#animus vitrum

[cinalilli]

4 style excersizes that i'm using as references on my shop for commissions

[fvriva]

-forces you to summarize annivi-

[screams, cries, throws up]

Animus Vitrum (anivi) is an ensemble fantasy-adventure story about a girl bred to house the spirit of a powerful and malevolent necromancer pushing back against her intended destiny of helping a disgraced and bitter god destroy the world.

Autumn, our protagonist, is that girl. Born with an unusually weak constitution for a blood mage with no sign that the soul of the Bloodmaker took hold in her, she was for the first decade or so of her life considered a failed attempt at this ritual and cast aside by her parents. She runs away from home, taken in by her cousin and his husband, where she discovers that she isn't actually magicless, the Bloodmaker was merely lying dormant due to a number of factors.

Overjoyed, Autumn enrolls at Stagfell Academy, the local magical school, where she meets the other characters.

Vernon is a young man that Autumn becomes fast depends with by chance one night, and quickly discovers that he's a) the son of one of the teachers, b) not technically supposed to attend the school, c) not technically supposed to exist, legally, at all, and d) a homunculus created hundreds of years ago by a wizard that's since been hijacked and turned into a bomb by the evil god. Because he's a teenage person on top of being the source of a decades of international security issues, he's the world's worst kept best kept secret, constantly yearning to be a part of a society that doesn't have to tools to handle him.

Olivia is a touch-and-go face from Autumn's childhood, from back before she transitioned. As the daughter of the headmaster and the prodigious heir to the Hart family's heroic legacy, she's high strung, uncharismatic, and occupied singlemindedly with solving the mystery behind her mother's murder.

Naomi is the last of our main characters, as Olivia's girlfriend and Autumn's roommate. Naomi struggles with always playing second fiddle to her more outgoing and talented twin sister, Ruth, and in her desire to keep up with her becomes susceptible to the temptations and manipulations of the god of decay, Ozymandias, posing as her familiar.

Animus Vitrum is a bit of a beast to discuss the plot for, as each major character has a cast of side characters and subplots that quickly become out of hand outside of my primary goal of resolving their main arcs, solving the mysteries of the various conspiracies to destroy the world, and the actions they take to get there. It's also had a number of iterations as I fiddle with the world in which it's set to get it where I'm happy with it. Ideally once I'm at that point, I'll be able to start adapting it into a comic to put on Webtoon.

[cinalilli]

someone take mspaint away from me

[fvriva]

Pls drop the Sleikir lore

Autumn & Vernon | Cy & Newton | Winter

grins. yule upon ye

send an emoji + an oc (or order the WHOLE HOG)

✨- How did you come up with the OC’s name?

Yule Helfeather's name I had picked out for a while because my corny ass wanted to pick a name that evoked "Winter" without being Winter, because I already have one of those in-universe.

Sleikir (usually stylized as SLEIKIR, all-caps) comes from the Yule Lads tale because after watching the Hilda episode about it, I wanted to play with the symbolism more. Her familiar is named Grila to parallel the hag, and she's Sleikir because that's a common suffix on a lot of the Yule Lads' names. It means "licker" in kind of a thievery sense and feels appropriate for a fantasy hacker.

🌼 - How old are they? (Or approximate age range)

This varies a lot. In her appearances in Prophecy she was 14-15, but in her own standalone story she starts it at 15 and then finishes it in her 20s, with most of the action happening when she's 19 or so.

🌺- Do they have any love interest(s)?

A few! I honestly want to give her even more exes because a messy love life really suits her.

The current one she's with (that I envision being endgame) is a nudibranch/slime alien gamer girl named Dwem Glop (her gamertag is GLAEVA). She's a bit of a mess, but she and Yule both are fishes out of water and generally a little coarse, so it works well.

Before that, she was in a longer relationship with a vampyre (fire pun intended) names Piotyr who was ultimately rather unhealthy for her. He got her into doing various vigilante scenes but it turned out he was just setting her up as a fall guy while he had a richboy tantrum against his father (The Winter King), and eventually he left her for dead.

Before that, the only major love interest she had was when she was a kid, a girl in the woods that moved away after a few years, but was enough for a bisexual awakening. (This was originally @cervicrazed 's Bambi, as we used to ship them in n au, but as she's more of a cameo and not overly important to Yule's overall story, I haven't felt the need to strictly canonize or decanonize anytime as arcs have changed.

🍕 - What is their favorite food?

Greasy fast food. Milkshake with fries. Pizza with extremely melty cheese.

💼 - What do they do for a living?

Officially speaking she's currently a warehouse worker but she's had a lot of jobs and gigs, including delivery and retail. Unofficially she's a hacker with questionable methods but ultimately noble intentions.

🎹 - Do they have any hobbies?

Lotta competitive video games. She also likes coding and making amateur electronic music. Unfortunately her taste in a lot of things except music is pretty basic, though she has room for growth.

🎯 -What do they do best?

She's very good at moving unseen, especially getting into places and listening to people that she really shouldn't be, facilitated by her ability to turn into/jump from shadow to shadow. She's actually not all that knowledgeable about computer systems, as she talks to devices directly as a shadow.

🥊 -What do they love to do? What do they hate to do?

She loves being showered in affection and attention by her partner. She also hates being complimented and especially corny shit. It's fine.

She also loves indulging in her vices unabated, of which there are several.

❤️ - What is one of your OC’s best memories?

When she met Dwem, it was in the post-honeymoon phase when she was with Piotyr but things were starting to go stale. They were both blowing off steam playing some trash MMO and Dwem was a mid-level player showing Yule's newb ass the ropes. Turns out, this was an alt account and she was actually one of the top ranked player of this game, but this way she could let off some steam and be herself too.

✂️ - What is one of your OC’s worst memories?

Lying on the ground of a condemned building, lower half of her right arm mangled beyond repair all over the room, freshly betrayed/dumped/left to die/left for the cops by her shitass ex-boyfriend.

🧊 - Is their current design the first one?

It's pretty close. The jacket design changed and she got progressively chunkier in design the more I drew her. She also started taking on some ferret vibes at some point.

🍀 - What originally inspired the OC?

She made her debut in the Sims 4 as a fankid in like 2019, but she's mostly a mixture of fairy tales (namely the Yule Lads and Peter Pan's Shadow), Tulip from Infinity Train, and Harley Quinn from Breaking Glass.

🌂 - What genre do they belong in?

Cyberpunk dystopian sci-fi. She also kind of needs a slight fantasy flavor to feel like herself though, so he WIP is perfect for her.

💚 - What is your OC’s gender identity and sexuality?

Female, bisexual, could be talked into a polycule, she/her. Could be gnc if she worked at it.

🙌 - How many sibling does your OC have?

1, her twin brother Log.

🍎 - What is the OC’s relationship w/their parents like?

She's got a kind of lovingly contentious relationship with her mom, Autumn. Autumn was raised in a really neglectful household, so Yule grew up with a lot more parental supervision and presence that she found a bit stifling as a tween. Her dad, Vernon, she's much closer with because he grew up in a more helicopter-y environment so he tends to advocate for her independence. She also has her auncle Cy, who has been teaching her all kinds of bad habits as she learns how to use her powers.

She accidentally got herself stuck thousands of years in the future and now she just wishes she could take back every stupid thing she's ever said.

🧠 - What do you like most about the OC?

I like how she sucks. I also like how rough around the edges she is, unapologetically, because she's just kind of a bastard! She takes up space and she's not going to be ashamed of that, despite her ability to literally fade away into nothingness where needed.

✏️ - How often do you draw/write about the OC?

Decently often, but most of the time I'm just bullshitting lore about her because I'm currently putting off designing Dwem because nothing I've sketched has been speaking to me especially.

💎 - Do you ever see yourself killing off the OC?

I can see a fakeout, possibly even changing her beyond recognition, but not killing her, no. It just is never the interesting option for me really.

💀 - Does your OC have any phobias?

Mostly interpersonal/intimacy oriented, in that she's super clingy but also independent. But that's less of a phobia than a particular way she's wired.

🍩 -Who is your OC’s arch-nemesis or rival?

100% Piotyr. Once her armless ass rolls up on Dwem's doorstep and she gets herself put back together the rest of the story is going to be about introducing him to the woodchipper.

🎓 - How long have you had the OC?

Wanna say 2019ish. In her current version though, something like 2021. So 3-5 years.

🍥 - What age were you when you created the OC?

Somewhere around 19-21.

[fvriva]

🐖 for Newt & Cy!! What do they look like now??

holy moly, a double whammy! heads up, a lot's different, and the art is a little outdated.

✨- How did you come up with the OC’s name?

Newt: Newt's name was intended to be as generic and boring as possible. Kind of ho-hum. Newton Daley feels pretty successful at it.

Cy: Honestly Cy is a huge placeholder name that kind of stuck. First and foremost it just sounds cool, but it's technically short for Cyclops, because when I first drew them, they had their face obscured by shadow save for their grin and one anime eye. This is the kind of thing that could honestly be revised, haha.

🌼 - How old are they? (Or approximate age range)

Newt: Originally in the story he was the same age as everyone else (15-16) but I'm toying with the concept of having him be a teacher instead because I liked him so much in the prophecy au! Additionally it feels like the cast is like of desperate for positive adult role models so he can kind of step up here. This puts him in his late-40s.

Cy: Cy was created from a scrap of Vernon's husk during the events of the story, making them throughout it only a few weeks to a few months old, as the whole thing takes place over the course of a year.

🌺- Do they have any love interest(s)?

Newt: Nope! He's ace. When he was a student earlier in development he had a platonic-sort-of thing for Cy but as he is now it's purely just fatherly.

Cy: Not currently. In the prophecy au they had a thing for Amanita but we'll just have to see what happens to them in development.

🍕 - What is their favorite food?

Newt: He's been eating bran and prunes and plain oatmeal gleefully since he was a wee tyke.

Cy: They've never had the pleasure of eating food where they are in development but they would enjoy the process of eating. It's fun and an excuse to be messy, even if they don't get anything out of it nutritionally or taste-wise. They'd be super into those styrofoam blocks that hold machined parts in place during transit.

💼 - What do they do for a living?

Newt: He's basically the magic school equivalent of a kindly gym teacher. Specifically focuses on swords. In a modern au coaches girl's volleyball.

Cy: Currently their job is assassin. Their dream job is unemployed.

🎹 - Do they have any hobbies?

Newt: Newt likes to keep busy so he has a lot of homesteading kinds of hobbies. Some textile work, some wood, lots of gardening and animal husbandry (especially beekeeping).

Cy: Not yet in canon, but after the story they hang out a lot with Newt and figure out what they like. They'd probably like camping honestly. Something about being out in nature, dissociating between spirit and body surrounded by life.

🎯 -What do they do best?

Newt: Genuinely, he doesn't especially excel in one particular area, but he is a reasonably talented swordsman to the point that they put him in change of training in that area. He's also incredibly kind.

Cy: They don't have any particular skills. Even as an assassin, which they're trained for, most of what they can do is because of cheap tricks and magical items they've been given. But so far, theoretically, it's murder.

🥊 -What do they love to do? What do they hate to do?

Newt: He hates having to yell. Nobody likes it when he does either, because he's not even brooding beforehand or afterwards, so it always just takes people completely by surprise every time. As for things he loves to do, he gets a lot of joy from tutoring someone one-on-one.

Cy: Cy hates people telling them what to do, which is basically their entire existence so far. It'll only get worse as it goes on because they value their freedom so much. Consequently their favorite thing to do is the opposite of what they're told... even if that's what you wanted all along. They're not smart enough to know what reverse psychology is yet.

❤️ - What is one of your OC’s best memories?

Newt: He's lived a pretty full life with a lot of happy memories. It's hard to pick just one, but it's probably one where he's teaching.

Cy: Later on in the story, Newt chooses to spare their life at great personal cost (he partially turns to gold). It's the first time someone treated them as valuable and worthy of grace despite the circumstances, and they hold this memory in high regard.

✂️ - What is one of your OC’s worst memories?

Newt: There was a disaster that happened at his sister's workplace and she was missing for a long time. This is a plot thread that kind of goes nowhere but he was up all night worried out of his mind for her.

Cy: Like Vernon, they're subject to the nightmares that come as a result of their amalgam nature, though due to their dissociative abilities with As Above/So Below they can avoid a lot of these thoughts, but at some point when they're whole and merged they need to rest, and they hate it every time.

🧊 - Is their current design the first one?

Newt: Not even a little bit. Newt's initial gimmick was that he was supposed to be an incidentally faceless character, then his face changed to be modeled after Jon Duckdotcom, then I made him a dilf, and now we're here.

Cy: Yes and no. I'm in the process of redesigning them to follow more of a rogue clone kind of arc, but haven't put this to paper yet. As for the design in most of the art I have of them, it's basically identical to the first drawing I made of them all those years ago.

🍀 - What originally inspired the OC?

Newt: The Boy Scouts of America.

Cy: Damien Wayne. And one of the prompts during Inktober.

🌂 - What genre do they belong in?

Newt: Honestly? He started as joke pastiche character riffing on a certain kind of non-threataning blandman that exists a lot as a buffer in the cast. He still is kind of a buffer, but now I think he'd be perfect in a comedy.

Cy: They're peak sci-fi honestly. Love an evil clone with sick swords and an edgy hood.

💚 - What is your OC’s gender identity and sexuality?

Newt: Cis male aroace

Cy: Agender, still figuring the rest out.

🙌 - How many sibling does your OC have?

Newt: Several. He's the oldest of 6. Most of them aren't super important but had established dynamics when he was a teen character that just don't fit well now. They're all named after Earth scientists, canonically wizards of antiquity from humanity's distant past. The most important one is Rosalind Daley, investigative journalist. She's the one that went missing. Pascal, Joules, Darwin are the rest of the kids.

Cy: Technically Vernon is like a brother to them, and probably the closest time they have to a sibling. But there's also all the failed clones that are basically just mindless blobs of matter. If they count.

🍎 - What is the OC’s relationship w/their parents like?

Newt: They're long dead at this point but good! They challenged him and were generally very supportive and proud of all their kids.

Cy: They were brought into this world by Ozymandias and hated him so much they joined the party trying to kill him. And turned the tide, allowing them to succeed. So bad.

🧠 - What do you like most about the OC?

Newt: Newt surprises me because I didn't expect his character to touch on something genuine and heartfelt in the planning phase. Hopefully it follows us to the page as well.

Cy: Cy has a special place in my heart because of how fucked up their given circumstances were, but how much they tried to do something about it. Not gonna lie they really do kind of suck as a person even by the end of the story because they're only just starting to grow and change, but you hopefully get kind of a sense that it's not the end for them. And hopefully they're fun to watch despite it all.

✏️ - How often do you draw/write about the OC?

Newt: Not often these days though technically his art is newer because of his prophecy au cameo. In it, he had fancy prosthetic arms and served as a plot hook for the party finding the engineer that made them.

Cy: I haven't drawn them in a hot minute but I used to love doodling them. However I have written them a bit in the prophecy au. Unfortunately because I needed an antagonist for Yule's arc and I was operating under the assumption that this was an alternate timeline where they didn't get the kind of help when they needed it and things were very different for them, so I ended up kind of character assassinating them in front of the squad. Even now this is their impression of Cy which is a crying shame :/

💎 - Do you ever see yourself killing off the OC?

Newt: I could see it but it wouldn't make sense within the scope of Animus Vitrum really. However he will die at some point of old age.

Cy: I think a good death would probably fix them. Or make them worse. I dunno. Regardless they're also sticking around, being a menace, ect.

💀 - Does your OC have any phobias?

Newt: Nope!

Cy: That they know of.

🍩 -Who is your OC’s arch-nemesis or rival?

Newt: He's much too normal to have one of these.

Cy: Their "brother" Vernon. And Olivia Hart (self declared)

🎓 - How long have you had the OC?

Newt: I think I must've made him in late 2018-early 2019. So about 5-6 years.

Cy: I made them in October of 2018 I think? So 5 years.

🍥 - What age were you when you created the OC?

Newt: 18-19. Though the refresh occurred in like 2021, when I was 20.

Cy: 18.

send me an oc + an emoji (or order the WHOLE HOG)

[fvriva]

The whole 🐖 for vernautumn 😏

i'll be answering the clover ask first and then put the rest behind a readmore, haha

send me emoji asks about my ocs!

🍀 - What originally inspired the OC?

Autumn: At the time, I was getting into Webtoons for the first time (though after a lifetime of being into webcomics as a whole) and as an experiment, I tried to engineer the most generic female lead from the tropes I currently liked reading. That basically culminated as three main influences:

Shin-Ae Yoo from I Love You. I wanted to make a story with a protagonist that was spunky, but not bubbly, despite all the hardships she had to deal with in her life. A lot of Autumn's voice in my head is very much like Shin-Ae's still.

Amy from Space Boy. I wanted to make a story about an outsider, a fish out of water, slowly finding her place in the world while at the same time finding common ground with a fellow outsider. Both my approach and the source material took a very different route eventually.

Ava Ire from Ava's Demon. This is another influence that stuck around more closely, though originally Wrathia's dynamic with Ava was originally intended to be a parallel with Autumn and Winter, who later became cousins rather than haunted soul-evil tulpa.

Vernon: Like Autumn, I made Vernon originally as a way to try and engineer a comic I'd want to read. He wasn't originally a homunculus, just a cringe little witch. But here are his top three:

Kody from LUMINE. I originally wanted to do something with a witch that couldn't do magic conventionally, a theme that I ended up splitting in half with Autumn as well.

Winter from Winter Woods. This was the first true Frankenstein romance Webtoon I'd read, and despite everything I've got a really special place in my heart for it. You can thank Winter for Vernon's eyebrows.

Oliver from Space Boy. This one was primarily to complete the set with Amy as Autumn, but his arc actually has stayed pretty close to the way Vernon developed as a character! Or at least, it feels that way to me.

✨- How did you come up with the OC’s name?

Autumn: Both Autumn and Vernon are relics from when the project was named "Seasonal Depression", which was an early version of the project where Autumn was being haunted by Winter and Summer, a left-right brain pastiche. Her family name of Saffworth refers to both her hair, the exorbitant price of saffron the spice, and the little purple flowers on the saffron plant. Flaxsong, her adoptive family's surname after she runs away, is intended to evoke both their fiber business and history of bardic storytelling.

Vernon: Vernon was designed as Autumn's foil, so he had to be named a spring name. Simple as. Helfeather was mostly just the edgiest dark-witch name I could come up with. (He was originally supposed to be Vernon Helfeather-Cravitz--Cravitz was the surname of his nonmagical deadbeat dad. He now doesn't have a dad at all!)

🌼 - How old are they? (Or approximate age range)

Autumn: She starts the story at 15, but she was 12 when she officially ran away from home. I have aus where she's in her 30s as well, as I also have a few stories dedicated to their eventual children.

Vernon: Vernon is a weird one. He only has about 14 years worth of consistent memory and maturation at the beginning of the story, but he's been around for a few thousand years, rebooting and resetting like a bad computer. He'll eventually get to grow up a bit, and could be around indefinitely.

🌺- Do they have any love interest(s)?

They are each other's love interests! Autumn also has a lingering crush on her childhood friend, Olivia, but when they meet in the story Olivia already has a girlfriend. Vernon has never gotten close to people before Autumn in that way.

🍕 - What is their favorite food?

Autumn: She's famously very picky as for most of her life before the Bloodmaker woke up, she couldn't eat most things without getting sick. During this phase of her life, it was probably bread and butter, not toasted. After the Bloodmaker wakes up and she grows comfortable with trying new things, she finds she really likes spicy foods. She'd love a sichuan hot pot broth or a classic tteokbokki.

Vernon: He physically has no tastebuds or need to eat. It's sticks.

💼 - What do they do for a living?

Autumn: After the events of the story she actively turns away from the medical field and dives into the Flaxsong family business. She manages sales and helps manufacture fabric. She especially enjoys dyeing thread and coming up with cool skeins.

Vernon: Vernon has always wanted to have a very public-facing magical research career, giving Nobel Prize speeches and whatnot. However after he's finally allowed to go to school and graduate he realizes he's way too socially awkward for that. Now he just tinkers in his garage and stays at home with the kids.

🎹 - Do they have any hobbies?

Autumn: Autumn likes watching horror movies (which don't exist in her setting, but, y'know, a girl can dream) and making shitty little dolls (either with fabric or, y'know, flesh). She also would LOVE a violent video game....

Vernon: Vernon enjoys people-watching, drawing, and reading. Although he craves being with people, he's also probably one of my more introverted characters.

🎯🥊 - What do they do best? What do they love to do? What do they hate to do?

Autumn: Autumn has an innate sense for both her and other peoples' physical bodies and anatomy both per the Bloodmaker and her time as a Saffworth having it drilled into her head. She hates engaging with that kind of magic except on her own terms, though. She's adept at but doesn't enjoy magical healing because she's aware of its capacity to harm. She learned to enjoy working with textiles and has gotten pretty good at it over the years, though.

Vernon: Vernon has a lot of very small talents that he doesn't even know about fully, stored in his muscle memory. He's also a very fast reader and usually had pretty good information retention despite his memory issues. He loves learning new things and trying to come up with creative ways to approach problems that accommodate his needs better. However, he hates putting himself in even minorly risky situations, because he hates the threat of losing all of his progress every time he gets a small injury.

❤️ - What is one of your OC’s best memories?

Autumn: Sometime midway into the story, possibly offscreen, there's some kind of mundane luncheon where both her adoptive guardians, Vernon and his family, and some of her friends are all spending a lazy afternoon together decompressing after a stressful week. Everyone is happy and lively and chatting together and well-fed.

Vernon: In one of Vernon's lingering first memories from when her resets in front of Autumn, and instead of recoiling in fear and disgust or a similar reaction, she instead helps cut him free of his husk and gives him a big hug.

✂️ - What is one of your OC’s worst memories?

Autumn: This one's tough but it's probably something from her childhood. I haven't fully ironed out all the Horrors but it was probably at the hands of her cousin, Winter, and it probably was what gave her the inertia to finally leave. She's got a lot of educational, medical, and familial trauma in general.

Vernon: The benefit of having chronic memory issues is he does tend to lose a lot of the bad memories, but one that lingers is an especially nasty one from a couple dozen years ago where he got injured, reset, freaked out whichever peers he was with, and that event started a chain reaction where he almost melted down. (read: went thermonuclear and exploded like a bomb)

🧊 - Is their current design the first one?

Autumn's outfit changed from being very preppy to just being cold at all times, but her hair has stayed pretty consistent. Vernon has always worn the same thing but the hoodie pattern/colors changed. He used to have longer, blue hair, and the specific hue of purple used shifts, but he's also pretty similar to his original form in ways.

🌂 - What genre do they belong in?

Autumn: Honestly, she lends herself a little better to a political noble family drama story than what Animus Vitrum actually is, which is an adventure fantasy, but she also does pretty well in a modern setting.

Vernon: Vernon is PEAK sci-fantasy. Rogue alchemist's spawn. If anything, Tela is too mundane for his ass.

💚 - What is your OC’s gender identity and sexuality?

Autumn is a bisexual cis girl. As for Vernon, honestly , he's probably aspec to a degree, but he loves Autumn wholly. He's also physically speaking basically...intersex? Kind of? He doesn't have a lot of the built-in sexual characteristics to the degree of it causing him some discomfort. It's complicated.

🙌 - How many siblings does your OC have?

Autumn: No blood siblings, but she was raised alongside her cousin Winter. She's got a lot of cousins in general.

Vernon: Cy is an imperfect clone made from one of Vernon's old husks by Ozymandias to try and kill him. After they chill out a bit they're kind of like a sibling, sorta.

🍎 - What is the OC’s relationship w/their parents like?

Autumn: BAD! Autumn's father was mostly neglectful of her and she only tended to interact with him when he was asking about her magical potential, and when he didn't receive the answer he wanted, he'd simply dismiss her. Her mother was more hands-on abusive, and had a penchant for pitting her against Winter constantly.

Vernon: He's got two moms and like, two not-dads. His moms are very sweet and they look out for him, but they have a tendency to be a little bit protective of him given his overall history and needs. Amelli in particular is also very concerned with the fact that Vernon's existence is technically a national security concern, where Clove is more worried about his emotional well-being. Vernon was technically created by a sorcerer a few thousand years ago and has kind of conflicting feelings about that. And then Ozymandias featured strongly enough in his more recent life to cause him a lot of problems, to say he doesn't like him is kind of an understatement.

🧠 - What do you like most about the OC?

Autumn: Autumn's managed to really worm her way into my friends' hearts with her pre-story quiet and shy demeanor. It's going to be exciting once I finally get around to writing her coming out of her shell. I'm looking forward to it.

Vernon: I'm very proud of Vernon's personal cocktail of gender issues, chronic physical/mental disability issues, and of the way he hatches from his own skin like a cicada. He just exudes such potent narrative vibes and I'm always a little in awe of it.

✏️ - How often do you draw/write about the OC?

Not as frequently as I have in years past, if I'm being honest. I did rp both Autumn and Vernon a few years back with @the-goblin-cat's Cherise and Neville to try and figure out their voices and I vastly enjoyed doing that. I've mostly just been both too busy with commercial projects and writing Exordium, but also too intimidated by the project to make solid headway into it.

💎 - Do you ever see yourself killing off the OC?

Autumn: Not really, except as a fakeout with the Bloodmaker. She's textually immortal due to it, and I have too many plans for her going forward in the story.

Vernon: Also not really, though if we're splitting hairs, he's kind of dying every few arcs and is also textually immortal, if not coming back changed.

💀 - Does your OC have any phobias?

Autumn: She's actually pretty fearless despite everything! She isn't very fond of pristine environments or disturbing imagery, but while she's able to easily avoid the first thing by allowing herself to take up space, the second she's actually been able to acclimate to it to a degree through the Bloodmaker and a burgeoning fascinating with horror media.

Vernon: He's rather squeamish. He has a tendency to be very careful whenever doing anything and will take any available precautions, as he's got a bad history with injury. He also tends to be very guarded and reserved emotionally, even with his friends, though it tends to just look like his normal bubbly self.

🍩 -Who is your OC’s arch-nemesis or rival?

Autumn: Her cousin Winter is an early antagonist and hurdle for Autumn to overcome. While Winter does have her own cluster of problems from her upbringing, she and Autumn's dynamic is bad for both of them, and Autumn finally being able to beat Winter at something sets Winter on a path towards getting her shit together. She and Vernon also share her other cousin, Emrys, as a nemesis, as he's kind of the antithesis to her "puppet of the family bloodline" narrative.

Vernon: Vernon has TWO arch-nemeses, their clone/sibling Cy, a fellow homunculus, and Autumn's cousin Emrys, who has pretty similar aspirations to him.

🎓🍥 - How long have you had the OC? What age were you when you created the OC?

I made both of these guys close to the same time, in roughly late high school, probably something like 18. (I'm currently 24, as of writing this, which makes this project 6 years old.) I was in the throes of teenaged hormones and this was a great way for me to vent in the moment, but I've since matured out of/moved away from the issues that incited a lot of the edgier subject matter central to this story. In the time since, I've also begun to reapproach teenagedom from the perspective a teacher working with this age-group, so this kind of change in perspective is also what's contributing to all the changes I've made to these characters.

[cinalilli]

[PORTRAIT] autumn

autumn in [black and red by lace garden]

[fvriva]

Whole hog winter 🐽

Vamonos

Thanks for the ask! I missed my girlllll 🥹🥹🥹🥺🥺🥺

Autumn & Vernon | Cy & Newton

send an emoji + an oc (or order the WHOLE HOG)

✨- How did you come up with the OC’s name?

Winter Carthmarrow in a lot of ways was designed to be alongside Autumn Saffworth, especially back when the project was called Seasonal Depression as a goofy pun as opposed to Animus Vitrum. Carthmarrow combines the bone theme (to go along with Autumn's blood theme) with a sense of destruction and fire (Carthago delenda est).

🌼 - How old are they? (Or approximate age range)

18-21. Her arc is a little longer than Autumn's to finish.

🌺- Do they have any love interest(s)?

Winter has had a couple over the course of her existence, but I'm currently in the process of reworking hers.

Originally she was meant to be paired with Summer/Midsomnir Titania because they were designed as opposite spirits for each other, but I've been wanting someone more conniving for her ever since playing with @mitspeiler and his girl Elmindreda as her partner. I think based on that, she would do well with someone conniving and devious, but dense and headstrong in her own way.

🍕 - What is their favorite food?

She likes salads, wraps, protein bars, and protein shakes/smoothies. Lots of health food that can be eaten pretty quickly and on-the-go. She also likes black coffee.

💼 - What do they do for a living?

Winter is currently a magic student that specializes in fire magic. She expects she'll inherit a number of shares in the family business when she comes of age, given that Autumn is pretty much worthless for it and incompetent in the business world. In a modern au she's practically built to be a lawyer as well.

🎹 - Do they have any hobbies?

She has a few but they're not especially enjoyable. Mostly just working out, training, studying, maybe playing an instrument. That sort of thing.

🎯 -What do they do best?

Winter genuinely is very talented at learning new spells quickly. She also has impeccable fashion sense.

🥊 -What do they love to do? What do they hate to do?

She loves dancing. It's a skill she's cultivated for social/heiress reasons, but she especially loves to teach girls their first ballroom moves.

She hates actually putting up with the male partners she ends up with during those. It takes everything she's got to be civil about it. She also gets easily frustrated in general, as she doesn't take criticism well (even self-directed).

❤️ - What is one of your OC’s best memories?

It's a memory that's soured since she left home, but one time she was exceptionally good at some milestone or test or competition, and Blanche let her loose at a fancy boutique with the credit card. Her Aunt even bought her something to eat afterwards.

✂️ - What is one of your OC’s worst memories?

I think I will keep the duel canon, meaning that after throwing the match because she doesn't want to kill [love interest], Blanche stabs her in a way that will incapacitate but not harm her long-term, with the intent of shipping her off to marry some loathsome political ally.

🧊 - Is their current design the first one?

It's pretty close! Honestly the only thing that's really changed is the specifics of her dress and her jewelry. Her palette and a lot of her facial features have been pretty set since day 1. The main thing that's changed is her role in the story.

🍀 - What originally inspired the OC?

Todoroki from My Hero Academia. Winter was originally born out of a cartoony split-personality au for him before I turned them all into their own characters, and also girls. She's also heavily inspired by the Schnees from RWBY. And my love for hot, mean, misunderstood women.

🌂 - What genre do they belong in?

I could see her in basically any drama, especially something with a competitive social element like business-themed. However, she's in a high fantasy adventure story currently, on a journey of self-discovery.

💚 - What is your OC’s gender identity and sexuality?

Cis lesbian, she/her.

🙌 - How many siblings does your OC have?

No siblings as she was orphaned at a young age. Autumn is her only sister-figure.

🍎 - What is the OC’s relationship w/their parents like?

Winter was very close with her mother, Rosé, and her father, Enamuel, and they loved her very much. After they died when she was two or so she was taken in by her Aunt Blanche and Uncle Theros, who were always a little distant. It got worse when Autumn was born and they started neglecting her, but it got slightly better as she proved to be very talented where Autumn proved to be somewhat of a dud, magically speaking. It was never very wholesome or supportive of an environment though.

🧠 - What do you like most about the OC?

I like how she's got the mixture of the extreme competence and talent with the utter incompetence when it comes to intimacy and vulnerability. She also SUCKS but I can fix her.

✏️ - How often do you draw/write about the OC?

Rather frequently! I used to actively roleplay Winter and I really must say she's one of my favorites. I draw her quite a bit too.

💎 - Do you ever see yourself killing off the OC?

I don't think so. She doesn't get to weasel out of all the shit she's done that easily.

💀 - Does your OC have any phobias?

Even with her fire magic, she gets kind of nervous around uncontrolled large fires. She's also scared of intimacy, especially with her internalized homophobia.

🍩 -Who is your OC’s arch-nemesis or rival?

Ideally she would have one of each: a rival that pushes her to be better and better that she events falls in love with, and an arch-nemesis shitty betrothed that doesn't care about all that, just wanting to use her for her bloodline.

🎓 - How long have you had the OC?

Since late 2017, so 6ish years.

🍥 - What age were you when you created the OC?

I would've been 16!

[fvriva]

12 for Winter and her girlfrieeeend

12. Is your OC self-destructive? In what ways?

Winter, being my oc in particular, is much easier for me to answer for.

Winter is self destructive in that she has a tendency to punish herself when she falls short. Some of it is through learned behaviors of self-deprivation. She's starved herself and kept herself awake (and training) as punishments for failure before. She also tends to push everyone else away from her preemptively when she feels emotionally inadequate, especially with her own sense of her lesbian identity and feelings for Elmindreda. She's petty, she's vindictive, and she's at her worst when she's in this state, so she's learned to remove herself from the situation as a means of damage control.

As for Elmindreda, here's what @the-goblin-cat to say about her:

ask me questions about my ocs

[cinalilli]

made some sprite art for vernon and autumn as though they were in some kind of game with vn elements!

[cinalilli]

after over five years of sitting in my wips, i finally finished this! we have autumn as trevor, with their spunky attitudes and diverse pugilist skills; vernon as sypha, with their casting tendancies and sheltered backgrounds; and olivia as alucard, with their flairs for the dramatic, precise sword prowess, and unshakeable urge for revenge.

[fvriva]

Gimme Exordium and Anivi for that orange ask game, first question

ORANGE - Describe the world!

ANIMUS VITRUM: I didn't talk much about the world in this other ask, only the characters. The world name here is currently Tela (though I keep going back and forth on the names for this setting), and is largely intended to be a dark fantasy vaguely themed after pre-modernist Europe. Running rampant throughout it are a number of capricious gods and spirits; three notable ones include:

The Seelie Queen, Vesna Oberon (current), Midsomnir Titania (previous), Lady of the Endless Hunt

The Weaver of the Tapestry (the one that consists of the fabric of time and space), and their Threadbearer attendants

The Unseelie King (gender neutral term), Hel (current), Ozymandias (previous), Lord of the End

Humanity isekaied to Tela thousands of years ago and immediately found it difficult to survive after having been essentially reduced to the Stone Age. They quickly splintered into nomadic groups and began to adapt in genetically divergent ways (into something adjacent but not identical to stock fantasy races) to the many, many threats. Humanity as we'd know it is extinct on Tela.

EXORDIUM: This world I went into a bit in a different ask, but here's an overview! The world of Exordium doesn't have an overall name currently, but in it, day, night, and the celestial firmament (and the celestial mechanisms that help facilitate the movement of the heavens--like gears in an astrolabe). Overall, the world used to be a standard globe

The Day-Plane, Wickrath, is locked in permanent day. People survive in the shadows of the giants, ancient earth elementals that are as large as the mountains themselves, and move slowly enough for societies to either settle directly on their bodies or gather in their shadows. However, the giants are ancient, inexplicable in the movements, and seem to war with one another. Albeit at the timescale of a landslide.

Wickrath is also, consequently, in the Sun's domain, and has many practitioners of the Sun's magic of Oaths, contracts, and exchanges. Still working out a lot of the mechanics here, but it's pretty much just animism.

The Night-Plane, Musaphia, is locked in permanent night. They're able to get by with low-light plants and funguses, though there's several ancient structures with with highly-sought-after magical relics that can command the elements and help people survive.

Musaphia is also riddled with pockets of dream magic, the Moon's domain. Dream magic, unlike oath magic, is entirely mental and metaphysical. It can't create something from nothing the way that Oath magic can, but it's the most versatile form of magic available.

The Twiling-Plane, Eikas, is the heavenly firmament between the day and night planes. Many of the spirits had voluntarily retreated into Eikas at the end of the war, but in the centuries that have since elapsed, extended proximity and restrictions have caused tensions to rise. Many spirits, out of a sense of claustrophobia, have been agreeing to be reborn as angels purely for the opportunity to leave.

orange worldbuilding asks

[cinalilli]

[PORTRAIT] winter

drew winter :] catty, vindictive fire elementalist with mommy issues also made a tileable butterfly pattern to go along with her

[cinalilli]

gave olivia and naomi the vernautumn treatment and made them some sprites! olivia and naomi are up on artfight!

[fvriva]

Gimme that GINGER for anivi and exordium

GINGER - What does the average person look like? How close are they to humans in reality?

ANIMUS VITRUM: There's a few major races on Tela! Most of humanity has either kind of mutated into their own thing or become integrated with the indigenous population, but there's still some differences.

Vitra are the largest group of surviving humans, distinguishable by the fact that every vitra is born with one, if not two innately known abilities. One is incredibly personal to themselves and often relates to their role as an individual within the Tapestry. The other is Animus Vitrum, the ability to create and use Heartglass. Vitra frequently pass on these abilities both genetically and naturally, the way one might inherit their parents' trade. They also tend to mutate intergenerationally depending on how long a bloodline has been cultivated.

Elfin-folk are descended from people that turned to making agreements (or even worshipping) the fae for an endowment of magic. They often have pointed ears and tails as well as some form of fur or scale-like skin variations depending on the type of agreement made in antiquity. Many tend to live in the frontiers and have more naturalistic color palettes that reflect the land.

Huldras are analogous but not identical to dwarves. They are a group of people that found shelter from the fae, given a particular magic that let them survive underground by storing a light inside their chests. This also gives them access to a potentially endless amount of storage space, given the contents of their bodies. Huldra have an extra finger and often gravitate towards reflective objects.

Beast-folk all have a variety of origin points, from being cursed into the form of another animal, to intermarriage between a human and a fae, to an animal that has been blessed with enlightenment and raised to the spiritual power of the fae. Beast-folk have a range of presentations as well on the hybrid animal spectrum, though they tend to skew reptilian if they're from Earth.

Indigenous Tela peoples tend to be extremely similar to the beast folk, but most are talented shapeshifters by nature and take on highly personal and contextual forms. There's three notable ones: Gvnomes, Mer-folk, and the Fae themselves.

EXORDIUM: Exordium has less-strict rules on what people look like, though the lore has kind of determined that humans overall are more common than otherwise. People have roughly the same variation as one might see in an shounen anime. There are elves and goblins which can have inhuman skin tones and eye colors. Elementals have a vast range of presentations but they're usually within what one might expect for them. The main thing here, really, are angels, which can be divided into the old style (ethereal figures made of solid gold light and matching vessels) and the new style (they just took whatever materials they had lying around and smelted an angel out of it).

orange worldbuilding asks

[fvriva]

comprehensive list of creatures:

lizards

chameleons

salamanders

turtles

tortoises

geckos

komodo dragons

frogs

bullfrogs

toads

tree frogs

tree frogs (poisonous)

snakes

rattlesnakes

bearded dragons

skinks

constrictors

gila monsters

alligators

crocodiles

skink

the dinosaur from jurassic park that can spit acid at you

iguana

horned toads

olms

this guy