some Ev doodles from tonight, trying to get back in the mood to make things!! I’ve been in a bit of a depressive slump lately due to Life Happening (and the state of the planet at large), so it’s been a struggle. This sheet of sketches was fun though!!
plus some extras!!
(also yes it is probably significant that Shas obscures Ev’s vision while Deis shuts them up. Shas and Deis both love a good evil monologue, but Deis likes to do the monologuing himself while Shas likes to freak people out when “Ev/Razienne” uses his speech pattern lol. And also, Deis is more likely to make them keep the memories of everything they see/do while under his control, as a form of torture, whereas Shas is more likely to black it all out (and let Deis fish things out of their latent memory bank for “fun” later).)
You know this moment, don't ya?
And time is strangely calm now
'Cause everybody's gone, it's
Just you and your anger
...
You really left me on the line, kid
Holding all your baggage
You know I'm not your father brother
...
Oh, golden boy, you shined a light on your home
And at your best you were magic, we were sold
But don't tell 'em what you told me
Don't even tell 'em that you know me
I would rather burn forever
But you should know that I died slow
Running through the halls of your haunted home
And the toughest part is that we both know
What happened to you
Why you're out on your own
Merry Christmas, please don't call
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When I made this it was supposed to be a sketch about how Fin has been traumatized by war and loss and simultaneously rewarded for his suffering with political niceties and social laurels, but it kind of turned into a thing about Shire. Especially after I added the spear and sword, both affiliated with Shire Paloran's various eras and lore.
Shire is... a lot of things to the main cast of Fractal Alliances. A little brother, a protege, a student, a friend, a lover... a stalker, a scourge, a twisted pawn of his mother's making... His death, therefore, ends up meaning a lot of different things to each of them simultaneously.
Markis Sparkes, Ev, and Fin kind of get the worst of it, I think. Markis and Shire were best friends (and sometimes more), and Markis saw Shire's descent into wrath and paranoia first-hand. He was also Shire's prisoner of war for a time...? So when he's killed in combat, it's both a relief to Markis and one of the saddest events of his life.
Thelia struggles too, but once he went off the deep end politically, she kind of washed her hands of him. To her, his death wasn't as hard-hitting.
For Fin, Shire was kind of like his personal political protege. Shire had showed a lot of interest in other cultures when he was younger, and Fin was more than happy to share his, so they bonded over that and stuck together for years as a result. As they got older, they found more common interests in sword fighting, architecture, and the ever-evolving strategy of war in Era 10. Then, in the late nineties, Shire tried to start something with Fin romantically, which he immediately shut down (ew, little brother figure, gross)... but Shire never really took his solid "no" for what it was.
That interest turned to obsession, and when Fin and Ev got serious, Shire was the first to know. He was also the first to know when they "broke up" in 2015, and his behavior changed to become more pressured and evocative. By the time Shire dies, Fin is desperate to save what's left of that old friend, and simultaneously relieved to not have to deal with this darker, hungrier, twisted version of Shire that he grew into.
For Ev, Shire was their and Talis's little shadow for the longest time, and Ev saw him that way perpetually. They loved his tenacity, his devotion to his people, his overall intelligence regarding politics and the struggles of their two worlds... Ev loved the kid, but they saw earlier than most of their friend group the path he was going down. They knew better than most the way killing a parental figure (or someone else you treated with similar respect) reflected on one's personality. Ev saw that shift and knew exactly what kind of lies Shire was telling, and had a good hunch as to why, as soon as he told them from that point onward. They saw his descent from a different angle than Markis, but it had no less impact on them.
And, of course, they kill Shire right in front of Fin, who was about to meet his own grisly end at the end of Shire's cursed, magic-amplified spear.
So that fucks everything up for all of them. Like, a lot.
Anyway, that's... sort of what this doodle became a reference to. I usually associate "Merry Christmas, Please Don't Call" with Anakin Skywalker and Obi-wan Kenobi (non-romantically), but it's going in my playlist for Shire now too.
WW: Constructed Languages of Broken Dimensions (BT)
Hello all, and welcome back to a Tumblr edition of Worldbuilding Wednesday! It's been a little while, but I wrote this fresh off my vacation and more than happy to share this with you all. Tag along for the ride, because I blew someone's mind with this the other week!
Visit the original post over on Patreon!
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What is a "constructed language?"
So I'm referencing Wikipedia's definition of the concept, but constructed languages are, in short, languages which did not develop naturally over time but were rather devised for a specific purpose. In this case, I have developed (or begun to develop) several "conlangs" for use in Broken Dimensions in varying capacities.
Some of Broken Dimensions' conlangs exist mostly as ciphers based on the American English alphabet, similar to the Star Wars alphabet for aurebesh or the codex of Mandalorian script forms. Some of BrDim's conlangs have budding concepts of grammar, their own growing dictionaries, and pronounciation guides!
This part of the Broken Dimensions project is something I started working with (in much, much earlier forms) as a kid - I LOVED making up languages and symbols that meant things only I could understand.
The languages I've made and begun to make for BrDim are so much more complex and much more time consuming to work on, but I think little me would've been utterly fascinated :)
The Languages of Broken Dimensions
There are actually quite a few named languages in Broken Dimensions, but the ones I have words and small dictionaries for, or alphabets designed for, are as follows:
Central Aetherian - trade language spoken throughout the entire Aetherian Empire, centralized around the core world with variants and dialects that get more distant from the original the further out you travel. Has an alphabet... of sorts.
Talkian - the most developed language I work with! Has it's own dictionary of words that grows almost weekly, can be spoken, and shares the Base Tartarun block sign alphabet with the rest of the dimension.
Base Tartarun - both a language and an alphabet! There are some words that can be understood across all of Tartarus, regardless of whether or not regional languages use different words that mean the same thing. Verdisse, the plural for "soldiers," is one such word. So is hetarn'aika, a strong swear word/insult usually used in reference to the Seven Heathen mages post-revolution. Similarly, the BT alphabet is used across the entire dimension of Tartarus and beyond as a trade language/default script for the written word.
Old Tongue - bits and pieces of this one. A language spoken in Eras 1 and 2 that has since fallen out of use. Was once the premier language and script to be used for writing magical tomes and conducting research in, but fell completely to the wayside after Crisis 5. Ziojic is an Old Tongue word made from two other words meaning "void" and "magic."
There are also other languages I refer to often but haven't put much thought or development into, such as:
Alcairok - the regional language of southern Tartarus, specifically Alcairo. Only has a few words. Alphabet in development.
Aislos - the language of Hell's Aisles. Mostly exists as a concept.
Rekahn Talkian - a variant of standard Talkian used primarily around Vadetta Heights and the northeastern coast of Tartarus. By Era 10 it's more of a "house language" used only with family, sometimes with hyperspecific words whose meanings are passed down through family lines.
Vaali - trade language of the eastern and southeastern coast of Tartarus, used in conjunction with the more mainland
East Coast Basic - the precursor and base language for most languages spoken in the eastern half of Tartarus - extremely similar to modern Talkian.
Envarian Sign Language (Envarasil) - 1 or only 2 Tartarun sign languages (beyond field sign, which varies from region to region based on military history and dominance) to have persisted through the millennia. Envari predominantly speaks Vaali, BT, and Interdimensional Common Tongue (CT), so they had less region-specific words in their sign language. It became the default dialect to use, and is rivaled only by Enzian Sign Language, which is similar but much more broad.
Enzian Sign Language - made up of part field sign, part CT sign, and part Adreonian sign. Has a sub-dialect that was used by the 1920s-30s rebel groups when fighting in the Era 10 Tartarun Civil War.
Ialu'kan - Trivaalian temple district dialect, mostly spoken by scholars, priests/devotees, and religious leaders in the province.
Viadexi localé - name of the island dialect spoken by some characters in The Lycanthra Syndicate.
Adreonian - very lightly used in parts of Fractal Alliances. It's the only surviving Darekaeiin/Shade dialect, and so survivors from the region kind of cling to it.
Base Tartarun
So, what's all this at the top of the post about Base Tartarun, then? Well, I like to reference little codes in my work sometimes. Since Base Tartarun is the alphabet I have the most settled/decided on, I like to leave bits of it around sometimes! I'd like you all to be able to read it and look for extra features :)
Included above are multiple shots of the Base Tartarun-English alphabet cipher! Feel free to save one image or the other (with the description or without) to use when you see a coded message in my artwork. This will be most common in comic pages, but I have hidden BT in illustrations before, and quite a few character design sheets for Fractal Alliances have BT scrawled into armor plates.
(You can also use BT to write for yourself in code! I used to write notes to myself in BT when I was learning the script. It's great for keeping track of things you don't want other people to be able to understand without the codex.)
What's all this for, then?
For fun, mostly! :D Little me liked making up languages, and I still do. That's the bare bones of it :)
But also, I've always felt like it would be cool to have a language only I and a few people could speak. My first experience with creating a coded pictograph language was on the playground, y'know? We made a small dictionary of symbols we could use to convey meaning to one another in class, on drawing paper, on our hands. It was fun!
I've also spent a significant portion of my life feeling as if I am speaking a language no one else understands, or being spoken to in one I don't understand myself. This is, in some ways, an extension of that. Now no one can know what I'm saying - for real this time! ;)
But again, it mostly boils down to having fun.
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I hope you guys enjoyed this short dive into the languages of Broken Dimensions! I'm sharing about them with the intention of someday uploading a dictionary of terms for fan perusal, but I don't yet know what form that will take. I'll keep y'all posted :)
Here’s the finished reference for the three Aracane brothers, each of whom are raised to become gods! I teased this on Cara a couple weeks ago :D
Arcanis/Rios is the lead of Lampshade Hero, the band represented on Ev and Fin’s sweatshirt (and several other pieces of merch scattered throughout my work lol).
I've been giving Fin a hard time recently with my art, so here's a "hard time" of a different type, re: his experience falling hard and fast for Ev lol.
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I was listening to Ke$sha (Warrior album), "Good Bi" by Beth McCarthy, and a few other similar things while working on this lol. Inspired by this iconic photo, of course.
sometimes I get ideas for animatics I'll never make while I'm driving and listening to music, and on my way to hike some trails yesterday I got a fun one:
“Praying” by Ke$ha
Fin calls up Herei after his sentencing and conviction, while he’s still in prison for treason, and goes off at him. Starts off calm, blows up at the end.
Essentially tells Herei “FUCK YOU, FUCK WHAT YOU DID TO ME, FUCK WHAT YOU DID IN MY NAME” and washes his hands of his former best friend and second-in-command.
“Your actions led to the deaths of thousands across worlds at the hands of the Phantasman Hivemind, Lordé, and you did it to protect me, which I never asked for! I didn’t need that kind of protection from you! I didn’t need you to make deals with evil incarnate to ‘keep him at bay,’ I needed you to be honest with me and prioritize saving the lives of everyone under our protection! I need you to do what was right!”
Then, a couple years later, Syne and Viridian come back and Fin gets his chance to yell at both of them again.
Syne is pretending everything’s fine, that she’s just concerned about her son after the War of Worlds and losing his fiancé, and he emphatically tells her that everything is NOT “fine!” He’s not fine, the worlds are not fine, and their relationship as mother and son? Nowhere near “fine.”
Fin expresses just how disappointed and pissed off he is that neither of his parents could both to show up during the WoW to even say something in support of the war effort against Phantasma. They didn’t check in, they basically showed they didn’t care. For all he knew, they had died fighting or been absorbed into the Hive!
He’s also VERY pissed still that his mother abandoned him to the throne and ran away. She’s never apologized for how poorly she set him up for the crowns, and for abandoning not just him, but her province and the dimension at large.
Syne was the oldest monarch in Tartarus. She had wisdom and experience that often outweighed her temper and outdated vocabulary. She was needed and she left.
He goes off at Viridian too, because he’s only been placating her this whole time, trying to keep peace between her and Fin instead of trying to be proactive and repair even his own relationship with Fin.
A”t least he tried!” Fin points out.
He even goes off about how they hid his siblings from him, how he had to dig into layers upon layers of Talkian history to find even footnotes about his siblings because his parents buried them to forget their grief—even in the pocket dimension, their own home!
He cries a little when he yells at them for not telling him about their graves, the memorial on the highest ridge, their crests and names.
And, even later, Fin sits at Ev’s side as they drink together, and he says sometimes he prays for the two of them. That some things only gods can forgive—“But Ev, Tartarun gods don’t forgive easy either. They fight for us, for justice, for what’s right. Even our gods wouldn’t forgive what’s been done to you, so neither will I.”
Wide shot of: a billboard-sized screen depicting another Imperial propaganda video. Then switch to: Ev and Fin sitting in the dark of a high rise in Vadetta Heights, two impact boards behind them filled with knives, pictures of Herei, the Council, and various individual sigils pinned beneath them.
Featuring: Fin’s glowing white eyes, magic armor details, lots of fire magic.
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I don't normally post these, but maybe I should? Someday maybe I'll even do thumbnails or a color board for the animatic-that-shall-never-be (lol)
I've been working on a few of these fun little sketch info pages recently - kind of a way to combine my messy sketchbook pages with a bit of coloring to keep my brain happy while I don't have time for full, finished, detailed artwork. I've shared this one over on Bluesky, so if it looks familiar, that's why!
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More notes below the cut!
I really do love the Hackerie twins btw. I used to talk about them alot circa. 2022 when I first made them while binging The Clone Wars in college (Cole is Fives, Reina is Echo, in case you were curious. Exception Reina doesn't "die" and become a prisoner of war. Cole though...). Since then, they've become a pretty fun and integral part to the Imperial side of Fractal Alliances, but I don't talk about them as much??
Anyway. They're agents of chaos, and they end up being quite prop relevant; I love them so much <3
BONUS: their little headshot refs from 2024 (?)...
