i watch a lot of porn lol and screenshot things i think are hot or enjoy for any reason. i usually take screenshots of angles i find interesting, cus amateur porno is very good at creative placement of the camera, or ill screenshot a nice clear shot of a hand gripping a body or a nice cock or a new pose etc. then do studies of these screenshots, ill do sketch pages based on em sometimes, or reference them when drawing. i dont usually do a 1-1 copy of a screenshot for an illustration unless i get rly lucky and find something thats like perfect.

for refs of trans men in particular, theres a bunch of trans dudes out there posting rly nice nudes and itll take u all of 2 seconds to find them on twitter. u can treat those pics like theyre figure drawing refs. but use common sense and dont be rude to anyone okay? theres also a limited amount of trans guy vids on popular porn sites but it is slim pickings so i wouldnt rly recommend limiting urself to only looking at trans porn for refs. u can easily look at cishet or cis gay porn and just use your own knowledge of the human body to make art that is accurate to your character.

other general advice is to do a lot of figure drawing so u dont have to rely on references so much and use CSP's (or any other program's) 3d models for pose references.

Shilohs sisters name is rana!! She is 12-13 ish yrs old at the start of the story. Ill attach a pic. She is a talented weaver, has a gift for remembering scripture (but importantly she cannot read) and is personally being tutored by one of the capitol’s 12 ruling bishops, girly girl who is rambunctious with an attitude…and her dream is to be a good wife. Shes been taught her whole life that that is what she should be, and shes like yeah im gonna be the BEST wife there is, no matter who my husband is!!! I want three kids and a house that looks like this and i will feel so happy and fulfilled if that is my life one day!!! But then, she is suddenly sent off to marry a rich man 3 times her age. And she is still a child. She is now a wife and has no fucking clueeee what shes doing and her husband treats her like hes her babysitter and her fucking annoying ass brother is also there treating her like a kid in this new town and fuckkkk no one really…seems to like her or want her around? The house servants gossip and bully her. Rumors go around about her age. The only person who talks to her like an equal is the sintouched eunuch church servant who keeps hanging around her brother. Hes the only one she can confide in about the strange flickers of terror she is remembering….

Shes an important character and has the most solid role in the story draft rn lol. The main conflict with her (which happens around act ii of the plot) is that the lord she marries wants an heir, but swore to the bishop he wouldnt touch her (he married her as a favor to protect her from forces in the capitol’s church who would kill her for things she has witnessed) so he needs someone else to have the kid, then give it to her so to others itd look like she had it. And rana kinda erm umm accidentally reminds the lord that yahya is there, and the lord knows that yahya isnt actually a eunuch, and gets permission from the priest (yahyas adoptive father figure who also basically controls his life, and has this thing going on where he wants to see yahya suffer as much as possible in repentance for the sin he bears on his skin because he believes that if he suffers enough then when yahya dies he will become a saint) to force yahya to carry it. Yahya, understandably, does not take this well. After the birth they try to make him the kids wet nurse and he runs out into the evil monster infested scary woods and cuts his breasts off and lies there hoping to die. But the cool demon monsters dont eat him (hint) and his father finds him and nurses him back to health. And the whole time yahya is recovering (shiloh out of the picture at this point btw, he had to leave for War Reasons) rana is there…with the baby……and confiding in yahya about more of the things she is remembering, because shes always done that. It was always him who listened. And she lets it slip that she has finally remembered whyyyy she was sent away…..she was put through the religious cannibalism and is immortal…but she is actually going to be physically 11 years old forever. She is never going to have a family. Yahyas baby is, to her, her only chance at something like the future she wanted so bad. Because she has no idea how to even conceive of herself as a person outside of the dream role of being a wife/mother. She literally has not been alive long enough to figure any of that out.

So shiloh comes back to the town when he hears rana has a baby because hes like (clenching so hard hes gonna have an aneurism) WTF DO U MEAN SHE HAD A BABY….but when he shows up he sees how happy she is!!! Genuinely happy holding that baby like a doll. Her bishop tutor goes with him bc he is a friend of the lord she married, and he is personally going to baptize the baby. But lol. Yahya has snapped and he kills and eats the babys heart on the night of the baptism (this is how the immortality thing works…its like got to do with the theology of the world) literally IN RANAS BED overtop of her and then he grabs her and kidnaps her when he gets caught. Things happen, shiloh ‘kills’ him and dumps his body in a river, rana is traumatized all over again and her baby is dead, plot plot plot yahyas not actually dead he just went to hell for a little while and found the fabled sword there that god used when he tamed the wild earth for humanity, and he comes back to kill his rapist and everyone who gets in the way. But heres da thing……rana also wants to kill her rapist (the bishop). Shiloh wants to kill yahya. The bishop wants the rich lord to bring about the second coming of christ essentially lol. Plot plot plot. Whatever. The story becomes about violence and cycles and how violent revenge can be cathartic but it does not heal anything. Rana may find catharsis but she is still 11 forever stuck in the state tht she was when bad things happened to her. Yahya may find catharsis but he had to harm so many people to do so and he still cannot return to how he was before. Shiloh ends up becoming turned to the side of anti-punitive justice…which is kinda funny to me personally because hes a soldier/knight, he has a huge body count. And he was killing innocents fhdfhdfh as war is like…

Not to infodump lol. This is probably incomprehensible i left so much out hahaha. But the last thing i want to say is that it is deeply funny (i have to laugh to be sane about it) to me that THIS story with cannibalism and murder and sexual assault in its plot is infinitely more Publishable than their main modern story, because the main modern story in its current state is actually very much about the palestinian genocide and how abandoning ones morals and heritage in favor of the imperialistic death machine is in fact fucking evil and has infinite destructive ripples across generations and all aspects of life, and it is explored through a depressing kink drama. No one would ever publish that. But the other story is just game of thrones for transmascs so its ok.

THESE ARE MY STORIES……I hope to one day tell them in ways that are coherent lol. But i hope tjis makes it apparent why i dont ever rly want to explore the stories outside of the actual form the final narratives take.

(Gripping you strongly) i wish i could tell u all about how insane i feel about the ending of yahya and shilohs main story cus ive had it planned since DAY ONE and i have a whole epilogue written thats just (making grabby motions with my hands) RAHHHHHHHHHH they are like. Theyre cosmically meant to be. i will tell u a little about it. Its more bittersweet than happy. After the end of all the canon events (spoilers i guess. Lol. U will not remember any of this by the time i do anything with it and theres always the chance that ill change the details) but ok so. Part of the story revolves around how one can achieve immortality through religious cannibalism. You will still die if youre burned up, crushed or minced up beyond recognition, or if your head or heart is severed from the rest of your body. Long story short Yahyas head gets cut off. And SHILOHHHHHHHHHH MY BOY….my sweetie who has come to finally forgive yahya for everything he did to him and his family, wants forgiveness and peace and for no one else to die. So he takes yahyas head and body and retreats into the mountains, and he sews yahyas head back onto his body, lays him in a coffin, and WAITS for the wound to heal. But it was a bad wound, and the head was separated for a long time, so shiloh has to wait 800 years (or some other long time enough for society to completely change) before finally yahya wakes up, and he doesnt remember anything!!!! But he recognizes shiloh as someone he definitely knew.

The story ends there but my little epilogue is so self indulgent hehehe idk if id ever actually make anything with it but its inspired by my experience with suddenly remembering traumatic repressed memories (which parallels what shilohs sister goes through in the narrative, which is important bc a lot of the worst of what happens to shilohs sister is yahyas fault, though he does it because she is responsible for the terrible shit that happens to him. Its a cycle.). Shiloh wants yahya to never remember anythinggg that happened to him previously, and is afraid of losing him again, so he shelters him and is overprotective and wont even teach him the new language everyone is speaking. And despite all of shilohs efforts, yahya starts remembering things anyway, and is unequipped to handle them and neither is shiloh lol. And shiloh has to learn that though he had good intentions he is just hurting him again because he is afraid that if he lets yahya be his own person hell destroy himself again. So lol this epilogue is like super self indulgent hurt/comfort yaoi. Which is so COMPLETELY different tonally from the main story that i think itll probably just live in my head forever.

yess....they are :3 so the reason they dont have sex in their canon is because it just tonally didnt fit. in the og draft yrs ago they did but the story has evolved many times at this point and now theres just...not really a spot for it to go that would feel appropriate. the very first drafts of it were very romance heavy. if youve ever read mdzs, i wanted it to have a similar vibe of being a slow burn romance in a fun fantasy world. that was a long time ago at this point and now i have other inspirations and other goals for the story, which involves exploring yahya and shilohs relationship in a way that isnt so...Romance! moreso as them as two people who are othered in similar ways, come together, and then have conflict.

their canon (as of rn, hoping to spend some time this winter finishingggg a final outline so i can get feedback on it from my friends and figure out what i want to do with it) is a medieval fantasy story where yahya and shiloh are the children of immigrants from a levant-like region living in a western european-like country. the plot revolves around shilohs younger sister, in the wake of their fathers death, getting sent off to be a child bride for mysterious reasons to a lord who lives out in the boonies, where monsters roam, and shiloh goes along to protect her and figure out what this lord wants with her. yahya lives there as a servant at the church, and because of some birth defects (skin discoloration) the priest believes he was denied entrance to heaven and sent back to earth to serve penance for some horrible sin he inherited. there's of themes of abuse and revenge and death! cool big creatures! yahya and shiloh start out as allies then become enemies. their relationship is still homoerotic lol but its less about their romance. they have time for romance in the epilogue. the only thing about the draft rn that is set in stone is the ending lol, the conflicts are resolved and shiloh spends 800 yrs waiting for yahya to get revived post-death lol.

I guess as a consolation, rn the opening scene is a timeskip sex scene where shiloh fucks a eunuch, cant see the poor guy as himself and instead sees yahya, and freaks out and leaves lol. so i guess thats LIKE theyre fucking. lol.

AND of course, there is the other main canon of them as modern day ppl lol and they fuck a lot in that. this story is once again getting revised tho cus i cant fucking decide what exactly i want it to be about hahaha, so i wont say much about it. this is a much easier thing to tackle than the other one though, so i have a feeling ill probably get to finishing this one before the other.