Hahaha, yes, Johnny did end up getting the haircut, he’d look like an actual mop by now (or at least Ted of ‘Bill and’ fame) if he hadn’t.   He does his own most of the time, so he mentioned it just sort as an out loud note to self, but there will be at least one haircut in the future that he doesn’t do himself, so it was why I had him mention that he needed one at all.   (Also I just really like that kind of thing? That they’re not cartoon characters stuck with the same hair all the time, and that these kids who are sort of supernatural still have to fight with their hair.  That charms me for some reason, and since my big thing this time around is enjoying livelier and more human Johnny, mentioning a haircut was this delightful mundane detail for me~)

Edgar assumes that Johnny’s sleep schedule is just massively fucked up from not adhering to set time for anything for years.  Also the head attack things he figures are sort of making things difficult.   When reSWAN started, Johnny wasn’t quite as averse to sleep as his canon counterpart, or even the original SWAN Johnny.  But he’ll soon get there, and that’s when Edgar will really start seeing things.  Right now, there are a lot of things that Johnny is refusing to talk about, and Edgar is going along with it for a variety of reasons, but eventually, it will hit a ridiculous point and Edgar can only cater to this weirdly specific ignorance for so long.

(They’re not that trivial, haha.  You’ll see stuff relating to them in the future, anyway!)

oh my god

You know, I don’t think anyone has ever asked me this before, or if they have, it’s been… many moons.

Things I have devoted fandom energy to (and still enjoy at press time) are, in no particular order: 

-Elim Garak and Julian Bashir and AU incarnations thereof (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

-The Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon (Doctor Who)

-The Fifth Doctor and Vislor Turlough (Doctor Who)

-The Eighth Doctor and Charley Pollard (Doctor Who Big Finish Audio)

-Reginald Jeeves and Bertie Wooster (the ‘Jeeves’ novels/Jeeves and Wooster)

-various iterations of Johnny C and Edgar Vargas (Johnny the Homicidal Maniac)

-Devi and Tenna (I Feel Sick)

-Marceline and Bubblegum (Adventure Time)

I’m sure I’m forgetting something.  I have some stuff that flares up if I see a thing again, (Fran/Balthier, Kimber/Stormer, Zoicite/Kunzite Detectives Goren and Eames??? So much random shit, I don’t even) and I have some things in Ye Olde Shipping Box from my massive anime time which are sort of 'Aww, I feel very fond seeing you! I still like you in an odd way!’ but the above things are things I’ve done fanart of within the last five years, and me drawing a thing is usually the way to tell I dig it.  

also have relationships among my original stuff that are my faves, but most of you guys don’t even know my original worlds and things, so that would an even more meaningless string of names, haha

At this precise moment, SWAN Johnny is my favorite thing to draw because I’ve been really excited about how much life I can get into him and the shape of his head is really kind of satisfying?? I think it’s maybe less that his head specifically is satisfying, but that I’m really pleased with how much more it’s been reading as derived from Jhonen’s original Johnny than any other time I’ve ever drawn him.   I also recently removed any rules I had imposed on him, so he’s very freeing.   He’s just getting me to do things I hadn’t before, so that’s been very motivating and inspiring and I’m drawing him nearly any chance I get because it all feels really exciting.  

In general, though, I love drawing my own character Banshee because there’s some similar freedom and exploration there.  I like exploring things with Banshee.  Non-sexual nudity is a big one.  Different media is another.  Non-passive injury or bleeding is another big one.  I could do Banshee for every one of these gore challenges, but I refused to do anything to her that will put her in the role of a victim.  If she’s cut and bleeding, it is implied that she has fucked someone else up too.  I never want her resigned or surrendering.  She’s always bleeding and challenging someone.  I like doing the black stuff seeping out of her face, but I always avoid it coming out of her eyes because I don’t want anyone to read it as crying.  I had a lot of personal rules for how I depict Banshee because she’s intensely personal to me and she carries things I can’t.

  One of the other things is that I like just letting Banshee’s facial expressions do what they want, with no consideration given to whether she’s still some kind of ‘attractive’ when she’s making them.   I’ve had some people think that drawings of Banshee were of a man when she’s making an unattractive facial expression (and isn’t with visible breasts), which I always find really interesting.   Banshee is definitely about expressing things for me, and not about how she looks.  There’s some weird conflict there because how the final image looks IS important because I’m making something that’s VISUAL, and it’s very 'round and round we goooo~’  (whoo eurovision reference)  

Hades, June and Yo-Yo are my other favorite original characters to draw.

The Second Doctor (Doctor Who) is also really great.  His face has such a massive amount of character.  I love drawing him so you can see youth and gleeful adventure as well as the age on his face.  He’s always just kind of adorable and he makes me smile as much when I draw him as he does when he’s on screen. 

I like drawing Garak and Bashir, but they tend to give me more difficulty than any of the above, so they’re slightly less fun, haha.   Though I love drawing DD9 Julian’s hair and DD9 Garak’s occasional ponytail~

Haha, no, I’m totally cool talking about that!   I talked about it probably a summer or two ago, which was the last time I think I painted Hades.  

Hades is from a world I made with a friend when I was nine/ten.  Honestly, it’s pretty fucked up already for something conjured by fifth graders, and I think it would have continued merrily in the vein of fucked up if I hadn’t veered violently into Sailor Moon (and general anime) territory around the same time that this story thing was starting out.   

My friend and I ended up getting ensnared by awful yaoi tropes and internalized misogyny and a whole bunch of other really toxic shit that ended up in our stories, because we didn’t really know any better.   Thus, a lot of the characters created during some of these periods were not developed a)well b)in a way that made sense c) at all d) some combo of the above.   The vast majority of our women were super meek and kind of pastel-y.  The men were a bit luckier, but not by much.  

The world was a fantasy/sci-fi world - elves and fairies, but also aliens and magically enhanced internet later on -  and that was great for me in junior high and even highschool.   It even worked for me in most of college.   But at some point recently, I was looking at the whole world of this story and trying to find someone like Banshee. 

It turned out I had one, but because of the above development problems, I had just legit not realized that I’d written a sociopathic character until I took a look at her with some distance between us.   So I was quick to sort of claim her for the slightly less cute because she is ridiculously dear to me.  This sort of thing happens when you have characters lying around for long enough that they’d be able to drive and vote if they were real.

Hades had always been darkish, as you’d assume, given his name, but recently, just drawing him looking a little weathered, with some of the dark around his eyes that I usually whip out for Banshee or Johnny, made him come alive and made him feel like the character I treasured so much again.

I do so much drawing just to connect with things and express them and for most of my life, that was done through the characters in this world.  Banshee was officially born in late 2005 or so, but didn’t really happen until 2008, so she’s fairly recent.   Hades comes from 1996. 

I was so frustrated with that world because it’d been part of me for so long that I wasn’t about to let it GO, but I couldn’t figure out how to find a way back into it because I thought there was no way any of the characters were going to provide the bloody outlets I seem to need anymore.  Turns out there’s plenty that’s fucked up (mostly thanks to the bloody cat demon woman I made when I was nine) and people I can change even just a little who will make the world feel more like me.   I can’t retro fit the whole world there to be a bloodbath, and I wouldn’t want to, because these people have an enormous amount of history behind them and I grew up with them being a massive part of my life.  I did want them to keep existing with me, though, and I was worried I’d grown to a certain place and they hadn’t and that’d I’d kind of lost touch with them. 

The girl I made the world with also sort of stopped talking to me when I pointed out some offensive stereotyping (and other shenangians) she was doing with a character she wanted to introduce, so the characters I adore hadn’t moved in a long time and they got kind of rusty.  I was worried without her, they’d just stop moving completely.  

I’m not sure the girl I made this stuff with would be jazzed about all the blood, but I sure as hell am.

And I think nine year old me would have really dug unsettling Hades and sociopath June.

good lord, i hope that’s mildly coherent