Spicy commission for @psycrowe of Dimi and Knives <3 Thank you so SO much for your patience! :’O It was a pleasure drawing these two again! (full pic under the cut, since it contains b00bies)
“Wife” and “legion” are two words that ideologically do not mix. Period. However, when caesars guest began to make progress in furthering the legions goals, exceptions can be made. Who’s the lucky guy? The furry or the Mormon?
My courier Jolly as a legate wife. Originally I wanted to draw her in a palla, but then I just kinda took it in a different direction. If you squint her gun says “legio patria nostra” or The Legion is our fatherland.
Not every villain, not every time, and certainly not to everyone at once, but there should be moments. We should, occasionally, be able to see ourselves in the bad guys, be able to understand how they got there.
Becauseit reminds us not to fucking go there.
Antis who get upset about villains having relatable qualities (often couched as being “romanticized” or “woobified”) are people who cannot bear to ever think of themselves as having the capability of being wrong.
Every human alive is capable of being a horrible person. Relatable villains remind us to keep an eye on that shit.
This is literally half of what makes me write Vulpes and Joshua so much. It’s delightful to make them into people instead of just generic “bad guys.” I want you to love them, hate them, love hating them, and hate loving them.
There’s something somehow odd, and downright difficult, about writing Vulpes in a domestic setting.
Istruggled with this chapter. Not only was there the “oh lord these introductions are taking forever, part 5 is gonna be a mile long,” but on top of that… I’ve written a huge number of scenes ahead that have more of a “this is a family” feel to them (super spoilery so I won’t get into detail). But writing him with his wife? His kids? It’s weird.
Writing the scene with Calista, Vulpes, Spes, and Corvus was an absolute breeze. That chapter pretty much wrote itself. Spes’ voice needs a little tweaking, but that’s mostly my failed attempts at making her a little BAMF wastelander with a hint of a Mexican twist. I’ll get it right eventually.
That scene though was just… It’s the family he wants. A gorgeous wife that is both into him and severely independent all at once, a son who he can be proud of and who is also respectful to him, and now he’s finally got his daughter back and she’s this wild nostalgia trip in the weirdest way for him.
But now writing him sitting down to dinner with his actual family. Eugh. A wife that is batshit insane and incredibly clingy. A son who barely respects him, a son who is going to make an excellent Frumentarius but you can never figure out what he’s up to, and one who is pretty much outright timid by Legion standards and is more a lover than a fighter. Two well broken in slaves, but they are at minimum a decade older than him, and he barely needs even one himself. (Please read “needs” in the way HE is looking at things, thank you. You all know I don’t support this horseshit, right?)
It’s a lot of mouths to feed, a lot of back-talk, a lot of “get yourself together” in four different ways. And now two of them blatantly despise his prized daughter, one who the hell knows, and one is just “ooh traveling must be fun, I want to do that.” And his one slave who can talk is just bringing up all these dreadful memories of his first wife that he’s not mentally ready to face and probably never will be.
So while he has this dream family with Spes, he also has this real family with Lavinia and it is probably more frustrating to him to have that than to not have the one with Spes. So when he’s home he’s just simmering all the goddamn time, and now he feels obligated to be home to protect his daughter suddenly.
This man has a whole spare bedroom just so that he has a place to sleep if he doesn’t want to deal with his wife.
Poor dear is a MESS.
And then there’s Calista.
Calista is pretty much feeling like a moving target in a bad part of town. Ajax wants her gone, Lavinia probably wants her dead, Janus is a wildcard but she expects the worst, Lex is a weird kid but at least he seems kinda normal, Europa is seemingly contentedwith being a slave somehow, Petrus literally had his tongue cut out by someone and is still just running around being a middle-aged errand boy, Spes is a firecracker and telling her she needs to be in some man’s shadow or she’s never going to be safe, and Corvus clearly has some daddy issues and Cal’s got enough of those to cover the whole damn army.
So all through this her brain is just singing this little chorus of
Should I stay or should I go now? Should I stay or should I go now? If I go there will be trouble, And if I stay it will be double, So come on and let me know!
Poor dear is ALSO A MESS.
Does she stick it out and try to learn more about her biological father? Does she run back to Joshua at Dead Horse Point? Does she flee to New Vegas and hope Awkward Science Daddy can help her sort her shit out?
No idea. This has evolved from fight VS flight to outright freeze.
Now, freeze is one I can understand. I am a long-time sufferer of freeze. Shitty job? I CAN’T LEAVE, I WON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO. Shit living situation? I CAN’T LEAVE, WHERE WILL I EVEN GO? Shit abusive guy? I CAN’T LEAVE, IF I DON’T KEEP HIM HAPPY HE WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING. Hell I had all of that happen in the first six months of 2021 alone. So on the one hand, writing it in Cal is easy.
On the other hand, having her come to decisions? Even though I already know what she’s going to do, it’s actually much harder to write her taking action than I anticipated. She needs this struggle though, to overcome it and start to become her own person here and not let everyone just keep jostling her around like a package no one wants to open.
On a final note, I just want you all to know that the “Janus Inquisition” line was totally accidental but I love it and now I just keep repeating NOBODY EXPECTS THE JANUS INQUISITION over and over in my head and it’s making me uncontrollably giggly.
