#this will do

[corporationsarepeople]

[vulchak]

Y'know them October drawing challenges? I'm starting one of those

It's called "Draw whatever you want, but every day in October"

Basically I wanted to do a challenge but I can't be bothered to follow a prompt list, so I'm drawing one character each day and the only rules I've set for myself are:

1. They have to have/be doing something related to halloween or fall

2. It has to be a different character each day

That's it. It can be just a doodle, a sketch, a character in a white void, we don't set hard rules here, we're chill.

For mine, It's not all gonna be Sonic, this is just who I'm starting with

Feel free to try this yourself I guess, tag me if you do, it would be cool to see and let's find out if I can actually complete this thing

[catgam]

not too hard 🥺

[cellarspider]

Since I’ve been thinking about it all morning: here. A partial introduction to my favorite villain.

In the days of yore, when I was a teenager and video game hype was almost exclusively magazine-based, I saw a kid reading a copy of Game Informer.

“Hey,” said I, “could I see that for a second?”

The kid, not knowing what they were about to unleash, handed me the magazine.

I had seen this on the cover:

I had no idea what this was, but I knew that I wanted whatever it was selling.

I found out that this was an advertisement for City of Villains, an expansion to the previously-released MMO City of Heroes. I’d never played WoW with its Alliance and Horde split, so the idea was new to me. WoW also failed to present me with anything like the vibes of the newly-introduced lead villain, Lord Recluse.

Yes, they liked this art so much they did it twice, and I’m glad they did. More below the fold on why he was so appealing for a young queer kid, for those who are intrigued.

I’ll keep this focused on a single topic for now: The intensely queer vibes that Recluse acquired over the course of the game’s plot. Keep in mind that this game came out in 2004, so the actual amount of openly queer content was very minimal. However, CoH/CoV developed a reputation as an extremely queer-friendly space, with a community Pride event becoming a semi-official yearly celebration, complete with the devs showing up as major NPCs, custom assets, and spawning in unique raids that tanked everybody’s framerate. Equivalents of this have carried over past the game's tragic shutdown in 2012, with community-run servers still staging their own Pride events.

If the art above doesn’t make it clear, Recluse had a much-beloathèd archnemesis, Statesman. If the art above doesn’t make it abundantly clear, this was always an extremely fraught relationship, with a complicated backstory that became more and more tragic the deeper you got into the game lore, eventually bordering on cosmic horror. But one thing was for certain, this was Hark A Vagrant levels of obsession over a nemesis.

The game at first seemed to backstep on that: oh, it turned out, Recluse had once been villainous life partners with a woman who went by the villain name Red Widow. She died decades ago in the collateral damage of one of Recluse’s nigh apocalyptic confrontations with Statesman, and her death left him with nothing but his obsession. So sad.

And then when Statesman died in the course of the game’s plot, Recluse spiraled into depression and nihilism that was only halted when someone managed to dig Red Widow’s soul out of storage and resurrected her.

It was always deniably presented, but the implication was very much that the two were functionally equivalent emotional anchors to his psyche, and losing both of them was something he couldn’t survive.

Also, there was that one time that the game’s Valentine’s Day event was advertised with a heart split down the middle, half Statesman’s iconography and half Recluse’s, topped with a banner that read “AMOR OMNIA VINCIT”, meaning “LOVE CONQUERS ALL”.

And that’s without getting into the first tie-in book. A prequel starting at the end of the 1920s, it was a delightfully and deliberately pulpy book, which… centered around a complicated man slowly dying of lingering health problems after his exposure to mustard gas in WWI, and his very good friend, estranged from his family for unknown reasons, who’d devoted the last ten years to caring for the protagonist, and helping him seek a cure. This has carried on year after year, even though the man’s illness has made him unresponsive to the emotional needs of others, something they both know is going to culminate one day in the two parting ways.

…And then they get superpowers, and their relationship does not get any healthier from there. But what it does gain is a surprising trans metaphor as our now-antagonist slowly metamorphoses into the spidery villain I know and love.

I completely missed this back in the day. I have no idea if it was intentional. But there’s a scene where this man looks in the mirror and sees the first signs of his oncoming physical transformation, and he likes what he sees. He has no idea where he’s going, but he’s excited for it.

…And he’s started killing people who refer to him by his former name, in the most literal case of “dead naming” I’ve ever seen.

Throughout the rest of the series, Recluse is unapologetically who he is, putting him in that category of queercoded villain that doubles as a power fantasy. He’s grown physically monstrous and loves it. He has respect from everyone around him, either legitimately for his capabilities or out of fear of what he can do to those who don’t give him his due. A new demigod who is only matched by the man he’s never stopped obsessing over. He wins just as often as he loses, and often salvages something from his defeats in ways that nobody expected.

He is terrible. And he is wonderful.

[rozugold]

If you were going to write a happy ending for c!tommy what would it look like

You mean you want me to ramble about the ending I’ve made in my head that specifically caters to me? Because I will ramble about the ending that specifically caters to me

So. Wilbur still leaves* and Tommy spirals and becomes deadest on killing Dream. He believes that all of his problems will be solved once he’s is out of the picture. He gets Tubbo and they jump Dream, run over to Punz, he reverses it and they capture clingyduo. Same as canon. (But I would change some dialogue that really bothered me, like the revive book having mind control powers and of course the staged disc finale.)

Clingy duo escape at the sacrifice of Tommy’s discs I guess. They come up with the nuke plan but instead of blowing up the prison Tommy plans on leading them out to logstedshire to cause the least damage. (Since I still think it’s really stupid that changing the trajectory of the nuke just slightly to the left would destroy the whole server. As if just hitting the prison wouldn’t cause the same amount of damage??)

(Also while we’re here Jack wouldn’t be involved in any of this because I hc his issues got sorted out during the stream where he blew up the hotel. He was able to get his closure and move on, don’t ask me how justwaituntiligettohiminpaintedillusions cough cough) Anyways.

Tommy sorta hits his lowest. He prepares to die. He dons his full L’Manburg uniform for the occasion (because the idea of him always planning to be buried in his uniform makes me lose my mind) At this point he thinks he’s lost everything. He’s ready to go down with the ship. At least he thinks he is…

Tubbo says totems won’t save him but he offers Tommy one anyways because he hopes he’s wrong. And Tommy takes it because he hopes he’s wrong too.

Tommy sets off to get the grilled cheese duo and succeeds in leading them to logstedshire. How? Uhh maybe he snuck in the prison with invisibility and yoinked a book from them. Something drastic enough to scare them into chasing after him.

They make it to logstedshire and I won’t go too into it because I’m making an animatic to better explain all this but Tommy is determined to go down laughing and Dream takes some L’s.

Nuke hits, Logstedshire is destroyed Dream and punz are dead and Tommy is alive. Tommy is alive and that shakes him up a bit. I don’t think it fully hits him until the next day. But physically he’s okay minus the new glittery golden streak in his hair (it’s barely noticeable unless he’s in the sun which I think is funny. Gets a cool hairstreak and it’s not even that visible, how unfair!)

Then we get to the fun part! A slow and thorough journey of Tommy unpacking all the shit he went through. Because surprise! Killing Dream didn’t solve everything like he hoped it would. The happy ending is that Tommy is given the chance to work towards his happy ending, yknow?

I imagine that when he hit his lowest point, yknow preparing to die, that he doesn’t quite leave that point. He thinks he does because he’s running off the adrenaline of finally defeating Dream. But he doesn’t quite realize how unfair and dangerous it was for him to have to do that in the first place. And in time he starts to realize that with Tubbo’s help (and maybe other characters help too, maybe Wilbur hears about what happened and comes back, of course there’s Quackity too. All the people who care about Tommy come to support him but they’re too late. They’re too late and have to realize that. They weren’t there for Tommy when he needed them but they’re here now.)

Tldr: What would a happy ctommy ending look like if I wrote it? Dream dies, and Tommy sets off on the journey to unpack all his trauma and learn how to find his happiness with his small support system. (So basically what I’m doing with Painted Illusions sksjjdj)

Also to be clear this is just the little world/au that lives in my head. This isn’t what I wanted the real ending to be. I don’t think all these ideas are very feesible in the medium of streaming. So if you had asked me what I think should’ve been done differently with the finales I would have a different answer.

*I still dislike the fact that Wilbur left at all. I feel like his story would’ve been stronger if he had stayed and healed. But for the sake of this specific ending he’d have to leave for Tommy to go to spiral the way he does

[thepenultimateword]

Polls for absolutely no reason except that I like them way too much

[bunnies-and-sunshine]

Not too shabby.

You make a pretty okay pillow, Scoots McGee!

[webginz]

[bnesszai]

hihihihi its squish Im EATING up the sol ness war idk how the prompts you guys are exchanging work but if it's alright I'd like to offer a line I heard recently

'You control my right to die'

but as skk beast or not :D

SQUUUUISH! Of course you can join the madness 💚

"You control my right to die.*

It isn't the first time Chuuya has said it. Dazai has even echoed the sentiment before somewhere between watching Chuuya cough blood and grabbing his wrist to quiet Arahabaki.

It is the first time, though, where Dazai meets his gaze dead on and says, "You have no idea."

[rivataichou]

some scouts’ lives are more valuable than others , only those dumb enough to acknowledge that join us.

ind. & sel. levi ackerman of attack on titan. canon / headcanon based + personal ideas. loved by gumi.

[elistilldoodles]

Ahhh here I begin tagging @vaultgirl2077 in the most unhinged way I know, showing affection ಥ◡ಥ

[adhdo5]

ATTENTION: DEFICIENT

PROBABILITY: DISTRIBUTED

TOKI: PONA

[marciego]

new ask game, it's called dropping random thoughts on the sillies in my inbox and i think everyone should participate <3

[arcandoria]

I miss Farren and Charon again and might actually re-work Farren and build Charon from ground-up in Cyberpunk now that I know how to do it

[superat626]

Gotta get that twin chicken bucket combo deal.

the Samuel twins belong to @yunisverse , who I believe also brought up College au.