hi everypony, i fucking hate this fish and it's now your problem

sometimes you create a character and then unparalleled obsession takes you by the throat. the inspo for creating the modern iteration of this character was mostly myself. and when you have yourself as a muse in this way, some fictional little guy becomes ur outlet for literally anything. it is so so freeing in a way i cannot describe. like! booyah let's turn all of THAT into a man in space, let's fucking go?????

i like thinking about him

oh to be homesick for a place that has nothing left for you. oh to carry guilt and the obsessive need to redeem. oh to exist as a walking contradiction, a betrayal of self, a patchwork of causes you hate. compliancy for the sake of comfort never did you any good, and now look, you're the last one left. can you believe this is what you fought for?! he's. l.lll l. literally l. literally. l. he's literally me. li. guys. lite. he's litera. lit lite lit l. l luh. d. does anyone smell toast?

i like fish

i wish i could have made PTC earlier. making PTC & developing the water-based planet he comes from is what led led me to obtaining a genuine interest in fish, fishing, and marine life. i'm obsessed with the freshwater species in my local area and i want more than anything a pond in my backyard full of little guys. this new interest has brought me much joy and infatuation, something completely new which i never saw myself enjoying pre-PTC.

i like writing his moral dilemma

there is nothing left for you to return to. you're the last one left. and where you once have internally begged for months of that exact release, you find yourself now, alone on the ship you'd stolen to flee, repeating to yourself an old folk-tale of a place that brings back the dead.

enzo's story is one about moral injury, betrayal of self, of guilt, and dread, and suicidally, and existentialism, all things incredibly poignant and important to me. i have triedd to rewrite this section so many times and each rewrite comes NOWHERE close to how i really feel about it. i hope you can get the feeling though.

enzo is not.... a moral beacon. it's difficult for your morals to remain stagnant in a life-or-death setting, and although he TRIES to be good, i think he embodies the "fawn response" real hard. what he believes in swings drastically depending on the person he's talking to. like no matter how much he says he loves people or adjusts himself for others' comfort, all of his motives stem from this desire to alleviate his own burdens. even his quest to get back what he'd once lost and revive his dead world is done not because he particularly cared for the world (most days it was quite the opposite), but to satiate his own guilt. maybe if he crawls back to what he'd hated, apologizes for everything, and falls in line again, maybe they'll let him. maybe things will be different this time. that is to say, wanting to feel better isn't selfish, really, but at the start of his story he has no idea why *this* particular method of feeling better (the revival and whatnot) is his end-goal. it's something he doesn't even believe he can accomplish at first, just a folk-tale to keep him going- but when it becomes more and more plausible, and he has to once again hurt people and is faced with the possibly of uprooting another planet to bring back his own.... what next?

enzo's story is one about whether he SHOULD try to revive a world which had intentionally destroyed itself, who is culpable and should he be? his arc is about interpreting the past, finding peace with others and himself, to condemn history but not bury it, and to KNOW HIMSELF. to find something he GENUINELY wants to fight for instead of picking up whatever he needs to get by, because if that's not done he'll just end up repeating everything he'd just run from.

for me, there is comfort in writing a conflicted character who still has to figure himself out in a war which will NEVER progress or change. One where the bad guys have won for a very long time. The task to find self-determination after it all ends, after complete lack of identity and loss of familiarity, is an incredibly compelling one to me. and what is there to do but to approach it anyways? yummyyyyy.

in a lot of ways, i regret making him a soldier, because this war and the military were always meant to be a metaphor for a secret third thing, but at the surface level could also just be interpreted as just.... commentary on warfare and the military?? and i am always so freaked out of the possibility of military nuts finding/reading thru my OC lore LOL..... terrifying..... i always think about revamping his being a military deserter to something more abstract because of that. but in a lot of ways i've grown really attached to this plot, and it's hard for me to detach myself from it. for the foreseeable future, THIS is his story.

it feels a little silly to say all of this and there is not a shred of tangible creative writing about him on this website. if u know me, u know that this is typical, unlikely i'll ever share PTC in its full extent bc i hold it close to my heart. but even if this is the case, i want to put *something* down on this site expressing WHY i feel this way. this character is a common centerpiece in my art, so i wanna talk about him, at least a little!

my design philosophy which is just "fuck it we ball"

on a more lighthearted note: i also draw enzo all of the time cuz his design is so simple. and hoo boy do i love drawing that stupid fucking gold-studded jacket, the shapes just come so easily.

i love the rectangular bits (sleeve cuffs, collar) and the sharpness which that ONE huge triangle (the lapels) adds. i love the neat ways i can pose him with his cape framing him, and how i can draw the extra fabric below his jacket swaying to indicate line of direction. all of this paired with the design trope of his pants blending into his shoes. and also the pretentious fucking epaulets. and his tired eyes and constant peeved expression. AUUUGHHH............ i also adore the contrasting colors in his palette, the dark blues which make the bright yellows POP, how striking his eyes are against the rest of his face, how weirdly regal his entire vibe is. helppp...

OH and the stupid stupid little halo cowlick. i like to give that design quirk to characters who share a narrative of cheating death (marcene and aly have one, robin used to have one too). perhaps it's too on-the-nose but I LIKE IT. it gives interesting silhouette and SILLY IRONY. speaking of his hair.... erm. why does a soldier have that? but once again, if i think it looks neat then it will be finalized. he is just a little bit bishounen and that's part of his appeal now, okayy???????

everything combined creates this cohesive blend of so many design tropes i can never get bored of looking at. on the downside... all of it is incredibly inconvenient from a fighting standpoint.... like when i first redesigned him to be a soldier in 2022, the uniform we know and love today was conceptualized pretty impulsively. it was a first-draft design that i got SO unbearably attached to that i just decided to make it the final one. but, as all first-draft concepts are, it is incredibly clunky and impractical. so many moving parts that a weapon could get caught in. but man i don't know, from what we've established, if it's a blast to draw then i'll keep drawing it. the impracticality coincidentally lines up pretty well with his planet's philosophy pre-world-end, being so set in their ways that they can AFFORD these inconveniences. they do NAWT think they can lose the war. turns out they can, and very spectacularly at that lol... they died as they lived.

i just think he has a cute looking face in general. like he is just so friend-shaped... i will never ever tire of drawing him ever.

my beloved......

my shaylaa....

when i'm allowed to write "filler episodes"

a lot of how he presents himself and his persona is residual from him existing in a hyper-rigid military-bootlicking planet his whole life. there's a lot that's been bottled in, a lot that he's never been allowed to say, so now in the present day when he *does* get to use his voice....... he's got a total mean streak 😭............ he tries his hardest to be polite but internally i think he's very petty and dramatic. it makes him really fun to work with, where he comes accross as completely bewildered by the idiots around him all of the time. i...... i hate to say it but i portray him as the designated straightman character a lot 😭😭😭 he's the type of character that is difficult to write by himself, but when paired with another character, a LOT of possibilities spring up. enzo probably has the most fleshed out relationships with the other 3 main cast (giomi, amias, otis) in my mind because it's SOO easy for them to put this man in situations™. i like placing him with people he will not get along with and somehow making them friends anyways. silly comedy slice-of-life doesn't usually exist with this man but when it does, i love ittttt. he and everyone else around him are sooo stuuuupidddddd i love itttttttttt.

anyhow, now that this incomprehensible exposition is over, i will now use the rest of this space to dump images that remind me of him. that's it. o7

enzocore images (the end)

you can tell how long ive had this pre-written from the stats on my website LMFAO