#and older fans generally know how to like. exist in a way that doesnt immediately cause drama and things are usually chill

[austronauts]

I'm curious as to how you got mitched. Was it gradual or did you just wake up one day with an all consuming urge to gently cradle this hamster of a man in your palms and deposit him into your pocket

oh it was not gradual at all let me tell you. it descended upon me faster than the leafs concede 2-0 leads. it descended upon me SO SWIFTLY i'm still reeling and trying to understand WHAT HAPPENED and how this little twink got me SO BAD.

so, the chronology of events and the Epic Tale of The Fall of Troy (me) to The Twink was as follows:

me happily existing as a pens fan who - after a long hiatus of not following hockey closely - just started getting back into the penguins because a casual conversation with my friends about hockey awakened my dormant penguins sicko memories and instincts like mount vesuvius erupting all over pompeii and herculaneum

me happily joining hockey tumblr and frolicking around in the pensblr fandom. i'd seen a couple of leafs games and knew that "that kid marner" was really good and played VERY pretty hockey but I honestly did not think about him at all! he was just some tiktoker lookin ass dude and i was busy tending to my geriatric birds (although i will say - as i started watching more and more hockey, leafs immediately endeared themselves to me for reasons i can't quite articulate. they just had good vibes. the contrast between the INCREDIBLE hypnotizingly beautiful hockey they played + the utterly boneheaded indefensibly bad mistakes and losses to bottom feeder teams? relatable queens!)

and then one day i found "jack campbell cat dad" content on here and became intrigued by auston matthews' massive mountainous body and jawline and looked up toronto maple leafs content on youtube. THIS, DEAR READER, WAS MY FIRST FATAL MISTAKE. you see - the toronto maple leafs' social media team HANDS DOWN makes the best content, because they FUNDAMENTALLY realize hockey teams and kpop groups are the same thing, especially when it comes to gaining new fans.

ANYWAY, i still remember the EXACT video that made me go - "my god, what is this silly little twink all about. why does he have eyelashes like that. i would like to both squash him into a viscous glittery paste i rub on my eyelids like eyeshadow AND cradle him in my fannypack while feeding him little nuts and pieces of asiago cheese." IT WAS THIS VIDEO - tHE LEAFS CALLING EACH OTHER OUT . THE INFAMOUS VIDEO WHERE MITCH DOESNT KNOW HOW TO SAY ENCYCLOPEDIA. i love a dumb little boy!

MY SECOND FATAL MISTAKE was dragging a fellow friend into hockey with me because im incapable of obsessing over something by myself. i always need to get someone else into it too. SO. I started showing my friend leafs content and SHE was like "have u noticed that this little fruit won't stop talking about auston matthews every chance he gets" (EXHIBIT A: THIS VIDEO where mitch mentions how good auston looks in EVERYTHING every 20 seconds. baby girl, enough. ENOUGH. just say you're dickmatized and go)

and then alas. ALAS. my third and final fatal mistake was going down the mitch marner tag on tumblr and unfortunately being exposed to all the ways in which! he is just! AN IDIOT MANIC PIXIE DREAM TWINK with 2 braincells (one of which is a sour skittle), daddy issues and tragic lore, and irresponsibly long eyelashes who loves physically glomming onto every teammate like a baby koalabear, adopting himself into older teammates' families as their part-time son and part-time dog, wearing terrible outfits and dancing in them, generally being a needy sweetheart that loves to chirp his teammates (poorly) but loves gassing them up even more, drawing smiley faces on his gloves to remind himself that hockey is supposed to be fun (this detail kills me every day), and making weird little faces on the bench because he has the zoomies? god, i am not your strongest soldier! i was not BUILT to be able to resist little sugary sweet morsels like this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if MATTHEW MARTIN, one of nhl's TOP LEADERS IN HITS, caved into mitchell marner heart body and soul....what the fuck am I supposed to do? not give him the love and headpats and neck scritches he wants? not root for his little happiness and well-being? i'm an idiot but not a MONSTER

anyway, that's why i am here typing up this monstrous screed on all the ways in which i was personally victimized by mitchell marner i guess.

okay wait i WILL add one thing - so long before i was a hockey fan i was a soccer fan, and have always always loved undersized creative playmakers who can seemingly weave magic from thin air while effortlessly eluding opponents as if they're made from pixie dust themselves. i have no doubt if mitch grew up in a country where soccer was THE sport, he would be a world class playmaking midfielder right now. and in that sense i do think my adoption of mitch marner as my little hamster was inevitable tbh.

#asks #anon #incapable of being concise about this twink YET AGAIN

[sonicboomseason3]

Same lore anon who asked about rol vs shattered crystal. Back with a diff question. In ur experience, do you think that most boom fans are kids? Ofc a large proportion of sonic fans in general are kids, but like, asking about boom specifically bc it's more of a niche, and the humor (AT TIMES) suits a slightly older audience; like I find the show wayyy funnier now (in my 20s) than I did when it first came out (in my early teens). Basically what I'm saying is that when I post stuff, I feel like only children interact. Which isn't horrible ig but like, it sucks when I wanna have a deeper convo about lore or characterizations (I love both btw), u dig? Ofc u dig. Idk it just feels like there are zero active adults in here except you. Thoughts? Or am I not experiencing the norm?

oh man im actually pretty closed off to the sonic fandom (all fandoms, really) and if it werent for this blog id be that silent fan that shares other peoples art but no one would know who i was. and technically i guess that still is the case because i dont advertise my main blog so if you were to see me around you definitely wouldve never heard of me? anyway my point is that im really the last person to know about the age of the average sonic fan (boom or not) on tumblr BUT... from what ive seen i understand what youre talking about because ive noticed a lot of minors in the fandom and even the adults ive seen around are around the 18-21 range and not much older than that. i know for a fact that sonic fans that are closer to my age and even older exist out there, but in my experience many of them are more active on twitter and i dont feel like immediately redirecting anyone to that place because its twitter and twitter sucks. and thats not even going into my opinion of how adult sonic fans choose to engage with this franchise for KIDS because i swear ive seen some weird shit on here coming from them and im just kinda like, guys pls alkdjflk would you act this way with your other interests? rhetorical bc i dont want to know the answer to that

and thats me talking about just the sonic fanbase in general but a lot of this can apply to boom as well since... boom is still sonic lol a good handful of people just dont like it and the ones that do consume other sonic media and thus dont focus solely on it. between this, its lack of priority with sega atm, the less than universal acclaim that it has, and the fact that its just not old enough to really cash in on that nostalgia bait, its no surprise to me that theres a metaphorical tumbleweed blowing through the boom part of the fanbase right now. hell its not like i was aiming to be one of the few active boom fans when i made this blog, i just wanted a place where i could organize my ideas for the continuation i plan on (eventually) writing while i kept the rest of my sonic consumption on my main blog

anyway just because someones a minor doesnt inherently mean they arent capable of engaging in conversations about lore or characters, but nonetheless, i see what you mean - life experiences can have an effect on how we interact with media and if youre anything like me you probably prefer to talk to people closer to your age lol. idk i feel like my answer is all over the place but i hope you got something from it nonetheless!

#mailbox #Anonymous #i think theres also something to be said about boom just not being very 'deep' to begin with #the show purposely steered way from anything too heavy and whatever lore we did get in the games #was so severely mishandled that no one want to think about that trainwreck #as a result every time boom gets acknowledged chances are people are just talking about a particularly funny joke #or ships #anyway sorry again for the disjointed thoughts ive been having trouble with that lately

[bkanvas-fairy]

Could you tell us a little about your characters?

Y E S !

but due to me having at least over a thousand characters I’ll just give a quick summary of the 25 I manage to dig up over 3 sketchbooks.

Y’all can pick and choose which of them interest yall or who you wanna hear more about!

Also because I’m extra, I made sketch icons for the 25 characters, info under the cut

I’ll talk a bit more about my actual Original Characters first, starting with

Aiko! Otherwise known as Echo

- A marked individual in a steampunk world that gets mixed with magic, because I like both of those things

- Echo runs an underground lab that does helps the underground world with replacing body parts, illegal surgeries etc etc

- Even though she marked, which puts a bounty on her head already, she is well respected by the community for not cheating for your money, stealing your cash, or shanking/killing you mid-surgery

- however, Echo does long for adventure and sometimes do get bored in the lab

oh yeah,, Echo like stealing eyeballs, so if you’re low on cash and wouldn’t mind losing an eye, you know who to call!!

Bonus:

Here’s Echo’s boring, undeveloped sidekick!! I don’t like her and I don’t know how to make her better. Yes, she doesn’t have a name.

here’s my god playboy that left “heaven” due to having an early mid-life crisis, I call him God boi cause;

- He goes by many names! 

tbh, he’s probably the closest character I have to being genderfluid/-neutral? I’m not sure,,

- The god has many powers, from lightning to shapeshifting

- The shapeshifting part allows him to change every part of himself, allowing him to change depending on his situation.

- God boyo, or originally Aristide, is obsessed with the idea of perfection. A god should be perfect, if a god is out of line, he is no god. 

- Same goes for him, which means whenever something is wrong with him, it affects him, extremely

However, leaving the land of gods to live among humans aren’t all perks

- Aris isn’t immune to diseases or injuries. In fact, he actually fell down and died on impact when he came to earth, being reborn into another child immediately.

- He doesn’t gain his memories back automatically tho!! He has to have a major shock to the brain in order for him to remember his previous lives

- Sometimes the shock isn’t enough either, when you have a thousand over lives, you won’t remember every single one of them. So forgotten lovers coming back to haunt because your brain hates you? That’s everyday for him!

i just,, i like playing with the concepts of god,,

Up next we got Ayeka Himura! A japanese student going to a neighborhood, but still a pretty good, school living close to poverty due to her father’s constant spending habits and obsession with art supplies. With the household lacking a mother due to wacky shenanigans, Ayeka takes care of her two younger siblings and the house, all while maintaining a very well-paid job and slowly loosing interest in actually studying for a good, honest job.

also she likes birds!!

Yes her design is heavily “based” off Toga but I love her current design too much to change it, h e l p

So like,, I suck at chinese and I made ocs that exclusively spoke in chinese to help with that but I’m still stuck at 40~marks

I forgot his scar but remembered his earring i hate myself

my og chinese kiddo! he was was first to come and I love his design ever since

he radiates fuck you energy except the girl below. He’s neighbors with her and they acknowledge each other existence ever since. he has a dumb cliche crush on her and is a bit protective of her because nothing says having issues than latching onto someone that makes you happy

Only this girl got named!! even tho she was the second character.

Li Shen, yes she doesnt have a surname, is apparently main ho now, according to my old oc chart of my “main” ocs

She’s the group’s resident sweetheart and really does not want you to do stupid shit, stop doing stupid shit. She tutors my son up there ^^ even though he’s actually smart and just refuses to do his work properly. But she still deeply cares for him.

As well as the girl below shdifhd

the last girl of the ching chong trio and the reason I had to switch up my son’s design is this girly over here! Her design was too business-y and formal so I enrolled all of them into college. A rich girl who doesn’t know how to deal with her g a y thoughts. Tried sending Li Shen some flowers once. She didn’t realize attaching her name would be a good idea and son got a good laugh.

i like paranormal stuff so they apparently look into that shit in their spare time. They’re all actually really fun characters to do prompts with I swear!! send some in and I’ll write them

I had a previous concept for son and Li Shen before last girl came and if yall want me to talk about it,,, i found my sketchbook with the old ideas,,

NEXT UP IS MY OLD GIRL ELORA!!

Elora herself used to be a fan character but I pulled her out and wow\

cant fucking believe she used to be straight for Vylad

shes the outgoing, fun adventure type! bit of mommy issues here and there tho,, I don’t want to say too much since I have an entire for her +

her now upgraded bro, Vincent

i really like the name vincent,,

also now he has mommy issues

Ead, the knight who used to have armor

I hate drawing armor 

he also have issues

AND IRIS MY SWEET GIRL IM SO SORRY

she doesnt have that much issues tho

basically I made elora and her bro have mommy issues, I’m sorry in advance if that spoils anything

I, sometimes, post about these 4 over on @eloradiesismydocsname​ and its a gay ol’ time

not that gay tho because uhh,, medieval times,, but I need prompts for a modern au of them and I am happy to talk about their personalities and even go semi in-depth for any of them!!

here we have ghoster.png,, which is her file name cause I didn’t name her,,

A horror enthusiast + film student that goes to a supposedly haunted shack to film her upcoming project with the boys. wacky shenanigans occur and the boys left leaving ghoster here to starve and eventually fall to her death. But because it’s my oc i get to bring her back from the dead, now hungry as ever and will fucking eat you, its not a kink thing, shes just that hungry and angry

tax fraud.png

a robo girl that i created during social studies cause they were talking about taxes and i just went, “what if,, a robo runs on taxes,,, and like,, she haunts you down for not paying your taxes,,” thus she was born! I don’t know what to name her but she is set in the future so-

Time to go future-apocalypse style because I love that setting too and was upset that I didn’t have any ocs in that style. So I created Alex A. ! A cybrog filled with memories of the previous generations as a sad attempt to preserve human life.

He’s accompanied by his sister/cousin idr i didn’t draw an icon for her, didnt like her design. they go on a hunt for food and to return with nothing. She gets to meet this other dude who has a plant arm im pretty sure i based him off someone’s elses oc but i cant remember. The 3 are forgotten. Kinda want to bring them back tho.

Neon! A character set in the future utopia of lazy people, where gamers rise up. its the best I can describe her story without getting too deep. She the new hacker on the block, joining the underground gang of elite hackers. She’s another one of those wacky characters that just has fun. I mean, when you know your way around codes and the world you live in is full of it, would you not take advantage of that?

as for fan characters,, uhh,, i have em

STARTING WITH MY WIFE!

Alexzandra Zara oh my god i forgot to draw her necklace and shirt

anyways,, Alexzandra is one of the more older ocs I have that didnt get a big revamp. Only an au I develop to the point I forgot the actual shows and the original cast are a little different from the source haha what? She’s the emotionally unstable german war veteran, yes the wife thing isn’t mutual, and haha shes only 27~. I cling onto her so much?? She’s hits a lot of “edgy” points but I still love her cause idk,, the story I made for her is something I hold dear cause Alexzandra was one of my first ACTUALLY DEVELOPED CHARACTER. Is it wrong to say I hold her really close to my heart? Is that weird? probably a little cringy sorry haha. I probably project a little into her which might have strengthened my love for her ack. Her story delves more into the depression very unstable needs to talk to someone side and i get scared talking about my wife’s story online so uhh, idk ask me specific questions about her, I’ll be more inclined to talk.

Dr Watts! The spoiled ass dick that stole dst Wilson’s house and yes this is a dst oc, yes im slightly sorry.

He’s just fun?? almost ran a blog with him and a friend’s oc. He’s your typical uptight old science gramps that took advantage of the fact that no one knows his real name that he calls himself a doc. He’s not. I put everything about him up to a 9-10? He’s one of those wacky characters and I love him for it! His story is really wonky tho so might need help solidifying that part 

and from the angry old man to my sweet man that will adopt you even if you’re noisy or call him ginger. Pilot here is a TF2 OC I made to interact with other tf2 OCs cause some of them are fun and i wanna join in :((

He’s the Canadian stereotype, and yes, he adopted scout, that was one of my character notes. 

Like the actual cast of tf2, there’s barely any real story to him. I only gave him a vague I don’t know my past but hey, i fly really really well. He participated in war unlike certain men but he’s still really nice and will only kill you if you hurt his family. Which he doesn’t know so he just considers the cast his family. He keeps mentioning a wife though, pretty sure he doesn’t have one but you do what makes you happy son.

Ai! an oc I HEAVILY revamped oh my god i hate her old vers. So if yall remember my random shouting of missing my og son, Aru. Here’s his bff. cause he barely has any actual friends that give a shit. And I just cant have that. but here’s your yandere revamped into a last minute addition. I actually feel like I did Ai a lot of justice. I don’t want to delve too deep cause I will start making charts. I’ll do that in a separate post if yall are keen

Isamu Aena! a mp100 oc I made by accident cause idk,, I was thinking about lolita fashion and all of a sudden, the actual oc I was going to make turned into a mob psycho oc. She’s one of my few ocs where her sexuality matters (she’s gay yeah) cause it plays a role in her storyline. She went from being “manipulated”/used to Mob’s wingwomen. She spots out things that can help him in the romantic department cause she’s into romance. A student of the school Mob infiltrated and a fantastic tailor, not to mention a pretty decent pyschic. wait where do models get their lolita stuff from,,

im gonna ignore that and move onto Lillian Yi! Who, i swear i did not meant for it, is very close to lloyd. I mean,, none of the ninjas were with him after s3, who you think he’d meet. Lillian is a survivor from the Great Devourour and yes I’m still pissed LEGO stole my backstory for Lillian to use for Harumi. FUCK YOU LEGO, i still love both of em tho,, The event did leave a big scar and it made Lillian job jumping for a bit, ending at Chen’s Noodles in S6~, where ya know,, stuff got better. She was a medalist for gymnastics and continue the activity, even after her parents’ death, to please others. She was already lost at the time so staying in the sport would help, right? Needless to say, after being rejected at a cop academy for youths, or something similar, she gave up for a while but got back into the idea of saving people by using her skills she already had. It helped with the weight and feelings and meeting the green ninja was a very big bonus. Also Lloyd dubbed her the “mysterious stranger” when she refused to speak in fear of her identity, slight shame, and maybe a bit of being star struck. It helped Lloyd too in a sense where he had something to distract him from Zane’s passing.

 Their relationship was eventually formed, strong and almost unbreakable, except for harumi but uhh thats a different story. Throughout the seasons, they stayed close and lloyd was always comforted by Lillian went times get ruff.

Also Lillian is my most light-hearted characters and I think that says a lot

Then there’s Nite “I don’t want to be your dad”. A character that is supposed to be in the ninjago world but barely interacts with the main story and only stays in his self contained plot. He was supposed to get a bf but uhhh idk. He’s the master of shifting and streams that online, taking out small crimes, and is actually really shy and doesn’t like interacting with people.

also haha fortnite

Nora Akino, the sin of despair! its an ad thing, I think. She speaks only in a foreign language that only Odin understands and is either big gay for Ava or Maggi, she can’t pick. And yes she did drink the vial, when TITAN attacks your planet and you accidentally die, how else can you meet your family again? also my grandpa walked in and said she looks like royalty. cool-

she wouldn’t leave my hand for like,, 3 days or something

Petri, a fellow troublemaker at camp campbell’s music camp. She managed to pick the camp because apparently a parent who doesn’t acknowledge your hard work don’t read the fine print! Please let David adopt her,,

LASTLY! Yukimaru Atsuko, hero name; Gummie. She goes by Yuki and is a big dick. She’s a studious student but gets more thrills on the actual battlefield. Living with her uptight grandma and her big bottom energy bro, she has the dom energy thing going. and apparently folks on G+, or the people who comment about her, thinks she’s really pretty, which was oddly a thing back before UA. She’s the dick you can like, not like Bakugou but she will definitely want to fight Bakugou. 

A gum-related quirk is not full of perks when its only your hands. I’d dive more into her like her insecurities and stuff but I’ve been here for probably 3hrs. Sorry anon.

Also I’m so sorry to anyone who reads this all the way through.

#not an ask #bkanvas' ocs #ocs

[flockofdoves]

wait ok maybe a bad time to start this at 1:30am (<- started this post last night lmao) but i’ve been thinking so much (for a long time but this week i think maybe prompted by jonny saying stuff in the s5 q&a part 3 about fanon character designs getting more homogenous as the fandom gets bigger its really been on my mind again) about my thoughts on the magnus archives character design stuff

(this turned into such a fucking long post my god sorry lol. just writing this for my own purposes really but i feel ridiculous i spent like a good portion of the past day writing this out dkjfhgfd)

like i already said on that other post character design stuff is full of so much under the surface both really silly and almost nonsensical (like ‘oh this character just feels like they have a lot of triangles incorporated into their design’ or the slightly more connected to reality arbitrary ideas people have about what type of character might wear glasses) and stuff thats incredibly loaded and very much connected to real life systems of oppression. so its like. idk. i like drawing people and fashion and harmonizing shapes and the idea of coming up with people who dont exist through abstracted drawings that somehow click and that can feel cohesive even with different angles/expressions/poses/etc is really fun to me conceptually but Character Design(tm) as a thing even outside of established tropes and schools of it that really lean into elements that can uphold gross shit as shorthand just inevitably theres so much to consider in the implications of making a person (visually) and ascribing traits to them (or i guess in this case largely the opposite)

so thats not something id call fun its just important and inevitably a big factor if i’m going to put any of this to words and can only hope i do so non-clumsily when i wanna talk about this on the whole just bc i find the process of how fanon designs get homogenized interesting (and the purpose of it understandable and maybe a bit inevitable in certain contexts) but also regardless of any actual potential problematic implications in any of that just bc i like the creative process of coming up with character designs i like trying to see when it comes to practicing that through applying it to characters in non-visual media i care about how i can break my guides for what they could look like down to their bare essentials between canon description, things i vibe with personally, etc so that if i have all that written down for myself it can be a good starting place for just experimenting with designs (i dont have any desire to settle on any one design for these characters but its just good general practice for this stuff) and maybe pushing a bit against some things that seem to be generally defaulted to mix things up or w/e. so yeah i’ve just wanted to write all this out for myself for a while, so after that long fucking intro fdkgh here goes!

jon!!!

ok so canonically hes born about 1987 and is like roughly 28-31 throughout the series but looks older to the point where he straight up lies and says hes a decade older at one point, he has graying hair, has been described as looking like he hasnt slept in weeks

(this bullet point contains spoilers up to early s4) depending on what part of canon youre describing him in he canonically has scars from worms probably all over his body (post ep 39), a burn scar on his hand (probably right and probably roughly shaped like a handprint) (post ep 89), actually i’m checking on the wiki now and it specifically says melanie stabbed him in the shoulder? but rereading the transcript and another couple parts that i thought potentially could mention it i dont believe it ever actually specifies (maybe the person who wrote that is conflating how both melanie and daisy’s first injuries from the slaughter are on their shoulders? so even if not canon good guess i guess that his scar from thats on his shoulder) (post ep 125) plus also probably on his throat from daisy (post ep 91), somewhere from michael stabbing him (post ep 47), and who knows maybe even something from mike crew (probably not it was just the height part of things not a lightning strike but i saw fanart of him getting a lichtenberg figure scar once from that which was interesting) (post ep 91)

has been described as ‘scrawny’ and ‘little’ which may just be more of a insult but because of that i support manlet jon lol. also because of that tend to think of him as skinny and not very muscular but i’m def not opposed to him being fat i think its really fun when i do see interpretations of him as such esp in juxtaposition with martin its nice having stuff sometimes where its two fat characters in a relationship. but if i’m leaning on every little word to narrow down character design i’d say hes most likely thin and probably short too.

getting into stuff with no real canon basis, i am a fan of him having long hair like a lot of fanon has him with. its a very tangential justification because i know its more the specific events surrounding this this was describing but when he was described as a “grubby jesus” that helped lol

but! my jon hair opinion that seems to differ from fanon is that i think maybe itd make sense with him being described as looking older and stuff to give him a bit of a receding hairline

not sure about glasses either way i think it just comes down to the specific design whether it looks good or not. there is something conceptually funny to me about giving an avatar of the eye glasses and debating whether that “makes sense” or not lol. one time i saw someones design where he stopped needing to wear glasses later on and i thought that was kinda fun

i don’t really care for like. idk. glowing green eyed jon or multiple eyes or w/e. like i get it. idk probably somethings happening when hes doing like the ceaseless watcher thing or like that one scene where he forced a statement out of that person who described him as “all eyes” like the phrase but maybe not just that as a phrase. so that plus the cover art of the show being green and making people probably theme stuff on that color i guess i cant blame people for doing that but idk just like. it feels kinda just Blah and not that novel to see a lot of the time and a bit too tropey or w/e for my personal taste unless people mix it up a bit. so i tend to prefer him just looking like some guy even later on usually. also with just like brown eyes or w/e

okay so this next part is for both jon and martin because i cant fit this into either of their sections because i feel like i cant adequately talk about this without doing it in juxtaposition to one another

this post summarizes basically anything i’m reiterating here far better but basically by nature of this being a podcast written by a white person for whom most of the first characters voiced (who included most of the most frequently appearing characters outside of those described by others because they were reoccurring avatars or w/e long before voice appearances) were from a small pool of people at a majority white company and their family members, even if that wasnt “intentional” of course that pattern happens so much and more productions should be conscious of that from the get go and reach outside their immediate circles to cast more actors of color from the start of their productions if they have the resources to properly compensate them. so basically from there theres no real totally satisfying solution for portraying “aracial” characters acted and written by white people’s race, because the situation just isn’t ideal in the first place

so like, with that in mind, i know its a bit of a mixed bag with jon in fanon being pretty consistently either ambiguously a person of color or specifically south asian, because i know people of color who were excited from fanon going in for him to be a person of color only to realize hes written and voiced by a white guy and has no canon race (which might just somewhat default to him being written as white since theres no active thought to how him being a person of color, let alone any specific race or ethnicity, might affect anything), but then on the other hand, characters with no race given being defaulted to being portrayed as white is absolutely another common issue in fandoms of things like books and podcasts. so personally because of that i would feel weird portraying him as white in my own designs in contrast with how consistently hes depicted as a person of color, but i would be interested in potentially depicting him as other races beyond the default fanon of him being south asian too (although theres def stuff to consider there that doesnt prevent any interpretation but just is there regardless like his dynamic with daisy in like s4)

and then this post expresses things better than i could ever rehash, but because of the stuff outlined in there in my own attempts at character designs i try to avoid making martin white because of the juxtaposition between that and making jon a person of color in their dynamic. not as pertinent and not something i’ve taken in from any fan of color saying it so i’m definitely not dictating this just talking out my thought process, but by extension of this i’ve also tried to consider how colorism in juxtaposition between them might make it sit better to have martin have darker skin than jon. this does get a bit weird though when balancing how martin has a couple really goofy lines implying ignorance about police abusing their power (i guess charitable interpretations could be that hes plenty aware but nonetheless vocalizing shock in the moment of it actually happening in front of him), so even if as one of the few characters i’ve posted designs of before i drew him as black, when i remembered those lines i guess its just an issue of an “aracial” character being defaulted to being written as if hes white, so even if he certainly could still be black (or any race besides white who might not have the luxury of ignorance about police brutality) it just makes clear that by him being written the way he was nothings ideal because theres not necessarily much depth that can be taken from canon to make certain depictions of him as satisfying or well fleshed out as they could be. oh also so inconsequential to the rest of this and i dont care about this at all beyond just latching onto any scrap to base things off of but the fact that martin maybe knows at least some polish i feel like thats not a language most people just know from school (esp as someone who didnt go to college) or w/e so maybe his mom is polish so probably hes part white at least to wildly extrapolate from there? idrc tho its just one more thing to note on the subject depictions of jon and martins races

martin!

canonically the same age as jon (so approximately born 1987 and roughly 28-31 throughout the series)

theres at least like 4 things in canon that can be used to say hes canonically fat, and some of those lines also more just generally describe him as “big” or w/e so while i dont care about sticking to this as much its easy to argue hes tall too (esp that one point where he says a worm “jumped literally 6 feet through the air at my face” which i guess could be approximate or the worm like. arcing lol and also iirc jonny says he doesnt remember writing that line but regardless its another thing to latch onto to narrow down design stuff)

melanie!

canonically has a scar on her shoulder (as of late 2016), probably on her leg too (if not by early 2017 then by early 2018/ep 125), and is described as skinny

(spoilers for late s4) (also eye trauma mention) post ep 155 she’s blind but trying to research what exactly she might look like like would the results of the damage she does with the awl after going to the hospital would her eyes need to be eviscerated vs enucleated? idk. thinking about lydia saying in a s3 extra in retrospect talking about this where shes like ‘it wouldn’t work like that with [an awl]!’ bc . lol yeah idk. or like would she have scarring on her eyelids or anything, would she have glass eyes, would she feel a need to wear sunglasses to protect her eyes or as a visual cue that shes blind (bc idt shed be the type to just wear it to hide her eyes) or not, etc. i’m not sure! one thing i do know for sure though thats a pet peeve in art is that people make her cane have a red stripe on it when it the UK especially a red striped white cane is for deafblind people, so her cane is most likely just plain white (also theres different styles of white canes but from researching i think shed probably make use of a long cane imo)

my biggest non-canon appearance thought about her is just. melanie king butch 💗

i do think its fun when characters get drawn with unnaturally colored dyed hair for no real reason and do think people should have fun with that more but simultaneously the contrarian in me gets annoyed with how common blue grown out roots straight hair bob melanie is. like the fun of the novelty of being ‘fuck it dying this characters hair’ gets sucked out of it from it being so consistent in fanon. also while she def could be a long haired butch or w/e regardless i just wish fanon of her was way more masc for my own self indulgent reasons

basira

i think the only canonical appearance description is the implication that shes not thin by jared when describing her, melanie, and martin, distinguishing melanie as “the skinny one”

hussain specifically as a surname spelled that way while i’m def no expert, from people i know personally and looking online too seems to be most common specifically with pakistani, indian, and bangladeshi muslims so it makes the most sense to have her be depicted as south asian. considering her VA, her being part black could make sense too but also i feel like its kinda a Thing in a lot of media where they’ll barely have black characters but when they do they’ll make them cops so like idk that’d def require more thought to it.

definitely not on authority on this of course this is just me talking through my own thoughts but i feel like maybe the common fanon of her being a hijabi feels a bit just like . theres not much thought behind it for a lot of people doing it? like it feels like ‘she has a muslim name’ -> ‘she’s muslim’ -> ‘she wears a hijab’ and not much else. like theres just like a whole lot that would need to be unpacked with any main character being religious in this series and actually specifically iirc theres a part in season 5 or something where her and jon reflect on the implications of all this on human religion? and both seem a bit agnostic in their approach. and of course theres people who wear hijabs who arent particularly religious (just like obviously vice versa) but for adults in places that arent majority muslim i feel like a main motivator for that would be connection with ones wider community? but basically all of the main characters in this story like necessarily with the themes and how all this was able to happen to them they feel pretty atomized from any real community (she specifically is paralleled with martin in how she latches onto daisy) none of this is at all to say she couldn’t be practicing islam and/or a hijabi but just that if thats how people want to depict her i think it deserves more thought than just drawing her as such (like for one example of how people have done cool things with making characters muslim i appreciate this artists comics about muslim jon (1, 2, 3)) but yeah! idk just something i’ve been thinking about but very much is not something i can act like an authority on of course. because being a hijabi is something stigmatized i do nonetheless feel slightly weird if i were to go against that fanon but idk

part of me is like ‘we dont need more butch cops’ but then the other part of me just defaults to wanting to make every woman gnc lol. for w/e reason i tend to picture her dressing pretty practically in like khaki cargo pants and hiking boots and flannels and such

daisy

canonically theres here starburst shaped scar on the back of her shoulder

(spoilers for mid s4) i dont care to find it now but i feel like once she was described as scrawny or skinny or whatever (not sure how much focusing on muscle vs thinness if so) but if so that was after she came out of the coffin so i dont think that really implies she always looked like that and i think maybe even by contrast could be implying she was muscular before

def think it makes sense to make her white. generally i do see her similar to fanon depictions of her although i do kinda wish in juxtaposition people would make more women look butch besides her. i think when i first pictured her before seeing fanart or anything it was pretty similar in build and hair color and demeanor such as most of fanon but i pictured her with like . you know like the tight bun women in the military wear lol. so its more ambiguous if her flavor of powertripping “tough” white woman is gay or not. but idrc regardless i dont plan on making much art of her

tim

uhhh i think the only canonical description of him beyond his worm scars (post ep 39) is that basira called him hot in comparison to jon and martin lol

ever since i started listening i keep defaulting to picturing him vaguely like tim from marble hornets lol. so like idk i think its fun when he has defined eyebrows and sideburns and stuff. but not even that i’m really Set on i think theres a lot of fun potential designs for him

sasha

canonically has long hair, is tall, and has glasses

(spoilers for either end of s1 or end of s2 depending on if you’ve figured out something. if you know you know lol) like obviously theres weird stuff in juxtaposition if you make not!sasha a different race than her. i think probably regardless theyre the same race considering melanie didnt note that when describing what sasha looked like. idrc about figuring out what not!sasha looks like ig if i ever make art of her i’ll just figure it out

i think this was the first art i ever saw of her like right around the week or so i started listening to the show that was posted and a mutual reblogged it so i think from basically the start thats how i pictured her essentially. but the main parts of ‘long dark hair, glasses’ i internalized from that are so close to just canon so maybe not saying much

georgie

uhhhh i dont think theres any canon description of her? and i dont have very many opinions on what she does look like honestly except that i think she looks very bisexual lol. i like the idea of her presenting pretty gnc but still maybe having some fun with feminine aesthetics too, but honestly making her present totally masc is really cool too

oh also wrt body type stuff. part of me is a bit tired of how sometimes it feels like fat characters only get to be in romantic relationships if its with skinny characters and rarely are there character designs of two fat people together and melanie is canonically skinny (which doesnt really matter i Could ignore it but i like latching onto descriptions just to narrow things down) and jons maybe implied to be which makes jon/martin like that too. but on the other hand idec i care more about just having fat wlw characters so if melanie in all i project on her cant be that then georgie will be

oliver!

only canonical description of him i believe is “tall, black and careworn, deep lines of worry etched into an otherwise handsome face”

uhh beyond that idk.. not really set on this at all but i feel like maybe he dresses like. business goth lol. like idk. well put together casual clothes like nice quality short sleeve button ups and chinos or nice cuffed jeans but maybe darker colors and a bit of a vaguely edgy but not tacky flair (like fucking idk. raven pattern button up or something lol)

i saw some art of him once where he had long locs and also just idk he was like doing that ominous floaty thing which included his hair and that had a nice rhythm in the art together with the black tendrils in the background so i could appreciate him having long locs/braids/twists or something. but def not set on that and ofc theres like a lot of years to depict him between he could have various hair styles

this is hard to really judge but ive seen posts where people are like ‘haha i draw oliver just like i drew kravitz in the adventure zone’ which is like vaguely annoying to me idk lol. but of course i cant Really know if thats what people are doing from depiction alone bc theres no set appearance for kravitz himself but sometimes i get the Vibes thats whats someones doing and its just like. whatever idk. branch out and design another character!!

there are literally soooooo many more characters i really thought i could make a short-ish thing for each character beyond a few necessary addendums but god even on inconsequential shit this post is already SO fucking long lol so i’m giving up for now i’ve done most of the main people plus my favorite side character so its fine i can get back to this later if i really want to

#cpost #tma blogging #i try to note spoilers on individual bullet points throughout this so it should be fine to read if you avoid those bullet points i think #even if youre not finished with the podcast