#always be plotting

[rimeswithpurple]

Good morning! Thank you to @monbons and @thewholelemon for the tags! It's a day full of birthday parties and playdates, so I wanted to get this in early.

I've been working on the artwork for my Cirque AU and I keep tacking on more illustrations that I want to do. I told myself that I would start posting when I was finished with the artwork for chapter three and that goal post keeps moving.

So, before I have to make an early morning run to the shops for a birthday gift, here's some Simon POV and art:

I’m taping up my wrists for training when Baz saunters in. The sight stops me mid wrap.

“Baz, you're wearing pants!”

“I’m most certainly not," he scoffs. “These are shorts.”

The purple “shorts” in question are criminally short and painted onto Baz. He's paired them with a loose fitting grey vest. This feels like a plot. (What sort of plot? That remains to be seen.)

I love drawing circus stuff, but I always forget how many feet that entails.

May your Sunday be less busy than mine! Hellos and high fives below:

@talentpiper11 @messofthejess @blackberrysummerblog @valeffelees @artsyunderstudy @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @youarenevertooold @bookish-bogwitch @facewithoutheart @larkral @run-for-chamo-miles @roomwithanopenfire @fiend-for-culture @cosmicalart @mooncello @that-disabled-princess @cutestkilla @noblecorgi @iamamythologicalcreature @best--dress @emeryhall @ileadacharmedlife @drowninginships @supercutedinosaurs @whatevertheweather @rbkzz @ebbpettier @cccloudsss @theimpossibledemon @katatsumuli @theearlgreymage @onepintobean @orange-peony @hushed-chorus @ic3-que3n @palimpsessed @martsonmars @aristocratic-otter @shrekgogurt @alexalexinii @prettygoododds @ivelovedhimthroughworse @raenestee @skeedelvee @lovelyladzzzz @lovelettersto-mars @jyae23 @the-beard-of-edward-teach

[tediousmalcontentt]

my favorite scene in all of literature is when Neil Josten wakes up in Columbia after being drugged, hurls an alarm clock at Aaron, dumps his water on the floor and throws the cup at Aaron, stuff his clothes down the toilet and squeezes out through the window, has the foresight to call Matt from a pay phone to protect his shit, hitch hikes back to campus, eyes back to brown?? shows up on Wymack’s door like 😜 and reveals he could speak German the whole time?? CHARACTER OF ALL TIME, that is a protagonist who knows how MOVE THE MFING PLOT ALONG

[ilikedetectives]

Veronica Ngô as Quỳnh in THE OLD GUARD 2 (2025)

In Vietnamese, while the speaker is talking/arguing with their partner and suddenly switches to pronouns pair: tao (first person, gender neutral) and mày (third person, gender neutral), this often signals as an unofficial breakup, or the relationship is now on thin ice at best.

TLDR: Category-7749-divorce-incoming pronouns

[hotcinnamonsunset]

when art (below left, print by Anna Haifisch) inspires art (below right, follow up by @molabuddy) inspires art (above, hand knit cardigan by me)🐕

[ruporas]

trigunned the hades or hadesed the trigun (id in alt)

[aashidoodles]

[collgeruledzebra]

the thing about trying to recommend fiction podcasts to someone who isn't familiar with them is that not only are so so many genres represented but also the level of production can fall anywhere from "basically an audiobook" to "major motion picture minus the pictures"

[eclipse-song]

Saw Mac Finds His Pride and ough. Lots of feelings I'm trying to put into words

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF movie Vanessa wants to meet Glamrock Bonnie..

[suntails]

true love

[strialternatives]

bonus:

:inhales and slams hands on the desk: akechi. palace. pitch.

disclaimer: the setting for this is all about vibes and aesthetics, it kinda got away from me when i started hashing out the plot around it two months ago so now we're here. in hell. (i'll probably have to make a secondary post i made wayyy too many concepts,)

yes i made an ost for this idea, here is a youtube playlist of chill european jazz

AU details under the cut-

Akechi Goro's palace is "Ampitheatrum Doloris”.

KEYWORDS: Akechi Goro, Tokyo Highcourt, Amphitheater

Akechi's psyche is a massive collection of locked doors, puzzles, and contradictions. He wants to be seen but not understood—heard but never known, ect. This makes his palace infiltration a waking nightmare (affectionate).

His palace is made up of five main layers. They each mirror a stage of grief:

1) There is the outer layer of with the appearance of a Venice-esque water canal maze, there is a door that must be opened to reach the entrance to infiltrate the second layer underneath the amphitheater. The puzzle's actually pretty sentimental and revolves around Akechi's interest in literature.

(This layer is depression, Goro mourns what he lost and the fact that the choices he made for the sake of revenge ultimately led to nowhere. This is reflected in how desolate/meandering the outer layer feels, it is the largest and most time consuming part of the palace for this reason. It takes weeks to finish. AKA, Akira and Morgana have a terrible, no good, very bad month of May.) 

2) The Labyrinth under the amphitheater; it is full of shadows for the arena champion to use as fodder for the enjoyment of the masses. ‘Loki’ resides here—this layer’s theme loosely plays on the Minotaur myth. 

The only way to escape is through a pulley/elevator mechanism which leads to the surface after shattering the Champion’s chains by force. Loki taunts in Old Norse, but gives Akira (and the party by extension) genuine hints on how to escape.

(This layer is anger, Goro is always angry, about the hand he’s been dealt, the futility of his own actions, and the fact that his life has always been a dead end, written in the stars.)

3) The Audience Stands; full of human cognitions and Akechi’s former clients and fans, despite everything, like Sae, he sees them as ‘people’ and is disgusted by them. Their compliments are shallow and empty, surface level like Goro’s facade. Cognition Sae is delegated to a middle manager-type role, and leads Akira and Co. through puzzles.

Different cognitions from Akechi’s shitshow of a childhood throw riddles based around philosophy and the nature of justice at the party, if the answer is ‘wrong’, there’s a mini-boss fight. Answering everything correctly yields a prize—a key, this process is made difficult by all of Robin’s ‘hints’ (which the Thieves can directly ask for) being lies.

(Bargaining. Goro always thought he could still salvage his revenge despite his enemy being essentially invincible, even now deep down he thinks he can salvage all the effort and sacrifices he put in.)

4) The Stage; Robin Hood appears proper instead of in cameo appearances, this is the lead actor's stage. To earn the right to stand with him, Akira has to have to prove his worth in one-on-one combat while showing the crowd a rousing show. The goal is to use the key obtained in the bargaining layer to unlock the Performer's cuffs.

(Denial, Goro doesn’t believe he needs or deserves saving or a life outside of his revenge, he believes there is no other way forward.)

Hereward and the 'treasure' are in the Imperial box area, which I'll save for part 2 of this I think! The second half of this'll have less focus on the environments and more on general plot and character design.

EDIT: here's part two and part three

[dreamsteddie]

Steve and Eddie who kind of flop in life and end up poor, living in a trailer in a different small town living quiet lives of no import.

The kids, Robin, Nancy, and Johnathan all seem to take the small handful of opportunities offered to them by the government in the aftermath of the Upsidedown to take off and make something of their lives. They're off writing headlines, making news, and living their lives to the best of their abilities, but Steve and Eddie find themselves stuck.

Steve stayed in Hawkins until the kids graduated and left for college. By then Nancy, Johnathan, and Robin are all in their second or third years of college. John and Nancy have their own apartment in New York together and don't reach out all that often, only seeing the rest of the Hawkins crew on Holidays and some vacations. Robin is flourishing at an all-women's college in Maine and has a partner and a cat and plans for graduate school brewing. She's always saying Steve can come out and join her whenever he's ready, but when the time comes it feels like he would just be trying to insert himself in the middle of a life he doesn't know how to fit into, so he turns to Eddie instead.

Eddie is permanently disabled in a number of ways following the events of season four. He struggles with chronic pain, has breathing issues due to the loss of part of his right lung, and lost enough muscle mass in his left leg that walking will never be easy or done without the use of a walker or arm bar crutches. The doctors said he recovered as well as he could have. The kids said he would get better with time. Wayne said it didn't matter if he never got better, he could do anything he set his mind to.

Steve is the only person who tells him the truth.

Steve tells him that it sucks. Tells him that it will probably always hurt. Doesn't give him false hope when he's trying to grieve the loss of the life he wanted to live. The goals he wanted to reach. When he falls deeper and deeper into himself, stuck in the muck of depression, Steve is the only person he lets in. The kids try their best but their lives are moving fast, and taking care of someone like Eddie is exhausting, no matter what they try to say. Eventually, everyone but Dustin gives up on reaching out, the younger boy showing up every Sunday to try and get Eddie out of the house. He always leaves disappointed.

When Steve asks him if he wants to use what's left of their partly government payouts and Steve's equally meager Family Video savings to buy a truly shitty trailer in a town an hour and a half south of Hawkins in the fall of 1990, it feels like the first boon he's been given in almost five years. He'll never be who he could have been if he had ignored Chrissy that day in 86', but he's always thought maybe he could be more than a ghost between Wayne's walls if he could just get out of this god-forsaken town full of people who know too much and too little of what's happened to him.

They get the trailer, pack what little they have, let Wayne hug them close, and leave.

Steve has already transferred to their new town's Family Video, moving up to claim the dubious honor of being the opening manager. Mostly he just unlocks the door, signs into the computer, and makes sure nothing catches fire. Eddie hoped that moving would miraculously make him fit to enter back into the world, but he spends most of his days with a blanket on the front porch, watching people pass by. He does, though, finally accept that he needs to apply for disability to help Steve keep the lights on and the water hot. That last little bit of hope that he could be what he used to be dies, but he's learning to be content with what he does have. He starts taking a walk, just ten minutes around the loop of the trailer park saying hi and trading polite nods with his fellow residents. He's not ok, but he's starting to build a new community of people not too different from himself.

The new trailer only has one bedroom. Eddie sleeps on a fold-out mattress in the living room. It had been a major argument when they first moved in with Steve insisting that Eddie needed the bed. Eddie argued that it wasn't fair for him to take the room when Steve was the one working 40 hours a week to keep them afloat. In the end, Eddie was the more stubborn of the two. It helps that Eddie has absolutely no qualms about crawling into bed with Steve on the nights when the couch bed really won't cut it for his aching body. Steve never questions it, just shuffles over a little and lets the other man in.

Steve doesn't question a lot of stuff.

He doesn't question when all their effects are shared between them with no effort to distinguish between yours and mine, Eddie's and Steve's. He doesn't question it four months in when Eddie starts to get his feet under him and decides to take up cooking, always trying his best to have everything done just as Steve walks through the door. He doesn't question when a good chunk of Eddie's first disability check goes to buying Steve a sturdy, if not very fashionable, new watch for his birthday since his old one went bust almost a year ago.

He doesn't question it when Eddie holds his hand for the first time under the stars hanging above their front porch.

He doesn't question it when Eddie introduces him to one of his new neighbor friends with a hand resting comfortably on his lower back

He doesn't question it when Eddie starts sleeping in the bedroom every night.

Or makes him box mix cupcakes for Valentine's Day.

Or kisses him for the first time on the couch that's never a bed unless they want to spend the day binge-watching bargain bin films.

Because really, isn't this how it was always going to go? Wasn't this exactly what Steve was asking for when he asked Eddie to skip town with him?

Isn't this what Eddie was hoping for when he said yes?

[ghostlakan]

the monkees are so stupid and great as a concept because they dont sound real. yeah they werent supposed to exist for real but they went rogue and killed their producers or something. the guitarist is a bassist and the bassist is a guitarist and the drummer is the only guy who couldn't play the drums. the government wants them dead and they went from starring in a silly kids sitcom to producing their own psychological surrealist horror movie that features just a real guy dying for real, in the span of like. a year. orgy mansion and secret fbi files. can someone put them out of their misery

[lazylittledragon]

relocating

(psst this is not on webtoon but it has its own ig now)

[novantinuum]

damn I can't wait until the long anticipated Steven Universe Renaissance happens as folks rewatch the show from the beginning in prep for Lars of the Stars and go "oh my god this show was So Good, how come I never realized how good it was growing up, the crit on it was so overblown and wrong" only for the Old Guard fandom (those who never truly left) to stare into the camera like we're on The Office and mumble something about how SU was ALWAYS good, the normies are just stupid and vastly skewed your opinions

[zorangezest]

woahhh I'm back again

I hope this isn't odd to ask but do you happen to have any fullbody coloured images of the DDDT cast and possibly their heights...

I want to draw like fullbody doodles of them eventually in the future KSJSK

helloooo! ty for the ask it was about time i made a height chart, here’s all the current active characters in the story!

and here’s a bunch of background characters who almost never show up (arcee doesn’t even appear in the story) but I liked their designs way too much so they’re also getting a lineup! also deepfreeze is there

drawing this actually made me realize something….