#intro to a thing I probably actually will finish eventually

[angelic-ish-phantom]

Drown

Danny knows what his parents are. He’s seen things people don’t tend to see. He’s grown up around the arcane and unrealistic.

Doubting it’s reality was never something he did. Not the way his sister always tried to.

But then, Jazz had spent her early years in house, going to school and having friends, ignorant as the people they passed by. All Danny remembered was traveling.

Danny’s earliest memories were of the RV, of his parents doing government work.

That’s why Danny knew without a doubt, monsters were real. Every kind was strange and spectacular; Danny wouldn’t have minded the idea joining his parents professionally if what they did didn’t always end up so violent.

He thought of a writhing black thing, a cat with too many tongues and too many teeth, caught in a glowing green net.

He thought of seals strung up like butchers meat, skin pulling in places like a slow-falling coat.

He thought of a hydra’s fallen heads twitching, a harpoon thrust through their body.

Danny’s parents were hunters, and they hunted monsters.

This wasn’t something Danny was too-strongly opinionated about.

Sure, he didn’t like the way people would look at his parents like they were insane sometimes, and he always tried to avoid staying near the RV when things got messy. But, he got to see a lot of places. And he didn’t really feel like he was missing out on much, being homeschooled.

Really Danny’s life is good. Everything is fine.

Or at least, it was.

It was, before his parents took a boat out on sea, the shore still relatively close.

It was, before his parent caught some massive scaled thing that looked a little to human for him to be comfortable with, and he couldn’t go far as it’s screeches grew quiet, because they were on a boat.

It was, until Danny gone to the railing and focused on the waves, knowing from experience he wouldn’t throw up if rode out his nausea.

And then all of a sudden it wasn’t, because the boat was rocking, and Danny had tipped over the edge, and something much bigger than whatever his parents had caught was dragging him down, down, down.

If he didn’t panic, he might have lasted longer, but he thrashed and struggled and tried to swim up.

It was no use.

And the water filled his lungs. And the pressure filled his ears. And his throat burned as he tried to scream between each intake of water.

His eyes stung, both from the water and unshed tears, as his vision darkened.

He got one good look at the one that had pulled him down to this fate. A woman, he thought, with a salmon hide and green skin, and matted white hair.

“A child for a child.” She might have said, voice like venom.

Then everything went dark.

oOo

Danny dreamt.

He Dreamt of magic and moonlight making him new.

He dreamt of waking up, his eyes too round, taking in a world of darkness like it was made from light.

He dreamt of feeling every wave and fish around him through the twitch of whiskers.

And in that dream, he swims with flippers and tail, contorting through waters until he remembers the blinding shore. All blurry shapes and sand and sharp smells as he drags himself up.

And then he wakes up.

oOo

Danny will wake up and draw a too-far line of what were and weren’t dreams.

He will wake up and see himself shivering on the sands of a shore, his parents boat not too far in the distance, and he will think washed up on the beach after falling off the boat.

He will let himself think it was only an accident and will try to keep tears from his eyes as he thinks of drowning.

He will hug his coat comfort, only to realize he hadn’t been wearing one.

He throw the garment away from himself reflexively for its too-close resemblance to the seal skins his parents seemed so eager to destroy.

He will struggle to his feet, and try to stop turning back to see if the coat is still there, unharmed and safe.

He will receive help calling his parents back to shore, will face comfort and relief that soothes him.

He will think of how much more soothing the coat would be.

He will be wrapped up in the RV and be safe and tended to, inexplicably not sick, but he will still feel like there are a thousand grains of sand pricking his skin.

He will listen Jazz argue with their parents, unable to mediate or reassure, because all he can think of will be soft furs on a beach and a dream that felt too real.

He will wait until the dead of night, the day before they’re set to leave, and he will return to the beach.

He will dig for hours until he finds his coat.

He will feel hands running down his own skin as he gently dusts its furs clean.

He will see the spotted pattern ripple underneath his fingertips.

He will wear it and look to the sea and consider.

He will decide.

He will wrench himself away, and hide the coat so deep in his mess of clothes it’s suffocating, and try to never think of what happened to every seal his parents caught, to every cloak his parents found.

He will try not to remember dying.

[nbwriteschaos]

writeblr re-re-intro...

...about hello again!! allow me to re-introduce myself. my name is grace, pen name nicole blue! whatever name you decide to associate me with, i'm still the same 21 year old pink haired caffeine drinking writer with a passion for all things strange, spicy and queer :) i've been writing over ten plus years and have finally found the courage to embrace my interests and be who i want to be as a future published author. so join me on my adventure of self-discovery and chaos!!! ...my writing my favorites are almost always changing, but i mainly enjoy writing/reading queer fantasy fiction. my goal is to get a little more spicy and mature with my work rather than stay in my comfort zone built up of young adult content. i tend to stick to mm and ff romances and don't intend to branch much farther out than that, but i will always stay diverse in regards to sexuality, race, gender, etc. there is no place for bigotry in my stories ever!!!! almost all of my stories will be created with the intention of representing the parts of life that a lot of people don't talk about. that includes mental and physical health. there is nothing more that i want than for my readers to relate to my writing and my characters, even if it's just one small thing. some of my favorite tropes and random things in stories are enemies to lovers, hurt/comfort, angst, fantasy creatures and monsters (especially fae!!), actual witchcraft/pagan rules and beliefs implemented into magic concepts, overly detailed descriptions, and sooo much more. this is a lot of stuff that will be a common theme in my stories and blog!! i also enjoy writing reviews from time to time, so i'll be posting those around here too. ((most of my writing will probably contain with darker themes and angst, so i will always leave detailed trigger warnings beforehand and of course advise readers to be 18+))

...my goals - eventually i want to actually finish a wip - i want to leave lots of book reviews and get in touch with indie authors to review their books for free!! - i would love to launch a blog of some sort soon - do more commissions!! other stuff: commissions info | goodreads | original posts/rambles/reviews | open to tag games and lists from anyone <3

[mirageofadesert]

Looking back on my first year as a c-drama fan!

This year I fell - first down a flight of stairs - and then (because I couldn't walk properly for a few weeks) down a rabbit hole of cdramas!

In total, I have watched 28 dramas since May. I actually finished 17 of them. I re-watched 8 of them at least once. My most rewatched show is Till The End Of The Moon, followed by Love Is Sweet and The Untamed!

Shows I loved

Till The End of The Moon: This drama triggered my hyperfixation, and I still love it so much. Tantai Jin became my new obsession.

Love is Sweet: This one surprised me because I don't usually care for romantic dramas. It made me more open to different genres.

The Untamed: I watched this for the first time in 2019, and now I can appreciate it even more.

The Sleuth of Ming Dynasties: It took me several tries to get into the drama because the political setting was too complicated. I'm glad I didn't give up. Wang Zhi became one of my favorites!

New Life Begins: I was just looking for something light in between and was quite surprised how much I liked the show.

Things I learned as a newbie:

Cdramas are an acquired taste. Sometimes it's worth going back to a drama that you initially gave up on.

To avoid spoilers, it's best to skip the intro and especially the outro.

I love my characters unhinged.

Apparently it is okay to share leaks from filming.

Never believe anything that comes from yxh accounts.

Shippers are toxic in any fandom.

C-drama fans are a bit older than K-pop fans, but they can be just as unhinged and have trouble distinguishing between how to treat actors and the fictional characters they play.

My ADHD is better regulated when I watch shows in a foreign language while reading the subtitles. I don't get bored watching TV, which is rare!

Shows I dropped, and what I learned from it:

Hidden Love: I still don't like romances that have no significant plot beyond the relationship. Especially if I don't care about the characters at all.

Back from the Brink: Sometimes dramas that start well become an unwatchable, rage-inducing mess halfway through, and it's not worth sticking it out to the end.

Beauty of Resilience: I'm a character-driven audience. If the characters aren't compelling and the story isn't interesting, I don't care about the show.

Ashes of Love: I hate childish FL with baby voices and naive personalities. I need better written female characters. I'm on my 3rd attempt to watch this show and I only have a handful of episodes left, so I'll actually make it to the end (eventually).

I've dropped a lot more shows and actually watched some to the end that I didn't like very much in the end, but those are the ones I learned the most from.

What will stay with me:

Tantai Jin: I'm still obsessed with this character. He is everything I need in a fictional character.

Luo Yunxi: This will come as no surprise to anyone who follows me, but my obsession with TTJ soon extended to Luo Yunxi.

Bai Lu & Sun Zhenni: While I appreciate both of them as actors, it's their fun and uninhibited personalities that made me fall in love with them!!

Costumes: I adore the detailed costumes and hanfu styles, and do prefer costume dramas to modern ones.

Food & drinks: I'm now looking into more Chinese foot now and how to cook vegetables in more interesting ways. I also bought "moon cake stamps"... so wish me luck!

New online acquaintances: I have made some new friends online who I can fangirl with to my heart's content!

What I'm looking forward to in 2024:

I'm really looking forward to Luo Yunxi's upcoming dramas, Follow You Heart, Shui Long Yin and Immortality (🤡). I'm also looking forward to Sun Zhenni's first leading role!

There are still many dramas I want to watch, but haven't found the time for. Like A Journey to Love, Goodbye, My Princess, Nirvana in Fire, Then Miles of Peach Blossoms and The Blood of Youth.

I'm not sure what else I'll post here next year. Probably more reviews and content related to my favourite actors. Let's see if something triggers my hyperfixation soon!

Happy New Year!

[wildflowercryptid]

V FOR VALEDICTORIAN character introduction :

DREW DECKER, the junior detective.

i FINALLY finished the first two character introductions for my fancase so now i can actually share them in full! (ya'll can probably see why they took so long now ha ha...)

i had to start with my faves of the cast so here's some more info on drew! i'll be posting j.b.'s character intro next.

( alt text for drew's bio below! ) ⤵

Drew Decker

A precocious young girl who aims to become a world class private detective one day. She is the first person Grimoire & Sally encounter at Chumbridge and eventually becomes an essential ally during their investigation.

Drew takes her goal of becoming a detective very seriously and gets agitated when others make light of her aspirations, especially when they make assumptions on her motivations.

Her ability to pick up on small details most miss, strong sense of justice, and compassionate heart are all great traits for a detective to have, but her bullheadedness and tendency to run blindly into situations could definitely lead to trouble.

J.B. is her aunt and legal guardian after the passing of her parents. The two have always been quite close, but Drew sometimes worries that she causes too much trouble for her aunt (despite trying to avoid doing so.) She respects her a lot, but does question her terrible sense of humor.

While she does miss her parents a great deal, she tries to avoid dwelling on their absence too much. Their unsolved murders are one of the things that motivates Drew to become a detective.

Not having anyone to watch her after school, Drew hangs around Chumbridge’s Library while she waits for her aunt to finish work. (It’s not uncommon to see her exploring the rest of the college, but don’t tell J.B. that.) As a result, she’s pretty familiar with a lot of people on campus.

She was pretty familiar with the victim and got along with her very well, as Victoria seemed fond of Drew. She often asked her how her days at school went and would even help her with her math homework. Drew notes that the brooch Victoria always wore was nowhere to be found at the crime scene.

Drew is not the Little Girl Grimoire is familiar with, but the two seem to be connected somehow.

Despite frequently getting in trouble at school, her grades are nearly perfect. Math is the only exception, it’s a major weak point of her’s.

Likes to draw, often doodling whenever she can find a pen and paper.

[yandere-daydreams]

Totally get what you mean with obey me!!! Look I've played older swd games, and I'd been looking forward to obey me release since early 2018 (when there was only a short intro vid). I even played the og beta! And I have been playing the game EVERY SINGLE DAY since its release (which was over 4 years DAILY) and when nightbringer was out I was like, fuck. Neither brought me much excitement and I have stopped reading events for almost 2 years. Now I just logged in to send AP to my friends and quitted. The only thing I'm gonna read is the main story probably.

(Tbh twst is superior is so many ways but I'd argue the gacha system in om is a little better and this is coming from someone with more than 200 UR/UR+ in om despite being completely f2p)

wait am i the only one who played for two solid years and had like,,, three URs total. it was my first gacha game tho so it might've just been a me issue. still requesting peer review though.

on topic though!!! i remember playing a few of shall we date's game pre-obey me and,,, like,,, there were definitely issues with very prolonged story lines and adding on character later one, but at least there were like,,, finished games,,, with routes you could play,,, and look forward to Not playing eventually. i really did like obey me, but there's just,,, too much of it. a good thing can only go on for so long until you're, like, just dangling around its corpse and occasionally dressing that corpse up in a fun outfit for special occasions. i might come back if it ever looks like they're going to, y'know, do an actual final arc with an Ending, but i do not think that's ever going to happen and i feel like it's pretty easy to see why.

[hallofharmony]

i think every quest from passage is supposed to represent each of the students and show their development through the quest

starting with passage of reliance, a quest about relying on people as only when you stay close to the mask you can traverse the dark forest safely, and wandering too far alone will put you in danger. when you finish it, overactive overachiever gets the mask. now overachiever is a bit of a hothead and well.... an overachiever. they do things by themselves to show that they're capable and are a bit of a show off but that's only to impress everyone. in the passage of reliance, they learn that it's ok to get help from others, and to depend on people sometimes.

onto the passage of assistance, a quest focusing on teaching the values of cooperation where you need the help of other players to guide the lights to the mask. Melancholy mope gets the mask after the completion.

as we see from their memory, mope is kind of a loner, preferring to stay alone and not really fond of other people. in the passage of assistance, they learn to actually go out there to communicate with others and work as a team.

in Passage of coordination, all players have to be organized and walk in a neat order to be able to finish it. oddball outcast gets the mask after completion.

now oddball is a bit of an airhead, some things from their intro card;

- They'll notice someone calling their name... eventually

- Daydreams intricate stories about jellyfish whenever they encounter one

oddball seems to always have their head in the clouds, kinda not knowing what's going on most of the time. their awkwardness also prevents them from properly mixing with others. In this passage they learn how to properly harmonize with folks and actually BE part of the team.i know it sounds similar to passage of assistance but in my opinion assistance is about learning how to help and lend a hand to people, meanwhile passage of coordination is about learning how to actually be in sync with your teammates

The passage of alignment was honestly kinda confusing, but it's probably the most obvious one in being a potrayal of tumbling troublemaker. since they got sent away by the passage guide at the end of the previous quest for being too silly, in this passage they learned to listen to people sometimes and not be so mischievous. this is reflected at the end of the quest where they give a respectful bow to the guide.

all in all, passage spirits are probably the ones with the most character and charm in my opinion and i love seeing them learning how to grow throughout the season and becoming closer as friends :)

[encrucijada]

PÍA RAMBLES #8

you might have seen this post or this wip intro. i'm here to talk about this book because i think it's really cool @teddywriting and i wrote almost 40k words by simply playing dolls with our ocs.

(yes i will be using screencaps of before sunrise, 1995 for any and all subsequent updates regarding this project thank you very much)

what's weird about this book in particular is that, despite maripaz and theo taking up way too much space in my brain, it's also incredibly hard to talk about them?? i know every single detail about them down to what they might order to eat at a mcdonald's, and yet i feel no one outside from teddy and i really knows these characters. their lore is weird and a bit convoluted and explaining it feels like i'm trying to explain the plot of a television show with like 18 seasons of character development you just had to be there to witness to understand even a fraction of it.

but first some basics about the actual book

title: babylon boy (book 1 of the home habitat duology)

genre: literary fiction

category: i say adult because there will be no censoring of topics but in this first installment our protagonists are around eighteen years old. you might consider that ya but i wouldn't

a small summary: having independently run away from home for their own reasons, theo and maripaz meet while homeless on the streets and form an alliance of convenience to survive. while theo vehemently denies the drug addiction he’s nursing, maripaz tries to deal with the way both want and revulsion seem to exist in her at the same time. falling in love is probably the easiest thing they do.

teddy and i are co-authoring, as in we both write the words. they will be primarily working on theo's chapters and i will be primarily working on maripaz's chapters but we'll both be involved in fully crafting this story.

talking about your book is hard when all that happens in it is character work so even whether someone gets sick at one point feels like a spoiler you want people to be surprised by.

we created mari and theo in 2020 on a whim. i can't even remember what prompted it exactly. we wanted a new pair of characters to play with and we decided to make two assholes to bicker and be mean to each other. this iteration saw three reincarnations before we put the characters on the shelf and almost resigned ourselves to them being a miss... if not for one important detail... i really, really believed they should have kissed. this first version of them would eventually be known as the homeless au.

looking back it's Wild thinking about how different mari and theo used to be. we moved onto new aus to play around with, landing on a superhero-type beat that became their new canon for a while. we had fantasy and sci-fi and musicians and hadestown and the raven cycle (that last one did so much for us it's insane). every new thing we tried shaped them more and more until they were unrecognisable from their original versions. one day i really want to go through their threads from start to finish and look at that change in real time.

there was a new thesis to their characters and it was no longer "what if two awful guys with issues were forced together and tried to bite each other's heads off". instead we were looking at two characters that through every new incarnation became more sincere and gentle. they had meta-narrative character development.

(every new au also gave us more characters to populate the world including but not limited to theo's twin sister, maripaz's seven siblings, alex, philip, a whole lot of parental figures, a quirky cast of friends... but i'll talk about them some other time)

then i did it again. in the 2.0 version of the homeless au there was one scene i loved beyond words where an argument between our two protagonists resulted in maripaz punching theo right on the mouth. when she tried to swing a second time he stopped her hand and warned her that if she wanted to hit him he would hit back. they fought and the scene ended. i said to teddy: they should have kissed. we laughed and imagined how homeless au would go now that their characters had changed so much. we started thinking about it more and more until we were moving the pieces of their cinematic universe around to fit this new idea... and suddenly we had plot for a book that would revamp that original homeless au... and a sequel too! (but more on that second one another time)

teddy started a rp thread of what came right after the opening scene of babylon boy, where theo and maripaz would shoplift and he would steal the angel necklace she wore (<- this is important)... and we just kept going... and going. we'd already had a few keys scenes to work towards, one those being that punching scene that started it all, as well as the ending. teddy added two new scenes we began calling the halo scene and the church scene, and we moved something we called the pool scene into this book from another au. we just had to fill in the blanks... fill in the blanks we did.

these right here are the names i gave each individual thread of the roleplay-ification of babylon boy. their purpose is not so much to be chapter titles but to make specific scenes easy to find for future reference. though obviously i had to be a bit artistic about it.

i don't know if babylon boy will have chapter titles, and if they will have some sort of theme going on (usually i like just putting two words together to create some imagery). "angel face" is probably what i would title chapter 1, but i also hesitate on that decision because i think i would like to save angel for later.

these threads are less of a draft and more the skeleton of a draft, that's why i called it a draft 0. its purpose is to give teddy and i direction and reading through them i already know how i want to shift the timeline and how i'd rewrite some of the scenes to make them a lot better, but it did give us a great cause and effect look of things. the way teddy and i approach our roleplay threads is more loose than what i do with @on-the-river-lethe (with whom i'm currently roleplaying draft 1 of our book lupine trail and also a giant hunger games au). fluffy and i write responses between 1k-4k words, they are basically chapters. teddy and i instead do a quick call and response, mostly focused on dialogue, we build on top of each other and neither of us really knows where a thread will go when we start.

there are no actual non-roleplay words written for babylon boy thus far. teddy is in charge of chapter 1 as we open with theo's pov but we are both busy or focused on other things. right now we're enjoying the playing around stage of the process (which i don't see going away even once we start seriously writing, i know for a fact we'll probably do various roleplay-type passes to babylon boy).

you've probably noticed the christian imagery is rampant here. it happened kind of by accident and the already mentioned halo scene is entirely to blame for it. like i said, teddy and i have this very "yes, and," approach to storytelling together where we kinda build on top of what the other puts down. teddy gave me the description of one (1) scene where theo sees a halo of light around maripaz's head and i decided "well, this is now i thing that is here to stay". church scene really brought it all together and there is a scene in book 2 adeptly nicknamed the angel scene that is kind of the culmination of this.

the imagery is almost exclusive to theo's pov as mari is more the subject of the imagery than the one pushing it forward. teddy and i will be doing our most to fill this book with visuals: characters lined with stained glass windows, lights shaped like hearts, signs and graffiti that say meaningful stuff.

babylon boy, as the title suggests, is more theo's book. both he and maripaz have meaningful arcs but theo's is really at the core of it, mari takes centre stage in book 2 (titled gossamer girl). i think i talked about this somewhere before but the titles just kind of... happened. gossamer was relevant for that superhero au and it's just a word i really adore so i wanted to use it on the title. you can't go wrong with alliteration so gossamer girl it is. and because i love when books in a series match i had to do something with boy. like gossamer i adore babylon for some reason, and so we got babylon boy. i wasn't sure about that one because while gossamer girl made sense with the theme, what did "babylon boy" even mean, exactly? teddy came in clutch and analysed the title for me. they connected it to theo's drug addiction and now i can't think of any two titles that are more perfect for this series.

like i said, there are no actual words written for this book so sadly i cannot share any excerpts. but i will share

Festival was very much the result of teddy and i having just watched before sunrise, 1995

we watched before sunrise, 1995 because the mannerisms of the two leads reek of maripaz and theo

"until a miracle happens" became a recurring thing said in the draft and it wrecked me

Our Fears is probably my favourite thread both thematically and visually. followed closely by Church Angels, though that one is mostly visually

The Pool is the longest thread with about 90 responses and all of it is beautiful. i would probably consider it the companion to Our Fears

"mutual pining they're both just idiots"

the closing image is probably my favourite one of the book

the core themes are very much trust, love, and communal help. we've got such an array of npcs who simply... help. i love the human race.

i'll probably do another update before we start properly writing talking about maripaz and theo as characters specifically. a bit of a crash course on who they are, really.

anyway. i'm giving you a golden star if you read all of that ⭐ do ask me or teddy about this story!! we'd be happy to talk about it. or even just about the characters.

cheers, pía

[beelikesbirds]

hi wow i’m finally making an intro post!! my name is jess (or bee or whatever other variation of my url that you want i suppose)! welcome to my blog! it’s mostly reblogging things but i have been making original posts more and more lately <3

ok i’m putting everything else under a cut bc i don’t want to be too long LOL

fandoms i’m in/general interests:

- the magnus archives/protocol

- ace attorney

- red dead redemption 2 (i haven’t played the first one yet i’ll get around to it eventually i swear 😭)

- bugsnax

- stranger things

- psych

- ducktales

- pokemon

- many MANY other things that escape me at this moment!

i write sometimes!!! i haven’t actually finished anything in forever but i have a couple of original stories in the works that i’m sort of obsessed with so those will probably see the light of day at some point (please know that if you ask about them you WILL be opening a can of worms whether you wanted to or not LOL)

i also draw! rn i’m mostly just doodling and practicing and such bc soooo many little people live in my head but alas i do not have the skills to get them out yet. you may see some of that if it’s ever where i want it to be as well!

i’m sort of completely awful at starting conversations (even with people i know well) BUT that doesn’t mean i don’t want to talk to people!! forever the anxious introvert’s dilemma. i’m trying to get better i swear. anyway, all this to say my inbox and dms are always open if you ever want to chat! :))

[rosiesdisneydrama]

Persona Tales (Better AU Name Pending)

[This au idea includes stuff from P3, P5R (which was my intro to Persona even if I haven’t quite finished it yet), DT17, and PKNE. Double Duck may be referenced, but I’ve never had the chance to read those and have only read what other people have mentioned about it.]

First off, the Persona 3 PC in this is Kotone Shiomi. Igor is unhappy about the end of her story and wants to do something to help her. He’s seen the life/happiness that the other Wild Cards had found in their lives after their respective adventures and wishes he could have seen the same thing for her.

And, after a lot of careful thinking, he thinks he has an idea of how to pull it off. But there are a few hitches that he knows he needs to work around.

Firstly; he needs to find a way to make the Great Seal self-sustaining so that he can get a hold of Kotone’s soul without destroying the thing that she’d given her life to create in the first place.

Secondly; he needs to create a new body for her since her original is long gone. (In the Japanese burial tradition of cremation too.) And being brought back as a ghost wouldn’t really help with living the life she’d missed out on.

Thirdly; he can’t just drop her back in her own world because she’s been dead for a while by this point. And the world isn’t really built for someone to come back from the dead after roughly a decade (probably more).

He needs to find someplace new to let Kotone have the chance to live the life she never got to have. So he uses his connection to Velvet Rooms, the plane between the Mind and Matter, to seek out a new world for his plan. Somewhere that has a connection to the same plane but is different enough so that she can (hopefully) avoid a similar ending.

It takes a bit, but he eventually settles on one that is close to the world Kotone came from while still different.

It’s not a perfectly peaceful place, but it’s full of wildness and wonder and things that would have been impossible in the universe she came from. The rules and its connection to the Collective Unconcious are different too, but there are some similarities that he hopes will allow Kotone to not feel too out of place there.

(He can tell that this world will have things happen in its future. Things that a Wildcard would be able to help with. As both a player and a guide.)

Now, he needs to find someone willing to help her find her footing in this new world.

Making use of his Near-Omniscience, he searches the world for someone who would fit the bill. Preferably, someone of a compatible Arcana. Perhaps even another Fool, who could learn to act as another Wildcard.

(Philemon and Nyarlathotep’s game didn’t exist in this new world, but the tools could still be used for good.)

Since the fate of the world isn’t at stake, he doesn’t really need to follow his usual rules to find a Wildcard. Which means he can shop around more to find someone to take the challenge. He doesn’t need to pick a blank slate, he can find someone more experienced/worldly to take the job.

He makes a list, carefully going over his options as he goes.

But, of course, since there’s so much freedom of choice it’s surprisingly hard to settle on a single person. So many who slot in well that he can’t figure out which one to actually choose.

He decides he’ll just ask, instead of making the decision for them.

He picks one at random, connects to them in a dream, and readies himself to actually ask/pitch his request.

.

Donald Duck is a teenager who's just finished high school and is still trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life. Adventuring with his family is fun, but he's not sure he wants to do only that for the rest of his life. (And being a secret superhero doesn't exactly pay the bills.)

As such, he's following grandma's suggestion of taking a Gap year to get some work experience and to figure out what he wants to do for his future. Uncle Scrooge has kind of helped by offering him a few places he owns that need extra hands, but Donald's still thinking about which ones he likes better.

(He doesn’t want to pick one that’ll end in him having to deal with someone sucking up to him to get in Scrooge’s good books or anyone that’ll be a jerk because they think his uncle would pull favorites in a job. He thinks Uncle Scrooge gets that since hasn’t been pushing for him to take any one of them particularly hard.)

(Or Uncle Scrooge was waiting until he’d gotten his hands on a specific one for Donald to do. Either could be true when it came to his Uncle.)

Right now, however, he's very confused about this strange (but honestly rather pretty) room he’s found himself in and the stranger with the really pointy nose and bulgy eyes sitting in a chair in front of him. He thought he was just heading to bed before wandering around for places that would be hiring tomorrow, but now he's here and that looks like a contract of some kind on the table and he doesn't know what's happening.

Thankfully, the weird man doesn't leave him in the dark for too long.

The stranger introduces himself as Igor and says he's there to request Donald’s help. One that he's free to turn down if he's not interested.

Mr. Igor explains (loosely) that something bad happened to someone he was helping/watching over, and that person was hurt badly. He wants to make it right by giving them the chance to start over, in a new place that won't have the same problems that got them hurt before and he’s thinking of having Duckburg be that place. But they'll need someone to look out for them and help them find their way. They also have special powers that might make the transition a little harder, because it’ll probably make them homesick and they can’t go back due to the thing that happened to them.

And he wants Donald to help.

He says that he'll give Donald some stuff to make it easier (something that’ll help him understand them? Donald’s not sure what that means), but he's not just dropping a random person on him and leaving. There are some more details/explanations thrown in before they're done.

Mr. Igor says he'll give Donald two weeks to think about the offer/request. And he's free to turn it down.

(That gets emphasized. Which is kinda of nice, most people don’t make it an option for him.)

He’s given a blank tarot card (at least, Donald thinks it’s a tarot card. It’s way too tall to be a playing card) which Mr. Igor says will appear in the “Conscious World” with him, so he’ll know this wasn’t all just a really strange dream. And he’ll talk to Donald in a week to clarify anything he wants to know about and then the week after that, he’ll come to find out Donald’s final answer. There’s a loud ringing of a bell, which sounds like the Wake Up bell on a ship to Donald, then he’s jolting up in bed just a few minutes before his alarm clock is supposed to go off.

And, sitting on his bedside table, is the same blank card from his dream. (Which means it wasn’t actually a dream…)

[the1trueanon]

I FINALLY GOT THESE DONE HERE WE GO:

ACTOR AU SAGE!!!

Fun fact! Actor AU is currently the only WH AU to have a version of Sage instead of Rosemary! :D

Her intro stuff is really long, so I'll put it under the cut (AAAA IM SO EXCITED TO SHARE HER)!!

So, for the Actor AU, Sage actually isn't an actor at all! She's a singer and songwriter who has pretty recently (like, within the past year or two before meeting the WH cast, maybe?) become very popular. Sage's personality and music draw a lot of inspiration from AURORA and MALINDA -- songs that tend to have a lot of deeper meaning behind them. She's eccentric and honestly a bit weird, but she's most known for being open and honest about herself and her music, and for being very caring and sweet. She's able to immediately connect to people and help them see different points of view, which is part of why she's gotten so popular with both puppet and human audiences.

Wally, of course, doesn't really trust it, considering how he thinks and what he believes. He assumes she's probably just another attention-hungry diva, thinking they're the shit, using the whole "lets all be best buds!" schtick to sell out. So he doesn't really pay attention to her or what she does too much, besides taking note of her rising popularity.

That is, of course, until he meets her.

Due to Sage's rising popularity, the show executives decide to have her come on the show as a sort of guest star. Wally doesn't really like this, but they're able to negotiate him to at least try it out for an episode and they'll decide what to do after that. Wally reluctantly agrees, but he's not too optimistic about it. He's really just expecting another one of those "rising star" types, y'know? (Which, fair enough, when you consider what all he's probably had to deal with in his time, plus the fact that all he's probably ever seen or heard of her is in interviews, and he puts on an act well enough for his, so.)

I have a whole actual comic planned detailing this that I'll hopefully finish and get out soon (sitting and writing comics is hard when you have near-zero focus QwQ) but essentially he's outside, before filming for the first day of this, just to get air before having to go back in and start directing things and getting ready and she approaches him and just starts talking with him. And he has no idea who the fuck this is??? (Honest to god, he'll never admit it now but he thought she was an intern or something at first XD) But slowly he goes from just answering her shortly to actually participating in the conversation?? And not just a "how's the weather" sort of thing, but like. Actual deep conversation, about what he's doing out there and talking through a little bit of the stress and stuff. And eventually he kinda like, comes to and realizes he's been talking way too much about way too deep stuff and he's like "hold up who tf are you again?" Which is about the same time her manager (who has been named Savannah and she's also a sweetheart) comes out looking for her and before Sage heads in she fully introduces herself to him, and he's just. Stunned. Absolutely blown away.

Here he was, expecting some diva he'd have to give the shake down to, but instead he's met with just. A girl. An honest, strange, caring girl.

This continues throughout that week of filming, Sage subverting every expectation Wally previously had of her. The whole time he's just more and more startled by Sage and who she is. Her whole team is super sweet and she obviously has very deep trust in them, and jokes with them like friends. She treats his staff with utmost respect (which, admittedly, makes him act on his best behavior every time she's around. He doesn't wanna look bad in comparison XD). She seems to genuinely enjoy her time there and what she's doing. Even more than that, Sage honestly has a very poor filter, so she talks a lot about everything lol, but it can be good! Because this is how Wally learns about her drive to create and how much she genuinely wants to bring people together. He finds out that really, the two of them have very similar visions, just for different audiences. Later, he and the executives and director and stuff are all discussing if they wanna keep doing stuff with her and her team and he's just immediately like "Yes. Absolutely. She has a similar vision to me. We either keep doing stuff with her or I'm personally helping fund her, capiche?" and they're all like "👀Got it" XD

And then, of course, there's her music. Which, after that first day of filming, he searches up as much of as he can and listens to it. And is again absolutely blown away lmao (there's another little comic idea I have for this too hehehe but its much shorter than the other one)

And thus begins Wally's journey of self-improvement, led by Sage's example /j XDDDD

ANYWAY HRGHRGHRGHRHGR THATS ALL THE EXPOSITION IMMA GIVE HERE CAUSE THATS A LOT AND THERE'S STILL A TON MORE STORY IN MY BRAIN BUT AUUUGGGHHH I'M SO NORMAL ABOUT THIS AU (also Frills, I have no idea what spell you've put on me with this thing but I have never made such cinematic art before O-O don't stop XD)

As always, Welcome Home belongs to Clown (partycoffin) and Actor/Diva Wally and the Actor AU belong to the wonderful @frillsand!! 💖💖💖

[imagination-overreaction]

I haven't done an official intro post, and I have no idea what to write here, so...

Hello!

I'm Shrub! I'm an adult, and I use it/he pronouns, no particular preference

Here's some stuff about me!

Things I like, in no particular order:

Team Fortress 2, drawing, Undertale, Deltarune, Blue Eye Samurai, Faith: The Unholy Trinity, FNaF (to some extent), embroidery, Buckshot Roulette, The Arcana (I love to hate it), Will Wood, plant symbolism, SCP (kinda) (mostly just the idea of it), Gravity Falls, Stardew Valley, Empress Theresa (I love to hate it)

How many OCs do I have?

143 147. If you ever wanna know about one, just give me a number and I'll be more than happy to share about that one (or the one after that if that one is boring). I have been coming up with fake guys for about 5 years now, and with all my works-in progress there is going to be more.

Characters are tagged as #oc-name

What am I working on?

The biggest ones are tagged on this post, but if you want more detailed descriptions...

A short story based on "Cabinet Man" by Lemon Demon, from the perspective of the maintenence man that looked inside that thing.

My longest official project that I'm still not 100% sure what format I'll be publishing in: A choose-your-own adventure set in the realm of the fae where you play as Mina, who just tripped into this world and has to get out alive.

Another longer project: A (hopefully) novel titled The Faceless King. It's lower priority, but I have a lot of characters crafted and a lot of setting made, so I might show off some of it.

Short stories (or a long one? Haven't decided) about my OC Chase, a bold and stubborn idiot that bought a really, really cheap house. The house is a demon. Near-death shenanigans ensue, but he is too bull-headed to let some peeling paint get the best of him.

An AU about the same stubborn idiot becoming a Fazbear franchisee. Near-death shenanigans ensue, but with enough duct tape and common sense, anything is possible.

A shorter, personal, sorta-vent-y project utilising the Software Automatic Mouth, as well as a couple of other projects using SAM.

A series of short stories about my OC Abe, an android created by a deity, and how he interacts with himself and the world around him.

The longest silly goofy project that can and will never be finished, where I take my OC Xavier, toss him head-first into whatever media I like at the moment, and make his celestial partners go find him in a sadistic game of cat-and-mouse. Might post some of this if I have parts I really like.

Any questions about the above things are welcome, and I have so many more characters that I'll probably talk about eventually too! I'm still getting the hang of actually posting to tumblr instead of watching and spam-reblogging from the sidelines, but I do plan on posting at least semi-regularly once I can properly wrangly my executive dysfunction.

If you read this far, thank you! I hope you have a good day :]

[etherfall]

Not the best but, here's the summary of BW2 of this AU (I'll go by Protag Rosa for this)

Wall of Text Warning

The story is probably altered, but mostly the same (kinda)

By the time of BW2 begins, N was defeated by Hilbert (Protag of BW1) but he turned it down. Finally he has a goal to pursue which he's away from region for a while

By then, he was challenged by Iris and lost the battle. Resulting he was stepped down as a champion and now currently living in Driftveil City (Specifically the building when you obtain Zorua) and created a small organization protecting Pokémon with his sisters as his assistant. Still maintaining a close relationship with Alder

During the intro and until Pre-Nimbasa City is mostly the same. Rosa and Hugh go to adventure, collecting gym badges, and encounters with men/women in in masks claimed themselves as Neo Team Plasma while being assisted by Hugh and several people in the process, meets Iris, and Encounters a man in lab coat named Colress.

By the time Rosa arrived in Nimbasa City, she encounters a man with Christmas Tree hair which she's recognize him as N. Son of Alder and the Pokémon Whisperer (People dubbed him due to ability to understand Pokémon).

After chatting for a while she meets Hugh and introduces him to N (Hugh is a fan of him)

Eventually they encounters Neo Plasma, battle them. Which N notices there's anger in Hugh's eyes which he thinks that Hugh probably have a history with Plasma.

After he battle Hugh finally opens up about what happened 2/3 years ago about his little sister's Purrloin was stolen by Plasma for "Liberation Purposes".

N decides to help him to find his Purrloin and Hugh is extremely grateful for that.

When they reached Driftveil City, N takes them (the same building where he creates his organization) to the building and introduces them of his organization and explains of their purposes. But Hugh finds out that several members of them are former Team Plasma (includes sage Rood)

Bewildered of this, he asks N why which he explains that they are actually believes that Pokémon deserved to be freed from bad humans which he agrees of that. But that doesn't mean that not all humans are bad.

After some explanation, Hugh calms down and reach understanding with N. He left the place to train with his Pokémon. Rosa remembers that there's a gym in the town, so she parts with N for a while.

Sometimes later, after local tournament on PWT, they meet again with N and Hugh notices a Neo Plasma grunt runs towards to the harbor. He decides to go after him despites Colress warning. Rosa, Cheren go after him. Leaving N and Colress behind.

During that time, Colress introduces to him and asks about his involvement with Ghetsis. Surprised by the question and ask how Colress know about it. He reveals that he met him few months ago and can't help that N and Ghetsis are so much alike, but he assures him that Ghetsis is not N's Father in Blood.

N asks him that he's involved with Team Plasma and he answers some other way around. But he told him that the only think he cares about is the Pokémon's true potential. Colress plead to him not to tell to anyone and N relucantly agrees.

Sometime after, Rosa, Hugh, and Cheren returns after the ship flew away, N told them that he has a thing to attend and they part ways for now.

From there until Pre-Opelucid remains he same.

Gotta finish this later, feel free to correct this or whatever.

Oh this is so cool!

I actually had a different idea and planned to make N become the Champion (since he's been training with Alder ever since he was young to take this position), but I really like the way you've taken the story!

(Still making my way through B&W2 so I'm not completely caught up on events yet...)

But like I've stressed before, all interpretations are welcome!! I love the way you manage to weave the characters & their interactions in, and am excited to hear the rest :D

[running-tweezers]

~ Pictures Of You - Part 5 ~

When Mercutio leaves Zephyr teary-eyed, Nate would try anything to see them happy again. Even something as crazy as breaking the confines of the 30 minute time-slot, and creating something a little more intimate.

Rated T

2830 Words

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5

~ June 9, 1989 ~

Thursday night had become the highlight of Nate’s week. It was the thing he daydreamed about to get him through the day. But this time, he wasn’t sure why he was even tuning in. He knew what he was going to see. He knew it was just going to make him feel worse. But he still stayed up. He still brewed that pot of coffee so it would be ready in time. He still flipped over to the public access channel and sipped from his mug, anxiously awaiting 1 AM. He couldn’t miss it.

Some teenage rock band had the slot before Zephyr, which would usually be one of the more amusing things to watch while he waited, but he couldn’t be bothered to pay attention. He was too busy thinking about last week. Mercutio’s voice kept snaking its way around his head. That cloying condescension that switched to anger the second he didn’t get his way, and then right back to the sweetness when Zephyr finally gave in. It made him sick.

He regretted not calling in. There probably wasn’t anything he could’ve done over the phone, especially live on the air, but he could’ve done something. At least made sure they were alright. But he just couldn’t take hearing that asshole’s manipulative bullshit for one more minute.

And now he was about to see Mercutio. Sitting right next to Zephyr. Talking about himself. For half an hour. Just the thought made his blood boil, but he had to make up for last week somehow.

Eventually the teenage rock stars finished strutting around what looked like a high school gym, and the show switched over to Zephyr’s familiar droning music. Nate braced himself for Mercutio’s stupid face. He hadn’t even seen it yet, but he knew it was stupid.

When the video signal came through seconds later, there was no stupid face. He unclenched his jaw. It was just Zephyr on their own, like always.

“Welcome,” Zephyr said shakily, “night owls and creatures of the darkness.”

It was the same intro they always used. But weaker. Smaller.

“My name’s Zephyr. And you’ve stumbled into my world for the next half hour…” They punctuated their sentence with a sniff and a quick swipe of their sleeve under their nose. Their black makeup was smudged out under their bottom lid, and the corners of their red, puffy eyes shone wet in the lights.

They’d been crying.

Zephyr cleared their throat. “The music you're hearing right now is actually a local band, Bitter Veil. This is a new single they recorded.” They tried their hardest to press on like everything was fine. “They gave me this last weekend when they played at Mercutio’s. They were great.”

Zephyr was no stranger to hiding their feelings on the show, in favor of a cooler, more aloof personality. But even their strongest mask couldn’t hide this.

Their mouth pursed into a thin line. “And speaking of Mercutio, I was supposed to be talking to him here tonight, but unfortunately he, uh… had to cancel.” They picked up a black and white composition notebook from the desk and flipped through it. “He— well, it wasn’t actually him. One of his associates, I guess, called me about 20 minutes ago to let me know he wouldn’t be coming. He apparently had, ‘more important things to do.’ That’s what they said.”

More important things to do.

Those words sparked the fire already kindling inside Nate. That absolute dick.

“And hey, I get it. He’s really busy. He’s got a lot going on.” They let out a small, unnatural sounding laugh. “Maybe another time.” They thumbed hopelessly through the notebook, before sliding it to the opposite side of the desk.

Before he could even form the thought, Nate had already dialed 4 numbers. He had to do something. This time he’d make sure they were ok.

“So, I’ll admit I’m a little unprepared now, it was so short notice.” They glanced off screen for a moment and muttered under their breath. “It doesn’t fucking matter, no one’s watching anyw—“

Their eyes darted to the switchboard. There was a hint of hope in them, like maybe they expected it to be Mercutio on the other end, telling them he could come on after all.

Nate hoped his voice coming through instead wouldn’t be a let down.

“Hi, you’re on the air.”

“Hey! It’s me. It’s Nate.”

“Oh.”

He couldn’t make out whether that was an ‘oh’ of surprise or disappointment.

“I’m— I’m sorry your guest didn’t come. That really sucks.”

“It’s fine.” Zephyr immediately snapped back, as positively as they could muster. “He just… I’m sure something just came up.”

“Right…”

A few seconds of awkward dead air passed as he tried desperately to find the right thing to say. Pushing the issue any further seemed like it would just upset them more. Moving on entirely also didn’t seem right. He struggled for words, until the notebook they had shoved aside sparked his curiosity.

“What‘s in the notebook?”

“Oh. Nothing important.” Zephyr grabbed it and tried to shove it back under the desk. “Just some notes. Questions and stuff. I don’t really need it here anymore.”

“What kind of questions?”

They stopped short of shoving the notebook out of sight. “Nothing. Just stuff I wanted to ask Mercutio.”

“Like what?”

They met his relentless questioning with a look of surprise. “I don’t know… Asking about his background in the scene, how he got his start, how he opened the club, stuff like that. ” They shrugged and thumbed through the pages again.

“Well.” Nate persisted, determined to turn this around. “What about you?”

Even though he was staring at a TV screen, the confused look they gave felt like it was directed right at him. “What about me?”

“What’s your background in the scene?” Nate repeated the first question back to them.

They scoffed, but a tiny glimmer of a smile shone through. “I promise you, my answer isn't gonna be nearly as interesting as his.”

“I’m interested.” He stood firm. “I’m sure other people watching are too.”

“There’s no one watching,” Zephyr sighed, defeated. “Barely anyone watches anyway, and anyone who was watching tuned out when they realized Mercutio isn’t here.”

“I am. I’m watching,” Nate said, plainly. “And honestly, I couldn’t care less about this Mercutio guy. I want to know about you.”

They breathed out a quiet, skeptical laugh. “Well, you’re the only one. There isn’t much worth knowing.”

“I doubt that. Come on.” Nate doubled down, the smile evident in his voice. “Even if I am the only one, I’m an inquiring mind. How’d you get into this?”

“Fine.” Zephyr rolled their eyes, but they couldn’t hide that little grin anymore. “If you’re that interested.”

“Oh, I am.” He shifted on the couch, settling in. “I’ll turn this into Johnny Carson, right now.”

Zephyr’s real smile and laugh broke through the surface again, and it made Nate giddy. He would be as dumb and silly as possible if it meant he got to see that authenticity shining through.

“Ok, fine. So—” Zephyr began. “I’ve always kind of been around… weird people? Counter-culture people. My mom was a huge hippie. Peace and love, flower power, the whole thing. She helped organize a lot of anti-war demonstrations. There’s all these photos you can find of this tiny Vietnamese 19 year old with flowers painted on her face giving daisies to cops in riot gear. She was the real deal.”

Their face softened a bit, their eyes full of fondness. Maybe a touch of sadness? He couldn’t tell.

“But I was born right in the middle of all that. I was surrounded by it most of my childhood. So my tastes have always been a little, different than the norm? Never had a ton of friends. So when I started high school there was a senior, who worked at the video store I used to go to constantly, and he was way into the scene. He knew about like, weird horror movies and cool British bands that weren’t big here yet and all the underground clubs. I just thought he was so cool. We became friends and he showed me a bunch of music, and I just felt so connected to it, more than any of the stuff on the radio. But he graduated and moved away, I started getting more into it on my own, and here I am now.” Zephyr punctuated their answer with a shrug.

Before Nate could respond, they suddenly shrunk into themself a little more. “So yeah. Got into it in high school. That was probably way more than you wanted to hear.”

“No! Don’t be sorry! I want to hear it all.”

It was true. He could listen to Zephyr talk about anything and everything for days.

“I just feel like it’s such a boring, nothing answer,” Zephyr groaned, embarrassed. “Especially compared to someone like Mercutio.”

“Fuck Mercutio!”

It felt incredible to say it out loud, but the shock on their face told him he may have overstepped.

“I mean, it’s your show. Not his.” Nate continued, trying to run it back a little. “You don’t need him to have a good show. It’s already great without him. With you.”

Zephyr eyes glanced down at the desk. “If you say so”

“Speaking of your show, what made you want to do this? How’d you get started with this?”

“More questions?”

“I told you. Carson. Or Letterman. Oprah, even. I’m flexible.”

Zephyr’s eyes crinkled up, unable to contain their laugh again. The remnants of their tears were long gone already.

It was working.

——————————

“Ok can I ask one more question? It’s for sure not one you had prepared for what’s his name, but I want to know.”

“Sure, we have time for one more, if it’s a quick one.”

“Alright, before I ask, I need you to know that I’m not trying to make fun. I love it, actually. I’m just genuinely curious.”

“Ok...” Zephyr answered cautiously. “Ask away.”

“Again. Genuinely curious,” Nate repeated. “How do you get your hair to look like that?”

Zephyr’s unbridled laughter had become a constant sound for the last half hour. He’d never heard anything more gorgeous. It was so genuine. It felt like the two of them were just having a conversation. No cameras or TVs or phones. It all felt so natural.

“I don’t know what you mean.” They leaned back in their chair, acting as cool as they could manage, apart from a sarcastic little smile. “It just looks like this.”

“Oh, really?” Nate played along. “Did it always look like that? Or did it happen when you started listening to your music?”

“No, it used to be really flat actually. But one day I heard a Siouxsie song and the next morning I just woke up like this.” They gestured to their face. “Makeup too.”

“Wait, if I keep listening to the music you recommended, is that gonna happen to me? Is this some kind of curse you passed along? Like a vampire?”

“I don’t know.” Zephyr smirked, leaning into the camera and whispering. “How do you think we make more goths?”

Nate gasped, dramatically concerned. “Shit… I can feel the transformation starting… I’ve got to go buy some cooler stuff. My Kmart clothes are an embarrassment.”

After yet another bout of uncontrolled laughter, Zephyr dropped the act. “No, but actually it’s just a lot of backcombing, and a ton of Aqua Net. The purple one. That’s really important.”

“Oh, of course, I wouldn’t dream of using another color.”

“They really don’t work as well! I’ve tried.” Zephyr glanced off screen, mid sentence. “Hey, I’m sorry, but my time slot is almost over, I need to wrap it up.”

Nate looked at his own clock. 1:28 AM. They really did cut it close.

“That’s ok! Thanks for answering my questions.” He put on his best Tonight Show voice. “You’ve been a fantastic guest, thanks for coming on.”

“You’re so welcome, Johnny. I’ll come back anytime.” Zephyr grinned at the camera, and it felt like they were looking straight at him. “Thanks for calling, Normal Nate.”

“Anytime.”

The way they could make him feel that warm, floaty, butterflies-in-his-stomach feeling, without even being in the same room was astounding.

“Anytime...” Zephyr repeated, trailing off as if lost in thought for a moment. They quickly came back to their senses, saying rushed final goodbyes, and signing off the air. The screen cut to color bars, and the dial tone rang in his ear.

That was it for another week.

He switched off the TV and hung the phone back on the receiver. At least he made them happy after what that prick did. He hoped they were actually alright. They seemed so upset in the beginning. But he didn’t expect them to want to talk about their feelings live on the air.

He stared at the phone on the end table, and a sliver of a thought appeared.

He shook his head. No. It was late. He didn’t know how public access phone lines operated. It probably wouldn’t work anyway.

He hoisted himself off the couch, stretching out his back, and took a few steps towards bed, but the thought kept nagging him. He turned back towards the phone, tempting him to pick it back up.

“Anytime…”

The word repeated in his head.

He’d never know unless he tried.

He snatched the phone back up and dialed the number again, no visual aid on the TV to help him remember. It started to ring.

And ring.

And ring.

His heart sunk slightly, hopes starting to fade. Then the ringing stopped.

“Hey, sorry, you just missed my time slot.” Zephyr’s voice came through the phone. “You’ll have to call back next week.”

“Zephyr?” Nate asked, already knowing the answer. He was too excited to say anything else.

“Nate?” They sounded confused. But not upset.

“Uh… hi!” He sunk back down onto the couch. “I’m sorry, I hope this is ok, I just— I wanted to— I don’t know—” He suddenly couldn’t find words. It worked. He was talking to them. Privately. No cameras. No audience. Just the two of them.

“No, no, it’s ok!” They interrupted. “I just wasn’t expecting it.”

“I wasn’t sure it would work, to be honest. I don’t know how phone lines like this work.”

“No, it’s a normal phone line. It’s my own phone line,” Zephyr explained. “We only have one phone? So it’s hooked up to our main phone line most of the time, but I take it and plug it into my own on Thursday nights for the show.”

“Gotcha. Makes sense.” Nate twisted the cord around his finger, still in a bit of disbelief. “If you need to go, I understand, I just wanted to talk to you a little more. Check on you.”

“We can talk more, that’s fine.” Just hearing their voice through the phone without the visual on the TV, felt oddly intimate. “You wanted to check on me?”

“Yeah, I— I wanted to make sure you were actually alright. After, you know. Your guy canceled.” He broached the subject cautiously, trying not to push too hard, too fast. “You just seemed really upset.”

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah I’m fine. It’s no big deal.”

They didn’t sound convincing.

“Are you sure?” He asked again. “Because between you and me, I think it was a really shitty thing he did. Canceling so late notice. And not even doing it himself, he got someone else to do it for him.”

“Yeah… It sucks.”

“And saying he had ‘more important things to do?’ After you told him last week you had a family thing, but that wasn’t enough reason not to see him?” Nate continued ranting. “Honestly, I wasn’t kidding when I said fuck that guy.” Nate laughed a little, trying to keep things light hearted.

“Yeah…” Zephyr’s voice came through the phone, quiet and shaky again. “It’s ok though. I halfway figured it would happen…”

“Why? Did he say something before?”

“No. Not really…”

Their voice was even smaller than it was before. It was like the cameras shut off and the real feelings came out.

“Are you ok, Zephyr?”

“Yeah. He’s just…” Zephyr trailed off, pausing before they continued. “He’s not as great as I thought he was.”

Nate’s stomach turned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean— He—“ They stopped themself every time they started a thought.

“It’s ok,” Nate reassured. “I get it. You don’t have to tell me. You hardly know me. But if you want to, I’m here. I’m listening. No TV cameras or anything. Just me.”

The line went quiet except for Zephyr’s soft breathing. A deep breath broke their silence. “I need to tell someone.” They muttered, almost inaudibly. “It’s been eating me alive.”

Nate’s blood ran cold. “What is it?”

“It’s all a little fuzzy, but. Something happened Saturday night.”

( @pinksparkl @phantasmechanical )

[tombstuck-writes]

wip intro: knucklehead

it's 2009, and theo and rodney (and all of their friends) are highschoolers in a tiny rural missouri town.

oh, the plot, you ask? i'll get back to you when i figure it out. but some of the themes are love (platonic and romantic), that horrible thing that happened to you wasn't your fault, just because someone hurt you doesn't mean everyone will hurt you, sometimes water is thicker than blood, and probably others.

it's a zero draft right now, which basically means i wrote 40,000 words about these kids but it's not really a cohesive story at the moment.

i feel like a small explanation for each of the moodboard photos is warranted, because i'm not super sure what to say about the story and i feel like this will give it context.

kids laying in a pile, probably at a sleepover: rodney and theo are part of a large group of friends who frequently hang out together like this.

a creek with trees on the water's edge: one of the friends lives on a large property and if you go far enough into the woods on that property there is a creek, smaller than the one in the photo but i couldn't find a perfect example. this is actually based on my real life, when i was a kid there was a creek in the woods at my grandmother's house. i imagine the knucklehead teens hanging out here.

a dusty diner with an old tv, and some hunting/guns/beer decorations hanging up: this photo does a good job of representing the vibes of this small town, and the old timers in the area would definitely be spending time together in a diner just like this. unfortunately this is also based on my real life childhood.

barn next to a dirt road: another photo to represent the town where the characters live.

"now is the day of salvation" sign: despite this being a very very small town, there are 3 churches in town, and lots of christian imagery similar to this around town. most of the teens in the story's friend group are queer in one way or another, so this imagery is meant to add sort of a lurking judgmental vibe to the story. i feel like i don't really need to say it, but based on my real life etc.

blurry school bus: quite a few of the scenes in the story take place in the local high school and on the school bus.

playing guitar: one of the main characters, rodney, plays guitar. in the zero draft it was a ukulele, but i changed it to guitar because i feel that it fits the setting and themes better from a storytelling perspective.

cluttered bedroom: this is what i imagine the main character, theo's bedroom to look like, maybe not exactly. i eventually want to create an illustrationof his exact room. but he collects clocks and has a quilt on his bed so i feel its close enough for now.

playground: there is a tiny park in desperate need of maintenance in their town and the teens hang out there quite a bit.

i'm really excited to be working on this again, because i took a break after finishing the zero draft.

let me know if you want to be on the taglist for this wip.

[fyrefrostanimus]

I still need to finish full references for most of the characters in the Everyone Lives AU but I might as well infodump what I know about the FNaF 6 cast after the fire if anyone wants to read it.

Michael

So, Frailty's remnant logic. If you know you know, if you don't it basically means that he recovers really quickly because molten soul metal is a hell of a drug. Mike actually didn't start recovering until AFTER the fire, since most of his body was rotten to the point it would take forever. Then the fire burned the parts that were stopping the remnant from really working (as you may guess it did not burn as Henry had anticipated) and it really was a shock when Michael passed out in the middle of the floor in front of everyone because his lungs just completely reformed and he hadn't needed to breathe in so long he'd just forgotten.

After he fully recovered (basically he looks like a normal human being again), his eyes took on a silver tone instead of the previous gray-blue. A little nod to the Silver Eyes trilogy even if it's just me taking the name literally.

Honestly way too much of Mike's stuff here is just "yeah this is how having remnant in his bloodstream affects him", so last one: while ghosts just phase through most people, Michael's a solid object (usually ghosts can only physically interact with other ghosts/directly haunted objects). Also he's kinda stuck being 23 forever.

Michael really likes Mother Mother, his favorite album is O My Heart. This might seem random but just listen to Body and you'll probably get it.

Since this AU came from nostalgia from an ask blog I used to frequent, he figures out that the older animatronics are still out there and goes around collecting them one way or another.

Henry

Charlie kinda shoved his soul into Lefty. She refuses to elaborate why to him.

Henry's a bit upset that he's still here, but maybe that's a good thing since no one else seemed to die in the fire.

Charlie

Her main reason for shoving her dad into Lefty was that THIS being his solution to keep her there pissed her off. Before you get on me for mischaracterizing her, imagine trying to fall asleep, but whenever you're about to nod off something wakes you up again so you're just constantly cranky from being tired for a whole week. That's basically what it was like insider Lefty for her.

She was inside the Puppet for a week before leaving it, and most of that time was spent inside a cardboard box that Michael was about to put into recycling. Box is box and Charlie was tired.

Charlie can interact more with the physical world, unlike most ghosts (eg. picking objects up, having more choice in when she phases through things, etc.).

William

He's just completely out. Everyone else could at least move after the fire (although Mike did have one of his legs charred to the point it crumbled when he tried to walk on it), but he's in UCN right now. Elizabeth in CB had to carry him out of the building.

William does still twitch occasionally, so he's obviously not dead. To reduce suspicion from the house smelling like someone died inside, they keep him in the basement and check on him once in a while to see if he woke up.

Elizabeth and Circus Baby

I got a lot to say on Elizabeth, honestly the reason I made this post was because I thought about her a lot while drawing her and I didn't want to forget it. Eventually I just decided "screw it, this IS the main AU I think about anyways so why not give everyone who wants to know an intro?". I'll color the text as it corresponds to each (green for Liz, blue for CB).

Originally she planned on only staying at Michael's house until William woke up and they split off (not like she would tell him). Elizabeth only stayed longer because it became really apparent that he wasn't getting up for a long while and she didn't want to leave without William.

She died in 1987 shortly after the second Missing Childrens Incident, and hadn't actually left Circus Baby until after the fire. So she spent about 36 years with no break inside the 7-foot-tall robot, and was extremely used to that. Once she's out and herself again, Elizabeth is suddenly about 4 feet tall and feels completely different. The closest thing I think to how she'd feel is weak/defenseless.

Michael managed to tell Elizabeth that William full well knew that Circus Baby would kill her if she went near it because that's what she was created to do, even having an emergency override: he just didn't pay enough attention to use it in time. She does end up believing this but it left her in a situation where she just couldn't trust anyone in the house for a while. William was shown to not really care about her as much as she thought he did, and she still didn't trust Michael. Elizabeth didn't trust Henry or Charlie either, and the rest of the Funtimes kicked Circus Baby (and by extension her) out to survive on her own. Eventually she built enough trust with everyone but it really did take a while.

The original MCI kids and Evan show up eventually, and Elizabeth subconsciously would count them and only really interact closely with one at a time when it was just the two of them. It's a habit she picked up from her time in Circus Baby and I don't think it really ever left her. So Elizabeth looks really shy at first, but really she's just functioning off of something that she has for years.

Circus Baby is still Scrap Baby when it comes to looks, but still goes by her normal name.

She has the claw on her right arm but no actual reason to use it, so sometimes she'll clamp down on something and not let go just for fun. This annoys basically everyone else since occasionally it will be one of their arms.

CB and Elizabeth still get along really well. CB's the only one Elizabeth trusts during that time period where no one else seemed trustworthy.

Everyone just calls Circus Baby either by her full name or CB (like I did here sometimes). But no one under any circumstances calls her just Baby. More from their own preference.

Molten Freddy

The Funtimes (minus Circus Baby who is still exiled) aren't exactly Molten Freddy anymore. They separated into their different characters again but take their sweet time figuring out how to take a form other than just a blob again. They'll figure it out eventually.

By eventually, I mean when Michael finally caves and goes back to the bunker for their casings. If Circus Baby can do it and not get locked back in, there's no way he can't (I would not doubt that the remains of his previous internal organs are still there, but he wasn't thinking about that part).

They get really excited seeing some of the most mundane slice-of-life things. Mike's building a LEGO set since he hasn't had enough time to do so in a while? They're immediately over there watching. The Funtimes probably haven't seen vents that aren't large enough for a grown man to crawl through and are questioning about why they exist if not as a mode of quick transportation around the house.

The Rockstars

Not much about them, but there's some notable things about the Rockstars I wanted to put here to finish this post off.

Rockstar Freddy's fucking dead. I'm not even holding back, he overheated in the fire and no amount of repairs are going to bring him back (UCN reference lol).

All the surviving Rockstars have some pretty bad fire damage, but none of them really care about it. The nice part of not having as much of a programmed personality is that you don't care how you look quite as much.

With Freddy gone, Rockstar Bonnie and Foxy do vocals together. Despite their grouping being called the Rockstars they actually do more country songs than anything.

[thecrescentmind]

I currently need to remake their refs so instead of refs you get screenshots from the wip I’m never finishing.

Sanders Sides OC introductions!!! (TCM au act one) intro explanation/context to the au here

Yapping about them under the cut!!!

Since I got some reason decided attempting a fanseries was a good idea I’m going to be vague about spoilers and the sides will be referred to be titles instead of their actual names, I’ll probably give up on being vague about spoilers eventually but for now I’m trying

Let’s start with the basic one: it’s me but not really: TCM!Crescent

Taking the role of c!Thomas: Crescent is the protagonist! The one whose mind everyone else is apart of! They’ve only just been introduced to their sides and will learn more about them as we go. His personality is a combination of the four he’s met. She’s creative, kind hearted, emotional, anxious, a bit awkward, and simultaneously very smart and very stupid! Well, that’s not all he is, but we don’t have to think about that, do we? TCM is a fun show where we only have to deal with the problems we want to face, we can just ignore that, this place is an escape and no one is going to change that.

Crescent is different from c!Thomas in well, they are literally just different people. Crescent is a teenager with a different gender and sexuality. I guess in terms of what they do in the story the first difference I think of is that Crescent is more aware of certain parts of themselves. This won’t stop him from acting just as oblivious though.

Now we have Artist: Embodiment of creativity, imagination, passion, and ego!

Artist takes the role of Roman! They’re passionate, creative, brave, a bit hyper, and the most confrontational of the group. He likes to act as a hero, even having a “magical girl” (despite not being a girl) form to transform into! She’s very willing to fight or get aggressive when nessecary, maybe even a bit too much. Funfact: the two dots on their crown are eyes! Her crown’s name is Ray and they’re what she used to transform into Ember Knight (the name she gave her magical form). Funfact 2: Despite being the creative side of a horror fan, Artist doesn’t like horror! Wonder what that’s about…

In terms of differences from Roman, Artist is less regal and overall has different vibes and demeanor. She also takes his thing with wanting to be a hero up several notches. She’s also less likely to just insult her friends for no reason, she will be kind of rude but with reasons. Basically if someone’s rude to her she’s rude back almost imeadiatley and she’s very aggressive towards people she has unresolved conflicts with.

Next up is Intel: Embodiment of intelligence, reason, and logic!

Intelligence, or Intel as literally everyone calls them for short takes the role of Logan! The most knowledgeable side in the mindscape, Intel is just as smart and rational as you’d think they’d be. They can be overly cold and serious at times, but that comes from a genuine desire to get things done and help out. And boy does she do a lot of helping! With Crescent being a former gifted kid who now as a teen is almost always in advanced classes (or art related classes, at least Artist can handle that part of their school) and with Intel always trying to use reason to calm the others down when things get serious, he certainly has a big job! Just hope they can handle it.

Intel acts a lot like Logan but the vibes are shifted to the right (listen it’s hard to describe how she acts I swear she’s different) but her arc and struggles are very different. Because of how much Crescent needs her she’s very hard to ignore so she isn’t really, tldr burnt out gifted kid needs a break.

Then there’s Heart: center of feelings and morals!

(I know her color is kind of hard to see I’ll fix that eventually) Heart takes the role of Patton! She’s kindhearted, empathetic, and very sensitive. The least aggressive or confrontational of the group. They’re the youngest of the gang, everyone is physically and more or less mentally the same age as Crescent but Heart formed the most recently. However they’re not a child and will dispute claims they are. Being the newest to the group they have big shoes to fill and he’s still learning how to do that best, can Heart really fill the void he left behind?

While Patton is seen as the group dad, Heart is often seen as the group child (even if she disputes it.). Her arc involves a lot of coming into her own in different ways.

And finally there’s Stress: embodiment of fear and anxiety!

Stress takes the role of Virgil, including starting out as an antagonist. At this point in the story they’re very rude and condescending, masking everything underneath a scary persona they’ve had as long as anyone can remember. But it has been a while. Him deciding to be a threatening presence within the show was a bit surprising for the other three sides, ever since the incident she’s mostly done her job remotely, staying away from direct confrontation with the others unless something major happens. So why do this now? There’s something deeper that they’re connected to, and I don’t think Crescent wants to find out what.

Stress has more energy than Virgil, but you won’t notice that at first because the scary persona definitely takes some of that energy to keep up. Her motivations are also pretty different from his but I’ll keep that a secret for now (she has the most complicated backstory out of everyone you will see)