#hotguy au

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[ MERCH ] [ MISC ]

Scott pushes his books toward him. The guy opens his bag and takes out a camera.

A really, upsettingly familiar camera.

---

Hotguy visits.

“I don’t want us to be the bad guys anymore, Cub.

I want to be a superhero.”

hi there!

may 19th is etho, the man, the myth and the legend! in my au, he’s very much a vigilante type, being seen as both a hero and a criminal in the eyes of the people ;)

enjoy!

-

“We aren’t peaceful. we aren’t strays, lost, confused. We are the fire of the people, we are the light and the fuse.”

The King’s voice rang over the crowd, eyes clinging to each syllable like gold to the poor. People stopped in their tracks, wandered from the alleyways and the shadows to listen to the man standing on cardboard boxes speak, call out to them as if they were his own. Ren had that effect— authoritative but human, theatrical yet personal in a way no other ruler could be. At least in Etho’s experience; he didn’t have much of it, to be fair.

His job wasn’t to listen, though. No, he was meant to scan the fields, employ his field experience in the busy streets of the city. Look for anyone shifty-eyed, lingering behind corners, reaching for sharp edges. And of course, as Ren had pleaded, look extremely intimidating when doing so.

So Etho stood tall, arms crossed, over the mass of people, doing his best to give a sense of danger while still maintaining focus. He was an instrumental part of the Red Ward, after all. Every outing, every piece of media shown with the famed Red King, Etho must be present as well. As the Ward’s White Night.

Even if the name originated long before their little militia team.

He thought back to his days before the Red Ward, before he had moved to the city and before everything had gone wrong. He was just a soldier, serving his time in the fortress that made up the capital of the South. As far as he knew, Ren was entertaining a career in Southern politics; but it’s not like he ever knew him back then, as foreign as their roles were to each other.

Etho had climbed the ranks of the military quickly— ribbons, medallions all a blur in his mind. He wasn’t even fighting with any sort of purpose; he simply knew the Wardwatch had a future he desired to protect. He shouldered his prizes, the greatest of all a fur coat given to him by a retreating Northern general, and wielded his sword.

The white of the fur, and the way he fought as if time were but a passing thought— that was what earned him the moniker of White Night. Not as a pseudonym to some sort of knight, though he guessed he might have appeared that way, but simply as what he was. A soldier. For the future of the Wardwatch.

Blinking back to the present, he watched as the crowd multiplied, people hooting and grinning in adoration. Etho thought of his former purpose, to preserve the future of a long-gone nation. He might have failed in doing so; he might have lost everything he worked for. But in meeting Ren, he found another way.

He glanced at his friend, gold crown shining as he gestured to the crowd. Faintly, Etho smiled to himself. Yes, he had found another way— not by keeping the future, perhaps, but by creating another light.

By giving dawn to another Night.

—-

thank you so much for reading!

welcome to butter’s hermit-a-day may! today we learned a little about the Red Ward, how the White Night came to be! very exciting woohoo

find me on ao3 at evilbutter !

(Doodle by @shr00mgum)

El Santuario is the home of many hybrids, with no federal regulation or even taxes, it is controlled more by companies than the people living there.

After a horrible incident HotGuy’s sidekick, CuteGuy, is presumed dead - but what happens when Grian returns as a villain?

(Art by @shr00mgum)

OK here it is, a ton of 'production' stuff for the Hot Guy Comic Zine! I've never been part of a project like this. Even though I was working on my comic mostly solo (shout-out to my editor Violet!), the world-building and story arc planning was completely collaborative. For example:

We started out on the world-building by voting on character's superpowers! Plenty of powers were almost unanimously agreed on, but Cuteguy was a HUGE campaign. We were pretty much 50/50 split between can fly/can't fly. Propaganda was exchanged LOL, like this piece where I campaigned for limited flying capabilities 😂 And thats what we ended up settling on!

From there we worked on a ton of brainstorming/world-building that I mostly spectated with an occasional doodle like these haha. I'm new to such elaborate AUs!

Pitch time!! I had pitches for each era and they were all pretty light and banter-y, so my year 1 pitch ended up fitting the vibe the best. My original pitch was 'HG + CG learn some key things about each other and plan to set up a base they can use together.' But when I started my script, I got really caught up in how they were navigating a partnership without knowing each others identities. The more I wrote through that, the more I wanted my story to be ABOUT that! So thats where my script started coming together.

Designs! I'm definitely not a confident costume designer. I was trying to go for low-tech + practical since it was early in their careers, and of course, easy to draw 😂

Process went more or less like this! Full color comics take a LONG TIME but it was a total labor of love. I had the graffiti bgs in mind from the very start since I knew it was dialogue heavy, I wanted to make sure the art was interesting and worth spending time looking at. Oh lord did I get carried away. I'm OBSESSED with the symbolism the fandom has put to the life series and so I tried to sneak in as much meaningful symbolism as possible. AND THE RESULT:

Guess I did pretty well! 😂😂😂