#though the tags are pretty on point--

[oxygen-stealer]

They call me the mimr

[badninken]

let's go

[swhhdr-wthhr]

i know i haven't uploaded a new chapter for this fic in over half a year... and i probably won't any time soon... but here's some lore explained w/ virgil

[cent-scratchnsniff]

MALUTHHH!!!!

[buwheal]

Hello, Spamton!

How's life? Also, do you have any opinions on the Addisons? (Pink, blue, orange, and yellow)

If so, what do you think of them?

[fungus-no69]

Pc fucking dies and the Ivory Wraith possesses them

It/they pronouns for Ivory Wraith, you/your for reader

Ummm warnings for death obv, a bit of gore/body horror, possession, iw kind of touches you a bit, very very brief mention of necrophilia at the end. It's dol what do you want from me.

You always found your way back to the lake.

It had washed you ashore this time, not something completely unheard of, but certainly not a common occurrence either. Generally, nothing larger than a basketball could get through the ruins.

The Wraith stares down at your unmoving form, it cannot feel the thrumming of your heartbeat in its chest. You seem unusually dishevelled.

Strange.

It touches your chest, where their necklace would have rested and finds no reaction.

It moves closer, so that its hair tickles your face. Nothing.

It presses your lips together, an action that would have you in agony, head ringing and leaving parts of you hollowed out-  waking you up, surely, and yet it finds not a single twitch. So it focuses the entirety of its mind on the physical state of its obsession. The ‘reincarnation’.

The stench that emanates from your body is foul, similar to that of the dead fish that wind up in the ruins occasionally- or the flesh left by hunters collecting flies before other scavengers can reach them.

There’s almost a moment where it feels a familiar sinking feeling not intertwined with rage (so tightly inextricable they were one in the same)- it sees the pallid skin, the rigidity set into your joints, slightly open eyes that see nothing. It recognises what happened for what it is. There is despair, longing, anger, denial and then it all combines before fizzling out entirely.

It is familiar with death, has seen many come and go. Both in life and it’s death. You were, of course, no exception but it foolishly believed that you would live.

You were an orphan, you would not receive a proper burial. It touches your skin and does not recoil as it peels away under their soiled fingers.

It possesses you, as it has done many times before- but there is no longer any ‘you’ to speak of. They almost miss the initial, instinctive terror that send your heart racing and made them feel like they were something tangible again.

Your body had not yet fully decomposed, was simply water damaged and set with the typical signs of death. Nothing that they couldn’t fix with time. 

Your- their appendages move slowly at first, rigid with the muscle tension of a cooling body. It is more difficult to manoeuvre a puppet with no knowledge of how to move. One foot in front of the other, skin peeling away and staying caught on debris. Excretions of liquid almost trailing behind them. They will manage.

Their reflection catches their eye, well- metaphorical eye since your- their body was no longer capable of seeing. A shell, a poor imitation of life. Yet believable if not for the almost glow of their eyes- unnatural. As they stagger through the forest to an unknown destination, they come across a lumberjack who expresses what they’re guessing is concern. They cannot hear through the sounds that seem like they’re underwater. Would it be defilement if they allowed your body to be used? No… that’s a question for another time.

You are not allowed to rest yet. You would continue on, as one.

[taravangians-storming-balls]

Is it an unpopular opinion that I think Moash is aggressively bi?

[decamarks]

HIIIII you feel like the right person to ask abt this (esp since i originally heard abt 3d workers island from you). do you know of any horror stuff that's in a similar manner to that? clicking through old webpages and stuff. i'm not sure how to explain it but even if i didn't really Get 3dwi i really liked the experience of it

Hmm... I'm not actually sure if I can think of much else along these lines, aside from, like, lomando.com—though this differs considerably in its sort of "adventure" style gameplay, and it lacks the linear story that 3dwi.scr has. There's almost certainly something more alike out there, but I don't keep up with web horror that much... If anyone else has suggestions, I'd like to hear them as well!

[halopako]

meows

ive been meaning to make a robot character (or characters) for a long time so yayyy ^-^

i think the design is a bit basic so i might change it sometime soon. but its more about the concept than the physical appearance so i dont really mind!! i had this idea a few days ago and ive been thinking about it a lot. plus i love the color palette of some older macos computers

i dont know what to name either of them, though,,, suggestions are welcome! i couldnt come up with anything really. i almost went with Byte and Bit but i thought it was a little on the nose, i guess. maybe ill go with something to do with 1s and 0s. definitely names that go together in some way

[moeblob]

I think it's worth noting that NONE of the humans have names yet but the white cat? Her name is Jezebel. And her human man loves her very, very much. And always refers to her formally by name. Whether simply Jezebel, Lady Jezebel, Master Jezebel, etc. But his wife calls her Jez sometimes and he's like "I can't believe the most important women in my life are so close. I'm so lucky, honey. I love you both"

Also their eyes all have a sort of uniqueness to them! Even the top guy who has regular looking pupils has a lore behind it.

[serpentface]

Do you conlang? I was wondering if you had naming languages (or possibly even more developed ones) for pulling the words you use. I tried to search your blog but didn't find anything, wouldn't be surprised if the feature is just busted tho. Your worldbuilding is wonderful and I particularly enjoy the anthropological and linguistic elements.

Ok the thing is I had kind of decided I was not going to do any conlanging because I don't feel like I'm equipped to do a good job of it, like was fully like "I'm just going to do JUST enough that it doesn't fail an immediate sniff test and is more thoughtful than just keysmashing and putting in vowels". And then have kinda been conlanging anyway (though not to a very deep and serious extent. I maybe have like....an above average comprehension of how language construction works via willingness to research, but that's not saying much, also I can never remember the meanings of most linguistic terms like 'frictives' or etc off the top of my head. I'm just kinda raw dogging it with a vague conceptualization of what these things mean)

I do at least have a naming language for Wardi (and more basic rules for other established languages) but the rudimentary forms of it were devised with methods much shakier and less linguistically viable than even the most basic naming language schemes, and I only went back over it LONG after I had already made a bunch of words so there's some inconsistencies with consonant presence and usage. (This can at least be justified because it IS a language that would have a lot of loanwords and would be heavily influenced by other language groups- Burri being by far the most significant, Highland-Finnic and Yuroma-Lowlands also being large contributors)

The 'method' I used was:

-Skip basic construction elements and fully move into devising necessary name words, with at least a Vibe of what consonants are going to be common and how pronunciation works -Identify some roots out of the established words and their meanings. Establish an ongoing glossary of known roots/words. -Construct new words based in root words, or as obvious extensions/variants of established words. -Get really involved in how the literal meanings of some words might not translate properly to english, mostly use this to produce a glossary of in-universe slang. -Realize that I probably should have at least some very basic internal consistency at this point. -Google search tutorials on writing a naming language. -Reverse engineer a naming language out of established words, and ascribe all remaining inconsistencies to being loanwords or just the mysteries of life or whatever.

I do at least have some strongly established pronunciation rules and a sense of broad regional dialect/accents.

-'ai' words are almost always pronounced with a long 'aye' sound.

-There is no 'Z' or 'X' sound, a Wardi speaker pronouncing 'zebra' would go for 'tsee-brah', and would attempt 'xylophone' as 'ssye-lohp-hon'

-'V' sounds are nearly absent and occur only in loanwords, and tend to be pronounced with a 'W' sound. 'Virsum' is a Highland word (pronounced 'veer-soom') denoting ancestry, a Wardi speaker would go 'weer-sum'.

-'Ch' spellings almost always imply a soft 'chuh' sound when appearing after an E, I, or O (pelatoche= pel-ah-toh-chey), but a hard 'kh' sound after an A or U (odomache= oh-doh-mah-khe). When at the start of a word, it's usually a soft 'ch' unless followed by an 'i' sound (chin (dog) is pronounced with a hard K 'khiin', cholem (salt) is pronounced with a soft Ch 'cho-lehm')

-Western Wardin has strong Burri cultural and linguistic influence, and a distinct accent- one of the most pronounced differences is use of the ñ sound in 'nn' words. The western city of Ephennos is pronounced 'ey-fey-nyos' by most residents, the southeastern city of Erubinnos is pronounced 'eh-roo-been-nos' by most residents. Palo's surname 'Apolynnon' is pronounced 'A-puh-lee-nyon' in the Burri and western Wardi dialects (which is the 'proper' pronunciation, given that it's a Kos name), but will generally be spoken as 'Ah-poh-leen-non' in the south and east.

-R's are rolled in Highland-Finnic words. Rolling R's is common in far northern rural Wardi dialects but no others. Most urban Wardi speakers consider rolling R's sort of a hick thing, and often think it sounds stupid or at least uneducated. (Brakul's name should be pronounced with a brief rolled 'r', short 'ah' and long 'uul', but is generally being pronounced by his south-southeastern compatriots with a long unrolled 'Brah' sound).

Anyway not really a sturdy construction that will hold up to the scrutiny of someone well equipped for linguistics but not pure bullshit either.

[moonfurthetemmie]

I was tossing @shroudedinsilver's Fell!SwapDream hi silver around and started wondering what a fell swapdream would be like if it followed the entirely arbitrary rules me and wheeze had made up for fell AUs.

Specifically, the true villain(s) of the original becomes the only genuinely nice one(s). or at least, they try to be nice.

Just to be clear, this isn't supposed to be a 'better' or 'more correct' Fell!SD. I'm playing with the barbies and looking at it at a different angle. i love rahab and venom and it'd be obnoxiously pretentious to think i, who only knows Swapdream lore from second-hand sources, could do a "better" Fell!SD that Silver, who actually interacted with the source material. Also have you met rahab and venom

But. I have some half-baked story and some slightly more baked idiots

I don't have a proper name for the AU yet. and I can't call it Fell!Swapdream because that's obviously already taken. i guess i could call it Swapfell dreamtale. but that sounds weird to me. and lets be real, Dreamswap and Swapdream get confused enough; we don't need to also have a Fellswapdream and Swapfelldream

But anyway. here's my new morons. Frenzy (left) and Enmity (right)

An incredibly long time ago, there was a magic tree. You all know how this part of the tale goes.

Frenzy eventually ate the apples. Working on the exact 'why' still

Here, the Magic apples are like normal food, in that they give you lots of energy. But they give it instantly, and they have way more energy than a normal apple. The enormous burst of energy pushes him into a very destructive mania, and it lasts for months. The influx of so much potent magic isn’t helping, either.

He eventually gets it out of his system, and comes to his senses. He’s horrified by what he's done.

Enmity doesn’t really care about the balance, after everything he’s been put through just for his job. But he likes being alive, so he tries to maintain it so the multiverse doesn’t get wrecked and take him with it.

So he'd been following Frenzy around, trying to deal with him with very little idea of how. He mostly got his ass whooped; more out of carelessness than malice on Frenzy's part. That said, it was intentional, once because Enmity wouldn't get out of the way. He's got a lovely scar to show for it now.

He’d been afraid he may have to kill Frenzy to do it. Frenzy, his own brother, who’d been the only person who loved him for their whole lives until the incident.

He was still trying to come to terms with this fact when he found Frenzy, alone, crying incoherently. When Frenzy notices that he's there, he turns around and for the first time in ages, Enmity senses guilt from him. But he looks so relieved to see Enmity. He tells Enmity he has no idea what had gotten into him, why he'd done any of that, and- oh, god. that scar. He did that, didn't he? how could he...?

To say that Enmity is relieved is an understatement. He tosses out any ideas of killing his brother and just does his best to comfort him and tell him it'll be okay. Which isn't very easy when just standing too close makes Enmity's body and soul start burning.

They talk for a bit. Enmity changes the subject from what Frenzy did to some interesting things that he saw during his travels, to distract him and cheer him up. Once Frenzy's calmed down, though, he tells Enmity that he needs to fix this mess he's made. But...how? He's hurt so many people, but the balance is tipped too far to his side--the positive side--and trying to fix the other mess is just going to make people happy...

Enmity has a wonderful idea. And by wonderful i mean he's gonna have lots and lots of fun with it.

They are now traveling their MV, terrorizing the populace. There's much less death and destruction that during Frenzy's initial manic episode, but everyone's misery is slowly, slowly balancing the scales. very slowly. It'll be a long time before it's fully fixed, unless they can create (or maybe even invite) a huge source of negative magic. And Frenzy...as effective as Enmity's plan is, he doesn't want to hurt people more.

but he wants to start a fight with enmity even less.

his brother is all he has. He's already hurt him once. He can't do it again. He can't lose him.

anyway they're having a great time and definitely aren't toxic and codependent. at least they're still close...?

Dream: Frenzy

His real name in-universe is still 'Dream'. 'Frenzy' is the nickname he gets if he has to interact with any other variant of himself.

He still gets that some sort of mania if he’s somewhere very positive, and especially if he has lots of energy, but it’s nowhere near as strong as the first time. He still has some of his wits about him.

He nearly killed his brother in his first manic episode, and will occasionally still seriously hurt—usually out of carelessness, rather than doing it intentionally—during the lesser, infrequent ones he gets now. But he can’t stand the idea of Enmity abandoning him, and when the mania fades he bends over backwards to try to make it up to Enmity.

He will say and promise anything to Enmity to keep him from leaving. He can’t imagine Enmity seriously has forgiven him for what he’s done to him. Unfortunately this also means that, on the exceedingly rare occasions that Enmity seems to be making a friend, he’ll do everything in his power to quietly get rid of them. What if they convince Enmity that he needs to get away from Frenzy…?

He and Enmity can’t touch without it severely hurting Enmity. His aura is honestly too much but he can tone it down some so it’s bearable. He misses being able to hug his brother

Easily spooked, even though he can sense people's emotions and therefore should notice someone approaching before he can even see them. Hard to get him to fight, though; unless it's his brother asking

His left (viewer's right) eye is mostly blind, but he gets along ok for the most part. His depth perception's a little off, though, and...well. windows are a bit of a problem.

His memory is kinda fucked, too. At first he and Enmity thought it was just that he couldn't remember everything that happened when he was in a manic state, but no. his memory is just horrible now

Design notes:

his hair is a little singed. just a tad. it used to be longer, many years ago...

Many scars also; burns and punctures and cuts.

hehe fancy coat

the wings are hawk wings!

His crown should still act like a halo, but heroforge only gives me one kind of halo

Ideally, his wings would be so bright as to be blinding in the second picture. but they're as bright as they can be, and i'd adjusted the first too many times already

His chain weapons can be blunt or bladed. Both have their own strengths. He has to really concentrate to switch without de-summoning them first, so he rarely switches when in a fight. He can't use both at once. They're both present here for illustrative purposes.

His left (viewer's right) eye changes when he's using his magic, or when he's in a manic state. usually both happen at once but not always.

Nightmare: Enmity

His real name in-universe is still 'Nightmare'. 'Enmity' is the nickname he gets if he has to interact with any other variant of himself.

Much as he likes being alive, he hates people. And his idea of fixing the balance is terrorizing the populace. He loves it, and has no idea why Frenzy hesitates.

He always forgives Frenzy for hurting him. Always. It doesn’t matter the circumstances. He wants his brother to be happy enough to stay with him. He's just as terrified of losing his brother as Frenzy is, so he wants to make sure Frenzy knows that Enmity still loves him.

While Frenzy clearly hates it, Enmity has discovered that triggering minor manic episodes is an excellent way to “adjust” the balance. A positive place is no longer positive! Everyone’s upset! Mission accomplished. He makes sure to always tell Frenzy that he’s proud of him afterwards, too.

He hates that he has to leave Frenzy semi-often for his own safety, so Frenzy’s aura doesn’t kill him. He also misses hugs but he doesn’t know just how desperate Frenzy is for physical affection

Hard to unsettle, easy to goad into fighting you.

His vision in his right (viewer's left) eye isn’t completely gone, but it’s not…normal. He’s still not sure what he’s seeing through it, but at least it’s not giving him a headache. As much.

(What he sees are people’s auras; a mix of soul traits and emotions. While monsters don’t have strong or notable traits that differ from each other under normal circumstances, they can still be particularly determined, brave, kind, etc. it’s not terribly useful to him right now, but it’s a result of Frenzy’s magic getting stuck in his eye)

Design notes:

I wanted to imitate one of the reaper poses in FFXIV (the second one shown here, with the spinning scythe) but it's kinda hard to pull off the spinning without actual motion, and I'm not good at implying motion most of the time without like. motion lines

white hair

One big scar on his face, and it’s from Frenzy. This is why his vision's fucky

He still has a scythe, and that seems to scare people the most so he uses it the most. He still has a sword, but it's been so long since he's used it that he usually forgets about it nowadays

Needs to have freedom of movement, so he wears lightweight clothes.

Much like with Frenzy and the original SwaN and SwaD, his eyes change when he's using his magic. His right (viewer's left) is uh...still fucked up. pretty though

that's a ponytail. his hair's not just slicked back

Other notes:

i want them to be able to shift into animals but i want to be silly and do something other than a bird and a snake. that said i have no idea what I'd do

i forgor SwaN's fighting a bunch of corrupted magic in his system. i feel like sticking close to Frenzy is helping Enmity somewhat, but it's probably. not the best option.

enmity's fucked up eye hurts all the time. some days it hurts worse than others, and just how much it hurts is directly caused by how long he's been hanging out around his brother. At best, it causes a dull migraine. At worst, it burns like hell and he can't focus on anything else. The only thing he can do is sit/lay down and rest, away from Frenzy and his aura.

honestly enmity should be having a lot more problems from hanging around frenzy so much but it'll be figured out eventually

probably

If for some reason they end up somewhere and Frenzy is entirely without his magic. one of them is getting carried around. because frenzy's not letting go of enmity. enmity's totally fine with this

neither of them like the other making new friends. they're afraid that said new friends are going to convince the other they're better off without each other; Frenzy's afraid Enmity will be convinced that he should never have trusted Frenzy again after hurting him, and Enmity's afraid Frenzy will be convinced that he shouldn't stick with Enmity if he's pushing Frenzy to do something he doesn't like to do.

they do not realize the other is just as bad as they are about it

they're very protective of each other. but frenzy panics a lot more and if something happens to enmity there's going to be a lot of corpses and ash

[boxbug]

who is a person who is three?

fanart for @theminecraftbee ‘s fic ‘solving counting sheep’ which i read in a single sitting. me when stories about identity <3

also fun fact i had another version of the watcher’s mask up until the finishing touches basically. the reason for this was that i misread ‘plain white oval with a symbol on it’ as ‘with a plain white oval on it’. somehow. i may be dumb

i now know the mask is supposed to be black on white but i’m not repainting the whole thing </3 the harlequin mask barely looks like a harlequin so we’re taking some liberties here anyways

[peachyhoneyadventures]

EDOLISSE AND VARRICK

These Hands, If Not Gods by Natalie Diaz | Still from When A Man Loves (1927) | Snippet from Richard Siken's "Crush" | Still From The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) | Poem from Margaret Atwood's "You are Happy"

[warpstarsims]

barely posting him in the nick of time, but!! everyone meet markie the unicorn, designed for the Lisa Frank theme on @gloomiegalaxies femboy friday challenge! i had a lot of fun designing him! ^_^ hope you like him as much as I do :)

[feroluce]

So I went to the wiki page for the henghill Bullet & Brain mission of 2.2 looking for some dialogue I had missed and

a) I found something incredibly tasty that slotted into some other thoughts I'd been having, more on that on another day, and

b) I saw this super fun little trivia at the bottom, which!

I knew Penacony characters like Boothill took a lot of inspirations from old movies, but I didn't realize it was even in his and Dan Heng's relationship, that's so cool!!

It fits them very well, it's such a fun reference. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" was an old buddy Western film (from 1969- nice) about a pair of outlaws. Butch Cassidy was the leader of a gang, and described as clever, affable, and talkative. Meanwhile, his closest companion, the Sundance Kid, was known as a man of few words.

Cassidy's original birth name was much more plain, but similar to Boothill, he took on a new moniker when he became an outlaw. "Cassidy" had been the last name of his beloved mentor, who taught him how to shoot and ride. And Sundance Kid was known as he was because Sundance was the name of his hometown, and it was the only place that had ever managed to catch and jail him, back when he'd been younger (also similar to Dan Heng, but ouch).

These two stick together like glue throughout the length of the film- through Cassidy's leadership of the gang being challenged, through a train robbery gone wrong, through being pursued by mercenaries, and even through fleeing to Bolivia and trying to start over together.

I don't want to say too much more, since the mission title is referencing one specific movie that I've never seen. I kinda wanna watch it now, though, just to see the inspiration that went into Boothill and Dan Heng and how they get along. I just think it's really sweet that these two were literally made to be the best of bros, how lovely is that. 💕