#like. i do not want to eat this SUCKS

[al-luviec]

something simple to try to get out of art block (it didn't work)

[hollypies]

Fuuuck I don't want to draw backgrounds anyway why do I get randomly dizzy and see black spots . What's that about

[silverware-is-interesting]

I'm sick rn but hey. i can still draw. with only mild inconvenience!!

i fucked up eucerin a bit but i think it's good for using no ref

here. have some ms pain too

[fisheito]

emotional support wolf meets too-shy-to-live sneetah

[serpentface]

Hibrides and Brakul having the world’s saddest booze-fueled girl’s night, probably a few months before the start of the story.

Anyway here's an extensive rundown of their shared history.

Hibrides Uryashta was the eldest daughter of a chancellor of the imperial city-state of Erubinnos (his lordship Erub Uryashta). She was brought up with great privilege and security, but (like most daughters of noblemen) was destined to be used as a bargaining chip in a political marriage arrangement. She was taken from her friends and family and moved to the city of Wardin at the age of 16 to complete her pledged marriage with Janeys Haidamane, the failson of the trade magnate Haidamane family. Janeys spent about a week poorly attempting to behave like a husband, and then took the first excuse to flee and engage in a petty military campaign against raiders on the Yellowtail trade route. She found herself left alone in his villa for three years with only hired servants for company. She made a few attempts to break into the city's elite social scene, but was quite shy and failed to make any headway.

Brakul had just spent a year and a half in a bit of a whirlwind. He was brought into a skirmish at the behest of an allied clan, who had been raiding the Yellowtail route and now was under attack by combined forces of an enemy clan and Imperial Wardi mercenaries. He killed one of the mercenary commanders and was captured as a prisoner of war, but was spared at Janeys' behest (who fucking hated that guy thought it was awesome that he got killed with a rock) and was ultimately recruited into the group. He had a chance to go back home, but actively chose to deadbeat dad out on his wife and child to be with his newfound lovequest, Janeys. He spent a year and a half as a mercenary, bonded closely with Janeys and swore brotherhood with him, and was eventually brought home to the city of Wardin with him. He found himself in the odd position of being simultaneously scorned as a foreigner and 'heathen', and the legal kin of one of the richest families in the city (and effectively the secret male concubine of their only male heir).

It was in this context that the two of them met, with Hibrides now being 19 and Brakul turning 27.

The two were initially wary of each other (Hibrides was particularly put off by his 'heathen' status) but bonded very quickly, partly due to their mutual states of being unmoored from their old lives, but in large part being just a natural chemistry. They had a lot of common interests and enjoyed learning from each other. Hibrides introduced him to traditional verse poetry (of which she was very fond). Brakul taught her how to ride khait, and even gave her a gelding from his own collection as a gift. They became very close friends over the next couple of years and spent much of their free time together.

A big part of the dynamic was that both of them are gay in a cultural context where there is no concept of Being gay, marriages are usually arranged and always between a man and a woman, and having children is a societal expectation. Each of them began to see the other as an ideal husband/wife, ie "if I had to marry why couldn't it have been him/her?". For Hibrides' part, Brakul had all the traits she would want in a husband: he was a pretty good friend and easy to get along with, he seemed like he'd do an excellent job of fulfilling expected roles as a husband and father (she didn't know about the wife and kid for a while), he treated her as an equal, and, most of all, had no interest whatsoever in fucking her. They were both in a sort of platonic emotional affair, and grew to love each other deeply.

Hibrides was pretty quick to catch on that something was going on between Brakul and Janeys, and found it strange and offputting but ultimately none of her concern. Her husband only being interested in his sworn brother and leaving her to her own devices suited Hibrides just fine, and Brakul always just kinda being There meant she was living with what had become her closest friend.

The stable state of this Feelings Triangle began to change in the wake of the brilliant plan to get Janeys (gay) (probably infertile) children he could pass off as legitimate via a Brakul/Hibrides pregnancy. It was something all three agreed to as a necessity; it was already drawing scrutiny that Janeys and Hibrides had been married for several years without a pregnancy, and producing heirs is a societal expectation and a central point of an arranged marriage between wealthy elites.

It was especially critical in this case, given Janeys was his family's only male child and only hope of continuing the family line, given both his golden-child sister Faiza and black sheep half sister Couya were Odonii, and thus sworn virgins and would never marry. (There's also a level to this that Janeys was regarded as a complete disappointment by his parents, and his mother made damn sure he knew that his only value at this point was to produce a better male heir to inherit the business. So this was a big fucking deal to him, and to Brakul by extension).

This was also not a route any of them wanted to take on any personal level, least of all Hibrides. She consented to the pregnancy and everything it entailed, but it was inevitably a painful and distressing experience all around. She had never wanted to be a mother to begin with (though had long accepted it as an inevitability), and now found herself with an infant daughter, which only meant it would have to happen again (they needed a male heir after all). And it would be utter social suicide and a profound shame upon her if the child's illegitimacy was discovered, which only added to the stress.

To make things worse, her first pregnancy shifted the entire dynamic with her husband and brother-in-law/best friend. Janeys changed from completely indifferent to actively spiteful and hostile towards her, and things had become extremely uncomfortable between Hibrides and Brakul. It only got worse with Brakul (the only one of them who actually WANTS kids) (kind of haunted by skipping out on his first child) finding it unbearable to be so close to HIS daughter and having to keep up an act that she was not his own, having no direct role in the kids life. He desperately wanted to be a father.

Hibrides, who was going through a fucking lot, started to become vindictive towards him for his role in things. She resented him more than Janeys, because Brakul insisted he cared about her and would desperately try to pretend things were normal, while consistently siding with Janeys against her wishes, including in preventing her from getting a divorce. (His excuse is that the children's legitimacy would be interrogated in a legal setting, which Is likely and Would be absolute social suicide with very real consequences. But the real reason on his part is that if she got out of the marriage, he might never see her or the children again). Hibrides began to do everything in her power to prevent him from having any relationship with his bastard children, even in secret or under the guise of a relative. Sort of an “if I have to suffer to keep up this facade so should you” thing.

They had two children in a span of three years, two girls (ruh roh!) named Erubi and Livya. By this point, Hibrides and Brakul were both experiencing what we would now call Clinical Depression and Alcohol Use Disorder (especially in the latter's case). Hibrides started to have affairs with both men and women, which she was sure to be very obvious about to insult Janeys and Brakul, but was mostly out of loneliness. Brakul turned his complete focus to Janeys and started avoiding Hibrides entirely, in hopes that she would become desperate enough to be willing to make amends (shockingly, this did not happen, and the rift only deepened).

In the present, their relationship status is: fucked. Both of them do still love each other on some level, but this is probably beyond repair. What little time they've spent with each other in the past year is sitting around being miserable and getting plastered. And now Hibrides, Janeys, and Brakul are all forced into the public eye on the pilgrimage together, and with a third child on the way. So that's probably going to be everyone's problem.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

!!! FLASHING LIGHTS WARNING!!! [IM NOT FUCKIN AROUND!!]

REACHED THE CUSP OF 'THIS MAY NEVER BE ABSOLUTELY FINISHED N IF I DONT SHOW IT NOW, IT WILL NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY.' SO HERE, A PROJECT IVE BEEN ORBITING AROUND UHH SINCE 2021 OR SO.

[supersecretmetalocalypseblog]

I thought maybe I was crazy, but I'm NOT. When Nathan sings or sometimes when he yells, he has a different set of like, mouth models, which I noticed, but didn't think much of. But did you know that they reuse this set for MMA?

I watch this show so much i say shit like "Heyyyy, those teeth look familiar!" but in my defense, I look at every frame of MMA i have every day one million times, and Nathan is the main character (more or less.) How am I not gonna see this eventually?

I guess it makes sense, they both talk in death metal growls and shit.

Alright you get the idea. There's four more below the cut, I just don't want to take up a whole bunch of space on ppl's dash. Also I rant about how MMA is just a Frankenstein's monster of other parts from the show. Because he's basically just a Klokateer with Nathan's mouth.

Despite it being the thing he does for a living, I actually found it hard to find good screenshots of Nathan singing. They do a lot of cool visuals during their shows, and it always shows weird angles of Nathan, which normally i'm all over, but I was so frustrated trying to find him looking forward with no hair in his face and like, the same mouth frame as the ones i know i had of MMA. And it preferred it be from later seasons, because the earlier ones are always so pixelated.

fun fact this face is what tipped me off to them using the same model. At first I thought it was funny that they both pouted like that, but then I started hyper analyzing it and was like "no that. that looks the exact same, actually.... hmmmm"

My favorite frames from metalocalypse are people in the middle of talking, and they do this horrible open mouth face. Charles has a really good one, and i love him a little bit more every time he does it.

THIS one was annoyingly hard to find, I knew Nathan made this face, but when i couldn't remember. Watched about 7 different episodes, scrolling through, looking for it, and then.... there he was, just, jacking off. Thanks Nate, very cool :3

Sort of related rant below.

I've been noticing a lot of weird quirks that I assume came up just because they didn't have a lot of time or maybe money to work with while making the show? When MMA was introduced in season one, it sort of came off like Charles killed him by kicking him into the river. Like, okay, that was fun, and all you nerds at home got to nudge each other and say "hey, that's the guy from the band" but like, that was just some guy, he's not gonna be like, a character.

But we see him later in season two, i think in Dethvengence is the first time he shows back up. So, i can't tell. Was he always going to be reoccurring? Why not try to put even a little more money into making his model? They have a lot of designs sketched up for him (labeled "metal mask assassin", I always thought that was a fandom name but nope, they use MMA on the sketches) and they range from basically how he looks in the show, to "Who is this man in tactical gear and why can I see his eyes?" There are six different sketches for his mask. Just his mask. And then, when the time came for him to be in the show, he's made out klokateer models.

Even when they draw the unique poses, like him fighting Charles in The Church of the Black Klok, we can see like veins on his arms they don't normally draw and stuff, and you can attribute that to trying to keep the model simple, I attribute it to "well, the klokateer arms don't have veins on them so..." Sometimes he has fingerless gloves, even though normally he has regular gloves. I can't tell which things they wanted as part of his design and which things were used because they had them lying around. MMA doesn't even have a looking right (his right, my left???? i think??) model, they just flip his head, which is technically inaccurate to his design, because his face and mask are asymmetrical. and i just wonder, if he's supposed to keep coming back, why can't they ever seem to afford to have him in the show???

I'm not blaming the production team or brendon or anyone else, i'm obviously blaming Adult Swim, like always. SO much of this show feels like "oh if they just had a little more money" that's why the movie is so phenomenal looking, it feels like the kind of shit they maybe always wanted to do with the show, but never could. sucks that MMA died before that could happen. Would've loved to see him in the AOTD style.

anyways, that's. that's my unrelated MMA design rant, i've had that one written out a couple of times just sitting in the drafts, so i figured I'd just shoehorn it into the end of this post. Have a little piece of trivia as a bonus for reading. The model they use for his body is labeled "henchman large" and it's the same one they used for his brother while he was undercover.

Henchman. Venture bros has ruined the word henchman for me, now all I can think about is Gary.

[lesbianfakir]

Mytho fans id like to issue a formal apology. I realized I, too, know how it feels to have your special little guy mischaracterized and trampled over by his own damn media and now everyone hates him but YOU understand you understand him and they’re wrong they’re all wrong and also there’s this other guy everyone insists is better like it’s a competition and it’s really annoying and you just want everyone to see your pookie bear the way you see him. I understand. I’ve always understood. I am a better man now.

[frog-with-no-therapy]

I want a spider X dcu but have Peter working at the league's base in space as a mechanic or a scientist, cause of course they will have the best material and information to help him make a way home. Except that Peter is weird.

Like, weird weird. Like, spider bite kind of weird with a hint of different culture from a different world kind of weird.

Listen most of his interactions with humans in their world is with them cause he's at the watchtower all the time, so his understanding of what is normal is a bit skew, and he probably also got used to acting more spidery, especially when in a lab or sm (courtesy of his time at the avenger tower where he doesn't really have to hide his spidery side)

Then you take into account him having a different kind of humour and a different set of memes and you have the whole justice league thinking he's secretly an alien

[naamahdarling]

.

[rellbot]

!food

rekkles is telling us his irl build

[rapidhighway]

today is a day you just gotta sleep through... Ughhhhh

[katierosefun]

not to be like “ugh aos crew” again but ugh aos crew again spock really got accepted into the most prestigious university on vulcan and was like “haha fuck you <3″ bc they insulted the fact that he’s mixed-race jim banged his forehead in the shuttle within the first 30 seconds he was on board leonard was hiding in the bathroom of said shuttle because he hates flying sulu couldn’t get the ship to warp for the first 3 minutes of his first-ever flight on the enterprise uhura is mostly okay still except she’s also got a thing going with her former professor so maybe that raises some eyebrows (ha) scotty is literally in a butt-fuck middle of nowhere outpost on a death ice planet chekov is. seventeen. i don’t really have much more to add to that except guys your ensign is seventeen years old

[stellewriites]

really fucking grinds my gears how my dad knows just how to make me feel fucking guilty for putting up boundaries and saying no

[antiquepearlss]

Tangled The Series would have been very different if Varian were voiced by John Mulaney, huh?

[sundial-bee-scribbles]

let's cut some onions

bonus: