art sometimes

the destiny of a great kingdom rests on the shoulders of a young girl

so this is deeeeeply self indulgent art, where i drew my oc as merlin alksjdfgh. why? because i wanted to. simple as. and i wanted to do something illuminated manuscripty because i had an illuminated manuscript phase as a teenager. simple as <3

merlin is a crazy important show to me i love it sooooo much and i just. after having my brain worms get a devastating x10 multiplier added to them by my wonderful wife making an observation uhhhhhh i couldn't like. be idle about it.

i HAD to draw my oc as merlin. it was imperative.

i know the show doesn't give a rat's ass about true medieval fashion and i respect their decisions. but also i wanted to try and lean just a liiiiittlle more medieval for me, for my sake, to have fun with it. as a treat! asjkdhfg and i saw someone give merlin a dagged hood a while back and i was like theyre genius. this is genius. i am giving my babygirl a dagged hood! with a liripipe! but you can't see the liripipe bc it's tucked into her belt asjkdhfg

you also can't see bc the hem of the tunic covers it, but she's wearing chausses :3c

i had a ton of fun with this and i feel like at least a little bit of my demons have been excised akjsdhfg not all of them! but enough!

so i'm very proudly my group's main tank, and my wol started out as a paladin because generally i adore the paladin trope and the knight in shining armor and all that

and i was majorly disappointed by the pld story i've been fed so far, but drk? drk was the paladin storyline i was looking for, and my friend @primordialwhale absolutely fucking knew that bc he was on my ass like yOU GOTTA GO PICK UP DRK THE SECOND WE GET TO ISHGARD. DO IT. GO. GRAB DRK.

and i did! and it is the job of my heart

i have a few canon jobs for my wol for a lot of story reasons, and more still im fond of or interested in

but drk is 100% the job of my heart, for a lot of reasons! and one of them is the undeniable kingdom hearts flavor i personally get off of it

kingdom hearts is one of my defining, formative media obsessions and i get SO much kh flavor off of drk

the fact one of our resources is our darkside? kills me. kills me dead. darkside is like my favorite heartless. i have others i love design wise (who doesn't love shadows or knights or the fucking popcat. look at the popcat! and oh my god the puddings. the puddings.) but darkside i love both his design and his story relevance so so much

and the constant struggle between light and dark, but the fact that it really isn't all that black and white, embracing the darkness as a friend and ally like auuugghh my kokoro. so i really really wanted to do a kingdom hearts inspired drk piece!! and here we are :3c which is why my wol's darkside is verrryy heartlessy and why i wanted to rendered a lot of the darkness as blue and black and purple like in kh <3

the shades behind her darkside are!! representations of her primary like emotional states of being a drk, the dark emotions she feels but wields as her blade etcetc

🟥 her rage/wrath/fighting injustice 🟨 vindication / selfishness sort of, a very "you deserve what you got" kind of feeling 🟦 grief 🟪 a ruthless sort of "the solution is killing you and i'm not sorry", the gesture is the thumbs down gladiatorial trope bc she was originally a gladiator in the bloodsands!

like obvi at the end of the day it's all a fierce desire to protect others, but there's complicated shit in there! and it can get ugly!

but i hope u guys like it this took like. two or three months on and off to make alkjshdf

so i'm very proudly my group's main tank, and my wol started out as a paladin because generally i adore the paladin trope and the knight in shining armor and all that

and i was majorly disappointed by the pld story i've been fed so far, but drk? drk was the paladin storyline i was looking for, and my friend @primordialwhale absolutely fucking knew that bc he was on my ass like yOU GOTTA GO PICK UP DRK THE SECOND WE GET TO ISHGARD. DO IT. GO. GRAB DRK.

and i did! and it is the job of my heart

i have a few canon jobs for my wol for a lot of story reasons, and more still im fond of or interested in

but drk is 100% the job of my heart, for a lot of reasons! and one of them is the undeniable kingdom hearts flavor i personally get off of it

kingdom hearts is one of my defining, formative media obsessions and i get SO much kh flavor off of drk

the fact one of our resources is our darkside? kills me. kills me dead. darkside is like my favorite heartless. i have others i love design wise (who doesn't love shadows or knights or the fucking popcat. look at the popcat! and oh my god the puddings. the puddings.) but darkside i love both his design and his story relevance so so much

and the constant struggle between light and dark, but the fact that it really isn't all that black and white, embracing the darkness as a friend and ally like auuugghh my kokoro. so i really really wanted to do a kingdom hearts inspired drk piece!! and here we are :3c which is why my wol's darkside is verrryy heartlessy and why i wanted to rendered a lot of the darkness as blue and black and purple like in kh <3

the shades behind her darkside are!! representations of her primary like emotional states of being a drk, the dark emotions she feels but wields as her blade etcetc

🟥 her rage/wrath/fighting injustice 🟨 vindication / selfishness sort of, a very "you deserve what you got" kind of feeling 🟦 grief 🟪 a ruthless sort of "the solution is killing you and i'm not sorry", the gesture is the thumbs down gladiatorial trope bc she was originally a gladiator in the bloodsands!

like obvi at the end of the day it's all a fierce desire to protect others, but there's complicated shit in there! and it can get ugly!

but i hope u guys like it this took like. two or three months on and off to make alkjshdf

she ditches her old clothes like Instantly she still hangs on to them, they're very sentimental to her but she's FASCINATED by human culture and she loves their cute clothes she also wants to be cute??

also her bronze jewelry has oxidized! ;v; because when she turns to stone, her jewelry doesn't turn with her!

(the explanation i decided on was a) the show is very inconsistent about what does and doesn't turn to stone with them askdjfhg and b) she had smith friends put them on her while she was sleeping, to ensure it wouldn't turn with her)