one thing I find interesting to think about in supermassive is that while being part of a romantic subplot far from guarantees a preferable fate, true love is demonstrated as eternal and inseparable as the loss of the other half stains the very being
Vince Barnes loved Tanya Clarke longer than she lived
Joseph Lambert fought to his last breath to defend Amy Lambert and honour her memory
Simon Carver was not the same man after he lost Madeleine Carver
Randolph Hodgson lied, murdered and destroyed himself because Mary Hodgson's fate was too much to bare
Josef Cernan would face oblivion at peace because of his certainty that Mikael Cernan would reunite with him on the other side of it
At the moment, I'm imagining the lore of "The Craven Man" as if Amy/Angela used a Uno reverse card against Carver/Carson. Since we didn't have a playable character with the Leonardo Patane model yet. Jeff was temporary and his fate couldn't be changed:((
Replaying Little Hope again and the trials from Carver's perspective must have been crazy xdd
He made all of this shit up (along with Mary) and then he sees that the victims are actually supernatural - Amy and Tabitha talking to someone who isn't there, David hanging in the literal air, Joseph's stones coming off on it's own. And then cherry on top - Mary and Abraham consulting with the air, just as Mary was supposed to be on trial.
He must have been like "wait I was actually right?!"
Whaaaat actual progress on drawing the Tilly Johnson era??? I thought we'd never see the day these two got posted, especially after the first version I had started over a year ago up and vanished and I had to start all over...
That aside, we have Ada Johnson, twin sister of Phineas Johnson and aunt to Tilly, with little May, who exists in the gray area between Ada's adopted daughter and housegirl (live-in servant) at the point in time when people were just starting to try to figure out how fostering and adoption should work. Ada is a weaver, having inherited that side of a long-standing family linen business while her other brother Jesse has the farming side, but, between her own failing health (think COPD although they didn’t have that term) and the Carvers' nearby cotton mill and many other mills like it crowding out the local linen industry, the Johnson business has been struggling to survive for many years.
Ada is also the owner of what became known as the Tilly Johnson House. Ada, May, Tilly, and Tilly's step-father all lived there together by 1856 (that lore will surface eventually), and as we know 1856 was the year Tilly's novel was published and became famous, which made enough money to keep all the Johnsons secure despite their failing business.
On to the art, I won't go over everything but as usual I'll point some things out starting with May:
The pattern on her dress has elements from all the M's, first with nods to the little girl's plaid and Megan's floral as well as the little girl's red, Megan's light blue, and more subtly Mary's dark brown. The 1850s adored plaid so that was a no-brainer, and I hadn't planned on the floral part, but then I saw the dress in this portrait with a great mix of both patterns in the colors I was after so I worked off that.
M's peter pan collar and long sleeves are ofc her staples but while they wouldn't be out of place in 1858 (except that this is set in the summertime and girls predominantly wore short sleeves) I figured I'd go with styles more typical for children's clothing this time. The two parts are not related by the way; the collar is an interchangeable piece sewn into the dress, and the undersleeves are from her chemise (the base layer of female undergarments).
Part of May's role is to serve as an errand girl in the Johnson business, where she goes back and forth between the house in town and the farm on the outskirts. That has an important part in the story, hence the basket I gave her.
Also note the piecing of her dress fabric up by the shoulders, included just for funsies. Cloth was not to be wasted, so it was not uncommon or frowned upon to more or less carefully piece odd-shaped sections of cloth together to squeeze as much out the fabric as possible, even when it meant putting random seams in conspicuous places and even if the pattern didn't quite match up.
Ada:
She's wearing a one-piece wrapper, which was the unstructured in-between sort of garment a woman would wear in the morning when she wakes up to get stuff done around the house before she gets dressed for the day. A sick person who didn't get out of the house much might have worn one throughout the day, which is Ada's case since she is chronically ill. (They weren't necessarily as short as I made hers but they were very casual and I wanted to draw 1850s cloth shoes my beloveds, these in particular having similarities to Angela’s two-tone oxfords). It made a perfect equivalent to Anne's housecoat, especially with quilted trim inspired by this extant wrapper. And ofc it’s done in horizontal stripes like Angela’s shirt, and it has shades of brown, blue, and a version of pink, adjacent to canon A-ladies’ colors.
Her chatelaine✨ Basically a clip that was worn on a belt with chains suspending various items that were useful to have on hand. They have a long history and were popular for women to wear at home as well as in certain occupations. I was very excited to give her one after I took notice of the purse Amy has on her belt.
She is wearing an indoors day cap (not a bonnet), a relatively simple one similar to Amy's bonnet. This era was the last hurrah for women wearing headgear at home and only older women were still doing it.
And lastly, her hexagon eyeglasses✨✨ You see them every so often in antique photos and I'm a big fan.
Here are the other drawings I've done for this set so far:
1858 Tilly Johnson (I'm going to do this one over eventually but that's the old version for now)
