#weslec

[dutyboundextras]

Found this while digging around in my old files today! This is the unfinished sketch layer to the 23rd page of chapter 0, featuring some light flirting, haha. The panels read as follows:

Alec: I don't expect to convince you of anything. [break] I only came to find out what makes you tick.

Wess: ...Yeah?

Alec: Yeah. Scope out your morals, get a feeling for what drives you, you know.

Alec [cont.]: Normal first date stuff.

Wess: WHAT?!

Alec: Hahaha, I kid. I kid. [tiny letters, to himself] Mostly.

Alec [cont.]: This won't get anywhere with such a sullen look on your face. [break] I was simply wondering what was really bothering you about all this.

Fun fact! Part of what Alec says in the last panel is a reference to that part in Mother 3 where Alec teams up with Flint to find Claus. I like to interpret Alec's humor as a mechanism for trying to diffuse tension/bad situations, which would have been further explored in Dutybound.

The other fun fact is that this page skeleton is almost 2 years old. Wow 2021 really hit me like a freight train, didn't it.

[luvkirby4ever]

WHAT IN THE HECK IS EVEN TRIPPING THE SENSORS IN THIS POST?!?  TUMBLR THIS IS AN OUTRAGE LET THESE TWO BE OLD AND GAY!!!!

FASSAD I KNOW IT’S YOU!!!

[askdutybound]

Apologies for the long delay with answering your question, @ask-kid -I took my time because you had given me the perfect question.  For a long while I’ve wanted to share some of the wild stuff that happens in DutyBound without telling anyone the context behind the situations, so you literally gave me the perfect chance.

The song from the flirty karaoke panels is “Toy Box” from The Get Down (performed by Herizen Guardiola “Mylene Cruz & the Soul Madonnas”).

[curiouselementalist]

♪ Oh~ I wanna dance with somebody I wanna feel the heat with somebody Yeah, I wanna dance with somebody With somebody who loves me~ ♪

I Wanna Dance With Somebody

A long time ago there used to be a download link for this song somewhere. Since then, the song has all but disappeared from the internet with the exception of one Youtube video preserving the song.  I really love this remix and wanted to share it with all of you.

[dutyboundextras]

Gonna crawl out of my hole and make Weslec content to test the site's new tag ban, similar to what I did during the 2018 purge.

In 2018 the site tried to ban a Weslec pic I made of them holding hands (scandalous!) and so- after appealing the post- they unblocked that picture but also unblocked the single actual not safe fw picture that I drew of them, for some reason.

[dutyboundextras]

Congratulations to America for successfully voting Trump out of office!  Which seems unrelated to the picture but for me it’s incredibly relevant.

Back in 2016 I started posting Weslec stuff to my DA, which was largely motivated by the Pulse nightclub shootings.  I wanted to do what I could to spread love for the LGBT+ community and defy the terrible people who hate them.  Before then I had been too nervous/embarrassed to post that kind of stuff online (with a handful of exceptions), but between that and Trump getting elected that year I started using LGBT+ art to cope.  2016 was an awful year for the LGBT+ community.

So to me my Weslec pictures became a symbol of defiance, which probably worked as well as it did considering their roles in DutyBound (aka living to be a pain in Fassad’s side).  So naturally, today I wanted to use them to celebrate.

With almost half of Americans voting for Trump we still have a long fight ahead of us, especially when the great pendulum of politics swings hard in the other direction.  But until then, let’s do our best to change what we can for the better.

[dutyboundextras]

I kinda like posting my low-effort doodles on here- it makes me look way more active than when I’m only posting my more ambitious stuff ^^;

[dutyboundextras]

he protec he attac but most importantly he supports alec’s bac

[dutyboundextras]

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!  The comic pages are from chapters 3 and 4 of my DutyBound Valentine’s Day fanfic (available on AO3), all tracing back to a Valentine’s Day idea from about 3 years ago.  I’ve been busy studying for taking an offical JLPT this year so I couldn’t find much time to draw this past week, but I wanted to share my cheesy little stuff anyways :3

Remember, no matter where you are in your life today you can always make some conservatives mad by posting gay stuff on the internet >:P

[dutyboundextras]

Someone left a kind note on the main Dutybound comic blog like a month ago and I’m too intimidated to answer it because I’m afraid of disappointing people.  But I’m still slowly chipping away (at the archive project, the video essays, the comic) and I hope it’ll all be worth the wait to everyone.

[dutyboundextras]

A Weslec speedpaint featuring ramblings about being closeted at work and the time I was informed that dolphins are a gay icon.

[dutyboundextras]

A bit of vent art after hearing about the Methodist church vote :C

[dutyboundextras]

There’s context for this and its name is DutyBound ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

[luvkirby4ever]

I have a pairing that consists of 2 old dudes and somehow along the way their theme song became “I wanna dance with somebody”. And so I’m sitting in the theater watching Love, Simon when there’s this whole sequence with that song and I am trying very hard not to absolutely LOSE IT through my sheer surprise and bliss. But then after the movie (it was amazing btw please go see it if you can!) I’m driving home and it comes on on the freaking radio!

It certainly feels like destiny!

[luvkirby4ever]

4, 5, 29, 30 for the valentines ask meme

Aaaaa thank you so much anon for the ask.  I just got home from work so I’ll gladly answer these in detail!

4. Name a popular ship you don’t get the appeal of.

The answer that comes immediately to mind is KumaDust (Kumatora x Duster) from the game Mother 3.  Part of the problem is that in Mother 3 the character ages are not well defined at all, so I played through the entire game not even registering that people thought these two were less than 10 years apart in age.  Mind you- I don’t mind character age gaps as long as they’re respectful and not preying on children.  But because my mind was clear of “oh they’re close in age so they want us to ship them” bias, the game doesn’t lend much towards the two being a couple.  Overall, the ship feels very heteronormative as if to meet the “we have to pair up the girl party member with another party member” quota.

That aside, I feel a bit bad for dunking on the ship since I’ve seen some very beautiful artwork for it.  I may have even reblogged a few pieces, if I liked the artist’s style enough.

5. What is your most fluffy + happy ship?

Normal person answer:  Bitty x Jack or Random x Holster from the webcomic Check, Please!  Especially Bitty and Jack.  Or the endgame lesbian couples from pocast The Adventure Zone.

More obscure answer:  Jeff x Tony from game Earthbound.

Real answer:  Weslec (Wess x Alec) from the game Mother 3.

I could talk all day about Weslec- about who they are, why they work so well, how the ship accidentally started from my mind making an immature joke while translating something… I would talk all day everyday about every since facet of their relationship if I ever found an audience to listen.

To boil in down to a precise statement:  it’s 2 characters who have endured sorrow and character development together, vowed to live better lives for the people they love, and learned that it’s okay to express insecurities and love.  Oh, and lots of stupid shenanigans happen.

And they get a happy, fluffy, warm-and-fuzzy ending. 

I will literally talk to anyone about this who will listen, which is why I’m making a webcomic that is a slowburn of these two.  (Well, there’s lots of other stuff that happens but listen I’m already making myself vulnerable by talking about it so I may as well be honest and admit that this is also part of the grand scheme of the it all.)

29. What is the ship you ignore 98% of canon for?

I’m normally a huge stickler about canon stuff in my own work but honestly there’s plenty I fantasize about that bends canon.  The most blatant canon abandoning I do is Tamakyo (Tamaki x Kyoya) from the manga*/anime Ouran High School Host Club.  Haruhi is very nice and I love her but when you give me 2 characters who call each other “Dad” and “Mom” who are in charge of a bunch of chucklefucks as “kids” I don’t know what I’m supposed to do *other* than ship them.

*(I haven’t read the manga version)

A runner-up might be Heiffel (Hilbert x Eiffel) from the podcast Wolf 359.  There’s not much canonical time for this to develop (and there’s canonical restraints with plot-related character problems that keep these two more distant than preferable) but seeing Eiffel explore the idea of redemption and personhood using Hilbert as a model and mirror hits my weak points just right.

30.  Is there a ship you like but you dislike the fandom?

I tend not to hate entire fandoms, just parts of them (like people who leave hate in character tags, especially if they’re a favorite) so I had to really dig in and find a fandom that I hate.  So that said, I really like the ship Chatot x Guildmaster Wigglytuff from the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2 games.  Over the last year or so I’ve thought about ships that were LGBT+ that I liked before I knew how to identify those emotions, and this may be the very first gay ship I shipped.

“Wait, but does this mean that you dislike the Pokemon fandom?”  Yes.  Immensely.  There are plenty of kind fans out there… but there’s such a rampant mentality of talking shit about stuff that you personally don’t find interesting.  Every time starter Pokemon are revealed people are quick to find one of them to insult (Osawatt, Chespin, Popplio).  Gumshoos- a cute detective (and GUMSHOE for God’s sake, with a detective hat!!!) gets compared to Trump.  That is needlessly cruel and comparing things to that bigot is neither edgy nor funny.

But overall I can sum up my displeasure with the fandom with a conversation I made the mistake of having in the presence of some dudebros in college.  I was talking about how it was funny that in Gen 2 everyone complained about Whitney being a hard gym leader because of rollout.  Since I picked Chikorita and was too young to want to train any supporting party Pokemon, however, I never had any problems with Whitney since I got tripped up against the previous leader’s (Bugsy’s) Scyther.

[Cue dudebro manslaining voice] “Ohhhhhhhhh, you picked Meganium!!!!?  Out of all the Johto starters you picked the bad one???”  I tried explaining that I’m a good enough player to win with anything and that “I pick whatever the fuck I want because I play to have fun, jackass” (I didn’t say that, but that’s what I was trying to convey) but I ended up feeling stupid for opening myself up and trusting that people wouldn’t be rude to me over my Pokemon choices.

…Because a few minutes later, a different dudebro told me (and I quote:) “It’s not my fault you like shitty Pokemon.”

So yeah, I hate the Pokemon fandom.

On a more positive note, thank you very much for the ask.  I’m always a slut for talking about Weslec, so thank you!!!

[dutyboundextras]

My Grandpa’s Husband (Inktober 6)

I recently read a wonderful book called “My Brother’s Husband” volume 1 (by Gengoroh Tagame) which is an omnibus of the first half of the series.  It’s about a brother meeting his dead brother’s husband and learning about the prejudices of being gay in Japan, as well as questioning his own thinking/prejudices.  I can’t wait for the other half of the series to be released in English.  I loved it so much that I just had to draw a Mother 3/DutyBound version of this.

I definitely recommend giving the book a look, especially if you’re looking for a story that talks about LGBT stuff while balancing a light happy tone with the very real struggles of being gay (especially as it pertains to Japan).  It’s cute, it’s touching, and it’s created by an openly gay artist (Gengoroh Tagame) who is definitely writing with a lot of experience and heart.  Here’s a link to it on Amazon, though I found this in my local library.