is there any freshly baked OC you'd love to share/talk about but haven't yet? also you've been reading a looot or books, any that have stood out to you so far?
(sorry about whatever you're going through right now, hang in there π«)
(Thank you, your message means a lot! π«)
Hmm. I haven't really been making a lot of new OCs latelyβI do also have Harlan and Leslie, who are pretty new! I only really have two sketches of them, Leslie is the blonde and Harlan is the other dude.
Their whole deal is basically... never ending codependent road trip through hell. They both grew up in the late 40s-early 50s so you know there's something wrong with them but their current timeline takes place in 1974. Both draft dodgers (well, Harlan was deemed unfit, Leslie just got the hell out of there). They're locked in an emotionally symbiotic relationship. Their whole deal is a bit convoluted honestly... but Basically "I may have ruined your life but we had a ball didn't we π€£ bitch don't lie."
Harlan is a dude who sees the world through this like... fleshy lens, a lot of things and people look weird and monstrous to him (as in, shambling globs of flesh and viscera, translucent jellyfish-like beings with strange organs on show, people with something moving under their skin), and it has been that way since childhood. Whenever he's near any ''creature'' he gets bad headaches and a terrible ringing in his ears, this is an effect felt by others sometimes but they cannot truly see the creatures as he can. It is ambiguous what these things are, what their purpose is or where they come from, because many of them are not actively hostile. He is a very silent and withdrawn person, emotionally cold, and self-sufficient to, like, a scary degree, but he's also physically assertive and intimidating when he wants to be. In fact, he overcompensates with aggressively exaggerated masculinity due to various traumas with deeply, deeply internalised homophobia and having to take over as the "man of the house" after his father died when he was fourteen. He houses a lot of shame inside of himself and sometimes takes it out on the world when he can't take it out on himself, having occasional, explosive and sudden outbursts of anger. It's a bit of a silence hills "they look like monsters to you?" situation wit him. These two are a shameless amalgamation of several pieces of media that have left an impact on me (whether I liked it or not) and I'm not shy about how much I'm wearing that on my sleeve with them hahah.
Leslie is just a regular freak. High charisma but has a complete lack of care for others' feelings or wants. He's a failed "rock star" (recorded one tape with his band and then they all left because they couldn't stand his ass), and is currently having a midlife crisis after various failed ventures. He grew up with more freedom and social mobility than Harlan, and unlike Harlan, is much more outgoing and doesn't repress his sexuality. He's always been deep in the counter culture of whatever time he's in, always evolving and looking for obscure new music and styles. In a way, he's kind of a "how do you do fellow kids" guy, and clings a lot to a time when he was a teen/20 yr old and much more cool (in his eyes, at least). He has something weird growing on him that he can't see, but Harlan can.
He's attention seeking and an extremely manic and restless guy, gets attached very easily to one person at a time. In Harlan he sees a lot of things: a shiny new project to keep him occupied, a temporary end to his midlife crisis, a man who he can change to suit him (but ends up becoming dependent on, oops), someone who does things that Leslie would've never been brave enough to do.
They're both control freaks in their own way, Leslie wants to control others and Harlan wants control over himself and his environment, and they have a push and pull relationship where they're codependent on each other and also horrible to each other. I like this song for them;
Anyway, they meet at a gas station where Leslie's been dumped by one of his friends after pissing him off in the car too much while they were road tripping, and Harlan's also stuck there because he's always got money troubles. Leslie agrees to foot the gas bill for this weird, quiet dude in exchange for transportation to wherever, and off they go. Things kinda... escalate badly from there.
Umm, I honestly have a 20k word document about these guys where i'm just writing things (and some of it is just shit like research on 70s shoe brands and car stuff lmao), but I don't wanna make this answer too long, if anyone wants 2 know more abt them I'm always open to chatting.
AS FOR BOOKS. Honestly this year at least has been slow for me, I've only read like 7 so far and unfortunately most have been kinda unremarkable. I have a my gripes about The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis but good god can that man write atmosphere. The constant descriptions of music and clothes and streets and other 80s-relevant pop culture could be grating but also made the world feel so... real, to me, in a way. I had the playlist associated with the book on while I was reading and had a ball. Right now I'm reading Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone and it's a very fun urban (?) fantasy with necromancy and gargoyles and vampires and giant dead gods so far :-)
Thank you for the ask again!
izzy806
dailybridgerton
