#I had lots of fun drawing and writing this :)

[doodledrawsthings]

you. Oh my god, you. (Positive)

listen. Before I had internet access, all I had was 1 hour of allotted browser time, bing image search, and a single dantdm play through of a hat in time that never got finished. I googled fanart and got pretty much nothing, I googled fancomics and got pretty much nothing, but you know what I did end up finding?

your art.

from ages 11-14, my goal in life, in art, was your art. I can’t tell you how much I loved finding random screenshots of your posts, because I was always just so impressed by how clean and consistent your sketches are, how the characters always stay on model, the shape language, how you could somehow sketch a character in like 20 lines when it took me 50 to draw sans in my little spiral notebook— like! Holy shit! For years I have looked up to your art! There’s still a photos folder on my dads old huge-ass 12 inch work iPad labeled “holy crap” and filled with your art. Because it inspired me so much. It’s become an undeniable part of my artstyle, now — I still have fanart I drew way back in the day of Hattie and the rest, I didn’t even know anyone’s names because I couldn’t play the game, but you’re the reason I eventually did play the game. Your coffee shop au and different versions of the prince— one of those ieterations inspired the main character of my novel! Well, novel that I tried to write, I was 13 so it was eh, but I tried!!

I’m submitting this on-anon because I don’t want to out my age on the wide internet (I like my privacy) but. Your art has really meant a lot to me. It’s the reason I played hollow knight, and it’s the reason I kept trying to develop an art style I was happy with. You’re the reason I started scribbling comics in my notebooks. Being 13-14 was pretty much the worst two years of my life, but I had Bing image search and the occasional glimpse of your signature, and I’d be so happy every time I found a new (if crusty) three-times screenshotted jpg. You literally introduced me to the concept of polyamory and nonbinary-ness with the coffee shop au. I had no other access to that in my household, and. Yeah. It meant a lot to me.

Anyway. I’m so glad I’ve finally tracked you down (in the most non-ominous way possible) and I’m so glad you’re still active— Please never stop making art. Your art is incredible, and amazing, and also you never know who’s out there on Bing image search. Thank you for creating for as long as you have. You’re pretty much the reason I’m shooting for an art degree (Wish me luck!) so just…Thank you.

(Also I had no idea you were a professional storyboarder, which is insane because that’s what I want to be when I’m through college. Hey, maybe I’ll end up storyboarding a remake of something you’ve storyboarded! hehehe)

Hi anon!

So right off the bat, I gotta tell you that this message made me start bawling when I woke up and saw it. Like I had a full-on cry session while reading your message and lying in bed for almost an hour. I am crying as I am typing this response, on my phone, still in bed. It’s 11am and i woke up at 9. So I hope it turns out coherent.

The last two years have been. weird. I say that a lot because I wanna say “rough” but that still doesn’t feel quite right. I’m almost hyper-aware that there are so many people that have it worse than me rn, so it feels hard to even acknowledge when I’m going through anything, myself, sometimes- REGARDLESS, it’s been kind of an all-time low for my mental health. There was a point within in the last year where I just HATED drawing. I struggled to bring myself to work, I struggled to bring myself to even draw for fun. It felt like I was posting just to post, trying to keep people aware of my existence and it almost felt physically painful to force myself to sit down and do it, sometimes.

I’m getting better now, I think, but. Yknow.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the “oh I can make money off this,” “oh I can get attention off this,” “oh I can prove myself a functional person in society with this,” of it all. I forget why I actually do this, sometimes, or if I even enjoy it. And then I get messages like yours, about the kid with limited internet access looking for A Hat in Time fan art on Bing image search, and I get taken back to when I was a kid scrolling Google images and deviantart for the same thing.

I don’t mean to like. Foster some kind of parasocial thing with you or any one of my followers. There’s a reason I’m saying all this, I hope it ties up in the end.

We don’t know each other. I’m not some mysterious legendary artist, or whatever. I’m a person who gets burnt out, and jealous, and insecure. I need inspiration to function, just like you, and when I don’t have it, I get art block. But I also really like to draw fictional characters kissing and hanging out. I like coming up with comics and stories and playing out dramatic and funny scenarios in my head like I’m mashing Barbies together. And when other people tell me they enjoy the stuff I put out when I do this, it makes me really, really, really happy.

I think I needed to read your message, probably. With the state of… Everything… Right now, especially recently, I feel like a lot of artists are also struggling with a sense of purpose, pride, and reason as the world makes it harder and harder to even BE an artist, these days. And when I read this message it was like Anton Ego at the end of Ratatouille, I got taken back to when I was a kid looking at my favorite artists and studying their style and striving to be better and better at it over years of my life. Not just because I wanted a job for it or cuz I wanted to be a famous Disney animator or whatever, but because it was fun and I just liked doing it.

Thank you, SO much. I say this in the most genuine and earnest way I possibly can possibly express. I wish you luck on your own path in art and art school. And if you decide that animation industry is your thing, then I wish you the best in that endeavor, as well. I think I will keep making art for a long time.

Peace and love on the planet earth ✌️✌️✌️

[goldsainz]

# CS55 — WELCOME HOME !

MASTERLIST !

REQUEST !

001. SUMMARY !

✯ the f1 season has ended, which means carlos can finally relax with his family.

002. WARNINGS !

✯ none!

003. NOTE !

✯ dad fics are my comfort zone (and angst too) they’re so cute and fun to write, which means if you want to request them i’m gonna write them sooner rather than later 🙌

word count : 618

Carlos let out a heavy sigh as he stepped through the front door of your home in Monaco, exhaustion weighing on his shoulders.

The F1 season had finally ended. Another year of relentless travel, intense competition, and grueling races. He loved it, but right now, all he wanted was to be home. To be with you and your little boy.

Before he could even call out, the sound of tiny, fast-moving footsteps echoed through the house.

“¡Papá!” A little voice squealed.

He barely had time to brace himself before a blur of curly brown hair and chubby little arms crashed into his legs. He laughed, dropping his bags and scooping up his three-year-old son, Santiago—his Santi.

“Mi niño,” Carlos murmured, hugging him tightly. “You got even bigger while I was away, huh?”

Santi pulled back slightly, his face lit up with pure excitement. “Mamá said we have surprise for you!” he announced proudly.

Carlos raised an eyebrow, amused. “A surprise?”

That’s when you appeared in the doorway, arms crossed with a playful smile on your lips. “Welcome home, baby,” you said softly.

Carlos’ eyes softened instantly. “Cariño,”

You walked over, placing a hand on his cheek before pressing a lingering kiss to his lips. “Come on,” you whispered against them. “Your welcome home treatment is waiting.”

Carlos let Santi down, who immediately grabbed his hand and started tugging him toward the living room. The first thing he noticed was the fort—pillows, blankets, and fairy lights all set up in a cozy little corner. Next to it was a tray with his favorite snacks, a bottle of wine, and a tiny juice box for Santi.

“Fort night!” Santi announced proudly, clapping his hands.

Carlos turned to you, grinning. “You built a fort?”

“Santi insisted,” you said with a shrug. “And I figured it was the best way to get you to actually rest.”

Carlos chuckled as he let himself be dragged to the couch. He sat down, pulling Santi onto his lap while you settled beside them, leaning against his side. It was warm, soft, and peaceful—the complete opposite to the chaos of an F1 season.

As Santi curled up against his chest, Carlos ran a gentle hand through his son’s hair, glancing down at him. “Did you take good care of Mamá while I was gone?”

Santi nodded seriously. “I helped cook! And I washed my hands a lot. And I gave Mamá hugs.”

Carlos shot you an amused look. “All very important responsibilities.”

“Very,” you agreed, laughing softly.

Santi suddenly sat up, his eyes wide. “Oh! Almost forgot!” He scrambled out of Carlos’s lap and waddled over to the little side table, grabbing a piece of paper before running back. “Me and Mamá made this.”

Carlos took the drawing from his tiny hands, his heart swelling as he looked at it. It was a messy but adorable crayon drawing of the three of you; Carlos in his red racing suit, you holding Santi’s hand, and a big yellow sun smiling in the sky.

“For you,” Santi said shyly.

Carlos felt a lump in his throat as he hugged Santi close, pressing a kiss to his curly hair. “This is the best gift ever, Santi. Thank you.”

Your son beamed, snuggling deeper into his arms.

You reached for Carlos’s hand, intertwining your fingers with his. “I know how much you give all year long, amor,” you murmured. “So this weekend? No stress. No alarms. Just us taking care of you.”

Carlos exhaled deeply, feeling every last bit of exhaustion finally fade. He kissed your forehead before leaning back, Santi nestled against his chest, the soft glow of the fairy lights around you.

“Best off-season ever,” he whispered, closing his eyes.

[divinit3a]

The second 'deadline' is up!

Feel free to still use the 'New Beginnings & Settling Chills' lists & color palettes! All of the prompts are fair game until the next set launches!

Enjoy a delightful platter of everyone's work! ❄️

🎨 @shystrawberries feathery and so fluffy, wow!

🎨 @no-7-hanako chill and cute as can be!

🎨 @soupdweller ice cold AND disgruntled? nomnomnom--ow, broke a tooth :(

🎨📝 @midnight-mourning beautifully sweet art; and bitey-cold hijinks in writing! >:)

Thanks for participating! 💚 -> the next deadline is Feb 1st!

A sampler platter of January prompts! Mix & match🍴 ty @luckyyyduckyyy for the name idea, its so cute :D

🎨 For artwork- use the colors swatches in your piece! Limited color palette, full color, monochrome, your choice! 📝 For writing- pick 2-5 of the words/phrases, and work them into your drabble! Directly mentioned, solely as inspiration, your choice! 📅 The 'deadlines' to post by are as follows: Jan 12th, Jan 22nd, Feb 1st 2025. 💚 Have fun! These 'rules' are to add a layer of creative challenge and act as a springboard for ideas. Feel free to use these prompts however you'd like (for dca, ocs, other fandoms, etc) & to break out of the ruleset.

the tag is #cafeprompts2025

if you'd like to be added to a ping list for these prompt lists, let me know!

good luck, have fun! 💚💚💚

[red-doll-face]

Snow Angel 11

Chapter 11: fevered Series Masterlist

low - medium honor Arthur Morgan x fem. Reader

Arthur has been living by himself, laying low (for real this time) somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. After the whole Pinkerton and Micah debacle, he has been hiding away, waiting for it all to blow over, occasionally getting letters from the people who still know that he’s alive. He’s been alone awhile and at first, he thought he could handle a little loneliness. He has been wrong before. Lucky for him, you look like the perfect thing to break up the monotony.

Warnings: dubious consent, arthur’s mental health is kind of not so good…VERY low honor Arthur, darkish fic, a bit of naive reader. Reader has dated and period typical ideals, not very good ideas about men and marriage… if you want reader to be strong and a fighter… this is not for you sorry. suggestive themes. Huge HUGe Voyeurism bit, arthur being a perv 🤨👀 huge weirdo energy LMAO small mention of wanting death, WC: 7780 Hello snow angels : ) here is chapter 11!!! this chapter will be from arthurs perspective so very exciting 😳 i had a ton of fun just getting nasty with him and writing his fucked up little thoughts 😈 arthur inner monologue was a bit weird at first but im sure ill get better at it by actually attempting to do it LMAO i hope you guys enjoy and pls let me know what you think!!! i wanna thank everyone who has left replies and asks about this series, all of you have been so supportive and amazing, couldnt do it without you guys 🥹🥹💖💖💖 also this ended up way too long so sorry Tags: lots of angst todayyy, no TB, weird but not that toxic relationship, Arthur being a menace.Arthur being rude as always just… low honor arthur as a warning lol - What does it matter if the man who saved your life is a little strange?

It must be dusk falling too soon. Slow deprivation of heat and light; does things to his head, as if that wasn’t half screwed off already. Arthur’s fingers clutch the dusty curtain in front of one of two main windows at the front of his cabin; his eyes swear they can see…something out in the treeline. At first he thought of Pinkertons; to collect that bounty they were on about. Why they would follow him to the ends of the earth for that would be beyond him but Arthur had been known to do stupid things for a big payout. And of course, he hadn’t lived this long without a healthy amount of paranoia. Or what he called caution. Or perhaps Charles should have left his ass at the nearest asylum.

But he can sense that he’s wrong when nothing comes of it. No gunshots, no desperate shoot out for his life. Just the quiet again. In a minute, he’ll look out the window and watch the figure disappear. And he’ll shake his head, rub his calloused fingers over his tired eyes. He drops the curtain, pouring another cup of coffee at the silver percolator in the kitchen. He is not losing his grip; he isn’t. He’d leave that to Dutch. 

It’s gotten worse with the winter; those strange things he sees from time to time. They make him feel more out of place than he already does. As if there’s something wrong with him, wrong with this moment. The frost grows over the windows like mold.

The summer sun kept the darkness from slipping in and leaking into his vision. But that’s long gone, been gone for a month. Shit weather up here, long dragging winters. Summers that were too short for his liking and an autumn that was beautiful but also short lived. The winter is too heavy now to do much of anything but loop out to the stable and back. Not much sightseeing to do, the same shock white landscape to see everyday. 

In spite of how beautiful the mountain is; with its sprawling forest, creeks like liquid glass, the fresh winter air… Arthur finds it arduous to see it. Closing himself inside his cabin is easier. He could go and hunt something, draw the scenery. But was that any better than the fireplace? The comfort and simultaneous unease of staying inside the confines of his new home drag him in opposite directions. And even if his paranoid visions are just residue from another time in his life; he knows there are people who could be still searching, who might remember his face. Bad things had a way of following Arthur wherever he went. 

Even more loathsome is the lack of sunlight. The sun disappears around 4 or 5 and it feels like it was midnight by 6. The windows of his wooden cabin blacken like soot, leaving him tired and groggy. 

Arthur tries to keep himself going with bitterness like always. Coffee, cigarettes, and alcohol. He thinks the lack of light plays with his head. It’s easy to mistake shadows for ghosts, trusting himself was hard as it was. 

Damn snow, cuts to the bone.

The stunning silence surprises him still at these odd moments in the day. Arthur thought that maybe the peace would do him some good. But there was a need that scratched incessantly at the front of his skull. Over and over and over. 

He spent a long time being needed by other people. Dutch made him feel needed at the very least. Like he was part of something that symbolized how free a man could be. And he had devoted every shred of himself to the vision that Dutch had for the world. It was all that mattered to Arthur. His fealty was really all he had to give and so he gave it. 

God, had he felt the fool on the last day he saw him, when Dutch walked away, as if everything Arthur had ever done was nothing to him. Twenty goddamn years of his life. If he was being honest, he knew that his loyalty was wasted before that day but he had waited to see if the man he knew would emerge. If he could kill that gutless rat and show Dutch the truth but he refused, leaving Arthur with nothing to show for it. Helping John, Abigail and Jack to safety was barely a comfort when he thought of all that he wasted. All he did was hand another man a chance at the life that he wanted. 

But it was too late. As always with Arthur. (Everything was always too little; too late) Providing for others was embedded deeply in his being. It was something he had done for years, especially when he decided to get his shit together. He might have dallied, thoroughly enjoying his youth. But he learned (through several extremely painful lessons) why it was important that he pick up the slack. Loyalty isn’t represented by inaction. He hadn’t been all too kind to people but he had kept his comfort that in some part, his work was what kept that camp running. And when that fell apart; he really did try to help the less fortunate.

Really, he was making up for his failures to the people he cared about most. Arthur questioned if he had cared enough. If he did, maybe things would have ended differently between him and the people he harmed by being selfish.

Maybe Dutch put some modicum of power in his hands and Arthur had wielded it badly, went around acting like the cesspool he felt like most of the time. But at the end of the day, the camp ate because of him, they had medicine because of him, hell, they even drank because it was him that brought back more money than anyone else. 

There is no one who needs him now. Arthur scrubs his hand over his face then down to rub over his shoulders. Leans his head back. At first it was nice. The independence. No more debt collecting for Strauss, no more worrying if there’s enough food for Pearson, no more looking out for O’Driscolls. He thought he would like only having one person to worry about; he had been lying to himself. Although he still had other things missing from him. They’re like phantom limbs. He can feel where they were supposed to be but when he looks down they’re gone. Hosea’s guidance was missing from him. Even if he was terrible at following it. The sound of the girl’s giggling and gossiping. Even Uncle and Swanson ambling around, drunker than he thought was possible. Dutch looming, watching through his haze of maduro sweetened smoke. He keeps looking down but they’re gone.  

The fire crackles and the wind howls; picks up the silence. Sometimes the wind from the flue sounds like the breeze over Flat Iron Lake. The fire doesn’t sound any different than it did when it crackled warmly around a circle of a mismatched band of criminals singing songs together, alongside the chatter and the drunken crooning. When it was the background noise to thick Irish blabbering. The poor kid. He was going places, as most of the younger ones were, he and Lenny would have run that gang when they got past their growing pains. He could have told them that when they were living, that sentiment would have meant something then. 

It’s been a year or two, the days sort of connect like train cars and chug along, not because he wants them to but because that’s how life goes. It’s an endless drag, an endless struggle. He can’t see how this is much better than being dead. Arthur Morgan is one of the few people who knows how precious life can be, he spent a lifetime taking it away from people as he pleased. 

He tries to savor this peace (as if he knows how to). Tries to remember what it was like, not having any time to himself, always at Dutch’s beck and call. Barely any time to take a piss, let alone really rest, really give himself room to be anything but what others wanted. How he loathes those memories. The years he spent dedicating himself to another man's dreams. Watched all those years slip away, ashes in a smoke stack, rising forever upwards until they’re forgotten. 

Arthur refuses to recall how many things he gave up for that life; down to the simple pleasures. Love, privacy, a family. He convinced himself that anything else wasn’t living, that he couldn’t ever be tied down. That old life was just… what he had. There was nowhere else to go and when he was old enough to go his own way, there were kids like him with nothing left; nothing to return to, no one to look after them. He might not have been anyone to look up to. Maybe he was a shining example of what not to be. It was Arthur who was there to keep people in line, to show them how to be killers for Dutch’s aspirations. He’s sure he ruined lives more than he taught them anything useful.

Nothing about that life was rooted in anything real, substantial to the world. Pipe dreams. Vague imaginings of living free in the west or some such tropical paradise. What a waste. Just the thought of a secluded island with palm trees on it summons a bitter laugh. 

He sits and watches the fire. Tries to ignore the shadow in the corner. It's thin and wavering. Today, it looks a bit too much like Hosea for his taste. Especially when the log on the hearth cracks, it sounds like that ominous cough that followed the graying conniver everywhere he went. 

Arthur lights another cigarette. He’s been making (quite frankly, just awful) attempts at rationing and this is his allotted second cigarette of the day. He’s two for five. He curses himself every time he forgets to take the drags and it crumbles to ash too quickly, landing on the rug beneath his boots. He hisses, a singe on his fingers snaps him back to the present moment. It burns his fingers when he forgets that he’s holding one entirely, too busy drilling holes in the walls with his eyes. He can’t stand it but he doesn’t have another choice. The silence has the mysterious property of making Arthur lose track of himself. He should have listened but he never learns. 

This deep into winter, not too far from the base of Mt. Pàtu, he can’t just head out on the road and get more cigarettes. The nearest town is a six or seven hour ride and that isn’t happening, not in this weather. He might take Currant out for a light trot so he can get some exercise but he can tell something big is coming soon. The bellows of air from the west have him readying for storm weather. Best to get a move on now if he were to be going out. 

It’s dinner now. He’s not sure where the time went but he doesn’t mind too much. He’s got coffee and he’s got hot food. Salt pork with potatoes, boiled in the salt water from soaking the corns of salt off the meat. He’s gotten better at cooking at least. Arthur scoffs at the thought of the slop he used to be eating. He takes a glass out and sets it on the counter, along with his fifth bottle of Kentucky bourbon. He’s allowed 6 bottles a month. By anyone else’s standards it might be a lot but where he spent most of his time; around other drunkards and degenerates, it’s not enough. 

The storm hits full force now, there’s gonna be snow all the way up to the porch by tomorrow morning. But the air inside of his cabin is still and smoky. From the window, he checks the stable to see if the doors stay closed. It’s well insulated so Currant should be fine. The storm will have scared most of the game into hiding away, he contemplates when he’ll head back out for hunting. He takes a seat at his plain dining table, spends a while on the same glass of bourbon. The smell of cedar and salt is nice.  So is the warmth of his cabin but it’s all lost to him. His sense for how fortunate he is to be here and not dead in a ditch is dull. Only he could be the man to crave chaos and blood and the sound of gunshots while sitting on his ass all day, sipping bourbon. 

He thinks he’ll read a boring book or pretend to keep busy by stoking the fire. Arthur listens to the silence, waiting to hear something but the crackling and the draft from a small crack in the wall. But there’s nothing. He should have listened to Charles. But he insisted that he would be fine. He can’t go back on that now, he’s always been fine by himself. He’ll just wear the groove into his leather chair even further like the sorry bastard he is, trying to ignore how small and stiflingly warm the room feels.  

The blizzard gets louder and louder. Dozing off on the sofa or in his chair sounds like as good a time as any. But he isn’t exhausted, just annoyingly groggy. Bouncing his knee does not count as activity. Neither does all the fidgeting he does, twitching his fingers, putting his legs up and bringing them back down. He tries to pace a little but wearing treads on the floorboards isn’t doing any good either. He puts his hands on his hips. 

 He grabs his journal but he doesn’t have much to write. What would he write about? Surely, the exciting things he experiences everyday. Waking up feeling like hot shit on a platter after having too much whiskey was not the kind of thing worth memorializing in his journal anymore. He’s a little past the shame now too, the embarrassment. He lets his fingers feel the blank page, the tooth of the paper. 

He lets his hand form images of spring, the point of his pencil worn into a dull tip, recollected as best as possible. It’s nothing but a pale comparison. 

There’s a pat on the door. It’s soft and weak. And just as softly, there’s a voice pleading for help, asking if anyone is inside. A light shining in through the cracks of his world. 

He pushes himself up. He knows he hasn’t had that much to drink tonight. The worst possible outcomes play in his head. A ruse from bounty hunters, a local gang taking advantage (not a whole lot better than he would have done only 3 years ago), or another ghost from his past (the ones that play at the corner of his eye). His chest gets a little tight but he’s been good at keeping unease from holding him back. Arthur shakes his hand out, placing the book on the mantle of the fireplace.

“Who’s out there?” It’s an oddity. To hear another voice. One that isn’t his own. It’s a beautiful noise, a pleasing beckon. But he’s no fool. He doesn’t even particularly want to be here, why would anyone be here if they didn’t have to be? He grabs his revolver from the small table next to the entrance, one of the only loaded guns in the house. “Please, sir, I promise it’s just me,” and the earnestness in that voice, he has to believe that promise is true. He has to open the door. With a deep sigh, he stuffs the gun away after a second thought. 

The figure is much too bundled up to gather any immediate details. She’s not very much, standing there out in the cold icy fluff. It isn’t until he nods his head to direct her does she realize she should probably come in. He peeks out at the tracks, just one long line of horse tracks in the process of getting blown over by the harsh wind and the lashing ice. Her struggle up to the porch marked in snow. Arthur scans the tree line for any of those dark silhouettes but they’ve blown away in the wind, they’re pushed from his mind when he turns back and closes the door shut behind the both of them. 

He turns to her, he doesn’t mind the way she shrinks away from his body, skittish and slight. Such a small girl, alone in a snowstorm. He can’t think of a single good reason why she would be going it alone and what she could possibly need more than a night in. She should be warming her hands next to a fire. He could do it for her, could gather them and breathe on them. He tosses that behind him like an empty tin can. He has other things to focus on, mostly trying to get a better look at her and prying an answer out of her as to why she’s out here like this. 

He’s more rude than he intended to be but a little rudeness is nothing new to him. “What the hell were you doin’ out there?” He has been described as coarse. Intentionally and unintentionally. He’s a little bit like a puffed up rooster when he catches her looking him over, marveling at the size of him. But he lets that fall away, surely she needed no old man assuming things on her part. He knows he ain’t much to look at. At his gruff tone, she has no response. The poor thing is so cold, her teeth chatter, whatever she mustered up to yell at him over the storm has run out. Arthur feels a little of his hard veneer chip away. 

He thinks to take her coat, covered in frost and not nearly as insulated as he had hoped, it’s damp with melting ice now that she’s inside. But he feels like he’s dreaming again, peeling her coat off and hanging it on the rack, a faux gentleman. He doesn't know why he’s trying to impress but there’s a chance that she’d like a man like that. So he plays, pretends. He’s surely done that before.

When her coat is shed, all of those visions he’s been having must have caught up to him. 

Jesus, Morgan. You’ve really lost it now. 

This disease of loneliness he’s been given has surely destroyed the vestiges of his sanity. He must be imagining some young soft handed girl with warm bright eyes and vibrant, shiny hair. Face of an angel, looking hopeful; grateful. Her eyes on him burn like hellfire. He feels strange, watching much too close at how her tongue wets her lips; chapped from the cold. Beautiful; she must be someone’s girl, he hopes for a widow who had lost her husband to the winter frost. He’d gladly pick up where the fucker left off. Pry her from his cold hands. Could just be the loneliness talking. He can’t bring himself to care all that much about it. 

Arthur can feel shame eating away at him, like ants at the corners of a scrap fallen off the table. He could have found himself sick to his stomach not too short a time ago. A girl as young as her and he, an old dog with even older tricks have no business together. He knows it too. But he was done with that crushing feeling of dread that ate away at his very soul some days. He had enough of his life to feel awful about. Blood on the floorboards, forgotten promises, disregarded words of affection. Just these moments, where he can hoard the vision that is this girl to himself after so long of giving pieces of himself away. 

What has that shame ever done but made you worse? 

If there isn’t the will to keep his eyes off the girl then there’s the give in him. Like a levy, it cracks a little, breaks into a million pieces of splintered wood for her. It’s been too long since he’s seen something so pretty. All flesh and blood. No graphite on paper; recollections of the women from his past, no Gem of Beauty cigarette card. She carries the smell of soap and perfumed cotton. He thinks it's geranium scented or another delicate flower crushed to pieces to make her smell like she came from heaven too. It’s a weakness he hadn’t culled. 

This girl of his; she must be something quite real. His wishful daydream would have diverted to more intimate topics by now, and he’d probably imagine a woman he’s at least met before. Deciding if he’d prefer her to be real or a misty figment of his imagination; he can’t make heads nor tails of it. Arthur knows he’d probably end up disappointing a real person more than he could offend a figure cooked up in his mind. He sighs. He turns to the iron stove beside the dining table. There’s still coffee and he can distract himself from his ridiculous train of thought by clumsily pouring it out for her. 

Hopeful bastard.

“You mute, girl? Asked you a question.” He knows she isn't but he wants to hear her talk some more. And maybe if she hears what a brute he makes himself out to be most of the time, she’ll turn her nose up at him the way she’s supposed to. Lots of women have, she wouldn’t be the first warned away by his attitude like a bad smell. He could almost let that temptation win. To change who he is at this moment. If only for the selfish purpose of luring her further into his home. However, he’s too impulsive and his tongue is too practiced at offending. He has words that are about as gentle as a fist to the nose. 

He sets her cup down on the table. Arthur doesn’t wait for her to figure herself out, grabbing another cigarette, swiping them off of the coffee table in front of the fireplace. To hell with the rations. It was a special day after all, a goddamned holiday. He strikes the match on the table, lighting it as she tentatively steps forward. Nearly singes his finger on the match he forgot to put out, wincing and waving it out to put out the flame. 

She’s a pearl, surrounded by the ugly oyster that is the less than stellar home he keeps. Carefully, she steps into his space. Suddenly, he’s hyper aware of every thing she could find awful or garish; his hunting trophies or the weapons or the wall. Or the mess of papers on the desk in the corner. It has him gripping his cigarette a bit too tight. Her face hardly moves in any particular reaction, as if used to him already. A simple neutrality is what takes her as she looks at some of the things over the mantle, then her eyes track over the small hallway, leading to the bedroom and some storage. She’s quick to bring her attention back to him, a soft smile that stuns him graces her face, kicking up some long buried hope of his.

 If there was a woman who should be a lady, it’s her. She sets herself down on the sofa, neatly keeping her hands to herself, reaching for the cup he set out for her. But first checking to see if it wasn’t for him with a nervous flick of her eyes up to his own. He can hardly ignore how it pulls at him. She holds the blue speckled cup on her thigh. 

“No, I…was getting something for my granny…” She explains she couldn’t make it to the doctor in the almost fatal weather outside. He has a humorless laugh. How could anyone send her out for the sake of some old hag; already knocking on death's door? Selfless girl but stupid. Defenseless. Her own mother, too. He supposes he can relate. The man he regarded as his father had been the one to let him down the most.

 It’s always the ones you trust. 

He makes his opinion known to her, maybe he can talk some sense into her. 

“I can imagine. What kinda mother sends a pretty thing like you on a fool's errand? You really thought you was gonna bring your ol’ granny a doctor in this?” He reprimands her, she might need it. 

Little girl gone out by herself. Needs you, don’t she?

What she probably needs is someone to keep her from doing things that risk her life for nothing at all. Doesn’t have to be him but he won’t turn the thought away. Breaking her open on her marriage bed. Such a pretty thing, a distracted smile into her cup of coffee. Lost in a snow drift because no one cared enough to keep her inside. 

And she does nip back. Trying to give a rebuttal but he won’t have it. He knows he’s right, giving his idea of a light hearted joke, his particular brand of poking humor. Heavy handed as always. 

“Your granny probably already kicked the bucket while you were out here, damn near gettin’ yourself killed.” 

 Perhaps insinuating her grandmother was already dead wasn’t the best attempt at familiarizing her with himself, her face tinges with an expression he’s used to seeing. Dutch said he had a sharper tongue than people thought. Hosea said it was too blunt. 

“And if it weren’t for me, well…” she’d be dead. Forgotten somewhere in the snow with a dead horse for company. Such an image should hopefully be sobering for her. It’s a harsh reality but one he would prevent from happening.  His hand comes up to scratch at his brambly jaw. She probably thought his slightly overgrown beard was ugly and unkempt. His fingers raise the delicate rolled cigarette to his lips. A nice calming drag helps his nerves calm down, they quit jumping under his skin every time her eyes pull over him, over his scarred face and his crooked nose and his gnarled hands. She looks like she holds something back. Her tongue, he thinks. He wished she would have just come out and said it. 

But she’s a polite little thing, stifling herself with another drink of the coffee. The satisfaction on her face and the small droop in her shoulders now that she’s warm makes him smile. 

She speaks up with a tremor stuck to her words. “I’m sorry mister,” her nose scrunches a little, doesn’t even know how darling he finds it. “but I don’t think you gave me your name…” 

In a well practiced motion, he leans and ashes his cigarette. It took him a while to remember that he can’t just ash them on the ground anymore. He had floors and a permanent roof now. He tends to get the hang of things at some point. He kicks his legs up on the table, gently so as to not frighten the girl on his sofa, warming herself by his fire, and drinking his coffee. The thoughts tickle that provider’s instinct so deeply embedded in his being. His name, he almost forgets all about that, looking into her pretty eyes, blinking curiously. Right. 

“Arthur. You married?” He never liked small talk too much. Never one for the surface level bullshit people put on. He watches each of her features form into something like a smile but not. Too nerve-y, falls into something else when she presses her lips together, her brows twitch as they pull together and her fingers scrunch in her gloves. 

As if she’d marry you, ain’t exactly the pick of the litter, are ya?

His fingers twitch, squeeze his short nails into the give of his palm. Then why does she call him? So enticing, then, looking at him with soft eyes, her legs pressed together and slanted. A real proper girl. Cute thing. Naive enough not to recognize someone like him at first glance. He’s something to be avoided. He wishes he could see a ring glittering on her finger, to ward away the seething heat in his head and his gut. Like a prayer muttered in the presence of evil but he doubted it’d be strong enough. 

“No, I’m afraid not,” her voice is like velvet, the rub of a rose petal between his fingers. Her eyes flick away and her teeth press gently into her bottom lip, sweet looking. No man to look after her besides her worthless father, left her out here to freeze. Alone, really. Or she might as well be. The world has been known to be cruel to women. To his mother, to a woman whose life he had ruined, to Mary even, to Susan and Molly. Well, most every woman he knew. It wasn’t fair but many things in their lives were disparagingly slanted away from them, scales always uneven. 

“Young lady like you, unwed and caring for your Ma, Pa, all by yourself?” Arthur scoffs, even as he points out her tragedy. “Now that’s just sad, is what it is,” His fingers push his cigarette into the ash tray a bit too hard, twisting it. And he looks at her blouse, drawing the outline of her with his eyes. He’d put it to paper later. She has a small nod for him. A shining opportunity. But he has to introduce his own dingy reality. The one where he was probably old enough to have been able to hold her when she had just been born. 

“You are… a sight, for an old ugly bastard like me is all,” Honest words slip from him, too loose for him to keep them behind his teeth. The bashful look crosses over her face makes his lip curl up just a little. She deserved to have someone tell her how pretty she is, who wouldn’t ever let her forget for a second how lovely she looked. Where all of these sappy things come from is beyond him. They ooze into his mind anyway.

Delicately, she sets the cup down on the table littered with other cups he had forgotten to put away and empty packages of cigarettes. He rolls his eyes at himself, of course he doesn’t clean up the day he has company.

“I left my horse in the stable out front, I hope you don’t mind,” her hands pet at her thighs, he can see where the fabric is damp. Immediately, his mind clicks into place, thinking on how he can fix it. That’s what the fairer sex truly craved, wasn’t it? Not some puffed up egomaniac. A fixer. A solution. His hands itch to move. To pick up the pieces of her problems and push them back into the shape of something whole. “Ain’t no trouble,” the relieved sag in her shoulders tells him that she actually worried about it. 

So Arthur does, he’s nothing if not a man of action. “Why don’t I get you somethin’ dry to wear? Should be turnin’ in soon. Gettin’ late.” He’s up before he can hear a protest. But she doesn’t give much of one. In his bedroom, his hands swipe his hair backwards. The small mirror he usually keeps around strictly for shaving catches the light of the small oil lamp. 

God, his best years are way behind him. So say the lines at the corners of his eyes, the gouges of his age on his forehead and the delicate webbing of wrinkles under his eyes. All of the evidence of his lifestyle glares back at him. There’s a ruddiness over the higher planes of his cheekbones from burning them under the sun. Some of the fist and knife fights from his youth have left permanent evidence of his misgivings on his face. Mostly in the form of scars and his odd nose. 

You disgust her, don’t go kidding yourself. 

If he ever told her the truth of himself, he’s sure a girl like her would go running, suddenly not minding the cold. He never was good at keeping beautiful things by his side. They rotted or wilted, or blew away with the wind. His rough fingers rub at the back of his neck. He stares deep into his own eyes. Trying to force some normalcy, some sense into himself but it’s all in vain. He grunts, paying mind to other things. 

He opens his cabinet, all of the simple clothes he keeps. Something new and not so weathered, or dirty, something clean. Like her. Some nice cotton knit union suit, something he bought when he was preparing for winter. He grips them tight and hesitates at the door. 

Just go n’ give it to her, and try not to be an idiot; for god’s sake. 

And the sweet smile he sees knocks whatever sense he had gathered out of him, he can hardly form a word. He just holds the fabric out to her like an oaf. And she rises, as to keep things comfortable, good at reading his brutish signaling, taking them gently and skirting around him. And then she’s in his bedroom. With a mental cuss, he realizes that he forgot to clean the room before he left. 

Ah, she’ll find out how pathetic you are at some point. Just a matter a’ when… 

All those empty bottles and habits he’s formed from living alone. Dirty clothes piled somewhere and sheets that probably smelled a bit too much like sweat. Christ. He sighs, pinching his nose. He’s not sure why he’s putting so much thought into this. He doesn’t care. Not a care at all. Right…sure.

At first, he distracts himself with preparing food, his leftovers, hopefully enough for her. Doing this is an action which is perhaps a bit selfish. He wants to make it clear that he can give her things she needs. He could figure out wants later.. Typically, he hadn’t thought too much of what women wanted but with her he makes lists, takes out the fine brandy. Sometimes he took after Dutch more than he would like to admit, the man was all too good at forgetting about a woman’s wants and needs.

The food hasn’t gone too cold. His hands look for things to do, stirring unnecessarily. Fumbling the dish he places it on. However, the little comfort he gains from activity fades. He can only grip the counter like a vice while staring out the window above his sink for so long. The shades of brown and orange that make up his cabin blur into nothing, the wood grain isn’t as grounding as he wants it to be. 

But then his legs drift in the opposite direction, He can hear a soft sigh and the rustle of clothing behind the door. He wets his dry throat. Arthur shouldn’t salivate. He does anyway.

You’re a creep. Something in his head laughs at him. 

Been too long since you had a woman this close to your bed and she ain’t even in it with ya…c’mon. C’mon, just open the damn door. 

His heart is about to pound his ribs into dust. He’s among the worst of the worst but this… pushes boundaries. Lines drawn in the sand. Peeping on women wasn’t something he was raised to do. And if he saw something he wasn’t supposed to see, it was an accident. 

You ain’t that bad.

He’s used to letting the tide wash those out so he can draw new ones. And here is a new one. When his fingers push at the door and he can see the sliver where she bares her own flesh. Rubs her hands up her thighs, stepping out of her clothes. His throat goes dry, his teeth bite bluntly at the tip of his tongue as his jaw gets tense. 

His eyes follow the natural plush curve of her body, pale yellow lamp light glancing off of her. He’d kill a man to touch her and he’d kill a man for touching her. Devouring every inch, his eyes soak it all up, dedicating her to memory. 

 And then she’s stepping into the creamy cotton of his clothes. Doing up the buttons at her front. Unbidden by him, his cock fills out, half hard, pressing uncomfortably at just the sight of her. The perfection of her hips, her hair brushing over her back. 

The guilt is chewing a hole in his conscience. It’s like there are termites gnawing away at the foundation of whatever restraint he had. He’s felt less disgusting after killing a man, making him choke on his own blood as it fills his lungs. But the reward had never been so delightful. A sweet girl, so trusting, putting her hand to her chest and smiling as she realizes he’s there. It doesn’t feel good at all, the realization that he’s drooling over her like a mutt. All she has given him is reluctance, nervous glances. She doesn’t touch him or leave her hand to linger. A sweet-as-cream smile is all he has, enough to tide him over. He wants her anyway, needs her to stay. Letting her walk out after this will be next to impossible. 

“You scared me, Mister…” Mister. So polite, an angel delivered unto him. He can feel how his body is tense, tight like a spring. How she doesn’t notice the evidence of his wrongdoing, pressing at the front of his pants is luck or her naivety. His expression must be dazed, a foolish look because all he can do is stare, unable to stop himself. Observing the way his clothes drape over her, exaggerating how much smaller she is in comparison. How stunning she’d look, sprawled over his bed sheets. Precious girl; struggling not to cry when she gets all stretched out on something wholly too big for her. In his mind's eye, she mouths his name, looks at him like all she wants is him inside of her. Right. His name again. 

He dips back into his own ease in which he controls all of himself with. He is self assured and well handled. And he certainly doesn’t curl in on himself. Lets her see how big he is, slips back into old habits with the ease that comes with capability. “Morgan, Arthur Morgan,” his real name, no Kilgore’s or Calahan’s. She should know it anyhow, if he has any real intention in giving it to her.

It’s dangerous and it’s like she can feel it, somewhere in her body is that base instinct. One she was born with to protect herself from people with bad intentions. But she has another instinct, bares her neck to him. Arthur has always been good at suppressing his hunger, desire for soft pretty things. Settling like sediment on them was the control he had, buried them and buried them and buried them. She's a rainstorm, flooding his mind, washing out his carefully maintained resistance. Leaves his want raw and exposed and actionable. He wants her too much, wants her more than he has any right to. 

He feels what little control he has over his urges begin to slip with that thought.  Usually, he let them take over. Let whatever pain and anguish in him manifest into pure rage, cold and unadulterated. At first, it revolted him, his actions. And the reputation he built to go along with them. But they began to grow over him like a second skin until they encased whatever hope he had for a better life completely. His self induced hatred hid whatever pieces of him weren't supposed to be his to have and to share. The things he had to hide from himself even to feel like a whole person at any given moment. And he let himself be that awful thing people thought he was. Arthur Morgan. A force of nature. 

But he deserved it, didn't he? Everyone should keep their distance anyway. He has a habit of making things worse than when he found them. But all he wanted was for her to be close. Sure, he could play the vulnerable man who could pine after his sweetheart, go out riding after her, guide her home where she would forget all about him. Just a kind man out to help the world.

That's not what he wanted. He wanted her to stay here. Can’t bear the thought of being a good man, sending her away when the storm blows over. In sickness and in health, til’ death do us part. That’s what he sees when he closes his eyes. She’s standing in the kitchen, turning the spoils of his hunts into dinner. With that easy smile. His too empty house just wouldn’t feel like a home without her in it. He’s sick, he knows; but he’s sure she can cure him. 

Arthur Morgan has always wanted more than he could have. He chews on the thought like tobacco. Bitter but eventually he begins to need the taste, to crave it. 

“Put somethin’ on the stove for ya, man can’t leave no woman hungry…” God, his tongue feels too thick in his mouth and his jaw aches from gritting his teeth too hard. And of course, he lays all his cards on the table. Man can’t leave his woman hungry.

Every little gesture she makes, wrapping her arms shyly around herself, the gentle tilt of her head and the small affirmative gesture she makes is in no way unordinary. But they’re all dripping with her appeal. How can she smile at him like he doesn't look the way he does? Like he hasn't made the world worse just by existing in it?

 He soils her just by laying greedy eyes on her neck, on her nipples which he can make out through the fabric of his union suit. And when she opens her mouth, he knows he’ll end up calling her what she is. Sweet and syrupy, soothing on his throat. 

“Thank you, Mr. Morgan. I really appreciate your kindness,” Arthur is convinced he heard her wrong. But her honesty is in those radiant eyes, in her easy posture. It must be meant to be, it’s not every day a woman talked to him like that. Or talked to him at all. He was perhaps too busy making sure they knew what they would be getting into; dealing with him. 

It may just be the respectful manners instilled in her. He supposed her parents had given her that; mannerisms that made her quite the catch. Utter perfection. But really, even that was a disservice. They damned her to him. Makes him see glimpses of a life he could have. Hundreds of conversations, every iteration of the precious babe they'd have together with his hair and her eyes, a son or a daughter. Two of each perhaps. Hours and hours of her gentle, refined voice taking up the empty room. He bows his head as if he can keep his disbelief and joy under the brim of his hat, currently hanging by his front door. 

She comes nearer. He can smell her cotton scent, can see the way the light casts around her hair, feathering over her, turning it into gold. His body moves to make the smallest space for her. Hoping she’ll nudge against him. He doesn’t even realize the way he’s formed himself to keep her here for just a moment. So close, Arthur nearly loses track of what he was supposed to be doing.  

“Been a long time since somebody called me a kind man, usually it was the opposite,” apprehension floods her body, her features. Her eyes focus on him, waiting for something terrible to happen. Arthur sees how she bristles. He only meant to be honest but she’s already read between his lines. Smart girl. 

He shows her just what he means. Even when he knows better, even if he’s never been this far. It’s like he has to touch though. No where uncomfortable, just to be sure she isn’t a sign that he’s truly gone from this world. 

“Please, I-” 

Her plea goes down his spine. It rakes its teeth over the parts of him that are wrong. That weren’t formed with gentleness, aren’t intricate. Just instinct that he’s indulged. 

He may not be a good man. But he can behave well enough to keep her. Now that he has the room for her. He doesn’t live in a drafty tent. He’s not a dog chained to the hand that fed him too many years ago. He would never treat her like an object to display or a mistake made in a drunken night of pleasure. He wouldn’t throw this away, this one chance at having something real. Wouldn’t lay waste to this opportunity to fill a hole in him that yawned empty for what felt like eternity. She’d be his wife and he; her man. A husband. Mister and Missus Arthur Morgan. A crock of shit, he would have said a month ago.

That ain’t the hand you been dealt and you know it. You’ve made a mess of things enough.

 But now… it's a dreamy reality. It hasn’t quite taken shape but he can get it there. Determination starts to crystallize over the idea. She’s something good; doesn’t need him. He could try to make something better too, could make the best of a situation, try to show her the best in him. But he knows it’d never be enough for her. He always throws these good things away, always ruins it somehow. But he grips and shakes like a mutt at this idea, gnaws it until it's raw. He can just take what he wants. Done that before, hasn’t he?

Just leave’er alone. God, you never learn, goddamned fool…

His fingers graze over the skin on her neck, uncovered by the collar of the union suit he lent her. Here in the dark of the small hallway, he can swear there’s something in the way she breathes, shudders. “I think you need a man to take care of you, honey, need a man to keep you inside- wouldn’t let you go out alone like this if you was my woman… Lemme show you how a man looks after a girl like you,” He’s aware that he sounds like a right bastard but he’s only telling the truth. His hand settles at her back, like it’s supposed to be there. They’re meant to be, all he has to do is show her. 

ok yall how we feeling LMAO i think his perspective was interesting and fun for me to write but idk if its any good, but i hope with practice ill get more confident 🥹🥹 bro is a freak sooo yeah it was fun to write him as a freak he is very conflicted about everything and he is super weird but also sexy sooo😳 i hope you guys enjoyed this lil backstory on why arthur is a weirdo 😊😊😭😭 lmk what you guys think !!

[faerghusfucker]

BALL FELIX AT LONG LAST

sorry this guy took a little while lol, school’s been kinda nuts but i’m getting into a groove with my work so i should be able to draw more consistently

so felix does NOT want to be at this damn ball lmao. he would much rather take advantage of the empty training grounds and do swordplay to his heart’s content, BUUUUUUUT sylvain made a deal with him that if felix joined him at the ball for a while, he would leave early with him to spar. and come on, what good is training without a sparring partner (even if he’s an idiot), so felix agreed.

part of this deal was that sylvain would get to force him into help him with his outfit, since if it were up to him felix would just wear his school uniform and have that be the end of it. obviously the rest of the house heard abt this arrangement and they all had a nice time in sylvain’s room getting ready and it was super cute im sure. mercedes and annette are both super enamored with his long hair i think, and annette worked her magic and got felix to let her do his hair, resulting in his lil do with the flower (which is actually gonna match the flowers on annette’s dress but oooooh you’ll have to wait for that one)

i’m gonna make a masterpost for this blog just to get organized, i see this more on writing/fanfic blogs than art ones but i wanna do one anyway bc a) i wanna start doing more writing on here along with art and headcanons b) i do a lot of reblogging here and general shitposting so i wanna make sure the posts that i actually do put effort into don’t get buried. so yay for that! thanks again for all the love on here recently, im happy my hyperfixation is fun lol

bonus full lineup bc i love how little felix is lmao shoutout to short kings

[maruyaaya]

some of my random neomachus headcanons bc i think abt them a lot while writing and sometimes just scrawl random notes like these in my notes app

neo is two years older than telemachus (it’s so hard to put greek mythology on a timeline but the way it makes the most sense to me is that achilles and deidamia have neo when achilles is 15 and then 2 years later, the trojan war starts and 17 year old achilles and 18/19 year old patroclus go to war. telemachus is born at round the start of the trojan war since he is 20 when odysseus returns and his journey took 20 years. so in the war’s tenth year, neo is 12 and telemachus is 10. so in my neomachus fic, neo is 22 and telemachus is 20)

neo is taller. neo has his father’s build so he’s tall and lean like achilles. i think telemachus takes after odysseus' height and he's rather short (still a little bit taller than odysseus though)

both neo and telemachus look like their fathers but with their mothers colourings. neo has deidamia’s red hair but achilles’ hazel eyes. telemachus has penelope’s blue eyes but odysseus’ brown hair.

sparring is their love language. neo wins nearly every single time, but it's a way for them to show affection

telemachus is a words of affirmation love language while neo is an acts of service love language

telemachus is really into physical touch. he’ll just randomly put his arm around neo’s shoulders or something like that and neo will fucking blue screen

modern au neo only listens to like mcr and føb. telemachus is a paramore stan. if they were on stantwt, they would hate each other—they'd get into so many stan wars and they'd be pqrting each other with death threats. telemachus would probably write a cancel thread on neo. then they'd fall in love and e-date

neo is surprisingly clingy and jealous. he def has attachment issues so whenever he sees telemachus getting along with someone (which is often bc telemachus is very charismatic and likeable), he starts to get all huffy and pouty. i think they'd probably fight over this bc telemachus hates it when neo is jealous, but neo can't help it

they bond over daddy issues. both of them had absent fathers and they love to talk shit abt their dads (they do love their dads, but sometimes it's aggravating)

neo is the epitome of guard dog privilege. he has resting bitch face and he constantly looks like he has murder on the mind. nobody dares to approach him and telemachus when neo is scowling

neo is very musically inclined while telemachus is tone deaf and it is the funniest thing ever to me. i imagine nobody has ever told telemachus that he's tone deaf so he honestly has no idea. neo will never ever tell him

on the other hand, i imagine telemachus being artistically inclined while neo cannot even draw a stick figure. idk i just really love the idea of them both being talented in different art forms. i think telemachus would be pretty good at writing as well, but he has godawful printing while neo has small, neat printing

telemachus is very charismatic while neo is very socially awkward and struggles with social cues. telemachus likes to fuck with him and tease him because neo is very oblivious. neo will never pick up on telemachus’ flirting. he has to hear I Am In Love With You in order to understand that telemachus is seriously flirting with him

TELEMACHUS IS SO TOTALLY A BOOK LOVER he reads like 100 books a year and he loves to read every genre though he particularly loves fantasy as well as litfic. if this is a modern au, i feel like neo is not a reader but instead is a film snob. they’re the goodreads x letterboxd dynamic

speaking of, telemachus would totally be a horror enjoyer to me. he just finds it so fun. i think neo also enjoys horror but not as much as telemachus

SO MANY OF THESE HAVE BEEN MODERN AU IM SORRY idk i just really love thinking abt modern au headcanons those are so fun ok ill leave this at that for now

[arualthecolorfulfreak]

I made a lot of mistakes while writing the text, so I needed to edit it on ibis paint (I hate my dyslexic ass TwT)

I had a lot of fun drawing hatsune miku Louie. I feel like Dewey would show them hatsune miku, and Louie would fall in love with her music

Also, the weapon I used for this

I love these kinds of pens (ФωФ)

[almondpiglet]

ppl were drawing mikus from all over so heres habesha miku and her lil twin sibs rin and len!!

[wardingshout]

Zelda goes mushroom girl

[floccinaucinihilipilificationa]

Hey hey hey may 31th anon! How's 2024 going? ☆ヾ(*´▽｀)ﾉ This year I have for you a leaked Sherlock season 5 image. Thinking of you!! And everyone!!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Happy Birthday to Fallen London; My favourite British people beefing it with bats simulator.

[yakichoufd]

fanart of The Bars, The Parks, The Mansion by Ffrindyddraig <3

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Chat have we discussed drunk chess with cherik cause i just think. That would be the darnedest silliest thing they could do

[parchmentknight]

speedrunning this drawing but im still a day late to hanzo's birthday 😩 but i got so inspired and the original image was just so good:

[themadzarka]

This is unnecessarily dark.

Don't smoke monster dust you guys...

[peridots-pixiwolf]

[Start ID. A redraw of the official icons of the ten named slugcats from Rain World, arranged in two rows: Survivor, Monk, Hunter, Nightcat, and Gourmand in the first, Artificer, Rivulet, Spearmaster, Saint and Enot/Inv in the second. Each is drawn in roughly the same pose as in the original art and fitted with speculative interpretations of their biology, and the second image is a “dead” version of this. For example, all ten have slug-like rhinophores in place of ears, cuttlefish-like colorful eyes with strangely-shaped pupils, cephalopod-like beak "teeth", expressive barbels or oral tentacles at the corners of mouths, spiny radulas, and the frilly mantle fringes of sea slugs, though otherwise their faces are squishy, simple and mammalian-shaped.

Cream-colored Survivor and yellow Monk both share triangular, bicolored spots matching their eyes (which are tan and brown, and two shades of blue, respectively), small, bumpy fringes, and relatively neutral looks on their faces. Defensive-looking Hunter is mostly a dull orange-pink, though their blobby fringe is a more violent red and their back is purple and marred with lumps. Nightcat is navy blue and flecked with dots of yellow and teal, their rolled rhinophores are a lighter blue, and their shading fractures into stars in some places. Gourmand is almost uniformly tan, their wide, very ruffly white mantle fringe bordered by a spray of white spots, and their beak sticks out from either corner of their smile. Primarily red Artificer, snarling, has yellow markings of multiple sorts, a prominent yellow dewlap and their characteristic dark scar taking out a chunk of its face. Rivulet is a darker blue than usual, with long barbels, red gills and rings, countershading, and a cheerful expression, sticking out their radula. Spearmaster is purple with orange accents, eyes and spots, a large fringe and spines down their back. Saint’s green caryophyllidia are marked by small, yellow diamonds, and their long, thin radula extends far below them. Enot is decorated with mottled red stripes, blue patches, yellow stars, and an uneven and almost cartoonish imitation of blush, though generally the same deep blue as Nightcat, a passive or almost slightly smug look on their face and their rolled rhinophores out to either side.

In the second image, nine of the slugcats’ eyes are crossed out, indicating that these are death icons. They look fairly the same, with mostly expression differences. Survivor is caught in the beginning of a threat display, a karma flower sprouts from Monk’s side, Hunter is burdened with overgrowing, purple and blue rot, Nightcat’s rhinophores are pinned back, and Gourmand looks mildly disheartened. For the final row, Artificer bites its radula between small plumes of smoke, Rivulet drops their expression, Spearmaster looks very startled, Saint looks almost entirely the same besides half-open eyes and their markings greater in number, and Enot grins confusedly. End ID]

If you'll excuse the unusually lengthy ID: the arena meme introduced by @pansear-doodles at long last after a nearly year-long wip status (or, rather, finished a month ago today to honor my own first time playing it!)

Design notes and shout-outs under cut! :]

The following people are some of those who’ve inspired my designs most since I started this eight months ago (or just inspired me to get a little weirder with slugcat biology), among many others for sure, and I thank them for it–but this is simply to bring attention to artists I find cool, and in no way an obligation to interact or anything :]

> @saturncoyote , @carpsoup , @charseraph , @gallusgalluss , @bitsbug , @dopscratch , and @0hmanit (and a special mention to dddeerbo and hunterlonglegs, who’ve since deactivated)!

Survivor: Surprisingly the hardest to pin down the colors for, since nothing with its sibling's palette seemed to match up right (I did have to add in a little blue somewhere for Monk, the beginning of making it clear how much I’m simply going based off of vibes for the colors of scug innards). I consider them, Monk and Gourmand to be part of the same gene pool of slugcats, and even possibly the same colony even if the latter isn't really related, so took a bit of Gourmand's coloring and fit them in with their inspiration: Goniobranchus verrieri. They serve as a bit of an introduction to my ideas of scug traits (i find it really fun how many people have thought to add so many silly sluglike fixtures of biology completely independent of me, buuut here I’m mostly talking about species variation), and like in-game they’re pretty average! They, Monk and Hunter have a couple scars sourced from a piece of Joar's concept art that I'm failing to find, those across the bridge of the nose, under the eyes, and across the rhinophores, respectively, and my Survivor interpretation features many on the back of the neck, as a result of survived lizard bites.

Monk: Their coloring is primarily based off the fact that I associate them with blue fruits, honestly, a bit because I was compelled to establish a familiarity with Rivulet, and lastly inspired by the spots of Goniobranchus kuniei (and geminus, less important to me as one of my characters is a kuniei instead, but more fitting). Between the yellow + blue and the circular marking in the center of their face, they’re meant to bear a little resemblance to an iterator that shares similarities with the characterization I’ve given them, and similar coding of her sibling can be seen on Survivor’s markings around the eyes. As both a “default” slugcat and one whose campaign I haven’t played, though, I can’t say I have much more to point out about em.

Hunter: The whole rot thing made for a really fun time drawing them, and while the color change on their back is a result of this, it’s also an excuse to relate them to Babakina festiva, arguably my favorite sea slug (mostly for sentimental purposes). And to Spearmaster, a fellow messenger slugcat, and it serves as a gradient between Hunter’s pink and the “traditional” color of Rot seen in the DLLs. Aside from their affliction, they’d actually be the plainest in terms of design, as they don’t have any patterns or quirks of body type, just the red + purple and strange lumps + possible malnutrition. I can’t remember if NSH had created them in particular or just...caught + released or something, but it probably wouldn’t be strange for a lab-grown slugcat to be simple like that.

Gourmand: Like the two above, they’re rather plain in terms of coloring and adaptation, and like the two above, I find that fun. I decided it would be nice to avert the “all slugcats being of the same body type, and Gourmand’s out of place as the exception” thing by just...adding more fat to all of them, really. I did want to emphasize their sheer bulk even so, both fat and muscular (not like I couldn’t have still gone further with it, of course, but slugcat anatomy can be a little obfuscating sometimes, and they were intended to look rather plush considering personal size headcanons and therefore the lack of proper gravity), and the thick and flounced mantle looked like a good addition, as per their sea slug Glossodoris hikuerensis. Unlike Survivor and Monk, I didn’t attempt to hold their resemblance to any particular other character (which means a little less to balance out the “default gene pool” thing), so those are all the design notes I have for em.

Artificer: The second slugcat I’ve ever played, or finished the campaign of, my favorite for at least a long time, and the first thing I did was give them yellow accents, the shape of which have troubled me slightly (not quite like the spots or stripes of the others). They’re both a little more appealing and more explosive-looking to me, and considering how early on I played Arti, actually present in some of my older art. It does give them a little resemblance to Saint (completely intentional, two slugcats with strange relations to karma), as well as the fact that its radula is green for familiarity with one of its children (at some point it was going to have all-green markings, even!). I’m generous with their scars, partly because it was fun to overemphasize the one on their face and partly because it does seem like a reckless slugcat, on top of the dangers of its explosive abilities–I’ll probably just keep adding more forever. Mostly-red sea slugs aren’t too common, but Hexabranchus sanguineus works for sure. The ridged, yellow dewlap can expand for combustion purposes, or something along those lines. Arti’s where I began experimenting with a lot of the mildly-offkilter features seen in my interpretation of slugcats, as they’ve once again been a favorite from the start.

Rivulet: I've obviously given other slugcats spots, deeply enjoy the bubbly-soda markings of other peoples' slugcats, and thought seal riv would be cute. Despite not too closely resembling it, they've been government-assigned Hypselodoris bennetti, for color reasons and for a couple sentimental ones. Originally, the colors of every scug were meant to match up with the custom colors I gave them at the beginning of their campaigns, (though Arti, Gourm and Spearmy are the only three who actually apply here, since I've only played through half the slugcats: I gave arti the yellow as mentioned above, gourm brown eyes and spearmy light pink spears, furthered by the outskirts pearl accompanying me and that palette all the way to moon. Tolerance training for eternity in hell cause I already knew about the maroon pearl quest). I initially gave them the colors of the bi flag for fun... but with the limited palette of this image, I was left without pink for a while and decided to see how they'd look in red. I then realized how they now wonderfully matched Moon, and besides, red's a sort of camouflage in deep water! As a side-note, the difference between their eyes and those of others always bothered me a little for anatomical purposes, and the cephalopod eyes were probably influenced by this!

Spearmaster: Inspired as much as possible by @notyourfunnyman ’s wonderful spearmy: designed in a way that helps it fit in with scavengers, at least between the long sensory tentacles, big ruff, back spines and slightly thin/distended anatomy, a form of defensive mimicry. I always had annulate rhinophores in mind, for a little diversity sure, but mostly because the shape reminds me of radio antennae and communication towers (seems fitting for the comms array and being a messenger slugcat)! I started searching for a real-life slug to give them just by looking up their rhinophore shape...and was met immediately and coincidentally with annulate-topped nudibranchs that fit them more perfectly than I could've imagined: Flabellina and surrounding clades, I think Paraflabellina ischitana works very nicely. The orange was completely unplanned, but there wasn’t a place for light pink among the other slugcats’ palettes, and importantly it likens them to both Hunter and Seven Red Suns a little more.

Saint: I am very much a non-furred slugcat enjoyer, with respect to those who aren’t, so figuring out the only visibly furred slugcat was an interesting challenge. I’ve decided that they likely have other, milder adaptations for help in the cold, mainly just more efficient fat storage, and what looks vaguely like fur is instead a bunch of tubercles (called caryophillia, for the second reminder out of three). Their inspiration doesn’t have these, however, Miamira sinuata’s numerous yellow and blue spots (not to mention...whatever’s going on with that shape) and general effect of being the only really green nudibranch I could find were probably perfect for a strange green echo. Not pictured, but their beak-teeth are tiny and flat to make a surface for grinding soft food against with the lack of a functioning radula, which is tipped with a specialized spiny “grapple-hook” for better traction/grip (not to mention the numerous little teeth running down the whole thing).

(Best part of hiding this under a readmore means edits will be seen by all reblogs, I'm mostly sure, because I completely forgot to mention! The spots on their forehead are simple eyes. Their camera eyes appear closed in-game, I like to believe their complex eyesight is rather poor anyways or otherwise reason that they aren't seeing out of those, and while this was far from her REASON for attunement with the world, it does help compensate for mainly viewing it through a canvas of simple light and dark. This, and the fact that their swapped-out "fur" is not only to commit to a lack of hairs but contributes to sensory input!)

Nightcat/Enot: I guess you could say I found the “these two are technically the same person” compelling. (E.g. similar colors, both very strange and enigmatic, and Enot/Inv/Sofanthiel’s remark during the dating sim about getting removed from Arena Mode.) I doubt they’re the only two slugcats in their body, considering humans with DID tend to have more than a few (and I find it very funny that a slugcat bearing resemblance to Nightcat appears in Gourmand’s ending. They’re allowed in the colony and Enot isn’t </3), and I have to credit @faelingdraws ’s art for being what convinced me on it! Their design inspirations come down to trying to balance a few different ideas: making the patterns and palettes of both look oddly similar (special mention to the stars, since those are fun to draw), basing them off of Felimare sechurana and juliae respectively, using blocks of color with the same placement as in Enot’s official art, and specifically making Enot look...biologically reasonable and imperfect, whilst also clearly trying to imitate human displays of emotion (what with...the eyes and blush on that one piece of official art).

Lastly, here’s just a lineup with notes on body shape and size. Most of the nicknames (existing to give a little more space, that’s all) are obvious, and while I can’t remember why I shortened Nightcat to Nox, it is in honor of my friend by the same nickname :]