ANOTHER 5000 DOOMED RELATIONSHIPS FOR KAI LIU!!!! (and other such ponders)

Hello everyone! I’m starting a new thing I might do every now and then where I ramble about bewilthredverse things ive been pondering lately! I’m calling it the very original title of “Bewilthred Posting”. Essentially what I’m thinking is something inbetween a devlog and a braindump/infodump. I don’t really want to keep an official devlog for Bewilthredverse projects as a whole, id rather keep that to individual stuff (like what I did with training practice), but I’ve decided to make my website my digital paradise (something I’ll elaborate more on when I write my site manifesto someday, stay tuned!) so I want to treat it like a place I can just do whatever I please without fear or judgement! So this is me dipping my toes into that pool…Heh…

I will add this warning to all of these blog posts (if it continues), but NONE OF THIS IS SET TO STICK!!! and is not canon unless I say otherwise LOL. I can change things however I like!!! I used to (well honestly I still do) get scared of people getting mad at me if I start talking about an idea and go another way, and I’m trying to fight that fear by just letting myself do stuff without being attached to it. Stuff’s always subject to change! It’s more fun that way after all. Just cause I let you observe my metaphorical silly circling around my room doesn’t mean you get to determine what my limits are. Let’s all just have fun in the Pondering circle shall we…

KAI AND HIS TERRIBLE NO GOOD VERY BAD RELATIONSHIPS

SO! What is this even centered around? What is cooking in Blanki’s silly little mind??? WELL! Long story short, I’m pondering redesigning Kai’s old friend group and re-doing their dynamics. The original group were essentially just brought together from other designs I had acquired from other people on Toyhouse, and initially they weren’t planned to be anything more than extras, but considering how much I’ve been fixating on Kai and his INTERPERSONAL ISSUES!!! It makes sense to want them more fleshed out and have something more Interesting for me to write about! After all, how ELSE will I extrapolate that delectable ANGST!!!! And you know friend divorce is my favorite thing to write LOL.

I’ve hopped back and forth on a few ideas on how to conceptualize Kai’s previous friendships. I’ll put a concept I had below from my ibis gallery. It’s not the most fleshed out thing in the world but it was just me Pondering mostly.

The main idea I kept coming back to was having a center figure that Kai had some sort of strong attachment to and was the “leader” of the respective friend group Kai was always desperately trying to feel apart of. I also Really wanted to project a lot of the pain of being a neurodivergent kid and being treated differently for well, being neurodivergent. A lot of Kai’s character is rooted in that sort of conflict, and is reflected based on my own experiences with dealing with ableism in real life. The sort of friendship dynamic where people keep you less as a friend and more as a pet that makes them laugh sometimes is unfortunately something very intrinsically tied to being autistic (at least in my experience). Your stims, ways of speaking, your humor, the way you react to sensory input, hell even your baseline of intelligence is judged with such scrutiny by others that you’re either a walking punchline at best or an active inconvenience at worst. But it’s totally not ableist guys. Totally not. We like you despite that!!!! Yeah. That’s a normal comment to say, especially to a developing mind. Totally not fucked at all.

However, a key part I kept coming back to was what type of relationship I wanted this connection to be. Should it be purely platonic? Or could I even make it a little more interesting with some implied romance…? Weird thing about me is that for a long time, I really didn’t like having previous romantic relationships for any of my characters. Almost all of my OC’s relationships were their first romantic ones, and I believe part of that was rooted in my own experience of never really getting romantic love, until well I was in a relationship LOL. This may be shocking to hear, but you get a lot better at writing stuff you do! Including romance! WOW! Who’da thunk! Since my first relationship, I obviously have much more experience and feel more comfortable exploring more complex topics like that, so I’ve been ruminating on various Messy Situationships that Kai could land himself in. I fear it’s a canon event as a queer teenager to have At Least One if not romantic, at least platonic relationship that feels like a cataclysmic divorce. I Love making my creatures suffer ok? It’s part of the Blanki style at this point. What is a Bewilthredverse if not an elaborate excuse to write 50000 doomed relationships that (hopefully) end with some sort of reconciliation.

This moves me to the main individual I’m making the host of Kai’s issues right! I’v named them Lex currently, and they were redesigned from a bat girl named Lana into…a bat boy LOL. Honestly it’s not really much of a redesign as much as it is just reusing the profile. The optics of it are a bit funny though. Congrats on the transition, king! But yeah, as I was looking for pointers on how to flesh out their personality, I actually ended up rewatching Season 3 Ep 6 of Tuca and Bertie (a show I really should do a full rewatch of someday) and Muriel in that episode is similar to what I’m envisioning for Lex. An alternative bad boy with vulnerability issues? That sounds like the PERFECT way to torture my blorbo!!!!!! I must go right ahead with this…

Below will be some doodles of The Fuck. You’ve probably seen him in my latest art widget :3 he’s a little freak! I might change some of his color pallete but for now it works. I also haven’t really gotten his snout down yet to like how I drew it in the ref. I’ve lowkey been loving drawing unconventional headshapes lately. I gave Sirena this freaky ass snout shape too. He’s like a fucked up little borzoi…my thing!!!

Talking about the rest of the friend group, I’m still very undecided on how I’m gonna go about the rest of them honestly. One of my initial ideas ended up being too similar to another creators and I don’t want to accidentally plagarize LOL. I have bounced back on some ideas though, like maybe making them sort of mirrors to the WOP but like. Evil. As a great Mulaney once said…13 year olds are the MEANEST people in the world. Except 13 year olds in this case are 18-19 year old Armonian kids lol. I also thought about maybe having them have some references to the designs of the band Victory featured as main characters to Madeon’s Victory Live (which you should read my blog post about wink wink) but yeah. I’m unsure! I do know for sure I’m probably gonna keep Cali’s design semi-similar, as I do like it a bit and they had the most unique characterization out of everyone. I do want more species variety in the friend group though, they’re like, almost all furries except Cali, which isn’t bad but I wanna push myself more!

but YEAH! That’s the end of this initial, very rambly first post. I don’t know if I’ll make more, but if I do I hope you enjoy! Bewilthred forever….I’m Blanki Bewilthredton. Collect my symbols