Hi this is where I talk a bunch about ocs :D
I dont have a lot of time lately to talk abt lore but i still think abt my guys whenever i have some chill time to myself, so here's some patch notes. This is also just me thinking out loud haha
CD:
ive been playing w some changes for CD and seeing if they stick :] gonna make the story slightly more complex and the sides of the conflict also different (for example I am going to make hades and talas full on enemies at first along with connon, caval and silas >:3 (and I am also making silas and his monster form two separate characters so the lion (hal) is now a mount instead))
Specifically what I've been thinking about is making Hades either a ship captain or a first mate for a rogue ship. The deal with Hades is that he comes from a renowned family from Redbridge and is a disgrace to them. In previous versions of CD they were artisans but that never rly clicked for me, and recently I have been reworking Redbridge into a naval empire to add some 🤏spice 🤏to the world, which would mean Hades' family is actually a naval captain family putting him next in line to be one of them but since his thing is being a disgrace he takes off and becomes a rogue. And instead of hating leviathans he fucking hates hunters instead. Conversely, I think with these changes Talas would also NOT be inclined to kill hunters (or at least not as often as he currently does). He'd pick fights with the naval fleet and other similar factions instead which is more like his character.
I also wanna try and bring back an older concept I had where connon's ship was able to both become fully submerged (like the subs in sunless sea where her character originated from) and this other idea I had where a ship could split in half into two smaller ships. Like if a catamaran could split into two and flank a vessel on both sides. But we'll see if I can make this work x)
Dragons (broken horizon + extinction):
I vaguely mentioned this a while ago as well but I've also been thinking abt my dragons and how I kinda want them to all be in one world/setting, which includes both my broken horizon guys (cer, jarek, octane, etc) and my extinction guys (alex, c, orion, etc) but I dont know how to deal with all of the conflicting lore and themes.
Because for extinction the big theme is there are people who can turn into dragons, and technically all of the dragons' powers are based on energy (for lore reasons). Meanwhile for my other dragons I have a few different elements or other ways of using fire (eg instead of using straight up fire/energy, my oc Jarek can breathe out gas only and ignites it with his mandibles).
I miss all my dragons a lot so I kinda wanted to make a world for them where I could have them Vibe and do different stories in so I thought about having a dragon-only universe but unfortunately Extinction has a pretty huge human element that I cant just eliminate.
It feels counterintuitive, i know the first logical choice is 'just let them be different things' but I genuinely feel like the right choice is to put them both together so the characters can interact and the whole story can be deeper because as it is both are really shallow and I would really like for them to work together so that's what I've been picking at for some months now (it's um. been real slow)
For these two stories I do have two different vibes though that I've been wondering how to weave together nicely bc they overlap for some characters. For broken horizon I had flying and aerial racing as a big theme (and some of the chars in extinction would be rly into that) and for extinction I had dragon arena fights as a big theme (and some of the characters in bh would be rly into that) both of these is another of the reasons why I wanted to put them both together bc it feels like they can fit very well I just have to find the right idea for them to click and then itll be smooth sailing -w-
I also wanted to talk abt this in hopes that talking abt all the dragons gets me to think more about them as well
I wanted to make this post bc I've been really busy lately and rly absent from here in general and I don't have as much time to draw (or even think abt ocs) anymore but I still wanted to keep posted about what's been going on in my head and hopefully get some eyes on it and maybe even some feedback if anyone is so inclined
If u read this whole thing thank u i owe you my life fr I hope u enjoyed reading abt my patch notes :D and hopefully sometime in the future I can get back to drawing concepts and stuff or maybe even writing stuff
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f Narrator wanting to murder maim mutilate m marla.. or marla/ male marla and narrator/f narrator worsties/besties. or marla/male marla and tyler… or anything with marla/ male marla..
Marlon called me, interrupted me at work, and he said he had a bruise. He said I needed to come and look at it right away, because he needed to know.
This was him, asking me, pounded flank steak, to look and tell him the nature of his bruise.
Marlon hasn't had health insurance in years, so he tries not to think about it, usually. It's easy, since there's no difference when you have health insurance. It's old hat.
But today, he thought about it.
And he noticed a bruise.
So I'm walking up to the Regent hotel after work, and he's in the lobby in his limp little tank top. He'd call it a wifebeater and imagine himself in place of the wife, I'm sure. I wonder if he isn't cold all the time. Mr. Marlon Singer, such a masochist just so he can show off his skeletal body with all the cigarette burns I have to hear him and Tyler laughing over.
I am Jane's abnormal hemorrhoid development.
He doesn't mention what Tyler and I stole from him, even though I think it was all the cash he had. Even though just three days ago he tried to chase me around the house and beat me with a broom. He made me and Tyler go sleep in the junkyard. Buried under our furs, howling at the moon. Maybe I can't fault him for that.
He couldn't keep it here where the guys he brings back could get at it, he said, and sure. But he should've known better than to tell Tyler about it, because now it's bags upon bags of lye being kept in the driest room in the house.
I work on grinding cracks into my remaining teeth as he grabs his neighbors Agatha and Dianne's Meals on Wheels kits. The delivery lady remarks on what a good young man Marlon must be, helping out these old ladies. Oh, yeah. A real, upstanding, mummified rat of a man. Maybe he helped them into the ditch. He yaps at me the entire walk up to his room, and I don't hear a word as I methodically rip up the skin around Tyler's kiss on my hand with a broken nail. It's been infected since Tuesday, and the ring of puffy red flesh makes the ghost of her lips white like the center of a neon tube. Always buzzing.
We get to his room, he says to me, "One of these boxes is for you, you know."
I think about all the women who bother to use what little time they have to operate charities that keep the poor and destitute alive enough to want to kill themselves. All that time spent cooking mac and cheese en masse and putting little packets of powdered milk next to little cartons of the liquid, like they get at schools and prisons, packets that can only be opened by the nimble fingers of caring relatives these elderly recipients do not have.
Sure.
Tyler told me I need to be eating at least two meals a day, or she'd steal a blender and make me drink raw chicken. So I eat the Meals on Wheels box. Sorry Agatha. I rip open the powdered milk packet, dump it into the carton, hold it closed, and shake it. Twice the calories. A recipe for palliative care.
Marlon's sitting there, quiet, eating Dianne's latest last meal. All the urgency is gone. Sucked dry. He's got pallor like a hospice heart failure. When dogs get treated for heartworms, the worms die, and sometimes, not all of them break apart. Sometimes, there will be thin, dead cords of necrotized nematode strung through their heart waiting for the right beat to fall apart and clot a vital artery. This can take years to happen. Your pet recovers perfectly from treatment until seven years down the line, you give it a doggy cupcake and a pulmonary embolism for its tenth birthday.
Marlon looks like he's had his first melarsomine injection and his owner is thinking about taking him to a dog park instead of bothering with the second. If you let a dog get its heart rate up too high when getting treated for all the parasites you let grow in it, its heart will explode. Or all the worms will clog its lungs. Whichever one it is, it's happening to Marlon here in this room. On this bed.
He says he'd found a bruise, a while back. A nasty little thing, like the crush of a plum under your thumb. Near one of his ankles. And Marlon Singer knew he couldn't afford any novel treatments, and he'd seen too many people rot from the inside out from them already. He did not go to the clinic down the street that gets its windows broken in often enough that there's just big black billowing sails of trashbags over their storefront more often than not. Marlon says he once saw a rat nailed to the door, which is something you'd think would be too neat and poetic for real life. He didn't go to the clinic because he didn't have to. And maybe if he was fucking guys he wanted to he would be a bit more cautious, but the men Marlon Singer gets to fuck are the type to have given him those bruises in the first place. They're the reason there's single mothers visiting that clinic, like half melted wax getting scraped out of the picture. He says he shouldn't feel guilty.
I tell Marlon about where I got the idea for poisoning all the food at the Pressman hotel.
He asks me what I mean by that, and I tell him about my first boss at the company I work for now.
When I first started there, I was selling our cars to companies. Bulk orders for work vehicles. My job was to not fuck up any contracts we already had. Marlon is probably aware, but the type of man involved in that sort of thing, he knows he's got you on a collar and chain. You and him both know he'll be renewing the contract, but you have to do the song and dance for him. Pretend you like how close he gets to you. Pretend you don't want to rip his testicles from his ballsack when he leans in sweaty and tells you how he likes your hair, did you go and do all that just for me?
Because he knows. And you know. But enduring this is what you were hired to do. If you were a man, you would've been hired to create a sense of the old boys club with this guy. But you're not.
There is so much pretense in the world.
Anyway, my first boss, call him Joe — whenever I'd return from those trips and dinners, Joe wouldn't pretend that it wasn't a shit job. He'd commiserate and wish me luck with the next one. He didn't overstep, he wasn't creepy, he kept his distance. The best you could hope for. Thirty days on the job, they asked me how I was doing, and I told them I was doing great. The job was amazing, I felt embraced by the company, my boss was great. One of those things was true to me.
And when Joe got his promotion, for being such a great regional manager, he cornered me in my cubicle and informed me he'd been jerking off into my nicely labeled thin salad lunches each time they showed up in the office fridge. He told me this with the same smile he'd always worn.
Marlon, he's next to me, and he leans closer like we're having a nice little confession. My skin itches.
It was before the 90 day clause kicked in my health coverage, so I had to wait at one of those free clinics like Marlon's, and I was surrounded by a lot of young men, wispy mangled pears. What little flesh was left was soft. When I told the nurse what happened, I watched myself die in her eyes. Dappling up with rashes and bruises until I was all painted and sunken like a bog body.
For the longest time, I wondered if I'd become the oral Mary. How many times I vomited in that office toilet, I don't know. I stopped bringing lunch.
The thing is, I couldn't see it in his face. Joe's, I mean. Not even when he told me. I couldn't see it in anyone. So I stopped eating out. Stopped eating altogether, really.
Marlon, his response was to go to the support groups. His tragedy was that it was a slow death, coming for him. Best to wriggle into the pile of dying bodies, see what it's like. Maybe that could muster enough suicidal impulse.
I tell Marlon, of course, I couldn't go to HR. I was a new hire with no evidence and previous record of liking my boss. I didn't want to tell my mom. I didn't want her to know. Those uncomfortable dinners became absolutely, wretchedly unbearable as I thought about the food I was being forced to share.
When the option came up for a dead end job in the least loved department in the building, I put on the best performance of my life to get the part. Best aspiring Compliance and Liability head and sole department employee, that's me. My new job was to keep secrets. It was, already, old hat.
For months I thought about waking up from a narcoleptic fit at my desk, with Joe leaning over the cubicle wall and asking if I was alright. I watched my stomach like it was nuclear. Every extra second it took until I bled like usual slid me closer to buying myself a shotgun and pumping a slug or two into my brain.
It's an unavoidable fear, I tell Marlon. You can't do anything about it. Once you know, you know. At some point, you have to find the peace in it. Imagine yourself, a balloon popping with meaty chunks flying apart, splattering onlookers and raining viscera.
For a month, six months, I had cancer. Worse than cancer. Every time I eat out, I get it again.
Marlon is looking at me, melting stained glass, drowning in that sort of shared pity you build together with someone who's dying.
I don't want Marlon to feel guilty.
I tell Marlon, that's why I poison the food at the Pressman hotel. Someone's got to do it. Blood in the tomato sauce, spit on the steak. Imagine what you could do to a soup. The men who go to the Pressman hotel, they're the kind that leave Marlon bloody and walking around Paper Street calling for Tyler to come out and burn more holes into him. They're the kind that get promoted from regional manager. They're the kind that lean in close, pull your wrist towards them, and say there's one way they know you could secure the contract renewal. The kind that almost ruin it in a temper tantrum when you don't, resulting in an upper management intervention on the 24th day of your new job. They're the kind that hear that shit and say you should've been more appeasing. More polite.
Don't feel guilty, Marlon.
I hope all of them rot so everyone can see the maggots eating their insides.
Marlon isn't smiling. I am unavoidably bad at distracting him. There's something final in it, when he sighs, and takes off his tank top. He says it's on his back, and I should just tell him.
I look. I see it. Black hole, botfly, necrosis. There's so many things these broken blood vessels could be. Withering, snapping apart like mummified heartworms. I imagine driving the two inch melarsomine needle deep into the muscles bunched upon his spine.
I look.
I press my hands into him, and I grip like I'm trying to rend my fingers through his skin, deep into his body cavity to rip out his guts. Like I'm trying to grab the rope of his small intestine and strangle him with it. Marlon's yelling at me and trying to hit me, arms flapping like a chicken, and I am bruising ten deep circles into the soft pearskin of his abdomen. It's the only place left on him that's mealy, that isn't frayed rope under worn out leather.
I tell him, you've got bruises. They look mostly normal, to me.
Don't worry too much about it.
And Marlon, he leans into me, and I let him.
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