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How does it feel knowing you have the devastating power of making people cry with just an image of silly animals

Solidarity

The desire to toss Figes into a spa so that slob finally feels true cleanliness and comfort.

HE'S NOT THAT UNCLEAN!!

Hey there!

First off, your artstyle is amazing. The format allowing anything to happen off-screen work so well, and the way you draw is just unique. Among all artists' worlds/FVNs I saw throughout the years, I rarely felt that interested, and I dare to say, emotionally invested.

I've digged into various archives (DeviantArt, Tumblr, etc) with insatiable hunger for more, and got some question concerning the lore.

From my understanding, it seems like Louis deserted the academy way before graduating. What were his reasons? Was it his own way to cope with Howard's death? To escape his Father's influence (although from my understanding Sebastian was more focused on Xev than Louis)? Something else completely? And if he did not take the criminal route right away, how did he ended up trafficking weapons?

2. From my understanding, Ezo (and some characters from Star Treatment too?) isn't your character at the very start, so how did he ended up as an important character in Louis's story? Also, I understand Ezo acts like a mentor, but what's their exact opinion and feelings for eachother ? The way they meet and began to work together feels ambiguous to me.

3. I saw the term "Zander(s)" several times, to designate Louis, as August's family (?) name, etc... So what exactly does "Zander" refers to? Is it related to that one moment where August call Louis "father"?

4. Out of curiosity, how tall would you estimate each character of your world? And is there a specifity related to their animal traits influencing their size?

5. Personnally, I'm having a hard time understanding how long have passed between some scenes, so how old would you say each character is? How old is Xev when he graduates/when he desert the ground forces? How old is Louis when he dies? How old is Sebastian when Xever confronts him? And so on.

6. Can we have an hint on what was Sebastian's secret ? And, I might have a twisted mind, but did Xever killed his father in his quest for revenge?

7. Will we ever see more of the mother? Or do you consider her a secondary character ? What's her feelings about the downfall of the family?

I know that's many question at once, so feel free to give answers to whatever you judge right to explain.

Thanks again for your time and keep it up! :D

Hey!

I've never gotten an ask this long or this loaded, so I'm having to write the answers down in a separate window side-by-side! Thank you for the interest and inquiries regardless. I'm surprised someone's gone in deep to my archives, which reminds me I really need to update/bolster them, it's been too long.

That aside, I'll try to answer as concisely and informatively as I can.

Nothing is monocausal, and with Louis, it was a combination of things. Without revealing too much of the story, Louis's family was always kind of a sore spot for Louis altogether. His relationship with his father wasn't the best, and his relationships with his brothers weren't all too great either. Not to mention, Louis found the academy (Greksil Military Institute) fairly constrictive, and not at all what he expected when he starry-eyed decided to follow family tradition. Add to that the fact he found more self-fulfillment hanging out with the street urchins on the periphery of the GMI, he deserted on a knee-jerk reaction. It's easy to see a future where he comes to his senses, returns, possibly patches things up with some family, but by the time he even entertains this option, he's too far, and he's on survival mode.

How he gets to the illicit arms trade is related to his encounter with Ezo on Cam-Amber.

Aye, so there's a couple parts to it, let's begin with Ezo, and I'll speak on the Star Treatment characters.

There is, at first, the more important out-of-universe angle. I had met the person to which the Ezo character belongs in a groupchat (at this point, more than a couple years ago) where I had been posting some of the early Percivals art. His character, independently, was something of a space pirate, which as I understand, riffed off of prior/then-ongoing interest in online starship combat games. We riffed a little bit about how Ezo, as an in-universe character would behave around Louis, and the seed was planted about how the two would be rivals/frenemies in some kind of black-market situation. I drew a couple things where I played with the idea, but eventually as I got more serious in structuring a more concrete biography for Louis's life, the story went from tongue-in-cheek to a more serious mentor-apprentice dynamic. Of course, I had confirmed that I was cleared to write something more in depth along these lines with Ezo proper.

In-universe, Ezo meets Louis on Cam-Amber, a financial-planet and capital of the Cam-Amber star nation, a member of the I.C.C. Louis is a street urchin, scraping by to survive, and he manages to impress Ezo by some contraption in the Cam-Amber underground. Ezo, chuffed, respects Louis's ability to catch him off guard and says if he passes a couple tests, he'll let him in on his "project." His project, as it turns out, is to start his own arms dealing ring by stealing as much of the arsenal of the Spartansk-Grover weapons manufactory based on-world. Won't spoil too much of that there, but I'll say at the end of the day, Louis is grateful for Ezo's patience, and Ezo respects Louis's pluckiness and resilience.

As for Star Treatment, a number of those characters were added when the scope of the series wasn't anywhere near as large as it is currently. Some folks who contributed characters to the story I had riffed with on the larger outline for specifically Star Treatment, with August as the main character, with the main arc dealing with August's survivor's guilt. Those characters are Hartwig, and KLARE/Ellen Weaver.

The Zanders is the name of the arms dealing group Ezo starts after the heist on Cam-Amber. Now, with Star Treatment being one of the earliest fleshed out (in terms of over-arching narrative) stories in the series, I've gone back and forth on details, and re-written aspects of the naming schemes specifically if the thematic impact demanded it. In the past and for the longest time, August's name was August Zander, specifically referring to him being "the Zander" off of which the arms dealing ring which had been passed down two generations at this point was named. But for now, August is named August Percival at the beginning of Star Treatment, and later changes that to August Zander. How and why? I can maybe illustrate at another time :3

Animal traits influencing size kind of goes back and forth- it's not really a consistent application. Deer tend to be taller, dogs vary wildly in height, bears tend to be larger, etc etc, but I feel like sticking to that everywhere would be limiting to the kinds of stories these characters could tell, and also makes it more grounded if characters varied in height just because that's the card they were dealt by birth.

As for heights, I've fudged the inches in past, but the answers are generally the same.

For at least the main cast, the heights are as follows (assuming we're in the middle of their respective stories):

Louis Percival is 5'7 Xever Percival is 6'1 August is 5'11

Secondary cast characters with stated heights include

Kirk Laklan at 5'6 Tycho Coran at 5'9 Ewan E. Figes at 5'8 Mark Colquitt at 6'3 KLARE/Ellen Weaver at 5'8

These do not count their ears!

Theeeese are a lot of dates so I'm gonna just answer it like this.

Xever was born on March 12, 2329. Louis was born on November 5, 2333 (which is today, Happy Birthday, Louis!)

Xever is a unit commander in the early 2350s, and he's already had extensive experience by 2354, when much of volume 2 takes place. He deserts in 2355.

Louis is just shy of 40 years old when he dies in 2372.

Sebastian doesn't have a set date, but he's certainly getting up there in years when Xever confronts him.

I won't spoil too much, but Sebastian has friends in high places that can rely on to make bad news sound less bad. As for Xever, what Xever does to Sebastian is instrumental to Xever's arc: by killing his father and deserting to follow a vengeance mission, he believes that he's reclaimed agency from people in his life who've held power over him. Of course, he's correctly identified the issue to some extent, but Xever's only made a half-development on his arc, and in some ways, taken a step backward. But it's that event, crucially, that sets him on a path where he does learn that reclaiming agency is more than just doing what you think you want.

I have a couple pieces queued up involving Elmira. She's important, and honestly I haven't given her enuogh screen time! Elmira doesn't have a positive view of her husband by the beginning of Xever's story. She blames herself in part for how Sebastian treated the most senior brother Howard, and even without all the information, knows that Howard likely wouldn't have died if Sebastian hadn't done some of the things he did. Elmira as a result tends to keep to herself, and attempts to be present in her children's lives if not her husbands, but even that is painful for her because in a way she's terrified of the possibility of hurt again. So by Volume 2 (of 7, I'm thinking), she's sleeping by herself in the guest cottage on the Percivals estate grounds that she's partially turned into a greenhouse where she pursues her botanical research.

Hope that was informative!

#furry #anthro #dwc marshal arts #furry art #digital art #dwc ama #commissions #furries #illustration #the percivals #sci fi #louis percival #xever percival #ewan figes #tycho coran #august percival #supernova story #constellations of louis percival #star treatment

Your art has such a weird nostalgic feeling for something that never happened, like looking through a window into a memory someone doodled over

The intended effect 😌

My earliest inspirations are screens from shows and movies, my approach in the beginning was informed by the goal of making pieces that felt like they were taken from a broader piece of work.

Mixed in with my fascination for an era where information spreading and lookup wasn’t as easy, and that’s been my current approach to a lot of my stories.

Let the audience read between the lines. Invite them to imagine. Provide answers later (and have them) but get them engaged first, and encourage speculation.

#dwc ama #questions for dwc #dwc marshal arts

Did Xever ever tell anyone about the "thigh high incident" or did Ewan threaten him at gun point?

(Figes is such a little guy, I wanna give him hot chocolate and gossip about the weirdest people in the ranks. I bet there's a bunch of rumors about the colonel.)

Hahahahaha xD Xever has his own things to keep under wraps, so he'd probably treat it like "Mutually Assured Humiliation," where the thigh highs would be in his truth nuke stockpile so to speak hahaha. That said, word about it would probably get out eventually.

I'm sure Figes appreciates the appreciation! He's a sociable guy, tho he knows when to keep his mouth shut about stuff if he needs to as well. He's a big fan of hot choco tho!

#dwc ama #ewan everett figes #questions for dwc

Something I constantly notice in your work is the obvious fascination with elements of the Soviet times.

If it's alright to ask, why is this the one inspiration so ubiquitous and unending throughout your works?

I've never seen another thing like it, especially in the furry art spaces.

Good question!

I suppose I should start with the idea that the Eastern-Bloc inspired motifs and subject matter really mainly comes specifically from my story, In the Red. In the Red was the first real story I started to write sometime back in 2018-2019, before leaving it dormant in favor of my science-fiction series The Percivals, which highlights more personal stories, devoid of Soviet influence or Soviet-inspired worldbuilding. Point blank, you basically see none of it in The Percivals, which I’d say is still my flagship project. As such, it really isn’t as ubiquitous in my works as it could be.

The only area outside of ITR the Eastern-Bloc theming can be found is, in part, some of the advertising material for my commissions (ironically) or through the graphics of my official statements/releases as far as updates from me go. The reason there is simple: old East-bloc propaganda/the visual language of publicly managed economies translates surprisingly well to marketing, and I suppose announcing the start of a quarter can be seen as a kind of mini, three-month plan.

That said, ITR works have kind of seen something of a resurgence on my part as of recent, and I’ve never forgotten the worldbuilding I’ve done for it.

I guess the initial thing that got me interested in it was the idea that there was this historical precedent for a society that was, at least nominally, dedicated to the idea of an alternate economic organization. This was years ago, and of course when you’re young and foolish, you kind of get fascinated by these comparatively eccentric states and how they did things, and believe that they stood for something.

This carried over to when I began writing the initial drafts for In the Red, when I populated the descriptions of how the government of the Vulpiet Union worked and this and that, etc, but it kind of ran dry when I 1) found the whole exercise to be fairly regurgitative 2) ceased viewing the USSR, off of which the Vulpiet world building was based, with some special pedestal.

So I took a break to focus more on my personal, character-driven stories, disillusioned and not exactly interested in writing something with a “top-down” view of things.

I’ve come back a bit to In the Red because I feel like I’ve learned a bit more about story writing, and handling narratives and worldbuilding with a purpose. I feel like I understand the implications of the various systems at play better, and have a purpose to writing a story mired in the politics of a dead empire, resurrecting it for what is ultimately a tale about the futility of fighting against a system as one person.

Outside of that, I still have a pet curiosity/fascination for what life was like in the Soviet Union, mainly for what I had said before: things were different. Not necessarily better, but different. And people lived through it! Not just through the obvious points of political repression or a stagnating upper-crust of geriatric bureaucrats, but through more grounded and surreal moments you wouldn’t necessarily. The monolithic blocks of socialized housing and the dingy rooms that were just barely enough but housed millions, the cheap consumer goods raised during the Brezhnev years that nonetheless colored the lives of many, the Soviet space program that was the spearhead of a national propaganda push for scientific progress that ultimately gave way to its Western counterparts. Life in the USSR was most certainly complicated, and its effects went beyond the ideological implications, which is one of the most interesting things to me. The Soviet Union was most certainly an ideological project, but it’s a case study of how so many who grew up during that time, in retrospect, don’t think of it as ideological. It was just “their youth.” And all those weird Lenin statues, cigarette smoke choked Khrushchyovka stairwells, and the truly omnipresent Party propaganda posters, were not particularly weird to those growing up with it, it was just “life.” And, resultingly, fascination in how to wrap my head around that.

What I’ve done so far with the Vulpiet Union/ITR is just a scratch of the tip of the iceberg on all that, and I hope to eventually capture the depth of life in this fictionalized version of the Soviet state. Not just with the kind of media the government would put out, but life for the average Vulpiet citizen. Surrounded by reminders of the ubiquity of the Party and State, but simply living your life as is.

I will say as an addendum that remotely worldbuild-y art isn’t new, or uncommon either. @kvernakamudra does an excellent job with pure historically-based worldbuilding, I’d say far better and more indepth than I do (I guess I’m more focused on the meta-narrative and have been busy haha). Nakamudra is not only a talented artist, but clearly does an immense amount of research to base off his fictional nations, which I respect plenty. His contributions to furry art space through the lens of taking worldbuilding as a historical project seriously is really a model of how one *should* approach research with nuance.

I guess the only thing that I *would* say does separate my stuff from other historically-adjacent furry worldbuilding, especially with newer folks and folks suspiciously obsessed with the 1870s-1950s, is that I do have a imminently critical take on the the kinds of systems that occur in ITR, while a lot of others do tend to lean to much into the tendency that I originally fell into years ago, which is worldbuilding only for worldbuilding’s sake, or worldbuilding without a point/a misguided point. I see a lot of folks do the regurgitative thing where “x real world phenomenon happened, let’s copy it into our setting just because” instead of investigating why it happened/what circumstances brought it to happen, and importantly, whether or not it was a good thing. I think, the honest test of a real-feeling world built is whether or not you’re willing to engage with the events of the story in an objective fashion, or if you’re just there to glorify the existence of the nation you’ve built from scratch. From my own works, what happens during the events of In the Red, serve as an indictment on badly set up systems: in the mid-late part of the story, Vulpiet Union crushes a student uprising in a neighboring country, and it is unambiguously portrayed as a bad thing. I’m just curious as to how many folks who write similar worlds would go through writing an event like that and making it an indictment on their fictional nation, and not as a glorification of violence. From what I have seen, I’m concerned that the number wouldn’t be so high.

Anyway, good question! And thank you for the food for thought.

#dwc marshal arts #dwc ama #questions for dwc

pretty dog boys...

I try my best!

#dwc ama #questions for dwc

Hi!

Going through Tumblr archives recently made me realize just how many details there are on each scene (like the "movie-like" posters which have each so many reference once you know the universe) and holy cow... you're the best at what you do.

So again, I've gathered a few questions I wished to ask you about, if it's alright.

What exactly happened after the crash on Dzheeron Dans for it to be so important to Louis and Ezo?

2. Xev being demoted after Tycho died seems a bit too harsh. I suppose something else happened back on the field? Or did he took full responsibility for the whole tripwire thing? And how did their colleagues react? Figes, Rodriguez and so on? Maybe even Sebastian ?

3. Who does the Ground forces usually fight? For example on Germinal?

4. Did you thought of a background for Kirk? Before he met Louis I mean?

5. Is the duel between the Percival brothers still considered canon? I'm having a hard time imagining the context in their respective stories.

6. Do you have any plan on writing down/drawing something for Stardust? From an exterior point of view it's already perfect to imagine the story. A simple summary, a Star Treatment character and a subtle mention of August. I wouldn't mind if it was left in this state to help narrate a bigger story, but I'm curious about your answer.

7. Concerning your stories, there is that one on the Tumblr stories called "The circuit". May I ask what it was exactly ? Some kind of early testing ground?

8. Overall throughout the years, what work are the most happy with? I think you already said to someone you can't choose a favourite piece, but then if it's alright to ask, is there one that was more enjoyable to make, made you progress with your skills, that kind of thing?

Anyway I guess that's it for today's questions, thanks for taking the time to read me and sorry for throwing so many things at you!

Wishing you good health Marshal!

The details have always been there, it just takes a degree of effort to see them when you've familiarized yourself with the lore- which it seems like you to a large extent have! Well done.

Without giving too much away, Louis is Ezo's apprentice for the first couple years that they're running an arms-running/arms-dealing ring through several star systems. Louis gets on board and proposes a couple of high-risk, high-reward heists, which Ezo goes along with, but a couple of them go not-so-well in the course of their partnership. Not all of it is on Louis, as some of those ideas are on Ezo as well. The one that happens before the Dzheeron Dans incident kind of goes uniquely badly, which leads to Ezo's separation from the arms dealing group and the gang's near-dissolution until Louis picks up the pieces kind of and starts from zero with Kirk.

Xever was not demoted because Tycho dies. Xever comes under scrutiny by his superiors because the circumstances of his conduct during the battle are mystifying. Usually an officer falling in the line of duty doesn't mean their immediate superior delegating their command to another office and going out of their way to find said officer, and then being basically unreachable, near catatonic afterward. The higher ups suspected there was something more going on between Tycho and Xever than senior officer-junior officer, which of course it was, and the powers that be launched an investigation. They suspected that Xever might have used his superior rank to advance on a lower rank, which would have been cause for removal, and in the largely conservative ICC Armed Forces, this thing was doubly looked down upon. That said, they found that Xever and Tycho's relationship started long before they were even in the same unit. The crucial testimony for that was Figes, who, wounded and bitter about Xever near-abandoning his post, maintained that the two's relationship existed outside of the bounds of military hierarchy. Xever's handling of command however was still deemed irresponsible. Sebastian, disgusted at his son's "proclivities" yet still obsessed with living vicariously through his children's military careers, throws one last favor in to his friends on the inside, and "saves" Xever's career (arguably way worse for Xever's mental health than just being ejected), and the decision reached by Xever's superiors is a demotion and reassignment to a desk job. Rodriguez is taken off-command after failing post-operation psych-eval, Wynn's busy with his own struggles.

Ground Forces is a tool of the ICC's foreign-policy and internal domestic security agenda. For the most part, they're mainly involved supporting factions in conflicts along the ICC's borders, on the side most favorable to the ICC, with the hopes of folding them into the political-economic union. The Germinal government (or, what's left of it in the face of the planet's rapidly intensifying ecological catastrophe) is favorable to joining the ICC, and insurgent groups on the planet are resisting ICC presence, largely (albeit wrongheadedly) blaming the ICC for the crisis. On Bostubor, the ruling government has basically collapsed, and several factions fight to take control of the planet, with the most well-funded faction clawing to become ICC-adjacent.

Kirk Laklan came from a large family of cats, with at least 12 other siblings between his housecat and lynx parents. Kirk did things by himself as his family was unable to really individually focus or nurture his interests, and his leisure time took the form of wandering the city, making little gadgets and gizmos from pieces he scavenged. He learned a lot of his tricks from Kitaitown and Little Chiapas handymen. Kirk would eventually work a number of odd jobs here and there, several weeks at a time as a sanitation worker, postman, fast food employee, barber, and eventually used parts salesman. It was through this last avenue that Ezo and Kirk met up, which got Kirk involved in the Zander's illicit affairs.

Xever and Louis show down, but it's being reworked :3

Stardust is a liiiittle later down the line. I'd like to finish Supernova, Star Treatment, and key segments of Louis Percivals before I do Stardust, so it's a bit low on the priority rung for me, but as I do more, the concept might just be juicy enough for me to pick up again anyway. I'm infamous for working in things out-of-chronological order anyway! Haha

The Circuit was a veeeery early concept story between me and my partner at the time. I'd like to think I'd still come back to it, because it has a bit of that Manhattan-like urban grunge that I really like, but also more importantly reminds me of a very happy time of my life. In a way though, I feel like coming back to write for that would be difficult, but I like to leave it up on the page because the memories are too good to leave unacknowledged. That said, Conrad the jackal character from that story still pops up every now and then in references, even if he hasn't been drawn in quite a while. He's known for demolishing bowls of ramen.

It's hard to say! I don't think I can answer that, even in the new spins you're proposing haha. I think, at the end of the day, each different story, whether or not it's the scifi Percivals series, the satirical drama In the Red, or even the fan work stuff I've done for the Smoke Room, brings to me a different benefit emotionally, spiritually, and technically. I'll re-phrase your question this way: what work portended a turn in the way I tell stories the most? I think the Percivals as a whole is too big to condense.

Star Treatment was the first story that got me to really sit down and focus on characters over the world at large, and taught me that it's okay to have a more emotionally grounded story than one that professes to explain every nook and cranny first. At the time in my life when I first came up with Star Treatment, I was working on the initial phases of In the Red, which was a much less-refined, much-less focused outline of what it is today. I was very concerned with the technical aspects of worldbuilding, like accounting for how many hectares of arable land were in the Vulpiet Union and the population of districts in the (insert name) Vulpiet Republic, etc. Star Treatment really forced me to question the point of all that if there was no point in the narrative. Was I doing it just to reembellish what I knew based on history? I dunno, I know that aspect is fun to some people, but in many cases since, it strikes me as a little self-congratulatory- and I say that as someone who got pins of my characters made haha. I've spoken to a number of people who ask me to review their worldbuilds and have lore-dumps for every technical question I could ask, but when I ask "what is it saying?" conceptually, or how emotionally resonant can you get from what you have so far, the answers I receive oftentimes clash with the goal of relatability in storytelling. And to bring it back, Star Treatment, while looking back at it in retrospect and realizing a lot of the plot needs to be reworked to have a more cohesive message and better pacing, was the project that got me "off my high horse" so to speak.

I might rephrase your question even more, and turn it into "what has each story/work brough to the table for me?," but that would be a VERY long post, and I'd have to do that another day!

Thank you for your questions, keep em coming! I enjoy answering!

-DWC