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BETWEEN BONUS: When Riley Met Brick Page 3
Posted on 15 October 2023 by rustyhearts

This week's lineartist is: silly-legend, HorseBlaire!

The thumbnail I gave her: [here]

My favourite thing about this page: I love HorseBlaire's linework. It's so confident in all the art she does, tbh. I also love how adorable Blaire looks in the bottom panel 🥺🥺 Bunny-esque with her little hair tufts even..

Mushy Stuff: HorseBlaire is a hilarious woman - has literally made me laugh until I cried and could barely breathe - and honestly deserves to make a killing as a concept artist with her talent and skill. Even unknowingly, she has managed to lift my spirits on cloudy days with her art and mind. I'm glad to be blessed with her company <3

Shout Out: HorseBlaire doesn't have a project to share, but I urge you to check out the phenomenal art on her tumblr. If you love fantasy creatures and/or women (and the occasional LB fanart uwu), you will love her art. Please sent her kind anons for enrichment.

53 thoughts on “BETWEEN BONUS: When Riley Met Brick Page 3”

  1. rustyhearts

    Boosty Update:

    Shez’s Family Have Bios – With blanks you can help fill in!
     
    Unseen First-Draft-Scripts from Ch9!
    ( Did you know, the original discussion Blaire &Riley had during their shift didn’t involve Jaden much at all? )
     
    CH12P9 Speedpaint

  2. HorseBlaire

    cries shits farts dies

    1. rustyhearts

      Thank you for fertilizing the comment section, queen <3 With a bit of Sunny ( ;3 ) weather next week, I'm sure we can expect flowers to bloom in no time uwu

      1. Sunny

        :eyes: hehe

  3. Still Hoping for Blaire Against the Odds

    Riley’s confused face in the third panel is kinda cute! It feels very Disney-esque to me. Like, if you told me she played Peter Pan, I’d believe you. 😉
     
    Interesting to hear how she talks about the discomfort of dresses too. I get not enjoying your legs rubbing together, or having it blow up in the wind, but earlier she was thrashing and screaming when she wore a dress, so there has to be something deeper going on…
     
    Can’t wait for Trinity-Skye to show up and throw Riley into even more confusion. (evil grin)
     
    Also, while I think of it, I’ve noticed that Blaire’s hair is closer to pink now, when it used to be a lavender shade. Was that an intentional change? Just curious!

    1. rustyhearts

      There is absolutely something deeper going on, breastie U_U
       
      Also omg, you mean Timothy Balloon Tits? “BabyGirl”. I almost forgot that Trinity-Skye was his original name choice before I realized how much more fitting BabyGirl was XDD Also, SHAME on you for wanting Riley to meet him >:O
       
      Re: Blaire’s hair. Not intentional, just sort of shifted that way tbh. I actually did a breakdown on Blaire’s hair colour changes over on the Boosty. But yeah, it really just boiled down to what worked best for different colour pallets, and overall not being fully certain of Blaire’s design the begin with. I think she’s been through the most drastic design shifts of the LB cast.

      1

  4. Mare Arbustorum

    Beautiful work as always <333 Love you bestie…ps stop drawing brick this cute the fuck??

    1. HorseBlaire

      love u mare
      miss u

  5. HorseBlaire

    But yeah, thank you Rusty!!! Your colours make it so delicious and nice. Always deloightful to collab with u 🫡

    1. rustyhearts

      The pleasure was all mine, breastie. Putting some nice oaten hay in your stable 🥰

  6. ultimateTerf

    Dear god they’re so stupid 🙁 also, why did Blaire bring Riley to Brick? I guess I don’t understand why she’s in the hot seat.

    1. rustyhearts

      Revisiting these pages may help your level of understanding:
       
      CH9P8 (first panel in particular)
       
      BETWEEN BONUS: When Riley Met Brick
       
      You’re also welcome to interpret as you see fit. Why do you think Blaire brought Riley to Brick? 👀

  7. Miss Moira

    Riley: *has religion-related trauma and doesn’t believe herself to be a walking stereotype*
     
    Brick, who met Riley like five minutes ago: I diagnose you with “not a real woman”. I am very progressive. 🙂
     

    Kill me.

    1

  8. Charly

    Ahhhh this art style is actually cute …

     
    I especially love how cute Riley’s lil (???) Face is.. I really feel for her here I just wanna take her away from these women and tell her she can dress as comfy as she wants and it doesn’t have to mean she’s not a real woman …

    1. rustyhearts

      If only it were that simple ~
      I agree about HorseBlaire’s artstyle, she made everyone adorable!

  9. Kory

    “doesn’t alleviate the discomfort”… *flashes back to the first page of Riley thrashing around in a panic attack* That’s not “discomfort” Blaire, that’s freaking trauma.
     

    Also HorseBlaire is the best and she deserves a lot of nice hay and scritches and prancing around in a big paddock !

    1. rustyhearts

      Could it be, women do not need to wear skirts or dresses ever for any reason? No, it is those women who are wrong!
      This isn’t even entirely a gendie thing, I know too many women who simply cannot fathom the idea of never wanting to wear dresses/skirts. x-x

  10. Jay

    I feel like Blaire just wants Riley to be more “queer” to validate her own wokeness 🤨
     

    It reminds me of parents who never shut up about how scary being a ✨trans parent✨ is and fearmongering about how terrible life is for trans kids but are clearly so desperate to trans their toddlers for clout.
     

    The sheer glee in Blaire’s last expression, maybe I’m reading too much into it, but Blaire’s martyr complex seems to be getting more selfish, like some weird trans specific factitious disorder.
     

    You’re so right about the confidence in the linework, definitely reminds me of me old-school handrawn animation, amazing work HorseBlaire 💜

    1

    1. Jay

      Also, a lot of parents of trans kids clearly want their child to transition because they don’t want a gay or GNC kid (*cough* Cher), I feel like Blaire’s desire for Riley to be not-a-woman is linked to her own lesbophobia and belonging to a group that demonises lesbians as privileged oppressors and “TERFS”, poor Riley 😥

      1

      1. Nonnie

        Funny how it works. They act exactly like those conservatives parents that do not want a “f-“/”d-” GNC child in their home… But WHEN do it, is cute! /homersimpson

        1

      2. Mistaly

        Makes me think back to Blaires introduction where she mentions her religious(?) parents who are “okay” with her relationship to Riley, but hold old school beliefs and don’t think they should live together before marriage. Which is something commonly heard by religious people, but in my experience, it’s not something religious people get very hung up on if they’re more ‘relaxed’ religious.

         

        They’ll say it but not actually get super bent out of shape over it if their kids do it with their partners. It makes me wonder if Blaire’s parents have mentioned subtlety or not so subtlety that they would prefer Blaire have a male partner and are using the ‘religious reasons’ as a reason why they won’t let Blaire and Riley cohabitate.
         

        I just wonder if that is something also in the undercurrent of Blaire’s seeming obsession with having a trans partner (esp the thought of Riley being a trans/man/). Don’t know if that’s reading too much into it or not, speculating away over here

        1

        1. rustyhearts

          I love to see the speculation either way – please always feel free!
           
          I can say, Blaire’s parents are some sort of Christian denomination (doesn’t really matter which). The idea of them being okay with same-sex relationships, but not okay with premarital cohabitation was actually inspired by my MIL who – during the referrendum for same-sex marriage in Australia- informed me that she was in favour of it, because if it was legalized “gay couples wouldn’t be forced to have sex out of wedlock”. XD
           
          I think you’re right to suspect something more sinister afoot though. Gotta be reason’s for Blaire being the way she is 🙁

          1

      3. K

        Either that or Munchhausen by proxy, to show how Great and Enlightened and Caring they are to the world while majorly messing up their kids. And sometimes both, I imagine.

        1. Nonnie

          I swear I wonder why no one have called this as “Münchhausen by TRAs”.

    2. Nonnie

      The same parents that claim “better to have an alive straight child than a dead gay child”, like… You claim you’re so woke that you use your wokeness to hide your homophobia.

    3. TheWestWind

      I think it might be akin to chasing a high in some ways. Since Blaire’s bisexual, I assume she probably dated men earlier in life and then ‘came out’ – and like most people that do so, got absolutely friggin swamped with affection, support, and validation. It’s a freaking drug, and she wants the same for Riley, or at least for herself?
       

      Honestly while the trans stuff is definitely taking hold of my homeland (the States) casually, there seems to be a lot less of this extreme weirdness, and also less homophobia in general? Compared to Australia that is.

      1. rustyhearts

        Idk about how Aus compares to the states but the gender shit is indeed rampant here. I just read recently a lesbian group denied the right to hold events that exclude males by the Australian Human Right’s Commission.
         
        We’ve got a number of blokes injuring women in women’s sports, pronoun shit is every where in employment and medical care, TIM support workers (aged + disability) being allowed to do intimate care for female residents who have specifically requested female ONLY staff. It’s bad :/

        1. Jay

          It’s just as mad here in the UK, the sheer amount of “trans education training” I’ve had to do at work recently… the pure sexism and homophobia I have to swallow so I can tick the right boxes and keep my job (I’m nearing the end of a long and expensive apprenticeship so I’m kind of stuck with it), I literally had to take a day off work because it made me feel psychically and very mentally ill 😟

          I hate how gagged women are by identity politics, I even tried therapy a few years ago and the lobby was packed with trans “positivity” (aka sexist and homophobic rhetoric) with a big sign on the wall saying “transphobia not welcome here”, tons of trans only groups and even some men’s only groups but none for women or just gay people, I always thought the reason therapy failed me was because I was beyond hope but how the hell are women supposed to be mentally healthy or get help for the trauma caused by misogyny and homophobia when it’s a hate crime to acknowledge it?

          Sorry, I really try my best not to be too doom and gloom, black pill feminism just isn’t me, but it’s rough sometimes 😅

        2. Jay

          I’m sure a lot of TRA’s would see my discomfort of an anti-transphobia sign as me “telling on myself”, after all it sounds good, doesn’t it? But we all know what TRA’s mean when they say “this is a safe space for trans people” (no assurances that it was a safe space for women/gay people 🤔), it means it’s absolutely not a safe space for anyone who isn’t straight or male. I knew it meant I had to bite my tongue and walk on eggshells, not mention anything about internalised misogyny lest I be slapped with a gender identity, even asked for a female therapist and got a man in nail polish (they/them male = woman I guess), I’ve never felt so unsafe than in that bloody queer flag plastered therapy room (not a single plain rainbow flag of course, QT club would have been proud 😂), shocker when I dropped out two sessions later. Only regret is nbnot saying something “terfy” on the way out.

          My dream is to save up enough to go to a proper woman’s festival, I’m living vicariously through LB until then 😅 I’m excited for Shez don’t get me wrong but can’t wait to see the ballroom night at Yonique!

  11. Parniya’s biggest fan

    Ew Blaire.. whyyy 😭😭😭

  12. Blais

    Both Riley and Blaire look so cute and fluffy-haired in this page! I love how cute HorseBlaire’s lines are! Seriously I want to pat their heads ;_; I hope HorseBlaire gets lots of tasty oats and comfy skritches and space to run around.
     

    “But you’ve also said you don’t FEEL like a boy?” I think a lot of TIFs notice the way AGP TIMs talk about “feeling like a woman”, can’t relate to it for obvious reasons, and take it to mean their “real” gender is neither woman nor man. Even though it’d make sense to question the AGP men’s reasoning, they feel pressured to change themselves instead. If they ask the men for clarification, they’ll be responded to as if they’d personally attacked the men.

     

    So even though a space like the TQ Union may have a lot more women than men, they wind up using a framework that only makes sense for a small subset of men, because all the social interactions get filtered through “will this hurt the TIMs’ feelings?” It’s creepy and sad. (I was in a space like that a long time ago.)

     

    That aside, I wonder how much of Brick’s behavior would change if Timothy Babygirl just wasn’t there. Blaire wouldn’t change, at least not for a long time – she has to feel like the savior who is giving all these poor GNC people an opportunity to “live in the bodies they want” and showing them the truth of her religion.

     

    On the other hand, Brick seems like a terminally online woman who became a gendie so she could feel like an expert on something. She wants to at least sound like she’s making sense. She does not like feeling like others can explain things better than her. If she had the space to think about what she was saying, and there was no “if I say this then Babygirl will have a breakdown so it can’t be true”, would she read some forbidden literature and peak?
     

    Or would she hang onto it because her “expertise” gives her clout?

    1. rustyhearts

      Absolutely loved reading this, thank you for sharing it – always fun to see what kind of questions/thoughts my work provokes!

  13. Nonnie

    William Shakespeare said best: In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.

    Oh, Riley. You don’t deserve this treatment from Brick.

    1. Sunny

      And from Blaire! Let’s not forget Blaire put her in this situation, knowing exactly what is going to happen.
      (Beautiful quote btw!)

  14. K

    Riley is utterly adorable in tbis artstyle, great job, HorseBlaire!
     

    She really doesn’t deserve to be subjected to this drawn-out game of other people deciding what/who she is, though.
     

    But since she doesn’t actually identify as nonbinary in present time, it’s comforting at least to know she didn’t fully get bullied into what they’re doing there.

    1. rustyhearts

      But Blaire absolutely remains hopeful Riley will come around. U_U

  15. ☆

    the story just keeps progressing! though i had a thought, since after this bonus bit we’re gonna have a Shez chapter, and then perhaps some other stories (i think it was mentioned you wanted to end the comic on a specific point?), is there anything you are planning on doing after Leasebound is done? do you plan on continuing it in a way by making spin offs, or do you have some other new projects in mind?

    1. rustyhearts

      Shez is going to be the focus next chapter – but it’s not unrelated to the mainstory. I like to think of LB as having an ensemble cast. So, while Jaden and Riley are the main characters, I want to take time to show where other characters fit into the larger story, and how their lives are all interconnected. The club Yonique is going to be playing a big role in LB, so understanding why/how staff members came together to work for Ruth is important to me.
       
      With regards to an ending, I do have an ending in mind for LB, and some very big key events I’m building to (intentionally gradual), but there’s lots of gaps in between I haven’t sorted out yet. Suffice to say, it’s not going to be finished anytime soon, so I haven’t really thought about *after* it’s completion. I’m still way too far away from that, haha.
       
      I do work on other projects on the side, but as LB takes up most of my time, I don’t really post about them because they’re not very far along. But I don’t think I’d do spin-offs. I’ve got lots of ideas for lesbian-centric stories – I was actually writing a lesbian romance novel before LB – so they’d probably be my focus.

  16. Green

    I love how Blaire and Riley look on this art style. HorseBlaire did a great job!

    1. rustyhearts

      Couldn’t agree more!

  17. Lauren B

    Blaire, no…listen to your girlfriend, not your clown friend!!

    1. rustyhearts

      She cannot hear you over her clown friend U_U

      1. Jay

        Y’know how you were having trouble translating LeaseBound cos gendie lingo doesn’t make sense outside of english (not like it makes logical sense 𝘪𝘯 english either), with most languages being heavily gendered? Maybe this is the solution! Just replace all of Bricks dialouge with clown honks 🤡

        1. rustyhearts

          Bahaahaha! I love it 🤣🤣
           
          It’s either that or go the old anime fansub route:
          Translator note: idk wtf is being said here sorry ^-^;

  18. I'm not sorry

    I may not be a construction worker, but I feel the need to lay brick.

  19. ShyBottomDweller

    HORSEBLAIRE CAN DRAW???!?!! faints…
     

    I didn’t think it’d be that easy to come to understand oneself as trans, or that i’d fall under nonbinary.
     

    Never experienced any special feeling regardless of direction just like Ri said, i just understood i was a girl because of how my body was and later would become a woman through aging, whether i liked it or not (and surely i wanted to remain small for a while and resented growing, i didnt want to bleed and get loaded with the pressures of the adult world). Just like I understood I was a human even if sometimes wished to be a tree, or a bird, or a shrimp, or a toaster,
    to experience difference.
     

    But if “being a woman” ceases to be about that, if it switches to be about having a numinous feeling or believing in mismatched souls, then I lose anchor and fall under nonbinary territory, simply because there is no feeling to locate and i dont believe in souls either, so i couldn’t possibly be one with that system of belief.
     

    Now i understand, in order to reject that conclusion (that one is NB) one would have to reject the whole argument, to say its poor, or nonsense. And to say that would mark you as bad, as that would imply you also believe the identities of those who used the same reasoning would be nonsense as they were built upon a faulty premise, constituting a faulty conclusion.
     

    And once you’re labeled bad, you become enemy and earn scorn… The only approved conclusion is to accept the premise of feelings and souls as correct and instead that your own identity as woman was wrong and false, reemerging as nonbinary you. Then that way nobody ends upset, nobody ends up condemned and their numbers increase, which in turn increases their influence.

     

    It’s kind of like religions and heresy!! 😮
     

    Fascinating. Grim. But fascinating.
     

    Must agree with the other commenter, Ri in third panel very very cute. high5 to HorseBlaire 😙

    1. rustyhearts

      Beautifully put! I couldn’t agree more on you likening it to religious heresy. Thank you so much for such a thoughtful comment, love the little nickname for Riley, too <3

      1. ShyBottomDweller

        I guess in a world where a significant portion of the population deeply believes in a floating allknowing invisible sky dad who made women out of a man and who works in mysterious ways, the prospect of having a mismatched spirit sounds fairly realistic and sound by comparison. In the broader picture, rather than a wholy oppositional notion, It fits neatly within 🤔 doesn tit?

         

        The enby thing though, it’s a catch 22 🤕 It’s a trap, and empathy is the bait.

         

        BTW author, do you dress up for Halloween? or Do you celebrate it at all? 👻 What’s the general australian tradition in this month?

         

        Also before i forget I want to recommend a KR movie i watched with a friend at her home! called Ballerina. Female centric revenge quest, came out this year, directed by Chung-Hyun Lee. Despite the title, its not about the world of ballet, not really. Can’t say much else without spoiling. We also watched Yes or No, which directed by Sarasawadee is about two thai women, one them is tomboy or gnc.

         

        RiRi like Rihanna sounds cuter too! flows nice hehehe

        1. rustyhearts

          It does fit! I haven’t been able to unsee the comparison since I saw a tumblr radfem liken gender identity to the religious concept of souls, and faith-based thinking.
           
          Re: Halloween, it is very much an American export for us and not widely celebrated. It’s gained a LITTLE traction in the last decade or so, like you might know someone who knows someone whose neighbourhood has 1 house decorated.
           
          Bigger stores have definitely tried to jump on the trend by putting out tacky halloween stuff alongside Christmas stuff in God damn semptember 💀💀💀 but that’s about the extent of halloween’s pull here.
           
          Oh and they’ve started selling jackolantern style pumpkins at the super market too. I saw a display the other day and thought it was a bunch of beach balls 🤣 Even up close they look cartoonish to me!
           
          It has always looked super fun to celebrate on American TV tho, probably the one holiday I wish Australia would get more. I’d love to decorate for little trick or treaters u-u. Though even if it did get big, it’d take place in spring here. Just like our summer Christmases 😅
           
          Thank you for the reccomendations! I have actually seen Yes or No – the first one. I think there’s like 3? But it was difficult for me to get passed the awkward acting and single-shot scenes 😅

           

  20. Crypty

    Ohhhhh horseblaire’s art is v good and satisfying even tho I can’t put my finger on why! I love how everyone looks in this, clean and flowy! The expressions too are very enjoyable! I esp love how Riley looks in this style!!

    1. rustyhearts

      Couldn’t agree more. I seriously reccomend checking out her art blog – her work always makes me feel like I’m looking at an expensive concept art book. Three of my favourites:
      [X] [x] [X]
      And of course, she also has an LB fanart tag 🥰🥰
      🥰🥰

  21. The Nicholas Inquirer

    I don’t know if this is the best place to post this, but I had questions about Nicholas if you’d be up for answering them?
     
    Firstly, is Nicholas gay like his dads, or just a straight boy who likes dresses?
     
    Secondly, how did Tanē and his husband have Nicholas? I’m guessing it wasn’t surrogacy, because I think you said on your old Tumblr that surrogacy is exploitative of women’s bodies. So is Nicholas adopted instead?
     
    Or does Leasebound take place in a world where two people of the same sex can make a kid?
     

    Naturally occurring violet eyes and red eyes are a thing, after all…

    1. rustyhearts

      Hey, thanks for commenting. Best place for questions unrelated to the current page is the FAQ section (for future reference).
       
      **Tāne, fyi.
       
      Re: Nicholas’s sexuality. Haven’t really given it much thought. I don’t think it would reflect on his character either way – so it’s up to readers interpretation.
       
      Re: parenthood. Yeah, I am against surrogacy and am an anti-natalist in general. So either Nicholas was adopted or one of his dads is bisexual and Nicholas came from a previous opposite sex relationship.
       
      Lease Bound is set in the real world, so yeah, no same-sex procreation. Cannot think of anything more off-putting, personally! 🤣
       
      The eye colour choices were just for fun. It seemed cute to give Faith eyes to match her mother’s name. And Elissa’s red eyes just looked cool contrasted against her teal hair. Neither of them have albinism.

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