rhythmantics

[rhythmantics]

more ancient+'s (first set here), this time featuring aethers, sandsurges, banescales (a second time), and dusthides

For the aether, I just wanted to really lean into the mothiness... and make a hatchling that doesn't hide its extra pair of legs. seriously, why does the actual aether hatchling hide its extra pair of legs... that's like, the Whole Point. I also thought it'd be fun to play with primary/secondary placement, so the aether's wings actually use its primary

Sandsurges, uhhh.... this is the most radical departure from the canon, because I kind of can't justify anything about the canon sandsurges. If they're supposed to be burrowers, why do they have cheetah bodies? Or the big clunky horns? And if they're supposed to be sand sharks, why do they have TWO sails when one would sell the shark-ness more? So this version features big mole mitts and monitor bod, with a single really BIG sail.

Banescale (2) - just trying to lean into (what i think) was the theme of the banescales, which is that they're "demonic" dragons compared to coatls being "angelic". So made the tail more obviously a trident and gave it crazy little grabby hands on its wings, and tore them up like aberrations. it turned out looking a lot like a man. sorry.

Dusthides... I'm not really sure... what's going on with the canon dusthides? they look like they're trying to be isopods and pangolins and armadillos. So here's my take on that. The armor plates are prehensile and can fold upwards. this is pretty much just a vestigial feature of them originally being wings because it's not like they can fly with them lol. again experimenting with secondary placement by having the armored legs, head, and tail tip be the secondary. it doesn't curl up into a perfect ball, but neither do pangolins. i also made it fluffy because i like fluffy dragons. it can't wear clothes anyway. it ended up turning out kind of centipede-y

i feel like auraboas and aberrations are like... fine. Any changes i would make to them would be pretty minimal (mostly I just want shrinkage on the auraboa wings and more exciting prim/sec placement on the abes) so i'm probably not going to do ancient+'s of them

#flight rising

[rhythmantics]

my favorite white people

i think i like the sketch better -_ -

#prototype #[prototype] #prototype 2009 #alex mercer #alexander j mercer #dana mercer #i just keep practicing portraiture ... i'll get better at it one day

[rhythmantics]

dnd npcs :D

#dnd #dungeons and dragons #dnd 5e #dnd art #kenku #changeling #dhampir

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drew my friend's astarion fandragon for them haha

#flight rising #baldur's gate 3 #astarion

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A short board I was working on based on The Decemberist's "The Hazards of Love" album, specifically the track Annan Water

#storyboard #storyboarding #animation #the decemberists #the hazards of love

[rhythmantics]

My pieces for the Pokemon Colosseum 20th Anniversary Zine! (Check it out, it's free!) I was honoured to have been chosen as the cover artist, so here are the front and back covers on their own :)

#pokemon #pokemon colosseum #wes pokemon #umbreon #espeon #rui pokemon #ho-oh

[rhythmantics]

Here is a free zine dedicated to pokemon colosseum and XD to celebrate its 20th anniversary! Thank you everyone who has contributed to and supported our zine!!!

#i was the cover artist on this! #front AND back :D

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#pokemon colosseum

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the adventures of an ex-poacher and his beloved cats

#yayayayaya happy 20th anniversary everyone

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in your headcanon why do you think Francis’s People all wear green? Like why not a more neutral color like white or black

1) Because it's cool, distinctive, and decidedly suits their vintage-ish, mod-ish look, while retaining a uniformity reminiscent of the MIB mythos they're based on, and

2) The color green is actually used in the show as direct shorthand for fundamental opposition to the Saturdays - Zak M's powers, which wind up belonging to our BBEG Argost, are also green. Given that the Saturdays are also uniformly orange, and Francis is practically a 1:1 character foil for Zak, the green color - which is shared by their smoke mirror doppelgangers and the literal final boss - help to drive home that Francis is Zak's equal-but-opposite, which is a theme I also wind up exploring in iwnoy o/

#iwnoy is still being written im sorry its so slow #the secret saturdays #zak saturday

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actually kind of obsessed w the fashion sense kevin chu gave him

#prototype 2009 #alex mercer #alexander j mercer #alexander james mercer #[prototype]

[rhythmantics]

Our DND party, + dmpc paladin:

#dnd #dndart #aasimar #yuan-ti #tortle #plasmoid #sea elf #elf

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character token for a friend's yuan-ti. Her jaw unhinges all the way :D

#dnd #dnd art #yuan-ti #yuan ti #pathfinder #lizardfolk

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#one day your project will have a name. one day.

[rhythmantics]

I saw on a bunch of other blogs you used to do psychonauts content but when I went to your current work, I could not find anything so I was wondering if you might know what happened to it?(sorry if this comes off as rude or anything I’m just curious)

i can answer off anon

[rhythmantics]

Oh! God I can’t believe it never hit me to ask this til now lol but what do you think Xander and Karen’s relationship looked like? How do you think they got together?

warnings for the fact that xander is a horrible scumbag and a mentally ill, child-abused wretch. so. usual warnings for that apply.

so a couple things to note; the first is that karen is literally xander's employee - he's the lab's associate director, she's just a low-rank gene sequencer. Second thing to note is that although he's 29 and she's 34, according to the prima guide, xander was originally conceived of as being 35, so I think karen was intended to be younger than him (even if only by a year).

Either way, she's pretty demonstrably weak-willed (betrays alex after a beating, and is persuaded by xander to risk her life to steal something from the lab for him). I don't think she's a bad person; in fact, i think she is a very nice, normal person (like let's be totally real, which one of us would be able to stand up to BW), which makes her ultimate fate at Alex's hands both a huge tragedy and a major reminder that neither Alex nor Xander are good people. I do NOT think it's right to blame Dana's involvement at Xander's behest on him - they are equals in that partnership, more or less - but I DO think some of the blame for Karen's death falls on Xander's shoulders. And Alex's.

In short, Xander takes advantage of her. Given his history with his mother (Ms. "worse than foster care" Mercer), and his suite of Emotional Issues besides, I have a very hard time imagining him in a relationship of equals. And they aren't equal - she's not as smart as him, literally his employee, and implied to be more naïve and trusting. He absolutely seduced her, and there's no way he's not letting the implicit threat of her career hang over her.

They definitely don't live together. We know they have their own separate places, but it's likely Xander had 0 intention of ever living with her, because the entire living room space in his apartment is his office. Given that the Point of Karen's character is that she's SUPER NORMAL, any future where they wind up serious together is one where she'd desire, you know, an actual living room. An entertainment center. You can probably already imagine about how well that would go over with Xander, who's spent his whole life compromising, and sees his new job/income/lifestyle as freedom.

That said, there is no overt abuse in their relationship. Xander has an Image, he has Standards, he hates his mother so much that he strives to be her opposite as much as possible. He would never raise a hand to Karen, but you don't need to be violent to exert control on a partner. I imagine he uses more subtle tactics. The fact that he's so beloved around his office that people would take his word over hers. The fact that he can and will use his horrific backstory to guilt-trip and justify any poor behavior toward her. The fact that he's clever enough and a good enough actor to - quite literally - gaslight. So on.

I think Karen actually thought she was very close to him, very intimate. He'd have framed his usage of his backstory as "opening up," or vulnerability, even though he's very cognizantly using it to make her feel like she was special, was fixing him. He'd put off talks of marriage or cohabitation with excuses of "not being ready" and "needing more time to learn how to trust people" while cognizant that he was never planning to let her move in, never. In many ways, he's the perfect partner, never forgetting a birthday or anniversary, always taking her out to nice places and getting her the things she wants/saying what she wants to hear, while ensuring he always has a leash on her and an exit strategy planned.

And the thing about Xander I find kind of fascinating is that he's motivated by contradictory forces. Xander is NOT a ~dark and twisted cycle path~ with no empathy or capacity to care for others; rather, he's someone with Severe PTSD who was literally in a survival situation for basically his entire life, with no trustworthy caregivers and practically 0 emotional nurturing.

It's not that he only sees her as a sex object - rather, Xander has a deep, deep craving for love and intimacy, and then screws himself over in that regard, because he doesn't feel "safe" if he isn't in total control, and he feels compelled to abandon other people before they can hurt him by abandoning him.

All relationships to him - even for his sister, who is "the only person he can trust" according to his prima bio (karen doesnt even make that list lol) - are functionally over before they begin. He expects the worst out of people - that they are liars, betrayers, cheaters, abandoners, insensitive, ignorant, and cruel - and then deliberately pushes the people around him to prove him right. Then he burns bridges, holds grudges, resents people. In Karen's case, he'll do things like deliberately not mention his birthday, because he's testing to see if she'll even care to remember (and if she doesn't, well, look at how cruel and insensitive she is, he was right to think that about her). If she does remember, he'll judge her on the quality of the gift she gets him compared to what he gets her (he's constantly psychoanalyzing and compiling mental dossiers on the people around him in case he needs to retaliate, which has the side effect of making him a REALLY GOOD GIFT-GIVER). And if it doesn't measure up (and it won't, because he doesn't actually open up to people, so how are they supposed to know what he wants), then that's "proof" that she's a dumb little sheeple, who doesn't care about anyone but herself, etc. etc.

But the core of this kind of resentment and hypercriticality is fundamentally that he craves acknowledgement, affection, validation, and emotional nurturing, things that he was deprived of growing up. The fact that he's so manipulative actually contributes to his despair; he hates that people fall for it, that (in his eyes) "they only see what they WANT to see," that he can ruin lives and destroy careers just by putting on a fake smile or pantomiming being hurt. It drives him crazy that he can get away with it.

At his core, Xander hates himself. Ten years of foster care and ten more years of child abuse have completely fucked up his internal self-image; he fundamentally conceives of himself as a worthless piece of trash that can easily be discarded as soon as anyone sees "the truth" (like he was in foster care), and/or as a weak, pathetic, inherently unlovable target and victim (as he was living with his mother). That's why he has to constantly self-aggrandize, say things like "I'm always right," train his body, avoid drugs and alcohol, put others down - he's constantly teetering on the edge of despair, a wounded animal still actively bleeding from welts that won't heal, in a world that has taught him that other people will hurt him. It's also why he goes Beast Mode on even minor perceived threats to his intellect or competence - what other people might see as a harmless jab, he perceives as a mortal threat. And given the fragility of his emotional state, it very well might be!

So what he gets out of Karen isn't pure physical gratification (although there is that). It's oddly contradictory, but to him, Karen is a symbol of "making it" - she's a hot young blonde with a PhD and a stable job, whom he can easily control (and is thus "safe"), who is madly in love with him. On the other hand, it's all fake, she doesn't actually care about him, just the fake persona he adopts toward her, NOBODY will ever actually care about him, EVERYONE sucks and he HATES THEM ALL. It's practically a form of self-harm.

So I don't think he's ever outwardly done anything to harm Karen. In fact, I think Karen thought she had, like, the PERFECT boyfriend, if only he was more open to the idea of moving in and getting married (but it's okay, she's fixing him). But I do think it was always 🤏 this close to BECOMING toxic and horrible, and Karen never had any clue.

TL;DR: Xander has many Big Feelings and most of them are hatred

#prototype 2009

[rhythmantics]

I think you’ve posted it before but I can’t find it now, but what is your headcannon for what Francis’s birthday is? I feel like its coming up but idk

Oh, I think I forgot to answer this one publicly. Birthday/zodiac thoughts copy-pasted from discord:

zak bday Nov 29, which lines up with the show, november marks the start of summer in south africa where the episode has green-ass trees and bushes. this makes him a saggitarius, which is associated with curiosity, adventure, and freedom. but this ALSO makes him an ophiuchus if we count that. which is a man holding a snake

francis bday Sep 22, making him a virgo (fits his character + terrible compatability with saggitarius) and the closer their birthdays are to each other, the funnier imo. sep 22 is the latest you can be a virgo

so zak: nov 29 (ophiuchus/sagittarius) francis: sep 22 (virgo)

id put wadi as a leo (fire sign for drought) and ulraj as a pisces (water sign babey).

drew is an aries, doc is a capricorn. so drew born in the spring, doc born in the winter

doyle gemini -_-

beeman aquarius lets be real

#the secret saturdays