Yooooo I love your OCs! Do you have any chat logs / dialogue for Jishen and/or Pyrroh?
Just to clarify, Pyrroh is my (very awesome) friend @ozmodai's OC!
But, thank you!! Though, the way we write our OCs is less chat logs and more like spitballing headcanons and scenarios back and forth LOL
I will say, one of my favorite scenes we've written between them is when Jishen went to find and reassure Pyrroh when he unfortunately backslid into a relapse. They're both characters who have had the worst luck of the draw; punished harshly by the dystopian society they were raised in and similarly turned to self-destructive coping mechanisms to escape it.
It's because of that, they saw reflections of themselves in one another.
WIP sketch by @ozmodai!
It was a turning moment for both of them as they realized neither of them had to feel like shells of people anymore. Now that they're both fugitives from the Empire, they have the chance to make a different life for themselves on the Resistance's refuge camp. To be better people, not just for each other, but also for themselves.
9 and 10 for jishen pls 🥺
9. If your character had to name a cat right now, what would it be?
I'm ngl i think he'd just call it "Cat" LKAJSDKLA he'd be the kind of guy who would sometimes feed a stray cat wandering around his house, but never own one... too much commitment for him...
10. How does your character feel about people seeing them cry?
HMM... it depends on the situation, because the only time I can imagine him crying is when he's Really reached the lowest of the lows... So, he would either feel ashamed or just straight up empty 😭
OC ask game!
- What does your character's laugh sound like?
- What does your character’s singing voice sound like?
- Is your character obsessed with anything?
- How would your character react if they were gifted something handmade?
- What is your character's favourite season+weather+time of day combination?
- If your character could erase one thing from the world, what would it be?
- What about your character still remains a mystery to you?
- Someone shows your character a photograph of themselves when they were five. How do they react? What is the picture like?
- If your character had to name a cat right now, what would it be?
- How does your character feel about people seeing them cry?
- What's the easiest way to annoy your character?
- What's the easiest way to entertain your character?
- How would your character react if they learned they're immortal? (if they are, how do they feel about it?)
- What thought or memory your character is aching to share with someone but for whatever reason, never has had the chance?
- If your character had to get a (new) tattoo right now, what would it be?
- How does your character think whatever they're going through is going to end? (if they already survived, did things go as they once thought?)
- What is your character's most unique physical attribute?
- When your character has nightmares, which emotion is the most present?
- Does your character have a catchphrase or something they repeat a lot?
- Which sense is the most important to your character?
- Who does your character think about when they want to feel safe?
- On a scale from 1 to 10, how much does your character's past haunt them?
- What does your character value more than anything?
- Does your character follow any routines?
- Will your character ever get to live normal life?
tag your ocs if needed so people know who to aim questions to! happy asking and answering! ⊹ ࣪ ˖
when I say that I think we need to lionize "artists" less I think that's genuinely true and like an actually valuable thing to establish, for everyone, including "artists."
like. there's soooo much discussion about "artist burnout" and the like "mental health crisis among independent artists" or whatever which like. medicalizing aside I think there genuinely is a phenomenon of there being like a significant psychic burden upon "independent artists," but I think it's due to different factors than people seem to think.
for one thing, I think the problem is partially that for a lot of these people, especially those who are, or aspire towards, petit bourgeois status, "doing art" is their like, job, and their source of income. for people who are petit bourgeois* especially, there becomes this immense burden both because a) your artistic output is directly correlated with your ability to feed yourself and survive and b) your artistic output is a commodity and therefore must be affected by market forces i.e. you have to make whatever garbage sells the most. both of these things inevitably compromise your ability to express yourself earnestly in your art**, because you have a direct material interest in making yourself broadly palatable and artistically accessible. it compromises your capacity to stand by your artistic convictions, and that is genuinely, in my opinion, a distressing thing to happen.
the other thing is that, for similar reasons, many of these people consider "being An Artist" a kind of person one can be, a heightened and elevated form of humanity, which certain people are allowed and the rest are barred from. when someone describes themself as "I am an Artist," it carries the implicit social and cultural weight of everything that entails -- all the lionization and mythology and all of the belief in there being some essential core element to their person that grants them unique vision or whatever.
this is a great avenue for having a complex about making art, because now the quality and reception of your output is directly associated with How Well You Measure Up to being An Ubermensch. and failure to meet these standards mean you feel like you are fundamentally a failure in the kind of person you aspired to be.
the thing is that like. being An Artist isn't a kind of person someone is. literally everybody makes art. a wise internet poster once said about art: "it will roll off of you like smoke, it will saturate your whole existence, it will be something you have no choice in." the line between what is "art" and what is "simply existing" is much thinner than you would think, and if we understand "art" as "that which can be interpreted and given meaning and by human social reality," or "that which is a communicative project", and if we understand interpretation as a form of art, we understand that making art is something we all do every single day, all the time. it's not an Elevated Practice of some vaunted, spiritually transcendent experience. it doesn't make people Special and Superior and Unique to make art. everybody makes art. maybe the art you make is cooking. maybe the art you make is whistling while you walk to the grocery store. maybe the art you make is the small talk you make with the grocery store cashier. art is, and can be, so much more than people seem to want to constrain it to. it is in the interest of capital, namely, to imprison art within extreme constraints, to define rigidly what "is art" and what "is not art," to call some art degenerate, to define art as "drawings and paintings" and shit like that. art is more than that. everything we do is and can be art.
and when you remove art from its pedestal, it allows you to take great joy and celebration in the act of creating, because the act of creating is both utterly banal and totally nonthreatening by merit of its banality. telling a joke is art. in this way, farting and making a funny face in front of your friends, or a kid you're babysitting or whatever, is art. art isn't Special, "High Art" is not some form of transcendent human expression that only a privileged few can access. art is everywhere and everything.
art doesn't have to be a prison and art doesn't have to be imprisoned and art does not have to be something that is terrifying and daunting to approach. if you can sing a song you can make art. if you can shoot a basketball you can make art. if you can make a joke about Charles Entertainment Cheese or whatever the fuck you are making art. art is not something that needs to be "protected" or "defended", art needs to be freed. and when you are to put away trite bourgeois sentimentalities about the Inherent Holyness Of Art, you are able to realize that art fundamentally cannot be threatening, and the act of creation no longer becomes a state you enter and exit, a sacred time that contrasts with banal, normal, profane time, but rather a process which you never exit and which exudes from the act of being a human being.