Or at least welcome...in a few more days. It's not February yet.
This challenge is all about celebrating the lovely ship between Dogday and Bobby Bearhug! Whether you're a writer, artist, or both, anyone can join and share their love for this ship.
And to be clear. The pictures can be platonic also. So even if you don't ship these two you can still participate! Awesome, right?!
Create whatever inspires you. It can be a sketch, a fully finished illustration, a one-shot, a long story, a comic or even a poem! There are no rules about style, length, or skill; the goal is to have fun and explore what makes this pairing special to you.
Follow the daily prompts or pick the ones that inspire you most.
If you know me, you know I've never finished an art challenge so there is 0 pressure. You can even complete prompts out of order if you want.
Share your creations with #HeartSolMonth so everyone can see your awesome work! When it's done I'll try to make a big master post of all the submissions. Let’s make this a month filled with creativity and love for Dogday and Bobby Bearhug! 💛🐾
Not silent. Never silent. The place breathed in strange, unsettling whispery ways. Marble walk ways leaned at impossible angles without ever collapsing, accompanied by disturbingly massive objects that made no rhyme or reason. Was that a giant banjo? Somewhere beyond the random ruins, a warped calliope repeated the same mournful three notes until the melody dissolved into whispers. All floating in a neverending bottomless sky.
Harriet tightened her grip around the shotgun. Before she'd crossed into this impossible place, the Old Shrew had rested one weathered hand on her shoulder while leaning on her crooked cane.
"De Unknown won't always be tryin' ta kill ya, chile," she'd warned. "Sometimes... it only be tryin' ta make ya doubt yoself. Dat be how it catches de strongest folk."
Harriet hadn't doubted herself once. Not through the twisting corridors. Not through the shifting gravity. Not through the barrage of magic Steve Bandel had thrown at her in one desperate escape attempt after another. Every illusion, every impossible hallway, every trick had eventually unraveled beneath the small amount of magic the Old Shrew had painstakingly taught her. Just enough to get the job done.
Now the magician sat slumped against the remains of a fractured marble pillar. His jacket and cape long lost in their battle, dust clung to his less ornate undershirt, his wrists were secured behind his back with silver cuffs etched in glowing bayou runes.
Harriet watched him test them with the quiet patience of someone who already knew the outcome.
He twisted one wrist, then the other. The runes shimmered softly as his fingers made the slightest movement. Harriet barely noticed it, but the air around his hands flickered as a teleportation spell tried to form.
The cuffs swallowed it.
Steve frowned.
He tried again.
Another shimmer.
Again, nothing.
For several long seconds he simply stared at the restraints. Then a tired chuckle escaped him.
"...Well."
Harriet allowed herself the smallest smile.
"Surprised?"
Steve Bandel leaned backwards, studying every carved symbol as though admiring a piece of craftsmanship instead of searching for a flaw. Recognition spread slowly across his face, and before long the chuckle grew into genuine laughter. Wasn't hysterical. It was the laugh of someone who had finally solved a puzzle.
"...You found Auntie."
Harriet frowned.
"What?"
"Auntie Shrewlady."
Her expression hardened immediately.
"...Excuse me?"
"That's what I used to call her."
A fond smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"She hated it."
Harriet stared.
"You know the Old Shrew?"
"I know Auntie." His eyes drifted back to the glowing cuffs. "She'd smack me across the head with her cane every time I called her that. Never stopped me."
Harriet's patience evaporated. She drove the barrels of the shotgun into his shoulder hard enough to shove him sideways against the broken pillar.
"You don't get to call her that."
Steve winced but couldn't suppress a faint grin.
"...Apparently I still don't."
"The Old Shrew is respected."
"I know."
"No," Harriet snapped, jabbing him again. "You don't."
Steve rolled his bruised shoulder as best he could despite the restraints.
"I probably knew her longer than you did."
The words caught Harriet completely off guard. Every shrew child grew up hearing stories about the Old Shrew. She was less a person than a legend, a matriarch whose wisdom stretched back farther than anyone could remember. Harriet herself had only met her recently, and only because tracking Steve into the Unknown had forced their paths together.
Steve, meanwhile, spoke about her like an elderly relative he saw every year at the family reunion, and that irritated Harriet more than she cared to admit.
Steve tested the cuffs one final time. The runes flared brighter than before, and another spell unraveled into harmless wisps before it could take shape.
He nodded with quiet admiration.
"...Very clever."
Harriet folded her arms.
"So they work."
"They do."
"No smoke?"
"No."
"No... teleporting?"
"No."
"No disappearing into another dimension?"
Steve gave a small shake of his head.
"Besides this one? Nope can't do anything."
"You sound awfully calm."
Steve looked around at the impossible ruins and floating objects above their heads.
"I've escaped stranger places." A faint smile crossed his face.
"...Not today."
Harriet rested the twin barrels beneath his chin. The cold steel pressed into his throat.
"Look at me."
Steve deliberately lowered his gaze. Harriet shoved upward with the shotgun, forcing his head back.
"I said look at me."
He complied, slowly and reluctantly. Harriet searched his face for the man she'd imagined during months of investigation. She wanted arrogance. She wanted defiance. She wanted the famous Steve Bandel whose smiling face had appeared in advertisements and theater posters all over Mouseburg.
Instead she found someone exhausted. Someone who looked as though the collapse of everything he'd built had aged him ten years in a matter of months.
It irritated her.
"You know who I am?"
"Uh, you're that new shrew officer? Cornelius told me about you once."
"My name."
"...Harriet Brown. It's a nice name"
Her jaw tightened. The shotgun lowered just enough for the barrels to dig into his chest.
" Good then you know why I'm here."
Steve nodded once.
"I imagine."
"You imagine?"
She jabbed him hard enough to make him grunt.
"Months. My people suffered for months."
Steve said nothing.
"You built this problem."
Silence.
"You let it happen."
Silence again.
She swung the stock of the shotgun into his shoulder.
"This is where you deny it!"
"...I won't."
"W-what?" Harriet stammered. "No excuses?"
"No."
"No sappy backstory?"
The corner of Steve's mouth twitched.
"...Seems rude."
Harriet nearly hit him again.
Instead she turned away, pacing across the cracked marble floor as she struggled to steady her breathing.
"I've read everything," she said without looking at him. "The police reports. Survivor statements. Every witness interview."
...The body count.
Steve remained silent.
Then she stopped walking.
"I read what Detective Jack Pepper uncovered."
This time Steve reacted.
Only a tiny blink and almost imperceptible but Harriet caught it anyway.
"There," she said, spinning back toward him. "That got your attention."
Steve lowered his eyes.
"...How's Jack?"
Harriet stared at him.
Of everything he could have asked...
That?
"You don't get to ask about him."
"I just did."
She crossed the room in two strides and slammed the shotgun into his ribs. The impact echoed through the ruined chamber. Steve doubled over, sucking in a sharp breath, but he refused to cry out.
"Your friend isn't here to help you this time!"
"Ouch...Fair enough."
Harriet seized the front of his shirt and hauled him upright.
"Do you know how many of us wanted to come here? They wanted revenge."
"...I know."
"I took it because I wanted justice."
Steve gave a slow nod.
"...Good."
She shook him violently.
"Stop agreeing with me."
"I'm trying."
"Fight back!"
"I lost."
"No!"
She shoved him backward into the broken pillar hard enough for stone dust to rain down around them.
"No, Steve. You don't get to lose that easily!"
For the first time since she'd captured him, Harriet saw something crack. Was that panic in his eyes? Or desperation? A little of both but mostly it was fear, a real deep fear. His pathetic smile couldn't hide it anymore.
Steve swallowed before speaking, his voice little more than a whisper.
"...Harriet."
"What?"
"I don't want to die."
The confession made her bristle because there was no performance in his voice. He wasn't pleading for his life or trying to manipulate an angle for freedom like grasping for empathy. Only honesty.
"I don't," he repeated quietly. "But... I don't know what I'd say that would make you wrong."
His shoulders sagged beneath her grip.
"I've spent years trying to explain myself. It never sounded any better out loud."
Harriet stared at him.
This wasn't the untouchable magician she'd spent months imagining. It wasn't the smiling celebrity from theater posters or the mastermind she'd built up in her mind while reading police files late into the night.
It was simply an exhausted old mouse who looked older than every photograph she'd collected, as though every month since the BMP conspiracy had unraveled had etched another year into his face.
She hated that realization.
Because it made pulling the trigger so much harder.
"You are a coward, mouse." Harriet whispered.
Slowly, almost without realizing she was doing it, Harriet raised the shotgun. The twin barrels came to rest squarely against Steve's forehead. The cold steel pressed between his eyes.
Steve's body involuntarily jerked with despair before quietly closing his eyes. He was waiting.
Harriet's finger settled against the trigger.
She imagined what would happen next. The sharp recoil driving into her shoulder. The deafening blast echoing through the Void the Unknown. Steve's head popping like a gore balloon, his body collapsing where he sat. Months of suffering answered in a single pull of her finger. Now that she thought on it, this was the perfect place to commit murder
Then what? The answer refused to come.
Instead another voice surfaced from memory.
The Old Shrew.
"Magic ain't power, chile."
"Magic be restraint."
Harriet closed her eyes for the briefest moment and drew in a slow breath. When she opened them again, the anger was still there.
The hatred was still there.
But the shotgun no longer felt quite so heavy.
"...Open your eyes."
Steve hesitated before doing as she asked.
The barrels were no longer aimed at him.
Without another word, Harriet stepped behind him, grabbed the enchanted chain linking the cuffs, and hauled him roughly to his feet. Steve stumbled as he found his balance, nearly falling before catching himself.
He glanced sideways at her.
"...So."
Harriet answered by giving the chain a sharp yank that nearly pulled him off his feet again.
"So," she said coldly, "you're under arrest."
Steve blinked.
"...Really?"
Harriet didn't answer.
A grin spread across his face. Steve let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
Another sharp yank on the chain nearly sent him stumbling.
"Don't mistake this for mercy."
"I won't."
"I'm taking you back because a court gets to decide your fate."
Steve held her gaze for a moment before giving a slow nod.
"...This is probably how Jack should have handled this."
Harriet grit her teeth. She really looked up to the private eye. She'd have some words for him if they ever crossed paths again. Tightening her grip on the chain, she gave it another firm pull and started walking again.
" Damn right it is now keep moving."
With a resigned shrug, Steve lowered his head and obeyed.
Together they disappeared deeper into the impossible corridors of the Unknown, officer and prisoner bound together by magic steel. Neither of them looked back while the Unknown itself seemed to watch them leave in silence.
_____
Steve Bandel please stop financially supporting evil experiments and genocide like wtf. Woobying you feels hella awkward. Jack not arresting Steve felt wrong to me.
Answers are gonna slow to a CRAWL for the next few days. I don't want to burden the VAs with too much work and I'd REAAAAALLY like to focus on drawing Episode One + New Money. However please feel free to put in questions for once those are done,,,,
In that time you'll still get drawings, some lore tidbits maybe, ect, but answers will be unlikely. Thank you for your patience!!
In the mean time, take these side by sides because OH MY GOD WERE THE OLD DRAWINGS CHOPPED.
The potential of these two would be so FIRE!😭🔥 I want to see them living a happy life together in the unknown away from society and consequences after having bonded over Betty.
Wanted to try something different and make a ptsd creature that's a bunch of limbs tangled up like a rat king
Idk why the idea for this came to me it just kinda did some time a couple days back thinking about the concept of a rat king which is where mice or rats get their tails stuck in a knot and usually it's a death sentence for them so I made it into war trauma hooray (not hooray at all somebody give Jack a hug)
Comment a été la grossesse de kosemos et l accouchement de bay vaster snipari dans l espace ou sur une autre planète ?
Bay and Vaster are twins. Likely born in space. Sniparri was probably born on Earth. Oh by the way at some point I changed Bay and Vasters names. Or at least I planned on it. At some point I had a list of names I was considering. Geeze what did I even do with it...
Jack: "We're gonna have to kill this guy, Skittles."
Brie: "Jack!"
Jack: "What? He's got a death ray."
Brie: "…He does have a death ray..."
Jack: "Mm-hm."
Brie: "…Darn."
I was listening to a video about OFF and I think it inspired me to draw Jack playing baseball. Then I just wanted to draw something shippy, just a bit. Like figuring out Brie's height which is likely to fluctuate a lot anyway. And a random meme.
As a friend said : I'm sure Jack has only shot people who deserve it. All 4,896 of them.
