#art takes a lot longer for me than writing does lol

[13runningsomething]

You've been invited to a Super Smash Bros tournament by these two. Will you accept?

@tmntstorycomp

They haven't had a chance to play video games in a while, so despite their competitive tendencies, Leo thinks it'll be great for all of them.

He also knows, more than anyone, that Raph needs to get a little angry right now

;)

[sunflowerandstrawberryspice]

CARMEN SANDIEGO? In 2024? It's more likely thank you think! Please excuse the shit quality for some reason I wasn't allowed to upload the normal pdf and I had to upload a fucking screenshot???

So my friend convinced me to watch Carmen Sandiego and since he's watching ALL of Ninjago for me I thought it was the least I could do to watch four season of a show with a pretty decent concept but uh... yeesh, don't get me wrong the show is really fun but lord have mercy does it have problems especially the last two seasons which were just so wildly disappointing to me. It went from a show with an interesting look on morals to pure pro-cop and mostly black and white thinking so quick (that not mentioning the breaking up a found family full of people with abandonment issues) it was honestly just so disappointing so me and the friend who introduced it to me decided to rewrite it! (I will not be animating nor do I plan on doing more than MAYBE a comic or art piece here and there because my chronic pain ridden ass can not handle that much lol)

The main goals are to:

1) Flesh out characters that aren't Carmen and actually give them reactions based on their lived experiences and how they might realistically react instead of what the show needed to move the plot along

2) Having characters other than Carmen be actually relevant to the plot the main one being Chase Devineaux who we're gonna kind of have as a parallel to Carmen (trust me yall) as kind of a "What if Carmen didn't have her friends/family to ground her and fall back on" but for all the Chase fans out there (gods I hope there's some other than me) he will be getting a happy ending but bro is getting put through the RINGER first

3) Have both A.C.M.E (now standing for Administration for Containing and Monitoring Evil) and V.I.L.E be the bad guys. Also just as an extra bit of fun we're making VILE a full blown cult, they were very cult like in the show so we're just gonna make it one. Both are going to be very morally questionable and while it'll take a bit longer for ACME to show it's true colors don't you worry they definitely will ;)

4) We're doing canonical lgbtq+ rep, I know the show teased a lot of relationships and really only gave yall background gays not to say thats bad but we can do better than just a brief shot of a damn taco truck. I mean like come on in a story about a young woman going against the government for the greater good why not put some rep into it ya know!

5) We're making it light sci-fi, not like SUPER high tech but definitely beyond what we've got currently, as shown with Carmen's prosthetic, and don't worry I'm doing my research as a disabled person I know how it feels to be misrepresented or ignored so I want to make sure I'm being realistic

6) PLAYER ISN'T GOING TO BE A CHILD! I don't know if this bothered anybody else but to me it was really weird that this 16 year old's only friends were in their 20s!

Alright I think that's what I'm gonna say for now, I'd love it if yall tuned in for updates if your curious since this is a passion project for me and my friend and we're having a blast writing it!

As always I am still working on stuff for Ninjago cause I could never abandon my one true love, currently there's a Pixal drawing in progress (it's giving me hell T-T) something for Cole and Geo, and something of Sora MAYBE even Euphrasia if I'm feeling up to it.

Having said that I hope yall have a great day/night and PEACE OUT!

[insertsomthinawesome]

Hi! Do you have any TWST friendship headcanons about the dormheads? They are definetely a chaotic friend group!

Also love your art! It's so pretty!!

OH ABSOLUTELY. First of all, Thank you so much!! THat makes me so happy to hear ;;v;; ONTO SHENANIGANS: A LOT if not pretty much all of this falls into non-canon-compliant territory, and I'm only partway through Book 5 so I could either totally guess soimething or completely mess something up, but here are my braincells

Vil and Leona: I LOVE these two. I think they have some of the most fantastic worstie to bestie potential. And in a weird way??? I think Vil is the kind of person Leona needs? Like, Vil can be a little too harsh, and in my personal opinion too much of a perfectionist (Not for the character tho, just if he was a real person xD As a character trait its 10/10 good writing) but the fact that he refuses to stop seeing the potential in Leona??? Thats something that I really think Leona NEEDS. People who are like "What are you talking about? You have the possibility to be so much if you just tried." Like that last part is harsh yeah, but I think Vil really has this... he has this Rook-like ability to believe in the potential of other people in a way that isn't actually as cynical as it comes across. If he learned to work more with Leona than against him, I actually think the two of them would have such a strong power duo potential.

Leona needs to see Vil for the Roses rather than the Thorns. He needs to see more of what Vil is SAYING, where he's coming from rather than just the words themselves. I think if Leona really comprehended how much Vil believed in him, like, ACTUALLY believed in him, i think he would be genuinely moved, genuinely shook and full of wonder that somebody saw so much potential in him, as so much more than being a failure or a freak.

However I think if they actually became friends Epel might have to take a week off for mourning because he could no longer go to Leona to escape the wrath of Vil xD

Idia and Malleus: Okay so starsending started me on this one, I think they would actually really vibe. Idia is an introverted Loner, he has a hard time with high energy people who make a lot of noise. Mallues CAN be a lot, but honestly he tends to... not be. Its more like the A Lot follows him. ei when he interacts with Yuu and essentially just ends up being a nerd. The specific image i've had in my head, is i feel like Idia could play animal crossing with Malleus watching him, and the two of them could vibe for H O U R S. Malleus would make the occasional comment or go on the occasional tangent, but he seems less like he needs people to engage with him sometimes, and sometimes just like he needs people to listen. And Idia isn't actually that bad at engaging with people!! He's got internet friends (lilia lol) which means he does know something about sustaining relationships and talking to people I also think that Malleus would probably find Idia's way of talking fascinating SLDFKJSDLGJSLDJG. As long as he wasn't mocked for not understanding, he'd probably find it downright interesting to listen to Idia explain internet memes from 2010 and talk about the history of Loss. I also think that Idia could really be a safe and quiet spot for malleus when things are hard. I feel like part of Malleus's frustrations, and why we see him run away from Sebek and Silver, despite both of them being family he obviously loves, is that, with the exception of Lilia, Both of them make a BIG DEAL out of things. Silver tends to be quieter and less explosive, but they both do. Sometimes I think Malleus just wants to be alone to process, or not be pestered or questioned. I think Idia could potentially be that safe and quiet spot where he's ready to listen, but not necessarily interested in making a big deal about it. If they became better friends he might not even ask, just offer quiet empathy.

Kalim and Leona: -Spoilers for Leona's Union bday card, since it hasn't released in English yet- OH BOY.... THESE TWO. First of all!!! ANother relationship that I think could do a lot of good for Leona??? Kalim doesn't really need him for anything, but he's a well of low expectation positivity, somebody who I can see dragging Leona out to do things, or even just, once in a while so honestly state the worth he sees in Leona that it causes Leona to stutter and pause. Like, Leona's union bday card mentioning that he'd have Kalim with him on a deserted Island cause people would come ot rescue Kalim....... O U CH??????? There's a running Narrative that Kalim doesn't really see the value in himself, and this would be another person (like Azul) who would contradict that. Leona sees a more cynical version of his value, but its still value all the same. And Leona likes to gripe and groan, but he's adopted like, half the characters who are younger than him, I don't think he's immune to Kalim Al-Asim at ALL. It doesn't help that Leona is already a Tsunderely doting uncle, I can see Kalim triggering the Uncle-Instincts in him sometimes... or a lot. The loud and upbeat disposition Similar to Cheka's wouldn't help. Specifically, because I've thought about these two being friends before, I've always loved this idea of a post book 4 sequence where Kalim like, kind wanders into the greenhouse to find somewhere to cry privately, but he runs into leona napping. Leona doesn't really want to deal with Kalim, so while he's blubbering through his explanation he's just like "Fine you can chill here as long as you're quiet" Kalim accepts... but Leona has beastman hearing, so even what might be considered reasonably quiet is loud to him, and he eventually caves and asks whats up. Just to get Kalim to shut up eventually. I think maybe I had a conclusion or an idea for what advice leona would give kalim, but I don't remember it at the moment, but yeah just. Them :) I think their dynamic could be really interesting.

Malleus and Leona: So ya'll who saw my whumptobers already know I have some bad braincells for these two clowns. I think they are jealous of each other, because they think the other has what they want, they think that they see the other squandering the gifts they've been given, being fools and idiots who don't appreciate what they have. Leona craves being accepted, having the crown, having the power to fix what he sees that is wrong, to actually have and impact in people's lives, to matter and to fit in. Malleus craves normality, he craves to be one of the masses, just another man among many, he doesn't wish for power, and he cares little for the catastrophic effect he can have on other people, he just wants to be invited. He just wants to be included. Leona sees Malleus as having the power to do what matters. Malleus sees Leona as having the gift of Normality and camaraderie. Ultimately they're both miserable where they're at (though not entirely. Leona loves his squad, Malleus loves his family, both of them have things they'd never dare give up.) and they think if they just had what the other had, they would achieve the things they deserve and desire. I think both of them would have to sort through a LOT of emotions if it ever clicked for them just how similar they are. They're of course seeing each other through rose colored glasses. Leona is not an everyman, he's feared by his own family, Malleus is not all powerful, he cannot stop the tick of death. Leona is persecuted for being "less than" his brother, Malleus is held so far above everybody else he can't be reached. This would take some time for both of them to process, but I think once they did there would be a chance for them to become good allies, and potentially even really good friends. THose are my main braincells!! I honestly think that making any of the dorm leaders interact is fantastic food for thought and relationship building. I would love to think over what it'd be like to grow a friendship between Azul and Riddle, or Vil and Malleus. Leona and Azul would be INCREDIBLE and fascinating!!! Like man, there's so much to work with in TWST. I realized this might be a little to the left of your question ^^;; Haha, If you were asking about more like, I guess lighearted headcanons, I'm not sure I have any yet!! But I'm sure with time I totally could :) Writing or playing with TWST characters intimidated me for a bit there, since the quality of the writing of the game was SO GOOD I felt there was no way I could do it justice. Now I feel a lot less intimidated, so i feel like I'm more likely to dig my hands into shenanigans and thoughts.

[the-alliance-maker]

More art from my younger sister, yay!

Mask (Baby Hero of Time) looks like that because he's worn the Fierce Deity Mask too many times for extremely long periods, and now it's started to stain/scar his skin.

I'm also putting her little doodle she made me bellow too.

Mask (Baby Hero of Time) has a/his shadow following him around. This is apparently my sister's view of their relationship.

(She was nervous about letting me post the gif and required that I clarified that it's a low effort, quick animation she only made to get a laugh out of me, lol. She was correct about making me laugh. I was in tears for, like, an hour.)

More explanations (And lack there of?) about it under the cut.

These pieces of art are both from an AU of mine that we roleplay a lot.

I'd explain more, but it's built off an alternate timeline/universe of @wutheringmights story "Call them brothers". And I'm not sure what her rules are about fanart or fanfics, mostly because I never asked or looked into it and I never intended to.

I make AUs for the fanfics I read, write fanfics for those fanfics with thousands upon thousands of words in them and then never post them or do anything other than hand them to my sister to read. She does the same with her art.

...Fandoms are messy enough without me accidentally stepping on someone's toes. (I think my sister doesn't post her art because she's too unconfident though.)

That aside, Call them brothers is literally my favorite fic I've ever read. I know we like to throw that phrase around in the fandom a lot, but I have every intention of getting that sucker printed and bound once it's finished. I've been reading Fanfiction for nearly a decade and this is the first one I've wanted to do that for.

If you're a person who enjoys darker stories and want a story line with some actual consequences for the characters, I'd totally recommend it. The last time I was this gut punched over characters and their development was Red Rising by Peirce Brown (My favorite published book series ever), and Wuthering's descriptions of a war ravaged country and all it's horrors is fucking immaculate.

I found Call them brothers through my desire to see a longer fic that had Spirit Tracks Link, and it did. not. disappoint.

Wuthering's takes on what Spirit's abilities, character traits, and game culture/lore are currently my favorite I've seen from anyone in the fandom, and I would doubly recommend the fic just for that.

That said, it's not a story for the faint of heart. It's Dark. With a capital 'd' for a reason. Wuthering doesn't add all those tag warnings for no reason. Also, if you can't stand to see one of the Link bois written as anything other than what the mainstream interpretation for them is, this isn't for you. War isn't out of character, but he's certainly a bold take. A fantastic one, but bold none the less.

Plus there's mild mentions of Links being interested in other character's that aren't their Zeldas or their typical love interests. There is NO shipping of the Jojo's characters amongst each other, but if you're the kind of person who can't stand alluding to characters having crushes that aren't Link x Zelda, it isn't for you.

I know there's some people in the fandom who don't like that kind of thing, so I thought I'd mention it. Also, you've been warned so no being mean to Wutheringmights about it!

If you're okay with the things I've listed, please, please, please give it a read. @wutheringmights deserves all the love for writing something so good.

(Anyway, I could ramble for hours about all the reasons Wutheringmights is my favorite Author in the LOZ fandom, but this was supposed to just be a post about my lil sis's art that got waaaaay away from me.)

[simulation-machine]

SIMS RELATED PROJECTS/UPDATES

My spring break is coming up in a week and holy crap do I have plans on plans on plans, especially since my summer is gonna be full of school + internship + HOPEFULLY friggin' graduating with a BA in Psychology so that I can start applying to grad schools.

Read more iffin' you'd like! It's long! Here's a picture of my golden retriever napping on her brother's food bowl to entice/entertain you:

god she is so precious i would literally kill for her

GOAL 1: MASTER GSHADE/ReSHADE

I know that some people are sticklers for this but my thing is that I had no gee-dee clue what I was doing with ReShade, whereas Gshade just kinda clicked and worked for me? That said I have a bunch of resources for learning ReShade so I might end up moving back to it at some point.

My main issue is figuring out the order of all the different effects. It obviously matters, I'm sure people smarter than me have tried to use presets only to be like "why tf does this look absolutely nothing like the baller screenshots this one cool Simblr has?" Annnd it turns out it's order + remembering to turn off certain graphic settings. Also photoshop, but that's gonna take a lot longer for me to figure out lol.

Like I'd been struggling to figure out why @gunthermunch's gorgeous Lithium preset wasn't looking as sexy as it did before annnnd it's because I forgot to turn Edge Smoothing off when switching to it. Jesus wept at how dippy I am sometimes.

Eventually, what I would like to do is maybe make my own preset at some point? I would be kind enough to show the effect order too if I did so. But this requires so, so much more shader knowledge than I currently have.

FUN FACT: My first ever degree was in art, I even went to a very fancy and private art school (School of the Art Institute of Chicago if you're curious)- I dropped out after one semester because uhhh that shit is expensive. Ended up finishing my degree at a much cheaper location in MN. That said, my art was 100% analog and 2D, and it turns out it did not translate super well into trying my hand at graphic art.

It's funny because I've been gifted really neat stuff for graphic art (like a really nice Wacom tablet and Adobe subscriptions), like people just expected my mixed-media ass would know what to do with it. NOPE! But yeah, Sims is sort of my excuse to try my hand at this stuff again, especially since I have a bit more energy now that my soul is not regularly being drained out of my body by customer service and tech support jobs.

GOAL 2: GET CRACKIN' ON ANOTHER DOOR

This one is hard because I am only on Gen 2 of the Orsons and it's sort of hard to justify starting up another story while that one is less than 1/5 of the way done.

THAT SAID, I don't plan on posting Another Door until I have a decent chunk of it done. Since it's not a casual gameplay story nor a legacy challenge, I plan on editing the bajeez out of the screenshots for it, really honing in on the aesthetic. I want it to look and feel very different from my random legacy challenge.

Fortunately, this story has been fucking up my sleep schedule for *months* now and I have a lot of the writing for it done. The hard part is translating that into the Sims, making sure I get the right poses and stuff, maybe even learning how to make some super easy CC (like, posters and stuff), and stuff related to GOAL 1 above.

What I'm saying is that it's going to take a bit. But I'm super serious about sharing it because it's my obsession and honestly the first time a story of my own design has possessed me in literal years.

Also, I want to make sure I have a significant backlog of the Orsons before I start seriously simming for it, because I don't want to screw over my favorite little pixel babies. This legacy challenge is going to be the one, I have done so much to keep my save files to keep it safe from harm (ask me how many backups I have of the save files. JK don't, the number is frankly silly).

GOAL 3: START YET ANOTHER MASSIVE CC PURGE

Y'all, my CC folder for this game is honestly an embarrassment. I go so hard on CC shopping because this community is stupid-talented and I like giving my pixel babies nice things and cool looks. When I'm bored and not quite in the mood for gameplay, I just like making neat-looking sims that I do absolutely nothing with because I love fucking around in CAS.

I have built my own PCs since I was 17 years old, and when I first built COMPUTERMACHINE (current rig) back in the autumn of 2018, it was with the goal that it would run Sims 4 flawlessly no matter what I did to it. It's got ridiculous amounts of RAM, I religiously update parts for it. And to be fair, even with the current 6,907,907,890 TB of CC I have atm it runs better than Sims 3 ever had with a measly 50 GB of CC.

But for me, it comes down to finding all the stuff I wanna use. Making myself get rid of the stuff I don't wanna use. Straight up yeeting the CC that I thought was going to look incredible that uh, didn't deliver.

I do CAS CC purges about once a year but have literally never done it for Build & Buy stuff, because OMG some of this shit I've had since 2014. Like when Sims 4 first came out. YIKES. My CAS CC obsession is notable but it's honestly nothing compared to my Build & Buy. Even before For Rent made building lots slow af, my PC was starting to take a solid minute to switch to different buy categories.

It would take a long af time so I want to make sure I have a bunch of content in the queue before I do it. It's gonna be a whole ass thing and be so, so boring to do. So I'm putting it off for when I have a ton of time to do it. Like, oh, my entire Spring Break?

GOAL 4: MAKE A FRIGGIN' RESOURCES LIST ALREADY

This would obviously need to wait until after GOAL 3 is completed, but I wanna make sure the awesome creators whose stuff I use get credit, and that people know where they can grab neat stuff. It would include not only CC but mods, Gshade/ReShade presets, and maybe even lots and sims I've downloaded from the gallery?

(Since I am super anti-paywall and very unapologetic and rude about it, I will also share where one could perhaps get some of these CCs without paying some dip a Trenta Starbucks Unicorn Frappucino amount of $$$)

It's ambitious as hell because *gestures vaguely at GOAL 3* but it would make things like doing WCIF asks and lookbooks so much easier.

Somewhat relatedly, I wanna make a navigation post, especially once Another Door starts getting posted. That story is gonna be a bit huge with multiple arcs that take place over the course of like, 14 years. Plus once the Orsons get to the 4th+ generation, it would be easier to track things down.

IN CONCLUSION...

I have been having so much fun sharing my silly little Sim adventures on Tumblr, so much more than I ever thought I would! You all have been so great to me, and all of this stuff is sort of a way for me to repay that. Ever since I stopped being able to be artistically creative ever since a really nasty depressive spell in 2017, Sims has been my #1 artistic outlet. And having people who are even somewhat entertained by my pixels is incredibly motivating.

Basically, if you read all of this, DAMN would you have been a rad livejournal follower of mine circa 2007. On the seriousness, however, thank you all so much for being rad and encouraging and sweet. I promise to do you all, if not proud, then at the very least not disappointed.

Time to hit the bong and take some pictures of Lou and Tatertot before taking my IRL doggos on a walk~

[420thewritersroom]

Got That Cursed Dawg in Him

Whoo-ie, this took slightly longer than intended. I wanted to gift this piece to @averageludwig simply because I LOVE LOVE LOVE their art and their pieces of the Demoman & Soldier makes my heart do backflips AND front flips. This is also highly inspired by @waterwindow art on Twitter that I think about daily, on top of that I love their art and their pieces on Demo & Soldier too.

This is also my first time writing anything involving the TF2 peeps, and I feel like it shows a lot when writing dialogue for the Soldier and Demoman (I didn't bother with doing written accents because...no, not skilled or patient enough to bother with that lol).

Before we continue, just wanted to do a bit of housekeeping, BLU Soldier is named John Doe (full name Johnathan Dodger) and is essentially a BLU Team OC. Same with the BLU Demoman, their name is Harvey (full name Harvey MacLennan). So for those who are confused on why the Soldier is named John instead of Jane, that's why. I also like to interpret the BLU Soldier to be a tad bit smarter (still a massive himbo). Anyway, I hope you enjoy the read!

Characters: RED Demoman (Tavish Finnegan DeGroot), BLU Soldier (John Doe), BLU Demoman (Harvey Maclennan)

Word Count: 2,058

Ships: RED Demoman/BLU Soldier (Boots n Bombs) if you squint

Warnings: Canon Typical Violence (it's not too gratuitous, but it's there), Unresolved Tension, mentions of murder, BLU Soldier is too dumb to not escalate situations to worse heights

John strains to keep himself upright, wobbly staying on his feet as he looks at the RED Demoman across from him under his helmet. Pained breaths escape him as he readjusts the grip on his shovel, having lost his rocket launcher in the fight long ago.

"Tavish," it hurts to talk as John forces himself to try to reach his former friend again, "Tavish, you need to snap out of it!"

He has tried, time and time again, since this fight reignited, to get Tavish to stop this bloodshed he was subjecting both teams to. John said he could talk him out of this blood-frenzied stupor that the RED Demoman was under, that there was no need to trap Tavish in the Respawn system. Or worse, cut him off from it completely. He can be reasoned with. He's one of the most reasonable men with both teams combined.

"You have to let go of that sword, Tavish. You can't let whatever commie trickery that thing is plaguing you with take over. For your sake, listen to me!"

The RED Demoman was slumped forward, arms dangling in front of him while holding on tightly to the Eyelander that dripped fresh blood from its blade. Tavish's remaining eye shone with a cursed green, the outcome of constantly feeding the sword the heads of not only the BLU team but RED as well. The usual rogueish charm that the Demolition Man possessed was gone. In its place, a blood-hungry beast that saw neither friend nor foe, but lambs fit for the slaughter. Despite being wholly empowered by the claymore, the body is still flesh and bone. Tavish, or whomever was possessing him, struggled to keep themselves aloft. They have lost too much blood, and Tavish's body protested any further exertion unless treated.

John, however, looked worse for wear. His uniform was ripped and in tatters, revealing the white tanktop below, which was also showing signs of damage. He lost FAR more blood than Tavish ever did, with multiple cuts that ran deep and oozed his essence all over his attire and on the dirt below. Breathing was haggard and painful for the BLU Soldier to do. Hell, existing was riding him up a wall as hours of fighting and dodging were catching up with him. The only reason he was still kicking was thanks to the few health kits and bottles that were littered about, the dispenser that his team Engineer set up for him (that was now destroyed at this point), and their resident nurse giving him a buff before the confrontation. But his resources were running thin. He practically ran this entire battlefield dry of its health kits and ammo, his rocket launcher and shotgun now only having a single shell and maybe two rockets for him to utilize.

"Heads," a ghostly snarl escapes not from the claymore but from Tavish's mouth, dripping like poison in John's weary ears. "Heads…Heads," the body continued to utter as it tried to inch closer to John. Tavish's body, exhausted from the fight, struggled to place one foot after the other, stumbling here and there as every nerve was demanding that this being stop and let it rest.

John can barely think. He tried talking to Tavish, but nothing was getting through to him. Every plea, insult, and statement was greeted with unbridled violence and horrific screams. Any strategy the war veteran could think of was leaking from his ears (or maybe that's just blood now that he's thinking about it). As Tavish's body lumbered closer, John scrambled mentally on what to do. Shooting Tavish will send him to respawn and will provoke the RED team to damn Tavish to whatever fate they opted to do. But he can't fight him either. Should whatever's controlling the Scotsman gain a second wind, John will be sent through the ringer instead, failing in his mission and pushing both teams to definitely kill Tavish.

Tavish was now within arm's length of the Soldier, scrapping the Eyelander beside him on the dirt ground and ready to swing the weapon at John's head. John isn't sure what compelled him to do this. Perhaps he was hinging on the possibility that their past friendship still lingered somewhere in Tavish's mind. Maybe it was a final distraction tactic he opted to pull out from under the possessed Demoman's feet. Regardless of what the reasons were, John pushed himself to get dangerously close to the deranged Demoman.

And he kissed him.

The kiss might as well be two kids on the playground pressing lips together, thinking this is "how adults kiss" or woeful virgins awkwardly "kissing" each other. The sensuality was lost between the two of them; their lips connected, but the desire that usually comes with it was in the other room.

Yet, John couldn't help but feel his heart flutter a bit. He tells himself that it's just the adrenaline and fatigue that caused his heart to skip a beat, kicking away the dawning fear that he might still harbor the same feelings that he felt all those years ago; before their fallout, before the Demoman betrayed his trust. But despite these affirmations he tried to hammer into his head, his lips still lingered far too long than they should have. But it must be doing something; Tavish has yet to raise his Eyelander at him.

John mentally had to rip himself away from the Demoman, quickly stepping back should the RED fiend decide to take a swipe at him. What he saw before him took him aback as the RED Demoman stared at the BLU Soldier with a wide eye. The color of Tavish's remaining eye no longer glowed a misty green, but it wasn't back to the usual brown that it was before. Instead, his eye was a startingly alluring emerald green.

"…Tavish?" John says carefully.

There's a brief moment of silence between the two, and John decides to take further initiative in this temporary standstill. "Tavish, you have to give me the sword. You're out of control, out of line, even for someone of your expertise."

The Demoman remained still, his face filled with foggy confusion as he seemingly was slowly coming to his senses. John took this moment of uncertainty to his advantage as he leisurely reached for the sword.

"If you don't let go of this communist contraption you found, they'll kill you. You hear me? They. Will. Kill. You, Maggot," despite the insult, it held none of the searing bite that it usually conveys. John silently thanks his helmet for shadowing his eyes as he used the concealment to prevent the RED Demoman from seeing him eyeing his sword.

"You may not be a red, white, and blue-blooded American, but I know you can fight whatever has plagued your English-muddled brain." John was so close to the sword that he could taste it. Just a millimeter longer, and he'll end this nightmare once and for all-

Tavish's eye suddenly flares in anger, shoving John away from him and placing extra distance from the BLU Soldier. "Then let them kill me. Maybe Heaven or Hell will have more use for me than this wasteland of a state!"

John stares at Tavish dumbfounded, his helmet slightly ajar to glimpse his blue eyes. "Tavish, you don't know what you're saying-"

"I know EXACTLY what I'm saying. Haven't had a drop of scrumpy since I've started this rampage."

So he was aware? All this time?

"What? You think I'm that ill-willed to just LET a dead son of a bitch take me over without an inch of a fight, eh? I fought the goddamn loche, read a cursed book, and lost me eye for it."

Not a single word was slurred or interrupted by an untimely burp. John was lost for words, unsure of how to respond.

"But, why? You're terrorizing both teams consorting with that weapon, letting it whisper Russian nonsense into your ears!"

"Firstly, this sword isn't from fucking Russia; let's put that through your tin-canned skull first. Secondly, I let it take over because I allowed it."

"But WHY?" Soldier couldn't restrain his growing impatience, his tone resorting back to his usual drill sergeant demeanor.

"Wouldn't you like to know."

"Don't back sass me, you one-eyed Scot son of a bitch. Your whiskey-drinking life is on the goddamn line."

"See, that right there," the Demoman points at the Soldier accusingly, "Maybe if you'd stop with those demeaning jokes, we wouldn't be in this mess!"

"Jokes? It's what you are, Tavish! You have one eye, and you drink! What else am I supposed to call-" John stops himself, his mind finally clicking back into gear and understanding where Tavish was coming from. "Ah, so drinking wasn't enough, was it? Gotta bully everyone else, all because of your own damn insecurities, is that it?"

"You shut your bucket-wearing trap," Tavish growled, his remaining eye threatening John with a ghostly mist.

"Maybe if you actually faced your own demons instead of trying to drown them out with whiskey and blood, you'd be half the man you wished you were."

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Tavish's eye becomes fully enveloped in the same cursed green color as his fury rises to new heights. "YOU HAVE LITTLE ROOM TO TALK FOR SOMEONE WHO WAS PLACED IN A MENTAL HOSPITAL FOR DECIMATING THEIR WHORE OF A GIRLFRIEND!"

Though this should've struck a cord in John, it instead made his spine and skin run cold as a shiver coursed through him. Nevermind that Tavish screamed to the heavens a secret he wished was left buried in its grave, but John completely lost the plot of what he was supposed to be doing. If anything, he reignited and made worse the Demoman's conviction to fucking kill him.

"T-Tavish, wait," John tried to backpedal, kicking himself mentally for letting his emotions run his mouth. But it was too late. The familiar sounds of Tavish's ungodly screams came rushing at him, and he had little time to run. Hell, he even tripped on himself attempting to run away from the bull that was the RED Demoman.

Thank his stars and garters that the Eyelander clanged against steel instead of his flesh and bone.

John is unsure when the BLU Demoman appeared or where they came from, but he was slightly grateful that the demolitionist stood between him and the willfully possessed Tavish.

"We gave you ten minutes, you took an hour, and we waited, John," Harvey's soft voice pierced through John like a hot knife to butter.

John panics as the possibility of Tavish meeting a fate worse than death becomes a painful inevitability in his mind. He scrambles through his words, thoughts not connecting to his lips, "Harv, please, just give me more time-"

"I gave you all the time in the world, Soldier. But something has to be done," Harvey grunts, and his words felt cold to the touch, but he does not raise his voice. Keeping a steady tone that, to an untrained ear, he might as well be as serene as a monk.

The BLU Demoman ends the standstill between him and his RED counterpart, building distance by kicking Tavish away with amazing strength. A prowess even the BLU Soldier didn't know his BLU companion possessed.

The RED Demoman's back slams against the outer walls of one of the buildings. With that previous stalemate, Tavish's body felt a renewed vigor as it slumped forward, and from his mouth, a familiar, venomous hiss escaped his lips, "Heads."

"If there's anything good that came out of your distraction, most of BLU have convened with RED, and they're plotting what to do with this beast once it's down." Harvey tilts his head to look at John, "Either you join them, or you help me keep this monster down."

John, from under his helmet, lingers between the two Demomen, searching through his mind how he can still salvage this situation. Ultimately, he settles on helping Harvey in the moment, and hopes to contain Tavish should they weaken him again. The BLU Soldier gets back on his feet, shovel in hand and stands with his BLU companion.

"I know you both have history, but that can not hold you back from doing what must be done, Johnathan," the BLU Demoman softly says.

"I know," John answers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey, you made it to the end of the story, congrats :D

My main inspiration for making this piece, aside from Waterwindow's art piece, was because I have yet to see anyone put Demoman in the "unwillingly or willingly becomes possessed by an entity that takes over their body completely and they're so deep in the possession sauce that they require the power of friendship to save them or have to be put down like a dog for the sake of the world" trope, and I decided to clumsily make this a reality.

I can just imagine, especially when he gains the Eyelander and his friendship with the BLU Soldier is broken, that Tavish goes through a spiral of emotions as he questions his self-worth and feels guilty for betraying his friend all for a cursed sword. And his guilt and self-hatred eats up at him and he becomes vulnerable to the influence of the Eyelander and lets the sword put him on auto pilot, allowing the spirit within to go on a mindless rampage against both RED and BLU team.

[milekael]

TEEHEE tagged by @rizaposting to do this >:3c

are you named after anyone?

I named myself 😎 The name Miles came from Miles Edgeworth LOL Me and an (ex)friend really liked Ace Attorney and the joke is that I was Miles and they were Franziska, and because at that point I was looking for a name it worked nicely!

However with time I really didn't want my name super directly attached to anyone, thats when I figured Mikael out as like "A longer version of Miles" and to be my name name SDFGHJ

I still use Miles a lot and like Ace Attorney btw! if anything, lately I been using Miles online more than my name for the sake of not putting my full name on the interwebs lol

when was the last time you cried?

Help 0 idea. I used to cry a lot as a kid and now for some reason is really hard for me to do it dfghj not even as some kind of psychological hang-up or anything I just can't really do it.

do you have kids?

Noup

do you use sarcasm a lot?

Kinda? Normally just with people I am close to because if its with anyone else I worry it might be misunderstood.

what sports do you play?

I don't play sports but I do really like doing physical work! I used to do a lot of construction work like building frames when I was at college.

what’s the first thing you notice about people?

A weird way to say it but I like to see people's "character design" LOL as in... I do perceive people very based on "If they were a character, what does their design tell me about their personality" kind of deal dfghj

what’s your eye color?

Grey-ish blue. Dark blue?

scary movies or happy endings?

help I am very VERY selective with the kinds of horrors I vibe with so really happy endings pretty much 97% of the time (Fear & Hunger is the 3% lol)

any special talents?

Huuh I know how to take machines apart! And how to build many many things out of trash. Also by taking machines apart sometimes you learn how to fix them, but I wouldn't trust myself to fix anything super important lol

where were you born?

Caracas, Venezuela! And I moved to the U.S (Sadly) in 2017.

what are your hobbies?

Help what do you do when your hobby is your job. I do a lot of the "ough I been drawing this thing for too long, I better take a break and draw this other thing" LOL but huuuh when I feel like doing something else I play videogames. Also I have gotten into online roleplaying again and I been starting to write fics, different from the things I usually have to write for work reasons so I count them.

do you have any pets?

The creachure The Beast Maki Roll. She is a cat.

how tall are you?

UUUH 5'3" or 5'4" I can't remember lol

favorite subject in school?

Saying art feels like a cope-out uuuh In Venezuelan highschool I really liked Literature and Biology was fun! And if we talk about college I didn't expect Sculpture to be my favorite but it was! And ofc I really liked Oil Painting (My concentration lol) and Illustration!

dream job?

OUGH I really want to work as an art curator in a museum :') or in general in a museum, put me to make an archive of historical stuff and I'll have a blast.

Another thing I would really like is working on set design! again I like physical work and traditional art so I would really enjoy it sdfgh Also also sdfgh my main goal is to make comics of my OCs lol but I don't... exactly want to work under an specific company (Maybe have a contract for publishing but my story wouldn't fully belong to them U know) so really my dream scenario is me working for some of the other stuff I want and also make comics on the side dfghj

SDFGH TAGGING HUUH @bolitamurcielago @seastawright @todd-machine and huuh @pixiunera sure why not!! (BTW don't feel preasured to do it I just threw you because friends beloveds <3 )

[chaithetics]

Absolutely adored the Late Night Mends work. Thank you!! Would you consider writing more monkey man kid x reader - maybe something where he praises and talks the reader through it, starting gentle and then figuring out he can be rougher because reader likes it that way. He would start out wincing through the pain caused by his fighting, but eventually forget about that. Praise/dominance part inspired by him saying "good girl, do you like that?" to the dog in the film.

Hey Nonnie! I'm glad you adored Late Night Mends! I'm blown away at how many people that fic has reached especially in such a short time.

Now this is an awkward one, I will be honest, after logging on a few days ago and seeing a Monkey Man fic on my feed with the exact same ask - EXACT wording minus the Late Night Mends mention lol - I did laugh because it's quite silly but I also felt a bit baffled. I'll admit that I am a sensitive person so maybe this in the context of other anons feels more rude to me than what it really is. I'm still going to talk about it though because I think my feelings are valid. I wasn't going to reply to this ask after that but I think this needs to be said.

It's going to be a ramble! Bear with me! For anyone who does I will give you a hug if you wish!

Writers are sooooooo underappreciated on this app and it feels like every time a writer starts to get a platform they post that they're thinking of deleting Tumblr, they're begging for engagement or talking about a really negative experience with expectations or their inbox.

If writers have their inboxes open and say that they're open for requests and you have a request idea, totally send in requests! 🥰 It's part of what it's there for! But please don't send the exact same request (especially word for word) to more than one writer! I can't speak for everyone but requests pile up quickly and fics take time. I personally can go through big hiatuses due to my health where I don't write or post any fics for months, in a good period I can write and post a fic weekly (since April I've posted 7 fics). Which is a somewhat common regularity, I know that there's some writers who post more or less frequently than that- that's just up to each writer depending on their circumstances. Each timeframe/schedule whether less or more is completely valid or understandable.

I take my time with fics, it is unlikely that if you send a request I will have it posted within a few days (unless I have the pressure of something like fics for Palestine lol). I spend time thinking about the prompt, jotting ideas and then writing, I'd say I spend 6ish+ hours on most of my fics. Most writers are also balancing work and/or study, along with social lives and other personal things like families, health etc. I work and have a lot of health stuff going on.

So I know that it can be easy to feel impatient with fic requests as you can read a fic in five minutes but it takes a lot longer to write it. I don't do much editing which you might've noticed lol, but plotting and editing take time too. And writers fit this in when they can. Around their lives. Art and fics take time, they do!ch I'm not sure what happened here, you sent this a few weeks ago and so I'm not sure if you copied and pasted this and sent this to numerous writers or if you sent it to one of us and we didn't reply quick enough so you sent it to another. I'm going to guess the former because of the wording? But everyone's time matters and this feels a bit disrespectful of the time of writers. You don't know if I'd started this fic, or if I had it ten minutes away from posting before I saw the fic by the other amazing writer. Or I could've finished and posted a fic before another writer did and they didn't see it and spent their time on finishing your request and posting it. If you have two writers writing the same prompt for something this specific, it seems unfair to someone who might've sent a prompt to just one writer and they will then miss out or have to wait longer for their fic because of this. I feel really guilty about how long it takes me to write fics and how long it sometimes tames me to write requests but I now feel like I've wasted a bit of my time on this idea, and it's time that could've been devoted to another request. I wouldn't want to finish this idea because I wouldn't want to be accused of copying the other writer because of the exact same prompt wording and potentially any similarities there could've been in the fics.

If you send a request to someone and want to follow up. You can message or send another ask to a writer, asking if they got your request, are they comfortable with it and do they know when they might get it out. Please do that instead of sending the exact same request to multiple writers (especially if it's super specific lol) or sending it to another writer because it hasn't been posted within a few weeks.

I don't know if this all made sense and I'm sorry for how long this was, please forgive me Tumblr besties! 🫶

A very tired and migraine-burdened writer signing off with lots of love💞

[meruz]

hey what’re your thoughts on bnha rn. you’re like one of the only dudes i trust with opinions on this manga/anime lmao

LOL idk why im one of the only guys u trust for manga/anime opinions BUT SURE do you mean like... what do I think of the current plot? or mha in general? (I will answer both. i love to talk) current plot: (SPOILERS) It's clearly the final arc and its clearly taking longer than Horikoshi intended lol. Overall it's decent shounen fare? Nothing mindblowing but it's well drawn and weekly developments r fun so im not complaining. I'm not the type to get rly invested in villains so AFO/shigaraki even Dabi are only interesting to me thematically and as characters I don't rly care but the visuals are cool enough. I love the pure white negative space hair and Horikoshi clearly loves AKIRA LOL. I will say I LOVE the ongoing Boku No Open Heart Surgery saga that's going on with Bakugo though. I love that they have to save him in some ridiculous weird power-based way lol, normal first aid would be booooring!! + I think its smart for the manga to keep him teetering on the edge of death and flashing his lifeless body every 5 pgs (lol) because it means even if the final fight drags a lil I'll keep tuning in.

in general: There's a lot of shounen manga out there but there's only one shounen manga that caters specifically to people who love the school aspect of x-men comics so I think I'm pre-disposed to love mha based on that alone. Beyond that, I love how idiosyncratic and energetic horikoshi's art style is.. I feel like the two things u can tell right off the bat abt his drawings is that he draws rly fast and that he rly loves his characters lol. Evident in the sketches he puts on twitter and the bonus content in all the tankobon volumes (it's also great for ""content""" he's a good content creator), he's always coming up with situations and outfits and concepts on the fly for those kids like they truly live in his brain. Also the more I read the more I realize I actually quite enjoy Horikoshi's writing too? I think he really clearly grew up with and adores paying homage to corny shounen superhero stuff but he's also very genre savvy and (I think) purposefully avoids a lot of common criticisms and pitfalls. Like the power scaling is pretty tame, the adults never truly give up responsibility of the kids & continue to own up to mistakes/endangerment (but never so much as to prevent the kids from doing cool action stuff!! duh), the cast is relatively well balanced despite being so big etc etc... It's not perfect, there's pretty significant failing on gender parity, and some of the pacing is way better in archival format > week-to-week but it's pretty good overall. Also its funny?? I feel like in the midst of 9486135613 action battle series + generic anime comedy we forget to address when something actually has good jokes and i think mha does. The aoyama cheese stuff made me laugh, the kids protesting biased commentary was funny as hell, and honestly i think mirio distracting afo with his ass?? funnier than naruto's final yaoi no jutsu imo. Sorry if you wanted me to dish out criticism I know its kind of popular to hate on mha rn because it's pretty generic low-brow shounen. And also adults who obsess over yaoi-ifying these kids are like the butt of the joke on the internet rn. But I don't rly run in fandom circles, it's just a solid manga to me with fun characters. Actually 90% of the reason I started reading mha again was because I listened to the mangasplaining ep abt it recently and they made me remember how much there was to like! Good to listen to if you want a more fandom-free objective take on the manga. Also Horikoshi credits all of his assistants in a bonus page in every volume! just a cool thing to note! kinda rare for a mangaka and kind of important for a series that requires as much assistant work as a wsj shounen. I feel like the amount of assistants that have gone on to lead mha spin off manga projects is kind of testament to how good his relationship w them is.

Ok thank you for reading my long thoughts. as a reward heres some drawings of deku and bakugo as splatoon characters that ive been sitting on for a while and have yet to finish LOL

[chemicalbrew]

2023 game list, part 1: I love complaining!

Once again continuing what has become an honorable tradition thanks to @smash-64 💜

I tried to promise myself I'd be more organized this year, trying to take notes after I beat things, making lists and gifs and everything, as it has become a consistent yearly undertaking. In truth, what happened is that I felt more overwhelmed by this than I did the last three years. The best explanation I can give is a combination of two facts: this year, while not particularly worse than what came before, still saw my confidence in myself tank a bit (i.e. What does this matter when few people read it and I don't bring much things of value to the table?)...

And the fact that I played very few games that really stuck with me, that I enjoyed enough to see through to the end and feel like that had merit, for a lot of the year. When that wasn't the case, it was more than likely I'd been on my nth playthrough of Katana ZERO of the year (more on that in a later post, hopefully).

I probably need help, don't I?..

games I played, but don't have much to say about at the moment without being prompted, aside from 'I kinda liked them, I guess', ordered best to worst:

Purrfect Apawcalypse trilogy (2019-2021) - series of VNs that's genuinely just good fun as you find yourself attached to the characters before you know it. You'll know if this one is for you at a glance. Also, this is how I found out about Panel Royale! LOL

The Witch's House MV (2018) - good old RPG Maker horror with a few decent twists. The remake has good QOL changes.

Gunbrella (2023) - the plot might be forgettable, but you get a gun that's an umbrella! What's not to enjoy?

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (1995) - I played this game, but only in the most technical sense. Literally cheated the fun out of it - either that, or this platformer style is not for me.

Coffee Talk: Episode 2 - Hibiscus & Butterfly (2023) - the most upsetting entry on the list. The writer behind the original game has passed away, and his absence is felt keenly even if you're not aware of the fact - because this sequel lacks charm.

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (2021) - yet another of those cheap and short indie 2D Zelda clones. The definition of the word meh.

Irisu Syndrome (2008) - a unique free puzzle timewaster. Tries to have a story and fails.

dishonorable mentions (the part with the most complaining)

2064: Read Only Memories (PC, 2014) [♪ Home (Not) Sweet Home]

Starts off decent enough, doing the bare minimum to string you along the mystery (which, for most people with standards, wouldn't even be good enough, but I was willing to stick with it for the sake of the neat audiovisual presentation).

As soon as the murder scene is revealed, however, the main plot starts to fall apart, and the longer you spend with the game's writing (which seems to go on and on forever) and characters (about as flat as a pancake fresh off the pan), the more bleak and yawn-inducing they seem (including Turing, who just took longer than everyone else to annoy me).

Do yourself a favor, play VA-11 Hall-A (which this game gratuitously references) instead. You'll get all the benefits of cute pixel art and upbeat soundtrack, but with an actually good story\character cast to match. I swear it says something about 2064 that one of its most exciting moments was seeing throwaway lines from a VA-11 character!

Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (PC, 2015) [♪ Climbing the Ginso Tree]

This is a game that won awards back when it came out almost a decade ago. Unfortunately, it feels like it was made to win awards and little more. While the credits scrolling up the screen tried to convince otherwise - with the usual special thanks given to families and pets of the developers - I sat there, unsure of what I was supposed to take from this experience (once again, the less words you try to use to tell your story, the more it usually suffers!).

The heart of any platformer is its movement systems - and, while eventually Ori's tools open up just enough to make you feel at least a little free and alive in its world, they also never go beyond what is almost painfully typical. Double jump, wall climb, ground pound, glide, charged projectile? None of that is going to wow anyone. The way it comes together is not too pleasant, either - Ori's too floaty and the obstacles before him, while painted with a talented stroke, are too unclear in their presentation to make for truly fun traversal. The exception to this is the escape sequences - sure, a lot of the time they're not much less frustrating than the rest of the game, but they're definitely more memorable, to the point where the accompaniment to one was the only part of the soundtrack I could think to showcase.

I don't regret the time I spent on this, per se, but what I can tell you is that it probably didn't deserve the awards. Also, the way the wall jump worked was annoying! Pushing towards the wall to do it feels very counter-intuitive, and with this I found that I much prefer when games have you face away from the wall to register wall jumps, or do not require you to press a direction at all.

Celeste (PC, 2018) [♪ Checking In] + Celeste Classic (2015, played as part of full game) :)

I was in high school when this made waves. I pointedly feigned disinterest as it splashed all over the internet, while making sure to download the soundtrack quickly and listen to it - more than occasionally - over the next three or so years. Lena Raine's work carried me through my school years and empowered me, and all the while I hadn't a clue what playing the game is actually like.

Those were the better days.

Now, the things about this game that seem to appeal the most to a lot of people are how refreshingly simple Madeline's moveset is and how much the game respects your time with death transitions and reloading, and the story it tells through heartfelt cutscenes and gameplay working in sync. To which I boldly say... none of those things are good enough.

Having to climb and manage your stamina adds another layer to navigating the rooms, sure, but to my simple ass, that's one layer too many. To the game's credit, there's a setting to make climbing toggleable instead of requiring you to hold down the trigger, and using that was the only reason I managed to push past the hotel and Oshiro (call me a scrub, it was genuinely overwhelming otherwise), but it still did nothing to change how I feel about this mechanic fundamentally.

I get it, it adds precision and verticality to your movement, and, seeing as you're literally supposed to be scaling a mountain, it's more than a natural inclusion... but its existence did nothing but add pressure for me, somehow. I would frequently forget it's an option at all before realizing the room in question expects me to utilize it. Instead of feeling like climbing expands my options, I felt constricted and awkward.

My second issue is much simpler. I'm a spoiled brat, and Celeste's respawning process involving that annoying whoosh sound effect and a transition that, yes, takes only about a second, but is still not quite instant, was not good enough. I recognize that having it be truly instant would not be ideal, either, but I can't help but wish that was the case.

As for the story... It underwhelmed me even back when I was doing surface level research at the time of release, and it's not impressing me now. It's okay, and I recognize why it would resonate with people - the themes of self-acceptance and resolve are plain to see (and just as plain to mull over). But in my time with the game, Madeline never began feeling less like an avatar for my failures and more like an actual character, never changed into someone I would truly like.

By the time I reached the Mirror Temple, I was certain that this game, in most respects, is just not what I would ever want. I pushed towards the summit anyway, and left it feeling profoundly... nothing.

However... Celeste Classic did not have any of those things! That little prototype gem of a game wastes zero time trying to set the stage and make you feel things with ~a story~, doesn't give you any opportunity to climb whatsoever, and neither does it waste your time having the screen fade to black when you die! And these three things, I reckon, are key to why this smaller version, that's supposed to just be treated as an Easter egg now, a relic of the past, and to be forgotten in favor of the project it grew into... resonated with me so much more! I beat it twice! It's lovely! It's what I actually needed Celeste to be!

IT'S COMPLICATED

AI: The Somnium Files (PC, 2019) [♪ MonzAI] + AI:TSF - Nirvana Initiative (PC, 2022) [♪ Nefarious Institute 1]

You know how they say not to judge the book by its cover? This is a story of me learning (once again) to judge a game neither by its reception nor by the credentials behind it. When I plowed through this duology, I came to understand that sometimes, lightning might strike just the once.

Of course, most of my bitter feelings about it stem from just how miraculous of a fuck-up Nirvana Initiative ended up being as a sequel (it's impressive how much it had to twist everything its predecessor stood for to even have a chance at making a mediocre point!), but a lot of the disappointment came from the way the first game carries itself in general, and maybe even from the presence this game has among fans. 'Oh, if you want more of the magic and mystery that you so enjoyed in Zero Escape, you have to try this! It'll be just as good!'

I should have had my doubts from the start, given how little I had enjoyed the ZE series after 999. AI1 flounders in many things, like its obtuse, deeply unfun gameplay loop - most of which is pressing random buttons until you see the most ridiculous shit present itself. There's also the overt reliance on stale and perverse jokes, and a story that can barely do much except trudge to the finish line and attempt to convince you the journey was worth it with a trite dance number, of all things.

But the thing is… even with all that, the first entry was somewhat compelling during its runtime, though most of that comes from its bold novelty. The idea of taking advantage of the surreality of dreams to find deeply concealed truths is fun to occasionally ponder, and there's just enough fluff to the places you visit and things you do to string you along for the ride (though having to check the same spots for flavor text on each revisit to very little results is a deep annoyance I have with both entries). The characters actually got a chance to grow (if not by much… this series' urge to be immature at every turn is nothing short of ruinous, sometimes), and their designs strike a wonderful line between outstanding and cringeworthy that makes them just… stick out in your brain, you know?

So while I thought the song and dance (both the literal and the metaphorical) were ultimately not worth much, I was still convinced, fooled by the magic just enough to see things come to an end; and the resolution itself was satisfying and believable, if nothing else. And with how exhausted I felt reaching this point, I figured that'd be enough.

To me, AI1 is all about finding shards of diamonds in the rough, and it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that its fandom runs away with what little they have to try and improve on it (and often succeed). As such, you'd expect its sequel to take advantage of how much room there is to grow, capitalize on this chance to refine things, and use the few strong themes the original presented (value of bonds and family made both by blood and by choice, finding those you can rely on to carry what you have done forward, etc)... right?

Um, yeah, turns out it twists over itself even more than I'd already thought possible in order to make sense (not to mention seemingly forsaking most of that mess right at the true end in order to approach the established universe from a contrived meta angle). If AI1 can be described as having extremely unrefined gameplay coupled with a decently intriguing story, NI is just about the opposite of that.

While I'm glad they bothered to make exploring the dream worlds enjoyable this go around, there's no way in hell that makes it worthwhile to bear witness to the innumerable ways in which this mess of a sequel sullied the already weak foundations laid down by its predecessor. When I had finished that game, I wrote, on impulse, that 'I haven't been this confounded by a sequel's existence since Chrono Cross'. It just… did not need to happen, like, at all.

Nirvana Initiative posed to me one of the worst questions you can have while playing a game, which is…

'Why am I doing this, again?'

Let's be real, it was mostly for the soundtrack. Unlike AI1, this game had passable music! Though having to watch ANOTHER dance number (like half a dozen times, actually! and no, there's no skip button!) just about had me gagging.

That's not even the worst part about that sequence, no - that would have to be the way it almost actively ruins and undermines what's probably the only passable character arc in NI (and even then, you have to squint hard for it to pass your judgement, given how it starts... gotta hand it to this game for managing to have multiple relationships with genuinely questionable setups involving uncomfortable age gaps).

I wanted to feel touched by the new, somewhat expanded narratives, I wanted to see the world grow a little, despite all the grievances I was certain I would have... But not even halfway through the plot, I realized that my true wish was to just move on. I think that's what I'll do here, as well, as even reminiscing on this chaos is quite dreadful.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Switch, 2022) [♪ Agnus Colony]

Don't become prey and victim to your own expectations - or to bad advertising.

Xenoblade is a special series, full of wonder and power. Words fail me this year, as they did the year before, when it comes to describing how much of an impact these games - the second entry most of all, a game I think about now and then with a bittersweetness on my heart that I oddly never can get enough of - had had on my mental well-being last year. They might as well have saved me back then, and while getting to experience them was something I'd been planning to do for a while, the specific circumstances it all had happened under were just so special, so exceptional, so wild, that it's hard to think of those days as anything but a gift.

And yet, there are plenty of things in this particular journey I still have to reconcile with. I never settled on what my impression of 1 is, in the end (or, some might say, I never properly played it); I could use a fresher look at 2, and… I never, ever, will finish Xenoblade Chronicles 3. It's a game I once had hopes for, but nowadays don't ever want to think about.

I thought it a privilege, of sorts - the fact that I was there to witness (and acquire) a brand-new release in a series that became dearly important to me. I ended up hearing many things - the trailers, the rumors, the leaks. They all spoke of a definitive resolution to the series, of levels of refinement never seen before, of intrigue so big you can barely take it, of key character appearances we were all dying to see.

Turns out most of what we were so eagerly expecting came with an extra price tag.

The base game of Xenoblade 3 is a mirage, a mere shade of what came before it. The environments are open and vast, but they look more drab than ever - and with the new autowalk feature, it takes even less time to get sick of it. The music takes you on a journey, but you forget what it sounds like far sooner than you'd prefer. The battle system promises lots of options and a nice learning curve, but it only overextends, overwhelms and forces you to grind. The cutscenes look every bit the part of a Xenoblade story, but meander and stretch things out to the point of boredom, which means none of the characters get enough time to grow on the player, either… Though a lot of them would probably go nowhere even given all the time in the world.

And the setting as a whole? Well, it's a simulation, so who cares about it feeling unique or fun? That's the point, the game says, you're supposed to empathize with these characters breaking out of their bonds, out of this miserable existence! Well, I say that things can be made appealing even in decay. You don't have to actively worsen things to make a point.

Future Redeemed is an impressive demonstration of how things could have been. It fixes practically every point where the base game falters - and it is in this part of the game where all those promises that once seemed hollow finally come true. Sort of. The exploration process is smooth as butter in the way none of the games before were, characters are at last back to having defined roles in battle, and all that teasing becomes a thing of the past as 3 acknowledges its own roots and past in full, and you think to yourself… 'If only we'd got this in the base game all along!'

But we didn't. And the credits on Future Redeemed roll far too soon to truly be satisfied. Is this how you wanted the saga to end?

honorable mentions

Butterfly Soup 2 (PC, 2022) [♪ Night Tourist] *I hope you'll forgive me for not finding a GIF for a mostly static VN...

It's so funny. For me it has been two years; for the creator, it'd been five. But I guess time doesn't matter when it comes to maturity, as I feel like both myself and this game have done plenty of growth. And for that, I love it all the more, just as I am now thankful to be able to call Butterfly Soup a short series.

Compared to the first game, the art is more refined, the tone is more consistent, and treatment of serious topics is more grounded - in more ways than one, this sequel is like a fond, yet melancholic look at what you once had, what changed since then, and what you hope to make of things. But between all that, it stays sincere and silly in the best of ways - the ones that make you feel cozy on the darkest of nights, the ones that endear you for a good while yet. Truly, this game was a ray of light in a sea of mediocrity this year.

Road 96 (PC, 2021) [♪ Hit the Road]

Yeah, I know. The fact that I have played a goddamn walking simulator at the behest of a good pal (who might or might not be reading this, hi on the off chance that you are!) is nothing short of a miracle. Not to mention the fact that I ended up having a good time with it!

I'll put it plain: the vibes of this game are almost impeccable. It wastes little time setting things up - it's the turn of the century, and a massively corrupt government is practically folding in on itself as it closes its borders. It's up to you, as you're literally put into a blank-slate teenager's shoes, to go on a desperate journey and see whether or not you make your way out.

Over the course of Road 96, you do this six times, and the people you meet on the way and choices you make with them may or may not shape not just your own future, but that of the whole country. There's nothing for it, then, but hit the road and see what awaits you, as you sit in a car that's probably stolen, blaring music from your carefully curated tapes… or are dropped off on the wayside with nothing but a paltry backpack to speak of… or find yourself biding your time near a gas station… or… whatever it is the game throws at you, as you hope that the strangers you run into actually deign to help.

Yes, the biggest way this game attempts to stand out is with our good old friend, RNG. Even reading blurbs about it, you cannot escape the all-too-typical claims of 'your own personal journey', 'a thousand unique paths waiting for you' and all that… months later, I find myself unable to decide whether this helped the game or harmed it more, as it's definitely smaller than it makes itself out to be.

As a story hook, this setup is clever and delightful, as I tried to illustrate a moment earlier, but the moment you begin to overthink it, you realize that the randomness aspect clashes hard against the continuity the game tries to establish. You, as the player, indeed learn more about the world and colorful characters in it each time you venture forth, but the avatar you control is supposed to be clueless as ever, setting out on a path that is, in fact, not quite their own any more. It's a weird gripe to have, and I found it an easy one to ignore, but I wish something could be done about it anyway.

As for the rest of the plot, let's just say it's... surprisingly binary, and the supporting cast small and not always compelling in turn. The game sacrifices some of the personal intimacy and uniqueness it has built up to make a sweeping, painfully boring statement of 'freedom good, suppression bad' before credits roll, but as damaging as that is to the overall experience, I feel like one can't deny the fundamental appeal of just being asked to go on a journey with sweeping stakes and truly, truly banging music. Seriously, it was meant to be put on speakers and blasted as the world passes you by!

In a word, Road 96 is ambitious, and in a sentence, it is ambitious, yet falling short of itself. Nonetheless, I was impressed by how it managed to worm its way into my heart for a while.

A Space for the Unbound (PC, 2023) [♪ Don't Have Much Choice]

Wouldn't you know it? I had actually played two games involving entering people's subconsciousness to solve their problems this year!

Truth be told, I'd been looking forward to this game for about a year, given that it was published by the people behind Coffee Talk (which, if you recall, I had quite enjoyed). The warm and inviting screenshots on the back-then almost empty store page, showing off awesome art and promising a sweet little journey with slice-of-life tropes and a mystery waiting to be solved… well, to say all of that was alluring is to say nothing, really. I just about jumped when I received a notification for this game releasing at last at the beginning of the year, and wasted little time trying to dive in.

The sad thing is, what you see is not always what you get. The cozy, comfortable, sensible vibes of the early game - running around the city, doing chores at your school, naming every stray cat you come across, watching the protagonist's diary fill up as he crosses all the little goals he had set in life off his precious list… Yeah, those things won't last - definitely not long enough to get you attached to characters living in this world.

As the plot begins to unfold, it fumbles over itself trying to introduce various cliches and supernatural elements, to the point where you recognize the whole experience as a tedious drag as you see exactly where it's heading, and think to yourself that you have heard all this before. It's yet another heartfelt story about self-actualization, and as the game hammers it in harder than ever before, you sigh and wish you could go back to the times of bottle cap collecting and cat petting. Sometimes, simpler is better.

Unfortunately, that's not exactly true when it comes to actually playing A Space for the Unbound. The gameplay is as simple as can be - basically all you do is walk around (quite slowly) and interact with things. I can appreciate how linear the game is, for the most part, but I wish it let us accomplish our goals without wasting too much time! Not to mention, if you try to see everything there is, you have to be prepared to deal with quite a few mind-numbingly repetitive mini-games for far longer than you have to. Don't do that. It'll just sully your impression of the game.

If you're somehow still interested in this after reading this messy opinion of mine, don't be too discouraged - you'll see plenty of beautiful sights, hear some cute music, and, maybe, be affected by the story far more than I was. (Besides, for a cat lover, it's always nice to see others appreciate them!) Just... try not to waste too much time with the game's superficial sidequests.

Tales of the Abyss (3DS, 2011 port of a 2006 release) [♪ The Distribution Base]

There's something ironic in how playing (most of) this game has been one of the best things I have done with my lovely 2DS since I homebrewed it earlier this year... and yet I quite regret not checking how (ahem) easily available the PS2 version is, instead. They may be functionally identical, but the hardware is not - you have no idea how hard some of the goddamn Mieu Fire puzzles become when your character is taking up a mere four or so pixels of an already tiny screen. Man, that was trying my patience at its finest.

These horrors aside, though, what kind of game are we even dealing with here? Well, it’s a Tales game first and foremost. I can’t deny claims that Abyss has a few strengths of its own (most notably, of course, actually bothering to have coherent character development arcs), but it’s not quite enough to obscure the ever-prevalent issues this series has:

exploration and side-questing is still annoyingly obtuse, not to mention traversal is painfully slow in the first half of the game,

some characters (in this case, Anise more so than others, but I'd argue Mieu's whole existence is part of this too) are obligated to suffer because Tales has to meet its unhealthy anime tropes\wackiness quota per game,

the skit system has not, unfortunately, evolved one bit (the amount of times I would skip a skit on accident, because any input halts its playback entirely…),

while I’m inclined to say the battle system is, for the most part, an improvement (the Field of Fonons mechanic is quite a nice change given the foundations of Tales gameplay, I have to admit), any goodwill you might want to give it gets shattered when you realize Free Run breaks bosses in half. And aside from that, it’s just your usual button-mashy fare.

So why did I push on with this game as far as I did, pulling the classic move of quitting right at the final boss instead of, well, any earlier? A lot of that is because I was just in the mood to mash some buttons in bed until I realized I was slightly underleveled for the finale and caught myself groaning at the mere thought of trying to even cheese it. A shame, that, because the ending of this game is pretty wonderful for what it set out to do, and it was the only bit I did not see on my own. It's like my experience with Final Fantasy VI all over again…

That's not all there is to it, though. Abyss has some of what's probably the most involved and curious worldbuilding (once you get past all the awkward made up jargon it loves to throw at you) of any Tales game I know! Not that this says much, because that's a low bar, and I'm not too familiar with the series at large, but it was enough to keep me engaged for a long while. And, as mentioned earlier, it puts in greater efforts than I expected to endear you to the cast as they slowly band together and uncover their own talents, purposes and aims in life - Luke in particular.

I liked him almost immediately - because I'm not too hard to please when it comes to this series, and his design is, I feel, particularly sweet and striking (especially given how nicely the game used the Important Haircut trope with him, and of course, the contrast between him and Asch). But that alone doesn't a good protagonist make - it's the fact that the story allows Luke to make mistakes (from small ones to straight-up catastrophes), get his comeuppance and grow from them organically, at his own pace, that makes him stand out in my mind.

As Luke sheds his sheltered ways of thought and accepts his responsibilities, those that were traveling with him, either out of obligation or by chance, begin to support him more and stand by him in earnest. It all comes together gradually and at a satisfying pace, and is definitely a highlight of the experience to me.

Growth and connection are probably among the biggest themes of the game, so it's nice to see that it applies pretty much equally to both protagonists and antagonists. Sure, it's the job of a Tales' Big Bad faction to be goofy and up to nefarious activities, but beyond that, the group has solid enough chemistry both among themselves and with the party that I actually ended up looking forward to most encounters with them, even if ultimately it felt a little predictable. As an aside, for a game this old, the voice acting was really good and plentiful (though there is none for skits, which sucks), and further piqued my interest in the story along the way.

To conclude, I'd like to say that the biggest thing I learned while playing this game is that I'm a sucker for grounded tales of (ha) self-actualization even this many years later. And also that once you play one Tales game, you truly, to some extent, know them all.

SANABI (PC, 2023) [♪ Warm Hospitality]

Do you want to know why I ended up playing this one? Of course you do, that wasn't really a question. I only bring this up because the answer can be revealed with a single screenshot:

...yep, the inspiration is that blatantly on display. I was expecting it, of course - the Katana ZERO community is the only reason I know of SANABI in the first place, and even as you read people's thoughts on it, the extreme similarity is practically all they ever bring up, be it in a positive or negative light. It pleased me and warmed my heart, while also making me feel wary - it's one thing to be inspired by something, and another to actually carve an identity of your own.

That said, KZ is far from the worst thing to try to replicate, particularly when it comes to visuals - SANABI has some awesome scenery that makes me feel right at home. And while the story at times feels so much like an amateurish copy that it leaves me confused more than anything (I'm sure the awkward English translation sadly does not help matters, not to mention the fact that I'd played this game in an unfinished state - you might expect me to write about it again next year!), the gameplay is anything but.

I'm sure there are quite a few platformers out there that have you use what's essentially a grappling hook to swing through the stages, but SANABI is my first experience with something like this, and in this regard the game absolutely manages to shine on its own. Movement is lightning-fast and responsive, enemy targeting is extremely generous - almost to the point of being handholdy (and, of course, they all die in one satisfying hit - as do you, if you set the game to the highest difficulty. It's nice to be given an opportunity to learn the ropes before engaging with the game earnestly!), and there's something to be said about how the level design has that extreme kind of clarity to it that I always appreciate and favors speed over precision, with how spacious everything is.

My only big issues with how the game plays are how it doesn't seem to be designed with a controller in mind (it is an option, but I found myself moving much more precisely with KBM! Me! Someone who never plays games with that!), and, once again, the just-a-bit-too-long death animation\transition. Being able to skip it helps, but I just yearn for no time to be wasted...

[mikareo]

hello again dove <3 hehe thank you so much for the matchup spots. it makes me sooo happy really <3 so, for the needed info!

a bllk match up please!

i will send it in an ask after this one :>

a male around teenage years thank you <3

an sfw result pls would be nice hehe

as for my personality, i’m a she/ her infp and a capricorn, to start off :D i think i’m a pretty curious and open minded person. i’m an introverted person who likes to be an ‘audience’ more by nature, but i’m also pretty talkative and affectionate i think. though, when my social battery run out i do tend to become a quiet person who just hang around and listen almost immediately haha ;;;; i’m a pretty idealist person, while also trying my best to be open and understand another point of view. and as i like to think a lot, while it came with its benefits like considerations, sometimes it ended up in some bad habits like 2 am 4 am silent overthinking and putting unnecessary pressure on myself to the point i got cold feet hohoho. however i do recently realize with little reassurance and praises that is convincing to me, i got cheered up almost immediately ahahaha my biggest love language are words of affirmation & acts of service, even though i’m pretty receptive to all! (words of affirmations and acts of service are definitely up there tho <3)

my hobbies include watching movies and videos! animations, indie stuffs, and ‘making you think and reflect’ stuffs especially lately haha. i also enjoy reading, writing, and drawing! (i think, it’s the aspect of ‘learning’ and ‘a story of something’ that interests me the most from these kind of activities) i also likes looking at aesthetically pleasing and pretty pictures and such. i do also enjoy going to new places. my faves are mostly related to art or history! i go alone sometimes, with my friends sometimes too. on my downtime, usually my go to is a long hour of rpg or idle gaming in my room. or scrolling down my phone for random trivia and advices while listening to something ehe

my ideal date would be to hang out, and maybe eat, in a place that is not too fancy, somewhere indoor if i have to choose tho haha. a calm & quiet place my date likes or have fond memory would be nice honestly, like a hole in the wall restaurant or a cafe they often hang out in, for example? a simple, pleasant time is more than enough for me. though, i think as long as i can listen and talk to them, i would be fine anywhere

i think that’s all! i hope it is enough and also not too much! thank you so much again :””” sending you many virtual kisses! i hope you can have fun and take your time doing this, i’m looking forward to it :3 wish you a nice day and night dove! take care <3

💌 ✮⋆˙ love letter to...popponn!

hi popon!!! srry this took a little longer than it usually does,, i rlly wanted it to be perfect n finals week got a little in the way! also i think we have the same glasses LOL,, ur so pretty tho like i love ur haircut,, the bangs are so cute so suit u sm !!!! i rlly hope u like this n i had a lot of fun doing this matchup!!

[ ꒰ᐢ. .ᐢ꒱₊˚⊹ ᰔ ] your complete matchup results!

⋆⋆⋆⠀ ⠀ APPEARANCE PAIRING ! congratulations . . .‧₊˚🪐✩ZANTETSU TSURUGI₊˚✨⊹♡

with his height, zantetsu towers over you and holds your hand, making sure that you don't get lost in the crowd. he may not have the biggest brain, but he does have the biggest heart. he'd do anything to see that bright smile on your face whilst your hair blows in the wind. if there's one thing he's devoted to more than soccer, it's undoubtedly you; and he wouldn't change that for the anything.

⋆⋆⋆⠀ ⠀ PERSONALITY PAIRING ! congratulations . . .‧₊˚👾✩YO HIORI₊˚🌑⊹♡

⋆⭒˚｡⋆ chemistry analysis . . .

while reading through your personality traits, i realized that i wanted to pair you with someone similar to you rather than someone who's your opposite. i also wanted someone good at communicating, which crossed off nagi (lol); and then i landed on hiori after debating a few other options. i think that you and hiori would definitely be the most compatible compared to any other blue lock boy— and you two would be really cute together!

one thing that you and hiori have in common, is your preference for a quiet life. you're both extremely introverted people and like to avoid noisy and obnoxious crowds, which makes it easier to find comfort in each other when you need a little break from socialization. rather than standing on the sidelines in silence, the two of you talk to one another and quietly comment on the conversation whenever you're in a social setting— genuinely enjoying each other's presence over a large group of people. when you're in need of a social break, hiori's the person you know you can go to.

being observant is one of hiori's major traits. he's extremely good at reading people and understanding how they're thinking without even having to ask, which would be extremely beneficial whenever you have those nights where your mind is running wild and you can't seem to sleep. hiori is right beside you, asking you what's wrong, and talking you through your feelings in the gentlest way he can. your happiness is of utmost importance to him, and he can't rest until he knows you're feeling better. he's also a great communicator. he knows how to explain his emotions and understand other people when they struggle to do so. with that observance and communication, he's the perfect boyfriend for you.

your hobbies also really align with hiori, considering that gaming is also his usual go-to when he doesn't know how to spend his free time. the two of you could be on a discord call together, in the middle of the most difficult rpg campaign that either of you have ever played; yet somehow still manage to complete the hardest task possible since you have such great teamwork. if either of you wasn't feeling up to play for some reason, you could simply watch the other livestream and lowkey backseat game if that's what your into— though hiori wouldn't mind. he just likes to hear your voice, no matter if you're telling him what to do or simply giving him some helpful advice.

⋆⭒˚｡⋆ memories on the wall . . .

⋆⭒˚｡⋆ a treasured moment . . .

"happy anniversary." hiori smiles at you softly as the glow from the dim over-head lighting casts dancing shadows across his face.

the atmosphere of the familiar restaurant is so comforting. it's almost like a warm blanket enveloping the both of you and squeezing tight until you're fast asleep. it's been a year since you first came here, having walked through the doors on your first date and choosing to come again and again to make more memories as the time goes by.

"happy anniversary to you too." you grin back, shining your bright teeth at him and mouthing a quick 'i love you' as you begin to look at the menu.

there's a smooth piano track playing on the speakers, so lovely that you'd think it was a live band if you hadn't asked a few months ago. you and hiori love this place for the intimacy the ambience brings. you don't have to shout to hear what he's saying and he doesn't need to be overly outgoing to get your attention. it's almost as if this place was made just for you two, and you were so lucky to find it so soon after finding one another.

"you gonna get the same thing as usual?" he asks. he knows you so well.

"obviously."

[sezija]

Hello! I recently saw your art of Ghali, Drephl and Rleiph, and decided to finally try out making wiki pages! I plan on making all three of them before adding them, but I have a few questions on about them. (Im pretty sure that you wrote the fic, but please correct me if I’m wrong)

first off, the fic is AMAZING, I cried multiple times while reading it, and everything goes together so perfectly there’s too much to talk about so I’ll stop here before it gets too long.

1) On Ghali, I wanted to double check that she took the last name Shims, because at some point it refers to the family as “the shims”

2) on Frihl, does he keep the last name Shims, or take his husband’s name?

3) can I say that Rleiph has pale speckles in her physical description?

4) could you give me more insight on Ghali’s , Drephl’s and Rleiph’s personalities? I personally struggle with describing those myself.

5) are there names for Drephl and Frihl’s parents, as I would like for them to be in the relationships category.

6) same for Rleiph’s girlfriend. Also, does she have a physical appearance? I’d love to draw the two of them together.

7) WEREWOLF CENTAUR. Amazing idea. What does the kid look like? I know that they’re described as a foal, but WHAT IS THEY JUST HAD A WOLF HALF INSTEAD OF A HORSE HALF, OR A WOLF HALF DURING FULL MOONS. I would love to know things like their skin tones and hair color too. (And coat) also thank you for all these centaurs, there isn’t even a catagory on the wiki for them yet.

8) what kind of clothes does everyone wear?

9) I know that Drephl and Ghali probably just went to a courtroom and signed some papers, but I really want to draw Drephl standing on a stool with her under an arch, where they just hug. This is also so I can mess around with possible wedding traditional clothing during that time period.

10) what is the name of Drephl and Ghali’s grandchild? The werewolf one?

Thank you for this amazing fic! Loved the art you made, and this will be very embarrassing if you didn’t write the fic!



Putting this under read more;;

Ok first of all. omg??? that's so cool what the hell!!! i'm so happy you liked my fic so much???

1) Yeah, she becomes a Shims

2) I think he takes his husband's name (which i don't have yet)

3) I forgot to give her some white in her coat in the art lol, but i decided to work that in; she's born with just a brown coat, but some white speckles start appearing as she grows older :3

4) They honestly don't have much, yet; the style i wrote in makes it really hard to add Character and Personality other than just stated facts like "she likes hiking" and "she's a computer programmer", sorry

5) Not yet, sorry

6)

7/10) I want to give them at least 2-3 kids so i can actually make them all different, though i imagine they probably have 5-8 year age differences cus raising just one is chaotic and hard enough lol. someone made really good art of their kid!!! (i've come up w the names Phil, Lei, and Majil so far) (j pronounced like (consonant) y)

8) currently i've just been drawing them in some clothes from our time cus i haven't had the motivation&energy necessary to figure out the Fashion of their time, but i can say that the blanket??? dress?? things the centaurs wear is like. actual clothing they wear in their time period&place

9) I love that so much. also, it honestly makes a lot of sense for them to hold an actual celebration; your wedding is basically the only time in your life where you have an excuse to gather every single person you're close to in one place for a big party (aside from your funeral but uh. yeah.) their marriage was meant as the point where they no longer cared what anyone else thought bc they were so secure in their meaning to each other, so i love the idea of them going all out and then just hugging.

also behold! look what i found from way back when i was writing the fic :)

[bunglegaydogs]

ramble ramble ramble

my eyes are stinging and ive got an agonising headache rn but I'm so bored and I want to ramble ramble ramble rn

not even about bsd (3AM NOT CLICKBAIT GONE WRONG GONE SEXUAL) surprisingly enough

(pls dont actually read this this is purely just me yapping LMAOOO)

just about ao3, fanfic culture, and wattpad really

i just need my thoughts OUT of me before I lose my mind

whats getting on my FUCKING NERVES RECENTLY is the sudden migration of wattpad writers to ao3 - this sounds SO BADDD let me explain

i am gladly welcoming the people who are willing to learn the new aspect and format of ao3 and who are actively trying out the website and adjusting themselves to it! in no stretch of the imagination should these people be shunned away from the site just because they're from wattpad

HOWEVER

the issue lies with the people who come onto ao3 and actively slander other writers/creators who have been using this site far longer than they have, simply because they don't understand the rules and basic etiquette of the website they're invading and trying to take over

not only is it just disrespectful to shit all over a community that has been built on the very thing they're all losing their shit over, but its then creating a negative space on ao3 where a lot of people wont want to write for fear of people like that, or at the very least will make people want to hide their works more to keep it away from the prying eyes of those fucking VULTURES

its the people who just shit all over authors and slander them in their very own comment section where they should feel PRIDE AND JOY at their readers commenting nice and pleasant things about the story they read. not being told to kill themselves or to never write again or receive death threats

ik this is such a bullshit little post but its actually been weighing so heavily on my mind as of late because I've just seen an influx of these hateful people spawn in out of fucking nowhere

i dont know whats happened with wattpad exactly, all I know is that something major was changed and it caused a lot of people to migrate

and thats perfectly okay - if youre going to be respectful and follow the rules of the site you're moving to

these people are so spoon fed on wattpad that they cant fathom the idea of actually searching for the fic themselves - they need to rely on an algorithm so that they don't have to look or think for themselves, really

not only that, but these people come onto the site, knowing exactly what it is (an archive for ANY and ALL type of fanwork, and pretty much anything that is legally allowed is allowed - gore, incest, pedophilia, rape, etc. ik we all know this but yk lol) yet they decide to try and censor these fanworks simply because they don't like it, without knowing the one golden rule - DONT LIKE DONT READ

again this yap makes no sense but imma keep yapping

a post i saw on reddit the other day that stressed me out was somebody complaining about age gaps.

the age gap was legal (Even if it wasn't, don't like don't read)

and they called the older person a pedophile...???

i just dont understand - its fanfiction. FAN. FICTION.

just because somebody writes something does not mean that they endorse that in real life. i write about some heavy and dark shit - half of it I don't agree with. writing is an art form, a way to express feelings and thoughts that are personal to you. even if they're not personal to you, its FAKE. it ISNT REAL. and yet these people cant find anything better to do with their time other than shit on other creators for being pedos or rapists. HUHHHH?

genuinely baffles me

another point that was raised in the comments of that post was people who shit on pairings where someone is really small compared to the other person because it's "child-coded"

GIRLIE WHATTTTT

sorry, brb, gonna go tell all my friends that they're pedophiles for being friends with me bc I'm too small

it BAFFLESS ME MANNN

i have so many more coherent thoughts on this but rn they're jumbled and discombobulated and Im actually on the verge of passing out so gn

[dreamsfulblues]

so i finally got around to watching golden wind and i’ve only just finished the second episode but i’ve noticed two things about bruno so far:

😳

he is a lot more playful than i thought he'd be, i expected him to be more serious for some reason? i'm glad he isn't though lol

one thing i don't understand though is why they changed the name of his stand from sticky fingers to zipper man? like what was the issue there, am i missing something😭

your art of bruno definitely does him justice, he looks so good😩 have you ever drawn his stand? i don't blame you if you haven't, it looks pretty complicated to draw. i'm sure you'd nail it as usual though :)

anyway uh this ask got way longer than what i initially wanted to say, i got thoughts™ while writing this lmao well i'm off to continue with episode 3!! :D

AAAAAAA IM GLAD YOU LIKE PART 5 SO FAR…and Bruno~✨😏

The first two episodes really make Bruno look like a dangerous mf like when you see him you know you already are dead. I remember I was freaking out with the eye and Giorno spitting out fingers it was so eeeeww

Bruno can be such a freak too😭

And yeah he can be quite playful and I loooove that. It definitely feels refreshing to see a leader/boss type character that isn’t all cold and stern.

I think it’s his design and expression that makes you believe he doesn’t allow fun . I love me a guy that looks brutal but actually can be quite a softie…or at least show he cares about someone. He is called „the mom“ for a reason~

Oh and the reason they changed the name was because Sticky Fingers is an album name from The Rolling Stones (a good one!) so to avoid any copyright stuff they changed it. Calling it Zipper Man tho sounds so silly like it sounds like a super hero Bruno came up with when he was a little kid 😂 but apparently it’s a music reference to a band too (can’t remember which one) which makes you question… then why change it in the first place????

Then again I can’t take the name Sticky Fingers seriously either because it always sounds…dirty 😳

And thank you for the compliment aaaaaa🙈💕💕💕 I’m just trying my best to capture the beauty of my Capo. 💦

And I thought about drawing Sticky Fingers too but I never had a good art idea for it and yeah it looks scary to draw I can already see myself dying during the process. But I will have to draw it one day! >:3

I hope you will enjoy the rest of the show and thanks for the ask 😊💖

[theunrealinsomniac]

As you know, I'm not familiar with your NaruSaku kid OCs. Character and design-wise, how do you imagine them being different from the more famous fankids, Shinachiku, Hanami, and Arashi?

In fairness D, I don't think anyone other than me is actually familiar with my NS kids lol, but I gather your meaning lol.

Okay, let's be clear first and foremost cos I have run into this problem before and I don't want anyone to misunderstand me when I say something in a moment.

I have no ill will against Shinachiku, Hanami and/or Arashi. I've just been here a long time and the NS kids I came up with have been knocking around my noodle for a lot longer than Shinachiku has ever even existed. I have my own, I'm not dropping them for anyone or anything. I'm also not co-opting them and merging my characters with them either. I patently refuse.

It's rude you know?

Cool? Cool.

As for differences beyond the obvious, there's four of my kids, they look different slightly, well you'll have to tell me, I don't know too much about them outside of the bits and pieces I've gleaned from other fic and art.

I strongly suspect the biggest difference is less to do with the kids and more to do with the differences between my Naruto and the Naruto we typically see in stuff about Shina et al.

We are made who we are by the people who raise us, no matter how much we may fight against it as adults, we are the people who came out of our parents/guardians parenting. For good or ill, we are all reactions to our parents, so if my Naruto is different to everyone who writes Naruto for Shina etc ... well I'll have different kids.

I very much get a bumbling sitcom dad/fourth child vibe from Shina and his siblings' dad. And that's fine, it's a perfectly fun and popular take on how Naruto would be as an adult and parent.

I just ... disagree.

I think this comes slightly from two key differences between me and the majority of fanfic writers still knocking around in the NaruSaku sphere.

I'm a man.

I'm a father.

So I have a distinctly unique perspective on fatherhood to most of the people writing Naruto as a dad for NaruSaku. Not a better one to be clear, just a different one.

And because of this, any particular differences between Shina, Hanami and Arashi with my four kids, Sachi, Ichika, Yuuto and Akihiko ... would be kinda like comparing apples and oranges to be honest.

So what I'm going to do instead is just describe the four of them as just them. And you'll have to tell me if that's like Shina etc or not like them.

I do actually have a post where I detail my kids a bit but I was a bit lackadaisical on physical descriptions. So this post will focus on that and I will link the other post with more of their personalities here.

Now, let's start with the appearance of the eldest Uzumaki child.

Sachi Uzumaki

Sachi is our eldest, she's got pink hair a couple shades darker than her mum, eyes just a little lighter blue than her dad and her face is mostly a perfect mix of both her parents, except for the grin. She's got her dad's grin and mouth. Her hair has been all sorts of length but as she settles into teens and active ninja duty, it is cut just a little longer than Sakura's was for most of the story.

When she hits her full height she stands at 5 foot 7, has a generally toned physique like most ninja and kunoichi do with one key exception. Sachi Uzumaki's arms are jacked. Girls got guns and knows how to use them lol. Think an Olympic swimmer for reference but not quite as bulky.

As for clothes, she typically dresses for action, she's what we who grew up in the 90s and early 00s would call a tomboy. There's a general mixing of colours, Sachi is very comfortable being the centre of attention and her clothing reflects this. While she's never gone out wearing full orange or anything like her dad, she has been known to walk around wearing some of Naruto's old jackets.

She does love a good pair of combat boots, the laces normally being fluorescent colours. Sachi's go to look from about the age of fourteen was an oversized top of some primary colour, normally blue, light grey trousers like the ninja uniform and sometimes Naruto's old jacket, sometimes a black leather jacket with the Uzumaki and Haruno symbol, which Naruto and Sakura made once they got married and merged their clans, yes I like this idea too, I'm sure it's also all over the other fankids lol, she wears her headband over her forehead to keep her hair out of her face and because she won't shy away from headbutting people with it.

Ichika Uzumaki

Ichika, Ichi to the family, is Naruto and Sakura's second daughter, sometimes their second or third child depending on the story.

She typically keeps her blonde hair long, think Kushina's lengths for the most part, but the style changes from braids to long flowing locks depending on her mood. She has the same shape and shade of green eyes as Sakura and like all of her siblings, Naruto's grin and mouth. But aside from her mouth it's all Haruno all the way down, you could see Ichika from a mile away and pick her out as basically a blonde Haruno.

She's very lithe to contrast her more muscular sister, if Sachi has a swimmer's body, Ichika has a gymnast's. She's also a few inches shorter than her sister and when all four of the kids are adults, she's the shortest of the bunch at 5 foot 3.

In yet another contrast to her big sister, Ichika is decidedly more traditionally feminine in her attire, favouring pinks and baby blues in her clothing. She's also more inclined to dresses and skirts. She loves summer because it's an excuse to wear sundresses and she loves a good sundress.

It does contrast to what she wears when on mission or training, she favours more form-fitting and close clothing in that scenario and her go to ninja gear is basically the typical uniform but with leggings and turtleneck under her eventual Chunin and Jonin vests. She wears her headband like a belt buckle.

Yuuto Uzumaki

Yuuto, Yuu to the family, is their first son, normally their third child, sometimes second.

He's a dead ringer for child!Naruto. If it weren't for his hair being less spiky and more flowing, think Minato basically, and his eyes being a couple shades lighter green than Sakura's you wouldn't be able to pick out which was five year old Naruto and five year old Yuuto. It's uncanny.

That is until he hits puberty, and his hair gets longer and his face more angular and it's like looking at Minato Namikaze's face on Hokage Mountain come to life. He styles his hair differently but if Sachi is a blend of Uzumaki and Haruno and Ichika is a Haruno ... Yuuto is a Namikaze. At least in the face. Body wise he's basically the same as Naruto, muscular in an agile way with a bit more bulk than his dad and standing at a full 6 foot, the same height as his dad. I don't care if he's actually 5 foot 10 in canon, it's my world now lol.

Yuuto wears as much black as he can as well. It's actually somewhat comical to see the flash of colour at the top of him, blond hair and a dark red headband over his forehead, and then just all black. Black dress shirt open at the second button and untucked, black jeans and black boots. If it didn't suit him so well, he'd get made fun of viciously by his siblings.

He forgoes the Chunin and Jonin uniform unless he's directly ordered to or it's a formal occasion and in fairness to the boy ... it does look weird on him.

Honestly, he looks a bit like a stylish super saiyan lol.

Akihiko Uzumaki

And last but not least, Akihiko. Aki or Koko to his family, I will let you guess who calls him what, but let's just say only Sachi gets away with calling him one of them.

Anyway, Akihiko has dark pink hair, which almost darkens to a very, very light red when he hits early adulthood. He keeps it shorter than the rest of his family, not buzzcut short or anything but no longer than the bottom of his ears. It's still a mess of hair though, no sign of mousse or hair gel lol. As an older man he even grows a beard.

He's the child who most resembles Sakura facially, including the forehead. But his eyes are a glorious merge of blue and green. Honestly they're quite astounding to look at. And of course he has Naruto's mouth and that damn grin.

He's a bit shorter than his brother and father, coming in at 5 foot 11 when he stands up straight and 5 foot 10 when he slouches, which is often. And he is very lanky, he's the least muscular of his family and that actually makes him look taller than he is because of how willowy he is.

Clothing wise, I dunno how to really put it, he dresses normally? Akihiko basically dresses to blend in, he doesn't stand out and he'd really rather you didn't look at him too long. Lots of earth tones and dulled colours. His headband is the brightest thing, and he ties it around his upper left arm on a flash of pink cloth.

And that's basically it for now. I hope this was worth the wait and let me just remind everyone that my takes on Naruto and his kids are just that, mine.

I have nothing but respect for people who use Shinachiku, Hanami and Arashi as their NS kids, but maybe now you've learned a bit about mine ... you'll see why I'm so attached to them. And I hope you look forward to reading the future stories I have about my Uzumaki family.

Ta ra!

[typewriteringalaxy]

fanwork creators self rec, or your five favourite fics/art/podcast etc

thank you for the tag @letters-to-rosie 💕 your answer reminded me that The Fire Next Time has been on my tbr for too long and I need to rectify that lol. anyway here we go in chronological order

everything's better with a friend (Ekko/Jinx, E, 7/7)

my magnum opus so far! more than 85,000 words of an AU where Powder doesn't joins Silco but faces many of the struggles Jinx does. This fic just flowed right after watching Arcane, it was a joy both in creation and readers' reception. I'm particularly happy with Powder's pov and the relationship's progression. Healing isn't linear, and love alone isn't enough to heal, though it does help. That ended up being the theme, and I managed it fairly well in the story, as well as a happy, domestic timebomb ending💕

(I did hint at a sequel of sorts, and the idea still spins in my head. Maybe by the end of summer?)

With Less Inhibition (Astoria Greengrass/Blaise Zabini, E, 5/7)

This one can be read on its own despite being an AU of another fic, The Platinum Collar. Honestly I prefer it from TPC: Blaise's pov and the focus on their friendship's development made the story better. Astoria's letters were also very fun to write. With both of them minor characters in canon (and in a not respectable canon to boot), I had a lot of creative freedom in their characterisation, so this ship is very dear to me. Also this fic was written with @hypernovaesx 's love, enthusiasm and moodboards (Blastoria being our gondola💕) and I love it all the more for it. I haven't left it at a cliffhanger, rather the complete opposite. (And someday I will finish it.)

touch as a form of comfort (Tandy Bowen/Tyrone Johnson, E, oneshot)

I wrote this one after watching Cloak & Dagger Season 2, whose ending made me so happy and thus the fic is a happy memory too. It's short and sweet, going along with the finale's wholesome vibe. I hope to share longer fics for this ship too.

howling hearts (Rey/Ben Solo, T, 7/7)

I returned to my roots with this one lol. First time taking part in the RFFA Valentine's Exchange, I'm happy to have completed the fic within the deadline, and the Beauty and the Beast prompt with Rey as the Beast was really inspiring. Thus I wrote a feral, angry Beast Rey, a nerdy smuggler Ben Solo, a pack of Sith Wolves as the Knights of Ren, and had the opportunity to toy a bit with the reasoning behind the Beast's transformations. It was fun.

party girl (multiship, E, oneshot)

An exploration of Jinx that I'm proud of particularly since in all my other fics of her I either wrote her as Powder or somewhat downplayed her canon viciousness and sheer chaos. And she's a damn difficult character to pin down. Parings include: Jinx/Thieram, Caitlyn/Jinx, Ekko/Jinx.

tagging, if you'd like to play:

@hypernovaesx (if you're still on tumblr; you know I loved your stories before I started writing mine and I love you💕)

@blueinsomnia (curious about your favourite Firelight Stories)

@linearao3 (I've admired your writing from Kohelet to Child Ballad, curious about your favourites)