Gonna do something a little off the usual Balinesque path today. I've had this kicking around for nearly a year now, as it was coincidentally completed on the eve of Balina's birthday (observed), then posted publicly on the day proper. Like a lot of pinups/wingits, it doesn't necessarily lend itself to any particular aspect of her personality, which doesn't usually stop me, but it always slows me down.

This picture, though. This picture is something else. It was one of the earlier things I got Jill to draw for me, and it's maybe the first time I looked at something I commissioned and started crying. There are over three hundred images in my gallery, but I don't know of any that I'd truly call sexy in the way that this piece is, especially for something I can mark as suitable for General.

Dahlia started as just a random side character in a piece of gift writing, grew into someone I was having horny daydreams about (even if I got her species wrong at the time), then got enough love put into her that she turned into her own creature. She heralded how I'd start trying to branch out in late 2019 and for all of 2020. She's not Balina, even if you can see the roots if you look at her, nor is she supposed to be. She's a bovine-canine hybrid with six arms whose name even looks kinda similar; I am not subtle about these things.

Balina, as a character, physically and emotionally, is rough. She's a pile of kludges working together just well enough to function. That's why I identify with her so much; I'm a mess that only functions out of stubborn insistence, rather than actual suitability for the task at hand. Balina is clumsy but durable, dysphoric but strong. She's cut her own way in life because doing otherwise is unconscionable.

Dahlia is much more aspirational, no matter how unrealistic that is. She's smooth and elegant, her body a finely-tuned masterpiece. Things that are at odds in Balina's body work in harmony in Dahlia's; she blends together dhole and springbok so well it's easy to forget she's a hybrid and not some wholly new creation. She's gorgeous, focused, and confident. She's a brilliant technical mind, inheriting credit for much of the robotics that make BTI the place it is, both from her work at Ignis and in her present capacity as the staff roboticist. She already knows she's succeeded in life, simply glad to exist and gleeful to see what every new day brings. She gets to be everything I could want to be, without fear of physical, emotional, or existential limits. She's the opposite of a vent, she's an ideal.

Art: Jill the Succubus (original)