#soup query

i dont really have a set design i'm happy with (yet) buuut this is where it's at currently

i've accepted that i'm never gonna get to those unanswered ask games so i will be pressing the button to clear my inbox. but first, i'm digging up this 2 year old ask lol

so i absolutely see why queer people may be drawn to admech, transhumanism-transgenderism and all that, the rejecting of the weak base flesh in exchange for the true flesh of the machine, this modular mutable kind of approach to the body where it is the altered form that is revered.

there is this sort of idea of a detachment to gender in it too, connected to tropes of cold intellectuals and non-binary nonhumans and unfeeling machines, and this sense of detachment from your physical form, your flesh, that is a very common experience to have when you're trans. and they're kind of alien to a lot of non-admech people, their bodies are seen as weird and their culture and practices mysterious and inscrutable.

lots of people love mad scientist types too, i know it well ok you know my love of mad scientists comes from a place of transgenderism. and lots of nerds who like warhammer may also be trans and may also work in some manner of tech related field, so it's like they ARE the tech priest.

personally tho, admech sort of falls short of what resonates (in a transgender way) to me. personally. <-big light up sign that points to this word.

one of the key components of mad science to me, narratively, and what makes it so trans, is that idea that you are working against god, against the natural order, you are making life without a womb, you are trying to reverse death, you're trying to. turn everyone into robots or something. and all of that is in 40k, i'm sure they're all doing that shit constantly in admechland, but crucially, they are supported by the churchstate. they have the kind of deep seated institutional backing that our ol' buddy franking stein never did.

it's a battle with norms and what is socially accepted, it's about taking creation for yourself, a kind of liberation, stealing fire from the gods (one could say. a modern prometheus). whereas the admech are in many ways regressive. innovation is not allowed, deviating from doctrine is call for persecution, they're not meant to make new things, they perpetuate a stagnation. course there are those who deviate from doctrine, but like, that's still a big idea with their faction and the imperium as a whole.

when people are like "to ME in #mymind admech are all genderqueer" i'm like, that's so awesome and real and beautiful. i wish i could play in this space with you however i have nothing to add and there's nothing there that really drives me to think about that topic any further.

it's almost like, the same sorta disinterest i have in queernorm fiction? or maybe like, when there's a fictional "genderless" alien species. i'd like real life to be super cool and niceys especially when it comes to the trans stuff, but like, that's not really what i'm looking for in fiction. techpriesthood just doesn't really resonate with my own trans experience yknow, so i make my own real specific shit, and other people make different stuff that resonates with them, including trans admech.

THE most important cosbackstory character. damira, his right hand, his second, his unsanctioned telekine, the last reminder either of them has of their old home. she's a few years younger than cosmas, but that stops being significant the older you get.

she was one of the kids cosmas took charge of on their dying ship. they were separated on cadarous, and damira and the other two were sent to an orphanage. as the second oldest (at about 10), she became something of a stand-in for cosmas during that time.

then her psykana manifested, and she pushed the only witness out the window. she's not stupid, no matter what other people say. she knows what happens to kids like her. maybe not exactly, she doesn't know where they go, but it's not something she wants to find out. and she killed someone. she needs to run away, somewhere where they'll never catch her. it takes her to the city's underhive.

she crosses paths with cosmas again entirely by chance. he takes her right back under his wing, feeds her over himself, teaches her how to turn off every instinct in her head telling her it's wrong and to just kill a fucker. never let go of your self control, never let anyone know, dismantle every obstacle in your way. listen to what he says, because you two need each other. she's still growing, but her spine's growing wrong, and everything hurts. he's there to make her a brace. he's there to get her bootleg psi-boosters. he's there to push her whenever she needs it.

damira doesn't talk, she's not expressive, she doesn't communicate her wants or her thoughts like others do. cosmas tells her a lot and doesn't let her in at all on other things. she doesn't tell him anything, but he still knows enough. they don't need to connect, they understand each other, their relationship functions exactly as they need it to. they don't call each other siblings, but it's the relationship other people assign to them. it works just fine, they're not going to waste time denying it.

over time, she goes from protected to protector. she is many things, but she is the looming figure at cosmas' back first and foremost. they need each other, cosmas may be the mastermind but it's damira who can do. she is his extending arm, she is the physicality he lacks. he is the face, she is hidden under the helmet. she derives just as much satisfaction from the hurt she causes as he does, is always so strict about her control just like he is. they work. when one of them is gone, the other retrieves them.

and then cosmas is gone for good. he's not coming back, not with the news of the maw. it sinks in for her, then everyone else. their empire can't remain without the both of them, she can't do it on her own. she leaves, finally letting the power vacuum take over as everyone cosmas was too paranoid to let close fights over all that's left behind.

hehe :3 a LOT of it originates in my mcr days, i picked up a lot from the band's aesthetics and also from other mcr fanartists. one of my faves from then was instagram user astrarevolution, you gotta scroll down to like 2018 that shit was PEAK i printed it out and stuck it on my walls. mcr fanart still fucking rules in general tho, i keep up with cordspaghetti and mychemicalraymance today just incredible stuff man... not gonna repost other fanartists' stuff but give em a good scroll!!

and obviously gerard way's art, it's so angular and striking, changed me forever fr.

julia from drawfee is also a MAJOR influence on me, the day i realized that it all made so much sense. the handsome men video changed my life with her nose-out approach to drawing faces. let's all look at the room full of vampires together

since i've been primarily a video game guy since i was 15, i'm really influenced by the art direction in those. vampire the masquerade bloodlines, the dragon age tapestry art style (da2's loading screens in particular), pathologic, dishonored (the tutorial art especially), the evil within, silent hill, darkest dungeon, that sorta stuff. i don't have anything on hand to realllly show off what i mean but the evil within is sooooo gorgeous in the chapters where everything but the red gets super desaturated

and of course i've been inspired by the fanartists of a variety of games in ways i will never know... couple off the top of my head, wehavekookies, ukropstales, martyfive, stozkpile, meirimerens, wiltkingart, shaydh, ok that's more than a couple lol

this drawing of the outsider of mine from 2022 was the first time i tried this specific art style, i don't return to it until 2023 with this corvosider image, but that style really stuck in the back of my head and i was super compelled to return to it. and now it's the primary way i go about drawing things, crazy how that happens.

i tend to get Particular about staying on model w/ my game fanart (if i don't have specific headcanons that differ from the model) so that definitely has a hand in the way things look.. also doing dishonored art gave me yaoi hands. i gotta make em big i will die if i dont make em big

for stuff that's not so video gamey...

i love otto dix's war etchings

nancy grossman my goat

takato yamamoto, first pic is my fave of his and also literally me

and of course i like francis bacon. we all love francis bacon

bernie wrightson, especially his version of frankenstein is SOOO. goddddd 😩 i own a copy too it's so incredible

not surprisingly, saturn devouring his son was mindblowing to me in high school lol.

there's more out there in my mind somewhere and more stuff that i'm not even aware of being influenced by but i think this is pretty good on the vibe. idk if some of this really shows since i'm just like. a character in a white void guy rn lol but this is the kind of aesthetic memory bank i'm working with.

WAIT and zdzisław beksiński

and stuff from my childhood like monster high and heroes 5 (back to video games lol)

AND REANIMATOR. and saw. but also i've hit the 30 image limit.

i also love a lot of things like negative space and diagonals 👍👍 really influences the way i do things. and i've been trying to get better at being much more intentional with where i put colour and detail.

OK ONTO YOUR OTHER QUESTION

this is long as fuck and also my meaniehaterpost (but also a smidge of a loverpost at the end) so it's going under a cut enjoy

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

sometimes i think "how do you let other people ruin your enjoyment of something just ignore them lol" but then i remember that i am NOT immune to this actually and my sense of superiority is arrogant and unfounded. i have been known to be a fandom's favourite boy enjoyer on several occasions but that doesn't stop me from also finding other enjoyers annoying

@fourraccoonsinacoat

the emoji's cooler on my phone where it's a ribcage, oh well. behold my fucked up scientist lask :) and lammy, who's not pictured. another pair (do not separate!!) with this one. also i should probably warn for cosmas abortion lore

coming from higher up the hive, lask was expelled from university and ended up as an (yet undefined) underhive lord's pet chirurgeon, forever indebted to the boss for the favour of retrieving his brother lammy, who was servitorized for criminal activity. when he doesn't have to tend to wounds and damaged augments, he gets to get creative with whatever experiment the boss wants done.

he's also the one who did cosmas' hysterectomy/abortion when all else failed. he doesn't have anything to give in exchange, he's not valuable enough to make it worth lask's time, but they make a deal. lask will get rid of his problem in exchange for an indentured assistant. cosmas becomes something of his understudy, which is unusual considering his disdain for others in his workspace.

lask creeps him out, but it's nothing compared to how lammy makes him feel. cosmas cannot understand the affection lask holds for his servitorized brother. to him, lammy is dead. lammy is a corpse continuing to be paraded around by a weird freak who can't let go. lammy is what cosmas could have become if he weren't so lucky.

gradually, lask goes from walking cosmas through all manner of things to barely showing his face, like the whole assistant thing didn't matter. cosmas snoops around lask's place a lot. it's mostly what he expects, but... he finds notes. about him. logs on observations and experiments he didn't know were happening. references to...

he breaks into the locked room and confirms that yes, that's the thing that was growing inside of his body, still alive, mutating, having survived yet another attempt cosmas made on its life. he wants that thing dead. but he has no plan, there's nowhere for him to go if he acts on impulse.

HELLO BALL LOVERS @galahadiant @winterscale

sorry there's no disco, t'was a reference to chrome dome's shiny bald head 😌 here's his portrait, for reference

ex-enforcer, underhive lord, egg cracker, and cosmas' last boss who he usurped after fist-fucking him to death. all of the portraits are drawn through cosmas' memory of them, and he remembers this man very clearly (and very shirtless).

chrome dome is obviously a moniker due to his^ chrome. dome. his head's a patchwork of metal, so is part of his body. it's all rather heretical, everything down here is. and he loves being shot in the head :)

cosmas never made it to second, or even third, never quite given an official place in the hierarchy, but he was the guy chrome dome sent when he needed something done. and also yet not a guy, he hadn't figured that out yet.

he was considered "one of the boys" under his employ, not feminine or attractive enough in chrome dome's eyes to "count" as a woman. the jokes that he was "practically a man" are what finally made it all click in cosmas' mind, yet when he wanted to reclaim it for himself he suddenly wasn't actually a man, could never be a man, are you kidding me?

chrome dome was everything cosmas wanted to be, strong, powerful, charismatic, fucking loaded, consciously he coveted his position and unconsciously he coveted his machismo. it was a classic "do i want him, do i want to be him" situation, as close to an unrequited crush as it gets with cosmas' aromantic ass. he wanted him badly, in a way that physically shoved him inside him.

da birthday boy..

Silas sends well-wishes and congratulations and delightedly informs cousin Cosmas that his people have succeeded in cloning the lop eared kleppa, a crate of which has been sent over to Cosmas' ship for his birthday :) One can only hope Silas thought to separate the genders

OMG DA BIRTHDAY BOYYYY