said it's Dimension 2 Delta."

"That's its serial number. Every dimension's assigned one at its Big Bang. But it's standard to let a dimension's own residents choose its name. It makes it more personal." The cloud sounded as though it had memorized this explanation. The Axolotl wondered how many times it had had to take statements from a destroyed dimension's grieving survivors. He hoped it usually got to give this spiel to witnesses of a narrowly averted apocalypse. "Typically the first explorers to leave their dimension get to name it; but the only person ever known to leave 2Δ is... you."

"Oh," he said. "Right."

"So, what did your people name your universe?"

He stared at the storm like it was stupid. "We called it... the universe?"

"Everyone calls their universe The Universe," the cloud said. "Followed by The World, The Dimension, Reality, and Home. They're all taken, come up with something else."

"Seriously? You're making me name my whole universe and now you're telling me how to name it?"

"They're not my rules," the cloud said. "If you don't have a native name, we usually name a dimension after the first known explorer to leave it. Was that you?"

The triangle was quiet for an uncomfortably long moment. His gaze twitched away; and for a moment the Axolotl thought he saw another image flash in his eye: a triangle floating in space, eerily serene, dead. His voice was small when he said, "No."

Surprised lightning quietly flashed in the storm's cloud. "Oh. Do you know the name of the first?"

"Of course I do. He's my..." He stopped himself. He said, too evenly, "His name is Euclid."

Obviously, the triangle wasn't speaking a language that can be spoken with human mouths or written with human symbols. "Euclid" is a stand-in word for an unpronounceable name; trying to say the name without the right anatomy—without even the right laws of physics and sound waves—would only mangle it.

But the rest of the multiverse didn't have the right physics or anatomy either. "Euclid," the cloud repeated, mangling it. The triangle winced. "Fine. How's Euclydia sound?"

"It sounds stupid," the triangle said.

"Well, it's your dimension. Do you have a better suggestion?"

"I..." The triangle floundered helplessly. "That... Okay hold on, I've had a very long..." He floundered again as he tried to figure exactly what kind of time span he'd been having a long one of.

"If you want me to come back later..." said the cloud, who very obviously did not want to have to come back later.

"I don't knowww, gimme a second," the triangle whined. "I've never thought about a universe having a name! It's—it's fine. Euclydia's fine."

"If you're sure—?"

"Of course I'm sure," the triangle snapped. "Euclydia. Yeah. Great. Fine."

"All right." The cloud zapped its tape recorder, turning it off. "Thanks for your time."

As it started to hover off, the triangle said, "Hold on! I answered your questions, you owe me some."

The eye of the storm reluctantly swung back toward the triangle. "What?"

He held up the shape he'd been extruding. "What do you call this... 3D circle thing?"

The sunbeam swept over it. "A cylinder?"

The triangle pointed toward VENDOR, who was out at the edge of the crowd answering the questions of some reporters who'd caught THEM attempting to slink away from the scene. "And what are the 3D circle things Coin Slot over there is hauling around?"

It glanced at VENDOR's stock of planets. "Spheres."

The triangle shook his cylinder. "Well, what am I doing wrong, then!"

"I don't know, math's not my thing," the cloud said. "Try rotating it."

The triangle waited until the cloud had moved on; then created another circle, extruded it again, but curled the extrusion around into a circle. He ended up with a shape like a donut. He said, quietly, "Oo-oo-ooh." He sounded impressed.

The Axolotl swam up alongside the storm cloud as it left. "So. Find out what you wanted to know?"

The cloud laughed ruefully.

That was what he thought. "Are the interviews you've been taking classified?"

"No, our reports are open to the public. Anyone can request copies. The database is a nightmare to navigate, though."

"Let me know who to contact for the records on this incident. Especially the witness testimonies."

"I take it you're also planning to go through that noise we just heard with a fine-tooth comb?"

"That's hardly the start of it."

If the Axolotl had been convinced of anything during all his conversations with the triangle today, it was that the triangle could barely begin to grasp just what it was he'd done to his dimension and all the dimensions around it—and he did a very poor job of communicating what he did grasp.

And if the Axolotl could prove that—if he could build a convincing argument that the triangle hadn't understood what he'd done, psychologically couldn't understand, that even now he only had the fuzziest comprehension of what he was involved in...

Someday, that triangle's sins would catch up to him. Someday, he would be in the hands of the gods of death and justice, and they would have to decide what fate his actions had earned. And when that day came, it would be the Axolotl's job to ensure that the triangle didn't end up damned or erased from existence.

As it was now, that triangle didn't stand a chance in the multiverse of being found innocent. But there was more than one way to avoid a "guilty" verdict.

By the time the triangle stood before a judge, the Axolotl would make sure that the right laws were in place for him to do what he wanted to do.

####

Where there had been swarms of firefighters earlier, now the scene swarmed with construction workers, working on the emergency genesis of over half a dozen replacement universes—carefully, so that the big bangs didn't do any further damage to an already unstable situation; but quickly. Already every destroyed one-dimensional universe had been replaced. Several half-burned dimensions had been supplanted with oddly-shaped undersized universes that met at the older universes' burned edges; jagged 1D dimensions sealed the gaps between these dimensions like a line of solder between two panes of stained glass.

By now, the flat planes and edges surrounded the zeroth dimension like the sleek shifting surfaces of an infinity-sided die; all except for one last missing wall in the middle of the damage.

Dimension 2 Delta. "Euclydia."

The construction workers were already setting up the scaffolding and equipment to set off another big bang.

As the Axolotl looked at the copious warning signs around the construction site—"DANGER! COSMIC EXPLOSIVES" "GENESIS IN PROGRESS"—the specialized equipment, the veritable army of workers, the mountain of papers the Time Giant had been reviewing earlier to ensure that everything was up to code and nothing would go wrong... he couldn't help but think of the triangle holding the seed of a big bang in his bare glowing hand, threatening to set it off right there. The Axolotl had known it was foolish, but seeing all the workers' preparations put just how reckless it was into perspective. Like a toddler holding a stick of TNT over a campfire.

He spotted the Time Giant among the workers, flickering back and forth across the scene as she tried to literally be multiple places at the same time. When she settled down for a moment over a worktable to double check a pile of blueprints and forms and calculations and even more paperwork, she caught sight of the Axolotl passing by, and tipped her chin up at him in greeting.

He paused, then nodded back to her. No hard feelings. He was just following his principles; and she was just doing her job. They'd each found their own way to help hold up the multiverse.

"Hey," she called out, and gestured for him to come over. As he did, she said, "Your leg's healing nicely."

He glanced down at it. His new toes were stubby, but at least they were back. "I don't like being uneven." He'd take a few more days on his tail. "I'll probably pay for it tomorrow, though." When he finally got home, he'd have to see if he could cancel his morning appointments.

"Reckon we'll all be feeling this tomorrow." She tilted her head toward Dimension Zero. "I've got a message for the god of DIY over there. I think you're the only one he likes—you mind carrying it over?"

####

It wasn't hard to find the triangle; he was leaning against the membrane around the zeroth dimension, moodily staring out at the third. He seemed to be gazing past all the gods, unfazed by their hubbub. The Axolotl tried to see what he was looking at, and didn't spot anything of note. As far as he could tell, the triangle might as well just be stargazing.

Along with the police tape and the ATTF barrier and the long-forgotten cordons to hold off the reporters, there was now an additional grid of orange cones set up blocking anyone from getting too close to the destroyed wall and the construction site. The Axolotl glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention before he slipped past the cones and swam up to the triangle.

When he approached, the triangle was muttering under his breath: "Stupid, now it sounds like an STD. I should've named it something cooler. Like... Triangletopia. Or the Party Plane. Or Margaritaville—I bet no one's ever used that one before..."

"Magister," the Axolotl said.

The triangle's eye snapped to him. "Hey, look at that! The pompous psycho is back! If you're even thinking about sticking me back in your 'office'—"

The Axolotl held up his forelegs appeasingly. "I'm not." He wasn't even crossing the threshold into the triangle's turf. "This is the last time I'll speak to you today."

"Finally, some good news," the triangle grumbled. "What do you w—ha! Ah-haha! I caught myself, that one didn't count."

The Axolotl decided not to count it. "The Time Giant wanted you to know they're about to set off the big bang where Dimension 2 Delta used to be. You probably don't want to be too close to the wall when it goes up."

The triangle's expression darkened; but he just said, "All right. Fine. Have fun. Not my problem! Just keep the construction noises down."

That was all he'd been sent to tell the triangle; but he added, "If you ever want to leave your dream realm, this is your last chance."

The triangle groaned. "This again? Listen, frills, I already told you I'm not interested! And you don't have the right to drag me out, this is my sovereign god territory—"

"I'm not threatening to," the Axolotl said gently. "I just—wanted to make sure you know. If you change your mind later, you physically won't be able to leave."

That gave the triangle pause. "I... don't see why not."

"For something to pass from one dimension to another, it needs a large enough hole to pass through," the Axolotl said. "For a person carrying the mass and energy of an entire universe to cross from one dimension to another... they need a hole the size of a universe. The missing wall where 2Δ was is the size your universe used to be. And now... it's the only exit big enough for you to pass through. Do you understand?"

The triangle stared at him silently. There was that hard, heavy look in his eye. It was awful to see. He did understand.

"If you don't come now..."

"We came up with a way to fit my entire universe into this one," the triangle said. "If I ever want to leave, we'll invent a way to get it back out."

"Your universe didn't fit in without incinerating it."

The triangle tapped the side of his hat with a finger; somewhere inside it was the speck that used to be his universe—the seed of a big bang. "It's travel-sized now. The next time will be easier."

For the first time since seeing the awful ruin of Dimension 2 Delta, the Axolotl forced himself to turn his fearful gaze chronologically forward. He squinted toward the hazy, far-flung future; and then he gave the triangle, in the present, a sorrowful look. "No, it won't," he said. "But I'll do what I can for you."

The triangle stared sullenly at him, unmoved by the offer. "I don't see what you're getting out of helping me. Everyone else is dying to send me to ghost jail or however things work around here."

"Isn't it enough to help you just because you exist and that makes you worth it?"

"If you ever, ever say something like that again, I'll kill you. I will find a way."

He wasn't particularly surprised. But that was truly what the Axolotl believed—and believed strongly enough to guide everything else he did. 

The things this triangle had done were too ghastly for even an ancient, experienced god to fully wrap his head around. Without exaggeration, he might have done the worst thing anyone anywhere in the multiverse had ever done.

But.

But if the Axolotl could prove that he, the worst person ever, was worth giving a second chance—that he could change, that he could show remorse for what he'd done, that he could be a force for good in the multiverse... then he would have proven that everyone, no matter what, was worth it.

The Axolotl had been voted Most Adorably Idealistic, but he'd never been called soft. His ideals were harder than diamond and sharper than obsidian. He hadn't decided to protect the triangle in spite of the impact that might have on the multiverse; he was protecting him because of the impact it could have. 

The Axolotl was a god of justice, of monsters, of second chances, and through his actions he could shape what justice meant throughout the multiverse as if he were sculpting clay; and he thought a small, sharp little equilateral triangle would make a perfect sculpting tool.

"In truth, I just don't believe in punishment. Not even for you." The Axolotl lay a forefoot on Dimension Zero's bubble. "But I don't see why you trust me." Because it was clear the triangle did. He'd trusted the Axolotl to judge the character of the other gods. He'd kept looking toward him like he was trying to gauge his own situation based on the Axolotl's reaction to it. He'd admitted the truth about the remains of his universe and his plans for it. It seemed like the Axolotl was the only one the triangle trusted in all this mess.

The triangle thought that over; then said, "You seem like a grade-A sucker."

He laughed. "I'll try to live up to your opinion of me." He had a guess what kind of people this triangle thought were suckers. The charitable; the caring. The people who didn't think that seeing the worth in everyone was a kind of illness.

"You should know, I intend to legally register my tank as a purgatory. I'll probably submit my application before the end of the week. If you claim it as your afterlife, you'll be transferred to my tank for holding while awaiting trial to decide your final afterlife."

"Ugh, now it all makes sense: you're starting a cult! I don't wanna join your cult, frills—I've got my own."

"But you do want to go straight to your lawyer's office if you're about to go on trial for your sins," the Axolotl said pointedly. "I don't intend to house anyone in my tank permanently. It will just be a transfer place for clients preparing for trial or figuring out where they want to go next—another afterlife, reincarnation... You're already technically dead; you can request at any time to come to my tank, and you'll be there."

"Sounds great for your other clients! But I'm not planning to go on trial and I don't want to be in an afterlife," the triangle said testily. "I'm pretty sure we've been over this!"

"I know you don't. I wish you didn't have to face it. But when you have no choice," the Axolotl said. "When you need it. When your time comes to burn like your people—" (the triangle flinched) "—call me. I'll offer you a second chance at any time."

"Low blow," the triangle muttered. "Don't put yourself out on my account. I'll be fine by myself."

"I'm sure." The Axolotl suspected he'd be putting himself out on the triangle's account for a long time. "What's your name? Your real name."

The background hiss of cosmic noise roared louder. The echoes of billions of erased ghosts said, "THE NAME OF THE MURDERER IS—"

With a flinch, the triangle cranked the distant dance music louder so it spilled cacophonously out of Dimension Zero again. It was too late, though. The Axolotl had heard the triangle's real name.

He pretended he hadn't. He waited.

The triangle didn't answer for a long moment. "You probably wouldn't be able to pronounce it."

"Maybe not." He'd seen how the triangle had winced hearing the cloud try to pronounce the name of some other shape. "I still want to know who you are."

He wrestled with his words; then finally gave up and asked his question. "What... is this place? We're not in the third dimension. When I—freed my dimension, I expected to go up; but we went... down. I didn't know there was a down." He confessed his ignorance in a near whisper, almost drowned out by his own music.

"You're in Dimension Zero." But that wasn't right. Dimension Zero was—should be—a point, and it's impossible to be "in" a point. A point simply is. "You are Dimension Zero."

The triangle said, "Then call me King Zero."

The Axolotl considered that. "Yes," he said. "I think that is your name."

Someone shouted, "Clear the way!" One worker at the construction site was looking directly at the Axolotl. "That means you! Unless you wanna be boiled frog legs!"

"I'm not a frog," the Axolotl muttered; but, he turned one last time to newly-crowned King Zero, said, "Call me," then hastily swam to the safe side of the orange cone barricade.

"Five, four, three..."

The Axolotl watched the triangle—and the triangle watched him—until the detonation. The big bang went off in a flash of light bright enough it would have incinerated anyone in the vicinity had it not been contained to a flat plane.

When the Axolotl looked away from the light, the afterimage of a triangle was burned into the center of his vision.

Dimension Zero was sealed off from the rest of reality—locking its king in for the next trillion years.

####

When the triangle said his name was "King Zero," of course, he wasn't speaking English. English wouldn't exist for a long time. The name King Zero is simply a convenient translation.

The English word "zero" comes from the French zéro. Zéro comes from Italian zefiro. Zefiro comes from Medieval Latin zephirum. And zephirum comes from the Arabic صِفْر—ṣifr.

####

Centuries ago, in the dream of a naive, trusting human, the human asked in Arabic, "What should I call you?" And King Zero responded, "Call me Ṣifr."

And years later, a dreaming human asked in Medieval Latin, "What should I call you, o muse of mathematics?" And of the two Latin words descended from his current Arabic nickname, Ṣifr responded with the one he thought was closer: "Call me Cifra."

A dreaming human asked in Old French, "What's your name?" And he replied, "My name's Cyffre."

Speaking Middle English, he told a dreaming human, "My name's Siphre."

And in Modern English, he told Edward Bishop Bishop, "The name's Cipher. But you can call me Bill."

In a year's time, and two years before his death from sleep deprivation, Edward would write Flatworld, a book about a 2D shape and his Muse journeying up to the highest dimensions; and also all the way down, below the spaces and planes and lines, to the self-absorbed King Zero, buried in the point-sized zeroth dimension, who thought a whole universe was contained inside him.

####

(It's FINISHED. 🎉🎉🎉

Hi y'all, if you just joined us for this Axolotl plot arc, usually this is a post-canon human Bill fic. I took a break from the main plot for one week to post a one-chapter flashback and then it was nine chapters. This bitch is 50k words. It's a novel unto itself.

Anyway if you only showed up for this story about the Ax, it only exists in service of a much longer story; so if you enjoyed this check out the rest of the fic. This is technically chapter 69 (lol). (If human Bill isn't usually your thing, I've been told that this is The Human Bill Fic For People Who Don't Like Human Bills because Bill is clearly very much a triangle unhappily trapped in a human body, rather than just chill with being human—so you might wanna give it a shot.)

And for the regulars who are already reading the whole fic: OH MY GOD IT'S FINALLY FINISHED, WE'RE FREE, WE CAN RETURN TO THE PRESENT. Listen I love the Ax and his bizarre but unbending morality, but guys. Guys. I miss Mabel so much.

Pre-warning that I may end up needing to skip a chapter or two before the end of the year, because work's piling a LOTTA extra work on me this month and I might just flat out not have time to edit & do art. I'm up at 3 a.m. editing & queueing this post and I was up til 3 a.m. another night doing the art because I HAVE NOT HAD TIME this week to do it any earlier. I did this because I love y'all.

No that's a lie, I did this because I want to FINISH this DANG ARC. That's my birthday gift to me.

Anyway lemme know what y'all think!! 💕)

[bluerosefox]

Invites

"OMA, kill meeeee" Ellie, aka Wrath complained as she allowed her head to 'thunk' on the cafeteria table in the Watchtower she phased into in order to sit in next to a boy dressed in red, yellow, and green.

"Aren't you already halfway there?" Came Robin's response as he took a drink of his water, eyeing his teammate with a raised eyebrow, though it was difficult to tell with his mask in place.

"OMA?" Asked Superboy on the other side of the boy.

"Shush you." She said towards Robin before answering Superboy "Oh my Ancients, it's like OMG but like for us ghosties."

"Tt" "Oh!" Came both their responses.

"So..." began Superboy after a few minutes of silence between them as he looked at Ellie like a confused puppy "Why?"

Ellie groaned and just stayed slumped on the table as she said "Da's dumb Observants council is hosting another dumb ball to try to get him or me hitched again, and like always I'm forced to attend because I'm Da's heir. We both hate it with a passion, most are just stuck up, power hungry, social climbers trying to get into our pants for the royal titles... Espcially if they become our Forevermores."

"Tt, why not just get rid of them? Or simply have your Father dismiss the ball." Robin said, his eye twitching in annoyance just at the thought of it. A ball sounded even more annoying than the gala parties he is made to go to.

"Sounds stressful... Also Forevermores?" Superboy asked, he was always curious of Ellie and her ghost culture but never knew what could be asked or not, he had been warned to never ask how a ghost died after all and that question is normally asked in every ghost hunter video on the internet.

"Forevermores is our term for the ONE. The one and only we will ever be with. Till our final end takes us we are always to be with them only. We are core creatures and bonding on that level is like sacred, we don't rush into bonding like that though. But everyone in the Realms hopes to be either become mine or Da's. And the ball is their best chance at meeting us on neutral grounds." Ellie explained as best as she could for Jon, it was hard trying to explain the type of level a Forevermore was "And to answer you Robin, Da can't. The Observants, despite how annoying they can get with their dumb demands, are part of the system council for the Realms, they're sadly needed to keep things in check hence their name. Da and his friends are still trying to find a loophole to get rid of them though. They were only created when they put Tyrant King to sleep and they still sadly have some backings from other powerful ghosts in the Realms, even an Ancient or two and in order to fully dismiss them we need all Ancients on board. And the ball keeps a lot of ghosts, especially the more powerful ones, errr I guess happy? Most just use it to gossip on neutral grounds, others just like to dance, network, or other junk like that. Basically, when it's not about them trying to get mine or Da's hand in ghost marriage, it's fun so Da can't dismiss it, it'll ruffle to many feathers."

"Wow..." "Tt." Were the response from her teammates.

"Yeah. Da really isn't happy because someone suggested inviting powerful people from a few Mortal Realms this time. Somehow it got approved. So... here." She said as she reached into her own chest, phasing her hand in, and pulled out two green envelopes and placed them on the table in front of them. Both boys stared in surprise to see their names written in dark purple ink and the stylized DP on it.

"CW let me invite you guys personally. Everyone else should be getting theirs in about a few minutes complete with a blaze of green fire and spooky vibes." Ellie said with a strained smile, both happy to invite them but also dreading the questions she'll no doubt have to answer once the invites were sent.

[redsugarx]

青白之魅 3: Hair & Makeup Styling

1 Introduction & Presentation // 2 Background & Influences // 3 Hair & Makeup // 4 Set Design // 5 Clothes & Accessories // 6 Conclusion

If you thought there was gonna be less nerd from here on out you are deeply mistaken.

I was responsible for the hair styling for both the white and green snake, which was super fun. I’ve been doing hanfu hair styling for a year or two now (thank you to everyone who let me practice on them!!!) and have gradually gotten better at it, even though I still struggle with some parts of it. I certainly have the equipment collection to show for it now at least! I have so many fake hair pieces I can’t keep track.

As with any hanfu hair styling, the process involved a lot of fake hair, pins, and hairspray—but of course before the actual styling started, which was mostly only on the day of, I had to spend some time thinking about how I wanted the hair to look on each character.

元 衛九鼎 洛神圖, Taiwan National Palace Museum, 她：女性形象與才藝，2020

As far as snake-like hairstyles go, the first thing that comes to mind is the 靈蛇髻/灵蛇髻/ling2 she2 ji4/Spirited Snake hairstyle, shown above on Luoshen, a women’s hairstyle that went through a lot of changes through the dynasties but generally involved a tall, twisting bun leaning slightly to the side on the top of the head, resembling the body of a rearing snake. It’s a very popular style both historically and among hanfu enthusiasts today, because it looks very unique and ethereal. Often, female spirits or goddesses are depicted with this hairstyle.

That was the style I was originally planning on using, but it came with some limitations: one, it’s kind of… in unstable equilibrium? We’d essentially be walking around with the leaning tower of Pisa around on top of our heads. I had to style both of our heads BEFORE setting up the set design, so there was too high of a risk that something would get knocked out of place, since I knew I would have to be running around doing things. Also, because Yulan has brightly colored dyed hair, she had to wear a black base wig under all the fake hair pieces, which is a bit more difficult to pin things to than your actual scalp.

So instead I went with a different design. I knew I still wanted a lot of serpentine loops and strands, and I wanted there to be a significant amount of volume going on—they are ‘spirits’ and ‘goddesses’ after all, they deserve to be fancy!—so I went from there.

The Poetry Vibes

I stumbled upon a few poems last year while looking for names for Cloud9 Hanfu’s Year of the Dragon collection, and a few of them ended up becoming inspirations for this project.

This is the first part of 張可久 (Zhang Kejiu)’s Yuan Dynasty verse, 醉太平·春情 (Drunken Peace · Spring Romance). It’s a bittersweet poem describing a speaker that is longing for a lost love, likening her beauty to the imagery of the evening spring showers outside his home. I’ll do a slightly more faithful line-by-line translation of the poem’s actual words, then a paragraph-form translation with more stylization that gets at the meaning a little more (poetry is really hard to translate).

This is mostly just my interpretation though, and my Classical Chinese is... extremely questionable, so like... take it with a grain of salt.

張可久 Zhang Kejiu, 百度百科

Line-By-Line

烏雲髻鬆，金鳳釵橫。<- “Storm cloud hair is soft and loose, the golden phoenix hairpin is horizontal.”

伯勞飛燕自西東，惱離愁���種。<- “The shrikes and swallows fly their ways to the West and the East, causing ten thousand kinds of sorrowful goodbyes.”

碧溶溶满溪綠水桃源洞，淡濛濛半窗白月梨雲夢，恨匆匆一簾紅雨杏花風。<- “Jade stream water flows to the Peach Blossom Grotto, moonlight is cast cloudily through the pear blossoms to my half-open window as if through a dream; the wind is unforgiving, felling apricot petals like a red curtain of rain.”

把青春斷送。<- “It ruins the spring.”

Stylized

Storm clouds gather loosely outside my window. I can almost imagine that they are strands of her soft hair; I can almost see where her golden phoenix hairpin would have laid, nestled in her black locks.

It’s springtime now—the orioles should be migrating, flying to their summer homes in the west, and the swallows to the east. Imagining their inevitable parting stirs a complicated sorrow in my chest.

As it storms, clear rainwater collects on the ground in rivulets, streaming away like liquid jade. I wonder where the water is going—is it to some forgotten, untouchable paradise? Is that where she is now? I can see through my half-open window where moonlight drizzles through the petals of the pear-blossom trees, misty and clouded as if I’m dreaming. Suddenly, a curtain of red petals fall across my vision like rain: it’s my flowering apricot tree, struck by the wind.

My trance is broken—spring is over.

//

As Chinese poetry tends to be, it’s very romantic with lots of natural imagery, tinged with sadness. When I reread it with this project in mind, it made me think of Xu Xian after the events of the Legend of the White Snake. While it’s commonly accepted that Bai Suzhen later ends up getting freed and there’s some kind of happy ending, the actual legend itself ends with the White Snake being imprisoned under the Leifeng Pagoda. Many years, if not centuries, pass before she gets out. So as many Chinese romances tend to be, the Legend of the White Snake is, by itself, a great tragedy. I can see the Xu Xian as the speaker of the poem.

Bearing this in mind, I imagine that the beauty of the Snake Spirits are much like the scene described in this poem—soft and ethereal like mist, hiding enough power to bend nature to their will.  I decided to lean into the ‘clouds’ theme, especially for Bai Suzhen.

傳 五代 周文矩 仕女圖, Taiwan National Palace Museum, 她：女性形象與才藝，2020 (ft fucked up fat cat)

The comparison of women‘s hairstyles to rainclouds is actually very widespread in Chinese literature, so it was perfect for hairstyle inspiration—in poetry, women are often represented by their features, ex. a poem might say "moth brows" or "cloud hair" to refer to a beautiful lady. Cloud hair and cultivated appearance is integral to the allure of a woman, so much so that the act of putting on makeup can be considered a transformation of identity.

In the linked instance the transformation of identity is supposed to be in the sense of gender identity, but you could also see it (in the context of this project) as the transformation from snakes to women.

This connection is strengthened by another poem, 好事近·夢中作 by 秦觀/Qin Guan from the Song Dynasty.

清宫殿藏画本. 北京: 故宫博物馆出版社. 1994, Wikimedia Commons

Line-By-Line

春路雨添花，花動一山春色。<- “Rain has filled the road with flowers, swaying in the breeze, filling the mountain with the feel of spring.”

行到小溪深處，有黃鸝千百。<- “I walked far along the mountain stream, where there were hundreds and thousands of yellow orioles.”

飛雲當面化龍蛇，夭矯轉空碧。<- “The flying clouds turned into dragons and snakes before me, stretching across the vast jade expanse.”

醉臥古藤陰下，了不知南北。<- “I lay down, drunk in the shade of the vines, not knowing which way is North or South.”

Stylized

I see where the spring showers have filled the mountainside with flowers. They sway in the breeze, bringing with them the rejuvenating scent of spring as I walk deeper and deeper into nature, following the bubbling mountain spring and the crowds of yellow orioles that have come out to celebrate the season as well. As I look up at the sky, I see dragons and snakes form in the midst of the roiling clouds above, leaping and coiling across the expanse of the clear blue sky. Intoxicated, I stop to rest underneath some vines, lost in the beauty of springtime.

//

So I am aware that it kind of sounds like this guy miiiiight be on acid but I'm pretty sure it doesn’t mean he’s hallucinating snakes in the clouds, it’s just like when you look at a cloud and say “that one looks like an elephant!”

Then again there is an interpretation that says his "walking further and further into nature" means he's just getting more and more drunk to escape his problems, so like... make of that what you will. Art is more often than not subjective.

Anyway, dragons also have power over rain and weather, and snakes are often called the ‘little dragon,’ often also associated with flowing water. All this is to say—clouds & coils are good representations of snakes! Also, you’ll notice that both of these poems are about springtime (though the second one is noticeably happier), fitting in with using this project to welcome the Spring Festival :)

Moving onto individual hairstyles. Keeping in mind the shapes of clouds, I wanted Bai Suzhen’s hair to be very tall, voluminous and ethereal to represent her spiritual prowess and strong will. A bunch of loops fan out at the top center of the hairstyle, adding ‘rays’ pointing outwards like a halo. I made sure there were a lot of round, circular elements to ‘fluff out’ the shape like a cloud. There are two strands of circles kind of peeking out at the bottom behind her neck/ears area, which were achieved by pinning a braid to each side and then pulling the outermost hair strands of each ‘loop’ outwards to create little flat circles.

Going back to the first poem, if I imagine that the speaker is Xu Xian thinking of Bai Suzhen, it makes sense for the mentioned ‘gold hairpin’ to appear in her hairstyle, doesn’t it? So I also added a few gold hair accessories—U-shaped pins for the most part, plus a small guan in the center to tie things together—to point outwards above her head. 

For Xiaoqing's hair, I wanted something that was a little more youthful, but still resplendent enough to do her justice. Xiaoqing is a younger spirit than Bai Suzhen, but still accomplished in her own right. Her hairstyle don’t extend as far outwards as the White Snake’s, but she has two ‘loop’ buns on each side rather than one peak in the middle. It’s kind of evocative of the double bun look often styled on younger girls, but with more fancy loops and swirls added to represent her high spiritual abilities. Each of the two main buns has two strands of hair looping up from the back of the head to the top. The strands are very loose, so depending on how I moved, they separated into several visible strands/just one thicker lock of hair.

The hair accessories I chose for Xiaoqing don’t have as much metal in them, to distinguish her from her sister, as I wanted to emphasize her connection to nature—because she has less experience than Bai Suzhen, she is often portrayed in media (Green Snake 1993 especially) as not yet reaching full human form, still closer to her serpentine origins. She has a white flower with green leaves on each side, standing for spring, youthfulness, and her dedication to the White Snake. There are a couple strands of pearls ‘dripping’ down from the flowers like raindrops, matching with the pearl accessories in the makeup, as well as with the white markings on Dragun’s back.

傳 唐 周昉 內人雙陸圖 , Taiwan National Palace Museum, 她：女性形象與才藝，2020

I also chose to include a pair of green half-moon combs, made to imitate jade (they’re acrylic, I’m working on a budget here ;-;). These were often worn several at a time, inserted into different layers of hair (as seen in the image above). Jade accessories are carved from nature—they are often subject to the colorings and properties of the natural base material they are made from, and they are often used to describe natural imagery. This can sometimes be a limitation, but for those who look further it can be an inspiration (see the Jadeite Cabbage, my favorite thing ever, Taiwan Numba One).

Peking Opera Hairstyles

京劇旦角，百度百科

Peking opera influenced the hairstyle design a lot. Dan roles (旦角）in opera have very specific hairstyle protocols. They wear a lot of fake hair pieces and hair accessories just like modern hanfu hairstyles have. One of the base hair silhouettes shared by almost all dan is the traditional 大頭/大头/da4 tou2/'big head,' with most of the hair wound into a large oval bun on the back of the head, and small pieces added at the edges for decoration. To imitate this look, the back of both of the hairstyles are padded with a large, flat, and round hairpiece (known in the hanfu hairstyling community as the 西瓜包/xi1 gua1 bao1/'watermelon bun'). This helps to add volume onto the back of the head, creating the illusion of very long hair that has been neatly wrapped and pinned up.

Another one of the key parts of these hairstyles is the round loop of hair in the center of the forehead. It’s an important feature that I included to tie the two styles together, to make sure it was clear that it was a ‘matched set’ so to speak, and was inspired by the hair loops seen in Chinese Opera styling.

戏曲旦角化妆、梳大头全过程，新浪博客，2011

Traditionally, a solution made from elm tree sap and/or kelp was used as hair gel to glue the little contouring base pieces (貼片子/tie1 pian4 zi0) down to the face. Seven loops called 小灣/小湾/xiao3 wan1/'little curves' line the hairline, one in the center and three off to the sides. I think they look kind of similar to the hairstyle that ballroom dancers have.

This was an artsy hanfu concept shoot, so I didn’t want to necessarily copy the operatic hairstyles—not to mention I don't know how, the motion of making one hair loop alone can take 3-5 years to train—but I did want to include some elements of the opera characters as a nod to their role in popularizing the legend! So each hair design has that central loop. It’s a separate hair piece that I bought for this shoot, whose base I covered with some of the other hair. It isn't glued down like it would be traditionally. I was going to have a few more loops coming down on the sides too, but I found that it looked kind of awkward so I took them off.

There are also two thin strands of hair trailing down each shoulder, another element partially inspired by Chinese opera styling, but it’s very common nowadays to have those there just for the Vibes so it’s not as unique. Most dan roles have a section of long unbound hair trailing down their backs, with two small strands separated out to stream down the front. This is called 線尾/线尾/xian4 yi3/'thread tail' or 線簾/线帘/xian4 lian2/'thread curtain.'

Makeup

Okay so this mostly ended up being about hair rather than makeup because I know a lot more about hair than makeup, but I'll talk a bit about the makeup too lol. I can't speak for the White Snake's makeup—Yulan was in charge of that and she did a marvelous job!—but I did do my own makeup.

The makeup for the green snake came with a great challenge: how do you make my face, arguably the roundest and most nonthreatening thing you’ve ever seen, into something resembling a snake demoness? Also, flamboyant makeup in cool colors can be tricky—too little and it’ll all disappear on camera, too much and it’ll look like a muddy green mess.

Both my sister and I are fairly warm-toned; green has to be very concentrated in a very small area to look interesting, otherwise it just looks like a bruise (I tried it). So I tried to use a lot of long thin lines of color and angles in the eyeshadow to avoid that, and to kind of draw out the snakey vibes. The meager selection of green eyeshadows that I had weren't the most pigmented, so we made a stop at Sephora (my first time in Sephora believe it or not) on the way from LAX to Riverside and bought some supplies. They turned out to be super super useful.

One of my favorite makeup features was a my sister’s suggestion—fake pearl ‘snake bite’ piercings under the bottom lip! It’s a fun little linguistic easter egg that I’m super happy to have been able to incorporate into her styling. 

宋人 宋高宗后坐像，Taiwan National Palace Museum, 她：女性形象與才藝，2020 Look closely and you'll see dozens of tiny women depicted in pointillism on her guan headdress!

Pearl makeup （珍珠花鈿/珍珠花钿/zhen1 zhu1 hua1 dian4）was really popular throughout several dynasties, but especially the Song Dynasty, where it became a huge trend among nobles. Today it mostly appears in hanfu circles, but I believe some Southern Chinese opera styles use them too.

As far as I know, the position that we put them in under the bottom lip is anachronistic, but they did often appear at the corners of the mouth/the dimples (面靨/面靥/mian4 ye4), so if you stretched it a little and imagine they've just been moved slightly, I could probably claim that it's at least historically inspired.

元人 畫梅花仕女, Taiwan National Palace Museum, 她：女性形象與才藝，2020

Other places that pearl makeup often appeared was on the temples, cheeks, or forehead. I also put a pair under my eyes just for funsies (I find that using smaller-sized pearls looks better to me, even though the ones shown in paintings are usually fairly large).

//

Okay that ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be. I am so tired wow. The next one might take a while to come out too, but hope this one was enjoyable :)

1 Introduction & Presentation // 2 Background & Influences // 3 Hair & Makeup // 4 Set Design // 5 Clothes & Accessories // 6 Conclusion

[genericpuff]

Hi there! 😄 Tysfm for compiling the LO brushes, being able to use them (non-commercially of course lol) makes me so friggin happy. 🙇‍♀️ I have a few questions to ask about them though:

Which brush did RS use for laying down color before shading/effects? In the Rekindled tutorial, you use the Lineart Brush for laying down flats, but I'm not sure if what I said in the previous sentence is the same thing as flats (I've been drawing my whole life, but I didn't start taking digital seriously until very recently lol 🤦‍♀️).

When the Splatter Versa brush was used in S1, there are varying oval shapes as well as several other non-ovular shapes that I don't see when I use the brush. Were there other similar brushes used with different shapes? Or am I just doing something wrong with the brush settings? The other shapes look more wilted than the other petal shapes.

Which brush was used for the usual thick, varying lineart? (It's most noticeable with the lines in hair in mid-S1 esp.) This brush isn't really textured, so I'm a bit confused which one in particular it is.

Sorry for being annoying, I'm just not tech-savvy and very intimidated by all the technical aspects of digital drawing lol ("Wtf are 'blending modes'?" /hj). 🙇‍♀️

Hey there, no problem!! I'm glad people are getting use out of them!

Though I'm not entirely sure as it clearly changed often throughout the course of the first season, the Gouache a Go Go brush and Hard Pastel both have those "crunchier" textures that you can see in some panels. There are also watercolor brushes that she used to blend the edges in some bigger panels.

Could you send me an example of a panel? Just so then I can actually see it and mess around with some things and give you a better answer haha That said, if I had to take a guess, either she messed with the brush control / tilt settings in Photoshop, or she may have used the Warp / Liquify tools to warp them intentionally to achieve that "petal" look. But again, send me a pic of the panels in question if you can and I can take a closer look :>

As mentioned previously, an example would help a lot here, but I do know what you're saying that some panels had very thick, varied lineart. Rachel has gone on record on two separate occasions that she used the Gouache Wet Pencil / Wet Round brush from the Kyle Webster Pack. Though the Hard Square Pastel brush can also achieve similar effects. Note that the Wet Round brush is a dual-sizing brush - if you adjust the brush size, you have to also adjust the particle size in tandem, otherwise you'll get a bigger brush size with more scattered/diluted particles. Though this effect IS very helpful for shading!

As mentioned, Rachel has mentioned some of the brushes she's used, and though it's not necessarily relevant to what you're looking for specifically, she's also mentioned these brushes in old FAQ's, specifically the Wet Round brush for lineart.

Here are some examples I whipped up real quick based on some of the panels that specifically depict thick lineart and textured coloring:

Mind you, these are all my best guesses, based on what Rachel has provided and what I've both dug up and been provided by other contributors who have pointed me in the right direction.

Unfortunately, while LO's art style is unique, it also makes it very difficult to reverse-engineer because throughout the comic (esp in S1 when she was still experimenting) while she did clearly have some "favorites" out of the bunch, she also just kind of went off "vibes" a lot of the time, treating every panel as an individual painting. And while that did lend to some of LO's most beautiful panels throughout S1, it also created a lot of whiplash between stylization because after doing one panel with thick lineart and bold texturing, she'd do another with watercolors and softer edges.

That's also not taking into account the software she was using - many of these brushes were designed exclusively with the Photoshop brush engine in mind, not Clip Studio, so they may not work entirely as intended if you use them in Clip Studio or some other non-Photoshop software. We also have to consider other factors like canvas resolution, texture effects added afterwards (such as that canvas overlay), and other adjustable settings within the brushes themselves that Rachel may have tweaked, including the pressure sensitivity, particle size/density, thickness, etc. All of which we can't really truly know, so we can only settle for our closest guess.

This is half the challenge - and fun - of trying to emulate her art style, because even she clearly didn't follow any strict rules 😅 Unfortunately it leaned more towards worse as time went on as it was clear the assistants themselves were given very little guidance or consistency (or at least, didn't have the time to settle on a happy medium) resulting in panels that are even more distinctly out of place as they were being swapped between different artists with different backgrounds and styles.

All that aside, I hope that helps! I do admittedly have to update that brush pack again, I feel like there are a handful of brushes I've found since then that could also be added, but I'd also like to update the included instructions to better reflect what I've learned since then regarding each brush and how they could be used. Ultimately though, they're yours to experiment with! Mess around, adjust the sizes and density and pressure settings, all of these things can contribute to the overall look.

Good luck! <3

[cringefaecompilation]

okay since i have felt i've been really negative i am going to be positive and talk about something near and dear to my heart. fanart redesigns!

this design of braius by @phi-guy is delightful, including the mustache variant. i'm not a big fan of him as a character, but this is a great compromise with the holstein patterns on his humanoid face that previously left a few furries disappointed.

fcg is a very tough character to stylize, given the whole... aeormaton of it all and that they're so intricately designed that any attempts to move any part of their body around tend to make things they do in-game not make sense. the blades of grass emblem being revealed as bloody fingerstreaks, for one. but this design by hugo cardenas strikes a good balance between canon and fanon where you don't have to sacrifice accuracy for imagination or vice versa

imogen sadly doesn't receive a lot of redesigns in fandom and even got hate (?!) for people putting glasses on her. but for the people that do a little more than that, i would have to give my favorite design to @rokiie! it's subtle, but i love that she's musclechubby and mixed, and her curly hair and ponytail is adorable. @jadequarze also has a nice looking mog, though theirs is more angular than bulky.

ashton is another character hard to redesign... because his original design is so damned complex it feels like a downgrade to change it. so not a lot of people do and focus more on his outfit and body type. so that's why these two, by @magscherer and @ladysantos are so great! little tweaks that make him fat or simplify him are so nice

@lyadrielle has the most complex chet redesign i've ever seen. i love how in-depth it is, and even if full head of hair chet isn't canon, i still adore the fluffiness of it. also quick shout out to @colealexart giving chetney a mustache because i love it.

conversely from her girlfriend, people love to redesign laudna, if not just to pump up her creepy factor over her "bizzarely beautiful" factor. @astoriacolumnstaircase and @paragonraptors do this in a fun-scary way! i love how spindly they make her, like a praying mantis. for a more scary-scary way, @cpprcoyote's laudnas are stunningly creepy and lovely. @galacticjonah's take on her is also very cute with her billowing fabrics surrounding her like a security blanket. good stuff!

being the mixed orym truther guy, naturally i love art that makes him a man of color, and this art by @therosecleric hits the mark for how i see him in my head. i love his curls, his jaw, and his strong nose, and it's always good to give him muscles in a way that don't make him look like a tween who powerlifts. the previously mentioned @magscherer's art of him is a bit more hobbit-y but still scratches the same itch. love me a brown eyed orym. @jennydolfen also gets points for her terrific hobbit/halfling proportions

@jam-etc's critical role redesigns might not be for everyone, but i love 'em all. dorian here looks so friendly and seeing his native culture depicted so overtly in his outfit is awesome! no whitewashed dorians allowed. on the same token, here's a repeat of @therosecleric's dorian art because it also is great to see him with curly hair and a wide nose. this design by @caitmayart with dark cloudy speckles on his body is incredibly nice as well.

and of goddamn course fearne gets the most art. it's fearne! there are so many good pieces of her i could not choose one. i love ones that play up her goat-y nature, like @willowbirds, @rainbow-roll-art, and @phi-guy again. and i love fat fearnes, like these two by @marmadelin and @countslimeula. this one by @maluspumilaa is so beautiful, making her a little more fey and extremely animalistic. all fearnes is good fearnes

[hopeymchope]

First-world fandom problems: Cutesy figures/statues of badass anime girls

Here's my minor complaint of the day: I'm tired of seeing soft/pretty/happy figures of badass anime women. I want to see them ANGRY. I want them in MID-ATTACK. I want that BADASSERY.

I've been rewatching Re:Zero lately, which has reminded me again how much I love the character of Rem. So I was like "Huh, I wonder if she's got a Pop-Up Parade figure" since I have a small collection of those.

And sure enough, she DOES have one! But it's... this.

Hrm. I mean, I respect the use of the "ice season" uniform since it's more modest and less pervy-looking, sure, but this is....... definitely not what I was hoping for.

Okay, so what other Rem figures are out there? SURELY someone has......

.....what the fuck is this?

I get that Rem can often be a cute character. I get that she's a sweetheart at her core. But I thought we all understood that one of her primary appeals is when she sprouts her demon horn and starts growling with rage before splattering fools' insides across the grass with her morningstar.

We don't love Rem merely because she's some cute maid. We love her because she's a cute maid who has a tragic past who—most importantly—CAN and WILL absolutely kill motherfuckers.

See, THIS. This is what I'm talking about. I don't want a figure of Rem as some soft-looking waifu. I want a figure of Rem as an absolute BADASS. But I can only find ONE figure/statue of this Rem. It's (A) highly stylized and (B) like $350 fucking dollars. Hard pass, then.

But you know... sometimes, even when you get your anime girls to appear in mid-attack in their figure release, they're still smiling cutely about it....???

Behold the Pop-Up Parade figure of Mikoto Misaka from A Certain Scientific Railgun.

YES, I understand that this is probably based on the OP sequence from either the first or second season of the anime. But those sequences—which are not part of any canon narrative—are the only time you'd ever see Mikoto Misaka smiling while firing off her signature railgun. She typically attacks like this while she's pissed off. The figure should've looked like, y'know, THIS:

And yet, regardless of my issue with the facial expression, I still own the figure shown. Because at least she's still preparing to attack. ... It's a start. We're taking what we can get here.

[spearxwind]

I’m just curious but do you have examples of good dragon anatomy in media? It’s ok if not or you don’t wanna share I’m just curious.

In media? whew, really hard to say. Often in media dragons will either have spoon wings (even if the rest of the dragon is good, like in hotd) or be shrinkwrapped :[

Toothless from httyd got it PRETTYYYYY CLOSE, the big wings dont go all the way down to the base BUT the secondary wings he has actually finish that part of the base and fill in that gap, and the fins on the tail tip are just so swag because they add lift to the tail tip as well

Saphira from the Eragon movie actually had GENUINELY TURBOSWAG wings!!! Like these are genuinely damn near perfect for the time. They're missing the wing slots on the tips BUT WE'LL ALLOW IT. Especially when these are so hard to make and back then especially

They could genuinely have more base to them, she does have a mild case of spoon wings but they are MUCH more proportionate than like... most others lmao.

uhhh uhhhh. I'm... actually REALLY struggling to think of basically any other media with good wings LMAO... the wing industry is in shambles. Most of the media with dragons in it has spoon wings (or worse). I feel like I've talked about one thing or another with good (or decent) wing anatomy but I cannot for the life of me remember anything right now.

Soooo...... to make up for that here's some BAD bad dragon anatomy in media:

From "dragons a fantasy made real". 1. what the fuck. 2. ???? i just dont know what to say its got it all. Shrinkwrapping, small spoon wings, nonsensical attachment to the back, etc. I love this movie to death but watching it when im older and Know Things is a curse

Dragonheart. I have not seen this movie but What The Fuck is going on there. Attach those wings son!!!! Theyre just flopping around!!!

Every single monster hunter monster with wings is uh. Very questionable. None of them have the patagium either which is A Crime. As much as I love the franchise TO DEATH the wings is something that irks me constantly lskdhsdfklj

They did actually do rathalos better for monster hunter world though! but its still got a bit of spoon wings. Its better, but still not very good

Malefor from spyro <3 what the fuck <3 we forgive him because its a stylized came but he's flying on sheer willpower those wings are doing nothing for him. Nor for every other dragon in the franchise

And last but certainly not least:

Why. Just why. That's not a wing anymore.

[over-powered-reader-insert]

Two Kings and a Heir

Ghost king Nico Di Angelo meets Ghost king Danny Fenton who meets Damain Wayne after some how being launched in to the dc univers ( Nico and Danny that is)

Danny needed a safe place as his univers is nolonger ( reaveal gone wrong)

Nico isn't sure how he got into the dc universe but he's knows that he's not in his new work any more ( takes place before the trils of Apollo)

Because ghost work diifertly in the dc universe Danny would have relearn how to use his powers: ie control over his ice core, intangibility, invisibility, ghostly wail, eco blast ect. His ghost sense is going haywire, half going off. There's no puff of mist leaving his mouth, but is has his entire body tense. Danny learns quickly that the ghost of this world works differently, no one but him can see them, and even then it's hard for him the see them half the time. ( it's just a slivery after image in hisn periphery but they disappear when he tries to look at them head on.)

Hunger still affects Danny, not as much as before the accident, but he's still half human and he still need to eat. Something cheep and greasy. There were no nasty burger here, just a place called bat burger where he clocks an nother kid around his age as being something more then a laminar but close to a halfa like him, developing core maybe?

Nico new that he wasn't in New York anymore when he woke up, and he's quick to learn that he's in jersey, in a city call gotham. A place that didn't exist before. he's half scared that he was placed in the lotus casino again, he knows that's impossable. but the fear lingers. ( it happens once but who's to say that it won't happen again?) Nico needed information, he don't know where he is, when he is , so he plans to summon a ghost. But first he needs a happy meal.

The clost thing to a mc' Donald's is a place called bat burger. There Nico meets Danny, and they both clock each other as pooled who has an extremely association with death, and the underworld. Another child of hades? Maybe.

Silent communication passed he tween the two of them. The cashier clears her throat, and Danny orders first before stepping to the side and lingering awkwardly behind the other boy as he places his order, a kids meal. The kid walks to a booth at the back, one shrouded in shadows. Danny is half compiled to follow, every time he meets a halfa they tried to kill him first and get to know him second. But so far this was going great. He joins the kid at the booth.

Silence lingers between then the boy stared out the window at the few passing cars, Danny decided to pick at napickn, a black stylized bat decorated the corner. How was she supposed to go about this with out fist flying? He's not at his strongest at the moment. He's been doing good so far at ignoring the ach of the vivisection wound. Hastily stitched half healed, sleeping and eating would heald the thing faster, he just need a place to sleep, and stock up kn canned food and granola bars. Maybe he could break into one of the abandon buildings.

" Nico." The boys said suddenly.

Um

What?

Name, name, names. That was his name. He should-

" Danny! Yeah... call me Danny."

This was a good start, names are good. It doesn't matter that he's on the sudden verg of panic, or that he was getting a migraine from the constant half use of his ghost sense.

" son of hades?" Nico asked tentatively as I'd he was sharing a secret.

" what? No my dad isn't-"

" Hecate then, she's your mother right? Your too old not to know who your godly parent is, and you can't be unclaimed." Nico said in a rapid wishper, his eyes darting around the room as if expecting someone to attack.

" No wait, dude calm down, I think I know what's going on." But before he could answer they were called to get food. Looking over his shoulder the cashier looked unimpressed. Right food, the original reason why he's here.

Part two later

[daka-d3monb0y]

New designs

Click for better quality

Old designs and rambling below

Old Left New Right

(Forgot to take a screenshot of him with the stars and changed eyes -_-' )

Sun's design was shown in my last post:

(New Lunar left for this image, idk why I did that)

And I didn't take a before and after picture of others because it's 3 am now.

I made Nexus and Dark Sun:

Charlie & Puppet

Monty variants:

EaPS Sunshine and Moonlight + Attempts at a former Solar model

Rambling:

Sun is a thin animatronic with more joins than other models. He's meant for the theatre and to perform tricks. He has the oldest model. (Most models have a glow feature.)

Moon's model is designed for the daycare. He's squishy and pillowy for Naptime, and he has a heating feature. He also has an adaptive voice box, which means he can mimic sounds and voices.

Lunar's model was made mostly to be cute. He has stronger metal than other models and strong legs for running away to protect himself. (My AU doesn't have the celestials as magic star people from space, so Lunar has energy blasts that come from his hands the same as Solar).

Eclipse's model is made of mostly scraps and arcade machines, he's thin to save on parts. He has a scarf Earth made him.

Solar is really strong, motherfucker can like pick up a semi truck/ extracting. Uhhh more about his model.

They're probably the same stuff I'd said last time.

Uh I'll have more rambling/explanation later it's 3 am.

No designs are permanent I hate Earth and Jack's outfits. Earth's outfits are always so flipping hard for me. Idk how to design clothing, and idk how to design women. (I love how I did Earth's hair tho.)

I also made Ballora but she is too ugly to be shown to the public.

And Charlie will have to wait for be shown with my other Puppet designs. I'm trying to find a place between a canon Puppet look and the stylized look.

Upcoming designs:

Dazzle and Ballora next. Then Puppets. Then eventually characters with snouts like the Montys, Foxys, and Freddys. OH AND THEN The Astral Bodies and explain how I'm doing them in an AU without magic.

Human designs:

[aleebeesplats]

Soul bond[OUTDATED]

“An eternity alone is a cruel thing to be subjected to. To be surrounded but isolated, heard but forgotten, so powerful, yet so weak at the same time. The story is your life, but is that really all there is to it? Is that why you did it? Allowed them to exist despite the obvious growing issue? You wanted to feel understood despite not knowing who you were or where you began. You’ve crafted life at the expense of their freedom. You’ve replicated freedom through life.”

More info about this au under cut

This really started as a joke cuz I wanted to draw more Stan and Mari friendship art but as god has it it’s not so much a joke anymore(yay). This whole AU centers around Stanley and Mariella “becoming human”.

Character refs for Stan and Mari. I might change some stuff up with their colors and designs but this is the main idea for now.

In this AU Mariella now works in the same building as Stanley and her job is to attend meetings. Employee 317 did this everyday of every month of every year. She first meets Stanley while waiting for those who were supposed to attend, surprised and confused at the sudden disappearance of everyone.

Mariella and Stanley are creations of the Narrator, so they don’t look exactly human because of that.

(They have normal noses in side profiles)

I was inspired by Friday Night Funkin for their stylized faces. In terms of expression they are much more animated in comparison to the Curator or the Narrator.

Speaking of Nar-Nar, here’s the man himself. His first form is more like a “concept” than an actual “appearance” as he didn’t really care about what he looked liked and cared more about getting through with the story. His current form is much more human and he often spends time in it outside of the parable in his office. I wanted to keep his figure blocky and sharp cuz I went by squares as his main image.

Now the Parable wouldn’t be anything without the building, lo and behold “Coworker”.

I suck at drawing buildings, but for all you need to know for now is that it always expanding in the inside (where the story takes place), and also it is alive, capable of thought and emotion to some extent. Yayyy living infrastructure.

Some additional early sketches I made while trying to figure out stuff.

I thought it would be funny if Nar and Curie dated for a week before realizing they swung different ways. Things are good between them but it’s a little awkward at times. I was stuck between making Nar-Nar an eldritch creature or just an old man, but then again why can’t he do both.

Quick height chart doodle. The egotistical old man strikes once again, he really made himself so tall because he thinks it’s funny being able to see over people’s heads. In a way they look like Kirby to him.

That’s it for now. I’ll try to not burn myself out so that I can draw more for this au. It seems shallow right now but that’s on purpose‼️

Also, none of the things I draw in this AU are meant to be romantic. They are Queer-platonic at most. This is just me exploring bonds in hard times +what it means to be human (self-projecting like hell).

[breakfastatmiles]

Your art is wonderful!!!

A constant inspiration to my own creativity and art work. Could you explain some of your art style to me? I’m interested in looking at a bunch of different ones to try and finally find one for me.

Goodnight!!🌙

Thank you so much! That means the world to me! I’d be happy to share some of my process with you 😄

Keep in mind I’m completely self-taught, so this is just the process of how I make my drawings and not any sort of professional advice 😅 apologies for the long post ahead 😪

Starting with the basics, my biggest influences are Jin Kim and Ami Thompson. Both are amazing character designers and I really admire their stylization and expressions. Whenever I feel stuck on something, I always go back to their drawings for inspiration.

I typically start in Procreate with a canvas size of 3300px x 4200px or 11” x 14” with a DPI of 300.

I put my reference in the corner of the canvas (in this case it’s a screenshot from the movie She’s the Man) and I start my rough sketch (emphasis on rough). Sketching is probably the longest part in my drawing process because I’m focusing on expression, composition, proportions, etc. This usually has about two to three passes before I move on.

Then I lower the opacity of the sketch and clean it up with some lineart on a new layer. Lineart doesn’t play a huge part in my style, but I still like to play around with line weight. Since I knew this was going to be a fully rendered piece, I didn’t spend much time on lines that I knew were going to be removed later in the process.

Underneath all of that, I use the skin tone and color the base of the character. I make sure that I color ever so slightly past the lineart, for reasons that will be important later. This part can be tedious, especially because I use a textured brush, so there are a lot of gaps that I fill in later.

Then using new layers with clipping masks, I start the flat colors. Nothing too crazy here.

I’ve made color palettes for characters and backgrounds that I typically draw, so this way it speeds up the process and maintains style consistency. If I need a color that I don’t normally use, I’ll just play around with the colors until I find something that fits well with everything else.

Next, on a multiply layer, I add some basic shading (with the skin tone color) and blush (with an orange-pink color). I also move onto the background. Some are more complex than others. If I’m going for a more cinematic look, I’ll fill the background in with some basic shapes and blur it slightly. Thankfully the background was pretty simple in this reference.

I start checking proportions now that everything has basic colors. Then I duplicate my lineart layer and change it to a pinkish-red and put it on multiply mode and turn down the opacity. This is why the base color layer needs to line up with the lineart, otherwise there’d just be gaps underneath. Instead of erasing my black lineart layer, I put a mask on it and just keep the eyes and eyebrows.

Then I start working on the shading and hair, which is an entire process in itself. Maybe I’ll make a tutorial on that one day 😅

I also use some vivid light and soft light layers and put in some subtle colors for extra pizzazz.



Then I add a hard light layer to the eyes for that glossy look and on a normal layer add some white details just to make some things pop more (like the nose, lips, eyes, sometimes hair, etc.)

I did make an eye tutorial a while back, but my process is still the same!

Lastly, I spend a lot of time playing with different blending modes (multiply, add, soft light, vivid light layers) and really focus on the lighting. I used to focus on adding a lot more details and make the coloring more realistic, but I found that the more simplistic coloring was easier for me to do and fit my style better. Sometimes I still tend to go too far with the details and realize that it looks better when I tone it down a bit.

That’s pretty much it! Let me know if you have any questions! Hope this helps. Have fun making art!