#dead end if

[deadend-if]

DEMO TBA | INFO | 17+

You know of the whole "death comes for us all" concept, you know that freak accidents can happen to anyone, and you know there is a reaper around every corner... You just didn't think it was so literal. When death themself comes walking through your apartment complex, you don't even notice. You do, however, perk up at the sound of a knock on your door. Upon opening, death greets you with a panicked wave and the information that your best friend has died fifteen minutes prior to their visit. Now, usually, you would ignore the lunatics in your city claiming to be death itself, but something tells you to listen this time. It might be the frantic way they describe owing your roommate a favor, or, funnily enough, the way they don't breathe, but you believe them. So, despite all the dangers of following a stranger to a second location, you're sure of one thing; you intend to bring your friend back to life.

This IF is written in twine and will be posted on itch.io. It is currently a work in progress. Advice is appreciated due to this being my first attempt at something like this <3

Travel to the land of the dead to find a way to save your best friend from an early grave, discussing themes of loss, change, and humanity along the way!

Play as a fully customizable character, choose your character's name, pronouns/gender, sexuality, appearance, college degree, and more!

Travel through the underworld and explore the vast layers the city of the dead has to offer.

Determine how you traverse loss and all the things that come with it. Either ignore or come to terms with what might happen at the end of it all.

Build a relationship with 1 of 4 character options (or 1 of 2(?) poly options!), two gender selectable, and two set genders (non-binary spectrum). (Play as aro, gay, straight, bi, trans, etc. Platonic relationships will be just as important in this game!)

This game is for 17 and up. There will be NO sexual themes, but there will be heavy topics, explicit language, and graphic descriptions of death. More Content Warnings will be listed in the demo.

The Best Friend | Abel/Abella Robinson [he/him or she/her] - RO

Your best friend since freshman year of college, once random strangers sharing a dorm, now living together of your own free will. A is an elementary school teacher with a calm, gentle heart. They are a bit of a doormat but are kind despite the world being cruel. For years they have been a loyal friend and helped you whenever you needed it, now it's time to help them escape the clutches of death.

The Guilty Reaper | Mortimer/Mort/Mortie [any pronouns] - RO

Mortimer has your best interests in mind, at least that's why they tell you when they pop up at your doorstep with tickets to the underworld. Being out of touch with humanity is supposed to be an asset for reapers, but Mortimer has always wanted to know everything there is to know about humanity. Can you even believe someone like them? Mort seems a little too honest, and a little too curious, but they're the only tour guide for the underworld that you know of.

Your Best Friend's Best Friend | Santiago/Santiana Vega [he/him or she/her] - RO

You know A has other friends, but what you don't know is why they hate you so much. Santi has never liked you, not four years ago, not today. They are sarcastic and confident. They will always take the opportunity to outshine you, it's hard to understand why someone like A would even tolerate being around them. Whether you like it or not, they're still A's other best friend and are just as determined to get them back safe and sound... Even if it means having to do it with you.

The Guard | Kyo [he/they] - RO

A (begrudging) friend of Mort and one of many guards of the underworld. They're a mystery to you and even to their closest friend. Kyo doesn't speak much. They are blunt, easily annoyed, and strictly there to keep an eye on everyone. He prefers to follow the rules and stay under the radar, especially since he seems to have something to lose. They seem to only tag along to keep Mort out of trouble, but there has to be something more to their goals. Why else would they risk so much for people they don't know?

Poly Options <3

A & S K & M (A secret third option, perchance?)

DEMO TBA | INFO

[artistotel]

hey! for todays protest, i made this little zine about palestine (holding just simple and basic information).

you can download the zine here, fold it yourself, and distribute it around.

no credit is needed. feel free to leave it around bars, protests, or wherever. simply print it (borderless) and fold it. here is a tutorial on how to do it.

dont stay silent. there is a genocide of horrendous, atrocious proportions going on. also if you are a zionist here to argue with me, i dont plan to entertain you at all, not on my art blog. fuck off, you'll be swiftly blocked. i see enough of you clowns on my main and i have no energy for you. you can skip the death threats too bc i dont give a shit.

(i'm off to get ready for a surgery now, i just wanted to post it before this. if you need anything, i might take a bit to reply)

[soyalexnajera]

THE AUDACITY OF THEM TO SAY THIS, FUCK NETFLIX FR

[droids-in-disguise]

Via twitter

[spinaholi]

sandra lynn’s dating history now includes:

the most red-flag, gaslighting, married guy who became a world renowned insidious televangelist and ruined her perception of love and self-worth

the saddest, wettest, cardboard-box-living, yogurt covered man with an ancient hereditary curse of bad luck

the arch devil of gluttony and living embodiment of insatiable desire and hunger

a former drug addict, high school student councillor, werewolf, who’s probably the most mentally healthy person to ever exist

sexy pirate

[me-beef]

@strangeravatar made a great point

i was gonna focus on the spike-hotboxing-celestia aspect but i got distracted somewhere along the way and i think i forgot what joke i was trying to make

but dont you think its interesting how many guards of the exact same color/body type she's managed to accrue?? i do

ooohh you want to go look at our stickers so bad

[havenshereagain]

DPxDC Idea

Danny working at Wayne Enterprises as some sort of engineer, uses the in-house app for all his blueprints and stuff

He starts getting notes from a coworker in-app, and assumes its this annoying older guy in his department who constantly undermines him because of his age, despite his education and past achievements (i feel like in this AU the Fentons react well to the reveal and they work together on a number of non-lethal ecto inventions that have Danny's name attached to them)

Except one day his coworker mentions never using the app, and Danny suddenly realizes there's only one other TD he could've been arguing with in the notes of the app

[awakefor48hours]

Thinking about her (a show that was cancelled unjustly) again

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF movie Vanessa definitely thought Abby died..

[amikoroyaiart]

Some 22 and 09 angst doodles

[deadend-if]

This is just to give you guys a better idea about the game!

Where is this taking place?

The MC, A, and S will start in the city they live in together. M will also be there, but you won't meet K until Chapter One starts (sorry). Once Chapter One starts the rest of the game will be in the underworld!

The underworld? Which one?

Great question!!! All of them!!! I have taken my inspiration from... so many things. I'm sure there is a depiction out there similar to mine, nothing is original or something? It will get explained in the game but it can't hurt to give a little summary of it! The underworld is surprisingly easy to reach if you know where to look. The old doors are deep within catacombs and cave systems, but in the modern world, it becomes a problem to bring massive amounts of souls down twisting tunnels and tight passageways. So, when the subway system was implemented in big cities around the world, the denizens of the dead decided it worked for them, too. The underworld became the city of the dead, built with skyscrapers that reach toward no sky, and streetlights that have no stars to outshine. At the lowest level, souls are in turmoil, writhing in memories of people and tasks they left behind. The highest point is occupied by misty, formless wisps who have left behind everything they knew and loved to seek an audience with the Council of Rot. It's a crooked city of souls that linger on the cusp of something new, or something old. Hardly anyone knows what happens after the dead are done being, well, dead.

What kind of customization will the MC have?

You'll be able to choose your name, pronouns, gender identity (trans or not), hair color and length, eye color, height, college major, room/apartment decoration/general style, and smaller details like tattoos, freckles, glasses, etc. MC will also have different job options, though limited, along with some choices on their backstory, mostly focused on death and family dynamics. You can choose why S has a rivalry with MC, one-sided or not. I am also adding a childhood pet choice! And if you ever have an idea on something small to add to the customization feel free to let me know! I'll do my best to accommodate it, but I'm still not great with twine lol...

What are the non-customizable features of MC?

There will be limited choices for your background, job, and rivalry, but I'm hoping to leave a lot of options on the table for your MCs. That being said, your MC will always have a neutral-to-good relationship with A and a neutral-to-bad relationship with S at the beginning of the story. You will also have a set age (27) for various reasons. There might be more later, but I want to keep a lot of options on the table for you guys. The ending may seem a bit rail-roady (I don't know 100% yet) so I want to leave a lot of wiggle room for other things.

Personality Stats? Skill checks?

Yeah, so there won't really be "skill checks" in the typical sense, whoops. This story will have personality choices and some other variables that will change the game, but there won't be any failing/passing checks or rolling dice. MC's personality stats will affect flavor text and it will be the classic types like stoic, cheerful, shy, bold, etc. Your most game-changing stats are going to be MC's feelings on death and attachment to living. You determine A's fate, and maybe everyone else's, too. Who knows? :)

On the topic of NSFW and RO asks

The main reason I'm not including NSFW in this IF is because I genuinely don't think it would fit well in the plot at any point. That plus the fact that I, myself, am asexual... I don't think I could even begin to do it justice lol. It would be just... cringe guys, you wouldn't even want it. I can't really say anything though, I'm writing romance while also aromantic :/ I intend to keep this blog and the story away from anything NSFW. While I, personally, don't care about those asks, I want to create a space without NSFW topics. I'm also wary of people asking NSFW questions about asexual characters (Mortimer/A). Romance/SFW asks/scenarios/prompts about worldbuilding or ROs are totally fine, and I will be sososo happy to answer them.

Updates and Timeframe

Guys... I hate to break it to you... but I may be slow on the updates (shocking, I know). I want to write as much as I can, but I am also a college student writing this on a whim. I love this story, I've been thinking about it and scribbling ideas for it for about 2 years now. I don't want to abandon it, but there may be long stretches of silence sometimes. I WILL say something if it goes on hiatus or goes dark completely, I won't leave you hanging! This story will go through a lot of changes, I change my mind about things all the time, so you may be getting a lot of random updates of me changing (seemingly) unimportant things, sorry in advance. Lowkey might take years to write this :)

This will update with time! :D

[silentsockfeet]

the fact that the vi vs jinx fight was foretold from the beginning. the fact that the opening credits ends with their fight immortalized in stone, so that every episode you watch is a reminder of the immutable truth of it. the fact that every moment is building to this, that the show will culminate in this. this was always going to happen, they told us this from the beginning, and nothing anyone could do will ever change that.

[nuinokata]

Now I don't ever want to hear anything about how "hanging out with guys is so much less drama" again in my life lmao

[ruporas]

need to exist in your warmth (id in alt)

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[andaniellight]

they don't make this kind of thing anymore 😔