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blatherkatt · 5 years

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i just started reading your blumenthal kids reunionfic and i LOVE IT! Its so good and so full of potential and angst and I LOVE IT!!!💞💞💞 The way you write Eodwulf is soooo good hes such a mess and so gay help him. and Astrid Omg... I cant wait for more of her i checked out some of your posts on here and shes just great??? You've clearly put a lot of thought into them with the child designs and stuff, did you have any major inspo for the two of them like songs or other characters and stuff???

hey tumblr dont…delete part of my answer what the heck

anyway!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH,,, ed ( @tactfulgrimalkin ) is the one doing the actual writing but we plan everything together and i edit and do artwork so he deserves lots of love for the great writing…i dont remember what else i had here before tumblr deleted it so i hope thats the gist of it

eodwulf is a gay disaster of a bastard man and astrid is SO fun and im SO GLAD UR EXCITED TOO BECAUSE WE SURE ARE

anyway you just opened pandora’s box and i’m very sorry for the length of the rest of this answer but here we go prepare for some cursed content necessary to answer that question ( | ) w ( | ) it was a Wild Ride getting these two characters to where they are boy howdy

so the thing is in order to explain how we created these characters i actually have to get into the origins of the fic on the whole because the two are inextricably linked, and also, the origins of this fic are incredibly cursed and you can send all ur hatemail right here go on blast us we’re ready

but we were talking about caleb and how we’re both excited for whenever astrid and eodwulf turn up, and the thought came up for basically the rough skeleton of that scene in chapter 2:

“hey how messed up would it be if instead of them both hunting him down like we’re expecting…one of them comes in with a huge savior complex and sincerely thinks he’s delusional and should still be in the asylum, how MESSED UP would that be”

…and then shortly after that, this happened

thats the cursed part dont say i didnt warn u but listen you know we’re right

also that pic of caduceus didnt exist back then i went back and got this screenshot just to share the curse with you all

ANYWAY

in classic us format we got carried away and eodwulf got slotted into the role of that scene in chapter two and his character was largely developed around that scene, like, what kind of person would still be clinging to caleb after all this time to that degree to make that happen? and what was come up with was an extremely avoidant person clinging to a fantasy version of things wherein they don’t have to fight

(eodwulf was developed into a Person before astrid, i should note at this point, and ed did most of that developing; i took point on astrid later on)

but around this time i went “screw it im gonna do some concept art we’re both in too deep now” so here’s some of that for u guys

started with them all as teens and did a couple sketches as well as one of baby (well. teen. so baby) caleb/bren/we were calling him felix at the time as some of u probably already know

first draft had astrid with longer hair than eodwulf lmao check this out

flipped the hair length on those two which was for the best because at the time we were imagining eodwulf as a bit more mischevious which is another thing that got reversed over time now astrids the prankster and eodwulfs the overworked mom friend because bren takes astrid’s ideas and makes them SO MUCH WORSE but he still looks better with longer hair and then i played around w/ colors for a while and wound up w/ this

voila, the initial kid concepts, to which subtle yet vital changes were made after time. if any of you are curious about if im frustrated that that’s still the best i’ve ever drawn eodwulf’s nose the answer is yes. yes i am.

astrid’s hair is not messy enough, theres not enough freckles, and she does not look ready to fight the entire world for a dare. 0/10.

anyway then i did adult versions which look WAY OFF NOW LMAO

eodwulf with way too much beard, looking far too messy when he ought to look very clean so that he can hide how much of a disaster he actually is, and also a glimpse into the very boring Ice Queen/Heartless Bitch we vaguely had astrid as to start with. even more out of character tho is the earring, astrid as she is today would absolutely never tolerate an earring unless she absolutely had to, girl’s got sensory issues but she didn’t back then. ALSO STILL NOT ENOUGH FRECKLE

anyWHO a while after this it was decided that eodwulf has ADHD, something both the authors have a whole lot of lmao, and that was the point where ed REALLY took off and developing eodwulf went out of control and we both went Well I Guess We’re Gonna Have To Write This At Some Point Now

and with that happening is when developing astrid took more priority i think, because man, at that point in the game she came way too close to that really annoying trope that shows up in fanfic a lot wherein The Girl is A Bitch who is Getting In The Way Of ~*The Yaois*~ and thats like, thats bad. we knew from the outset we were absolutely not setting this up as a love triangle because we both hate those but even w/ her having no romantic relationship to either of the two, like…she was kind of just There and the one who was most loyal to trent (the only thing of her original characterization that really stuck, honestly) and sooo boring????

so like, and i say this honestly, i managed to COMPLETELY FORGET that “reverse sasuke” cursed comment from the beginning of all this and STILL go “well what if we made her more like caleb’s rival that’d be fun”

and that’s how astrid sorta wound up accidentally morphing into the Scrappy Underdog of this anime trio and calling her a naruto analogue is extremely cursed but also not inaccurate tbh

started out with the concept of her popping into bren’s window because she heard they were doing magic and wanted to learn it too and evolved from there; we decided that she was gonna be neurodivergent too but, hilariously, initially that she was “the best at pretending to be neurotypical” (WE COMPLETELY REVERSED THAT AND IT IS FOR THE BETTER. SHE’S SO MUCH MORE FUN NOW) and made her also autistic because it one meant she could be like SAME HAT at bren really hard which’d make her feel more like part of the group instead of just the odd one out, and two because it fits with the whole rivals thing

branching off of that we made her just. INCREDIBLY direct. like. astrid’s thought process is “how can i accomplish what i want accomplished with the smallest number of steps? what are the consequences of doing it this way? do i give a shit? no? im gonna do that.”

(which is why she climbed a tree to get into bren’s attic instead of using the door because that way she just completely skipped having to convince his mom to let her in)

i cant get into it much here because so many spoilers and we’re gonna explore it all, but like, astrid’s backstory turned into this exploration of the intersection of sexism and ableism especially as applied to a medieval-esque society in which the word “autism” doesn’t even EXIST and in which a convenient double standard exists Right There in the form of bren and like,, its gonna be good guys im excited for it

as far as characters tho she does also have just a touch of Vimes from discworld to her, albeit like, she’s lawful evil to his lawful good, but she’s got the same tendency to stick REALLY FIERCELY to the rules that she thinks are important, even when they inconvenience her, even if it’d be so much easier to bend them just this once

and for songs i cannot link like any astrid songs because they all might accidentally give away so much BUT I CAN LINK AN EODWULF SONG

youtube

this one was HUGE for him

uhhhh i think that’s everything i can think of that we can say right now unfortunately so i’ll end this with a comparison to the current teen designs we have now that are being used in the actual fic, even tho im not fond of how bren came out in this picture, but like, for the sake of comparison

lets see how far we’ve come

I N C R E A S E F R E C K L E

#longpost #SORRY TO PEOPLE ON MOBILE #zemnianghosts #i also got a lot better at drawing them all over time #just like. so much

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thedappleddragon · 4 years

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Day 88 (Monday June 8)

i woke up from a crazy dream where my siblings ad i were traveling by car in some magic world and i was katara. i dont remember much, but i tried to press an entire treebranch like you would flowers between the pages of a book while the city law enforcement was chasing after us. at one point we walked in on a presentation and when they told me to get off stage i asked if ic ould please speak for a moment. they told me no, so i asked pretty please. i think that was a re-occurring part of the dream.

i dont really rmember the specific order of what i did today, but here we go. i spent some time outside today with my cat and ate a sandwich, but it was so unbearably sunny that we went inside. i later came back outside in the evening at like 8 pm when it was cooler and shadier and i brought a spray botttle with a little fan on the top. i sat on a towel in the grass and kept an eye on my cat and watched tiktoks until my phone died, so i switched to playing with the grass and making grass chains that kept falling apart. i spent so much time outside that my mom got mad at me for not responding to her calling for my help inside. at some point i could hear the neighbor kids playing hide and seek in their backyard. im always afraid that they think i’m spying on them, since i face their house because thats the side of the yard my cat likes to hang out in. thankfully theres a big minibarn in the way, so if im sitting in the grass i cant see any of their backyard.

i was hungry and wanted potato slices, and then i remembered that we owned an apple peeler/slicer/corer combo thing and i thought it would be cool to try using that instead of cutting the slices by hand. the peeler part had too strong a spring, so it dug into the potato so i just moved it back lol. it worked really well other than that. i sliced it, put it in a pan with some oil, and then tried cutting up an apple with the thing, but the spikes that hold it in place just bore a hole into the center instead of pushing it into the blade, so i just cut it buy hand perpendicular to how you normally cut apples. i thought it would be a fun idea to try and bake one of the slices, so i put it in a pan with a little pad of butter longside the potato in the oven, flipping both ever so often while watching youtube in the kithen. i added a little brown sugar to the apple slice. the potatoe turned out good, its hard to mess up lol. but the apple tasted like ass. the butter i used was salted, and the apple was sweet instead of tart, so i just threw it away. im glad i only used one of the slices instead of like 3 like i had origionally planned. i think if i used unsalted butter and a granny smith it would turn out ok, but i dont think im going to try it again lol.

i took a couple driving practice tests in the morning, but i got frustrated that i didnt know stuff and gave up. i promised myself that i would try again later today, but i kept procrastinating whoops. its 2 am but i might give it a shot. i have to practice a lot tomorrow, because if i dont pass i probably wont get to take it again for like a month because all the bmvs are so busy and only taking appointments.

i was scrollling through tiktok and found an audio i thought was funny and would fit one of my ocs so i did a really rough sketch animatic that i’ll eventually clean up. i would add it to the post but im on my laptop right now because my phone died and my sister borrowed my charger :/ i’ll add it in the morning if i remember. yall are going to make fun of my for having a teeth kink or something tho because thats the only part of the sketches i put any effort into (pensive face emoji 😔) (idk if that worked i just copid and pasted it lmao)

i dont acually know much about my friend’s oc (Osimiri/Osi) that i’m shipping with my oc (Valka) other than she’s kinda grumpy so i scrolled back through our texts to see if she gave me a ref or any character description and i found a bunch of her cute art of GillFauns (thats thier ship name because Osi is a siren (gill) and valka is a goatfolk/tirfling so she has hooves (faun (even tho she’sa goat not a deer shhh))) and now im re-obsessed with them omg <3 and i also realized that i have no idea if i’m drawing her correctly/ how my friend intended her to be interprited. our art styles are SO different, and with hers i have to just guesstimate what she means with her character designs. (tbh she’s not that good at art but i still love her drawings because she’s so passionate about it and i love some of her ocs) but because of a combo of her art not being that detailed and me just drawing from memebery and not knowing the character that well, i have no idea if i’m taking too many liberties and stealing the character away from her. although on the other hand she doesnt really actively use that oc. she was meant to be a dnd oc, but idk if she ever actually went to ANY of the meetings. if she did, it was before marching band ended and i was able to join dnd club.

anyway sorry this post is so long, i fing it easier to ramble and get my thoughts down when im on a keyboard than on my phone typng is much faster and a lot of fun so i always type more lol. but uhhhh its 2 am and i want to take a driver’s test or two before i go to bed, and get to sleep at a decent-ish time.

#thanks for coming to my ted talk #corona diary #im thinking about where that anon is again

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