ranticore - Tumblr blog

[ranticore]

here's an ancient WIP of the Kosa flock i shared on patreon! This is actually the last harpy pic i drew before deciding they should have beaks, but luckily none of these guys are kings and it's still sketchy so there's plenty of time to edit the image (and not much editing to do)

the one in the very middle with the grey speckles is Mriya, a young pen who's sole purpose is to piss Cuinn the fuck off

the wing overlapping between different figures here is a bit fucked, i think the barn owl one should be further in the back, but otherwise i still like it :)

[ranticore]

Real talk, every time (every time!!) someone sends me a sweet ask about my books and what they thought of them, I get a sale. Even the most basic "I liked it!" ask makes a material difference to me and I am incredibly grateful. I know somebody who took the time to recommend it to a bunch of their friends and now i have the stats to prove word of mouth works. I'm really thankfully not in a position where I rely on art sales to survive but I'm still super grateful (I paid my car insurance with inprnt money last year for example) and things would be a lot worse without it. Yay thanks 🧡🧡

[ranticore]

i finished TVM recently and I've rarely been so emotionally invested in a story- i would get so teary eyed every time esk talked about finbarr. the train scene with esk reminiscing about his passing had me putting the book down for a good hour to recover

Haha yay >:)

I originally wrote that scene WAY sadder and then I was like cmonnn this is too sentimental we need to pull it back a bit. As I was writing I sent screenshots to a friend and felt diabolically evil at all the crying emoji responses

[ranticore]

gna be real with u guys every time i gear up to draw flicker the sphinx i should have drawn like five weeks ago i get so boreddddd of fur that i chuck it and go draw one of my skin monsters instead. i might just make the sphinx hairless... even though the entire point was the contrast with twist...

[ranticore]

i felt that Noroth deserved a do-over.. this is jean's dragon in the Pern thing.

^ very half hearted render. he is slightly iridescent but that's just because i'm the world's number one blue (the colour) hater so i always shade it like this (i love blue dragons)

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given that i have three swan harpies I realise that (swan harpy) is not very specific. but mia and ebb are from siren so it's different

[ranticore]

the only reason rainspell (swan harpy) has eyebrow markings while no other harpy does is because I use them to help orient the head and the beak knob throws me off.. idk if they are very expressive at all, like most harpies he expresses using his eyes and winglets more than his facial muscles. but he usually has a generally kind expression, no matter how he's really feeling (frustration, most of the time.. he has to basically do invisible admin work for a superflock of thousands who think his job is just to be pretty)

[ranticore]

retraining my hand on the pc tablet. when i don't use it for long enough it starts feeling soo slippery and fast so i gotta practice

bunch of stuff today but i ended up homing in on the swan harpy (who i've called Rainspell) because although I've drawn swans before, every time I try I always get hit with just how weird they are. the legs get me especially for some reason.. they seem almost plantigrade (but ofc they are not). these are some wonky legs alright

[ranticore]

I just finished The Viper Mourned today and... wow. Once I picked it up I could not stop and it did not disappoint. I'm just left here wondering what could possibly be next after that last third of the book.

Marina's hunt has to end one way or another >:)

Also hehe yayyy 🧡 I'm so glad you enjoyed it, thank you so much for putting your faith in me and staying along for the ride

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going home today :) And also tomorrow due to in-flight time dilation. Excited to get back to my normal drawing setup because I got a huuuge brain blast for a cool painting last night

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We were talking about a. Warriors Cat AU for our dnd characters so here he is. Poses lovingly based off of my friends' very shaped cats. I haven't been into warriors for decades but it's ripe ground for some silly fun

The design comes from when I drew him as a tabaxi years and years ago

[ranticore]

hits u with my dragon beam

tha boys and their dragons from the au i am self-indulgently messing with. green, bronze, and brown. these are scaled to their actual sizes relative to one another & their riders.

reasoning/more info under the cut. when i say 'niche audience' i mean the approximately One Person who knows my characters and has also read a pern book (me. i'm the one person it's me)

Féiix is a green rider obvs. I think it's really generous of dragons to have a colour specifically for bottoms. Her name is Searrath and she ends up committing matricide by stubbornly rising at the same time as queen Lenath, to protest the weyrwoman's abusive treatment of her rider. Searrath is legendarily short-tempered and protective, and although her rider might continually reassure her that his arrangement with the weyrwoman (as her personal spy; he is an ex-harper) is healthy, Searrath has other ideas. She is quite good at precise hops between, which is how she manages to bait Lenath into flying head first into a mountainside.

Islin's bronze Taranth is very big, very gentle, and completely unwilling to do his duty as a bronze in any capacity at all. He has a... complicated relationship with Lenath and endures a good amount of ridicule, but Islin is adamant that he will never make a bid for weyrleader as this involves sleeping with the weyrwoman and queen (he'll settle for being wingleader). A strong disagreement over Félix's spywork and loyalty to Lenath leads Islin and Taranth to walk out from their weyr, and operate out of a different base for years before Lenath ultimately dies from failing to compete with Searrath on a mating flight. He is the only bronze rider who is not originally from a weyr.

Francis's brown Nelath was almost killed by Lenath when he hatched. As the son of the newly-ousted ex-weyrleader, Francis could have easily impressed a bronze and ousted the current weyrleader, so the weyrwoman conspired to prevent it from happening. Lenath broke Nelath's leg during the hatching, and only the invervention of Francis's father's bronze saved both himself and the injured hatchling from what appeared to be the queen's random fit of infanticidal rage. Nelath recovered well and became a very popular brown dragon and an impressively good shot with his flames. He has attempted several times to chase a queen (usually one of the juniors, still a little wary of Lenath), and has even succeeded more than once. Francis and Nelath support one of those junior queens during an attempted ousting of Lenath and the weyrwoman, but never expected that Félix's loyalty to the weyrwoman would separate them for years (until Lenath goes out carcrash style against a mountainside, as previously mentioned)

It's my first time trying to write a full conspiracy over the course of the characters' lifetimes so it's pretty fun!

[ranticore]

I know I said I was going to share some writing about Pascal and Nico but having edited all of that piece now into a presentable state, I'm not happy where it ends. I always do this for the au stuff lol I write a good 20k and then leave it hanging when my motivation shifts. I want to write the proper ending to it before I post it. And I was about to surprise drop the pern au fan fiction as well but it has the same issue sooooo

[ranticore]

How did Ambrose capture the sphynx??

Sphinxes are super dangerous active predators and rarely cooperative with humans so the fact that Ambrose has Flicker working with him is his main evidence of legitimacy as a monster tamer. Ambrose tracked Flicker down after falconers complained of their harpies being dive bombed near his village. The sphinx engaged him in a game of riddles when they met, and Ambrose cleverly turned the riddle back on the sphinx, rendering it speechless, and it then submitted to his will and admitted that he was its rightful master.

That's what Ambrose claims, anyway, and he believes it to be true. In reality, Flicker is an unusual member of its kind who just couldn't be fuckin bothered learning how to strike out on its own after being kicked out by its mother. When confronted by Ambrose it softballed him on every riddle and then cheerfully agreed to follow him home, under the condition that it would get a nice shelter, food to eat, and a nice bed to curl up on. Flicker is lazy and unambitious, but cunning enough to play Ambrose like a fiddle if it so desires.

Having "tamed" an unusually biddable sphinx, Ambrose then felt he could definitely handle a manticore next (he can't - Flicker is the one keeping Twist in line, most of the time). He did not realise that the two creatures, while both catlike, are not remotely similar at all where husbandry is concerned.

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the evil part of my brain wants to unite all the more disparate stories in the kosa setting into one unified plot.. but I must resist... big plot is the killer of enjoyment... that being said I have some ideas about ambrose & his cats being hired on at kosa to help the general effort alongside the falconers

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TVM spoilers

I thought a lot about the funniest way to foreshadow the avatars and decided that jean mentioning them in his very first chapter, it going unacknowledged, and then him not thinking about it again because he's got better things to think about would be best

important to note that the old art doesn't show the carhaix avatar's antlers.

[ranticore]

it is within the wyrm's best interests to keep the village prosperous and well-populated, but this does not necessarily mean the wyrm must keep them happy, safe, or in good conditions. this fact seems to have missed the king of the city, who believes wholeheartedly in the goodness of the wyrm