#birbwellspeaks

[birbwell]

at what point does your art stop feeling like Your Drawing and start feeling like Art

[birbwell]

i have no concrete proof of this but i just get this strange sense that even some leftists think race is made important to a character to Make A Brave Empowering Politically Correct Statement and not because it can be a genuinely interesting and joyful/tragic facet of their narrative

[birbwell]

something gay about iceblinks and water skies. youre telling me the shape of one is reflected in the other? okay.

[birbwell]

can we get more non conventionally attractive characters please and thanksyou

[birbwell]

when an older character has a baldspot theyre hiding it's like i get it. youre hiding your sensitive spot from yucky perverts like me

[birbwell]

Could we get a summary of Robin's lore and personality (and his relationship with Templeton)? (I am new and nosey here :D)

hiii thank you for the ask! I don't know how new you are, so I'll try to cover as much ground as efficiently as I can o7

Robin Shaw is the player character for The Pale Beyond, a game about a polar expedition gone awry. Robin Aster (Tagayun) Shaw is my captain who answers the question "what if a guy who has issues w taking responsibility of his own life and actions was put in charge of 26 souls on a doomed polar expedition". He stares the Great Man theory in the face and proves it wrong by sucking very badly and kind of failing to fulfill his duty*. He's fat he's queer he's a brown man in Edwardian pseudo-England he's undesirable & awkward and he's also my cute funtime thang, my bobin shaw.

Most of his life is spent working and that's fine by him because he believes that hard work makes a good and righteous person. I wouldn't describe him as a workaholic per se because he doesn't Love working, he just really needs it because he's poor. He prefers doing service work, he likes being Nice and Outgoing to customers ie. accommodating passengers on the ferry (he's not the ferry captain btw!!!), being a railway porter or a waiter, etc, but more often than not he does physical jobs.

He truly believes in the premise that working hard and presenting yourself well will give you a better life. One of his goals for a long time was to buy himself a nice tailor-made suit. He really likes the coat Hunt gives him for the expedition, it's got (torn-off) epaulets and Big Important Buttons. makes him feel cool.

Fractured view of his cultural identity. Tries very hard to fit in, knows he does not. Tries to cling to the customs his mother taught him but also tries to be the good old Englishman his stepdad taught him to be. But its OK bc he saw a museum exhibit with stolen artifacts once and now he's very proud of the fact that the English think he's awesome and exotic and totally respects him (no). His second-greatest flaw is that he would love the British Museum.

His first greatest flaw is... heh

Robin is slow to (show) anger. He has to be, the person that he is in the word that he lives in.

He's not good at writing. His beautiful run-on desperate sentences that give historians a headache...

Generally dislikes the way he looks. Frustrates him that he can't grow a full beard. He started smoking to get thin. That hasn't happened yet.

Unwilling captain. Robin was surprised he was even made First Mate; he just wanted to be put on the ship so he could escape the law.

He's literally nice! If you catch him on a smoke break he will look like a deer in headlights <- feels weird socializing in a non-work capacity. He's just generally awkward and isolated by this awkwardness.

He likes to draw lala... He likes to paint the riverscape he calls home. He likes drawing cartoons but wants to be better at nice proper portraiture. I've been playing with the idea of his art style evolving throughout his lifetime. His art changes noticeably after the Pale.

His backstory (and Pale run. and post-pale story) is available on his Toyhouse, which is written as a Wikipedia page in a modern version of the world of Pale (with lots of place/language/person names I made up on the spot). it's not finished and his story is continually changing, but as it stands it tells a very limited, detached version of Robin's life and exploits as if he were a middling C-rank explorer lol.

TLDR: Robin was born as his parents immigrated to pseudo-England. He grew up poor, helped out with work. When his mother died, his stepfather functionally disowned him so he spent the next several years of his life wandering and taking odd jobs. He eventually landed a job as a seaman at a passenger ferry, which was smuggling artifacts to the museum (which was along their route) on the side. After killing a man in an unrelated bar brawl, the police would track him to his job, where they uncover this smuggling operation. Robin is aware that he is fully and utterly fucked and sinks the ferry in his panic to escape. A year later, he would find Hunt's ad for an expedition and figures it's his ticket out.

I recommend playing the game not just to understand his lore (since a lot of it hinges on a big spoiler, and the Wikipedia page obscures its ramifications) but because it's honestly a nice little game with fun characters. also bc you want to know my Robin (and Templeton! and the crew!!) so bad oooh.

going to do the Templeshaw addition another time! Suffice to say they do not actually get together until post-Pale. they're kind of Unwilling Captain Whos Never Had Power/His First Mate Who Worships The Concept Of Authority And Is Kind Of Weird About Hierarchy In General :]

*(spoilers for an asterisk note below the cut)

*Robin is quite literally unsuitable as a Polar Explorer Captain. he completely fails on his "first" attempt and is only able to survive to the very end after multiple timeloops, after retaining muscle memory and premonitions from past failures. he fails to live up to the Great Man theory; he would have doomed everyone without the time loop.

Now, it's a different question entirely whether he wants to leave the timeloop at all.

[birbwell]

despising fandoms and still desiring community around Thing is like an evil concoction they feed to mice to drive them insane

[birbwell]

when people say don't trust your thoughts past 10pm this also applies to thoughts of grandiosity such as "i will fix my life forever" and "i will do everything right now"