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Kwillow

@kwillow.bsky.social

I draw my characters being weird little jerks whenever possible. Please point and laugh at them. ✨ https://kwillow.tumblr.com/ ✨ https://chocodile.net/amaranthine/

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Kwillow@kwillow.bsky.social · 2mo ago

In his grief, Theo's words are faltering, and his grasp on reality is somewhat unstable, but his convictions are neither. He will never give up on Mother. He simply can't.

Short comic drawn in response to a tumblr ask: "is there anything that would make you give up trying to bring back mother dearest? Or would you die trying?" The comic has a chilly blue-gray color scheme. and depicts an anthro rat character. He is small, pudgy, and dressed in old-fashioned winter clothes. In the first panel, he sits in a forst of bare-branched aspen trees. Snow falls around him as he breathes foggy air into his gloved palm, watching as the fog breaks around his fingers. His brow is tense and his eyes wide as he says: "there is no giving up. There is no other choice. For me to go on without her--it is as if, ah, as if this fog lingered on the winter air without my breath to form it. As if my shadow still clung to the earth even after the light that cast it went dark. D-do you understand? That I live while she does not is an antinomy." The second panel pulls back, looking at him from above to reveal that he is leaning against one of the graves in a quiet snowbound graveyard. The shape of the grave casts a long shadow over his body in the shape of a coffin. He looks up at the sky, clutching himself as he continues: "my lungs draw breath, my heart beats, but I am no less a corpse than she. If her chance at life costs the rest of mine--it will have cost nothing at all."
Kwillow@kwillow.bsky.social · 2mo ago

In his grief, Theo's words are faltering, and his grasp on reality is somewhat unstable, but his convictions are neither. He will never give up on Mother. He simply can't.

Short comic drawn in response to a tumblr ask: "is there anything that would make you give up trying to bring back mother dearest? Or would you die trying?" The comic has a chilly blue-gray color scheme. and depicts an anthro rat character. He is small, pudgy, and dressed in old-fashioned winter clothes. In the first panel, he sits in a forst of bare-branched aspen trees. Snow falls around him as he breathes foggy air into his gloved palm, watching as the fog breaks around his fingers. His brow is tense and his eyes wide as he says: "there is no giving up. There is no other choice. For me to go on without her--it is as if, ah, as if this fog lingered on the winter air without my breath to form it. As if my shadow still clung to the earth even after the light that cast it went dark. D-do you understand? That I live while she does not is an antinomy." The second panel pulls back, looking at him from above to reveal that he is leaning against one of the graves in a quiet snowbound graveyard. The shape of the grave casts a long shadow over his body in the shape of a coffin. He looks up at the sky, clutching himself as he continues: "my lungs draw breath, my heart beats, but I am no less a corpse than she. If her chance at life costs the rest of mine--it will have cost nothing at all."
Kwillow@kwillow.bsky.social · last yr.

AN OBSESSION 🐀 (1/2) A comic in which Theo talks about his "studies," the purpose of which he is vague about, since it's a bit of a faux pas to drop "these days I've been conducting horrific necro-arcane experiments on bits of corpses -- what have you been up to lately?" into polite conversation.

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Kwillow@kwillow.bsky.social · last yr.

AN OBSESSION 🐀 (2/2) Of course, it all comes back (inevitably, inexorably) to Theo being the world's most fervent mommy's boy. He needs her. Death can't have her. ...Any chance at a content, relatively normal life for him really was over when he could no longer enjoy playing with his trains.

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Kwillow@kwillow.bsky.social · 3mo ago

His dad procreating with side pieces is something that Theo wouldn't have considered. He forgets that babies can be born out of wedlock. (If reminded, he'd find it so unfair that his perfidous father might've spawned a higher quantity (maybe even quality) of descendants than his perfect mother.)

An ask message from tumblr with a cartoon drawing made in response. The message reads: "Theo, think you got any half-siblings out there?" Theo, a small, chubby anthro rat dressed in an old-fashioned suit and bowtie, replies: "Oh hell." He pauses, staring into the middle distance, gripping the side of his face with a gloved hand. After a pause, he continues: "I dearly hope that I don't. It is appalling enough that my father afflicted even ONE woman with carrying his lowly spawn."
Kwillow@kwillow.bsky.social · 3mo ago

He'd have very different feelings about this mythical beast known as "consequences" depending on when in his timeline he's asked - so here's a few Ambroyses across the years.

Short comic drawn in response to a tumblr ask, which questions the character Ambroys about his inability to consider consequences, wondering if this is a side-effect of his mortality. The first panel is labeled "~20 years old." It has a pink color-scheme. A young, foppish unicorn man reclines on some pillows, waving his hand dismissively at the questions. At first, he does an unflattering mimicry of the question: "There are consequences to your actions, blablablah" before saying "Oh, please. You're boring me. I hear enough of this crap from Papa." The next panel is his at ~30 years old. It has a sickly green palette. The same unicorn hunches, dressed only in a loosely tied robe which falls off his body. His hair is disheveled and his eyes are wild and ringed with dark eye bags. He has bandages on both his arms. He snarls: "Or maybe I AM playing the long game and you just don't get it 'cause of YOUR stupid little lifespan! Maybe one day I'll be right where I wanna be, and you'll be fucking DEAD!" In a weak afterthought, he adds "you... you think about that." The last panel is labeled "~300 years old" and has a golden palette. The background is of churchlike stained glass. The same character is present, dressed richly in a priestly garment, visibly aged from his younger appearance, with streaks of silver and white in his long gold hair. With a weary grimace, he says: "Oh, I'd argue that immortality makes one far LESS impulsive. When you know you have an endless wealth of years, you can afford to wait... but a rash move can have you paying the price for a long... long... time."
Kwillow@kwillow.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Theo on the "power imbalance" between Hyden and he. (Can't have a savior complex about a person who doesn't need saving!) Hyden IS manipulating Theo, but he's leading Theo with a rope that Theo handed to him, and Theo wouldn't have given him that rope if Hyden had appeared strong enough to yank it.

A short comic drawn in response to a tumblr ask. The ask wonders about Theo's relationship to a man named Hyden. Theo helps him with his daily duties, including dressing him and possibly bathing him, while Theo receives nothing in return. The asker states there is a power imbalance between the two men, and asks if Theo ever worries about Hyden's power. The first panel shows an anthro rat man dressed in a suit. He sneers and says: "I will tell you what I told Hy--his Grace: I am not bathing anyone. Indeed, despite your pothering, I do not perform any courtesy unless I wish it. ...Do you believe that Duke Hyden is forcing me to assist him? By what means?" In the next panel, a anthro rabbit (much larger than the rat) struggles to walk, while the rat looks concerned. A monologue continues over the panel: "Certainly not by strength. As you say, the man is feeble, sickly, slow. His legs are nearly double the length of mine, yet I am the one that must shorten my steps to allow him to keep pace. Without my ministering, his vigor would decline even further." Next panel: the rabbit leans over the rat, gazing in wonder at flames he's conjured. "Not by spellwork. He is as harmless as a master marksman who has lost his sight. He was once the deadliest mage the world had ever known, but now he cannot conjure even a spark. Not without my help." In the next panel, the rat is clad in a coronet and royal cape, which he drapes over the rabbit. "Not by sovereignty. In this age, I am nobility, a man of status, and he is no one, a man stripped of his power, his prestige, even his personhood. I alone respect his title. I alone am his ally in a world that despies him-no,worse than that-a world that does not even know he lives." In the last panel, the rat looks askance at the viewer, a mix between a smirk and a snarl on his face. "So, you say there is an 'imbalance of power' between Duke Hyden and I. I say you are correct... though you have attributed that power to the wrong man."
Kwillow@kwillow.bsky.social · 4mo ago

SINS OF THE SON (1/2) There is an infestation of rats in Northcrest manor. Which is the vermin and which is the exterminator depends on each one's point of view.

The first half of a comic, drawn in a monochrome cartoon style with heavy black hatching. In the first panel, an anthro rat man opens a heavy wooden door. The man is dressed in a ~1900s-era sack suit. He is surrounded by the light of the outside, but the inside of the manor is drenched in deep shadow. The door sits beneath an archway crowned with the emblem of a heraldic sheild and a baron's coronet. In the second panel, the man ascends a flight of stairs. He uses a mote of light he has conjured from his palm to illuminate his surroundings: peeling wallpaper, dusty old painting, cobwebs. He's in a grand old manor, but a very neglected one. In the shadows, below his line of sight, there is another figure hidden in the shadows. His silhouette is that of another rat man, though rather than walking up the stairs he crouches and crawls, more animalistic, the lens of his glasses flashing like a predator's eyes in the dark. One can barely make out the fire poker in his hand. In the final pinal, the first rat man has drawn back the curtain of a bed. His expression is one of horror; despite being indoors, his breath gives off a chilly fog. He stares down at the silhouette; it looks like the figure of a woman at rest. Behind him, the glasses of his pursuer glint in the pitch darkness. Text boxes wind their way through all the panels, saying: "He knew he was not welcome. I had rid the manor of vermin before. Overthrown as patriach, he crept back as a thief, here to seize his 'entitlement;' my birthright. If he had not been stopped, he would have had me declared me. He would have taken my home away from me. He would have taken HER away from me."
Kwillow@kwillow.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Despite Theo really wishing he'd been born as an the same species as his mother instead of as a rat-person, an ermine-Theo would not look as elegant as he thinks he would look.

Drawing of an anthro character. This character is drawn as an ermine. He is white-furred, short, chubby, and dressed formally. He grimaces awkwardly, showing crooked fangs. He has a short, bushy tail with a black tip. In the upper corner of the image are three little doodles of the same character in a simplified feral form: one of him doing a weasel war dance, one of him with his mother (a much longer, elegant-looking ermine, and one of him perched on the back of a giant fat rabbit, gnawing on the bunny's ear in carnivorous glee. The bunny seems unbothered.)
Kwillow@kwillow.bsky.social · 5mo ago

At Ambroys' present-day multi-century age, some past screw-ups don't seem so bad anymore, maybe because he's successful now, or people who'd be mad at him are long dead, or he's lied about them so often he's replaced his memories with confabulations. Still, he has few mistakes that he winces over.

A two-panel sequence of an effete, maturely-aged anthro unicorn character speaking. He's dressed in fantastical priest robes and has a literal halo, so there's some religious nonsense going on here. At the top, there's a question from an anonymous follower: "Deep down, how much does Ambroys regret it all?" He answers, posing with his hands out like he's a metrosexual Jesus, his halo glowing radiantly: "What's to regret? Look at me. Admired, adored, worshipped, even. I've lived a wonderful life. True, I've suffered more than my share of tribulations... but if I had not suffered them, I may have become a different man, one who could not share his light with all of you. I would gladly endure each terrible wound of my past, now that I know the blood that I spilled would, one day, help flowers grow." In the second panel, he looks askance, a fidgeting finger pressed to his cheek. He says: "That said... there are a few little things here and there that could have been done... differently."
Kwillow@kwillow.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Theo: "When I hit myself with a hammer it makes me stronger and a better person because it is my awesome destiny to make myself suffer unnecessarily and on purpose" Jo's distant voice from beyond the veil: "NOT WHAT I MEANT"

First half a simple comic featuring anthro characters. At the top there is a screenshot of a tumblr message saying: "Theo: since your catalyst stone is bonded to your hand, it's right there on top of your muscles and tendons. Does that impact your dexterity? And isn't the hand an important means of casting magic?" The first panel, colored in fleshy reds and maroons, shows a small man's hand, with a cutaway revealing the muscles and tendons underneath his skin. A red stone, shaped like a teardrop, is embedded into the flesh. He says: "Hnk. I knew better than to damage muscle... though I could not avoid interference with the extensor tendons. At first, there was pain, a peculiar grinding sensation, though the nerves have since learned to cease their whining." In the second panel, the cutaway is gone, showing just the hand. Red, vein-like magical strings emanate from the stone, appearing to manipulate the man's fingers. He says: "At worst, the fingers of my left hand occasionally rebel, refusing my orders to straighten. Fortunately, the cause is also the cure for any incidents of digital noncompliance." The next panel has a gray-purple colorscheme, showing it takes place in the past. An ermine woman dressed in Victorian attire channels flowing streams of magic into a single beam of light using a wand. Above the image, the man's monologue continues: "Most mages do not rely solely on the hands for casting. It is more prudent to use a focus. Magic is a savage force. It will fight against its domination like a wild animal. Only the unwise offer it their hand instead of a leash. Mother favored a wand for taming her more tempestuous spells."The comic continues. The next panel shows the man in full, also in the gray-purple flashback color scheme. He's a short, chubby rat anthro in a three-piece suit. He is shrouded in darkness, whipping around the wand and peering over his shoulder like he's trying to find something in the dark. His present-day self monologues incessantly: "Alas, despite her tutelage, when I attempted to wield her wand, it served me little better than a stick. A blind man cannot see the glow of a fire, only feel its heat. My mother saw the light of magic, but I only sensed it through its burn. When the wand absorbed the familiar sting I felt when casting, I was lost, unable to descry what my mother, what all mages, perceived so keenly." The next panel is back to the present-day maroons and reds. The vein-like magic emanates (or is absorbed by) the stone in his hand, which he looks at with an expression of scornful analysis. "Hence, I am... obliged to cast with my hands. Magic heeds my commands only when I submit my flesh to its bite and refuse to flinch. Yes, it is true that the catalyst stone demands yet more sacrifice, greater endurance..." In the final panel, the man squeezes his hand into a fist, the magic energy bursting from between his fingers almost like the spraying innards of a squashed bug. His expression is a strange mixture of a smile and a grimace, his mouth pulled back taught to show his fangs and his eyes opened wide. He concludes: "...But pity my not. Despite my deficiencies, my mother was able to teach me much. When I struggled, she told me how 'suffering begets strength.' She knew then, as I know now, that our power must be the progeny of pain."