#and people who are posting like. bird-human anthro stuff

[birdmenmanga]

sometimes I feel really ridiculous and silly for being so obsessed with birdmen but then I open up the twitter for my childhood best friend and see image after image of a singular maplestory character and I'm like oh I'm normal after all I'm literally so normal

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

SDV's 1.5 update contains content that plays into racist, colonialist, and imperialist myths and beliefs.

Disclaimer: I loved SDV (which is a given, considering I have an SDV sideblog lol?), and I'm not writing this post to get people to boycott the game or stop liking it or whatever. I just want people to understand why this content is harmful, how it might be affecting your biases and beliefs, and think of how they can engage with this media without exacerbating the harm that it does. I'm Filipino, and I don't speak for all POC or all brown people, but I felt deeply hurt and betrayed by the content update. Please keep that in mind before you interact with this post. Explanation under the cut because of 1.5 spoilers (obviously) and because this got long.

(I will block people who clown on this post. Keep your opinions to yourself unless you also have firsthand experience with the issues I describe.)

Background

I was already wary of the 1.5 content update because of how the previews featured ~tropical~ and ~exotic~ stuff, but I decided to give it a shot because maybe I was being too hasty with my judgment.

I wasn't. I made a new save to play with the 1.5 content update, and at first, I was having a great time! The new special orders made gameplay more exciting and varied! I could finally get rid of the nursery from my house without mods! The remixed junimo bundles made me change my usual game strategy. And then, I finally unlocked Ginger Island.

It seemed cool at first, but I had a sinking feeling growing in the pit of my stomach as I kept playing. It got to the point that I started nursing a stomach ache and lots of anger that took me days to shake off. I know SDV has never been a shining example of racial/ethnic diversity and sensitivity (I mean... there's a reason why mods like Diverse Stardew Valley and a bunch of other diversity mods exist lol). But while the lack of diversity in the pre-1.5 content is more of a missed opportunity, the 1.5 content is just... actively harmful and hurtful, imo. Here's a breakdown of the issues with the setting and the characters:

The Setting

Ginger Island, along with the Fern Islands in general, is a tropical island that is clearly based on islands in the Pacific. Its features include fertile soil and an abundance of natural, foragable resources. And for some unknown reason, it has no native human population.

Many islands in the world are uninhabited by humans, and there's always a good reason why. The island's environment may be too hostile, it could be too small to sustain human life, it could be sacred or otherwise culturally unacceptable to live there, or some disaster may have occurred to wipe out the local population or cause them to flee. Some uninhabited islands are nature reserves or privately owned. The point is that if an island is habitable, people are bound to call it home.

Writing Ginger Island as an uninhabited "tropical paradise" feels like a copout. It's as if the game is saying, "don't worry, you're not colonizing this land because no one really lives here! You're not stealing this land or anything because it's up for grabs and is just waiting for the right person to come along to develop it and turn it into a resort for other people who don't live here!" But that claim rings hollow when there are so many signs of civilization there, such as literal computers and ancient structures. And the canon reason for the existence of these things is that dwarves, non-human creatures, lived there once. I just think it's ridiculous and harmful that the game completely ignores and erases the existence of the people who lived and still live in the places that Ginger Island is based on and goes even further to use non-human creatures as stand-ins. I don’t think I have to explain why this isn’t good, considering that people of color have been compared to animals and treated like animals to dehumanize us and justify our oppression for ages.

To really hammer in my point about whitewashing and erasure, all the human labor on the island is done by a flock of parrots that you pay with golden walnuts (i. e., resources that you get for free from the island they live on). There's even an anthropomorphized bird who's a shopkeep! I get that creating a whole cast of human NPCs to fill a town would have been way too much work for a content update, but CA didn't need to use a bunch of animals as stand-ins for non-white human characters. There’s a troubling trend of creators prioritizing animal characters over characters of color, and CA plays right into it. He seriously chose to create more anthro characters instead of adding characters of color to the game in a setting that in real life has populations that are primarily made up of brown people. The game includes brown people's land and cultures, but it draws the line at brown people themselves.

The erasure of brown people and the portrayal of our lands as wild and untamed have been used to sanitize the narrative of colonialism for centuries. Pretending that our lands were wild tropical paradises that were ripe for the taking is pretending that colonizing forces didn't use violent, dehumanizing means to subjugate or wipe out countless peoples and cultures in order to make these lands available. Ginger Island's erasure of brown people just perpetuates this colonialist myth, and the context in which it does so disgusts me: the farmer, who already runs a successful farm that was inherited from their grandfather, goes off to a tropical island they have no personal connection to and uses its natural resources to expand their business further. They also open up a resort on the island for the enjoyment of other privileged people from their homeland, and going there is treated as a luxury. This is a classic colonizer narrative, and I cannot believe the game forces players to colonize an island in order to win.

The Characters

I'm honestly amazed that the amount of feedback about the lack of diversity in SDV didn't prompt CA to create characters of color. I'm amazed that he chose the setting he did and still didn't bother to create any characters of color. The fact that all three of the new human characters who live on this tropical island are white makes me go a little apeshit, to be honest! I hate all three of them for a variety of reasons, so I'll go over them one by one:

Birdie

My reasons for not liking Birdie are primarily related to misogyny (lady spent literal decades in isolation on this island moping over her dead husband?) and ageism (if you tell her to live her own life, she tells you that she's too old to???). Sooo they're not really related to the rest of my discussion here, and I won't get into them further. Moving on!

Professor Snail

White historians, archaeologists, and paleontologists have been stealing and plundering artifacts, relics, and fossils from colonized lands for centuries. These white scientists would send their “discoveries” back to their homelands with little regard for the people they stole from. I’ll acknowledge that Professor Snail doesn’t bring the bones and fossils off the island, so his character isn’t as awful as it could be, but he still canonically has this line:

I really just don’t understand why it was necessary to make this character white when making him a character of color could have easily prevented the uncomfortable real-world implications of a white man coming to a foreign land to plunder fossils without asking anybody for permission. If he he’d been created as someone who traced his ancestry to Ginger Island and wanted to study the island’s biological history, his character could have been so sympathetic and even admirable to me! But his character as it is just makes me think of this meme:

Here are some links for further reading about colonialism in paleontology and other social sciences: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Leo

I had a hard time figuring out how to write about this character because the way CA wrote him is arguably one of the most racist parts of SDV. So many aspects of his character left me speechless and appalled because I cannot believe people are still writing shit like this in the 2020s.

I’ll start off with his storyline: this white child gets stranded on an island and is raised by animals. When the farmer meets him, he speaks in broken English to show how “wild” he is:

As the farmer continues to interact with him, he begins to speak more “proper” English:

Wow... he’s becoming more “civilized” because of the farmer’s influence!

As his story progresses, he reveals that he’s lonely because he doesn’t fit in among the other birds. Eventually, he leaves behind his non-human family and assimilates into a primarily white, Western-coded society because that’s supposedly where he belongs.

This whole storyline is made possible by the problems with the setting that I mentioned earlier. Leo wouldn’t feel so lonely and out of place if there were people on the island. He wouldn’t be depicted as wild and animal-like if he had an adoptive family made up of humans instead of parrots. But because CA chose not to have native human characters on this island, Leo can only be around other people if he leaves his home and family behind. As a result, Leo’s story has very uncomfortable parallels with how colonizers have historically separated indigenous children from their families and cultures and forced them to assimilate into the dominant colonizer culture because they considered indigenous cultures to be savage and barbaric (1) (2).

Leo’s whole narrative unintentionally implies that a good life in a good community can only be had in civilized white Western societies. I’m honestly having trouble with further explaining why Leo’s whole character makes me feel so gross, so just read up on the White Man’s Burden, The Jungle Book and other works by Rudyard Kipling (1) (2) (3) (4) (5, PDF download link), and even Tarzan (1) (2).

Leo’s character is also used to further whitewash non-white cultures: 

Poi is a Polynesian dish. Mango sticky rice, which is also a recipe that Leo teaches you in-game, is a Thai dish. In the letter, Leo says that the dish is from his home and enjoyed by his non-human family. Considering that he probably learned these recipes on Ginger Island, and that the only “people” who could have taught him this recipe are literal animals, including these recipes in the game in this way just reinforces the equation of brown people to animals. I’m not Polynesian or Thai, but I know that if CA had included a Filipino recipe in the game and not only had it taught to players by a white character, but also passed off as something from the white character’s culture, I’d be angry. I’ll repeat myself: The game features brown people's food and cultures, but it draws the line at brown people themselves.

I don’t think there’s any way to tweak or edit Leo’s character to fix the issues I described. No matter how we change things, he’s still an orphan raised by animals coded as indigenous people, and he assimilates into the dominant white Western culture. The only way to address these issues is to completely redo his character and even the setting of Ginger Island. Here are some options that I’ve thought of:

Leo is related to someone in the Valley and stays with them for part of the year.

Leo lives with his human family and community on Ginger Island.

Leo’s parents are specifically from Stardew Valley/Pelican Town and he wants to visit in order to reconnect with his heritage.

This list isn’t comprehensive, but it does show that there are so many alternatives to having yet another Mowgli story in Stardew Valley.

Conclusion

I don’t think that CA had bad intentions when he made this content, but the fact is that he did create this content. I’m not calling him a bad person. However, he does have a lot of racist, imperialist, and colonialist biases that he has yet to unlearn. Considering the setting and subject matter of the new 1.5 content, he really should have hired some sensitivity readers to avoid creating harmful content. The man’s sold over ten million copies of his game, and he certainly has the resources to put together a sensitivity team.

I can’t look at Stardew Valley the same way I did before 1.5, but I’m not going to condemn the game as a whole. I might play the game again someday, but I absolutely won’t be going back to Ginger Island. If you’ve enjoyed the Ginger Island content, then good for you! Please just keep all that I’ve written here in mind and accept that that content hurts some people like me.

If you’re a content creator, I urge you to get sensitivity readers if you’re featuring  cultures that you’re not a part of to avoid making the same mistakes that I’ve discussed here. Creating from a place of understanding and respect can only make your work better and more accessible to a wider audience, especially to the people whose culture you’re borrowing.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S5 Ep 19: Yugi and the Only Neck Accessory He Didn’t Really Want to Wear

Been busy! Hopefully stuff will open up soon as I’m taking a hiatus on a different quarantine project and will be finishing painting the entire roof of my car this week? One can hope. Sanding the rust off the whole top of a car takes a long time it turns out?

Also, fun Yugioh fact, I recently painted a book cover for an author who is older so she’s never seen the show, and she looked at my tumblr, saw my Duke Devlin fanart and was like “That’s him. That’s my main character. OMG. You captured him perfectly!” and I was like “Ma’am that is Duke Devlin, hence the single dice earring on his lobes there, but we can work with this.” and now a spiritual Duke Devlin is on the cover of a Wuxia-style fantasy trilogy on the Vella. Had to give him a top knot and delete the eyeliner for Wuxia reasons but uh, that’s just Duke.

So long story short, fanart can get you work, don’t even worry about posting that stuff online because most people don’t even know it’s fanart anyway and older ladies freakin love it.

Back in Yugioh, the team was doing their best to navigate a map through the woods and they do about as well as they normally do.

And inside Tristan lifted up the floorboards and was like “I found the only way out, this is it, this is the only way.”

And they ended up in something that has a color scheme I would actually associate with a jungle. Finally. We have finally left California (in order to go to another Hell.)

Youknow, when we went to California, we visited Hell, and when we went to India, we also took a stop at the nearest death destination. There’s just so much death on this show and sometimes I forget because there’s been a ghost in our party for so freakin long it’s been normalized.

(read more death imagery under the cut)

Joey freaks out at a flock of crows and reveals in this episode something I never realized about him before.

Like I’m not always the perfect observer as I’m sure you’ve noticed, but I love that this is canon for probably only this episode, but I will never forget it for the entirety of this series.

You go on hating birds, Joey.

Bro was like “Maybe it’s a deep cut about Mai Valentine because she’s a harpy lady” but eh...pretty sure we spent like an entire season of Joey telling us that Mai was a good experience? Would be incredibly funny if immediately after all of S4, Joey was like “You know what? Screw Mai, guys.”

So my thoughts...it’s probably just a literal bird experience. Like I had a friend who hated deer because once she went to a petting zoo, got some pellets to feed the deer, but her finger was sticking up, so when the deer came over to nibble on some pellets her finger went up it’s nose by accident. She was so disgusted by this event that was entirely her fault, that she brought up how much she hated deer basically whenever we saw one.

So like...maybe Joey fed a bird wrong at a petting zoo. I can see him getting bit by a parrot because he was too Joey Wheeler.

But now that we’re in a graveyard neighborhood, Pharaoh decides to hop out because there’s a lot of ghosts here and he needs to practice socializing with his peers.

So that’s just a Yugioh monster doing the ostrich dance, right? Like this is a meme from like 2010 but on Yugioh in 2003(4?)

Good to see the Ostrich dance here in the land before Vine.

So they pull out their Pokemon to do some antics, Tea looked like she was about to do something useful, and Yami does a yump across time and space to get her as far away from playing (not)cards as quickly as possible and y’all...sure was a position these animators animated.

Holy crap.

And I was going off about that scene last season where they woke up in the same bed like...

...have these two been together this entire time? Like together together?

They’re like...way more comfortable than you’d figure they’d be considering Yugi nearly passes out every time he gets a hug. But Yami just like....How long has this been going on? As long as Joey’s fear of birds?

Like obviously this show would never cover what the hell Yugi may be thinking about this overreaching move here, because we’re gonna gloss right over that, and just run away up a flight of stairs. No one mentions this ever again. Which is mind blowing for an anime to do. I think in most anime I watch, the kids would be like “ahh ahhhh I bumped into a booooob!” like it does for I want to say every other episode of My Hero Academia. But in Yugioh, they saw that low hanging fruit and they were like “we expect a higher level of maturity out of our audience. Now here’s a fleet of ostrich dancing tree monsters with faces for crotches.”

They decided to sprint up this flight of stairs, and it enough of a slope to deter the monsters who are only unbalanced weird legs.

I want us to take a moment and admire this background painting. I can’t unsee the rocks that are all the same size, just piled on top of eachother. Did Alexander the Great just plop rocks here--or was the mountain made up of tons of similarly shaped boulders?

Like there’s a lot of nice bg’s in this arc, don’t get me wrong, but this one...I’m just trying to wrap my head around the logic of it.

At the top, they meet a pantheon, that is immediately blocked by this wall, because if this arc had a tagline, it’s “Yugi gets inconvenienced every 4 seconds.”

Bro was like “Clearly they would have pushed it over if Tea wasn’t slacking off” and like...she is actually. Look at her. Only used one hand? Slacker.

Joey was disappointed he couldn’t push over a massive wall, and the team decided not to analyze how much Joey Wheeler thinks of his own strength and instead fixate on these statues.

Usually in anthro characters they kinda look birdlike but act human. But what about an anthro that’s just a bird? Like human torso, but can turn his head 180 degrees? Yugioh made me ask this question.

And then Joey was like “wait, there may be a solution that isn’t just to use brute strength!”

Youknow it is a bummer that Kaiba couldn’t witness Joey own a dragon while he himself only has a robot jet dragon. Although, the jet is probably faster, stronger and overall...better than this baby dragon. It would have been great for Kaiba to witness Joey under-utilize this dragon and forget he has it for like huge swatches of the episode.

And then Grandpa pulled some body horror out of nowhere.

Wow.

I mean that is really gross.

I guess Grandpa can’t use Blue eyes, because Kaiba ripped it up, Grandpa can’t use Exodia because Weevil tossed it off a boat, and grandpa can’t use the card that’s just a building because...it’s a building.

So instead Grandpa has a bunch of meat and bones that look like something out of Doom. It’s probably from a more obscure Konami property, but I forget which.

I’ve seen Tristan hold back Joey in this hold, first time it’s been Tea.

So much shipping in this episode, it’s wild.

It’s also wild how low my standards are for what could possibly be shipping when it comes to Yugioh because of how freakin tepid all of these characters are, which as I’ve brought up before, I really don’t mind.

So Yugi decides that because Grandpa was folding his arms like one monster and it made a gem light up or something, to just do the video game thing and use the giant ass statues as clues.

Why was this arc not a video game? Like parts of it really feel like it was meant to be.

So Yugi falls down a hole, where the walls cave in like it’s that dumpster in Star Wars but like...it barely phases him.

Also...Yugi might be able to see in the dark. It’s never been brought up but like...the more I think about it...has Yugi ever struggled to see without the lights on?

After Joey disappoints everyone, he confronts death.

And Pharaoh and Yugi decide to solve the puzzle of “how do I get out of this trap dungeon room” which, honestly, is probably what they’re doing every time they hang out in the brain pyramid.

So they summon their mascot monster, and surprisingly the show decided its ability to fly cannot help them out here.

Kuriboh manages to become enough of a doormat to push Yami up to the stone and they end up in a set of weird cuts that ended in this?

Like seriously it was like flashes of light and then they were just...up here like this.

Hey like...

Alexander the Great, my man...

Were you planning to put that stone in the middle of a exhaust vent hoping someone would touch it? Because there’s no way anyone would rationally have done that. You would need to fly to do it. This is the world’s worst DM.

Like Yugioh pulls a lot of fantasy nonsense but this arc is a lot more like a “it’s a kid’s show, just go with it.” arc than most of them. It’s not a bad vibe, necessarily, it’s just not the vibe I’m used to.

So once I witnessed maybe the most boring conversation I’ve ever witnessed about corn (this was on a twitch stream, by the way, a guy was playing an interesting game, and then a guest came on and started talking about corn and plants for 2 hours) and they would not shut up about how all taxonomy is wrong because there are no such thing as trees and how all animals are labelled incorrectly, and then they started comparing it to like all sorts of mushrooms and phytoplankton as you would if you clearly got a little bit high before dumping your corn knowledge on a twitch stream.

Anyway, after that bizarre experience I suffered so I could learn how to play an obscure video game, I think I can safely say, that while I know everyone here thinks a bird can’t be a dog. If you’re a high biologist: a bird is absolutely a dog. Apparently you can just do that if you’re the most boring biologist alive and no one will argue with you because to do that would involve talking to you. We’ll just say a bird is a dog and no one can fight me or I will talk about the corn book that this guest on this twitch chat was thinking about renting from the library about the different types of corn mutations inherent in freakin Indiana. Therefore, Joey’s fear of birds and dogs is same.

So they use Dark Magician to save them from the statues, and Yugi busts into the pantheon again because they got to open this casket before a time limit that I kind of forgot about, tbh.

And inside the casket, is...this thing!

(enjoy this line on the bottom of the image I don’t feel like fixing it)

And you may say to yourself...it looks like it’s just floating in mid-air, that’s silly, and so I want to introduce you to the next panel where you can see that it is...quite literally...just floating in the air like a video game.

and it just slurps itself onto Yugi before he can be like “nonono.”

Wasn’t there some horror movie where you were stuck in some sort of body brace that slowly tortures you (was that Saw?) This has that vibes. Like man that looks uncomfortable to wear over a jacket and two belts and a collar that is another belt.

That and I...I gotta appreciate that Yugi popped his collar while wearing body armor and chunky necklace. What 00′s fashion appreciation right there.

Bit like...this isn’t breathable, right? Like Yugi’s gonna finally take this thing off and his jacket will just be completely soaked in sweat?

Anyway, that’s it for this post, next week we’ll see if Yugi can walk through a doorway in that thing.

Also, I can’t bring up the ostrich dance without sharing the vines of my generation

[celticrune]

and for u the uneven numbers of the oc questions thing!!

…boiUnder a cut for length

1. Your first OC ever?From the OCs on my ask page, that’d be Morana. I created her for my first DnD campaign, when I needed an npc to beef up the party. She’s grown a lot since then, especially since I started playing her as a PC, but yea she’s fun.

My first OC ever is more difficult. I think the technical first would be a fan oc I made for an rp, Arya. Wait no that’s wrong she’s the second. The forums were taken down so I can’t check, but I’m pretty sure the first rp I joined there was a dinosaur rp, where I played like a velociraptor also called Arya (I was very creative). I might’ve written some stuff before that but I don’t remember, so I’ll count this.

3. Have you ever adopted a character or gotten a character from someone else?nope

5. If you could make only one of your OCs popular/known, who would it be? oh jeez. don’t make me choose between my children

7. Are your OCs part of any story or stories?Well, do DnD campaigns count as stories? I’ve also written oneshots for various characters, and I’ve got a giant college au with @spitaverse-burr and @kima-ladyofvord​ that features all our character which could count as a story.

So yeah basically all of them.

9. Would you ever be willing to give any of your OCs to someone else?why?? that’s the main question I have for adoptable OCs just why. not in a judgey way, i just genuinely do not understand

11. Is there any OC of yours you could describe as a “sunshine”? Tanwen. She’s the only pure character I have, all the rest are assholes. Tanwen is an actual ray of sunshine she’s great

13. Do you have any troublemaker OCs? Keiji, 100%. Whisper as well, if it’s something "cool” or if she was dared to. Though, Whisper is still pretty nervous about actually breaking the law, so it depends a bit on what it is.

Raya is not an active troublemaker so much as she has a casual disregard for these odd rules of civilization. She lives in forests like 99% of the time give her a break.

15. Do you like to talk about your OCs with other people?yes

17. Any OC OTPs? oh boy do i ever. Morana and Lux’ Rorik, Temperance and Lux’ Chal, Val and Tori’s Lytte, Keiji/therapy (maybe also Keiji and Lux’ Wyatt), Raya/trees, Tanwen and Lux’ Ghilli (they’d be so cute..)

19. Introduce an OC that means a lot to you (and explain why)All of them, honestly. They’re all a part of me and they’re all very lovely assholes

21. Your most artistic OCNone of them really have a defined artist thing in their canon, but Keiji likes carving little wood birds to keep his hands busy during long watches and the like. Tanwen loves reading sappy romance novels, and in the college au she’s definitely written some terrible friendfiction (it’s like her one big secret, apart from the sister thing). 

23. Introduce OC that has changed from your first idea concerning what the character would be like?this is difficult damn. I think maybe Keiji? The first concept I had for him was “a monk who’s had to leave their order, and is v bitter and angry about it”. His backstory hasn’t changed, but his way of dealing with it has. I ended up dumping a bunch of my issues on him, and now he’s far more betrayed than angry, and he hides it all behind humour and snark. 

Beside him, Morana has also changed. I introduced her as a quiet, pragmatic npc character. Since I started playing her she’s gotten a lot more emotional and she’s found a temper (and a tragic backstory)

25. The OC that resembles you the most (same hobby, height, shared like/dislike for something etc?)As mentioned above, Keiji has a lot of my issues, mainly the selfdestructive habits and never talking about your feelings or being honest about them ever. 

Raya has my love for nature and natural magics. Morana has my curiousity, the love for knowledge and the need to know (even if it comes at the cost of summoning a devil). Whisper has my protectiveness, and subsequent troubles with communicating it. 

Honestly, they all have parts of me, cause well that’s just what happens when you create characters. and i love them all they’re good

27. Any OCs that were inspired by a certain song? nope

29. Which one of your OCs would go investigate an abandoned house at night without telling anyone they’re going?Keiji. Whisper would only do it on a dare so there’d be other people involved. Morana definitely would, because she’s dumb and reckless and in search of cryptids. 

31. Pick one OC of yours and explain what their tumblr blog would be like (what they reblog, layout, anything really)ohohohoho. I recently found the conversation where Lux, Tori, and I talked about this for the college au.

Morana has a blog devoted to cryptids, but she also reblogs all history posts she can find. (she corrects them and adds sources if necessary). Surina isn’t technically in this au, but I could see her running like a fitness blog. Raya has a gardening blog, with tips and logs about her own plants. Val would have a lot of selfies w Lytte (and more pictures of just her), a lot of backstage pics from theatre, actual journal posts on recommendation of their therapist, and a truly worrying amount of posts about how to hide various weapons on your person.

Tanwen would run one of those cutesy study blogs, with prettily coloured to do lists, pictures of an organised workspace, and lots of self care tips for exam week. Keiji has various sideblogs. He has a fitness blog which is also about his martial arts studies, a shitpost meme blog (his main), an edgy aesthetic blog (bruised knuckles, people smoking on top of buildings, that kinda thing), and probably more.

Whisper would run like a proper blog blog, with logs from her many scouting trips and like mountain climbing adventures. Also a lot of pictures from those. Temperance isn’t really interested in going through the hassle (cause y’know blind), and Mokir is a cat. There is a tumblr and a linked twitter account dedicated to every sighting, and pictures and applause whenever he’s attacked someone.

33. Your shyest OC?Either Tanwen or Whisper probably, though neither of them are that bad. Tanwen can speak up and is stubborn enough to defend her opinion when it counts (which is often), and Whisper overcompensates with bluster and rambling.

35. Any sibling characters? Nope. I mean, some of them have siblings, but i don’t have two characters who are siblings

37. Introduce an OC who is not quite human Morana and Temperance are tiefling. They’re a race which used to be human, until they were corrupted by demons, and now they look various levels of demonic. Surina is a dragonborn, so definitely not human. Val is a half-elf, though they’ve passed as both elven and human. Raya is a woodelf. Mokir is a rakashan, so basically an anthro cat. He’s based off like norwegian forest cats, so he’s an already burly and tall man who’s then like 50% fur it’s hilarious. 

39. Introduce any character you want Well in that case let me introduce the characters from The Roles We Play, since they’re not on my blog. Astra is a highelf wizard and she’s adorable. She’s quite shy, but she loves talking about the stars and magic, and someone else always needs to be on watch with her because she will without fail be distracted by watching the stars.

Nira is a human paladin of the Raven Queen. Her family didn’t quite agree with her choice to go study, but she found a second family with the order. She loves adventure, and she’s always the one most eager to explore ancient ruins and dangerous-looking caves.

Rémi is a half-elf bard. He’s the mom friend of the team, armed with exasperation and fond amusement, always ready to talk his friends out of jail. He also carries at least four instruments on his person at any given time.

Vengeance is a tiefling ranger with an owl companion called Hope. They go by Ven, most of the time, and they tend to be a voice of reason. They favour dry humour and snark, and they often spend long watches carving wooden figurines. 

41. Has anyone drawn fanart of your OCs? If yes, maybe show a picture or two here (remember sources & permissions!)Yes! Lux is a gift to god’s good earth and they have a lot of amazing art here, including some of my characters~

43. Do you have any certain type when you create your OCs? Do you tend to favour some certain traits or looks? It’s time to confessWell, one thing I noticed recently-ish is that almost none of my characters tend to be honest with their feelings. Keiji’s the most obvious, but Tanwen, Morana, Surina,  Whisper, Val, Temperance, they all have an element of acting, of being various levels of two-faced, of pretending you’re fine always. They all do it in different ways, but yeah.

Another thing is that I tend to make low charisma characters? like so many of them have cha as their dump stat. I also find it difficult to play low-int characters, so they all tend to have a higher intelligence.

45. A character you no longer use?Not from the characters on my oc page, but there are a shitton of characters from my rp days who I’ve abandoned.

47. Has anyone ever (friendly) claimed any of your OCs as their child?..probably. Can’t recall any specific examples rn, but I think Val’s been adopted more than once, same with Whisper. Val and Lux’ Chal also have a fun au where Chal adopts Val and runs away with her, and they become a family and travel together and it’s all fun and good until Temperance’s assassins manage to chase them down. 

49. Which one of your OCs would most likely enjoy memes Keiji. 100%

[foggyfenmonster]

1, 2, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24!

[from this list!]

thanks so much for the questions!!!

17, 21, and 24 you can find here!

1. When did you get into art?

i’m basically a kid who never stopped drawing; i was interested in art from a very young age! on my birthday i always wanted to go to the art museum, and when my elementary school had an art festival i would coerce my parents into taking me lol :’D

i started drawing in a “serious” way at around… 10 years old? perhaps a little earlier… that’s when i started to share my art with others online! i also went around asking for tips and critique, studying anatomy, practicing my observation skills, exploring new mediums… basically, i started looking to improve, rather than just drawing to not be bored like you do as a child? that’s how i define me “getting into art,” anyway!

2. What art-related sites have you ever signed up for?

strictly art-related: deviantART, Art Fightused for posting art: tumblr, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Toyhouse

6. What levels of artistic education have you had?

i have taken high school art classes and drawing college courses - i’m currently majoring in graphic design, so my journey ends not here…!!

9. What is your least favourite piece that you have done?

i’m going to limit myself to 3 years old at the most (so, 2015-2018 art) and finished pieces only, because hating your old art and digging scrapped doodles out of the trash are both way too easy 

……..with that in mind, this one sucks 

10. What do you like most about your art?

one of my drawing professors said my art has a very personal feel to it, that i capture the physical feel of the human body in the character of my linework, and honestly that’s glowing praise that i can only hope to claim but i do agree my ability to capture people emotionally is pretty strong! i think there’s something deep inside me that just knows the small ways that people seem to behave and it leads people to be able to tell a lot about my subjects just by looking at them

11. What do you like least about your art?

stylistically, it borrows from a lot of style traditions, so i get people who call it “cartoon” and people who call it “anime” in equal numbers annnd i never know what to tell them because i don’t think it fits neatly into either??? :’D 

i also picked up on a lot of ~~~tumblr sjw~~~ art trends by accident and i constantly worry that people think i like steven universe because i like animal crossing noses and draw fat people sometimes

12. Have you ever considered taking commissions?

yes! i want to open them this year…

13. Are you looking to pursue a career in art?

Perhaps… i am studying graphic design obviously but who knows if i’ll actually get a job in that or if i’ll be happy baking bread the rest of my life

14. What do you like drawing the most?

my OCs obviously of course, mostly human creatures, long curly hair, loose fitting clothes, birds, wings/feathers, faces, legs

15. What do you like drawing the least?

animals that are not birds, anthro animals, straight hair, furniture, lace

16. Do you draw more fanart or original art? If fanart, what fandom do you draw the most of?

i draw mostly original art! i don’t know what fandom i’ve drawn the most for even is, honestly… it’s probably between kirby and pokemon?

18. What is your purpose for drawing?

drawing is fun and i like it

i want to tell good stories, i want to make people happy, i want to make people laugh, i want people to have hope for themselves and believe that things will get better for them, and by making art, i strive to improve others’ lives in the same way that art improves my life!

19. What medium/program do you use the most in your art?

digitally, i use a wacom bamboo tablet from 2012, gimp 2.8, and win7 mspaint 

traditionally, i use mechanical pencil and acrylic paint the most! but i have dabbled in stuff like crayons, colored pencils, soft pastels, and polymer clay

interesting fact: a majority of my traditional paintings are done with my left hand and my fingers!

20. How would you rank your art? (poor, mediocre, good, etc.)

my art is Good

23. What do you think you could stand to improve on?

a lot of my techniques could be optimized; as of right now it takes me a really long time to complete anything

subject variety has been a problem of mine for years and years because forcing myself to draw new things is really hard