💥PROMPTS! (for when you want to send an OC artist some asks… but don't know anything about their characters yet)
Which one of your ocs would you want to dress like if you could get away with it?
Which one of your ocs *actually *dresses the most similarly to you?
What is a fact about one of your ocs that you've never gotten to share with someone before?
Which one of your ocs do you wish people would pay more attention to?
Do you ever put your ocs into alternative universes/settings? If you do, tell us about one of them!
Do you have any ocs who started out as fan characters, or as adaptations of canon characters who eventually became their own thing? If so, what did their character progression look like?
Which of your ocs has the most tragic backstory and why?
Which one of your ocs would you consider the weirdest, and why?
Which of your ocs do you think you would get along with best in real life?
Which one of your ocs do you think you would dislike the most in real life?
Do you have an oc "type?" (AKA, are there any design or characterization trends that you notice popping up amongst your characters?)
Do you ship any of your ocs together? If so, introduce one of the pairings!
Are any of your ocs enemies? If so, why are they opposed to one another?
Have any of your ocs been re-written? If so, what did their old version look like vs their new one?
Which one of your ocs would you want to dress like if you could get away with it?
none of them dawg they shirts got holes in the back..
What is a fact about one of your ocs that you've never gotten to share with someone before?
Solena is obsessed with true crime radio shows. she's a bit embarrassed about it. makes a lot of sense though, when you consider what her boyfriend does
Which one of your ocs do you wish people would pay more attention to?
all of them lol NO hm... Igne. Igne hasn't done anything yet. he's got no personality. I know this. he's going to become significantly more interesting once [spoiler]
Do you ever put your ocs into alternative universes/settings? If you do, tell us about one of them!
no! I'm too busy making canon ToT I did draw them as jrpg au, but I dunno if people got it! do people still play jrpgs? it's all ttrpgs now
Do you have any ocs who started out as fan characters, or as adaptations of canon characters who eventually became their own thing? If so, what did their character progression look like?
nope! i can't remember the last time i made an FC
Which of your ocs has the most tragic backstory and why?
oh, well if it's a CONTEST... I think Vin got it worse than Fauno. I mean it really sucks, but you can live with disfigurement. but how do you live without hearing? no more songs?!?
I can't wait to see Fauno gets slapped with that. he's never considered anyone has it worse than him. lol
Which one of your ocs would you consider the weirdest, and why?
agartha. yeah you heard me. fascists too stubborn to surrender under siege in a CAVE. so stubborn they'd rather eat each others' legs and scrape algae off the rocks than go back to the surface and admit defeat. fuckin. weird.
Which of your ocs do you think you would get along with best in real life?
Cygni because he's nice to anyone!
Which one of your ocs do you think you would dislike the most in real life?
Dido... i made her as gross as possible. smiling while screwing you over and there's nothing you can do about it? we've all been there.
real talk i would NOT like Sylvester either, for similar reasons. he's genuine in his friendliness but too oblivious to notice he's destroying everyone around him. he thinks if he just says sorry and has good intentions then everything will be forgiven. fuuuuck people like that.
Do you have an oc "type?" (AKA, are there any design or characterization trends that you notice popping up amongst your characters?)
Archetypes! they are a thing, all ocs align to existing archetypes.
I keep trying to write a Magnificent Bastard (Sylvester is the latest attempt) but idk if he's earned it yet. There's something timelessly appealing about Bad Guys who get out of karma just because they're sooooo sexy.
Solena is the straight As perfect attendance goody two-shoes brown-noser. I'm sure there's a trope for that. She's been building that reputation for so long, nobody believes she could unflinchingly break the rules and carry on like normal, never getting caught. that's why she's so paranoid!
Do you ship any of your ocs together? If so, introduce one of the pairings!
I do not ship it! But the aforementioned are an item! a couple! a scandal!! I don't plan on developing their relationship in the main comic, but if you're curious:
they agreed to destroy the letter and pretend they never read it. they're living together and sleeping together and trying not to think about it :)
they keep a lot of secrets from each other. Sylvester gets TOO excited about Campaigns -> she gets sick of hearing about it -> he spends all his time with coworkers/drugs instead
Solena craves his attention but has no way to get it except starting a fight -> gets increasingly more irritated about petty things (housework, money, what station he left the radio on) -> eventually turns it into an explosive argument -> they "split up" knowing full well they can't stay apart -> after a few weeks sulking, convinces herself he'll "act normal now that the Campaign is over" -> goes back to him and pretends nothing happened. he 100% buys it and promises next year will be different. it's not :)
Have any of your ocs been re-written? If so, what did their old version look like vs their new one?
Almost all of them; it's inevitable for how long we've been working on this. but big Nope to sharing the old versions!! looking at my old drawings makes me want to kms :) apparently I am the only artist with this problem. maybe one day we'll solve it.
this short story is a scene i intend to add to the comic. Vin hasn't been introduced yet; this is set shortly after his post-Campaign hospital stay. you can think of it as his first job out of high school :)
subject to changes bc that's the point of writing the scenes before i comic them. helps me avoid dead ends.
probly won't change this torture method tho. it's physical, it's psychological, it leaves no marks, just set it and forget it. as a bonus, it only works on angels, so i doubt anyone's done it before.
agartha is very serious about recycling. Where there’s one trash can, there’s four more. They have limited resources and that impacts not just the gadgets but all the materials they use.
They believe strongly in “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” that’s why you’ll see CRTs next to flatscreens next to flip phones next to [unrecognizable]. Everything they make is designed to last and to be repaired. They don’t update designs arbitrarily.
Compatibility is a major pain in the ass, but it’s almost offset by how much old stuff is still functional. They don’t have Brands™, you get whatever the labor dept lends you.
Anything of significant value cannot be owned in agartha. Vehicles and computers are rented from the manufacturer, and they expect you to bring them back for maintenance, or you lose your privileges to using it.
Anyway, back to the Average Agarthan Media Experience.
“Radio” is popular for news and entertainment. I put it in quotes bc it’s all piped in with wires, but it’s audio-only and has “channels.” Their screens/cameras suck.
The internet is for grownup important business if you’re a nonstripe. Its initial purpose was for record keeping, as they keep accounts on every citizen and how much they’re worth.
IdLegi is a heavily censored forum. Anyone can read (most of) it, but only Archangels and Seraphim can write or edit, and they tend to do that in spaces among themselves. (that’s the side of the internet Sylvester got addicted to immediately) Anonymity is illegal; your account is linked to your official records and all your activity can be tracked.
They don’t have smartphones. Dido’s laptop is the closest thing to that we’ve seen, but those are not widely available due to production complexity. I imagine some of them are custom made/modded or made in small batches, if you’ve got a buddy with connections. (she does)
if you see a smartphone charging on a nightstand, it’s actually a dumbphone plugged into a service line. They still have/use public phones, but you get your own handpiece with the numbers stored in it. You have to find somewhere to plug it in when you need to make a call. (I’m not saying radio is impossible underground; they do have wireless options—but this is the more reliable way.)
On top of that, the devices can be azoth-powered, all-electric, or a hybrid of the two. The azoth ones are slower (small data transfer can take hours) but can do things the electronics can’t.
The slipscreen Ulloriak watches the campaign on is azoth-powered. The screen is bendy like fabric, which stretches taut over a collapsible frame. It’s like a one-file mp4 player, it’s just got one inloaded video and that’s it. The battery lasts a very long time and can be recharged. The screen is alive so it’s always a little damp to the touch. but that’s the only way they can make touch screens; they’re not very popular. On the plus side, it isn’t destroyed by water. They’re cheap to make and commonly used to distribute films or music videos.
Not everyone owns a computer, but everyone has at least a data card with their personal documents, which fits into a wallet. Plugging that into any random terminal (freely available in many public places) will let you access your own files.
They don’t do video games. The cabinets we see in vin’s chapter are actually pretty risky, cutting-edge ventures. Agartha is harshly anti-gambling (they think it will ruin the economy) so ANY kind of gaming is treated with suspicion. The ones vin is making are officially sanctioned to scratch the “push buttons look at rectangle” itch & keep people from sinking into the debauchery of pachinko.
Their team is working on Subsole, which is constructed to uphold good Agarthan values like “surface bad” and “might makes right” and “centaurs are chaotic evil monsters.” there’s also a gambling minigame that uses pretend in-game money so, don’t say agartha never did anything for you.
The cabinets themselves can be reprogrammed to output different games, like switching disks/carts in a console except it takes disassembly and hours of inloading (how they call downloading). That’s also how they update the game. Same as the data cards, you keep your save file with you and bring it to the arcade.
Arcades of course being your only option if you want to play, because letting people put sinful gaming machines inside their own homes would be catastrophic! But they are warming up to the idea of legal, public “gaming spaces” that can be heavily monitored.
All that for an excuse to draw weird little retro devices. I can and I will
read a book that taught me how to completely unfuck everything that's wrong with me (re: anxiety, depression, mania, phobias) so THAT is kinda my priority in life rn
once I get sorted, we'll be able to make a much better comic. better drawings, better words, better at posting, better expectations of myself and others.
I'm so sorry I let it get this bad! but here we are. I don't want to go back and redo pages/panels, but I do plan to draw new chapter covers and add some small comics between them. I didn't have it in me at the time.
theres genuinely nothing in the world more important to me than working on this comic. i will face any challenge for it.
on the back of Astro Boy, it says Osamu Tezuka drew over 150,000 pages in his career. is that true?! is that even possible? surely I can finish the thousand or so I need to tell tpa. it will take some time. there is no rush.
