bro check out this cantata

FINALLY @onawhimsicot 's awesome Life Series Team Rancher Superhero AU fic, Tangotek Evil Incorporated is posted and I get to share my initial concept art for Dr. Blaze and Canary respectively!

if anyone makes fanart of TTEI, you're welcome to use my designs with credit or make your own!! There's nothing more superhero comic than every artist doing their own take <3

I've loved seeing Cadence's event artists takes on their outfits they're SO GOOD. I love seeing all the different designs!!! PLEASE @ me and Cadence I promise you, we'd love to see it <333 Also my ask box is always open if you want to chat!

I'm definitely going to be making more polished designs and drawing for this universe in the future (superhero aus my beloved I had SO much fun designing them)!

but for now, if you also love character design, have way too many thoughts about Ranchers and hero/villain costumes like me, and 3 pages wasn't enough, buckle up and enjoy my extra ramble under the cut:

EXTRA:

When Cadence asked me to help design their outfits, the request boiled down to "i just need ideas, you don't have to like draw a whole Thing" but I'm so Normal about my blorbos so uh naturally it became A Whole Thing and when I got to Canary I had to frantically hit the brakes on my character design brain from making him too cool

Tango's design came easy, Canary's outfit less so. Surprisingly it's kinda hard to make a somewhat on theme but also basic hero outfit jsakfhajskfh

criteria for Canary at the time was a mix of on bird theme but also NOT on theme since he needed to be a bit basic for context of the fic so he WILL be getting a glow up later

We debated giving Canary a gas mask vs a beak-like mask for a long time, the bandana is my compromise while also hitting that Basic vibe. Its also a nod towards my Sheriff!Jimmy design & Ranchers

We have a long history of working on a OC superhero universe (lovingly dubbed soupverse) together, and while I also just think plague doctor vibes are Neat the concept of the beak being a hero/villain mask is partially pulled from my main villain, Crow who is also bird themed (shocking i know)

Canary having a silly jumpsuit was also loosely inspired by Zedaph's high dive Zedvancement skin from his S9 Ep 1!

Tinted lenses to hide your identity my beloved, what if we both had colored tinted lenses and were red and blue coded and were nemeses...haha jk...unless?

Just the other day, Cadence said to me what if Canary wore Uggs and lowkey he might asjkfhaksjf

Parrot, while not depicted eventually got summed up to Aviator vibes and obviously Canary had to match

A lot of this reference sheet was originally scrawled in my notes app and generally in my head. I cleaned it up for the event so while I'm sorry it's so messy, it was worse originally LOL

Hello! I noticed you said you're currently engrossed in FMA 🤭 it's also one of my all time favorites anime 🥰

If you don't mind, can you say what personally draws you to it and what are your thoughts on your favorite characters? (In case these 2 aren't your favorites, can you mention what you think about Ed and Roy? Not as a pairing :)) just them individually)

Sorry for being so specific in an ask 😅

Hope you have a great day! 🤗💫

hello!!!

fma has been my favorite manga since i was a kid i'm really attached to it 😭 me and a couple friends decided to rewatch the CoS movie together and we both fell down the deep end and have been obsessively rereading and rewatching everything since then. i'm having so much fun i luv fma...

i think what really drew me in was edward himself tbh! he is such a unique protagonist, and especially at the time he was the odd one out among shounen heros—not naive and untalented meant for eternal nekketsu powerups but a boy who had always been frighteningly smart and had gone thru extremely traumatic events and whose goal as a hero wasn't to become The Best at his craft or to save the world but to fix a mistake he had already made.

i was (still am) very attached to him being disabled and how the story manages to include all that this entails (chronic pain, reduced mobility, special needs...) while at the same time engaging in really cool prosthetic design and functions and without ever making it demeaning or pithy toward amputees. arakawa was an absolute genius for how she went about ed's disability.

ed is just such a GOOD character. flamboyant and flawed and unflinchingly moral. self-sacrificing and self-hating but with a drive and devotion to overcome everything. he's a truly unforgettable character and he is insanely enticing as a protagonist in a story like fma, where every plot point is carefully connected to the overall story... like a transmutation circle in and of itself. icarus fell as his wings melted but ed keeps standing back up even with a whole leg missing, even after facing his own punishment for trying to play god. he is loud and bad-tempered and hilarious and his character design is awesome and that would've been enough to make him a fav for me but when u add in his generosity and kindness, which are so painfully obvious despite the prickly exterior, he's Ultimate Fav material. my blorbo my meow meow.

that his personal story is all about love for his brother and trying to fix the terrible mistake he made and which he will forever blame himself for (even tho everyone around him knows that he was only 11 at the time, and it's a miracle he managed to save alphonse at all, and doesn't think he deserves to hate himself for it) is just... it's good ok. it's a wonderful story with a wonderful conclusion. it suits him, his personality, perfectly. edward elric is a marvel of a protagonist.

damn it's hard for me to pick other fav characters bc i love everyone so much. i love izumi and ling and greed (both versions lmao) a lot... and scar and hawkeye and hughes... its too hard to pick.

roy mustang is definitely up there in the fav list tho. it's a bit funny because usually i wouldn't be much into him as a character bc his whole shtick is pretty much "i committed genocide but i feel bad about it" but he managed to have enough personality and flair to make himself vital to the story and extremely enticing too. it helps that everyone in fma has so much chemistry together, so his team has a lot of charisma. if mustang had been alone or even with just hawkeye or hughes i don't think he would've been nearly as interesting to me. i do think the story should've gone a bit deeper with his goals bc people tend to forget that he doesn't just want to become fuhrer, he wants to disestablish the military state altogether and make it so war criminals (including himself) can be tried legally. his ultimate goal can be seen as very selfish in that way—he wants to be made to face justice. and to the end he's not reluctant to use every tool at his disposal, including marcoh's last philosopher's stone from ishval to heal himself... that's the sort of plot point that leaves you feeling a bit sick and makes him into a character worth his weight in salt.

it's cool to put his choices next to ed's. like ed literally refused to use his deadbeat dad's philosopher's stone, which was made from people from 400 yrs ago that he never knew and who would've been dead anyway and whom hohenheim actually talked to in depth, to save alphonse; instead he sacrificed his most precious passion. and he refused to use kimblee's philosopher's stone when he almost died in baschool—instead he used his own damn lifespan to heal himself just enough not to die lmao. meanwhile, mustang, even while expressing reservations and acknowledging all that it means, used a stone made from the lives of the people he personally massacred. he is what you can genuinely call a morally grey character and that doesn't change thru the story. and i like that.

also he's funny

Karin~~Im back from a very tiring shift to tell the pkmn trainer crush story ✌🏼I'm ready

So let me present to you, Quinoa (or Riley in the Spanish dub I think)

He's like the reincarnation of another dude Sir Aaron (I liked them both OK? Little me was wild) and the reason why I had a Lucario obsession

here's not a lot of story with him but with the person who showed it to me

Basically I had a crush on my best friend who was like 4 years older but he was so nice and liked to draw, play video games etc he made me wanna start learning about anatomy and to take drawing a step further (he made like 3 or 4 drawings for me, that was peak love language)

I admired him but I know I looked at him with heart eyes from time to time 😅😅😭😑 cringe cuz he liked another girl 🤡 anyway he liked Cynthia so it was like an exchange of "who's your trainer crush"

Now that I think about it my first ever fanfiction or like fan writing was something I started to do with him (it was an "isekai" story that involved the two of us, I would write one chapter he the next one and so on)

Ufff this made me nostalgic

So Quinoa more than a blorbo is like my nostalgia character, when I used to crush on real people (lol)

I'll come back tomorrow with more loved characters so get ready to listen to my ramble 😔

Game: Talk to me about your blorbo!!!

NAT WHAT THE HAWK THATS SO CUTE ARURGSHDJWJSHSHXIWNSOWNF 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 AND HE MAKE DRAWINGS FOR U????

Dear f/o: please. I want that too. 🥲🥲🥲

NOOOOOOOOO ITS OKAY NAT IM SURE YOULL FIND SOMEONE AS AWESOME(OR EVEN MORE) IN THE FUTURE THAT SHARES MUTUAL FEELINGS WITH U <33333

*AND* YOU WROTE FANFICS TOGETHER???? BRO-

Dear f/o: i am once again asking. please. i want that too 🥲🥲

COME AGAIN TMRW WISJWIJSJEHD THANK U FOR SHARING THIS IS AN ADORABLE STPRY AURGSJDJWIJSJW 😭😭😭😭😭😭

ANNIKUH PLEASE TELL ME ABOUT JAX TJE BLORBO FROM YOUR HEAD 🤲🏾🤲🏾

you, my friend, are going to live a million beautiful lifetimes and go to heaven. im gonna put it under the cut bc its a little long but oh my god i love jax so much.

Jax is one of my dnd characters!!! they're a nepherit, which is essentially an immortal body snatcher.

*abt the nepherits, the only way they survive is by changing from body to body, and they're only able to take over ones that are currently alive...so naturally they're unpopular. they were created by this evil necromancer who raised a bunch of people from the dead to create an army of supersoldiers to take over the world, but the nepherits took his ass down. however, while thats great for the world, the nepherits end up wandering aimlessly and hopelessly like physical ghosts bc the one purpose they had is null and void.

most nepherits live on one island, isolated from the rest of the world, but jax travels all over the place. to offset the hate that they get as a nepherit (bc it is somewhat easy to tell who is one*), they've gotten really good at learning how to talk to people and make friends, so they have a knack for winning over people quickly--or at least neutralizing a conflict. they're a great traveling companion, too; they have great survival skills and they're awesome at fighting.

they have some fun quirks that i really like! they like to take small bones of extraordinary monsters they've killed, so they have a bag full of exotic bones they carry with them. they're really good at whittling, too, so when they run out of money, they'll make a bunch of little decorative statues, go to a rich town, and upcharge the hell out of them bc they know the rich ladies go crazy for them. they also have a huge journal! like people, their memories fade after a while, so they carry around a journal to make notes of cool or important things to remember at a later time. they've got a secret library full of journals with information about people and events from the beginning of some civilizations. the issue is that they SUCK at taking notes. they always write something down in shorthand and assume they'll remember what they wrote, but they literally never do. its very funny to me, but it means they'll experience the same things over and over and always forget what happened last time.

^^^related to this, they had recently found a drawing of them and an elf woman** tucked super far back in their journal and had no idea who she was, but they started tearing up when they saw it, so they started a personal journey to figure out who this clearly-important woman was. they were slowly piecing some things together, but still knew close to nothing. one time, they were exploring a big beautiful room in a sewer system and saw it had their writing on parts of the walls. one door said "do not open, darkness inside," and they were like "this means nothing to me, i am so bad at note taking lol." so they open the door, and inside is a room full of human skeletons surrounding one skeleton sitting upright decorated in flowers and a hair scarf, and every one of their memories of the room came flooding back: it was the skeleton of their elf friend. they'd made the same mistake of finding her before, forgot they left the note, and came back and relived the same trauma of seeing their dead friend for the third time. horrid, right? i love making myself cry. (i could go into so much more about this elf friend, but this is already so long lmao).

it's really easy for jax to get angry and wrapped up in what they miss out on because of who they are, and they have a ton of existential crises. they're very dependent on the relationships they make, but they always outlive all of their friends, and they very rarely get to feel any physical contact because nepherit-inhabited bodies are constantly icy (even in hot weather, touching their skin is uncomfortable rather than refreshing). even when they make a new friend, there's still a barrier because so many of the troubles that jax has are impossible to experience the same way they do. like, yeah its hard for humans to lose friends, but humans will never have the experience of losing all of their friends forever. they get lonely a lot because of it and feel abandoned by the gods. and, of course, its impossibly difficult to handle the recurring trauma of changing bodies. after so many thousands of years of built up anger, they're prone to horrid doom-spirals and self-destructive behavior.

but! one thing i love about them is that they've still found ways to make their existence worth something, when other nepherits succumb to the agony of their existence or embrace their origins as killing machines out for revenge. jax has the "genetic" bloodlust that they all do, but they use it to protect and not to instigate. they've managed to find some sort of purpose by helping make others' lives easier, whether it's hunting down an eldritch horror, pet sitting while a friend takes a long trip for work, giving some decent advice, or raising someone's child (canon). they've got a lot of time--way more than the humans around them--so they like to do something proactive with it!!!

again im kissing u a million times for inquiring bc the only people i get to talk to this much about jax is my partner and my therapist lmao. theres a ton ive left out, im sure, but they're just so cool and i love them.

*nepherits carry over consistent physical traits, and jax makes it p easy to spot them bc they got one style they really like and stick to it lmaoo. this is them from an earlier body. same hair fluff; same classic nepherit hair, eye, and skin color; and those classic colors babey lets go

** this is the little drawing of them and their elf friend, Syvis, they found in their journal, also from another body. she's such a queen and i adore her endlessly. i need more drawings of her bc shes beautiful, this doesn't do her justice at all.