#I'm extra okay

[mamamittens]

Now at five chapters for the new Pokemon fic solely because I've been keeping pace with my playthrough of Pokemon Scarlet just to keep in mind how these different characters first pop in. Won't need to after the introduction part because by then I can justify that the OC has changed enough that I don't need to maintain the exact energy the other characters had at the start.

It's been weird and frustrating to basically play five minutes only to realize this is going to be another few thousand words just so summarize this short interaction. Just shy of 13K and Feo is set loose to explore the main city around the school. Hasn't met Penny or had her first-ish day at school either.

Things that I still need to cover for literal DAY ONE

Run into Team Star hassling Penny

Kick their ass

Get a Tera Orb after Nemona's 'y u battle other people, I'm right here!' speech

get into the school

meet up with Clavell

go to homeroom

Go to staff room with Nemona talking to Geeta

Go to cafeteria to talk to Arven

Receive phonecall from 'Cassiopeia' and be overheard by director

get called to director's office

be asked to care for a pokemon Feo is already caring for

Have Nemona take Feo to her dorm

Pretty sure next cutscene is literally the director telling the school kids to GTFO every once in a while for their 'treasure hunt' thing and I get dogpiled by all three characters (Nemona, Penny, and Arven) about their questlines.

won't have them all get along just yet. They'll naturally converge as they get closer to Feo. Also, Feo WILL BE INVITED TO THEIR DORMS SOONER THAN ENDGAME, WHAT THE HELL GUYS?!? I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS LONG BEFORE THAT POINT JESUS

Anyway I'm totally having a blast moving my in-game character five feet and having to stop to write another dozen pages cause this game has no pacing at the start.

[egophiliac]

(breathing into a paper bag) FRALIO....

can't believe they gave us another guy. oh my god. so I guess Kelka is more, uhhh, more OOO then, and Fralio is Ankh? not that it matters too much, although they do seem to be doing something with the connected Riders so. who knows. anything goes! or if I may, anything gOOOes! god. of course they're the Ambition parallel. of course they are. oh my god.

fortunately there's nothing else they can throw at me right now that could possibly --

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[radarchives]

[varilien]

wednesday was the 1000th day since the fateful afternoon my roommate asked to see the space cowboy show i apparently used to talk about a lot and i wanted to do a big illustrated piece to celebrate but my job keeps me from drawing anything at all !!!!!!!

anyways i've been missing vash so so so so so bad u guys can anybody hear me it's so dark in here.

lines also cuz i really like how his hair turned out :3 reminds me of the couple shoujo manga i read as a kid teehee

[chromojoy]

Can a dog boy and a bug girl ever truly be in love

[crowgore-throwaway]

I'm refreshing my crust jacket, and I made a new patch

Based on the Deserter's monologue

[galactaknightyaoi]

🏳️‍⚧️ DOUBLE HEADCANON ATTACK!!! 🏳️‍⚧️

Family HCs are already fun on their own but with transness added on they're even better. It's actual comedy gold. Also I've always wanted to draw some kind of Meta Knight VS Galacta Knight type thing, but I can't take anything seriously like that. So you get This.

What This is, is a way too high effort shitpost. It took a combined 2 and a half? Days, though most of it was just sketching. I'm proud of it! Anything for the bit.

Textless version + unfinished doodle under the cut

[bisexualchaosdemon]

Friendly reminder that reading the aftg ec is not for the faint of heart!

One minute you're looking for a line you know is in there, and the next thing you know it's been two hours and you're giggling about the Foxes going skiing but then suddenly you discover that Andrew broke his leg and arm as a kid and– oh God.

I was looking for "This was part of the deal. His hand was not part of the deal." btw

[dourgeek]

☆please do not repost or repurpose my work, thank you!☆

[liquidstar]

Lately I've been trying to learn how to paint (I'm still not very good at it, and find it extra hard to do precise brush strokes bc dyspraxia) but it's Emilia's birthday so I did my best for her ^_^

[magicicephoenix]

sun implying the only other nickname moon has given is to him, along with the comments about how he isn’t happy that moon is flouncing around with some rando he’s never met, have me rolling on the floor uncontrollably. moon’s softness to his old friend against sun’s sharpness. I might be obsessed

yes yes yes you're feeling it. RAAA i love when Sun is the sharper of the duo. he is the one with the pointy sun rays, after all.

Moon is a hard one to befriend. it's quite a task to even get close enough for consideration for a nickname. few have been up to the task. hence why he's only given two in his entire, very long lifetime.

it used to a special thing, for Moon to call him by a nickname. a unique thing. something only they shared.

it seems those times are dead and buried. and even if they weren't... it hurts too much now.

[bookwyrminspiration]

sisyphus moanin about that boulder when he doesn't even have to write a research essay with three strangers

[hannahssimblr]

Amalfi coast, 2011

[izloveshorses]

anya + flinching at loud noises and sudden movements (vs dmitry noticing, adjusting his behavior, and becoming a source of comfort)

[justalittlebluetiefling]

Okay, but now I really am thinking more about people who are upset that the gods "played favorites" and gave some of their followers more power than others, but learning that there needs to be (I need the transcript and it's not released yet so I'm just throwing stuff out there) essentially mutual love is like... yeah of course the gods are giving some followers more power than others because those people are, as a general rule, WILLING to take on that power. They ask for it. Not everyone WANTS that power.

[somegrumpynerd]

Do you guys wanna see a thing I tried writing? It's pretty unfinished and I don't think I will finish it but it was fun to play with and it might be okay as a lil snippet! I also have like no energy for drawing right now but I wanna post something lol

(The context is Cross and Killer are alone on a mission in some unspecified au when Killer goes stage 3)

“Killer?”

Cross looked over when he got no response, half expecting Killer to have wandered off in some direction as he did on these longer jobs. His loyalty to Nightmare was often at war with his attention span in the field, and you could expect a job to take longer if it was anywhere a cat was liable to appear.

What he didn’t expect was to catch sight of Killer’s wildly fluctuating soul glinting in the reflection of the knife that was coming right for him.

Cross managed to lunge back just in time for the knife to arc downwards into the snow in his place. Its wielder slowly turned his head, tracking the path to where Cross was now. His empty eye sockets gushed with more ooze than usual, stare somehow colder than the ice he was now shaking from his blade.

“Killer…” Cross began, trying to keep his tone steady and authoritative like a warning. He was ever hopeful that this was some stupid game Killer was playing out of boredom, but that hope died as he watched some of the black goop begin to drip out of the corner of the other’s mouth.

That only happened when he went stage 3.

Shit.

Cross felt his soul drop. He’d never dealt with Killer like this alone, usually they handled him as a team if Nightmare wasn’t there to take over. In the time it would take him to look down at his phone to call for help there would probably be a knife in his head.

This was fine. He could handle it. He always had more training and stamina than Killer anyway, he just had to play keepaway with his life long enough to go home with it.

Killer teleported in front of him, something that caught Cross off guard. In his right mind, Killer almost never seemed to use his magic in fights unless he wanted to fuck around with the other. 

[Put the fight part here idk pretend there was a really cool fight, it was so cool, you loved it]

Cross felt his soul drop again, but this time the rest of his body followed. Killer was using his gravity magic to hold him to the ground, and was shambling towards him ready to finish things. Cross struggled for a moment to see if he could fight his way out of the magic’s hold, but to no avail. He was pinned as his assailant now stood threateningly over him, knife raised. In a flash of desperation, he reached out both hands and grabbed Killer’s ankles, quickly moving his head to one side as a bone attack pierced up out of the snow and struck the other in the jaw.

It wasn’t his strongest attack, but it was enough to knock Killer backwards and stun him. As Cross felt his soul being released from the other’s magic, he quickly scrambled forward and sat on Killer’s chest as he lay sprawled out in the snow, pinning his arms down on either side of his head as he began to come back around. His face was leaking so much determination from every crevice that at that point it was hard to make out an expression under it all, but Cross could tell he was frustrated as he felt the rumble of bone attacks beginning to rise up out of the snow around them.

He followed suit, carefully forming a line of his own bone attacks closely around them to act as a barrier. He could feel Killer’s attacks bouncing off of his, each hit more desperate and frantic than the last like an animal clawing at the sides of its cage. He felt some magic encircling his soul again, but this time trying to raise him up rather than push him down. It was weaker than before, whether because Killer’s attention was split with still launching bone attacks or because he was beginning to tire out, but Cross managed to fight against it and stay put.

“Killer!” he barked, leaning over the other’s face. “That’s enough. You’re not going anywhere until you pull yourself together!”

The gravity magic seemed to cease at his shout, so Cross continued in the fervent hope that he was getting through to him.

“We’ll stay here all night if that’s what it takes, but I’m reporting back to Nightmare when this is over and I’m not leaving without you! Do you hear me?! I don’t care if I have to bring you back hogtied over my shoulder, I’m not gonna hurt you and I’m not gonna let you kill me!”

He didn’t realise he’d been shouting until the clinking and scraping of bone attacks had slowed and stopped altogether, and it was just the sound of his promise echoing off the bones and snow surrounding them.

And the strange gurgling sound coming from below him.

He opened his eyes again in confusion and stared down at the skeleton weakly fighting against his grasp, determination pooling and soaking into the snow from every gap in his skull. It took a second longer than he’d like to admit for Cross to realise that sound was Killer choking on it.

His bone attacks shrunk back into the ground and he shot backwards, landing ungracefully on his backside with a little curse. He hurried to pull Killer up and help him lean forward, swatting his back as he retched and spat the toxic goop up onto the ground where they’d just fought.

It was never an elegant dismount from these things, they’d found there was just no dignified way to get out a ribcage worth of black ooze. After a minute of heaving and gasping, Killer finally got a hold of himself and started glancing frantically around.

“Where’s Dust??” he managed to choke out with the urgency of a parent who’d lost their child. It always seemed to be the first thing on his mind when he came to from one of these episodes, Cross was never really sure why since any other time it seemed like they hated each other.

“He’s at home,” Cross assured, pressing one hand to Killer’s spine for support. “It’s just us, we were on a mission.”

He could see now that Killer’s soul had calmed down from the pulsating mass of spikes it was a few minutes ago and become somewhat soul shaped, still twitching nervously but a far calmer sight than before. That was a good sign that the attack was over. He wondered how much control Killer had over it, since he’d definitely seen it turn that way without having to go through a fight to the death first, but it was rare.

Cross flinched as he felt Killer grab him again, though this time instead of kicking him in the ribs he simply held on for dear life. That was another clear sign, after he was done puking up whatever goop had built up he usually cried for a while.

It was odd, especially the first few times, to see someone who always seemed so disconnected and unphased have a sobbing breakdown after trying to kill you.

“Hey,” Cross said, voice hushed as he wrapped his arms around the skeleton trembling in his lap. “It’s okay… you’re okay…”

Cross had never been the best at comforting words, but he knew Killer just needed someone to cling to while he got a hold of himself, and he was content to be that for a little while. Especially after being thrown around so much, his aching bones were more than happy for an excuse to sit in the snow for a bit. He could feel Killer’s soul being pressed against his chest as he wept silently into Cross’s shoulder, the fear and regret seemed to be radiating from it like smoke from a smothered flame.

He wondered idly if this was what Nightmare could feel all the time.

...

He also wondered just how hard it was going to be to get these black stains out of his jacket again once he pried Killer's face off of it.