wetbloodworm

[wetbloodworm]

also i whipped up a quick new icon for artfight. blep :p

[wetbloodworm]

DOING ARTFIGHT THIS YEAR LETS GOOOO

[wetbloodworm]

thinking about aiverse some

specifically how androids are designed to have a few little tells that ID them as androids right off the bat. they've got the little metal bits on their faces that are often similar to cp77 cyberware, and often at least one hand has metal bits as well where they can interface with electronics in various ways. some might have more markings on the body, but the face is standard and hands are extremely common. they're not strictly functional - the metal on the hands isn't necessary to make the interface work - but there's a purpose aside from aesthetics. i'm thinking it might be like. federally mandated? thinking about the US specifically since i can't be spending my time working out how every country handles different things lmao. anyway, it makes sense to me that it'd be mandated that robots need to be identifiable as robots, and this is particularly important for those designed to look like humans or other living creatures. there's all kinds of reasons why knowing that what you're dealing with is a robot is important. for androids, since they're made to look as close to humans as possible, putting something right on the face is the most efficient way to do this.

as a side note, robotics companies copyright their designs. zeph's face markings and hand pattern are Chapetek branded designs and makes him immediately recognizable as one of their models. like slapping a ford logo on him.

the main thing that i'm bringing this up for is like. what if a person wanted to have plastic surgery to get those kinds of markings? put some metal in their face, look more like a robot. i'm sure loads of people would be super into that. i feel like that would ALSO be regulated, though, like. it defeats the purpose of making androids be marked as robots if people can have those same identifiers. surgeons legally aren't able to modify people to have android markings. now, that doesn't mean NO ONE has ever done it. where there's a will there's a fucking way, y'know? there's ways. would someone who gets the metal facial markings from Some Random Guy who was willing to do it get in legal trouble for it? can you be legally forced to get the markings removed? there are huge debates on bodily autonomy regardless but it'd be so much worse if you could be court-ordered to undergo a procedure to get the metal back out of your face. i feel like it's more like you'll get a huge fine for it. and it'll absolutely cause you trouble in real life, if people mistake you for an android. it's... not necessarily a SMART choice to make for yourself. also god help you if you get a copyrighted design etched into your face.

now, a thing that i think is much more common is like just... makeup. metallic makeup in fun little patterns. if you do it well enough you can still run into trouble if people mistake you for an android, but mostly it's just a trend certain age groups or subcultures tend to play around with. makeup artists can have a lot of fun with that kinda thing.

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okay so this is a fun little guy but this is actually a really personal piece for me lol

my therapist and i were talking about how there can be a benefit to personifying your disorders or symptoms or whatever, like how it's comforting or helpful to sometimes separate it from yourself and examine your symptoms as an external thing. that's definitely a thing i've done for a long time so it was cool hearing it from a professional! she also described OCD obsessions as a bad roommate standing outside your room with a bullhorn, which i loved, but i wanted to edit that mental image because i picture my OCD not as A Guy but as A Creature. which of course has been done before by all kinds of artists before but, y'know, 'holy shit two cakes' etc etc

so! OCD creature!! i'm going to elaborate on the design and thought process under the cut because this gets long and, as always, i talk So Much, but i care about your scrolling experience lol

oh wait first i don't want this hidden under the cut: for the black one i eyeballed jakdaw's art piece here to get an idea of how to stylize an iggy and have a solid base to design this little guy

okay so. the bullhorn was a critical aspect of the design because of that conversation, and i do love an object head. the color scheme is because i looked up 'colors that make people anxious' and i didn't even read the section this one article had on white because the associated photo was of like an ultra modern super white kitchen and i immediately went 'oh yeah no absolutely that's it'. then red feels obvious. the chain tail.... i can't articulate that one. it was instinct, i drew a regular tail first then suddenly went 'no. chain'. and i didn't question it

and then, okay, the italian greyhound body. why the italian greyhound body. i mean they're highly anxious dogs so that felt right, but also there was an element of wanting to make the body something small, and something that i have positive associations with. not that i feel positively about my OCD to any degree, but like... hm. if i'm personifying this creature, i don't think of it as malicious. it's blaring horrible distressing things at me but it's not trying to be cruel. it's just so so scared all the time and it can see every tiny thing that could ever possibly go wrong and sometimes things that couldn't possibly go wrong but what if they did somehow and it absorbs everything that i'm horrified by or scared of or disgusted by and it has to shout all those things at me full-blast all the time. it can't not shout those things at me, it's a bullhorn, it's designed to shout. maybe sometimes it's trying to protect or warn me. maybe sometimes it doesn't want to be alone with these terrible things. maybe sometimes it's just crying. maybe sometimes it's just trying to engage with me but all it can do is shout. it's not trying to hurt me. it IS hurting me, but it's not trying to.

i think there's also an aspect of like... yes, we're personifying and separating my OCD from myself, but when it comes down to it it CAN'T be separated from me. it IS part of me. and i've spent and currently spend enough time feeling negatively about parts of myself. i didn't want to design a creature to hate. i can hate what it does but i don't want to hate it, that distinction is important somehow. making it something i can feel sympathetic towards even if it's distressing or hurtful feels more helpful than making it something that's solely here for me to hate. also making it a dog gives it the feeling of being something i'm responsible for taking care of, which feels right somehow?

so yeah. this little guy is sharp and loud and distressing and so so so hard to ignore but it's also just a creature doing its best. i just have to learn how to work with it and learn how to get it to crank that volume down so it's not hurting me as much or as often. i have to teach it that most of the things it's so so scared of won't actually hurt us, that it doesn't HAVE to be so so scared.

idk. this was just really nice to draw and talk about.

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whipped up a quick merri for his artfight profile and i liked him. my boy

[wetbloodworm]

there's a trend in my dnd ocs where the character runs away from/leaves their home and family with no intent to go back (permanently or for the foreseeable future). this is different from just leaving home for other reasons, the critical feature is 'won't go back or feels like they can't even if nothing is physically stopping them'. sometimes it's because they felt stifled and want to live freely, sometimes it's for their or someone else's safety, sometimes it's to avoid something or someone, sometimes it's because they hate their family. often it's a combination of these things. i'm sure this says something about me.

examples:

temerity - felt stifled and wanted to live freely, hates his family

merripen - felt stifled and wanted to live freely, safety concerns (himself from the other gardeners)

niamh - felt stifled and wanted to live freely, safety concerns (herself from the hag), hates her family

cathan - avoiding something (their parents)

anthera - avoiding something (her family), safety concerns (her family from herself)

blush - avoiding something (people knowing they're undead)

kyenneth - felt stifled and wanted to live freely, doesn't HATE their family but huge disagreements there, avoiding something (royal responsibilities)

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im in the stage of workdbuilding for tehahs where i'm developing the dating system and calendar. gotta work out major events to trigger the start of a new age (got two so far) and figure out how many years are in each age. the ages are named after gems and minerals: the equivalent to BCE, so year -1 going back to the start of creation, is called the Zircon Age (shorthand like -300 ZiA) because zircon is the oldest mineral found on earth and that's fun to me. i'm having a fucking blast.

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zenith finally got his hands on some diamonds in yesterday's session!!! only 200g out of the 5000g he needs lmao but progress is progress!

a fun character development bit that came up for me was when he asked for anti-theft enchantments and the enchanter said she could make it so either just he would be immune from the alarm, or him AND his friends. and zenith earlier on in the campaign would've wanted only him to be able to access the diamonds, but he's grown to have at least enough trust in the friends to feel like he doesn't have to worry about them stealing from him. like yeah, these are INCREDIBLY rare and INCREDIBLY valuable, but his friends are nice people. they're actually his friends, in a deeper sense than he usually uses the term. he trusts that they wouldn't steal from him. if they were to go for his diamonds, it would be because they genuinely need them, like getting them to mercy for resurrection purposes. i feel like there's the potential that zenith might have different opinions on who deserves resurrection than the others do lmao but we'll cross that bridge if we come to it

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pivoting to TRverse by working on a post in my drafts and came across this line that tickles me: "jay was jealous of magali and went 'i'm gonna ruin her life' about it because he's extremely normal."

[wetbloodworm]

liked doing those little heads for the somaverse kids, so here’s some for my arikids. plus áedán. he’s here too.

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this is a long post so shoving it under a read more lmao but somaverse text post meme. just one as an example first and then there's gonna be so many

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looking for text posts for my somaverse kids but i found this one

[points] mik

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been spending some time looking at the planes to see what types of beings are native to them to work out what forms the Progeny take. was a lot of fun looking through stuff!! anyway i got them all worked out and also whipped up some names for all of them. mostly just mashed sounds together that sound fun together lol. who knows if i'll ever do anything with any of these guys but i like knowing who/what they are

some fun examples: the god of the abyss is a klurichir, the god of acheron is a bladeling, the goddess of elysium is a leonal, the god of the outlands is a rilmani, the god of the ethereal plane is a xill.

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i think i touched on this a bit during some other planes talk but i can't remember if i settled on details. either way more planes talk

the outermost part of the multiverse is the sorta shell formed by the positive and negative planes. so what's beyond that shell? Nothing! infinite nothingness. before creation, the only thing there WAS was the infinite Nothing. the First was the only spark of sentience there, of anything at all. that's why it's true form is Nothing: that's what it had been a part of before creation. so it made the material planes and more creation spun off from that and it kinda neatly packaged everything together, and that's the multiverse. outside of it is the rest of infinity. and, well, the far realm is SOMEWHERE, it can't easily be charted but it IS a part of creation, just. it's weird. don't worry about the far realm.

if someone happened to travel all the way to the edge of the astral plane and through the positive or negative plane and tried to move further beyond, they simply couldn't. they'd be faced with the vast infinite nothingness and moving into it is impossible, like a sort of barrier exists. looking at it would be... extremely difficult to process if not mind-breaking. it's hard enough to look at the First when there's at least SOMETHING surrounding the Nothing to give it context. but Nothing as far as the eye can see? bad on the brain. touching the 'barrier' makes that body part go instantly completely numb so it doesn't feel like anything either. removing your hand or whatever will make the feeling fade after a few seconds. and yes, touching the First in their true form or in the spot of Nothing they leave in more physical forms will have the same numbing effect

i mentioned that the First manages the positive and negative planes, and that's mostly because they are extremely raw and powerful forces. but it's also a little bit to keep an eye on the Nothing outside. make sure nothing unexpected happens out there. like, IT was out in the Nothing, maybe something else is too? like yeah it spent an inconceivable amount of time alone out there where it never encountered anything else, but that doesn't mean it's completely 100% impossible for there to be anything else. it keeps an eye out because if there IS something out there there's a non-zero chance it could be a threat, and the First WILL defend its creations. but also, maybe, maybe there's just a little bit of hope there as it looks out into the Nothing. maybe it'd be nice to find others like it. it's not alone anymore, it has its creations, but it's the only thing like it in the entire multiverse and that can still feel a little lonely.

IS there anything else out there? idk! the possibility is fun to hold over this setting

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making a decision on the 'are the gods Big or not?' front and i think, by default, they're mortal sized. they CAN be big, but that's always a choice vs just being how they are. if a god summons you to their realm to talk and they're the same size as you it can make you feel at least superficially on the same level. if you show up and they're Big you can know they are actively trying to make you feel small. i mean, assuming you know that's how it works. tbh mortals might not know that? maybe some do, because a god or two has mentioned it and word spread a little. otherwise there might be all kinds of theories as to how big the gods actually are.

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tehahs map… idk the version actually. anyway broke up some of the territories in heska so it’d be more counties that the conquered. also edited the borders of the islands on the right because they were too smooth and looked unnatural to me. also editing just now to do the same to the west island part of heska

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some fatetwister and bonus eolle. idk if he was a follower of hers before she gifted her divinity to him or if he was just some unaffiliated guy who she thought was interesting

what was he doing to get her attention? good question! thinking on it now, my instinct is that he was a major part of some rebellion in one of the countries and that his part involved being big and loud and causing whoever they are rebelling against just so much trouble. had unusual but very effective ideas. huge thorn in the enemy's side. combining this with how he got his nickname, i think he was captured by the enemy twice, escaping loudly the first time and being set to be executed the second. still managed to escape again though because that was when eolle swooped in like 'now is the PERFECT time for me to retire and make you a god'. fatetwister agreed both to get out of being executed but also because he was totally down to be the new chaos god are you KIDDING that's SICK. also agreed that the timing was perfect, very funny, good job. made things, uh. complicated for the enemy. what do you do when one of the big names of your opposition who you were ready to execute as a message ascends to godhood. what then. anyway he gave himself the name fatetwister after that. was meant to die but caused enough chaos that he ascended instead.