In case you haven't seen it before, this is your chance!
I will draw: you, your friend, your crush, your OC, fandom character, a ship with OCs or/and fandom characters, humanoid designs
I will not draw: feral/non-humanoid designs (exception: Cats the Musical), complicated armor/mecha, nsfw of any kind (nudity is not nsfw), pedo/incest/abusive ships, ships with real people (negotiable)
You can contact me in tumblr dms, or through email [email protected]
And please share this post! I just quit my job, and commissions are now my main source of income. This would mean the world to me 🙏❤️
Hey guys! I posted my new comm prices 🙏 if you haven't seen it yet, please check it out and share the post!!
Also, got reminded by a good friend that lava top exists, so now paypal payments through it are available! For anyone who isn't familiar with those platforms - they are one of the few remaining options for russian artists to receive payment from abroad, and I will provide you with a simple instruction on how to use them
Have been experimenting with my artstyle lately (again), and those two are an attempt at something more comic book-ish/manga-ish... I rly like how they look, but this style is very hard to maintain!
Frustration or Sympathy? The discourse around Custas in episode 7.
One of the most tense discourses around the anime has been around Custas' introduction, with many anime-onlies very frustrated about his impulsiveness and manga readers rushing to defend him, but with a completely different perspective on his character. This post is not to say what's right or wrong to think, but to reflect on what an interesting phenomena this is. How important is it to know a character in order to sympathize with them? (vague manga spoilers ahead)
When Custas goes down for the cargo, the first thing he does is wrap Dagda's roundlute in his arms with a smile. It's a scene that easily pulls on the heartstrings of manga readers, knowing how important it was to changing the entire course of Custas' life—it's what brought them together in the first place. Anime watchers might infer broadly about the ownership of the lute, but have no access to the emotional gravity given to the manga readers (for the sake of this post i will not focus on readers that do not like custas).
There are two major reasons for Custas' actions. The first one is foreshadowed by the visual of Agott falling off a cliff at the start of the episode. Both Qifrey and Olruggio call out that this is a major flaw in her character: she is in a hurry to prove herself and does not consider the consequences. When Custas is first rescued, the first thing he says is that he couldn't save the cargo. Dagda reassures him that it is fine, much like Agott would get gentle reassurance from Qifrey, but Custas clearly still feels a need to prove triumph over this failure by going back for the cargo. Thus, the cliff tumbles. The accident is a consequence of his own major personal flaws, and because it's so clearly wreckless, audiences are often more frustrated with this mistake than sympathetic.
He cannot be just understood as a parallel to Agott or even Coco though, as that ignores the major difference between them: he is a lower class outsider. This is where the anime vs. manga perspective gets complicated. The manga is much more explicit about class differences later on, both considering the priviledges witches have over others as well as the classes within outsider society where we see a spectrum of royalty to muckpool people. It elaborates on their nomadic lifestyle to imply that losing their cago would bring major ruin to their livelihood.
A major reason that viewers are quick to frustration instead of sympathy for Custas is the perspective of the fall being merely a plot device. Many stories have civilians making wreckless decisions to simply give the main characters more conflict: and let's face it, that is what Custas serves to the plot. It's a cliche in all senses until Custas becomes a fully developed character later in the series. Reacters, especially, are most likely to root hard for the protagonists to show high engagement and passion for the series, so having harsh reactions to conflict towards them is natural.
Another influence on audiences is the tendency of anime/manga to immediately explain the ins and outs of characters, with villains often getting fully visualized flashbacks so that the audience is left with no confusion with how to feel about them. That's why it is so easy for Custas to get reduced to a plot device; with no backstory within the episode, audiences expecting a typical anime presentation of characters don't get the usual "this is why they have this tragic flaw."
It brought me to a question that nags at my mind: does a character necessitate a backstory to be sympathetic? Plot device or not, should we not strive to make sense of a character's actions? The real world does not offer backstories behind the strangers we interact with. Actions that seem frustratingly ridiculous may be explained by an economic situation that makes someone risky and desperate. Often when discussing complex characters whether that's agott, qifrey, or custas, the conversation is often "oh just wait for them to get better." And to me, I don't think that should be the necessity of compassion towards others. Once again, however, it's easy for manga readers to say that in hindsight. That's why the duality between these different perspectives is truly interesting to study.
By the way, there's a "rebuild" of previously the biggest wha discord. Me and others will be there for discussions very often! discord.gg/tongariboushi
I SOOOOO love those three 🥹🥹🤲 felt THE need to sketch a bit of them
And I also have a little headcanon on their heights! Had to put Coustas back on his two for this one, lol
A little rant below the cut!
So, I feel like, despite the lack of canonical information on the exact ages of characters, oftentimes it's pretty obvious who's older/younger just from how the kids act!
My reading on those three specifically is that Coco is the oldest one: i read her as 13-14 yo, because while she might not always be confident in her abilities, it's not bc she's not mature enough: she is just _new_ to this specific field. But aside from that, she often shows Initiative, thoughtfullness and emotional maturity of someone who already has some self-awareness and understanding of nuances of both the world and the people around.
Tartah vibes like he's slightly younger: he seems to be very inspired by Coco and often follows her lead, AND he has a crush on her, which ofc is rooted strongly in just how exactly they got to know each other - but also is very common for kids looking up to their peers who are just slightly older
And Coustas to me always, both in the design and in the way he's acting, gives off a _small kid_ vibe - he's very easily distraught, easily affected, and quite often shows the lack of perspective taking towards others, which is not a personality flaw - he IS compassionate and clearly cares about his close people, but he reads like a kid who hasn't yet developped the full ability to put himself in the other people's place. Which of course is probably also rooted in his experience and quality of life overall, and is absolutely valid in his case, but that's also the reason I'm pretty sure he's NOT older than 12, and my strongest age hc for him is 11
Also, as a treat for all those who read this far: a coloured version of the kittens!
Don't like it as much bc I kinda suck at colours lol
I can't stop going insane about those additional bday pages, and SPECIFICALLY Coustas' one 😭😭😭🙏
He's SUCH A sweet kid(( look at my lil boy((
"it's just the day I was born, I don't have any good memories" is so( and then OF COURSE Coco and Tartar make a fuss about it and celebrate him anyway 😭🤲 this is such a real piece of children's friendship - I've been on both sides of the very same situation in my life
AND LOOK, he falls asleep do his dad's lullabies!! He is TINY 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹
I have a question about your Oc Manuel. How did he get his ability? If he had his ability when he was younger, how did he react to it as well as the people around him? 🤔
Btw, your artwork is SO COOL! :D
Hello!! First of all, thank you very much for the interest and compliments! 🙏
To answer your question, I first want to humbly offer you two lore posts I did: one, about basics of the lore and who ability wielders are, and second - Manuel's brief story, since you were interested in him! 👁️👁️
First: ability wielders are born, so they don't really "get" an ability - it just develops as they age! Normally, abilities are discovered around 3-6 years of age, and - in case a person uses it - become stronger and more controlled with age. So, Manuel got it from either his mother or his father, or both (I have no idea who his parents were tbh)
Second: developing abilities is NOT encouraged by the society. And so most of the time, ability wielder kids get told at least by part of the adults in their life that those are not to be used because they are dangerous. In Manuel's case, he was taught in one of the last remaining schools specifically for ability wielders, that reinforced this mindset on _all_ their pupils and it was basically "brainwashing them into being harmless". And Manuel especially, since his ability is barely usable for anything but destroying alive things, was numerous times told that he's horribly dangerous, and his ability makes him well basically a potential killer, so he should never use it on anything and anyone, else he's bad and will go to jail eventually.
TW just in case: mentions of minor self-harm and animal cruelty, not anything too bad tho
But Manuel was never really a "normal" kid - in his younger years, he had huge dissociative tendencies, and preferred to just stay quiet enough and agree with everything so that people around don't disturb his little inner world. And in his little inner world, he was really curious about living beings - in every possible way, be it observing their behaviour, looking at how they work on the outside and, at the very least in theory, on the inside. And he was also - despite major brainwashing from adults - very curious about what can his ability do to them. As, well, any child who's still discovering what will happen if they rip grasshopper's legs off or touch a butterfly wing. So he tried it in secret - most times on bugs, as they weren't very easy to notice and no one is ever surprised to see a dead bug, sometimes - on small animals (though he wasn't specifically trying to kill them - he was just trying to understand what _exactly_ his ability does), and sometimes, when he got older and started actually thinking about how insensitive it is to other creatures - on himself (again, he never did more than a minor injury to himself - he already understood that it can be lethal). He was VERY ashamed of disobeying, and of hurting the little living creatures, but could not tame his curiosity until he grew old enough, gained more knowledge and didn't have the need to do practical experiments anymore to know what he should be able to do (or, well, at least learned to hold himself from it)
Just for starters, while I'm prepearing some bigger attacks
Characters in order (links to AF profiles of their creators included, check them out!):
Roxie by rredinew
Vlada by stazis
Jaques by SnakeryУ
