ELAEZ

1. actually it's a silly story of how i became a fan and yeah i want to add it. at first i dived into a fandom because of my friend who was playing ts2 and making some fanart. i never played ts2 before 2023 (i tried only ts3 since my 10 and ts4 later) and my fandom space was pretty small - just a circle of people i knew NOT on tumblr. and at first my fave was Ripp and i thought that Tank is THE black mark character (idk how to explain) and i was really surprised to see THAT much people liking him here. while i thought i pulled the most weird fave possible.

*why*?? erm well my guilty pleasure is to mock some Masculine Straight Manly Male Bully characters. when i see that type, i feel no mercy, but i can't help but dig deeper. not sure why toxic masculinity became one of my favourite topic to joke about and explore. maybe because of the culture around me, that is CONSERVATIVE, but sometimes capable to mock itself roughly. basically i adore lameass jokes about that type. but! Tank's not just the "funny closeted manly man wannabe", it barely defines him, in fact. i think i adore the potential of his negative feelings and destructive behaviour - of course it's open for interpretation (and i'm an overthinker), but DAMN! i can project reality around on him, i can explore the spiral of his feelings (sometimes i feel i relate though) and the most important - I CAN MAKE FUN OF HIM. actually, i think the best written character would be boring for me if it's not possible to make fun of them, so it's a damn full house. so uhm i think he's hilarious but with a serious potential

2. i think i'm not really surprising in this sense... uhm the most sure with microsoft solitaire and hades 1/2. also liked/like bg3, tf2 and disco elysium maybe (can't bring myself to finish it though. hard to get ready). also love the warcraft universe but can't say i'm a fan of the games though i played

3. plenty of them actually, but not everyone got a decent fresh pictures for themselves. but! three of them (there's actually more)

1) Daisuke/Dante/etc (varies between AUs). the most frequently drawn for now because i've put him into alnst OC project, but actually exists from late 2019. fun fact: in the beginning Tank reminded him to me a little bit just by being a hilarious "manly man", but actually Daisuke's kinda more about religious trauma in most of stories. i often draw him in younger age for the mentioned fan project. the weird silent guy who looks twice older his real age, tells disturbing street life stories and suddenly comes in with a glamrock drip despite being built like someone who beats the shit out of glam guys.

2. Michiho/Misha/etc (yeah they all have different names in different settings). disturbing MSI, NIN and eminem listener. non-ironically cishet male despite being built like a doll. reason why neon indigo is a color of evil.

3. Yutaro/Yura (stress on a)/etc. the oldest OC from the "main cast". the 6'3 tall definition of comfort that breaks up from being one. local older brother core.

ofc yeah there's more but gotta draw them more often.. even though i think of them daily

4. actually i just wanted to make another ts4 character with a funky nose. wanted to make some story and had an idea that he could have lived in strangetown when he was younger, but got some trauma forcing him to leave. it was erm may 2024. i showed him to people and my friend said that he looks like someone who would terrorize strangetown with Tank. i thought like "haha cool idea" and i didn't ever think back then that Danny would last THAT long and that tankdanny joke WILL be a thing. so i made him in ts2 and that's when the shit hit the fan. it's the second damn anniversary soon.

inspo... hmm well i think i can name some main themes/ideas. especially in his teen years - kinda like overexposed nostalgia with these damn burnt out ads on the walls of a shop with some cheap warm cola. and a bit of that movie high school aesthetic with a twist - well yeah, Danny IS a jock, but the one who got outside of his "normie" comfort zone and quickly lost the popularity-coolness-girls because of getting paranoid, but still kept his habits and sass. even though now he has only one friend except for his own twin sister (and even she has problems with him). music-wise... well, he has a little playlist of his own of some stuff i relate with him. it ended up with him becoming an actual franz ferdinand fan (well, the first album came out in 2004). and it's also a funny twist for me because they're kinda too bisexual for a tough guy wannabe (yeah, he's suffering from toxic masculinity too, but not as hard as Tank does). i think the playlist is a bit lame though and actually there should have been fergalicious

and yeah. the most important fact. when i created Danny and his family, i tried to make some jokes with their names. like, some's names and surnames can be shortened (?) to CD/HD/CPU/RAM. but Danny's... a weird case. first, his full is Daniel "Danny" Dallas Duster. basicly a triple D. and his surname is a reference to...