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Pretty in Pink (swapped AU)

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Auds is still a princess, even if she doesn’t really know that about herself yet. Therefore I have to draw her in pastels, cause I can. Generally I think her AK palette is WAY less saturated than Audrey is in canon. A visual representation of how difficult it is for her to heal from the Isle of the Lost.

I imagine it takes a lot of coaxing from her friends to get her out of the leather capelet and into something more comfortable. Jane and Lonnie definitely have to put in the work to get her hair out of her eyes. But isn’t she a cutie? I love her.

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Dragon Mal (reference sheet)

Doing some dragon refs to flush out the Dragon Girl’s color palettes. Mal’s original design is boring. I’ll try and do one for Audrey too.

Mal may seem a little small compared to Ben, but she is only an adolescent dragon and is still growing. She’ll be as big as her mom someday.

I know she breathes red fire in the films but green fire is way cooler and makes more sense for her character. I haven’t decided how she got her scar yet.

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HEIST HEIST HEIST

I saw this post today and got inspired, SO here is Descendants Could Have Been A Heist Movie, thebluestbluewords take :

(this is very much an outline and not a full fic yet, but I might yet write this someday)

Taking this whole heist movie idea very seriously, this would be (and might yet be if I have the time for it) a fic about how the first Descendants movie would have gone if it had been a heist movie, rather than a fairytale.

The main plot of the movie is no longer about learning to choose good and seeing that kids don’t have to follow in the footsteps of their parents- it’s now a high school political intrigue about stealing a wand.

(don’t worry about the larger themes there- the wand might be stolen for many self-serving reasons that go beyond 'doing what their parents say'. Maybe they’re stealing it to make a larger statement about opening the isle. Or about how treating villains as villains is wrong and they deserve trust because it makes things so much more fun for them in the long run)

(can you tell I haven’t decided on the overall tone of this AU yet lmao)

The story starts when the VKs are being told to get the wand, hand it over, it’ll be easy.

Sure, they say.

Sounds great, they say.

Give us your spellbook and magic mirror and whatever else you’ve got to give, and we absolutely won’t use them to betray you and open the isle on our own terms, they don’t say.

(this story ends before we get to that point, but the implication is there)

The kids arrive in Auradon, as in canon.

Unlike canon, they don’t immediately go for a break-and-enter approach to the museum, because if they’re going to heist this, they’re going to do it right. A good heist takes planning, and patience, and research.

What they do is wait until the weekend, and then inform the school admin that they want to get to know the culture of Auradon.

The museum seems like a great place to start, Evie says earnestly.

We didn’t have anything like it back on the Isle, adds Mal. It would be such a good learning opportunity for us.

And we could see the town. And the candy store. Say the boys.

The school admin caves, because it would be wrong to deny these kids a chance to get to know this history of goodness! They’re just teenagers, and they’ve been doing so well with their first week, and of course they can go into town, do they want a school car to drop them off?

They do not.

The museum is kind of a bust. They spend some time scoping out the security, but they’ve had a whole week to magically-google everything they can about this place, and it’s not much of a surprise that there’s a functionally unbreakable magical alarm system set up around all of the objects.

Time to reassess the plan.

(this is where the political intrigue comes in)

Ben is still a Fundamentally Decent (if slightly boring) guy in this.

Of course, he’s also the one on the line if this whole villainy exchange program goes wrong. It shouldn’t be a surprise that he would come to check up on his flagship students after they have a day out exploring the town.

Oho, Mal thinks. Here’s something they can work with.

Ben is sweet. He’s not terribly interesting, at least at first, but he seems like a guy who genuinely cares about the idea of bringing villain kids over, and can probably be manipulated to their purposes without too much effort.

So the VKs think over their potential plans to get the wand, and decide that yeah, if they can get an in with the future king of Auradon, that’s probably a pretty solid place to start.

Unfortunately, they decide to start this attempt by blatantly flirting.

Audrey is very much a political presence in this fic. She’s not evil by any means, but she is goal oriented and doesn’t necessarily love the idea of VKs coming in and altering her five year plan for herself and her boyfriend.

(I think Aurdey is an interesting character, and I wish she’d been given some better motivations in the first movie beyond ‘mean girl in a high school movie’. So in this fic, where they do still crown the incoming royalty at sixteen, they also believe in setting up children for advantageous marriages. Audrey and Ben have been pushed at each other since they were kids, and yeah, maybe there’s not a lot of actual love between them, but they’re friends and it’s way easier to just date each other and make their parents happy than refuse and risk losing the sway they get with their parents by being the good little obedient golden children who are happy to be put together if it’s what’s best for the future of the realm.)

The point of this is, the VKs send Mal in with her very best flirting, taught to her by Evie in a truly hopeless training montage, and it just-

Fails. Completely.

And now Audrey sort of hates them.

Great.

The other unfortunate piece of this heist is that the relationships between the co-conspirators, the core four, are….somewhat intense. Charged, if you will, with a certain kind of tension.

I’m not saying that Malvie hook up in their pink princess dorm room on the first night and then don’t talk about it for the rest of the story despite blatantly flirting with each other all the time, but yeah actually that might be what I’m saying.

This is the middle of the fic now, and there’s some kind of political drama that leads to the VKs finding out about the coronation.

Maybe it’s teammate bonding, because I think it’s tragically underutilized that Ben and Jay are canonically both sports bros and I want more of that sweet high school sports team drama content.

The point is, they find out about the coronation, and that the wand will be out and about during that day.

Oho, they say. An opportunity.

Building on the sports bros theme, Lonnie gets to be in this story! She’s a cool character and I have a couple of unfinished ideas for her kicking around my fic drive, so she’s going to be here too.

Lonnie finds the VKs in a somewhat compromising state of planning.

Uh, what the fuck is this, she says.

What do you THINK, says Mal, who is not known for keeping her mouth shut.

Looks like...some kind of statement that you’re going to make during the coronation, says Lonnie, who is a nice person and also didn’t hear/see all that much of the planning before she was noticed. (as I’m typing this up I am also remembering the School of Secrets shorts?? Lonnie is absolutely going in this fic as someone who spies on her new friends. It’s almost like canon. She’s the daughter of Mulan. She can sneak when she wants to)

Yes. Exactly. A peaceful political statement, says Evie, who is often a quicker thinker than the others. We are going to… sit at the front in protest. Of how we have been treated. As villains. We deserve the same respect as other students, regardless of who our parents are.

Lonnie is surprisingly on board with this, because honestly, based on some of her costume choices in d1, magical disney utopias seem to be overwhelmingly white for the most part and do not know how to support their international students very well.

(am I still mad about the awful dress she was wearing during the family day scene?? yes.)

So now they have Lonnie on board with their made-up protest plan, and they’ve got Ben and Jay being… actually bros, weirdly enough, and somehow there’s got to be high school political intrigue that I haven’t thought through yet (maybe a group who doesn’t approve of the villainy exchange program is trying to get Ben declared unfit?? Idk. Maybe it’s just different mini kingdoms angling for a good position, and it matters Very Deeply who sits where at the coronation and it’s a whole deal. That one probably works a bit better.) and it’s altogether getting Pretty Far Into Things.

Family day isn’t a big conflict in this AU, because the VKs don’t really care about the whole family gathering and party business without Mal being involved with Ben. They decide to have a chill time hanging out and plotting their heist instead. The wand is going to be taken out before the coronation, but rather than try and grab it in the middle of things, it’s got to be easier to grab it right before or after, while it’s in transport.

They have multiple people who can pick locks. People who can charm guards into letting their guard down for a bit. Ways of getting around even electronic lock systems, given some time.

They hang around the classroom a bit longer after their parent phone call, and get to talking with Fairy Godmother about how maybe, possibly, they could get a real place up at the front during the coronation. It’s a good distraction, and hearing more about the logistics of how things are going to go on the day itself is a perfect segue into asking more about the objects that are used during the coronation. It’s important to understand their new home! No other reason they’d want to know about the history and powers of her wand.

No other reason at all.

They learn that the wand is going into secure storage in Fairy Godmother’s office for the day before the ceremony. Of course, it’s going to be safe enough there. The magical wards at the museum are mostly there in case of emergency, and they’re really more about making sure none of the objects get damaged than they are about theft.

There are no more villains in Auradon, after all.

All things considered, it’s shockingly easy to break into Fairy Godmother’s office the night before the coronation. The wand is in a safe with some magic barriers around it, but Mal has her mother’s spellbook, and Evie has a magic mirror that can look up the answer to pretty much anything they ask, so it’s short work for a pair of magic users who have been practicing their spellwork since they day they left the isle to break the temporary barriers down.

There’s a regular human lock as well, and they give that one to Jay. He’s their lockpicking expert, after all.

And there it is.

Mal grabs the wand. There’s a surge of magical energy up through her hand, burning everywhere she’s touching the silvery metal, but in a way that feels like strength.

And all hell breaks loose.

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Y’all i just experienced Rotten to the Core in the fucking club. My life has been irrevocably changed. I legit had a religious experience.

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"This is between you and me Mother."

aka Mal's about to go HAM on her mom who didn't expect Mal to go full demi-god

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I don’t think the Descendants fandom talks enough about the fact that Jay was the first of the crew to choose good after Mal’s speech and Carlos was the last

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@c-rose2081 inspires me constantly ive drawn so much within the past month because of her lol

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This is glory, this is beauty, this is my pride and joy.

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i updated an old isle of the lost map i did. view in new tab/fullscreen for best effect. 

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Hades and Persephone

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Reposting because the tags are borked for some reason? Just two wives hanging out by the Styx without a care in the underworld. I still ship Maldrey even if it’s not my main anymore ^^ they’re sweet together sometimes lol

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Whatcha got there?

Self explanatory art is the best kind. This is as much a bestie situation as it is a valid ship in my mind XD Mal’s not happy about it either way.

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Some Audrey angst for soulmate AU, which I'm posting now cos I won't finish it today. Plot will get there when Uma does ✨

Audrey made it to the port just in time, just before the yacht hosting cotillion leaves – goodness knows whose idea it was, anyway!

Do they know nothing about <i>being fashionably late</i>?

Presumably, they don’t; Audrey scoffs at the tip of her heels peeking from under her skirt. She was forced to wear her shortest heels, would you believe it?

The audacity of these people.

At least the decorations are somewhat passable, she muses as she waits to be announced to the room – boat. Whatever.

And she would have done a better job with it, anyway, she will have you know.

Still waiting, she stretches her hands out in a way that would show off her newly manicured nails were she not wearing gloves, not that she regrets the money spent, though. A lady always looks her best, even if there is no one to see.

And the gloves, well, those are non-negotiable, Audrey is afraid. She can’t just risk touching someone like that, touching someone and getting a mark and <i>not knowing</i> whose mark it was – that’s what she says, anyway.

It’s better than explaining the deep shame she feels about her lack of soulmate, the fear–

She hears two deep thuds and the door opening, her name and title being announced for anyone to hear, and forces a perfect smile on her face.

Barely anyone looks as she descends.

It shouldn’t be like this. It shouldn’t.

She should walk these stairs with Ben at her side, with their soulmark proudly displayed – That would make her grandmother happy. That would make <i>her</i> happy, right?

Instead, Audrey keeps the pleasant smile on her face as she mingles with the crowd, running her finger absentmindedly over a seam in her glove.

A ringlet of hair managed to escape her updo; she pushes it behind her ear.

(That’s how Ruby got her mark, isn’t it? That boy of hers pushed her hair back and his fingers came back stained.)

She should go fix her hair.

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God why is the royal wedding so choppy????

because the studio that did the animation had never done any animation longer than a trailer or commercial, which is why the trailers to the royal wedding look amazing, yet it looks like a BAD m.a.p(multi animator project, which are all amazing because they're usually fandom made with beginner or novice animators) for the full length feature, they practically had a different artist for every frame so nothing looks consistent, i have a feeling the animators were rushed too so they didnt have time to actually make anything look good or alive, honestly the biggest problem with the animation is the lack of eye shine

like

Og: no eye shine, she looks dead

WITH EYE SHINE

Just the simplest little detail brought the animation to life

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Another in my series of drawing Descendants Hades in poses from his animated counterpart.

I like Descendants Hades a normal amount, I promise.

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i think this got buried in my tags but since i still like it-Uma d3 redesign but less costume and more kinda normal outfit-but also clearly a d-com outfit

captain jacket-painted denim pants-copy/newish corset, and kinda different hair.

if i think i made this in 2021 after i did my rewrite design n i wanted to do a ‘make it kinda canon but better’ instead of just making an entire new look; i like it still tho, if i could edit anything-it would be her skin tone cuz i accidently used her high-lights that were combined with her actual skintone-cuz back then i didnt know how to color pick properly for skintones 

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How i feel about Umas new design but its copy pasted from the discord

yes to the braids and hat, hell no to the rest of the outfit

she looks like a doll, not uma

its just, super overdesigned, like u(Ash on discord) said, they're trying to go back to D2 without understanding what made the D2 outfits so good, the pirates had lots of design to them but they were never overdesigned, theres just so much going on in this new outfit that it feels like a big blur of brown and teal, nothings drawing my eye nothings catching my attention, its a boring doll design at most and and an overdesigned costume at the least

they also dont understand how the first 3 movie outfits were made, they were made woth intricate details that made the outfits feel, well, like the characters. These designers dont get that, they take a color pallet ans then slap the main motif on the character and call it a day, they dont think 'why does this character dress this way' or 'why is this their color pallet' so everything feels so flat and fake

plus they domt get why umas color is teal, shes not based off her moms main colors of purple and black, so they gave her thr color of her moms eye shadow, so Uma is teal and or turquoise, so thats her color pallet, and brown is her complimentary color so shes paired with brown and gold

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More random favorite pictures of the blorbo aka Ben. ft. Evie bc "Chillin' Like a Villain" sure has a whole lot of stupid-looking Ben lmao