raelly-writing

[raelly-writing]

“That One Hairstyle? RETIRE IT!” Black Hair is an Art (pt.1)

(This is part one of two lessons, with this one focusing on how our hair itself! The next lesson will encompass how to incorporate its existence into your writing. It'd be a massively long post otherwise.)

So! Black hair. Black hair is a CENTRAL, ESSENTIAL part of our culture and identity. Writing and drawing it means understanding the vulnerability and trust that comes with access to it, and yes, it is racist to suggest that ‘it’s just hair’ when our hair serves such an important role in our history and art. I already wrote a mini-lesson and ask on the topic, but being aware of what our hair looks like, and what means to us, will help you to understand why we care that you put in the effort to get it right.

Hair Textures

We are not a genetic monolith! However, for the sake of this series, we are focusing on 3C-4C, because 1) it's most likely to be seen in life and 2) least likely to be seen in popular art! When you are creating your characters, consider the style and care for THESE textures. I will get more into this next lesson.

Let's get into SOME of the hairstyles!

Afros (36 Afro Hairstyles)

“So, what’s the phenomenon behind the Afro? Well, it’s our hair in its most natural form, but that’s only part of the phenomenon. It’s a way to fight the status quo without saying a word.”

-Ebony Magazine, The History of the Afro

When nonBlack society hears ‘afro’, they think completely picked out, Black power imagery, political statement. And it was, and is! But in actuality, afros are just the natural hair growing out of a Black person's head. The same way your hair grows out of your head. Our texture. Even my hair is not allowed to be ‘hair’, it has to ‘assign’ my Blackness; my distance from whiteness. Imagine, the hair growing out of your head being automatically associated with how you should be perceived. Just by existing, it is making a statement in a Eurocentric society.

Braids (31 Braid Styles)

There are SO MANY TYPES of braids and ways to wear them. If you can imagine a design, I bet there's a Black braider that can do it!

CORNROWS ARE NOT AUTOMATICALLY BRAIDS! Internalize this! They may be used in the same style, but they are NOT INTERCHANGEABLE TERMS!

Braids are considered a protective style; that is, a hairstyle designed to let our hair 'rest' and grow without having to manipulate it. If you have a Black character that's constantly on the go and/or doesn't have time to focus on their hair, and you want an accurate, more true-to-life experience for them, braids can be a crucial part of character design.

Locs

(Yes, while that link has plenty of examples, it was also self-indulgent. Locs are gorgeous, Black men with locs are gorgeous!)

"Locs vs Dreads": As someone in the loc community, there’s been a push to refer to the style as ‘locs’, rather than ‘dreadlocks’. Some people with the style will not care, but others take it very seriously, so it’s something to keep in mind. There’s a societal stigma behind having locs, that they’re ‘dirty’ or ‘unkempt’ or ‘lazy’ and that is NOT true. Locs are beautiful, and they take far more effort than people seem to want to believe lmao.

Locs, though there is currently a positive revival, are still highly discriminated against. Kids have been expelled from school and even have had their hair forcibly cut off to be allowed to participate in sports. Many places won't hire you if they think your hair is 'unprofessional' or 'dirty', especially if you're a Black woman. To consider yet another example of the hair that grows out of my head 'dirty' is extremely racist.

LOCS ARE NOT BRAIDS!!!!

Locs are also a protective style, albeit a much more permanent one, and one that comes with a long history and culture behind it. Many Black people consider the biblical story of Samson to be a man with locs, and that our locs hold power within them. That not just anyone should be allowed to touch your locs. So, if you're interested in mythology and powers, that might be an intriguing way to go, that would be possible if you had a Black character with locs!

In Professional Media

The lack of awareness and concern about our hair isn't just a fan or amateur creator experience. It is ubiquitous in the professional media world. Black actors, actresses, and models have discussed having to do their own hair when working, because no one would properly care for it on set if it wasn't familiarly white. It’s admittedly grown better- however! After decades of not having options other than ‘stereotypical afro’, ‘box cut’, and ‘white people hair’, it is LONG PAST TIME to stop settling for the bare minimum in Black character design. We can tell when "one of us" (with some sense, at least) wasn't in the room to make decisions in popular media.

If you were curious about the lesson title, here's a current example of what I'm talking about in video games. Tell me if you see a pattern:

This style? The Killmonger? We seent it!!!! It has become the “hairstyle to show I understand the exaggerated swagger of a young Black teen” option, the "I know the Black people!" go-to, and frankly, we are all tired of it. Okay it was cute on Ekko. The Black Delegation DEMANDS the professional video game industry pick something else! We have SO MANY DIFFERENT HAIRSTYLES!

I'll give you an example on the other end (not trying at all; refer to Lesson 1) from one of my favorite games, Hades:

This is my blorbo. My favoritest guy. I’ll fight for Patroclus being Black til the day I die. While I begrudgingly settled in my excitement, I can tell you no one Black with any voting power was in the room at Supergiant when they approved this design. Why? His texture! Locs were such an easy option if they wanted long hair! Locs existed BEFORE Ancient Greece! The man did not have a flat iron while fighting in a war! A good Black designer would have considered that!

To give him a more accurate design, some artists (myself included) lean into giving him locs (one of my favorites is @karshmallow 's Pat; a phenomenal example in caring about your Black characters). It’s something Black fans find themselves doing- redesigning Black characters. That's not something we should have to do at all, especially in media we pay for!

But if you REALLY want your Black character to have straight hair, that leads into the last style of this lesson:

Straight Hair

We do have straight hair. But it’s not straight because it grew out that way! It will still look and be thicker! It might be a wig or a sew-in (human or synthetic), it might be flat-ironed (while relaxed? While natural?) It takes effort to get and maintain straight hair.

'I think it looks better good this way!'

If you catch yourself thinking this, this is a racist statement. Whether you’re aware of it our not, there is a bias towards Eurocentric/white features in our society, and that includes in our media. When you think “I only drew [this Eurocentric hair texture and style] because I think it looks good on them!” I want you to PAUSE and think about the WHY. WHY do you think that this Black person’s natural features are unattractive in comparison to the white hair texture you gave them? And how hurt might a Black peer of yours would feel hearing that you find their natural features not worth drawing because they’re “not attractive”. It requires approaching your own internal biases, recognizing them, and then working to unlearn them. And that means practice! Using references to draw our hair and styles, and growing used to using OUR features on US!

Doing it in Art

Me personally, I think if you think drawing thinner hair textures is easy, thicker hair textures should be a BREEZE. I was curious, so I challenged myself and-

(it took me about thirteen minutes total to do ol boy's hair and it's still not right. I'm sick fr y'all don't even know 🤢)

@ackee has a really good art lesson on the how-tos of drawing Black hairstyles. I highly recommend checking it out, as well as following and supporting a fellow Black artist (who is far better than I!)

Hair Brushes

Finally, an option you can use for painting is downloading Black hair brushes! Vegalia has an amazing array of brushes with different types of curls, locs, and braids at her Etsy store! You can also follow her on social media to see how she applies them, and support yet another amazing Black creative!

I know this was a long one, but you made it! Just keep going. Remember, it's the thought that counts, but the action that delivers!

#sticking this here because I had so goddamn much fun looking up natural textured hairstyles #when making that hair style contest submission #and judging by the excitement from people I sure as hell hope the natural hair submissions that won make it in game during Dawntrail's #patch cycle #it's 2024 dammit #RPGs can do better than disco era afro and cornrows as the only options

[raelly-writing]

category of blorbo called "technically i like them but fanons obsession with them to the exclusion of other characters pavloved me into having a negative reaction whenever i see them"

#honestly part of the reason I try not to mingle too much into the bigger community

[raelly-writing]

Reblog for a larger sample size!

No "show results", if you're not a fanfic writer just be patient.

I saw a post about an anon saying it was embarrasing to have an ao3 account in your 30s (it's absolutely not), so I want to do a poll and see what the age range actually is.

#pfft #if everyone stopped doing fandom stuff at 25 like some seem to think #there'd literally be 70% less fanfics #and lmao sooooo much less art #30+ here btw

[raelly-writing]

Thancred: Please don’t do anything overly dramatic or stupid.

WoL: You could sooner divert a river from its course than deny me my nature.

#pot meet kettle

[raelly-writing]

Running on three hours of sleep due to illness so I hope this word salad makes sense. :'D

Pick up a new MMO, I thought. It'll be nice to have something to look forward to while suffering through the most soul crushing summerjob, I thought. Joke was on me.

I didn't really get into the hm... RP aspect of FFXIV until a little into HW when I started considering Viana more as a character in the narrative rather than just my PC (I came over from WoW, it took a while to adapt and get into the flow of my character actually mattering in what was going on). And I didn't really feel like I knew enough about Highlanders to really settle on anything, but didn't want to risk spoiling myself on Stormblood stuff, so I ended up just headcanoning her as a orphan from Ul'dah. (Later amending it to her parents fleeing early on in the Mad King's reign and just falling foul of Ul'dah's shadiness)

... accidentally setting myself up for a whammy of my favourite tropes: Tank couples and "Finding home in each other" friends to lovers.

So midway through Stormblood I just had a moment where I, after careful contemplation of both Aymeric and Hien, popped out of my trashcan and pointed at Thancred. "That one. I want the disaster rogue with enough emotional baggage to fill a Olympic swimming pool."

I thought Thancred was entertaining in ARR, but he really grew on me in the HW patches. His emotional journey is interesting to pick into from a writing perspective, and the pull of two people looking out for their found family amidst all the losses they suffer, and looking out for each other in small ways that grows into something more, was a appealing one to me.

Love me a LI who is hypercompetent but doesn't always see that. Like many I deal with depression and impostor syndrome, so that aspect of Thancred is very dear to me, and I'm firm in that those things just haven't magically disappeared after SHB. Even when you're doing better, everyone have bad days.

I wasn't sure until I finished Shadowbringers at which point they'd get together, seeing either the 'FWB coping - oops caught feelings' point in the HW-SB patches, or two stubborn idiots quietly pining away until SHB. Latter won out, and I think it's for the better.

Their journey from a professional merc who isn't really sure she can trust this smooth talking bard to be there when shit hits the fan, to two gunbreakers sharing the effort of keeping everyone safe and supporting one another, is fun to explore. Both the low points and high points, because they certainly argue at times, but I tend to focus on the high points because this is my comfort ship and have you seen the past four years? No idea what I would have done without them.

... also heehee, tall girlfriend, short king boyfriend.

Another random WoLQotD/OC question

I thought I'd ask this while I worked on my other questions. :)

If you're a WoL x NPC shipper, what drew you to that ship and why? What makes that ship the pinnacle for you and your oc? Is it that you love the canon character you write them with, you find their dynamic interesting or something in between?

If you're not a WoL x NPC shipper, but you have a ship with another person, how did that come about? What makes that ship fulfilling for you? Has the ship impacted your relationship with that other person? Feel free to gush, I wanna hear it!

Oh, and pictures are a must (if you have them).

#wol questions #thancred waters #viana morkheim

[raelly-writing]

ffxiv players i come before you with a new question

important: im not asking which of them would be the most likely to say fuck because we all know the answer. im asking which one would be the FUNNIEST and have the BEST EFFECT on the script and story as a whole.

#let urianger say Fuck

[raelly-writing]

I like to think that Alisaie refuses, point blank, to acknowledge that Alphinaud is now a few months older than her after the events of Shadowbringers. Like yes he got Called before her and due to Funky Time Bullshit he was there on the First longer than she was, but that doesn’t make him older. Heavens no. He’s been lording his fifteen minute head start their entire lives she’s not about to let him get even further ahead!! Stop laughing at her WoL this is serious!

#all of this lmao #I have a small headcanon that my WoL at some point goes 'so... does this mean you're technically a year older than me now?' to Urianger #and he just firmly goes 'it's thy body that endures the flow of time not thy soul' #while Thancred nods in agreement from the side

[raelly-writing]

Well at least he understands the player base...

#thanks Yoshi-P #I'm gonna try and finish Elden Ring now :'''D

[raelly-writing]

My fave thing abt the scions is how they yell at WoL when WoL sacrifices themself once (1) as if each and every single one of them hadn't sacrificed themselves several times before. 1 hour ago even!!

#For Thancred specifically there's a very special flavour when you play as a tank through MSQ #so you have One (1) Rogue yelling “I CAN TANK THIS!” #and WoL yelling “LIKE HELL YOU CAN”

[raelly-writing]

Member's fanart request: Tea time Uri! An Eorzean magazine about goss- jk

#dashing Urianger~ #very lovely OP #got a very Leyendecker feel to it #urianger augurelt #other people's art

[raelly-writing]

Thancred Shipping.

#have reblogged before #but yes :'D #thancred waters #wolcred #aeryn striker

[raelly-writing]

#lmao :'D #thancred waters #aldera lightwing

[raelly-writing]

Winter

#I miss the scruff so much #thancred waters

[raelly-writing]

The Seventh Dawn

Catching up on comms (again). This one was from blue birb app.

#oh dang that looks awesome

[raelly-writing]

Many thoughts head full about one tiny moment in ShB right before Il Mheg, when Exarch bails us out of the fight with Ran'jit. (screenshots are from my fav streamer/youtuber, I've rewatched his vods so many times I know exactly where to look for certain story beats)

Not sure if this was ever explained in canon, so here's my interpretation: Thancred grins either because he's activating the teleport himself by giving Exarch (these circles are allagan magic) some kinda signal, or he knows PRECISELY when it's going to happen. Like, down to seconds. They must've pre-arranged the whole thing with Exarch right before the encounter. Perhaps, bumped into each other, and winged the escape plan. Either way, this implies a non-trivial amount of trust. Thancred trusts Exarch not only with his life, but with Minfilia's, and everyone else's. I think this's a very neat and subtle way of showing his relationship with the old man.

#wouldn't surprise me too much if it was a #“uh oh things aren't going well down there #buy me two minutes” kind of thing #thancred waters #crystal exarch

[raelly-writing]

Alright I'm tired of these two pieces so just gonna call them done and move on to something else :'D

#thancred waters #ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #wolcred #highlander wol #my art

[raelly-writing]

Alright thats too good a question to pass up

#I wrote that scene at the Reach like Viana got really fucking injured #because it just lost all tension for me when WoL just sits up and goes 'I'm good #let's continue' :'D #I get that the game has to game but that tanky warrior lady went the fuck down #so yeah #torso scar is the most prominent one #writing her immediately post-EW as very emotionally exhausted #large part to Zenos and In From the Cold events #because I played as a gunbreaker and uh didn't exactly take much damage in that last fight so honestly kinda rolling with it