#fun fact before I dived back into FGO

[hanakihan]

gray collar cough best skin cough spiriton dress is finally in crane’s shop

time to get moriarty’s ass

[asuraaa]

Question: What inspired you to make this comic/these characters?

TL;DR: MY LOVE OF OCS, HISTORY, AND BL DRAMA.

LONG VERSION: okay it really is kinda hard to pin any specific inspiration other than i just really like OCs and historical fiction and this character dynamic, but i feel like i get this question and similar ones a lot SO I'M JUST GONNA REALLY DIG INTO IT THIS TIME, give as thorough of an answer as i can.

so in 2009, i played ragnarok online. A LOT. i played with my friend jenny (who is the comic co-writer) and we would make dumb characters and then get super attached to them. she made an airship pirate sniper named cicada, and i made a posh politician wizard named gladimir. they looked like this:

my goal in designing glad was to make him the prettiest OC i had. most of my OCs are like... lanky old men and quirky ugly dudes, but glad was going to be GORGEOUS. and thus i made him to my taste, the prettiest boy i could manage. i'm just really into twinky pretty boys with bobs, so i guess you could call them my inspiration. here's some OG 2009 gladios:

they're a dime a dozen in mainstream media now, see lio fotia, yuri plisetsky, shion kiba, that fairy prince from FGO... but glad predates them all, i was just following my heart LOL. characters like xellos from slayers or garma from gundam may have played a subconscious inspo role, but i only realized this in hindsight years later. tho weirdly enough they're both purple:

anyway, jenny and i RPed a lot; having a friend to RP and be invested in OCs with you is always hugely invaluable inspiration for anything, i think! eventually our ragnarok online story kinda hit a dead end and got dropped for a while, until we picked it up again in 2015, and started exploring... ALTERNATE UNIVERSES. and the AU of "what if glad was a prince" just fucking TOOK OFF. insert old 2015 first doodle here:

inspiration for THAT came from an alanis morissette song that i've linked before, which was this one LOL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGYCyQfbFHM

it gave me the idea for the golden trial in the comic, which served as the base for a whole new world of RP and plot building. IN FACT i would say that music in general became a huge point of inspiration, specifically french music due to the nature of glad's made up country being some french/english hybrid. so on that note, let me link you some more inspiration songs:

- french drama vibes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN4VLmo1QG4

- french emotional vibes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfW5FQ5iv2E

- english plot vibes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAI5mYVWotI

the inspo for the overall aesthetic of the characters just comes purely from history and historical fiction vibes that i like. royal european clothing and the age of sail are hot. i think there's some subconscious inspiration from utena and gundam as well:

and inspo for the overall story i cant attribute to anything specific other than my friend’s interest, love for BL comics, and glad and cicada's character tropes. i love a classic brain & brawn duo, i love a short king with top energy, i love a heart of gold rowdy boy, and i love when you think two characters are completely opposite and then they turn out to be actually pretty similar. i don't know of any media that specifically fed me these vibes within the time frame we were making this story, but i will say that when promare came out it was PRETTY DAMN GREAT. here's glad dressed as lio because image breaks:

lastly, what inspired me to actually make the comic: memento mori. like many people, i just sit on my flat ass making stories with my friends that will never be shared outside of that friend group, and for the most part i am 100% perfectly okay with this! but deep down i just knew i wanted to actually make a comic... i wanted to be able to look back on my life and say HEY, YOU DID IT, YOU MADE A THING. i'm a story lover, i'm a story teller, and i just needed to finally indulge in this in a more tangible way. dead men tell no tales.

i was in my 30s when i started drawing the comic. it's never too late to start. >:9 start yours today.

o and i guess the narrative itself is just a general mishmash of ideas and tropes i think are fun, there’s no specific inspo there either. i like 90s anime, old video games, historical movies and documentaries, etc. i do pull from age of sail and pirate history for sure, that’s def a general inspiration for me! here’s some of my books on the subject, feel free to ask me for more titles/reccs if you’re into this stuff huhu:

ALSO, the comic had no name until after i started drawing it, but the name came from a song as well, pls enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R-BR9bzdMM

anyway i guess that's the deep dive into the inspo! if i think of anything else i'll just add it in later but MAN IF YOU READ THIS FAR, YOU ARE A ROCKSTAR. hope this answered everything and more, thanks for the question!!