#But I WILL be imagining skeleton good times that one was for real

[busycloudy]

if u write only for twst can yew do Floyd leech and and and uhhh errmmmm uhhhh guy reader mc idc whose scenemo and floyd discovers they have shared tastes and mc/reader gives him make over 😣

IF UR POTENTIALLY OPEN TO OTHER FANDOMZ.. STARTZ TREMBLING AND FOAMING AT THE MOUTH.. TARTAGLIA...

okay thanks ily pooks

thx for requesting!!! I will be actually joining new fandoms real soon and hopefully writing for them, so this will probs be my last time writing for twst atm :3 n e wayz, I hope you enjoy this!

A fluff fic

The reader is MC and goes by he/him pronouns.

This can be read in both a platonic and romantic way!

Floyd may be ooc due to the fact I haven't played twst in MONTHS + This will include hcs

You were making some kandi bracelets again since you didn't really have much else to do and also wanted to add more to your collection (you already had like 37 but shhh) until you heard your door creak, causing you to look up to a tall, smiley, blue haired figure, which was Floyd of course!

"Heya shrimpy, watcha making there~" He asked with curiosity in his eyes.

"Nothin much, just making bracelets" You responded as you tied the string together to finish this piece off.

"Ohhhh...I think I tried that before but got bored cuz the beads kept falling off" Floyd sighed, "But I like to make shirts!" Floyd excitedly claimed. "Really?? Me too!" You smiled. "We should bleach some shirts together sometime!" You requested. Floyd put a finger on his chin, pondering. "Mehhh...maybe...OR we could right now" He instead offered, to which you had to accept, hell maybe you could even give him a full makeover!

You got the black shirts, cardboard, and bleach out and began working. The two of you finished after about 15-20 minutes and adored the results. Floyd went with a skeleton type pattern and ended up cutting the sleeves off his shirt, and you'd gone with a spine with wings, but in all honesty you just went with whatever came to your head as you'd done so.

You two complemented each other's shirts and such and then you offered the idea you came up with earlier. "Floyd, what if I gave you some clothes to style with that shirt? I have some stuff that I got in a size too big so I haven't worn it yet, and I could get you some shoes" You suggested. "Shrimpy, giving me a makeover?hmmmm...sureee, but only if I can give you one too!" He said, and you nodded your head.

---

You handed Floyd your eyeliner, eyeshadow, brushes, etc and let him create away, and you discovered he was actually good at doing makeup and such.

Your makeup:

(you may imagine wtv you'd prefer tho!)

Floyd's outfit:( I couldn't find a good png and was DEF not drawing this cuz I can't 💔) FLIP I FORGOT THE KANDI. But anyways his stuff would say stuff like eel rave and sea slugs etc

Floyd entered his dorm happy with the new outfit he now has. "Ah, hello Floyd. Where has this outfit come from?" Jade came out of nowhere, asking. "I bleached this shirt, but Shrimpy gave me this other stuff! Isn't he soooo cool!" Floyd giggled. "I do rather like it...maybe I ought to see what he could do for me too..." Jade pondered

[somegrumpynerd]

This day has been a series of slaps to the face so I will be aggressively imagining skeletons having a good time in my little cage until tomorrow morning, this will be different to what I normally do here in no way, thank you

[theminecraftbee]

"Well hello there Secret Keeper!" Scar says, chipper. "It's a bea-ut-i-ful day today here on the Secret Life server, and I'm here for my daily hearts for winning! I have to say, it is gorgeous today. Really a lot easier to keep the rain away without other players, what with sleeping through the night not being a problem at all! Did you know, by the way, that sleeping and rain are connected? I didn't until recently, but by golly, they sure are! Can you imagine? The world is full of so many strange things."

The Secret Keeper, being a big dumb stone statue, doesn't reply. Scar's beginning to think it's just rude. It sure replies whenever he hits the button, which is the first step in his morning routine these days. He's gotten better at dodging damage, really, even with the nearly infinite hearts! He's just not so good at dodging skeletons and creepers and such that he shouldn't top off every day.

He hits the button. He feels his health return to him. He gets a new task: Win Secret Life.

He snorts, a little bitter, to himself as he reads it and folds it into his pocket. "You know, I don't know if I'm lucky or unlucky that you're such a moron that you don't know what winning means. Your machine is broken."

No response, again, because the Secret Keeper is, as established, a big old dumb rock. Well, whatever. Besides, if he lingers on resentment and upset for too long, it might catch up with him! He's certainly let it catch up with him before. Why, a few days after he'd won, when he really had it sink in that he was for-real alone on a server covered in lightning burn marks and blood, he had a bit of a breakdown! There was sobbing, screaming, yelling at the world, the whole works! And when no one responded then, well--

"Did I just call you a moron? I'm sorry, I didn't mean that!" Scar says. "You know how I get sometimes. The world is beautiful and warm, but sometimes it gets a little hard to breathe around here! Now, where were we... oh, right! The trading post terraforming project! Now, we hit a bit of a snag the other day, what with the wandering traders I'd caught all sort of--dying--and all that, but luckily, more of them might show up any moment, and they really are vital to making the place feel alive and breathing. So today we're taking a break from that to build up some trees!"

He waves his arms like someone is listening. He'd like to imagine someone is. Grian told him he won--just because all the ghosts are quiet now doesn't mean they aren't there! And if that was a moment of temporary insanity, well, he probably--he needs to think it's not, is the thing! He absolutely needs to think it's not.

He hums and gathers more logs. His makeshift tree farms are pretty nice, if he does say so himself. He pauses as he hears distant howling and sighs. "I guess we will also be spending today cleaning up the wolf population! I swear, I have no idea what those people were thinking making a wolf spawner. A man takes a nap for a day and then the entire server is overrun with stupid white animals! And you know, I do hate having to cull the things, but, well, you know me. I've learned how to kill pretty well, I think, and really, dogs are easier to kill than people."

He grabs a sword from his chest and sharpens it. He keeps it perfectly clean so that there isn't too much blood on it. Good thing, too; most of the blood would probably be his. He's a bit clumsy, after all. He cuts his fingers on it all the time. No matter how well he bandages up his hands, he just keeps making them bleed, drip, drip, dripping blood on every path he walks down. No matter how hard he works to clean up his massive building projects, the little splatters of blood follow him, so he's sticking to dark colors where he can.

The flowers will probably show the blood, he thinks. The flowers and trees he's building. Hopefully, the blood doesn't stand out too much. It feels wrong, in a world where there are no bodies.

He stands up. He heads in the direction of today's pack of unwanted pests. He sighs. "You know, I know your question is, well gosh, Scar! All the previous winners died. When are you going to finish it off and kill yourself? And wow, that's a pretty dark question. You should be ashamed of yourself for asking, really." He laughs. It's not funny. Who cares.

Instead, he shakes his head.

"And, well, you have to understand. I'm not done building yet! I can make my base so much nicer looking! And besides, you're still handing me hearts. If I get hurt, I can just come back and get more from you! If you want to die, you have to kill me yourself. You fucking cowards!"

No response.

He sighs. "Well, that's enough of that for today. Sorry, I'm feeling kind of morose. It's all this sunshine! Can't be good for a man. Did you know populated servers rain more often than unpopulated ones? It's true! It's because people don't sleep enough. But here I am, getting all the sleep I need. Now, time to go kill some dogs and build some trees! I can't think of a better way to spend an afternoon, can you?"

His hands hurt. He ignores it. He ignores a lot of hurt, these days. It's not like it's hard.

[juanarc-thethird]

Since your doing the DP and Wolverine prompts does this mean that Nora’s used Jaunes dead body as a weapon or just his sword?

Deadpool used Logan's bones because they are metal, so in this case I chose a third option that I came up with. --------------

Nora arrives at a forest where a cross marks the site of a grave.

Nora: (Narrating) For a long time, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be back. VIZ Media bought RWBY, there was a whole boring rights issue, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then, it turned out that they wanted me! the one girl who shouldn’t even have her own show! That was all so stupid. Look, we know the title of this thing, so I know what you’re wondering. How are we going to do this without dishonoring Jaune's memory? And I’ll tell you how. We’re not.

Nora then starts digging

Nora: (Narrating) I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Jaune is not dead. Sure, it made for a perfect ending to a very sad story, but that’s not how his Aura boosting thing works. You think I want to be out here in beautiful downtown North of Vale, digging up the one and only Rusted Knight? No, thank you. But the fate of my entire world is at stake. He may not be living his best life, but he sure as hell ain’t dead.

Nora finally reaches the bottom and finds the coffin.

Nora: Bingo... Yahtzee...

She then begins to tear apart the coffin.

*Smack! Tap! Scratch! Bang!*

Nora: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

*Crack!*

She makes a hole in the coffin and then…

Nora: Damn it!

She didn't like what she found.

Nora: Son of a bitch! *Hits the cross* Fuck! Motherfucker! My world is fucked!

Moments later....

Nora leaning against a fallen tree

Nora: *Talking to his right while the camera is only focus on her* That was weird. I’m much calmer now. Look, I’m not a woman of science, but you seem incredibly passed away.

The camera zooms out to show a very dead and skeleton-like Jaune, but still wearing his armor.

Nora: But it’s good to see ya. I gotta be honest, I’ve always wanted to ride with you, Jaune. You and me, getting into a Ladypool and Rusted Knight. Just fucking shit up. Can you imagine the fun,... the chaos,... the residuals?

She then starts playing with Jaune's helmet.

Nora: (Mimicking Jaune's voice) That's right Nora. There’s nothing that’ll bring me back to life faster than a big bag of RWBY cash.

Nora: Me too, Jaune. *Gets upset* No, no, no, no. Ugh, he had to get all noble and die for real. God damn it! *Looks back at Jaune* I could really use your help right now.

Suddenly, a group of futuristic soldiers appear out of nowhere. Nora sees them and hides along with Jaune's corpse.

Nora: Wait! I’m warning you! I’m not alone!

Soldier: Nora Valkyrie! You’re under arrest by the Time Variance Authority. Too many crimes with this, come out!

Nora: I hate this guys.

Soldier: Last chance! Throw out your weapons and come out peacefully!

Nora: I’m not gonna give you my weapons! But I promise not to use them. *Looks at you the reader* Did you know that Jaune's armor is made by a lot of pieces together? Here we go, maximum effort.

Nora jumps out of her hiding spot, and uses Jaune's corpse as cover. The soldiers are confused.

Bye Bye Bye by NSYNC It starts to play.

Nora: *Looks at Jaune* Okay, Jaune. I guess we’re getting that team up after all.

Nora grabs a piece of Jaune's armor and throws it at one of the soldiers, killing him instantly. The other companions of the deceased are stunned, but seconds later they run towards them as more soldiers appear.

Nora takes two pieces of armor from Jaune's shoulders and uses them to stab two of the soldiers. One in the back, and the other one she slashes and then stabs him in the head. Following with a kick that makes the piece come out the other side of the guy.

She then uses her leg armor and begins to swing around, hitting the soldiers in the face. She knocks one to the right, another to the ground, and one to the left. She then takes her phone and takes a photo of herself kissing one of the deceased on the helmet.

She then takes both of Jaune's arm armors, bones and all, and begins to slap each and every one of them like it's a game. With what remains of the armor already shattered, she kills the remaining ones. I use Jaune's fingers to stab one of them. Jaune's head to hit another one in the genitals. What's left of the legs to stab quite hard right into the chest of another soldier who was running.

Nora: What is this?

Nora notices a part of the armor that looks like a sword handle and pulls it out. And just at that moment a blue sword blade appears as if it were a lightsaber.

Nora: *GASP!!!!* IT'S THE SWORD OF DESTRUCTION!!!

Nora: I am soaking wet right now.

Nora: (Narrating) To be clear, I’m not proud of any of this. The wanton violence, the whiff of necrophilia, it isn’t who I am, it isn’t who I wanna be. Who I wanna be? Well, to help you understand that, I gotta take you back. My little joy ride I took through space and time, to the day that changed everything.

Nora: (Narrating) But that will be for another day, because the idiot who wrote all this is a little tired.

[lala-blahblah]

Character flaws that would have been more compelling for Will to have to overcome in TSATS instead of "uh oh my boyfriend is a little bit edgy and that came as an unexpected shock to me even though he wears black and has emo bangs":

Struggling with setting boundaries and being honest when things bother him. As a healer he always has to put other people first, it would be interesting to see him approaching a relationship the same way where he feels the instinct to put Nico's feelings and wellbeing above his own, following him into Tartarus even though it is extra hard for him as a child of Apollo to be down there. It feels so much more authentic for Will to keep quiet about his negative thoughts rather than to blurt out all these criticisms about the underworld. And then Nico could feel hurt that he's hiding something from him for the drama, and Will could grow by allowing himself to communicate better even if he has negative things he wants to talk about

Fear of abandonment but ground it more with his real experiences instead of him just randomly panicking about Nico leaving him behind. Michael and Lee both died and left him alone after he got close with them. His dad was generally distant his whole life, he finally got to spend time with him but only under dangerous circumstances and all too soon hes gone again. Will's mom was the only constant in his life but after monsters started attacking he had to live at camp away from her for most of the year. This results in generalized superstition and anxiety that every time he has a good thing the universe takes it away from him, maybe it makes it harder for him to allow himself to get attached in a deeper way. It would be interesting to see him being the one that was more upfront with his emotions and about liking Nico at the beginning, but as their relationship goes on he struggles with more serious things like saying I love you or imagining a future together because he feels like once he does it will be taken away.

Flip the TSATS struggle on it's head and have Will secretly be very into all the dark underworld stuff but feel like he has to repress that because it's weird and people judge him. Being a healer is already a little dark and intense, I feel like Will wouldn't be scared of the undead but somewhat fascinated. Like you're telling me he wouldn't love to examine a walking skeleton and see how the bones move and connect? Growing up as a son of Apollo everyone expected him to be sunshiney and positive and so he tried to hide his weirder interests but oh my GOD he has so many questions for Nico about underworld magic and it's so hard to play it off. You could still emphasize the yin and yang of Nico having lightness and Will having darkness but make it feel less judgemental to Nico this time

Basically I just take it as a personal offense that Will would ever be critical of Nico's sarcasm and grunge aesthetics. HE'S INTO IT!!! HE HAS A THING FOR EDGY MEN OK!!! THIS IS THE GUY WHO SAID HE WOULD GO ON A DATE WITH DARTH VADER just you TRY and tell me that prequels Anakin was not his bi awakening and the blueprint for all his future crushes.

[oneforthemunny]

I'd imagine that every time Halloween rolls around, Rockstar!Eddie and Nepo Baby are on the cover of at least one magazine with a spooky Halloween photoshoot. I'm seeing a werewolf eating (out) a fair maiden. Or a pregnant Nepo Baby tied to a table and a Rockstar!Eddie getting ready to sacrifice her. Or them recreating a scene from the biggest horror movie of the year.

Only over the years, as the kids accumulate, it goes from Playboy to Parade. And instead of tits with fang punctures, you've got a line of tots in skeleton pajamas.

(This was originally meant to be a blurb prompt and I got carried away so now I think it's more just a Spooky Thought I had to share with you. Whatever, Happy First Day of Fall! 😂)

oneforthemunny's spooky stories: rockstar!eddie x reader's time warp

or how halloween looks through the years for rockstar!eddie and nepo baby!reader :) ps pics below are for inspo that i used not specific more of just how the photos looked or what the idea was based off of!

October 31st, 1992

“Look at you.” Eddie grinned, dimples and shining eyes when they rolled over your frame. “My bride.” 

That you were, both in and out of costume. It was the only recognizable part of yourself right now, your engagement ring. Your skin had been tinged a pale green, the SFX artist made your ‘gashes’ and ‘stitches’ look far too real for your liking. Tonight, you were the bride of Frankenstein, instead of Munson. 

“Look at you.” You pouted, eyes rolling over his costume. Not Frankenstein, but… a vampire? “What-What are you wearing?” You huff, throwing an arm out at his costume. “We’re supposed to be Frankenstein and-” 

“-Technically, it’s Frankenstein’s monster.” Eddie grinned, fake fangs making his smile more sinister looking. “I had a last minute change. Dracula and Bride of Frankenstein together? That’s scandalous. So much better, baby, believe me. No one’s done this before.” 

You rolled your eyes, shifting the torn white dress to cover yourself. “When did you change your mind? While I was in makeup for six hours?” 

Eddie laughed, hands running down your skin. “I like your hair.” He muttered. “Think you should do this more often. Pretty metal look for you, baby.” 

“Yeah?” You hum, running a hand lightly over the electrified updo. “Too bad it’s a wig. Maybe I’ll keep it. Put it in the dungeon for you, when you want to get really weird and freaky.” 

“I always wanna get really weird and freaky with you.” Eddie growled, a low rasp in his tone that had your knees shaking. His lips ducked down towards yours, the fake blood around his mouth making your stomach turn. 

“No,” You shake your head. “Get these pictures first, then you can kiss me. I’m not sitting in makeup again, Munson, my ass was falling asleep. I was sitting there for so long.” 

“I can help you with that.” Eddie growled, a playful smack to your barely covered backside that had you shrilling, glaring at him through white contacts. 

October 31st, 1993

“You can barely even see the bump.” You huff, cradling your bare stomach in the mirror. “It just looks like I’m bloated.” 

“You’re out of your mind.” Eddie shook his head, inked hands cradling your torso. “You look so pretty.” 

Your lips settle in a pout, turning to the side, pushing your stomach out further in the pink, frilly lingerie from the 60’s. The sheer robe tied at your collarbones, flowing over your frame beautifully, parting so your belly could poke out. It wasn’t the pregnancy announcement you expected to have, but a fun one, regardless. One that would leave a shocking impression when it was sent to the press. 

Eddie’s ‘costume’ hung around his waist, arms crossed over his bare, tattooed chest. You grinned at the green, scaly suit- designed to subtly resemble Creature From The Black Lagoon’s monster. 

You smirked to yourself, looking at Eddie through the mirror. “My parents are going to hate this.” You grin, nearly proud. It made Eddie’s heart skip. 

“Good.” Eddie snorted with an eye roll. “Not their baby. Not their choice.” He shrugged, hands roaming protectively over your soft, stretched skin. “Victor shouldn’t hate it too much, right? It’s a movie reference, at least.” 

You laughed lightly. “True, and I’m… more covered than last time, right?” You grin, smoothing your hand over your exposed skin. 

“Definitely, much more reserved than last time.” Eddie grinned, chin hooking over your shoulder. “We have to be more appropriate, Button, now that we’re going to be parents.” Eddie mocked your father’s posh, droning tone, quoting what Victor nagged about over the last brunch you had together- a month ago when you told them you were expecting. 

Eddie’s lips pursed at the pinch still unfaltering in your brows, hands still smoothing over your belly. “Hey, look at me.” Eddie rasped, hand cradling your jaw gently, pulling your eyes to meet his. Those soft eyes that made your heart skip a beat every time you found yourself in their gaze. 

“Fuck ‘em, alright? This isn’t their baby, it’s our baby.” Eddie muttered. “You wanna do this? We don’t have to. I’ll tell them all to go fuck off if you want me to. Or we can do something different. Do the Mummy things if you want to. Just say the word. Your call-” 

“Ed.” The smile he’d been looking for graced your face finally. “I still want to do the photos. I’m just… I’m having a moment. I’m hormonal, and-and I’m just having a moment.” 

Eddie grinned, plush lips pressing a kiss to your nose. “Have a moment. You look hot, though.” 

“Thanks.” You muttered, eyes fluttering to look up at him through the strip of false lashes. “Not bloated?” 

Eddie snorted. “Definitely not. Very pregnant. Very, very hot.” 

October 31st, 1994 

“Ed, is she looking?” You say through a smile, eyes still trained on the camera. 

“No, she keeps looking at you.” Eddie huffed, lowering the camera. “Looking at your webs.” 

No crew this time, oh no, Eddie wanted to do it all on his own. The set up wasn’t elaborate, but your costume was. The Black Widow, finished with webs that attached to your dress, hung around you for the perfect dramatic effect Eddie was looking for. In your arms, your little itsy bitsy spider, Persephone. 

“Sephy,” Eddie cooed. “Fuck, babe, where’s the rattle thing? The lamb?” 

“I grabbed it. Look behind you.” You nodded, cradling Persephone closely, her little hands reaching for you and pulling the fake spider arms with her. “You’re just a pretty little spider, aren’t you? The cutest little spider!” 

“Found it!” The camera bounced on Eddie’s chest, shooting you a dimpled grin that had you flushing. “Look at me, Sephy! Look at Daddy!” 

You fixed her in your arms, cradling her to your side. “Is she looking?” 

“Yes, she is!” Eddie lilted in that babbling baby talk that had your heart swelling. “Look at my little spider. That’s so good, look at Daddy!” 

“You sure you don’t want to be in this one?” You asked, hoisting Sephy up higher into your arms, swaying her lightly. 

“Nah,” Eddie shook his head, looking down at the camera, pulling out the film. “Just wanna look at you, baby.” He winked. 

October 31st, 1999

“Kensie,” You coo, looking down at the red faced four year old, desperately trying to keep her from tearing off her ears, two fuzzy clips that mimicked a cute werewolf. “We just need to take a couple of photos, and then we can change and go Trick-or-Treating, I promise.” 

“I wanna go no-o-ow!” Kensie wailed, a piercing sob that had you cringing, the twins stirring in their black bassinet prop. 

“Kensington,” Eddie grit, adjusting Persephone’s cape. “Trick-or-Treating hasn’t even started. There’s nothing out there right now. No candy.” 

You glared at him lightly, though Kensie’s sniffles did ease. “No?” She asked, head tilting to the side sweetly. 

Eddie shook his head, green painted frown softening lightly. “No, baby. Doesn’t start until six. We have plenty of time.” 

“Better quit frowning, baby.” You hum, tapping your finger on Eddie’s creasing forehead paint. 

This year's theme was a take on the classic, creepy show from the 60’s. What better way to celebrate your still growing family than this? Everyone else was favoring the Addams Family this year, but not the Munson’s- Munster’s. 

“Are you ready, Mrs. Munson?” Phil asked, looking up from his camera at you. 

You nodded, fixing your dress while you stood next to Eddie, one hand on the bassinet. “You think they can tell?” You grit through your smile, your dress snug when you turn towards him. 

“No.” Eddie gritted back, eyes flickering down to your abdomen, just starting to swell with baby number five. “You look good, baby, always do.”

[jay-arts-t]

October slide is up on us chronically ill individuals so here are some Logan, Laura and Wade headcanons.

I'd like to think Logan experiences pretty similar symptoms to EDS (So more like HSD since they may not experience all related symptoms) since his joints have to hold together adamantium bones. He gets that deep aching twang in his knees, his back hurts more no matter what position he sleeps in.

Wade jokes that he's going into hibernation because Logan starts to struggle with getting up in the morning - not because he's a lazy lump, he just can't bring himself to get out of the warm little pile they've got going on. But once Wade realizes it's because Logan gets chronic pain as well he's investing in an electric blanket to keep them all warm. Logan lives in that blanket now. Their electric bill is through the roof.

I imagine whenever something dislocates or drifts he just casually shoves it back in place as best he can, unless it's his ribs. There isn't much he can do about it. The first time he mentioned that his ribs drift Wade went, "I'm sorry your WHAT?? Put them back???" while Laura just nodded in understanding

Laura experiences pretty similarly to Logan since they have the same conditions. Well, at least in the movie franchise they both have fully adamantium skeletons. I think in the comics they surgically removed her claws, coated them in adamantium and re-implanted them. Pretty sure they did the same thing with Daken with the muramasa blade- but that's a whole can of worms for another time.

I think Laura gets a lot more of the internal issues rather than a lot of joint pain. Yes it's still there, but she has a harder time with stomach pain, her periods are more painful because even internal tissue is affected by EDS. So essentially if she's having a Not Fun Time™ she's crawling over to Logan and using him as a heating pad. Which Logan doesn't mind because 1 Yippie Daughter Time, 2 Yippie Affection, and 3 the pressure feels good on his joints and they both end up falling asleep for the lovable 3pm 6-hour nap.

Laura 🤝 Wade - silly patterned compression socks. You will never see that woman not wearing them. She gets Logan Garfield ones and he wears holes into them.

Once the first leaf falls from the trees Wade is BUNDLED. Warm hat? Check. 3 shirts, 2 hoodies, 2 pants plus compression leggings, 3 socks, and a big ol' winter coat. Logan calls him ridiculous and reminds him that winter and autumn aren't as consistent as they used to be, and they'll probably be back in the 80s the next day. But Wade isn't hearing any of it. He's staying vigilant. He knows his body. It doesn't matter if it's hot or cold, as soon as fall hits his body is like, "hey you know that healing factor you have? Damn where'd it go???"

Laura gets him a portable heating pad.

Vanessa helps Logan learn about what foods are easy on Wade's stomach and which ones to avoid making so he's not in more pain than he already is.

Once winter hits Logan is happy because he's lone wolf cringe and likes the silence and solidarity of winter. Baby you're not getting that in the inner city parts of New York. You're getting slush in the sidewalks and the distinct smell of artificial salt and probably most definitely sewage.

On the other hand, Laura and Wade are miserable. They miss summer. Everything was better when it was hot. Their only reprieve is that it's soup season and also hot beverages are more available (besides coffee, though Laura is a big coffee person. Logan hates it, she calls him a pussy. Wade also hates it unless it's iced with 800 pumps of vanilla and caramel and creamer (real)). I think Wade would be a big eggnog lover but it destroys his stomach. Logan has caught him chugging the carton in the middle of the night. It was disgusting. Logan does the same thing with apple cider.

That's all I got for now

[violinios]

Corrupted!Dream

What if he ate the golden apples? More information below! (This au is not finished yet)

Some facts about him:

I wanted to use roots with thorns to reference Nightmare's tentacles, and also to recall the roots of a tree, like the tree the two guardians used to protect. It comes out of Dream's back, and the first time they came out, right after being corrupted by positivity, they tore the back of his clothes and his cape, so he eventually changed the clothes he was wearing, but the old cape remained. Another reference to Nightmare in his design are the yellow and purple carnations in his left eye, not only because of the meaning of the flowers themselves, but because Nightmare of the goo covering one of his eyes, so I decided to do something similar, but with plants instead of slime. Dream is blind from the left eye after gotten attack from defending his brother from the villagers.

As for the meaning of the colors of the carnations that come out of his eye, I did very brief research, so don't take the meanings I'll write here for certainty. Yellow carnations represent rejection and purple ones represent loneliness. Although they are attached to Dream's body, they represent Nightmare's feelings towards the villagers who often mistreated him. The flowers grew after the corruption and after Dream discovered what they did to his brother.

What is controlling Dream's body now is not Dream himself, but rather a parasite that has taken over his body and identity, while the real Dream remains semi-conscious and unable to regain control of his body.

He feeds on positive feelings and his objective is to exterminate negativity for his own survival. He is not capable of feeling remorse, and will not be afraid to exterminate an entire universe if it has a very strong negative aura (like universes that follow the genocidal route, for example), but he cannot visit these universes alone since his magic works using positivity as "fuel", so he's dependent on allies to travel to negative universes.

He doesn't kill because of his moral compass and doesn't really care about what's right or what's wrong, who's good who's bad, he will kill them anyways if their negative aura is enough to give him a headache. This means he will kill innocent people who hold suffering on themselfs only to end with their negativity.

He calls himself a hero/savior/angel to manipulate people with false promises, when in reality, he only acts out of his own needs and survival instinct, not actual kidness.

There's only one who is full of negativity that Dream wants alive; for now, names won't be mentioned (who the person/monster is still not decided, it can be an already existing character or maybe i'll make an OC for this, but for now, feel free to imagine whoever you want to imagine) but their aura, somehow, makes the burning feeling of overwhelming positivity inside of Dream feel a bit less like it's burning. Yes, the positivity is too much even for Dream to the point it feels like it's burning from inside (remember how in original Dreamtale, a human body would barely even survive with the amount of energy the magic held inside the siblings body? Well, now imagine that now the magic way more powerful to the point that even his skeleton body hurts sometimes), and their negativity makes it feel less painful.

He is not completely incapable of feeling negative feelings, but it is VERY rare. Some examples are his fear of owls, a trait from the original Dream that remained, or the anger he feels when he is disobeyed.

He killed the citizens of the village when he saw the amount of negative feelings they caused his own brother. At first, he didn't want to kill Nightmare, but after he saw Nightmare attack him after the genocide he caused, Dream now seeks to kill him as well. He thinks of him as ungrateful for trying to hurt him after finishing off the people who caused him so much suffering, and he blames himself for leaving him alive, knowing that he is also the result of negativity.

Nightmare doesn't want to kill Dream, because he knows that the balance in the multiverse is important and it is their existence that causes it to exist, he just fights against him to not be killed and when some universe/being is being hurt by Dream. He wants to find a way to bring his brother back to consciousness, he still wonders if he could kill the parasite without killing Dream too. Dream, on the other hand, doesn't care about the balance.

His spines possess a poison that gives his prey the illusion of comfort, hiding the sensation of pain and fear within his own positive aura so that they do not escape when captured. It is rare for their prey to regain consciousness to realize the danger they are in, but not impossible, and some may be immune to the venom or his aura, like Nightmare, who'd feel a big pain if he got captured, which is a good advantage if you don't want to be trapped with Dream forever or eventually die.

[wellfine]

HII I love your art so much it's so expressive and it feels like theres so much movement in it! I was wondering if u had any tips or advice to help with that? I practice anatomy and expression so much but it seems like everything I draw on my own is so stiff!! Anyway I hope you have a great week :)) <3

Hi there! Firstly, thank you so much for the kind words, it means a lot that you would take the time to tell me!

Second- my advice is to take everything you've learned about anatomy and THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW!!!!!!!

... For now. Just into the front yard so you can keep an eye on it. But I have seen many artists concentrate chiefly on studying anatomy only to feel like their art ends up too stiff. My own experience has been to treat anatomy as a tool best used to correct an image in the later stages of construction rather than as your driving foundation.

If "correct" anatomy (however you choose to define that) is the priority of your undersketches, I find that you end up with a sort of Skeleton Song approach to drawing - y'know, the knee bone's connected to the thigh bone, etc etc. Whatever energy, emotion, or intent you wanted your drawing to convey is getting lost each time you split it into another anatomical segment. By over-focusing on individual parts, you lose sight of your image as a whole.

The key to conveying dynamic movement in motionless art is to ensure every element of your image agrees on and communicates the same action, the key to which is something called the line of action.

A line of action is simply that - an implied "line" with wich you lead the viewer's eye and communicate movement. Think of it as the core of your figure's action, simplified to its rawest form. By knowing this, you know what to emphasise and what to de-emphasise.

Well, art is a visual medium and I am better explaining with drawings than words or I'd never have picked up a pen in the first place, so:

Images can have multiple lines of action, lines of action can complement and contrast each other, and a line of action isn't always as obvious as something like running. Imagine you're tring to make your art more "aerodynamic" to the eye. Since I draw a lot of One Piece fanart, I assume you're also familiar with it, and you can probably imagine how Oda uses "lines of action" when composing panels of Luffy punching something, Zoro slicing something, Sanji kicking something- etc etc. He's really good at selling the "oomph" of action shots by reducing visual clutter so that the impact of the action is greater.

(The Monster Trio's abilities are all designed in such a way that allow for REALLY striking lines of action... you can tell Oda loves studying manga fight scenes and wanted to create a world where he could push these concepts to the limit, and it's no wonder One Piece caught the eye of animators even before it was serialised by Toei)

You're probably already noticing how line of action also feeds into composition and silhouette when it comes to conveying movement in an image. Basically put, once you've isolated whatever action it is that you want to convey, the more visual clutter you can streamline away from that action, the stronger an impact that will have on the viewer. A firm line of action, an uncomplicated silhouette for your figure, and a readable overall composition of your image/panel are all ways to minimise visual clutter.

You can also use this information to achieve the opposite effect! Sometimes the ideal action you want to convey is not fast, or powerful, or confident, and you can use the same principles.

In fact, you can apply line of action to images that don't have any "action" in them at all. You can make a drawing of someone simply standing there feel more lively by applying these same principles to their body language:

You can develop an eye for how to simplify movement down to its "lines of action" by studying real photos and other people's art. Try simplifying a figure to its silhouette, and then simplify that silhouette further to a stick figure. And honestly, a lot of this could be boiled down to "see your image as a whole and not just a collection of individual pieces". Set anatomy aside during the composition stage and bring it back in when you start building up the sketch.

Moving away from the line of action, my second piece of broad advice is simply to exaggerate more. Lots of artists subconsciously hold themselves back from pushing motion, expression, etc. out of concern that it will look "too much". Well, maybe it will- but you won't know that unless you try! You can always walk it back if you think you took it too far, but I think you'll be surprised by how far you can push your art before you hit that point.

My final piece of advice is to work on line confidence. Even if you follow the rest of this advice, if you have hesitant and scratchy lines, you're undermining the flow and punch of your art. The best way to improve line confidence is simply by practicing! Do a lot of quick, timed studies, and use a permanent medium like a ballpoint pen or marker. Focus on unbroken lines wherever possible even if it makes your studies look like garbo. I find traditional studies are best for improving line confidence, but if you'd really rather stick with digital then just don't let yourself use the eraser tool, and try using a chunky brush with limited pressure sensitivity.

And that's it! Don't stress about it too much though. Loosen up with your art and, like any other skill, you'll improve with practice, time, and analysing what you like about other people's art. Good luck!

[qin-qin16]

OMYGOD THANK YOU SO MUCH 🙏

Basically reader has family issues, especially mommy issues, and killer finds out about that maybe seeing bruises, finding about them crying silently, idk. a scenario i would really like is going on a sleepover with killer, and then maybe as they want to try silly pjs, he spots bruises and as he asks reader about them they burst into tears

i would prefer reader to be female, but please dont make her act too feminine, maybe like you would a gender neutral act, even better masculine

thank you so much

cw: Killer x Reader, gn!reader, hurt/comfort, talk about past abuse, slightly mommy issues, Killer is trying to be a good shoulder to cry on… 

note: I hope this, even a little, makes your day better!

"I'm just giving you a heads-up: I talk in my sleep." 

"Is this for real, or are you just trying to freak me out?" You don't even lift your gaze to Killer, choosing instead to keep arranging the sheets on your makeshift bed on the floor.

"Totally serious! One time, Color threw holy water on me because he thought I was possessed." This made you snort a little and then, finally, you looked at Killer, one eyebrow raised.

"That doesn’t really sound like him."

"Come on! Have a little faith in your friend here!" he says dramatically, throwing his hands up, "And Color is way more of an idiot than he lets on! He might seem grumpy and serious, but he's just as goofy as any other Sans." He then crosses his arms, looking pleased with his point.

"Does that apply to you too?" His victorious look fades quickly, but then is replaced by a smug grin. 

"Of course not! I’m better than any other Sans!" You roll your eyes at his arrogant claim, but your smile mirrors his.

"Alright, alright, oh great Sans, hand me my pajamas." You quickly grab a pillow and throw it at him, but, as expected, he easily dodges it and then grabs the same pillow to toss it back at you, which you don’t even notice until it hits your face.

"Nah, I’ve got a better idea." He then jumps onto your bed and heads for one of the closets in his room. Before you could yell at him for messing up your freshly arranged covers, he comes back with two soft onesies,  both featuring a cat theme (which didn't surprise you at all).

"See? Best friends need matching pajamas for their sleepover." Killer extends the orange onesie toward you; the hood is adorned with two fluffy ears, and there are stripes on the back and sleeves made of the same fabric, resembling soft cat fur.

"They’re so soft!" you say after feeling the fabric against your hands. "Okay, you’ve convinced me: you are the best Sans there is." You dash to the bathroom in the room, eager to try on the onesie as soon as possible.

"I know, I know, I’m the best!"

"Don’t let it go to your head!" you call out with a laugh, imagining Killer’s grumpy face behind the door.

Finally alone, you start to undress. The light above the mirror flickers from time to time, but the dim light is enough to reveal the marks on your body: bruises, scratches; some old, others newer with redness still showing, and one near your left rib that had just recently gone down.

It wasn’t a pretty sight, you knew that, but it wasn’t like you could avoid it. The situation at home was unpredictable and chaotic, yet it was still the only scenario you could think of for your survival. For a while, you stayed like that: holding your shirt in one hand as your eyes scanned each of the bruises on your skin.

"Hey! You won't believe what I—" The door slams open, nearly knocking you backward. Both you and Killer tense up.

Your hands act faster than your words. One moment the door is wide open, with Killer's empty eye sockets staring at you in shock; the next, you’re shoving the door shut with force, not even considering whether you’ve hurt the skeleton or not.

"What the hell, Killer!" you shout, your hands still pressed against the now-closed door. Your shirt is lying on the floor now, along with any semblance of composure you had before. 

For a while, there’s silence from the other side. Your head rests against the door, your forehead giving a gentle bump in the wood.

What a mess, you think with a pang of regret, He must think I’m a crazy, pathetic punching bag… 

"Sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t mean to startle you." His voice comes muffled, not only because of the closed door but also because he’s speaking softly, as if choosing his words carefully, "Could you please open the door for me?" 

I don’t know, why should I open the door? There’s nothing to see here, I don’t want to hear the same awful words I hear at home… The insecurities grow louder in your mind, your hands trembling slightly against the door.

"Please, sweetheart, I promise I just want to understand what I saw." he says in that same low tone again. You watch as the doorknob turns, but neither of you makes a move to face each other again. "Nothing bad will happen, I promise, and you know I don’t make promises I can’t keep." He tries to lighten the mood with a little chuckle at the end.

Still trembling, you slowly reach for the doorknob as your throat tightens, holding back the tears that are about to come. When you finally open the door, your eyes don’t immediately find Killer. Instead, they drop to a fixed spot on the floor as Killer’s shoes come into view.

"Thank you, sweetheart…" He only used that term when he wanted to reassure you. "You did very well, but I need you to do one more thing for me, okay?" His hand moves toward yours, moving as cautiously as his voice.

You consider pulling away, but then you remember that this is Killer, who, despite his name, would never harm you. Soon, his cold fingers gently clasp yours. The little you could see started to blur behind the tears welling up in your eyes. Your entire focus was on holding back your tears and not showing the pain you were feeling.

"Can you look at me, please?" But it was of no use. That simple question was enough to release what had been stuck in your throat. A sob escapes you before tears begin to roll down your cheeks, dripping to your chin and falling to the floor.

"Hey, hey, it’s okay, you don’t have to do this, alright?" Killer tries to stay calm, but your sudden breakdown unsettles him. Still somewhat unsure of what to do, Killer pulls you into a tight embrace. "It’s okay, nothing will happen to you here…" he reassures, gently nuzzling one of your bruised shoulders and resting his face against the curve of your neck after he finishes speaking.

"I'm sorry," you say through your sobs. "I ruined our sleepover..." You mimic him, burying your face against his shoulder and smelling the cigarette smoke coming from the jacket he’s still wearing. Your arms soon wrap around him as well, holding him as tightly, if not more so, than he’s holding you.

"Shhhh, you haven’t ruined anything, you’ve never ruined anything." His whispers return; you feel his hand gently stroking your back, his thumb making small circles motions on your lower back. "My sweetheart, what happened to you?"

"My mom—" You can’t finish the sentence, the sobs and tears preventing any coherent words from coming out.

"Shhhh, shhhh, it’s okay, you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to." He shifts slightly away from you, just enough to rest his forehead against yours in a comforting gesture, "We can stay like this for as long as you need." And so you did.

For a while, you forgot everything, simply just sinking into Killer’s warm and protective embrace. If anything bad happened again, at least you knew where to go now.

[ontheticktick]

Deadpool & Wolverine AU Starter for @oozeyboozey

"Damn it! Son of a bitch! Fuck! Motherfucker! Our world is FUCKED!"

Wade threw the shovel that had been in his hands out of the grave of one James "Logan" Howlett. The merc climbed out of the hole he had spent way too fucking long digging, and begun to pull the adamantium skeletal remains. He released a frustrated growl as he begun to drag it over towards a nearby log.

"This would go quicker with HELP!" He pointed out to his plus one on this little venture. Or was he her plus one? The British motherfucker hadn't really made it clear in his little jaunt of exposition. Either way, Anya hadn't elected to help dig.

"Look..." he sat the skeleton in a sitting position between himself and Anya, "I’m not a man of science, but he seems incredibly passed away." He reached out to pet the knee of the deceased Wolverine. "But it’s good to see him! I gotta be honest, I’ve always wanted to ride with this guy. Logan. Me an' him, getting into a Deadpool and Wolverine. Just fucking shit up. Can you imagine the fun? The chaos? The residuals?" He sighed wistfully. "But noooo...No, no, no, no. Ugh...he had to get all noble and die FOR REAL. God damn it! We could really use his help right now."

The TVA agents arrived just in time to be at peak asshole level, likely intending on adding injury to the insult of being completely fucking DOOMED.

"WAIT! I’m warning you! We're not alone!

"Wade Winston Wilson and Anastasia Winnifred Barnes! You’re under arrest by the Time Variance Authority. Too many crimes to list, come out! Last chance! Throw out your weapons and come out peacefully!"

"We're not gonna give you our weapons! But we promise not to use them..." He moved to begin picking apart the skeleton he'd dug up. Looking to Anya, he spoke. "There are 206 bones in the human body. 207 if I’m watching Gossip Girl." He reached out to hand Anya a piece of the remains as well. "Here we go, Commie Mommy, just like ol' times...MAXIMUM EFFORT."

A Note for the Audience, From Captain Deadpool:

To be clear, I’m not proud of any of this. Anya might be though. She always took pride in her work...when we were TOGETHER. Thanks to a knock-off Grimace with a BALL SACK for a chin, though, half of her whole family vanished...and I couldn't measure up to be enough to help. Where was I? Oh yeah. I'm not proud of any of this. Not that you're going to see any of it unless you go see my new movie in theaters, but Anya won't be in that one, so just...PRETEND that she is, maybe. I could teach you how to pretend she's there. I've gotten real good at it in the last couple years. All of this though...The wanton violence, the whiff of necrophilia, it isn’t who I am, it isn’t who I wanna be. Who I wanna be? Well, to help you understand that, I gotta take you back. Before my little joy ride I took through space and time, to the day that changed everything...

His birthday was filled with his friends and loved ones...all 9 of them. He had been mingling with the guests, when he happened upon his roommate. Blind Al seemed a little jittery.

"Want to do some cocaine?"

"Hey!" The merc insisted, "cocaine is the one thing that Feige said is off-limits."

"What about Bolivian marching powder?"

"They know all the slang terms. They have a list."

"Even snowboarding?" Wade nodded.

"Even disco dust."

"White girl interrupted?" Blind Al's brows furrowed.

"Even Boris bump," Wade affirmed sadly.

"Poker show?"

"I wouldn’t even try powdered donuts."

The woman tried one last-ditch effort. "Do you want to build a snowman?"

Devastated as he looked to Althea, his shoulders fell. "YES...but I CAN'T." With that, he got up from the chair that he had been sitting in and retreated from the woman that was essentially his live-in mother, heading over to the snack table...and coincidentally, over to where Anya stood. He was honestly shocked that she had even wanted to attend his birthday party. His best guess as to a motive was PITY. His heart ached and his throat felt tight as he got closer to her, until he was standing beside her. Gathering up all of his nerve, he spoke.

"Thanks for comin'," Wade told her genuinely, if not a little stiffly from his rampant anxiety. "How's uh...how's work? You still traveling to exotic, distant lands? Meeting exciting, unusual people and killing them?"

[overcastedsays]

So it’s established that the only part of the mindflayer that’s actually robot is the black mechanical part, and that the real body is just for show, right? If the mindflayer exists only as the “head” part and is effectively puppeting a vessel, what if a mindflayer could control OTHER vessels. Maybe in order to survive in the harsh environment hell it has to puppet a more resilient and mobile body (after all, a head can’t do much on its own). Maybe when a mindflayer self-destructs, it only gets rid of the puppet body, leaving a chance or survival for the main head to find another host. Without a vessel to control, I imagine it’ll headcrab style latch itself onto another creature (husk, machine, or otherwise) and take over its body.

Husks would be relatively easy to take over due to their low mental fortitude, but as organic creatures they die fast and are pretty weak. The mindflayer would probably end up siphoning all of the blood out of it before they could fully incorporate themselves. Demons would be far more resilient, but would be more difficult to take over because they’d put up more of a fight (physical or mental). They’d be more difficult to pilot because they operate on hell magic. Perhaps the Mindflayers are so adept with hell magic because they had to learn how it worked to effectively control a demon host.

Other machines, however, would function a bit differently. The Mindflayers usually can’t fully override the original machine’s programming because that would destroy important drivers that are required to keep the machine functional. On the flip side, leaving the machine’s mind fully intact would result in almost immediately removal of the mindflayer from the host. Even a streetcleaner or a drone wouldn’t take kindly to having their body commandeered and probably has some sort of antivirus. Instead, the Mindflayers take on the role of a sort of symbiote; whether it be parasitic or mutualistic is up to them. Perhaps they provide support, extra processing power, or another pair of eyes to give them a leg up in combat. Perhaps they stay like this mutually until they can find or create a new body. Maybe they stay like this forever. Maybe they spend time becoming acquainted with the code of their host, plotting the best way to instate a full takeover without completely shutting them down. Maybe they have a Venom type situation. Maybe a large enough machine could have more than one mindflayer symbiote.

This also gives a much funner reading to the mindflayer’s chosen bodies. Not only are they made to fit the Mindflayer’s personal ideal and make them happy, but they’re probably an engineering marvel. It has to have an intact circulatory system to support blood flow, a “skeleton” so it can support the weight of its internals , and likely some sort of vessel for casting hell magic. Mindflayer’s aren’t just artists, but very intelligent inventors. Certainly makes sense why they would get so uppity about their bodies getting ruined, it probably takes a LOT of resources to build one. The Mindflayers might not be scrapheads nominally per se, but they probably spend a lot of time scavenging for parts to build these. Of course, they have to be more picky than Swordsmachines. Making a body that good requires quality equipment. Maybe the scrapheads think Mindflayers are stuck up. Maybe they think they’re the pinnacle of self invention, on par with THE Swordsmachine. Maybe some mindflayers are their own de facto sect scrapheads. Do they give each other advice like swordsmachines do? I love Mindflayers so much can you tell.

[chronicdisasterwrites]

gamer!eren boyfie: minecraft edition

dating gamer eren is exhausting and exhilarating

like i can imagine him being such an ASS when you play a game w him - if you’re a noob, he will tease the SHIT outta you, but if you’re more or less experienced he might tone it down (maybe)

when you play minecraft together he would go on the craziest raids and just teleport you to him out of nowhere with no warning, just for you to fuckin EAT DIRT-

and when you die and lose all your stuff he’ll just laugh and be like “hah noob”

although, he’ll be sweet too 🫶🏽

like he’d definitely tame a wolf and name it after you

“babe babe look at my little friend-”

if you’re new to minecraft, he’d definitely help you out along the way.

“um beb? please don’t hit me, i will actually die”

“but it’s so fun-“ he will kill you if you don’t listen and continue hitting him, don’t test out that theory 💀

he would protect you from skeletons and creepers bc bro idc how experienced you are THEY ARE TERRIFYING

if you get lost, he’d get your coordinates and go find you

and then end up getting lost himself bc he saw smth cool and you moved to a completely different place as well 🤷🏽‍♀️

he for sure made his wolf sit somewhere and ended up forgetting about the poor thing 🤡 (i did this omfg-)

jean, connie, armin and sasha would join in as well and they would just be absolute menaces

one time, your wolf accidentally killed eren’s wolf and this petty bitch STILL brings that up in arguments

no matter how much eren and jean argues, they always go on raids together and they’re actually really good at communicating and fighting together

you started to build an underwater house w armin’s help and eren got jealous so he wanted to live there as well

let’s be real, he got jealous of your house, not you and armin 😌

bc his house looks like ass

this boy thinks he’s really good at architecture but he is so basic GAWD- you let him have his moments tho

he definitely teleports you to him whenever he finds cool things tho like one time you guys were looking for a village and he ended up finding a beautiful meadow with so many flowers and he collected a bunch of flowers and threw them all at you 🥹

he’s so cute

a/n: is this taken from real life? yes 🫶🏽 also i will make more of these gamer!eren imagines bc i love gamer!eren

also, help me out bc idk if i should add the taglist to every single fic/imagine i write. should i?

[charmwasjess]

My tiny mountain town is a blue dot swallowed up in a sea of red. Our statistically-irrelevant town went for Harris. The larger counties around us all went for Trump. Here’s what this election looked like in the southeastern Appalachian on the front lines of that cultural divide: 

Outright unprosecuted voter intimidation: in the few blocks walk from my house to downtown, I can see a prop skeleton dressed as a Harris supporter hanging from a noose, and Harris yard signs slashed with a knife, others just ripped down to the cardboard.

Gerrymandering - years ago, these little-known poorer districts were redrawn around population centers in ways that give likely Republican strongholds more weight, particularly in rural areas like mine. Republican lawmakers literally have opened prisons in rural counties in my state to artificially inflate population numbers with people who can’t vote due to their felon status to tip the scales.  

Of course, the Electoral college, where US votes are decided by weight of a state’s respective collective population and importance rather than just the counted individuals votes

I’m not making excuses. I echo the rest of the world’s collective disgust and horror about the outcome. I am literally sick with my country. People will die because of this. People who don’t live here, people who didn’t get a choice or stake in the US elections, and who probably wish they’d never heard of the place. And people in my own community. 

Yet it is so easy to picture this election as the ultimate triumph of laziness and inattention, particularly in “ignorant hillbilly” places like where I live, which generally go for Trump without any fight - at least not one that shows up on an election night map. But the Republican right has been working for decades to put the legal, economic, and societal pressures that lead to this in place here. 

We fought hard. Grassroots campaigners, our organizers of LGBTQIA+ groups, leaders in our communities who showed up despite the fact that it put a target on their backs if shit went bad. Teachers fighting Republican-led mandates of ignorance and racism to choke out any thinking that might interfere with their political goals for their ideal voter base. Librarians who get death threats for having kid’s books dealing with gender or queerness in the public libraries. 

These are not imagined examples, these are things that happen to real people I know in my tiny blue community. And the violent, right-wing party, the party that promised to make this second Trump term one of revenge and retribution, knows who those people are too. 

The Charlottesville “Ignite the Right” attack happened in my backyard. I had friends on that street when a self-described neo nazi drove into a crowd and killed Heather Heyer and injured 35 others. Trump was president when it happened; he called the alt-right who invaded Charlottesville with guns and armor and torches that day “good people.” 

I have no faith in my party now. It feels like we’re still trying to play a game we lost years ago, while the other side is busy winning a new game, one where they get to make up all the rules. 

I realize that there are greater global trends at play - incumbents being ousted, a swing to the right, post-pandemic economic scrambles - larger issues than the difficulties of voter suppression in my rural American communities. I'm not in a great mindset to consider them this week. I've been politically active since I was old enough to vote, and it feels like we always build so much momentum and then slam facefirst into this fucking invisible wall.

Honestly? I’m so tired and depressed and anxious, I feel like I can barely function right now. At the same time, I’m disgusted by my own despair and whining. What gives me the right to stop trying now, when so many people across the globe are facing the same anger and exhaustion? When so many people are in more active danger, with less options than I have?

Anyway, I wanted to write something out about the election, maybe just to let go of the words and get them out of me. I'm a queer politically active liberal in a Republican-dominated rural space. Next week, I'll read all the posts about hard work and hope and building support networks. This week, I just need a fucking minute on the floor.

[swordfright]

Tell me about how the structure of the medium impacts the story 🔫

My brother in Christ, prepare yourself for the most boring essay you could possibly imagine. I'm going to over-simplify a few things here for the sake of Getting To The Point, so bear with me.

I think a good starting place is that DSMP is an example of New Media. The go-to definition most folks use is this one: that New Media are stories told via "communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content." In other words, NM is basically this category of stories made up of convergent elements, which satisfy a multimedia requirement, and are heavily reliant on both participatory fan culture and recent advances in technology that allow creators/audiences to communicate with one another instantly.

There's a couple ways you can understand DSMP as a New Media, but as far as I'm concerned, one of the most interesting is prosumption. The term "prosumption" describes a creative situation where a piece of art is being produced (at least in part) by the same people that consume it; they're both audience and creator. DSMP is a really great example of this phenomenon, because A) it's serial and therefore the CCs had ample opportunity to respond to and engage with the audience's reception of their story; and B) because the chat feature allows CCs to interact directly with their audience during roleplay rather than after the fact. These features, among others, kinda set the stage for DSMP to function as a highly prosumptive piece of media.

In particular, the stuff that interests me is the stuff to do with storytelling convention (genre, perspective, etc) and how prosumption turns all that on its head. There are a number of altercations in DSMP canon where the course of the story is altered because of real-time interactions between the CCs and their chat - particularly times when a CC's chat warns them about events happening at the same time elsewhere in the server. In this kind of scenario, the CCs are static, they can't really leave their own stream. Their viewers, on the other hand, are able to jump between streams and talk to each other to figure out what's happening in the overarching story. When this happens, viewers have choices to make: are they going to tell a CC what's going down on the other side of the server? If so, how are viewers going to communicate those events? Viewers are biased, they directly inform CCs, and the information they divulge (as well as how they divulge that info) goes on to influence CCs' actions and thus the events of the story, to some degree. In my opinion, this is a pretty new and exciting way to prosumptively construct a narrative! Media has always been interactive to some extent (especially serial works), but the interaction being live and in real-time is pretty significant in my view because it can exert unique pressures on a narrative.

Speaking of audience choice, that brings me to the next thing I want to yap about: ergodic storytelling, a term that refers to stories “negotiated by processes of choice, discernment, and decision-making.” For reference, a good non-MCYT example of this would be hypertext fiction, because it's generally characterized by the ability of the interactant (that's the reader, in this hypothetical example) to explore material provided by someone else, either as a kind of conceptual landscape (think setting in a video game), or as puzzle pieces that must be put together in order to give the interaction the "big picture" of the story. Basically, with hypertext fiction, there is a core text (the main document that forms the skeleton of the story) and there are multiple hypertexts branching off of the core text - and whether the reader ends up reading those branches, and in what order, inevitably shapes that reader's perception of the whole story.

So here's where it gets tricky. In the case of DSMP, where is the core text located? Is there any one identifiable core text at all? Or is it more appropriate to consider each individual stream or VOD as its own singular core text, with the related Twitch channels and Youtube recommended in the sidebar being "branches"? Alternatively, if the streams and recordings distributed on the server members’ official channels are the central text in the grand hypertext fiction that is DSMP, then can adjacent spaces where audiences do the work of creating and archiving lore be considered their own story branches? I don't have answers to these questions. No one does. That's part of what makes DSMP exciting.

To translate the above quote out of Academia Hellspeak: in an ergodic story, the audience has agency, but the agency enabled and allowed by the text varies in its intensity and mode. Yes, stories told ergodically necessitate choice — and therefore enable agency, turning the reader or viewer into interactant — but that element of choice doesn't always look the same. Some hypertexts are more choice-reliant than others, or are choice-reliant in different ways. So, rather than being a choose-your-own-adventure story, DSMP is more closely analogous to a story where the audience chooses the perspective through which they view plot developments, in addition to having some influence over how plot developments unfold.

(☝️From a 2021 Polygon article, if you think I sound crazy☝️)

The web of choices DSMP presents to viewers is very complex, even compared to other forms of choose-your-own-adventure game. Because each CC approaches the task of story-creation from their own angle (bringing their own narrative baggage to the writers’ room, so to speak), those shifts in perspective this Polygon article describes often also constitute shifts in genre. For instance, cc!Wilbur brought his music production experience and interest in musical theater to the server, cited operas and stage musicals as some of his main inspirations; and accordingly, much of c!Wilbur's most crucial arcs observably draw from those sources. When you watch a c!Wilbur stream, you’re watching a story about statecraft, about revolution, about the triumphs and tragedies of ego that play out during the process of nation-building. On the other hand, cc!Quackity has repeatedly identified Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul as his primary influences; accordingly, his RP character’s story is closer to a piece of gritty prestige television in some places (especially LN series). Unlike with c!Wilbur, a lot of c!Quackity's tension does not revolve around a romanticized fantasy of revolution but around more personal conflicts: securing your place in a new regime, navigating exploitation as both exploited and exploiter, etc. In terms of both plot beats and character arcs, Wilbur and Quackity’s respective storylines embody many of the genre conventions the content creators are working within.

Moreover, a shift in genre often entails a shift in style or mode. Because cc!Wilbur was heavily inspired by musical theater, the presentation style of his character’s storyline is correspondingly both theatrical (i.e. only loosely scripted, nearly always televised live, and improv-heavy) and musical (featuring multiple instances of Wilbur singing in-character ballads and anthems.) On the flipside, Quackity’s streams (especially the later ones, since I'm mostly focusing on Las Nevadas era here) demonstrably mimic the prestige TV shows the CC draws his inspiration from, with lore sessions being pre-recorded rather than televised live, featuring distinctive sonic and visual aesthetics popularized by neo-Western thriller dramas. So, where a piece of media like DSMP is concerned, shifts in perspective entail shifts in genre, which in turn entail pronounced shifts in style. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say it's an entirely new story depending on which character the viewer decides to follow. In that regard, what initially appears to be a single choice (whose perspective to watch a plot event through) has the power to determine a wide array of other elements, as viewers’ responses to the options presented to them will decide the overall tone of the section of the story they're about to watch.

While I think the genre-switching is genuinely super cool, lately I'm a lot more interested in perspective-switching and how it's related to viewer empathy. One side-effect of DSMP being televised live is that yes, you can watch a plot event from 30+ different POVs, but you can't watch every POV live. Typically, you either have to switch between multiple streams, or you need to pick one streamer to watch live and maybe later you'll watch other characters' POVs as you see fit. This has an impact on your perception of how that plot point went down because watching something live feels very different from watching something after-the-fact. I haven't done study on this, so what I'm about to say is mostly conjecture, but I wouldn't be surprised if viewers felt greater empathy for (and greater degrees of kinship with) characters whose POVs they watched live.

The choice of which character to follow also has observable impacts on other kinds of narrative conventions (who is the main character of DSMP? the boring answer is c!Dream because the server's named after him, but the real answer is the protagonist is whoever's POV you watched most of the major plot events through) but to be honest, those questions don't interest me as much.

So, going back to perspective and empathy. I think viewers' reactions to Exile are a really solid way of exemplifying the thing I'm trying to say, so this is the part of the yapping where we gotta bring up the dreaded Exile discourse.

Even though the Exile VODs are available and new viewers can go back and watch them, those viewers experience the Exile arc in a way that is fundamentally different from the experience had by viewers who had to wait in between updates as the videos were being streamed serially in real-time. I would argue that viewers who were “present” during the whole arc noticeably felt the brutality of c!Tommy’s treatment to a greater degree, because the audience was effectively forced to sit in exile alongside Tommy’s character - stewing in anxiety, looking forward to the possibility of appearances from other characters, and living in fear of Dream’s next visit, etc etc. Obviously you could also make this point using c!Dream's time in Pandora as an example, but I'm using Exile here because I've actually seen a lot of fans bring this up when discussing the arc: "people who didn't watch live Don't Get It," "the reason newer fans don't see Exile as scary is because they didn't have to watch it live," that sort of thing. And while I have certain qualms with some of the implications here, I do think these are really fascinating responses! These sorts of responses show that viewers consciously perceive their viewing experience as having been fundamentally different from others' based on a temporal element that's unique to serial fiction!

This instance of a divergence in collective fan experience is an example of choice being rendered unavailable to viewers by virtue of the story’s structure and means of distribution; audience members who happen to accidentally miss streams or who begin following the story after major events have occurred will never be able to engage with and witness those events as LIVE viewers, merely as retrospective ones. They don’t get to make that choice, but they do get to make choices about which perspective (and therefore genre) they get to experience the story through. So it follows that each aspect of DSMP, a semi-ergodic story, can be categorized as either ergodic or non-ergodic, and whether a particular storytelling element is ergodic can change depending on WHEN the viewer began tuning in to the story.

I have a lot more shit to say (shocker) but I'm gonna cap it here for now. Though I do want to add that this is kinda why I have a lot of patience for the crazy diversity of interpretation you tend to get in DSMP fandom. If you took a random sample of fans and asked them what they think of various arcs, characters, and plot events, chances are they would all have fairly different things to say. To me, that's a feature, not a bug. Obviously I have my own opinions, and obviously I do think it's possible for a given interpretation to be "bad," i.e. not grounded in the text - but I have a lot more patience for it here, in a fandom where agreeing on what "the text" EVEN IS presents a challenge. We can't all agree on who the main character is, so I don't ever expect us to agree on more nuanced questions of theme and conflict resolution in the narrative. Again, that's a feature, not a bug. I don't think it was ever possible to reach a consensus with a piece of media like DSMP because of how inextricable the audience is from the story.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

hey do you guys remember how I said that I was going to use patreon to write up content that would be WILDLY too long for tumblr? yeah. this is uuuuuh a little less than 6000 words about a bad Animal Planet series from 2008 that no one watched but me and my sister.

and here's part of the introduction under the cut for freebies, in case you want a little sample:

If you weren’t a painfully introverted animal fact kid in the early 2000s it’s almost impossible to explain the degree of sway that Animal Planet and its shows held over me as a child. Meerkat Manor, Animal Cops, The Most Extreme, The Little Zoo That Could, Prehistoric Planet, River Monsters, all of Steve Irwin’s work, and truly any and all non-serialized programming about any animal imaginable. I ate it all up, even the terribly boring half-hour programs like Backyard Habitat and Petfinder that they only played in the weird wee hours of the morning. 

Crucially, this programming is mostly of a nonfiction bent. Prehistoric Planet uses a framing device involving the use of time travel to bring extinct animals into the present to live in a zoo, but ultimately they’re trying to teach you some facts about some beasts, and while Meerkat Manor was definitely anthropomorphizing and editorializing the drama those meerkats experienced, it was at least rooted in the very real Kalahari Meerkat Project, which has been intensively documenting the behavior of meerkat mobs for many meerkat generations.

But then we get into the oddballs. In 2004 Animal Planet aired Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real, a British “docufiction” produced for Channel Four that sought to contextualize the nearly-global mythology of dragons in real history and biology, complete with CGI recreations of dragons in their “natural habitats.” That’s all fine and good; there’s nothing wrong with using a fake thing to teach people about real animals’ evolution and anatomy. The Loch Ness Monster episode of River Monsters is excellent for this, as you can tell that host Jeremy Wade (angler, freshwater detective, and criminally fuckable old man) doesn’t expect to find a monster literally at all and is just taking the opportunity to introduce his audience to animals they might not otherwise know about, including the noble Greenland shark. He pulls the same trick again in a later episode where he’s sent to discover the “truth” behind sea serpents and winds up diving in search of the elusive oarfish.

Dragons is… not doing that. Instead it offers up a framing device following a completely fictional paleontologists who “suggests the theory that a carbonized Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton on display was killed by a prehistoric dragon” (thanks, Wikipedia) and then has to go on a quest to save his career by proving that dragons totally existed and he’s not crazy. And he’s not! The piece ends with him discovering straight up for-real dragon bones in the Carpathian Mountains. If you were, say, an impressionably soft-brained 8 year old watching this, well holy shit. Congrats! It turns out dragons are real and nobody knows but you. 

Why did Animal Planet air this? God only knows, but it wouldn’t be the last time they dabbled in this shit. 2012 saw another piece by the same creator, Charlie Foley, called Mermaids: The Body Found which posited that various governments are holding merpeople captive and also relied on the infamously eugenicist aquatic ape theory to justify how merpeople could exist. The CGI on that one creeped me the fuck out, although I was at least old enough by then to recognize it wasn’t real.

Between those two docufictional farces, Animal Planet got a little freaky and rolled out some fake factual content of their own: three season of the TV show Lost Tapes (2008-2010, RIP), which purportedly showed “found footage” from incidents of humans having terrifying encounters with cryptids and fighting to escape with their lives. Interspersed with the fully fictional stories were segments of experts talking about folkloric history and speculating as to how creatures like Sasquatch and sea serpents could be real, which was an admirable effort to make it educational but often fell pretty short. There’s a werewolf episode where their expert weakly offers up that there are tons of transformations in nature, like caterpillars turning into butterflies. Notably that has absolutely nothing in common with a human turning rapidly into a wolfbeast and then shifting back, but they tried! They stopped trying as hard by season three, by which point they were throwing any and every beastie they could think of at the wall: there are episodes dedicated to zombies, a poltergeist, two different types of vampires, and the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. 

Also straining belief was the dedication that some POV characters had to keeping their cameras rolling. I don’t blame the writers for that; it’s hard coming up with a fresh gimmick for “found footage” in every episode. Some of them, like characters wearing body cameras, are pretty smart; others, like a teenage girl continuing to film on her phone while being hunted by the Jersey devil, are not. They’re very much running on horror movie rules; the characters are as dumb as they need to be to make the plot go. To the show’s credit the dumdums are frequently punished, and it’s not uncommon for every single named character to end up dead at the hands (or claws, fangs, whatever) of the monster of the week. 

Needless to say, as a 12 year old I thought this was extremely edgy and cool. I was old enough to recognize that the so-called found footage was fake and that the acting was mostly very bad, but I liked cryptids and some of the show’s better episodes could still creep me right out. I think geeky 12 year olds who like to get a little freaked out on purpose are probably the ideal target demographic for this show, followed by nostalgic 20-somethings who have seen every episode several times.

(Hi, editor’s note: having completed this list it turns out there are WAY more episodes than I thought and I fully Do Not Recall some of them, so egg on my face.)