#sofart tag

😇- What’s their best trait?

for catalina saying that she likes nemo because he "acts nice" or "he's genuine" would be disingenuous; from her perspective its easy and unchallenging to be perfectly "nice" and she's seen the more selfish and disgusting side of very earnest actions pretty consistently (she also tends to look down her nose at people she considers gullible). so for her she likes that nemo is attentive, especially toward her, in a way that does not make her want to claw her skin off or gouge his eyes out, and thus she finds their interactions surprisingly and pleasantly mundane.

nemo was born with a stutter that he maintains thanks to many years of speech therapy only really emerges when hes very nervous; the trouble is that nemo is always quite nervous, especially when he's forced to be around or talk to other people. most people are not particularly patient with his inability to get through a sentence without restarting it partway through, so he really enjoys catalina's patience in that regard, and is amazed by how easily it seems to come to her. he likes that from his end it feels like she's really listening to him and not counting down the seconds until it's her "turn" to speak.

👿- What’s their worst trait?

while vega is correct that rakesh does work himself up over things that are really inconsequential and even nonsensical pretty often (all while being nonchalant about things that should definitely raise his hackles more), her perspective of this flaw is somewhat skewed because he tends to fuss over her especially, sometimes for legitimate reasons, but just as often because he's sticking his nose into her business.

likewise rakesh is also right that vega is also avoidant of admitting when she's wrong about something to the point of it becoming dangerous and insane, but his perspective of her stubbornness is also greatly exaggerated because he actually started out in T.A.R.G.I.T. as her "lab assistant", and is kind of unfairly letting his memories of when she was first working there and also 17 color his judgement of it a little.

🧠- What’s your best memory with them? Worst?

as alluded to in the previous ask, rakesh was not the most forthcoming with dove about something pretty important, and that was his inability to actually die (or, as rakesh argues, his inability to stay dead after he's been killed). it didn't start as a purposeful secret but the longer it went on, the harder rakesh found to broach the subject, until dove was forced to watch him die rather gruesomely out on a mission in front of him and then go on believing for the next few hours that rakesh had been permanently killed.

dove dislikes this memory very strongly for obvious reasons, the core of it of course being the initial horror of watching somebody literally be killed in front of you, but even more so somebody you've grown to care very deeply about. it certainly didn't help though that he found out after the fact that pretty much everybody else knew, and nobody ever elected to just come out with it and tell him.

rakesh dislikes it because it makes him feel extremely guilty. in his mind he'd grown so used to and began to really enjoy the "special treatment" dove was giving him by not being "in the know" about his mutation, even though arguably it would help him calculate how much a risk he should be taking better. he genuinely hadn't expected dove to be so affected by watching him drop, but that also makes him feel bad for being selfish and in a way thinking something. pretty fucked up about his friend !

ultimately dove heard out rakesh's reasons for keeping it an "open secret" and did and does acknowledge that he's not sure what he would really do in rakesh's situation, and as such they've just resolved to make sure neither of them die going forward. that being said rakesh does get kind of twitchy when it's brought up, and dove frequently cites it in arguments when rakesh won't budge on the issue of who should be throwing themselves into potentially fatal situations.

very early in his stay into the future dove was pretty much immediately resigned to basically just doing the Banal work of knighting until he was hopefully killed in action. rakesh was having none of this and immediately set his sights on helping dove build something of a social life. since dove only came with his old armor and was given what basically amounted to scrubs after it was pretty much destroyed he figured the first order of business was to get him some proper clothing

while initially rather overwhelmed dove has come to hold this memory with great fondness. rakesh obviously helped nudged him to more "modern" garments but overall just used the whole thing as an excuse to kind of bridge the gap between them and let him figure out some stuff about his new environment without smothering him or leaving him to completely fend for himself. also, as somebody who had previously had his wardrobe pretty strictly controlled, it was admittedly a bit exciting to just pick out stuff he thought looked nice

rakesh, for all his repeated social blunders, is actually really skilled at getting a good read on people and for better or for worse getting them to open up and say how they really feel. one might assume this doesn't apply to dove considering he is not particularly talkative, but rakesh would argue that it's actually quite easy to pick up on dove's thoughts and feelings based on not only what he doesn't say, but when and how he chooses not to say it.

that being said rakesh knows there's probably a fair amount about dove that he doesn't know, but it doesn't distress him. he likes to learn new things about everybody in his life, including people he's very close to ! that's part of what makes forging so many lasting connections exciting !

dove is... more conflicted in this regard. he genuinely views rakesh as a good man and somebody who certainly doesn't give himself enough credit, and he trusts him pretty implicitly. that being said, even though rakesh definitely acts like an open book and isn't really actually secretive perse, he deflects things a lot and especially lies through omission; and dove finds it a little unfair (and terrifying) that rakesh is apparently able to distract him by pointing out some latent stuff within himself that dove didn't even put together himself until rakesh pointed out to him.

it also doesn't help that rakesh wasn't honest about something pretty significant about himself until dove had to find it out himself the hard way ! but that's expounded upon a bit more in another ask...

october has me thinking about my freaky little goth bitches again for the first time in years. the freaky little goth bitch 2 is under the cut for nudity ig as well as a brief explanation of what both their deals are

at first rakesh was classified as a pretty “simple” anomaly: he fell off the roof of a building, and then was reported later fighting his way out of the body bag they put him in. when he first joined T.A.R.G.I.T. they didnt really know where to put him or what to do with him, so they shoved him off on vega (also fresh in the organization) as her “lab assistant”

this is where most of his resilience was discovered, as he ended up pretty much getting in some kind of fatal lab accident nearly every day. naturally after he just kept coming back it became pretty obvious something else was up with him just in a differently fucked up way... vega eventually begged not to have him as her as a lab assistant anymore bc while theyd grown very close and she began to actually view and care abt him as a friend he is genuinely just very awful at being a lab assistant. so thats when he started getting stuck with all the organization’s suicide missions

2:30 in the morning seems like a fine time to post art on this blog again, for the first time in about a year

this little group right here are easily what i consider to be my oldest ocs; actually, if you've been following me for like 7+ years, you might even recognize them, which if that is the case please pretend you don't ! i'm very embarrassed

i came up with the idea for their story all the way back when i was about 13 or so, where originally it was more of a ground-up fantasy setting where all the characters were Wacky Creature People like pepper. eventually however the world building and storyline got too convoluted for even myself, the sole person who had to keep track of or be invested in it, and i decided the thought of a group of teens who befriend what amounts to basically their town's local urban legend had a lot more potential in terms of fun dynamic set ups and little story challenges

similarly, because i was 13 or so at the time, my understanding of teenagers (let alone storytelling or conflict), was quite flawed, so when i actually became a teenager a lot of things about the characters and how they behaved changed, and funnily enough now on the reverse end of things as i get further away from adolescence they have through the gift of hindsight changed even more. if i had to single any one of them out though for who has changed the most i would say annie; she was very 2-dimensional and shallow when i was starting out at 13, and was what i thought a "clever" "satire" of boy-crazy, vapid "other girls", that i now through the wisdom of being an adult and just a i like to think slightly more empathetic human reeked of insecurity and self-centeredness on my part, lol. in my mind her personality now is still a bit high energy and bombastic but in a much more well-rounded and human way, so she's someone you're supposed to laugh with and not at (which is something i try to achieve with most of my characters)

desperately trying to convince myself to get back into posting art/oc stuff on this blog again 🙈😔