WIP From Drawing A Bee Beetle Awhile Back. (...Somehow I Like Going Back To Look At WIPs More Than Finished

Thank you for choosing my submission, and thank you everyone who voted, this was really fun! I’m going to post more about these sillies because I feel like I probably should now, lol.

S9 Round 1*

More than foils

cw: soulless character, identity confusion

They’re narrative foils, they’re alternate selves, and they’re intergenerational BFFs. A lost her soul long ago in an attempt to stop being overly emotional, and is now cold and heartless, having convinced herself that she’s better off without her irrational emotions. A is logical, efficient, and solitary, having lost her need for connection and the joy she used to find in life. Then she meets an adolescent version of herself, B, whose soul and emotions are intact, and has to reconsider everything. In some ways the two are polar opposites, yet in others they’re exactly alike. B is lively, caring, fun-loving, and always overreacting. Both of them are brilliant yet reckless, searching for new knowledge without regard for safety or sanity.

B tries to steer A towards morally better choices, knowing that she’s the only one A will listen to, and she grows to admire A despite her flaws, eventually coming to love her like family. A has become selfish and uncaring towards others, but to her, B is not “others,” but the soulful, complete version of herself. A considers herself no longer capable of love, but B becomes everything to her, valued above even her own life. They form a sort of symbiotic relationship, with A acting as a mentor, guardian, and voice of reason to B, and B acting as A’s heart and soul and conscience. In many ways, they catalyze each other’s character development… but they also enable each other’s craziness.

Birdsong

cw: murder mention

She's a woman who exists beyond normal boundaries of time & space, who's somehow both a ghost and the reincarnation of her own great-uncle. He's the detective investigating her murder, and was somehow destined to help her long before he ever knew she existed. They've never met while alive, but they both can't stop haunting each other all the same.

The detective and the ghost keep circling each other throughout time loops and dreams, where both of them seem eternally trapped in the same series of rooms. The woman might be trying to guide the detective to the right path, or she might be a vengeful corrupted soul keeping him stuck forever. The detective might be stumbling closer to a way for both of them to escape, with the ghost ascending past her current status -- or he might somehow be her murderer, thanks to the time loop they've both entered. Neither of them seem to have the answers yet, but there is the lingering possibility that the only way for them to move past their current state is to become a part of the very environment they can't leave.

*Ship does not have to be romantic.

SORRY FOR THE VERY PERSONAL COMIC!!

This is my half of “Unhealthy”, an essay comic double header with the lovely and talented Sarah Winifred Searle. She and I both wrote about our personal experiences as overweight ladies with eating disorders, and her story is breathtaking! You can buy a physical copy of the book here: https://topatoco.com/collections/abby-howard/products/ah-unhealthy

Or buy a digital PDF here: https://abbyhoward.itch.io/unhealthy

My dad has bees. Today, I went to his house and he showed me all the honey he had gotten from the hives. He took the lid off a 5-gallon bucket full of honey and on top of the honey there were 3 little bees, struggling. They were covered in sticky honey and drowning. I asked him if we could help them and he said he was sure they wouldn't survive. Casualties of honey collection I suppose.

I asked him again if we could at least get them out and kill them quickly, after all he was the one who taught me to put a suffering animal (or bug) out of its misery. He finally conceded and scooped the bees out of the bucket. He put them in an empty Chobani yogurt container and put the plastic container outside.

Because he had disrupted the hive with the earlier honey collection, there were bees flying all over outside.

We put the 3 little bees in the container on a bench and left them to their fate. My dad called me out a little while later to show me what was happening. These three little bees were surrounded by all their sisters (all of the bees are females) and they were cleaning the sticky nearly dead bees, helping them to get all of the honey off of their bodies. We came back a short time later and there was only one little bee left in the container. She was still being tended to by her sisters.

When it was time for me to leave, we checked one last time and all three of the bees had been cleaned off enough to fly away and the container was empty.

Those three little bees lived because they were surrounded by family and friends who would not give up on them, family and friends who refused to let them drown in their own stickiness and resolved to help until the last little bee could be set free.

Bee Sisters. Bee Peers. Bee Teammates.

We could all learn a thing or two from these bees.

Bee kind always.

Sally sells #identity confusion by the sea shore.

Linking to my Grima Propaganda from last round :)

TLDR: Incredibly cool giant apocalypse dragon who has been repeatedly betrayed and attacked by humans, his worshippers are awful and not even he likes them, super complicated and interesting relationship with his unwilling vessel who may or may not actually be Grima himself reincarnated.

Losers Bracket Round 3: Match 1

Palutena(Kid Icarus) vs Grima(Fire Emblem Awakening)

This describes the Hollow Knight.

it's always so fascinating and heartbreaking when a character in a story is simultaneously idolized and abused. a chosen prophet destined for martyrdom. a child prodigy forced to grow up too fast. a powerful warrior raised as nothing but a weapon. there's just something so uniquely messed up about singing someone's praises whilst destroying them.

Ok, ngl, I love how much effort you put into your Human/Modern AU. It's quite fantastic to read, I do have to ask on other characters like the God Tamer, Zote, Elderbug, and Lace, what're they like in your AU if you have any ideas for them?

Honestly, I haven’t thought of much for most of them yet, but my friend and I had some discussions that led to more character lore regarding Zote and the ghost characters, so here ya go! • Gorb: the school janitor and a crazy Radiance fan. He occasionally talks with Sybil about their obsession. • Zote: The Hallownest public school’s horrible gym teacher, who may or may not be on drugs. He thinks way too much of himself and keeps talking about how his precepts are the way to success. Bretta develops a crush on him. • Marissa: an up and coming young singer who likes Radiance’s music but wants nothing to do with The Fandom (TM). She’s Marmu’s older cousin.

• Marmu: One of Ghost and Grimm Jr.’s classmates. A sweet, naïve little girl who likes to play ball games. • Xero: An absolutely obsessed Radiance fan who got arrested for threatening the lives of the mayor and his family during the Radiance protests. • No Eyes is the local legend/Cryptid.

Please vote for Lucina (AKA “Marth”). She’s my blorbo and she’s the reason I first started getting into Fire Emblem. To me she’s badass and cute and relatable and funny all at once and how did they fit this much awesome in a single character. I’m autistic and although her behavior doesn’t scream autism quite as loudly as that of some of the other characters in Awakening *cough cough Miriel* she seems very autistic to me with the overly formal way she speaks, her tendency to take things literally, her general lack of social awareness including a comically terrible fashion sense, and the way she often doesn’t get jokes. She feels personally responsible for saving the world and holds herself to such an impossibly high standard and doesn’t know how to rest or have fun because she grew up in a freaking apocalypse… I just love her so much.

a signed version of the fixed chart, for reposting