#sorta???

with Yana's history of giving trauma and behaviors stemming from them that are often usually for female characters over in Black Butler with Ciel, seeing this world where rather than avoiding any hint of gender discussion or romance (please there are Vibes here) by making the entire cast male, we actually got another angle/continuation of how she usually writes anyway

which is perfect considering how like, villains are queer-coded often, they're campy and over the top, which in turn leads to being gender non-conforming, except that in this world it Is the norm to strive towards- it's a flavor of queer normative in a very specific way that it's no longer in universe queer to be feminine in certain ways, it's expected/encouraged

BUT. Rather than leave it there, with this normalization comes the negatives, pressure, and judgement with this new set of ideals, in which it isn't always a good thing and gives male characters issues and insecurities and the like of which is usually given to female characters

We have direct commentary on body issues (Azul) or being pressed into strict diets (Riddle) we have the entire house of Pomefiore, it's a rather constant theme

Creating a scenario where things that society takes for granted as being "girl problems" and giving them to male characters highlights how extreme these actually are and how badly it can affect someone's life, like a sort of defamiliarization that makes the issues stand out more clearly as not being innate to any gender but something serious and stemming from harsh social expectations and/or flat out abuse, which is seen clearly as such

skirt pt.2

this probably would have been better for Azure but. I love nightshade so it's ok 🙂‍↕️

Wanted to experiment with colors a little bit more than usual and try gradient map again