His name is Bert ☺️🦖

I've been asked a few times now, if these kinds of illustrations are traditional or digital. it's both <: The inks are traditional, made with 03 or 05 micron pen.

Then I take it to Clip Studio. Paint-bucket and basic brushes are used for big blocks of color and some preliminary details.

Brushes: Dense Watercolor, Transparent Watercolor, India Ink Darker Bleed, Bit Husky, G-pen, Milli Pen, Cross hatching texture brush. Blend: Running Color On Fiber

Somewhere in there, I'll pick up a free-to-use watercolor texture and set it on overlay, to see how it meshes with the values I already sketched in. I'll finish up the rest of the smaller details/values with the same above brushes. And voila.

Hope that's helpful <:

Hello :D

You're so cool

Anyway have you thought that in your rat sons au Splinter might outlive the boys?

You're very cool :D love your stuff dude

(tw for some blood, light gore, implied overdose (kinda??))

hi copper!!! this is a fantastic question!

so obviously typical irl rats have far shorter lifespans than the average irl tortoise. according to google (yes, be awed by my spectacularly in-depth wealth of research) the average pet rat lives between 2-4 years ish, and the oldest on record lived to be about 7. meanwhile, an African spurred tortoise (Splinter's species) averages more around a 50ish year lifespan in captivity, tho is suspected to possibly exceed 75 or more in the wild.

Now, the mutation does give us a lot of wiggle room for playing with these numbers. For the rat sons boys, id say their natural lifespan probably clocks in at about 45-55 years old? definitely not old by human standards, but not young young either. (though, its also important to note that the boys were exposed to the mutagen just days after being born.)

For Splinter, meanwhile, aging is slightly more complicated. He lived the vast majority of his life as a regular normal African spurred tortoise (well, non-mutated at least. there were perhaps some shenanigans of a more mystical variety going on before he was mutated, but thats a separate matter) He was about 70ish i think? when the boys were born and they were all exposed to the mutagen. so he is already distinctly an old man turtle papa. id guess he'd probably still have another eh lets say 25-30 years after his mutation. he could probably push it a little farther even with some mystic nonsense, but when push comes to shove id say his 'natural' post-mutation lifespan would put his death like a solid decade or two before his sons.

of course, the tricky part of the matter is that theres no way for Splinter to know any of this. theres no way for him to know how the mutation affected them all, or if it even affected them all in the same way. especially since the boys dont show many physical signs of mutation for the first few years, and just kinda look like normal rats, (albeit with a more human sort of intelligence) — what sort of health standard do you hold them to? what if they simply dont show external signs of sickness or old age anymore? how do you actually know if something is wrong?

for a while there Splinter is very worried that one of his babies will just essentially reach the end of their normal rat lifespan, fall and not get up again.

so mostly, he just tries to live in the moment, enjoying whatever time he does have with his little ones, taking each day as a gift <3

still,

that fear

never

really

goes

away.....

“It seems I was the one who didn’t read between the lines.”

Take the deal, Luigi!! You can do it!!!

*Luigi has already collected himself!

Ball hurling towards him, the plumber stands determined, readied with a clear mind.

*A direct hit! Good job!

Thanks to a clear head, though nervous, Luigi delivered a sturdy direct hit, sending the ball flying back into the air.

Seeing the Koopa readying another throw, Luigi quickly shook it off and readied himself once more for the onslaught of attacks that awaited him.

Ball after ball, the plumber successfully sent the balls flying, avoiding harsh injuries from the explosions that followed.

After all was said and done, the koopa sat astonished by his easy success.

"I guess a deal's a deal, huh?" Lemmy said "Here, here, I'll get those offa ya..."

With that, the Koopa unlocked the cuffs with a small key...

*Congratulations! Luigi has been unhandcuffed!

Chuckling awkwardly, Luigi took off his gloves and rubbed at the chafing skin on his wrists.

"...wuhoh..." Lemmy mumbled to himself.

"E-Eh? Who's this now?!" Luigi said, a panicked response to Lemmy's reaction.

*Dimentio is now open for asks!

he forgor

GIL / MOR / ISM

Okay, I did the 16 personalities test after YEARS and I’m not too surprised by getting INFP-T as a result, but I am surprised by how they’re all the extremities and like nothing from the middle ground. Guess I’m just all or nothing type of person big time 🤷🏻‍♂️

But like why, or more likely how? I’m baffled.

This is super interesting, though. Makes me reflect, like, a lot. I’m glad I did this despite all the confusion

More under the cut if anyone is interested in a deeper analysis bc I don’t want to gatekeep

i love reading things set in countries that i'm knowledgeable and/or have been to because i can point out really minor errors in fanfiction. i think the average american does not know that in england (and apparently some of asia! which i only just found out) there are switches on power outlets so you can just turn it off instead of unplugging it. like 9 times out of 10 that won't come up but on the off chance it does i'm like ohoho. this clown has never been to england...! my favorite part though is watching americans (specifically americans because i swear to god people who speak english as a second language and/or are from any other country have some idea of what it's like to have an accent / personally know people who have accents? idk) try to write british accents like it is REALLY funny. i literally only lived their for five years and i never picked up a full accent myself (certain words and tones i did but they're mostly gone after living in the states again for a few years) but between living there and having a ridiculous amount of family there & visiting them often (like once a year if im lucky) i like KNOW what british accents sound like. i think some americans genuinely dont even know theres more than one or two english accents i think some people think there's like posh english and chav english and nothing else. maybe scottish accent gets thrown in there if they remember the uk is not in fact just england. i would bet real money they've never heard a welsh accent. anyway my point is it's really funny watching people who don't know as much as i do write this stuff. like i see it and i understand how doctors read this and go Oh that is so medically inaccurate. i get them now. anyway i dont remember what my point here was but please know if you are attempting to write a british accent. reddit and youtube are your best friends if you don't have a british friend you can ask and also rest assured even if you do ONE google search. it will not be the worst attempt ive seen guaranteed

Curious about this, so I’m conducting a little anthropological study:

TAKE THE PLEASURE WITH THE PAIN

A LEVEL RESULTS DAY AND I DIDN’T FAIL AAAH

Heya! I saw that you are a Destiny lore expert, so I wanted to ask you something: do you think it's possible that Savathûn used Rasputin to shoot the Traveler?

We know that Savathûn somehow saved the Traveler during the Collapse and, as far as I know, nobody told us how yet, but I think it would explain a couple of things like the frozen Hive on Mars and why the Witness needed to gather information about the Collapse specifically from Mars

Now, I realize this sounds like a bit of a stretch and I'm pretty sure I'm missing some lore here (tbh, I still don't know if Rasputin shooting the Traveler is considered canon or not), but I wanted to ask if you think this theory can somehow stand or not

Hey! Thanks for asking :) It's a huge point of interest for me as it's a very unclear and contentious topic! But it's also very important for the lore going forward, with all the recent focus on new information about what happened during the Collapse.

First, to clear things, Rasputin shooting is not considered canon. As a matter of fact, most people consider it a crackpot theory that has been disproven many years ago. For context, this was a very popular theory that got used and abused to prove either that the Traveler is evil (because it wanted to leave) or that Rasputin is evil (because he shot) or that both of them are evil. The theory was incredibly annoying, especially when we didn't have enough information so it ended up being labelled as crackpot.

However, I disagree. The theory was "disproven" before Y3 od Destiny (Shadowkeep release). Shadowkeep, its associated seasons and everything released since has been filled with information that seems to be indicating otherwise. Not to mention that a lot of the new stuff is reframing our understanding of the Collapse and we are probably going to be getting a lot more information about it soon. My post discussing newer information about the possibility that Rasputin shot is here. I wrote it before Witch Queen so there's nothing about the newest info of Savathun being there, but it still mentions many details that seem to indicate that Rasputin may have shot after all.

Now we know that Savathun was involved. We don't know the full details because she didn't want to share them. The best info about her involvement with the Collapse comes from her worm, in Of Queens and Worms quest. This is all we know:

Savathûn’s Worm: Always violent. Fine. Have information. But only this. No more. Ever. Truth you seek. Humanity’s Collapse. Even the Witness deceived. The Witch Queen did its bidding. Earned its trust. Rode alongside to apocalypse. Watched many burn. But the Witness turned a violent gaze to Traveler. Witch Queen projected lies. Clever deceptions wrapped in shadow. Tides turned. Witness sent away, back amongst the stars. Ghost: Are you saying Savathûn deceived the Witness? Is she the reason humanity survived? Savathûn’s Worm: Not the reason. A reason. Not for humanity, but for Traveler. My promise, delivered. Will say no more. Ever.

Savathun deceived the Witness, projected lies and deceptions. This helped turn the tides and the Witness was "sent away." Ghost asks for clarification and the worm says that Savathun's trickery was not THE reason, but one of the reasons why we survived. So Savathun was involved, but she wasn't the only reason we survived. Her trickery helped, but there were other factors like Traveler's own actions and, possibly, Rasputin.

We have no clue what was the nature of this deception Savathun pulled on the Witness. Some theories:

Savathun projected a lie about the Traveler being defeated already which made the Witness leave (this would make most sense given that the Pyramid fleet remained completely dormant outside of the galaxy until the Traveler woke up at the end of the Red War. The Fleet must've thought the Traveler is dead and therefore had no reason to come back until it became clear that the Traveler is still alive).

Savathun tricked the Witness into leaving before the job was done by pretending she will do it herself. This may have involved Nezarec because we now know that he was the disciple assigned to our system and that he led the first wave of attacks on Earth, but he is also known as a "traitor" (to the Witness?) and as someone who commited a sin (to the Witness?). Savathun may have tricked both the Witness and Nezarec into believing that she will finish the job, but then betrayed them and also left Nezarec hanging which led to his death.

There's other theories and possibilities too. It's impossible to tell right now. Both Savathun and her worm were vague, and every other character that can tell us more is indisposed (Rasputin, Nezarec), our enemy (Nezarec, Witness) or we aren't aware of them yet (Neomuna).

However, Rasputin is known to have fought in the Collapse. He was very active and fought relentlessly against the Pyramid Fleet, though none of his attacks worked. He had a protocol ready for the event of the Traveler leaving: shoot it so it would be forced to react. That was the final desperate plan in case everything else failed (which it did).

Is Savathun aware of Rasputin? Was she aware of him back then? Could she have used him? I don't think she would've personally risked damaging the Traveler, since her only goal was to keep it alive, no matter the cost. So Savathun using Rasputin to shoot wouldn't fit her line of work, at least in my opinion. We don't really know and she may have been desperate enough to use Rasputin or just trick him into thinking he's working with an ally.

As you said, the Hive were in our system already around that time. They were on the Moon because the K1 research team scientists mention Hive tunnels and those huge bones in the Hellmouth. Nokris and Xol were also already active at the time of the late Golden Age and the Collapse. The lore on this is from last year's Festival of the Lost (a little bit goofy because it's lore of a Techeun telling Glint stuff during his investigation about "the headless ones"):

"Bray used the tools of the Vex, while Hive blasphemers practiced the magical art of necromancy." Her tone darkened. "Both succeeded, after a fashion."

"The early Hive experiments were done in secret, under the guidance of a powerful Wizard, whose name we'll not mention here."

"Nokris," Glint offered.

However, Nokris and Xol ended up being frozen on Mars until the end of the Red War, when the Traveler's awakening unfroze them. For the record, Nokris and Xol and their Hive were frozen on Mars due to Rasputin. He couldn't fight them so he used a protocol called "Siberian Entropy" to freeze that area of Mars, including his own bunkers and facilities:

"Rasputin activated protocol Siberian Entropy for a long term plan. Did I happen to find him on my own?"

So Rasputin definitely had altercations with the Hive, but it's unclear if he ever interacted with Savathun, knowingly or unknowningly.

Is it possible that Savathun's plan to save the Traveler involved Rasputin? Seems to be. Is it likely she used him? I don't think so, mostly because that's not her way of doing things (she doesn't brute force things; shooting seems more like a Rasputin-only action) and her plan seemed to have been mostly around tricking the Witness. However, if Rasputin did shoot, Savathun could've used the Traveler being damaged to convince the Witness that the Traveler been dealt with.

In my analysis of the new stuff in regards to whether or not Rasputin shot, I mentioned that we know the Traveler was being somehow affected by Darkness during the Collapse. I made a suggestion that the Traveler was being pulled by Darkness' gravity powers, since the Traveler does mention being "pulled":

You want to run, but you are pulled in all directions by opposite and equal forces that hold you perfectly still.

I also made a suggestion that perhaps the Darkness began overtaking the Traveler and the Traveler positioned itself in a way for Rasputin to shoot the part of it that was being corrupted; this would explain why there's a huge chunk of the Traveler missing and why it was blown away by some incredibly powerful force that propelled it possibly thousands of miles away (the Shard of the Traveler in EDZ: the only thing we know about the Shard is that it happened during the Collapse). Darkness doesn't use conventional weapons, neither does the Traveler and neither does Savathun. The only one shooting nukes around the planet was Rasputin.

This could also now be explained with Savathun. Maybe it wasn't the Darkness corrupting the Traveler, maybe it was Savathun's webweaver wizards holding it in place, just like during WQ. Maybe she did that to take the Traveler away and Rasputin shot it because he didn't understand what was happening. Or Savathun did it on purpose to make him shoot so that the Traveler would be forced into a state of dormancy to trick the Witness.

It's unclear right now. I believe we'll get a full explanation once Rasputin returns and we will be able to put this debate to rest once and for all. I think there's reasonable evidence that he did shoot, but all of that evidence can be explained in other ways as well. We just need to find out what really happened. No matter what Rasputin tells us, it should be huge for our understanding of the Collapse, Savathun's involvement, Nezarec and the Lunar Pyramid and the Witness. Rasputin was there and he knows.

And if for some reason he doesn't remember (he was damaged pretty badly in Arrivals), we're still left with Neomuna in Lightfall. Neomuna should be aware of what was going on during the Collapse since they remained hidden and were able to observe from afar. And on the topic of Rasputin, he was the one that helped them stay hidden and even deleted their location from his own database in order to ensure their safety. He's intrinsically linked with Neomuna, the Collapse and our survival.

Ever since Shadowkeep, we've been getting crumbs of new information and lore on the Collapse and what really happened. This has been increasing ever since then and WQ was huge with the reveal that Savathun was there and helped save the Traveler and, by proxy, humanity. But this story isn't over and we still need a lot more information to fully understand what happened. Rasputin waking up has to be a huge source of this information, and so does Neomuna. Probably Savathun as well when she is rezed again, and it's likely that when we assemble all relics of Nezarec, he might drop us some hint or two. And of course, I feel like the Witness will have things to say as well.

I fully believe next season will feature Rasputin up and operational in his new Exo body so he can give us information on his previous fights against the Black Fleet, the Collapse and information on Neomuna. Hopefully he will be able to shed more light on what happened, his perception of the Collapse and possibly, if he was able to identify Savathun's interference, more about what exactly she chose to do. I believe it's possible that Savathun used everything at her disposal to trick the Witness, even if that meant counting on Rasputin to follow his protocols.

OKAY SO I'M GONNA GO AHEAD AND SHARE SOME DRAKEN HEADCANONS, mostly about his flaws since we didn't see that much in canon. under the cut for length. keep in mind that most of this is not actually implied in canon, just stuff i thought would be interesting and may end up scrapping/changing in the future.

in terms of actual canon moments that imply his flaws, i could only think of a few things: his initial fight with mikey over pah and how it got out of control, the moment after emma's death where he took everything out on mikey, and maybe (??) the fact that he didn't share his feelings/objections on toman's dissolution and accepted it while secretly being conflicted, too. i've tried to draw upon these moments when making stuff up, but if anyone has any different ideas to mine based upon these moments for flaws draken might have, PLEASE SHARE THEM WITH ME I WOULD LOVE YOU AND MARRY YOU INSTANTLY AFHJSDK

anyway. so i thought one flaw of draken's that'd be interesting is also a strength of his - his strong moral compass and high expectations of others. this is also a good thing for obvious reasons, but in contrast means that he expects people to react to trauma in the "right way" and thinks on some level that they have an obligation to do so.

now... it's actually more complicated than that. that's what he TELLS himself he believes, but in reality, when he finally acknowledges to himself that mikey has become a "bad person" (more on that later) - he can't abandon him. he decides to try and save him, going against his own principles which state he should be writing mikey off as a "lost cause", because mikey is ultimately more important to him than those principles.

however... i do think those high expectations caused issues in a different kind of way. specifically, while he subconsciously noticed mikey's pain and his "darker side" even before the kanto incident occurred, he somewhat denied the full extent of it because he didn't want to have to face that conflict between his principles and his love of mikey. maybe he was afraid of what the end result would be. it's kind of like... on some level, he didn't want to lose that "perfect" image he had of mikey, because then he'd be forced to either abandon his friend OR completely re-evaluate his worldview.

of course, it's not like he thought mikey was perfect. he was willing and able to call him out when needed, and noticed when he did things wrong, but kind of downplayed the seriousness of it to himself a little?? a lot of this is all subconscious, though. he TOLD himself the reason he didn't push harder about mikey's mental state is because mikey didn't want the help, or just needed support in the form of being treated like normal, or that he was healing on his own time. but deep down, it might've been because he feared that if he acknowledged what mikey was hiding, he'd end up abandoning him.

i guess in that way, his flaw is more "not wanting to acknowledge his own feelings" than "high expectations of others." they're both an issue to an extent, but for the latter, when it comes into conflict with his care for his friends, the latter ultimately wins out.

i also want to compare him to the others in toman a bit and my headcanons for them... so. baji i think was another character who noticed what was up with mikey and didn't push, but for him i think it was less not wanting to acknowledge his own feelings on it, but more that he felt he didn't have the right to interfere after what happened with shinichiro. mitsuya... probably didn't notice as much as draken or mikey, and might even have handled things better then them if he had - but by the time he did notice mikey's darkness, mikey already seemed too far gone. pah didn't notice because he's not the smartest, but if he did he would've talked to mikey about it because he's BEST BOY OKAY LISTEN I'M RIGHT!! #pahbestboy

but back to draken. some unrelated to the whole mikey fiasco flaws are generally his tendency to keep his feelings to himself. not telling emma how he felt, for instance - he tends to assume people just "know" how he feels already. also, he tends to keep in his more negative feelings/feelings he thinks he shouldn't have, and that leads to them spilling over when they become too much (see him @ mikey after emma's death.)

finally, i do think draken did on a small level rely on mikey to an extent. he saw him as a "strong leader" and didn't want to lose that image of him... but that's not really a huge thing for him in comparison to his other reasoning for not pushing with mikey, if that makes sense?? like he still considered mikey more important than that.