poster art by the indomitable qv

hello friends!!! i'm in the process of putting together pals for DEAD OR ALIVE, which is going to be a digital zine featuring wanted posters of ocs!!! the premise is super simple and flexible on purpose; design a wanted poster for whichever oc brings you joy and/or is a nasty terrible criminal, and we're going to compile them all into a digital zine free to download! the zine will be posted with a suggested donation link encouraging folks who enjoy it to donate to The Bail Project, which posts bail for low-income folks while also fighting against the structure of the u.s.'s "justice" system. we're hoping to do a small digital merch bundle as well—namely the blank versions of the wanted posters within, for those willing to contribute, but if you have other ideas for digital merch please let me know!!!—in exchange for donations.

the zine will be completely digital, but with an option for contributors to get a physical zine at the end at-cost—we'll manufacture some books and everyone who wants one will split the cost of doing so evenly, and you'll pay shipping from massachusetts in the u.s.. the books probably won't be more than like $10 a pop if EVEN, but shipping can get PRICEY internationally, so keep that in mind!!

but!!! you don't have to commit to that just yet!!!!! YOU just have to worry about GETTING IN THE ZINE!!!! i'm not doing a formal applications process due to the kind of casual nature of this. please just post some of your art here (or pm it to me) and i'll pm you with an invite to the discord we're organizing in!!!! that's it!!!!!!!!! you do NOT have to pick an oc right away; i just want some samples of your art.

particularly encouraged to apply include folks with non-basic-humanoid ocs (object heads, furries, monsters of all sorts, etc.)! also, because money is not exchanging hands in this zine unless you get a physical copy, this zine is open to minors who are comfortable being in a mixed-age space!

please consider sharing on twitter too!
and on tumblr!
and bumping the toyhouse thread!

hello everyone. i got extremely bored and assigned birthdays to literally all of my ocs. here is a list of all of their birthdays. my 2022 goal is to do a drawing (not necessarily a complete one, but at least a doodle) for each character for their birthday!!!

hopefully i will be able to find a calendar code i can use to spiffy this up instead of using just this big bulleted list lmao... if you've got a calendar code hmu

ANYWAY

January

2: Naja
12: Phoebe
     19 - Capricorn Season Ends
     20 - Aquarius Season Begins
27: Witch

February

2: Calamity
6: Mhambi
10: Cadence
14: Allegra
18: Madgherash
     18 - Aquarius Season Ends
     19 - Pisces Season Begins
29: Susie

March

10: Jess
17: Dhara
20: Su Fei
     20 - Pisces Season Ends
     21 - Aries Season Begins
21: Kaisa
22: Rue
26: Donner
31: Anemone

April

1: Lunetha
3: Elspeth
6: Daphne, Laurel
10: Madison
11: Emily
18: Solar Flare
     19 - Aries Season Ends
     20 - Taurus Season Begins
20: Sonnet
23: Roxanna
29: Nanala

May

1: Nasrin
2: Leticia
7: Noa
11: Lavana
15: Kabibe
     20 - Taurus Season Ends
     21 - Gemini Season begins
21: Khanysile
30: Bryony Blumenthal

June

5: Yona
7: Jasmine
12: Castor
     20 - Gemini Season Ends
     21 - Cancer Season Begins
21: Pannova

July

19: Arabella
     22 - Cancer Season Ends
     23 - Leo Season Begins
23: Lulu
31: Ilsa

August

2: Gwendoline
10: Oleander
11: Neil
16: Eloise
18: Latonya
     22 - Leo Season Ends
     23 - Virgo Season Begins

September

5: Genevivia
12: Flora
     22 - Virgo Season Ends
     23 - Libra Season Begins
24: Emotion
25: Angharad

October

3: Avalon
5: Iris
9: Pomona
13: Piper
18: Dinah
20: Thalia
     22 - Libra Season Ends
     23 - Scorpio Season Begins
28: Dodona
31: Lillia

November

4: Tanith
6: Ferelith
11: Cassogha
18: Fayola
     21 - Scorpio Season Ends
     22 - Sagittarius Season Begins
24: Bryony
28: Tink
30: Phoebe Proctor

December

2: Sable
12: Alula
     21 - Sagittarius Season Ends
     22 - Capricorn Season Begins

some liner notes about the process of picking birthdays for my ocs, if anyone cares!!

• for the most part, birthdays were decided as such: i chose a suitable zodiac for the character based on personality, then used dice to randomize the month (any die, one month evens and one month odds) and then day (a d20 if my range started from the 1st of the month, a d10 or d12 as was appropriate with the result added to a range that started on the 21st or some shit; this meant that birthdays like august 21st or 22nd just weren't going to come up but whatever). rerolls were only permitted to keep two characters from having the same birthday!
• the only exception for shared birthdays (so far) is daphne and laurel, who share a birthday because the latter is the former's reincarnated form
• in some cases i had trouble picking a zodiac based on personality, or i had a major arcana tarot card associated with the oc that i felt was way stronger than anything the zodiac could provide. in those cases, i found the card's ruling planet, found which zodiac sign that planet ruled over, and randomized within that zodiac. i only did this for a couple of ocs—daphne and lillia, namely
• i will admit: the dice said october 30th for lillia and i went you know what, fuck it, and gave her halloween
• a few characters i felt strongly about what season they were born in, so i randomized within the season (a d4 for the month and then the appropriate die for the day, depending on season beginnings/ends) instead of worrying about zodiacs; kaisa, tanith, phoebe proctor, and jasmine all received this treatment
• some characters did just get assigned birthdays for story/symbolic reasons: su fei's is the spring equinox, roxanna's is shakespeare's birthday whereas sonnet's is the weed day... lulu's was randomized and i was told later that it was the discovery date of comet hale-bopp, so i made her mother lunetha's birthday the day that same comet passed perihelion
• halfway through my doing this project one of my friends asked what i was doing for characters with different calendar system and my answer was an emphatic "fuck." i have decided simply not to worry about it. in a few cases i've provided translations (the dragon age calendar is still a 365 day calendar so i translated kaisa's birthday into it and noted both dates on her profile, elspeth's world has basically the same calendar but with different names so i noted that too), but in others there's just no hope (the granblue fantasy calendar makes no sense so there simply was no hope for lavana or nanala). i've just decided to work on the logic of "this is what their birthday would be if translated to our calendar" if necessary. whatever. who cares.

WHAT'S GOOD FOLKS i overhauled my character tag system and, lacking a good way to sort them proper, i'm making a list here

consider this a constant work in progress, and consider me long-suffering

AGE. category refers to character age

AGE. minor
AGE. adult
AGE. elder

PRONOUN. category refers to character's pronoun use. more than one tag may be used

PRONOUN. they
PRONOUN. she
PRONOUN. he

SPECIES. category refers to character's species

SPECIES. human
    humans of any kind, magical or otherwise. does not include humanoid or human-appearing characters of other species
SPECIES. alien
    if it comes from space, it goes here
SPECIES. animal
   this is where the furries go
SPECIES. artificial
    includes robots, homunculi, and any other manmade species
SPECIES. demonic
    demons and demon-aligned, including tieflings
SPECIES. divine
    angels and deities
SPECIES. draconic
   any dragon-aligned species, including dragons and things that turn into dragons
SPECIES. fantasy fare
    catchall for orcs, elves, halflings, and the like. may also include otherwise uncategorized d&d races with only singular examples
SPECIES. nature aligned
    dryads, nature spirits; i will probably need to rename and reorganize this another time
SPECIES. undead
    includes ghosts, zombies
SPECIES. unibunn
    refers to the unibunns closed species

MAGIC. category refers to characters with magical abilities, narrowing them down by type

MAGIC. alchemy
MAGIC. fire
MAGIC. dark
MAGIC. divine
    refers to any power granted by or involving a divine or deified source (ex. communing with gods, d&d-style paladins or warlocks)
MAGIC. healing
MAGIC. light
    refers specifically to light-elemental magic, as opposed to divine power
MAGIC. magical girl
MAGIC. nature
MAGIC. spells
    catch-all for general witchery and wizardry
MAGIC. technology
    sci-fi or technologically-enhanced magic
MAGIC. weather
MAGIC. other

ORIGIN. category refers to the character's primary use; disincludes ttrpg characters because they have their own folder

ORIGIN. fandom
    catchall for fandom OCs, further specified under the FANDOM. category
ORIGIN. friend verse
   for collaborative OC verses between friends
ORIGIN. rp forum

WEAPON. category refers to characters whose world features combat, highlighting their fighting style

WEAPON. archer
WEAPON. axe
WEAPON. body
   applies to characters who use things like fangs and claws to fight; may include characters who change their form to use these things
WEAPON. brawler
   applies to any character with fists-and-feet fighting styles, regardless of formal training
WEAPON. firearm
WEAPON. hammer
WEAPON. healer
   refers to characters in combatant groups who specialize in medical skills or magic
WEAPON. knife
WEAPON. mage
   catch-all for magic or other elemental abilities
WEAPON. mech
WEAPON. spear
WEAPON. sword

FANDOM. category refers to characters with either origins as fandom OCs or extensive AUs in a certain fandom. an OC having a fandom tag absolutely does not mean they're exclusively used as fandom OCs

FANDOM. avatar
    as in, the last airbender/the legend of korra, not the blue one
FANDOM. fire emblem
FANDOM. dangan ronpa
FANDOM. granblue fantasy
FANDOM. pokemon

TTRPG. category refers to what tabletop system a tabletop game character has been used for

TTRPG. dnd
TTRPG. anyone can wear the mask
TTRPG. heroes of lite
TTRPG. lords of gossamer and shadow
TTRPG. masks
TTRPG. monster of the week
TTRPG. pokemon tales
TTRPG. pokeymanz
TTRPG. stewpot
TTRPG. thirsty sword lesbians
TTRPG. urban shadows
TTRPG. vensris fire emblem

CAMPAIGN. category refers to specific campaigns that a tabletop game character belongs to; mostly used for NPCs

CAMPAIGN. ardolon
CAMPAIGN. crystal claire

ETC. category refers to various themes or aesthetics common among my OCs in the interest of getting them all in one place

ETC. celestial
   for star, moon, sun, and other space-like themes
ETC. floral
   for characters for whom flowers play an important role, or where floral themes are prevalent in their visual design
ETC. knight
   characters who are knights or at least have knightly armor
ETC. performer
   mostly dancers, but anyone who's up there doing performances for a living qualifies
ETC. royalty
   mostly princesses, realistically speaking, but there's some queens in there too
ETC. witch
   characters who are witches, and/or have pointy witch hats

TDL. category refers to practical things i need to get around to for the sake of the oc's profile

TDL. bio
   characters lacking a bio, just, like, at all
TDL. bio update
   characters whose bios haven't been updated to match my new template
TDL. icon
   either an icon needs to be drawn or i hate the one i'm using as a placeholder
TDL. reference
   character lacks a full reference image