#weird. she should be older

[venti-death-watch]

so glad the hearth timeline is like… slightly more understandable than before. previously i had freminet down as being given to the hearth at about 5, arle killing the previous knave when he was about 8, and the twins being taken in a few months later at about 12 when he was still 8. for my au, that makes them about four years apart, which feels slightly large of an age gap but ultimately it works better than making them a year or two apart.

apparently, canonically arle was 16 when clervie died at 16, 17 when she killed the previous knave, and then spent an unknown amount of time in prison before becoming a harbinger and taking over as the director of the house of hearth.

freminet was taken in during the year between clervie’s death and crucabena’s death. the twins were taken in a few months after that.

if freminet was taken in at 5-6, the twins taken in around 9-10, that keeps the age gap between the trio as well as explains the ~10 year gap between this and canon. that would make freminet 15-16 and the twins 19-20, which fits them really well. i wish arlecchino was older, though; she definitely feels older than ~27.

[shadowed-dancer]

Characters that are younger than Xiao and it feels wrong

Over half the archons (Nahida, Focalors, Furina, probably the pyro archon and the Tsaritsa assuming they were born after the cataclysm. Idk I feel like we assume gods should be the oldest and they just... aren't)

Yae Miko

Dainsleif

NEUVILLETTE

Characters that are older than Xiao and it feels wrong

Ganyu

[serpentface]

Scenes from The Baby Wars Part One: The First One

[Hibrides never wanted to be a mother (though the concept of childbearing has always occurred to her as 'inevitable and necessary'), underwent very severe post-partum depression, never really bonded with the infant, and was extremely uncomfortable with nursing her (they had a wet nurse who covered most of it).

Brakul ended up being the Designated Housewife throughout Erubi's infancy and was effectively the only member of the household providing parental care, was Extremely bitter with Hibrides for not really wanting anything to do with her daughter (among other things), and was raised in a context where fathers allowing their infants to comfort nurse on them is a standard practice (which is not widely conceptualized as a Thing men can do in the Wardi cultural sphere and comes off as bizarre to the rest of his household).

These combined factors lead to tense standoffs where he looms behind Hibrides trying to guilt her into Feeding The GodDamn Baby while looking, from her perspective, like he's trying his absolute hardest to breastfeed.]

[premamelody]

derg

[peachypine]

the roomies!!! i originally designed this ososan oc trio in full about a year ago to write on an rp blog. it's not really active rn, but i still want to talk and post about 'em, so here they are! just basic rundowns, but i'd be curious to hear which one (if any) is your fav of the three (feel free to leave it in the tags?? if u want!)

bonus transparent of them all together:

aaand some rambling under the cut about their designs

anzu:

i wanted to use orange as a character colour bc it's one that wasn't already used in the matsu rainbow, and i had a concept of a gyaru character named anzu kicking around in my head for a long time as well, so here we are. miwa from the mixer ep inspired the eyeshadow (orange rather than miwa's blue obv, to keep with her colour theme) and delinquent totoko's design inspired her ombre dyejob! i went with a blonde-to-orange look as a nod to anzu's namesake fruit (apricot).

the strands framing her face are split into 3 sections at the end (2/3 are grouped together and 1/3 flips in the other direction) which is a little nod to her being one of 3 siblings (eldest), as well as the "三" character used in her surname (mikado) meaning 3. the rest of her hairstyle is just because i thought it looked cute, though.

ososan's style is more simplified, but i wanted to convey makeup that was a little bold, but cute (long false lashes, eyeshadow, & and a soft pink or nude glossy lip). clothing-wise, she mixes and matches a few different substyles (agejo and onee are prominent, with some ane, tsuyome, and general old school gal influences as well?), with a particular fondness for animal prints, esp. tiger print. (that said, orange tiger print doesn't seem all that common in gyaru clothes, so in-universe i like to think that the top pictured above was originally a black-and-white zebra(?) stripe print she thrifted and dyed at home--close enough!)

her nails day to day are usually medium length since she has a lot of hobbies that involve her hands and anything longer makes those things a bit more cumbersome. sometimes they're decoden/bedazzled, sometimes they're just painted a cute colour/pattern, depends on the day! and i think she opts for press-ons over extensions for longer nails, since it's cheaper.

ran:

i'm just a bitch who loves purple, that's the reason for this one. i think the hime cut with shorter bangs is nice because you can showcase the eyebrows (i think eyebrows can really elevate a character design so i gave all 3 their own brow shape) without worrying about the lines for the eyebrows and bangs intersecting in an annoying way when you draw it. i like shorter, slightly sharp eyebrows like these because they're easy to draw, lol. i think they're usually furrowed like she's displeased with something, but that may just be her resting face. i also thought this blunter, sharper-looking cut (bold, standoffish) was a fun contrast to anzu's flippy half-updo (bright, bouncy) and yuzu's short, wavy hair (languid, relaxed).

5 piercings on each ear (2 spiked helix & 3 lobe) = 5 siblings including ran (4 older brothers). the other reason for this number of piercings was that her namesake flower (orchid) had--i thought--5 petals, but as it turns out i'm a fool, it's actually 3 petals (including the lip) and 3 sepals??? ah, well.

clothing-wise, influences from various punk/vkei styles alongside some rokku gyaru. (maybe anzu introduced her to this one?) this brash style is the total inverse of how she was expected to dress growing up. (when she and anzu first met, she was an OL with no piercings, undyed hair, and positively miserable, but that was a number of years ago now.) i'm really not reinventing the wheel with "small and angry", but y'know, we have fun here.

yuzu:

is teal distinct enough from blue to count as its own colour? i think so. for yuzu, i really loved the concept of a deadpan-looking character who is very much not the straightman, who in fact wants very badly to be the funnyman 99% of the time. that kind of straight-faced but silly comedic character is always really fun to me.

half-lidded/heavy-lidded eyes paired with thick brows are always a winner to me fsr, and i wanted to give her a more "handsome" looking face with a bit more of a defined jaw than you typically see on women in ososan. as a treat. i wanted her to look a bit like a mysterious prettyboy, but she's not actually mysterious, she's just a space cadet. (and very straightforward about her thoughts and feelings, saying them with little fuss or thought.) expectation vs reality, people deciding what you're like based on their own perception vs what you're actually like, etc. etc.

i don't have anything deep to say about her hairstyle, but maybe that's how yuzu would like it, what you see is what you get. (again, eyebrows vs hair... let that eyebrow scar that i gave her for no reason shine.) as for clothing, she prefers things that are easy to move around in, so her style is the most "matsuno"-like (t-shirts, hoodies, basketball shorts, sweats, etc.). in particular, she likes shirts with phrases, usually in english, that are funny or almost make sense but not quite ("for background visual gags" and "for the english speakers in the audience").

[waitineedaname]

mxtx characters who, in my humble butch opinion, should be butch

Luo Binghe: listen. look me in the eyes. in a genderswap situation, Binghe should get to be butch. one of the key themes in SVSSS is gender, and one of the things that distinguishes SVSSS!Binghe from PIDW!Binghe is that he's not the hypermasculine protagonist and instead is allowed to enjoy more feminine things (like being Shizun's housewife). that's why he's specifically called Bing-mei and it's also why im on my transfemme Binghe soapbox all the time, but that's a whole other topic. what im saying is if we're reversing the gender situation, then fem!Binghe in SVSSS should get to enjoy more masculine things. it's what she deserves. she strikes me as the kind of butch that gets a thrill out of doing gentlemanly things like giving SQQ her coat when she's cold. she should be the Bing-di to PIDW's Bing-jie

Shang Qinghua: this one is deeply self-indulgent projection but don't fucking worry about that okay. SQH is a very specific flavor of low effort butch nerd. SQH is the cookie monster pajamas to butch pipeline. SQH cuts her own hair with regular scissors for convenience and Shen Yuan is dying to get her to just buy some goddamn clippers. SQH is running off of four red bulls and spite. She inexplicably has game and she's just as confused about this as you are

Xie Lian: imagine this for me. you go to one of those volunteering events where you're cleaning trash out of a creek or something. there is a woman there in cargo pants or maybe overalls, something with a shit ton of pockets. she has not shaved in months, maybe years. her hair is in the messiest bun possible, or maybe tied back under a baseball cap. she is somehow the most beautiful woman you've ever seen. after taking away all the trash and informing everyone how to sort the recycling, she is picked up by another woman who appears to be the definition of high camp. you leave this encounter feeling like you might have been converted to something. perhaps to lesbianism. this is what an encounter with butch Xie Lian is like.

[eebie]

was fucking with this arcane analysis until this guy went off on how silco and jinx’s relationship was inappropriate + it was likely silco was being predatory with their sole reasoning being because he’s Not A Good Man

[pizzleyanked]

lamis - vishnu - yarrow - calla - pavot - tide

[noirrelite]

The many ways I've drawn Sierra's eyes since Feb 2022, in rough chronological order (oldest to newest)

[pseudospectre]

Sent an application for a kitten on Petfinder tonight. I'm irrationally scared they'll reject me for some reason :/ but Selkie needs a buddy and I've been scrolling looking for a little face that calls to me. And she does. So I hope I hope!

[yazzy-khan]

just found out that Sonya is older than Yaz. need 3-5 business days to process this

[dreamsofkissesandice]

The fanfic in my head that I wish was real :(

[turnip-root]

!!!!!!!! i need to be someones older sister so badly

[starry-beetle]

Learning to simply trust people in that their being kind to me is genuine kindness and not some ploy to get closer to me, just to mock me... That's been hard. My home life was basically being punished for my physical and mental health from day one, and did NOT leave an easy way of trusting folks in my mind.

Why am I saying this publicly? Because I don't want my avoidant personality to keep being some blank mask of silence I present to people. Even if I am not frequently around, I want to trust people and make friends

[totallyveryallosexual]

Having recognized now that I probably had undiagnosed ADHD and autism during my childhood, I keep remembering things that make me go, oh shit, those were symptoms, weren't they?

[babacontainsmultitudes]

Over The Garden Wall but instead of Wirt and Greg it's Grant and Paeden that's it that's all I needed to say thank you