#brdim ocs

[artistic-m3nace]

Fake it 'til you make it Mask on, never take it off Wear it 'til wearing it feels natural Whatever you tell yourself it's not true

Smash your competition, baby Show us some good entertainment Victory's your only payment Gladiator, gladiator…

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yeah, you're in it now Ev. sorry pal, the plot demands that you be forced into submission in the most brutal way possible. no, it's no in a fun way. yeah no, even the guy subjugating you just thinks its kind of funny, the only satisfaction he gets is from the way he gains more power every time he uses you. yeah, that does mean you're a weapon with no ownership over your own self or destiny. sorry man.

…now NATHAN, on the other hand, is having the time of his motherfuckin' life.

SONG: "Gladiator" - Jann

Click on the image for better resolution!

[artistic-m3nace]

comic cover concept art!!

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FA will probably NEVER be a full-fledged comic because it’s so long 😭 Parts of it maybe, but not the whole thing. Little Golden Age is a subsection of the outline I happened to name, and it literally takes place over 20 years lol.

regardless, this little reference-sketch turned illustration was very fun! I've been testing out some different methods of coloring in combination with my usual gradient mapping fuckery, and this was one of the successes.

hope y'all enjoy!

[artistic-m3nace]

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).)

[artistic-m3nace]

merry christmas, please don't call.

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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.

[artistic-m3nace]

Fractal Alliances - comic #5 - 1961

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Read the notes over on Patreon (for free)!

[artistic-m3nace]

Ev, and I cannot state this enough, is a very unreliable narrator because they are getting partially mind-wiped all the time.

That is all.

[artistic-m3nace]

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).

[artistic-m3nace]

you are not in control. you never were. how does that feel…?

( pycithea, 1927 )