#we're from the same village & we know each other p well

[drgnbld]

little bit of a wild rant in the tags. i’m honestly just SO shocked that i’m very much just [ laughs ] what the fuck     tw for murder / death.

[cheapsweets]

The garrulous Slagzogg

My response to this week’s BestiaryPosting challenge from @maniculum

A little rough this week, but wanted to get it out there (perfect is the enemy of good :p).

Jinhao shark fountain pen with fine, hooded nib, with Monteverde Raven Noir ink, over initial 5.6mm HB pencil sketch.

Process and resoning notes below the cut...

"The Slagzogg marks the watches of the night by its constant cry. No other creature picks up the scent of man as it does.  There are two kinds of Slagzoggs, domestic and wild. Wild Slagzoggs fly high, in a an orderly fashion, signifying those who, far away from earthly things, preserve a rule of virtuous conduct. Domestic Slagzoggs live together in villages, they cackle together all the time and rend each other with their beaks; they signify those who, although they like conventual life, nevertheless find time to gossip and slander. All wild Slagzoggs are grey in colour; I have not seen any that were of mixed colour or white. But among domestic Slagzoggs, there are not only grey but variegated and white ones. Wild Slagzoggs are the colour of ashes, that is to say, those who keep apart from this world wear the modest garb of penitence."

Okay, we know they fly. We know they have beaks. Hence, it's pretty obvious what kind of creature this is...

A pterosaur! Er... Well, there's no mention of feathers (which is probably reasonable...), perhaps I'm just tickled by the thought of medieval domesticated pterosaurs? I probably spent way too much time trying to draw a wattle fence, too. We have a farmer feeding her flock of domesticated miniature azhdarchid pterosaurs, while a few wild slagzoggs fly high overhead, looking down on their cousins below.

I went with azhdarchid pterosaurs since I felt that would be more visually distictive, and fit better in the picture given their more upright and distinctive method of locomotion on the ground. I also love the idea of a slagzogg 'village' cackling (like the one spreading its wings on top of the fence), clacking beaks, preening themselves, and generally making noise!

We also know that 'no other creature picks up the scent of man' as well as the slagzogg... We do know at this point that the bestiary authors love their superlatives almost as much as Pokedex descriptions, but we have no reason to doubt it. So, looking at modern archosaurs with a great sense of smell... Apparently, crocodiles actually have a fairly good sense of smell, but we're looking at birds to work out how best to represent this in a creature with a beak. Now kiwis have nostrils at the end of the beak, vultures also have a great sense of smell (though they completely slipped my mind until I was most of the way through), which left me with petrels... Petrels are diving seabirds with a distinctive 'tubenose' (their nostrils form a tubular nasal passage atop the beak), and use their sense of smell to detect prey (and their colonies) at sea. It's definitely a distinctive look!

What do they use their great sense of smell for (apart from identifying their keepers, one assumes)? Maybe these are truffle hunting pterosaurs? ;)

Actually, my first thought on reading the description was the dog vultures from the Judge Dredd comics (unfortunately I can't find any pictures online), until I re-read the description and noticed the reference to beaks!

This all raises an interesting question about how I (we? I don't want to assume too much) approach these challenges.

I feel like most of the time, I'm trying very hard to approach the prompts with a completely open mind; in many ways, a lot of the fun of these challenges is seeing what designs we come up with compared to the bestiary illustrators, given the same prompts.

Occasionally I'll have a pretty good idea what the creature is meant to be, in which case I will sometimes exercise a form of 'malicious compliance' where I'm either sticking as closely as possible to the description, or more rarely pursuing a parallel direction that I know is not the 'correct' one, in order to avoid drawing anything too close to the animal I believe the prompt is referencing.

Most rarely, I just have a cool idea from the prompt (like the Blisheag) and head off in that direction instead.

Guess which one this is :D

So what I'm also learning here is that I need more practice drawing humans, and drawing pterosaurs!

As an aside, this week I discovered this site;

It's basically a giant repository of links to various images and sites relating to medieval life and culture (so for example, I looked up the links for straw hats to get some medieval straw hat references this week...). There's so many links in here that some of them will inevitably have moved or expired, but it's potentially a really good source of references! I was able to find this image (partway through drafting the drawing) that I ended up taking heavy influence from;

[ask-sibverse]

So! Yesterday was another bad migraine and my brain turns to cotton when those happen. I'm still kiiiiinda recovering so for now, because reading other people talking about their headcanons and thoughts on fandom shit just makes me wanna yell about my own shit! So here we go, going into every single Dreamtale in Sibverse, why they fought, and how they reconcile (short summaries, only going into anything not a spoiler)

Nox and Reve (main pair)

Why they fought: p typical Apple incident, Nox was still just angry at everything and everyone by the time Reve came out of stone. It took a long time before Nox calmed down, and by then was too proud to admit he was wrong. Reve really didn't know how to handle things, so things continued in much of the same for thousands of years

How they reconciled: Mari, who was originally a close friend of Reve, is "accidentally kidnapped" by the Bad Sanses and ends up befriending them as well. Through some more dumbass bullshit the twins are finally in a calmer situation to talk things out (and actually admit to their own stupidity)

Star and Nova (outer/celestialverse)

Why they fought: they only fought during the Apple Incident

How they reconciled: Nova and Star talked things out immediately after Star came out of being a statue

Belladonna and Daisy (floralverse)

Why they fought: the torment of the villagers continued even into teenage years. Daisy, likely as a coping mechanism, was unable to fully admit to how bad the villagers were, leading Bella to believe his twin just couldn't admit that "good people" could be bad. This led to an almost compulsive "need" to "prove" to Daisy that everyone has darkness and can be bad.

How they reconciled: tbh Bella and Daisy never truly "talked things out." It's more that over time while Bella was sealed he started to calm down and they were less at each other's throats (this is sibverse only. The floralverse fic is a "what if" Star never came and Bella was never sealed)

Kage and Yume (I still need to fucking name this verse)

Why they fought: similar to Bella and Daisy, but Kage honestly wanted everyone to hurt like he was hurting, including his twin. Kage honestly did some fucked up shit that will require trigger warnings when appropriate.

How they reconciled: they really don't. Their bond is never able to recover, even with Kage eventually apologizing

Morpheus and Pyrite (witchverse, we're getting into verses I haven't introduced yet)

Why they fought: post apple incident Morph calmed down relatively fast, all things considered. He was unable to free his twin at the time, and ended up meeting and becoming close to a mortal that became like a mother/family to him. When she was murdered, he fucking lost it, and decided to just wreck everything in his grief

How they reconciled: Morph started handling his grief better and calmed the fuck down (there is a lot more to this)

Comfy and Anxy (Comfort and Anxiety, they don't quite have a name for the verse oops)

Why they fought: Acrylic(Ink) ended up repeatedly alienating Comfy from his twin, meanwhile Anxy had some of his own issues that made everything worse.

How they reconciled: they actually got a chance to talk properly with help from some outside forces.

Important note: Acrylic is not an "evil" Ink. He had some shit ways of handling some trauma and mental issues, but is not evil.

Solar and Lunar (mythverse, a semi FTFO inspired verse with influences from Norse and other pagan mythology)

Why they fought: being stubborn

How they reconciled: they ended up raising Cura (their Ink) together

Nighty and Shard

Why they fought: apple incident

How they reconciled: Nighty grew up and calmed down, and talked things out with Shard post statue, then raised his twin

Dagger and Knuckles (Fellverse)

Why they fought: honestly it was the two dumbasses just petty bickering - because they're Swapfell based not Swap based - post Apple Incident

How they reconciled: work between Lighter (their Ink, an absolutely sassy gremlin in platform heels) and Star to basically literally knock some sense into both of them

Swad and Swan (Swapdream babyyyy)

Why they fought: excessive amounts of positive magic in Swad's system led to the blinding positivity and manic behavior

How they reconciled: Star basically fought Swad enough to burn the magic out of the system enough for him to finally calm down and the two had a very long talk

Other Dreamtale twins that did not need to reconcile are Silver and Gold (merverse/leviathan verse, if they ever fought and reconciled it was waaaaay outside the fic timeline), and Summer and Winter (rescued basically moments before the Apple Incident, their tree of feelings is under a magic barrier now and neither twin consumed an apple), and then Yami and Hikari (coreverse, the multiverse Observer was born in) reconcile due to heavy amounts of plot intervention