#at least they're having fun I guess

[emry-stars-art]

We may branch off into separate masterposts as we keep going, but for now, here’s this ✨ there may be some overlap or ambiguity with various posts, but I’ll do my best to organize!

mermay 2023 pdf/zine (free download)

oops all mers au 🦈🪼🐋

brainstorming pg1 mermay 2023 piece head pats for jellyneil whalemack

mer cuddles

squid jean take 1

hybrid mer Kevin

jellyneil’s gender

Neil tries to catch food for Andrew

How Neil sleeps sometimes (and harbor seals being cute)

Tiny baby squean?

When sharkdrew surprises jellyneil

Jellyneil and its stingers

sharkdrew au 🦈🏴‍☠️

brainstorming pg2 sleepy baby sharks/some lore sharkdrew and whalemack

Neil meets the shark (evernote scene)

sharkdrew finds a washed up pirate

Mer Kevin and human Jean&Jeremy

Maybe another first meeting

jellyneil au 🪼🎣

first mini comic pt1 / pt2 jelly life cycle/baby jelly neil little Andrew finds a baby jelly

harpoon fisher Andrew

baby jelly sounds

bubble rings snippet

[hannahssimblr]

It’s been a long time since we were three - Jen, Michelle and I, and nobody else. Really it was two first, them, from the first day of junior infants, when children were seated alphabetically. Smythe sat with Tengu, that was the natural order of things, and for them, that was that. 

Plenty of people stay friends with that first kid from that first day, it’s just how it works out. You end up spending eight years or more joined at the hip with that snot nosed kid who borrowed your pencil and chewed off the eraser on the end, or snipped chunks out of your hair with safety scissors. But maybe, even to small children, a special, unbreakable bond is born from the experience of witnessing one another cry softly into your copy books as your parents reverse out of the car park and abandon you in a new, strange place with twenty-nine five year old strangers. 

It worked out well for them, though, Michelle, who was bullied for looking foreign, and Jen, the tiny, confident child who had mastered the art of the creative insult by the time she could speak. Boldly, she stood up to anyone who said a word to her new friend, and no, Tengu isn’t hard to pronounce, you just can’t read. And, by the way, you have chocolate smeared around your mouth. 

I crashed their party in the autumn of 2002, uncomfortable in my first ever uniform, and made to sit down at the back of the room like an inconvenience with maths worksheets while everyone else participated in their Irish lesson. I didn’t even know that Irish was a language before then and thanked my lucky stars that ten years old was considered too late to learn and rendered me exempt, because the thought alone of attempting to make those foreign, hacking sounds at the back of my throat was enough to make me shudder. 

It was Jen, to my left, who nudged me, “are you dyslexic?”

“No, I'm American.”

“What are you doing here then?” 

“I moved.”

“Why?”

I was grateful when the teacher told us to pipe down, because I wasn’t really sure how I was going to answer anyway, but it was only a minute before a piece of folded paper landed on my desk. 

A note.

Did you ever go to Disneyland? Yes No

I circled yes and tossed it back at her. Of course I’ve been to Disneyland, like, five times. My great aunt took me on every single birthday, and I went on all of the rides I was tall enough for. 

The notes didn’t stop, one after another, question after question, and I shrunk a little under her curious gaze at the desk next to me, not really ready to be observed with such intensity, but it didn’t matter what I wanted. Jen wanted answers. 

“Do you have Coronation Street in America?” She said, trailing me into the yard as I tried to find a secluded spot to eat my sandwich.

“Hm? Where’s that?”

She giggled, “What about Quality Street?”

“Are they, like, kinda the same thing?”

“Do you know any WWF wrestlers?”

“I know them on the TV, I guess.”

“But not in real life? Have you met any celebrities?”

“Um, I saw the guy who played Screech on Saved by the Bell one time.”

“I dunno who that is. Anyone else?”

She could be pretty annoying, but disarming and easy to warm to nonetheless, but it was never Jen that was the problem.

It was her best friend Michelle. 

Michelle Tengu didn’t really talk. Kids in the class would try their best to make her say something, they’d ask her if she was mute, which she wasn’t, she was too shy to speak sometimes, and when she did her voice was whisper quiet, which didn’t help.

“What?” Our classmates would bellow, “I can’t hear you, you have to speak up!” and underneath the table her hands would ball into fists and her face would burn furious red. 

Usually kids like Michelle were too much effort for me, I dare say boring, even, I tended to gravitate towards loud, borderline obnoxious types but I quickly learned that wherever my new friend Jen went, Michelle went too, so her presence, I would have to learn to accept.

Once I got over my impatience with Michelle’s quiet nature we tended to get along pretty well, she was the perfect antidote for Jen and I, who would often launch into spirited arguments about stupid things that hardly mattered, but she was so good at being diplomatic, logical, making sense of things that seemed so complicated to us but simple to her. Michelle was very good at being right. All of the time. It was one of the interesting things about her. 

There were other interesting things, of course, which I began to discover during the long, humid summer of 2004. Like the way her hair, long, sleek and black, reflected the sunshine, and her pouty mouth and chestnut brown eyes. Girls weren’t gross to me in that way anymore, especially Michelle.  

It was her house where we hung out, mostly, because my house had a fussy toddler in it and Jen’s parents were weird and always made us participate in chores, but Michelle’s house wasn’t perfect either. Her parents were always hovering within earshot of the living room as we three friends hung out, and they made sure that Michelle’s bedroom was always off limits to me. Jen could go up there all she liked, to fetch a CD or a teen magazine for us to fill out the stupid quizzes, but not me. I had to park myself on that pale blue couch and listen to my friends giggling through the ceiling while Rahim grilled me about my education.

“I don’t get why they’re like that,” Jen would say in consolation when we walked home together after another summer afternoon in the Tengu’s semi detached. “They’re the same with the sleepovers, even though they’d be so much more fun if you were there too. I honestly just don’t get it."

But I did. 

And as time went on the girls would understand too, because by twelve almost everything felt different to the way it felt at ten. There wasn’t only Michelle and her pretty glossy hair anymore, there was Jessie and Alice and Amy, and eventually, my very first girlfriend Holly whose friends used to shove digital cameras into our faces when we tried to kiss at the teenage discos, and who would start dramatic, weekly arguments with me over text message if I dared to so much as ask the girl next to me to borrow a pencil sharpener. 

Things became extra complicated when somebody left a handmade card and a packet of gel pens on my desk for my birthday, which I assumed were from Holly, and thanked her, much to her chagrin, because it hasn’t actually been her, no, she’d bought me tickets to see Dodgeball at the cinema.

It was Michelle. 

Holly insisted that I give them back to her, so I did, with all the sensitivity and tact a newly turned thirteen year old is capable of, which is almost none, and left Michelle standing forlornly in the yard holding the card I had barely read dangling limply from her fingers.

It was her, eventually, who launched a campaign against me after many weeks of being an obliging boyfriend, claiming that I was spending far too much time with Holly and her friends and had forgotten all about those who had welcomed me with their friendship when I was displaced and alone at the beginning, but I didn’t think of it like that. I still wanted to be friends with her and Jen, they were my main friends, but I needed to make time for my new friends too. There was only so much of me to go around, surely, if she were so reasonable, she would understand.

“You don’t care about us at all anymore,” she hissed at me in the school yard with tears in her eyes, “It’s all about Holly and her gang now. Well, she can have you, you don’t have time for anybody else these days.”

She ignored all my attempts to make it up to her, and we only drifted further apart after that, losing ourselves to the new landscape, the new rules of secondary school, finding different interests, different people, different music, ways to dress and express ourselves to spend our time until eventually the only thing we had in common was Jenny Smythe, the girl who had stood in place while we swirled around her, a rock in a churning ocean of teenage angst. If it wasn’t for her, I know I would hardly see Michelle at all. I’d never have to think about her. 

But I do, and now instead of her giggling I hear her sobs through the ceiling of the living room.

Beginning // Prev // Next

Big thank you to @nexility-sims for helping me make sense of this montage scene! It was driving my crazy for weeks <3 <3 <3

[shima-draws]

Me, sketching out charm designs: Fun!! Ehe! So fun!!

Me, lining charm designs: Why did god put me on this earth. Why was I put here only to suffer. Such a cruel fate has befallen me

Me, coloring and shading charm designs: Fun!! Ehe! So fun!!!

[venacoeurva]

Decided to look at queeringthemap for some (mostly) heartwarming reading and why is there a person in the middle of Lake Huron just screaming

[sysig]

Blusters in, flusters out (Patreon)

[arty-cakes]

Mad and angry at how these two joke side characters try so hard to be heteronormative but they really aren't and that's where most of their misery comes from. not all of it but most of it, like it very much keeps them in the cycle, because they seem desperate to find a happy storybook ending and this is how they think they'll find it, by trying to be like the same characters that found that happiness. its never addressed but also painfully obvious with how much they don't fit in with the other npcs dear god these characters are queer coded to hell i could write an essay (i accidentally did)

its not even like bretta and zote are straight cis characters these two are bi and aro canonically but its more to do with the gender roles they're trying to replicate, and failing. they suck at it. he is not this emotionally stoic resilient lone knight he is in fact continuously fighting his emotional pain and if you give him the right attention he will stay forever. he'll get angry that you saved him or that he needed your help because YOU dont fit in his story. she's not a forgiving accepting loving damsel in distress she can take care of herself great and will also drop you like a hat if she sees even one flaw in you. because then YOU dont fit her story either. they care so much about their stories because they reinforce the identity they think they're supposed to have but they're also so disconnected with themselves BECAUSE of these gender roles that they dont realize it makes them miserable

the biggest cause for this is that they are lonely isolated individuals and dont understand or know enough about real people so they have to go off their storybooks and it only keeps them alone. its like you have to be stubborn about saving them and staying by their side so they can get that chance to change and thats exactly what the knight does. its stubborn as hell it will save them again and again and it will fight their dumbass crushes as many times as it takes to make them realize what they're doing is painful. and bretta gets that chance, she leaves the town that isolated her and goes to find something better, most importantly she gets experience. zote gets to stay alive, which is the best thing you can do for him. because now he might get to face his pain, whereas in death he never gets to overcome it, just escape it

its also very funny that when the game pushes them together in this fake relationship its purposely depicted as completely ridiculous and an obvious parody and you also have the chance to beat it to the ground multiple times. whereas the two more meaningful love stories that you get to help happen are mlm and wlw and completely unapologetic about it this game is GAY

[running-in-the-dark]

kinda disappointed with how this weekend went. I mean, it wasn't bad! but it was our first weekend in the new apartment, and I/we wanted to get a lot done. I already did a lot during the week (a lot for me, not a lot for most people I guess), but there's lots of things that I can't do/can't do on my own, either because I'm too short or not strong enough or I need someone else to hold something or whatever. which realistically just won't get done during the week because my husband works full time, so. it sort of sucks that only one very small, unimportant thing got done. 😔

[pirate-poet]

since everybody ELSE is doing this picrew i thought i should too

i really wish i had more for these guys, i do

in order from top to bottom: Phiri Ulfur, Vermillion Liminate, and Jacqueline Blackwood

[rogersstevie]

i figure they’ll drop it in a few eps like they have with everything else but it would be a little funny if after all the barchie vs varchie shit that they just made beronica endgame

[pocketramblr]

au where UA is a hell school specifically in the same way my real actual school I work at is

Aizawa didn't read Izuku's file and see the recent quirk reregistration because he didn't even get the binder of student files until a month or two into the school year

[marshmellowtea]

self shipping with damien in a way that’s distinctly tragic. self shipping with actor in a way that’s tormented but ultimately tender. self shipping with darkiplier in a way that’s strained. self shipping with wilford in a way that’s honestly kind of funny

[paperzombiie]

More Azalea Valley pages!

Nohreh made the mistake(?) of befriending the werewolf guy (whose name is Demian) some time after their one night stand and they both realize they have a lot in common, one of those things being: they never had anyone to teach them how to deal with their situations... so they make a deal.

-

Demian had previously rejected his offer to help during full moon night. Nohreh worries about him... It's not that he doesn't know Demian had been doing that every month since he was a kid, it's the "all alone while turning into a frightened beast" part he can't stop thinking about...

[nebulous-rain]

[volume warning cuz tumblr likes to blast audio posts for some reason]

been punching the air wishing i knew how to code because i STILL have that msa game in my head. i Will make it someday. i promise. i'm too stubborn not to

but!! while i don't know how to code i do know how to make music- so i'm just going to keep making tracks for certain areas i envision and hope u all can just see it in your brain. but about the game:

in short, it takes place during the first video- it centers around you (playing as arthur) searching the mansion for vivi (and mystery? haven't decided where he'll be yet) after getting separated and slowly finding clues as to who the fuck this Pink Bitch that keeps trying to hunt you down is. this track is for lewis's study area, where arthur is gonna find some Shit

[beneaththeshadows]

I thought of doing something nice for this year's Valentine's Day, so here's a poll with rare pairings from F&B (I decided to choose a Targ/dragonrider and a non Targ/dragonrider, just to do the cliché "hold on me" pose). Whoever you people chose as the winner, I'll draw them on a little (romantic) dragon trip

[sysig]

Looking his very best, as much as he can anyhow (Patreon)

[skullzy20]

I am not exaggerating when I say I live with one of the worst cishet men I've ever met in my life and its horrible

Pretty big vent incoming in tags, just a warning. Feel free to scroll past /gen