Cecil part 3 - stories of the stars (aka mostly weird headcanons about Cecil's tattoos and then a lot of pictures)

So the hair took...well it took from Tuesday to Wednesday morning.  And then last night I decided to just take the plunge and do his tattoos.  So here's some fun headcanon stuff.  If you don't care, feel free to just go look at the tattoo pictures.  Spoiler alert: they're constellations.

Bit of a background headcanon to my tattoo headcanon.  Night Vale is unstable, and always changing.  Everything is constantly in a state of flux - the streets change on a regular basis (it's more a weekly schedule than anything), things disappear and reappear arbitrarily, and nothing is constant.  In that vein, Cecil's tattoos.  I think they are sentient and do move, but not always, and certainly not very much.  I think they're bashful, and they prefer to not be touched, or even really seen as much as possible, so they tend to shrink away from people (except Carlos, who they like)  Of course Cecil does have some measure of control over them too.  But here's where I think the most drastic "movement" occurs: I think they change either daily or just sporadically.  One day they're tribal, the next they're smoky shapes that drift, the next they're geometric, sometimes they're tentacles, other times they're standard vintage designs.  When I first saw astrogyaru's constellation Cecil I just added that onto the list of things Cecil's tattoos definitely change into.  and then as I decided to do a Lala, I also decided constellations are also probably the only form of tattoos I could give him that wouldn't a) completely suck and b) have no relevance.  It also fits in well with the idea that Cecil has three tattoos that he did not get done himself at the local parlor.  Now for pictures to describe what those three are and then which constellations I put where and why.

The three tattoos Cecil did not get done, are an eye on the back of his neck and the moon on the back of each hand.

do you appreciate how hard it was to resist the temptation to make this a Sheikah symbol?

this one appeared the day his mother disappeared.  he doesn't have a third eye in his forehead, because this is how he sees the town.  in my deity!AU it's the source of his omniscience and the mark of his power.  in my normal hc, he uses it to "feel" people's presence, by which he can almost tap into their existence, feel the things they feel, see the things they see, sort of read their minds. (A Story About You, yeah?)  he also sees emotions as color auras around people (see what I mean about colors?)  All of these abilities slowly culminated until he was 15 and his mother left and he woke up with this mark that synthesized all his abilities.  he can make this one move, but left to itself, it stays at the base of his neck where he keeps it pretty covered with his clothing. 

on the back of each hand, he has the phases of the moon working from the equinoxes in opposite directions of the year.  most of his doubt and mistrust of the moon comes from the fact that he doesn't know why he has these marks.  (in the deity!AU it's so he can keep track of controlling the flow of time itself, the gravitational stability, and the balance of life in the desert)  in my normal hc, the marks help him read the stars to predict the future which is a trick he learned from his mother, and these enhance his ability.  he doesn't read them often because he likes to be surprised by the events of the present, but on the occasions that he does read them, he is yet to be proven wrong.  (he also glimpses the future when he hiccups but that's irrelevant) click here for a fun little bonus comic I drew that I actually do like about him reading the stars.  

So now you see why the constellation thing is pretty cool, right?  It fits in perfectly with the hc I already had.  Now, I am super intrigued by the creativity behind astrogyaru's designs.  I even asked once for a reference of them to see the full set and why they chose the constellations they did.  For my little Cecil however, I chose an entirely different set of stars to paint (the stars in glow in the dark white, the lines connecting them in glow in the dark lavender) and golly gee does he glow!  so here we go.

so this is the constellation Horologium, the pendulum clock.  because all the clocks aren't real.  

 

this is Mensa, the table mountain because mountains aren't real either.

this is Aquila, the eagle because it's the closest one I could find to a bird of prey (also some discrepancy on how it's drawn out which is why it has a different fancy comparison picture. I liked this way better than the other method)

this is Microscopium, which as you might have guessed, is a microscope because ~science~  Again with the discrepancies - some people connect the top two stars into a box, but I think that's a little boring (I guess accuracy < my personal enjoyment now?)

the last one on the front is Gemini, which if you don't know Gemini then we're in serious trouble (it's literally the only constellation that even resembles what it's supposed to be)  I included it not because it's Cecil's star-sign, but because of the whole Kevin/Cecil doubles thing.  also because it was really fun to draw.

Canis major, the dog.  Who is absolutely not in the dog park.  And is probably also just a plastic bag drifting by on the wind.  Again: nobody draws this one the same, there's like literally zero consistency and had I found this particular image of it earlier I probably would have used it but whatever, I went with this one version on nasa's kids website so yeah mine looks like a Tim Burton dog. 

this is Lynx, the closest thing to a cat, which I chose for Khoshekh who is probably at least remotely close to being a cat himself.  

Cancer, which is my Cecil's star-sign. (my Carlos is a Virgo) (again an arbitrary decision I made based on plot convenience, and the personality traits they both display most frequently)  

the last tattoo is Chamaeleon, the chameleon.  Remember about the colors?  Remember how everything in Night Vale is constantly changing?  That's what spurred this decision.  Again people are always drawing it differently, and again if I had seen this one first, I would have gone with it cause it kinda looks like a boxy object with a line  a reptile poking its tongue out. 

Anyway, I'd just like to point out once more that the credit for the inspiration of this particular tattoo idea belongs to astrogyaru, I simply took it and applied my own twist because I have a longstanding love of stars and constellations and I kinda instilled that into my Cecil too.  Though Night Vale stars are different than our stars, and his favorite constellation is the Flower Crown of the Goddess.  (I actually did think about just using the fictitious constellations from my fic, but then it would be like an inside joke with myself and I would feel really lame trying to explain it to other people.  this way I at least can tell them they're actual shapes from ancient star charts.)

Feels good to get the blog all caught up on progress.  Now I'm awaiting a nebulous trip to town to get fabric (possibly tomorrow?) and then the daunting task of learning to sew doll clothes.  At least the poncho I can probably do freehand (I crocheted a Merida Lalaloopsy completely from scratch with no pattern once) but the sewing...I'm better on a large scale than a small scale I fear.  But we shall just have to give it a shot and see I suppose!