#i usually only readmore the really long ones but when i thought about it i was like. best to play it safe just in case

[catchyhuh]

SCARS!!!

SO COOL!! THESE PEOPLE ARE ALL VERY TRAUMATIZED

WARNING FOR TRANSPARENCY’S SAKE: a little discussion of accidental, unintentional self-harm to a degree so tread lightly. tip toe here.

lupin: oh tons. he’s lost count. the majority of them admittedly are pretty tiny, like little nicks from knives, both from Murder and even just oops my finger slipped when i was making dinner. most of them are on his forearms and his torso, front and back, but the deepest one is on his back. it wasn’t even the result of one specific attack, it’s just that, when you’re running away so much, a lot of shit tends to hit your back, and it doesn’t really get a chance to heal unless you cut out that thieving shit for a month or two. lotta scar tissue back there. otherwise most of his scars aren't even that visible because of how damn PALE he is put that guy in the sun for two minutes. lord.

jigen: he actually does have a canon bullet scar on his arm (jokes on you people you thought this was just a mildly obsessed writing dump but really i'm here to share lupin facts with you!! hemingway papers baby) and it’s DEEP it did not heal properly. like almost like a mini crater from the impact of the bullet. beyond that he’s got a few tiny scrapes along his back, and his knuckles on both hands are a little rough, but his hands in general are kind of rough so you don’t really notice unless you’re reaaally looking

fujiko: the problem with chronic backstabbing disorder is that you are the company you keep, and, uh, most people don’t take well to that sort of thing believe it or not! not that many on her back though, as she tends to be a very defensive fighter in situations like that, and doesn’t let the opposition get too far out of her sight. like lupin, though, she’s got a bunch on her arms, but ALL the way up on her arms, and a few near her stomach, including a few tiny burn scars. these people really do not know when to quit. BUT you’d never see any of these because she usually covers them with makeup. always keep the public guessing and remove any identifying marks on your body! 

goemon: you already know about that shoulder baby we don’t even need to talk about that shoulder which is great! because thinking about it too much makes me lightheaded. goemon might be the only one out of them to not have ANY scarring from bullets. not even like, grazed. he’s just freakishly untouchable in that sense. of course, cuts and scrapes are there, and does have some burns along his chest though from when he and lupin met (if you’re buying that specific origin story because god who can keep track anymore) but that’s only because he kept them WAY too exposed to the elements. 

zenigata: guy’s RESILIENT. RESILIENT like jerry. the only reason he doesn’t have as many scars is because he’s the only one who manages to take care of most of them somewhat regularly because he’s not throwing himself in front of guns and knives AS often (note: not because he's actually responsible and on top of the proper healing process, he's just in that Can't Afford for This to get Worse grindset). on the opposite end though, that means the ones he does have like. 90% of them come from stupid things he did to himself. “oh damn this is a big one on your arm i bet that came from fighting with lupin” uh no that would be when he panicked during a car chase and jumped a little too early and fucked up his elbow. that one would be from a ramen cup spill. that one would be from a particularly mean cat. he’s probably got an ACTUAL cool dangerous one somewhere but it’s definitely not any of these 

[somegrumpynerd]

HEY. POINTS FINGER… any thoughts on how everyone reacted when the other joined the team? as in how did killer react when dust came, how did he and dust react when horror came, how did they all react when cross came, etc. i love love LOVE your bad sanses thoughts way too much they make me so happy. if i write hurt you write comfort and it’s awesome. also how do you think they slowly started to get closer? just.. bah give me your thoughts on them!!!! any thoughts!!!!!!!!!

You fool!! You’ve given me a chance to ramble about my special little guys and now this post will stretch on forever!! Mwahahahahah >:3c

No but seriously this is probably gonna be wicked long cause I have 1 million thoughts about these guys joining and meeting each other so uh, readmore for everybody’s safety and sanity

(^ I wrote that in the document before I started typing out my actual thoughts and uh

yeah no kidding, this is like a fucking essay so proceed with caution)

OKAY SO

I’ve said before that Nightmare got Dust for two reasons; one being that Dream had just recently started working with Ink (and soon Blue) so he and Killer were no longer able to gang up on Dream. He wanted somebody else to bulk up their numbers and give Killer a little back up. He also was starting to realise that Killer didn’t handle being alone very well, since this was when he most often got worked up and broke things around the castle (and sometimes tipped over into stage 3). Dust would be a perfect fit since he had the same amount of lvl and fighting experience as Killer, and since they were so close in circumstance they would be practically like brothers right?

The irony that he thought this about a guy he was recruiting to help kill his brother was apparently lost on him.

They absolutely hated each other. Like, it was instant. Killer saw him as a replacement, why would boss go out and get another sans - one with almost the same backstory as me - when I’m right here? Does he think I’m not good enough? Am I disposable and this is the backup for when I die in combat? He didn’t take it well. He took it all out on Dust too, not cooperating in battle, trying to start fights in the castle, etc. He couldn’t outright kill him because Nightmare had given him strict orders not to, but Killer loves a loophole. If he roughed Dust up down to 1hp and something else happened to finish him off, technically he’d followed orders.

Dust just straight up didn’t want to be there. Nightmare just showing up and yoinking him had worked fine with Killer, but Dust had wanted to sit in his empty au and die, he had no intention of joining a team or doing work of any kind - good or bad. The only reason he didn’t just lie down and refuse the entire time was that he had to fight back against Killer, as much as he wanted to die he refused to give this ass the satisfaction or lvl. He didn’t intend to be any help out in the field either, but again, Killer was making sure he got fired at so he had to retaliate to stay alive.

Eventually it got bad enough that Nightmare had to pull Killer aside and demand answers. In the year or so of knowing him Killer had never willfully disobeyed orders before, so Nightmare needed to know what had gotten into him. He dispelled the replacement rumour right away, he still wasn’t quite softened up enough to be sappy about it but he made sure Killer understood what a good worker he was and that Nightmare had no intention of losing him. It didn’t help a lot, they still hated each other for other reasons, but it eased a little.

Killer still had pretty frequent dips into stage 3, except now he would go straight for Dust usually. Nightmare had tried to explain what he’d learned about it to Dust, but he didn’t really believe that it wasn’t just Killer deciding to try and kill him for funsies. He only accepted it after a particular episode where he attacked Nightmare instead, which Dust knew Killer wouldn’t try in his right mind.

After he came back to his senses he sought Dust out. The air around Killer was very different after a stage 3, sort of sombre and almost calm, so Dust let them sit together and Killer apologised for giving him such a hard time. They actually talked for the first time in months while Killer was still calm (or tolerable, as Dust describes it), and it didn’t magically fix everything but, things were a little better. They still fought and argued and bothered each other but it wasn’t as sharp, there was a lack of real murderous intent in it all, and sometimes after an episode they would talk a little bit. It was the best Nightmare was going to get for now, so he took it.

They were still completely incompetent about taking care of themselves though. Neither of them would eat unless prompted and Nightmare didn’t have good enough knowledge of mortals to know when that should be to stop them passing out from hunger on the job. Not to mention the stars were now a full team, and with the way Killer and Dust would sometimes rather target each other on the field he could do with more backup.

Horror was the first of the group to get a choice in joining. Nightmare had taken note of how much Dust didn’t want to be part of things, and while it was in his best interests in the long run given his situation, Horror’s au was still mostly intact - though a little in disrepair. Horror was also the first in the group to have a good (and ongoing) relationship with his brother, so Nightmare knew he couldn’t just pop in and steal him, he had to be a bit more diplomatic with this one and offer a deal.

He gave Horror some time to think on his proposal - he would set up regular deliveries of food to Horror’s au in exchange for him joining their team - and was quite surprised when Horror agreed, with some stipulations. Horror was equally surprised when Nightmare agreed so easily to his terms (that he didn’t want his brother to know what he’d be doing, and that he wouldn’t kill). A little down the line the terms were altered to add that he would also be left to visit his au every week or so.

Horror was not impressed meeting the other two. He didn’t need his power as judge anymore to sense the lvl coming off them both, and given who they were working for he was instantly distrustful of them both (the uh, brother situation did not help). He was also in a place that had an abundance of food for the first time in probably years, so he was doing a lot of going hog wild in the kitchen and then getting very sick as a result.

Dust didn’t particularly feel anything for him. This guy hated him, sure, but it wasn’t forward and slashy like with Killer, it was just quiet loathing which was fine. That’s how Dust felt about himself so, y’know, mood. He did kind of feel sorry for him though, not just because of the whole famine and everything, but also because he was watching this guy eat like his life depended on it and then get sick and undo it day after day. He was the one who suggested Horror getting his food in moderation to Nightmare, which did help but was an absolute ordeal to enforce. Y’know how some people get hangry? Imagine that but you haven’t had a proper meal in years and now these people give you tiny amounts of food and don’t let you eat more for hours. The hunger mood swings were a sight to behold, you would never have guessed in those days that Horror specified not wanting to kill.

When his ability to eat had evened out and he was in better shape, Horror made a point of apologising to Dust for being aggressive with him. Over time he’d kind of softened up on him from his initial impression, since he could see plainly how wracked with guilt Dust was over his situation. It was a little easier to imagine that whatever he’d done was truly out of desperation and not just for fun, as Horror had assumed at first sight. 

They also both retained that classic sans laziness, so it was easy for them to share a space while saying and doing nothing. It made Horror the first person that Dust willingly spent time around in the castle (and vice versa since Horror was still largely suspicious of Nightmare and Killer - the deal seemed too good to be true and the stage 3 episodes didn’t help). As time went on, Horror kind of became Dust’s emotional support skeleton in a way. Dust had become quite averse to touch in his solitude and Horror very slowly brought him back out with casual gentle touches, until not only did he no longer freeze or stiffen at being grabbed but Dust would seek him out to flop next to on the couch. Horror claimed it was just returning the favour for helping with his eating situation, but really it was nice to have something resembling a friend here.

Killer, for his part, was going through This is My Replacement 2: Electric Boogaloo. Not to the same degree as with Dust, since Horror was quite a bit different, but Killer was still wary of this new addition. He didn’t really instigate anything though since, to be honest, Horror had the intimidation factor. He was like a foot taller than both of them, he had a cracked skull and completely different magic and it seemed like every time Killer saw him he was eating bread like a wolf eats a deer. So while he was going through his food moderating, Killer mostly just stayed quiet and kept his distance.

Horror had not softened on him like he had with Dust, since Killer didn’t openly show remorse. He still watched him with distrust, especially after seeing the way he scrapped with Dust for seemingly no reason other than for violence’s sake. Killer was still mostly targeting Dust in his stage 3s, but Horror had to be careful to stay out of his way since he was still working with much lower hp than the other two. What did start to convince him was seeing how similar Killer and Dust were after a stage 3 episode. Once Killer was slightly more composed (ie stopped crying), he became so tired and quiet and blunt about things he normally joked his way around. It was a little startling, but also started to bring Horror around to the idea that Killer might regret his actions too, just buried under several layers of whatever the hell is also wrong with him at any given time.

Killer and Horror only really started interacting after talking about Dust. Killer was asking how he got Dust to like him since he seems to hate everyone and everything else, Horror told him very pointedly it was because he wasn’t trying to kill Dust. Killer admitted he wasn’t trying to kill Dust, at least not anymore, he just wanted to fight for fun. It opened up a better channel of understanding, knowing that Killer did not actually have murderous intent behind his swings (stage 3 notwithstanding). It made it easier for Horror to occasionally get involved in the roughhousing which Killer delighted in, knowing that the other two knew how to hold back enough to keep him from dusting.

Speaking of stage 3, it was around this time that Killer and Dust made a very important deal. After a particularly rough episode with a little too close of a call, Killer showed up in Dust’s room and begged him shakily to make a promise - that if he ever got too out of control during one of his stages, Dust would kill him. He’d been told over and over by Nightmare that it was impossible for Killer to hurt him since he was immortal, but now there were more people around him where that wasn’t the case, and he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he came out of a stage and found himself alone. Dust promised.

It’s also worth mentioning that, once they were all close enough to be on speaking terms, Horror started bullying the shit out of these two about eating. Now that Horror knew neither of them were going to kill him, he felt safe enough to pick them up by the scruff and set them at the table to say they weren’t leaving until they had at least a snack. He let them pick what they would eat - he wasn’t that cruel about it - but he had to see them eat at least 3 times a day or they would hear about it.

It was by no means perfect or regular, but after about half a year Nightmare finally had henchmen who ate food and worked together (mostly).

Now here’s the problem… I still haven’t really figured out how or why Cross joined the team. Like, obviously there’s some kind of point in the events of underverse where it splits off into an alternate timeline, but I haven’t really figured out where yet so. Leave that one with me just a little longer. Cross joins.

Nightmare really truly didn’t intend to take anyone else in. They were (mostly) getting along, they were pretty well matched to fight the stars, he had no need of more mortals.

…but he was also pretty soft at this point. Every one of them had taken a blow to his I’m immortal I’m an island I don’t get attached to others persona and he’d gotten pretty damn fond of them all. This was why when he felt the sheer weight of loneliness radiating off of Cross, he just couldn’t bring himself to leave him.

So Cross entered the castle. 

He did not particularly intend to stay or make friends, he was trying to get his world back and nothing more. He even revealed a little down the line that he outright refused to kill, and was quite surprised to find that Nightmare was fine with that. At the start he was polite but not friendly with the others and mostly kept to himself.

Dust, as is often the case, did not really have an opinion. Another new guy, this one was self sufficient and didn’t bother him so he had no reason to get involved. He was content to be in the same room as Cross but didn’t start up any conversations.

Horror felt the need to speak to Cross, since Dust would happily stay silent for years and Killer was, well, Killer. Horror was somehow the closest thing to normal they had, so he was the one that made small talk. Mostly asking what Cross would like for meals and encouraging him to pick something he liked when he got the answer of “anything is fine”. As Cross settled in a bit more and actually opened up, they bonded over being the only two to enjoy food. Horror made a point of adding chocolate to the stock they kept in the kitchen and making tacos here and there for Cross.

Horror was also the first Cross kind of warmed to, mostly because he was the one devoid of lvl and Nightmare had mentioned he’d also said he wouldn’t kill. Learning a little about his au’s situation only softened Cross to him more, especially seeing that he still cared a lot for his brother and was trying to protect his home (even if Cross found it unthinkable that he lived away from it). It was through Horror that he also got accustomed to Dust, how being quiet and distant was kind of his default and that he also felt deeply haunted by the loss of his world. They weren’t exactly friends, but it was comfortable enough.

So now boss had taken in another new person, someone who takes orders like a soldier and fights with knives and ruthless precision and aims to be his righthand man, and Killer was ecstatic. By now he’d mostly put his fears of being disposable behind him, Nightmare had gotten a bit less subtle in showing how important they all were to him and Killer felt confident he wouldn’t be replaced. Which was a little bit funny, because the only guy he didn’t feel threatened by was the one who absolutely competed for his spot.

Cross needed to prove he was useful, he had to feel like he earned his keep and that all the training and suffering he’d done was for a reason. When Nightmare sent them on missions, Cross aimed to be the fastest and the most efficient and to report to Nightmare without question. Horror and Dust looking on would have expected Killer to see this 100% as a threat to his position as (self proclaimed) Nightmare’s second in command, and to go for this guy’s throat when nobody else was around.

But Killer was fascinated. Cross was completely different from any of them, bar Nightmare whose au is a whole different kettle of fish, so he had a certain element of unpredictability to him. Horror and Dust were both based on classic sans just like him, so to a certain degree he knew how they would feel about most things and what they might say, the only differences being in what they had experienced through their own timelines. Cross was based on a swap sans and his au had taken wild twists and turns away from usual events, so Killer had to learn everything about him by poking and prodding for answers or observing from a distance, much like back when it was just him and Nightmare. Cross was something new to be studied and Killer loved taking notes.

Cross did not see this as friendly. He was competing with Killer for approval, not realising Killer was playing their contest like a game. When he saw Cross training he would jump in to spar for fun, but Cross saw his rival trying to get a jump on him and take him out of the running. When Killer would hang around and pester Cross in their off time with questions, it didn’t seem like someone taking interest, it seemed like someone being nosy and looking for weaknesses to exploit. When Horror mentioned that Killer was being surprisingly contained and friendly, Cross really thought he was fucking with him.

The first time Cross was willing to even consider this was the case was when his locket came loose on the field and Killer ran back to find it, since one of the notes he’d taken was how the locket wasn’t something Cross would play about (the same as Horror with food). It didn’t make sense for someone who was seriously competing to have him kicked out to just hand his necklace back, no ransoms or attempts to crush it to upset him, just some vague remark about “owing him one” and then right back to Nightmare for orders.

Cross had to give him something of a chance after that, Horror helped a lot by telling him “he doesn’t want to hurt you, he just doesn’t know how to be normal”. It was mostly a playful jab at Killer, but reframing their interactions changed it significantly for Cross. Now they were sparring playfully and having friendly competition on jobs. He wasn’t as put off when Killer went into stage 3 because he knew he could match him in combat and the others were always on hand to help restrain or distract him. Cross also took note of how Killer calmed down a lot for physical touch, not unlike how Dust had warmed up to Horror. It went a long way into not only making him a little less combative for attention every day, but it seemed to put longer stretches between his episodes (which Cross had also started tracking so they wouldn’t be caught out by them as much).

For his part, Killer has disobeyed instructions in the past to benefit Cross, usually ignoring the task to help him if he’s hurt. He’s also given Nightmare nudges towards praising him because he’s noted that that’s what Cross needs in the same way he needs touch (not that Nightmare doesn’t praise them normally, but when Cross is going through it and needs something). He also doesn’t particularly like chocolate but has made a point of not admitting this to Horror so he can give his chocolate to Cross.

(It’s also worth noting that Cross is the only one, besides Nightmare, that has been to Horror’s au. He offered to help out during the food delivery and got to meet Horror’s Papyrus (who he is a little intimidated by but ultimately friendly with, even though it’s a little weird since he’s a good bit different from his own Papyrus). Dust and Killer can’t really visit for a few reasons, mostly because everyone will notice their lvl immediately and know what they’ve done. Dust especially doesn’t know how he would react to having a Papyrus in front of him again and doesn’t want to put Horror's family at risk to find out. Whenever he visits, his Papyrus asks about Cross now and sometimes tries to make tacos for him (key word tries, he’s still a Papyrus after all). He may have joked that seeing Cross sometimes is “like having another brother but younger and less lazy” and when Horror told him this Cross may or may not have cried.)

And that’s where we are now!

They’re a very strange group who’ve been through some inexplicable events and have all changed each other in one way or another. And whether or not it can be admitted, they are a family c:

Now onto how Nightmare was made emotionally open by each of them!! In this essay I will no just kidding could you imagine this is already like 7 pages long

If you got to the end of this post please drink some water and get yourself a snack

[nocturnalnewsiestrash]

I'm in my feels about how the way ghosts interact with the world and each other affects Edwin and Charles as sensory seeking and sensory avoidant neurodivergents.

While it's already hard to understand the dynamics of ghostly interactions with their environment at play I'm pretty sure of these things. So we know that Edwin and Charles don't feel items and other alive people the same as they would alive. It's a different touch-based-sensory-less experience(?) at least that's what we know. And we know that they can feel other supernatural beings and each other, differently. I'm in the camp of its basically the same as normal human sensory touch but that could be argued a bit. However we're sticking with that both for the sake of this post and cause I want to.

This analysis got long as shit so readmore it is

Now we see Edwin being very touch avoidant with relatively everyone (besides Niko and Charles) and we see Charles being touch seeking with just about everyone. This makes sense to me under the fact that they as neurodivergent beings both have their more usual "resting state" on the touch-sensory-acceptance scale where Edwin generally rests at the sensory avoidant side and Charles rests at the sensory seeking side.

The implications though of how the fact that you can't really feel things through touch the same way as you would alive really gets to me though. Because you might think that without the sensory part of touch there wouldn't be anything to activate the neurodivergent avoidance right? Well obviously this is not the case for Edwin as we see him from the beginning tolerating touches from Charles and no one else. Then we gain Niko too as someone he appreciates the touch of. And if he can't really Feel the alive people, like Crystal, the same that means that the new ghost touch sensory experience also triggers the touch avoidance. And we see Charles practically touching anyone and (anything) who will let him which means the ghostly touch also triggers touch seeking. So does this mean that under DBDA dynamics neurodivergence finds a way to still be sensitive to sensory experiences under any circumstance? Both in avoiding and seeking it? Does this mean that it's more of a mental thing than the actual 5 senses of it? This is so interesting to me because I've often thought that having the ability to turn off and on sensory capabilities would be LOVELY for my mental health (I have ADHD) I'm not so sure that's true anymore because my brain would just adjust and find ways to avoid and seek THAT new feeling. The feeling of the absence of feeling.

Now the difference between ghost-alive touch/ghost-environmental object touch and ghost-fellow ghost or other supernatural being touch is also interesting to me in sensory seeking terms. Because we also see Edwin enjoying Charles touch specifically and at first we could assume that he only likes touch under ghostly sensory feelings. And us neurodivergent people often have our people that we have more spoons to handle the touch of than others. Which also has very adorablely soft implications of Charles being Edwin's Safe Person including sensorily. But then we see him enjoy Niko's touch too which means that he can also find his sensorily safe person in alive interaction sensories terms. And obviously we see Charles being sensory avoidant too when he's out of spoons for that, like when he bats Edwin's hand away when Edwin attempts to comfort him at the lighthouse. And we see Edwin also sensory seek in, as George put it, craving Charles' touch after their hug in episode 5.

Now I'm fairly certain that they feel things in Hell the same as they would between other supernatural beings and as they did when alive. Which after 70 fucking years of that, I don't even KNOW how I would feel about touch as an already sensory avoidant person if I was in Edwin's shoes. Genuinely an unfathomable part of the experience for me. But clearly Edwin still can handle touch just more specific about it. No different than a regular neurodivergence experience really. Which just gives me so many emotions because Edwin baby boy I knew you were so so strong but 🥺 how did you handle this so well too 🥺. I don't know how you did it. He has so much credit for how he's handled (well everything, but specifically this) so well under these circumstances. Someone pls tell him he deserves more credit than he gives himself.

Anyway my Edwin hell emotions aside, i saw someone mention awhile ago (I would credit them but I don't remember who) that Charles and Edwin wear their gloves so often specifically to avoid having to think about the fact that they don't have the normal human sense of touch anymore which is just so something. Because that in and of itself is its own sensory avoidant behavior. Avoiding the fact that they're not really experiencing a specific flavor of sensory anymore? Could this be true for their many layers of clothing they don to possible keep from feeling that they can't feel the environment the same? Like wind/the snow in ep1, the temperature, and other elements? Sensory avoidance too. A supernaturally charged type of sensory avoidance but still. Sensory avoidance. Plus how we see them lose their layers and gloves when they're in their office bubble alone? Their home? Their comfort space where they have the spoons to relax? And possibly have the spoons to handle the new (well new as a relative term) different type of touch sensory experience that is their ghostly existence? Cause in THESE terms Edwin's sensory seeking in the form of rolling up his sleeves and placing his legs propped up upon the couch arm to experience this new type of environmental feel more fully. And Charles is sensory seeking in the form of Touching Everyone of His Magic Bag Items (and doing classic neurodivergent rearranging and setting up just to take back down play but that's beside the point) and fidgeting by throwing (and consequently touching) the ball in ep1. Which IS in line with how when we're more emotionally comfortable we have the spoons for being more comfortable with other things like more touch and more audio and more visuals as neurodivergents. These are the environmental and worldly items based touch. But we also see them touching EACHOTHER more within their office comfort zone, which means they also feel more sensory seeking in the way we're familiar with in their home bubble. And having the spoons for being more emotionally vulnerable there too but that's not really the point of this post.

In conclusion, how Edwin and Charles still act as touch-sensory seeking and avoidant neurodivergent individuals after this long as ghosts really enamors me. I didn't really go into analyzing the other 4 senses have changed for them but we know they can see and hear the same so those sensory seeking levels wouldn't change, and smell and taste are too things they mentioned they don't have anymore as ghosts but they HAVEN'T touched on how smell and taste senses would work between them and other supernatural entities like. I can't really comment on how the minute differences between ghost on alive and and ghost on ghost feelings would differ without knowing more. Like perhaps this would be touched on more in season 2? Like the taste of eachother hmm? Much to think about. Anyway yeah this was my neurodivergent reading of their touch based sensory seeking, I probably didn't consider some things, so I would love to hear your input on this too!

[gin-juice-tonic]

can i ask how youre able to make so many comics or if you have any tips for aspiring internet funny comic makers? your gag comics are always so creative and funny and well-executed, and your longer form stuff is just a delight to read, i would love to know if u have any advice/insight into yr process

I'm not good at advice so you will have to bear with me here. Also I'm putting it under a readmore cause images make it into a long post. The like first 3/4th of this I talk about specific comics I did, but if you scroll to the end I tried to give some general advice.

My stuff is unfortunately very inspiration-based as opposed to planning-based. So my process might not be helpful if you're looking for something structured... The first thing I should say is I write down basically anything that pops into my head ever. I have a bunch of nonsensical tumblr drafts,

I have stuff in my phones notes app,

I have pages and pages of papers and post-it notes littering my apartment (if you want to know the extent, my sister asked me how I could live with my apartment being so "messy". The only messy thing in it is my papers scattered about). I find the paper stuff the best, because I can draw instead of just writing down concepts.

This is the page I did for the comic about Stan "comforting" Dipper over his unrequited crush on Wendy. (The tumblr version being here)

You will notice aside from the order on the page being strange and some scratched out dialogue, there's not really evidence of a 'plan' here. That's because I was just drawing this as I was thinking it. You will also notice there are two random unrelated Ford drawings in the middle of the page. That's because I was drawing ANYTHING that I was thinking of.

And when I say write down anything, I do mean it. Write down something you did that week, something you remember from when you were 8, something you said out loud and laughed at, things you thought about in the shower, a fact you learned, what your friend had for dinner. See if you can apply it to something. I've mentioned before that this comic only exists because I ran out of toilet paper and went to buy a large bulk pack of it...

When I already have a base idea and just want to expand on it, I usually draw first ask questions later, and things seem to just snowball into being a story. As an example, for the comic I did about Dipper's swimsuit, the base idea was just "Dipper and Stan both wear fully covering swimwear - because they're trans and its what they're comfortable with." But when I went to look up what Dipper wore to the pool, i noticed mabel had a Star one piece suit

Dipper has a star hat in the first episode that he loses, right? SO why don't we give him a matching star one piece that he abandons.

Of course then that single drawing CREATES the story, because we have to explain how he eventually ends up in what he's wearing in the episode. And then I just draw and draw and draw until either the comic ends or I can't continue for whatever reason. The outline for the full thing usually forms while I'm drawing. If I'm worried about forgetting, I'll write down what comes next.

Some of this stuff I didn't stick to, or greatly expanded upon. It's good to be flexible with what you're doing. If something you originally intended only to be a throwaway bit inspires you, roll with it and keep going. (If it ends up being nothing, you can always discard it or turn it into something else later anyway)

I did the swimsuit one basically fully on my computer, but if you want to see another paper based one, a lot of the comic with the kid stans and crampelter I'm doing currently is down on paper.

If you can make out my writing, you can see it says "Crampelter has found out about Stan and Ford's boxing identities" at the top there, which was the general main idea of this part of the comic. This one was a lot more planned than the dipper swimsuit one. There's multiple pages of this sort of stuff, and I knew the idea I wanted was "If Ford and Stan are trans, why would they still be called those names as kids?" (So I guess the takeaway from this one is if you're wanting a structured comic, write down the main idea on the top of a page and brainstorm dialogue and drawings on it?)

There's a lot of sort of floating heads with dialogue, all that matters is I get the emotions or general idea drawn. They're important for me to draw out because being able to "see" the scene (even if I'm seeing it heavily unfinished) is what usually inspires the next bit of the comic.

And I know I talked like a lot already but some general other advice:

Draw, ask questions about what you've drawn, draw more to answer the questions, see if those new drawings ask any new questions, continue this process till you come to a satisfying resolution.

It's fine to not draw something immediately after you've thought of it. I have a lot of things I've just squirreled away for later. And in the same vein its okay to drag something old up that you've never used and try to work with it.

I almost always put on music while I'm trying to think of things. Something I feel fits the mood of what I'm doing tonally. And then I usually just put the same song on repeat, though some people im sure would feel like that is psychological torture. But its helpful to me.

This might sound silly if you're someone who leaves the house a societally normal amount, but I try to go out into the world and do things so I get new ideas and experiences I can build on. Sometimes those things are literally just "go to the park", but sometimes it's venturing out somewhere several hours away or doing an activity i'd never care to do normally... I try to take note of anything that stood out to me and write down thoughts or feelings I had during.

When it comes to trying to be "funny", you should try to make yourself laugh first. Not only because you want your comics to bring yourself joy, but also because its just hard to make stuff you don't care about (And harder to be consistent about it). Though if you think of something and you don't really think its funny, you don't have to throw it away! You might be surprised what other people end up liking. So don't kill yourself to write jokes you yourself don't really get, but if your brain spits out something on its own you dont care much for, it still may be gold to someone else.

It's okay to make comics about simple and relatable things. People love relating. And depending on what you're writing about, that relatability may be really needed!

Everyone has something of value to say. Even if you yourself don't feel like the things you're saying matter, or that they're too silly or un-serious to matter. They matter.

[whaliiwatching]

Caught up to the fic!! Absolutely fascinated by all the queer/punk/poc history here, since I don't know much myself. Very sweet chapter as well.

Unrelated question - mostly - but why is it common fanon to depict Noir as the more scarred up of various spiderpeople? Naturally everyone has their fair share of fights, though the only we see sustaining any marks is Peter B and his misaligned nose. Personally, I've taken it as Noir Peter not healing as cleanly due to it being Spider God stuff over Weird Radioactive Healing Factor stuff. Thoughts?

thank you so much!! i’m glad you liked it, & hope the ending was satisfying for ya <3

short answer: hot

long answer, plus a map of my idea of noir’s scars: under readmore :)

i’m not a devout spidey comic/movie fan or a doctor. this is based on conjecture and minimal research!

when i came up with my unmasked noir ideas, i wasn’t influenced by fanon—i hadn’t seen any other fan art, not even when itsv came out. but i can think of a good few reasons that scarred noir is a popular headcanon: evidence of what he’s been through makes him feel more tangible/relatable, the visual difference enhances his thematic individuality as distinct from other spider-people (especially other Peter Parkers), self-consciousness can explain why he doesn’t take off his mask in itsv even around other spiders.

all perfectly valid and interesting reasons! but the first two reasons are doylist and the last one is missing a crucial question: why does he have scars? unless a wound is severe, gets infected, or gets lucky, it won’t usually scar. facial injuries especially need to be really bad to leave a mark. and of course most if not all other spider-people have the healing factor. so what gives??

i like the spider god’s curse influences healing factor idea; it opens up some nice angsty possibilities regarding an inability to Be “Fixed;” no matter how much he tries, he can’t erase/forget what’s happened to him. but i also enjoy the bandaging someone up after a fight genre of fic, and am annoyingly pedantic, so my personal working theory is that the healing factor is not a doctor with ten plus years of experience and an accurate understanding of human anatomy. when a bone really badly breaks, it has to be reset or it’ll heal wrong. to me, the healing factor doesn’t know what ‘right’ is, only ‘fast’ and ‘effective.’ it’s an accelerant, not a substitute for medicine.

so let’s establish the baseline. modern spideys either receive modern medical attention or the injury is superficial enough that they don’t require it. even poverty-stricken peter parkers get rushed to the hospital, because fictional doctors Don’t Care About The Money and/or peter is dolled up in spider gear and who’s going to ignore a visibly beat-up celebrity hero?? plus i honestly believed peter b’s nose was just genetics or smthn. my nose is misaligned and it’s never been broken to my knowledge

to compare, noir lives in 1933 and, far as i can tell, doesn’t rlly garner the same fame and respect from the public as modern spideys do. in the 30s, medicine was meh (they had x-rays but didn’t rlly consider radiation much of a threat, penicillin was still in its infancy, polio was a huge threat, etc) but was also, more importantly, far too expensive for most people suffering during the Great Depression. whatever treatment noir receives after a fight, if any, would look way different from ours. that means his healing factor, which can’t differentiate scars from normal skin or a misaligned bone from a whole one, would be inefficiently assisted or left alone. it would leave its history behind.

on the infectious disease side of things, it’s probably much easier for even noir to recover from less physical ailments like the flu and pneumonia—spider healing factor likely remembers and codes for immunity better than regular immune systems—but without modern drug therapies he’d still be worse for wear, ie internal scarring. mans would have a shorter-than-average parker lifespan if not for the pseudo-immortality of the Spider God

anyway. all this to say, here’s my personal map of parker’s scars. crop tank and daisy dukes to keep tumblr off my ass <3

(tbh this is more for my reference than anyone else’s, i’m sick of looking through my art of Just His Forearms to keep my details consistent, but maybe someone will find it interesting lol)

[koscheicore]

I say throw Ten into the sea/ocean. Because, why not! I'm not 100% sure he can swim tho 😔

OKAY MY THOUGHTS ARE THOUGHTING. BEAR W ME. My memory of 10 and his arcs is a bit messy but remember this?

Yeah you do. This is gonna get a bit long so imma just add a readmore

Iirc he was at some party being all emotionally unstable since he's lost so many people and he really, really doesn't want to go, to "die." So he's putting off his regeneration yeah? If I'm misremembering then pretend I'm right (?). He's obviously had too much ginger there, and the ainley!Master is there in disguise. He's been observing this Doctor for a bit, quite entertaining how he refuses to move onto his next face, how he's so fond of himself, how he wants *more.*

So much for being able to smell the Master or whatever... he definitely doesn't recognise him. He ends up flirting with this stranger of course, long conversations about nothing and everything, mutual fascination, your regular the Doctor meets the Master and is oblivious af to who he is, and when he's too wasted, the Master takes him to his TARDIS. The Doctor is a bit too intoxicated to pilot and as he rambles nonsense he begins to realise his beloved ship is moving, and the pretty stranger is at the console. How? He really doesn't like that. He tells him to stop, but he won't listen, so he gets up and tries to grab him away from the console, to no avail as this stranger opens the TARDIS' door, and messing with the gravitational configuration pushes the Doctor out.

And he falls.

He soon finds himself sinking into a nowhere planet's ocean, a familiar laughter he can't quite place still resonates in his head, "die, Doctor, die! You must die!"

He tries to swim up, but this water makes it impossible to float. He keeps fighting, desperate, he does NOT want to die, he's not ready, he will not, not yet, he still has to do so much more, besides, he had imagined his death would be different. He feels pathetic. He deserves better than this, he thinks.

"Ah but of course, you were expecting a grand finale, weren't you, Doctor? How incredibly contemptuous."

Great. He's hallucinating. The surface is far away now, the temperature is drastically lowered as darkness engulfs him and he finds himself unable to do anything but accept surrender. Is this how death feels? Cold and lonely, and a pugnant sense of regret?

Cue a myriad of sequences I haven't had the time to think of, moments he would have liked to change, to intervene with in a rather reckless way, and how he could indeed have done "more". None of these have a satisfying ending, anyways.

Eventually, he finds himself staring at the back of a figure, this scene is different, it feels rather somber, but still, familiar, in a sense. The smell of decomposition invades his senses as he squints and makes out the shape of an almost skeletal being, dry tissue flaking off it. It's, somehow, still alive, and he remembers he has seen this disintegrating shell of a person before.

"...Master?"

The figure turns around, excruciatingly slow. It stares right back at him, if one can call that staring, but what the Doctor sees is not the decayed Master. The structure of its bones is clearly that of himself. The living corpse emits a suffering whine, weak and trembling at first, but it gets louder and louder, so loud it hurts and rings not in his eardrums but in his head. He can barely make out the word as it tries to move its lips, it's only a simple...

"Regenerate."

***

The Doctor wakes up in his TARDIS, alone. She sings her usual steady hum. His tie is on the floor, alongside the hat he was wearing, and he's been sitting on the same place he barely remembers collapsing at earlier when he arrived from the party.

It's only as he manages to stabilise his breathing that he notices an itch at the back of his neck. He scratches off about a dozen hypnotic sleep patches.

---

SOOO basically the Master was guiding him through all of that because he may have noticed he was putting off his regeneration >:3c Yeah I was supposed to do little silly headcanons not a whole almost one shot but I got inspired HDKDLD HERE YOU GO HOPE YOU ENJOYED

Again my apologies if I got stuff from 10 wrong I barely remember nuwho cuz memory issues but this was fun! Also the sleep patches are those the 12th Doctor uses with Clara in Dark Water, they're technically not supposed to work on 12, so I assume they wouldn't on 10 either, but who's to say a dozen of them wouldn't or that the Master didn't tweak them somehow, or maybe it's the ginger. Anyways 10 is a mess and I am biting him.

If you want the silly headcanons still feel free to send another ask for that I got a bit carried away here fjfkfkf.

[rosanna-writer]

we said hello and your eyes look like coming home (11/?)

Summary: A canon-divergent AU where the bond snaps for Rhys on Calanmai, Feyre unwittingly accepts it, and Fire Night magic proves to be more transformative than anyone bargained for. Feyre drags a mate she hardly knows out from Under the Mountain, then puts him back together as war with Hybern approaches. Warnings: dubious consent, canon-typical sexual violence, canon-typical violence Rating: Explicit Chapter Word Count: ~3.1k

Feyre faces her first task Under the Mountain.

Some dialogue in this chapter is taken directly from ACOTAR book one.

Read on AO3 or you can find the eleventh chapter below the readmore.

ch. 1 - 10 | ch. 11 - she underestimated just who she was stealing from

I heard the crowd before I saw it. The passageway reverberated with the roaring, which could only mean that everyone Under the Mountain was here to witness this. As long as Rhys was among them, I didn't mind.

As the guards hauled me closer, the floor became slick and muddy. That was strange—all of the rooms and passages down here had been hewn from dry stone. I suspected it had something to do with the task ahead of me, but I couldn't imagine what. There hadn't been any mention of mud when I'd gone over maps of Under the Mountain in Velaris, and Rhys hadn't mentioned anything about it, either.

The shouting grew louder as we approached, and the faces of the fae closest to me were twisted in feral, bloodthirsty delight. I kept my chin high. Amarantha sat on a wooden platform erected above the crowd, surrounded by all seven High Lords. I didn't bother to look at Rhys or Tamlin, as much as I was tempted to.

Instead, I turned my attention to the strange labyrinth of tunnels and trenches along the floor. I was to be thrown into it, I realized. Perhaps there was something for me to find without getting lost, traps to avoid…

Then Amarantha raised a hand, and the crowd went quiet.

I looked straight at her, doing my best to seem faintly bored. She wore that usual mocking smile that was becoming far too familiar. Rhys kept out of my head, so I just waited for her to speak.

"There's not a scratch on you, Feyre. Don't tell me Rhysand decided to be a gentleman last night and make your first time soft," she said.

"Daemati don't leave marks," I said coolly, "but I'm not surprised you'd forget, considering how utterly unremarkable your whore turned out to be in bed."

The words were out of my mouth before I thought to warn Rhys I was about to insult him. He knew perfectly well that I had to keep up appearances, but to use that word that had been spat at him for fifty years…it might have gone too far. I sent a pulse of regret down the bond.

He slipped into my mind just long enough to say, Unremarkable in bed? It's difficult to be offended when you're being such a liar.

Good—he saw through the mask I was wearing, too. Forcing myself not to let my relief show, I kept watching Amarantha. Even from a distance, I caught the way her eyes flashed and her lip curled in the beginning of a snarl. My words had been a touch too defiant—I braced myself, ready to bear the brunt of her anger.

She merely rested a possessive hand on Tamlin's knee, a clear display of dominance that flaunted the ring with Jurian's eye. It was a miracle I managed not to look irritated. Even with the power of all seven High Lords at her disposal, she clearly seemed to consider my apparent devotion to Tamlin a threat. Pathetic, really. She could have him for all I cared.

"Did you solve my riddle yet?" she said, voice dripping with false sweetness. I said nothing and kept my face blank. "Of course not, and what a shame. It was so simple, but I suppose humans just can't handle faerie wine. You don't even remember it, do you?"

"No. I don't remember it at all," I lied, cheeks burning.

That, at least, seemed to satisfy her. She sat back in her throne contentedly, and I did my best not to look too relaxed.

"Then you'll have to face my tasks, I'm afraid. Though I suspect you'll like this one—Rhysand tells me you're a huntress."

I held back a smile at the confirmation Rhys had come through for me. I might not have a bow or supplies to make a snare, but I was by far the the best hunter Under the Mountain. I'd all but proven that on Calanmai.

My sense of relief was short-lived as claws dug into my armpits and lifted me into the air. I let out a shriek. The crowd laughed. I twisted to see what had grabbed me—the Attor. I was dangling from its claws like a mouse caught by an owl.

Two more powerful wingbeats, and it dropped me into the trench.

I fell to my knees, mud soaking through my pants. The muck seemed to suck me down, and I prayed I'd tied the laces of my boots tight enough to keep them on. I struggled to my feet and tried not to gag at the smell.

The smell—if I was hunting, I'd need to cover my scent. The mud itself might not be overwhelming to a creature that lived here, and it seemed safe enough to assume whatever beast she'd have me fight would have an acute sense of smell.

The sound of Amarantha's voice pulled me from my thoughts about the possible direction of the airflow through the arena. "Hunt this, Feyre," she said, then called, "Release it."

I barely kept my balance as a grate rose, sending rumbling vibrations throughout the trenches. Heart pounding, I bent my knees, ready to push off and run in any direction. Amarantha was saying something else, but I ignored her.

My quarry appeared.

And it was a worm.

A giant worm, surprisingly fast, with a mouth full of rings of sharp teeth, but a worm nonetheless. I barreled down the trench to put space between us, to give me time to think and come up with a plan. I'd hunted plenty of game in the woods, but I hadn't the faintest idea how to hunt a worm.

Rhysand had to be out of his mind if he thought this was part of my skillset.

I kept running, veering around corners and hoping it was enough to give me space to breathe. There were no weapons down here, nothing but mud. Perhaps I'd be able to hide myself in it, but that wouldn't do any good if all I had to kill the worm with was my bare hands.

After turning enough corners, the worm was nowhere in sight. I risked stopping in the middle of a long straightaway. It seemed safe enough to pause here, somewhere I'd see it coming. Bent forward with my hands on my knees, I considered what I'd seen. Most of my attention had been on that terrible mouth and razor-sharp teeth, but then I realized—I hadn't seen a pair of eyes.

The worm was blind.

It had to rely on smell to navigate, and it was almost certainly used to the mud. And the first rule of hunting was to conceal your scent. I dropped into the mud and rolled. There was precious little time before the worm came slithering around a corner, but I made sure every inch of me was covered—my hair, my face, my neck—even as the damp seeped through my clothes and chilled me down to my bones.

The crowd tittered, clearly confused by this turn of events, but I tuned it out. I was invisible now, but I still didn't have a weapon or a plan. Until I did, I couldn't waste a single shred of my attention on anything else, though I couldn't help but notice Rhys saying my name and something vaguely smug.

Now that I'd caught my breath, I hurried through the labyrinth and looked for something that could be of use other than mud. I had no weapons on me, nothing to use as a projectile beyond the clothes on my back. And my shoe would hardly be enough to fell the worm, no matter how hard I threw it.

I skidded to at stop at the end of another long straightaway, nearly falling into the pit before me. The Mother only knew how deep it went. If I fell in, I'd be trapped. But there was nothing in this labyrinth for me but mud. And the worm was coming.

So I dove.

I dipped my chin, tucking in my head to avoid landing on it just as Cassian had trained me. The mud softened my landing as I rolled, then got smoothly to my feet. There was some scattered applause from the crowd. I ignored it, intent on finding a tool. Or at least a way back up.

My eyes hadn't adjusted yet—I couldn't see what it was, but I nearly wept for joy when something hard crunched under my foot. I crouched down and dug it out. Bone. Piles of bones came into view, the remains of whatever the worm had been eating. But more importantly, my way out of here.

I could retreat farther into the darkness—there had to be a second way out—but I wouldn't be able to see. To get out, I'd have to scale the the mud walls. There was nothing to grab but mud that fell away in my hands. The bones would have to do.

I found a long, thin bone and broke it in half over my thigh. It snapped in half, even as my own body protested at the effort. But the ends were sharp. Deadly. And I felt better with a weapon in hand.

I fastened one half to my belt, then got to work setting my trap. I cracked as many bones as I could, breaking them over my knee until my thigh was probably dotted with bruises under my mud-soaked pants. I stuck them into the ground, sharp side up. When the pain of snapping them over my thigh became too much to bear, I broke more with my foot.

The crowd was roaring above me—at some point I was vaguely aware of a taunt from Amarantha and something else smug from Rhys. But I was too intent on what I was doing to care.

By the time it was done, my hands ached and stung, covered in scrapes from bone shards. The trap was set, but I still had work to do. None of this would matter if I didn't have a way back out. I pressed the last few long bones into the sides of the pit, a makeshift stepladder to haul myself out. That is, if they didn't snap under my full weight and send me falling onto the spikes I'd set up below. I fastened as many more bone fragments to my belt as I dared, hoping they'd prove useful later.

It had to work, if only to spare me the embarrassment of being killed by my own trap in front of an audience.

The bones wobbled under my weight as I scrambled up the makeshift ladder. My stomach flipped, the feeling too familiar after climbing up trees with too-thin branches. Before I could fall, I heaved myself upwards. I flopped forward, landing inelegantly on my stomach. But I'd made it.

Pulling the bone-spears from my belt, I pressed them into the mud so they jutted out sideways. They'd force the worm to slow down as it rounded these corners. It would buy me some time, a few precious seconds.

Now it was just a matter of baiting the worm into the trap.

I unfastened the last bone, holding it out like a sword, and stalked down the trench. With the dull roar of the crowd and my own heartbeat pounding in my ears, I could barely pick out the slithering sound the worm made as it moved. My instincts were screaming at me to go faster, but years of hunting had trained me to ignore them, to look and listen before every single step.

As I rounded a corner, it slithered by, completely unaware of me. I'd change that in a moment. Gritting my teeth, I cut open a gash along the side of my arm. It was small, but if the worm's sense of smell was as acute as I suspected, a few drops would be enough.

Leaving blood behind me in a trail, I ran.

The mud sucked my feet down, and my legs were groaning with the effort to pull my feet out with every step. The squelching sound seemed to echo in my ears, drowning nearly everything else out. I'd kick off my boots and run barefoot if I had to. I prayed it wouldn't come to that.

The trench didn't seem to end, and I'd half-convinced myself I'd spent the rest of my immortal life running from the worm when the pit opened up wide before me. I dove again.

But this time, my energy was sapped. I put every last drop of strength into the leap, but I didn't travel quite far enough, landing too close to spikes. I barely managed to remember to tuck my head and avoid slamming it into the mud.

A bone shard dug into my arm as I flipped myself over, crisscrossing the first gash with another one, tearing open the flesh all the way from my shoulder to my elbow. I screamed. Tears pricked at my eyes.

I scrambled back, away from the mouth of the pit, not thinking, just seeking the darkness on instinct. Even with pain clouding my mind, I knew darkness was safe. Bone-spear in hand, I pushed myself deeper into the worm's den.

I turned around just in time to watch the worm plummet after me into the pit. The wet, crunching noise that followed would replay in my nightmares for the rest of my days, the worst thing I'd ever heard since that very first snap of a rabbit's neck.

But the worm didn't move.

Out of habit, I reached towards my thigh for a hunting knife, ready to fight through the exhaustion to skin and butcher a kill, the way I'd done at the end of countless long days in the woods. But for once, I didn't have to.

I staggered forward, still clutching the bone-sword in my uninjured hand. The crowd was cheering, but the only thing I could focus on other than the pain was the gentle brush of talons at the edge of my mind. I let my shields down—it was a wonder I'd even managed to keep them up this long.

The wave of relief down the bond was so strong I nearly lost my grip as I climbed back out of the pit. But Rhys wasted no time, pressing his talons deeper to take away the pain from the wound in my arm. It cleared my head, at least somewhat.

As I walked back through the labyrinth, Rhys said, I have never been more grateful to have the bravest mate in Prythian.

And I had never been more tired of being brave. Yet again, I'd found myself in danger, setting a trap and killing a beast just to keep myself and the people I cared about alive. Rhys had been right that the task had played to my strengths—at the end of it all, the worm's labyrinth of muddy trenches wasn't any different from the labyrinth of snow and ice I hunted in each winter. For a while in the Spring Court, I'd thought I'd finally put hunting behind me, but after finding out that had all been a lie, ending up right back where I'd started was so much more infuriating.

"Well," Amarantha said with a little smirk as I approached the platform, "I suppose anyone could have done that."

The words broke the dam that had been straining to hold back my overwhelming rage. My lips pulled back from my teeth, I snarled like a faerie, took a few running steps, and hurled the bone-spear at her.

It landed just in front of her, embedded in the mud, quivering and splattering filth onto her gown. I nearly screamed in frustration—I'd been aiming for her heart, but my strength was too depleted to throw the bone far enough.

But then Rhys dropped his shields completely, and from his side of the bond, a wave of the best feeling in the world washed over me. I didn't recognize it at first, but it was warm and golden and beautiful, something far too good to exist in this hellhole Under the Mountain. Even as I wanted to let myself melt into the feeling, I struggled to find a name for it.

A sob nearly escaped me when I realized what it was: love.

Amarantha was picking up a piece of parchment and saying something about it, but I paid her no attention, just focused on the way Rhys's mind curled around mine. I love you, too, I said back, wishing that as I did it, I could look at him and not the see the mask, just this once.

But before that he'd called me brave, and something about it had been familiar. As Amarantha continued on with some nonsense about wagers, I wracked my brain, trying to figure out what it was about the word "brave" that had stuck in my mind. I'd heard it before, somewhere significant.

I drew enough strength from the feeling of Rhys's mind against mine to remember. But I bless all those who are brave enough to dare. I had been brave enough to dare to come Under the Mountain, and there was only one thing that had truly felt like a blessing since I'd arrived, the feeling he'd just sent me through the bond.

And it was the answer to the riddle.

I turned my attention back to Amarantha, who was saying, "…and just one person said you would win." I knew exactly who that person was, and it was all the confirmation I needed that I was right.

"By the way," I said, my voice strong as it rang through the arena and carried over the crowd, my cocky tone making me sound just a bit like my mate, "the answer to the riddle is love. And Tamlin isn't my High Lord—that honor belongs to Rhysand."

The whole room was instantly plunged into darkness. There were screams of terror from the crowd, but I wasn't the least bit afraid. This was the darkness that sang in Rhys's veins, the same power that had greeted me like an old friend the first time I'd set foot in the Night Court.

On the platform where Rhys was standing, I could just barely make out the outline of membranous wings, razor-sharp talons, and raven feathers, as if the darkness was letting me see through it, allowing me a glimpse of the monster that lurked underneath it all.

I smiled at it.

I could feel the sense of victory, though I wasn't sure if it was entirely mine or Rhys's or something that belonged to the magic I'd just released. But regardless of where it originated, I knew exactly what it was.

This was Night Triumphant.

[minecraftbookshelf]

Biglong ask incoming, I kept getting more ideas as I typed lol. Hope you’ve got a ramble already locked and loaded. This might be a bit much otherwise, sorry. 😅

So… How big are things in MoS? Like the empires are presumably much larger than the Minecraft counterparts, being actually functional empires. How long is travel between the empires? Is the Minecraft map basically proportional or would things scale up differently? Is there just a separate map for the AU or are the broad strokes close enough to use the original world as a reference?

And what does travel actually look like? Are elytra a common thing for people to have? If they’re rare and valuable, who gets to use them? How about boats, horses, camels, lamas, donkeys? What’s common? Are there empire specific preferences for mounts/vehicles? Do we got flying machines, and would you see them outside the grimlands? How does pix tend to travel when he goes wandering?

When the dragons get brought back (gem would not appreciate the passive voice there) do dragon riders pop up? Do they become more common mounts eventually?

What is travel between empires like? Who lets people through easily, who doesn’t, and how do they enforce it? (especially with the flying people) What’s the process to be allowed into more closed off empires? I imagine the rules are different with allies, so what are they in that case?

Do you have any big trade routes you already thought of? Is ocean trade and travel generally allowed by lizze? Are there any silly circuitous routes that trade or travel has to take to get around closed off borders; get around both as in literally geographically around and metaphorically, as in around the rules.

Do winged sophonts ride on mounts sometimes; for comfort or for pomp and circumstance? Or is flying just so much faster that they basically never bother? Are there underwater mounts for the seafolk? Do seafolk use boats for themselves? Can seafolk swim faster than boats? Travel long distances faster?

Nether travel exists too! Or does it? Xornoth didn’t get possessed, so is the nether still around? If it is, how common is nether travel? Is it like the baseline for long trips, or a restricted ultra-fast highway? Probably depends on how hard it is to make portals in AUland. Do they even make more at all? If not commonplace, do the portals have like, waiting lists? Who tends to use them? Is it mostly used for trade?

Oh jeez, my asks are only getting longer. I feel like I need a tldr. Actually..

TLDR: a bunch of questions about travel in the MoS AU, more specifically regarding, in order; scale, vehicles, borders, trade routes, flying and swimming manually, and the nether.

Ok, now I think I’m finally actually done, for real this time, and I hope you have a good day. <3

Usually I either do have a ramble locked and loaded or it doesn't take much to get one going so I wouldn't worry about it XD

going to go ahead and preemptively pop in a readmore because, all this. (Also this ask is very funny to me because the literal first few paragraphs of the upcoming chapter do actually talk a bit about travel. In the sense of "Jimmy has flown all the way to the Overgrown and is dried up and cranky about it.")

How Big Is It All?

I have messed a bit with the proportions. On the actual SMP for example, Helianthia is one of the smaller empires, while that just...isn't quite feasible for the purposes of the AU since the sort of large scale agriculture happening there needs Space. Even when its magically assisted agriculture. Basically I'm using the official map and just adjusting proportions a bit. I might make my own "official" version for the AU at some point, but I haven't really bothered at this point.

Helianthia, Mezalea, and Mythland in particular are all pretty big. Some of the other kingdoms, like Pixandria, are fairly small but just spread out over a large area. (In this case, small populations clustered in a few different oases) Rivendell technically has a fairly large territory, but a lot of the Southern reaches of it are abandoned. Things like that.

Travel?

Travel time depends on who is traveling to/from where and how. There are elytra but they are extremely rare and are reserved for the rulers themselves and, in a few cases, particularly trusted messengers who act as couriers for high-security documents/messages. Mythland, Mezalea, Pixandria, Helianthia, The Ocean, The Swamp, and The Grimlands all make use of elytra to differing levels, while Rivendell, The Overgrown, and The Lost Empire have enough citizens with wings of their own that they don't really bother. The Crystal Cliffs use spells to achieve the same effect (Shrub doesn't even arrive until after the story has already begun, so I leave them out of a lot of this discussion mostly because a lot of it will be in the actual fics explicitly as they learn to find their way around a strange new world full of stupidly tall people.)

Boats and ships are very common for the seafaring kingdoms; The Swamp, Mezalea, and Mythland. Pixandria also has a few but they mostly use them for near-shore fishing and shorter ferry trips. Ocean trade and travel routes are heavily effected by the existence of the Ocean Empire in general and Lizzie in particular. The Mythlands used to be much more seafaring then they currently are, and yes, they do have to take some rather circuitous routes these days.

There are very much empire specific preferences for mounted travel, though horses are fairly standard in most empires. A lot of those will show up fairly quickly in the series so I won't do a full breakdown here but yes, Pearl does have her golden goose because I love that that is a thing.

Pix has traveled just about every way imaginable and he is just as likely to show up at your door on foot as he is by elytra.

There are some flying machines, though they are not incredibly reliable. They are mostly used by the Grimlands yes though Mezalea also has a couple of more dirigible-style transports.

I'm actually going to put a pin in the topic of the dragons for now. :)

What is travel between empires like? Who lets people through easily, who doesn’t, and how do they enforce it? (especially with the flying people) What’s the process to be allowed into more closed off empires? I imagine the rules are different with allies, so what are they in that case? Do you have any big trade routes you already thought of? Is ocean trade and travel generally allowed by lizze? Are there any silly circuitous routes that trade or travel has to take to get around closed off borders; get around both as in literally geographically around and metaphorically, as in around the rules.

These will both be kind of covered in the post that I will make with the trade routes map i mentioned making earlier but the tldr is yes, alliances definitely affect trade and travel, though the emperors themselves tend to go wherever they want and show up on each others doorstep with zero warning, there are some instances in which this is heavily discouraged. (Mythical Sausage is Not Welcome in the Cod Swamp. He shows up anyway. This is a major topic of conversation that I have been writing about lately XD) Some empires also heavily discourage air travel by outsiders.

(So yes most of the winged rulers do have backup mounts for such cases.)

The Ocean Empire does not really use boats or ships but the Swamp does. Some Sea-folk are faster than ships straight up, but mostly they aren't as limited by ocean currents and wind patterns and so can often take more direct routes. (Though they also do use the currents)

Nether travel does exist. Xornoth's connection to the Nether is a little bit different in this AU, just because I've tweaked the mythology to suit my own purposes and story. So there are Nether roads, though how frequently they are used and how well they are maintained varies wildly. The Ocean Empire and the majority of The Swamp population avoid it when possible, because it's basically instant dehydration for them and is an incredibly dangerous way to travel. A significant portion of the Rivendell population is also very ill-suited for travel in the Nether as well. It's primarily used for extreme distances or for some of the WRA. It's mostly used for time sensitive things that won't be harmed by the heat. Some trade, but mostly travel.

Nether travel won't show up much for the first two arcs but will feature heavily in the third arc so I'll go into it in a lot more detail there.

[nokmietarchive]

[EDIT: HEY thank u for checking out our girls!! these designs are a little outdated though; be sure to check out my fwend daisy's character sheet version!! >:3]

NICKELODEON TOOK MY WEIRD GIRLS FROM ME AND ILL NEVER FORGIVE THEM anyways heres me and my friends fan-designs for Frida and unnamed sister who we have named Georgia!! Georgia's design is by @keeperesque i just rottmnt-ified it :3 i added some loose headcanons/thoughts under a readmore cuz it got long

We like to imagine Frida is older and possibly the eldest, while Georgia is on the younger side and possibly the youngest.

Frida I think knows how to use the spears that we see Big Mama's footsoldiers wielding. It would also suit her distant and rigid upbringing/personality. But I think she'd be actually super super good at hand to hand combat, specifically disarming others and using their offensive moves against them. It'd be fun to see her spar with the boys like in my mind she would COOOOOK in fight scenes. I'm not super sold on her color scheme yet (im notoriously bad at colors lol) but I wanted to just get the design out there.

We had to make up a lot for Georgia since we don't know a lot about her except she was lost in an isolated dimension. We imagine she was surviving tooth and nail in a universe that the Krang had already taken over, so the remains of a bunch of mortals turned to goop. We thought kamas would be suitable for her because they're multipurpose for climbing around in uncertain terrain, but also could have a fun unpredictable whirlwind technique to match her zany personality

OH ONE MORE THING ABOUT GEORGIA she's based on a diamondback terrapin but specifically her shell has pyramiding on it which usually only occurs when a terrapin is suffering from malnutrition!! just a really fun detail my friends came up with :3

[deathgamegirl]

diana and eric ztd are narrative foils and in this essay i will

when it comes to diana and eric from ztd, i feel like they're such poignant examples of how being abused can manifest in different people's lives. below the readmore is a short examination of each character's response to abuse- mind the content warnings in the tags.

diana has basically been pacified by the abuse her ex-husband committed on her. she's very nice and caring and empathetic, but she is 100% the type to put herself in the back of the line for other people and cannot stand the idea of doing wrong by those she's close to. i think this is also why her breakdown in d-end 2 hit me so hard— she tried her usual coping mechanisms at first when her and sigma were trapped in the shelter alone (she was just as compassionate as she had always been), but after a month, when she realized no one would come for her and sigma, she hit her limit and had an explosive breakdown, begging for any kind of relief or salvation. i would not be surprised if she had suicidal intentions even before then, but kept those thoughts to herself because she feared it would upset sigma.

meanwhile, eric's first reaction when he's stressed or thinks he's screwed up is aggressive. he doubles down on his paranoia and cannot admit when he's wrong, because if he does, that means he's in trouble. he has to be right and he has to always smile, no matter what, even if it causes people to hate him. it's the only way he's been able to survive thus far, especially when his younger brother was killed as a result of his father's abuse towards both of them.

they're both motivated by fear and have long histories of trauma and abuse, but the way that their adult selves manifest their poor coping mechanisms is one of the things i actually really enjoyed about ztd. abuse is never pretty, whether it's outwardly "acceptable" or not.

[tauforged]

let's talk about the way we talk about sigma

and i’m not just saying this because i’m a hater or because i find the woobification of characters annoying (although i am, and i do, but that’s neither here nor there) but i AM saying it cuz it’s no longer mildly annoying so much as it is just hurtful and exhausting due to the casual ableism it perpetuates. whether it’s consciously or not, it’s there and i’m pointing it out cuz a lot of people probably don’t even realize what they’re saying (i hope) so i wanna spell it out crystal clear.

*granted, these are sentiments i’ve seen far more often on twitter or tiktok than on here (and i know complaining about stupid takes on either site is like going to the beach and getting mad about all the sand, but bear with me) but it’s ABSOLUTELY something that i see a lot on here too and i'm starting to get incredibly fed up with it all. someone's gotta fuckin say it.

im going to put the majority of this under a readmore because i've got a lot to say on the topic but here's the long and short of it:

you guys have GOT to stop acting like sigma is a poor little helpless confused manipulated innocent little uwu baby. like, for real. stop saying that shit. stop lamenting about “waahhh poor science granpa doesn’t know where he is or what’s happening around himmm 🥺🥺🥺”. stop acting like he’s being held captive or abused by talon despite evidence to the contrary so you can make your little “uwu i can’t wait for overwatch to save him and Fix Him uwuwuw” posts. and for the love of all that’s holy, if i see one more person say or imply that he was better off when he was being forcibly institutionalized than he is now working for talon, i’m going to start fucking attacking people with my teeth like a chimpanzee.

it's incredibly fucking weird and alienating for literally anyone who experiences even a fraction of the things yall are pointing out as proof of his incompetence. and before any of you hit me with the "oh it's not that deep 🙄" im gonna tell you right now that i dont care and im going to be mad about it anyway cuz its my party and i can post whatever i want.

ANYWAY!!

to continue my point, not only is it weird and infantilizing and demeaning and belittling to those of us who deal with literally any of the myriad of things going on with him that i’ve seen people point to as proof that he ‘needs to be fixed’ — memory lapses, time loss, dissociation, auditory hallucinations, disordered thought, just straight up being autistic, hyperfocus and/or complete lack of focus, panic attacks or meltdowns, i cannot overstate how many of the ‘weird’ things he does are just autistic traits so i’m gonna say it a second time for good measure — and those are all just things that i personally have in common with him (which is part of the reason i’m as mad about this as i am to make this post, but i digress).

to single out these things, all of which are completely reasonable for someone who is autistic, who is traumatized, who suffered through a prolonged period of forced confinement, and/or who has literal brain damage, and NONE of which are nearly as tragic and doomed as people are making them out to be, that’s all bad enough on its own!

but to point out these traits and then turn around and use them to color every single interaction he has with another character, every single thing he says, and tie it back to his traaaagic broken mind and how he’s clearly losing his grip on reality just feels… insanely othering in a way that’s really exhausting.

like, for fucks sake, a solid 80% of his character interactions could be lifted near verbatim from conversations i’ve had in real life with my friends, family, coworkers, you name it, all of which were friendly and usually in jest — hell, 9/10 times when i let out a random non sequitur or lose my train of thought or forget what i’m doing, nobody even bats a fucking eye! they sure as hell don't accuse whoever i’m talking to of abusing me because they expressed mild annoyance at my bad joke.

i’ve genuinely seen someone get all worked up and construe his one interaction with sombra where he comments on her tendency to disappear and reappear in odd places as evidence that he’s got dementia and is slipping away from reality altogether… and not, yknow, a nod to her fucking cloaking ability and translocator and the fact that she uses both very frequently just for the hell of it. that one still fucking baffles me i'm sorry. if i hadn't seen it with my own eyes i'd honestly think it was a joke. like. cmon now

another thing that makes it even worse is that most of this is also just…. not even grounded in canon. if this was the way blizz was writing him, it’d be one thing. it would still be shitty and ableist, but blizzard handling their oooh spooky scary mentally ill character badly is about as surprising as the sun rising every morning. i can't say i wouldn't still be upset to see people continuing to perpetuate it, but i wouldn't be AS mad, i guess.

but SO. MANY. of the popular takes on his character are either never concretely stated or outright contradicted by his ingame dialogue and interactions and it drives me insane!!! idk WHERE y’all are getting this shit but so many people are reaching so hard to make him a tragic sad uwuwuw glass bones and paper skin pathetic little meow meow that they’re going out of their way to misinterpret source material so they can shout from the rooftops about how sad and pathetic and unaware they think people like me must be.

i keep seeing people talk about how he probably has no idea that talon is a terrorist group, that he doesn’t know what talon IS, or that he doesn’t even know that he WORKS for talon, and it’s starting to go from mildly annoying to infuriating. this shit has literally no basis in canon aside from conjecture based on the fact that he’s Known to be mentally ill!! i don't see even half as many people getting this all up in arms about widow, who we KNOW FOR A FACT was literally kidnapped and experimented on and brainwashed by talon. like. that's her WHOLE THING. meanwhile sig literally just works there and people are clamoring for ovw to come """""rescue"""""" him as if hes like, a lab animal or something instead of a grown man who happens to not be particularly bothered by the fact that he works for talon.

this is something that's addressed in game MULTIPLE TIMES - he’d far prefer to watch an ant crawl on the ceiling than listen to s76 trying to ‘talk sense into him’, not because he can’t hear him or anything either, it’s pretty clear from his tone and cadence that he’s actively choosing to ignore him. when baptiste points out the fact that he’s fully capable of leaving talon if he wanted to, he doesn’t deny it or act confused or like that’s a strange thing to say, he just seems a little bemused that someone would think he WANTS to leave. yeah, he sure could— but why would he bother?

he's not "totally unaware of what he's doing" in the fucking slightest - hell, i'd argue that his new map-exclusive lines and interactions prove that he's MORE grounded now than he was in ovw1. yes, he gets a little confused on occasion when he can't quite remember the last time he's been somewhere. (memory lapses are just kind of like that. i had several while writing this post, in fact! it just fucking happens sometimes. it's really not the end of the world. frustrating, yeah, but i promise you we can manage just fine).

i guess the question i'm asking is: is it really all that difficult for to fathom that he might just... WANT to be there? that he might just straight up not care what talon is up to, so long as he's able to keep doing his research as he sees fit??

and for the record, before anyone takes this and runs with it and we lose the plot of this post, i am NOT SAYING that the very idea of wanting him to leave talon is #problematic or anything. i dont care, really. do whatever you want. what i do care about is just like.... being mindful about what we're saying and WHY we're saying it. it's reaching a point where people are somehow managing to look at the ass backwards already ableist as hell decisions blizz has already made with him and decided "hey, i bet i can find a way to make that even worse!"

[sweatandwoe]

bioware da:v stuff

Ohhhhhhh, I forgot about it being multiplayer originally urrrggHHGGG nightmare nightmare

EA/BIOWARE execs I hate your flaccid brains.

They do claim to "have a mastery of the frostbite engine now" but an RPG should never have to be forced into that FIFA engine! It looks so "bloomy" & waxy, the camera jerks around to be "immersive" when the character runs. It feels like they were told to keep adding post processing effects so some suit could say he punched it up.

I still hope the gameplay will be fun/wellmade but I have to admit I personally don't care about how heavily the story is going in on elves as the one important™️ race to the world setting.

I'm playing BG3 & DOS2, trying to tell myself I can't compare Bioware to Larian as they are very different styles of RPG studio but oogh more time passes & the more I enjoy the way Larian does it. As an ancient Bioware game fan, it stings.

BIOWARE CRITICAL (I ranted more than I thought)

Frostbite Engine is probably why we also got an art direction change, that feels closer to Fifa. It wouldn't surprise me if that's also where the hair physics comes in, as Fifa does have that. It doesn't look bad to me, however, I saw someone describe it as Pixar-lite and I can never unsee it. Also, the Megamind Qunari was certainly... a choice.

Also Frostbite used mostly for multiplayer games and the scrapped live service/multiplayer DA game, also got used here. From just a lot of elements that I don't wanna go into here (this post is already very long)

I think the combat actually looks fun but I've seen people call it CRPG still and no, it's an action RPG. I wouldn't expect anyone to go and expect BG3 combat (Or story elements). I do wonder if it'll get old quickly though, and also that the monster designs aren't scary at all and look really goofy. The Ui/hud stuff during fights is also pretty messy and I hope they have options to remove things from it at launch.

Putting the rest under a readmore, I went in depth lmao

Elves are taking certain front, but also it feels like in a weird direction. We're in Tevinter, Dwarves have strong relations with Tevinter but there isn't even a faction related to them? Also, we have a high focus on the elves, which is to be expected with the plot of the last game.

But also we're in Tevinter and I haven't seen, ya know, any mention of the slavery, which elves are a major portion of. Like none of the ads talk about it (which could make sense). No articles I see mention it. It feels... weird. Especially given we're seeing Solas' backstory in this game, and how he freed slaves was important to his character but yeah little to no mention of it

That being said I also have heard nothing about the story spoilers, besides what some people posted on Twitter, and it was scraps. A lot of people who just played the first 7 hours, are releasing their reviews and say the story is good, but won't go into details because of spoilers? Make a spoiler video, I'll watch it, but I wonder if Bioware/EA didn't allow the mention of any story elements to preserve "their surprise choices" (and any story elements hardcore fans would get pissed at)

FOLLOWING IS A SMALL SPOILER (TWO LINES) FOR VEILGUARD, I think it's important to see before you buy it but BE WARNED

God this line pisses me off so much

Solas should have negative traits, actually, and make huge mistakes, like he was known to do in the last DLC released, a decade ago. No matter how many plans he has, he usually fucks it up by going too big.

He literally was chumming it up with Mythal, "she was the best of them", yet here he is pointing at (probably) her and Elgar'nan as they become Gods. I think making him fully against the system from the start and not someone who once enjoyed some benefits of the system, even if he didn't engage in the slavery aspect of it, to become friends/rivalry with the Evanuris but as they grew in power, and eventually murdered the only one of them he considered actually good, the light bulb went off in his head, is like, really a big character retcon to me.

Despite how bad they were, Solas didn't want to lock them away. He despised and loved them. He never killed them, he couldn't, either do to his limited power or due to his friendship with them. He loved his People, that he would cast everything he loves, all away for their freedom.

And when he returns, he doesn't even see the Dalish as elves. He think he's failed them and wouldn't care if they all died, if he could bring back the power to restore his People, even if it means bringing back the Evanuris. And if they go "well he was going to break the veil without trying to actually awake/unlock them", that is dumb writing. He understands that they are the consequences that he will unleash onto the world at the end of DAI and that he thinks life with magic is better to bring back the People, even at the cost of the world itself or the People's freedom at that. The People who he doesn't even consider are modern elves. He doesn't give two shits about modern elves, only the ancient ones he's lost. He seems them as his failures and instead of, ya know, actually trying to help them regain their lost cultures and lands he jumps to "actually you all are horrifying, you can die while I regain my own world"

The Elf!Inquisitor is the only elf he truly sees as a person, the potential to be a member of the People in his eyes. Everyone else is a fool or a tool to him.

BG3 and DSO2 are such healing things for the RPG fantatic soul. They have their problems, but the quality is so much higher than I ever expected to see. The way choices actually matter and have direct consequences in the one game vs having to wait until the sequel to see if collecting ten bear asses for that one dwarf lady gets you a special dialogue option.

Larian has got my support always, they made DSO2 so good, that I pre-ordered BG3 all the way back in Oct 2020. I have no desire to ever pre-order another Bioware game, except maybe some remasters.

[scummy-writes]

I don't find this fandom welcoming. I posted a few fics and there was barely any interaction. I joined a few discords and was shocked to see the amount of vague-talking about other bloggers. Not a nice place imho

Your main experience with it not being welcoming is barely interaction and bad discord servers?

Hm. This is a very limited amount of information and since this is anon, my opinion is heavily based on trying to guess the most likely reasons why this is your experience. With that said, my opinion is this:

What do you count as barely interaction?

Is it that your post 'only' got five notes? Ten? Twenty? Are your expectations built off of other fandom's notes, or fanfics that are a year old and have gotten the luck of being reblogged and circulated a lot more? The comparison game is a bitch and a half if you're trying to gauge that as how welcoming a fandom is. Because the truth of the matter is, even if you're writing the fanfic equivalent of Shakespeare, if it is not tagged properly, a super long fanfic with no readmore, posted on a holiday, posted on a weekday, etc etc, it can yaknow. Not be Seen a lot. And if you're just posting something you've made with the intentions of just being seen, rather than having fun creating, in a smallerscale fandom like this, unfortunately it will not meet your expectations at times.

I don't know why there is this undercurrent of belief that you have to be actively creating some kind of fancreation to be able to talk to people as well. In complete honesty, I have seen screenshots of the game with some event dialogue or something, five words written on the post, and it have like 100+ notes. Sometimes sharing just your thoughts on dialogue is enough to get conversations going if you got it tagged and etc. These are blogs made for sharing thoughts and interacting with others thoughts, whether those thoughts are fanfics, fanart, fanedits, commentary on the games, theories, ideas, incoherent yelling about your faves, etc etc.

Are you reaching out and talking to people on your own accord? Because I think that also plays a Huge part in being talked back to, and having what you create seen. If you're posting into the tags and it doesn't get seen for whatever reason, and you're not actively talking to others and making friends via communication... how are people supposed to see what you make?

I think people see what they deem 'popular' blogs, who are usually creators who just got very lucky, and expect to be treated like that very fast, and when they don't, they think there is something wrong with them and the fandom, when it's almost always neither imo. I think it can be a build up of frustration that is getting unfairly targeted at yourself at times (in this case, a general 'you' is what I am using here), or outwardly towards strangers because your post isn't being seen in a sea of posts. And then sometimes there is very unfair resentment towards 'popular' bloggers due to this, where it's sometimes seen as their fault for not 'engaging' with everyone when, again...sea of posts. People working 40 hr workweeks. People with a family they're raising. People going to school. Etc etc.

So... is it the fandom being unwelcoming, or is it a weird pressure you're putting on yourself and others for no reason?

In regards to the discord stuff, since I feel that is a bit separate:

Discord servers... hm. The vague talking you reference is also very vague, and I think that depends. Because what is the vague talking? Is it something like "man someone posted a really awful and harmful opinion regarding this mental illness a suitor had" with no name dropping, no link sharing, and someone just a bit bummed someone said something hurtful? Or is it like... "[blogger name] is a piece of shit because they did [unproven thing]".

Those are two extremes, and there could be many more examples that I would see as more '''''acceptable''''' referencing of someone (the poor mental health take example where no one is identified and no one is specifically going apeshit on the blogger, just sad to see something harmful), and then the bullshit of namedropping and being a cunt for no reason. There are layers to this! Context matters a lot and I am left with not a clear thing to comment on.

My advice for discord servers, regardless of the fandom, is this:

Look at the blogs of the people who moderate/own it. Do they meet your personal levels of safety? Or are they actively arguing with other people in the fandom with the intention of just being a dick?

Is the server for all ages or for adults? That usually weeds out some childish behavior. Does the server have rules? Are there rules set in place to essentially be like "hey lets not namedrop people and shittalk them for no good reason"? Are there rules against being a dick? And if there are rules... are there mods to enforce them? Do they listen when notified of the behavior? That matters A Lot.

I think I tried....four? Five? Different discord servers where I kept running into people I did not like, or I thought I got along okay with until they did smth out of the blue that made me go "yikes!".

Sooo... i blocked their tumblr accounts. And talked to other people. Those few folks I blocked did not spell out that they themselves were the entirety of the fandom... because there are hundreds of other folks to talk to, and I found a handful I enjoy and settled in with that. Trial and error of course, but I still found people.

Your experiences are different than mine, but unfortunately I cannot agree that those experiences alone mean that this entire fandom is unwelcoming. I think you had some bad experiences and I'm sorry for that, but I can't nod along and go "yeah this whole fandom is shit." essentially.

[mushroompoisoning]

I've been thinking about ultrakill a lot ( as per usual ) and I just gotta yap for a long while bare with me. hiding my yapping behind the readmore

I think what gets me the most out of everything in ultrakill is the little things. those small, self contained stories that have no relation to the larger story or even the game itself. you could replay infinitely and miss them every time

like. one my very first playthrough there was only one thing I remember that truly stopped me in my tracks

I was blowing through the game a million miles an hour, making sure every encounter was as batshit incomprehensible and fast as possible, right up until I got to lust. specifically the first room in 2-2

it was the skeletons in bed in that little house just to the right. when I saw them I just stopped. stared for a little. I didn't think much of it then, as I didn't really know anything about the game

but now like. I think about it. and damn. this is hell, and yet these two people - wh are supposed to be suffering for eternity - found love. or maybe just comfort. regardless they were happy

and then theres the poems in violence. the only one you're guaranteed to see is the "paint the world red" one. the one about well. indulging in violence

the other two - the gutterman and earthmover poems - are stashed away. Hell I never found either of them while playing, only know about them from posting online. but the fact that the poem about love and empathy and mercy and the poem about the consequences and cycle of war are hidden in violence layer... idk it gets to me. I don't have any articulate thoughts on it but it really gets me

and there's probably a million examples I could talk about but tbh I have a headache so I can't think too hard about them

since this is turning into a general All Current Ultrakill Thoughts post I may as well talk about blood a little. specifically relating to how its talked about

v1, the war robot, made only to kill, gets the message BLOOD IS FUEL

and then there's gabriel's "We all bleed the same" line ( I don't have the exact quote don't kill me )

I think the contrast in those two ideas of blood speaks to the anti war topics of the game. in war, blood is fuel; not just in the game but in real life. each soldier is just blood to be spilled for whatever cause they're fighting for. fuel for the war machine, in a non-literal sense

gabriel's line is the complete opposite of this idea. we all bleed the same, we're all worth the same, and we don't have to suffer for the cause of those in control of us. even though he's inciting revolution, he isn't inciting war, because he's prioritizing the value of individual life rather than throwing it away

I don't have any concluding thoughts I don't know if any of this is even right at all but as stated earlier I have a headache so I can only use so much brain power. whatever forever

[hayannoran]

DA02:TB WAS AMAZING!! Personally, I enjoyed it WAY more than Last Evo Kizuna, and that's really saying something since I think about DA:LEK a lot. I'll be talking about spoilers and my thoughts down under the readmore line!

Okay, so I'll start off with the one thing I somewhat dislike first before getting to positives and just gushing about details: I didn't really like the fact that the digivices dissolved. That's it, really. This is mostly because I'm a bit worried about how travel between the human world and the digital world would work, now. (Also, maybe this is just my Miyakari brainrot, but I was thinking about how this would make it harder for Hikari to visit Miyako... it's ok, my lore brain comes before any kind of shipping brain, but I'm a little bit sad.) Personally, I'm just headcanoning for fun that they eventually can just. Go into digital screens persona-4-style since I think that would be goofy, but that's probably not going to happen lol.

On Rui: I was really pleasantly surprised at how he's written!! Honestly, I felt his frusturation; honestly, I was a bit peeved at what Hikari said to him when he first told the 02 team about the time he broke his digivice due to what Ukkomon did, because even though I agreed with her on what she was saying, I felt like she was ignoring his point of view and his understandable grief. (People aren't perfect when responding to other people's trauma all the time though, so I don't mind from a story perspective.)

I really liked Ukkomon's weird eldritch tentacle form. The tree branches make me think that it's probably Yggsdrasil that Ukkomon has contact with? Since they didn't specify what Ukkomon's connection is, I really hope they explore it more in the future with more episodes, or maybe even another animated series. (Though, maybe a movie would be better for the sake of a more polished end result? Idk, more digimon content is always welcome to me.)

The one scene of Daiken baiting was kinda funny but a little sad since yknow it's queerbait and we know it won't happen canonically due to the epilogue 😭 and the directors doubled down on the epilogue in interviews so we know its not happening... I remember clearly seeing Daisuke blush, but I think Ken was largely unaffected, which, if that blush is anything other than embarrassment, has some slightly sad one-sided connotations. (I'm a Bi Daisuke truther. Maybe I'm delusional. Who cares it's for fun)

This is just a small detail, but I noticed that Silphymon's voice (in the dub at least) (I watch sub usually but the only viewings near my area for both today and tomorrow were dub viewings) was just Tailmon's voice and had none of Hawkmon's voice, which was kinda interesting? It doesn't matter much, it just stuck out to me. I thought it was kinda funny.

I do wish the 02 cast interacted with each other a bit more, but I'm not nearly as bitter about that as I thought I would be, since Rui was a main character I enjoyed. If there's more digimon media in the future that riffs off of this movie, I *would* like it if the 02 cast got more focus, but Rui is a welcome addition to me. (I hope they all get to meet Wallace again at some point... that would be really fun [said by a person who has Hurricane Touchdown as their favorite movie])

Overall, I thought the movie was really good. It had a few other issues, and as someone who's used to the sub I found that the dub voices weren't *entirely* my favorite (except Rui, Rui's performance was excellent), but they didn't bother me as much as I thought they would, making for an amazing experience imo. Review sites I've looked at put it at a B, but for my personal opinion, it's one of the best pieces of digimon media in a LONG time. I'd recommend that you watch it yourself to form your own opinions though (if you haven't watched it and are still reading this for some reason hah) since that's what really matters.

[singsweetmelodies]

just wanted to say that your charlos tags on the notp post were a WHOLE ASS MOOD

like i can't deny the chemistry because i'd have a lifetime supply of smoothies from the level of 🍓🍊🍌🥝🍇 in those c2 videos. but i just cannot indulge in it whatsoever

i can't even point to a specific moment that turned me from 'oh they have a fun teammate dynamic!' to a full-blown hater ('hater' is a bit strong but close enough) but it must've been something to do with the fans...

anyways, just wanted to express my gratitude for those tags. nice to know that i'm not alone

darling anon!! thank you so much for this ask - and oh, bestie, you are definitely not alone. you are so not alone, and i am actually hugging you rn, because it's always fab to find someone who agrees with your ship opinion 👌 sorry to the charlos fans out there, but it just can't be for us. #rip

and that third paragraph of yours - ah, man, i feel you so much. i also used to genuinely enjoy their teammate dynamic a lot (loved watching the c2 challenges, etc etc.) and i also can't quite point to a specific moment when this changed? but i do know the general themes about it, and since i had an incredibly long exhausting day at work today, i'm quite in the mood to rant about them. i will do so under the cut, though, lmao, because goodness knows i'm in a petty mood tonight.

any and all passionate charlos or just carlos sainz fans - please do not click on the readmore, because i'm not going to be terribly nice to your fav here, i'm afraid 🙃

so for me, when i first got into f1, it wouldn't have been inaccurate to say that i kinda loved carlos sainz. i loved the carlando/mclaren videos, and i loved the c2 challenges. he's funny, and he's pretty, and he has a cute dog, and he drives for ferrari... what more could you want?

the thing is, though. i am a charles girlie first and foremost. even though i liked carlos, he was never on the same level as charles for me. especially not in terms of driving - because, well, just look at the start of the 2022 season. enough said.

what started getting to me was that group of passionate carlos fans (the carlos girlies) who seemed to seriously think that carlos is a better driver than charles. they would slander charles and call him an inconsistent/reckless driver, while saying carlos was so much better. obviously, this rubbed me up quite the wrong way. and then at the same time, i was seeing carlos on my screen giving interviews where he would insist that if he'd had a few more laps, he would have overtaken max's red bull. like... i'm sorry, but that was never going to happen. in any world. pffft. (my thoughts at this point went: arrogant! he thinks he's better than he actually is.)

so that got me to like carlos himself a little less, which obviously has an influence on the ship as a whole. i mean, it would be hard to like a ship if you only really like one of the two partners in it, right? right? this is what i've always thought, anyway... except that a lot of charlos shippers seem to like carlos a lot more than charles. which is to say: in so many of their fics/characterisations, it's all glorifying carlos, while charles is essentially his arm candy with all the character depth of a rather pretty paper cutout. less than ideal...

the last thing, and perhaps the pettiest of all, lmao, is just that i'm incredibly possessive and insane about piarles. i acknowledge it. in fact, i fully own it. they are my ship, and i want them and only them to be endgame, always. now, obviously i don't expect everyone to agree with me 😂😂 but i don't particularly want to be seeing any content on my dash that features charles/anyone other than pierre as an endgame ship. and charlos usually is portrayed as an endgame ship/they're meant for each other etc. etc. well, sorry. to me, charles is meant for pierre, and pierre only. charlos is out. the end 🫶