#gingull

first day artfight drawings!!!!

banger ask. I'm going to do this for All of my guys

C) Did you have trouble figuring out where they fit in their own story?

Gingull: Both yes and no. "Yes" in that she's the main character, or at least, the story would be from her point of view and revolve around her. "No" in that I've been struggling to pinpoint exactly how her personality is and how she interacts with everyone else. I want to make relationship dynamics interesting. Maybe I'll make a chart.

Alfin: He's very much a designated "support character" in that he's Gingull's sibling and is the closest to her, but other than that I feel like he doesn't have too much of an active role other than being a presence and a part of Gingull's world. I'll have to workshop him a little more because admittedly he's the character that I'm least invested in.

King: As a parental figure for Gingull, how he plays off on her is pretty important on understanding her decisions and general worldview and etc. I think she has an overall positive relationship with him, which is a little different than my personal experience, so I'd like to explore how to make this more complex and how King influences her arc. He's in the same boat as Alfin where he individually probably won't drive the story forward but is an integral part to Gingull.

Moberry: This is where things get more interesting, Moberry possibly plays one of the most active roles in the "plot" of slug city in that their dynamic with the city's leader, Maika, affects nearly every other character on various ways. I'm particularly really into the results of these interpersonal interactions and dynamics having consequences. I love The Consequences. Maika is a character that doesn't appear much physically in the context of the story and the city in-universe, so Moberry serves as the bridge between him and the "outer world" through their personal experience with him. They also serve as the leader of the hidden underground, so there's a parallel going on between them and Maika.

Smooks: I love smooks so much. Easily one of my favorite characters and designs. Her role in the story is less "plot related" and more "worldbuilding and imagery" related, if that makes sense? The main tower, many buildings, and the vehicles are all mainly designed by her, so I want to play around with the implications from that. Is transportation useful and convenient, or is it disabling? Was this from Maika's influence? Her own internal concepts? Much to think about. She plays an interesting role in the background for sure and I think would be a fun adult figure for Gingull to look up to.

Dr. Walworth: Her current role is "character who worked closely with Moberry and also has guilt about her involvement with Maika" and is also a therapist for Delta. There's some implications with her role that I feel like I need to flesh out more, for example, if therapy isn't a "licensed practice" due to the nature of the city's organization being so aggressively anti-mental health, is it hidden? Does she make her services known to the general public? There's a lot of questions I have to jump off from there, including the fact that she herself is autistic and therefore was unknowingly contributing to the detriment of citizens like her. Like Moberry, she's actively trying to make up for the damage done, and I like exploring that sort of character arc.

Delta: She's probably my favorite character to think about. Initially, she was the "soldier with ptsd" archetype that I kind of wanted to stray from and develop more, and then eventually brought in the idea that she was responsible for bringing Gingull in to their machines, and then turning around and rescuing her when the machine malfunctions. As far as Gingull is concerned, Delta is part of an oppressive and violent force and wants nothing to do with her, the flip side is that Delta has been seeking an Out from the military and feeling increasingly trapped by it, and the machine malfunctioning was her breaking point for her to actively rebel. Gingull doesn't know any of this, and even when she does, there's no forgiveness involved with it. I'm like. so interested in her arc in that she is both a victim and perpetrator in her system. the tension of it. it's so juicy to me. There's so much that I want to think about for Delta. Any other character, if put into her position, might have done the same, or at least understood why she kept under wraps for so long. What are you supposed to do when you feel like you have no choice in what you can do, no impact on the circumstances, and knowing that what you are doing is ultimately wrong?

Oster and Co: Oster and his alters are very much side characters, similar to how Alfin in there to give Gingull relationships. Oster is there to flesh out the underground city community on Moberry, Dr. Walworth, and Smook's side. He's also there to be a friend to Gingull, someone who is a little older but still a kid, so there's solidarity there and also as an example/contrast for living with some kind of accommodation. Alka, Kaola, and Teris (alters) I'm not entirely sure how they fit in, but at the very least they're going to switch fairly nonchalantly. I'm wanting him to have a more major(?) role in the story but I haven't thought about this character in depth enough for that.

Eidwinn: He's pretty much stayed the same as I was thinking about his role initially; someone who isn't connected to any of the other characters personally except for Gingull, and the brief moments that they share end up having a profound impact on both of them. I talked about this a little more in the previous ask, but I'm really attached to Eidwinn, so I don't mind that his role in the story is fairly small. Something about the contrast between Eidwinn and Gingull (young and old, someone who still has their life ahead of them vs someone who's lived through much) works so well with how they are fundamentally very similar people and were both impacted by Maika's project. I love having parallels.

Maika: Very obviously the Main Antagonist, responsible for everything that's I've talked about regarding the previous characters. Originally, I had him as a more flamboyant, appealing villain character, and stepped down from that because it really didn't seems to fit in with his goals and role as the city's leader and opted for a more serious, cold, cutthroat character. The thing to understand about Maika and that I want to come across is that his desire to do good for the citizens is guided by a misunderstanding of what people actually need, going off of his own idea of what's best, and what was once a genuine effort to make a great city was overtaken by his curiosity about like. Conditions. and what he could do to fix them. I'm wanting to dig a little more into his motivations and in the context of slug city's world as a whole, culturally. I might have typed this out in a different post or just forgot but I want to think about if his mindset is a product of other dominant schools of thought in slug city society, or if there was any particular event that set off this obsession and whatnot. I'm wanting to steer clear from "this guy is completely irredeemable" or imply that he's intrinsically "evil", not to deny that he fucking sucks and that his actions have consequences on Everybody. I think the dynamic between him and Gingull is interesting, in that to him, Gingull is fairly unremarkable and he isn't aware of her until much later when she ends up breaking into the tower and seeing him in person. To Gingull, it's extremely personal, he's the man who built up(or at the very least, enforced) the system that she's suffered under.

I) Do you prefer to keep them in their canon universe?

Yes, but also I drew them as splatoons just for funsies

I have a tendency to just draw existing characters as species or crossover from other media, so there's like a nonzero chance that I'll draw the cast as Something sometime down the line. It's definitely not going to be any fully fledged AU that I think hard about conceptually (who knows. I might be lying. I'll never know)

Love this animal!!! The slutch!! Finally getting around to answering these stray asks that have been sitting around in my inbox.

4. How easy is it to earn their trust?

Her trust is easy(ish) to gain and easy to lose(I know that "how easy is it to lose their trust is also a question but for the sake of this answer I will include it). She's someone who may have been more gullible when she was younger and was repeatedly betrayed by it, and thus has learned to become more cynical of new people. This comes from a lack of or difficulty with recognizing patterns in social cues (speaking very much from personal experience as an autistic kid growing up). She still retains a level of sympathy and optimism for gaining trust, especially when they've made a good first impression, but she tends to fall back on bad assumptions if someone's slighted her, and it's only after communicating further and patching things up that the trust is more strongly instilled. Her sense of trust can be distilled into "optimistic about potential new encounters and cynical when the encounter happens".

6. Do they consider laws flexible, or immovable?

Gingull's sense of "right and wrong" comes from her dad King, who taught her that laws can be an unfair but necessary evil, in that there's a reason for each law to be in place, but that reason won't always be the morally correct thing. King takes a more passive approach to this, but urges Gingull to take whatever action she feels is correct to do. When she was younger, she was probably more likely to be compliant with laws, and formed her own opinions on them as she grew older and encountered direct consequences of the laws. She considers "laws" to be rules set in place by someone else arbitrarily (and not an innate sense of morality)

The question is honestly a little vague and I might have to delve deeper onto what the laws of Slug City are, which would be an interesting post and thinking exercise. Like, are laws formed by one individual, suggested and voted on by the community, or a mix of both? or a secret third thing? It would be informative in structuring the city so that I have more to work with when it all falls apart.

7. What triggers nostalgia for them, most often? Do they enjoy that feeling?

I haven't thought about the specifics of Gingull's life growing up all that much, besides the fact that she's always been close with King(dad) and Alfin(sibling). I feel like it would be fitting for her to feel nostalgic for the simpler times, playing in the summer and not worrying about school or politics or other complicated feelings and things, especially after the accident that mutilated her face and being involved in the city's conflict. Part of her character development is her coming to terms with being allowed to grieve for what was lost, accepting her new life and situation, and being angry at the system that causes her new life to be very difficult. Nostalgia for Gingull comes with bitterness at the realization that not everyone was allowed to experience it, maybe a twinge of survivor's guilt, especially later on when she finds out what happens to all the other experimental accidents(answer: citywide coverup). This all fuels Gingull's eventual desire to help the other suffering citizens(and the despair with being powerless to do anything about it alone).

For Gingull: A) Why are you excited about this character?

I'm mostly excited about Gingull because they're kind of the culmination/crossroads point that ties all the other characters together, I think it's an interesting point for a character to be in. Admittedly, I've been having a hard time figuring out exactly how Gingull fits/moves the story forward since she's a product of the circumstances. I'm definitely going to be projecting a lot of personal experiences onto her, so there's a catharsis element to her too. I'm also excited to figure out how she interacts with all the other characters, given that she becomes mute at the beginning of the story, and not everyone would know/understand how to communicate with her and the frustration that comes with it. Also going to have so much fun with electrical imagery <:] The other thing I'm mainly excited to think about is her relationship with Delta(sea urchin), the soldier that pulled her from the malfunctioning machine and saved her life. There's going to be some tension between the two because Gingull is in no way obligated to forgive Delta for it, given that Delta was still actively Working for the military, and Delta has her own guilt complex about it as well due to efforts to break from the military and work towards doing some good. It's a dynamic that I don't think I've really seen or know how to describe, but I feel like it's easily the most interesting one to explore in regards to Gingull's character arc.

B) What inspired you to create them?

Gingull was created for the very initial premise of slug city's story, which was "dystopian government project to 'fix' mental illness spawns beasts that are representative of the illness to stigmatize it", like, the trope of an inner self or unwanted traits being a separate entity and character must learn to deal with it, or something. Gingull's beast is a long, wormy thing made of pure elctricity, and the imagery of that came first, and then Gingull's design, and then the story premise. The above description is currently a bit outdated and a little more nuanced, but the core of Gingull's character concept was built from the electrical beast, hence her helmet shaped like a socket. Initially, the idea was that she wore the helmet to cover her face because she's afraid of the disfigurement, and the electrical beast is a manifestation of her desire to be wanted and understood, so there's a moment plotted out in the story where she discards the helmet and the beast goes after the helmet instead of her. This is still partially true, but I've added a layer where the helmet enables her to not need to make eye contact or mouth expression, so there's an element of new comfort from that. Not sure where I'm going to take the previous concept with this, she's definitely a character that I'll need to workshop more in order to flesh out the core of the story.

Sorry for the really awful image quality but I don't think I've ever shared the beast designs before. Here's Gingull's.

For Eidwinn: A) Why are you excited about this character?

I'm really attached to Eidwinn, I'm honestly still not sure where he fits in the story, but he's very charming to me. Not that he's actually charming personality-wise, he's pretty reserved and generally unfriendly, but he's just very enamoring to me. I'm definitely thinking about a moment in story where Gingull goes to him for solace or happens to meet him, I haven't fleshed out those details yet. I'm also waffling on whether he should have prior relationships to the other characters, but he also just feels far removed from them and I think he's good as-is as a character that isn't directly involved in the other character's happenings but is nonetheless affected by them. He's important in Gingull's context because he's someone that's experienced life in a similar way to her, so there's solidarity in that.

B) What inspired you to create them?

I got started with slug city's premise and began making characters that would make cool beast concepts. Eidwinn's thing is that he's a plant shop owner who has a hoarding problem, and instead of doing anything meaningful about it the govt just dragged him to their machines, so his beast is this massive monstrous orchid that's supposed to represent his (debatably) unhealthy attachment to his plants. I haven't exactly decided if the beast manifestations are decided by Other People's perception of their root issues, or if it's a self-imposed idea, or a combination of both, because each implies something different about the nature of the beasts and how the characters interact with them. There's definitely a sense of shame associated with them, especially in Eidwinn's case where the beast roaming around causes him to be more shut in than before. In any case, I just really liked the concept of his character so he's stuck around. I needed characters that weren't direct players in the story.

also I know I probably could have typed thought up in The Text Post but additional thoughts always get put in the tags and I'm not going to bother retyping them. it's about the vibe of rambling in the tags <3 here's my post-post thoughts: