By Ed Himelblau

SHAPE HELL

Yup.

the funny thing about tgcf is that both xl and hc obviously think of themselves as the romanced femme in their ya novel dynamic. xl thinks he's the dainty maiden who gets romanced by the daring charming male lead. hc thinks he's the poor damsel who was saved by the wealthy but kind lord and spends the rest of her life pining after him.

both of them are 800 year old men who love fighting and beating people up. xl is a literal beefcake. they're still living their best femme lead lives.

Spin this wheel and tell me if you got something you need/want.

look at me I was super tired and irritated for several days and wanted to write the saltiest thing ever but I didn't because I try to be a good person!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111 tell me I'm cool and great.

ok no writing posts at 2 am again go to sleep you repetitive bitch

Shoutout to characters that are both genuinely deeply kind and also genuinely terrifying and willing to spill buckets worth of blood to get something done. And neither of these are an act, they're just both very true.

nie huaisang but make him fat

NIE HUAISANG DESIGN EVERYBODY GIVE IT UP FOR NIE HUAISANG

Some notes

He has the elaborate Nie braids and also he has the anime hair vent pieces in the front of his hair that are just completely down and in his face. All this fucking braiding and for what! Useless as a career

I saw the frilly sleeves in an animatic once and I fell in love immediately

You can't really see the one by his right eyebrow in either image but he has four moles/beauty marks on his face. Getting inauspicious with it.

I basically kept the face structure of his actor in CQL because that was a solid as fuck cast and I'm attached

Idk if you can tell but esp on the fullbody one I drew the body sketch out and then put the robe on and I did not in fact draw him particularly slight! And I'm quite happy with how the big vertical panels and frilly sleeves make him look like he is I think I'm cooking

i think an underused trope is Not Found Family: when a group of people go through something but they still don’t even like eachother