Finally Got Around To Drawing Him

some ishquegs i commissioned from @ekary!!!!! MWAH

heheheheh “beauty and the beast” romella doodle based on @darenk8p ‘s monster!romeo concept

stella’s dress is based off of @/darenk8p’s admin!stella design ☺️

T H A N K Y O U

Technoshipping doesn’t get enough love and here I will make my case on why it is a Good Ship

Loud and funny guy with lots of insecurities paired with the quiet and peculiar guy who ALSO has lots of insecurities???? Iconic

An engineer with a robot? Also iconic

Techno is a cute ship name

SOFT SOFT BOYS

They don’t interact enough in the show despite having a lot of potential for a really interesting dynamic, so it’s both fun and challenging to write them as boyfriends

THEY’RE BOTH SO SMART THEY’D MAKE SUCH A COOL POWER COUPLE

Zane making Jay pie

They’re both so akward it’d be incredibly amusing to watch them ask each other out

Their aesthetics go well together

There aren’t enough dang fics

TWO SCARED BOYS = ONE SCARED COUPLE = CUDDLING

It’s 4 am and I can’t think clearly but trust me it’s a cute ship

It doesn’t matter if you hc Zane as super tall and Jay as super short or vice versa, because in both cases the height difference is phenomenal

They both have soft hair and that’s canon

They can be scarf buddies

They’re totally a playful, mushy couple that just wants to be around each other and hang out all the time

Jay making Zane laugh is my entire aesthetic and it could be yours too

Too fluffy for you? You want angst? Well listen here, buddy. I’m too tired for that right now but one if these days I’m gonna write a fic and my intention will be to make you cry.

Jay definitely rollerblades and Zane definitely ice skates. What does this mean, you ask? 80s neon aesthetic and glittery wintercore aesthetic solidarity. They can combine their forces and take over the world.

Jay saying “OwO” to be funny over text, completely forgetting that his boyfriend can’t comprehend those types of jokes without being explicitly given context. This results in Zane using it frequently and it makes him too happy for Jay to make him stop.

Headcanon that Jay burns everything he makes. He’ll be making the food, it’s going fine, and then he burns it. Zane wants to support him so he turns off his taste sensors and eats it.

Picture this: Jay burns the food and he brings it out knowing full well it practically isn’t edible, but he thinks its kinda funny so he just wants to show his boyfriend like “lol idk how i even burned it this badly wanna just order chinese” but he gets cut off when he turns and sees Zane go completely dead in the eyes and take a huge, unflinching bite of the completely black food. Nobody speaks. Zane chews and swallows. Kai walks into the kitchen. He sees. He knows. He opens his mouth to say something. He walks back out. The incident is never spoken of again.

Lol jk nobody lets Zane live it down

JAY TREATING ECHO LIKE A LITTLE BROTHER-IN-LAW. LISTEN. LISTEN. AND DON’T FORGET ED AND EDNA WOULD ABSOLUTELY LOVE ZANE BECAUSE HE’S SO SWEET AND POLITE HNNFGGFF.

they're bffs!!!

(or maybe they're dating who knows......)

yeah so um. i may be mentally ill

p.s. all of my ishqueg kissing sketches look literally the same I'M SO SORRY I DID ALL OF THEM AT 3 AM

Mizu, femininity, and fallen sparrows

In my last post about Mizu and Akemi, I feel like I came across as overly critical of Mizu given that Mizu is a woman who - in her own words - has to live as a man in order to go down the path of revenge.

If she is ever discovered to be female by the wrong person, she will not only be unable to complete her quest, but there's a good chance that she'll be arrested or killed.

So it makes complete sense for Mizu to distance herself as much as possible from any behavior that she feels like would make someone question her sex.

I felt so indignant toward Mizu on my first couple watchthroughs for this moment. Why couldn't Mizu bribe the woman and her child's way into the city too? If Mizu is presenting as a man, couldn't she claim to be the woman's escort?

However, this moment makes things pretty clear. Mizu knows all too well the plight of women in her society. She knows it so well that she cannot risk ever finding herself back in their position again. She helps in what little way she can - without drawing attention to herself.

Mizu is not a hero and she is not one to make of herself a martyr - she will not set herself on fire to keep others warm. There's room to argue that Mizu shouldn't prioritize her quest over people's lives, but given the collateral damage Mizu can live with in almost every episode of season 1, Mizu is simply not operating under that kind of morality at this point. ("You don't know what I've done to reach you," Mizu tells Fowler.)

And while I still feel like Mizu has an obvious and established blind spot when it comes to Akemi because of their differences in station, such that Mizu's judgment of Akemi and actions in episode 5 are the result of prejudice rather than the result of Mizu's caution, I also want to establish that Mizu is just as caged as Akemi is, despite her technically having more freedom while living as a man.

Mizu can hide her mixed race identity some of the time, and she can hide her sex almost all of the time, but being able to operate outside of her society's strict rules for women does not mean she cannot see their plight.

It does not mean she doesn't hurt for them.

Back to Mizu and collateral damage, remember that sparrow?

While Mizu is breaking into Boss Hamata's manse, she gets startled by a bird and kills it on reflex. She then cradles it in her hands - much more tenderly than we've seen Mizu treat almost anything up to this point in the season:

She then puts it in its nest, with its unhatched eggs. Almost like she's trying to make the death look natural. Or like an accident.

You see where I'm going with this.

When Mizu kills Kinuyo, Mizu lingers in the moment, holding the body tenderly:

And btw a lot of stuff about this show hit me hard, but this remains the biggest gut punch of them all for me, Mizu holding that poor girl's body close, GOD

When Mizu arranges the "scene of the crime," Kinuyo's body is delicate, birdlike. And Mizu is so shaken afterward that she gets sloppy. She's horrified at this kill to the point that she can't bring herself to take another innocent life - the boy who rats her out.

MIZU'S ONE MOMENT OF SOFTNESS AND MERCY, COMING ON THE HEELS OF HER NEEDING TO KILL A GIRL TO SPARE HER THE WORST FATE THAT THIS RIGID SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER WOMEN, AND TO SPARE A BROTHEL FULL OF INNOCENT WOMEN WHO ARE THE CASTOFFS OF SOCIETY, NEARLY RESULTS IN ALL OF THEIR DEATHS

No wonder Mizu is as stoic and cold as she is.

And no wonder Mizu has no patience for Akemi whatsoever right before the terrible reveal and the fight breaks out:

Speaking of Akemi - guess who else is compared to a bird!

The plumage is more colorful, a bit flashier. But a bird is a bird.

And, uh

Yeah.

I like to think that Mizu killing the sparrow is not only foreshadowing for what she must do to Kinuyo, but is also a representation of the choice she makes on Akemi's behalf. She decides to cage the bird because she believes the bird is "better off." Better off caged than... dead.

But because Mizu doesn't know Akemi or her situation, she of course doesn't realize that the bird is fated to die if it is caged and sent back home.

Mizu is clearly not happy, or pleased, or satisfied by allowing Akemi to be dragged back to her father:

But softness and mercy haven't gotten Mizu anywhere good, recently.

There is so much tragedy layered into Mizu's character, and it includes the things she has to witness and the choices she makes - or believes she has to make - involving women, when she herself can skirt around a lot of what her society throws at women. Although, I do believe that it comes at the cost of a part of Mizu's soul.

After all, I'm gonna be haunted for the rest of this show by Mizu's very first prayer in episode 1:

"LET" her die. Because as Ringo points out, she doesn't "know how" to die.

Kind of like another bird in this show:

here's the rest of the gang just as promised

it is also my duty to draw something with mama bozo now

[i assure you, i can be trusted with firearms] so yeah. i played deponia. rufus is a little fucker

have you ever seen a woman so beautiful you started crying?

*stella voice* ladies

so this sounds really cool but... lego....

WHERE IS TANG