thereturnofthem - Tumblr blog

[thereturnofthem]

When you bring the "Dark is at least 1/3rd Actors ex-wife' fact into account.

The ship of Y/N and Dark gets infinitely funner in retrospect.

I don't care how dormant Celine is in the supernatural sorta system that makes up Dark. Imagine you're Actor, and this guy who got inadvertently WASTED by your half cooked revenge plan comes back to life, and at some point in your attempt to woo this person to your side, they end up breaking off and hooking up with the demon that houses the soul of the woman whos infidelity supposedly started this mess.

ACTOR JUST KEEPS TAKING FUCKING L'S AT THIS POINT AND GOD REFUSES TO LET HIM KNOW PEACE.

[thereturnofthem]

Ok but you can twist this concept in so many ways and my mind immediately went to some analog horror shenanigans because lost media is a concept that's just ripe in that genre, and the ANGST-

People know the movies exist, but the only way you could likely find them aside knowing Actor personally is a few small internet movie enthusiast circles.

Or having been there when they were released.

Wilford likely saw a majority of them, but at this point in his life he's forgotten them to where if he saw something from them he'd likely be hit with nothing but a strange pang of nostalgia that would seem to hang in the air for the next few hours before it simply faded again.

Dark would refuse to even talk about it, maybe it's more Damien, maybe it's Celine, but seeing that media again after a near century just makes their blood boil. Mark seemingly had everything going for him and now what? It's like he's a shell of his former self so seeing Actor so, normal, going about the job he loved is like a smack to the face.

And Y/N / DA? Well, from what we've seen, the facade Actor puts on of just being Mark has completely skewed their perception of the man.

And yet, maybe those movies invoke an odd sense of fear, hearing an old song would be enough to seemingly reduce them to tears on the spot and they don't know why. Maybe it's Actors voice, the way he smiles, but they're scared of him and they can't remember why that is, he's dangerous sure, but aside from the pain in their chest they don't have evidence as to what happened.

They'll be ok though, right? I mean, Mark said it was probably nothing, anyways.

Maybe the movies themselves are a sort of memetic hazard at this point, something thats not supposed to be seen and is better left buried in some filing cabinet somewhere untill the film finally rots, but, it never does.

Lets take the movie theater scene in ADWM for example, if Dark can interrupt a seemingly unrelated show, maybe Actor has a bit more presence than one would expect. The films seem to be in astonishing quality even these days, in fact, so much so its like the leading man could just reach out and touch you.

i headcanon that Actor's movies from his time of fame are basically lost media. like, some amount of people knows they existed, but since around WWII, no one has seen them.

and Actor's chilling, owning a copy of every one of his movies, owning copies on anything possible. he has the original tapes, he has them copied to vhs, to cds, digital etc. he's not gonna share tho, why would he? the plebs don't deserve to see his glory.

[thereturnofthem]

Here is CK!Maxwell's re-design!!!!!!

~Some say that if you stare at his coat for long enough you will see the embroidered shadows move....

I designed him to fit the codex and to have an opposite color pallet to Wilson's.

Closeups!!!!!

[thereturnofthem]

I Don't have a damn clue what I'm doing now that I've started working on my Don't Starve AU, (the whole concept of which is just, Post-Encore shadow court nonsense, my self insert is there)

But I vibe with the idea of giving Maxwell a masquerade mask in his design.

Because it fucks, but also it could like, tie into some sort of deep self reflection nonsense I guess. Maxwells still grappling with the fact that he's flipped sides faster than a line cook cranking out over easy eggs and is having a 'Do NOT perceive me' phase.

So, mask.

Ok bye for now.

[thereturnofthem]

Release your inner middle aged white man.

i am a middle aged white man

i am sorry

[thereturnofthem]

Ah, so Damien and Celines family name is finally revealed.

darkiplier the-WHAT NOW?!?!?!

[thereturnofthem]

Alright, this isn't organized but I just watched Nates video about where things are going from here.

And Honestly? Good for him.

I'm just a small potatoes hobby artist but the weight of feeling chained to algorithms and the court of public opinion, feeling obligated to stay on track with your genre of content despite having a whole slew of other project ideas is tiring.

So hearing that Nate is actually going to be able to step away from the current, brand, I guess? He has set up and actually have the time and ability to venture out and do things he wasn't able to before due to time constraints or whatever else is honestly great.

I've been here for a long time, and despite only now stepping out into having an actual blog and doing what I genuinely want to, starting creative projects and shitposting like nobody's business, it's nice to see creators I practically grew with be able to take time to do the things they want to.

So stay fresh, keep on what you wanna do, and throw yourself into a shelf, you too, have time to do the things you want to.

[thereturnofthem]

I found this sign on pintrest and now have the mental image of I.R.I.S putting this up around their containment facilities after Marvin finally interacts with them face to face for the first time.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[thereturnofthem]

Cruel and unusual punishment, free my boy.

I need YOU to get me out of tumblr tv

[thereturnofthem]

Sooooooooooooooooo....

I was looking at my old drawings of the CK AU so I could get the fic accurate.... and I realized Maxwell used to have a mask before I scrapped it. (It was a half comedy-half tragedy mask) But I decided to sketch him with a blank mask instead.... and it... kinda got away from me........

I was also drawing this on discord and multiple friends said I made him too hot..........

[thereturnofthem]

You wanna know what I've been thinking about?

The fact that in ISWM Macks character was supposed to be played by Sean, but due to covid plans had to change.

Anyone else ever think about that?

And the fact there's clearly something wrong with Mack, just like, in general-

Because it makes me speculate on the (probably extremely low) possibility that unstable glitch in the timeline was supposed to be Anti.

That would of been terrifying, but completely in character.

Motherfuckers followed us everywhere else, why not space-

You could make an AU out of that.

((Edit: just realized you could also use that concept to add another layer of SPICE to the "That's not me" situation because Anti can and will, steal a body to impersonate a motherfucker

[thereturnofthem]

I will happily swerve out of my normal range of content to reblog this because I could scream my love for Dead Money as a DLC from the rooftops for hours at a time.

Dead Money emotionally broke me at every turn and I think it's bullshit it gets shelved in a lot of peoples analysis of New Vegas as a whole in favor of the other DLCs (Honest Hearts, I'm looking at you with contempt but I don't have the willpower to open that can of worms)

It's a master class of writing and has so much depth it's insane, Vera is an excellently thought out character and she deserves more respect than she's typically given.

this is extremely niche fallout fandom discourse but as someone who really, really loves the story and characters of Dead Money, i swear to christ that if Vera Keyes wins the "fallout fridged women tournament" poll that's going on, i'm going to snap. anyone voting in this way would probably think that laura palmer was fridged in Twin Peaks just because she's dead. are some people really so poisoned by extremely watered down "media analysis" (so malformed that it can barely be called that), terminal cases of tropebrain, and an insistence on good representation that to merely suggest the value of negative space in a narrative would be to cast pearls before swine? sinclair built the whole casino because he couldn't let go of his love for vera, even though he knew all along that she was planning to betray him, and after she finally came clean about her partnership with dean it couldn't stop them from both dying lonely, regretful, stupid deaths inside of it. dean domino couldn't let go of his grudge against sinclair in which vera was a pawn and so he seethed over it, staring at her immortal hologram, for two hundred years -- she still got inside when he couldn't. vera's secret terminal illness meant that she was going to die anyway, no matter what. the fact that we don't get "vera's side of the story" is intentional because the fact that she became totally absorbed by the casino to haunt it forever as a holographic ghost, as much a part of it in death as she was a part of sinclair and dean's obsessions in life, reduced to reciting a looping script of the casino's promotion or her last desperate moments forever, is also intentional because it is horror and it is tragedy and it is supposed to feel really fucked up and emptying. if you wish that vera could have gotten a better ending then of course you do. even at the ending of the story, if Christine survives, she has been given Vera Keyes' voice and because of Christine's decision to remain in the sierra madre, it's as if Vera Keyes is still chained to this gigantic mausoleum that sinclair carved out for her, but now her famous voice is warning people away from this same fate instead of luring them toward it. this is all A-B-C 1-2-3 baby block stuff to me and yet some of you would still call this "fridging?????" ask for your parents' permission before going online

[thereturnofthem]

I mean, I'm not usually a whore on main.

But Anomaly Found Anti hit me like a sack of bricks and I still haven't recovered.

Lots of anti fangirls huh. That got me thinking, are there people gay for anti? Like i'm referring to males who are simping and giggling and kicking their feet for anti bc i see a lot of the girls side in this field. And hey, whether you're straight or transmasc or enby or intersex whatever, i wanna hear FROM YOU 🫵✅️

[thereturnofthem]

This is a byproduct of me using the 'Chase is Anti' theory in my current WIP, goodnight everybody. ✨️

[thereturnofthem]

Hey, Hey!

Doctor Alexander Glass here with a PSA. ((RANT CW: RPF)

If you write RPF or make artwork in the same vein you're fucking weird.

I genuinely DO NOT know how some of you in the Ego fandom or just enjoy content creators can still make things like that and believe it's completely OK after what happened to a lot of creators.

It's 2024, I don't care if you're a minor, If you're old enough to be on this app, you should have the comprehension skills to understand that shipping real people in an explicit manner is incredibly disrespectful to say the least.

Especially in the most OBVIOUS case.

The two creators involved in the most talked abt example were so heavily impacted by that shit that it caused them to distance each other for a while, they're friends for fucks sake, do you have any understanding about how hard that is?

And I'm also going to point out, that there are a good chunk of accounts with this type of content, who do not tag it as RPF and instead use the main creator tags to put their work under, leading to it popping up on peoples FOR YOU PAGE, and making it so it can't be blocked outrught.

Not everybody wants to he exposed to that, I honestly think it's on the same level as someone not tagging triggering content like violence or hate speech.

Am I being overdramatic? Maybe, but I don't give a shit cause apparently neither do the people doing this.

((PSA OVER))

[thereturnofthem]

I AM HONORED

Holy shit. 😭

Can someone fucking separate these two!? GOD-

[thereturnofthem]

*[sighs]*

Ok, but the fact that you brought this up reminds me of the fact that, yes, I am selectively mute and have access to an AAC device.

But, I am also plagued with absolutely horrific hand tremors after one of my dozens of physical incidents in my life.

Can you picture that-

Being in a dire situation where communication is required and hitting the wrong button entirely because the system you have access to is a touch screen?

You wanna know what direction I'm going?

Too bad bitch, I'm talking about soup now, because my hands exist to spite me.

Signed,

A very tired DA

HC for selectively mute captain... I think they have an AAC device on their arm-padd, and know a lot of sign language. Obviously the "i know your speeches tend to get people riled up captain" + the crew sitting in awkward silence for 40 seconds while the captain stares blankly at them is just a mute protagonist joke, but it would also make logical sense in this context