#it's a cool visual don't @ me

[icewindandboringhorror]

I made a few new wax seal stamps out of clay (like the ones I did for my worldbuilding stuff forever ago), this time just of random symbols that I thought might look good done in the style of painting over the raised part of the wax or etc. :0c Some of them aren't carved deep enough to really show up that well, but overall they worked okay for being clay lol

[sparkling12]

I'm curious, in general do we prefer Poison Ivy with Green Skin or Nah?

oh reblog for more responses please lol

[bigkickguy]

magna medical

[skrunksthatwunk]

yyh cast pet type headcanons!!

i am thinking about them and i am giving them animals to hang out with. yeag

hiei - falcon

falconeers don't really own their falcons. it takes a long time to build trust with them, and they can fly away at any time. they are wild animals

i think hiei would appreciate that untamed quality, and the speed, sight, and skill of them. i think he'd want a capable animal companion, if any at all

note: kuwabara would be freaked out by the emphasis on competence/functionality as well as the impermanence of it. he views animals as creatures to be protected and cherished, while hiei would rather spend time with something capable, self-sufficient, and useful (stealing this idea from my eikichi fic bc i think im right)

the closer an animal or an animal-owner relationship is to a baby/baby-parent relationship, the further he wants to be from it. it grosses him out a Lot. to him, it's like adopting an adult and then babytalking it

most peer-like relationship with animals

kurama - chia pet lol ferret/rat

i think he'd enjoy small, clever troublemakers

there's some tension inherent with kurama owning any prey animal (i think they sense his foxness), but if he finds one that isn't bothered by it, i think they'd get along just fine

enjoys training them

could keep them in his hair lol

somewhat used to short lifespans relative to his

relates to them and how they feel as animals to some extent, but he's much more likely to take control via a caretaker role than treat them as peers, like hiei

botan - chinchilla/sugar glider

i just think she'd like something soft fluffy and exotic. just seems like it'd suit her :)

pretty strong anti-reptile anti-bug bias. they freak her out

open to birds of a certain flavor. i think she'd like doves and pigeons for their dumb sweetheart-ness

also most likely to get something like a mini pig or a pygmy goat, though i think she would feel quickly overwhelmed by them

kuwabara - cats

obviously. *gestures to canon*

if i had to guess at a reason for it i'd say it's a matter of feeling appreciated. you generally can't get cats to do anything they don't want to do, so that means when they show you love, it's extra special. and i think his perseverence with challenges could help him win over even the most reluctant of cats, as well as his gentleness and unconditional love towards those critters

i think kuwa likes winning animals/people over and feeling chosen and seen

strong preference for very social animals, particularly mammals (so not, like, hermit crabs). i think he'd like dogs too

hates mice, so kurama's rats would be a bit weird for him

not huge on fish or reptiles, but willing/able to admire the coolness of them after freaking out for a bit. not huge on bugs and usually doesn't get over that

yusuke - it's complicated

i hate to say it but i don't think yusuke's really an animal person

HOWEVER. i do see him having a 50-year love-hate relationship with a sassy parrot. idk why i just think he'd argue with a bird

less used to short lifespans relative to him, would probably do better with something that lives longer, i.e. a parrot, while he's adjusting to that reality

bonus points bc he's kind of a bird (puu bird imagery)

though i think he'd appreciate feeling wanted and loved, i don't know that the responsibility of a pet would make him feel grounded and secure (i.e. kuwabara), but more anxious and constricted.

his carefree lifestyle would conflict with high maintenance pets, so he probably avoids them for a long time until he's ready to settle down

i think he likes dogs like he likes kids. they're cool to spend time with, but he's probably not gonna feel ready for them until they get dumped on him. i can see him dogsitting for keiko.

shizuru - cats, but for different reasons

a bit like hiei, i think she appreciates self-sufficiency and independence

not huge on kittens, see above

would really like a very chill very lowkey cat

yukina - hear me out. it's not birds

ok. i know birds are probably everyone's first thought bc of her bird friends at tarukane's, but i have a counter-proposal:

i think yukina loves birds but wouldn't want to trap them. she strikes me more as a feeding-birds-at-the-park type + knows what it's like to be trapped (and resents it)

she would be very willing to take in a wild bird that, due to injury or illness, could not be re-released. i think she'd love that

instead, i propose: hermit crabs and brine shrimp

yes im making her be into sea monkeys

my justifications for this are pretty limited. i mostly just think she'd be really into little guys. and i think she'd have a bit more interest in pets that would be considered weird or boring by others (i.e. cockroaches, beetles, tarantulas), especially if they come from non-icy climates. i can picture her holding everything from an iguana to a maggot with similar enthusiasm. but i think she'd likely start with small aquatic guys

plus, she feels a lot less bad about the trapping thing because they need to be in water to survive. it feels more right to her

anyway i just feel like she'd enjoy aquatic stuff. maybe because it's novel, if the ice world was too cold for them to be accessible

i like to think there's ponds on genkai's property that she could put koi or turtles in

oh dude can you imagine her with a frog terrarium bc i can

likes mammals as well, but fascinated with cold-blooded creatures due to novelty

keiko - hamster/gerbil/dog

i also struggled with her a lot, but i think she'd be a dog person

AND i also think she'd be into those small rodents, i.e. hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs (for smth bigger). maybe she had a few as a kid and never really got bored with them like others did. quite passionate about their value as pets, very upset about how they are treated by broader communities

part of me says she'd want a little dog and part of me says she'd want a huge rowdy dog (a bit like yusuke), so maybe she can have both. as a treat :)

though if i had to place anyone as interested in raising farm animals (as livestock or as pets), it'd be her. idk why but i can see her caring for geese and pigs and stuff. she wouldn't mind the hard and often dirty work of it

genkai - tortoise

i think she'd appreciate a slow-paced, low maintenance kinda guy

long lifespan bonus

it's really easy for me to imagine a big tortoise on her compound just free roaming

or perhaps little turtles in ponds around the property

plus turtles kinda inherently have old lady swag to me

toguro - snake

he's used to things kinda climbing all over him

also appreciates the low maintenance aspect

would probably look at a snake dislocating its jaw to eat something whole and go "would you look at that,, you're pushing your limits to feed yourself,,, for you it's a matter of survival. truly i have much to learn" or some shit

sensui - chickens

uh. i don't have an explanation for this one. i think he and itsuki would raise chickens that's all

i think he would carry them under his arm and he'd like watching them walk around

koenma - dwarf hamsters

just the tiniest little fit-in-your-palm types. makes him feel bigger

i can just imagine one of those wire cages behind him in his office idk vibe checks out

[sysig]

You mentioned you mainly ship Glados/Chell when it comes to Portal? Could I please request something with them, however you personally imagine their dynamic? Sorry for the vague prompt, I'm just curious what your ideas are!

Day 25 - As if being dead wasn't bad enough

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?

I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.

disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.

this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.

what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.

with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.

from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.

with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)

[whiteboardartstudios]

Goodbye, Gendaen

fan art for @mtqcomic

Thoughts and LONG ramble under the cut! (includes spoilers!!!)

A while ago (like last week maybe?) I realized that I've been following this comic for almost a year, and I still haven't drawn Mysta yet! I figured that with the recent end of Chapter 3 and that *huge* lore drop (I was NOT expecting that oh my goodness the theory wheels are turning in the void that is my brain) now would be a pretty good time to draw her! So that's where this came from! :D

I thought that it would be fun to draw Mysta looking sort of like a knight? Partially because it makes for cool posing and composition but also because I think that if she was in D&D she would be a paladin due to the whole "Hero sent by Destiny" thing (I considered sorcerer or warlock as well, but her moveset is mostly melee at the moment so I thought that paladin fits better. Plus this opens up the possibility of Gendaen being an Oathbreaker paladin, depending on how that whole situation with the Crimson went. (also now I kind of want to put the main cast of mtq in D&D even though I don't actually know a lot about D&D ToT. I think Eth would be a ranger maybe multiclassed into something magic-related, because rangers have a favored enemy mechanic that gives them advantages on fighting a certain type of enemy, which could be Crimson enemies for D&D Eth. Yele is (kind of obviously) a druid because of the whole dryad thing, and Zaïl is definitely giving rogue energy to me.)) Anyways, D&D-related sidetrack aside – hello??? End-of-chapter-3 lore drop? (/positive) I have SO many questions. First of all, what happened to convince Gendaen to switch sides? For someone who allegedly spent his entire life trying to cleanse the Crimson, it would've taken one heck of a worldview-upending revelation to get him to join it. With the information we currently have, it seems pretty clear that Gendaen isn't mind-controlled or corrupted or anything – not just because of the reasons Eth gave in page #169, but also because from all the interactions we've had with Nelun Soma'o/Gendaen, he seemed to be pretty chill? I pointed out in my first fan art post that it doesn't seem as if Nelun Soma'o is being built up to be a villain character and is instead more of an antagonist with a slight mentor role, and I think that still kind of holds up now. Gendaen definitely wants Mysta to help him and/or the Crimson with something, and as Yele said in that recent comic, things aren't really adding up. I'm still slightly suspicious of the Order of Learning as well (insert person pointing at conspiracy theory board meme here lol), since you would think that if Gendaen and Eth are really close then Gendaen might have told Eth about the whole Crimson situation, right? On Page #250 (which is marked as 150??? probably a typo but idk) Gendaen says that he didn't want Eth to be roped into this whole situation, which could be a reason for keeping him in the dark – though if he knew Eth really well then he might have suspected that Eth wouldn't just let him disappear and would go searching for him. Another possible reason (in my theory) if the Order is evil or something and Gendaen learned something that he shouldn't have learned, maybe he knew that Eth wouldn't believe him because of his loyalty to the Order? I may just be connecting random dots and calling it a picture here but *something* is going on and until we get more clues on what that may be, I'm sticking with this theory lol :P EDIT, I was rereading Gendaen's character sheet and it says there that he has a strong code of honor and fights for the underdogs (not the exact phrasing but it's close). 👀 does that mean the Crimson is in some sort of underdog position? 👀

Anyways back to the drawing a little, I gave both Gendaen and Mysta a sort of braid-like element in their designs to sort of tie them together a bit visually (Mysta's is on the sides of her head, which is kind of hard to see so I added a little ribbon to show that parts of her hair is tied back, and Gendaen's is in his golden hair accessory thingy). I think that there's definitely some sort of correlation between Gendaen's disappearance/switching to the Crimson and Mysta being sent to Sol Ybberia, and I also think that both of them are going to play an important role in whatever happens in the future, hence the braids (to show that their destinies are kind of intertwined, as the two Heroes of Sol Ybberia). I also thought that it would be fun to put Gendaen in a stained glass window instead of actually physically being present, because up until the Nelun Soma'o reveal, all the things we know about Gendaen are basically all from Eth's recollections of him, which for me definitely paints a bit of a "Character haunting the narrative" kind of vibe. I also think that with the Nelun Soma'o reveal, the somewhat glorified (for a lack of a better word – I think Eth might be a little biased when it comes to Gendaen, considering that Gendaen has been missing for about 5 years, if my math is correct? 5 years feels like a long time to me and I think that if a person important to me has been missing for that long then my impression of them would definitely start warping to how I want to remember them/who I wanted them to be and I might start unintentionally ignoring the things that doesn't quite match that image in my head. Speaking of/case in point, Eth's reaction to the Nelun Soma'o reveal!) image of Gendaen that we had got thrown in a metaphorical blender with our idea of the Crimson at the time, and it just makes things a whole lot more complicated in a very interesting way. (If you look at the bottom right of the image you can see Nelun Soma'o's cloak coming out of stained-glass Gendaen's cloak, which I thought would be a fun little detail to include). Hence, the stained glass is kind of the "perfect Hero who disappeared to advance the plot" Gendaen and we can see Mysta kind of splitting the glass with her Rotted Fork from a composition point of view, referencing that huge lore bomb she dropped a couple of pages ago and how that changes our (or at least my) perception of Gendaen as a character entirely. I really do like the plot twist, as I think it makes Gendaen a more 3-dimensional character with more complicated motivations and narrative significance, as before I mainly knew him as "predecessor to Mysta" and "one of Eth's sources of motivation", but now he my understanding of Gendaen also extends to things about Gendaen himself and not just about his role in relation to other characters (for example, "Gendaen is helping the Crimson for reasons currently unknown" or "Gendaen is planning something that involves Mysta??? and he's in the Void??? And apparently Mysta is supposed to jailbreak him out at some point in the future?" He definitely has something planned behind the scenes, I don't know what it is and I want to find out).

MORE THINGS about Gendaen (can you tell that he's my favorite character at the moment ToT), what's up with those last words? If I'm correct (and I think I am, I scrolled all the way back to the page where the gods were introduced just to check this ToT), Nomù is Compassion? How is compassion related to Gendaen's alliance with the Crimson? I mean, when you think of the Crimson, compassion definitely is NOT the first value that comes to mind. Right now it seems that to me, Gendaen's plan with Mysta and the Crimson and the Void is connected to Nomù somehow? (the "I won't disappoint you" is definitely interesting). I don't have a lot of thoughts or theories on where this might be going, I just thought that it was something interesting to metaphorically chew on for the next while. It definitely seems like it has some sort of narrative significance, at least.

There might be more things that I wanted to talk about, but I can't really think of them off the top of my head right now (it might be due to the fact that it's currently quite late in my time zone ToT I am sleepy) so that's all from me for now :D (Also dropping the version of the drawing with just the lineart here because I think it looks really cool)

I hope you have a really nice day and/or night! :D

*a starry rift in space opens up in front of me and I faceplant into it like it is a mattress* (gotta make that dramatic exit!) [Image ID: The first image is a colored and rendered image of Mysta from the Mysta's Terrarian Quest webcomic standing in front of a stained glass window of Gendaen. She is holding the Rotted Fork spear from Terraria, and she has a determined expression on her face. The stained glass shows Gendaen with his back turned to the audience, and one closed eye is visible. His cloak is flowing to the right of the image, where it emerges out of the stained glass as it fades from green to dark grey. Crimson vines, green trees, and white clouds surrounds Gendaen in the stained glass. Outside of the glass portrait, real crimson vines are creeping along the stone walls that the portrait is on, framing the portrait and Mysta in the middle. A red light source is shining down from the upper right corner of the drawing. End ID.] [Image ID: The second image is a work-in-progress version of the first image without any color and only some minimal shading, with all shades being in monochrome. Mysta's lineart is noticeably darker compared to the line art of the background. End ID.]

EDIT: Forgot to add image ids, they're here now TwT

[fly-sky-high-arts]

COLGERA

[seenthisepisode]

just came back home from john wick 4...... my poor little meow meow........... :((

[peach-coke]

➤ Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities || 1.07 - The Viewing October 28, 2022

[legendoffreakshit]

They're boyfriends, your honor

[red-moon-at-night]

I would be so popular if I were an anime boy. People would make posts about putting me in a blender all the time. They’d call me sopping wet and say I was born in a cardboard box all alone

anyway. *shoots trans-your-gender laser beam at yumemi for fun*

[icewindandboringhorror]

Apparently I can meet my goal of roughly 400,000 words in 6 months if I just somehow write at least 2,200 words a day ghbjh... Almost 2,500 today... huzzah...

[lets-all-calm-down-a-bit]

me when I see someone draw Cartman skinny and conventionally attractive because they want to ship kyman but they don't like fat people and want a gay relationship they can fetishize

[beebfreeb]

wait do you like corru.observer.

It is very beautiful to look at but I am not very far into it! Everything about it intrigues me.