I don't know what I'm doing

she/her 18 years old Artist who's writing a webcomic atm! My Instagram

[peablossom-draws]

Hey There!

Here's an introduction of me and my blog! I'm a digital artist who likes writing comics.

I have two stories I'm working on:

The first one is called Soul Bound. It's an Edwardian-era-esque fantasy story about witches and how the main character, Cressida, has made a pact with the devil to bring her brother back to life. (witches are an oppressed group who undergo a magical suppression surgery called the severing.) It explores the idea of breaking toxic cycles and what family really means. It also has themes of classism and xenophobia. It's also Very Gay. You can explore the tag Soul_Bound in my archive for more!

My second story is called Dovecote. It's a redo of a concept I had when I was little. It's basically my take on the Cinderella fairytale (I'm taking inspiration from the French, German, and Vietnamese versions of the story.) It takes place in an alternative version of the 1700s, in what I lovingly refer to as Not-France. It explores ideas of parental abuse, grief, self-acceptance and identity, and learning to be selfish. It is unfortunately not gay. You can explore the tag Dovecote in my archive for more!

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recent, unconnected Soul Bound pages I’ve inked recently

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“Henriette, new art just dropped”

[bubbles-and-bat-wings]

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okay, I love Widow’s Bay so far, but WHY IS SARAH’S HAIR DOWN IT’S TAKING ME OUT OF THE PLOT AGHHHH

[iam-the-wild]

feels so rare now to get a show with normal looking people, widows bay did a really good job at actually doing that

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What happens when you put Cressida in victorian illustration style? You get ...whatever this is

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I wrote more for Dovecote the other day

(Alden, why aren't you working on Soul Bound? You ask. I can't. I want to, but I can't, I literally am unable to work on it, at the moment.)

I had a difficult time trying to write this. I had to figure out how to show Sabine's narcissism in a situation where she is no longer being enabled by her husband and daughters. Putting her on the defense was harder than I expected, and then I figured out two things:

One, Sabine is likely to use her womanhood as an excuse to victimize herself, and simultaneously attempt to trivialize her attacker's feelings and insult them in order to gain the upper hand (she is some kind of malignant narcissist, not a covert one, really. She's prone to grandiosity).

Two: I like to think Maximilien, Sabine's older brother, is a product of his time. He's awful, but in the kind of way that people of his time wouldn't judge him, while we modern folks see him as morally abhorrent. Meanwhile, Sabine is disliked by the characters around her, and by us. Part of that may be because her place as a stepmother and a woman naturally provide her with a vulnerability: other characters are more likely to police her and question her actions. So I wanted to show that dynamic in this scene.

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Chapter 14 of Dovecote might be my favorite one I've written so far.

I titled it "Banished Children of Eve" based on the prayer Hail Holy Queen:

Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,  our life, our sweetness and our hope. To you do we cry, poor banished children of Eve.  To you do we send up our sighs,  mourning and weeping in this valley of tears  Turn then, most gracious advocate, your eyes of mercy toward us, and after this exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving,  O sweet Virgin Mary.

Anyway, it mainly follows Ella as she adjusts to her new role as a servant. It also ends with a parallel to a fellow "banished child," Amalia. It also heavily centers names, or mores what people are called. Case in point:

One thing we've seen earlier is that Gaspard is well-intentioned and very clued into formalities. Once Ella gets demoted, he continues to call her "Mademoiselle," much to her chagrin. He's very black and white with it, and Ella, being not only both lady and servant, is also mixed race. So the way he thinks really gets to her. Who is she? She doesn't know, she's Ella.

Similarly, we have Amalia (now called Amélie, the francophone version of her name)

"She will need many fine dresses. Yes, mom? What do you think, Amélie?"

"What am I? I am French. But no. No. But no."

(There's a specific dialect of German I would like to use for Amalia, Schönbrunner Deutsch, that the Austrian Habsburg court would have spoken, but I don't know how I would go about that, much less translating English to that, considering I can barely do it with French. Even the French is an estimation, I'm fairly sure the Bourbons would have spoken Parisian French, which would be mostly similar to the standard French taught today, since other dialects like Occitan Breton, etc, were effectively gotten rid of, so hopefully I'm not too off base with the French but agggghhhhhh. AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THE VIETNAMESE. technically the French forced the latin alphabet later on but I'm stuck with modern Vietnamese and even then Hội An (then called Faifo) was pretty much in the middle of Vietnam (which had experience a Civil War about 100 years earlier) AND the Chinese and Japanese influences, specifically in that area would have been crazy.)

[crossfalconx5]

“God forbid I go mad, for it’s such a dreadful thing to be.”

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hey Tumblr folks, long time no see

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Big news! I just finished outlining? summarizing each chapter? of Book two of Soul Bound! It was so hardddd. I keep telling myself to have faith in readers to be smart, but Im so worried that plot elements just coexist out of nowhere??? ahhhhh

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every once and a while I get sick of writing sad stuff and decide to write un-funny comedy (which is just another cinderella version with dumb humor)

these are the highlights. For context, this is a codpiece:

yes it's the thing, that thing (fashion is weird af sometimes)

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this was so fun to write

I definitely messed something up with the grammar and didn't notice but I'm tired so who cares.

Anyway, Cyril is fluent in Korthyan. He knew street Korthyan from when he was little, and then learned from books later on.

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Frames from a reel I posted on my instagram

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