#everyone's pretty cool

[justarandomllamacorn]

"Now you've done it, Zircon! Prepare to loose", shouts our hero, kicking down the door. " uh Zir? Teddy? You here, buddy?", but nobody answered him. "Hats?", he called, " Bushy-brows? Come on guys, it's not funny."

No matter where he ran, the lair was dark and silent. No guards at the door or in the break room. No one on the computers. All the offices were empty, even Stella was missing from her spot at the receptionist.

Where could everyone be? Today was a Monday, not a holiday and it wasn't August so no one was on summer break. The rooms were well lived in with various papers on the desks, filled coffee cups on the break room table and now clean laundry in the dryer. Yet there was no one to be found.

The doors flew open as our hero ran through the corridors, barely avoiding the wall at every bend, slipping once or twice along the way before he barreled into another man as he broke in the inner garden.

"Where is everyone?", he yelled, " what have you done to them?"

The man merely flipped him down on his back, drawing up as he came near. His mask could leave no doubt as to his identity, the Blue Devil, an A-class supervillain who usually dwelt in high end restaurants, around the 1%, as his heroes ran around the world to stop him.

"What are you doing here?", breathed out our hero, anchoring his trembling hands in the soft grass to get up. " if you've done anything to them, I'll make you regret it "

You are a Class E hero. You show up to fight your Class E villain; as scheduled. Terror hits you as you see the a Class A supervillain standing there.

[poppyberry]

Everybody NEEDS to listen to the new Wild Life retrospective on Imp and Skizz's podcast. They got Grian called in and they give so many cool insights into the series (and honestly say so many things I think people need to hear)

Highlights for me:

Grian designed each wild card to be weaponized and wanted everyone to take advantage of them. He goes over each individually and all the thought he put into them and all the work the backend team put into their execution. He's rightfully really proud of them. Him gushing about Trivia Bot and how excited he was to show his friends the "coolest snail ever" is particularly sweet.

Skizz says discovering each wild card was a LOT of fun. He says something like "I can't believe as an adult I get to have so much fun." Impulse is really impressed with the execution of each, citing stuff like making it rain when the time one activated and the passive mobs spawning in before being replaced, and how the little details like that built excitement and tension.

Grian says how he understands that some viewers maybe just want more seasons of the essentially the same series, ie six seasons of just Third Life, but it's more important to him that the Lifers get to experience something new and fresh. He also doesn't like comparing each series, preferring to consider each one as its own thing.

Impulse can't wait to do another Life series, Skizz is equally excited but tries to hold discussion about it back since he doesn't want anyone pressuring Grian, who is palpably burned out. Like, you can hear how tired this man is. Grian says there will probably be more series since everyone is still enjoying it, but he's not trying to outdo himself and not to expect him to keep escalating.

Skizz always tries to do something new each season yet feels like he always falls back into the same habits and dynamics, but not this time: he feels like he got to explore a new dynamic with the Spanners and had a blast doing it. He and Grian gush about how much fun they had with their "big brother trying to keep his little brothers alive" routine.

They have a grand time making fun of Impulse and his "Sweats". Impulse is unabashedly still hungry to win a series.

Impulse didn't want to kill zombie Skizz, because of the five minute cooldown, but Skizz makes clear that he was really happy with being a zombie, even if there was a lot of doing nothing in between summons. He says it means a lot to him that he got to help with the burden of facilitating the series, even just a little bit.

Grian gives good insight into his personal life strategy: he does some things to deliberately test his relationship with other players. Standing in the Danger Zone was a trust exercise, testing Jimmy and Scar. Jimmy and Scar failed.

Despite Scar failing the trust exercise, Grian heard the disappointment in Scar's voice about the Snail Bot thing and immediately caved, but he's really happy that it led them to in-canon reconciling and becoming strong allies again.

Grian's favorite moment was making Jimmy pay for the failed trust exercise by blowing up the bunker, particularly pleased with his one liner of "it was always gonna be like this". He says Wild Life as a whole has been the most enjoyable series for him, even though he didn't get to have as much fun as the other players due to knowing all the wild cards.

All three of them gush over the scene of everybody failing to kill Joel as he teleports around, laughing about how it was straight out of a movie or an anime. Impulse feels like Joel took his superpower to a new level, but Grian reminds him the he didn't have an army chasing him around trying to kill him. They're all super impressed with how the finale turned out.

Some of the powers were assigned (Cleo, BigB, BDubs, Scar, Lizzie), some were random (Impulse, Martyn). Some were based on players' names, others on their personal narratives, but coming up with ~16 different powers without including any that would just be exploited for cheap instakills was really difficult, which is why there were so many espionage ones. Hilariously, Grian was hoping Scar would accidentally kill Jimmy by punching him off a cliff because of their ritual of trying punching in the earlier episodes. He also gave Scar that power because he knew Scar wouldn't feel bad about killing people with it.

Grian chose to give himself the mimic so he could show people how their powers worked if he needed to, and so that it wasn't given to somebody else who'd have to spend the whole session figuring out the mechanics of 15 separate superpowers and potentially dying because of it. And because he thinks its the coolest one and he wanted it (lol)

All around there's tons of fun details and stuff in this episode of the podcast and absolutely everybody should listen to it all the way through.

[cherryfennec]

Summer Times

Hi! I'm finally back from my two week abroad trip!

[astronnova]

doodles (as i avoid work) of the super awesome you wouldn't like me alive fic by @ectoplasmranch which i binge read in a 7 hour sitting yesterday

[chalkrub]

various art trades from the past month! had FUN as usual

[eggwishing]

sans looking at ice or something

[egophiliac]

some (extremely) quick doodles to celebrate the glorious return of glorious masquerade! I haven't had a chance to do much personal drawing lately, but I didn't want to let it go by without doing something!

[chloesimaginationthings]

I think it's absolutely adorable how Movie Mike and Vanny's relationship is like this

But Mike's still comfortable sleeping on her shoulder and in the palm of her hand.

I think that's sweet.

They’ve gotten to know each other better, so he feels safe to sleep around her

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 2 - Level Up!

[anemonet]

Its zine time again! I did all of docs stuff for the @hermitpostzine :D definitly check out everyone elses stuff its so so cool!!!!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

In Regards To Your 2024 Summary:

Holy shit it’s been another year????? The hell?????

Also! Your art style is gorgeous and that being found in 2023 and then refined throughout late 2023 and the entirety of 2024 really shows, as does your growth in panel layouts, perspective, and — as you said — experimentation. If you ever post your animation or video game art I’m looking forward to it.

As cheesy as it sounds, being able to laugh at funny comics and look at all the details of your art really made my 2024 brighter, even when things were hard. Including looking at your older art— it doesn’t need to be new to be enjoyable! I’m glad your art is well loved and it’s a privilege to have been here since the (near) beginning. I hope you take care of yourself in 2025 and beyond!

You and your art bring a lot of people a lot of joy never forget that <3

Thank you so much for keeping up with my art journey throughout these last two years! Two years!!! I am baffled at how that feels both too long and too short!

Admittedly, my art summary didn't manage to capture the fact that I did a lot of comic layouts that I'm really proud of. I also drew more backgrounds and made some very detailed works (*Dungeon Meshi spoilers for these examples*).

The growth is lot more evident when comparing my 'best' comics of 2023 to 2024:

Sometimes the growth is vertical, sometimes it is horizontal - and damn, sometimes it goes out of sight into the Z-plane. But it is always happening!

[countlessofvoids]

Hiccup was a runt, the most awkward, frailest guy around. He was created with the intent of being someone who's different from everyone else; both in his design and story. Someone who's weak around people who value strenght, someone who befriends dragons while others want to kill them. Hiccup makes up for his physical weakness with compassion and trying to bring peace to both sides.

Which is why in his every iteration after the first movie (+ ROB); Hiccup is a 6'1, modern beauty standart who can easily beat everyone in combat no matter how more build or/and experienced they are, unless the writers decide they need to higher the stakes, or they have other characters fight the enemy for him.

[whiskers-my-beloved]

Wesker Meeting Wesker Tsum

Continuing this from my last ask and taking inspirition from @idkvg comment.

Imagen if they teamed up, but I am not sure that would work. Wesker tsum is even more stubborn that regular Wesker. Lil bean would plan out something to steal all the food in Wesker fridge if given the chance.

[sysig]

Take any opportunity at all (Patreon)

[anghraine]

I know it's well-understood at this point that Kirk/Spock is much more of a nerd4nerd ship than a nerd/jock thing, but it's just been kind of percolating around my mind that both of them aren't just space nerds but space nerds who were personally bullied.

Like, 18-year-old Kirk was targeted by an older bully who combines "total asshole" with "the most grating man in existence":

MCCOY: Well, yeah, I'm beginning to feel a little bit picked-on, if that's what you mean. KIRK: I know the feeling very well. I had it at the Academy. An upperclassman there. One practical joke after another, and always on me. My own personal devil. A guy by the name of Finnegan. MCCOY: And you being the very serious young— KIRK: Serious? I'll make a confession, Bones. I was absolutely grim, which delighted Finnegan no end.

This was five years after Kirk survived a genocide, btw, and likely well before his stint as an Academy instructor known to be strict and demanding (which is the period the "stack of books with legs" description of him comes from). By the time he's 33, fifteen years after all this, it turns out one of his deepest fantasies is just beating the shit out of his bully, but only if he can do it According To The Rules (the replica of Finnegan sneers, "Always fight fair, don't you? True officer and gentleman, you").

Spock, meanwhile, is viciously targeted by his Vulcan peers for being biracial from at least age 5; he's described as being tormented by other boys by that age, and "at home nowhere except Starfleet." I think he'd have been 18 or 19 when he left for Starfleet and it's... the least bad of his options, but he seems to have spent his entire career among humans and being persistently subjected to raw racism and profound disrespect for his culture at every turn.

Like, their histories of being metaphorically shoved into lockers are not identical or anything, but I think it's interesting that they both have them.

[jontaro-kun]

That one time a pose study (looking at art of pretty women and telling myself I was being productive) turned into Portia