#I chose them based mostly on vibes

[365-days-of-taylor-swift]

September Day 21

We're doing seasons or the rest of this week to celebrate the start of autumn on the 23rd (where I live at least)! Would love if y'all shared your stories about why you connct to your "spring song"! 💚

Check out the masterpost to vote on other currently running polls!

Like your fave 1989 (tv) vault track based on the title Or your favourite TS song on a movie soundtrack!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Social Quitting

In “Social Quitting,” my latest Locus Magazine column, I advance a theory to explain the precipitous vibe shift in how many of us view the once-dominant social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, and how it is that we have so quickly gone asking what we can do to get these services out of our lives to where we should go now that we’re all ready to leave them:

https://locusmag.com/2023/01/commentary-cory-doctorow-social-quitting/

The core of the argument revolves around surpluses — that is, the value that exists in the service. For a user, surpluses are things like “being able to converse with your friends” and “being able to plan activities with your friends.” For advertisers, surpluses are things like “being able to target ads based on the extraction and processing of private user data” and “being able to force users to look at ads before they can talk to one another.”

For the platforms, surpluses are things like, “Being able to force advertisers and business customers to monetize their offerings through the platform, blocking rivals like Onlyfans, Patreon, Netflix, Amazon, etc” and things like “Being able to charge more for ads” and “being able to clone your business customers’ products and then switch your users to the in-house version.”

Platforms control most of the surplus-allocating options. They can tune your feed so that it mostly consists of media and text from people you explicitly chose to follow, or so that it consists of ads, sponsored posts, or posts they think will “boost engagement” by sinking you into a dismal clickhole. They can made ads skippable or unskippable. They can block posts with links to rival sites to force their business customers to transact within their platform, so they can skim fat commissions every time money changes hands and so that they can glean market intelligence about which of their business customers’ products they should clone and displace.

But platforms can’t just allocate surpluses will-ye or nill-ye. No one would join a brand-new platform whose sales-pitch was, “No matter who you follow, we’ll show you other stuff; there will be lots of ads that you can’t skip; we will spy on you a lot.” Likewise, no one would sign up to advertise or sell services on a platform whose pitch was “Our ads are really expensive. Any business you transact has to go through us, and we’ll take all your profits in junk fees. This also lets us clone you and put you out of business.”

Instead, platforms have to carefully shift their surpluses around: first they have to lure in users, who will attract business customers, who will generate the fat cash surpluses that can be creamed off for the platforms’ investors. All of this has to be orchestrated to lock in each group, so that they won’t go elsewhere when the service is enshittified as it processes through its life-cycle.

This is where network effects and switching costs come into play. A service has “network effects” if it gets more valuable as users join it. You joined Twitter to talk to the people who were already using it, and then other people joined so they could talk to you.

“Switching costs” are what you have to give up when you leave a service: if a service is siloed — if it blocks interoperability with rivals — then quitting that service means giving up access to the people whom you left behind. This is the single most important difference between ActivityPub-based Fediverse services like Mastodon and the silos like Twitter and Facebook — you can quit a Fediverse server and set up somewhere else, and still maintain your follows and followers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

In the absence of interoperability, network effects impose their own switching cost: the “collective action problem” of deciding when to leave and where to go. If you depend on the people you follow and who follow you — for emotional support, for your livelihood, for community — then the extreme difficulty of convincing everyone to leave at the same time and go somewhere else means that you can be enticed into staying on a service that you no longer enjoy. The platforms can shift the surpluses away from you, provided that doing so makes you less miserable than abandoning your friends or fans or customers would. This is the Fiddler On the Roof problem: everyone stays put in the shtetl even though the cossacks ride through on the reg and beat the shit out of them, because they can’t all agree on where to go if they leave:

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms-9fc550fe5abf

So the first stage of the platform lifecycle is luring in users by allocating lots of surplus to them — making the service fun and great and satisfying to use. Few or no ads, little or no overt data-collection, feeds that emphasize the people you want to hear from, not the people willing to pay to reach you.

This continues until the service attains a critical mass: once it becomes impossible to, say, enroll your kid in a little-league baseball team without having a Facebook account, then Facebook can start shifting its surpluses to advertisers and other business-users of the platform, who will pay Facebook to interpose themselves in your use of the platform. You’ll hate it, but you won’t leave. Junior loves little-league.

Facebook can enshittify its user experience because the users are now locked in, holding each other hostage. If Facebook can use the courts and technological countermeasures to block interoperable services, it can increase its users’ switching costs, producing more opportunities for lucrative enshittification without the risk of losing the users that make Facebook valuable to advertisers. That’s why Facebook pioneered so many legal tactics for criminalizing interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/cases/facebook-v-power-ventures

This is the second phase of the toxic platform life-cycle: luring in business customers by shifting surpluses from users to advertisers, sellers, etc. This is the moment when the platforms offer cheap and easy monetization, low transaction fees, few barriers to off-platform monetization, etc. This is when, for example, a news organization can tease an article on its website with an off-platform link, luring users to click through and see the ads it controls.

Because Facebook has locked in its users through mutual hostage-taking, it can pollute their feeds with lots of these posts to news organizations’ sites, bumping down the messages from its users’ friends, and that means that Facebook can selectively tune how much traffic it gives to different kinds of business customers. If Facebook wants to lure in sports sites, it can cram those sites’ posts into millions of users’ feeds and send floods of traffic to sports outlets.

Outlets that don’t participate in Facebook lose out, and so they join Facebook, start shoveling their content into it, hiring SEO Kremlinologists to help them figure out how to please The Algorithm, in hopes of gaining a permanent, durable source of readers (and thus revenue) for their site.

But ironically, once a critical mass of sports sites are on Facebook, Facebook no longer needs to prioritize sports sites in its users’ feeds. Now that the sports sites all believe that a Facebook presence is a competitive necessity, they will hold each other hostage there, egging each other on to put more things on Facebook, even as the traffic dwindles.

Once sports sites have taken each other hostage, Facebook can claw back the surplus it allocated to them and use it to rope in another sector — health sites, casual games, employment seekers, financial advisors, etc etc. Each group is ensnared by a similar dynamic to the one that locks in the users.

But there is a difference between users’ surpluses and business’s surpluses. A user’s surplus is attention, and there is no such thing as an “attention economy.” You can’t use attention to pay for data-centers, or executive bonuses, or to lobby Congress. Attention is not a currency in the same way that cryptos are not currency — it is not a store of value, nor a unit of exchange, nor or a unit of account.

Turning attention into money requires the same tactics as turning crypto into money — you have to lure in people who have real, actual money and convince them to swap it for attention. With crypto, this involved paying Larry David, Matt Damon, Spike Lee and LeBron James to lie about crypto’s future in order to rope in suckers who would swap their perfectly cromulent “fiat” money for unspendable crypto tokens.

With platforms, you need to bring in business customers who get paid in actual cash and convince them to give you that cash in exchange for ethereal, fast-evaporating, inconstant, unmeasurable “attention.” This works like any Ponzi scheme (that is, it works like cryptos): you can use your shareholders’ cash to pay short-term returns to business customers, losing a little money as a convincer that brings in more trade.

That’s what Facebook did when it sent enormous amounts of traffic to a select few news-sites that fell for the pivot to video fraud, in order to convince their competitors to borrow billions of dollars to finance Facebook’s bid to compete with Youtube:

https://doctorow.medium.com/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video-adbe09319038

This convincer strategy is found in every con. If you go to the county fair, you’ll see some poor bastard walking around all day with a giant teddy bear that he “won” by throwing three balls into a peach-basket. The carny who operated that midway game let him win the teddy precisely so that he would walk around all day, advertising the game, which is rigged so that no one else wins the giant teddy-bear:

https://boingboing.net/2006/08/27/rigged-carny-game.html

Social media platforms can allocate giant teddy-bears to business-customers, and it can also withdraw them at will. Careful allocations mean that the platform can rope in a critical mass of business customers and then begin the final phase of its life-cycle: allocating surpluses to its shareholders.

We know what this looks like.

Rigged ad-markets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

Understaffed content moderation departments:

https://www.dw.com/en/twitters-sacking-of-content-moderators-will-backfire-experts-warn/a-63778330

Knock-off products:

https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/08/twitter-is-the-latest-platform-to-test-a-tiktok-copycat-feature/

Nuking “trust and safety”:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-dissolves-trust-safety-council-2022-12-13/

Hiding posts that have links to rival services:

https://www.makeuseof.com/content-types-facebook-hides-why/

Or blocking posts that link to rival services:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/better-failure/#let-my-tweeters-go

Or worse, terminating accounts for linking to rival services:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2022/12/twitter-suspends-mastodon-account-prevents-sharing-links/

That is, once a platform has its users locked in, and has its business customers locked in, it can enshittify its service to the point of near uselessness without losing either, allocating all the useful surplus in the business to its shareholders.

But this strategy has a problem: users and business customers don’t like to be locked in! They will constantly try to find ways to de-enshittify your service and/or leave for greener pastures. And being at war with your users and business customers means that your reputation continuously declines, because every time a user or business customer figures out a way to claw back some surplus, you have to visibly, obviously enshittify your service wrestle it back.

Every time a service makes headlines for blocking an ad-blocker, or increasing its transaction fees, or screwing over its users or business customers in some other way, it makes the case that the price you pay for using the service is not worth the value it delivers.

In other words, the platforms try to establish an equilibrium where they only leave business customers and users with the absolute bare minimum needed to keep them on the service, and extract the rest for their shareholders. But this is a very brittle equilibrium, because the prices that platforms impose on their users and business customers can change very quickly, even if the platforms don’t do anything differently.

Users and business customers can revalue the privacy costs, or the risks of staying on the platform based on exogenous factors. Privacy scandals and other ruptures can make the cost you’ve been paying for years seem higher than you realized and no longer worth it.

This problem isn’t unique to social media platforms, either. It’s endemic to end-stage capitalism, where companies can go on for years paying their workers just barely enough to survive (or even less, expecting them to get public assistance and/or a side-hustle), and those workers can tolerate it, and tolerate it, and tolerate it — until one day, they stop.

The Great Resignation, Quiet Quitting, the mass desertions from the gig economy — they all prove the Stein’s Law: “Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop.”

Same for long, brittle supply-chains, where all the surplus has been squeezed out: concentrating all the microchip production in China and Taiwan, all the medical saline in Puerto Rico, all the shipping into three cartels… This strategy works well, and can be perfectly tuned with mathematical models that cut right to the joint, and they work and they work.

Until they stop. Until covid. Or war. Or wildfires. Or floods. Or interest rate hikes. Or revolution. All this stuff works great until you wake up and discover that the delicate balance between paying for guard labor and paying for a fair society has tilted, and now there’s a mob building a guillotine outside the gates of your luxury compound.

This is the force underpinning collapse: “slow at first, then all at once.” A steady erosion of the failsafes, flensing all the slack out of the system, extracting all the surpluses until there’s nothing left in the reservoir, no reason to stay.

It’s what caused the near-collapse of Barnes and Noble, and while there are plenty of ways to describe James Daunt’s successful turnaround, the most general characterization is, “He has reallocated the company’s surpluses to workers, readers, writers and publishers”:

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/what-can-we-learn-from-barnes-and

A system can never truly stabilize. This is why utopias are nonsense: even if you design the most perfect society in which everything works brilliantly, it will still have to cope with war and meteors and pandemics and other factors beyond your control. A system can’t just work well, it has to fail well.

This is why I object so strenuously to people who characterize my 2017 novel Walkaway as a “dystopian novel.” Yes, the protagonists are eking out survival amidst a climate emergency and a failing state, but they aren’t giving up, they’re building something new:

https://locusmag.com/2017/06/bruce-sterling-reviews-cory-doctorow/

“Dystopia” isn’t when things go wrong. Assuming nothing will go wrong doesn’t make you an optimist, it makes you an asshole. A dangerous asshole. Assuming nothing will go wrong is why they didn’t put enough lifeboats on the Titanic. Dystopia isn’t where things go wrong. Dystopia is when things go wrong, and nothing can be done about it.

Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop. The social media barons who reeled users and business customers into a mutual hostage-taking were confident that their self-licking ice-cream cone — in which we all continued to energetically produce surpluses for them to harvest, because we couldn’t afford to leave — would last forever.

They were wrong. The important thing about the Fediverse isn’t that it’s noncommercial or decentralized — it’s that its design impedes surplus harvesting. The Fediverse is designed to keep switching costs as low as possible, by enshrining the Right Of Exit into the technical architecture of the system. The ability to leave a service without paying a price is the best defense we have against the scourge of enshittification.

(Thanks to Tim Harford for inspiring this column via an offhand remark in his kitchen a couple months ago!)

[Image ID: The Phillip Medhurst Picture Torah 397. The Israelites collect manna. Exodus cap 16 v 14. Luyken and son.]

[prostocupoftea]

Kinitopet Programmers AU

finally i am finished with this one, daaaamn

it is hard to draw pathetic men with midlife crisis when your style is mostly for anime boys

more info and sketch version under the cut!!

sketch version aka how it'll probably look like in comic version 'n some doodles

srry for my writing but i was too laisy to put it as regular text

It is a plot-based au, i already have most of the storybits and like... a vibe-chart (i tried to make a playlist for this au and understood that for different chapters and different characters that'd be a copleatly different music, sooo it's a chart now :) )

i will post a fog-o-wared timeline that im hopefully gonna reveal comic-by comic, but also maybe with just pure writing. Hopefully i can include songs that i chose for them into it but we'll see (:

aaand of course designs can change, hopefully not much but we'll see

Now about au:

Main story:

Story follows non-sentient AI Kinito, his creator Sonny and his beta-tester Victoria (oc)

Being literally the first AI (or RRA in-univere) ever, Kinito does not have any, and i mean, any ai safety features so of course his reponce to a goal phrased as "have user near me and/or interacting with me as much as possible" is digitizing them into his own virtual world while killing them in the process. why wouldn't it be?

So that happened. Like, a lot. And with Sonny and Vic too (at the different time but yeah)

Sonny is like "He kills people. We should turn him off because, you know, killing people is bad."

Vic is like "well, we will die if we do that, and it is not that bad here, we are kinda immortal. We should give him acces to changing his initial instalation code before admin priveleges and acces to social media so we can have everythin we want here. It is not that bad to digitize humanity, yk?" and yes i know it is 90, no social media, but shut up, if they made ai then, then i can make twitter then too

Sonny is like "...no??"

And then they fight about it for million chapters

Also they both can't do anything without agreeing bc they have two parts of that admin access key (the data you use to delete kinito in-game) so they are stuck with eachother (also that's why Kinito can't just kill them)

Little facts that may or may not to be important:

Kinito asks so many questions (and weird once too) and has most of the glitches because he needs to analise your responces to copy your mind perfectly (let's pretend that people wouldn't lie about that...)

Your house in your virtual world is made from important places from your memories and oh boy can i do character explorations with this one

I decided that Sonny and Vic are not related. There were thoughts about making then "The Kinito Brothers" (or, at least, siblings) that were mentioned in commercial, but nah, they are just coworkers now. And a bit of work-friends (bc if you interact a lot as a manager of the project and the best worker might as well be friendly)

Author has no idea how small dying toy companies that accidentally create technological marvel work. Author has some idea how AI-s work. So be prepared to be spoon-fed info abut which ai safety problem we are dealing with in which chapter (:

Kinito will mostly be unrendered (as drawn here) but for some cool moments i might pose him as for my other posts. Also his eye placement changes to the side that is most visible because i want him to be able to look to the right side sometimes--

Also when i say "fucked up mentally" i mean they have that them psychological problems with me projecting heavilly B) (guess on who i project most. trick question. all of them. the whole au is my problems split into three characters and forced to interact B) )

Also sea-creature analogies (that are gonna be mentioned like twice):

Victoria is a flying fish because deep character reasons

Sonny is a pufferfish because i said so

oh also there is 7 deaths in the plot as for now

on 3 characters

good luck figuring out who, how and when ((:

for my own sanity i will probably make little doodles where everything is great and kinito is a good guy and not a number-obsessed maniac (i mean... can u imagine not being able to feel any happiness from anything besides one thing... damn...) and you can differenciate them bc good-guy kinito will have a lot of stickers on him (i will explain it somehow but real reason is just bc it is cute af)

like this but even more stickers (he is unfinished here)

[megamindsecretlair]

BOOK UPDATE 11/1/24

Yall 🥲 can I be cocky real quick and yall won't judge me 👀

I've been spending the past week editing my book, getting the inconsistencies out as best as I could. (Like when I described Jasper in a green plaid shirt and it somehow turned into a navy thermal in the same scene 🤣🤣🤣🤣)

And im well and truly done. Its out of my hands. I don't know what else i can do/say to improve on it. Yall i was in here tooting my own mf horn 🥳🥳 i was getting my own self bothered writing some of the 😮‍💨 scenes. Like I wrote that? I snapped like that? Who am I trynma show out for but myself like 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨

Here's a sneak-sneak chuz I love yall 👀

“Do I get to play in this pussy whenever I want?” He asked.

Her belly flipped. Her mouth dropped open. “Yesss,” she moaned.

“Do I get to keep you?” He asked. He licked his lips and she felt the torturous glides of his tongue on her.

“Forever,” she said.

“Forever,” he said.

👀👀👀

And I realized that yes, writing is fn scary. Posting that writing - let alone publishing it - is downright frightening. But you also gotta have a level of "fuck it, I did that shit" attitude about it. My advice will always be to write what YOU want to see. What turns YOU on. If you have fun, then we having fun boo 😗

Okay, im done being cocky. Chuz its truly because of all of you who've been with me on this writing journey. Who commented and reblogged and told me that I can weave some words around to unlock some knowledge bout themselves 😏😏

You let me be cocky. You gassed me up to believe in myself to make my dream come true. I will be publishing under a pen name, mostly for marketing reasons. The name I chose doesn't have many search results so I won't get lost in the noise. Unlike my real name 😒

Im also hard at work on my website. I want yall to have fun when you visit it. And that vibe is not easy to achieve when you're an over-anxious indecisive person 🫠

Special shoutout to @darqchilddaydreamz and @westside-rot who sent me an ask game that inspired the story of Zora and Jasper and encouraged my silly story to become something. That was the universe stepping up for me.

All this to say is thank you, thank you, a million times thank YOU. I hope you fall in love with Zora and Jasper like I did.

This is where the hard part comes in. Reviews are a must to get any kind of traction with the book. I only ask for a fair and honest review when the book comes out on Goodreads because to be absolutely 💯, I got bills to pay. And I've been skipping out on overtime to get this book done, ya feel me? 😩

I also may or may not have plotted out 5 other books that are all separate stories. One of them may even be a vampire novel. One of them is deff based on Mr. Black. But idkidkidk. Lemme see how this book does first 👀🫣

[the-greatest-magic-of-all]

Oh, Brave and Loyal Knight

○ fandom: fantasy high

○ main pairing: fabriz (fabian x riz)

○ characters: fabian | riz | penelope | dayne

○ genre/warnings: king + knight au

○ tags: King Arthur Vibes | But also The Goblin Emperor Motifs | King Fabian | Knight Riz | Court Politics | Mostly Fluff

○ word count: 2,654

→ summary: It's a lovely morning in Fallinel, and Riz is a horrible (yet loyal) knight.

○ note: based on a post by @/plumerii.

part 2 | part 3 | part 4

“Dude, your brave and loyal knight fucking bit me.”

King Fabian Seacaster pursed his lips as his gaze lazily drifted from Mr. Blayde’s bloodied hand to where the aforementioned loyal knight, Sir Riz, stood, licking the last of the young man's blood from his lips. Doing his best to hide a smirk, particularly at how the brief bout of pain had made Mr. Dayne Blayde's Solsian use of “Dude” slip through his halfway decent Elvish.

Fabian’s sure that in any other situation, his fianceé, Lady Everpetal, would admonish him for it. However, she was too busy glaring daggers at Fabian and his knight as she shielded Mr. Blayde’s thoroughly punctured hand with her own. Haughtily huffing so hard that they managed to echo in the vastness of the throne room as she did so.

By the third huff, Fabian decided that he’d made them squirm long enough to finally deign Mr. Blayde with a response. Especially with the way some of his other guards were eyeing him. Sighing, he sat back on his towering, ornate throne, caught the young merchant’s eye, and asked, “Well? Did you do something to provoke him?”

Indignation erupted on both Mr. Blayde's and Lady Everpetal’s faces. Blayde could only gape at Fabian, momentarily struck speechless, while Lady Everpetal’s pale complexion reddened as she cried out, “Did he—you can’t be—that little—”

“Oh, stop with the sputtering, your Ladyship. It’s beneath you. Here, look,” Fabian said, holding up a bejewelled hand. Tilting his head toward his knight, who caught his blasé look and returned it with one filled with mischief. “Sir Riz, why did you bite the good merchant’s hand?”

Making a point to deliberately lick the blood off his teeth before speaking, Sir Riz cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Blayde took a tone with his majesty that I didn’t like. Alluding to threats to your rightful reign that he is too cowardly to say plainly.” He turned his head toward an aghast Lady Everpetal with his ears pinned back and a sneer on his lips, hissing out, “Be happy that I chose his hand and not his eye.”

Sir Riz had wanted to say worse; Fabian could tell. Worse about the merchant punching above his status and far worse about the Lady with monarchal ambitions. Yet, he held his tongue, not wanting to show those cards lest the Everpetals wise up to their ruler knowing of their unabashed treachery and become more challenging to hinder.

Fabian’s quick ascension to the throne of Fallinel after the Elven Oracle (and best friend) had gifted him Fandrangour had left him in a position in want of allies and with a plethora of enemies. Yet, thankfully, his inner circle of confidantes had formed swiftly in the days preceding his coronation. And no one was more loyal to him than Riz Gukgak of Solace. A former detective Fabian had met during one of his many adventures across Spyre. Over the years of knowing each other, both had saved the other countless times and had grown closer than either of them had originally planned to. So, when the Court of Stars had backed him into a corner, demanding the ancient position of the King’s Nohecharei (a knight sworn to die than allow harm to befall the King) be filled, Fabian knew of the only person in the multiverse that he trusted enough to take up the mantle.

“I see. Sir Riz, refrain from biting next time. Use a dagger, far more sanitary.” Fabian said to his knight with a firmness that tried to mask the amusement at the situation underneath. In return, Riz bowed deeply and gave a quiet affirmative. Satisfied, Fabian turned back to the couple before him. Paying no mind to the steam coming out of Lady Everpetal’s ears, he told the dumbfounded Mr. Blayde, “One of the healers in the palace infirmary will see to your hand. I’d hurry before it gets infected. Now—”

“Your Majesty!” Leaving her fiancé behind, Lady Everpetal lifted the skirt of her flowy, green gown to rush closer to Fabian. Stopped only by a warning hiss from Sir Riz. She only spared Riz a single glare before softening her countenance to something sickeningly sweet as she turned to the King and said, “The Everpetals have been loyal to the Crown and the Court of Stars for eons.”

Don’t roll your eyes. Don’t roll your eyes. Kings don’t roll their eyes, Fabian!

“Yes, you’ve made that notion quite clear, my Lady,” Fabian said, arching one of his well-kept brows at her. “How that fact seems relevant enough to remind me every time we meet astounds me.”

“I only mean that, as my fiancé, Mr. Blayde should receive the same dignities as any else of my esteemed and ancient House,” Lady Everpetal said. Her expression strained to keep pleasant. Making it hard to tell whether her narrowed eyes were because of the raised cheeks of her smile or the fury burning within. Nevertheless, she let out a tittering laugh as she went on to spit out with barely concealed rage, “The fact that you're about to let that little—”

Fabian shot up on his throne. His hands gripped the armrests, threatening to scratch the golden embellishments, as he hissed, “Watch your tongue, Everpetal.”

“—knight—” She **quickly pivoted like the expert courtier she was, yet was still picking up steam.*“—*Of yours get away with injuring a soon-to-be member of your court i-is unconscionable!”

“Lady Everpetal—”

“Don't **you understand that you are throwing out centuries of noble tradition for a Goblin who was a peasant not a year ago?”

“Penelo—”

“Why must the Court of Stars have their way of life thrown to the wind all because of the arcane technicality that was your royal inheir—”

Fabian hadn’t realized how close Lady Everpetal was getting to him until Sir Riz swiftly imposed himself between them and slammed the tip of his Sword of Shadows into the marble of the dias.

CLANG!

The sound of sleek, sharp metal against stone echoed out into the great hall and drew everyone's eyes onto him—something his wasn’t want to do. Yet still, Sir Riz stood solidly, back straight, shoulders squared, and a tight grip on his blade. From behind, Fabian couldn’t tell what expression was on his beloved knight's face, but by the way, even Lady Everpetal had gone ashen and stumbled back toward Mr. Blayde; it was chilling.

“Yes or no?” Sir Riz began, his tone firm and fierce as the bright lights of the throne room dimmed at the sound of his voice ringing out. The newfound shadows clung to the knight’s blade, swirling around his hands and feet. “Does his Majesty not wield Fandrangour, The Sword of Elven Kings, Lady Everpetal?” He asked with a snarl. Mr. Blayde flinched. “Does the crown, enchanted only to let the true ruler of Fallinel wear it, not sit happily upon his head?” Lady Everpetal winced. “Did the Elven Oracle herself not foree his reign?” The shadows grew darker, grew in number, and grew in size as Sir Riz, despite his tiny form, also seemed to grow. His commanding presence filled the chamber as his voice, vexed and indignant, raised to almost a shout. “Does the Court of Stars move against him? Do you dare commit high treason?”

Sir Riz’s final question hung in the air for a few long moments.

No one dared even to breathe as perhaps the tentative peace Fallinel had might unravel before their eyes in the following moments. Fabian could feel every guard that lined the hall tense. None more pulled taut than Sir Riz, his tail still and his hackles still raised.

Mr. Blayde looked at a loss for words (then again, what else was new), while Lady Everpetal looked like she knew exactly what she wanted to say but kept her tongue still so as to respond to an accusation of high treason thoughtlessly.

Neither party dared to make another move, whether on the offence or defence. A moment so fragile a wrong single word might break it. Luckily, Fabian always considered himself a deft touch.

Fabian’s soft chuckles broke the silence of the throne room as he pushed himself to stand, gaining the hall’s attention in one easy movement. With a gentle hand on Sir Riz’s shoulder, the shadows receded, and the room's brightness returned as Fabian said, “Settle yourself, Sir Riz.” After a couple of extra moments, Sir Riz did what he was told and turned to acknowledge Fabian with a bow. Giving him a tiny, reassuring smile, Fabian looked out at the pair in front of him, his smile turning intimidating as he continued, “I’m certain that Lady Everpetal did not come here to list her grievances with my rightful reign before contesting me for the throne in an official capacity.”

Fabian certainly wasn’t in the mood for the trials and duels that come with the arduous process that was the Court of Stars’ official channels for contesting the ruling monarch for the Fallinese throne. And he’s sure Lady Everpetal wasn’t either.

Yes, yes, he was granting her a way to slither out of treason.

A way that would, he had no doubt, allow her to go back to plotting to overthrow him in secret. But it also got her to leave him alone for the next couple of days, or maybe, Gods willing, weeks. And that prospect of peace and quiet allured him deeply.

For her credit, Lady Everpetal took it immediately. Her too-sweet smile was back on her fair face as she bowed and said, “Of course not. Apologies, your majesty, for my outburst.”

“We all have our bad days, my Lady,” Fabian said back, ignoring the scoff that fell from Sir Riz’s lips. “Now, I do believe I’m quite finished taking audiences for the rest of the morning. Lady Everpetal, take your fianceé to the palace infirmary and see yourselves back to your fiefdom. Sir Durden, make sure they find their way there swiftly. Good day.”

And with that, Fabian swept out of the throne room, his silvery Elven robes fluttering behind him as he went. His steps were quick and filled with purpose, even if that purpose was to get back to the King’s—to his tower and collapse in a heap of rich, silky fabric and heavy opal and sapphire jewellery. He didn’t hear Sir Riz’s footfalls behind him in the same way he heard the clicks the heels of his own boots made, but then again, Fabian never did.

Riz was a damn good Rogue; moving silently through the halls of the palace was so second nature to him that he often unintentionally startled other members of the Court of Stars—even other spies. Fabian had heard many complaints about the phenomenon and fielded even more demands that Riz wear a bell. He waved them all off, noting that his nohecharei had never managed to frighten him. Leaving out the many times Riz had scared him at the beginning of their friendship and the years it took to hone his ability to notice Riz’s faint tells.

So, Fabian walked, head forward and held high, not needing footsteps to know that Riz was only a couple of steps behind. The way his claws tapped the hilt of his blade and the faint swish of his tail was enough.

It wasn’t until Fabian had reached his chambers within his tower—the Alcethmeret—and fell onto one of his couches that he got a good look at Sir Riz again. Turning to see him standing by the grand double doors, a soft smile on his face, he took a moment to enjoy the view.

Standing as tall as he could, a few inches shy of four feet, Riz’s slim frame was wrapped in only the finest dark leather armour over tawny brown robes. Far from the starched shirts and vests he wore in Solace. Sword of Shadows on his back. Arquebus at his hip. Fabian’s personal sigil embroidered onto his armour right over his heart. Same as the one he used to seal his letters and appeared on banners throughout the country. He’d never admit it, but the possessive part of him always preened at the sight of it. Physical proof of Riz’s connection to him. One that would protect him from all harm that might’ve befallen him as a lone Goblin in this den of High Elves.

His seal.

His knight.

His Goblin.

“You just had to bite him, didn’t you?” Fabian asked with a drawl and a wide smile.

Riz shrugged, his grin growing to match. “You told me I could bite whoever I wanted if you or the throne were in jeopardy.”

Fabian couldn’t help but roll his eyes, letting his head fall back onto the antique couch’s pillow. And apparently, he was the drama queen. “I wasn't in danger, The Ball.”

“If you allowed a foreign merchant to be so brazenly disrespectful—which Blayde was, threatening to stifle Solsian imports if you did not bend to his fianceé’s wishes—then the rest of the Court would start acting up.” “Besides, I thought you didn't mind my bites.”

Fabian’s head shot back up. Locking gazes with Riz, whose canny, amber eyes held a spark of defiant teasing. Narrowing his eye, Fabian crooked a finger at him and said, “Come hither, oh, Brave and Loyal Knight.”

Riz obeyed, striding from the door to bend a knee and kneel before him. Fabian immediately took advantage of their closeness to cup Riz’s cheek, running his thumb across a field of deep evergreen freckles. Riz's slitted pupils dilated at his touch, a catlike pur emanating from the ferocious knight as he leaned into it.

They stayed like this for a few long and peaceful minutes. There were no words between them, only sighs and grunts as Riz guided Fabian’s fingers to run through his greenblack curls. All was well until the palace clock tower rang, shattering their little personal bubble and bringing Fabian back to reality.

Still playing with the soft hairs at the back of Riz’s neck, Fabian pouted and quietly said, “Blayde and Everpetal are going to continue to be a problem.”

In a flash, Riz’s pupils go razor-thin once more. “I’ll handle them.”

Fabian's sure he would, but—“Word of her outburst will reach the ears of the other Houses and the rest of the country soon enough.”

“No other House will publically align with House Everpetal so soon after Penelope's stunt today,” Riz said with absolute certainty. “Neither will the rest of your subjects.”

“The Court of Stars could be moving against me,” Fabian shot back, feeling anything but certain about what their future held. “A coup could be on the way sooner than we think.”

“It’s not.”

“How are you sure?”

“Because,” Riz said slowly as he pulled away from Fabian’s hand so that he could take it in both of his. “I’ll squash its embers before it can catch,” he continued, staring into Fabian’s eye with the same conviction he had on the day he took his oath as a nohecharei. “Don’t worry about any of that. I’ve got your back, Fabes.”

“What would I do without you?” Fabian asked, his voice cracking and his chest full of warm, soft feelings as a sense of breathlessness overtook him. He knew the answer was collapse under all the weight and pressure of the life he never thought he’d have to live, though Riz would never say that.

Instead, Riz feigned thinking for a moment before he answered, “Die in a ditch thanks to a sabotaged carriage.” Fabian gasped in fake outrage. How so very dare he! Yet before he could complain, Riz pressed a kiss to Fabian’s ringed knuckles as he let out a laugh. “Not on my watch, though, my King.”

No, Fabian thought to himself, never on his Brave and Loyal knight’s watch.

[asherashedwings]

FNF CONNECTED UNIVERSE LINE UP Part 1: The Boyfriends

Chat. I spent 34 hours in this canvas. I am so tired.

Anyways, when I began working on Connected Universe AU, I already knew I'd be making line ups. Cuz I love making line ups and I also love suffering.

Close-ups and lots of yapping under the cut

THIS IS ABOUT TO BE A LOT OF READING IM SO SORRY-

Alternate Universe Boyfriends

So all these guys, unlike the other BFs present on this line up, are actually BF but from different universes. They're the same dude.

I thought it'd be neat to display the fact that they're from different universes by drawing them all in different art styles. It was also a fun exercise to test my art style range.

So starting from the left, we got Base Game BF. The main universe one. He's drawn in my usual art style. Not much special about him. Boyfriend.XML my beloved. I will note here though that I did take some of the elements form my own BF design and threw them onto the AU BFs. So that's why they all have some sort of jacket/hoodie etc.

Then we got Yourself. I reverted to old tactics and used my sketch for his line art, which results in him having thicker line art in general. I also further distinguished him by giving him harsh black shading. He always has that. He already had it on his face, so I just gave it to the rest of his body too. Cuz silly. You. You could even say. Silly Billy- 💥💥💥

Then we have Funkadelix. Him and a few other BFs make use of the Blackburn brush for their line art, cuz idk I like that brush. I referenced the Mutant Mayhem style when making him, since in the Connected Universe, he's in the same universe as those turtles. His colors are mostly yoinked from the actual Funkadelix sprite. I think. I may have tweaked them a bit/eyeballed them idk. I prolly eyeballed them.

Then we got Monday Dusk Monolith (MDM). I really went with the mentality of "NO ROUND SHAPES" with this fucker. Just wanted him to look super sharp and scratchy, since that AU is literally dealing with an apocalypse. So sharp shapes just made sense in my brain.

I had a lot of issues settling on a style for Mix, so I just chose to take inspiration from the FNF loading screens, cuz it just fit in my brain, idk. His design also features present in my Pico design, like the stupid cleat shoes and stray hair lines. Yknow, since he's literally a mix of BF and Pico. He also uses Blackburn

Finally, HD. I decided to try and go for a semi realistic style for him, proportion wise at least. Cuz. Yknow. HD. He also uses the blackburn brush, but I also pulled an old tactic for him and made his sketch visible over his coloring. Cuz idk, I think it lends towards the vibe.

"Side" BFs

Okay, now we're REALLY getting into AU territory.

So from here on out, all the BFs are separate people from THE BF, and have their own names and shit.

So staring off, we got Blake. I was reading through his wiki trivia and saw them say his style was more "radical and funky" than base BF's. I saw the word funky and ran with it dawg. So that explains this clothes. I also tried my darndest to get rid of a lot of the BFs caps, cuz dude, I can't have that many fuckers having cubic backwards caps. So I gave Blake a pair of star shaped sunglasses cuz funky, chat, FUNKY. We decided that his stage name is Love Bird, and he chose that cuz that's a pet name his GF has for him, and if he had a band it'd be called The Birds of Paradise.

Then we got .XML. I immediately knew I wanted to give him a mullet. Look at this man and tell me he wouldn't have a mullet. Besides that, not much changed. Since he kept the name of .XML, I imagine he is actually related to BF in some way, and he just goes by his last name. They might be cousins or brothers or something idk. There's also more dumbass info on him here:

Then there's River, or G-Sides BF. I took a lot of inspiration from his teaser designs, cuz they were silly. Literally named his river after the dumbass river design on his sweater. I don't got much info on him besides that. I can't talk about River without including this image so here:

The New Yorkers

This group is literally named after the fact that they all live in NY in my AU. Technically, the Minus BFs should also be here, but they're their own group.

Starting with Bartholomew, or B3, I just took the shape of his glasses and ran with it. Chat I needed to get that shape language from somewhere. I actually drew him twice, since the first time around I really was not digging how I drew him. He's fine now tho. His ass only got brim, cuz he had to be different somehow. Other than that. not much changed for him.

Now Evan.. Evan gave me so many issues. Like, dawg I drew him three times. I kept on trying to make the orange in his upcoming design WORK but I just COULDNT chat i COULDNT

So, per @braveboiart 's request, I ended up getting rid of it entirely and replacing it with his blues and grays. They also gave me the advice of brightening the colors a bit, which was very easy for me to do, I love bright ass colors. I also touched up his design shape wise, since that was also lacking the first time around. So boom, zippers on the pants and baggy ass sleeves. I'm content with how he came out. Chat I did all his design touch ups while I was exhausted out of my mind. Sometimes you gotta be delirious with sleep deprivation in order to cook, kids, trust me (please do not be like me-)

Benjamin was pretty simple. Kept him soft, kept him round, kept him pastel. Got rid of the caution sign on his hoodie since .XML already had that, and just replaced it with paint splatters. Not much more to say.

With X's design, I got a lot of help from my good good friend @minxtheeenby , mainly when figuring out his hair style. Those braids are not actually his hair, and are fuckass cords that connect to his headphones and can move independently. Don't ask about the logic, I will not be thinking about it. He was born in Philly cuz of his fuckass white eyes. White eyes means Philly, I don't make the rules here.

Minus BFs

The colorful critters, these guys are.

So. Beta. I had actually drawn him before this point, and he didn't change much from then

He has arrow shaped top surgery scars cuz I love giving constantly shirtless characters top scars and I just. HAD TO once I had the idea to make them arrow shaped. Main things to change since that drawing are some details on his pants and some of his colors; notedly the fact that his hat is a darker color compared to his skin to further distinguish it. Also Brave kept trying to get me to make parts of his design the same color as his nipples. So that happened /lh

Chat. I let my furry show with Blue. BUT CHAT HEAR ME OUT. On the wiki it's stated that he's a "Dog??". You think I could look at that and not go all the way? So yeah. Dog. He's silly and he got his weird ear ring things from his sister (Minus Miku).

Not much to say on Mean, he barely changed. I just drew him in my style and added a few details. He might also be an alien, idk.

Now, I posted about Golden a bit, but for those who didn't see that insanity: I made him an Alien Hominid. Cuz small yellow alien=Alien Hominid in my brain. Flawless logic. (Don't worry chat, I sat down and extensively researched the AH series to the best of my ability to check if it made sense. And I didn't see anything that would make it not make sense?) But yeah, silly. Him and Otis might be buddies, cuz goofy.

Who Fuckin Knows

These guys are just all the guys I had nowhere else to put. Miscellaneous group.

So first we have Bonnie, or Saturday Night Swappin' BF. He's another one that I had to go back and touch up. I actually touched him up the same night/morning as Evan. He ended up turning purple. The name we assigned him was an omen /j Chat I swear he was originally blue, I don't know what happened

HC that he just got really into FNaF when he was younger and has just been cosplaying a humanized Bonnie the Bunny ever since /hj

BIDU GAVE ME SO MANY ISSUES AND IDK WHY. It's prolly cuz by the time I got to him I was getting SUPER burnt. But I prospered and was able to finish him. And I don't hate how he came out, so bonus points there. Main change was replacing the prohibition sign on his shirt with a lightning bolt, cuz no one but BF is allowed to have that symbol, and Bidu already had lightning bolt imagery, so eh why not. His eyebrows being green, at least in my style, implies his hair is naturally green, and he just added the blue and pink, and I find that slightly humorous, idk.

Keith (StarCatcher) was another one I had to go back and touch up, but that's due to the fact that I was informed that him and his GF got a redesign before the creator deleted their FNF stuff. So I had to go back and fix my design according to that. I also leaned into the scape suit direction cuz SHAPE.

Now, you might be wondering, why is Flippin BF here and not with the other alternates? He was grouped with him in a previous post? Well, that's because after more assessment, I decided that Friday Night Flippin' is in fact, in the same universe as Base FNF and not an alternate universe like I had previously decided. So I changed his design a bit (mainly just getting rid of his hat and changing the color of his shoes) and boom. Different guy. He is staying pixel art tho. I do still need to come up with a different name for him tho.

Now this next one, Heath, is not from a currently existing mod, but from an FNF AU my friend Minx is making.

I decided to include him cuz he's silly and I love him. Their AU is canon to the Connected Universe.

Okay, so Cam (Hellbeats BF) changed A LOT. I let my furry slip out again. BUT I HAVE ANOTHER REASON FOR IT. See, in this connected universe, it's not just Newgrounds stuff that is canon. I also made other fandoms I'm in canon. So that means the Hellaverse is canon (specifically my rewritten version of it), and Hellbeats has to fit in with that. So I had to assign the characters species from that universe as well. So I made Cam a cherub, cuz I wanted him to stay short as fuck. He's also a raccoon cuz he's a lil shit and I thought it'd fit If ur curious, this is what everyone else is:

Okay I'm done yapping now. Gonna be doing the GFs next.

[spotaus]

Hi guys, this is usually what a doodle page ends up looking like <3 (oh, and @ancha-aus thought you might like this! Not writing but certainly fuel to my fire lol-)

This one is New Age filled!!! (Close-ups abd Lore beneath the cut!)

1) Night and Cross!

Night is actually very clingy once he's a teen. He doesn't usually realize it, but around the castle he'll snake to be closer to his Knights so long as there's no one he needs to keep his composure infront of is nearby. Cross is the one who's not used to physical touch (when it's not Ink ofc) so Night in his personal bubble makes his heart melt but also scares tf out of him <3

2) Error and Night's Meeting!

Error was carrying his whole life on his back and trying not to get arrested for unintentional property damage at this point, so when he saw the chance to get back at his brother and prove he was strong enough? Yeah, he got that on chance instantly. And was VERY smug when Nightmare chose him. (Also, Error is wearing gloves, so less Haphephobia)

3) Dream and Blue designs!

I think these are good tentative designs! Dream probably has a more regal fit, but he likes to play up that rugged exile look- He's inspired by Archers, while Blue takes on that classic Knightly-vibe. Their equipment is mostly stolen from Night's troops or brought with them from Blue's home kingdom.

Also, Dream is approx Killer's height at this point, shorter than Cross and *much* shorter than Apple!Nightmare. (Hc that Skeletons tend to be tinier in stature thanks to weird monster beauty standards. Horror and Geno's fam are outliers.)

4) Horror and Dust designs!

Horror is naturally a very *large* monster. He's very malnourished when Nightmare meets him, but by the time he's a Knight Nightmare has made sure that's no longer the case. He actually loves comfy, simple clothes, but to play up the whole 'strong mysterious' bit he wears a more barbaric Knight's garb. He doesn't mind acting scary, it's more fun that way :]. Dust is very very small, and envies horror sometimes for his size, but his tiny stature let's him control his body and move a lot quicker. He's very much based on a rogue, and usually covers the lower part of his face w/ a black cloth, and the upper part w/ his hood or mask. Dust only removes both to bathe, eat, or relax in a safe location. (Ignore that I can't draw the stupid gaster blaster lmao-)

These last two were space-fillers, but Cross and his Borzoi (Windmill, otherwise known as Milly (Killer named her-)) and really bad first wips of Ccino! I think Ccino was a chubby, happy toddler, but lost a lot of 'weight' (bone mass? Magic?) due to stress and pressure and bad eating habits. So it isn't until a while after the Coronation that he starts to relax abd feel safe enough to eat normal meals (Nightmare used to guilt him into eating snacks together, but as his boss (and younger brother) he can encourage it more often). By the time Killer shows he's still not quite healthy, but he's better. As more weight is lifted off his shoulders, the better he is. (That 'beauty' most people saw was a more stereotypical slimness, but Killer never stopped seeing Ccino as beautiful-) I think he never looked traditionally underweight, so no one noticed, and it was only much later that Night processed it. (And maybe it's why Dream hardly recognized him later on-)

[chamberkat]

may I inquire what you do to achieve the (iconic) colours on your pieces 👉👈 I'm specifically thinking about the blue/greenish shine characters tend to have mostly on their skin, which I assume you get with like a saturation or lighter colour layer. honestly just curious how you get your lighting to look the way it does because it FUCKS, as does everything about your art every time tbh 🫶

Hi! Happy to hear you like it so much! It’s honestly not anything super special I’m doing with the coloring. But I made a little tutorial for you and for everyone who was curious about it. My choice of color always varies from every drawing but I used the last Landoscar art to show you an example! I roughly base it on color theory but sometimes you just have to trial and error to see what fits and what not. (You kind of just get a feeling for it eventually)

The fun thing about colors is that people always associate it with something. If I want to create something intimate and romantic I use red. If I want to do something happy and uplifting I’ll chose a warm orange. You can definitely use that for you advantage and go bold with it. The Gax snake drawing is only green because I wanted to represent the bitterness between them! So obviously I went for a venomous green hue.

The key is to always think about what vibe you want to create and use that as a guideline! Have fun trying out for yourself and don’t shy away from just testing out the whole color wheel until something fits! Sometimes it’s a bit of a cat and mouse play until I find the perfect hue!

[messycunt]

Need me more of that Hucow Malleus... and just Diasomnia in general, my favorite boys.

This was supposed to be short but woah boy, strap in because your dumb Hucow au (tone: affectionate) hooked me like a goddamn fish. I did not know I was horny for this. Some of it is requests, some personal headcannons/ideas/sacrificial offerings for your au.

Ummm, for the sake of recognizing me in the future, can I be assigned an anon emoji? IDK which one to pick, but if you're willing to select one based on my vibes, that's cool!

May I request how Mal and his handler's relationship kicked off? He isn't aggressive so I imagine his previous handlers felt intimidated or could just never find Malleus to perform handling duties! So Crowley just had to rotate through staff hoping to find a handler Mal is fond of. Or perhaps Mal chose his handler through a chance meeting...?

In the meantime, I imagine Lilia was a pseudo-handler for Mal but couldn't perform most of the duties due to their familial-platonic relationship. Handler duties seem really intimate.

(Speaking of that... Does the job come with a "you might get fucked by Hucows" disclaimer? Or is that JUST Crowley's farm? If humans and Hucows are equal, do the non-farm Hucows act mostly normal and the farm Hucows choose to lean into their more primal, horny side?)

Also not to be a simp but here's some more things my silly fangirl brain has thought up:

Imagine Malleus disappearing on his handler's days off because he's followed them home (with their permission, after pouting at them the whole day) and is enjoying a domestic weekend? Cooking home made meals for them, playfully doing a role-reversal where he is the "human's handler" which is mostly him insisting on doing chores, assisting with basic things like hair brushing, then being confused when he has to use technology to do things like "washing clothes" or "running the dish washer" or "turning on the radio." But altogether it's really wholesome because he wants to show his appreciation for his handler by doing for them what they do for him! Unfortunately, with how tall he is, a few holes do get poked into the cieling at your house.

Hucow Malleus who won't ever cross his handler's boundaries, but is very touch starved and needy, so he'll often make offers that involve physical touch and close proximity, then pout the rest of the day if you say no. Typically he just makes offers a little too soon. For example, after only a few weeks, offering to let his you stay in his personal quarters with him instead of the communal handler sleeping quarters. Lilia suggests he ask again after a few months. Malleus never stays sulking for long- how could he when his favorite handler is around? I imagine he has big regal looming eldrich entity energy but is very soft and gentle at the heart. He likes hearing about your life experiences, especially travel. Being a show cow means that Crowley tries to keep extremely close tabs on him when traveling for shows and Mal hardly gets to enjoy any of the local culture. He's pretty adamant on having you brought a long for business-related travel. That way, he's technically being supervised when he sneaks away with you to see the sights!

Hucow Lilia being so very fond of pranking his handler, whose care he barely needs. He'll playfully make care tasks difficult on purpose, but stops just before you can get frustrated or upset. If he accidentally crosses the line, sometimes he'll even finish the care task himself without help! Which shouldn't be physically possible in most cases, but he'll take his secrets to the grave.

Hucow Lilia who is a "retired" show bull (again, claiming he's "too old" for it) but can easily perform his old routines without breaking a sweat. If any of the young cows aspiring to be show bulls need, he's glad to train them! But his training is a little... unconventional and most young cows will pass on the offer. But it must be effective since he was- still is- Malleus's sole show mentor. I imagine Lilia mostly sticks around the farm because of his Diasomnia family and because he likes helping raise the calves. With supervision from Vil, who makes sure his parenting methods aren't too crazy and, more importantly, ensures he never cooks.

Imagine Silver being the easiest Hucow to handle for because hes just so chill and sleepy. If anything, the hardest part sometimes is waking him up long enough to get him to move to a different spot for Hucow care! He easily accepts his handler's assistance but also offers to help with tasks like carrying milk or fixing a fence. He is also very likely to fall asleep on their lap for hours and make their legs go numb. The best part about being his handler is definitely that he'll let you pet and stroke his pelt pretty much the second you become his handler. He's very duty-bound and, as such, trusts you implicitly to do yours.

Unlike Silver, Hucow Sebek is very unwilling to rely on his handler. Lilia has had to scold him many times on letting you do their job. Sebek tries to relent, but he will still complain, especially if it's a new care task or routine. To him it's a matter of pride and proving he doesn't have to depend on others. Especially since he's fond of you- he can't let himself look WEAK by relying on you, right? But if you twist your words just a bit- say that he's helping you by letting you do something or need him to remind you how it's done- he's suddenly eager to show you. He'll preen under your praise and, if you want to make him really happy, ask him to do little things for you, like reaching something on a tall shelf or asking for his advice on a personal matter... he'll absolutely glow with pride knowing you value him. Also, Hucow Sebek eventually gets to a point where he'll WEEP when you're gone the same way he does when Malleus is away for a show and he can't come with.

Now, after brainrotting a bit, I have two more requests and they are HORNY...

My first request is some size kink shit with Hucow Malleus and his handler. I'm LIVING for the idea of getting split in half by his literal prize cock with him cooing praise over his tiny little handler being able to take it. Big soft Dom vibes, even when he's being rough, just so much love in his giant dragon Hucow body.

My second request is Sebek getting blue balls and his handler insisting on "relieving" him because he's trying to power through it until it "dies down" or some dumb shit. But once he relents, he's DONE for. Nearly begging to breed his handler, pressing them up against a wall or some shit, kind of "dom but tsundere" vibes? 100% consensual and instigated by the handler tho.

THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK!!!!

I'm happy my insanity is what turned you to the hybrid kink side n I love all of your ideas please do stick around

uhmmmm how does milk(🥛) anon sound?

cw: hybrids(hucows), breeding kink, begging, dacryphilia(jus overwhelmed tears I think its cute), not proofread so sorry if it's all nonsense characters: malleus, lilia, silver, sebek

malleus is far from violent and doesn't have a reputation as such, he doesn't even playfully nip or headbutt like kalim and ace sometimes do, but his strength and stature are probably what scared some of his handlers off in the past if they weren't frustrated by how much he loves to disappear the hour before shows that is.

I imagine you being some intern handling some other cow that malleus just gravitates towards for one reason or another. when track is lost of him he's found in your general area or waiting somewhere he'll know you'll be soon(yes he subconsciously memorized your schedule) but you didn't seem to mind. this is great from crowleys perspective though, it's an obvious and easy fix, by making you malleus' handler he doesn't have to worry about switching them out every month… or paying both fees for fairs that he never ended up attending.

♡

trying to find a way to say this that isn't crude but well when am I not; fucking the hucow you're in charge of handling isn't part of the job technically but isn't frowned at too much either, not on crowleys farm anyway tho i wouldn't put it past the old bird to have made separate agreements w handlers that do require them to tend to their bulls more intimate needs, with a -barelynoticeable- pay increase of course. other establishments do have regulations in place to prevent it, seeing it as unprofessional at worst. it works on "a you break it you buy it" type of policy so you wouldn't wanna be the guy who knocks up a prize heifer who's starting bid is 70k.

♡

lilia makes for a fun cow to handle if anything, uh granted you're not brand new to working on the farm that is, alot of his ways of teasing newbies is borderline hazing, outside of that he's like a fun grandpa. he is banned from the industrial kitchen tho the closest he's allowed to get to cooking is supervised potato peeling duty if jamil has anything to say about it. I also imagine lilia being cuddly once he gets comfortable enough with you! lots of hugs, cheek kisses and headpats(he likes giving and receiving them) happen between the two of you.

♡

silver takes his responsibilities very seriously and would do well w a handler who's equally task minded but not to the point theyll outright refuse his assistance, though a little downtime never hurt anybody… I mean you told crowley you'd probably have silver milked by noon so it's not like you promised or anything, plus he looks cute resting so peacefully.

♡

now if anyone needs a reminder to relax every once in a while it's sebek. but once you catch onto the fact that he's just a little bit, maybe kinda sorta trying to be a show off cus he has a itty-bitty tiny crush on you(even if lilia had to point it out for you) it makes the job so much easier. yells your name and trots up to you so excitedly during morning role call every. single. day. his body language is super easy to read even if he's trying his best to act aloof about how he feels, especially early on, the way his tail swishes around wildly when you pat his arms while giving him compliments always give him away.

hucow sebek is one prideful n stubborn animal, even in rut. you offered to help him the first few days of it and why wouldn't you? I mean it's not in your job description, probably but you don't mind helping the poor thing out. he refuses the first 2, 3 and then 4 times so you decide not to push him. something about how malleus wouldn't stoop down so low as to take a cheap shortcut offer(he would) such as the one you've presented him with, even tho he does really want to he didn't verbalize that last part ofc.

when he does finally fold he's desperate and sweaty and mumbling nonsense about how you were right and he's sorry and he doesn't deserve you and you are also both very much behind the practice showroom out in the open. you can feel tears and sweat drench the back of your shirt. sebeks large hands are gripping at your hips and tummy like his life depends on it. his thrusts are sloppy and inexperienced but they work to fuel the fire growing inside of you nonetheless.

he hasn't stopped talking the whole time either. he's loud like always but it's what he's saying that's surprising to you. begging you go let him cum in you over and over until neither of you have any strength left and promises to be the best father he could possibly be if you do end up taking his calf. it's just his rut talking, you think, it has to be. not that you'd mind

♡

by the time sebek gives you a break hours have already passed and he slips his dick out of you still some what hard. he insists on carrying you back to his quarters, with intentions of continuing there obviously.

whoever was practicing for next weeks show that afternoon sure did get an earful

i did get a few other asks about hucow malleus n his breeding kink if you're reading this and you sent one of them I didn't forget you ok kiss kiss, so ill keep this ask in mind when answering those <3

[mintybagels]

not exactly a full tutorial, but here’s the process sth like this goes through

first is the rough sketch. when i’m translating a real person to 2d work i try to hone in on personality to determine what shapes to use.

for example Crowley is a demon and very cool looking so i emphasize his actor’s sharper features using shapes like triangles. whereas with aziraphale i ephasized the softer band more rounded shapes. exaggeration is really important when it comes to animated/cartoony characters to distinguish their features, but also be aware to not overdo it or fall into stereotypes.

i really love this shot because of the contrast between their expressions, so i tried to bring that out as much as i could

when i choose colours it’s really a feeling/vibe i go for. so in this pic i chose to use warmer base colours for crowley, and cooler bases for aziraphale to have them contrast with their expressions. the lighting mostly covers this contrast during rendering, but it’s still useful to have to exaggerate the mood for the overall picture.

when it comes to backgrounds i always just simplify the biggest shapes down to their colours, unfortunately i don’t have the separate picture for just the bg here but i’ll probably show my background process at some point if anyone is interested in that sort of tutorial

if y’all have any questions feel free to speak in comments or ask box :3

[cavejebus]

my adam playlist is about 20 songs now, so im gonna post it even though it is still a WORK IN PROGRESS!!!! ill add onto it when i wanna ofc, but i just wanna share a lil bit of my visionnn <3 expect a lot of linkin park lmao

some songs might not show up on the tumblr preview so i highly recommend going to the actual playlist if you have spotify!!

and batuta din moldova is there too cuz why not

below is a few categories and explanations for most songs!!!

ANGSTY SHIT

songs I thought either the lyrics or vibe had something to do with his angst... usually has to do with his background, during the trap, after the trap (whether he survived or not), or just headcanons :P

1. paper cuts - nirvana

"my whole existence is for your amusement", "why do they not try to escape?"

i THINK this song is about this dude who is like, in a really shitty kidnapping situation.... or something idk don't quote me on that :P it gives off the vibe of how it must've felt being in the bathroom all alone :( waiting for his boyfriend to save him :(

2. pictures of me - elliot smith

"you'll be the victim of your own dirty tricks", "i'm not surprised at all and really, why should i be?", "so sick and tired of all these pictures of me")

i like the whole pictures tie in.. the song isn't rlly about this, but some lyrics seem like how he would feel about being in a trap. like "I'm not surprised jigsaw chose me for this, my life is shit!!" ofc that would be if he knew who jigsaw was beforehand....... self deprecating shit yknow

3. given up - linkin park

"stuck in my head again//feels like i'll never leave this place//there's no escape", "thought i was focused, but I'm scared//i'm not prepared", "i hyperventilate//looking for help somehow, somewhere//and no one cares"

OK so first quote from this that I chose is like, how he sees his life as some useless "live to die" type thing, then the next quotes are how he realizes that he REALLY doesn't wanna die at the end of the trap. despite his whole "my life is shit I hate my job yadda yadda" talk, he still begs for his life once it's really in danger!!!

4. black heart - stone temple pilots w/ chester benningtion

"rescue me//(If you don't mind)"

lawrence......rescue this bitch....... ok but this song is mostly vibes, it can have angsty vibes :P

5. go with the flow - queens of the stone age

"she said, "i'll throw myself away//they're just photos after all", "i can't make you hang around//i can't wash you off my skin"

MORE PHOTO STUFF!!!!!! love it when it all ties in......... for the second quote its kind of a chainshipping thing... i cant make you hang around, adam goin "don't leave me!!!!" and i cant wash you off my skin, lawrence left his frickin bloody handprint on adams face.... oughh

6. and one - linkin park

"left all alone//far from my home//no one to hear me, to heal my ill heart", "it's too late to love me now//you don't even know me"

this song just generally gives angsty adam vibes, but the second quote is TOTALLY CHAINSHIPPING..... like they literally just met but already have such a connection since they went thru all that SHIT. but uh its too late for them to live a happy normal life together cuz lawrence never came back womp womp!! i can see adam sitting there waiting like "he don't even know me why tf would he come backk"

VIBES/STUFF HE'D LIKE

whether its based off of whatever tf he was listening to in his headphones that one time, or just based off of the time... i think his music taste would generally be pretty vast, while still staying around nu metal and alternative rock

1. one step closer, papercut, don't stay - linkin park

its 2001, hybrid theory has been release and is already fairly popular, i'd assume :P plus I think he'd favor linkin park since they've got a lot of complexity, as opposed to some mindless nu metal around that time

2. guns (are for pussies), down - 311

AGAIN with the rap x rock wtf!!!! he also like, cares about politics and probably trash talks all those gun loving dummies

3. brain stew - green day

who tf doesnt like this song... but it is about rotting in your room and he probably does that often <3

4. break stuff - limp bizkit

DO I HAVE TO SAY WHY I PUT THIS ONE???? ITS BREAK STUFF LIMP BIZKIT COME ON!!!!

5. the fear (flipped) - the shins

honestly have no idea why, but its giving adam!!! dunno what the song is about, but i glanced at the lyrics mentioned a bong and i was like "haha adam smokes weed"

6. tired of sex - weezer

he would like pinkerton, but i kinda only like this song off of it :P i don't listen to much weezer

7. blister in the sun, kiss off - violent femmes

i kinda just wanted to add in the acoustic sounding shit, but i do think adam would listen to violent femmes!! and you should too!!!

8. break it to me - muse

have y'all noticed that he kinda lied a lot during the trap? sure he isn't a good liar, but he seems like he's cool with lying for whatever reason... i just kinda picked this one cuz i needed to add some muse and the song kinda says shit about lying and stuff idk!!

CHAINSHIPPING SHIT

other than the angsty chainshipping in the "angsty shit" category, these just have cutesy lil lawrence x adam stuff <3 sorry to SHOVE chainshipping down your throat but whatever love is love

1. add it up - violent femmes

not specifying which lyric even though there IS one, i'm just embarrassed to say <3 but uh the only thing stopping them from making out sloppy style on top of john kramer was their chains :P

again, i WILL be adding more to this :3 but here's just my thoughts for now. im TOTES not just projecting my music taste onto adam hahahahhhhahahhahahhhaaa he's just so ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! sorry if none of this makes sense!!!

[irradiatedsnakes]

the Big TMA Furry List

this list with commentary/choice rationale below the cut :] i wrote a lot of thoughts down do please check it out.

jon: common raven

martin: tan jumping spider

sasha: southern flannel moth

not!sasha: red postman

tim: jackson's chameleon

melanie: eastern copperhead

georgie: triceratops horridus

basira: domestic cat (calico shorthair)

daisy: domestic dog (german shepherd)

elias: barn owl. jonah: eurasian eagle owl.

gerry: domestic dog (black doberman)

annabelle: white-booted racket-tail

jane: cabbage white

michael: spiny softshell turtle

helen: common hermit crab

oliver: black vulture

peter: risso's dolphin

mike: caelestiventus hanseni

jude: black kite

agnes: ???

nikola: stealing major's carousel horse

jared: american dog tick

breekon&hope: Hog and/or Bear. you get no more information

dekker: mouflon

gertrude: great tit

leitner: domestic cat (persian)

manuela: gray long-eared bat

rayner: olm

salesa: sea otter

simon: dodo

elaboration below !

jon: common raven

this was a choice i made before i even finished listening to the podcast back in 2020. jon's 1000% a bird to me, and the curious nature of corvids works well here. plus, i think a bird so universally ominous as a raven works perfectly as a horror protag :P i used to draw raven!jon with a couple troodon traits, mostly just cus it was fun, but i wanted to make my designs more grounded for this iteration. made them plantigrade, didn't get silly with body styles like i have with mp100 designs.

martin: tan jumping spider

if you've been here for a while you'll know that my furry martin has gone through about two million iterations. he started off as a european pine marten, to bold jumping spider, to chinese pangolin, to nine-banded armadillo, finally to nurse shark.

out of all of these the spider and the shark are my favorites. i wanted to go back to the jumping spider though- the design is really fun and i wasn't able to get the expressions right, but i'm more confident in my skills now and i'm having fun with the design. i may revisit nurse shark at some point. i switched from bold to tan jumper- i originally chose bold just cus they're my favorite jumper, but their stark black/white and iridescent aqua coloration just doens't work for martin. so, the tan jumper!

sasha: southern flannel moth

another old choice. species chosen because of a friend's fic, pharos by right (another i'm planning to reread now that i'm dipping my toes back into tma..)! southern flannel moths are poofy and orange, and their caterpillars are those super painful teddybear ones. i really like the design.

not!sasha: red postman

wanted to have her be another lepidopteran, and with all the many examples of mimicry among the group i thought red postman was a fun choice. doesn't look anything like a southern flannel moth, but that's sort of the point.

tim: jackson's chameleon

yet another choice from the oldtimes- most of the main characters are, i've mostly switched around the more secondary chars. first suggested, i believe, by @/ofdreamsanddoodles. i think there's something very fun about chameleons being basically a living mood ring & tim's Descent s1-3 showing physcially not just through the worm scars but through like, constant stress coloration during s3.

melanie: eastern copperhead

one of my favorite choices. i have a young copperhead specimen named after her. this one is quite vibes-based, but i do really like the copperhead as a viper that is not deadly. and i'm always a sucker for the "animal perceived as scary and violent that in actuality only strikes when under extreme stress" thing in furry assignments.

georgie: triceratops horridus

another favorite choice. visually, i really like how this works out, and trikes as a social and protective animal works well. she's literally got a shield on her face. horridus was chosen because i like the shape of the head and horns better than prorsus.

basira: domestic cat (calico shorthair)

got a little cat/dog thing going on for dasira. i like the inversion of the usual cat/dog dynamic with their unhealthy devotion instead, and visually it just works very well for them both.

daisy: domestic dog (german shepherd)

yeah i know this one's an exceedingly obvious choice.

elias: barn owl. jonah: eurasian eagle owl.

it's the institute logo! it's him! barn owl for elias specifically because of its very sleek look, designing him went fantastically. also, i can make the eagle owl's face disk work as a mimicry of ben meredith's muttonchops, which i think is a fun design bit to give to magnus.

gerry: domestic dog (black doberman)

certified gerryguy @/gerrydelano's choice. to quote a discord message from 3 years ago (sorry ron): "i feel like.........my INSTINCT is some kind of canine because like. the whole symbolism thing about being either an obedient or rabid dog. something something muzzled all your life. being a dangerous figure if people only see the silhouette but you just want scritches and nobody'll get close enough to you." black dog symbolism + breed which has ears cropped and tail docked, unecessarily molded for a Purpose which the dog has no say in

annabelle: white-booted racket-tail

sort of my original choice- she used to be part white-booted racket-tail, part anna's hummingbird. kept with the racket-tail cus it's fun and very cute. i've had a couple people express surprise that she wasn't a spider, but i think that's way too obvious. hummingbirds, though- they steal the webs of spiders to use as material to make their nests, but can sometimes become trapped in the webs and eaten by the spiders themselves. which is probably the metaphor-via-fursona-assignment i'm most proud of in this whole list

jane: cabbage white

the cabbage white is a butterfly whose caterpillars are routinely parasitized by the parasitoid wasp the white butterfly parasite. in case you're not familiar, parasitoid wasps lay their eggs on (usually) caterpillars, which hatch on the still-living caterpillar, devouring it from the inside before eventually emerging from the consumed husk of the host. also, i really liked the image of parasitoid wasp larvae emerging from an adult butterfly, rather than a caterpillar.

michael: spiny softshell turtle

for michael and helen, i wanted to choose animals which were, in some way, their own home. turtle is an obvious choice- and spiny softshells are a favorite of mine, and sufficiently strange-looking.

helen: common hermit crab

see previous entry. also please google "hermit crab without shell"

oliver: black vulture

bit of an obvious choice, but i adore vultures so i had to. black vulture chosen because i think the monochrome color scheme + straighter face work better than a turkey vulture for him

peter: risso's dolphin

i really like the idea of a cetacean for peter and the lukases as a whole, a famously social animal for the seemingly contradictory nature of this lonely-but-huge family, plus with so many cetaceans being endangered getting that lonely angle (risso's specifically are not, though, as peter is lonely through his own choice, not by circumstance).

mike: caelestiventus hanseni

it's a dimorphodont. he feels like a pterosaur to me, and i like the idea of a vast avatar as a usually short-flying arboreal species, for the unnaturality/contrast of it.

jude: black kite

black kites are one of the species of kites known to intentionally spread fires by picking up burning sticks to flush out prey.

agnes: ???

the only one i'm still undecided on. will update.

nikola: stealing major's carousel horse

i can't top that

jared: american dog tick

great choice from @/magnusarchivememes. Takes Your Blood And Gets So Big

breekon&hope: Hog and/or Bear. you get no more information

vaguely russian animals that are large and imposing but remain somewhat generic. which is the hog and which is the bear is not consistent.

dekker: mouflon

dekker has very much mammal vibes to me. the mouflon is a neat species of wild sheep. i think the noble, imposing but kind image of the ram works well for dekker as that sort of true-good hero figure, and mouflons in particular are very nice looking with good shapes. the statement giver in distant cousin describes dekker as "though he was slightly shorter than I was, it seemed like he towered over me." which i think this sheep works well with.

gertrude: great tit

i wanted all the main eye avatars as birds, just like how i give them all glasses. just a fun little treat for me. great tit was chosen for gertrude as a kind of classic british bird, and as tits in general are VERY fiesty despite their round and adorable appearance. i really like this image of a great tit posing with a dead mouse like it's a hunter with a trophy deer. the cheek markings also work really well to bring to mind the image of old person jowls.

leitner: domestic cat (persian)

vibes. also i like the idea of him as a spoiled domestic animal. if i remember correctly, this was also @/ofdreamsanddoodles' suggestion

manuela: gray long-eared bat

she's a bat. what's to say. WELL actually okay there's the perception of bats as blind but actually having quite good vision which i think meshes in a fun way with the dark, and the way manuela does her sciency stuff.

rayner: olm

i mean, yeah

salesa: sea otter

largely design-oriented, suitably scruffy. ocean animal with strong social bonds, it was a slam dunk soon as i thought of it.

simon: dodo

how couldn't i, come on.

[sits-bound]

Bound: I Do Not Love You by @writandromance

The first time I made the cover. Sigh.

A little cattywampus.

I took part in a typeset exchange for the @renegadepublishing Discord server, and this is the typeset I received! It was created by @imaginariumpress from the fic I Do Not Love You by @writandromance. This fic is probably in my top 3 fics - it has it all. Angst, memory loss, slow burn, more angst, and ultimately a happy ending. So good, like all of the author's work. I'm partway through their latest fic now, so I'm really immersed in them! Love it.

The typeset itself is beautiful - check out the chapter headings and the section dividers! And the font choices are so lovely. I chose the cover font based on the font used on the chapter headings and the music page. And I want to note that generally I do not like when "fancy" fonts are set in all caps, but I don't know, there was something about this one that called for all caps on the spine. It just fits the vibe, I think. I love it.

The bind mostly went together smoothly, but I didn't cut it perfectly straight in the guillotine, so, erm, it's a little crooked. But it's FINE it's FINE. And then I made the cover, it came out perfectly, but the boards were a couple of millimeters wider than I would have liked and I should have LEFT IT but no, I had to try to trim them while glued to the bookcloth and, well, that was a bad idea. So I had to start over, but all's well that ends well.

And I was going to do a black on black cover, but I chickened out, so I don't love the color of the endpapers with the cover, but it's fine, it's fine.

Cover font: Roman Antique Italics

[nopanamaman]

would you say there was any significant reason behind your choice for first/last names of pafl characters?

Not particularly! I mostly chose them based on the characters' national origin and/or what sounded good. The national part isn't always perfectly aligned, of course.

And Olya's surname was vaguely choosen because of Riza Hawkeye (Orlova comes from Orel, which means eagle)

EDIT: missed the part about first names, oopsie poopsie

A lot of them were motivated purely by the vibes i got from the characters! Which is why Yura is Yura and not Lev. I also tried to choose names that would be easier for foreigners to pronounce, at least to those familiar with romaji. So stuff like Evgeniy wouldn't fly lol

[embrysunrise]

Cherubs - Urianger

I recently got it in my head that Urianger makes so much sense as a trans character and now that's all I can see so I added top surgery scars to his chest and have been doing several little doodles of him feeling liberated in his gender euphoria!! Focusing on this piece, I'm most proud of the wings and the metallics, but genuinely I feel like this whole thing is a big level-up from the last cherub I did for Estinien. I wanted to really pay attention to the subtleties of Urianger's personality and character development. I based his wings off of a swallow's wings, birds that herald distance traveled, good fortune, and good luck but can be often overlooked because they're not super flashy birds. The colors were meant to be muted in them; the whole thing is supposed to have an almost-somber feeling, which is why he's shown crying, because there's so much burden that Urianger bears for the sake of the people he cares about, and he does it all silently and without complaint. His development in ShB is what helped me to fall in love with him as a character since I had mostly written him off up until that point, so I chose a background from the cutscene trailer for the expansion. The red of his ribbon was done in the same color as the gems from his jewelry to tie all of it in, and I added a bit of glow and sparkle to his cards, but I chose not to include the astrolobe because the magic is in him :> I'm really pleased with the tone of everything; this kind of soft tragedy vibe is something I'm familiar with but the muted palette is something I'm not used to. I think it turned out great and I really look forward to turning this into a print in the future! Absolutely in love with this piece, and with Urianger. I can't stress that enough. WIP shots will be uploaded soon! See the entire tutorial process over on my Patreon!