#AND THEN ONE MONTH UNTIL METALOCALYPSE…

[taibobo]

Whoa! easy boy!

down boy!

down!

I MISSED HIM.

[valiantkix]

This guy bites my ankles and causes problems

[lampmeeting]

Just a couple weeks until the end of September, so you know what that means!

Kloktober is almost upon us! 🎃🦇

What is Kloktober?: An incredibly zazzy event taking place in October where we celebrate all things Metalocalypse. There’s a prompt for every day of the month to interpret as you see fit! Draw, write, cosplay, make memes, whatever you like - all forms of participation are welcome!

How do I participate?: Make your totally brutal creation inspired by the day’s prompt and post it using the tag #kloktober2024 - it’s just that simple! Post it here, post it to Twitter, post it to AO3, post it to Instagram, wherever you usually post your creative stuff!

But am I allowed to–YUP, ANYTHING GOES! There are no wrong answers during Kloktober! ✨ However you decide to interpret a prompt, it's valid! If you only want to do a few days, or even just manage to do one, that’s also completely valid. Please don't burn yourself out or stress, this is for fun!

What if I don't vibe with one of the prompts? No worries! If there's a prompt that doesn't suit you, please feel free to reach back in time and choose a prompt from a previous year's Kloktober (2023, 2022, 2021, or 2020). And as always, if you have any questions about anything, hit me up!

(plain text version of the prompts are below for anyone who needs them!)

your favorite character

your favorite relationship

horror movie crossover

dressed to kill

use a self-insert or OC

road trip or drug trip

furryklok or demonklok

a favorite headcanon

use someone's parents

bravery or cowardice

inspired by your culture

tattoos or piercings

create-a-skwigelf

use a Halloween treat

one year after AOTD

costume party or sleepover party

use the ghost of a dead character

palling around with another band

what if they never got famous?

Abigail Appreciation Day!

use two character who never met

too much booze or too much sugar

Dethklok as a different music genre

fix them or make them worse

inspired by a metal song

post-apocalypse or cyberpunk

bring back a one-off character

conspiracy theory or propaganda

birthday or funeral

HALLOWEEN!!!

YOUR choice!

[chewing-drywall]

METALOCALYPSE HEADCANNONS

(Part 1/??)

Buckle in yall this will be a long ass post

TOKI WARTOOTH

Earlyklok! Toki

-the most sincerely homophobic in the beginning. You don't just get raised the way he's been and not have some WILD ass beliefs about the world, he eventually unlearns it but being surrounded by dude bros who constantly call things gay as an insult and his tendency to take things litterally DONT help. And it's not like active hate or anything it's just getting raised that gay people are sinners and are gonna burn in hell is definitely a topic you gotta make an effort to unlearn.

-seeing two girls kissing on the streets of florida for the first time??? SHOCKED, litterally did a full head swivel to check if anyone else had seen it and imploded when no one seemed to be as surprised at he was

-Doesnt really even understand why the rest of the band likes casual sex so much, it feels good but at first he thought it was strange there were all of these girl fawning over a him, a technical stranger, and he just goes along with it.

- got his ears pierced about 4 months into earlyklok sitting on the ledge of their shared apartments crusty bathtub

they were all packed into the tiny bathroom, talking over eachother, the room thick with weed smoke, skwisgaar perched over him in the bathtub holding his head straight

pickles did it with a safety pin and an icecube, joint hanging off his lips as he squinted in concentration

Toki didn't flinch, didn't even stop talking to Nathan about the newest Cannibal corpse album that Nathan wanted to buy a cd of

He liked the feeling of skwisgaars hands engulfing his face, it was a touch that wasn't cruel. Plus knowing that the best guitarist he's ever heard in his whole life hands were soft was a fact that he's gonna ingrain into his head.

Murderface and Nathan actually looked mildly concerned at tokis complete lack of reaction

- the kid will offhandedly say really cryptic shit, through broken English and weird reactions to what they think is normal stuff. the band gets the gist that they'd have to be a hell of a lot drunker to handle his truth (toki: oh don't worry I'm used to the dark! :), everyone else:👀)

-got a lip piercing but didn't take care of it properly, so of course it got infected and had to be taken out

-this is when he starts age regressing but doesn't realize he's doing it,

-he'd watch a kids cartoon in complete silence until the season ends and it's the only way to keep him completely still and quiet

-is attracted to bright and colorful things even if it gets him made fun off by the guys, secretly LOVES Lisa frank art

Regular adult toki

-AUTISM AUTISM AUTISM

HATES tables that aren't clean, when it's noticeably sticky or there's crumbs that stick to his arms when he leans on the table

-same with the feeling of spilt beer, has gotten used to it over the years but the feeling of dried sticky beer still has his skin crawling

-has drunken bong water as a dare (all of them have as some point but still)

-has also smoked weed through his nose (again on a dare)!

-if you look really close into his eyes, his eyes go so light blue it looks pale yellow

-very very kind and pretty eyes, the downwards slope of them make him look sad with a neutral face

-LONG AND THICK EYELASHES

-works out mostly regularly to keep his shape, he gets too energetic for the others to handle so it's a good way to blow off some steam

-Likes the idea of wearing feminine stuff, skirts seem sooooo comfortable but doesn't wear them cause yknow the teasing would be absolutely relentless

-medium thickness chewed on lips, does it mindlessly

-knows hes capable of incredible violence, the band is also very aware and whenever he gets legitimately pissed off during a argument (like a genuine, seriously bad argument) they'll usually just back off and wait to bring it up later when toki doesn't look like he's three seconds away from curbstomping them

-FAT crush on Nathan but for some reason gets really shy around it??

-Nathan will compliment him and toki will deadass write with a fluffy pink huge glittery pink pen in an equally pink journal kicking his legs and giggling

*Nathan told me when I got that chord I kept fucking up correct that he could *see me improving* EEEEE he's soooo big He could throw me Like a football

-fond of murderface, knows people deal with their own shit in diffrent ways so he doesn't take his insults to heart (usually)

-relationship with skiwsgaar is. Weird.

I'll probably get into it on another post but it's SO complicated like. Were both emotionally constipated around eachother, our relationship used to be so kind and gentle skiwsgaar was tokis mentor and wanted to see him grow but has such anxeity around toki surpassing him he purposely beats him down; and toki doesn't have the work ethic or drive to truly get to thay level and it impedes the progress of the band. But engages with this weird rivalry thats also a form of love and respect like. Your the only one I could ever be worried about being better than me and I've watched you grow so much and I don't know how to express that properly YADDA YADDA YADDA

-loves pickles very much, he was the most welcoming in the beginning and always made a space for him at the table, later on a shoulder to cry on.

[pyro-yoshi]

Pyro's emeto commissions

I've never done commissions before but I'd like to give it a shot. I got laid off last Thursday so I don't have a job anymore. Work in my home local is slow, so unless I travel out of state I'll likely be off for a couple months. I'm going to have a lot of time on my hands, so I figured I'd try doing emeto commissions.

Want to see your favorite character puking their guts out? Hit me up! I'm primarily focusing on fan art, but I'll also draw your OCs!

Since I've never done this before, here's my promise to you: Until I show you the finished product, you won't be charged a penny. Then we can negotiate prices depending on the complexity of the piece.

I won't charge that much since my art skills pale in comparison to a lot of other artists.

Here's an example of my emeto art (old pic, just a character, no background):

Priority fandoms:

Saw (current hyper fixation)

Silent Hill

Resident Evil

Metalocalypse

The Walking Dead

Stranger Things

The Simpsons

Will also draw:

Characters from most other fandoms, your OCs (as long as you provide a picture or detailed description) anthro/furry/literal monster/non-human characters.

Male characters are preferred, but I'm willing to do female characters too.

I will NOT draw:

Underage/minor characters. I will NOT draw characters who are under 18. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Real people. Fictional characters/OCs only!

Scat

Certain fandoms (see below)

Characters that wear super complex outfits or armor (too hard to draw)

Fandoms I won't draw for:

Genshin Impact, or any other anime (I should probably apologize for this, but I simply don't care for anime. At all. Sorry guys)

Harry Potter

Family Guy (or any other show created by Seth McFarlane)

South Park

If you're interested or just want to chat, send me a message on my non-emeto account, @creepereyes. (That's the account I access via Tumblr app, I access this one via laptop and don't check it very often)

@creepereyes is me. You're more than welcome to message me on here too, but it'll take longer to get a response.

[black-klok-youth-pastor]

Charles and MMA Theory

Okay, I came up with this theory a while ago (and has been sitting in my drafts collecting dust for months until this point) but haven’t really shared it in that many places. Bare in mind this is also a sort of weird fan theory of a fan theory, that being the popular Dadlacia theory (the one where Salacia is Charles’s biological father in case you don’t know) so feel free to take this with a massive grain of salt, as we gather around the Pepe Silvia board to ask this one question that just clicked one day. That being:

What if Charles Offdensen and the Metal Masked Assassin were half brothers?

Now admittedly both characters are wrapped in mystery, so of course there’s gonna be a lot of fan speculation on both of them, albeit the main smoking gun is that we at least learn MMA’s backstory in Doomstar Requiem (in song form):

“Born and left alone Never knew his mother Who was killed during birth but left him a brother”

This verse seems to suggest that MMA and 216’s father wasn’t in the picture, either by neglect or being absent altogether, essentially leaving 216 to raise MMA by himself (which is particularly messed up since they seem to be a bit close in age). Sure in complete fairness in a sung-through musical like this we don’t have time for every single detail, but the specific word choice intrigues me.

And if you know the basic Dadlacia theory y’know where I’m going with this, mainly the infamous scene in the cold open of Fatherklok where Charles is suspiciously wistful about how it feels to lose the strength of a father’s touch and that his father had strong hands. Now am I saying all fatherless characters in the series are Salacia’s children? Not really. Like for example, I’m kind of skeptical of the fan theory that Salacia is Skwisgaar’s father, if not the real dad of everyone in Dethklok. The Skwisgaar one I can kind of buy even if I have some theories that I think are better but the latter I’m not as fond of since it kind of ruins the point of the found family aspect (honestly the only variant of this theory I can see is the ones involving Salacia only being their father in a past life, like the sort of Kronos figure in the pantheon but we’d be here all day if we dwelled into that).

What I’m getting at is that part of it kind of goes into the “but why?” aspect since by all accounts. After all, Salacia is immortal as far as we can tell so on paper he wouldn’t exactly feel the need to sire children. Short version as I go to my now outdated headcanons post, my sort of theory to that is that he has a plan not unlike Ego from Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2 that involves fathering as many children as possible that through trial and error would grant him offspring powerful enough to serve his machinations. Human beings to him are pawns after all, why would his own offspring be different?

Although I freely admit a good chunk of my theorizing has been on the thematic level. The lore of Metalocalypse has taken a lot of influence from various mythology and religions, and what better way to tie into the themes of brotherhood throughout the series than good old sibling rivalry which can be found everywhere from Set and Osiris to Kalervo and Untamo to (of course) Cain and Abel, particularly how one brother more or less (except not really) kills the other.

Although funnily enough, Charles is simultaneously Abel and Seth in this metaphor considering how they didn't even meet each other until after 216's death.

[sparklecinnamonbunny]

My Personal MTL OC Week 2023 Retrospective

*waves* Hey y’all, I thought I’d link to all the works I created this past week and provide a little commentary of my experience with them to cap things off. This is secretly more for me to look back on than for anyone to enjoy, but I might as well share it and see if I can’t start a trend. @pan-flute-skeleton talked shop with me a bit and inspired this idea, but I’d also love to hear other’s thoughts/experiences with this fandom event!

Day 1: OC X OC (X OC) — The Naked Dismissal I came out of the gate swinging by tackling a crossover piece by pairing Sunday with two characters that weren’t mine! I knew I wanted to write Sunday salivating after Caj, but the whole scenario didn’t come together until I was clowning around in Discord and curiouslyhigh and chordsykat egged me on to write Caj/Sunday/Teja since timelines don’t matter. This was a blast to write and I’m looking forward to going back and writing the Pornographer’s Cut. Thanks again to both of them for loaning me their fandom bicycles! Also, if you haven’t seen it already, Chordsy hit me with a gorgeous piece of retaliation art of the unlikely trio! Day 2: Best Friends or Rivals — A Matter of Perspective Ch. 1  “First Impressions”: I felt like I had this absurd momentum pretty much all week, and A Matter of Perspective showcases it. Spellbound begins in medias res, so I had a ton of room to explore things before Sunday meets Nathan. I intended to play up Sunday and Dick’s friendship with this one, while starting Ava off as competition, but then I thought of a cohesive theme for the whole piece and put Knubbler on the backburner.

This one also netted me a new OC, Envy, who we haven’t seen in the Spellbound ‘verse yet, but who I do get to show in the 80s kickin’ it with Azure Blue and SnB Pickles. Day 3: Style Swap — A Matter of Perspective Ch. 2  “Big Easy Barbie and the Price of Leather”: It’s a tie between this one and the canonically impossible threesome for my favorite work of the week. Ava Sunbeam was originally written to fill a stereotypical music show judge role I needed in Spellbound (and to parody a couple pop artists), but she’s grown a lot of nuance and her own arc. 

In addition to saccharine themes of understanding and kindness, it shines a light on some of Sunday and Ava’s red flags. Sunday’s POV forgives a lot of sins on her part. I had fun making them very obvious. There’s also some secret Ava lore that adds to the overall vibe of both parts.

Day 4: Canon X OC — Six Ways to Sunday I started this piece in April, intending to use it for MTL Rare Pair Month’s “What Could’ve Been” and “Canon X OC” prompts and got stuck a little over halfway through. I brought it back out for this thinking ‘Oh, I’ve just got to write the sex scene and edit, this should be easy,’ but I still struggled. I don’t like it and I don’t have a reason other than ‘this was stupidly hard to write’. 

Day 5: OC Fusion Canon X OC again — Spellbound Ch. 9, “Ultimatumklok” After the struggle I had with Six Ways to Sunday, I was kind to myself and finished up a chapter of Spellbound for Friday instead of learning a fusion dance. I’ve been super excited about this chapter (and the next couple to follow) for a while. This chapter manages to set things up and provide some warm n fuzzy payoff at the same time, all while sneaking in some sweet sweet lore dumps.  Day 6: Dethkids — What Goes Around Comes Around I intended this to be a punchline to the end of the SkwisDay smut. It got away from me so quick. Between Sunday and Skwisgaar’s feud and CEO and CFO having real talk, my plan of ‘goof-fueled crackfic’ went sideways. We did get back to madness at the end, though. I’ve added a couple one-shot ideas to further this AU to my WIP pile. Final Thoughts — I’m so thankful that I had the time and energy to participate! I put out over 18,000 words of Metalocalypse fanfic this week. I haven’t written this much in such a short time since my last NaNoWriMo! I’m especially proud of the fact that I put out five coherent stories (Sunday & Ava’s two go together, but can stand alone). I’ve always struggled with finishing WIPs once I start them. This shows me that I can finish what I start if I put my mind to it. :)

[airrushmindtravelingcircus]

Wikipedia’s shit new redesign, and how to avoid seeing it without being forced to make an account

It seems like the only time I ever post on this blog anymore is in an attempt to disseminate information to as wide an audience I can. Such is life when all other (public facing) social media sites cause the wrong kind of psychic damage to browse.

Anyway, if you’ve used wikipedia in the past couple days you already know how terrible it looks. Web3.0 “sleek and modern” translating to “bland and monochrome.” When I encountered it, I immediately put a long and damning criticism in the feedback link which is probably the digital equivalent of when adult swim hooked up their fax machine to a shredder in mockery of the Metalocalypse fandom. After getting my anger out, I perused one of the talk/discussion pages that wikipedia has (since that’s one of the biggest features of this site that noone pays attention to (since noone with a life has an account)) regarding the change in UI, and the people there were up in arms as well! Until other members assured them that they could change the skin in their account settings, and that any article can have the character string ?useskin=vector appended to the end of it in order to browse the old version of the layout without needing an account.

So, problem solved in the most tedious and nerve-grinding way possible, right? Well lucky for you we’re not done yet. It had been brought to my attention several months ago, when youtube started to implement their equally terrible “we want the instagram audience” feature of YoutubeShorts, that there is an addon for both firefox and chrome called Redirector. Using this addon, your browser can automatically add the character string to the end of any url without needing to type it in manually every time. The formatting is very simple if you’re even scantly tech literate, but for convenience’s sake I’ll just put the picture of my filter up anyway:

You may notice how my settings use the term monobook over vector, that’s because monobook is the name for the old Web 2.0 skin the site had! Thus, I now have an objectively better experience with the site than I did before as a result of discovering this url extension exists.

[bonesdoesart]

Updated void post

Hiya, friends! If any of you are here because of my old "speaking directly into the void" post, let it be known now that many of those fandoms I am no longer in OR I've moved on to a different one currently.

I have decided to update it in the form of a completely new post, so PLEASE disregard the old one!!

I can never really tell when a fandom I get into is going to be a special interest or a hyperfixation until at least a month or so passes. I have some fandoms I've been in for YEARS and I'll never stop loving them, while others only last maybe a few weeks. I'm only including special interest fandoms on this post, but rest assured that they're not the only fandoms I'll post about, they're just my main interests.

My main fandoms are...

Venture Brothers

Metalocalypse

Doctor Who

Slenderverse

Mlp

And...that's about it. LMAO

Okay but seriously I only really have maybe four fandoms that I'm neck deep in, but that's not gonna be the only fandom content I post on here!!

Also, I'm gonna put my DNI criteria on this post too so I can weed out the Weirdos....

DNI if you're...

A minor (I actively promote my adult Twitter blog on here and also post suggestive stuff. I don't feel comfortable having kids follow me, especially since my main interests are catered to adults. I'm not gonna go out of my way to block minors because I don't post straight up nsfw but just know!!! It makes me feel. Weird)

A transphobe (I'm trans. Get the fuck outta here 👉)

Homophobic (I'M GAY GET OUT IF YOU DON'T LIKE ME)

A n*zi (self explanatory.)

Any kind of trans radicalist (there's a whole spectrum for being trans, and I may be part of the majority of folks who experience dysphoria and want surgery, that doesn't mean other trans people have to be that way.)

A proshipper (EUGH. DISGUSTING. GO AWAY)

Ai "artists" and NFT weirdos (I hate all of you)

Ableist in any way (I'm neurodivergent, please piss off ❤)

Anyway, that about wraps up this annoyingly long post. Thanks for following if you have! And anyone who has it, feel free to stick around, I post art sometimes LOL

[keanuweeps]

I want to just give some personal updates, since I am nebulously back

I am graduating college this summer with a Bachelor in English and a minor in Writing and Publishing

I have had my writing taken quite seriously in the local literary community, particularly my poetry. I have not yet decided whether to share it here, but I probably will if I get any particularly noteworthy publications (I have a few minor ones and am still submitting a lot to different literary journals and literary magazines.)

I was in executive leadership of a literary magazine through my college for 2 years, attended AWP, and all around have had some amazing experiences.

I have been on T since October 2022

My name is Tom now

I had wild sex with a litany of different people, and I still can't tell if I'm bisexual or not.

I no longer identify as binary trans, as I had from nebulously 2021 until maybe a month ago, and instead identify as nonbinary. I think for me inside of myself I identify as a butch, in the way that I did when I was a lesbian, but it's my preference in the cishet world to, most of the time, just let people assume I'm male because it is easier for me.

My bearded dragon is older and doing well

I got very involved in local trans activism. Got on the news, became a leader in the campus community, won an award. I also helped spearhead, organize, and run two trans joy conferences. Very cool stuff. I'm currently working to get more involved off campus as I'm graduating.

I got hatecrimed by the conservative group on my campus, the police would not even take my report, and over the past year I have been forced to just kind of let it go and focus on what is positive in my life.

My IRL friendships are flourishing. I am living out the found family trope. I have never been happier.

I have been doing my best to additionally support Free Palestine IRL. But I do also want to say it here, Free Palestine.

I still do not know whether I will ever continue my Metalocalypse fanfiction, if I am being frank. The people who supported me really gave me the confidence in the beginning to take my writing more seriously and it played a role in my returning to college. I am very grateful for the kindness and love I was shown. Thanks always 💙

[little-murmaider]

Fics I Loved in 2021

I’ve said it many times before but Metalocalypse Fandom is flush with so many incredible artists and writers, and at the end of the year I love to celebrate that by sharing some of the fics I read this year that I loved! This is an extremely incomplete list, and I tried (failed) to keep it to one fic per author, but thank you to everyone who has shared something they’ve created for this weird little show. I’m so happy and grateful to be a part of such a wonderful community.

The Lost Time Series, @squeeto: Toki is back after months of being held captive by Magnus Hammersmith - but the torture he endured is too much, and he goes into a coma. When he wakes up, he's different than the Toki that the band is used to - and it's a hard pill for an already-fragile Skwisgaar to swallow. DILF, @mc-offdensen: The sheer audacity of writing Oscar/Calvert porn in our Lord’s year of 2021 is admirable and inspiring. [18+]

aubade, @gluku-pikron: After stabbing Nathan, Magnus goes to Charles' place to lick his wounds. Getting in Tune, @wumbo-calling: A (collection of?) drabble(s) where nonbinary!Skwisgaar gets to explore their experience with gender.  Oh So Intricate, @lampmeeting: Seth wants to have a threesome with one of Amber's friends, and somewhere a finger on a monkey's paw curls in on itself. [18+] Johnathan’s No Good Very Bad Day, @atmilliways: Dr. Twinkletits misses his meds. A Minute of Their Time, @sourbat: They came and went. Men: some young, most older. They all came for the same thing. Pressure, @offdensmith: During a stint in rehab, Magnus gets to know his new roommate. Surprisingly, they have a lot in common. [18+] Aligned, @lampmeeting: The revengencers scurry from him and huddle together, watching. Waiting. In that moment, Magnus hates them. Truly hates them. Disgusting motherfuckers. Mindless freaks. Ruled by their hunger and their fear and their rage. Not like him. He’s in control.  Something Blue, @fishklok: Amber connects with her new brother-in-law during her wedding. Word to the Wise, @vicekings: Long before Dethklok was world-renowned, and long before JD Walker was branded with the black stag gear, one CFO sent his personal security to investigate a hunch about his up-and-coming band. Love bites, @gointothevvater: Pickles downed his drink with a great sigh, saying, "Been way too long." "Since you've had whiskey?" St. Cecilia asked, laughing when he shot her a deadpan look. The sound was like fire, warm and bright and blazing through him. He'd have blisters when they parted, he was sure of it. They'd hurt like hell. Rejoin, @failedintsave: After the rescue, Dethklok must adjust to shifting band dynamics, changes awakened by the Doomstar, and a world that's relying on them to save more than the economy. In Your Eyes, @squeeto: Skwisgaar falls apart hard when Toki goes missing. It Could Be Simple, @failedintsave: From day one, there's been friction between Dethklok's lead and rhythm guitarists. Eventually it leads to fire. [18+] Thunderstruck, @squeeto: Skwisgaar is falling hard for Toki, and it's everything he's ever dreamed of - but his dreams also remind him, that letting people get close to him might not be such a good idea. [18+] A Place For Us, @all-hail-the-water-god: Moving to Norway from Sweden seemed like it may be boring until Skwisgaar meets Toki, a mysterious teenager from odd parents who seems to be holding onto countless secrets that Skwisgaar isn't quite sure he wants the answers to. [18+] Relax Your Mind, @offdensmith and @metalitaph: Back in the mid-nineties, before the signing, before any knife-based incidents, Dethklok never seemed to notice that their manager and one of their guitarists had gotten close, which was on purpose. Magnus and Charles were both very private men after all. A collaborative effort showcasing what it's like trying to make it big in the music industry, with the added complications of unexpected emotions after a night drinking. [18+] The War Is Over and We Are Beginning, @insomniac-pens: It's the first fall Pickles has realized he's lived through in years. The Bridge, @fishklok: While the band is touring in his home state, Charles manages to find a quiet moment with Magnus.  After the Threesome They Both Take You Home, @metalitaph: Melmord has his friends drive him home. A Band in Hope, @cthene: With Dethklok scattered to the ends of the Earth, Skwisgaar and Toki must navigate a post-apocalyptic landscape of horrors, strange beauty, and madness, with only fragmentary memories and a few mysterious words to guide them: Stay together. Stick to the plan. Keep moving north. [18+] The Sweetest Thing, @atmilliways: Before taking their relationship to the bedroom in any way, they had talked a lot about what that would mean. Skwisgaar, of course, is internationally known as a master of sex with more notches in his bedpost than actual bedpost, and he’d admitted to her right up front that he couldn’t, off the top of his head, think of anything he hadn’t done—“Excepts, eugh,” he’d said, then mumbled something. [18+] Encore, @fishklok: Magnus expected to die. Instead, he's given another chance. [18+]

[frumentariae]

Can You Keep Them In The Dark For Life? | Prologue

content warnings: allusions to childhood abuse

fandom: metalocalypse

“Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

The house is empty, as it has been for the last 20 or so years.

She wanders from room to room, day by day, barely grazing the minimum for survival. Go to bed. Eat. Drink water. Do the same, over and over, until the sun goes down and it’s time for the next merciless day to continue.

The monotony kills her. Every day the same, a little closer to the grave, and another day older. Her beauty falls away like peeling paint.

The men who warm her bed don’t really count for company. Not really. There’s no connection, no real spark. No purpose any longer than to cling onto what was, rather than what is.

Her son doesn’t call anymore. The one man in her life she can trust to never really leave, to never really hurt her. She can trust him. He is all she has left sometimes, even when his most recent pictures are ones she’s had to carefully clip from magazines herself. Her hands hurt more than they used to, and she detests the way her swollen knuckles have trouble fitting in the metal loops of the scissor handles.

She can’t parse why he left, and why he doesn’t ever check up on her. She knows she was never a perfect mother— years of her own parents abuses, the traumas she had faced as a child far too young, they added up quickly, and she knew that some of it had been unfairly projected. She knew he struggled with lacking a father, but what was she supposed to say? He had never said his name, only left her loved more than she had ever been loved, with a child she had so wanted, and left her with his memory; His one eye, his braided beard, the long coat and his peculiar wide-brimmed hat. He had told her to watch over their son, told him that he would do something great. He would be something great.

She’d half convinced herself it was all her imagination, but it was difficult to ignore when her son was now the world’s most famous guitarist. And what’s more— He existed. He was alive. Before the man, she had been convinced she was barren. Maybe she was. Nothing had grown before or after Skwisgaar’s birth.

In any case, most days she figures it best not to dwell. Better to ignore. Better to push it all down and put on a smile. She’d learned that from her mother. There was a lot of choking down misery before she’d left home. 

It’s late afternoon now. The sun long since disappeared beyond the treeline. She’d always hated that about winter here. No real sun for months.

Her painted fingers find the cellphone that he gifted her a number of years ago. It’d been for some sort of holiday, or maybe a birthday? She couldn’t remember. Sleek, champagne pink. Skwisgaar had awkwardly explained how that made it feminine and classy. A subtle dig. She didn’t get it.

Her fingers trace a familiar string of digits, and the she presses the Call button. The drone of the dial tone meets her ear, buzzing on and on before there’s a click, and—

“Skwisgaar—“

“—You haves reach the perskonals phones of Skwisgaar Skwigelf. Leaves a message after da tone.”

Only in moments of vulnerability does she do this. Sometimes she just calls to hear his voice, how ever tinny it is over the receiver, or how short the message is. How infrequently he actually answers.

Before she knows it, the voicemail beeps, and her voice is being recorded. She hesitates, pausing awkwardly, teetering between her messy English, and her more fluent Swedish. She knows that despite his thick accent, Skwisgaar is probably better at English by now. Still.

“Skwisgaar—“ a beat of static filled silence. She feels stupid, lonely, angry at herself for this moment of weakness. It crawls up her throat and scratches. It’s all she can do to choke it down and get her words out. “—It’s… your Mama. I miss you,” she hates how desperate that sounds. Pathetic, just like Papa always said she was. She thinks about saying something, taps her nails against the avocado colored countertops of the kitchen. Bites her lip, and knows that her lipstick comes way on her teeth. She hesitates, and thinks of the man with one eye. She thinks of his wolfdogs, of the black birds that seemed to always flock around him.

“Call me back? It’s been awhile, and...I’m old,” —Something that she hates conceding. Another pause, and she knows she’s eating up precious voicemail time. Wouldn’t want to fill that up. If it were at all possible.

“Skwisgaar. I want to tell you a story. I think it’s time. I want to tell you about your father.”

[the-loveliest-lotus]

Chapter 8 of The Wicker Man is up on AO3 and Lucy has finally obtained her rainbow hair. Also introduced Lucy’s late Mom, Angie Desmond (pictured below.) 

Note: Chapter contains adult themes, meaning it starts with a lemon, viewer discretion is advised.

Chapter is roughly 10,000 words long.

It’s absurdly far ahead, but I think I have the perfect family drama between Lucy’s family and Pickles’ family and I just... It’s gonna be beautiful in the worst way when I get around to that chapter probably months and months from now. 

More about Lucy’s Mama Bear below the cut:

Name: Angie Desmond

Sexuality/Gender Identity: Bisexual, cis woman

Birthday: April 19th (Aries/Taurus cusp)

Age at Time of Death: 55

Where is She From: Originally from Austin, TX

Height: 5’5”

Nicknames: Ange (Roger); Mama (Lucy and Pickles)

Love Interests: Roger Desmond, who was at her time of death serving a 20 year sentence for selling weed. They had an open relationship and would have conjugal visits, but they were emotionally exclusive to one another. Were swingers when he wasn’t in prison.

Where She Fits into the Metalocalypse Universe: Lucy’s mother, mother to one of the (eventual) members of Dethklok. She kept Lucy sane while she was in an abusive relationship, and tried to help her as best she could. Acted as an unofficial “adoptive” mother to Pickles, in that she always took care of him when his family was treating him like shit. Angie always had a strong intuition, which is where Lucy inherited hers from.

Appearance: Impossibly young looking for her age, is 55 years old but appears to be more of an older sister to Lucy than a mother, looking like she is maybe 35 in a video that she left for Lucy at her time of death.

Lucy takes after Angie a lot in her physical appearance. Angie has an oval face, blue eyes, and originally had wavy brunette hair. A slender, curvy woman with a psychobilly style and had pink/purple hair at her time of death. Had several face piercings including a nose piercing and dolphin bites.

Personality: Very extroverted, very protective to those she cares about. Would get into fights and win with men twice her size at bars. Loved music like Aerosmith and Reverend Beat-Man, and was the type to drink good booze out of old glass jam jars.

Was very much a “Mama Bear” and was always very protective of Pickles as well as Lucy. Did not get along with Pickles’ family in the slightest, but refused to let Pickles and Lucy suffer because of family drama.

Absolutely devoted to her husband, and would claim until her dying day that he was the only man she ever loved. The two of them did swing, and then when he was in prison they opened their relationship, but they remained emotionally exclusive to one another.

Her love for hallucinogens caused her to give her daughter the initials LSD, and the name seemed like kismet since her favorite actress was Lucille Ball.

Skills and Hobbies: Angie enjoyed DIYing clothing, which was where Lucy picked up the hobby from. She was a punk in her teens and 20s, and her style shifted to more psychobilly as she got older, but she always kept the punk flair and attitude. She was very self-sufficient and would dye her own hair, and eventually she taught Lucy and Pickles how to dye Lucy’s hair.

Angie would bake for fun, and she would always cook for Lucy, Pickles, and Roger when they were around.

She was a biker, and her prized possession was her custom 1952 Harley-Davidson.

Loved to travel when she could, and she loved going to concerts with Roger or with Lucy.

How She Died: Angie was on her Harley on the highway when a drunk driver going down the wrong side of the highway hit her head-on, despite her attempts to avoid him. She died on impact and did not suffer, but her body was very mangled. The driver was also killed in the crash.

Ends up being cremated and Lucy keeps the ashes, which she ends up scattering with Pickles and the rest of the Dethklok gang (Knubbler and Offdensen included) in the California Red Wood forest. Lucy, Pickles, and eventually Roger each get some of her ashes.

[fishklok]

have you ever talked at length about amber's family before? like, what your headcanons for them are? does she have any brothers or sisters? does she get along with her parents?

not at length, but i'll take the opportunity now!

i really like the idea of amber's background mirroring pickles', so i hc that she left home at a really young age too (probably 16, like pickles). i think she also had dreams of l.a. or new york, but she happened to wind up in tomahawk when she ran out of money. she was just supposed to stay there for a few weeks until she saved enough to keep going, but then weeks became months, which became years, then seth happened, and yeah.

she has three younger sisters. her status as the eldest daughter further emphasizes my point that amber works harder than anyone else in metalocalypse.

amber's relationship with her parents (when she had one) was rather tense. they didn't know how to talk to or relate to her, but she didn't know how to talk to or relate to them either. amber's autistic (undiagnosed until adulthood) and growing up, she felt like everyone was speaking code around her and it frustrated her when she couldn't keep up. since her meltdowns usually surfaced in her just going quiet and "spacing out", they were easy to go unnoticed.

she hasn't kept in contact with her parents, not because she resents them, but because she feels guilty for not reaching out sooner, so she continues to put that off -- and the cycle continues.

she is starting to get back in contact with her sisters. sometimes they come over and they go clubbing.

she's lao and cambodian (on her mother and father's side respectively) she grew up speaking lao, khmer, and english, although the first two are fading since she doesn't use them that often anymore (unless she's shit talking with her sisters and she doesn't want seth to understand)

[frienderbender]

how long have you been in the metalocalypse fandom for? if you had to pick a favorite out of the main cast who would it be?

so metalocalypse is a show i had watched on and off for years (would really just watch it if it happened to be on or whatever) but i had never actually sat down to watch it start to finish until a couple of months ago? and i ended up really falling in love with it then so i made this blog because wow i wanted to draw the silly metal band and now i just draw the one off villain–

really though i’ve only been around a couple of months ahaha i really enjoy the space here. met some truly talented and wonderful folks and have had the time of my life making fanart for this series. and i hope others have enjoyed my stuff as well. because holy shit there’s so many incredible people here.

as far as my fave from the band, it’s skwisgaar, easily! i just think he’s neat :] it can be really hard to choose a fave from the band though, they’re all so hilarious and i feel bad separating them. i love them all.

[atmilliways]

On the 10th day of Dethmas this writer gives to thee…

Dec 22 - Metalocalypse but it's a cheesy Hallmark holiday movie

He’s a big city notary, only in town to clean out his deceased grandparents’ condo.

He’s a small-town metalhead pot dealer/part time taxi service with no one to hang out with for the holidays.

Is it fate, or is it Christmas?

Chapter one of a Murderface/Pickles, what-if-Dethklok-never-happened AU. I went heavy on Pickles' accent for this and I refuse to apologize for my crimes.

~

Deck The Halls With Ughs & F*ck Yous

When you boiled it down to the bare essentials, the first half of the letter basically said, “Merry Christmas, your grandparents are dead.” 

Which, William felt, was kind of nice of the lawyer writing to him. He hadn’t liked his grandparents particularly much, for all that they’d raised him ever since the unfortunate murder-suicide that had claimed his parents. Everything he’d accomplished in life had been in spite of them. They’d wanted him to be a hubcap salesman like his grandfather; he’d gotten his notary license and done just fine. They’d wanted him to stay in the same kind of podunk towns they always lived in; he’d gone to the big city and landed a steady career notarizing deeds and titles for a huge real estate company. All they’d done was yell at him to make sure was still alive for seventeen years. Anyone could have done that. 

It was the second half of the letter that was the problem. Apparently they’d had no money to leave him, just all the crap in a condo that needed to be emptied out by the end of the year so the next owners could move in. If he didn’t, there would be a ridiculously large fine due of some truly idiotic wording in the lease they’d signed. 

A quick check online told him it would be cheaper to just fly out to this . . . Tomahawk, Wisconsin, throw all the shit in a dumpster, and be done with it. He had a couple weeks of vacation time coming up anyway, with Christmas and New Years, and no particular plans. Why not go? Maybe it would be . . . cathartic or something. 

William sighed and reached to grab a credit card from his wallet. So much for a quiet Christmas to himself, holed up in his  blissfully undecorated apartment with takeout from one of the best sushi places in the entire city. 

~

Tomahawk was pretty much what he expected. Once he made it out of the four-gate airport with a baggage claim so slow that it might have been faster to  walk  instead of fly, it turned out there wasn’t even a taxi queue. He had to go back inside and call one himself. And it wasn’t so much a taxi service as something called “Pickles Cab” scratched in above the payphone.

As long as it had wheels and knew how to find the address, he didn’t much care. The dispatch guy had seemed kinda stoned on the phone, but hey, William figured, that just meant he might be able to find some to buy in the area. 

The car was easy to spot because it was the only non-white thing moving in the snow-caked parking lot. William eyed the shitty old Vista Cruiser in shades of drab green, rust, and beat-to-shit wood paneling skeptically as it pulled up to the loading zone curb at an angle that was, frankly, terrible. The driver put it in park and popped out the driver’s side door with the engine still running, spewing thick steam out of the tailpipe in the frigid air. 

“Hey dood, welcome to Wiscahnsin,” the guy called, waving. “Abandon hope all ye to enter here, heh.” He smirked. William recognized his voice as the person he’d talked to on the phone.

“Uh . . . hi,” William replied awkwardly, hefting his two suitcases, 

“Trunks open. Lemme get it fer ya.” The driver hurried around to the back of the car and opened it for William to toss the suitcases in. He had a shock of red hair trying to escape from his black beanie in all directions, and park-job aside seemed slightly less stoned in person than he sounded. “Wanna sit up front? It’s warmer up here, I’ve had the heat blastin’ all the way here . . . uh, just let me clear some shit out first.”

‘Some shit’ seemed to be a lot of empty bottles and cans and snack wrappers, but William waited patiently because it’s not like this place had any actual taxis he could call instead. When he did climb in and buckle his seatbelt, at least it was warm, as promised, even if it did smell like pot and stale beer. 

The driver popped back in, stripped the glove off one hand, and rubbed at his nose above a vivid red goatee before grabbing the wheel, “Okey, here we go. I’m Pickles, what’s yer name?”

“William Murderfasche,” William replied. What kind of a name was Pickles? But . . . it did explain the name of the ‘cab’ company. 

“Murderface, that’s a fuckin’ cool name. Mind if I just call ya that?”

“. . . Sure.”

“Cool. So dood, Murderface, where to?”

William gave him the address. The car pulled away from the airport with a jerk and he stared out the window at passing snow banks and white-shrouded trees, starting to sink into all his misgivings about the decision to come out here. There was a certain smell that developed anywhere his grandparents inhabited for long enough that he hadn’t realized until moving out on his own kept him in a near-constant state of upset stomach. 

“Hope ya don’t mind there ain’t no radio,” Pickles told him companionably, not appearing to mind when William didn’t react. “Tape deck’s broken too. . . . I’m tryin’ ta save up the money to fix it by givin’ people rides and shit. And doin’ some other stuff too, but don’t tell the cops, heh. All the local stations are pretty much shit anywey, all they’re playin’ right now is fuckin’ Christmas songs.”

“Hm,” William agreed. 

“What kinda music you listen to?”

“Hm. Uh, what? Oh, schorry. Moschtly metal, I guessch.” He shrugged, shaking himself out of the funk he’d been about to sink into. Usually he would prefer to just be left to his own thoughts, but right now the chit chat was actually a welcome distraction. “It’sch good background muschic for conschentrating on not thinking.”

“Hey dood, me too!” In his enthusiasm, Pickles gunned the engine and sent the car into a brief skid on the wintery road, but corrected it with an ease that spoke to lots of practice. “There’s naht much of a metal scene here, fuckin’ sucks. What else am I supposed to get fucked up to, huh? People jest don’t get that. Is it any better where you live?”

William, braced for impact as he now was and would probably remain for the rest of the ride, shrugged again. “I don’t know. I moschtly keep to myschelf, but there are plenty of schtoresch that have deschent schtuff, if you’re willing to schort through all the other crap.”

“Well, cool. Hey if you wanna hang out at all while yer here, I got a pretty good collection on vinyl. Y’know, if you don’t have family shit to do. I’m avoiding mine due to sort of a . . . landlord tenant dispute. They won’t let me put a lock on the house-door to my basement-room, so I’ve got it barricaded and stopped payin’ rent, and now Mahm won’t let me eat anything she cooks. But it’s cool, I’ve gaht an exterior door so I can still get in’n out.”

It took a moment to digest all that, but William noted the invitation with the tentative optimism of a guy who’d moved a lot as a kid but never quite gotten the hang of making friends as a survival method. 

But he was only planning to be in town for a few days, get the condo cleaned out ASAP, and go home, never to return. Not a lot of point in making friends. 

“Thanksch, but I probably won’t have time.” He wasn’t looking directly at Pickles, but he saw the driver’s smile drop a few watts out of the corner of his eye. Feeling bad for the guy, he quickly added, “Schoundsch like you’ve got a pretty good schet-up, though.”

“Eh . . . it’s alright.”

The conversation petered out after that, and William had no idea how to get it going again. He’d always been shit at this sort of thing. Looking back, it was probably a miracle that he’d stuck through high school long enough to graduate, having alienated, avoided, or accidentally insulted enough of his peers that virtually no one on campus had ever willingly spoken to him. The only social group he’d ever successfully infiltrated was the lunchtime stoners that hung out in the park across the street, and that was because they’d mostly just sat around passing joints, trying to blow smoke rings, and napping before having to face sixth period. 

Eventually Pickles put his turn signal on and announced, "Here we go, Christmas Mountain Avenue. Sheesh, that's a little on the nose, huh?"

Privately William agreed, but awkwardly swallowed the chuckle before it could make itself heard. As they pulled up in front of the building, he peered out the window at the gray, shitty condo building and felt his lip curl. Fuck, there was a fridge in there full of rotting food and cans of condensed milk that he was going to have to deal with somewhere in there, he just knew it. 

“Is this where yer staying?” Pickles asked dubiously. 

“No,” William said with a shudder. “Thisch isch juscht the . . . family schit I’m here to deal with. My grandparentsch died and I have to clean out their plache by the end of the month.”

“Ooh.” Scratching thoughtfully at his goatee, he leaned forward to get a better look at the building. “. . . You know, the nearest motel is a ten minute walk and it’s gettin’ dark soon. Yer gonna want a ride, prahbably.”

William blinked. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”

Pickles made a show of looking thoughtful. “So . . . want any help? I gaht reeeeal reasonable rates.”

“Well. . . .”

“And I’ve gaht weed, too,” he added. 

“Done,” William said immediately. 

Well. At least the ordeal would probably be over with sooner this way, and also a lot less horrible with something to blunt the edges (and cover the Smell).