#enchantress-emily

[laurasimonsdaughter]

I just read a fantasy novel I think you might like: The Phoenix Keeper by S. A. MacLean. It's set at a zoo for magical creatures and includes tons of detail about their habits and how they're cared for. The main plot involves the protagonist trying to revive the zoo's phoenix breeding program. (It also has a bunch of queer rep, and the protagonist has anxiety and could be read as autistic).

Oh that sounds very fun, I haven't read a magical creature urban fantasy in ages! I do have to ask my obligatory questions though:

Are any kids hurt/in danger?

Does a parental figure die?

How dark does the "darkest hour" get?

I saw this book being recced as "for fans of The House in the Cerulean Sea and Legends and Lattes". And in Legends and Lattes the darkest hour is being a victim of arson while still being loved and protected by your friends. Whereas in The House in the Cerulean Sea what I would call the darkest hour is.....the entire existence of the world outside the island??

[chelshiart]

I love your Derkholm art! Do you have any tips on drawing griffins? I’m planning a webcomic that includes some griffin characters, and I don’t have any experience with A) drawing them in the first place and B) making them look like individuals. Thanks!

Thanks for being so patient for this reply - had a pretty busy couple of weeks preparing stuff for artist conventions. Anyway, was a lot of fun to ruminate on - here are a bunch of things I've thought about (and am still thinking about) when drawing the griffin kids! Heads up that I'm still practicing myself, and there are definitely a lot of aspects of creature design I could work on (the wiiiiiings gah), but hopefully this helps give you some direction on designing your own bird-lion-cats.

[cd-covington]

Linguistics worldbuilding question for you!

I'm planning a webcomic set in an embassy where various magical races meet up to do business. The races I've planned so far are humans, fae, dwarves, goblins, sea-people, dragon-people, and gryphons.

Do you have any thoughts on ways to distinguish the speech patterns of the different races so they don't all end up sounding alike, especially the non-humanoid ones like the gryphons? I think some of them have nonverbal elements to their languages as well, which the visual webcomic format will help with.

By the way, there's going to be a translation spell either on the building itself or on some sort of amulet that everyone carries with them, so they can communicate with reasonable ease (and yes, I know about some of the problems with the universal translator trope).

Hello enchantress-emily!

This sounds like a fun idea for a webcomic 🙂 Speech patterns can be interesting to play with, and I think you can utilize the magic universal translator to help you with that.

The first thing you can do is figure out what types of metaphors and proverbs and idioms each of these species would have. What’s important in their culture? What would common touch-points be for the sea-people – what would their equivalent proverb be for, say, “we have bigger fish to fry” (there are bigger problems)? (Because frying doesn’t work well under water, right??)

Another thing you can think about is sentence structure. For example, German sentence structure is different from English, and nearly half of German sentences don’t start with the verb. German also allows you to construct massively long nested sentences that REALLY don’t work in English unless you separate them into 2 or more sentences. So maybe one of the species will have more complex sentence structure (even translated) because that’s how their language works, and maybe one of them will be more like English. (Not all languages in the world allow you to have dependent clauses (your which or who ones)! You can’t say I saw the man who lives next door at the supermarket; you have to break it down into I saw the man at the supermarket. He lives next door to me. (Or just I saw my neighbor, of course.))

There’s also formality. Maybe the fae have Court Language that’s more formal, and this formality gets carried over in translation. (But how? You decide if you want them all to sound like Jane Austen characters or like Aragorn son of Arathorn or whatever 😉)

Since you’re using magical translation, you can have the sea-people’s idiom for “we have bigger problems” come out as a literal translation of whatever they actually say. Think about The Little Mermaid a second – Sebastian sings to Ariel, “The seaweed is always greener in somebody else’s lake.” This is obviously a nod to “the grass is greener on the other side of the fence,” but grass doesn’t exist under the sea, and lawns and fences don’t either. So they use seaweed (like grass but in the sea) and lake.

You could do fun things like have the translation spell get hung up on a nested sentence (maybe the fae like to go on like the Germans), then everything comes screeching to a halt and the speaker has to start over but speak straightforwardly.

Speaking of straightforwardly… how does the spell handle lies, falsehoods, half-truths, white lies, and other forms of obfuscation? Is it impossible to lie because of some part of the magic that detects speaker’s intent? Are some species better at lying than others because they can say (for example) “I didn’t hate it” (a true statement, but omits “but I didn’t like it either”)? This would be a TON of fun to play around with, especially for people who like writing twisty political stories.

You mentioned body language and other nonverbal communication, so I want to touch on that briefly. Nonverbal communication varies around the real world, and you can have different species with different NVC (and maybe it gets mis-read! Maybe a normal gesture in one culture is offensive in another! Maybe the magic doesn’t cover NVC!) There are so many things you can play with here. Good luck with your project! It sounds fun.

If you think this is interesting, consider backing my Kickstarter, where I’ll be writing a book about how to use linguistics in your worldbuilding process. Or if tumblr ever sorts out tipping for my account, leave me a tip.

[alexandriaellisart]

lavender

[loneliness-of-spring]

See I’ve had this idea since like. Two years ago. And a recent tweet reminded me of it again; and I decided why not work on some concepts for the fun of it?

Twst girls’ school ideas :) from doodles at the start to the conceptualisation of the uniform below :D somewhere along the way I just? Could begin to actually render??? After looking at a single short IG reel??????? Bonkers

Anyways, it’s definitely still in its early stages, but the concept I had for an all girls’ school in twst was twisted from the enchantress from beauty and the beast! The magic brooch is by far my proudest design, matching her crown while looking like a flower bud from reference images I used :)

ngl this uniform sucks ass and I’m still gonna think of different, better designs for it. But hey rendering practice

[otakusparkle]

Identity V Ivory Tower Series Additional Series

Ivory Tower Series now will released more Survivor as Students, and in addition, Hunter will join as Teacher!

New release soon

Survivor

- Enchantress (Patricia Dorval)

- Prospector (Norton Campbell)

- Wildling (Murro)

Hunter

- Photographer (Joseph Desaulnier)

[anonymousdandelion]

Troublemakers of the best sort. 🤩

@kuttithevangu

I first read When the Angels Left the Old Country last fall, but @anonymousdandelion's and @flameraven's recent enthusiastic posts made me want to read it again, and now there's art! Uriel, Little Ash, Essie, and Rose are heading off to cause some kind of trouble together.

(This also gave me a chance to illustrate a headcanon I haven't seen in fan art yet: that Uriel, who's described as having a round, soft face, is soft in the rest of its build as well.)

[bloggingboutburgers]

I saw an ask a ways back on your blog from someone looking for fiction with QPR rep, and I couldn’t resist putting in a word for my favorite webcomic, Widdershins by Kate Ashwin (magical adventures in an alternate Victorian England). Two of the major characters, Jack “Mal” O’Malley and Heinrich Wolfe, have what feels very much like a QPR/platonic life partnership. Mal is canonically aro-ace, and while Wolfe likes flirting with pretty girls, Mal is very clearly the most important person in his life. I think you and/or your followers might enjoy it!

Ooo, thank you so much for sharing!!

[r0ya1]

My old Mikey birthday drawing ✨

I love Mike Morton….

[chichimodele]

Seductress

vs

Wild Woman

[anininas]

I love women what can I say

[laurasimonsdaughter]

There we are~

Okay, I’ll bite: what would a Studio Ghibli adaptation of Tatterhood look like?

Well, first of all it would be based on a specific Dutch translation of Ruth Manning Sander's version of the story, and the sisters would be called Ragebol (head of tangled hair) and Berenice. Second, it would be all the Ghibli vibes and visuals

Wait, let me call in my sister @badassindistress:

[manglagirl1]

I created tablet for Identity V players no cheating okay.

I even did my own.

There are characters I do own that I did not add in there for example the mercenary I own him but I do not use him as often as I use the other rescuers plus I don't have any A or S ranked skins for him.

[pmakuma]

01 / 10 / 23

the comeback!!!!

[ponds-of-ink]

Beauty and The Beast AU Art: “The Masked Enchantress (and her Lily Rose)”

This is all speculative—Both in design and in character choice— But I thought it’d be great to show off my (current) version of The Enchantress.

..Who is either a really (understandably) upset child or a really (understandably) upset adult. Not sure which route to take yet.

(Don’t mind the dark eyes. That’s just how the mask looks. The green “pupil” poking through it is what you should worry about…)

Anyway, the flat and design only versions are below.

[otakusparkle]

Identity V New Event Release

"Dream Invitation" Public Map Preview Video