I've been playing these games on repeat lately and I missed them on my trip so I drew them. Here are a few that I started, not sure when I'll finish these but it's been fun drawing again.
i wanted to show some appreciation for one of my favorite works on the archive, Our Worst Creatures! beautiful piece i think more people should read. i love charlotte balfour so so much.
Rating: Mature (subject to increase)
Relationships: Charlotte Balfour/Cal Balfour, Charlotte Balfour/Arthur Morgan
Major Warnings: Graphic Violence, Serial Killers, Gendered/Sexual Violence (referenced), Mental Illness, MH Arthur Morgan
Summary: A complete reimagining of Charlotte Balfour in the tradition of fin de siècle horror: the civilized violence of the Gilded Age, the advent of American serial killers, and the bottomless wellspring of feminine rage.
Read here.
CHAPTER 10 - EXCERPT
The needle she will use on him in just a moment sits on its little silver dish, and she holds it into the lantern flame for a while to cleanse it. As she waits for it to warm up, Charlotte imagines she can see it shifting color, its atoms threatening to change their form.
“What else?”
“I don’t know. Four, five. They was all like that,” he says, factually. “One way or another. Shoot enough people, the next looks the same.”
The needle is hot between the calluses on her fingertips. She should open a window, but out there, the wind on the dark water makes it far too cold, and if Arthur shivers, she might hurt him. So she lets the air go bad.
“What else?”
“Who all I killed?”
Charlotte knots the catgut in the needle eye and snaps the length with the knife. His voice sharpens as he figures it out.
“That ain’t what you meant to ask me. Charlotte.”
She stills her palm over the large wound on his back. It is still bleeding, only not quite so dreadfully fast. Above it, his shoulder blade, where raised bone disappears into the flesh of the body like the moon sliding behind a mountain.
“Ask me what you meant to ask me,” Arthur says.
Hans' gold pourpoint lives rent free in my mind because his decision to wear that for the majority of kcd2 says so much about him and his image he's trying to project.
Because the thing about it is that it's pretty obviously a reconstruction of Charles de Blois' pourpoint, which exists in the musée des Tissus et des Arts décoratifs de Lyon.
It's made from cloth of gold brocade- the only kind of fabric of the period that would shine in candlelight the way Hans' pourpoint does. The ground of the fabric on the extant pourpoint is ivory silk. Hans' changes colors depending on the lighting- sometimes in Trosky it looks scarlet, most of the time it looks gold. Either way the weave of the fabric is a combination of silk and threads wrapped with extremely finely beaten sheets of actual gold.
It's theorized that the fabric on the extant example was imported from the middle east. And I cannot emphasize how complex of a weave this is because this is before the invention of the jacquard loom, which functioned with punch cards like early computers. These ridiculously expensive threads had to all be dropped and adjusted by hand to get this pattern.
And the thing is- Hans' is even more complex. It's not a geometric repeat, it has scrolling vines and an intensely complicated pattern of birds and deer which makes it even more precious. You can see it a bit here:
The cost of this fabric would have been staggering. And fabric in the era was narrow, maybe 20" wide, and since Hans is a tall man he would need a good deal of fabric for this. Then you add on the fact that it's all pattern matched so that the design is unbroken by the button down chest, and his sleeves are well matched. And the grand assiette sleeves with their unusual tailoring would take even more fabric to keep everything nicely matched up.
Then there's the buttons all the way down the front and on the sleeves, with button holes bound by hand in what would have been silk thread. It can take a good fifteen minutes to cut and bind a buttonhole nicely, so the time spent on those alone is astounding. Each button would be handmade by stuffing a circle of fabric with wool wadding and binding off the end into a thread covered stump (which takes ages to do well, I've never achieved a nice stuffed button in less than ten minutes).
The chest would have also had extra wool padding in it (meaning extra effort to shape and sew it) in order to achieve the wasp-waist effect that gives him such powerful looking shoulders.
So his pourpoint alone is worth more money than most peasant farmers would see in a year. Even in a lifetime, maybe.
It's finer than anything we see on any other character in the game. Von Bergow's clothes are that of a rural lord in comparison. Even Sigismund's royal attire isn't so obviously valuable.
It's also, by nature of being a pourpoint, a military garment at its core. Charles de Blois' pourpoint has arming points in it even though its good condition suggests that it was worn for some ceremony and then probably never used again.
Then you add his hood. Red dye was common, though certain shades of scarlet could be far more expensive. To my eye the gold design on it isn't just simple embroidery but goldwork, aka more real gold threads tacked down to glitter in candlelight, aka even more money worn on his person.
(How he got all of this stuff takes some mental gymnastics- the pourpoint is too well fitted to not have been made for him. Maybe it did belong to him at the start of the game, was picked up by the bandits and sold along to Trosky where it was returned to him. Even a team of the best tailors couldn't put this together in the hours between him being released from the gallows and him going to meet Von Bergow in his chambers, and I highly doubt he would accept Von Bergow's cast offs no matter how fine they are.)
Which is all to say that by wearing this Hans is trying so hard to assert himself as a man of means, worthy of respect. He wants to be noticed. In a room full of well dressed men you still would not be able to take your eyes off the young man wearing more gold on his back than a country lord would ever dream of owning. He wants to be seen as a man who is ready for glorious battle, a true knight in his beautiful pourpoint.
Although sumptuary laws weren't as punishing as they would later be during the renaissance, it could also be read as him reaching above his station a bit because after all, how is the Lord of Pirkstein out dressing the usurper king? It's something of an insult that Lord Capon walks into a room looking like this when his betters don't even dress with such flash.
And that makes it hit all the harder when, at Suchdol during Von Bergow's interrogation, all the men in the room talk over him as though he's not there. He can wear his fine pourpoint but he's not respected as a lord or a military man. It doesn't matter what he does to project the image of a nobleman- he's still not treated as one. For someone who truly believes clothes make the man and everyone should follow social rules as prescribed this has to be a real kick in the gut.
Hans looks like a prince from an illuminated manuscript but none of that matters to the robber barons he's surrounded by. Just another ugly lesson that the rules of the world apply don't seem to apply when it comes to him.
We're sucked into medieval Bohemia again, serfs, so I thought I’d whip up a list of my KCD1 Hansry-focused fics… since I realize folks may be hungry for Hans x Henry content that doesn’t spoil KCD2.
(Plus a couple fics with limited spoilers, clearly flagged below.)
If anyone wants ’em, here they are! (Please consult the tags on ao3 for additional content warnings, and thanks @charlie-rulerofhell for making this pretty gif!)
rednightmare’s Hans x Henry fic list
A Strange Hunt
Mature. Complete.
NO KCD2 SPOILERS.
In a storm, I think, 'What if the gospel be not true?’ – John Wesley
Hal, Hans, and Theresa—chasing ghosts who cannot love them back.
Description: Three connected character pieces, one for each lead of KCD1. My first KCD fic, and I still think it’s my best.
Warnings: Canon (non-graphic) sexual assault in Chapter 1.
With Horn and Leash
Teen+. Complete.
NO KCD2 SPOILERS.
It is Henry’s first winterhunt, and wolves are howling in the fields. Hans cannot understand why everyone is so afraid.
Description: Henry confronts Hans about his piss-poor lordship and the consequences thereof.
Lost in the Trees
Explicit. Complete.
NO KCD2 SPOILERS.
Henry uses his time in the monastery to reflect on his life—as it is, and as it used to be, and his relationship with Lord Capon.
Description: A lengthy relationship study of Hans’s role in Henry’s life and recovery from grief.
In Spring
Mature. Complete.
NO KCD2 SPOILERS.
Spring cannot last forever. Eventually, he will grow up.
Description: An exploration of the end of Lord Capon’s extended adolescence as he faces the inevitability of his future.
Without Home
Mature. Complete.
NO KCD2 SPOILERS.
Ma, who knew more about ash and ruin than you’d think, once warned Father not to heal a wound with hot coals. “You be careful rushing things with fire,” she said. “You’ll get the bleeding stopped, for certain. But once it has—if it sickens—you’ll have a Hell of a time ever letting the blood back out.”
The whole world goes to fire. Henry waits to bleed again for a long time.
Description: Henry confronts his grief and takes the only path forward: through it.
Fortune Favors the Bold
Explicit (eventually). Longfic, UNFINISHED.
NO KCD2 SPOILERS.
An Amorous Adventures + Capon’s Champion DLC redux romp staged during a joust and narrated via three alternating POVs: Lord Capon, Henry, and Karolina. Silly and sad in turns. (Mostly silly, though.)
Description: A deeply dramatic longfic-in-progress. Alas, I probably need a new name for it now…
Prayer Before Morning
Teen+. Complete.
NO KCD2 SPOILERS.
At Christmastime, even Hans must go to church. Because he is still Hans, he brings Henry along.
Description: Winter-themed sugary fic with a hard shot of lordship angst. One shot.
by a heel
Teen+. Complete.
LIMITED KCD2 SPOILERS: FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
God’s truth: It does not occur to Henry until the moment he spies Hans’s heel hanging over the edge of the block at Trosky that Birdie of Pirkstein could ever die.
Description: My take on For Whom the Bell Tolls. One shot, "missing scene," canon outcome with an established relationship flair. KCD2 SPOILERS FOR SAID QUEST.
The dust of Suchdol settles, and it coats Henry's heart with strange magic. It feels as though he can see everything that will happen next.
Description: A relationship study in the post-game to unpack the events of KCD II and prepare for the next phase of Henry's life with Lord Capon. Limited KCD2 spoilers. One shot, fluffy and philosophical.
one of my favorite sokka scenes from avatar :)
This idea spawned from @mixermixey's post about the rooms at the Devil's Den - [here]
Specifically the fact that Henry's bed has a curtain.
And Dry Devil's bed being in the same spot next door, and the shit he probably hears. Might I add the possibility of him drunkenly wandering to the wrong bed at the wrong time.
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