#Kain means well

[thedustyleaves]

I haven’t forgotten about my comic; uni and work has just dug their (very interesting and relevant) claws into my soul and won’t let go, so here’s some wip’s C: 

[pbnmj]

it’s important to me that peter and co always have their bank accounts in the negatives . like it is fundamental that spider-man is broke

[fatedroses]

Man meets Morbol

[hoardlikegoldenirises]

I made some very minor edits to my Man-Spider ref for Peter (link) so since Kaine is the source of the man-spider transformation in-universe (...spoilers?), I figured I ought to sketch out some stuff.

The face ref is just edited from Peter's though lol.

update: I am going with 2 human arms and—

this like in Scarlet Spider (issue #15). I think that's a good way to do it and I like the Other's design anyway.

anyway, some closeups:

man down!!!

man getting up!

spikes :)

also I have written out the scenes where this happens and actually he should have basically the entire top half of his suit missing at the point for reasons but obviously it isn't drawn that way lol

6 arm stuff i am scrapping

—

Tarantula transformation in AU is pretty similar to regular 616—he dies, he becomes a freaky spider guy for a bit. There's no cocoons or anything though, just nasty body horror, and the circumstances are mildly specific in that in my AU Kaine is frequently on immunosuppressants (and a bunch of other medications), which has a side effect of... preventing the tarantula from happening in the event of fatality. So when this happens it necessitates Kaine being off of his medications.

It's the kind of thing where it's like, his body is actively trying to kill him at all times but also prevents him from dying, so the medications he takes make it so that's less intense/technically keep him alive, but also make it way easier for him to actually die (on account of being immunosuppressed) and also the meds... stop the tarantula from busting out if he dies, so it stops him from resurrecting... otoh his medications also help alleviate several of his agonies. so it's like. well, you know. he can't eat fermented food but at least he's not vomiting blood every day!

this is the costume he's wearing in those pics by the way:

oh btw here is a side by side comparison of Kaine and Peter's faces:

Kaine is a little paler and still has a nose. lmao. also he has so much hair it looks much nicer than Peter's—Peter has thick hair but he doesn't have hair like Kaine does, you know?? It's more obvious when half of it falls out, though I think I probably still made Kaine's hair too thick and nice looking.

You can also see that their little iridescent bits are slightly different colors.

[latte-lizard]

Blrobrlo i think his mark power is so cool and dosent get enough love

Alt no text

[softgrungeprophet]

kaine wip 60k and it only covers like 2 months' worth of events

the power of... *checks document* describing kaine taking a bath for half a page, and all these scenes of him half conscious in the hospital... 3 page dream sequence... buying a $400k car... etc...

[brother-emperors]

hi there, I hope you're doing great! I love your comics so much, everything about them is amazing: your style is so unique and the way you organise them (does it make sense?) is wonderful, and since I'm quite familiar with ancient Rome but much less with everything else, especially the Renaissance that I know only superficially, they got me very curious, especially about Cardinal Sforza. Do you have any reading recommendations to get a bit more in detail about the whole thing and him in particular?

thank you so much!!

so. oh boy. so the thing about ascanio is that he was doing so much everywhere all the time that there's a 800 page biography about him that specifically mentions that it chose to focus on his life in the political sphere because it would be too fucking long if they covered his impact on the arts and music as a patron

the extreme cliff notes version of his life (english): HERE

a short biography (italian): HERE

the rest of these are in english (except the ascanio bio), there's a whole bunch of scholarship on the sforzas that's somewhat region locked to italy/your ability to read italian, and god I feel it every day I look at the bibliography of the ascanio biography. someday......someday I'll go to milan in person.....get ahold of these books and texts...........see the archives................

A History of Milan under the Sforza, Cecilia M. Ady

Milan Undone: Contested Sovereignties in the Italian Wars, John Gagné

Popes, Cardinals and War: The Military Church in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe, D.S. Chamber

Ascanio Maria Sforza: la parabola politica di un cardinale-principe del Rinascimento, Marco Pellegrini (Italian)

an additional rec, Showtime's The Borgias. he's extremely fun in that one

[meirimerens]

hi, i know you headcanon some pathologic characters to be homosexual, like Daniil, Artemy, Yulia, Stakh... what do you think their relationship with their sexuality were throughout their lives? also, i remember in one of your older answers you mentioned Daniil coming out to his mother... how exactly did that happen in your vision?

hello darling this reply has made tumblr give me that "there was an error processing your post" over 15 times now for no good reason. it's like it was too big at first but this is the same length and if you read this it means it sent. anyways.

i had posted something kiiinda similar here (below the cut) including bi characters (eva + the twins) but i had forgor to include stakh + by god i can repeat myself/elaborate (i love. repeating myself <3 for real honestly especially on this) so ooh baby here we

Dankovsky (longest because i'm writing about him so the thoughts are many) knew at a young age (like 11-12) he didn't like girls and instead did boys so he had to come to terms with it in some way Pretty Quickly. to me he was raised christian eastern orthodox, which like all christian denominations comes with its fair share of religious-specific homophobia, he wasn't particularly like. Thrilled per se. + the familial/ancestral culture comes with its own set of expectations around masculinity which homosexuality inherently challenges and the fact that he was already more into cello than like war as a kid made his father raise an eyebrow on him right. so from ages like 11-16, dankovsky was like Well i'm going to have to pretend i don't see it and hope the sky doesn't fall on my head. at around 17 it became evident that was IT really that truly what he was and there was nothing he could possibly do to not make it be this way. it came with a sort of like. acceptance that it just was going to be how it was, but he was already starting to think how he could push the Acting on It part long enough for him to maybe become busy with something else. i think as he grew up he shed the concept of "sin" as he actualized himself atheist so no "hate the sin love the sinner" for him, but you can't really pull the religious guilt out of a man raised religious ykwim. eventually as he accepted that He Was, and that by god it wasn't even a bad thing to be/started Embracing it as one more of his Transgressions (when it. not really is, a transgression comes with a degree of consciousness and will to violate a law or code, the fact that he's gay is just. how it is. that's him forever and that'd be him regardless of context etc), he started assimilating gay codes for himself (the red tie…) to be like. Yes. ykwim. he still had not met a gay person in his life so it truly felt like Him Against the World, but he started being more comfortable with the fact that he was gay. however, it still didn't stop him from started a whole… "i'm not in a relationship rn bc i'm focusing on my studies" mindset. at uni, he truly like. came into his own internally while still trying to maintain a certain ambiguousness outwardly. andrei saw right through that and, even if he's like not gay but bi, he was the first dude daniil met who was also (Loudly) into dudes. dankovsky owes andrei the first like. actual coming out to Someone else than his mommy when andrei would bait him into hanging out with other gay and bi men, dankovsky would sit in a corner not fuckin wit anyone just Soaking In The Homosexuality In The Air, and when andrei went "u got a problem with that? you homophobic?🤨" dankovsky had to go like "i don't have a problem with it at all… when it's other people" [implied: i might deal with it not too well when it's me myself]. and from that point on he was like ah fuck me [not literally] why do i bother being insecure about it. from ages 20+ he was still very much in his Married To My Work Era + as he founded Thanatica he tried to lay low to not get investigated and being very loudly homosexual was not the best way to "not make waves" so even as he settled in himself with the fact that Well he's gay and he's gonna be gay forever so he better live with it, he still stayed closeted for his safety. i think from ages 18 to current game-day 28, not getting laid pardon the frankness led to him developing like an internally Fucking Crazy relationship with love and eroticism and he might have kept himself from entering relationships because he needed someone who Understood He'd Want To Eat Him. (love wins!)

re:coming out to his momma i think she had had her Doubts for a while yknow has had her Doubts. his dad too, but from his dad's perspective it felt deeply Painful (bc when the son is gay it is the father's masculinity that is threatened.. i've spoken about it on the post i've linked in the beginning) whereas his mom didn't have that My Masculinity Threatened. dankovsky knew he was gay since age like 11-12 but only came out at around 14-15, when it became obvious for him and hard to ignore, especially as people begin to have little boyfriends and girlfriends at this age. he told his mom first because he was closest to her and she was like.

she believed him from the beginning because she had had her Doubts. for a while she didn't quite know what to do with this information as it all dawned on her that it likely meant no grandkids, no daughter-in-law to whom she could give her pretty jewelry and so on… but also i think she like. could relate her son's homosexuality to like. fucking Tchaikovsky. who attempted suicide because his marriage to a woman made him so miserable. so she was like… well. that's just how it is isn't it. she's just gonna have to make peace with it whether she likes it or not. i think eventually she came to the conclusion that she spent 9 months building him from her blood and bones and a full day putting him out in the world so it would be stupid to be mad at him for that. + that's god's doing isn't it. she can't be mad at god. and if god's mad at her son he can take it to himself. etc .

Burakh for the longest time um. Didn't know. i think he realized that about himself genuinely age 26 in the 12 days. he's going through an entire coming-of-age/coming-into-place story and i think that includes a realization story lol. i think for the longest time he just thought he didn't love anyone period. up until 20 methinks he was like "well i'm just a late bloomer". then he went to war as a medic and was like "well i'm just so fucked up in the head my mind's full of corpses that's why there's no place for love". then he went home and… lord almighty. for years he thought was just not made for love because he truly. hadn't looked the other way (he's just like me fr fr). he went from not knowing what a closet was to realizing he was in it and the door was ajar to being out and in a man's arm in the span of 12 days. he didn't really have the time to brood about what it meant for his future/himself/his relationship to his people for him to be homosexual because love slapped him across the face and he fell on his ass. as his whole story is about finding his own path and learning to cope with doing things that might not be approved of him and living with choices that are of love regardless it's truly just like. learn to cope FAST. you have way more problems. + as i think the herb brides Know i think he's not given too much grief by his community and doesn't have the religious trauma background of dankovsky. also since his parents are. well dead. he doesn't have to respond to them + his dad textually is like You're gonna have to do something boy. (and that something might displease him but that's out of his hands. and into burakh's).

.

Yulia knew early too like 12-13. she always was a tomboy as a kid and almost just like… naturally blossomed into a masc lesbian. i think from early on she was like. ok well we're coping with that. she already was going against social conventions by being an educated woman a woman in ""typically"" male professions a masculine-dressed woman so at this point the fact that she liked women that was like. well if you don't like it tough luck buddy. she always had a relatively distant (if loving) relationship with her parents so she didn't feel the need to justify herself to them + won't lie they saw it coming. they had it comin… she was not in any relationships for a while because she's kinda like Dry of a person/passionate about things most people just don't see/don't fuck with so while she is charismatic and handsome and knew she could be desired she didn't have any long-term relationship before eva because you truly need a girl who's a lil bit crazy to handle her. and vice versa. so love wins. i think that while she might not have frequented lesbian spaces like bars because her ass does not do well with crowds i think she never felt like she was So Alone like Only Lesbian on Earth. i think she did feel a sense of loneliness about it but it was also mixed with a deep sense of Well I'm Here and I'm One So Someone Like Me Exists.

.

Stakh for a little while was also that "well i'm kinda too fucked up for love" and he was also fighting for his life to be seen as a good student a good protégé a good foster son so romantic love was Far from his mind. i think he realized he was gay around age like 15-16 when it all starts to Dawn on you y'know everything Dawns on you. he was very quickly like. well that's how the cookie crumbles. i think there was a sort of immediate acceptance about the Being Gay factor but more of a restraint about acting on it because he too was like Married to The Student Behavior and didn't want to risk losing his place by isidor's side, especially since he didn't know how isidor would react to him being gay (i know what isidor did to that old man so i know he wouldn't have cared but rubin is not a mind-reader). it was truly like. well i am and i can't do much about it but i'm soo focused rn. as 18-20 came around the corner and his relationship with isidor truly felt like he was fighting for his life trying to be seen as a good student he was like I'm either going to war or becoming a monk. he was fully willing to commit to lifelong monkish celibacy because he's always been. kinda dry. kinda with issues. + i think subconsciously he was trying to not let Desire creep up on him because it would distract him from the menkhu way (nice dichotomy idiot what lies outside of it etc). he went to war [p1 lore which i abide by] and. well when you put a bunch of fit young men together away from the women of course something like this would happen. anyways he comes home having acted on his homosexuality which he is fine with + feels kinda like a weight being lifted off his shoulders but he stil hasn't tasted Desire ykwim. Want. Hunger in the lover sense. but he's like. shrugs. whatever. monk it is. he doesn't become a monk. he clings to being isidor's foster son until his knuckles go white. it ends up being for nothing. grief and anger scythe him right. and in what follows he bonds with someone who's Fucked up and who Knows Hunger and Desire and omg flushed emoji etc. (+ my belief when dankovsky comes to peter's loft to talk about god-knows-what they kinda realize pretty fast He's Just Like Me Fr and dankovsky appreciates his + peter's company kinda like he appreciated Just Sitting There surrounded by gay and bi men even if they barely talk. just knowing you're like. Not Alone. etc)

.

bit long. sorrey.

[imabiscuitinthousandworlds]

Kain (my OC) meeting his younger self, by me, in OneNote

[ID in alt]

[aevumgames]

BTW, here are the heights for each of the RO's all together!

[scarletspider2the2ndpower]

Ben Reilly: Scarlet Spider (Vol. 1/2017), #18.

Writer: Peter David; Penciler and Inker: André Lima Araújo; Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg; Letterer: Joe Caramagna

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

Decided to just look for a tier list with literally every FE character ever (and managed to find one!!!) so I could make a list of all my top favorites only (also sorry some have their portraits cut off. This was the only tier list I could find with every single game and every single character without digging through the website.

These aren't actually in a specific order (so I don't necessarily like the character listed first in that tier more than the others there and may even like others on that tier more), but I just arranged them by series per tier.

That's not to say I don't also have love for other characters, because there are plenty I do enjoy a lot. This is just my like, top of the top.

Also, just because there are no characters from a certain game doesn't mean I'm not familiar with the game, but that I'm just not fond enough of anyone in the cast for them to have made this list.

My "kind of favorites" are like... not really at the top but I can definitely say I'm way more fond of them than the characters that didn't make the cut. It's like, a big gap in my affection toward them and those who didn't get on the list at all.

Sadly not many ladies got in because IS sucks at writing women 9.5 times out of ten, they don't interest me, and/or the men are written so much better that they interest me way more.

Normally with tier lists I end up basing it on how well characters are written, the depth of their character/stories, how well they're integrated into things, how they are as a unit, etc. In this case it's just my pure personal biases with no strings attached.

Now that I think about it though, if Lyon is supposed to be my favorite character in FE8, why is Seth the only character I listed? 🤨🤨🤨 Perhaps I need some introspection on this...

tellius is littered all over this thing lmfao

[hoardlikegoldenirises]

growth, healing, etc. also shampoo and conditioner.

(wip from my lineup for kaine which i'm finally doing lol - still figuring out some of the dates. hair-wise, kaine will actually probably be approaching knee-length by like... late 2013 though... his hair grows superhumanly fast lol) (but scar-wise as far as healing skin and so on and not forming more scars etc. i'm still figuring some stuff out but am thinking maybe reed helps him get a better medication to keep him from dying) (but also i wanna give him agony (the symbiote) at some point but i still have to uhhh figure out when/how/why that would happen)

[transcredwaters]

Take some sketches of a couple of my characters cosplaying their voice claims. Feat. Jieleaux Yolaine, Miz's mentor from the adders, and of course the wol duo that is Yargui and Miz (where i forgot to color Miz's tail right but I'm too tired to fix it)

[transjarlaxle]

lrt this ai shit is also feeding into my skeevy feelings about people using stolen art for their ocs/ttrpg characters/whatever else. there are so many avatar makers picrews hell artists that are doing commissions for 10-20 bucks (criminally underpriced, but it is what it is) cuz now you have people who already feel entitled to other peoples character illustrations and original ideas spreading ai art because its so pervasive already and im just. ggrrraahahahhggghhhhhh please care about artists more. and not just "professionals" everyone who shares their art with you. for free. you are not entitled to it

[softgrungeprophet]

windowverse houston fic is so close to done but also so far

because i still have to add like.... a bunch of plot stuff 😅😂