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kulife2022 · 2 years

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Creativity

Creativity At Kutztown

Prologue: Introduces the blog. ‘Creativity on campus’. The prologue talks about how Sharadin, how people make connections in the sport management program and Lytle Hall promotes creativity on the KU campus.

Kutztown University is a college full of creativity and wonderful opportunities. The Sharadin Art building, Keystone Hall, and Lytle hall hold some of the most creative minds on campus. Creativity can be portrayed in many different ways. Not just in art, but in written words and in promoting yourself to make connections. We have worked together and created this blog to deepen your understanding of creativity. There are many forms of creativity displayed in Kutztown, and we have explained the main points in this blog. t, self-promotion, and writing. The first act is how Sharadin promotes art students to express themselves in a creative way without being restrained. The second act is how people promote themselves in sport management. The third and final act is how people express themselves through creative writing.

Act one: How the Sharadin Art Building Promotes Creativity without Restraints

In the artistic aspect of creativity, there are endless possibilities. Here on campus, artists express themselves through sculptures, murals and group projects. I’ve noticed some extravagant art pieces scattered around campus, and they all have shown a different form of self expression.

These photographs were taken at the Sharadin art building. The current art show is overwhelmed with incredible colors and textures. Each piece tells a different story, and each one is beautiful.

While creating art, individuals have the chance to show their true colors without restraints. There are no boundaries to what can be created in the artistic world. Everyone is different, and so is their art style.

A specific art style that I would like to address belongs to my fellow artist Charlotte Weiss. While speaking with her in Beck Hall last week, she told me about her process. Charlotte loves to crochet and draw to express her creativity. Her art blossoms best when she is in a cozy familiar setting like her bedroom, or her backyard.

Charlotte and I are actually roommates, and have spent lots of time adding our own artistic touches to our dorm room. Our creative styles intertwine very nicely, so we were able to create a beautiful and safe home to spend our days here at Kutztown.

During our conversation, Charlotte said that being surrounded by nature brings her peace and inspiration: “Sometimes when I’m bored, I put myself in a peaceful setting, and force myself to create. Most of the time it results in something pretty awesome.”

When Charlotte told me this, it made me so happy. I relate with her creative process, because I too need a peaceful environment to invent my best work. As an art major, sometimes I feel overwhelmed with the amount of art I need to submit to my professors. I don’t always feel inspired to create, and it can bring stress and lack of motivation. However, changing my surroundings always puts me in a different mindset. My creative spark usually returns to me.

Personally, my art style has grown and developed a lot as I’ve gotten older. Especially since I’ve started college, I’ve learned so many new techniques that have improved my art tremendously. Being exposed to new styles and mediums has motivated me to expand my creative horizons. These are a few photos of artworks that I’ve created recently:

I am extremely lucky to have the opportunity here at kutztown to express myself through art. There are so many people here on campus that are encouraging and understanding. No matter how difficult it gets, I can always count on my fellow artists to lift my spirits. Each and every day is a blank slate for creativity. I’m so happy that I chose Kutztown to continue my creative journey. I will forever be thankful for my experiences and knowledge that I’ve gained here.

-Bobbiejanne Lowes

Act two: Creativity in the sport management department

How creativity differs in the way people reach out and make connections in the sport management program. Keystone Hall.

When asked about how creativity differs in the ways people in the sport management program reach out and make connections, sport management student Kevin Schwartz said, “Trying to connect with all the different types of people in the job industry because it is a highly competitive field so I would want to know people that work with sales and other stuff like that. I would want to know people that work for minor league sports and majors so when I start at the bottom I can work my way up by knowing important people.”

Creativity is expressed in different ways all around the campus. Any major or career path requires some amount of creativity to succeed. This applies to the sport management program as well as numerous others here at Kutztown University. College gives us the unique experience to explore our own creativity in fields of our choice.

Many people who imagine creativity at college will immediately think of the art departments and other related fields and majors. Although they would not be wrong, everyone who attends KU, or any college campus, develops and uses their creativity to explore who they are, and who they want to be.

Scott Hirsh

Act three (Writing for creativity): Explores how Lytle Hall Encourages Creativity.

Creativity is more than just art or promoting yourself. There is literary creativity as well. Lytle Hall here at Kutztown University is a hub for creative writers. One of the events that is promoted through the building is Shoo-Fly. Shoo-Fly is a literary magazine that is run by Professor Jeffrey Voccola here at Kutztown University. The magazine helps promote written works of creativity by the students here at KU. Of course there are other ways to express oneself through words. Creative writing is a popular option for writers.

Two creative writing students that I interviewed here at Lytle Hall express their love for creative writing, and respect for their creative writing professor, Keig. Riley, a creative writing student, said this about the professor, “Keig is a really great professor and is accommodating of all literature.” Another student, Regan, said this about the same professor, “He is really chill.” When it comes to creative writing, having a professor or teacher that encourages their students to write is a good thing.

I can relate to these two students with the reverence that they have for their professor, because I had a similar creative writing teacher in High School. I remember that she didn’t set down strict guide-lines for our assignments, and left the assignments open-ended. It allowed for creativity to flow freely from my brain to the Google docs document. Add the fact that there is a similar professor here at KU that has the same view for creative writing. Half the battle with creativity is finding someone who encourages it and allows it to grow. Creativity is more than art or self-promotion, creativity is the words on a blank page.

-Sydney Hartman

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thiskulife3 · 2 years

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Creativity At Kutztown

Prologue:

Kutztown University is a college full of creativity and wonderful opportunities. The Sharadin Art building, Keystone Hall, and Lytle hall hold some of the most creative minds on campus. Creativity can be portrayed in many different ways. Not just in art, but in written words and in promoting yourself to make connections. We have worked together and created this blog to deepen your understanding of creativity. There are many forms of creativity displayed in Kutztown, and we have explained the main points in this blog. The first act is how the Sharadin art building promotes art students to express themselves in a creative way without being restrained. The second act is how people promote themselves in sport management. The third and final act is how people express themselves through creative writing.

Act one: How the Sharadin Art Building Promotes Creativity without Restraints promotes art students to express themselves in a creative way, without restraints.

These photographs were taken at the Sharadin art building. The current art show is overwhelmed with incredible colors and textures. Each piece tells a different story, and each one is beautiful.

When Charlotte told me this, It made me so happy. I relate with her creative process, because I too need a peaceful environment to invent my best work. As an art major, sometimes I feel overwhelmed with the amount of art I need to submit to my professors. I don’t always feel inspired to create, and it can bring stress and lack of motivation. However, changing my surroundings always puts me in a different mindset. My creative spark usually returns to me.

I am extremely lucky to have the opportunity here at Kutztown to express myself through art. There are so many people here on campus that are encouraging and understanding. No matter how difficult it gets, I can always count on my fellow artists to lift my spirits. Each and every day is a blank slate for creativity. I’m so happy that I chose Kutztown to continue my creative journey. I will forever be thankful for my experiences and knowledge that I’ve gained here.

-Bobbiejanne Lowes

Act two: Creativity in the sport management department

How creativity differs in the way people reach out and make connections in the sport management program. Keystone Hall.

Scott Hirsh

Act three (Writing for creativity): Explores how Lytle Hall Encourages Creativity.

-Sydney Hartman

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fycarmensandiego · 3 years

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A chat with author Melissa Wiley

In 1996, HarperCollins published six Carmen Sandiego chapter books, featuring VILE villains from the then-current "Deluxe"/"CD-ROM"/"Classic" generation of computer games and a new lineup of Acme agents, headed by a Black female Chief (Lynne Thigpen ha impact), and focusing on kid detectives Maya and Ben.

The series included two books each by two writing teams and one solo act, Melissa Peterson. I got in touch with Melissa, who now uses the pen name Melissa Wiley, and she graciously answered some questions about writing the Carmen books and beyond.

To get you caught up to my knowledge before the interview, here's Melissa's website, and here's her bio as printed in the two Carmen books (accompanied by the caricature above):

Melissa Peterson is the author of several books for young readers. Born in Alamogordo, New Mexico, she has lived in eight different states and visited Germany and France. She has never ridden a dolphin, but she did eat a great deal of sour cherry ice cream outside the cathedral in Cologne. [Note: These are both references to plot points in Hasta la Vista, Blarney.] Her research for Hasta la Vista, Blarney included many hours playing Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? An official ACME Master Detective, she lives in New York City with her husband and young daughter.

FYCS: Thanks so much for agreeing to this interview.

Melissa Wiley: What a fun blast from the past! The Carmen books were my first professional writing gig and I had so much fun working on them.

That's so exciting to hear! With that being the case, how did you get involved with the books?

I was an assistant editor at HarperCollins, working for the wonderful Stephanie Spinner. I started out as her editorial assistant at Random House right after grad school and moved to Harper with her a year later, shortly after [my husband] Scott and I got married. Stephanie knew that I wanted to be a writer, and she often sent in-house writing assignments my way (lots of cover copy). When I left Harper in 1995 to have a baby, Stephanie recommended me for several book assignments, including the two Carmen Sandiego novels. That project had been underway for several months—Harper was doing a tie-in with the game and TV show. There were six books in total; two were assigned to me and four went to other writing teams [Ellen Weiss and Mel Friedman, and Bonnie Bader and Tracey West]. I often joke that I got my first modem, my first baby, and my first book deal in the same month!

I loved working with my Carmen Sandiego editor, Kris Gilson. The two books were a blast to write and a great learning opportunity for me. Ellen Weiss remains a good friend of mine. She's a true gem of a person!

Have your experiences writing the Carmen books influenced your work since then?

With Carmen, I discovered how much I love writing humor. Before that (in grad school), my poems and stories were on the serious side. I had so much fun with the playful, sometimes goofy tone of the Carmen Sandiego books that I definitely shifted afterward to more of a focus on humor in my books. I still find writing from a place of playfulness to be my most satisfying kind of work.

Were you familiar with Carmen Sandiego before writing the books?

I loved the computer game! I'd seen several episodes of the show—it's all a bit blurry now and hard to say which I encountered first—and really enjoyed it, but I especially loved the game. Instant classic!

How much guidance did you receive from HarperCollins / Brøderbund? Were the plots your own, or were you given plot outlines?

We were given the basic descriptions for the two kid detectives, and I had a couple of meetings with the editors and the other writers to flesh out the characters a bit more—give them personalities. I don't think Mel was in the meetings, but Ellen was there, and Tracey and Bonnie.

Then I wrote outlines for my two books and the other writers outlined theirs. I was assigned one "Where in the World" mystery and one "Where in Time" mystery. I think I submitted several plot ideas for each—the big challenge was thinking up interesting objects for Carmen and her henchmen to steal. The Blarney Stone and cocoa beans were my favorite ideas and I was thrilled that they got picked!

How did you research the books?

Those were AOL days, and the web wasn't yet a place for intensive research, so I spent a lot of time in the library. For The Cocoa Commotion, I conducted phone interviews with staff members at the Hershey chocolate factory—lots of fun. But I never did get to visit the Blarney Stone!

What was your favorite part of working on the books?

Researching the history of chocolate! Naturally I had to do a lot of sampling in order to describe it properly. ;)

Your author bio in the books mentions that the scene in which Maya and Ben eat sour cherry ice cream in Cologne, Germany was inspired by an actual experience of yours. Did any other experiences of yours make it into the books? Have you had any other travel experiences that notable? (Note: I'm originally from Northern Michigan, so travel experiences involving tart cherries are a high bar to clear for me.)

Ohhh, that sour cherry ice cream! I hope I get to taste it again someday. Apart from eating a lot of chocolate, I can't remember any other personal experiences that informed the books. If I were to write one today, I'd make sure to set a scene in Barcelona. My husband and I spent a week there in 2008 and it was an incredible trip. The paella! The Gaudí buildings! Art on every corner! I'd love to go back someday.

The bio also features a caricature of you with your baby daughter...

That drawing was made by the brilliant comic book artist Rick Burchett, who was working with Scott on Batman comics at the time. Scott was an editor at DC Comics and Rick was one of his favorite artists to work with. When I needed a bio illustration for the Carmen Sandiego books, we commissioned Rick to draw it. I love that piece so much! The baby is my oldest, Kate, who was born right around the time I started working on the books. We still have the original art!

You've written over 20 children's books for a variety of ages, in a variety of genres. Do you have any favorites among them?

That's so hard to say—I'm fond of all of them and I dearly loved creating worlds and adventures for Charlotte and Martha in my Little House prequels—but The Prairie Thief and The Nerviest Girl in the World are extra-special to me. I grew up in Aurora, Colorado and had a summer job at a wildlife refuge on the prairie, a landscape that served as the setting for Prairie Thief. I loved getting to weave secrets into the prairie setting that means so much to me.

Your most recent book, The Nerviest Girl in the World, was published last August. Can you tell us a bit about why you wrote it?

I lived for 11 years in La Mesa, California, a small town just outside San Diego. While I was there, I learned that in the very early days of silent film, there had been a film studio in town. Eventually the studio moved to Santa Barbara, but it was exciting to discover that before Hollywood was the center of the American film industry, little old La Mesa was a moviemaking place. I began reading everything I could find about the studio, and when I learned that many of the cowboys in those early Westerns were real cowboys and ranchers, an idea for a book began to take shape—the story of an adventurous girl who stumbled into work as a daredevil film actress along with her cowboy brothers.

Of course, I'm legally compelled to ask the question that literally every interview currently includes: how has the pandemic changed your job?

LOL! Yes, it's the question right now, isn't it! Well, I've worked at home since the Carmen Sandiego days, and I homeschool my kids, so in the biggest ways our lives weren't hugely affected by the shutdown. But I used to do a lot of my writing in cafés, and I miss that like crazy! I had to think up all sorts of new strategies for staying focused at home this past year. I'm hoping to get back to the coffee shops this summer!

Something I found really interesting is that you have a Patreon, which you explain you started to help pay for medical bills. How has that experience affected your work as an author?

I've played with lots of kinds of content on Patreon and really enjoy having a space to share behind-the-scenes stories. It's a more intimate and personal space than social media, so I feel free to let my hair down and be really frank.

Thanks so much for these fantastic questions! I had so much fun reminiscing about the Carmen Sandiego adventure!

#carmen sandiego #melissa wiley #interviews #mine #csm

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Why Wonder Woman’s Real Origin Story Lies in First Wave Feminism

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This holiday season, one of the few bright spots for families unable to go to theaters—and even those who did—was Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 1984. An ambitious and vibrantly colored celebration of heroism in all its forms, including those that don’t end in fistfights, it’s a superhero movie that’s won as many fans as detractors. But while basking in the new spectacle is well and good, it’s also worth considering how it came to be. For even in this HBO Max tentpole, one can still see how the feminist movement of the early 20th century is grafted into the very DNA of the Wonder Woman character, her origin, and even her most contentious iconography… something that rarely gets acknowledged in the broader comic fan community.

The character of Wonder Woman was created by Dr. William Moulton Marston in 1941. A psychologist with an eclectic career, Marston went from inventing the lie detector test while still an undergraduate at Harvard in 1914 to being essentially blacklisted from academia by the age of 33. But of course his most enduring legacy came afterward; it came when he engineered a superheroine intentionally designed to be a great role model for girls and boys.

As Marston famously said, “Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, I believe, should rule the world.” However, the actual political and sociological influences on Marston and the women who helped him create Diana are often overlooked, even as the character has come to dominate pop culture.

Marston, rather infamously nowadays, lived a polyamorous lifestyle with his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston, and a second partner named Olive Byrne. Byrne is often credited in the 21st century as the inspiration for Wonder Woman (instead of a wedding ring, Marston gave her two bracelets that are identical to those worn by Diana Prince). Yet it is very likely that Holloway Marston had just as much influence. After all, she was a lover of Greek antiquity and until her death kept a book of Sappho’s poetry from the island of Lesbos within reach.

Still, it is Byrne’s influence that historian and esteemed Harvard professor, Jill Lepore, most untangles in her riveting portrait of the Marston family, The Secret History of Wonder Woman. Lepore, who holds the title of David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of History at Cambridge, zeroed in on Byrne’s relation to the early feminist movement at the turn of the century and its impact on Marston, recasting Wonder Woman as a bridge between the suffragist movement and the generation who grew up reading Wonder Woman comics before fighting for the “women’s liberation movement.”

Olive Byrne was born in 1904, the daughter of Ethel Byrne and the niece of Margaret Sanger, the latter of whom founded what became known as Planned Parenthood (Margaret also coined the term “birth control”). In 1916, Ethel and Margaret opened in Brooklyn the first United States birth control clinic, and received jail time at a workhouse for their trouble. There Ethel nearly starved to death while going on a hunger strike. During this time, a 12-year-old Olive Byrne was being raised in a Catholic orphanage because her father and grandparents had died, and Ethel Byrne was not interested in raising her daughter.

Despite their absence, Olive held her mother and aunt’s politics in high regard. And those ideals would reverberate in Wonder Woman comics too. They were thoughts informed by the circle of New York intellectuals and early 20th century socialists Margaret and Ethel interacted with in Greenwich Village. Among their contemporaries were Upton Sinclair, Emma Goldman, and a very notable Lou Rogers.

Lou was actually named Annie Lucasta Rogers, but because she was told she couldn’t get work as a woman cartoonist, she initially submitted her work as “Lou” via the mail. Her historic drawings of women being able to finally break off the shackles of patriarchy by using the right to vote are echoed throughout Marston’s Wonder Woman comics, just as much as the author’s own fascination with male and female domination and submission.

In the 1910s, feminists and suffragist literature was rife with Amazonian imagery that would live again in the pages of DC. For example, Max Eastman published in 1913 a book of verse called Child of the Amazons and Other Poems. In it, an Amazonian girl must confess to her queen that she has fallen in love with a man. Yet Amazonian law forbids any warrior to marry or bear children until she has produced significant change in the world. Thus the young Amazon abandons her romance, stating she won’t seek love again until “the far age when men shall cease / their tyranny.” This is echoed in Wonder Woman comics as Diana repeatedly, and flatly, refuses to marry Steve Trevor.

In one classic Marston story, a dopey Steve whines, “Angel, when are we going to be married?” Diana coolly fires back, “When evil and injustice vanish from the Earth!”

More appropriate still is Inez Haynes Gillmore’s Angel Island. Published in 1914, after Gillmore co-founded the National College Equal Suffrage League, Angel Island envisions five American sailors who are shipwrecked on an island that’s crawling with “super-humanly beautiful” women with wings. Driven mad by lust, the men capture the women and cut off their wings, leaving them helpless as none has ever walked with their feet. But eventually one of the angels leads a violent revolution “with the splendid, swinging gait of the Amazon.”

This too echoes early Wonder Woman stories of the heroine being chained or rendered powerless by men who would wish to dominate her in every sense of the word. It is, after all, the fate her mother Hippolyta had to free the Amazons from in bloody battle.

Men trying to chain Diana or rob her of her powers by either bounding her bracelets together or removing them was also a common occurrence in ‘40s Wonder Woman comics, particularly those authored by Marston. In one memorable Marston story, a man unaware that Diana Prince is Wonder Woman even chains her to a stove so she cannot leave the kitchen. Diana retorts with a smirk, “How thrilling! I see you’re chaining me to the cookstove. What a perfect caveman idea!”

The year of 1915, meanwhile, saw the publication of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, another feminist tale of an uncharted utopia of only women. For thousands of years, this lost paradise’s women have reproduced asexually, not unlike how Diana is born to Hippolyta in the comics after the Amazonian Queen sculpts her out of clay. These women of “herland” know nothing of fear, war, or even basic concepts of property. Unfortunately, three male American students find them and fall in love, each marrying one woman. But then each is thunderstruck that they cannot consummate their relationship whenever they want. In this thinly veiled allegory about the need for birth control, two of the men are banished when one tries to rape his wife, and another expresses confusion as to how rape can be a crime in marriage.

“The women [of Herland] are Amazons because, in the nineteen-teens, reporters routinely used the name to describe suffragists,” Lepore said in a recent article in The New Yorker. “So did suffragists themselves in both the U.K. and the U.S., including Elizabeth Holloway.”

The writers of these stories were also contemporaries and even sometimes neighbors of Olive’s mother, Ethel. And just as Olive helped introduce a worshipful admiration for her aunt Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood to the Marstons, with whom she built an unorthodox home, so too did she seemingly inform (along with Holloway Marston’s love for antiquity) what became the Wonder Woman origin story, which was recently given new life by Jenkins and Gal Gadot in 2017’s Wonder Woman.

There is of course the question of whether the new movies fully embrace these legacies. Lepore, for one, is skeptical, writing in 2020 that “Patty Jenkins seems to be interested in history… But she’s apparently not at all interested in the history of women: it’s got no place in either of her two ‘Wonder Woman’ films, even though they both take place during major inflection points in that history.”

However, the hard-won victories of that history, and how Marston seeded the ideals of its first wave into his comics, is still inextricably linked to Gadot’s Wonder Woman. We see it when she stands with a near divinity over Chris Pine on a beach in the 2017 movie, unaware and undisturbed by the preconceived limits a patriarchal society would place on her; and we see it when Wonder Woman can defeat villainy and greed in Wonder Woman 1984 without having to throw a single punch.

So for whatever bondage iconography that also clearly seeped its way into Marston’s creation, there is a definite through-line of a century’s worth of feminist ideals that connect the fantasies of the suffrage movement to the icon of female empowerment that the women’s liberation movement claimed Wonder Woman to be when she was placed on the cover of Gloria Steinem’s Ms. magazine in 1972. And a hundred years later, it lives on like Amazons and angels on the big screen.

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The post Why Wonder Woman’s Real Origin Story Lies in First Wave Feminism appeared first on Den of Geek.

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waterparchive · 4 years

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Sex, Spongebob and sweaty hands: Inside the wild world of Waterparks fanfiction

By Marianne Eloise

Waterparks have a devout and imaginative fanbase – so asking them for fanfiction might seem like a recipe for chaos. But that's exactly what vocalist Awsten Knight has done with his podcast, Slumber Party

(May 1, 2020)

When I call Waterparks frontman Awsten Knight at 1pm, he hasn’t been awake for long. Since we spoke in February, the pandemic has changed things for everyone. Unsurprisingly, he’s a little less busy than usual.

Despite a familiar-sounding “descent into madness”, Knight’s getting through quarantine the same way as all of us: jigsaw puzzles, Animal Crossing and weighing up subscribing to streaming services. “It feels so wasteful. I was like, man, am I buying a fourth streaming thing? Per month? That seems irresponsible. Eh, fuck it. I’m home,” he laughs.

He’s also been doing DIY – namely deciding where to put his vision boards: “My place is very spacious and clean and the walls are white. I get nervous about putting too many things on the wall.”

Meanwhile, many of Waterparks' fans have been keeping themselves occupied with the latest season of Awsten’s podcast, Slumber Party. The premise is as ingenious as it is cringeworthy: Awsten and his friend Travis Riddle read out Waterparks fanfiction and rate it.

Travis, who Awsten calls a “grammar dude”, is a writer and editor with the credentials to give thorough feedback. Now in its third season, the podcast’s submissions are often erotic, making for awkward reading for its star. Even the PG ones make him shudder: “It’s literally Waterparks fanfiction. That is so gross and weird!” he laughs.

Awsten was innocent to the concept entirely until 2015, when he naively tweeted, 'I hope someday someone writes weird sexual fanfic about me and SpongeBob. That's what I want. These are my goals.'

“Someone wrote the most graphic thing about Spongebob in half an hour, and I was like – ‘never mind!’ That was my intro into fanfic,” he says.

Awsten’s fans often struggle with boundaries, and it seems counterintuitive for him to dip his toe into the murky pool of fanfic. But the idea originally came from him and Travis wanting to do something together: “The very first idea was to read the fanfiction and then talk about it and the validity of it and whether or not it could happen – which usually it couldn’t,” he laughs.

The current season was recorded last year, which Awsten is grateful for: “It’s already a struggle to keep your head right at home, he says. "If I had to read fanfiction all day, I wouldn’t be good!”

For season three, they’ve moved up in the world from Awsten’s bedroom to a set-up in a suite with a fireplace in Beverly Hills. He’s proud of the show’s quality, but ever the perfectionist, he’s looking to ramp it up: “I want to be like, on a horse in the next one,” he suggests – before adding that there’s the matter of financing a fleet of horses to think about. We brainstorm ways to get his Patreon subscribers to pay for it: “We will say your name while we’re on the horse and send you a video!”

He’s laughing, but there’s every chance he might go for it.

I ask Awsten whether he has a favourite submission. “No. Fanfic sucks, I hate it all, it’s all bad, I have no favourites,” he jokes, adding that what he does have is a handful of very least things he's received.

“There’s one where it was me but from every era with all these different colours of hair and then we all fuck each other," he says. "It was really weird. I hated that. I hate all the gross ones where they go over the top."

But his least favourite genre is slash, wherein he and his bandmates hook up: “There’s a lot of weird ones where Geoff and I are banging. I don’t like the ones where Geoff and I are banging, because he has sweaty hands in real life. If I’m getting hurt or Geoff is getting sweaty with his hands on me, then I don’t like those.”

There is something he can stand, though, which is stories with a paranormal twist. “They’ve had demonic stuff happen, there have been fairies, there have been magical horses. There have been a few possessions. They definitely get weird with it.” He adds that this season, they’re leaning into the paranormal with a spooky episode. “The ones that stick with me, the ones I like the most, are the paranormal ones. The haunted ones. There’s an episode in this season that’s not out yet where it’s all the scary ones and we turn out the lights and make it spooky”.

While some of his dedicated fans can be aggressive, many of them are creative in their adoration. Opening the floodgates to reams of fanfiction seems like a recipe for chaos. At first, Awsten and Travis sourced the stories themselves, but after creating an inbox for the podcast, they noticed a shift in the content. “In the next season when they knew they could submit stories, it was a skyrocket of insane, nasty stuff. They were just trying to be shocking so they could get on. We let a few of them go, but not all, because we didn’t want it all to be like: ‘and THEN he put his dick in a pencil sharpener!’”

In recent months, Awsten has been trying to stay offline, both to mitigate the negativity and avoid internalising too much input on his music: “If you tweeted or made songs or art or whatever for your most sensitive followers, you would have the most shitty, bland work ever,” he says. "That’s another reason to just stay away and focus on the reason they’re supposed to be there in the first place – which is what you make.

"Some people say they’ll like it either way, and I’m like, on the off chance they hate it, I want it to at least be something I really love, so I can be like, well, I like it.”

There’s one band in particular whose approach to focusing on their own goals Awsten admires: “Sometimes I wonder if certain things will get liked more in the future. Like the way when Folie à Deux, the Fall Out Boy album, came out, everyone just fucking hated it, but it’s so good,” he says. “But they don’t look back on their past like it’s their glory days, they’re moving forward and I love that. It would be so easy for them to spoon feed people Cork Tree over and over, but if they had done that, where would they be right now? It doesn’t feel trend-chasing, and I really appreciate that.”

He’s quick, however, to not draw too many comparisons: “We’re definitely not Fall Out Boy level so we’re not big enough to be hated that much,” he laughs.

Even when he’s not reading their fanfiction, Awsten has to manage his band’s relationship with a passionate fandom who often express their obsession inappropriately. When he’s so often on the receiving end of adoration, it’s easy to forget that he’s a fan himself. One upcoming episode of Slumber Party, which Awsten calls his “most difficult” to film, will feature Joel Madden of Good Charlotte.

“It’s not cute, because we always have fanfiction of the guests," he says. "It was the weirdest thing ever. I respect him so much. Trying to get him to read that, I was like...uhh.” His discomfort is genuine, and he jokes that whenever someone he admires follows him, he gets “self-conscious” and posts less dumb stuff.

It’s a gentle reminder that no matter how many fans someone has, they’re likely also a fan of someone they admire in a way that makes them feel awkward – it’s just a matter of whether they choose to log off or write fanfiction about it.

Stream Awsten and Travis’s Slumber Party podcast on Patreon

#awsten knight #awsten waterparks #awsten interview #awsten and travis slumber party #slumber podcast

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pennys-th0ughts · 5 years

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Robert Gray - The Origin of Pennywise 🤡 Chapter 1

Papers were scattered all over the desk and the dim light coming from an old oil lamp was fluttering in a lonely corner of the room. It was raining outside one cool November night of the year 1873 and the cobbled streets of Derry were almost empty. The sky was black ink like and the moon was bigger than usual. I was sitting on my armchair next to the window watching the last persons leave the street heading to the warm refuge of their homes.

The rain drops crashing against the window were falling down the glass getting thinner and thinner until the rain became a light drizzle. My eyes were focused on an old naked tree which had been stripped from all its leaves; it seemed to be dead since a crow was holding onto one of its branches looking erratically sideways. A seemingly endless night had woken up from its brief nap time, wet weather made it longer but sometimes the fresh breezes get to cool down my unstoppable mind from overthinking.

Stores were closed and finally the silence took over the sidewalks as insomnia used to take over my tired body and restless mind. I was twenty five years old and I suppose it was an advantage to be that young and have no commitments yet while being the sole heir of the only medicinal store in town. I could use my freedom at will and do whatever I pleased, managing my times since I was my own boss at work. The burden of such responsibility fell down on my shoulders when my father passed away, a couple of years after my mother decided to leave us because of a serious case of fever that my father couldn’t cure. I guess he felt defeated for not being able to cheat death this time and the corrosive feeling of guilt was what finally submitted him one night during his sleep.

The formalities concluded and after an orderly ceremony, the family’s lawyer made me sign some papers, then it all became in some kind of beneficious curse I needed to keep on going in order to survive. My father was the only apothecary in Derry and he began teaching me from an early age the art of mixing drugs to create specific medicines, so my grandfather did with him and so on.

Business flourished when a new disease wave attacked the small town leaving many fatal victims and several people in a critic health state. The only hospital was packed and people who couldn’t get medical attention in this facility had to stay indoors to prevent spreading the illness. There is when I stepped in. During a whole month I wouldn’t stop preparing thousands of dosses commissioned by the hospital and many other wealthy families. I would end up working night and day to fulfill the town needs for medicine to cure diphtheria, soothe the pain and reduce the fever. I got to really enjoy my work, but one day I couldn’t take the overwhelming pressure anymore that made me snap, so I started looking for an assistant to help me out with the preparations and also someone to deliver them. Speeding up the delivery could definitely save other people’s lives.

Shadows of death were still lurking and swallowing everything in its path, turning the alleys darker and the houses emptier. The plague was spreading faster than we could cure it and the atmosphere in Derry was getting heavier with sadness and hopelessness. During the nights, streets looked like pathways to afterlife and the little oil lamps hanging at the entrances were like golden eyes, always watching and waiting.

Two days passed and interested people didn’t make themselves wait much longer and started to come to the drug store asking for the jobs. They were all willing to help but none of them fit with the qualities I was looking for. Until one day I finally found her, or perhaps she found me. Her features were as I imagined them and even better; she had little hands and long fingers, she was meticulous and careful. Her name was Charlotte Wise but she was known in town as Ruby, a well-deserved nickname since her hair was red as the stone. The day she came into the store everything changed, as if a sudden peacefulness had taken over the place. My new assistant would transform not only my work but also my life from that moment on.

Spring arrived after the dark days left Derry and its people slowly tried to get back to normal. Charlotte and I began having more time to spend in each other’s company so I decided it would be a good opportunity to teach her something new related to her job. We were still working as usual but the environment inside the shop had some kind of magic that was making it springier. Andrew, Charlotte’s younger brother, took the delivery job and he was doing very well, we didn’t receive any complaints about time or packages delivered in bad conditions. The boy was attentive and helpful, just like his beautiful sister. Agility was on his side and he was making a great use of it with the bicycle he got for the job. When work increased we bought a new mean of transportation so the boy wouldn’t get caught under the suffocating heat or merciless storms.

That year ended with a happy ending for Derry and we started a new one even happier. Charlotte and I had gathered enough money to begin a new life; she wanted to live with me so we bought a small but modest house two blocks away from the shop. Her brother would inherit his sister bedroom in their mother’s house so things couldn’t have settled down any better. I proposed Charlotte to be my wife one hot summer morning to which she merrily accepted. We got married at the chapel and later we had a delicious brunch under the willows of the park. That day and the ones that would follow would be memorable.

August, 1875

Charlotte’s contractions were getting more often and she will soon start her labor. We found out she was expecting later that summer which to me was like more wonderful news. I was in the middle of a preparation to help diuresis when someone came to the shop and let me know that my wife was in the operations room. I left Andrew in charge of the shop until I got back and rushed to the hospital taking the carriage; it will get me there faster.

I got to the Derry Public Hospital just in time to hold my wife’s hand and help her with her labor. Although she wasn’t looking so well she was doing an amazing job, showing her braver side, as always. The nurses were extremely careful and gentle; they were coming and going, taking wet cloths and other objects to the room.

After a long struggle Charlotte finally delivered a beautiful baby girl into this world. The doctor cut the cord and put her on my wife’s arms; he turned around and made me to a side to talk privately.

– Congratulations Mr. Gray – the literate man said squeezing my shoulder-. Your daughter is in perfect shape – he made a pause and, with a lower tone of voice added- but I'm afraid your wife is in delicate condition now. She has lost too much blood and she will require an intensive iron treatment to overcome the anemia she might possibly develop.

The doctor gave me a prescription with the steps to follow and a food diet, I thanked him for his advice and went back with my wife that had fallen asleep cuddling our child. The little girl was oddly quiet, she seemed confused and curious yet she was paying attention to her surroundings very carefully. I came closer to take a better look at my tiny wonder and took her little hand with my fingers that she immediately held on to firmly. My heart was pounding inside my chest like a machine out of control, making me sweat almost profusely. Nervousness, excitement and curiosity were a complex mixture, as the ones I was so used to prepare with the only difference that this one was totally out of my knowledge.

Charlotte was indeed exhausted and very pale but I could see the joy sparkling in her face. She made a huge effort to open her eyes which eyelids seemed too heavy. Once she could finally fix her eyes with mine, she grabbed my hand and made me sit next to her. She looked at me in silence for some minutes as if trying to dig up my feelings somehow and figure out what was going on inside my head. Slowly the light in her eyes started to fade away, like a candle about to be completely consumed.

– Promise me you will always look after her, Robert – she pleaded in a whisper.

I nodded bitterly without saying a word knowing that, deep down inside she was, in some way, asking me to do something she wouldn’t be able to do and she just wanted to be sure we would be okay. I stroked her cheek so tenderly that the very contact with her smooth skin made the tips of fingers ache. I hugged them both as if I was trying to protect them from the world and the coldness it owned, but my arms seemed not to be enough. Nothing seemed to be enough to replace the turmoil of divided feelings I was being prey of that very moment so, I did what I was the best at, I began mixing them just to find the balance between happiness and sadness, wholeness and emptiness.

Five years later

Snow was covering Derry like no other time of the year and streets looked like unpolluted highways to heaven. There were some children playing in the front gardens of their houses, some were throwing snowballs at each other and some others were building snowmen. Augustine was having a hard time building her snowman since the snow kept on crumbling or the little branches didn’t stop falling from their holes. I was watching her through the window and her persistence was one of the many reasons of my smile. I grabbed my coat and went outside to help her finish what for her seemed to be a colossal monument. She was almost six years old and her mother and I had the chance to pick a name for her which I will always be totally grateful for.

Christmas was near and I had already bought Augustine her present. Andrew would spend the holiday with us since I started to enjoy my brother’s-in-law company and her niece loved her uncle very much. He became a great help when Charlotte passed away and our daughter was still a baby, he would take care of her while I was working and making the deliveries from time to time.

After Charlotte died I didn’t feel the need to bring another woman to work to the shop and less to start a new relationship, the hollow she left inside me was big enough to be impossible to be filled with somebody else’s presence and the fact was I wouldn’t ever try to replace my wife no matter how alone I could feel. My queen left her throne and I had a princess making her way to occupy it someday and that, for some unexplainable reason, was already a whole challenge that I had gladly accepted the very moment I looked at this little girl into her eyes.

To be continued…

#pennys thoughts #short story

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tyrantisterror · 5 years

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Revenge of the ATOM Create a Kaiju Contest: ENTRY ROUNDUP!

Twenty three wonderful monsters were submitted by twenty three wonderful people to the second ATOM Create a Kaiju Contest. Let’s give them all their due before the winners are announced, shall we? Just as with last time, I went ahead and sketched them all, because I’m a masochist who enjoys hurting his carpal tunnel ridden hand, and because I feel like it gives every monster a fair shake.

@bugcthulhu starts us off with Rohobaron, a hot-headed retrosaur/crocodile chimera that can superheat his body to ignite the landscape and incinerate enemies with a touch. Despite the fairly nasty powers, Rohobaron actually has a somewhat sweet personality, being quick to make friends and staunchly loyal to his allies, though his short fuse can also make him drag his friends into danger.

Design-wise, Rohobaron’s got a very solid concept, with those dynamic fuckoff-big arms and horns being the most obvious selling points, along with little dashes of character like the gharial lump on his nose and the heavily armored plates on his chest. You wouldn’t confuse him with the other retrosaur kaiju in the series, that’s for sure. The idea of a monster this burly and gnarly looking being a sweetheart is the kind of “appearances can be decieving” thing that ATOM thrives on, and giving a kaiju powers that reflect its personality (in this case, hot-headedness = heat powers) is always cool. There are some minor continuity issues with the bio given what’s going to happen in ATOM Vol. 2, but Rohobaron doesn’t lose points for not reading a book that isn’t fully written yet. All in all, a wonderful submission!

@akitymh is next with Charlotte, a retrosaur of the herbivorous persuasion. Exactly what clade of herbivorous retrosaur it belongs to is intentionally unclear, as Charlotte has a thagomizer like an armored goliath, but also shares some quirks with horned goliaths, despite lacking horns itself. A missing link, perhaps? She’s also unusually large for an ATOM kaiju, which suggests she’s been around for a long time - reinforced by her calm and sometimes protective nature, as the older kaiju tend to be less fight-focused than the young ones in ATOM.

Charlotte’s design is very interesting, and I like the idea of having some retrosaurs who don’t quite fit into any one given clade - it makes it more like real life taxonomy to have some oddballs here and there. Her smattering of armor plates gives her and interesting look, and I like how her long hind legs allow her to go bipedal as well as walk on all fours. Her neutral personality also makes her stand out among the mostly fight-happy monsters of ATOM. All in all, a solid entry!

We continue the prehistoric theme with @ariccio50‘s marvelous armored retrosaur, Scolosurtr! An genetically modified armored goliath, Scolosurtr’s most prominent features, as you have no doubt noticed, are the two massive yet hollow spikes on his back, which are connected to the kaiju’s two massive hearts and occasionally shoot projectiles when he’s pissed (though this is painful for the reptile to do). Scolosurtr can superheat his blood as a defensive mechanism, which in turn allows him to melt the ice that often clings to his body in the frosty countries he tends to roam. The armored monster is very easily stressed out, particularly by his fellow kaiju, and will even bite his tail in an attempt to calm down.

Scolotsurtr’s design is rad as hell - I love a giant monster that looks like a mountain, and the mini-volcano shaped shoulder spikes are such a cool pokeon-esque design feature (I say that as high praise). His icy, antisocial personality is a fun contrast with his fiery look, and the personality tick of biting his own tail to calm down is a very endearing quirk. Also, can we appreciate how wide this fella is? Just an absolute unit. His powerset allows him to stand out from the mostly tooth and claw fighters of ATOM, while still being balanced thanks to the pain it causes him to use it. A very well rounded entry!

@scatha5 brings us our fourth entry, the enormous armadillo Rerradon! Shy but willing to fight when backed into a corner, Rerradon is a formidable enemy when roused, with thick armor keeping him well defended and enough claws and spikes to make other monsters rethink their choice to attack him.

Mammalian kaiju are, as many have noted, very rare, and Rerradon is an excellent contribution to their small but growing ranks. I’m a sucker for armadillos too, and Rerradon keeps all the traits I love about them while still having a unique and monstrous look to him. My favorite detail on this fella, though, is one of his alternate names - “Dracula’s Weird Dog.” Why? Well, because of the fact it references some obscure monster movie trivia - both in the 30′s when the Bela Lugosi Dracula first came out, and the 50′s when it was prominently re-released, armadillos were not a particularly well known creature, and would have been considered exotic and strange by most Americans. As a result, the film-makers of Dracula put an armadillo in the vampire’s haunted castle, banking on viewers thinking it was some sort of strange monster. And, at the time, it works - most people who saw the film had no idea what the strange lizard rat thing was, though I imagine anyone living in the Southwest probably wondered why the hell an armadillo was in Transylvania. Obscure references to monster movie minutia are exactly ATOM’s jam!

Our next monster is @quinnred‘s flying saucer mimic, Mogul! An enormous descendent of the sea cucumber, Mogul needs both Yamaneon radiation and water to survive, and causes a great deal of chaos in the process of feeding until scientists realize dehydration can drive the creature away, While too simple in nature to exhibit much of a personality, Mogul’s mysterious nature and accidental imitation of interstellar travelers allows it to leave a mark nonetheless.

An incredibly clever design that I wasn’t quite skilled enough to capture in my sketch (you should always check out the links to the originals here, folks), Mogul is tailor made to a great 1950′s style monster story. You have the initial mystery with an inherent red herring built into it (i.e. everyone thinking the creature is initially a UFO), the startling discovery of what we’re really dealing with, and a creative solution that scientists come upon when studying the monster’s biology. While Mogul’s simple nature means it might have trouble in a kaiju vs. kaiju story, it’s incredibly well suited to a stand alone tale, the kind that could really flesh out ATOM’s giant monster crisis.

@cerothenull brings us our first big arthropod, Acanpetax the enormous assassin bug! A gnarly insect that wears the bones of kaiju its killed as armor, Acanpetax is a cruel and vicious hunter of its fellow monsters, though over time its vicious ways soften.

Kaiju bones turn to Yamaneon when they die, and Yamaneon crystals are shaped in a way that would give them a very coarse, spiky texture (if my muddied memories of Geology 101 are correct, anyway), making the insect’s armor even more evil-looking, which is great for a monster that (initially) plays a Heel role. This guy has the makings of a great villain monster, and I like that, in ATOM fashion, he still manages to get a heroic turn over time, especially the implication in his bio that it comes from communicating with the spirit of the snake monster whose skull he currently wears as a hat. It’s delightfully weird! A big bug with a solid visual to work off of and a great role and character arc baked into his personality, Acanpetax is a strong contender!

(no seriously you really need to check out the original postings, my sketch here does not do this fella justice)

@evolutionsvoid also shows ATOM’s big bugs some love by bringing the fungus infested Megaria into their ranks! Originally a larval cicada that was parasitized (and likely to die) by a fungus, Megaria’s sudden transformation into a kaiju brought her into a more balanced symbiosis with her parasite. Neither an attacker or a protector, Megaria is a spectator of kaiju fights, and will eagerly watch her fellow giants battle without participating herself. She is a force to be reckoned with when backed into a corner, though, as Megaria’s fungal growths have given her a variety of sound-based abilities, many of which she is not fully in control of.

It hasn’t been touched on in ATOM much yet, but plants and fungi are affected by Yamaneon radiation in a very similar manner as animal life, and Megaria presents a fun opportunity to explore that. The idea of a parasite and its victim becoming partners post-mutation is really interesting, and Megaria’s design is just as interesting to look at as its concept is to think about. Her fungal symbiote also gives her a great number of unique powers and abilities to make any fight scenes she’d be in unique, while her personality as a kaiju spectator allows her to stand out (I can see her making cameos in other stories as a background monster). Another solid contender for the contest!

@highly-radioactive-nerd takes us back to the past with the helmeted retrosaur Tsunoking! Technically a paleo tyrant, Tsunoking sports several defensive adaptations that are similar to those sported by many herbivorous retrosaurs as well, though perhaps his most notable adaptation is the crown of horns that gives him his name (see, he’s pointing to it in my sketch! It’s a nice crown.). A proud but honorable monster, Tsunoking is a powerful fighter who prefers to fight similarly powerful foes, and is also rather fastidious when it comes to personal hygiene.

I love the chimeric mix of features here - the dragon-y snout, the pachycephalosaurus dome skull, and the ankylosaurus tail club all give Tsunoking a very unique silhouette among the many carnivorous retrosaur kaiju in ATOM, and would no doubt provide some fun speculation for ATOM’s paleontologists. The vanity gives his heroic personality a fun flaw to work with, and I likewise think his Samurai-esque honor code could be interesting to work with in a story. A wonderful prehistoric monster to add to the roster!

@dragonzzilla brings us a very strange and melancholic monster, the bipedal caribou Najjuk! In addition to its striking humanoid stance, Najjuk emits a great deal of toxic gas as a byproduct of its Ice Age biology, and its inability to cope with warm temperatures results in it becoming incredibly aggressive and dangerous whenever it leaves its arctic environment.

There’s a clear (but not too heavy handed) metaphor for global warming in the threat Najjuk presents, as the warming of the earth leaves it less cool spaces to seek refuge in, and the caribou’s methane emissions actually contribute to the problem that’s destroying its home. The monster also has a great deal of pathos built into it - a herd animal that is the last of its kind, forced to live in a habitat that’s too inhospitably cold for most other kaiju to tolerate, making it an incredibly lonely monster. Combine the symbolism and pathos of its plight with a very striking mammalian design and you have an incredibly unique entry into ATOM’s menagerie of monsters!

@virovac gives us a truly bizarre entry with one of the most clever descriptions I’ve read so far, the low budget monstrosity known as Nematerror! A mutant roundworm, Nematerror is one of the monsters considered too simple in nature to have a personality, though it still seeks what it needs with enough voraciousness to be considered a threat.

The really ingenious thing about this entry lay in its description, as virovac chose to describe how the creature would look if it were an actual prop in a low budget 50′s monster movie. Made from a garden hose, stuffed socks, and some other trash, Nematerror is the kind of cornball monster puppet idea that could only be carried out in the atomic era of creature features, the kind that Joel and the bots would have a field day with. There’s even a description of how its hose nozzle could be turned around to represent a nematode’s malleable mouth parts! It’s very clever, and definitely the sort of idea that suits ATOM’s love of cheesy monster movies.

@skarmorysilver brings us the old and crusty mole monster, Gnomoran! A sadistic curmudgeon, Gnomoran is a deeply unpleasant monster to face in battle. With venomous spit and caustic pus secreted from its many facial sores, Gnomoran’s natural weapons give it a revolting edge, which is made all the more nasty by its mean-spirited personality. However, Gnomoran is also in immense pain, as its healing factor has been thrown off kilter, giving it the kaiju equivalent of cancer.

The design of Gnomoran is excellent. Like many of the previous ATOM CKC entries, it plays on the secret connection between ATOM and my Midgaheim stories, in this case using my mole-derived Gnomes/Dwarves as a starting point, and working back to show their more explicitly rodent-like roots. The star-faced mole nose, long beard, big ol’ horn, and lumpy tumors all give him a bunch of iconic design details, and his power set of venom and caustic pus is uniquely gross. He’s a great Heel monster, with a nasty attitude to match his equally nasty looks and power set, all while still having the ability to be sympathetic. Figuring out how to explain why his healing factor has gotten so out of whack presents a bit of a continuity hurdle - Gnomoran has symptoms of both cancer and old age, which normally aren’t possible in an ATOM-verse kaiju, so that would need a good explanation. But design and personality wise he’s a damn good fit!

DA user Lediblock submitted the chicken/retrosaur hybrid Galiente! Made by splicing DNA from Tyrantis’s blue nemesis, the Terror, with that of a chicken, Galiente is a panicky, defensive monster who is tormented by the knowledge that other kaiju find his flesh ridiculously delicious.

Galiente’s design is a freakish mix of reptile and bird that goes for body horror, with a patchwork mix of scales, feathers, and raw skin, twisted limbs, and, somewhat inexplicably considering the two animals it’s a mix of, velociraptor feet. The result is a very tortured looking creature, which fits its nervous and tragically aggressive personality - Galiente is a monster that picks fights because it fears it will get hurt if it doesn’t make the first move. There’s a sadness that goes along with its wretched appearance and attitude that’s very sympathetic. The monster’s backstory would probably need some tweaks, though - the many ways it is tied to Tyrantis specifically seem a bit unnecessary, with the “people mistake it for Tyrantis” angle being a bit implausible (and somewhat redundant, given Tyrantis already has two enemies that are his twisted doppelgangers as is), and I’m not sure a monster hunting organization would recruit a chicken farmer into their ranks, no matter how good his business savvy is. Still, a plausible backstory wasn’t one of the contest requirements, and design and personality-wise Galiente is a very solid concept.

@protagonistprepblog submitted Gentil, an armored monster with a sweet disposition! Gentil is designed to be something of an earth elemental, with a mix of traits from various creatures associated with that element. He sports a healing mist/aura, a poison blast from his mouth, venomous claws, and the standard kaiju powers of strength and nigh invulnerability. He’s also smart enough to join an organization specifically to help people.

Gentil has a very striking design, albeit one that’s (intentionally) hard to place taxonomically. He would probably be the result of genetic modification in ATOM’s world, though the way his creator described him as the kaiju of the Earth Element makes me think the intention is for something more magical in origin. The sweet personality suits his name very well, and as far as monsters go he’s very friend-shaped. Most of Gentil’s information was shared with me by his creator via DMs, and he’s a very thoroughly developed concept, albeit one that seems to fit a story of protagonistprepblog’s creation a bit better than ATOM. A wonderful submission nonetheless!

@dinosaurana submits the nuclear gator known far and wide as One-Armed Louie! Already a menace when he was just a big, one-armed alligator, Louie became a true menace when he survived the explosive failure of a nuclear power plant, resulting in a number of wild mutations that, among other things, allow the massive crocodilian to assume a semi-bipedal stance. Louie’s aggressive nature and history of getting into mischief ironically make him a pretty good kaiju to have around, as he will more often than not turn those shit-starting instincts on his fellow giants and end up keeping them in line as a result. Even Jim Madson, a gator hunter turned kaiju wrangler, can’t help but appreciate how the “rat bastard” has become something of a boon to humanity since becoming freakishly large.

One-Armed Louie brings a true crocodilian to ATOM’s cast, which warms my reptile loving heart. One could argue that the retrosaurs are all just very weird crocodiles, of course, but while that may literally be the case, most of them don’t look like crocodiles - they don’t have that pure crocodile vibe - and Louie makes up for their deficiency by being very much a big ol’ crocodilian. Big ol’ gators and crocs are a giant monster movie archetype just as much as big ol’ bugs, and Louie gives them their due very well. He also looks absolutely hardcore, which fits his aggressive “rat bastard” personality to a T. A very solid entry for the contest!

@iamthekaijuking submitted the modified martian monster Nyergolep! Originally from the planet Mars, Nyergolep was kidnapped by the Beyonder Alliance and experimented upon until it developed psychic powers. Designed to be a sort of anti-Kemlasulla, Nyergolep is a nervous wreck who hates combat and desperately wants to escape the Beyonders.

Nyergolep’s design takes a lot from Kemlasulla’s, albeit with a lot of twists - fitting for the “Anti-Kemlasulla.” Its tentacles are much more massive than its legs, with the roles of each set of limbs being reversed (i.e. using tentacles for locomotion instead of grasping, using legs for grasping instead of locomotion), and it lacks all of the armor Kemlasulla has, including the bony plates protecting the head and eye. The result is a very fragile looking martian, the squishy mage to Kemlasulla’s rough and rowdy fighter. I like the wiggly line of its upper jaw the best - don’t ask me why. “Nergle’s” design is a little too closely tied to Kemlasulla’s for me to give full marks in that category, though I do love that wiggly mouth. Its personality is pretty damn good though, fitting with the other shell-shocked war veterans in the Beyonder Kaiju army.

@dragonseeker-rex submitted the cactus/bird hybrid Orothorn! In a story that feels like it came from one of the more light-hearted Twilight Zone episodes, Orothorn began as a normal gilded flicker that happened to befriend an cowboy actor named Mick Auricson (specializing in playing cowboys was A Thing in the 1950′s) after Mick nursed the little bird back to health. An ill-placed dynamite explosion near a hidden Yamaneon deposit not only supersized Orothorn, but fused it with some of the nearby cactus (violent bursts of Yamaneon radiation can do this kind of shit on occasion), creating a massive, thorny-skinned bird monster with a heart of gold and a fondness for humans in general, and Mick Auricson in particular. The feeling is mutual, as Mick even commissioned a special kaiju-sized scarf for the bird to wear (which I forgot to illustrate, whoops!).

Birds are lacking in ATOM’s roster (we don’t even have any in the core 50 files), and Orothorn is a unique take on the concept, with cactus thorns sticking out from between his feathers. Him being a kaiju that specifically emulates the heroic behavior of a cowboy (actor) is also adorable and so very in line with ATOM’s sensibilities, it’s genuinely cute and I love it. It’s a giant bird with cactus thorns that wears a scarf and thinks it’s a cowboy, how can you not love that?

Dracosaurus Rex submitted the enormous tuatara kaiju Tuatani! Initially mistaken for being a retrosaur, this three eyed reptile can shoot energy blasts from his third eye and carries a virulent disease in his blood that infects any who encounter it. A lonesome creature, Tuatani is very placcid during the day but will go on nightly rampages from time to time, apparently in a fit of vengeful despair at being the only one of his kind.

A clear homage to the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Tuatani nevertheless has a lot to set him apart from his inspiration, with a multi-eyed motiff that sports an actual third eye as well as several eyespots. The loneliness that drives him to lash out is a nice nod to both the film and the short story that inspired it, and his status as a Tuatara descendant would make him the last modern reptile missing from ATOM’s pantheon. The nature of the disease in his blood would need some elaboration, as the immune systems of ATOM kaiju are very strong (being able to regenerate white blood cells almost instantaneously makes it very easy for them to learn which micro-organisms need to be destroyed), but it’s an interesting power for the monster to have. A very solid entry!

@umbercario-sablesable gives us the giant silkworm, Munchy! A caterpillar whose head, jaws, and true legs are covered in a metal alloy. Munchy lives to eat, and with metal jaws he can eat quite a lot of things! While the insect will eat any non-living matter it comes across, it prefers not to eat living things, which makes it one of the few monsters who finds buildings more appetizing than the people inside them. Though Munchy has little desire in this world outside of sating its gluttony, it isn’t a malicious creature, and so long as your house isn’t in its path you have little to fear from the monster.

Silkworms have a short but important role in kaiju history, as Mothra’s larva form is based on a type of silkworm, so making a silkworm kaiju plays into a very grand tradition. Munchy goes for a more morally neutral route than Mothra, though, taking the voracious appetite of a caterpillar and exaggerating it to a proper kaiju scale. The simplicity of it actually makes for a rather unique kaiju, as Munchy’s single-minded desire to eat as much non-living matter as possible makes it a very different sort of antagonist than the somewhat more complicated kaiju villains of ATOM. Add to that the massive variety one can find in silkworms and you have a recipe for a very good monster!

(Apologies at the possible inaccuracy of my illustration - google could not find images of the wakabayashi landrace species of silkworm that he is specified as being, so I had to just look up silkworms and hope I was somewhere in the correct ballpark - and then I missed the detail about his first pair of false legs being long enough to give him a bipedal stance so uh... well I think he’s still pretty cute, that counts for something?)

Sir K brings us the lung/ryu kaiju Yokaigon the Incredible! Mistaken for a retrosaur by its initial discoverer (we certainly have a lot of scientists in ATOM who are very bad at taxonomy), Yokaigon is capable of affecting the weather like some of the few psychic kaiju in ATOM’s setting, suggesting latent psychic powers on the reptile’s part. He is also able to absorb electricity and may or may not be able to fly. Introverted and antisocial by nature, Yokaigon isn’t driven to seek out combat like most other kaiju, and prefers to be left alone.

With a backstory inspired by an absolutely terrible dub of Varan the Unbelievable!, Yokaigon is a fun homage that winks at some of the mythic creatures that existed in ATOM’s universe long before the series takes place - a surviving Loong/Ryu, much as Kraydi is a surviving dragon and Gorgolisk a surviving basilisk. While Loongs aren’t covered in my Midgaheim Bestiary project, I have done sketches of what they would be like before, and it’s fun to see them mixed with a suitamation look here. I don’t think a sea monster necessarily needs to make storms to still feel appropriately mythical, but the hydrokinetic ability to summon sea storms is plausible enough in ATOM (I’ve got a Yeti who summons blizzards in roughly the same way, so who am I to judge?). And people always want more dragons.

@toothlessloveshiccup brings us the prehistoric arthropod Insectra! Despite appearances, Insectra isn’t actually an insect, but actually a much older arthropod that is more closely related to horseshoe crabs. Forged in a conflict between natives and an encroaching military force in the South Pacific, Insectra protects the local human civilization of her island home while repelling those who would destroy it. With EMP blasts in her already powerful arsenal, she is a formidable enemy for anyone, man or kaiju, to face.

Insectra’s design has a great Hanna Barbera bug-monster vibe, the sort of thing you could see going toe to toe with the Herculoids or Space Ghost. It’s simple in some places, but to the point, with great big spears for hands and wide, stompy feet. Her motivation as a protector is a great nod to Mothra, while having an even more explicit anti-imperialist bent to it. A very well rounded entry for the contest!

Shadyserpent brings us the draconic reptile Karax! Another mythic creature sneaking into the world of ATOM, Karax is a serpentine beast whose vestigial wings allow it to fly (Yamaneon’s ability to defy gravity doing some of its most implausible work yet). With terrible venom and a better-than-average healing factor, Karax is a deadly opponent, the dragon-like beast is thankfully more focused on collecting shiny objects than waging war against man or kaiju, though his desire to add to his hoard sometimes causes trouble.

See? I told you people like dragons! Karax’s design retains the ATOM-approved level of scientific plausibility, with his wings being fairly simple/under-developed compared to the more fantastical dragons of my Midgaheim stories. He retains the prehistoric monster vibe that other Midgaheim survivors like Gorgolisk and Kraydi have, towing the line enough to fit in with ATOM’s menagerie while still winking at the mythic side of things. His fondness for shiny objects is both a nice nod to his draconic nature and a fun character quirk that can get him into the kind of trouble that stories are made of, and the fact that he’s also got more than a few references to the classic giant monster movie Reptilicus is also a plus! A very good entry.

@titleknown brings us Neuro-Idiom, a brain monster who creates psychedelic mass hallucinations! Formed from a bunch of aliens fusing their minds together, Neuro-Idiom conjurs other creatures out of thin air with its psychic powers, and has pretty much every other psychic power to boot!

Neuro-Idiom’s primary design, that of a big walking brain creature, fills a monster archetype that hasn’t been present in ATOM thus far - i.e. the big, ambulatory, disembodied brain, and yes, that is a SUPER popular archetype for 1950′s/60′s monster fiction. Its psychic projections also pay homage to various monsters in fiction that were actually just the manifestations of an unsound mind - the Id monster from Forbidden Planet, the crawling brains of Fiend Without a Face, and the Crackler from Godzilla: The Series are examples of this concept. The backstory of this monster would need to be reworked since it kind of ignores that “kaiju” in ATOM is a word with a very specific meaning (you can’t have a kaiju without Yamaneon involved), and the monster having amplified versions of EVERY psychic power makes it significantly more powerful than anything in ATOM’s canon, so that might have to be toned down a bit as well, but all in all it’s a lovely brain monster!

@drrockso20 brings us our final entry, the massive bison Chief Wrigley! With gorilla-like arms and enormous horns, this big bovine has the muscle he needs to protect his herd and territory from any creature that dares to challenge it! He’s not all brawn, either, as Chief Wrigley is clever enough to use the environment to his advantage, and even makes use of simple tools from time to time. He can telepathically communicate with others, and can sometimes generate electric blasts from his horns.

With a very unique design, power set, and personality, Chief Wrigley has the makings of an excellent protagonist/hero kaiju, the kind who could headline his own corner of ATOM’s kaiju-verse. Bison are a really underused basis for a kaiju, too - they have very unique heads, and their bodies are build in a way that’s very good at conveying mass. With just enough special powers to make combat scenes interesting, but not so many that he feels out of place in ATOM’s world, Chief Wrigley is a strong contender in this contest!

Those are the entries! Who will be the top three winners, and who will get the grand prize? You’ll have to wait a bit longer to find out, but for now, let’s appreciate how many wonderful monsters we made here! In a way, they’re all winners in my book, even if I can’t give prizes to the whole batch!

#Revenge of the ATOM Kaiju Contest #The Atomic Time of Monsters #kaiju #giant monster

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s4g2webdesign-blog · 4 years

Text

Good Web Design

What is Web Design?A Web site is the final output of a Web design. The Web site sits on a Web server where electronic files are stored. The Web site presents the contents and interactive features or interfaces to the end user in the form of Web pages. How the information requested is displayed to the user is par of the Web design process. Additional controls are embedded in order to display more complex media like animations, sounds and other forms.

Whats New? The Clouds of Course!Everybody wants something new from time to time and yet some need a fix of something totally different. In the realm of the internet, that is quite a common occurrence with the many innovations that are always popping up and with all of them, none can be as exciting as the move into the clouds.

The Open Design Community: Free CSS Templates!If youre most people out there who dont know CSS and have no time, or care, on how to do one for your blog, then the next action for you would be to find a place where you can download one for free. Thank goodness that there are a lot of sites out there that give them away for free. The only problem is, that since you were not the one who created it, you will be subject to their designs and whims.

One of the sites that give free CSS of cool web designs is The Open Design Community (TODC). The Open Design Community is a hub for open source website designers from around the world providing thousands of XHTML and CSS based free web design templates available for download. So, please feel free to take a minute or two and browse through the designs that our fabulous designers have submitted and see if one might work for you! And remember they are free!

Bad Web DesignHere are some features that can really mar the over all concept of your web design. It is important to take notice of the most common mistakes web designers commit. You might be able to use some insights into creating an effective web design which might be simple but can invoke your projected image. Backgrounds that are gray in color by default presents so many problems most especially with the pages readability. Avoid color combinations that can render the characters unreadable. Backgrounds are mostly effective when it is left simple and does not interfere with reading. Texts must be readable. Avoid small characters. Keep the links colored blue as much as possible because common users are already used with the color.

DIY Web DesignDo it yourself design projects are proliferating in the internet these days. There are a number of web sites that practically teaches you what to do without hiring a web designer. A do it yourself web site design applies perfectly for young professionals who are just starting to learn stuff in business or trying to reformat the existing business that they are running. DIY web site design offers you total control over the project and over the site that is why its simply gaining popularity. It takes the work out of dealing with consultants, designer, contractor landscaper and the likes. In DIY design, your ideas are sure to be heard and taken careful attention to. You get to express your style and personality. because at the end of the day, it still will be your website, selling your products. This has solved constant problems with web designers who are truly passionate in their work who sometime can get overly sensitive to a small correction or observation of his work. Do it yourself web designing surely saves you money and time and energy.

Benefits of Web 2.0 ApplicationsWeb 2.0 applications are the latest trend in website design . Many Internet companies and users are turning to web 2.0 for its added features. It has also increased functionality. It has brought about a new wave in how sites are to be built, designed and applied hands-on. It makes the users enjoy blogging, download, RSS feeds etc. These developments give added excitement to online experience. It is said that Web 2.0 companies sites get higher ranking in search engines, like Google, yahoo and countless others. Web 2.0 benefits are countless. You can post photos, albums, help guides and maps for planning your travel abroad.

It has radically changed the quality of social interaction worldwide. Blogs proliferate. marketing online costs much less. And it has created networking success stories. Web 2.0 gives you full control over your business while adding smaller but very useful features to it.

Website design is of course not giving the visitors with another plain piece of text. Go as per the old saying "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Here the beholder is the visitor of the website that you are going to design. So as a skilled website designer you should have mastered all the skills needed to create classy and attractive graphics, colors and shapes placed in perfect balance to catch the eye of the visitor together with drawing his focus to the most important sections of your website. Your job as a website designer is to make use of colors, text and graphics and translate into a visually appealing layout, logo, banner, and button system.

As a professional website designer, you need to chalk out a well-devised approach for creating the website. First, you need to understand the specific business necessities of your client and lay out the basic structure of the website. In order to minimize the cost of the set up, the website designer should be equipped with predefined web templates. Having this feature in your armory, you don't need to go hog-wild with the designs for the reason that you are not designing a website by tinkering.

Internet Marketing (Part 2)

Start a blog. Blogs have now become a favorite for search engines. If you go ahead and launch a blog, link it into your main site, print blocks of information and float RSS feeds. If you do these then most of the search engines can locate you much faster. Design some copies of digital books that you can send out to everyone. You can write for articles or courses online that could be submitted elsewhere. Then, create your own write-up in a manner that you can use them in any possible type of media, whether online or offline.

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#web design #web developers

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yvynyl · 5 years

Audio

// Letters to YVYNYL //

Good Night Gold Dust - Second Moon

/ Stories like songwriter Laura Schultz’s note to me - life, death, an artist journey - permeates this record as it seems to create elementally personal inflections for her. I’m interested in how music and death find these paths together, but particularly the way in which tragic sudden deaths happen to influence a song writer’s work. I want to call it powerful, but sometimes, an artist needs to simply say it out loud; to recognized how it makes things feel better. Not that it’s always happier. It’s not. It’s sad and difficult. But still, there’s a spot of light within finding a place for reflection and for moving on.

Hey there, Mark!

I'm Laura, from Minnesota-based band Good Night Gold Dust. Thank you so much for featuring our song, “Waves” off of our first album a few years back! I’m happy to announce that we’re releasing a new album, and the first track is called “Second Moon”.

I wrote this song in the guest bedroom of our 111 year old home in Southern Minnesota, looking out on the hundred-plus year old maple trees, fallen leaves and the exposed foundation of some long-forgotten structure in the backyard woods. It was nighttime, mid-winter. The crickets were absolutely screaming through the nine windows of this second story sunroom and the wind made the old trees moan as their branches swayed. It was beautiful.

I told myself I’d write a song that night, and this is what came out. A friend died in 2012 and I'm still writing songs about her. It’s amazing and sick how grief comes in waves, how much it can take you by surprise, knock you out completely out of nowhere.

I wrote this song thinking about her, wishing things could have been different. Maybe I could have done or said something. Maybe I couldn’t have. Maybe someone else could have. And most of all, if Charlotte, robust and alive, all fantastic songs and unexpected guitar parts and cleverness, could have died like this, then anyone could.

She and I had played in a band together in Wisconsin just a year prior to her death. When I moved to Minnesota we formed new bands and kept playing together. She had her own amazing band and mine was just getting started, finding its footing. My boyfriend/co-bandleader and I looked up to the easy camaraderie she and her band mates shared. We loved their music. We thought we’d go on tour together, sing on each other’s songs at our next show together, keep drinking red wine and joking and playing.

Right after I found out, I talked on the phone with one of our old band mates from our first band together and he said, “Jesus, Laura. It could have been you. What if it was you?” It wasn’t me. But it could have been. That’s the tragedy. It could’ve been any of us, but it wasn’t. It was her.

Laura

Got a story to tell? Submit them via Letters to YVYNYL.

#Good Night Gold Dust #Letters to YVYNYL #Minnesota #grief #death #music #long form #essay #stories

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bestsickpenscom1989-blog · 6 years

Text

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dontkeepthedevilwaiting · 6 years

Text

Here we are!

Thank you, dear readers for submitting your thoughts on UCN, it’s time for us to do the same. We believe it is Michael’s Hell. Hold on for a second, and let us explain, but first, let’s explore and talk about the views you have submitted, thank you each and everyone who did!

(Full post under the cut)

@mymandakat says

That’s completely understandable! Keeping up with FNaF is rough, and that’s an understandable viewpoint, however with so many voicelines that are... Striking we can’t really feel the same way

@starryoak says:

God, is this a relatable one. But, as I shall elaborate on further later, I feel Will deserves something more biting. Torturous. Fitting for an abusive, manipulative, murderous liar.

@cuddlycat4 says:

A great point! Plus I feel if we played as William, some form of Michael would be there, maybe after he’s scooped.

@funtime-innards says:

That’s fair! I’ve seen a lot of reasons why it could be William’s hell, and a lot of them raise fair points, but if you’ll hold on, let us explain our findings (as best we can, without spoilers, of course!)

@kittyqueen445 says

Again, fair enough! But for us, the opposite is true.

@smiranna1210 (Who I can’t tag for some reason >:/) says:

First off, no need to apologize! believe me, if anyone should be apologizing it’s me ><, to continue, I’ll go ahead and delve into our pre-prepared lines we went into:

“I recognize you, but I’m not afraid of you, not anymore.” -The Puppet

We know that Michael was a bully when he was younger, as evidenced in the FNAF 4 minigames. And with some fancy calculations, we can determine that Michael was at least 11 years older than Charlotte. This could account for why she would be scared of him. If you were a young child watching someone bigger, and taller picking on kids, you’d be terrified! I was bullied when I was younger, and even kids who were younger and shorter than me were scary. It would certainly also make sense for it to be William, but I feel like another Puppet quote would also back us up.

“I don’t hate you, but you need to stay out of my way.” -The Puppet

She sees Michael as someone who interferes with bringing life to the children, but doesn’t feel hatred toward him like she does for William. And for your reference to Orville, we have an idea for that as well:

“He tried to release you, he tried to release us, but I’m not gonna let that happen. I will hold you here, I will keep you here, no matter how many times they burn us.” -Orville Elephant This refers to Henry trying to release the souls by burning down the pizzeria, Orville using the “they” pronoun could be referring to the minions of hell because Henry only burned down a pizzeria with them once. And as for Michael, he seems to be a much more unaware component to Henry’s plan.

@fnafcomicsartandaus says:

Once again, completely understandable! we’ll go over the rest of the voicelines very soon, and I can totally see that being a satisfying conclusion, but we have some ideas that might also be a lovely conclusion.

Anonymous says:

William does deserve hell yes, but again, doesn’t he deserve to be in a Hell more permanent? And as for the one you should not have killed, Michael’s hands are not clean. Michael has done wrong, but wrongs that can be made right. It’s not entirely his fault, either. We’ll go into it more in the comic, if you’ll care to stick around.

And lastly, @cherry-s-poison says:

Now, this has been one of the most intriguing cases for William’s hell I’ve seen. However, I do still want to provide our (almost) full evidence for Michael’s hell, if you’d care to read...

We believe that by playing through and beating UCN, you are playing as Michael trying to redeem your soul. Michael has sinned. He bullied his brother and accidentally killed him, but he is not beyond saving. Michael resides in the 5th circle of hell, the circle of wrath, where the dead fight each other. William, however, is beyond redemption. His hell is deeper, more permanent. He resides in the third ring of the 9th circle of hell where traitors to their guests are frozen in ice, and we can hear his screams from the fifth circle. William is a traitor to his guests because he killed children who came to be entertained at his pizzeria. In Dante's Inferno, it is explained the once a person commits such treachery against their guest, their soul falls to Ptolomea (the 3rd round of the 9th ring) before their body is even dead and that their body is then inhabited by a demon until it's natural death.

And now for the quotes that stand out to us the most:

“I can’t run like I used to, but I can pull myself apart just fine.” -Foxy (If you play as Michael in every game, sometimes under assumed names, you would know how fast Foxy used to run to get into your office.

“You won’t get tired of dying, will you?” -Toy Chica (It is established in The Fourth Closet that William has yet to die. He somehow, miraculously keeps hanging on, even under extreme circumstances. Michael, however, gets scooped and dies, yet manages to regain control over his body as some sort of zombie. And, again, if we are playing as Michael the entire time, we see him die over and over with every jumpscare.)

“Where is my beak? Lodged in your forehead, of course.” (In FNAF 2, we have a time where we find Toy Chica’s beak is missing, and in FNAF 4, the girl with the toys of the animatronics has a Chica with a missing beak. These would be things that Michael would have seen.)

“Now I can play take apart and put back together! You won’t feel a thing.” -Mangle (This alludes to the fact that Michael worked in the FNAF 2 location where the Mangle was a pull-apart and put-together attraction.)

“I wanted to wait for just the right moment to drop in!” -Mangle (Mangle drops in on their victims to bite them in the face, which they try on Michael in FNAF 2)

“He’s here and always watching, the one you shouldn’t have killed.” -Mangle (William has killed multiple children, and if we were to break it down to “the one you shouldn’t have killed,” it would be Charlotte [a girl]. Whereas, we watch Michael feed his little brother to Fredbear. Later in the game, we hear a flatline, signaling that the brother died. This is the one Michael shouldn’t have killed.)

“Come face the consequences of your failure.” -Withered Bonnie (Michael has failed to save the children. In FNAF 2, we see the Puppet tell Michael to Help Them! Save Them! Then there is the message: You Can’t.)

“I have seen him, the one you shouldn’t have killed.” -Withered Chica (Another reference to the “ONE” you shouldn’t have killed.)

“Seeing you powerless is like music to me.” -The Puppet (We know that music soothes the puppet. Without music, she comes at Michael. Seeing him powerless is also comforting to her.)

“I am remade, but not by you, by the one you should not have killed.” -Nightmare Freddy (WIthout giving too much away with what we think the first part of this means, we have another reference to the “ONE” you should not have killed.)

“The light can’t save you now.” -Nightmare Freddy (Michael flashes the light to get rid of the nightmares.)

“What a gift to relish, a victim that can’t perish” -Nightmare Freddy (Baby has stated that Michael won’t die. While his body does in fact die, unlike William, Michael’s spirit remains as he has unfinished business)

“Let me put you back together, then take you apart all over again,” and “Let’s see how many times you can be pulled apart.” -Nightmare Fredbear (Michael broke his brother by sticking him into the Fredbear’s mouth. Now it’s Fredbear’s turn to break Michael.)

“This time, there is more than an illusion to fear.” -Nightmare Fredbear(These are Michael’s nightmares, his fears, and now they are real because he is in purgatory.)

“We know who our friends are, and you are not one of them.” -Nightmare Fredbear (If you go to the pile of toys in Michael’s brother’s room, he tells you that these are his friends. They are not, however, Michael’s friends.

“Greetings from the fire, and the one you should not have killed.” -Jack o’ Chica (Another reference to the one you should not have killed.)

“This is a nightmare that you won’t wake from.” -Nightmarionne (Michael has nightmares, but now that he is truly dead, he will not wake from them.

“This time, death cannot save you.” -Nightmarionne (Nightmarionne is not canon, which could mean that there is no actual animatronic stalking Michael, but rather just a nightmare. Every time Michael gets jumpscared in game, he dies again, but is able to return because as Baby said, “He won’t die.” But in hell, death will not save Michael from the eternal torment, only beating the game will release his soul to heaven.)

“I am the fearful reflection of what you have created.” -Nightmarionne (This one is a little too spoiler-y, so I can’t go into it, but needless to say, Michael is the one who is scared of his reflection.)

“I guess you forgot about me.” -Circus Baby (We know that Michael is William’s son. We also know that Elizabeth is WIlliam’s daughter. Did Michael forget he had a sister?)

“Want to see the scooping room?” -Circus Baby

(Baby tricks Michael into going into the scooping room, so she and the others [as Ennard] can take over Michael’s body.)

“You won’t die, but you’ll wish you could.” -Scrap Baby

(At the end of Sister Location, we see a scooped Michael with Ennard inside throw up Ennard, fall down, and we hear Baby’s voice say, “He won’t die,” over and over again. Then zombie Michael gets up and all of Ennard’s eyes look at him from the sewer.)

I would love to go into Lefty’s lines here, but it’s too spoiler-y for what we have planned.

Bonus:

I know it may seem strange to cram FNAF 4 and Sister location together, but I think Nightmare’s lines really back this theory up.

“I am your wickedness, made flesh.” -Nightmare

(Michael gets scooped on Night 5 of Sister Location, but he is still haunting his own body while Ennard is wearing him as a skin suit. Nightmare appears on Night 7, and is the embodiment of Michael’s worst fears.)

“I am here to claim what is left of you.” -Nightmare

(It may be that Nightmare is possibly acting as the Grim Reaper, here to collect what remains of Michael after he is scooped.)

“I will vomit you back, to relive your horror.” -Nightmare

(After Michael walks around with Ennard inside his skin for several days, he vomits up the spaghetti monster. If Nightmare is there, a animatronic personification of Michael’s fears and his death, Nightmare would know of this. Michael might fear being vomited up by an animatronic because it would have meant losing the fight against Ennard.)

To conclude, we thank everyone for sticking with us through the walls of text. There was a lot of information, and interesting opinions to comb through, and we hope we have shed some light and inspired opinions of your own. Thank you for lending your ears (or eyes, for that matter) and we hope you continue to enjoy the comic!

#fnaf #fnaf ucn #fnaf theories #ucn theory #michael afton #william afton #ucn spoilers #don't keep the devil waiting #dktdw #don't keep the devil waiting comic #dktdw comic #fnaf ultimate custom night #ultimate custom night

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