born 2 be mild

I don't say enough how deeply I appreciate people expressing interest in the stuff I make - though I try to show it by responding as much as I can in turn. But right now, I'm busier than I've ever been, reckoning with a family member's health situation, and that plus the nightmare-team combo of my godawful administrative skills and my sluggish drawing hand is not helping me manage my ask box in Times Such As These.

I feel guilty about receiving nice messages and questions, things I really want to answer, but getting too overwhelmed or lacking time to keep up. I'm hoping closing my asks for a bit will give me time to catch up and make this number look less scary. Hopefully it won't be for a long time! Comments and DMs will still be open.

It seems silly to say when my pace is/was so slow, but I really was busting my ass to do as many of those as I could, and unfortunately that's led to me feeling terribly burnt out on drawing. I need to do something different for a bit (…whenever I have time to draw, that is).

The people-pleaser is unpleased when the people aren't pleased. Maybe 7/10 uncomfortable, not because you're making him worry about his future, but because you're implying you aren't impressed by his outfits and that is so much scarier.

The way he'd reply to this depends on whoever was asking, so I stitched together both modes for this. In the open, he would just give the "aaw what are you jealous? ♥" response. He's trained himself to avoid emotional meltdowns in public. His household has to put up with those instead! That first part, where he flips back and forth between egomania and insecurity via babbled rapid-fire questions, is is much, much closer to his unguarded feelings than what outsiders see.

Some part of him genuinely believes he does everything for his beloved but ever-demanding public. Dressing up to brighten their drab lives, saying "yes" to every dance as he's asked for at the latest gala, adding another fib to his fleet of little white lies that keep everything nice and copacetic, etcetera. Ambroys congratulates himself on his saintly selflessness, even if 1) no one even asked, 2) he always slips out of doing any unpleasant or difficult or unglamorous favors or 3) the real benefactor is himself.

Relax your grip, lady. No one's taking that thing away from you. (No one else wants it.)

If Jocosa were asked this question by someone in-universe (9/10 uncomfortable, especially here in her younger years) she would give the answer of "being in the family way again would not be medically advisable." That is truth-adjacent, but not the whole truth. As she says, questions surrounding her fertility followed her for years, through side-eyes from her peers; glances of pity by her staff; through exhortations and excoriations from her husband and father and mother.

Jocosa wasn't deluded--she knew why her strange, singular spawn was considered unacceptable. Years prior, even she'd have agreed that she was duty-bound to produce progeny. That was the girl that married a contemptible man at the behest of her father for the good of the bloodline. Despite pressure from those same men to submit herself to more pregnancies, for the first time, Jocosa refused their demands.

She'd never have dreamed of such rebellion in her youth. But coming into womanhood--or, perhaps, the nights enduring the humiliation of the marital bed, the years spent sick and suffering through futile pregnancies and miscarriages and stillbirths, and the months caring for the infant the family doctor told her would die (would be better off dead)--changed her. She developed resentment, spite, a thirst for power of her own and, most surprisingly, a deep affection for her wretched little whelp. Though her body had recoiled at the thing growing inside it and vomited him up prematurely, he still clung to life and to her, loyally obeying her desperate, whispered orders to stay alive just one day more. He had stayed by her side when none of her other offspring could and none of her family cared to, and she'd stay by his.

In which Theo says "I'm not naive," then proceeds to be deeply naive.

This'd maybe rank as 6/10 uncomfortable. Theo has little to lose by helping Hyden, and Hyden has little to gain by alienating Theo. It only makes sense that the two most intelligent men on the continent should combine their minds to see their missing pieces restored. Theo has no reasons to believe Hyden is lying to him about his intentions (no reasons he's paying attention to, anyway).