#AUGH this is a long one

[frozenhi-chews]

SPAMTON JUMPSCARE! I wanna know about how you fell for each other! Was it a love at first sight sort of thing or was it more slow burnish :o?

OUGH WIFE!!!

In the canonical timeline, I Scammed Death, it was a SLLLOOOWWW burn. These two Did Not Like Eachother. At all.

Pancake was fairly new to Cyber City, having an at-home shop and needing money. And one of the best ways she could get that is dumpster diving. Turning trash into art. However, there's someone else in those dumpsters.

Late one night, she found a dumpster she hadn't seen before, reached in, and then got BIT! Something had bit her arm so hard it broke her skin and she still has the scars years later. In response to this, she smacked her assailant on the opposite wall, where, TA-DA, a short angry Addison was there. He accused her of stealing his merchandise, and she felt bad enough that she put some trash back, but not without a sneer. This angered him to where he bit her shoulder, she smacked him against the wall, and she ran out.

For the next few months they had been at each other's throats. Spamton mostly, snarling at her when she arrived in his general vicinity. And Pancake sassing him out to his annoyance. They did not like each other.

Then somehow, it felt like Pancake flipped a switch. Somehow she was kinder. It threw Spamton off, thinking she was trying a new tactic to get under his skin. Checking in on him, visiting and buying things from his shop. Heck even HANDING HIM FOOD upon occasion. He hated it. But, to his denial, he liked her company.

The two of them slowly became friends, and that relationship JUMPED when Pancake defended him from someone else. Pancake was there to stay, that was her FRIEND. And one thing about Pancake across all universes, YOU DO NOT MESS WITH HER FRIENDS. She ended up fainting in front of him, and in a panic he brought her to his shop.

That changed their relationship. He found out he liked her before then, when he was in an abandoned restaurant and was singing. She was there and applauded him. Pancake found out she loved Spamton after he patched her up. And then the mutual pining commenced.

Spamton confessed first. Late at night. Having a horrible day. Sitting on the roof of his shop with Pancake. After that, they decided to pursue a relationship. And it wasn't until a couple months later he moved in.

Oooaaah that was. An infodump XD

I could talk more about I Scammed Death, I love it so much and Spamton in general. I have other AUs too, like Fallen Angel/Redeemed Demon, Dumpster Meet-Cute, and more.

As for I gained him as an F/O? I wasn't even into Deltarune. I was on the outskirts just looking at the fanart, when I realized I was CRUSHING on him. It startled me and I was in denial for a week despite making self ship art. It's been fun though. He's my wife, my husband, my second half. I love and adore him so much. There's a reason he's my #1 Rated Ultimate F/O. No one comes CLOSE to him

[padmestrilogy]

darth maul and padme amidala: discarded pawns

iain mccraig on doing concept art for the phantom menace / wookieepedia / james dillon / star wars tales volume 6 / paul mcdonald

[eff-plays]

The way Astarion reacts depending on how you compliment him in the mirror scene (I have no interest in insulting him so I won't be covering that here, have fun though!) drives me fucking insane.

"I want to know what the world sees when it looks at me. What you see."

And you get two types of responses. First, your choices for compliments are

Strong, piercing eyes.

The creases when you laugh.

Pick the first, and he's pleased. "Go on," he says, sounding very seductive. You're giving him exactly what he wants, and he's encouraging it.

Pick the second, and he gets upset. He's an eternally young vampire, not your doting grandmother! You can do better than that. Even if you meant it as a compliment (I know my Tav definitely did), he doesn't seem to take it that way.

Your second options are

That dangerous smile.

The way your hair curls around your ears.

Once again, the first one pleases him, and he even praises your efforts. Very good. Now finish the scene and tell him he's beautiful.

But if you say the second, he gets exasperated. This is meant to be flattery, not poetry. Just tell him he's beautiful and we can call it a day, he says with a dismissive wave of his hand. He doesn't need to hear this crap, just tell him what he wants and fuck off.

Of course, it doesn't matter how you get to this point, and every dialogue option at the end of the scene nets you the same amount of approval. If you call him beautiful, it's +1. Call someone else beautiful, it's +1. If you ask whether he just wants shallow praise (aka don't call him beautiful), you get +1. So this is me pulling this out of my ass I guess.

I always choose to call him beautiful becuase 1) he is and 2) my Tav thinks so too and would oblige him if he asked for it that directly.

But I am obsessed with the different routes you can take to get to this point and what they imply.

Strong, piercing eyes and dangerous smile pleases him more outwardly, but doesn't actually affect the outcome. He's satisfied and confident with these compliments. They confirm what he's trying to project into the world, what he aspires to have and to be.

The creases when he laughs? The hair curling around his ears? Those are things he can't control, can't use against someone else. But he asked to be seen, and if this is what Tav sees, then what does that mean for him?

Why are they complimenting his laugh lines? Why are they speaking poetry at him? Why are they seeing things he has no control over, and why are they revealing them to him?

He doesn't want shallow praise. Questioning this nets approval, and giving it to him doesn't increase approval. What he wants is assurance that what he's trying to be is what the world sees, that he's in control.

And if you actually act as a mirror, point out the things unique to him that you see, he gets uncomfortable, because you're showing a reflection of someone he thinks he's not, of someone he has no control over. And that's scary, even if it's supposedly complimentary.

Because what's scarier than losing control?

But then, compared to how genuinely upset he seems when you insult him (I looked these up on YT for context), the laugh lines and hair curls are still accepted as compliments. So what does he think when Tav says these things?

They see past his piercing eyes and dangerous smile. They see something else that they like even more, things he's not aware of or doesn't appreciate as much. What does that feel like, to cultivate such a perfect image of oneself for the purposes of seducing and tricking others, and then be stumped when someone walks past all that and points out something entirely different that they noticed and found endearing?

Do you do him a favor, and tell him you see only what he wants to be? Or do you speak the truth, and show him what he actually is? Which one is better? Which one is worse?

[redinthesea]

"The Unlucky Groom" or "Have You Fulfilled Your Dream Yet?" or "Back Where You Started" or "Why Is He Cinderella Though" or "I Still Think He Needs to Be Put Down" or "Smoking is Bad"

[ruporas]

all I wanted was to save them... (ID in alt)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Get Souped!

[khattikeri]

one of my favorite things about mdzs is that for how heavily its plot involves politics of classism and misogyny... even the characters most directly impacted by it can't and don't free themselves from it. literally the closest exception is mianmian.

meng yao being the "son of a whore" wasn't some sort of commie awakening for him that led him to wanting everyone to be socially equal. he played the political game, climbed the ladders, sucked up to and backstabbed and murdered people, including other prostitutes who actually had nothing to do with how he and his mother were treated at the brothel he grew up in.

he put in so much extra excessive effort for even a fraction of the same respect that members of gentry cultivation clans got. and he did deserve to be treated more humanely! but he feeds into the exact same system that created him, leading to his own undoing.

his efforts were for a fragile upward mobility that was never going to hold up. he never surpassed his origins nor did he empower others in similar stations, because the society he lives in is not one that would accept that.

the second he got caught and all those crimes exposed, he was scapegoated to hell and back, replacing wei wuxian as society's terrible one-sidedly evil boogeyman overnight.

speaking of not-quite male gentry, i think it's interesting that wei wuxian explicitly doesn't try to climb the ladders in BOTH lives, knowing full well that anything he does will be punished just for the sheer fact that he is wei wuxian.

wei wuxian is scolded for giving intelligent and correct answers in school. lan wangji does the same and is praised.

wei wuxian occasionally lounges around with fellow disciples and is punished. jiang cheng does the same and mostly escapes.

wei wuxian refuses to carry his sword around in public (after losing his golden core, which nobody knows) and is scorned as an arrogant upstart. nie huaisang has been doing the EXACT SAME THING for YEARS and nobody bats an eye.

unlike jin guangyao, wei wuxian knew subconsciously from the start that his acceptance was superficial and that he could be cast out any time. when he was 10 and recently taken in by the jiangs, he canonically would not eat or use "too much" food and water because he thought they'd find him a nuisance for "wasting their things" and kick him back out.

now away from just the classism, yu ziyuan is a proud and strong noblewoman in a society that belittles and derides women for everything they do. her strong cultivation doesn't matter. she's victim to the vicious rumors of her husband loving another woman who is strong like her but apparently had a more likeable personality.

it doesn't matter even if jiang fengmian didn't cheat or that wei wuxian is wei changze's son with cangse sanren; yu ziyuan can't bear with the humiliation of herself (and by extension her children) not being "good enough". she's ridiculed for "failing" in that one duty as a wife, mother, and woman.

she lashes out and takes out that anger on everyone present for years, giving her children lasting trauma and also being a key element in how the jiang family and yunmeng jiang sect are effectively wiped out at the hands of the wen clan.

madam jin doesn't even have a name outside of the fact that she's married to jin guangshan. i don't even remember reading anything that indicates if she's a strong or weak cultivator, or what, which in itself proves that to most people, it doesn't matter. she's "just" a woman.

of course she's angry at her husband's affairs and all the bastard children they bring in. but she also can't do anything about them, so she lashes out at the few people she can: servants. non-cultivators, probably. those very same bastard children.

shoutout to meng yao getting shoved down a flight of stairs at age fourteen, because if madam jin tried that move against her husband instead, it would make her lose even more face, which as a noblewoman she'd never do.

and that's not getting into how jiang yanli is consistently sidelined for being physically weak.

that's not getting into how mianmian was actually a good cultivator, but was mocked by everyone around her for trying to stand up for wei wuxian when everyone was turning on him. how everyone scoffed at luo qingyang's words as "just some lovesick woman" who "obviously wants to marry or bed him since he saved her".

luo qingyang is the only one of these characters who HASN'T died. she didn't play society's games like jin guangyao. she didn't dig her heels in confidence of her own abilities like wei wuxian.

she didn't bitterly lash out like yu ziyuan and madam jin. she didn't gently accept it like jiang yanli.

she just LEFT.

she married an ordinary merchant and cultivates separately from mainstream cultivation society, and therein found her own peace and happiness.

mxtx doesn't bother with particularly class conscious or feminist vocabulary to hand-hold readers into understanding these disparities, but that choice highlights them & the deeply entrenched politics of their society even more. i really love it.

[maddyscrsideblog]

Having Kiki and Vax thoughts again this time about the more abstract idea of the champion of the goddess of death being in love with an almost immortal woman, the only way they can be reunited is by waiting a thousand years until her death and he will show up time and again to make sure she gets to live those thousand years, there is a woman that the embodiment of death is in love with and he ensures her immortality

[hasarjunadoneanythingwrong]

🪷

[hhheythere]

[l1ght-n1ghts]

HAPPY DEDEDE DURSDAY. Have THE King of Dream Land in all of his glory in the dragon au!

+Design notes/headcanons under cut

Based off of King Penguins! It let me give him a splash of color, and so his chick plumage was brown to make him look like the Waddle Dees! And also “King” Penguin. Haha.

Also based (generally) off of Theropod Dinosaurs. Namely, the Therizinosaurus for its body plan. I didn’t give him the killer claws because I still wanted him to be able to use his hammer. Maybe in another life, Dedede.

While he is primarily bipedal, he can swap to a quadruped stance if desired. He only usually does this if a ceiling is too low for him, or if he goes beast mode (like in Forgotten Land)

His horns form a crown-like formation on his head that was inspired by his mask during Masked Dedede fights. He polishes them to make them shiny like gold!

He has a throat pouch that lets him store food and, when he wants to float, air. He taught himself this through pure spite. I'm actually pretty sure the spite part is canon.

Dedede actually has a good amount of scars, but most of them are smaller and hidden by his feathers. Some, however, stick out quite a bit.

Has a stubborn hoarding instinct. Dedede’s initial greed as a ruler combined with this trait is what sparked the whole “stealing all the food in Dream Land” thing. After he grows as a person (gets his ass kicked) and becomes a good King, he moves on to hoard other things. It’s usually shiny things and small bits of food. He shares it with people he trusts (the Dees and eventually his friends)

The Dees look remarkably similar to a weirdly proportioned chick in his eyes (Same general body plan. Warm shades that are close to being brown. Cute, high-pitched calls). This sets off so many protective instincts in his head it drives him NUTS. Like he knows logically that they’re fully grown, but that won’t stop his brain from going “THAT IS A CHILD.” at first. This only gets worse with time :)

[dizzybizz]

only took 2 years but he's done now

[roachemoji]

🤡 ⭐️ funny little cardigan 🌙 ❤️

maybe I'll actually dress up and style an outfit or something

[sketchy-tour]

Im SO slow with the update, I haven't actually poked at the secrets yet but I am LOSING MY MARBLES OVER WALLY SINGING AND SPECIFICALLY HIS SONG TOYLAND

Head in haaaaaands!!!!!

[neptunesailing]

femstars week day 4: high fashion / magical girls

[snazzi-strawberri-artz]

AUGHH CLASS ASSIGNMENT YIPPEEE!!! Had to make cut out silhouette designs for 3 of our characters!!!