#karleeen

[ranchwamen]

I drew nine of my characters as Breaking Bad characters! If Sirpa had evil in her heart and was diagnosed with lung cancer in Albaquerque, this is what that world would look like. Probably.

Exactly four of these characters I haven't posted yet, but hopefully that will change soon. From left to right Sirpa (Walter), Lazlo (Skyler), Karleeen (Jesse), Billiam (Marie), Niklas (Hank), the Man (Mike), Remington (Hector), Salli (Saul), and Marie (Lydia). I couldn't for the life of me figure out who would be Gus even though he's my favourite BrBa character, but maybe it will come to me eventually.

Better look at the White-anen extended family and The Criminals:

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

I’ve been trying to get better at not drawing totally accurate spider anatomy all the time and also doing more interesting poses for taurs because they’re not just an expressive human upper body on top of some animal legs. So here’s Karleeen doing things !

[rxttenfish]

thank you!! i knew i wanted to have both the pike-markings and the pike-shaped face (and the pike-shaped fins), and atlantic migratory and arctic both worked very nicely, especially for the location :> arctics would introduce more greyscale markings, especially the starker whites and blacks, but i imagine the atlantic is where the gene to break up the markings came from, making them into longer stripes and stipples over bolder streaks. similarly, arctics do have very small fins for merfolk, and they're the only species who don't have grey-purple mouths and mucus membranes! instead, they're pink or sometimes spotted, so i went with some nice, light purple for the salt organs.

funnily enough, ahti II might remain very long for my merfolk too, just depending on how many arctic genes he has, as they're (if i'm recalling my own lore correctly) the second-largest species of merfolk.

fortunately, middle royal is a lot more variable than the low royals like miranda... mostly the merkingdom permits them to largely do what they wish, including their own internal affairs and how they manage themselves, so long as they otherwise follow the merkingdom's laws. a lot of middle royals do retain their cultural attachments and styles of ruling that they possessed pre-merkingdom rule, including most of them still going by the eldest-born instead of the youngest-born for inheritance, but this is a sliding scale too. those who have the most power and political sway do behave and have internal cultures a lot closer to those of the crown, partially because of the pressure exerted by the push for power (such as the suitors' courts and the way they're laid out, selecting who from what families can marry into the family lineages further up the chain, so to speak) and partially because of the crown's bias being favored towards those already within their cultural sphere... and the more powerful the middle royals are, the more pressure they have to try and slot themselves closer to the low royals, and the more pressure they start to exert internally as well.

honestly i think i need to talk more about the middle royals in general! they're neat, especially since the merkingdom gives them permission to go to war against each other, and there's a lot more actively changing political landscapes around them, at least in comparison to the low royals. this serves the nice dual purposes of giving them a loose enough leash to not view the low royals as much of a threat, while also making them more directly responsible and accessible for the population who is affected by all this political maneuvering and mistreatment... meaning it's not too uncommon for the middle royals to get overthrown either, letting the low royals come back in and mop up the mess, letting the population feel like change is happening and occurring, putting them back under the merkingdom's thumb now that they're in a vulnerable position after a conflict, and keeping certain that nothing that would pose a direct threat to them gets very far.

this is also why there are so many atlantic migratory middle royals in the arctic too — as they were one of the areas that most resisted merkingdom rule, and so when their laws and system of governance was implemented, a lot of adjacent atlantics were given free reign of predominantly-arctic merfolk areas and populations. it's been a pretty notable conflict point still... but it does also explain why there's a lot of arctic hybridization in the atlantic migratory populations in the upper northern regions, and especially why it shows up in their royal lineages, since usually those were less likely to be deposed of by displeased populations (and remaining a little more influenced by the existing culture present).

Crossing the merfolk streams by doodling @fishyfishyfishtimes's Ahti II as one of my merfolk. :>

In this case, I decided to go with Atlantic Migratory merfolk, but due to the location and position, with a high amount of hybridization with Arctic merfolk. Similarly, I feel like he would slot nicely as a Middle Royal, typically being rather powerful players over wide swathes of area inside the Merkingdom.

The second sketch is just Miri checking out this weird landfolk-fish. More traditional merfolk are odd for her too!

[yummyummy-404]

Studio - Karleeener by Kanokoso_ Performing Arts

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

KARLEEEN CLOTHES KARLEEEN CLOTHES!!!!!!!!!

I've been itching to redraw Karleeen's various outfits and design her new ones since forever and now I actually sat down and did it over the past few days. I wonder what her favourite colours might be !!

Not much to say here that wouldn't be obvious. When it's cold, Karleeen wears more clothes, and when it's warmer, she prefers to be barefoot and wears less clothes. They don't always cover her abdomen because culturally having your abdomen (arachnid, insect or otherwise) exposed is the same as wearing a top or a short shirt that leaves your human stomach exposed, since taurs don't have anatomy that's one to one with their "species of inspiration". Karleeen's pants tend to be loose because her legs can bend at so many places, and they open at the top (at the top of the cephalothorax or "spider back")!

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

A comic, in which Karleeen has an extremely normal reaction to the idea that her friends might ever interact.

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

You know that art trend that was like “draw your OC before and after the trauma” with the Undertale quote? I did a version of that with Karleeen in April! Although with her it’s less of a “before and after” and more like…. during? Well, in any case. It gets a lot better :)

Still images:

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Had this funny and uncannily real Miitopia interaction which would 100% happen if these characters came to meet, I think. So I drew it out! Featuring Miranda Vanderbilt of Monster Prom fame and Karleeen of... fishyfishyfishtimes fame? This time she needs no introduction as the joke is pretty obvious lmao

It would no doubt be left entirely ambiguous whether or not Miranda intends this to be a threat. On one hand, she’s been raised and conditioned to see torture and harm of those lower than oneself as wholly normal, not to mention she’s a fish out of water in a foreign culture and to her this could simply gifting someone with something that reminds her of them (creepy amount of pins aside). On the other hand, Miranda can be oblivious but she’s not stupid. She's executed blackmail plans before. So… well! Fortunately Karleeen was going to be her friend anyway…

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Karleeen gets crushes very easily

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Our non-marine heroine Karleeen McQueen

You know what, you already know lots of stuff about Ahti II, I’m now going to tell you about Karleeen the spidergirl, Ahti’s best friend and the protagonist of a story I’m writing! A quick information sheet:

(+ Art reference)

Karleeen (with three e’s)… well, who doesn’t know about Karleeen! Probably not by looks, but you could read all about her on the papers some years back. It’s been a while, you'd hardly recognise her if you saw her now! Especially among the other jolly beachgoers, joggers, shoppers and summertime tourists; Karleeen lives in Naantali after all, with her single father on the coast of southwest Finland. In the summer it's busy, in the winter it's very quiet, all year round it's a very appropriate place for Karleeen, she thinks.

Now in her mid-teens (the Sirpaverse “starting point” is 2021), Karleeen is a most open and jolly girl! She loves socialising and chats with just about anybody she has a chance to interact with for more than five minutes. She’s always planning outings and looking to spend time with her best friends, too! She enjoys being silly, making wordplay and coming up with puns with ridiculous set-ups. Karleeen is a sensitive soul, she feels all of her emotions very strongly and shows them strongly, too. She sometimes has trouble regulating her emotional reactions and has a tendency to spiral. It's very difficult for Karleeen to lie, her feelings will be very clear from her facial expressions and body language no matter how hard she may pretend to feel otherwise. Not that she'd even lie! It would make her feel too bad.

Karleeen has loved nothing more her whole life than making "thingamajigs" — you know, machines, things that move, little inventions! It's so fascinating to her, how pieces that are little more than scrap on their own weave together into intricate creations that are far more than the sum of their parts. When she was a young kid she'd make things out of twigs and rocks and rope, but in her teens she's now moved onto more sophisticated methods, legos and actual robot-building sets. She's also dipping her toes into coding, so far it seems fun and it offers an additional medium for making things (only digitally this time). Karleeen would love to study mechanical engineering when she's old enough to go to a university, but it'll be a while until then! Besides for robotics Karleeen enjoys hiking in the outdoors, climbing trees, basking, collecting fun and/or useless trinkets of various kinds and strawberry-themed items, playing platformers and action-adventure games and doodling.

Karleeen’s a smart girl, but she struggles a lot with languages. Or, well, don’t let me entirely misrepresent her: she does have the achievement of knowing some ASL signs. Still, Finnish is the only language she speaks fluently and it’s her own mother tongue! She can’t quite get anything else stuck to her brain, speaking Swedish or Surish or even simple English feels like a chore. Like stated above Karleeen’s body language is very clear, one of the more common actions Karleeen does when she’s nervous, scared or sad is holding her hands and arms close to her chest.

Karleeen's favourite genre of music is classical, but she can't listen to it casually because it makes her very emotional. She likes pop, rock and soundtracks when it comes to just playing music in the car or with friends. Her favourite animals are elephants, and her favourite fish is the electric eel. Her favourite meal is minute beef steak with seasoned butter and chanterelles, but her actual favorite singular food item in general and favourite snack is wild strawberries. Her favourite drink is tap water. Her favourite flower is fireweed.

(Nowhere else to really mention this but Karleeen is also asexual and biromantic, it took a long while for her to figure out because her relationship with having human connections is rather complicated and unusual but she’s comfortable in that identity and doesn’t really overthink it, she has a lot of love in her heart for so many things so it’s only natural she would have a lot of love for many people too, she thinks)

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Hair guide (and overall style guide) for Karleeen so I don't forget how she's meant to look at each point in her tween-to-early-adulthood life stages. I’ve seldom drawn her as an adult but look at her :) She’s so grown!!

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

I'm drawing various outfits for Karleeen (because what are you even doing if you aren't making digital paper dolls of your characters?) for the first time since about 2022. Back then I drew this pretty cute overalls design and I wanted to redraw it, compare!! (click to see full images)

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Art-and-character meme with my two special pookies :DD Both can ramble on and on for hours if you just give them the right topic. Coincidentally both also freeze up if someone were to insult them, although Karleeen freezes up from being rightly distraught and Ahti freezes up from suddenly having the social interaction etiquette manual in his brain not have an answer to such an outlandish event and blue screening as a result

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Karleeen’s room, during day- and nighttime! I think drawings of environments can really help with showing how a character is like, a window into their life.

Close ups of some details:

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Fun fact: Karleeen can skii 👍 I drew several images to show just how she does it, too! For all your many-legged needs.

Despite what you might think, having eight legs fastened onto four skis actually improves Karleeen's skiing maneuverability, as her feet naturally point "sideways" from her body and her “ankles” aren't particularly twisty. Having two points of contact in each ski (akin to a snowboard) lends her more fine-tuned movement and more kick! She can't quite ski in her normal standing pose, but let's be honest, no one should, you'll fall. To ski, she must simply keep her four middle legs closer to her body, with "bent knees" (patellas)

Normal cross-country skiing works just about the same as on any other person, her skis alternating in kicking back and moving forwards to glide. The biggest difference here is perhaps that her ski poles touch the ground between her legs as opposed to the ground on her sides, which is simply because her stance is very wide. Her arms have a lesser arch of movement because her legs get in the way, but the propulsion from having four legs push back on each kick as opposed to just one means you wouldn't really realise there's any hindrance of any kind. To turn, she simply extends one of the legs on her second frontmost pair of legs, and to slow down she’ll extend both.

Skate skiing is a little bit different, instead of kicking back on both skis of one side she only uses the back skis for kicking, and does a slithering motion on her front skis to keep up momentum, as if on ice skates. Nifty!

Here's some more detailed drawings of her skis and ski boots, for cross-country and downhill skiing! Karleeen's feet are rather small and so are her boots, the material is bendy like on ski boots for normal feet. Since cross-country skiing doesn't require any crazy tricks, her boots are held in place on cross-country skis with velcro straps. Her downhill skiing boots and the skis themselves are bigger and more robust!

So that's it! I’m not sure how Karleeen would manage ice skating for the aforementioned sideways-pointing feet reasons, but as a Finn and avid cross-country skiing enthusiast it’s of most importance to me that many-legged taurs of the Sirpaverse can enjoy the joys of skiing :)

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

One of the most fun things you can do as an artist with characters is make one of the characters an artist, too. Then you get to pick an artstyle for them!

Karleeen (Ahti's buddy) likes doodling a bunch :) Her art looks like this:

I tried colouring a couple but I don’t think I want to have the art coloured, the simplicity of only having lineart that implies shape instead of deliberately showing it in colouring is a part of the charm