#zhas

Miki givin’ it to her brother Zhas, lol

Guess what month it is, ehhhhh.

Zhas is going to kick off Inktober. I somehow missed him last year, despite my being obsessed with him.

A quick summary of the character:

Zhas is the main character from The Sponsors. He is kidnapped at the age of eight from the jungle and sold as a slave to a zhalja school within the Hahnar Empire. From 8 to 15, he’s taught how to become a zhalja, a coveted type of slave only rich men can afford. A zhalja’s job is to advocate for his sponsor whenever possible, host parties, and entertain guests. All zhaljas are educated in literature, theater, music, art, and history. They’re basically pretty young men who have access to male-only spaces (Hahnar society is rigidly segregated by gender, so much that rich women have separate houses from their husbands). A man’s wealth can be judged by how much gold is on a zhalja’s face. A zhalja is then freed at the age of 35.

Zhas has three different sponsors: his first is cruel and abusive, his second is a grump who hasn’t much patience for him, and his third is Bazha Jabari, who purchases Zhas only so that Zhas doesn’t have to put up with his second sponsor’s shit anymore. Their relationship is complicated, but at its foundation is a serious mutual respect for one another, as well as compassion for others. Jabari is totally whipped and Zhas calls all the shots. Zhas will do pretty much anything for a friend, to the point that he gets almost-assasinated and then kidnapped by pirates for an imprisoned zhalja who asked for his help. He’s tall, bisexual, and beautiful, and he will fight anyone who hurts the people he loves. He has a tendency to get very jealous of any zhalja who so much as talks to Jabari, which is an endless source of frustration to Jabari. His tendency to get into trouble and risk his life also frustrates Jabari, who prefers to just throw money problems.

Yhafi-ja Abhas (right) keeping tabs on Yhafi-ja Hallah (left), who eventually becomes Zhas’s charity case, as seen below. 

So I got my printed copy of The Sponsors. The website not only allowed me to just print one for me, but to also offer the printed version for sale on their bookstore. So for anyone who has $8 burning a hole in their pocket and a love for an alternate-reality fantasy novel featuring an all-black cast with a bisexual main character, ya’ll know where to find me.

An e-book will eventually come ‘round, but for now, this is all I got. In case you don’t know of it already, here’s the cover and the summary:

Ah, I would have liked to finish this, but at this rate, it’ll be done in two years, lol.

Anyway, I wanted to draw this scene from Book 4 of The Sponsors because I thought it was great visually. Hallah is a 16-year-old boy Zhas spends a lot of time trying to rescue from a super shitty situation. When Zhas finally succeeds, Zhas’s boyfriend/sponsor Jabari gets super pissy because Zhas didn’t tell him what was going on. And because Hallah is so used to shitty sponsors, he tries to protect super tall and a very capable Zhas from Jabari, a teddy bear in human form, even though Hallah has suffered a lot of horrific abuse from men of Jabari’s position.

It’s kind of adorable but also kind of heartbreaking. Hallah has zero ability to protect Zhas, but he will damn well try, consequences be damned.