#selfship sunday

[mrsgiovanna]

Yayy it's selfship Sunday, my free pass to be cringe (the rest of the days I'm aware and apologetic, not today hahahaha/j). I always wax lyrical about their dynamic but today is Bri just being a menace. I mean he's the one that made the roses anyway, and there was no vase?

Hope you're all doing great. I'll be back with some actual writing soon. Xoxo 😘 🤗

[charophyte]

I wanna start making a blog post every Sunday just as an excuse to ramble and repost art because I really just want to get inspired to do stuff with my selfships again despite being burned out :(

This weekend I'm gonna ramble about my main self insert Ash and how they've evolved as a character since (predictably) I've been thinking about them a lot recently.

My concept for Ash started out VERY simple; it really was just "what if a mad scientist had another mad scientist do their top surgery?" (which is funny because Ash being FTM trans did NOT last long). It was a little bit too easy to make them as a Dorohedoro character, especially after I decided to make them a human and not worry about magic shit. It really just was a matter of coming up with character motivations and light backstory: they want to create magic from scratch. Not because that would potentially dissolve the sorcerers' strict caste system or liberate humans from their status as target practice or anything, just for their own self-satisfaction.

Ash is a timid, cowardly person. They masquerade as a sorcerer to study them, oftentimes killing them in self defense with a gun (also looked down upon by magicians). Afterwards, they glean whatever they can from these corpses before cremating them and using them as fertilizer for their garden. This is really when I started associating Ash with plants and greenery despite living between two barren, urban dystopias. I liked the contrast of them being seemingly both uncaring towards magicians and humans alike while also being nurturing towards plants, and later, their partners.

Ash's relationship with Noi is also pretty straightforward: she helps them "dispose" of some bodies one day, and foolishly brings her back to their apartment and treats her to their cooking before they realize who she is. When they do finally realize that she's one of the most powerful sorcerers, both literally and socioeconomically, it's already too late. Since Noi is a very food-motivated person, she keeps coming back for free food and, eventually, Ash's company.

Trying to make the best out of a dangerous situation, Ash decides to take advantage of Noi's insane healing magic and pain tolerance and starts doing their own experiments on her. Surely this won't have any unforeseen consequences on their relationship.

Ash's relationship with Shin also reflects a lot of what I believe to be foundational traits for them. They're frustrated by him beating around the bush with Noi, completely disregarding that they've been romantically and sexually involved with her themself for the past few months. Mostly, they are annoyed seeing him, someone that Noi cares about, not living up to what he could be, not being his honest self. They push him REALLY hard too, knowing that they can get away with it (Noi's pet human + same shitty father figure/doctor that saved their lives).

So, with all that being said, putting Ash into a world where "morals" are a thing that actually matters, I didn't want to just change their character entirely. I needed to find some way to justify their general disdain for people. And to be clear, I don't mean in some edgy misanthropic way, I mean that they hate people who conform to societal norms. In some way or another, they feel wronged by society, when it exists.

As a character, Ash was absolutely developed further as a JJBA OC than anything else. I do somewhat resent myself for that, since I'd like to focus more on my female f/os than I do now, but I just got such bad brainworms thinking about them being with Jotaro (and making Jotaro a butch sometimes doesn't make up for that).

When I realized I could make them a JJBA character and staple them to Jotaro, all I knew at the time is that I wanted the two of them to meet as grad students, since at the time I was obsessed with thinking about Jotaro's career in academia (and I still am. of course). I also wanted them to grow up in the southwestern US, to keep the vibe of living somewhere "desolate" (or what most would consider desolate).

Once I realized that Ash needed some sort of reason to resent others, I just slapped some traumatic backstory on them, as you do. Not gonna pretend like it's profound or anything, but it was nice to have a character to project my experiences with dealing with PTSD onto, even if the nature of my trauma is very different. This is also when I decided to give them a physical disability/chronic pain as another way society fails to accommodate for someone like them. It took me a while to commit to this since I don't use a mobility aid in real life, but once again I wanted them to have similar but different issues than I have to deal with irl.

Ash's hedonism also gets cranked up to 1000% once they can have all of the one night stands, alcohol, and drugs they could imagine throughout college. Then, this collides with becoming attached to someone who abstains from every pleasure imaginable. They feel a strong need to teach Jotaro how to be himself instead of the man he's tried to be his whole life, being repressed and all that.

I thought it would also be funny to change Ash's cowardice; they are still a coward, but they also wildly overestimate their own abilities. Not just in a fight, but general skills. Otherwise, all of the freaky shit that goes on in Jotaro's life would scare them off too soon before they can get in too deep. This also somewhat led to them becoming a control freak, where they want to be the person providing for people (Jotaro) always and not the other way around, even when they do need help.

So essentially their character moved from pathetic sopping wet coward to overconfident wet paper towel. I wanted them to become someone who is both pitiable and punchable, someone who is hated but is justified in hating others back. I don't know if it's because I'm projecting or I get some kind of cuteness aggression, but I like to give my favorite characters a hard time with my self inserts lmao.

As for where I want to take them in the future, I want to make more characters for them to bounce off of. As easy as it is to say "Ash is a friendless loser and all of their colleagues hate them", I think it would be more interesting if they did have friends, but still struggled with loneliness. I also want to expand on their family life and time growing up in their hometown, just to have fun exploring them as their own character instead of just a self insert.

All of this is not exhaustive of course, I could be here all day, but I feel if I continue I will just be splitting hairs or going off topic. I realize that everything that I do want to expand on I can simply make another blog post for on another Sunday.

[mrsgiovanna]

Yayy, it's Selfship Sunday 🐞🪽😍 just posting something here that I made yesterday. I tried my hand at animating it (poorly, lmao). I want to get back to writing the lore for Bri. For now, it's a Bri and Giorno stealing a kiss outside.

[mrsgiovanna]

Yayy, it's selfship Sunday, (it's been a while haha). I've been trying to create more little things here and there and have been studying the manga while ignoring my responsibilities 🤣and kinda liked how this doodle turned out. It's very true to how I envision their dynamic as her having his back (literally here lol) and just someone that supports Gio through all his difficulties. In my universe, Bri is synonymous with being Passiones angel of death to their enemies, but to the ones she loves, she's a guardian angel who'd give anything to keep them safe, none more so than Giorno. Okay, enough yapping from me 🐞❤️🕊

[mrsgiovanna]

It's been a WHILE since I've done this, but... Yayy it's selfship Sunday. I'm trying to get back into writing and art, but there's so few hours in the day lol. I imagine that's probably how s/i bri feels as well, because she really wants to girlboss her way around the world, but still wants to be Giornos little wife while taking care of her family and it gets a little overwhelming sometimes. Giorno knows her though and makes sure she gets what she needs, whether it's just rest or a change of scenery, he's there for her. Image dump for funsies, happy selfship Sunday 🪽🕊❤️🐞

[mrsgiovanna]

Yayy it's selfship Sunday🥰 (it's been a while since I've done this lolol, but I'm feeling especially soft today).

Was just thinking about little events like mothers day, fathers day and birthdays at Villa Giovanna. Even though Bri and Giogio are super busy with their collective careers and philanthropy ventures, they prioritize family time especially during occasions like these because they want to give Giordano and Giada all the things they lacked at that age. Even though being parents scared the ish out of them both, they did the best they could with their intuition and the aid of some precious friends and family along the way so much so, that they raised a pair of wonderful people. Bri as a mom would be extremely soft and warm with her children, and I feel like this is something that Giorno appreciates, given his own upbringing. That's not to say she doesn't have her faults, but what she may lack, Giorno steps up and provides for so they're a tag team. It's very much Iike all the other aspects in their lives, they always back each other up because they know nothing can best them as long as they have each other.

Giorno as a dad is very protective of his family, he's experienced loss (which he was able to reverse in my universe, but he never wants to be in that position again) and he's not naive, he knows he will attract many enemies, but he's confident in his ability to thwart them.

I feel like the 3 of them would have little surprises for Bri on mother's day, lopsided pancakes and slightly overbaked cookies, macaroni art and pictures that Bri keeps in a box of treasures deep in her walk-closet. These are the moments she lives for and will protect with her entire existence.

And just for lols:

[mrsgiovanna]

Yayy it's selfship Sunday 🥰

No elaborate thoughts this week, just the many moods of Bri and Giorno.

[mrsgiovanna]

I added Giordano to Araki's art 🏃🏽‍♀️🥰. Briverse runs parallel to the canon universe thanks to good guy Diavolo, so here he's the ninth JoJo (GioGio) This selfship Sunday is dedicated to their first baby and the first heir to their empire.