#I’ve also decided to write a dragon au for them

[desmond-the-queer-dragon]

I know nothing about MotoGP but I made this meme from the tea that was fed to me by my best friend @dasmidna

Did I get it right? Did I pass the vibe check?

[amourane]

kick in the right direction

pairing: football player!seungcheol x mascot!reader

genre: fluff, university au

w/c: 0.9k

summary: seungcheol is the star football player in your university but he becomes a bumbling mess in front of you.

warnings: none, you do get hit by a ball though

a/n: i have decided to start writing fics for seventeen too because i just love them way way too much <3 also disclaimer this post used to be under my old url httphannie <3

Seungcheol doesn’t know what to say. He usually has an explanation for his actions. There doesn’t seem to be anything coming to his mind when he sees you on the ground. The problem with being the star player on the football team was the amount of trust his coach put on him. As well as the thought that they needed to win every game, that wasn’t a problem though because Choi Seungcheol was a beast when he was in game mode. His aim was the best on the whole team, he’d never missed a goal. 

Obviously today was an off day.

“You’re staring, Cheol.” Jeonghan gives him a hearty slap on the back. “You really like our school mascot don’t you?” All Seungcheol can do is nod, watching as Seungkwan helps you up.

He really wants to go over and say sorry for nearly knocking you out with his kick but he can’t. Not because he doesn’t want to but because he simply can’t. It’s stupid really. Choi Seungcheol, star player of the football team, can’t say two words when he’s faced with you. He’s tried speaking to you. Once after a game, not the best choice because he’d become so nervous he spilt his water bottle all over you. Even after you told him it was fine he was still stuttering his words. Another time he’d managed to catch you walking down the hallway. The moment you smiled and said ‘hi’ his mind blanked. No words could come out of his mouth and he stood there gaping like a goldfish.

Talking to girls was easy for Seungcheol. He could give them a smile and they’d be fawning all over him. You were different. There isn’t one time he’s had a full conversation with you with nothing embarrassing happening. He’d stumble over his words or nothing would come out of his mouth. The only thing that kept him from giving up was the fact you would grin every time he came up to you and he didn’t like giving up.

“Of course I like her!” Seungcheol runs a hand through his hair. “I just don't know what to do?”

“You could ask her out.”

“I can’t!” 

His friend arches an eyebrow, clearly puzzled. "What do you mean you can't ask her out? Like you're scared, or you don't know how to, because those two are completely different things." Jeonghan's tone is gentle but probing, urging Seungcheol to confront the root of his hesitation.

“That’s not it. I’ve got everything planned out. I know what to say and I know where I want to bring her to. There’s a whole plan in my notebook, it’s coloured in and everything!”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Seungcheol fiddles with the hem of his shirt. “Whenever I go up to her to ask her out my throat closes and I can’t find the right words. Or when I try to even write my confession, my hand freezes and no letters can be written. It’s even worse because I manage to make a fool of myself whenever I’m in front of her!” He kicks the football away.

Jeonghan sighs, staring at Seungcheol as he aimed a perfect kick to the goal. The boy was completely enamoured by you. Practically the whole school knew about his crush on you. Everyone was just waiting for the day the both of you would come in hand in hand. 

//

“Y/n, oh my god! Are you okay?” Seungkwan was shaking you by your shoulders. You rub your head. That football was really hard. Who knew air could hurt you? “How many fingers am I holding up?” He waves three fingers around and your eyes struggle to adjust to his trembling hand.

“Calm down. I just got hit in the head, I don’t have a concussion or anything.” You just know there’s going to be a huge bump on your forehead tomorrow. “It’s partly Stuart’s fault.” You pat the dragon costume you had on. The fuzzy green body was heavy and the long swishy tail at the back was quite annoying to lug around.

"Why are you blaming our mascot? Stuart did nothing wrong," Seungkwan interjects, shooting a pointed glare at Seungcheol. "Star player my ass." He mutters under his breath, clearly unimpressed.

“Hey, don’t blame him. I’m sure it was an accident.” You give Seungcheol a little smile and an ‘okay’ sign to tell him everything was fine. 

“I can’t believe you like that dumbass, he can’t string two sentences together when he’s in front of you.” Seungkwan helps you up, handing you Stuart’s head. You dust off the dirt on your costume. 

What was there not to like about Choi Seungcheol? He was popular, athletic, smart and talented in everything. Not to mention he was the literal definition of eye candy. There hadn’t been many occasions where you two had met. He’d always stutter helplessly or his cheeks would resemble a fire truck, which was very endearing. It was quite funny seeing him stumble over his words whenever he tried to ask you out.

“Why don’t you just ask him out? You already know he likes you, not that he makes it the most obvious thing in the world.” 

“But isn't it just the cutest thing when he tries to ask me out but he’s a stuttering blushing mess?” You giggle when you catch sight of the pout Seungcheol has on his face. “I hope he asks me out soon though, I can’t wait to finally go on a date with him.” 

The smile you shoot at Seungcheol has him tripping over his feet, face planting into the ground. Suppressing your laughter behind your hand, you watch as he hurriedly picks himself up, only to see his teammates rolling on the floor with amusement.

“How long are you even willing to wait?”

“As long as it takes.”

[musicalmoritz]

Funniest headcanons?

Okay wow I have so many crack headcanons so prepare yourself. Take every negative thing I’ve ever said abt fanon and throw it out the window, this is about to get so unserious

• Hanako is a fudanshi. This applies to the whole Toilet Gang (except Nene would be called a fujoshi), they’ve got a little book club. Hanako is the most insane about it tho

• Aoi and Akane are a himejoshi/himedanshi couple

• Lemon and Akane smoke weed together on a regular basis (throw back to the time I looked up “slang words for marijuana” for my Terukaneaoi fic and ended up sounding like Skyler White)

• I feel like an average conversation between the Toilet Gang is the most insufferable, out of pocket middle school humor you’ve ever heard in your life. Those four make South Park look like a kids show

• Akane has a random lock of Aoi’s hair on a shelf in his room

• Since the Minamoto father is absent and the mother is dead, Tiara just kind of assumes Teru and Akane are her parents. Instead of correcting her on this, Akane decides to be the dad who stepped up

• Akane is one of those filmbros who does NOT play abt Pulp Fiction (me) (that’s the second time I’ve mentioned that movie in relation to Akane today)

• He’s also the type to ask you to name three Nirvana songs if he catches you wearing one of their shirts and if you even so much as think about saying Smells Like Teen Spirit, he’ll shoot you in the head

• Hanako is lowkey mad Kou and Mitsuba started dating without him

• In the TBHK universe, Mei is the one who drew the Miku Binder Thomas Jefferson image

• Nene writes reader insert fan fiction

• She’s also a BookTok girlie (not one of the really bad ones, just cringy. As in she would unironically love the book boyfriend audio)

• Sakura is rly into disturbing movies and they make Natsuhiko watch them with them just to make him nauseous

• Hanako and Kou jokingly flirt with each other and it makes Mitsuba and Nene genuinely mad. Like Hanako can ruin Mitsuba’s day with a single “I can take your man”

• Yk that one image of Cheryl Blossom wearing an “I ❤️ Boys” shirt? Teru owns that shirt

• Akane is the type of dude to raise his hand during a class discussion and say “I’d like to play the Devil’s Advocate”

• Aoi flirts with waitresses very poorly and it gives Nene severe secondhand embarrassment

• Once a week, Natsuhiko challenges Teru to a fight. She loses every single time

• Nene has one of those traumatic hamster death stories

• Mitsuba’s hair is dyed so whenever he’s being particularly annoying, Tsukasa tells him his roots are showing

• Kou and Nene have had one of those awkward “I have a crush on someone🤭 And it’s someone you know veryyyy well👀” moments

• Sumire used to climb to the highest places she could find to get Hakubo’s attention, and it gave him a mini heart attack each time

• OG Mei had a fursona. It was a dragon

• Yk in Spongebob when Squidward was confirmed to be the most miserable person in all of the Bikini Bottom?? In the TBHK universe that’s Akane except it’s for all of Japan

• Teru has given the “I’m vengeance, I am the knight” speech while exorcizing supernaturals AT LEAST once

• The Minamotos frequently watch Cinderella together bcuz Tiara is obsessed with it, to the point that it’s become Teru and Kou’s favorite movie as well. Teru drags his friends to watch it with him too but Kou refuses to admit he likes it

• Kou chews with his mouth open

• Mitsuba has cheesy romantic fantasies about Kou the same way Nene does about her crushes (I credit this one to one of my TikTok mutuals @/mads)

• Natsuhiko has an ASMR account (just like they do in the Monster Nursery au)

• Tiara doesn’t quite understand the premise of being gay or coming out so every day she congratulates Kou on being bi

• Kou straight up lies to Tiara about things, it’s an older sibling canon event. Teru does the same to Kou. For example I once told my sister you could dilute chocolate milk into regular milk by pouring water in it. And she believed me.

• Despite the fact that Kou’s been friends with them for many years, Teru regularly forgets Yokoo and Satou’s names

• Aoi and Nene’s mothers have a bet on when the two of them will reveal they’re secretly dating

• Mei is one of those ppl who’s allergic to almost everything. You order a plate of shrimp beside her and before it even hits the table she’s like “Keep that FAR away from me”

• Kako was homophobic until meeting Akane. A “I don’t support that lifestyle” kind of homophobe. Before meeting Akane’s baseball bat

• It’s okay tho he supports his bisexual son now!! He goes to pride parades and everything

• Mirai braids Akane’s hair when she’s bored

• Tsuchigomori has never felt the touch of a man

• If you say one bad word about Teru around Kou, you better be prepared for a full monologue. Stan Twitter wishes they could be as dedicated as Kou (Yokoo: I want to kms / Kou: Wait until the next student council election we can’t lose votes)

• To avoid tarnishing her popular girl image by coming off as rude, whenever Aoi wants to leave a conversation with someone she doesn’t like she pretends to faint

• Mitsuba breaks up with Kou every other day

• When Aoi and Nene are having trouble communicating their feelings verbally, they find a wrestling ring and box their feelings out

• Aoi and Nene apply to every job together, they are a package deal

• Kou is the designated bug killer for the Toilet Gang

• Yako can talk to other foxes. But only foxes, no other animals so the power isn’t all that exciting

• Natsuhiko hasn’t picked up on Mitsuba being gay yet so he keeps offering to set him up with girls

• Sakura has been involved in at least (1) unethical psychology experiment in the past. They administered those shocks for Milgram with a completely straight face

• The hands in Mitsuba’s boundary reflect his feelings so every time Kou comes to visit, they jump around him like overexcited dogs

• Tsukasa had a very intense Alvin and the Chipmunks phase

Okay I have homework that’s due in like 2 hours so I’m gonna have to end it there. I hope my terrible sense of humor amused some of you

[askdacast]

Life Series SMP/Eyes and Ears AU Thematic Discussion + Theorycrafting (pt. 1)

WARNING: Extremely long post

Kachow what’s poppin fellas, I’m back at it again talking about boomer block Youtubers and their surprisingly in-depth improv series. Now that the Life Series’ 5th season has finally concluded, I’m back on the lore train and poor Scar is left to suffer the consequences, and Martyn’s concluded yet another lore stream, I decided to compile a long master post of lore notes and theories about what we have so far.

Obviously all the ‘lore’ of the Life Series is purely unofficial; Grian has not approved any of it as being actually official/set in stone for what he intended the series to be. Most of it has been us in the crazy fandom extrapolating their really good storytelling, and also “semi-canonized” by Martyn in what he calls the Eyes and Ears AU (and this post assumes you are familiar with it). As someone who’s been a fan since the beginning way back in 3rd Life, I’ve pretty much hopped on the lore train since the beginning as well (if casually) and enjoying all the different extrapolations/analysis/angst written around the players. Rather than just theorizing lore details in a vacuum, however, I’ve always liked imagining the lore based around the reoccurring themes, symbolism and arcs we’ve seen across the series. I’d been bouncing my various thoughts and theories around these themes for a while, and finally I decided to compile my notes together.

This post is basically my imagining what the Life Series/Eyes and Ears AU story is “about,” as if it were a fleshed-out, long-running and story-driven tv show. Initially this post started as simply a gigantic “Eyes and Ears Theory,” me trying to sus out my own theories/ideas of what the Life Series’ mysteries were based on Martyn’s lore. However, considering that Martyn is ALSO writing the lore on the fly, and I have some details I would interpret differently or change, this ended up less a ‘theory’ and more ‘me writing an entire AU/interpretation of the Life Series as a whole.’ My intention is NOT to ‘correct’ Martyn’s lore, nor to claim my theory as the ‘right’ interpretation; rather, this is my personal interpretation of what the Life Series story is about, based on information shown in the original SMP and in Martyn’s AU.

One last disclaimer: I am ONLY drawing on lore details from the Life Series, Martyn’s lore streams, and Minecraft EVO, and also references to the iRL creators. I am not drawing on any story from other SMPs such as Pirates or Empires; there may be some Hermitcraft references here and there.

This is going to be very long, and a multi-parter, because I can’t summarize to save my life. And I promise I’ll come up with a proper name for my series of posts another time. If you’ve stuck around to read, I thank you.

Part 1: The Overall Plot + Understanding the Watchers

Recap of official lore details

Although Martyn hasn’t given specific details on the Watcher + Listener species (he hasn’t come up with a name yet), we know the following details for sure (from EVO, lore streams etc.)

Watchers + Listeners + The Council are all deity-like beings of the same species, and they all consume human emotions

The Council are the upper ranks/possibly leaders, whereas the Watchers + Listeners are separate factions

The Watchers are at LEAST two high-ranking members of the species (the two dots being outcast from the wider circle, as is their logo)

The Watchers were behind Minecraft EVO, where they gave all the players tasks (much like Secret Life) and eventually ending in them fighting the Ender Dragon separately

While the Watchers may not have been evil in EVO, they certainly became so AFTER, when they began to crave more negative human emotions, viewing them as “tasty” (Martyn’s words), s p i c y

They first kidnapped Grian at the end of EVO season 1, turning him into a Watcher to possibly have him join their ranks, but he’s gone rogue after realizing what their plans for the Life Series were, and plans to rescue his friends from them

The Life Series was the Watchers’ ploy to trap the players in an infinite death game where they betray and cause each other pain, all to harvest their negative emotions. Grian, in defiance to this, takes control as the ‘game master’ to make the whole thing…well, a game, so that his friends can enjoy, have fun and ease their anguish. In Martyn’s words, this is like “pouring ketchup all over the Watchers’ sundae.”

The Listeners (EVO season 2) are an opposing faction to the Watchers who disagree with their methods, although why is unknown. They’ve attempted to contact some players (e.g. Jimmy) before back in EVO in order to oppose the Watchers, but it’s not known how successful they were. They’ve also tried to swap in players in the Life Series before (e.g. subbing Lizzie and Gem for Pearl and Cleo in Lim. Life) in order to sneak them in and try to subvert the game. The Watchers kidnapping Gem for Secret Life is partially in retaliation to the Listeners. The Listeners may not be good and may have nefarious intentions also, it is as yet still unknown.

There’s potentially a third faction, the Speakers, but very little is known about them and Martyn doesn’t want to elaborate on them yet.

Okay, but what are the Watchers even after?

"Accept your fate."

From here on out is my real conjecturing/theorizing. The main question on my mind has been why are the Watchers doing what they’re doing? Obviously Martyn has confirmed that they are malicious deities who find negative human emotions tasty, but this raises further questions. Why exactly do they desire such emotions, or need them to survive (if they do, anyway)? Why do they favour negativity, when the other members of their species consume a wide range of emotions? They were confirmed to be outcast in some way from the other factions for this ploy, so what does that say about them then?

The whole species fundamentally do not understand human emotions (or perhaps do not even possess them)

This seems to me the most logical conclusion. These are powerful deities who can create miniature worlds/dimensions, life, and time to an extent (death loop). They should theoretically be self-sufficient, so I doubt that their consumption of human emotion is for survivability reasons (i.e. I don’t think Watchers will literally die if they don’t consume emotions, the same way humans die without food). What seems more likely is that human emotions bring them some benefit to their intelligence or power that they’d otherwise be quite non-functional without. (Think like the demons in The Promised Neverland, who regress to feral natures/lack of sapience if they don’t eat humans)

The Watchers’ powers and their lab-rat experimentation on the players gives a huge vibe of not being able to understand human emotions in an involved way, but only from a distance. They know methodically things like murder and betrayal cause panic and anguish, so they enforce these experiences through the game, mechanics like the Boogeyman, the Secret Tasks etc. But they don’t really know internally why these emotions come about the way humans do. Being above time, they probably don’t understand why the funny small animals have so much attachment to their transitory experiences and memories (more on this later).

world's angriest pumpkin

The Watchers are Losers, Actually

Going further, don’t you think the Watchers have a very misanthropic mindset all around? “Anguish and panic are s p i c y.” They conversely have a complete disgust for positive emotions, and can’t stand Grian making things fun for everybody. It almost feels like they have the mindset that only things like hatred and fear are exciting, bringing motivation and life to the humans, whereas things like happiness and fun are ‘useless’ because they don’t bring about the same results. Let’s also not forget their name – Watchers – and that Martyn’s confirmed them to be symbolically based off us, the audience. It’s almost like a commentary of the worst of the entertainment industry, of an audience who crave watching anything and everything to satisfy their own desires, even at the expense of the privacy and safety of the entertainer. Given the current state of the internet and social media, I don’t think I need to elaborate how awful things can get.

In other words, I believe the main motivation the Watchers are eating humans emotions is because they WANT to understand and ‘take into themselves’ such emotions. I don’t think they’re totally emotionless – Martyn does portray them with moments of glee and anger. But their understanding of emotions is superficial (self-centered, if you will) at best. As deities with no needs, being above time, they have nothing to be afraid of and nothing to feel sad or anguished over. It’s a boring, dull and empty existence. And that’s precisely why they’ve set up the Life Series game: by kidnapping a few humans and putting them through the artificially constructed wringer of panic and betrayal, they think they can create a human farm of such rich, complex and exciting emotions, all for themselves to enjoy at their own pleasure and fill the void they have.

(Listeners’ side note: If all that is the philosophy of the Watchers, it’s probably not difficult to see how/why the Listeners oppose them. The Listeners likely disagree that negative emotions are the most optimal state of humans, and unlike the Watchers do not think human suffering is just tasty popcorn one can eat at one’s pleasure. Their name – Listeners – implies they’re a more sympathetic faction, as in they listen to one’s troubles and heart rather than take delight in suffering at a superficial level. But if they are the same species, it’s very likely they have the same lack of instinctive understanding of human emotions that the Watchers do, and this could cause…problems.)

Why turn Grian?

All this is also why I believe the Watchers kidnapped Grian + turned him into a Watcher in the first place. Firstly, if they were going to concoct their plan to trap humans, they needed a collaborator from the humans in the first place. Secondly, and most importantly, this collaborator was going to be their only direct source of how human emotions work/feel like, and therefore what were the most optimal conditions needed to ensure their death game would generate the most pain and anguish. They picked Grian because he’s always the ‘leader’ of the SMP players, the person gathering and organizing everyone, so logically, he is the most ‘representative’ of the humans, and the one with the greatest ability to control them.

Of course, it’s also true that Grian was a little $#@% throughout EVO and actively rebelled against the Watchers’ tasks, so making him their collaborator might seem strange. Ignoring the meta reason that the ending was written to explain Grian’s exit from the series. But I figured in this case, they considered the benefits more than the costs. Grian’s chaotic nature is not unlike the Watchers’, considering how much he loves causing pranks and trouble to others. So, as a huge oversight, they think Grian is just like them: he loves to see people suffer, so they think. Additionally, the Watchers are desperate to understand how Grian gets his fellow humans to follow him and do what he asks with little effort. You’ll notice the Watchers have very direct, authoritative ways of trying to wrest control (e.g. the tasks, “do this or you fail”), and they get very petty and upset when people rebel against them (re: Scott’s refusal to be the Boogeyman, their motto is a very demanding “OUR WILL BE DONE.”) They see Grian’s charisma as yet another aspect of human emotions they fail to understand and thus WANT to possess for themselves.

Pictured above: The Watchers, coping and seething

Of course as we know, the Watchers believing Grian would help them is a major oversight. Becoming a god doesn’t just fundamentally change who Grian is, and he definitely doesn’t want to consign his friends to an infinite death loop of suffering. That being said, I don’t think Grianhas truly gone ‘rogue’ so much as taken as much advantage as possible of his ‘deal’ with the Watchers. We can guess the Watchers promised to him some kind of control/leadership over his friends’ circumstances as long as he worked for them, which led to them giving him the keys to the Life Series. In other words, so long as he fulfils their requirements of things being a death game that will generate ‘food’ for them, and lets them revive everyone each loop, he gets to decide how the games go.

And we know exactly what Grian’s done with this: he created the green-yellow-red lives system, he creates a fun gimmick each season, he inserts himself into the game as a player, all to bring out the best and most creative side of his friends rather than the worst. The Boogeyman probably is the only gimmick the Watchers added on their own initiative (re: Martyn’s POV in Last Life) in order to make things more spicy. Probably Grian’s conversation with the Watchers each time goes, “hey, I got an idea on how to bring out the most creative ways for everyone to cause pain in each other, [comes up with some bullcrap justification for the game’s fun mechanics].” I like to think the Watchers were going to make the death games even more vicious, cruel and competitive, but because of Grian’s wrangling he’s convinced them that a slow burn from joy to horror creates better results, and they tolerate it as long as they see him useful.

Memories and Emotions

There is also one BIG detail of the Watchers’ plan I’d like to mention: Martyn claims that the Watchers do NOT erase the players’ memories. At the end of each season, they consume everyone’s emotions so that there’s no more angst/ill will towards each other, and they start each season afresh. The players remember what’s happened in past seasons, but they don’t continue to hold the pain and negative feelings they had towards each other.

I don’t buy this, for numerous reasons.

For one, Martyn has confirmed the Watchers ARE capable of removing people’s memories. The one memory they have outright altered was the ex-EVO players’ (Martyn, Jimmy, BigB etc.) memory of what happened to Grian: they don’t remember that Grian was taken to be turned into a Watcher, and instead remember it as him either going missing or dying after the Ender Dragon fight. All this presumably to not give away the Watchers’ schemes and to ensure they still listen to Grian as if nothing ever happened.

More importantly, however, memories are vital to humanity’s emotional experience and mental health. I am not an expert by any means, but there are studies showing how people with amnesia, PTSD or other conditions affecting memories have flashbacks/emotional reactions to trauma they don’t remember consciously. The Watchers have (supposedly) done something far more simplistic yet fantastic by just eating up everybody’s emotions. All this, even though they see humans as emotion factories, constantly able to generate emotions just by existing, by their ability to draw and create meaning through emotional experiences, and by creating memories – the clearest embodiment of a mortal’s attachment to time (which if you remember, I believe the Watchers have no concept of).

You cannot just tell a human to stop feelingcompletely (under normal circumstances anyway), but especially not if they remember something very very traumatic.

Besides, there ARE clear instances when some of the players remember the events of past seasons and are STILL not over them! Impulse and Tango still being bitter/distrustful after Bdubs betrayed each of them separately, Cleo distrusting BigB for the same reason, Scott referencing Flower Husbands a lot, Pearl feeling betrayed by Cleo/Scott when they supposedly broke up the Gaslight/Gatekeep/Girlboss trio at the start of DL, Bdubs’ “I wanna be your favorite son” in Secret Life, the list goes on. Note that I’ve only listed negative/bittersweet instances; there are plenty more cases of the players remembering past seasons and alliances positively which the Watchers may have ignored. The point is, if the Watchers truly consumed everyone’s emotions to the point of a clean slate, they haven’t exactly been thorough. Nor do I think it’s very conducive for them either – don’t they want players to have enduring, unending, unresolved pain, the sweetest of all (to them)?

No, I think the Watchers HAVE been erasing/suppressing the players’ memories – they’ve just been very selective which ones. Martyn’s said that the Watchers do not care what families or connections they separate so long as they get the people they want and the plans they want. I’m going to assume the players in my theory/the Eyes and Ears AU are exactly the same as their CC counterparts. In other words: they’ve stolen Grian away from his wife. They stole Martyn away from his and his daughter. Ditto with Skizz, Impulse, Tango etc. They stole Scar away from his family. Joel and Lizzie are the only couple they didn’t separate, perhaps because they needed both for their plans, and also so they can inflict the most torture on them by ripping them away from each other, over and over again. And in order to ensure the complete submissiveness of the players to the game, the Watchers have taken away their memories of their past lives, their families, basically anyone who isn’t a fellow player in the game. The Watchers don’t erase the memories of bonds between seasons, because it’s a pain to have to teach the humans how to play all over again, but they erase any memories they find disadvantageous to keeping the game running.

They might even go one step further: while they haven’t erased the players’ memories of who each other are (so as to not cause confusion), they do try to suppress important memories. Things like how they met, the times they confided in each other after a bad day, cried on each other’s shoulder, laughed in each other’s successes, the times they hung out with each other’s families. Imagine the different alliances constantly gravitating to each other, but never being able to remember why they care about each other so much. Imagine Bdubs’ “Come on, you know you and I go way back!” when trying to justify taking Cleo’s stuff, and Cleo laughs back, even though she can’t quite remember what exactly Bdubs has done to warrant that. Imagine Joel or Lizzie trying to remember why they loved each other so much.

They fight and kill some of their friends, and protect others, because…because why again? It’s for survival value, surely, so the Watchers whisper. It’s because the strong must congregate with the strong and leave the weak to die, surely. It’s because Martyn’s always been a loner, and always will be, and should remain so. So they tell him. So they whisper, this is a deathmatch for a reason.

Grian’s Fundamental Rebellion

I think all this is the real reason Grian is rebelling against the Watchers. The most immediate reason is obvious: he wants to free his friends from this death loop. But the deeper reason as to why he’s rebelled is that the Watchers are torturing and robbing his friends of their humanity. They’re taking a tight-knit group of friends who love and would do anything for each other, and turning them against each other in a cruel and unescapable death game. On TOP of this, the Watchers have constantly messed with their heads in order to make them obedient and submissive to their schemes and the worst of their human nature, trapping them in fear, pettiness and paranoia. Of course Grian is upset. Of course he wants to save them from this fate. It’s an insult to who he knows these people to be.

This all leaves Grian in a pretty precarious position. While outwardly the Watchers want to make him a lackey as the “game master”, both he and they know he really wants to save his friends (they probably see it as their ‘cattle’ showing a bit of resistance, which once again they need to suppress). And while on one hand he’s making the games fun to ease his friends’ pain and bring the best out of them, this is just a hotfix rather than a real solution. In order to really rescue the players, Grian’s got to get them to rebel against the Watchers as well. Refuse to play by the rules, by the expectation that they must murder and kill without mercy, without any attachment to their alliances or past friendships. Make everyone like Scott refusing to be the Boogeyman, or Skizz constantly trying to be wholesome (until the bloodlust gets the better of him anyway).

Ironically in order to achieve this, Grian’s best bet is to try to jog everyone’s lost memories of each other and the things they lost, both good and bad. But ultimately, this is going to make them (in the short term) suffer more. This is where you can insert all your Desert Duo/Flower Husband/whatever alliance you like most angst. But more practically, I like to imagine when “the cameras” are not watching, when Grian knows no one will notice or catch him, he sneaks around to the different alliances, even the ones he’s not part of, to ask them how they’re doing, if they remember anything from the past etc. (in a meta sense, the players edit and cut stuff from their videos all the time; who’s to say he isn’t trying to catch a quick chat while everyone’s mining?!) It also reflects in why Grian is constantly trying to make alliances with different people instead of just gravitate to one person, he needs to check on everyone and capitalize on every single opportunity. (besides the meta reason, being that cc!Grian wants to be creative, and sticking to the same person all the time isn’t very entertaining from a content creator perspective)

One last detail about the winners: I don’t have much to say about the fragments yet, because Martyn (sneaky boi) hasn’t yet revealed the significance of the fragments nor of their healing, although he has hinted Bad Things™ will happen if a player gets too fragmented. But I do think the winners are important: with the game finished, they give Grian a very short window of time to talk to one person directly, without Watcher interference. They’re always the last to be killed/swept away/revived by the Watchers, and I can imagine there’s a brief period of time when their souls are being transferred to The Void w/e where Grian can step in and interfere. In my theory, Grian passes on some sort of clue/push to the winners, as like a subtle message about what they can do to stand up to the Watchers. I’ll detail on what I think these individual messages were in part 2. Needless to say, 3rd Life was a traumatic experience for Grian for many reasons, but the nail in the coffin was the fact that he won, and therefore there was no way for him to pass a message onto anyone.

Conclusion

Hooooooo jeepers that was long @A@; Thank you so much for your patience reading this if you made it to the end, I really appreciate it. As I said, I’ve had these lore ideas bouncing in my head for a LONG time, and with the end of Secret Life I couldn’t get out of my head the different trends/symbolism that was popping out of an improv series. It honestly speaks a lot to how genius our favorite block dudes are at improv, that they can turn their improv nonsense into a coherent narrative. I really wanted to try my hand at fleshing out such a narrative, and with Martyn constantly drip-feeding lore to the fans, I had more than enough material to not just put out guesses but construct something a full XYZ. As I mentioned, I enjoy workshopping themes and characters a LOT more than just worldbuilding or “what if this or that” details in a vacuum, hence why I’ve written all that I have, so this was a fun exercise for me all around!

Next time in part 2 I talk about Character Development™, or character specific notes and details I’ve noticed and extrapolated from what we’ve seen of each individual player, as well as what their different arcs across the seasons mean for them within the lore. Stay tuned for another wordbarf!

Bonus list of works I was inspired by for this loredump:

Log Horizon

The Promised Neverland

Danganronpa (ironic as I’m not really a fan of this franchise, but the first game has an otherwise solid premise which I found really similar to the Life Series)

The Fate franchise (when Martyn asked “what’s Fate?” on the latest lore stream, let me tell you I couldn’t stop laughing; NO MARTYN DON’T GO INTO THE WEEB RABBIT HOLE)

Various amazing animatics from the Traffic fandom: Earth, Bang!, most of Melloz Heist’s works, and of course all the amazing fanart

Way too many conversations with my friends about fantasy species

[fair-city-reporter]

Completely Useless Wordgirl AU’s

Hi, so I’m bored and maybe just a tad stressed from a job interview tomorrow lol, so I decided to write up some more Wordgirl au’s - only with very little information explained and I’ll talk about them later! Also I have some meta I want to do, but that will also come back at another point. Anyway,

The Wordgirl Appreciation Page using Alternate Universes;

Boku No Hero Wordgirl AU: A BNHA/Wordgirl AU ft. Becky as a UA student - Fair City gets quirks? I’ve yet to fully delve into it. Also I just had the thought of her meeting Class 1a even though that’s technically a crossover /lh but shhhh

The Owl House x Wordgirl AU: Becky ends up in the Boiling Isles and meets a witch by the name of Victoria Best. Shenanigans ensue. Ft. Violet as Willow and Scoops as Gus

Beauty and the Beast AU: ToBecky, of course! I don’t think I have to explain who is who lmao

Pokemon AU: Trainer Becky is on her way to become a gym leader but of course, she and her friends run into trouble on the way

(This one’s a joke, sort of-) Centaurworld AU: why? Why did I create this monstrosity? Anyway, Becky would be a really fun -taur and let’s be so fucking for real, I could get silly with this. Becky would technically be Horse-

How to Train Your Dragon AU: dragon Becky dragon Becky dragon Becky (alternatively, Tobey as Hiccup, Becky as Astrid, and shenanigans ensue. What could possibly go wrong?)

More chaotic alternate universes under the cut! Speedrun edition;

Spy Kids AU

Miraculous Ladybug AU

A Whisker Away AU??

Big Hero 6 AU (only it’s a crossover but shhhh-)

Arthurian/Medieval Fantasy AU

The Sailor Moon AU I’m brainrotting over

Okay, I’ve talked enough about AU’s right now

Please keep in mind right now my full attention is on Whumptober at the moment! Although I’ve got mild writer’s block so we’ll see how this goes but don’t worry lol- I’ll come back to these at some point. I need to stop. Also I’ve got another mini fixation taking space in my noggin’ right now! Sorry about this being a little awkward, it’s late-ish

[everlasting-rainfall]

ON MY KNEES BEGGING FOR YANDERE KAIDOU

Whoa, whoa, whoa!! Chill, chill!! There’s no need to yell, dear!! I get that you want Yandere Kaidou but there’s no need for shouting like that, I can hear you just fine

Also get up off of your knees for goodness sakes, I haven’t cleaned the floor in like two weeks and I don’t want your nice pants getting dirt all over them, ok?

All jokes aside though, sorry it took me so long to do Yandere Kaidou as the last time that someone requested him. It was a minor who I deleted the ask of and blocked only to get an Anon ask like five minutes later about Kaidou which I also deleted as I’m pretty sure that was them

So I’ve been reluctant to do Kaidou asks but since I’m pretty sure that you aren’t that minor then I’ll take on your request but since you also didn’t specify anything then I’m going to do my One Piece Crossing AU

I sincerely hope you don’t mind! Now let’s get into it!

!-MINORS DO NOT INTERACT AT ALL-!

!-POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNINGS-!

Obsessive Behaviors, Stalking, Unhealthy Relationships, Kidnapping, Isolation, Violence, Somnophilia, Leg Breaking, Writing Possibly Reminiscent of Old Creepypasta

!-POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNINGS-!

!-MINORS DO NOT INTERACT AT ALL-!

So imagine that you’re the next poor soul to find the One Piece Crossing game like let’s say that it just popped up in your mailbox or something so you weren’t gonna turn down a free game

You opened it up and customized your character to your liking before choosing Pirates over Marines which took you to the screen where you could randomize your starting villagers eventually winding up with Kaido and King

After having turned on Immersive Interactions, Kaido immediately seemed like the one who was more interested in you when you started playing as he was rather big and menacing but he seemed alright to an extent even if he was just following you around the map of your town for the most part like he had nothing better to do

As you continued to play the game though, more villagers like Queen, Jack, and even a pair of siblings named Ulti and Page One started moving into the town

They didn’t bother you that much as they mostly went about their days with the most that they did telling you that Kaido was looking for you, that something you placed down was inconvenient or needed to be moved, or asking if you’ve eaten today as you look a little pale to them

Typically the response to the last one being “No” was just dragging you off to Kaido’s house leading to you and him sitting down together at a table where he would typically guzzle down a giant bottle of alcohol while he had your character be brought all sorts of foods to eat

It was during these moments that the two of you would talk quite a bit like this was how you found out that he had the power to turn into a dragon and also that he had a son but you weren’t able to find out much else about said son other than that he hated him

You even found out that you could even ask him questions too by typing them in so you got pretty curious and started asking a bunch of questions usually getting a short response or even just a grunt as an answer occasionally

Finally for shits and giggles, you decided to ask him who his ideal partner was which seemed to get his attention as he looked at your character and described you like not your character but the you outside of the game

That was honestly pretty creepy but you just chalked it up to not being too serious like “Oh! Dialogue tree must have just picked those options…” and you continued through the game like normal, you played it almost every day and would just relax as you decorated your island and did other things like hung out with your villagers or tried to see what sort of things you could do

Eventually life started getting busy and you found yourself putting the game down for a while as there simply wasn’t enough time to invest into playing it, you were gone for an entire month before you picked the game back up

It was late and you were sitting in your pajamas on your bed, you turned your system on and watched as the screen flickered to life. You loaded your save file and things seemed normal at first, your character was just laying in bed sleeping quite soundly despite their bed head.

But things looked different like someone had completely redecorated while you were gone and you got hit with a notification telling you that things had changed while you were away, Kaido took up control of the island while you were sleeping and not only that but you were in a relationship now too with him

That was a shock but it explained the much bigger bed and the different interior, Kaido must have moved in but when you pressed a button to go to the next notification

“Kaido has spent quality alone time with you while you’ve been asleep, Nine Times”

This notification was odd to say the say the least as you weren’t sure what it could possibly mean by Quality Alone Time like did it mean that he just spent time with you while you were asleep? Clearly it meant something romantic as the box the text was on was pink with hearts around it

Other notifications simply told you all about what happened on the island in your absence like the villagers moved your decorations around figuring that you wouldn’t mind, the island was visited by other characters a certain number of times, and that Kaido had renamed Onigashima for some reason

Once they had finished, you were finally able to get out of bed and decided to see what was going on. It was pretty late in game so not many things were going on, you were able to explore and found that so many things had been changed by the villagers but none of it looked bad and a lot of it looked really nice despite the change in aesthetic that you were trying to go for

As you wandered though, something came through your system speakers and it sounded like some kind of shout. It was loud but what really chilled you to the bone was that the shout was of your real life name

You tried to turn off the console but the button refused to be pushed down like something was preventing it from being pushed, the screen even began to glitch a little bit and the console sparked you to drop it but as soon as it hit the bed. A light shine out from it and you suddenly felt a powerful shock go through your system that almost made you want to scream

When the light came back, you noticed the shift in temperature before anything else and then you noticed that you were outside but in the same exact place that your character had been standing. You were even wearing the same clothes as them

It seemed like a horrible nightmare and you tried to wake yourself up thinking that it was one until you suddenly felt yourself being snatched off of the ground by none other than Kaido himself

He was far bigger than his model had made him out to be and he looked terrifying but oddly happy to see you, he asked why you had left the house like you needed his permission to do so and when you didn’t answer out of shock. He simply carried you back there, he took you inside and put you right back on the bed that your character had woken up on

He told you that since you were his spouse now, he wasn’t going to tolerate anything like this and that you needed to ask him before you even stepped foot out of the house

But since you had, he wasn’t going to simply let you get away with this without punishment but he wasn’t going to hurt you. He always did wonder what intimacy would feel like with you being awake after all

Let’s just say that you wound up finding out what quality alone time meant in the notifications…

The seasons passed by with the leaves changing on the trees, you stayed trapped inside of what was now yours and Kaido’s shared home. He barely let you outside and if it was then it was only for short periods of time and even then, no one except the villagers that he trusted the most were allowed to interact with you

You honestly hoped that there would be some way out of this but Kaido had smashed the phone that allowed you to turn on Immersive Interactions in the first place to pieces so there was no hope that you would be able to escape by turning off Immersive Interactions

There was one point in time where you attempted to make a break for it and escape him by simply getting off the island but let me tell you that it was a horrible, horrible idea for you to do that as even though if you managed to get off of Onigashima then you would soon find a giant blue dragon flying after whatever vessel had been unfortunate enough to have you

He dragged you home but there was no quality alone time waiting for this time as a punishment, he was going to make sure that you wouldn’t be able to run or even walk or stand for a very long time

It was that day that he broke both of your legs in order to teach you a lesson and ensure that you couldn’t escape for a very long time…

He was nice enough to allow you at least full range of the house in a wheelchair after a while but as the days continued to pass by with your legs in casts and no sign of escape anywhere in sight especially with Kaido by your side

You knew that you were never escaping him and that you wished sincere mercy upon the poor soul who would find the game next if they should turn on Immersive Interactions just like you had…

Lord knows that they would wind up as a prisoner just like you had with your new “loving” husband…

[theresademoninyouroven]

I heard about the Slay the Princess AU you’re making, I’m so curious, I’ve been having so many issues trying to find fandom works of it and I’m so curious what people are thinking up!

Thank you for your question!

Answer under the read more for spoilers for The Pristine Cut!

Now, this is a very new development, so I don’t have too much solidly set. However! I do have the groundwork laid out, I believe.

This is an alternate path to the ‘The Princess and The Dragon’ route. It remains the same up until the player gets booted back into their body and decide to cut The Princess’ arm off by themself. When they get shunted back into The Princess’ body, they anticipate Opportunist attacking and catch their original body off-guard and use the opportunity (hah) to escape.

If I had to give a Narrator description to it:

Is— is that one gone now? Hm... good. That one seemed to be… unhelpful, in your goal to slay the princess.

(Voices™️ arguing I’m not good enough to write that out)

But before you can decide to sink your blade into the Princess’ heart, her eyes suddenly lock onto you. They’re… different. With a beady shine they didn’t have before. She lunges forward, using her free hand to strike the hand you’re carrying the knife with. It’s sent out of your hand, flung into the corner of the room with a loud clatter.

(Voices™️ Surprise)

A sickening crack fills the room as the Princess fully breaks away from her severed limb. And then she darts under your right side, scrambling across the stone floor. She’s up the stairs in an instant, practically on all fours— or, threes— and you hear the sound of a door being opened and then slammed shut.

You hear the sound again, this time quieter, more muffled.

~~~

And, if it had a canon end, the two would run out into the abyss and they’d be painfully parted as this vessel is collected. A voice remains undeveloped, as is re-subsumed into their body, to their dismay.

However, in my canon divergence- whatever-hoohah, when the two escape, (???) and then they’re free, running off into the woods to escape a presumed-chasing birdman-thing.

Snippet from writing I’m working on:

You’re deep within the woods. Your hands grip your ripped dress, keeping it from further wear by snagging on the underbrush. Your legs ache with how long you’ve been running.

You slow down.

(She sounds out of breath) ‘We’ve… traveled quite far… It should be safe to take a break… I think.’

(Explore) Are you sure? What if they’re chasing us?

‘I don’t know… I hope not. But even if they are, we shouldn’t waste all our energy at once… I’d hate to collapse and have them find us like that.’

That’s… true. I suppose we can rest a bit.

‘Thank you.’

You come to a stop. As you catch your breath, you take in the surroundings. The wind rustles through the leaves of the trees. Said leaves are beginning to decay, bearing specks of discoloration. The air isn’t warm, but it’s not as cold as the basement.

‘This… is nice. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to see what’s outside of the basement… much less what we’ve seen.’

~~~~

This is based on the nice princess, and would have different dialogue if the player got the harsh princess instead.

That’s what I’ve got at the moment, although the idea is rapidly developing in my head! I’m away from my computer at the moment, so I’m unable to draw anything for it currently. I’m happy to answer questions about it, if anyone has any! Especially since this is also a ‘Accidental creation of a 12th voice’ AU.

[lavender-not-fruit43]

Random(and dumb)facts about my tsot Bradenny au bcs I’ve got nothing to do today

I decided to make already an another au of it bcs drawing them isn’t enough I MUST TALK ABOUT THEM

- Bradley made his own kingdom while Kyle and Eric still having conflicts with each other because he tried to make them friends to stop the conflicts but he failed anyway

-Kevin Stoley has the kingdom but he wasn’t in Kyle’s nor Eric’s side because his kingdom and Kevin himself is more interested in astrology and also best friends with Bradley

-Red McArthur(dragon slayer) hates Princess Kenny because of how she flirts with Bradley a lot

-Dougie is Paladin Butters partner(and also an adopted brother)

-Butters,Bradley(from cartman sucks)and Charlotte are besties

-Bradley Biggle helps poor people and also likes growing his garden full of berries(even though he was a loser in other kingdoms except Kevin’s)

-Princess Kenny flirts with him a lot because he was hated by elf kingdom and kupa keep and wasn’t like the others because later on she just got him known better after like month

-Clyde is still Lord of Darkness but now together with Scott Malkison

-Kyle and Eric don’t want Bradley and Kenny to date nor marry each other just only cause they had a big hatred for each other

-Kelly,Tammy and Princess Kenny are besties too

I’m like not good at writing but I tried 😭😭

It just the only things that popped off my head from it-

[aimportantdragoncollector]

Three Weeks of Trioholders Winners!

I’ve been thrilled by the amazing flood of content for my event. Now I’m proud to announce the winners! This will only be the first round of prizes. As a reminder, I extended Three Weeks of Trioholders for a bonus round from Monday November 21 to Sunday November 26, 2023. The details are here. However, I’m not going to make the people who submitted early wait any longer to collect their prizes. It was extremely difficult for me to pick the winners, and I had some very very close decisions. I loved every single entry.

First Place Winners in Writing and Art:

@missremember takes first in writing for [LISTEN], an amazing fic in the form of the Second One for All holder’s old recordings. I both laughed and cried!

For art, I just couldn’t decide on just one winner because the competition was too steep. Therefore I’m awarding a tie for first place in art.

@suugiart did an entire animation for the duoholders. I’ve watched it three times already. Words cannot describe my emotions so I will settle for WHOA.

@fanfictiongremlinao3 blew me away with this gorgeous trioholders piece. The shading is beautiful. I love seeing Yoichi so happy after his tragic past.

Second Place Winners in Writing and Art:

Nana’s Guide To Ending 200 Years of Pining by @samthehyena had me clutching my sides laughing at the oblivious pining trio.

@stealthsuitdeku made me laugh so hard with this drawing of All for One’s reaction to his brother eloping. If only Yoichi had tried this in canon, he might have given his brother a heart attack. I also think it’s a hilarious Dad for One-compliant detail that apparently All for One has laser eyes to match Izuku’s tear attacks.

Writing Honorable Mentions:

For @chaosverse-mainblog who wrote an entire collection for Three Weeks of Trioholders, my greatest challenge was deciding which one to award a prize to. In the end I picked A Foxes Love because it hit all my favorite tropes of kitsunes, Second and Yoichi being cute together, and All for One being a creep.

@teriiphelia for Innocent Accomplice which has my adored gender-swapped Second and Dad Yoichi.

@breeze-tells-tales for heart, don't fail me now because I love Anastasia AUs so much, and cute trioholders interaction.

Art Honorable Mentions:

I had a really hard pick between the two submissions by @thebnha-auhoard but in the end The Dragon and his Vampire won my heart. Just look at those beautiful wings, horns, and teeth!

@palebonedry this made me gasp out loud, the bloody colors are haunting. I’m fascinating by this AU and Nyavka Yoichi and All for One. If you want I’ll write the AU for your prize! (Or pick anything you’d like, it’s your prompt.)

@gracelyn33 this art perfectly captures the tragedy of the duo holders. I adore how you shaded the light across their faces.

@whensaturnfalls how pretty, I love Sleeping Beauty AUs.

@unknownreservations you drew too much good art and made it very hard for me to decide which one I wanted to pick for a prize. But in the end I picked this one because I loved the expressions on their faces. It’s obvious how much Second and Third adore Yoichi.

@azzabynes these three are adorable and I love how you made them dance.

@chaosverse-mainblog the one and only entry for the newly named Vault Breakers ship (Second/Third) is worthy of its own honorable mention. I adore the blushes on their faces so much.

Prizes:

First place in both art and writing will receive a fic of a minimum of 3,000 words from me (Katydid on Ao3) based on a prompt of your choice. Second place in both art and writing will receive a fic of a minimum of 1,500 words from me. Honorable mentions will be given at least a snippet based on your prompt (hopefully they don’t all get long like last year.) You can contact me to receive your prize here on tumblr, or on discord where I am katydid1. I’m setting a deadline of December 31, 2023 to claim your prize. I reserve the right to ask for a different request. And please be patient since I gave out quite a few prizes for this contest.

I enjoy writing prompts and I’m excited to receive your ideas. It’s been a blast to host this event.

[ghostwoodsketches]

Nine of my OC’s! I had a lot of fun drawing them all and enjoyed playing around with their designs. 

Very basic character info: 

Tate: my dnd tabaxi rogue gardener who has nearly died to several gelatinous cubes, and has adopted many children—including a talking borzoi named Anthony who is a dog-war veteran who loves cupcakes. Tate has been married twice, and can be described as a middle aged Goblincore clown dad with too many kids. His grandfather is also a chicken named Albert! 

Socks: another dnd tabaxi rogue, because that’s all I can play. She’s tates older sister who grew up on a ship at sea after she left the tabaxi kingdom because, well, why not? She’s my asexual sapphic pirate who has committed multiple war crimes and currently has her own tiny “kingdom” (a town) all consisting of sentient, life-sized ants. Don’t ask… 

Faenala: one of my dragons from the now deactivated game School Of Dragons, based off of the httyd universe where you play a side character who spends their time collecting items and eggs, following the occasional dramatic storyline. I made stories about the characters i made in the game. So Faenala is a Silver Fury who grew up on a small island called Valhallas Hollow, which is inhabited by a shitton of terrible terrors. She’s very sneaky, and grew up around these terrible terrors who she would hunt for and protect. 

NightCanvas: I made his design in a random nightlight dragon batch I was drawing towards the end of July, and liked how he turned out so much that he’s turned into one of my OC’s! He and his sister Pearl tend to travel from seastack to seastack in search of a place to call home. He’s very protective, playful, and has a tendency to dive head first into danger. 

Oscar: is one of the OC’s I’ve drawn the most lately! He’s part of my continued Nightlight Family AU for httyd, and is Toothless’s grandson. He was seperated from his dad, Pouncer, at a young age and has spent most of his time trying to teach himself to live on his own. He’s terrified of everything,  is very skittish and sweet. 

Miks: I’ve been a huge fan of the ps4/5 game Stray since it came out a year ago, and recently decided to make my own StraySona character! I’ve created what his side quest, dialogue, and minor interactions would be like! 

Kallias: She’s one of the main characters in a novel I’ve been writing, which sounds absolutely batshit and weird if I try to explain it. In summary, she’s a genderqueer sapphic whos obsessed with Cryptids.She’s in love with her friend, Daisy. Kallias works at an arcade and has a problem of waking up in different short horror stories every night, only to wake up covered in blood. As you can guess, this makes a relationship difficult. 

CreatureFall: one of my dark forest warrior cat OC’s from clangen, he’s in a bunch of stories that take place after they’ve gone to the DarkForest. He’s the definition of a himbo, and spends his time giving out therapy sessions to the murderers of cat hell.

FennelBones: born in cat hell, he’s a very charismatic disaster who is constantly trying to make friends with the wrong people, which lands him in a lot of trouble. He’s the son of my favourite warriors oc, FleaThistle, and his cottagecore husband FadingStar (who belongs to @liberhoe) 

taglist: @residents-of-the-darkforest @ambitiousauthor @chaos-n-bees @starfalcon555 @elementaldeityoffood)

[itspronouncedjulia]

I have another question for you in regards to the laena!lives au you are going to write (please forgive me I’m just so excited). I was wondering if you were willing to share any ideas you have, namely what you decide you’re going to name laena’s baby. I know the post says daemion, but I’d honestly think that aemon would make more sense given the fact that rhaenys’ father was named aemon (unless you have another name in mind or like daemion better, it’s your story after all!) i was also wondering if you had a planned outline for it or if you’re going to have the dragon twins be actual twins like in the canon of the book or for them to not be twins like they are in the show? Anyway, I’d love to hear your ideas! I’m sorry if I’m being annoying, I’m just nosy/curious by nature 😭

(Again, no rush, I really hope I don’t come off that way <3 please take your time when writing/uploading this fic. I love your dragon dreams fic too!)

Good morning @laelinc! I’d be happy to share the ideas I have for he Laena!lives AU but admittedly they aren’t a lot at the moment.

So for the baby I haven’t decided the name yet. Namely because I’m debating if I want to stick to the original idea of them being a baby boy or switch the gender to a little girl. I do like the name Aemon though if I do keep the baby a boy.

Currently don’t have an outline. What I’m going to do is wrap up Dragon Dreams first and then start properly outling everything and getting the ball rolling.

As for the dragon twins I intended for them to stay twins like in the story! I’m most excited to write them. Honestly I have been feeling like I missed an opportunity to put them in Dragon Dreams as Visenya and Aenar’s older sisters but if I had them in the story my little Visenya wouldn’t be the heir to the heir so it all works out!

I’ve had a few other ideas. Mainly I’m debating where everyone is when Viserys dies. I’m torn because I feel like Laena would understand the importance of Rhaenyra being in King’s Landing as the heir to the throne and would encourage her to stay. I feel like Laena sees the coup coming a mile away if they aren’t there.

On the other hand I could see Laena not wanting to be there either. Especially because it would be easier for her and Rhaenyra to carry out their relationship on Dragonstone…

I also think if Rhaenyra is in the capital when Viserys dies and has been for years unlike in the show that makes it really hard and really stupid for the Greens to attempt to usurp her.

So I’m not sure yet 😅

And along that same vein I’m also debating which dragon Aemond will eventually claim. He’s going to have to have a dragon. With Laena still alive and the rider of Vhagar and Rhaena now the rider of Caraxes it would make a very brief conflict if the Greens only have three dragons. Really two with Sunfyre and Tessarion because I can’t imagine Helaena fighting.

I was also debating that perhaps the Greens are the ones who recruit the Dragonseeds.

But that’s pretty much all the ideas I have so far! I’m super excited for the story. I think it’s going to be fun to write. I really appreciate @silver-dragonborn giving me permission to run with the idea.

(Also I’m glad you’re enjoying Dragon Dreams as well it’s currently my favorite story I have going ❤️)

[lavenderstobins]

who's who in the dragon age au?????

Bear with, this might get long, so I’ll try and break it down by game.

Dragon Age: Origins

Chrissy is the Warden / the Hero of Ferelden, recruited by senior Grey Warden Ser Robert Buckley. I haven’t yet decided her class. Jason had been one of the recruits too but he either didn’t survive the Joining or was killed when trying to back out of it.

Jeff is the other Grey Warden, essentially filling Alistair’s role. Haven’t yet decided whether to incorporate more of Alistair’s plot for him yet! He’s a warrior.

Eddie and Wayne live in the Wilds. Eddie fills Morrigan’s role initially, with Wayne able to save Chrissy and Jeff at Ostagar—not as Flemeth, but as a passerby. Eddie’s a mage!

Nancy fills Leliana’s role. She’s a former chantry sister and a bard. She and Mike are fleeing from Lothering when they meet the trio. Nancy’s a rogue, Mike is a warrior.

Freak joins them at Redcliffe, where Jeff was raised. I’m thinking Freak is a warrior.

Gareth is a Crow (assassin) sent by Brenner to take out Chrissy. Nancy takes him out with ease and he offers to join them on their journey. He’s a rogue.

Barb also lived in Lothering, but she died in the darkspawn attack. She’d been a chantry sister same as Nancy.

Chrissy makes the ultimate sacrifice in order to end the Blight, leaving Jeff as the only Ferelden Grey Warden. He’s the one who goes to find the cure. The group separate after Chrissy’s death, which brings us to:

Dragon Age 2

Steve and Robin are both simultaneously Varric and Hawke. Steve finds his passion in storytelling and writes about their adventures and Robin ends up with the title Champion of Kirkwall. Steve’s the one with the family estate, Robin’s the one with the blood connection to seal away Henry Creel.

Vickie fills the role of the surviving twin, having escaped Lothering with Robin back when the Blight broke out. She contracts the Taint during the Deep Roads expedition and is saved by Jeff and recruited to be a Grey Warden.

Tommy and Carol fill Bartrand’s role, being behind the Deep Roads expedition. Tommy finds the lyrium idol and it eventually drives him mad, which prompts Carol to seek Steve and Robin out years later (after she and Tommy had abandoned them in the Deep Roads prior).

The Byers run the Darktown clinic. Will’s the apostate healer, with Jonathan and Joyce running the clinic with him and keeping him secret.

Max stole a Qunari relic and is trapped in Kirkwall, just like Isabela.

Lucas and Erica are two rogues who live in Kirkwall, friends with the Byers. Dustin’s also friends with them and has far too much of an interest in runes and magic despite not being a mage.

El’s a former circle mage, now apostate, who escaped the circle with the help of a Templar named Benny. Lucas, Erica, Dustin and El imprint on Steve and Robin like ducklings; I think they’d be getting into trouble in the city and Steve & Robin would intervene once and they’d immediately latch on.

Billy would be Meredith I think, I haven’t thought too much about it. I also don’t have anyone specifically behind the chantry incident at the end of the game yet.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Nancy’s a nightingale now, still filling Leliana’s role.

Eddie’s the Inquisitor rather than Morrigan, having been at the wrong place at the wrong time. He has the rift anchor in his hand.

Steve, Dustin, Lucas, Erica, Max, El, Jonathan and Joyce come to Skyhold once Skyhold is established. Steve claims to have no clue of Robin’s whereabouts, intending to keep her safe.

Hopper I think would have Cullen’s role, being a templar and an advisor. The other advisors are Mr Clarke, Nancy and Murray.

Briefly mentioned prior, I’ve got Henry Creel/Vecna as Corypheus. Robin’s father (Ser Robert Buckley) sealed him away years ago and Steve & Robin accidentally unleashed him while ironically trying to prevent his release.

Argyle is the potions master. I think Jonathan would become the stable master.

Vickie reappears as the Grey Warden contact for Here Lies the Abyss.

They don’t all fit the characters 1:1, more their roles in the plot, and as you can tell there’s a lot of overall changes! It’s SO fun though I’m having a blast

[areiton]

Cap-IM Rec Week Day 3

 It’s All About AUs  today!!! AU’s are my favorite, when talented authors take my favs and put them in a completely different situation and world and still makes them recognizable. Whittling it down for today’s rec list for @cap-ironman was especially difficult, but here are five of my favorite kinds of AUs. 

(By Any Other) Name by Captain_Panda

When Steve went down with the Valkyrie, he thought his days with dragons were over.

Then he meets Tony Stark, who inherited Howard Stark's dragon.

As the kids say: "It's complicated."

This Dragon!AU series is my favorite dragon AU. The world building is excellent, as is the relationship developed between Steve and Tony. I think I’ve read it a half dozen times and already look forward to the next reread. 

Knight of Wands by Sineala 

Steve has reigned as king for ten years, and in a few days peace will finally come to his kingdom. Representatives of the Kree Empire are soon to arrive for the negotiations that will end the war between them once and for all. Steve is looking forward to settling down, with his hand-picked Avengers at his side -- led, of course, by the masked knight Iron Man -- and also his trusted advisors, the most beloved of whom is Tony, his court magician, the most powerful mage in all the land.

But when Steve's life is endangered, Tony makes the greatest sacrifice of all to protect his king, a sacrifice far greater than his life. And when Tony disappears under mysterious circumstances, Steve learns that even his closest friends keep secrets that he could never have suspected.

I have a soft spot a mile wide for King/Lionheart stories, especially when Steve is the king and Tony is advisor/wizard/knight. It’s just a perfect dynamic, and as always, Sine is flawless at telling a story. 

I Whisper Your Name on Each Star I See Falling by JezebelGoldstone, littleblackbow

The day Natasha first told Steve her idea, he never would have dreamed that her fool notion would land him here: watching the train roll into the station and trying to wrap his mind around the fact that somewhere in there is the man who agreed to marry him.

Steve, an alpha farmer living outside a small town in the Rockies who doesn't want to admit how lonely he is, has been exchanging letters with omega Tony for nearly a year. When at last Tony arrives in Big Eden, Steve is confronted with the fact that he doesn't know Tony as well as he thought he did - and falls for him harder than a landslide anyway.

This one is hard--arranged marriage au’s are near and dear to my heart, and picking just one was near impossible. But how soft Steve is with Tony in this one breaks me every time I read it, so--here you are. 

Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree by Annie D (scaramouche)

Steve doesn’t mind that Tony doesn’t return his feelings. He just would've preferred if it didn’t come with the side effect of his coughing up flowers and possibly dying.

I struggled between hanahaki or soulmate AUs, and decided on this because I’d put soulmates in an earlier list this week. Hanahaki is both beautiful and heartbreaking, just the way I like my fic. This one is amazing. 

ad astra by Areiton 

The first time he kissed Tony Stark, the stars danced overhead.

Ok, I might be cheating a little by including my own AU here, but. I really love this one? It’s a space AU which I always love, and plays with the movie from 2019. Anyway, it remains one of my favorite pieces of writing. 

[zuppizup]

Hiiii I just finished the first two chapters of Fuel the Pyre! I'm super excited for it, it's very well done!

I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about your writing process. How do you outline? What kinds of things need to be in an outline in order for you to visualize the story? Do you outline the entire story, one chapter, or just one scene at a time?

Thank you for your time!

Hello! Thanks so much for your kind words! I’m so happy you’re liking the fic so far.

This is a super fun ask. Not sure how coherent or helpful my response will be, but I’ll give it a try. 😆

So, stories like Purgatory, Fuel the Pyre or my WIP dark magic AU, always start out as a bunch of questions.

What if Ezran hadn’t interrupted Callum and Rayla in Viren’s study…

Could a human/elf halfling do primal magic? Can all of them or just a few? What would control that?

What would the world be like if dark magic actually was controlled and regulated.

I usually don’t start out planning a fic when I ponder questions like this, it’s usually just my mind wandering. For me, while I love big, wonderful, imaginative worlds (like the world of The Dragon Prince) what I’m really more interested in is how these things affect individuals. I actually tend to visualise the story before I outline. In fact, I often visualise far beyond where I think I’ll finish the story. (I say where I think I’ll finish because both my current long fics are now firmly in the “after the end of the planned fic” territory)

So, in Fuel the Pyre, for example, I imagine there’s a lot of unknowns for the people involved. Halflings would be pretty new on the scene, all things considered, so the characters themselves wouldn’t have the answer to these questions, which felt like a great excuse to add tension and drama.

Once an idea has got me and I can imagine how that conflict is going to affect the characters, the general outline tends to sort of write itself. I am a planner, so I by the time I start putting pen to paper (so to speak), I’ll usually have a beginning, a rough middle and an end. There will be plot points, tangents, twists and sometimes side stories that I haven’t figured out, but I’ll have a plan for the general flow of the story.

From there, I’ll come up with a pretty messy draft. So, I just sort of go wild in a document. Usually, when I’ve decided I want to write a longer fic, it’s because certain scenes just play on repeat in my head, so I’ll indulge myself and write those out. Then I’ll go back and make rough chapter/arc notes, which usually leads into some other fun scenes I get inspired to write, and slowly, piece by piece, I sort of string the fic together like that.

I used to outline more linearly, starting at the first chapter and working from there, but I found I’d get stuck on transition scenes (the bane of my writing life) and then avoid the fic. (If I put my fingers in my ears and sing very loudly, the transition scene can’t hurt me). I find letting myself write the scenes I’m excited for makes me much more productive. They usually give me ideas for other fun (I use the term loosely, I generally mean “angsty”) scenes and I essentially build my story like that. I do like adding foreshadowing and twists, which is made a lot easier by writing like this too.

In Purgatory, for example, I tried to drop a lot of subtle hints about Callum and his slowly building arcanum connection. It’s so fun when people pick up on that stuff, but I also don’t want it to look like I just pulled a twist or a revelation out of my rear. Nowadays, I do prefer to write the bulk of a story before posting, which this method obviously works better for.

Often, when I start a fic, the beginning and the ending are the most defined parts of the story and the middle is the area that requires the most work, but by stringing the various elements together, I sort of “discover” new conflicts and fun elements to explore, which (hopefully) makes for a richer, more entertaining story.

So, not sure if that was what you’re looking for, but if you could describe the stream of consciousness that is how I write, a process, this is mine. 😅

[wanderlustmagician]

Taking a breather from reports! So for mythic creatures, I’ve been thinking about the Zeldas. Mostly Flora and TOTK, but also kind of all of them.

So anywhoozle, Flora in this AU is not a dragon. TOTK established that the secret stones being ingested are the cause of dragonification. So while the narrative I set will still have her go all Zelda: Become Dragon she wont be a dragon as a her baseline creature.

So anyways, Hylia is often depicted with wings and I decided to challenge myself by making all the Zeldas be a mythic creature that has wings of some sort.

I finally decided on Warriors being a Griffin (thank you @somer-writes for suggesting it <3) and that lead me to having Artemis be a Valkyrie. They’re warrior women often depicted with wings and she is a Warrior Princess. It works.

Sun is a Phoenix, she’s got the whole ‘Hylia reborn’ narrative and the long sleep in a Crystal… it works it vibes. Plus I wanted her to also be a big bird like Sky.

Dusk is a Erinyes, or Furiae, which in Greek mythology are chthonic goddesses of vengeance and are often associated with the goddess Nyx or with the night. They take vengeance on any man who has sworn a false oath.

Aurora is a Finnguala or Finola. It’s from Irish mythology, but since she was cursed to her own deep sleep and Finola in the mythos is cursed into the form of a swan, I thought it would be interesting to give her this one.

Lullaby is a Gamayun. They’re a prophetic bird from Russian folklore which I felt was very fitting for her.

Dawn is a Firebird. They’re similar to a Phoenix but not the same.

Dot and Fable are Sphinx.

Tetra is also a Erinyes. I debated having her be a Gorgon; snakes for hair, golden wings, and petrifying gaze… very pirate captain, but ultimately went with Erinyes for now. Might go back to Gorgon though.

Flora is also a Phoenix. :)

[ninadove]

4 for Clive let's put him in situations

Clive stop putting YOURSELF in situations. Clive you’re gonna get in trouble. Clive —

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

I actually have a Miraculous AU that I’ve been neglecting for months!

Clive is the Peacock holder.

[Exactly no one is surprised by that.]

Much of the plot still needs to be figured out, but here’s what I’m thinking at the moment: Hershel was the former guardian and passed the box onto Luke, erasing his own memory in the process. Having lost the only person who cared for and understood him, Clive, also known as Panoptes, decides to track down the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous to bring him back.

I might actually write it one day! 🧡🎩🧩

Clemmy bonus under the cut:

She cast a Lightning Dragon right as he finished his sentence which only further proved his point

Thank you for the ask! ���🕊️

Ask game here!