#a candy cigarette

[biomechabug]

i think its important to show that yeah in a lot of senses charles is a "victim". his parents were fucking terrible people, he has substance abuse issues, self-image and confidence issues, baggage from his emotionally abusive childhood and past relationships, chronic depression, probably has a few undiagnosed disorders, etc etc. and yeah that sucks and that is definitely the reason he is the way he is, but at a certain point youre an adult, youre responsible for your own actions, and you need to acknowledge that the way you behave hurts the people around you whether its on purpose or not, and that doesn't make you a bad person necessarily but it does mean you need help and you need to change. and its kind of a cliche thing to say but getting to that point alone really is the hardest part for a lot of people

ive kinda been on both ends, when you're deep enough in a suicidal fugue and hate the world enough it's easy to convince yourself that nobody gives a shit if something happens to you / will at least have the capacity to move on even if it is demonstrably not true, and thats kinda the headspace that charles is in. hes genuinely kind of incapable of conceptualizing that it bothers people that care about you when you hurt yourself. it really fucking sucks hardcore to watch someone you care about do that to themselves consistently and in a weird way it can devolve into you hating that person because why cant you just see that i love you and i want you to stop hurting yourself you fucking stupid piece of shit. it is genuinely the kind of thing that ruins relationships and i wish it was easier for people to understand that, that when someone harms themselves whether its through trying to commit suicide or drinking themselves to death they arent the only one that suffers as a result. rambling just I LOVE MISERY

[biomechabug]

In their weird codependent friendship marty is the emotionally mature one and charles is himself so there's an uncomfortable number of times that he has to drive him home from the bar after he got shitfaced again or talk him down or be like Dude that was kind of uncalled for. he genuinely really cares about charles and just wants him to like, do some soul searching, stop doing shit that makes him miserable for no reason, and not turn into his parents & is also definitely feeling the pressure to be there bc he almost killed himself that one time. It's not a miserable emotionally draining relationship 100% of the time, they still have fun and there's definitely some hope that charles will work his issues out it just sucks and charles is kind of a shitty friend, not on purpose obviously but it rarely is in these kinds of relationships

[biomechabug]

marty is probably a year or two older than charles

[biomechabug]

additional marty facts

full name is Martin Bergamaschi

based on a pekingese dog

nearsighted

has this gaudy ass pink suit that he loves and always wears on nights out

delusions of being able to sing

[biomechabug]

i havent drawn or talked about marty a whole lot but he's charles' coworker and friend (though they have kind of a weird relationship). he likes disco clubs and sci fi movies. he doesn't like drinking bc his dad was an alcoholic which makes it really unfortunate that drinking is one of the only social things that charles likes to do.

some Character Lore concepts ive had rolling around in my head are obviously his father was a dysfunctional alcoholic, he used to be charles' roommate at some point, and was there for one of charles' suicide attempts. charles has unrequited feelings for him at some point. marty does genuinely like him as a friend but charles inadvertently ruins all of his relationships through his own self-destructive behavior & refusal to examine his issues and not considering how it affects people who care about him

[biomechabug]

this ref wip has been on my desktop for over half a year now and its clear to me that i am never going to finish it so here's a vaguely marty-shaped collection of lines if you want that

[biomechabug]

i only have like 3 big original projects and i should say even then theyre mostly concepts that i might never actually do anything with

laturia - high fantasy worldbuilding thing, indefinitely shelved

pigeons in the crypt - like a dumb schlocky grimdark sci-fi horror action whatever thing with lots of Violence and Killing

a candy cigarette - the one i'm most likely to act on. it's more of a slice of life thing about regular human people, paced like a sunday comic strip but will probably also have a lot of storylines that are just about depression and childhood trauma and shit

[biomechabug]

also just for the record, charles, marty, tammy and all the other man dog people are canonically humans. theyre just represented as dogs as a fun artistic liberty. charles was originally designed as a weird anthro dog and i just kept it going from there but they are humans lol