Symbiote (art & story)
I drew my characters in a Venom AU.
Below: Story, full resolution picture, process demonstration.
( Click here to see this and the process images better)
As an unnecessary disclaimer, a good chunk of characters in my stories tend to be based on a base set of characters I have. This post is a good example. The human girl is based on Brusli, a socially anxious and sometimes rude character I have. The Symbiote is based on Sarlla, one of my boyfriend’s characters that I borrow often enough, who speaks before thinking and has almost no impulse control. For the purpose of the story, however, I typically change characters’ names to fit the universe better.
The orange-haired girl is Audrey. She’s a quiet college student and the type of girl you would pass in the hallway without really noticing her. You might see her on one of the hallway benches at school with her earbuds in, studying or working on a homework assignment. Although she has excellent grades and is likely at the top of her class, she rarely speaks up during a lecture and dreads groupwork. If you end up in a group assignment with her, she might come off as rude or uninterested despite your best efforts to get to know her. Brusli isn’t actually trying to be rude or act uninterested — she’s most likely just anxious about the social interaction and doing her best to focus on the work. The sooner the assignment gets done, the sooner she’ll be out of this awful social situation.
One day after class, the Anthropology professor pulls Audrey aside and asks if she would be available this upcoming weekend to help organize the Anthropology lab. Audrey finds out that her professor is retiring after this semester and that the professor had never really taken the time to organize the place in her fifteen years of teaching. Understandably, the professor doesn’t want to leave a disorganized mess for her replacement, but she’s also not as young as she used to be and personally can’t clean up as much as she would like to. Since Anthropology is Audrey’s favorite class and this is her favorite professor-one of the few people she actually engages in conversation with on a weekly basis-Audrey agrees to help out.
The volunteer work would be considered a lonely job by more social people, but Audrey is perfectly content to listen to her music and sort rocks all by her lonesome. She comes across some sludge-like material pooled at the bottom of a plastic container during her work, accidentally getting some on her hands. Apart from a typical response of “Oh, ew, why?” Audrey doesn’t pay much attention to the substance, figuring it to be either something that deteriorated years ago or residue from the items in the bin. She empties the bin out, mildly surprised but pleased that the substance didn’t seem to stick to any of the contents of the container, then sets it aside.
The Anthropology professor comes to check on Audrey later during the day, asking her how things are going. Audrey replies that it’s a mess, but that she’s enjoying herself. As an afterthought, she remembers the sludge in one of the bins and tells the professor about it. Audrey stands up and dusts herself off, turning around in a circle as she searches for the dirtied bin. Strangely, she can’t determine which container had been the one she’d handled earlier. She rubs the back of her neck and mentions that she must have either misplaced it or maybe whatever-it-was had some kind of reaction to the fresh oxygen. The floor is a complete mess anyway, cluttered with everything Audrey has been pulling out of the storage rooms, dust, and dirt.
That’s about as far as I’ve gotten with the actual story. I would probably have to rewatch the 2018 Venom, but Audrey’s symptoms most likely match Eddie’s, although I doubt she gets chased through the streets by corporate thugs or anything like that. She eventually meets the Symbiote occupying her, who goes by the name Noxa.
Below are the process pictures.
Originally published at http://lankquespot.wordpress.com on January 27, 2021.
