#detailed wax

[prismatic-skies]

NOW AVAILABLE

[polychromaic]

🌸 when the Hindriarch banished Eskhind and her kin from Bey Lah, Neelahind would follow her heart into voluntary exile. To abandon a surefooted life, as well as a coveted spot among the Fellowship, is nearly unheard of among both hindren and Wardens, but Neelahind was glowing when she took her leave. I hear the pair are quite happy together, practicing arconautics in the ruins to the west—at least, that's what the kendren bring news of when they come back to trade.

back at it again w more caves of qud deer gals 😏✨ i'm kind of enamored with the ending to the Bey Lah quest where Esk and Neela both take off, so i wanted to see what they'd look like as a matched set of lesbian pariah-arconauts. geez, i can’t believe it’s been almost two years since i drew them last

image descriptions under break!

img desc: A drawing of a hindren deerfolk girl from "Caves of Qud". On the left a title card reads "Pariah Neelahind (she/her)". Some of the details are labeled. Her fur is a rich cedar red, with a lighter heartwood underbelly curling under her arms and on the inside of her legs down to her hooves; her curly hair is dark mahogany, tied back in a ponytail with a sky-blue bandana; her antlers are a pale heartswood, deepening to a rich velvet at the tines. She’s smiling, looking up and off to her right; she's poised upright, her arms spread to either side of her as she grips the haft of her war-scythe Yal, which is laying across her shoulders. She’s wearing shining steel platemail—a breastplate over a nanoweave surcoat patterned with pale lemon slices over pink (called "Pink Lemonade"); her armor is incomplete, but well taken care of. She’s wearing leather braces, a steel gauntlet on her left hand only, and a woven blue sash and bedroll across her back.

img desc: A drawing of a hindren deerfolk girl from "Caves of Qud". On the right a title card reads "Pariah Eskhind (she/it)". Some of the details are labeled. Her fur is ashen, with her pale undercoat spotting through on her forearms and flanks. Her messy hair is a greenish bleach-blonde, and one of her ears has a hole in it; her antlers are pale and their velvet is darker grey, and they're covered in little tied-on charms and brass tine hornaments. She has an eyepatch over her left eye, and a gap between her front teeth. She's grinning, slouching in a relaxed fashion, pulling back her hood with one hand and flashing a rock-on with the other; her front two legs are crossed, while the back two are spread like she's posing for a picture. She's wearing a well-worn chainmail hauberk, which extends down over her back; a ragged cowl, with buttoned slots along the hem of the hood for her antlers to fit through; a leather bracer on her left wrist, a steel pauldron on her right shoulder, a fingerless elastyne glove on her right hand, and two pairs of croccasins on her hooves. A pocketed saddle is slung over her back, along with a backpack and bedroll; on either side, the pockets are full of tools and bits. Tucked into her swordbelt is a sheathed folding carbide longsword and a gaslight kris; slung across her chest is a bolt-action rifle called "Peashooter" (it has a lesbian flag on its stock). Around her legs are several beaded bracelets and charms; one of them is the rightfully reclaimed Kindrish, complete with its carved deer charm.

[charleslee-valentine]

I wanna talk about this scene.

A head kiss is *so* significant as a choice. Obviously he can’t kiss her lips unless he wants to have his face superglued to hers, but to waste time getting upstairs to have kissed her at all is sorta what I get caught on. There’s got to be *something* going through his head to make that decision over damage control.

We know the abuse of these women, tying them up in a medical chair, is because of what he went through in his childhood. The duct tape bindings in his high chair, the experimental surgical procedures from his father, the neglect; it’s all mirrored in the leather straps, the chair itself and the identical one up at the house. But we also know Bo, despite probably killing at least Victor, has undying devotion to his mother and her legacy. Trudy slaps her child no older than three across his face without hesitation. What affection might look like or have once looked like in the Sinclair house is curious.

The forehead kiss, in the context of the abuse, can read of both possessiveness and distance. Something like staking a claim, less intimate and affectionate than, say, one on the cheek. A heavily controlled sort of relationship. But back to actual affection.

With the Sinclairs, it’s very skewed what that might be like. When Vincent and Bo interact on screen for the first time, Bo is critically injured and angry. He snaps at his brother, but his remorse is immediate and he uses words as a form of affection. Promises as apologies. Almost like begging, a kind of worship on its own.

Which itself ties into his relationship with their mother too.

Trudy is kept down at the church, having her perpetual funeral service. Bo is seen on screen for the very first time kneeling at her coffin in a probable prayer. But that kind of devotion I think is the Sinclair way of affection. As in religion, which has a recurring symbolism in House of Wax, and as such in the characters lives. Prayer drawing parallels to love isn’t surprising.

Something interesting is that in numerous religions, head kisses can be the passing on of a blessing. Bo forces Carly into the same bindings he suffered in for years, but he grants her a blessing before he leaves her there. It doesn’t seem affectionate at first, if anything it’s just kind of condescending, but knowing how Bo works is what makes it much more interesting.

The question is why?

Bo consoles Vincent after he hurts his feelings by talking about their mother’s blessing and legacy. All of Ambrose is a gift from a woman who treated them horribly, and they accept it. The killings are literally for her. In that way, I think Bo is apologizing. He’s inflicting on this woman something that destroyed his life, and he isn't some zombified, all magical slasher; he’s still very much a human being who feels pain and emotions. A lot more emotions than either of his brothers seem to show on screen, actually.

His role as the leader -or the preacher of this church they’ve built, hence why he finds Carly hiding under the robes in the church- isn’t without remorse. It’s do what’s got to be done. Which started with his parents. Victor says in the cold open, “I’m doing the best I can,” while wrestling a toddler. They call little Bo the monster while they’re actively hurting him. These excuses are pre-programmed into his complex.

In regard to further biblical imagery and the Sinclair parents, is the theater. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? plays nonstop, with the specific scene with Carly being hunted in the theater taking place during Jane’s song. The first two lines of that say, “I’ve written a letter to daddy, His address is Heaven above.” There’s this idea of communicating with a dead parent again, just like Bo speaking out loud to Trudy’s corpse, but now it’s outwardly tying it in with religious beliefs. If Bo is the preacher, he’s simply passing along the holy message instilled in him by his parents above. Bo *is* Baby Jane in that way, but not for the most obvious reason. While yes, he is harsh to his brother, as Baby Jane treated her sister Blanche badly, there’s also the fact that he’s a washed up, desperate, abused child who craves love and validation and normalcy again. Using his communication with the divine up in Heaven above to spread a blessing is a way of getting approval. With a detached kiss to Carly, his crimes are the gospel.

A consistent theme here is not only his relationship with being abused, but also with Vincent. Biblically, conjoined twins are considered a mistake of nature. God creates two human souls, but it is the fault of nature that their bodies combine. However, because of the risks, it is also considered mostly immoral in the church to separate them if one or both will have their lives risked. For the Sinclair twins, their father did this surgery himself, at home, which is obviously wildly illegal and dangerous. That makes him a sinner and an obstacle to a perfect Ambrose, on top of being an abusive asshole. So he’s killed, implied to be shot by Bo directly. That bullet was his punishment as much as the highchair was Bo’s punishment. Vincent may not have gotten the highchair, but he does have the marks on his face to show for what Victor chose. The surgery, the sin of going against the new plan, left Vincent scarred and missing not just tissue but parts of the bones in his face. Having to wear the masks and being disallowed from leaving Ambrose is his punishment for Victor’s moral crime. God took from them both unfairly and I think, despite his devotion, Bo doesn’t quite believe in the faith fully because of that.

Again, he’s human. He has his doubts and fears. His reassurance to Vincent in the form of “Ma would be proud” goes for himself too. And his subsequent “She always said that your talent would make up for what God took away from you.” Vincent doesn’t need convincing though, he needs an apology. That’s what Bo’s speech about Trudy is, is an apology, but that doubles for both him and Vincent. And the head kiss too. Because again, he’s operating on what he’s supposed to do. It’s a routine.

At that point, I think Bo doesn’t get satisfaction from fulfilling God’s (ahem, Trudy’s) plan anymore. Carly, and by extension every other girl who was down in that cellar at one point or another, is a sacrifice to it. She’s duct taped in that chair because someone has to be suffering in order for the Sinclairs to thrive. That’s the way it’s been before. Someone has to be hurting to need God’s grace so badly as to keep up what they’re doing, rather than just forgetting Ambrose. But what makes me think Bo specifically has stopped deriving anything positive from that order, is that he also tells Vincent “We almost finished what Mama started.” Based on the number of empty seats in the theater alone, they could theoretically kill a lot more than just the six kids that night. Why stop there? Because of the sacrificial lamb down in his cellar. I think Bo thinks that his actions will trigger be some fateful event that’ll free them all of Ambrose. Some great flood or some such. And when it doesn’t come for an entire decade after Trudy’s death, I think his desperation is growing more and more over those ten years to where his faith is now slipping. Back around to the head kiss, the silent promises he makes to Carly is to reassure himself that she’ll be special and it’ll end with her.

Choosing Carly specifically, could come from a biblical Madonna-Whore complex. Bo saw the whole group the night before, only two of which were girls obviously. Between them, Paige is pregnant. The Bible states directly that she should be burned for that (as she is out of wedlock.) Ambrose is, to him, a Holy place, but bringing Paige in and keeping her alive, no matter for how short a time, would technically be making the entire land impure. So Carly it was. I do think he has an attraction to her, since whoever has the video camera that night takes special care to record her lips, and then he makes a comment about them after supergluing them. It’s just the fact he could’ve kissed her at any point before the glue came out, and chose not to. Just that little head kiss. Because as much as he’s preached, he has to resist temptation himself or it’s all for naught. Does that mean I think he doesn’t assault any of the women? No, absolutely not. There’s a sex swing in that cellar. It’s just a matter of repenting. The first time we ever see Bo’s face, he’s on his knees in the church. Out of all the empty buildings in Ambrose he chose to go pray at church before the group showed up. He knows what he’s gonna do and knows he shouldn’t. Hence the other meaning of the kiss again, the apologetic side combined with the resistance.

Bo is such a deeply, deeply complex character. He went through so much only to turn around and inflict so much. Going back to their father’s choice to do the surgery on his own, the impacts of having a whole person removed from the back of Bo’s head is so unknown.

From the way they were conjoined, their skulls may have very well been attached. Seeing as Vincent has impacts to the development of his brow bone, cheek bone, lower jaw, and nasal bridge, those bones would have to go somewhere, and the realistic answer is that they would’ve been fused to Bo, or at least the parts of those would’ve been there. All in the back of Bo’s head, directly against his skull. To me, it’s incredibly, incredibly unlikely that no impacts would’ve been made on Bo’s brain development. How much of his violent impulses are even his own, and how much comes from a traumatic brain injury, inflicted by their father himself. Certainly blaming that baby for being a monster, when it’s a consequence of his own behavior, seems about fitting with the rest of the manipulation processes that go on in that family. Which Bo had to learn from somewhere. Trudy was likely his biggest abuser, but I think Bo modeled a lot of himself, unconsciously, after their father. Killing him was just taking on that role, and the religious filtering of it all, is Bo’s way of processing that. The father, the son, and mama’s Holy Spirit.

[sothasil]

Two blokes slacking off at work :p

Cretan diplomats based on a painting of the tomb of Rekhmire, Luxor. I was intruigued by the leopard skirt thingy one of them is wearing and drew a more or less realistic interpretation of it! The other guy's there so he can have a buddy.

While i usually draw people looking as average as possible, it's not the case here. It's fair to assume that within the "PR" context of the painting (representing their people in front of a foreign king) these would be the ancient aegean's hottest boytoys, so I kept them snatched and smooth shaved.

Originals under the cut!

Mural with my chosen duo highlighted

Cropped closeup, leopard skirt guy on the left (and the two arms of jugs guy!)

[deathnguts]

The black brothers variants

[leonardcohenofficial]

required watching and one of the best concert films i've seen in a minute; gil scott-heron's pointed blues poetry remains ever sharp and ever relevant and if you're unfamiliar with his work black wax is a solid introduction to one of the realest to ever do it

[jancyyyyy]

So Jancy definitely got bigger pockets after seeing how much Rosé could carry in S1 right? Like I'm rewatching and she said her pockets can hold dollar bills folded into eighths and nothing more, then in the one shot stream she has hand sanitizer on her, which is definitely bigger. I like to think she was inspired by Rosé's massive pockets and went to a tailor to get some better ones put into her suit

[klabauters]

One time another player from my larp group made me a lunchbox to take to an event. They even re-packaged everything into neutral or historically accurate packaging so I could carry it around in character.

Now, I ofc had to point out that I had the best lunch out of everyone, which, given the fact that all my larp friends are reasonable adults, had vast consequences and started what I'd call the snackbox war of 2024/25.

Since I'm not picky with making friends as Lutz, this character has friends in all sorts of different factions. So half of his friends can't stand each other.

For context: this is the character for whom I just really lean into my natural talent for looking young and being a pest. I keep getting snack packs in the fucking post, from people with handwritten letters in-character, letting Lutz know that whoever sent this particular lunchpack is his best friend after all. I'm not even complaining, but today I found a linen bag full of potatoes and a letter in cursive in my mailbox. My roommate is, by all means, intrigued.

In short: send help, my adult friends are having a fight over who can made me, another adult, the best lunchbox.

[marejadilla]

Brian Haberlin, “Sorceress”, watercolor with dorland's wax surface, 2024. Detail, Honolulu, Hawái, USA (19 de agosto de 1963). Brian Haberlin is an award winning American comic book artist, writer, editor and producer.

[jojo-schmo]

Metadede Week Day 1: "Sworn Partners"

[prismatic-skies]

NOW AVAILABLE

[violent138]

If some ao3 bookmarkers had been around back then, they'd have no trouble categorizing the fucking library of Alexandria even. Insane effort, and so meticulous. I'm enamoured.

[canisalbus]

Your art tastes like aged paper, sugar, and chocolate to me, with a hint of salt every so often

Machete looks like white chocolate, and Vasco's like buttery caramel

.

[sunnimint]

When your robot boyfriend takes you home because you’re wasted af, vomited three times, and nearly threw hands with a cactus.

[send-me-a-puffalope]

Been really into crayon art lately

[snazzyscarf]

the thing about me is that I will absolutely shamelessly give my favorite little minor character who has cubed me a disproportionate amount of narrative significance than he actually has, BUT THE PROBLEM WITH THAT is that he (Clockblocker) actually honestly and truly DOES have one of the biggest impacts of any character.

like i know they were not giving out medals for the sake of preventing infighting after the leviathan fight, but Clockblocker damn well deserves one because quite literally everyone would have died had he not frozen the Titanic Waterbending Godzilla in time for several whole minutes allowing the remaining capes critical time to re-strategize and hold out for Scion. Additionally. everyone Also would have died had Skitter not been able to utilize his power to slice That Thang (Echidna) in twain. Two (2) S-Class threats within months of each other and he turned the tides on both of them.

it’s like. it’s honestly a testament to what Tattletale was saying about how a lot of parahumans never really get the chance to understand the full extent of their powers because they’re never under the right circumstances to do so. because if you think about it purely in situations like the bank heist or party crash early on in the book, Clockblocker’s power really isn’t anything to write home about. and if they lived in a reality where things like that were the biggest threats around he would probably stay that way!

but they don’t live in that reality. they DO live in a world with towering kaiju endbringers that threaten the planet every three months and they DO live in a world where monstrous parahuman accidents like echidna are likely to pop up, and it’s because of this product of circumstance that you can make a legitimate case for Clockblocker having one of the strongest powers in terms of utility. he lives in a reality where his niche is allowed to shine!

and it’s this kinda thinking that makes the fact that he is—at the end of the day—Just A Minor Character, so incredibly compelling because it further illustrates the idea that This Could Be Anybody. under the right circumstances, any parahuman could find their otherwise mid-level power suddenly become the most pivotal role in a survival setting. or the most dangerous! it opens up the floor to a wealth of possibilities.

like say what you want, and i do concede that of course my darling boy Dennis doesn’t hold the same narrative significance that any of the major characters do, but when you look at his role in the story from this perspective, He Really Is Kind Of A Big Deal.