wetbloodworm

[wetbloodworm]

practicing

[wetbloodworm]

wanted to draw a baby akid, turned into baby koretz. dressed up a bit for some diplomatic dinner or whatever its family was invited to, clothes color coordinated with the expectation of being seen by species with vision.

baby akid mostly just look smaller. some features softer and shorter like their faces, smaller stinger, shorter tail. i think the spines and claws should be more blunt than depicted here. maybe coloration should be less vibrant? though potentially koretz is old enough here that its final colors have come out. idk, maybe i'll draw more babies

[wetbloodworm]

aurelia and silence doodles! trying to get a feel for aurelia again after not drawing her since college, and getting used to silence's new design.

[wetbloodworm]

revamped kids! carmine (they/she) and micah (he/him). carmine is a scientist, micah is a shiphand and mechanic. he gets a huge crush on her very quickly after they're both assigned to the ship and follows her around in a puppy dog kinda way. she likes him in return but struggles to differentiate platonic and romantic feelings so it takes her a bit to realize she Like Likes him. micah's patient and loves friendship too though so it's fine. they're a sweet pair.

[wetbloodworm]

plenty of differences between koretz and silence but i had commented on how they're both flirts that have a particular interest in humans. they're different THERE though in a few ways, summarizing it by 'koretz is good at flirting with humans and silence isn't quite as much, it just doesn't stop her'. talking about that.

not that silence doesn't have her own charm that humans could like, but she's more likely to miss the mark. this is both because of lack of real-world experience and her just generally being... i don't want to call her a loser lmao but boy she fumbles a lot. lack of skill with flirting in general, she's not great with other ezzrol either, just comparatively better. she's spent her whole life watching and listening to and reading stuff produced by humans so she THINKS she knows what she's doing, and yes that gives her at least SOME kind of knowledge base, but it's like getting all your social skills from watching rom coms. also important to note, with her having spent her life on the ezzrol home planet, she hasn't really encountered TOO many humans. probably only met enough directly to count on one five-fingered hand. she also only has a shallow understanding of what she's watched/listened to/read from/about humans. surface-level understanding. doesn't know WHY certain humans flirt the way they do. doesn't get the nuance.

koretz, meanwhile, didn't grow up learning about humans from content by their transmissions, but it's had more personal experience. it's colonyborn, from a family with professional ties to the TUC government on a colony closer to the center of TUC space. one parent might be a diplomat? so it's just naturally ran into more humans (and other aliens) through its parent's work and through running into other diplomat families + non-TUC-associated families and visitors to the colony. this, plus some general tips from its diplomat parent, gave it a better baseline understanding of how humans interact. also it always had an interest in humans, from childhood crushes to more adult Interest as it grew up, and while silence Consumed Human Content i think koretz actually RESEARCHED more. even before it got its human mods it was teaching itself how to better interact with humans on their level. on top of all of this, koretz is just naturally charming and good with people, adaptive and flexible with cultures its less familiar with, good at recognizing shifts in tone and speech and body language etc to detect shifts in reception to its behavior. silence is more dense lol and i think i said she was charming on her post but. no. changing my mind. she TRIES to be and again she DOES have her own charm but. that only gets her so far.

the personal experience thing is really the biggest determinator. koretz was taught how to be respectful in general and to many specific species, enough for its family to bring it along to professional diplomatic functions and not worry about it making a huge faux pas. then in its personal life, it just sought out humans enough to learn by doing. it definitely wasn't always SUPER successful in flirting, but it kept trying, kept putting itself out there. was often direct about expressing interest and spoke to humans directly about what they like. hooked up with humans and probably had some embarrassing or unsatisfactory experiences early on that it learned from.

another thing that helps IS the human mods. it had to learn how to use the human parts, but with practice it became easier to copy human body language and gestures and facial expressions. the face is a big advantage it has over silence. humans are big on faces. and like yeah silence can take on a convincing human shape even without the face, but she doesn't fully know how to move it. again, she's copying Human Content she only kinda understands. there's probably an uncanny valley feeling to watching her move that'd throw a lot of people. which isn't her fault, but it is what it is.

okay my wrist hurts a bit so wrapping the post. basically by the start of their respective stories, koretz knows what it's doing and silence does not but that doesn't stop her.

[wetbloodworm]

one thing about me is i will make a spreadsheet about ANYTHING

[wetbloodworm]

it's my sister's birthday which means it's andrew's birthday because i gave him the same birth date for some reason back on high school. happy birthday andy

[wetbloodworm]

reblogging with bits on specific characters now

so there's the ones i created in high school and there's the ones that spawned from a dream i had several years ago

first, the former! mixing original lore and stuff i've come up with more recently/as i'm writing this

aurelia is a human with a spaceship that's small enough for her to run by herself. mostly transports goods, occasionally people. hardworking, not TOTALLY serious but leans a little more towards the no-nonsense side of things, always dreamed of flying her own little ship around in space and saved up for ages to be able to afford one. probably from a star system other than earth in human territory. has an older brother that's a bit of a mooch but has a good heart, and they love each other very much.

silence is an ezzrol from the home planet. criminal that worked her way up from petty crime to working in a gang to working in a larger criminal organization. the ezzrol ability to shapeshift varies between individuals, with some being better at it than others, and silence has always been high up there in terms of skill, which she used to her advantage to go undercover when required. scrappy, charming, largely resistant to authority but good enough at what she does to let her get away with being sarcastic with leadership when she can't bite her tongue (do ezzrol have tongues...). great at ship-jacking. she got involved in some shit way over her head and did a great job at it for a while until she got caught, after which her organization immediately cut ties with her to protect themselves. silence was either set to be executed or at least jailed for a long time before a group intervened on her behalf. she was given an ultimatum: work with them and they'll pull strings to free her, or decline and suffer the consequences of her crimes. she jumped on working with them. turned out they wanted her for a very hush hush mission involving locating a missing prince and princess (or equivalent figures) that had escaped political fuckery by leaving the planet. i'm not sure if the group was working on the royal family's behalf or against them, but either way they wanted to find and retrieve the siblings. silence joined up with the mission and left the home planet with the team.

here's where things can diverge for silence: either she snuck away from the team to get as far away as she could, or she continued to reluctantly work with the team but went off on a sub-mission by herself. either way, she gets herself in trouble on her own when her ship starts malfunctioning out in space. in order to survive, she docks with aurelia's ship. originally she just hijacked the thing immediately, but i think silence just plays it cool at first. just a rando passing by who had ship trouble, it happens, could you just drop me off at the nearest occupied planet and i'll figure it out from there?

i'm a bit fuzzier on how the plot proceeds from here, in part because it depends on that divergence. is silence still on her mission or is she trying to get away from it? i'm not sure! gotta work out those details!

as shown by her name, silence's family was one that was a fan of human transmissions and culture, and silence took to that in part because she was also a fan and in part because she thinks humans are attractive. she's into other aliens as well, she's just got a specialty. so she's a huge flirt with aurelia from the get-go. aurelia's a bit flustered by the attention on multiple fronts but they DO eventually date so i guess it works out well enough.

those are the two main characters but a few more

that ezzrol prince and princess. sister is older, brother is a kid with limited shifting abilities (not due to being a kid, just due to not being good at it). that's all i know about them aside from the fact that they escaped political violence back home and are in hiding outside of ezzrol space.

cadizh is one of those aliens with the stomach mouth who is involved... SOMEHOW. no fucking clue how. he's silence's friend somehow. maybe they talked over.... space-internet.... space-internet friends

there were two kids that i had designed at some point, one human kid named roshan and their alien friend who i may or may not have named. i gotta redesign the alien friend but i'll get around to that. i don't remember much about them, just that they got into shenanigans together.

and then, new kids!

definitely a side story from the main plot, just exists in the same universe

centered around this one research ship. i think it's for a company that TUC contracts with, something along those lines. either way, their thing is that they go out to the edges of their local sphere of inhabited space and check out planets for signs of life and other things like that. largely not looking for undiscovered sapient species or anything - though they've had training on procedure in case that happens, which it hasn't yet - mostly like. taking notes on local flora and fauna and minerals and taking samples where possible, taking notes of air quality, etc. both trying to determine if a planet is inhabitable + if potentially colonizing it/setting up stations there wouldn't disrupt the natural ecosystem too much and also just trying to generally gather information to chart out unexplored territory + learn what they can from how this planet operates. also does some light transport between research stations in different planets/star systems.

also since they spend a lot of time out on the edges, they end up docking on more space-rural occupied planets to recoup before heading back into more populated areas where the research stations are. they bring extra supplies with them on these runs to trade with locals. all occupied TUC planets are (theoretically) self-sustaining but that doesn't mean space-city stuff isn't wanted. sometimes they'll take requests, sometimes as small as 'hey the kids here are super into this one space-television show but the signal is garbage out here, if you're coming out this way could you bring us a few copies of the future-blu-ray box set so we don't have to pay exorbitant fees for shipping'

this particular ship is based out of a research station on a human-founded colony. doesn't mean there aren't aliens about, there's plenty, there just tends to be more humans. other stations in different systems vary.

crew is comprised mostly of scientists, plus shiphands and other essential staff. there aren't soldiers or anything, but there are combat-trained individuals to accompany the scientists when they're exploring just in case they encounter more hostile lifeforms. subduing things peacefully/non-lethally is ALWAYS preferred, and god the paperwork when animals/etc do get killed. they avoid it at all costs, though protecting the crew does come first.

just like the colony they're stationed out of, the crew is mostly human. not everyone, just most of them. probably 2-3 non-humans on board.

koretz is one of them! it's one of the two co-captains of the ship. the other is more science-minded and leads the research side of things, where koretz is there more to manage the crew itself. the other captain is a human and isn't super sociable or warm, like she cares about her crew but she's not great with people and she's here for the science. koretz, meanwhile, IS sociable and good with people, finds a good balance of being personable with the crew but professional and firm when necessary. both are good leaders, they just have different skill sets.

koretz is a flirt, particularly with humans, and it may have taken on human modifications and got itself stationed in human-heavy territory for. reasons. don't worry about it. it IS professional with its crew (mostly. it can spot an alienfucker a mile away and if it can tell someone on the crew is Interested, then. well. what is it SUPPOSED to do, NOT jump on that???) but when the ship docks it tends to get through its duties quickly so it can spend some time flirting with locals.

('so avi you've got two aliens that are into humans in this 'verse' YEAH AND WHAT OF IT)

next new character is bryn! human shiphand, helps keep the ship running. not in the maintaining-the-engines way, that's a different job, but like cleaning and maintenance etc. quiet, keeps to themself, interested in the research the crew is doing, hella autistic. new to the ship, hasn't formed a lot of connections yet. not SUPER popular among some of the science crew for mean girl clique reasons but otherwise they get on fine with people, they just often take a while to warm up to others.

bryn is absoLUTELY an alienfucker. not particularly focused on any one species, just appreciates non-human features both aesthetically and sometimes in an attraction way. not NOT interested in other humans, they just know what they're about. not particularly good at flirting, especially with other species that often have VERY different methods of flirting, but also just kinda lacks confidence on that front with aliens and humans alike.

respectful of others and can be perfectly normal around people they're attracted to, but they're not necessarily GREAT at hiding their attraction. not in a purposeful way, just kinda. y'know, it's obvious. i bring this up because i mentioned koretz being good at spotting alienfuckers, and bryn makes it particularly easy on it. bryn being introduced to the captains upon being assigned to the ship and koretz takes one look at them + hears their pulse spike and is just like :))))

once koretz confirms that bryn isn't just attracted to it but also receptive to flirting - once they realize that koretz is flirting with them lol - it jumps on the opportunity. the two absolutely end up hooking up, which i don't think is strictly against company/TUC regulations, there's just a section in the harassment prevention training that talks about employee relations ofc. Just Be Careful.

there's a hint of a romantic aspect to their relationship, but they're not exclusive. in fact the two being semi-together helps boost bryn's confidence a little bit, and that plus koretz giving them some advice they start trying to put themself out there a bit more when the ship docks somewhere. they've been isolating themself for long enough, time to Get Out There.

those two are the priority since they were the focus of that dream i had and also i'm the most interested in them, but got a couple others on the ship i'm loosely working out. the other co-captain, for example, who i talked about up there a bit

i'm. okay. so i had a whole bunch of among us OCs that i could steal for this. i'm likely not going to be playing with them in the context of among us anymore, but i CAN stuff them into SERENDIPverse. i'll find my chart describing dynamics and roles and see who i can grab.

mal/mallow and canary were the two i focused on the most in that collection of kids, with mal being a crewmate and canary being an imposter (alien) and the two being Involved, and idk if i want to put TOO many human/alien pairs on this ship but also i know what i'm about, y'know. and like. it's fine. it's literally fine. i can do what i want. it's also kinda funny to me.

canary could be an ezzrol? shapeshifting alien in both iterations. i'd want to rename them both because the color-names were an among us thing specifically. i'll think on it.

alternatively, i really like canary's humanoid design, i could make them human. i get the alien/human dynamic elsewhere. there's some stuff i lose with making them both human, but i think that's okay. can get some of that but maybe making one earthborn and the other colonyborn, maybe canary is from a non-human-majority colony and can play with some culture differences tehre?

oh actually hang on i found the image i did using picrew of the whole cast on that among us ship

there's a lot of people i can steal from here lol and i'm vaguely remembering SOME dynamics. the three pairs down the middle were couples; fern (ship doctor) and color were married, mal and canary were dating, madder and eerie had SOME kind of Thing. eerie can still be an alien, maybe HE'S the ezzrol. idk, i'll play around with it!

this is not the full crew of the SERENDIPverse ship btw, just to avoid the confusion. i'm just gonna steal some characters from this list.

also wait maybe it wasn't a picrew. i'm looking for the thing i used for credit and i don't see it in picrew and suddenly i'm remembering the vague image of a different layout. fuck. where were you from? this was like five years ago. this one looks right but it doesn't have the pride flag backgrounds. maybe they were removed at some point?? this has to be it. i'm confused.

okay okay anyway i'll re-examine these kids later

talking about SERENDIPverse, some general stuff pulled from both the limited original lore and stuff i'm building now, might reblog with bits on specific characters later on

general sci-fi-with-aliens 'verse. loads of alien species have come in contact with each other with new ones popping up occasionally. humans are neither super new among the spacefaring species nor one of the first. middle child of spacefaring species.

when visualizing alien territories i've always thought of the star control 2 map or like. spore space mode. circles of influence. countries/empires but in space. there's some overlap here and there, and space travel is allowed through territories between species with friendly relations, otherwise you gotta go around. then i kinda think of those territories as being similar to firefly, where there's core planets that are more built up in the center and the further out towards the edges you get the more likely you're gonna get planets with small-town or rural-town energy.

i found my page of alien species i did during high school, but only two of them were more than a one-time design on that page specifically lol. there's the ezzrol - shapeshifting alien species with advanced radio technology - and some species that i don't think i ever got around to naming, or if i did it just didn't stick in the cheese. i remember them being carnivores who weren't always ENTIRELY above eating other sapient species but curbed that behavior for alliance purposes. had their mouths on their stomachs with a tongue that could launch out like a harpoon. bipedal, squat little bodies, tentacle-esque arms, two eyes. i'll doodle them up sometime. i only had one individual in that second species, named cadizh, and i know he knew silence but that's about the extent of my knowledge there lmao.

while i'm likely not recycling any of those other designs (at least not entirely, there was this one huge species that i could maybe salvage), one design element between all of them that was important to me then and continues to be important to me is that none of the species skews TOO humanoid, at least in their natural states. things that can take on humanoid forms to varying degrees - like the ezzrol through shapeshifting and the akidi through body modification - are fine, but i wanted to avoid the 'green-skinned human' thing. 'Humans But We Put Antennae On Them'. perfectly valid and fun designs, big fan of things that look mostly human but fall a bit to the side, just not a thing i want in this 'verse :) doesn't mean all traits that humans have are off-limits, or combining some of those traits together. species like turians from mass effect acceptable, species like asari from mass effect not. the line is fuzzy and not strictly defined lol gotta feel that out! figure out what feels right!

actually i think i had a species i came up with in college that did skew more humanoid than i'd like, but i don't think they originally started in that 'verse and i just kinda mushed them in? i'm removing them. get outta here

NOW things that can take on humanoid shapes. obviously i'm a fan, i've got two of 'em even if ezzrol can't look quite as human as they used to lol. love thinking about why an individual would change or adjust their form to look human (or like any other species). love seeing something that looks like you and knowing that they're TRYING to look like you for one reason or another.

there's several alliances between varying species, some overlapping. one's bigger than the others that contains most of the known species, known in english just as The Universal Confederation, colloquially called TUC (pronounced 'tuck') or the Confederation. used to be called The Galactic Confederation until intergalactic contact was made with other species and the name got updated to include potential future additions. lead by The Intergalactic Cabinet (TIC, 'tick', or the Cabinet), which is comprised of ministers from each species. why use universal one place and intergalactic the other? to make the acronyms different. literally that's it. this is me god making this choice.

speaking of intergalactic contact! i'm thinking that travel to any of the milky way's satellite galaxies hasn't been accomplished yet (and definitely not andromeda), but TUC has used ezzrol-based technology to reach out that far via radio/whatever. at least one species in another galaxy has been contacted this way, potentially more if THAT species is in contact with others in THEIR galaxy they could hook TUC up with.

there are also other species further out into the milky way that have been contacted but not met directly yet.

these species that haven't physically reached TUC space (or vice versa) aren't technically members, though some that've been in contact longer and have expressed peaceful intentions are considered honorary members.

not EVERYONE is all chummy with everyone, i'm sure. there's tensions or history between some, and some might just be uninterested in cooperating with TUC and/or others. have there been any wars? probably! none going on right now.

more later maybe

[wetbloodworm]

some adores and sparrows ive been gathering

[wetbloodworm]

had a thought that if the ezzrol are always listening in to alien transmissions then they likely have a decent understanding of various languages even before first contact. not every individual ezzrol, of course, some just listen to/watch translations, and those who do get a grasp of an alien language have an imperfect understanding due to the limitations that come with only having transmissions as your source, but it's something! more than a lot of species have when making first contact.

two thoughts coming with this

1) ezzrol tending to pepper in alien words in their speech, taking on words as slang and that kinda thing. like adopting words from other languages happens all the time, but they're doing it before they even meet any aliens.

2) i like the idea of first contact happening and the ezzrol doing the encountering being like 'oh shit i know this alien species, quick quick go get that guy in engineering i think these are his specialty, he might know what they're saying'. like imagine meeting an alien species for the first time in your species' history and they bring out some dude who listens for a moment then gets real excited and starts talking at you in your own language.

okay now thinking more about first contact and i like the idea of the ezzrol at some point coming to the decision to actually respond to one of the SETI transmissions that they've been picking up for ages. they haven't gotten far with space travel yet but they have an appreciation for aliens and want to get that ball rolling! picking one of the transmissions and sending a message back in both the alien language(s) and some of their own. we kinda know who you are and we want to meet! come find us! :)

[wetbloodworm]

talking about SERENDIPverse, some general stuff pulled from both the limited original lore and stuff i'm building now, might reblog with bits on specific characters later on

general sci-fi-with-aliens 'verse. loads of alien species have come in contact with each other with new ones popping up occasionally. humans are neither super new among the spacefaring species nor one of the first. middle child of spacefaring species.

when visualizing alien territories i've always thought of the star control 2 map or like. spore space mode. circles of influence. countries/empires but in space. there's some overlap here and there, and space travel is allowed through territories between species with friendly relations, otherwise you gotta go around. then i kinda think of those territories as being similar to firefly, where there's core planets that are more built up in the center and the further out towards the edges you get the more likely you're gonna get planets with small-town or rural-town energy.

i found my page of alien species i did during high school, but only two of them were more than a one-time design on that page specifically lol. there's the ezzrol - shapeshifting alien species with advanced radio technology - and some species that i don't think i ever got around to naming, or if i did it just didn't stick in the cheese. i remember them being carnivores who weren't always ENTIRELY above eating other sapient species but curbed that behavior for alliance purposes. had their mouths on their stomachs with a tongue that could launch out like a harpoon. bipedal, squat little bodies, tentacle-esque arms, two eyes. i'll doodle them up sometime. i only had one individual in that second species, named cadizh, and i know he knew silence but that's about the extent of my knowledge there lmao.

while i'm likely not recycling any of those other designs (at least not entirely, there was this one huge species that i could maybe salvage), one design element between all of them that was important to me then and continues to be important to me is that none of the species skews TOO humanoid, at least in their natural states. things that can take on humanoid forms to varying degrees - like the ezzrol through shapeshifting and the akidi through body modification - are fine, but i wanted to avoid the 'green-skinned human' thing. 'Humans But We Put Antennae On Them'. perfectly valid and fun designs, big fan of things that look mostly human but fall a bit to the side, just not a thing i want in this 'verse :) doesn't mean all traits that humans have are off-limits, or combining some of those traits together. species like turians from mass effect acceptable, species like asari from mass effect not. the line is fuzzy and not strictly defined lol gotta feel that out! figure out what feels right!

actually i think i had a species i came up with in college that did skew more humanoid than i'd like, but i don't think they originally started in that 'verse and i just kinda mushed them in? i'm removing them. get outta here

NOW things that can take on humanoid shapes. obviously i'm a fan, i've got two of 'em even if ezzrol can't look quite as human as they used to lol. love thinking about why an individual would change or adjust their form to look human (or like any other species). love seeing something that looks like you and knowing that they're TRYING to look like you for one reason or another.

there's several alliances between varying species, some overlapping. one's bigger than the others that contains most of the known species, known in english just as The Universal Confederation, colloquially called TUC (pronounced 'tuck') or the Confederation. used to be called The Galactic Confederation until intergalactic contact was made with other species and the name got updated to include potential future additions. lead by The Intergalactic Cabinet (TIC, 'tick', or the Cabinet), which is comprised of ministers from each species. why use universal one place and intergalactic the other? to make the acronyms different. literally that's it. this is me god making this choice.

speaking of intergalactic contact! i'm thinking that travel to any of the milky way's satellite galaxies hasn't been accomplished yet (and definitely not andromeda), but TUC has used ezzrol-based technology to reach out that far via radio/whatever. at least one species in another galaxy has been contacted this way, potentially more if THAT species is in contact with others in THEIR galaxy they could hook TUC up with.

there are also other species further out into the milky way that have been contacted but not met directly yet.

these species that haven't physically reached TUC space (or vice versa) aren't technically members, though some that've been in contact longer and have expressed peaceful intentions are considered honorary members.

not EVERYONE is all chummy with everyone, i'm sure. there's tensions or history between some, and some might just be uninterested in cooperating with TUC and/or others. have there been any wars? probably! none going on right now.

more later maybe

[wetbloodworm]

more ezzrol concepts

[wetbloodworm]

ACTUALLY FINISHED A DOLL PROJECT meet valerie!! the one on the right was one of my fav dolls as a kid and i decided i wanted to remake her. got a head using the same midge face mold (actually from the same doll) and did a reroot + faceup. got all the clothes on etsy minus the shoes which are normal barbie shoes. standard mtm body. nothing super fancy going on here but i think she turned out cute!!

[wetbloodworm]

potential idea for ezzrol redesign! just some quick sketches, nothing polished here. kinda like a cross between a cuttlefish and a chameleon. got that core shape where all its organs are stuffed and then LOADS of limbs surrounding it. in a relaxed state you can make out the shape of the individual limbs more, but they can press together to form a seemingly solid expanse of skin. all parts of its body are extremely flexible and can be easily moved around and contorted. specialized skin cells that control their pigment so they can color-shift with extreme precision. might have some control over skin texture as well. these combinations of traits allow them to essentially shapeshift, as they are mimics. this allowed them to hide from and mask themselves as predators, and i mean it still does but like they became the dominant species on their home planet, predators CAN be an issue but like. in the same way bears can be an issue. just don't be where the bears are and you're fine. so mostly the shapeshifting is just a social thing now.

[wetbloodworm]

thinking about what akid clothing would look like... both thinking about how akidi can't naturally see and how it'd work on their anatomy. thoughts under the cut

most clothing tends to be undyed or only dyed incidentally in the process of treating it. dyeing on purpose became a bit of a thing after genetic mods got advanced enough that akidi could give themselves sight and some designers began incorporating color. most akidi don't have those specific mods though so it's not a hugely important thing to consider whilst dressing, especially if you're sticking around akidi territory, though those who spend more time around aliens tend to factor it in more. this outfit has been purposefully dyed and this akid has picked out an outfit with a coordinated color palette on purpose even though they can't see it themself, either because they're dressing with the expectation of being seen by someone with vision or because they enjoy pairing colors listed in clothing descriptions regardless.

rather than colors or patterns having any importance, texture is the big thing for clothes. tactile sensation is highly important to them, and also casual touch is VERY common among akidi, so individuals can express a lot by the material of their clothing. touching someone and encountering something like silk has a different social connotation vs something like burlap vs something like cotton etc etc. so akidi don't always dress for comfort, they often dress how they want to feel to others. also not just material, but the shape of your clothes, the accessories and stitching, anything you can pick up on with your hands. this outfit has the little holes in the top of some places for aesthetic purposes, giving it a different tactile landscape when you run your hand down their back than if it was a solid piece.

another thing that gets incorporated is sound! the sounds your clothes do or don't make carry different meanings and such. this outfit i've drawn has little wooden beads on strings attached here and there so that the individual clatters quite a bit while moving. i think the rest of the fabric is soft enough so it's not like squeaking or anything with movement in addition, very soft shuffling sounds. and the shoes are simple so not a huge change to the natural stepping sound there. so you get the subtle stuff and then the loud beads standing out the most. this is an attention-grabbing outfit but not chaotically so.

as for the actual purpose of the clothing. this one in particular is a mash-up of purely aesthetic choices - the tan wraps here and there for decoration, the veil for a fun little sensory experience when they talk, the ear piercings - and stuff designed for utility - the shoes to protect their.... would you call those feet? i just think of it as All Leg, basically pants around the lower bits mostly to lightly protect against blindly misplaced touches. the cloth around the neck is aesthetic but there are versions that are intended to be protective. like, akid armor will cover the neck along with the torso/abdomen where the vitals are. but this isn't armor, it's just calling to that design element, if that makes sense?

okay post done

[wetbloodworm]

silence concept…. the red bits and belts are real clothing, the rest is just Her. good at mimicking gold and faux clothing folds. the four lighter blue sections on the inner part of the mask are her eyes :) still pondering natural form possibilities

[wetbloodworm]

thinking of changing how my ezzrol species looks and what their limits on shapeshifting are. they don't shift via magic or anything, it's all physical ability, so i need to make their anatomy match something that can do that. current design is too solid-looking to me

problem is thinking on how to design them im just thinking of this one among us group who did some fic and art worldbuilding a detailed story around the game that i really loved. their imposters were an alien species described as predatory mimics, and the design for them is what i'm picturing now. and honestly i can take inspiration from that, i just want to make sure i'm not straight-up copying.

so like, what i'm thinking is extremely flexible body with color-changing pigmentation. can contort in such a way that they can take on the shape of other creatures, sometimes almost flawlessly. can't recreate hair properly, maybe just the look of hair if you don't get close enough to determine it's rippled and shaded skin rather than individual strands. the more detailed a disguise, the harder it is to do and hold, so if there's a way to simplify they'll do that. like for humans, forming plain gloves rather than worrying about nails and fingerprints (or actually wearing gloves), forming a helmet or veil or mask vs trying to form a human face that would be VERY difficult to make convincing if not impossible. you're more likely to see a human-shifted ezzroll 'wearing' a mask with a bald or covered head and easy to replicate clothes without any accessories, etc vs one trying to replicate a face and hair illusion.

most of the time when they're shifted it's not to fully pass as another creature (though that's part of the utility of the ability on an evolutionary level, pass convincingly as something that isn't prey), like when dealing with aliens it starts in early contact as a safety procedure then becomes a cultural thing. you just take on alien shapes when you're around non-ezzrol, it's just what people do.

after friendly relations are established between the ezzrol and other species, they become more relaxed about trying to prevent others from knowing what they look like. hard to keep that secret forever, and if they're all choosing to play nice then they can tentatively lower their guard at least a bit. not in danger. so there's no repercussions for letting aliens see what you look like, it's not illegal behavior or anything, but it mostly becomes a trust/comfort thing. drop your forms around friends.

back to anatomy... i mean again i don't want to copy off those imposter designs but ezzrol have always had tentacle-like limbs lol. that's been a constant in their design since creation in high school. so that element is here. i'm thinking omnivore. want to look up cuttlefish and chameleons for further design inspiration. land-dwelling, maybe climbs around like chameleons do.

alright so if i'm redesigning ezzrol then i've gotta redesign my girl silence's design. her original human disguise can live on in AUs like dnd stuff where she's a changeling etc. but now i gotta get rid of her hair and face and decide what's clothes and what's skin. i'm liking the idea of her wearing a real headwrap with her just forming the general shape of a human head with a mask. i thought real mask but she needs her eyes exposed so i think they're hidden as part of the mask's design. OH butterfly mask maybe where the fake eye patterns butterflies have are actually her eyes?? okay okay i've got ideas time to draw