stegginsketches

[stegginsketches]

Summary: Following Brother’s orders, Dio heads towards a remote town in Nevada in search of the late Dr. Klim’s greatest creations — a time machine and a mysterious thing known as the Blue Bird. 

During his journey, he’ll adopt find an apprentice, and together, they will have to solve puzzles, meet new people, find a way to tolerate each other, and maybe learn what being a gentleman truly means in the process. But anything to fulfill Free The Soul’s sacred mission, right?

(Or, alternatively: A Professor Layton and the Curious Village AU with Dio and Quark as the protagonists.)

Wordcount (chapters 1-3): 10,6k words

Content Warnings (for the whole fic): Spoilers for the entire Zero Escape series, as well as some implied spoilers for Curious Village. Lots of strong language (though that’s probably a given considering Dio is the main character). Cults (again, fork found in kitchen). Some mild violence. A bunch of near death experiences and references to past deaths.

So, it’s finally time to release the fic I wrote for the 2025 Uchikoshi Big Bang (@uchibigbang)! The fic will have ten chapters in total, but for now, here are the first three chapters of the fic.

Special thanks to @aibafiles for beta-reading this, and to @kiwifie for all the amazing artwork she’s made for this fic!

[stegginsketches]

"The child looked at him with big eyes full of curiosity and something akin to… relief? Was Dio imagining things? What kind of lunatic would be relieved to almost be run over by a car?!"

My first piece of a few for @uchibigbang of the fic written by @999-picarat-puzzle!

You can read the first three chapters here!

[stegginsketches]

To Save Innocent Souls

When Akane comes to, three things catch her attention in rapid succession. The first is about herself — aside from her name and what she looks like, she can't remember anything about who she is. The second is about the other two people near her — one in tattered clothes and one dressed like a punk, who are staring each other down. And the third is about the scene that's unfolding before her — the man in tattered clothes is backing away from the man dressed like a punk, who is shouting at him threateningly while brandishing a golden gun. She has no idea who these people are yet, but she can't just stay there and do nothing. Or... she would, but there's just one pretty big problem... And that's the fact that she's already dead.

the first part of my fic for @uchibigbang is now live! massive thanks to @stegginsketches for the INCREDIBLE art piece and @aibafiles for beta reading! i couldn't have done it without you both in my corner 💜

new chapters will be uploaded every wednesday of this month!

[stegginsketches]

For my part of the @uchibigbang, I’ve made this illustration to go along with a delightful Zero Escape/Ghost Trick crossover fic written by @deathgamegirl! With Ghost Trick being the first VN I ever played, I was so stoked to work on this, so please go give it a read here. It will be updated each Wednesday of June!

[stegginsketches]

Welcome to Another Route: A Zero Escape OC Zine! The interest check is now open here. This will be an open acceptance zine for any skill level. The only rules other than being nice are to be 18+ and be able to commit to the project!

The form will be open until around May 20th. Applications should start around the beginning of June, and the actual project is planned to start in August.

This art is featuring Eric and Mod Candy's oc Film, and the art is by me.

[stegginsketches]

dear tumblr user, you scrolled too much, pass the capcha to prove you're not a gaulem

[stegginsketches]

Blather On 🦴

[stegginsketches]

“I LOVE that game!” (watched a letsplay and commentary about it)

[stegginsketches]

To: @stegginsketches

From: @goggles-girl

Merry Christmas! Hope you enjoy this drabble, I enjoyed writing the three's sibling dynamic.

Sometimes, Luna liked to pretend the small pinging noise was the chirping of a bird. 

It was so tranquil inside the B Garden, the smell of dirt and the trickle of water unlike anything else inside the Rhizome. She could sit there for hours and hours if demand would allow, as if she were at a beautiful path instead of stuck on the moon in a facsimile of the world she had been created to help save.

"Um, helllooooooo? Anybody there? Moon to Moony???"

Lagomorph's shrill voice echoed over the loudspeaker, disrupting the tranquility of her sanctuary. She knew it would come eventually if she ignored his pings for long enough, but the sigh came nevertheless.

"I'm here, Lagomorph. Has Miss Kurashiki arrived early?"

"Yessir! Her ship is docking as we speak. Better hop to it, or the doctor will be angryyyyy."

“I’ll be there momentarily. Thank you, Lagomorph.”

With her hands folded in her lap, the android took one last look around the garden. Anytime Akane Kurashiki came to visit, things got extra busy and moments like this were few and far between. She knew it shouldn’t matter to her, she was programmed to be an assistant to Dr. Klim and nothing else, but it only made the quiet moments even sweeter.

After trekking down hallways and taking an elevator, Luna found herself in the large warehouse room that would one day be the starting point of the grand plan Dr. Klim and Miss Kurashiki had been working towards over the years. Every footstep echoed hauntingly off of the walls, with nothing inside the room to deafen them. Sometimes when Dr. Klim wasn’t forcing him to study some intense scientific field, Kyle would visit the room and see how long he could get his shouts to echo off the walls before fading out.

The large door that Luna had been told would hold a 9 someday had already been opened, presumably by Lagomorph. She passed through the opening and continued her walk down to the lift, whose gears were whirring away. 

After a few moments, an older woman came into view, a ponytail full of nearly grey hair falling over her shoulder. She wore a long purple dress and a smile that was somehow warm, weary and distant all at once. Luna wasn’t sure how it was possible as an android, but she still felt a shiver come across her form. Miss Kurashiki always had a certain demeanor about her; a sense of knowing, as if she was 10 steps ahead of everyone else at any given time. It made Luna uneasy, even though Akane treated her better than any of the other three people she shared the moon base with.

“Good morning, Luna.”

“Good morning, Miss Kurashiki. I hope your shuttle was smooth.”

“Oh, nothing worse than the usual bumps here and there. Though as I age I certainly don’t take them as well as I used to.”

“I would be happy to bring some extra medicine to your quarters before bedtime, if you would like.”

“That would be lovely, Luna. Thank you kindly.”

The two of them began to walk back down the hallway toward the rest of the Rhizome. These walks were usually uncomfortable for Luna, who wasn’t sure how to make small talk with the Mistress. However, today Miss Kurashiki had brought a container with her-a wooden box with a hinged lid.

“Miss Kurashiki, could I take that box for you?” Luna offered. She knew from experience that the older woman was stronger than she looked, but so was Luna, and she didn’t have to worry about pulling her back. 

“Oh that’s very kind of you. This is actually for you and Kyle anyways. I know how hard you two have been working and thought you could use a little break.”

As Luna took the box from Akane, she heard a small tinkle of bells coming from inside. Any predictions about what could have been inside the box immediately slid from her mind.

“I hope you like it,” Miss Kurashiki said. Luna thought she detected a hint of a giggle under the words. “It’s the right time of year, but I haven’t celebrated it in a while, so I thought you might get better use out of it.”

*******

"Um, Kyle?"

"Yes?"

"I still don't think the tree looks right," Luna said, pushing past the impulse to feel timid in the face of the young master.

"Seriously? What is wrong now?" His voice carried a strange tinniness to it as a result of the suit Dr. Klim required him to wear to keep him healthy on the moon.

"I think we need to fluff the branches more before we put too many ornaments on it. There's a lot of gaps, especially on the right."

The teen let out a huff. "Really? I don't think it's that bad..."

"Sorry Junior, but Luna is right, your tree looks like Swiss cheese!" Lagomorph interjected, projecting himself onto the wall next to the tree.

"Well, I have never even *seen* a Christmas tree before. How am I supposed to know what it looks like?"

The three of them were gathered around a short, plastic fir tree that Kyle had sat on top of a round table in the lounge. Luna and Kyle were perched on round stools next to the table, the box Miss Kurashiki had given them resting on the floor between them.

“I simply carrot take this anymore!” Lagomorph exclaimed. His form was suddenly replaced with a picture of a tree similar to the one in front of them. This one, however, was much bigger, taking up a whole corner of the room it was in, floor to ceiling. 

It was also quite gaudy, Luna thought to herself. There were dozens of ornaments, lights, and ribbons covering almost every square inch of greenery. The overwhelming nature of the decorations told Luna the picture was clearly from the before times. After the Radical 6 outbreak and the ensuing chaos, the ratio of people to items made trinkets and baubles easy to come by, but everything Luna knew about the prior days indicated that opulence was often shown by the amount of stuff a person owned.

“Lagomorph, that’s ridiculous. There is no way our tree is going to look like that,” Kyle huffed at the screen.

“Sure Junior, but you’re missing the point of the picture. Look at the branches! Aren’t they pawsitively sticking out everywhere?”

“Lagomorph’s right, I think if we just spread these out a little more we’ll have a much fuller looking tree. And then we can start putting the ornaments on it.” Luna handed the young man a shiny green orb almost as big as the palm of her hand. As soon as Kyle took it, the ornament felt as if it shrank three sizes in comparison to his gloved hands.

“Sorry Luna, but I do not think that I have the dexterity to wrap these ornaments around the branches to stay on the tree the way I think they are designed to.” He continued to fiddle with the branches, slowly getting rid of the gaps within the tree.

“Lagomorph?”

“Yes, Mooney?”

“What other Christmas traditions are there? Is there anything else we could do to celebrate?”

“Welllll, another hopportunity I stumbled across is that people hang their socks up overnight!”

“What on earth?” Kyle puzzled. “How could that possibly be a way to celebrate a holiday.”

“Donno. Seems like some Earthlings believe a deity would come by and drop gifts inside. Some kind of saint?”

“We might not have a deity to put gifts inside, but we can still hang them up,” Luna declared. “This is the first time we celebrate a holiday, and I want to make sure we do it right!”

*******

A few hours later, a weary Akane and Sigma stumbled into the lounge, each with a pair of socks in their hand. The smell of turkey lightly wafted through the room, making both of their stomachs growl.

“Good, you made it! Just in time for dinner, too!” Luna set a tray of warmed up rations down on a small table in front of the plus red couch in the lounge. 

Kyle was already sitting down, his hands folded in his lap. “You brought the requested items too,” he said, a hint of excitement in his voice. “Please take one of the sticky pads and place your sock on the wall.”

The two older figures followed his gaze to the far wall of the room, where three socks were plastered up against it. Just in front of it sat a green Christmas tree, haphazardly decorated with green and red baubles and gold strings. 

Akane couldn’t help but let out a giggle as she took in the scene. “Well, I didn’t expect you to get to work so quickly. Seems you really got into the Christmas spirit.”

“But Christmas isn’t until-” Sigma’s words were cut off by a stomp of Akane’s foot.

“They’re having fun, no need to put a stop to it now,” she whispered to him.

“But this is valuable time we could be spending in the lab! Or studying.”

As she watched Luna lay out three relatively unappetizing plates, Akane waved her partner’s insistences away. “It’s good for the boy to have some time to enjoy being a kid. Besides, we may have our proclivities against the Christmas season, but it’s good for us to have a break too.”

With only a few more grumbles, Sigma moved to the couch while Akane hung up their socks as part of a tradition that neither Kyle nor Luna seemed to fully grasp. After the four of them were seated, Luna grabbed her glass (full of water only for show), raised it up above her head, and smiled at everyone in the room.

“Merry Christmas, everyone!”

[stegginsketches]

Upholding Luigi Mangione as a class hero isn't actuality helping anything; not because killing the ceo was wrong (it wasn't) but because the man still maintains his innocence. You're doing no better than the cops and fraction of the public against the shooter's actions by treating Mangione as if he's unequivocally guilty.

Redirect your energy to fighting the police's bullshit prosecution and blatant public defamation of his image. Stop supporting him on the grounds of heroic actions. Support him on the grounds of there's still literally no proof he actually fucking did anything.

[stegginsketches]

crazy how there's collectively maybe a dozen they/them characters in pieces of media that anyone talks about and if you go to look up things about them in queer fandom spaces then you'll still see them getting misgendered a good 60% of the time

[stegginsketches]

I finally find the motivation to finish something, and it’s Huxley in the Darling Dance fit

[stegginsketches]

mr shu takumi i have the funniest idea

[stegginsketches]

9 hours 9 persons 9 doors is a crazy game like conceptually. youre in the torture labyrinth and your weirdgirl childhood best friend will say shes just remembered a story she heard once about a scientist who turned himself into [pickle] and she will ask you if you want to hear about the [pickle Rick experiment] and then you say no I don't want to hear about the [pickle Rick experiment] but unfortunately for you and the other losers trapped in the bootstrap paradox you fumbled that autistic girlie so bad like cosmic scale levels of bad that now the knife man is going to murder you all. with a knife

[stegginsketches]

yeah

[stegginsketches]

One should always have at least 2 craft projects going. That way, when one of them is messed up and misbehaving, you can switch to another, and let the first one sit there and think about what it's done.

[stegginsketches]

thanks babe that's so helpful