#Archive would be the main character if I do more with this au.

[radioactivejinx]

So, have you ever listened to the voices and made a next-gen mlp au about deconstructing ships and having atypical family dynamics instead of stereotypical nuclear family dynamics? No? Just me? 

Anyway, here’s Archive! My Sparity fankid! So, to be honest I’m not a fan of Sparity because of the massive age gap between them and the fact that Rarity’s known Spike since he was a child. In reality, this relationship wouldn’t work out. I felt compelled to break down why Sparity isn’t the ideal endgame romance for Spike and Rarity and that’s how Archive was born!  

Archive lives with her Aunt Twilight Sparkle and her father Spike. Despite living with Spike he isn’t her primary caregiver, Twilight is. Spike is more of a brother to Archive than a father and Twilight is more of a mother to her than an aunt. Archive was born when Spike was 18-19 and he couldn’t handle raising her on his own, so Twilight took over for him. Twilight mostly raised Spike as a child, so taking care of Archive came naturally to her. Archive is a master at categorizing and organizing Twilight’s massive library. She has a love for history and studies it ravenously. She believes that by documenting current events the mistakes of the present can be avoided in the future. ( All of her records and journals will surely survive the test of time, right? The next generations will be able to read her documents. They won’t be lost or destroyed and ponies will be able to learn from them and avoid repeating past mistakes. Wait what do you mean the history of G4 is lost in G5-) 

Archive has a strained relationship with her bio mom, Rarity. Don’t get it twisted, Rarity loves her daughter and doesn’t regret having her, but she recognizes that dating Spike wasn’t a good idea. Rarity was desperate to settle down and start her own family. Years of failed romances were weighing heavy on her. Spike, no longer a little boy, but a fully grown man now, decided to shoot his last shot and ask his childhood crush out for the last time. He figured she would say no but to his surprise, Rarity agreed to give him a chance! 

Unfortunately for Spike and Rarity, their relationship didn’t work out. Despite her best efforts Rarity never felt right dating Spike. He may have been a grown man when they started dating, but Rarity could never forget the child he once was. The child who came to Ponyville riding on Twilight’s back, the child who looked at her like she hung the stars and moon in the sky. The child she watched blossom from a small baby dragon to a gangly awkward teenager to a man. A man she agreed to date. No matter how much she tried to excuse or rationalize it, it just felt wrong. 

Surprisingly, Rarity and Spike's friendship remained strong when Rarity broke things off with Spike, but the same could not be said for Rarity’s friendship with Twilight. Twilight was taken aback when Rarity agreed to date Spike, but she did try to support their relationship. However, Twilight just couldn’t stomach Rarity dating Spike. Twilight raised Spike ever since he was a baby. She held him for hours when he was crying and rocked him to sleep. She kissed his scrapes and gave him bandaids. She taught him how to read and write. She gave him the talk when he was a teenager. Spike may be an adult, but he’ll always be her baby brother. Rarity, one of the first friends she formed a genuine and strong bond with, watched Spike grow up alongside her, is now dating him? It feels wrong. It feels like a betrayal. Twilight desperately tried to overlook her issues with their relationship, but in the end, she just couldn’t. Her friendship with Rarity became strained and would have ended altogether had Rarity not discovered she was pregnant with Archive soon after her breakup with Spike. Nowadays Twilight keeps civil with Rarity and remains in contact with her for Archive's sake, but Archive can tell her aunt resents her mother.

Rarity maintains contact with Archive and tries to visit her whenever she can but with her fashion empire, raising her other kids, and her personal problems she can’t always see Archive as much as she wants to. Archive feels awkward whenever she interacts with her mother because Rarity feels like a stranger to her. She thinks Rarity regrets having her. Archive never says it, but sometimes thinks her family would be better off if she were never born. This isn’t true. Spike, Rarity, and Twilight all agree that the best thing to come out of Spike and Rarity’s past relationship was Archive. If only she knew that.

[chatterbox-juice]

GOVERNMENTS! LEADERSHIPS! WOO!! i hate politics but Jamaa having a flag (last time I checked) suggests that there's some type of government or organization right?? like, yeah the jammatians could've just joined together and said something like "we stand together forever" but no. nah. no thank you. SO, i haven't thought about fully implementing this yet, but i kinda want to? hear me out; the lands of Jamaa have different pseudo-governments and cultures. there's only so much you can do in a game that [was] focused about educating kids the alphas don't count here k? Jamaa Township has a council-based "government;" the alphas make decisions. Township is a jack-of-all-trades thing, anyone from anywhere lives there, so the culture is one big loving doting hug of complete fuckery. Nothing makes sense except the things that do. A leopard runs the news station alongside a penguin. A great horned owl is playing the orchestra on top of the diamond shop. Jam Mart is always empty, a room filled with nothing but pillows exists, it's always crowded and nobody knows personal space even if it gutted them. It just makes sense. Appondale and Kimbara, which are in a territory dispute in my rewrite, both have a vague government structure following the same thing; battle. Appondale and Kimbara both LOVE battle, but in different ways. Appondale, and every other land, by default, also has the alphas that live there in charge (ex. Atlas and his pride, Olive, Biff, etc.) Outside of that "official" government, it's a chieftain system. Tribes in Appondale are somewhat isolated. News gets around, but everyone wants to be left alone outside of events. A gathering for something and other happens, Appondalians (?) celebrate and build camaraderie, and then the camaraderie is basically forgotten about when they retreat to their respective tribes, families, etc. Kimbara, being a smaller land in my rewrite, dabbles in military aristocracy. Protection is NEEDED, and since Kimbara is so bare, warlords are celebrated instead of regular chieftains. Tactical brilliance on the battlefield is what earns you respect. If you have a good sturdy build in Kimbara, use it! They're probably more interconnected because of this. Not necessarily hosting meetings per say, but maybe just little things, like marriages between different tribes. Castes most likely exist in families because of this, we'll see.

Being a warlord's offspring isn't earning you any leverage in Kimbara; blood is as thick as water until it's on the ground. Meritocracy but not really but actually kind of.

In Appondale, blood means everything, to the point of family heads being the ones who call the shots for the land, especially noticeable in Atlas' pride, where obviously the males/head of the family is in charge.

also here's proof about my au's map im transferring it to digital rn

[bellametre]

Some Ultimate G/T Favourites

I've wanted to do this ever since I saw @gullivertravelstowonderland post the idea. I added a category or two because there's some media I just had to include, but here we go:

Favourite Tiny: Spiller

This shy, wild, golden-hearted dreamboat catalyzed everything for me. I became utterly smitten at the age of nine and went on to watch him in every Borrowers adaptation ever—an obsession that’s still going strong.

Favourite Giant: Optimus Prime

I was so jealous of Shia LaBeouf back in 2007. I don’t even have the toys, but I’ve consumed nearly every comic, show, and movie Optimus Fine appears in. When June Darby in Transformers: Prime says, “And I wore heels and everything”? Same, girl.

Favourite G/T Movie: Ultraman: Rising

If you haven’t seen this movie yet, why are you still here? Go watch it. It’s about a snarky, size-changing superhero who has to look after a baby kaiju. If you need more convincing, just look up a picture of Kenji Sato.

Favourite G/T Show: George Shrinks

Fellow Canadians know this was the show back in the day. Banging intro, unique plot, confident little genius of a protagonist—seriously, this kid made me covet being four inches tall like nobody else. And no, his Zoopercar was not cheating.

Favourite G/T Book: Valiant

Sarah McGuire delivers here: a host of giants, a kick-butt heroine, a villain with a superiority complex, and an attractive lord who gets injured so badly that one of the giants has to “cradle him like an infant” to carry him to safety. Good stuff.

Favourite G/T Manga: Godaigo Daigo

For yet another story about giant heroes protecting cities from monsters, this was a pleasant surprise. Kounosuke showcases all kinds of G/T relationships—coworkers, friends, parents, and romance—and every arc absolutely slaps.

Favourite G/T Webcomic: Piper

The fact that Dr5spectre has been on hiatus for almost two years now is one of the greatest tragedies of our time. But I beg you—check out this comic, especially the AUs. The Goblin of Dornenholtz is so soul-filling it hurts.

Favourite G/T Song: Touchy Feely Fool

It definitely has to be AJR. Not only did I grin like a maniac when I watched the music video, but I like to think the lyrics are about a tiny person who wishes they didn’t have feelings for a giant anymore but simply can’t help themselves.

Favourite G/T Magical World: Roshar *Art by Rocío Sogas

This is probably one that isn’t very well known in the community, but Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive is full of great G/T moments, particularly between the main character Kaladin and his companion Syl, a shapeshifting spren.

Character I Would Like to Shrink/Grow: Loki (MCU) *Art by keiidakamya

Guys, we were robbed. He’s literally part Frost Giant! Yes, we got a taste of it in What If…?, but imagine how the movies could have gone if this had been a form he took when he gained or lost control of himself. Robbed, I tell you.

· · ·

Ahh this was so much fun! I hope some of you feel inspired to try this; I think it would be a great way to find more quality (or not-so-quality) G/T content. There’s so little of it out there, after all.

[pikachic]

Hi it's me again. TMA/POKÉMON AU??? YES HELLO PARDON ME I NEED TO THROW MYSELF AT THIS OCCULUS AU YOU'VE GOT GOING ON IF YOU DONT MIND

*BUSTS DOWN THE DOOR* I’M SO GLAD YOU ASKED

I’ve had this AU simmering away for a while and but haven’t posted that much about it, so thank you for the excuse to scream about my extremely self indulgent Pokémon x The Magnus Archives AU

*ahem*

Introducing:

POKÉMON OCULUS

(Here’s an illustration I did after getting your ask - Champion Jonathan and his ace Pokémon, Vigitera!)

This AU is set in the Ervenis Region, a relatively small island region off the coast of Galar. It closed its borders two years prior to the main storyline, shortly after its Champion went missing during a series of attacks in its major cities and his predecessor was found murdered. Since then, an acting Champion has been instated and the borders have been reopened, but the Champion still has not been found. Most Ervenisans believe he is dead.

However, the Ervenis Champion isn’t as dead as everyone thinks, and his disappearance is only the first in long chain of events that will shake Ervenis to its very core, orchestrated by a man who aims to rule over a ruined world governed by nothing but his own will and the fear of people and Pokémon alike, and who will stop at nothing to bring that goal into reality.

More lore under the cut!

(Some of the AU-specific names and terms might be placeholders in that I haven’t been able to come up with anything better lmao)

(Also some of the art might be a bit old)

General Lore Stuff

Jon is the Champion who went missing, and Gertrude is his murdered predecessor.

Martin is Ervenis’ Pokémon Professor

Martin being the Professor is literally perfect.

Be. Because.

All of the Pokemon Professors (except for the newest ones) are named after trees.

And Martin’s last name is BLACKWOOD. Which is an ACTUAL TREE.

(My first rough attempt at drawing Jmart in the Pokémon art style)

Also jmart are extremely married

They’re Ervenis’ favorite power couple

(Professor Blackwood for half of the main plot: *sighs.* …I miss my husband. I miss him a lot. I’ll be back.)

Their Pokémon ship name would be Londonfogshipping

Martin has a Galvantula (most likely a regional form), a Sinistea, a Frosslass, and a Togekiss

Jon, in addition to AU-specific Fakemon, has a Gardevoir and a Luxray

Jon also has a shiny Appletun on his team and Martin has a Flapple. Make of that what you will :D

Also yes there are Fakemon in this thing

I have never designed any Fakemon before except for one thirty-minute period of time from when I was ten but I’m not going to let that stop me

(Initial Fakemon sketches! Three guesses as to which characters get Sqwyrm and Manickregus and the first two don’t count)

(Also Ervenisan Yamask has another form, which evolves into Ervenisan Cofagrigus which is inspired by the Do Not Open coffin)

(I have a whole list of Fakemon designs I want to make but 90% of them aren’t fleshed out at all)

Tim and Sasha are Professors in their own right, and also Martin’s assistants/fellow researchers

Tim has a Houndoom because I saw another TMA Pokémon AU that gave him one and I really liked the idea, he also has a Ludicolo because I lost a debate with my friend who is also into both TMA and Pokémon

Sasha has a Dartrix and a Meowstic

Most of the Avatars are gym leaders

(Yippee gym leader designs!)

(Not pictured because I ran out of steam before I could draw them: Michael and Helen, who run a double Electric-type gym; Daisy, who runs a Dragon-type gym; Karolina, who runs a Ground-type gym; and Jared, who runs a Normal-type gym)

Elias is the acting Champion in Jon’s absence and the secret leader of Team Chrysalis

The current Elite Four consists of Peter, Simon, Maxwell, and Annabelle

You might have noticed that Jon and the gym leaders are all wearing (mostly) black pendants/brooches

This is part of the Ervenis’ region’s “gimmick:”

Metafestation (which is. Almost definitely a placeholder name)

Skilled trainers can use special items called Metalenses to tap into the psyches of Pokemon and Trainer to manifest the shape of their desires and the power of their emotions in reality.

You basically give the Pokémon a JoJo Stand

Each Metalens must be specially shaped and cut to suit unique trainers and Pokémon, and since using poorly made Metalenses may have disastrous consequences on its users, only a handful of people have the qualifications and legal authorization to do so

(Gerard Keay is one of these people!)

Metalenses are usually worn as pendants or brooches so they’re close to the user’s heart

For the Metafestation power-up to be strongest, the trainer and Pokémon must have a shared goal/desire and a deep bond

(This bond does not have to be a positive one. It just needs to be strong.)

These Metafestations have their own typing system, though no one’s been able to figure out exactly what it is yet.

It’s the Fears. The Fears are the typing system.

Though most users of this system aren’t aware of it, Metafestation comes from achieving a delicate balance of both desire and fear.

When I first came up with this idea, it was JUST Fear, but I felt like that was a bit dark for frickin POKÉMON so I added the desire aspect

After all, what we fear and and what we desire often go hand in hand

You desire safety because you fear its absence, you desire light because you fear the dark, you desire freedom because you fear being confined, etc.

For example, Professor Blackwood desires companionship, and fears being forgotten. Most of the Metafestations he and his Pokémon create are foggy and cold, but in a way soothing at the same time.

Though a small handful of them are spindly and laced with puppet strings and reflect his desire to wield his cunning for good.

(However, he hasn’t been able to properly use his Metalens in years. The first and only time he tried after his husband vanished, it backfired horribly, consuming both him and his Pokémon in a chilling fog and sending them spiraling into unconsciousness. It took weeks for them to recover, and Professor Blackwood bears a physical scar of the incident in the streaks of stark white in his hair.)

Of course, most people don’t have just one desire/fear. The Metalens just channels the strongest ones, and most users don’t achieve more than three separate tertiary types of power-ups.

One of the biggest exceptions is Jon.

He desires many things: Safety, love, knowledge. He also fears many things: Being manipulated and controlled, abandonment, the unknown.

When he was a child, something happened to him that scarred his psyche in such a way that he could channel all of his desires and fears.

It’s what makes him such a potent conduit for the power-up system, and what makes him a prime target for:

Team Chrysalis

Team Chrysalis is a criminal organization/sort of cult disguised as something innocent: The Magnus Institute, the region’s main research institution that Professor Blackwood works at

The AU’s main plot gets kicked off when Professor Blackwood finds evidence that his husband, the missing Champion, is still alive

If this were a real game, the main story on the side of doing the gym challenge would be helping Professor Blackwood look for clues about Jon’s whereabouts and about The Magnus Institute’s hidden goals

Professor Blackwood also figures out that it’s very likely that Elias had a hand in Jon’s disappearance

(Professor Blackwood for the other half of the main plot: *slams down the Do Not Open coffin in front of Elias* It’s a coffin. There’s a name engraved on it. “WHORE!” IT’S EMPTY!! *grabs Elias by the collar* AND YOU’RE GOING IN IT!!!)

The Elite Four are also part of Team Chrysalis and fully on board with its plan

Though Annabelle might have her own machinations going on

Team Chrysalis plans to reshape the world as they see fit by summoning a Legendary Pokémon that’s a warped physical manifestation of the fears and desires of all living creatures, and simultaneously embodies and feeds on those fears and desires

(It’s basically all the Fears mashed into one eldritch monstrosity)

(I’m mildly worried this sounds too similar to some existing legendaries but at the same time I’m just spitballing and having fun here)

To summon this Legendary, they need a lynchpin capable of channeling all of those fears and desires

This lynchpin is Jon because of course it is.

Team Chrysalis’ whole plan actually only serves to grant Elias immortality and make him king of a ruined world but shhh none of the team members know that

I have zero idea what the Legendary would look like, I just have the fact I want it to have “Pan” in its name

The climax of the story comes when Team Chrysalis starts their ritual and the end of the world. In order to stop them, their Vessel and the Legendary must be defeated.

You are challenged by The Archivist!

The Really Self Indulgent Part

I started working on this at the same time that my friend was watching through XY for the first time

So at some point when coming up with all of the story stuff my brain went “what if I stuck Ash Ketchum into the story?”

So Ash is there now. For some reason lol

He’s 19 now and is just doing his thing and traveling the world

As usual, he takes on the player’s role, challenging gyms and helping Professor Blackwood in his investigation and eventually helping him take on Team Chrysalis

(I made this shitpost in like. Less than an hour lmao)

Ash is so done with these evil team leaders trying to destroy the world

Greninja is also there because tHIS IS MY AU AND I DO WHAT I WANT *MANIACAL LAUGHTER*

And I think that’s it for an overview of Pokémon Oculus!

I have a bunch more stuff for this AU, mostly spitballs and WIP writing snippets, and I do plan on making more art and Fakemon designs eventually (especially now that I’m getting better at emulating the Pokémon art style)

Thank you for reading this far, and feel free to ask me anything about this AU! :D

[aluria-sevhex]

petpet but it's all of the player cast

"...who are these goobers?"

These 12 are the main cast of the active in-progress MSPFA Sovereignstuck!

SOVEREIGNSTUCK is an in-progress MSPFA about 12 Teens, Their Friends, and a God-Making Machine - an RPG, simply titled SVURB, pieced together through mysterious scraps of code. Together, this ragtag team of young adults will have to figure out how to take control of themselves, the narrative, and win the game. But sovereignty over the story itself isn’t something that can be taken without pulling a few teeth, and it’s up to them to decide whether it’s their own, or somebody else’s…

-@/nekropsii (the lead writer), in his elevator pitch found here.

That elevator pitch works wonderfully as a more professional piece of advertising for a fanventure - but I would rather not retread the same tone and ground in this post when the writer has already done an excellent job.

Instead I'm going to talk about it in my own way!

Sovereignstuck is a current interest of mine that is presently doing things to my brain chemistry! It is still rather early on but it is actively updating and approaching its first anniversary. ;) :D

It is not an AU - it does not take place within a zone where there is canon content for it to be 'alternate' to. It features a new cast and a new game on Afterra - "a place once called Earth C by those who created it."

Featuring such wonderful characters, such as:

Retris Morage, a newly 18 neo-Japanese child star afflicted with Classpecting Analysis Disease, Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Disease, and of course, The Horrors.

Tejuri Kromab, a chronically ill Texican girl who writes fanfic about religious figures, knows her way around a yo-yo, and is also VERY VERY FRIEND-SHAPED! :D

Annomi Errata. :)

There's also banger music conveniently archived by a fan at @/sovstucktunes. :D

read it here:

[thunder-opossum]

Hey everyone, it pains me to say this, but I will no longer be running an ask blog format for my au "Sizzling Waters".

I know he means a lot to you, as does he to me, but I'm afraid I'll spite my creation the harder I work on it.

I will no longer be answering asks talking to Sizzle or any of his counterparts, sort of. I don't want this story to die, it's still a fascinating au, and I still want all of you to hear it. I just can't continue telling the story like I was without it decaying slowly.

Please learn more below the cut.

I'll answer asks, on the occasion with drawings if I feel like it or I need to show something. Asks u am looking for are:

Asks to continue on the story: ask the right question to find out the story (what happens when SW reaches FP, What happens after this event, etc...)

Ask about alternatives: what would have happened if so and so lived/died?

Ask facts about the character: what is Sizzle's favorite smell? (Can be about something that generally wouldn't/didn't happen such as "what's Sizzle's favorite type of chocolate?")

Ask the characters stats/in game quirks: how would sizzle and his buddies play in a campaign? (Please ask these questions in small segments, otherwise it would be too much or fit in a post)

And feel free to try anything else, if I don't feel like it, I won't answer it.

Now for something important!

Would you guys prefer a second blog? This would act as a sort of archive and informational source of Sizzle's story. It would also be a convenient place to send asks about the AU (if you accidentally/want to send them to this main blog for whatever reason, that is fine too, it will just be rebloged to the archive account.) I will preface this by saying this is something I've wanted to do for a while now↓

I will still draw Sizzle in my free time and for fun, as he is my character who I still hold dearly. And that is why I am trying to balance this as delicately as possible.

Have you sent a sizzle asks to me but I have not answered it?: they will most likely not be answered here, feel free to resend them though.

I sincerely hope you all can understand, feel free to ask about this plan.

[yellow-faerie]

@wormsontoast I do indeed have some thoughts about Archivist!Georgie (from the au vaguely outlined here) and since you showed a mild interest in it, I shall now tell you all about it here haha

So there are two things I kinda want to say before I keep going because this au has been changing and shifting in my head a lot and I want to get a bit more of it out into the world.

The first is that each archivist au is based off of as few changes as possible to the canon timeline, aiming (ideally) for only one change that causes ripples throughout the timeline. For example, in the Gertrude-causes-the-apocalypse au, the one change is that Agnes and Gertrude get bound when they are both much younger and the web manipulates things from there, yada yada that's not why we're here BUT you see the vision.

The other thing is that my initial intention was that most people would have a pair, forming some sort of couple or QPR, two people against the world kinda thing - one of them would be the Archivist and one of them would be their apocalypse + 1. This was mostly because (in my head at least) I saw one very eye-aligned character in each couple.

BUT I have recently been doing a re-listen and one thing that stands out to me is that so many of the main characters want to know things, that I think a lot of them could have ended up in the Archivist position in fact. Martin seems to actively encourage reading statements in S3, and Tim definitely has the motivation (when the circus gets involved at least) to be manipulated into the position - more curious though are Daisy and Georgie.

I'll leave a potential archivist!Daisy post for another day (because that's a wild au and a half haha) and talk instead about Georgie, who was meant to be the purpose of this post lol (I'll pop it under a readmore)

So, Georgie - the first thing is how does she become the Archivist? I think the point of divergence for this au would be that Georgie and Jon don't break up during Uni (or just after) and keep their relationship kinda going for a while, and when Jon mentions joining the Magnus Institute, Georgie goes with him.

The real question is why. Georgie in the podcast is fairly avidly against chasing the monsters, so I can see her as taking a job there as a way of keeping Jon safe - I think she sees him as quite naive for his scepticisim and knows that she will not talk him out of it, so she better just be there to stop him from going somewhere he shouldn't.

Jon and Georgie do break-up though, although fairly amicably. They keep living together because it's way cheaper than living alone in London and they are friends. Georgie also starts WTG but it's very much a side project to work (one that she keeps putting off making her full time job, even though she wants to, because the Institute's library is just too good for research).

She's also the one to push him towards the cute librarian with whom Jon has several cringefail attempts to woo before they start tentatively dating.

I reckon that during the course of being in research (with Jon and Tim and Sasha), Georgie gets marked by the web. They'd marked Jon but then Georgie had come, and so they saw an opportunity in her (or wanted a back-up just in case).

Either way, by the time that Gertrude dies, Georgie is the one that Elias chooses as the next Archivist (and I honestly think that Gertrude might have thought that Georgie would be the next Archivist too - Sasha is good but you can't beat actual fearlessness coupled with good sense).

She gets to take with her Jon and Sasha and Tim (Elias is like...let's make sure I have plenty of hostages to work with when the time is right) and that's the Archives team sorted. They're fairly competent, considering the fact that none of them have a library science degree.

Season 1 goes much the same but we meet Martin when he escapes Prentiss. Jon has been going to the library for Georgie, getting out books on archiving and the like and periodically finding references, mostly because he's the one who's closest to the library staff (well, one library staff member in particular).

But Jon mentions that Georgie assigned him the Vittery statement - something about facing his fears - and he hates it, so Martin suggests they go together after work, and he would deal with any remaining spiders for Jon. (Who is Martin, if not down bad for Jon?)

(That is, of course, a rhetorical question lol)

Something something, Martin gets trapped in his apartment for two weeks by the Worm Woman despite not actually being in the Archives. Then he comes straight to the Archives to give a statement, where Jon is working late and waiting for Georgie to finish so they can go home. Jon is the one that suggests Martin stay in the Archives, after he turned down the offer of staying on their sofa.

So Martin lives in document storage and continues working in the library with the rest of his coworkers none-the-wiser, and gets kinda absorbed into the Archives nonsense as Sasha meets Michael etc. etc. And Martin and Jon get really close, from late nights and evenings and weird little dates.

It goes from like...dating to being genuinely quite serious; they have been together for probably like 2 or 3 years by this point but this is a tipping point in their relationship. They keep talking about how they'll move in together after all this is over, so Georgie can finally have her home studio and Martin doesn't have to go back to his flat.

Anyway-

There's also Melanie. She comes in because Georgie was one of the people she contacted in her search for answers and Georgie was like...come and make a statement, maybe we can do something.

Melanie is slightly less derisive of the Magnus Institute (only slightly) mostly because she likes Georgie more lol

Martin is in the library when Prentiss attacks, and is the one that Sasha finds when she runs up from the Archives. Jon and Georgie and Tim are down in the archives, knocking in walls and fighting off worms, and Sasha and Martin go find the CO2 suppression system.

Sasha turns the right corner; Martin doesn't and ends up in Artefact Storage.

Tim finds Gertrude's body. The tide of worms split him off from Georgie and Jon who end up getting wormed in the archives before the fire suppression system gets set off.

They have a few weeks off. Not!Martin and Jon do move in together as had been planned, staying at Georgie's while sorting out a place together. Before everyone returns to the Institute (Martin got the time off too because he was deemed sufficiently traumatised by it all), Jon and Martin move in together, Sasha and Tim have another ill-advised hook-up and Georgie ends up...alone.

Queue the paranoia arc. Georgie might not be able to feel fear but I think that would make a paranoia arc even funnier, because she is convinced that she is seeing things Rationally only for her very much not doing that.

So the thoughts get a bit vague from here. I have some thoughts for each character though!

Martin is obviously taken by the Not!Them in this and so that really fucks Jon up. Jon is Georgie's oldest friend and very much her closest support net, often being the one to feel fear in her place (like she uses him to gauge how she should react to a situation, something that developed because there hasn't really been a time since Georgie returned to Uni where they haven't been in relatively close proximity).

So Jon goes off the deep-end after the revelation of Martin's death and the fact that he wasn't even living with the guy. He takes the responsibility of Martin's mother onto his shoulders, he literally ties up all of Martin's loose ends and then I think he just...stops caring.

It's a mix between Tim's complete S3 despair and Jon's S2 paranoia. He literally cannot trust anyone anymore, no matter how hard he tries, except maybe Georgie because of the whole Archivist thing. And so he goes to the circus with Georgie and Tim and Basira and Daisy.

And he is the one to press the button and die.

I don't usually like taking that away from Tim, because it is a decision so tightly linked to his backstory but I actually put him as ending up in the Coffin in this, shoved in there by a well-meaning Gerogie with her mind being twisted by the Unknowing.

I like the idea of Georgie having a bit of a superiority complex in this AU, where she is sure that she knows better than everyone else because she can't feel fear so she can see things Rationally and Correctly (she wildly underestimates how much other emotions can influence you).

Anyway, back to Tim. He wasn't as depressed during S3 because Georgie's own mini-paranoia arc involved a lot more of digging into statements because she is much more certain that the knowledge of who killed Gertrude is in there, and also Sasha is very much alive and well.

I mean, Jon's rancid vibes are definitely off-putting but like this is at the point where they realise they can't leave and the dread powers exist so the vibes aren't great anyway.

So Tim ends up in the Buried. How does he get out you ask?

Sasha.

I have been waiting for a potential AU in which to put Vast!Sasha and I have decided this is the one. No I don't know how yet but this is my decision - I love the idea of Buried!Tim and Vast!Sasha being something of a couple.

Beyond that for them though, it's mostly vibes.

I think Basira might actually choose to work with Peter Lukas in this one. I wouldn't have Georgie go into a coma post-Unknowing because she's already touched by the End and I don't think she would choose to wake up again, because she simply doesn't have the fear of death that influenced Jon, so she's around for the inter-season shenanigans that occurred.

So Basira doesn't trust her or Elias or Peter, but she decides that as she knows Elias and Georgie, and she's been offered this position by Peter, she'll take it.

(She's trying to ignore the pull of Daisy, hunting out there somewhere, lost after the circus - she never even got the chance to fight against it)

Melanie would be a very interesting one indeed, because part of what attracted her to Georgie in the first place (I think) is that Georgie knows about the entities and can understand her trauma, but is determined to not be a part of it, so they would be so much more messy than in canon.

I honestly couldn't say how her story would thus change. Melanie is a very fascinating character to me and I struggle to sort her out in my head without writing her (and so is Georgie - that's the problem with not writing them as much as some other characters :/) - that said, I do think she doesn't go full eye gouging because she does really love Georgie and doesn't want to leave her in hell alone.

(Hand in unlovable hand and all)

(I also think that Tim and Sasha might decide to do some eye-gouging with friends, as not-quite fully realised avatars of other powers, and try and settle down together somewhere, just in time for the apocalypse)

I'm not sure what all of Georgie's marks would be, or how she'd get them, and if you've got this far I am sure you understand my thoughts are vague and disjointed; but know it will be tragic and upsetting because I refuse to let myself write happy AUs lol

ANYWAY, thank you for showing an interest in this AU :)

[bbybluemochi]

bbybluemochi's F.A.Q. ✧･ﾟ

Hi! Arun here! I thought that instead of answering your submissions one by one I’d gather all the frequently asked questions and answer them in a single post (this is a mix of art/OC/commissions related q's)!

Please note that I do read all your messages and I’m so grateful for every one of them!!!! I keep all your words really close to my heart, thank you for liking my art and loving my Ocs as much as I do, it means the world to me <3

What’s the name of your OCs?

They’re called Cotton (the blonde one) and Puppy (the dark haired one). The original idea for them was to make some silly wolf/bunny OCs (that’s why Cotton is called like that, it was supposed to be a joke about her tail…) but somewhere along the way they took over and became something completely different!

Is there a webcomic for your OCs?

Not currently! I don’t have the time or the skills (for now) but I’d love to give it a try in the future! 

I was wondering if you mind people using your OC art as character art/inspiration for DnD?Just games with friends that are for fun, nothing for commercial.

Go ahead! I find that really flattering.

Just out of curiosity, are any of your OCs bisexual?

Both Cotton and Puppy are lesbians. That’s what I feel comfortable drawing since I’m a lesbian myself. If I ever do draw a bisexual OC I’ll make sure to mention it! <3

I think you said Cotton was a dominatrix in a previous ask, but is Puppy on the opposite side of the spectrum or is she just glad to be there whichever way?

Puppy is very much a sub. They both switch (Puppy as a service top and bottom and Cotton as a top and power bottom), but the dom/sub dynamic never changes. Also I wanted to mention that these dynamics do not transcend outside of the bedroom that much, there’s more to them than their kinks but I do love to draw them deep in their submissive/dominant headspaces. 

Are one of the lesbian fairytale characters trans?

I didn’t design either of them with that in mind, but I’m super OK with people headcanoning them as trans!

May I use your art as a header/icon?

Of course! Remember to credit me tho~

Do you allow people to use your art freely?

I don’t allow reposts of my work (not that it matters that much, since almost all my art has been already reposted a million times ))): but I’d really appreciate it if you just shared my posts instead of reposting my art). As for phone backgrounds/wallpapers or stuff like that, yeah!

Do you have an instagram account or other social media, I would love to follow you there.

My main platform is twitter (same @), I post all my drawings there and I’m usually more active over there. Tumblr is kind of like an archive. I really like the community here but I find it easier to reply/interact with people on twitter! As for instagram, I do have an old art account (same @, again) but I haven’t posted in so long. I may start posting there soon if a certain rich guy decides to keep destroying the bird app tho. 

I’ve always thought about this… how do you think it’d look if the aesthetics/styles [of your OCs] were reversed?

I’ll have to explore that in a future drawing, I haven’t thought much about it! 

Do you write fics for your characters or has anyone else written fics about them?

Not yet! A couple of my friends have offered, tho! I usually like to stick to drawing because that’s what I do best, I don’t wanna subject anyone to my writing (it’s not very good,,,,). When I share some of my Ocs stories, I think it will be in comic format. 

What's the story behind your OCs? 

There are several, actually!! I like to put my OCs in different universes. As for now, there’s the Fairytale AU, the modern setting AU (this is the original one), and now the Werewolf/Vampire AU. I also did a drawing of them as spiderwoman and black cat but I don’t think that AU is gonna make a comeback for a while. I’m also planning a scifi AU but I’m not sure I’d be able to pull off that aesthetic with my current art style so I’m still working on it. 

The Fairytale AU is the one I’m working on most of the time. I wanna release a small artbook with their story + illustrations. That was my main goal for 2023 but life got in the way, so maybe,,, 2024??? *crosses fingers* 

Is your shop down? It’s saying that it’s not available.

I open my shop for 1-2 weeks every now and then, that’s why it’s closed most of the time! My plan is to open the store again in september, if i manage to finish all the merch in time! I’ll announce it on my twitter and tumblr account when I do. 

Would you ever share a tutorial on how you make your art?

Yes, of course! I’m not very good at explaining my drawing process but If it helps anyone I’d love to! Just let me know what part of the drawing process you’d like me to focus on, because If i try to make a full illustration tutorial it’s gonna be too long/difficult to follow. 

May I ask what brush do you use for your lineart?

I use a different brush almost every time I start an illustration, I’m not very consistent when it comes to that (I think it’s mainly because I haven’t found the perfect brush yet!). But let me know what illustration you’re curious about and I’ll try to remember which one I used!

Do you come up with poses off the top of your head or do you use some type of reference? I always struggle with them.

It depends on what I’m drawing! Some of my drawings are reinterpretations of paintings (I’m obsessed with pre-raphaelite painters and arthurian legend paintings in general), so in those cases I try to adapt the poses to my art style. Even If I’m trying to recreate an already existing painting I end up changing the poses/proportions a lot along the way to fit my personal taste/art style. 

Other times, I just sketch from imagination (this is more entertaining, I think, since looking at references can make the drawing process a bit tedious). If I find it hard to draw a certain pose/part of the body I will look up references on printerest, no shame in using pictures! If I still can’t find the pose I need I’ll just take a picture of myself (this is like, a last resort for me. I’m too lazy for this). 

My personal advice would be to use references for the pose and then tweaking the pose and trying to make it more personal 

I love the way the armor was designed and rendered! Can you share some tips on designing armor? 

Drawing armor is something I still struggle with most of the time. I think I’ve learned a lot in the past year (please don’t look at my armor drawings from 2022,,,,, sigh) but I still struggle to draw certain poses/angles. My advice is: don’t hesitate to draw non-functional armor!!! There’s always gonna be someone like “actually, that armour makes no sense :)” well !!!! it looks cool as hell so who caresssss !!!!! 

I think it’s more important for you to get comfortable drawing armor before you start beating yourself up for not drawing accurate ones. It takes a lot of practice (I’m still learning!!!), especially if you’re trying to draw historically accurate ones, so start by having fun, and then work your way up from there.

Most of the tips I can think about are really hard to explain without a visual example, so let me know if that’d be a tutorial you would be interested in and I’ll try to make one (I’m cringing a little just saying this bc I swear, my armor skills are so bad compared to some amazing artists out there………..).

Do you allow cosplays your OCs?

YES…. YES PLEASE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IM BEGGING YOUUU ILL LOVE YOU FOREVER !!!!!! *rattles my cage* 

Do you allow fanart of your OCs?

Again,,, PLEASEEEEEEEEE !!! Just tag me so I don’t miss it and remember to give me credits if you do !!!!!!!!!!! :D

I was wondering if you use procreate , clip studio, or similar apps?

A mix of both. I used to draw on procreate only until I got a tablet and now I’m a clip studio user (csp sponsor me please), and now that’s all I use. I’m so used to drawing on PC now that I don’t think I’d be able to go back to procreate, but I still like that app a lot! All my drawings (even the ones I do on csp) always get retouched on procreate because I like some of the effects (*dreamy sigh* chromatic aberration filter,,, love u). 

I wanted to know if the marks Cotton has on her waist are tattoos or like a scar? 

Those are tats! Puppy is a tattoo artist ~~~ (I’m actually not sure if i’ll keep the waist tats on Cotton or if I’ll end up redesigning them,,,)

I was wondering if you take commissions?

Not right now. I also don’t have any plans of opening commissions any time soon! When I do, I’ll post a google forms on twitter and here on tumblr with the prices and type of comms I do. But there’s nothing scheduled. 

Even tho I'm not doing commissions atm, I’m currently looking for illustration jobs (specially book covers), so don’t hesitate to email me at bbybluemochi@gmail.com

That's all for now, thank you for reading!! I think I covered most of the questions, I'll make another q&a post in the future! Bye~~

[stjohnstarling]

I did a little googling about Fifty Shades of Grey's origins as a fanfic and oh my god I have opened a terrifyingly deep rabbit hole. It's so much more than Fifty Shades. I think all of self-publishing might be an offshoot of the Twilight fandom. I'm going insane.

This essay explains a lot. Twilight fans got sick of Twilight but still wanted to participate in the fandom, so they got creative:

There were stories where vampires didn't exist (like Fifty Shades of Grey). They got CRAZY popular within the community because they were essentially just generic romance novels with characters we already knew (made it easy to write and consume, as we already liked and cared about the characters). Though there were always nods to the original Twilight series within them, you didn't even have to know Twilight to enjoy an All Human-AU. I've gotten tons of reviews on my fanfic where readers say they've never even picked up the book. By 2010, probably a good 75% of Twilight fanfic being produced was All-Human. It was literally a chore to find a fanfic that had anything to do with vampires.

Twilight fanfiction diverged from its source material to the point where it was only a minor tweak for most popular authors to drop the Twilight link entirely and publish their fanfic as original novels. From a comment on that essay:

Seriously, Twilight fandom got really crazy big for a few years there. It was not totally uncommon to get multi-million clicks on a semi-popular story. It's weird looking back on it and calling it "Twilight fandom" because it was really more like "Romance Novel fandom". For real, for a period there, calling a Twilight fanfic author a 'Twilight fan' would be the ultimate insult. But they never stopped writing about Edward and Bella! It's so weird

And from the main Twilight article on Fanlore:

So what we've created in our neck of the woods are people using their fanwork to gain a huge audience, then removing the fanwork, filing it, publishing it, and sending cease and desist letters if the fanwork is shared. (The published works are then marketed back to the fandom via author profiles and banner ads on the archives.)

Fifty Shades of Grey was the first of these to explode, but it's far from the only one. Every single one of EL James' fanfiction contemporaries I've looked into is not just a self-published author but among the biggest self-published authors in the world, many of whom were foundational to shaping the look and feel and tropes of the medium. Twilight fanfiction is absolutely foundational to all of self-publishing.

This explains so much about the mainstream parts of the industry to me. I don't think they've ever fully gotten out from under the weight of the Twilight fandom, even to this day. It's still the same stuff, look at this. From a former fan's ff.net profile:

My BFF Angel and I (who met through [writing Twilight fanfiction]!) are co-writing writing a dark YA series of standalone romances, with so many of my fave themes. Trauma, bullying, addiction, social issues, violence, pretty rich high school boys being douchebags, hurt/comfort, frantic dry humping, you feel me you feel me.

The resulting book series from 2021 has tens of thousands of Goodreads reviews.

[perpetualexistence]

A Total Drama Magnus Archives AU

Day 7: Free Day!

Alright gang, this one’s going to be a bit different as this is what I’ve got the energy for right now. Rather than tell a narrative like I usually do, I’m just going to infodump the ideas I currently have about this AU.

The important thing to know is that this AU takes place parallel to most of the events happening in canon Magnus Archives. Though in this case the setting is actually The Usher Foundation, the sister organization in the Americas. Spoilers for The Magnus Archives because it’s going into it.

Everyone’s in their late 20’s here mainly because they need to have full time jobs for this to work. Also, please do check tags.

(It’s also got a very heavy focus on Alenoaheather as villains and I won’t apologize for this)

@total-drama-horror-week

Characters and their Roles

Usher Foundation

Gwen: Protagonist, pretty much takes up Jon's role except instead of recording tapes, she listens to tapes and makes forensic sketches so that the Foundation can actually be able to recognize what they're dealing with. Her sketches are hauntingly accurate. Becomes an avatar of the eye.

Courtney: The foundation's lawyer. Her main job is pretty much protecting the foundation from all the lawsuits about break ins that the investigator types just constantly do. Is a skeptic about all this and just took the job because she needed an in to the field and this is just what she found. Does start believing when she realizes her friend Bridgette is different even though everyone else claims she's still the same. And thus having to deal with Not-Bridgette.

The Antagonist Trio

Alejandro: Avatar of The Spiral. Comes from the Burromuerto family who have aligned themselves with The Buried. After…separating himself from family tradition, dedicates himself to The Spiral. Hypnotizes people into states of mind where they lose sense of self, direction, purpose, you name it. His hair is full of curls and his pupils fractalize when he’s hypnotizing someone, or when he’s feeling extreme emotion.

Heather: Avatar of The Web. Was once a regular spider that was gifted with ascension into avatarhood from the entity that spawned her. Now exists as a drider that tricks humans into coming enough to her so that she can paralyze, cocoon them, and eat them at her leisure.

Noah: Avatar of The Eye. Only surviving member of his family line in the event that saw him become an avatar. Feeds on learning and seeing others' traumas. Scrambles around trying to figure out avatarhood until he meets Alejandro, and later Heather. Works for the Usher Foundation to feed himself and feed his partners intel and vulnerable statement-givers to feast on. Peers into others’ worst traumas and can force them to relive it in their minds. He has an eye each on the backs of his hands.

Miscellaneous

Izzy: Avatar of The Hunt. She goes out of her way to encourage others to give in to predator/prey instincts. She enjoys watching the chaos go down between the Usher Foundation and the antagonist trio. She stays on the fence and would help either side if asked.

Eva: Avatar of The Slaughter. Or at least aligned with it. Offers herself as a mercenary so that she can satisfy her bloodlust. Works a lot with the Foundation but can be persuaded to work against them if someone else can offer her a better fight.

Backstories

Noah

Noah's part of a big human family with a lineage of being involved in supernatural things, from research to hunting to capturing to study etc. Basically a more localized version of the Institute/Foundation. They're more a neutral party rather than just for the side of humanity though, which somewhat puts them at odd with them.

The Mudaliars are one of the safer bets of information for those outside of the Usher Foundation. Of course there is usually a price in terms of exchange of information, corpses of what they kill (one of his sisters really likes dissecting things), just money, etc. Noah isn't the most sociable or the one who's normally 'customer' facing, but he's the one who stays at home the most while the others are out and about. They need to leave at least one person at home at all times to deal with clients that might come in, and that person was Noah once he was old enough to start getting into the family business.

The problem was their extralegal status ar semi-archivists led them vulnerable to those aligned with Entities. The large size of their family also made them a tantalizing target. Thus the family, Noah included, were kidnapped in an attempt at a Mass Ritual to bring forth all the Entities into the realm.

The ritual involves each Mudaliar being sacrificed in a different location for a different entity. Noah is meant to be a sacrifice for The Lonely, so he’s locked into solitary confinement, with his only interactions with the outside world being pictures slid under his door of the corpse of each family member as they get sacrificed for their entity.

He’s able to piece together what’s happening, though with dread realizes there’s little he can do to fix the situation. His one chance is to disrupt the ritual, though his options on that are very limited. Eventually he settles on the idea that he could devote himself to a different entity to disrupt it and save himself.

He knows he’s caught in a trap of the lonely, doomed to die a slow and agonizing death of dehydration and starvation being all by himself with nothing to eat or drink. Thus he turns his attention to attracting the attention of The Eye. His one idea for how to do this is to dedicate himself to keeping track of his own deterioration.

He commits energy he should be preserving writing down everything he’s learned, not sleeping until his body forces him to collapse in exhaustion and then just starting up again when he’s recovered. Running out of pen and paper and thus using whatever he can get his hands on, eventually resorting to his own blood in his commitment to make sure his knowledge doesn’t die with him.

Eventually, it works as he’s granted avatarhood. The downside is that he did this while still connected with his remaining family. Becoming an avatar of The Eye saved himself and the world, but it killed the rest of his family. Leaving him alone anyways.

He wanders around for a while trying to figure out what there even is to do about his life until he comes across Alejandro when he’s trying to feed himself with forbidden information.

Alejandro

The Burromuertos are a family that have served The Buried for generations (similar to the Lukas family). Serving The Buried has led them to getting riches untold from the ground. Their family always lives in prosperity.

However, this gift isn’t without sacrifice. Each generation, the Burromuertos have to sacrifice one of their own to The Buried. In the days of old this involved taking the sacrifice and shoving them inside of a special suit of armor. The person inside would still be kept alive, and slowly crushed to death over the course of their lifetime. The suit act independently of the will of the victim, following the orders of the Burromuertos outside. The victim would power that suit of armor that serves as a guardian.

By the time that victim is used up, they would have been crushed into a diamond. That diamond is then placed into a display room that only the heads of the household know about. It’s part of the guardian’s duty to protect this room, as well as the rest of the mansion and Burromuertos.

Over time, the suit of armor modernized to something more akin to a robot suit. Tradition made it so that the youngest would be the one sacrificed so that more time would last between replacements. It also had the head of the family sire children in threes: The first to inherit the family legacy, the second just in case anything happened to the first, and then the third to be the sacrifice.

Alejandro was led to believe that he was simply meant to inherit part of the family wealth. He knows of his family’s history with The Buried, but not exactly what the sacrifice entails. (Burromuertos are only allowed to know about the ritual once they’ve produced a potential heir since their use as a sacrifice becomes nonexistent.)

His time comes early, just before reaching adulthood, when the old sacrifice fully crystalizes. He’s shoved into a suit and discovers just how much value his family put into him.

He stayed like this for a few years. He learned to have only quick, shallow breaths, as anything longer would see his prison tighten around him. Although he had been conditioned to be loyal the The Buried even in this tortured state, he was always ambitious, and was never quite as loyal as his family would have liked.

Instead, he follows a descent towards The Spiral. With nothing else to do, there’s only trying to mentally escape his current reality of being crushed and trapped. He’d rather do that than acknowledge his family knows he’s alive, but will do nothing to save him because he wasn’t good enough for them to produce a younger child to spare him from this fate.

He’s somewhat aware of the things that happen outside of the suit, though he much prefers to stay inside with his hallucinations.

This is until Noah comes to free him. It wasn’t intentional. Truth be told on Noah’s end, he was just hungry for knowledge since The Eye was making it known he wasn’t feeding it properly. A rich family like the Burromuertos seemed like they’d have just the knowledge he needed. The robot at their beck and call was just another obstacle to deal with.

In trying to flee from and destroy the suit Noah accidentally ended up freeing Alejandro. Noah has a heart so he helps bring Alejandro back to reality. Alejandro has a heart full of hatred and pettiness so when he finds out why Noah’s there, he agrees to help steal from his own family.

Using what he’d learned from his time in the robot suit, he helps Noah steal some wealth, particularly the family diamonds.

Though when he touches one of them to put away he finds out they're still conscious thanks to inherited psychic link of having been trapped in the suit just like them.

The two of them bond through working with the diamonds. Noah uses Alejandro as a conduit to peer into the diamonds and feed off their traumas, while Alejandro gets the knowledge his family denied him without having to relive his own trauma inside the suit.

They stick together for a while, surviving using Noah’s knowledge about entities and Alejandro’s newfound hardiness. Experiencing the pressure of the suit has left him stronger and tougher than before as gravity now as nothing than the gravity he’s used to.

Though the whole time they’re doing so Alejandro still has nightmares from his time trapped in the suit. The terror always comes from The Buried, but then salvation comes in the lies he tells himself. The lies he tells to others to forget things. In fractals and spirals and other.

He gives in to The Spiral so that nothing else can ever claim him again. And life is pretty easy.

Up until they meet Heather.

Heather

Heather started off as a store-raised spider. As a spider she was naturally touched by The Web, enough to have a small form of sentience. Her dwelling was small and cramped, and meals didn't always come on time. She wasn't the happiest with it, but she also didn't really understand what happiness was. It was enough to survive so she lived with it, though the part of her that could think wanted more.

She thought she'd get this when she was bought by a teen. That teen provided her a much bigger terrarium, and went so far as to get her live food. She discovered what enjoyment was when she drained the life out of a fly. She was content. She actually grew to a healthier size for her species since she was malnourished before.

That teen seemed really excited to have her. Something about 'revenge', though Heather didn't know what that word meant. She figured it had something to do with that older sibling that constantly seemed to pick on them. Though that older sibling was squeamish around her, and thus she learned what fear was.

All this came to a head when it came to what her owner referred to as 'the big day'. Heather didn't know much of what was going on. All she knew was that she was placed into the smaller container her owner used when they wanted to carry her out of the house, and stuffed into their pocket. It was dark and cozy so while she didn't appreciate the jostling, it wasn't so bad. The next thing she knew she was taken out of that container and placed onto something with a lot of pink frills. She was pretty confused, but was able to piece together that she'd just been placed onto the ballerina outfit of that older sibling. She was content to stay in place until the performance started and the older sister began to dance.

In order to not be flung off, Heather clung as tightly as she could. Until, eventually, she heard a familiar tune. It was a song she'd heard play every meal time. One she'd eventually learn was called Dance of the Sugar Plum fairy. So, as she took this to mean that despite these circumstances that food was here, she emerged from beneath the folds. This immediately got screams from the other performers and the audience. And eventually that older sister when she realized there was a spider on her during the performance of her lifetime.

Despite Heather's intelligence, she was barely able to process the speed at which she was flung off from that body. Before she could recover from the fall, someone else came and squashed her.

The curtains fell, and everyone was fleeing from her mangled, still living body. Twitching in agony. There was screaming all around. But there was also laughter. One she recognized.

It was from her human. Laughing at a prank pulled off. Uncaring for her agony now that her job was done. No attempt to rescue her despite the love and care she thought she'd understood. The only mercy she received was from the ballet teacher who came to finish the job just so he could salvage the disaster of a performance.

It was in her death that she was able to meet her mother. The Great Spider. She was offered the chance to become the manipulator. It was her birthright, after all. She took it without hesitation.

One by one those who attended that performance went missing.

One by one she perfected her craft of trickery and deceit.

She saved her owner for last.

The look on her face was satisfying.

Thus, Heather started to fully live her life in her new form as a half-human, half-spider. Her human half took inspiration from what the idea her previous owner wished for herself. She uses social media to trick her victims into coming closer, and then when meeting them in real life, webs them up to consume them.

She’s had hunters try to take her down, and other people stumble into her lair, but none of them were really of importance.

Not until Alejandro and Noah, who find their way into her lair in their attempts to get a break from other avatars/humans in between their feeding sessions.

Heather tried to trick them into thinking she was just another victim who needed to be helped to get them to come closer. Unfortunately for her, they were both smart enough to know something was wrong. Noah outright said as much, to Alejandro’s chagrin as he wanted to lure her into a false sense of security thinking that they’d fallen for it.

They have this conversation about how this should have been handled in front of Heather. Honestly, it was pretty hilarious seeing them seemingly not understand the danger they were in.

Still, Heather had a job to do, so she threw away the false pretenses and chased after them.

Despite their banter they do prove themselves rather competent in evading her. Alejandro tries to hypnotize her, though as an avatar of The Web she’s highly resistant to attempts to manipulate her. Still, she’s impressed. So much so that she agrees to let them go.

…And then proceeds to follow them around while disguised as a regular spider in order to see if her hunch about these two having more worth is right.

She starts realizing their potential, though is unaware of the fact that they know she’s watching them thanks to Noah’s connection to The Eye.

Though this time he's smart enough to sneak this information to Alejandro rather than outright say it considering what happened the last time he decided to out her. Alejandro gets the idea to put on more of a show of their capabilities since he can recognize that she's sizing them up.

When it eventually does get public that they’re sizing each other up, that’s when they agree to an alliance. They’ll work together to keep each other fed and make sure they each stay alive.

No matter what.

Domains and Avatars in a Changed World

The Change still happens as it does in canon. Nobody has a direct part in it, though Alenoaheather are a continuous threat to The Usher Foundation as a trio of avatars seeking to expand their influence and victims. They get into fights, though the conflicting parties end up surviving to see themselves Changed.

Gwen

Her sketches take on a life of their own. When she sketches something realistically enough, it’ll come to life. She isn’t guaranteed control of it, but it will be there. In addition, if she sketches an individual, she’ll be able to ask it about things that individual knows. If she touches that sketch up to the original, then that person/creature will be trapped within the drawing. If the drawing is destroyed, so are they. Unlike with other deaths in the changed world, this is permanent.

Her domain is Artist’s Alley. There are booths run by abstract figures that buy and sell art. These art pieces are in fact humans/animals trapped in pieces of art. It represents the fear of being put on display for others to gawk at and commodify. She’s vaguely aware it exists, and when she does find out about it avoids it like the plague.

Izzy

She can turn into prey animals that lure unsuspecting victims into an obsessive hunt that never ends until the person can hunt no more and collapses due to exhaustion, dehydration, or a combination. At which point, she then turns into a predator that rips them apart. She waits for them to reform so that she can start the process all over again.

Her domain is The Opened Season. In it humans are caught in a cycle where they are always hunting someone down, while they themselves are always being hunted. It’s based on the fear of not being at the top of the food chain despite being high up there. Izzy spends most of her time here.

Eva

She can take her own emotions and strengths and project them onto others. This is usually rage and results in others getting filled with the urge for violence. This prevents them from thinking straight, which makes them both easier and harder to fight off.

Her domain is The Battle Arena. Humans are made to fight in an continuous onslaught against each other and other beasts and foes. There are places for training that are still met with violence. Places of rest and relaxation are all potential fight pits. It represents the fear of peace not being an option.

Alejandro

Alejandro's domain is The Lulling Field. It looks peaceful, with nothing trying to attack you. The grass is soft. There is a standard cycle of day and night. During the day it's sunny, but there's always shade among the many trees. It's just warm enough to encourage rest without being overbearing. There are poppies with fractal designs that litter the ground. For those who prefer resting inside, there are cabins with the comfiest beds imaginable.

Those who aren't lured by the temptation to sleep find those strange, beautiful poppies start emitting pollen that forces them into slumber.

That's where the horror begins. Once they fall asleep, they are trapped within a non-euclidean dream that never ends. The dream logic is strange and unpredictable. A person loses their sense of attachment to their body as they grapple with viewing themselves in the third person perspective of their dreams.

There are many times where they're allowed to think they've figured out how to escape the dream and have woken up, back to a reality pre-change where nothing bad has happened.

It's always proven as a lie as each 'wake up' is actually them being driven deeper and deeper into their dream. Until they can't even remember what their original reality was like.

The many peaceful sleeping forms that inhabit the field forever hide the torment the dreaming soul is experiencing. They enhance the illusion that it must be safe if so many are comfortable enough to sleep exposed.

The real world is such a harsh place right now.

Don't you deserve the rest?

As its avatar, Alejandro has the ability to travel through and inhabit dreams. In this form his limbs are much longer than they should be, and he’s closer to 8 feet tall. His fingers curl in on themselves but are capable of slicing. His pupils are permanently fractals.

He'll carry poppies that he blows into the faces of those who are awake to knock them out. He'll often go into those of his victims and insert himself as their dearest, most trusted friend.

Sometimes he'll try to convince them that they're insane for thinking that their dream is anything but reality. Other times he'll help them 'discover' their unreality and help them 'escape'. Truly let them think they're the protagonist trying to free their people. only to laugh when they just go right into the next layer of dreaming thinking that they've finally won.

His realm represents the fear of falling asleep and never waking up.

Noah

Noah's domain is The Library. Which, as the name implies, is a giant library with books filled on every subject known and unknown to mankind. There are cameras watching every shelf.

There are reference desks centered at the entrances/exits with mechanical attendants. Those attendants can answer questions in regards to basic questions about the section they reside over, but anybody seeking specific questions, or who wishes to borrow a book, need to make their way to the main reference desk in the center, which is where Noah resides.

The directions and maps to get to that main desk are confounded by riddles that must be solved using intelligence. If solved properly it's a quick trek to the main desk. Otherwise, it takes ages to stumble to the right spot, though being smart enough to make one's own map that works for them will also get them there quicker, albeit still slower than if they'd solved the original riddle.

Anyone in The Library will want to make their way to that central desk fast, because it has regular hours, and closed time where the lights go dark. The attendants make their rounds at dark.

Any visitor caught by an attendant is dragged to the central reference desk, frozen and put On Hold on a large shelf until Noah can come to deal with them when The Library opens again. The same thing will happen if they're caught stealing a book or damaging anything in The Library, which is nigh impossible to get away with with all the cameras.

Those who have broken the rules have all their knowledge forcibly extracted from them by Noah. His fingers slip through their skull to pull out their brain and spread it into sheets as thin as paper. The grooves of the brain become lines of text as they're separated into neat sheets of paper. Their bodies are used as the leather needed to bind the new book together. They're still alive and conscious through this whole process as they get shelved away into the appropriate section. To stay there until someone feels like checking them out.

Anyone who does make their way willingly to Noah during business hours has the option to ask for a library card. Library card holders are allowed to stay in the library after hours (so long as they hold firm to the no stealing or destroying property rule).

They can stay in the library as long as they like without need to worry about Noah. However, his partners do like to come visit from time to time, and they're always eager for more victims. Noah won't do a thing to stop them. So any humans can stay at their own risk.

Library card holders are also able to borrow books from the library. Regular books can be borrowed without issue. However, more valuable books, such as books that would help them survive and understand the new world they live in or books that were once people that have all their valuable knowledge, require valuable knowledge to be given in return.

A person can either let Noah Behold them for a traumatic memory that they will then be forced to relive as he examines it and determines if it's a worthy trade for the book they want. Or they can give up a cherish memory for him to turn into a book. They'll never be able to remember that memory again.

This domain's fear is about getting caught breaking a rule you didn't know existed. Getting punished in a way that far outmatches the crime. The rules are nowhere to be found so you have to either ask for them and risk somehow breaking them that way, or stumble around and hope you don't break them.

It's a surveillance state with an apathetic watcher. He only care for his books, not people. He doesn't want to be here. If he's made to deal with it he takes it out on the person who interrupted his brief moments of peace before going back to his task.

Noah's also got the ability to peer into someone's immediate future based on their current thoughts. He doesn't pack much of a punch himself aside from his 'blast them with the PTSD' ability. But he can dodge attacks because he can See them coming.

Rather than just have the two extra eyes, he now has eyes covering every part of his body. If he touches a person, he can place one of his eyes onto them so he can see what they experience.

He also has at least a vague awareness of what's going on in each of those cameras at all times.

Heather

Her domain is called The Spider's Den. There are spiders and webbing everywhere. There's evidence that there was once remnants of humanity but it's all overtaken by webbing. Stepping on the webbing sends vibrations to other strands, which is how spiders get alerted to the presence of humans. Only baby spiders are the size of regular ones from Pre-change. Spiders now are on average the size of humans.

Once they paralyze and cocoon their victims, they drag them over to the central web to present them to their queen: Heather. She'll inflict her own venom on them, and only then will she unravel their cocoon. Not to free them, of course. She rips into a person to pull out their nerves.

She turns the webbing into strings and replaces the nerves with them. With the end of their strings attached to herself. She forces them to play along into a fascimile of normalcy where Heather is the main star. Everyone else is merely there to compliment her and revolve around her.

When she doesn't need somebody anymore, she'll cut their webbing. They'll collapse with nothing to hold them up, and stay there paralyzed thanks to her venom and their lack of nerves. They're left to just watch as life goes on without them. Occasionally being used by other spiders as new nests. If Heather does remember they exist and wants them again, then she'll reconnect their strings and start the show all over again.

The domain itself is more about the general fear of spiders, but Heather has also turned it into the fear of being an insignificant player in someone else's story.

Her avatar ability is that ability to connect people to herself via webbing, and then control them as she pleases. Her venom enacts a permanent paralysis. While in her previous drider form her human half was mostly human, now her top half is much more spider-like. She has eight eyes and she has mandibles. She’s also bigger, standing closer to 12 feet.

Endgame

So there’s no concrete endgame for this AU, as it’s more ideas and concepts than anything.

I will say that post-change, Alenoaheather perform an unholy wedding in order to marry their domains together. It involves many a sacrifice, and they ‘invite’ the few outside of themselves that they care about to it. Mind you, they do this with the intention of keeping them trapped forever, but still.

One of which being Carlos, who has to grapple with the fact that his little brother has now become this monster. Carlos is just a human caught in all of this. Despite Alejandro’s best efforts, his abilities do overtake Carlos just with his sheer presence and Carlos becomes closer to a vegetable than anything.

Alejandro refuses to acknowledge this and treats Carlos as if he isn’t talking to a shell of a man.

Gwen and Courtney are traveling about trying to fix the world in whatever way they can. Mostly by killing off other avatars.

Eventually, the change gets reverted, though I can’t decide whether Alenoaheather gets defeated by Gwourtney before the change gets reverted, or if they become normal after the change and get hunted down by everyone else.

Either way, that’s all I have for this AU for now! Don’t know if I’ll decide to expand upon it more but hope you guys enjoyed it!

[crguang]

not fuckboy Kafka being a fuckboy on accident, that is honesty kind of funny, but I am still running…towards her.

ok but Kafka in the firefly animation was kind of funny for some reason. she was also really hot in the animation but Elio definitely told her to be there, so she’s just sitting on a space while waiting for something and she’s just drinking. I was looking through firefly’s story and there was nothing about Kafka 😔 except for when she’s recruited and only mentioned as “the woman” there was stuff abt silver wolf and blade, so obviously everything abt her is going to be plot relevant when she shows up very soon in the main story.

Also Kafka at the interrogation scene was so silly. Like they took her jacket, her contacts and wiped off her lipstick for what? her back and her shoulders do be looking fine tho people like me are why there’s dress codes in school and her eyes are gorgeous, like she looks so much softer when you can see her pupils, she’s so pretty.

your post abt how Kafka slows her speaking was very interesting and I’d like to know how her va was directed for those scenes, and I definitely need to rewatch the interrogation again I’ll def get distracted

Speaking of her voice actor, Cheryl texiera was so good on the white night cover. Her belting was amazing. Definitely feeding my headcanons for my university au. In aural class you have to sing notes (from my research) to prove that you can tell the difference or smth, and I just think it’s be funny that reader would be so mad at Kafka for having perfect pitch and having a good voice and generally just being good. I’ll write whenever my actual uni isn’t kicking my ass.

-🌠

fuckboy kafka’s lowkey a loser when you think about it… that’ll make more sense in the next part but the unnecessary things she does as proof that she cares are so silly. firefly’s trailer was so good i remember losing my mind when kafka was shown at the end because it was so unexpected 😭 but she did look gorgeoussss, my timeline was just profile pictures of this for a while hdjdhdj. she needs to put that glass down she’s always gotta be drinking something like let’s start carrying a water bottle baby (i love exaggerating her unhealthy habits). i also love that the trailer confirmed kafka was the first SH recruited even tho i already knew like yess prove me right hoyo

TRUST ME KAFKA’S COMING BACK 2.7. like she is just trust me she’ll be back so soon beautiful as ever i just know it…

i love the interrogation scene of the luofu i think it’s my favourite, i remember squealing when she walked in the frame without her coat like i was a victorian man seeing a woman’s ankles for the first time— at the time i hadnt checked anything about her so when i saw her without her coat i realized that she was mostly wearing it to look good (she cut holes into it to pass her arms through them instead of it being over the shoulders like himeko bc she wears fancy long sleeves… just unnecessary?3!4?) then i read her character description in the archives and it said she loved collecting coats i was like “i knew it…”

SHE DOES LOOK SO MUCH SOFTER RAHHHHHH. she’s much less intimidating and i love it so bad because we were seeing her without her defenses for the first time + we got to see her full design (it’s my favourite). they took her jacket and contacts/wiped her makeup cause she actually got arrested so they likely needed information like eye color and fingerprints etc, plus she was hiding three grenades, two rifles and a sword like i’d confiscate that stupid ass coat too. i think the funniest part is that she went back for it afterwards 😭

ALSO YES THAT WHITE NIGHT HIGH NOTE CHANGED MY LIFEEEEE LIKE HSR IDOL/BAND AU WHEN???? i need that university au im gonna email your profs to cut you some slack so you can write because im itching just at the idea of an academic rivals story with her… hope your classes aren’t too stressful tho!

[simonwanders]

Fic Rec

If you’ve read the amazing Salvage by MuffinLance or the equally fabulous The Art of Burning by hella1975, PLEASE go read Ozymandias, King of Kings by Think_of_a_Wonderful_Thought.

Basically, it’s an incredible AU carefully built on a twist: instead of being sent to hunt down the Avatar after his Agni Kai, Zuko went in a prison camp to die digging for coal. Three years later, Zuko is still alive but traumatized and resigned to his fate; one day, however, the prison gets attacked.

There’s a million reasons I couldn’t recommend it more, but here’s a few of them:

This AU features an alternate version of canon!Zuko, with even more trauma and angst, but he’s exceptionally well portrayed. Honestly, I got as attached to this version of Zuko as I am with the show’s version. This Zuko is more wary, ready to do anything in order to survive, and I cannot describe how enjoyable it is to follow his character development.

The main pairing is Zukka, and once again, it is amazingly written. We get to see them act as teenagers and try to build an awkward, but incredibly sweet relationship, despite the context of the war and the misunderstandings between the two.

Unlike in the show, the matter of the war is treated with more crudeness and a realistic perspective. There is violence, there is moral conflict, there are well-loved characters who struggle to do the right thing (looking at you Hakoda) and it is an absolute delight to read.

The relationship between Hakoda and Zuko is a tortuous one, especially because of Hakoda’s behavior and Zuko being an unreliable narrator. I am a lover of the trope featuring Hakoda adopting Zuko (I found this fic while specifically searching for this trope) and, reading Ozymandias, I can say the experience is as fascinating as it is painful. I cannot wait to see how their relationship will evolve. It is my favorite part of the fic and the primary reason I would recommend it to all lovers of Dadkoda. The author chose a particular take on Hakoda’s character, but if you want to know more, you’ll have to go check this wonderful piece of writing!

Here is the link:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/15482547/chapters/35941371

Than you for reading this and I hope I managed to convince y’all. Ozymandias, King of Kings is still being published, and believe me, the updates are worth the wait.

[vieramars]

Making this its own post bc it wasn't getting seen as a reblog

Re: a very niche oddly specific fluffy TMA au

So I'm in a swing dance club and I started thinking about what if the characters of the magnus archives were all in a swing dance club. Absolutely no regard for canon, just all the characters hanging out having a time.

Half the characters do not know how to dance. Some are really good at it. Elias is the club leader who thought having a position of authority would be fun but now he's stuck managing a room full of chaos gremlins with fear powers.

Half the playlist is mechs songs. Nikola insists on doing live music every few meets.

Jon watches tons of videos on swing moves in order to learn them and is constantly watching his feet to make sure he's doing the steps right. He's a follow and almost exclusively dances with Martin. Even though he helped form the club he perpetually has new awkward member energy. Still, once he's had plenty of time to practice a move, he can do it perfectly nine times out of ten.

Martin is a much more confident dancer than someone who'd just met him would think. He's a lead and his musicality is on point. He's really good at songs with tempo changes, and his favorite move is probably swing kicks.

Tim and Sasha are terrifying on the dance floor. Sasha's the lead and every dance she's trying to beat her own record for how many times she can spin Tim consecutively. They prefer open position and every other move is a basket turn. 

Michael showed up one day and just became part of the club by being there, then later invited Helen along. Both of them like to dance with pretty much everyone, and both of them love sliding doors. Sometimes involving actual distortion doors. Their dance moves are reality bending and they always have the flashiest outfits. Michael is ambidancetrous (comfortable leading or following) and Helen is a lead.

Agnes wears very thick gloves so that she can dance with people without burning their hands. To avoid accidents she's also very good at no-contact moves. Sometimes she brings Jack over for club meetings. She's a lead and her favorite move is sugar pushes though she also likes line dances and does the best charleston out of the whole group.

Daisy and Basira are inseparable. But they are both leads. Rather than dancing with other people they just solo jazz and line dance together.

No matter who she's dancing with or what moves they're doing Nikola is killing it. Her favorite dances are steal dances where everyone's rapidly switching partners. She's always the fastest to find a new partner and get back into step. She does everything with a flourish and is an expert at dips of any kind.

Melanie and Georgie are just vibing. Probably the calmest dancers in the room despite being far from the calmest people. Georgie can dance the entire length of the meeting without taking a break.

Gerry mostly only dances with Michael, Mike, or Tim because they can match his energy the best. He loves fast-paced songs and complicated moves, and can absolutely fuck it UP at the shim sham.

Mike Crew also really likes fast-paced dances and loves spinning his partner until they might as well be in the vast for how dizzy they are. Dancing with him comes with a spin at your own risk disclaimer.

Oliver is more of a slow song enjoyer, and he joins Jon and Nikola in the live music performances. While Agnes is the best at many variations of the charleston, Oliver is the best at the cowboy charleston specifically, and he can do it while playing a fiddle.

Peter Lukas REFUSES to dance except for rarely when Elias convinces him to, in which case they have a vibe that's somewhere between overly formal ballroom dancing and Morticia and Gomez doing the most. 

Jane Prentiss is mostly here for the snacks and the vibes but she joins in for warm-ups and line dances. The only person she'll dance together with is Agnes cause they both prefer the least amount of physical contact possible.

Annabelle Cane is the main dance instructor and she's a phenomenal teacher. She knows all the moves by heart and she's rocking the roaring 20s aesthetic. If she's leading a line dance, everyone's in perfect sync.

If I missed anyone lmk, this is all coming directly out of my brain so some characters might've gotten lost in the stream of consciousness. I'm open to asks about dance pairs, who leads/follows in that pair, and what songs they would pick if they had the floor 👀

By the way, dance pairs do not equal ships! I do ship a few of these pairs (and it makes sense to me for couples to gravitate towards dancing together), but anyone can dance with anyone!

[yuuneeyart]

Well it's been a while hasn't it? After everything that's gone on and my twitter suspension back in December, I've just decided to take a step back and focus on my personal life. Spending less time online, focusing on my job, that kinda boring shit that adults do.

But I have (slowly) and (only when I can) been working on shit. Mostly my Undertale creepypasta, UNDERTALE: The Garden. I'm sure some people remember that… but not many probably do. So I thought that since it's The Figure’s (formally Flower Child’s) birthday, I thought I'd show some stuff off.

art by me

So what is UNDERTALE: The Garden? Well.. UNDERTALE: The Garden is a story about an Undertale fan game that had been lost to time. The story focuses on the narrator finding an old and unfinished version of a fan game titled UNDERTALE: The Garden that had started its development fairly shortly after the original game’s demo had come out back in 2013. Created by an anonymous tumblr user who went by Tokumei, the game was originally meant to expand on the small amount of lore of the demo, adding more areas to the ruins, giving a new interpretation and backstory to the world, and much more. However the game went radio silent after a few years of development hell and Tokumei had not been seen since then.

Now years later, the narrator finds a gamejolt page with a familiar game on it. Excited to play it, they decided to discuss their findings on a tumblr blog. As well as archive any assets, information about development, and songs they can get their hands on. The narrator eventually finds out the game has much more to it than it was originally leading on…

art by me

There's a lot of things I have planned for the story that I don't wanna get into here (don't wanna spoil things before they come to light) but I've been working on making the actual world of The Garden much different than the original game. I've been taking an NES Godzilla approach for worldbuilding where the game just looks so vastly different from its original state using real life caves as well as Christian and Muslim imagery and cultures for inspiration for everything.

art by anonymous, pixel art by me and anonymous

But now the main attraction of the au, The Figure. She's definitely changed since you first met her 2 years ago. Instead of going to exes and helping them, she's now someone who simply wishes to be left alone. Staying in her world trying to make it as perfect as she sees it.

And now some trivia i guess for the funsies

She is not sentient, everything in the garden that happens is just a weird fangame.  The whole idea of *The game is alive and REAL!!!* has become a cliche of the creepypasta community that I don’t wanna repeat

She has a canon voice now, which can be heard here

Her facial expression never changes

The monsters that get deformed are still alive. If they were to die, you would have seen a pile of dust

art by me

That's all I have for now though, hopefully this at least peaked interest for some. This isn't me making a grand return either, just thought I'd at least post something about a character I've cared about for the past 2 years since it was her 2 year anniversary. Anyways, imma go to bed, cheers.

[snek-panini]

Very belated Binderary books, uh...I've lost track actually. I think they are #6 and #7. And it's another two-volume split! This is (Slow) Burn, Baby, Burn by orchidlocked, an extremely long Good Omens fic set in the 1970s. It's about our favorite angel/demon pair navigating the disco scene, and it's not an AU, which is sort of usual in a fic this long and with such a specific premise. There are a fair few real people featured here, some as major characters, and a lot of music history and an excellent playlist alongside all the fun and angsty relationship stuff that so many of us are here for. I learned a lot about disco reading this fic and it was fascinating and also way more queer than I ever realized.

For the cover up there we have a white Allure book cloth on the spine, and white HTV over homemade book cloth for the main cover. The cloth pieces both come from the same sheet but I oriented the stripes this way so they'd be coordinated-but-not-matched and I really love the effect. They're also cotton and really nice to hold. It's funny, I was thinking of binding this fic when I found the fabric while digging through the Joann's remnant bin, and as soon as I saw it this fic not only came to mind but moved up to the top of the to-bind list. It was fate, clearly.

More photos under the cut!

Both spines and a top view. That's orange HTV for the titles. This it the first time I've worked with matte HTV (I usually use metallic or foil) and I was surprised at how much thinner it is, and how easy it was to stick. And I like the color inverse here in counterpoint to the front cover. The top view shows off the handmade endbands and bookmark, and also the rounding job. I'm still working on rounded spines, and the turn-in over the spine didn't come out as smooth as I'd have liked, but I think it's a good result. The ribbon bookmark was supposed to be blue to match the endbands, but every blue ribbon I could find clashed horribly with the cover so it's this nice leafy sage green. Which actually works really well with...

The endpapers! I got these as Joann's too. All four are cut from the same print, but I shifted and rotated them when I trimmed them so the patterns wouldn't all be in the same place. I had desperately wanted this other paper I found on Etsy with little vinyl records all over it, but the pieces weren't the right shape and I'd have had to ship them from overseas ($$), but I like the mood these ones set. And they're thick and nicely textured and look awesome with the cover, so really I think things worked out very well.

Couple of pics of the interior. I kept it fairly simple but I feel like it fits the story.

The scene break line is orange, to match the covers. I usually use gray but wanted something more fun. I recently bought some off-white paper that I used for most of my binderary projects this year because I've heard it's easier on the eyes, and it is, but I used the older bright white for this so the color contrast would be sharper. No complaints; I think it looks amazing. The second image above is the appendix I put together for the volume. Being so centered in the music industry, this fic has a really long playlist that the author put together with their preferred recordings. It's linked in the story and I did include the link text in the book, but I had my mind on preservation and the challenges of digital archiving while I was making this one, so I also took all the title/artist/album info and just listed it here. It was too much to do all by hand, so I learned how to export a Spotify playlist into an Excel doc, then moved that into the Word doc to print. A lot of steps, but not nearly as hard as I'd thought, and way less tedious.

I have to say this book is aesthetically really different than all my previous ones. I ran into so many design hurdles but I honestly couldn't be more pleased with the end result. I'll have to push my comfort zone like this more often, I guess.

[char-lie-spirals]

I would like to learn about the rest of the aus you mentioned here:3

Okay okay so!! I talked about some of them, so I'll just put the entire list under the cut and either link to my previous responses or cook something up! And what I cook up can possibly include a snippet of my writing too :]

Also since this is a lot of AUs/WIPs I'll try to be brief, but feel free to ask about more details on them!

Terminus' Ritual

This is an AU I've had for like a year now, and it answers a very simple question - What if the End HAD a ritual? That its avatars complete between mag 159 and mag 160? Simple answer - Zombies. And also some deaths getting reversed because getting a quick taste of it should make people more scared, and it's hard to keep a zombie apocalypse going with too few people. (This doesn't match the End's values, I Know.)

I have some notes on different characters' situations, who comes back etc etc but honestly the storyline I focused on the most is Oliver seeking shelter in Graham's old flat only for Graham to also be there, Pretty Confused about the passage of time between his death and now. :]

Graham gets spat out AU

Sasha gets replaced, NotSasha picks up the tape recorder and goes to dispose of the tape. The Artifact Storage is silent, but not empty, as a man who doesn't recall his own name wakes up on the floor. Okay this already sounds a bit like a snippet so I guess you can have a proper one too:

It was all pointless, you only suffered longer -- but is that truly pointless?

This one is a WIP in which I just wanted to explore the idea that the only reason Graham lived for so long was because he was scared that entire time, to the point the NotThem wasn't in much of a rush. It's pretty angsty, but can be bittersweet too if you look at it at the right angle and I am a simple man with a lot of hope in my heart. I've not been making much progress with it, and I'm not sure if I'll end it on the title-question and leave it up for the reader to decide, or if I'll provide my own answer, but let me say here: I don't think it was pointless. Not to me.

Michael(s) experience confusion

Already talked about this one here!

Graham Lives WITHOUT Becoming

Graham survives the events of MAG 003 because Oliver gets there in time to help him, and the two of them try to navigate the aftermath together. They go through many ups and downs, Oliver ends up becoming an Avatar himself, but Graham just kinda,, doesn't?? It just never happens. No fear claims him. At this point a lot of people are convinced he's an Avatar because of how his life is intertwined with the Fears but nope. Just some guy who can bluff pretty decently, gets lucky a lot, and loves his End-Avatar fiance a whole bunch :] (yes they're engaged now)

Graham Folger Lives because The Eye Is A Backseat Gamer

One of my Eye Graham AUs :] The main one, you could say! In this one, The Eye backseat-games his MAG 003 experience, and he Knows where to hide, what to do, and how to survive. After that, he goes on to start working at the institute, becomes an Archival Assistant after Jon's promotion, and goes through the horrors! I also talked about it Ages ago, right here- hold on that was in MAY???? 2023????? 10 months ago???? This is messed up.

Anyway! here's a little something I have written about it so far :]

DeathNote intro

Just me trying to explore how Graham and Oliver might've met, grown closer, gotten together and stayed together for 6 years :] No clue if I'll ever publish this and if so, if I'll use it as a backstory/background for one of my AUs or as its own stand-alone thing? But yeah it's just the two of them growing closer and falling in love :] You can have this snippet of it, too! It's their literal first meeting!

Antique seller Graham

Talked about this one here! I will probably do so again soon! But you can also have a snippet, since I guess writing all this really put me in a snippet mood! This is from this AU's version of Amy's statement :D

Cockroach Graham AU

I don't think I need to elaborate.