Doodle Of Them ❤️

Uh gay gay homosexual gay

2nd try at posting this since I forgo the most crucial Art step

More sketch book etharis! Ngl I totally forgot how his actual face looks, I’ve been doing a completely different interpretation for the last like five years 😔

Also he’s 100% daydreaming about runaan in the first doodle

First doodle from after season 7 that I didn’t post. I love Ethari so much, I have for the last five years, which is CRAZY to think about because he and runaan basically shaped my art style into what it is today.

Over those five years I build and re-built the reunion in my head, knowing that I could be getting my hopes up for nothing. tdp is a complex show with a tight time budget. Things have to be cut, and I was terrified the reunion was going to be one of them. And then we finally got it, and it was perfect

I nearly forgot abt their birthdays so I guess this is my joint contribution! Happy (late/early) birthday, twin jewels!

Funnily enough my birthday is also on the 30th, so let’s call this an early birthday present for myself, too.

reblogging because there is SO MUCH LORE in here and I live for reading tiny flavor text.

Thank you OP for giving me moonfam fanart ammunition

Here are all the Keepsakes and Accessories from the Moonshadow Forest region of The Dragon Prince: Xadia mobile game (recently removed by Netflix). #TheDragonPrince #playXadia

The highlights of my ruthari comic page thumbnails (ahahahahahaha you see, if I post them here that means I must finish the comic. I’ve entered a contract with god)

edit: comic is up here

ETHARI CHANGED HIS MOONSHADOW MARKINGS ON HIS ARMS???? FROM THE CIRCLES TO A SWIRL????

A) So does that mean they’re painted on?

B) if they are painted, does he change them because runaan isn’t there anymore to help him paint them??? Because like, an even circle is real difficult to draw on your shoulder without help.

C) in terms of character design, I will be interpreting this as him losing stability. His old design was perfectly symmetrical, whereas now he’s a little off kilter, literally spiraling with grief. To me, there’s a lot of meaning in his markings specifically, especially the ones under his eyes that look like permanent tear tracks 🫶

D) goddamn it now I have to relearn how to draw his markings

Ok I talked abt this a lil before in another post but THE RUTHARI DESIGN LANGUAGE

Ethari outwardly has changed, but that design reflects more of his grief, the passage of time, and his inability to let go of his husband. It’s also all external—his hair is longer, his Moonshadow markings are now asymmetric/unbalanced, his earrings are gay as hell and really show how he is not over his marriage at all. Most importantly, his armor/shoulder things. He looks prickly, closed off, and that’s exactly how he acts when he thinks runaan is a stranger, which is very un-Ethari.

On the other end, Runaan’s design is hugely the same as season one, with the only two changes being A) his weird ass cutout sleeve is missing on his right, and B) his horn. Unlike Ethari, runaan’s biggest character design change is losing a part of his actual body. Hair can grow, clothes can change, but Runaan’s horn is part of him. His being has been fundamentally altered in a small way, and he’s going to carry that change for ever. Both figuratively, with how he’s seen the true outcome of his assassin work, and literally.

Ethari has a design that communicates his relationship with runaan, he always has. In bloodmoon huntress, runaan calls Ethari his guiding light, but in reality I think it’s the other way around. Because Ethari is the most out of character without runaan. He ghosts Rayla out of grief, which is very out of character, because runaan is gone. But after two years, runaan still comes home to an Ethari who is grieving and hopeless, but not broken.

And after they reunite, Ethari returns to the same state we’ve seen him in for pretty much the entire show. And I get why. He’s a minor character, the plot doesn’t need him to have a paradigm shift like runaan, but I like to read into it as Ethari being the moonfam anchor. He’s the home they all come back to, he’s the warm hug they all need, he’s soft and he’s kind and he’s defined by his love for them. So when he loses his family, he loses himself. He’s and anchor with no ship. Runaan is his heart, without runaan, there is no point for there to be an Ethari, and it makes him lash out and ghost Rayla.

So. Here’s why I’m thinking about all this: Ethari making Runaan a prosthetic horn. Ethari, runaan’s anchor, helping him reforge this part of himself and shine truth onto the great lie of assassin-hood that runaan held so close to his persona. Runaan choosing to replace his belief in precision violence with his belief in love. Most importantly to me, Ethari confronting the lie he helped reinforce for runaan. Ethari seeing that he’s been making weapons to fuel the cycle of violence that in turn took his entire family and his heart from him. And Ethari and runaan deciding to help build the new world, Everkynd, where the lie and the cycle don’t have to dictate their lives.

A good couple of months ago, I rewatched the Ferdinand and Hubert FEW3H supports with the intent to re-imagine Ferdinand’s twin jewel speech as a comic—until when this first part of their A support totally derailed me. I realized that Hubert’s line here about how easily Ferdinand could kill him is:

A) actually hubert’s twisted way of saying “I trust you enough for you to kill me and get away with it”, and

B) totally angst in waiting because Ferdinand *does* kill Hubert in other routes, and Hubert’s line is such a funny wink wink to the player acknowledging that

So anyway, obviously I had to adapt that specific scene into a comic instead. I’ll probably do the twin jewels speech at some point, but rn I have another comic in the works for these two that’s not support related, so stay tuned I guess?