ORIRISING

I'm the character artist for Moonlust Games, a small indie studio creating "Under Heaven or Hell", a dark romance otome / visual novel coming later this year. Our Kickstarter page is launching soon! In the meantime, you can check out our Steam demo here. In the full release, you can expect:

A 70k+ word branching narrative featuring multiple endings

Three love interests each with rich lore and complex dynamics

An affinity system as you deepen your relationships with each character

7 animated cutscenes, numerous CGs, and interactive scenes, …and much, much more!

oh you're going to get me started (/positive) so for some context i write a lot of crossover content as a hobby, hence my absolute love for anything and everything to do WITH crossovers themselves, but kimby has such a dear place in my heart and an absolutely absurd amount of lore attached now that i'll try my best to summarize but this will be a mildly incoherent ramble regardless trying to summarize their timeline rattling around in my head LOL

THIS BEING SAID ... the initial premise with their dynamic was kim following the events of DE being essentially set up by someone in the precinct who was also a fable and had some general animosity / jealousy towards him for etc reason which eventually led him being sent to fabletown to assist with the case taking place throughout the events of twau with faith's head mysteriously showing up on the doorstep of the woodlands and since mundy cops would otherwise be aware and/or aren't meant to be aware of the events regarding fables or fabletown, bigby telling him right out the gate his own opinion of why he's there [ that someone likely has it out for him for some reason / sent him to die there -> that no matter what happens with the case that he'll do what he can to ensure nothing happens to him ] in the midst of basically telling him outright what he's dealing with re: fables and their existence to immediately shut down any of kim's remaining skepticism from the miracle of the phasmid, the funniest of which is just outright giving him the book of fables via asking bufkin to give it to him to further double down on his point BUT I DIGRESS

the events of twau are extended a bit longer for the sake of a more slowly building relationship, but the real meat of the ship (to me) is how well they balance each other out ... they start on a relatively professional basis as you'd expect, but kim's general demeanor and INCREDIBLE patience meshes really well with the sort of person bigby needs. by which i mean, part of what starts having their feelings develop is during their investigation process, while bigby is used to the other fables looking down on him/degrading him for his past no matter how 'good' he's trying to be in their present, he establishes outright that they will respect kim / his work alongside him (iirc the lore was something regarding bigby getting into a fight at holly's bar due to some remark woody made towards BIGBY more than kim not even necessarily entirely maliciously about his mundy boyfriend or something) which kim HIMSELF isn't used to due to his prolonged experiences in revachol and the rcm where he remarks often enough in DE that the discrimination he's experienced lends to him sort of expecting police/officers of any kind to treat him similarly, very few people would or have actively defended him as a person in his line of work because of who he was no matter how much he personally tries to protect everyone else + especially people that revachol directly considers lesser than / suffer discrimination themselves, so bigby defending him is a HUGE DEAL that he still tries to downplay by telling him he didn't need to / that he'd be okay + that hes used to it but bigby doubling down that "it WAS necessary and he DID need to do it bc the world will never change if people who are in positions of power / privilege [read: himself] don't force others to make said world safe for those othered to be in" which initially sets off kim's direct interest / fondness for him for how genuinely kind bigby can be + the lengths he goes for people he barely knows because he genuinely wants a better world and good life for the people around him ... which later on this comes back around vice versa where with kim having witnessed both bigby's good nature and when/why his temper flares [either in self defense or in the case of injustice] whenever snow accuses bigby of 'still enjoying the violence' with everything that's going on and more or less suggesting that he's still this violent monster makes kim SO ANGRY because he's spent not only so long seeing the things that do make bigby angry / how he's been constantly coming to defend everyone despite how much fabletown HATES him because he just wants to protect people and then also witnessed firsthand the sheer distress bigby was experiencing finding "snow's" head so bigby gets his first real defender with kim calling out snow in the same way he calls out harry in de for his problematic behavior/being incorrect about xyz thing because he KNOWS bigby is just trying to do good which makes BIGBY notice how much kim also cares for him ...

the rest of the timeline is a continued development of their feelings in between the case progressing, lots of cheesy subtle flirting and things like sharing their cigarette breaks and finding ways to bond and realizing how much they like each other's company ... kim feels safe and smitten with bigby and bigby feels like kim is the first person who actually sees/understands him because no one else has ever bothered to give him the time of the day to TRY to understand him ... lots of gay yearning in between patching up wounds that bigby often ends up with keeping kim out of harm's way, etc etc

they're two people who have ostracized by their respective society for one reason or another and find common ground with their personal traumas and experiences and find security / a genuine love with each other where they haven't elsewise been able to find it with anyone else

other fun events during the timeline is kim trying his best to step up more to physically protect bigby which comes to a head in their first physical encounter with bloody mary where when bigby is critically injured/almost killed by her theyre able to get away since mary is so fixated on bigby + taking crane kim is able to load his gun with silver bullets and shoot her (non lethally but enough to damage) enough that she eventually backs down and he's able to help him get back to recover ... later on down the line after a surplus of other misc events kim eventually decides to transfer to STAY with bigby and help the fables / fabletown ( by then he's also on more amicable terms with snow and bluebeard and the like too, it was actually snow that started the process in seeing how she could help streamline the transfer process + suggested he should work with them because kim and bigby are in a dedicated relationship at this point and trying to figure out what to do ) and then later on past THAT bigby suggests the idea of kim eventually becoming a fable with the assistance from the literals / kevin thorn eventually leading to the creation of "the wolf prince" fable which ends up bigby's first story with a 'happy ending' despite it being a villain romance / "the story of a faraway prince that escapes his kingdom for xyz reasons (some adaptation of kim's own history, something adapted from his own history and likely the revolution prior to the setting of DE and the trauma bc grimm's fairytales) -> the prince meets a manipulative wolf -> choosing ultimately to stay with the wolf and in an inverse of the frog prince story becomes a wolf with him (bc bigby makes him a werewolf) but the moral of it being anyone (even villains) being capable of love/change " so they can stay together forever etc etc

there's genuinely SO MUCH lore but the TL;DR really is what i said in that they both give each other the understanding and love that they've either needed or lacked or accepted they either werent deserving of or would never get with their respective worlds/societies being what they were and finding sanctuary in each other ... it's very soft old man romance and it brings me a great amount of joy

Also doing some April-June slots for a Couple / Kiss YCH!!

and if i start barking what then???

+ rough sketch under the cut bc i shockingly liked it too