Villain never liked the phrase "kill them with kindness" since it seemed so utterly unpractical. That was, until he decided to try it out on the hero...
It started small, catching hero off guard by giving them a hand up after knocking them down. A few compliments here and there that were more genuine than villain's usual mocking flirty quips that left the hero confused more than ever...
Soon, mysterious packages of food or other gifts began arriving at the door making hero feel more perceived than ever before even under the adoring light of their fame. Helping them with an injury or two and even going as far as to kidnap them for an entire week until they were rested again. Some excuse about needing their "mortal enemy" to be alive in order to defeat them. It was jarring in a way.
Soon enough, villain began noticing hero's injuries, the dark circles under their eyes, how their team truly didn't care for them. Villain also started to notice how their sudden care was breaking hero down, showing the cracks in their perfect facade with every bit of kindness, how their strikes were less powerful, the hesitation in their face when facing villain. Maybe the world hadn't been as kind to them either...
So maybe kindness did work, and soon enough it wouldn't matter whether or not villain got rid of hero or corrupted them to their side. Oh, because poor hero was already at the villain's door, clinging to them in a mess because at the end of the day it didn't matter if they were enemies.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Me: (body-checks speaker off the stage and grabs the microphone)
Caring to the point of destruction. Caring to the point of obsession. Caring to the point of collapse. Caring as an toxic coping mechanism brought to its extreme.
Caring too much about others and destroying or erasing yourself in the process.
Caring too much and going to illogical, harmful extremes as a result.
Caring like a spider in its web and not even realizing you're doing it.
Care that goes past all reasonable bounds and turns you monstrous.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Alright I'm bored, here's a poll. Remember when I said I had many ideas about sona au's? Which one would you want to see written out first? (Also drawn, I'll draw the designs to the best of my ability iudfhs)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
I got inspired to draw character sheets for Danny, Sam, Jason, and Jazzās vigilante personas. Hereās a link to the authorās drawings of their outfits (these were a vital reference for me when doing this so thank you so much for sharing them Quill)
More commentary (like 7+ paragraphs plus 2 images) about this project and the designs below the ākeep readingā line.
None of these thoughts I have for each character are in order, but I have a lot of commentary for these since this project was a lot more conceptual than my normal work. I also just like talking about my art/design process.
If you ever find yourself wondering at some point why an element from the original design wasnāt included, the answer is that the removal was completely intentional and part of my grandmaster vision for this work and wasnāt because I just forgot about it entirely during the design process.
This was the first one I sketched out, I wasnāt even sure at the time if I was going to fully commit to drawing all of them. I thought that Sam was gonna be the hardest since her description was way longer than the others, but then bird boy beat her out. I took a lot of creative liberties with her design, the bag was added bc I couldnāt figure out how to add pockets to the skirt. I was trying to avoid a joker color scheme so I had a lot of ref images that I got by searching like āpurple green aestheticā on Pinterest. The dark purple and dark forest/blueish green won out in the end. I desaturated a lot of my colors for her just to get as far away from the neon Gotham rogue aesthetic. I also added the bdsm harness over the armor to add more punk elements to her design, I know that in real life that would be very uncomfortable to wear over scalemail armor but sometimes we take creative liberties when they look sick as fuck. Also, I didnāt realize until I went to look for a reference for aconite flowers that aconite is wolfsbane! That was neat to learn! Also, the font I used for Aconite is called āzai Art School Calendar 1931ā,Ā Iāve used this a few times for other projects, itās one of my favorite fonts.Ā The āzaiā fonts the creator has are all very good.
Shade (Danny)
There wasn't much to add to this page. His outfit is pretty simple (besides the patterning). I wasnāt sure how to pull of an optical illusion pattern but I was reminded how I sometimes get an eyestrain induced headache when looking at someone wearing a patterned shirt with really thin stripes so I just leaned into the idea of a small/detailed hard lined pattern. I originally made 5 separate patterns for him and then turned them into stamp brushes in procreate. I only ended up using three of them, the one on the chest, the one on the legs, and the one on his hand. But, I imagine the patterns fade and shift when he moves, sort of like a lenticular print. I gave him constellation freckles and stylized the hairās fade into white. The hair was inspired by how time-woods draws Martin Blackwoodās hair (linked: time-woodsās fanart of Martin Blackwood). Also put way too much effort into the teeth on the mask. I just like the chunky teeth design. Oh yeah and the font I used for him is called āTypewriter_Condensed_Demiā
Erinys (Jason)
Repeatedly ran into the issue of not having enough canvas space bc of my fervent need to thoroughly document and plan out how the wings worked. I also reversed the colors for the bodysuit & armor so the under layer was black while the armor plates were red. I only realized afterwards that I may have been inspired by the red centipedes in Rain World (linked: gif of the red centipede, donāt click the link if youāre unsettled/afraid of bugs/insects), artists subconsciously draw inspiration from other artists all the time though so Iām not like upset about it. I stand by it because it looks sick as hell. Also leaned into the magpie theming for the wings. I think the vigilante form was supposed to be reverse magpie coloring? I canāt remember, but I stuck with normal magpie coloring. The anatomy of how the wings connected to the collarbone was inspired by JayEatonās Magpie Bridge Project. Reference image link. Link to the article the image is from. I didnāt draw the wing armor because I couldnāt figure out how to would work with the wing anatomy and I ran out of canvas space. Finally, the font used for him is āDIN CondensedāĀ this is a default font, I wouldāve used something more punk but I needed the text to be legible.
Insight (Jazz)
I did Jazz after Iād already finished the initial trio, so I had to switch to a new canvas for her bc Iād hit the layer limit multiple times on the previous one. I really do love doing that spiked under-eyelash thing with characters. Donāt know when that started. Anyway, I added the shoulder pads to her outfit to help break up the empty space. The golden eyes were a nice accent color since her design is very overwhelmingly green. Honestly the braid hairstyle and gold eyes really do obscure her identity, multiple times when drawing her I was worried that she didnāt really resemble Jazz enough. There wasnāt a drawing from the author for her so I only had the text description to go off of. I just realized that she sort of reminds me of a forest ranger and I donāt know what to do with that realization. I copy/pasted my drawing of her eyes when gold and recolored them to match her normal eye color. There were two layers for that, a hue shift and a hard light layer to emphasize the shadows.
Hereās what it looks like without the hue shift:Ā
It looks really cool and Iām 100% that color combo in another drawing down the line. Oh yeah and the font used for this sheet was āEuphemia UCASā. It comes with Appleās operating system, I use it as a neutral default text most of the time bc itās nicer than helvetica but not overly fancy like Times New Romanāand why am I talking about fonts.
āāāāāāāāāāāāāāāāāāāāāāā
Anyway, this project was very fun to work on. The alt text for this was its own endeavor, hope the folks using screen-readers donāt mind 4-5 paragraphs of description text. Also, I cannot remember for the life of me if Dani got a costume description, but if she does Iāll make sure to update this image set with a sheet for her.
And to the author, QueenOfTheQuill, if youāre reading this message that Iāve left at the very bottom of this post below a read more line, thank you for the fic. Itās very good and Iām glad I caught it during my slow decent into DPxDC brainrot. I love the interactions between Jason and Tim, itās nice seeing a revived Jason thatās not bogged down by pit rage. They definitely seem like they couldāve been good friends if not for the unfortunate circumstances that led them to meet in canon. Also, Iām sure Jazz will love interacting with Batman and Nightwing. So much psychological & childhood trauma to unpack with them.
Feel free to use/share these images if you so desire and thanks again for your work.
