#what more can you wish for in an oc.

[strelitzien-gewaechs]

Oc-tober!

(i 100% wanted to do this on day one. surely i did not forget it was the 1st yesterday...)

prompt list by beweird : OC-tober 2024

Day 1: Fav Oc

Helleine!

my fav wet blanket of a man <3

pathetic lil (v tall) fey count who prefers to stare out a window or write poetry (hes also cursed to turn kingdoms into snow and ice unless he gets cured by true love's kiss <- though luck boys never been in love before)

A knight (Delphi) and her handmaid (Marigold) unexpectedly need to stay at his fortress during a snowstorm and Mari (and reluctantly Helleine) decide to try and figure out the mystery that is dating and set up Helleine with Delphi. The only problem is that both Mari and Helleine are utterly hopelessly aroace and do not know how relationships work

[mattodore]

birthday boy 🎂

[magnusbae]

"...You had to be able to show too much of yourself. You had to be just a little bit more honest than you were comfortable with. And if people judged you, if they felt they knew who you were, that was just something that you were going to have to live with. And what was strange is, once I started doing that, and I was expecting to be judged, or shunned, or people’s opinions or to have to deal with things, what I discovered was, actually, their opinions were, we really like this. We love this story. That’s a good story. It felt huge. It felt personal. And I realized that’s because I was being honest about me.“ —Neil Gaiman

[0donto1nsanity]

Hey chat how we feeling

[chill-vibes-but-rainbow-panic]

Finally back, with a lil more of Chill's Artist Admiration Sketchbook; making fanart for blogs I like :D

@kingspacebar

Accessoires and colours my beloved <3 <3 <3

[luck-of-the-drawings]

POOR GABRIEL MONTEZ! YOU NEVER SAW THIS COMING DID YOU? ALL YOU WANTED WAS POWER. SECURITY. SAFETY. & THATS EXACTLY WHAT YOU GOT! JUST IN EXCHANGE FOR YOUR BODY. LETS JUST HOPE NO ONE FUCKS THIS UP. LETS JUST HOPE YOU WONT HAVE TO CLEAN UP THE MESS.

[fivepebsi]

yayyyy finally i can post my wonderful poopsies 💖

[lulubeanie]

Don't forget that you can always draw your ocs and favorite characters in fun outfits that you think they would wear. you can and should do this

[bonefall]

post/734733274896809984/do-you-ever-worry-your-own-writing-might-come-off that makes sense. i was asking because i'm afraid of accidentally writing misogyny myself and i kind of admire what you do

Hmm... I wish I had better advice to give you on this front, but honestly, the only thing I can tell you is to consider the perspective of your female characters.

Women are people. They have thoughts and feelings of their own, so like... just let them have their own arcs. A lot of the worst misogyny in WC comes from the way that the writers just don't care about their girls (or, in the case of tall shadow, actually get undermined and forced to rewrite entire chapters), so they're not curious about their lives, or WHY they feel the way they do or what they want, or any direction for their character arcs.

Turtle Tail as an example. She'll often just end up feeling whatever Gray Wing's plot demands. She's gotta leave when Storm dumps him to make him feel lonely. She shows up again to love him in the next book. Lets her best friend Bumble get dragged back to Tom the Wifebeater, but is sad enough about her death to be "unreasonably angry" with Clear Sky, and then calms down and accept Gray Wing is right all along.

And then she dies, so he can have his very own fridge wife.

In this way, Turtle Tail's just being used to tell Gray Wing's story. They're not interested in why she would turn on Bumble, or god forbid any lingering negative feelings for how she didn't help her, or even resentment towards Clear Sky for killing her or Gray Wing for jumping to his defense. She isn't really going through her own character arc.

She does have personality traits of her own, don't misunderstand my criticism, but as a character she revolves around Gray Wing.

So, zoom out every now and then, and just ask yourself; "Whose story is being told by what I wrote? Do my female characters have goals, wants, and agency, or are they just supporting men? How do their choices impact the narrative?"

But that's already kinda assuming that you already have characters like Turtle Tail who DO have personalities and potential of their own. Here's some super simple and practical advice that helped me;

Tally the genders in your cast. How many are boys, how many are girls, how many are others?

And take stock of how many of those characters are just in the supporting cast, and compare that to the amount you have in the main cast.

If you have a significant imbalance, ESPECIALLY in the main cast, fire the Woman Beam.

It's a really simple trick to just write a male character, and then change its gender while keeping it the same. I promise women are really not fundamentally different from men lmao. You can consider how your in-universe gender roles affect them later, if you'd like, but when you're just starting to wean yourself off a "boy bias" this trick works like a charm.

Also you're not allowed to change the body type of any girl you Woman Beam because I said so. PLEASE allow your girls to have muscles, or be fat, or be old, or have lots of scars. Do NOT do what a cowardly Triple A studio does, where the women all have the same cute or sexy face and curvy body while they're standing next to dwarves, robots, and a gorilla.

Or this shit,

If you do this I will GET you. If you're ever possessed by the dark urge, you will see my face appear in the clouds like Mufasa himself to guide you away from the path of evil.

Anyway, you get better at just making characters girls to begin with as time goes on and you practice it. It's really not as big of a deal as your brain might think it is.

Take a legitimate interest in female characters and try not to disproportionately hit them with parental/romance plots as opposed to the male cast, and you'll be fine. Don't think of them as "SPECIAL WOMEN CHARACTERS" just make a character and then let her be a girl, occasionally checking your tally and doing some critical thinking about their use in the story.

(Also remember I'm not a professional or anything, I'm just trying to give advice)

[konveeart]

Sketchpage of my characters <33

I closed my eyes couple days ago and half-slept under the cloudy weather. It's the first time in years I get brave enough to draw my characters in a scene right after I experience it.. I sleep immediately at night (no complaints, I am indescribably grateful I don't experience insomnia), but I miss the time before I snooze where I dive into my headworld..

I've been doing so many things in-between working split shifts that I've given myself possibly another ibs episode, resulting in taking the day off yesterday. I felt ok by noon so "I'll draw for 2 hrs" became 7 ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ I'll do my best to take it easy for the next few weeks u u ^^^love how I wrote so and as soon as I recover I want to go back to doing a billion things!!

Since you're here, here's the full page~

It was super fun to draw and I am extremely shy about it but also super proud and I worked hard!!

[yuichiroswife]

{ Happy 26th birthday to me. }

[tinyfantasminha]

👍

[mel-loly]

-“The Sun loves the Moon so much that he tries to do everything to make it close to you..

Even pick up every dandelion and wish for it...

He also are always praying to God that someday they can be together and for sure, still close to each other..”

-Mel, Designer.

@manpleblog/@alsomanple

[vaguely-concerned]

I've been trying to figure out a dynamic between neve and rye that I find more compelling, because right now there's not much of anything there for me to sink my little teeth into. but I think I've landed on something delicious with the idea that especially after minrathous gets fucked, rye looks at neve and sees myrna -- someone he feels he keeps letting down horribly no matter how hard he tries not to and can't quite achieve the approval of/connection with that he wishes so it's better to just pull away completely and disengage rather than stay in that unshifting shame. neve is (very understandably) measured and distant with him after what happened, and he's flashing back to his student days of myrna gazing at the perpetually hungover heartbroken heap of a person of him on the other side of her desk every time he missed the deadline of a paper or project like '...can we at least both agree that this is. a bit disappointing. especially considering your potential.' (and him all smudged black eyeshadow and numb ruefulness being like 'sure that's a very kind way to put it myrna thank you'.)

aside from the 'if I let him get too deeply into this he'll go the way of brom and it'll be all my fault (again)' element, neve thinks rye is dismissing her and her city/being a bit callous in the same way he was after varric's death (listen. how fucking wild must rook's reaction to losing a beloved mentor seem to the rest of the crew who aren't seeing the blood magic paper doll ghost varric the whole time, especially those who got to see them interact. you WOULD think 'there's something wrong with this guy. putting the job first is one thing just not seeming to react at all is another this is fucking freaky', wouldn't you, especially after seeing the warmth in that dynamic in action beforehand.) perfect storm of two people who grit their teeth and turn inwards in pain deciding that not talking about it is their best bet (NEWSFLASH: IT ISN'T) lmao

(rye spent his last year of watcher training on a mostly joyless bender and then got it together enough to finish the eternal orb project last moment in a fevered near-sleepless week instead of the half a year that was intended. emmrich is both astounded and distressed to hear this. "a week? but -- but that is an astounding accomplishment rook!! and also why in the maker's good light would you ever do that to yourself?" ("well you see there was no one to stop me from doing it like that but me. and under those conditions these things tend to happen".) rye was working through/looking up stuff around transitioning and doing every kind of OTHER high level watcher research through that whole time, but ultimately he's an excellent watcher and a terrible student, at least under traditional methods. adhd from here to the fucking moon. touched by something akin to divine inspiration in moments of high tension that pulls all the threads into one coherent unbreakable cord, a bit of a frayed mess in most other settings. in our world he'd be dropping out of a masters program at the very last hurdle in this moment maker bless and protect him)

[bannedaid]

thinking about my gw2 fellas because i can’t play right now. thinking about all of them and shaking them around in my head and thinking about how i havent rped them in months and they’re starving and wasting away. sorry varus eros sobb agar keer plato and the sylvari i impulsively made one day. scratches head. kind of want to yap here but also in tags because i think tumblr works that way. people yap in the tags right

[puppyeared]

i feel shy talking here when i dont have anything worth sharing but i cant help feeling like ive said things in the tags that could be brought up in court