#loose strings

[sons-from-adam]

To love a man in uniform

[peaceandnature]

this is first rate stuff <3

[starbuck]

the thing is, i love The Narrative, but i also absolutely adore a truly character-focused tragedy where everyone’s downfall is caused not by larger narrative forces, but by hundreds of tiny decisions made by characters who, despite their best efforts, just suck.

[aroaceleovaldez]

the fact that Nico canonically gets flustered easily is really funny to me given he also is heavily implied to listen to emo/punk/etc music. poor guy puts his playlist on shuffle and the most nsfw rock song starts playing and he just slowly takes off his headphones.

[xenomorphicdna]

On the string propaganda

Heeellll yeah

Bestie is an entire PLACE

I look at those guys and let me tell you the soul of that thing ain't just in the puppet, it's in all the neurons carrying the thoughts and emotions, it's in the power rails that serve as the heart. All the memories in the memory conflux and all the numbers we see flicker across displays, the flux condensers, the puppet; a little avatar.

No way these massive machines see life the same way we do. They have their own experiences and senses and things they hold dear. A world we can't imagine, a way of living we couldn't even comprehend.

I could never tear an iterator apart to be just a puppet. Who am I to decide how's life supposed to be enjoyed or perceived?

You treat your creechurs however you want- I ain't gonna dictate that. But damn, hearing the thrums and buzzes of the linear systems rail? They are alive with so much power, these mechanical beasts are exactly what they should be.

[iloveundertaesooomuch]

Some advice from AU Calebs!

Heck yeah I did it! Finally i finished ONE of the HUNDREDS AU crossover ideas I have in my head!! Crossovers are fun guys!! (I apologise for a bad english in advance. Writing this it a rush.)

"It's ok to ask for help." (A Reverse Of Feathers And Mud by @jess-the-vampire)

I couldn't make a crossover meme without the legend. Sorry, not sorry. He is such a sad lad but tries to stay positive and be happy for his family uydfykudsutsudskudsluds (*dies*). I have to admitt, Caleb's dad energy is too strong for me to handle without wanting a hug him. No wonder! He was THE grandpa for centuries straight without a break. At least Caleb gets his whole family together in the end. Comics with him and either Hunter and Philip or Luz and Eda make me run in cirles around the room aaaa.

"You are not a burden." (Brother's Keeper by @idoodlestuffsometimes)

Damn, you definetly created one of the darkest AU in the fandom. Each time I re-read AU related posts I scream my lungs out because it is so angsty and so great. I am genuinely scared of your Belos ngl, because.. this man didnt loose anything and he still proceeds to do all that stuff. Enconter with him has 0 survival rate.

POOR CALEB! At least in the world of memes he had an opportunity to flee the captivity twice (the bald head and the car). This man had no moment of mental rest for centuries oh my God. One of my friends wants to fight his brother personally to protec Caleb at all cost sksksk. Well, at least Hunter will always have an actually loving relative! And if the happy ending is going to be canon, I think the future looks great, especially knowing how much pain all your characters go through currently. (And I think both Caleb and Hunter would need the "you are not a burdain" affirmations. At least some form of support in their situation.)

You said in the latest ask-answer that BK!Caleb was supposed to have white streaks in his hair so I attempted to add them. Hope they look fine! Colors for the outfit I got from Belos, so they would match, I guess???

"Murder is okay." (Loose Strings by @oldmanpip)

My bro, brother, friend... Despite you being not to involved on the discord server, my brain is still rotting with your great awesome AUs. And I know you know that. Your Caleb is really loose in all sences of that word and I love that. Wonder if your AUs will ever be available to the public. Because oh boy oh boy they deserve to be recognised. (Loose Caleb is such a conservative grandpa who never did anything wrong, wdym?)

"Your feelings matter." (Pip In Time by @celestialscribbler)

Honestly? Man, your comic is the reason I got invested in Witteclaw couple at all. Even if the "Pip in time" is not their story, but you wrote their teen romance so sweetly. Those two melted my heart... I scream each time I re-read your comic for 100th time. Just WOAH my brain goes brrr! And Caleb as a character is also written really really well. I love him so much. He is such good brother but MAN HE NEEDS A BREAK FROM BEING AN ADULT! BOY! Insirt crying and heart emojis here.

(PS: hope you still care about your health!)

My thoughts:

I have been drawing this for more than a month I think? And the only reason for that is my university. I hope to actually get an ADHD diagnosis because something is clearly wrong with me. But thats not the point.

There are so many ideas in my head. Goofy and not. The only problem is that I have less and less ability to do what I want lately. I wish I could bring them all to life, but at the same I dont know if anyone will be interested. Would AU crossovers look too self-indulgent? Or nah? Idk. (Just Grimwalker-Isle already has so much potential for stupid ridiculous fun I am runnin on coffee juice.)

Litteraly my mind is plagued with different fun plots and possibilities I am going crazy. But I also have A TON of WIPs that I need to finish. Perhaps I will attempt to manage everything at once, but, no promises.

Wish me luck on my exams!

[bigmilkagenda]

Of the many, many plates of pancakes* that were offered to the listener in magp 1-07, this one may be my favourite

[ID: A screenshot of an unofficial transcript to The Magnus Protocol. CELIA is saying "Yeah. I mean, it's an old system, but it could have been worse. It's not like we're wrestling with tape recorders and manila folders." /end ID]

When we meet TMA-Celia for the second time, she's lost her name. She was Lynne Hammond, and now she's not. She doesn't seem to remember Martin, either, but it's not clear how much of herself and her life from before the change she does remember. She's freaked out by the tape recorders that start showing up, and there's no indication that she associates them with the Institute specifically.

If Celia Ripley is, as we are clearly intended to believe or consider, the same Celia as in TMA, why is she making knowing comments about manila folders and tape recorders? Tape recorders in particular are hardly standard equipment at what seems to be mostly a text data-entry and cataloguing job. She could have said typewriters, or carbon paper. Fax machines, if we're dunking on Freddy specifically.

She says "tape recorders and manila folders." Celia Ripley is referencing The Magnus Institute, particularly the outdated technologies in use in the Archives.

Maybe she learned more from Melanie about what the recorders were and did at the Institute, sometime after MAG 190. Maybe she has those specific memories of giving her statement in MAG 100, and little else. Maybe Martin grew an apocalypse beard and she remembers everything, but just didn't recognise him out of context and in a tunnel and during A Pretty Weird Time Overall.

Maybe she stuck around with Melanie-Georgie-Basira for a while after things returned, and that's how she learned about the particular significance of tape recorders.

Maybe she found some tapes and listened to a couple hundred of them.

Or maybe she's simply an AU Celia, with a knack for oddly specific and kind of clunky comparisons, drawn into this through the powers of metafiction and string theory.

Or maybe someone filled her with spiders and sent her to finish the job of spreading Fear to this particular world.

And the reason this particular plate of textual pancakes** (short stack, butter and nightmare syrup) is one of my favourites from "Give and Take" is because I genuinely have no idea! None of these are theories because there isn't enough evidence to point me in any particular direction. It's a mystery!, Jon voice, etcetera.

If you cornered me and paid me to have an opinion about it I could say which options I thought were more likely, I guess. But the odds are high that I'd be wrong, and I think the boat for me getting paid to interpret texts probably sailed fifteen years ago, besides. I'm in this for the love of the game.***

November is the true spooky season in the northern hemisphere.**** Yeah, October ends with Halloween, but you know what month starts with Halloween? Mmhmm. By November of 2019 TMA had been on my list for a few years, and someone I was getting to know and really liked recommended it to me specifically in the days after 159 aired. The conditions were correct for me to get into something new, is what I'm saying. I still remember listening to "Anglerfish" for the first time, walking home from my office job in the blustery November dark. I got home starry-eyed and red-cheeked and thrilled by the story I'd just heard.

It took a couple of months for me to catch up, and though I loved having so much to listen to there were times when I wished I'd started earlier, to have the experience of seeing things unfold.

And now we're back at a beginning, and get to experience the horrible joys of finding out.

[ID: A screenshot of an unofficial transcript to The Magnus Protocol. LENA is saying "Of a sort. I hope you're as ready for it as you think you are. Consider yourself "in." /end ID]

*Sabrina pancake meme

** the best kind, especially if it's a contest between textual and fluffy pancakes. Keep those spongy bastards away from me, I'll take the kind with a typeface instead

***Being a huge nerd

**** For more of my opinions on November, see https://www.tumblr.com/almostmolly/188799234276

[mwah-so-kissed]

[raintailed]

Wretched beast for a worldbuilding project called Skylight!!! I'm calling it a dragon shrimpfish for now.

Info and notes transcript under the cut!

For context, this is an extinct alien native to a moon that has extreme tides due to orbiting a planet. The world also has magic because it's fun :]

Dragon shrimpfish have a mix of arthropod and vertebrate traits. I'm thinking that they lived in shallow seas and foraged in reefs. Occasionally they would enter intertidal zones to forage but were forced to retreat when the tides went out.

Notes transcript:

Main drawing

3 body segments

belly fuzz to stick eggs onto

3 pairs of swimmerets

tail "fin" made of interlocking hairs

Swimmeret detail

covered in setae!

claws for gripping rocks

Lower drawings

moray eel vibes

2 lower jaws!

feeding arms are usually folded under mantle plate

[teafromthemicrowave]

Will wood and the Worms on a String⭐️

Details and doodles under the cut!!

[blue-rose-soul]

I'm sorry, the what now?

Yeah, that's what I thought you said.

Maybe I should go into the Helluva Boss tags more often because I completely missed this until I started thinking about rewatching HB and remembered this scene. Someone has to have come up with some theories about The Root of Evil - Roo - and this cannibalistic cult family, right?

I remember 5000+1 years ago reading something about 'the cult that killed Alastor's mother' but for the life of me I can't remember whether it was fanon, based off something Vivzie actually said, or I just imagined the whole thing. Either way I'm now thinking about Roo having cults scattered all across Earth in the Hellaverse, and with Vox being speculated to have been a cult leader when he was alive I'm also wondering if he could possibly have been involved in a Roo cult.

Or maybe the writers just thought it was an appropriate word choice for a cartoon-Satanist and I'm reading too much into it, lol. But it would be fun if that was a bit of foreshadowing.

[legendaryrooftopscene]

It feels like Kawi is being very blushing maiden right now but I truly think that will go away after he and Pisaeng have some proper intimacy. A (sober, awake, agreed-to) kiss, maybe even sex. Kawi is lonely, he’s been alone for years and years, he’s barely got friends and he’s not the type for hookups, so this is absolutely his first relationship. It may even be his first time having sex (though in my head, I have a small headcanon of him hiring a sex worker somewhere in his late 20s to lose his virginity to and it’s…nice but he knows what he really wants is an emotional connection during sex *cough demi cough*) and this is his first time realizing he has romantic and sexual feelings for men. Of course right now he’s going to be avoidant and cold and awkward. That’s who Kawi IS. He needs time and Pisaeng’s warmth to thaw him a little, to experience intimacy in a safe way, with a person he trusts to take care of him, and then he’ll be just fine. I’m thinking about the moment in the trailer when they’re in bed together, shirtless, and Kawi hesitates and then grabs pisaeng’s hand. I think that will be the turning point for them and I expect a lot less blushing maiden after that.

[badlydrawn-brostrider]

Would you mind elaborating on how exactly bro fought back against cal/ removed him? Unless that’s already been shown and I have yet to find it

In which case sleep is for the weak and tumbr digging is for the strong

/ / It's technically already been shown but I don't mind explaining!!

Throughout the arc Cal hijacks the narrative which are basically Bro's thoughts (Big big example that gave Milo brainrot: "You won't give him up without a fight." Who's narrating this? You (Bro) won't give him (Cal) up without a fight or is it You (Cal) don't give him (Bro) up without a fight?). Pre sburb their thoughts align near perfectly because Bro knows nothing else and there's no point in questioning him, post sburb he's become his own person with his own thoughts that instantly clash with Cal and he KNOWS that what's going on is Not Good. He falls back into the routine because its familiar and he's tired and he doesn't want to keep going through the difficulties of being an actual human- he doesn't actually WANT to become the way he used to be, its a trauma response.

The fighting back is more about mental strength like... What he didn't know/closed his eyes to back then vs what he knows now. He's actively questioning Cal's control and trying to take back little bits and pieces of the narrative, fighting back for full control of his body against Cal's strings. He Wants to be his own person and keep his family safe, he doesn't want to be a puppet, and that affects Cal's control on him

[catmanbowser]

injursd my hand. Forgot abt it and went to wash my hair feeling like it's been dipped in acid when using shampoo lmfao

[clannfearrunt]

mark my fucking worms i will become the king of flossing this upcoming year. an absolute fucking god of flossing every night. WITH physical string. doctors orders he said I in particular need streings

[hooved]

picked out what kandi (+ other bracelets) i wanna wear to the rave i'm going to on friday and took some quick shitty pictures with flash because the lighting in my room sucks