#how I'm creating characters now

[dootznbootz]

Fascinating how Polites, the character who is the personification of Odysseus' optimism and is only in 5 songs, is more grieved and appreciated than Eurylochus, a character who is his own person and is in 11 songs.

[blackkatdraws]

My two Narrators (Grey and Black) listening to music together :3

Look at them vibing!

Unrelated siblings forever ♡

[angermango]

"Oh, I know very well. How the puzzles beckon so sweetly...

As expected of you, Layton.

Only an honest death will cure you now."

...

expanding on that Lady Maria vibe for Descole from the first Laytonborne post, and that famous boss intro.

Descole would make a hellish boss fight, i know it. i mean have you SEEN how he moved during Eternal Diva and with that big ass sword? now imagine that with Soulsborne-scale strength and possible other additional powers.

plus his theme could be pretty easily adapted into a Bloodborne boss style piece I think, just add more orchestra heavy brass and cellos and some ominous Latin chanting choir and presto. that organ goes so hard too.

[lightningidle]

Fig's line "I don't think I'm an artist, I think I'm just a good friend" has not left my head at all. Just...

You're Fig Faeth and your horns came in over the summer and you pick up the bard class as a form of adolescent rock 'n' roll rebellion, and it works! It's exactly the outlet you need! You give a guy you just met drumsticks and you start a band and it's good enough that within a year and a half you're touring. You are, in every sense, good at being a bard.

And then, finally, your junior year, you start to take it seriously. Your art goes from an outlet and a form of rebellion to a practice. A discipline. (Can rebellion exist within a discipline?) Your classmates know what they want to do with their work. They all have a thesis statement. And yeah, there's cohesion in the music you make, but you've never had to think about why you make it. You've never sat down and dissected what it is about bass that speaks to you. You've never poured over your lyrics to pick at any deeper meaning. Why should you? You don't play music for a grand design, you do it to... huh, why do you do it?

(Your art is the one form of self-expression that feels as safe as Disguise Self does, because even if you're pouring your heart onto the page and then screaming it in front of thousands of people, it's not like you're really making yourself known. You can sing I'm lonely, I'm scared, I'm furious, and your fans will sing it right back, and there will still be the distance between performer and audience to keep your heart safe.)

Now you're being asked to look inward to explain the artistic choices you're making, and you can't help but recoil at that, because you'd rather do anything than look inward. Meanwhile, your classmates have no problem with it, so you start to wonder if you're a real artist at all. Can your art be authentic if it only exists to bolster a thesis statement? Has your art been unauthentic this whole time because you've never really thought about a thesis statement before? Is that what makes it art, and not just the next track on somebody's teen angst playlist?

You can't think about yourself— acknowledging your own existence makes you want to puke. So if your music is an extension of yourself, (and it is, even if it's just because the spotlight reveals only what you want it to,) you can't think about your music. You can't. You have to. Your grade depends on it.

You're Fig Faeth, and you keep multiclassing because you'd rather be a good friend than a great artist. If introspection is what great art demands, then fuck it. You must not be a bard at all.

[666writingcafe]

An Emergency

MC

The sound of water running greets Mammon and I when we return to Serenity Manor, which wouldn't be so unusual if it weren't for the living room ceiling beginning to show signs of leakage.

"What room's above this one?" I ask. Mammon stares at the ceiling, appearing contemplative.

"Asmo's bathroom." As soon as he answers me, he begins running towards the stairs, and I struggle a bit to keep up with him. I catch up to him as he's loudly banging on Asmo's door.

"Yo, Asmo! What's goin' on in there?" he yells. "There's a buncha water leakin' into the room below your bath!"

Silence.

"Alright, you had your chance! We're goin' in!" Mammon nearly throws the door open, spilling water out into the hallway.

Not that Asmo would know. He's completely passed out, his body slumped over the edge of the tub.

"Asmo!" Any anger Mammon may have felt before is now replaced with total, unbridled fear. "MC, turn off that water!"

Once done, I kneel next to Asmo and touch his shoulder. I may not be able to fix the bathroom or the leak, but I can at least help him feel better.

"May the vestiges of pain that linger within the demon before me be eliminated," I murmur. "I am the one they call MC; hear my command." White light emanates from the hand touching his shoulder, and within moments Asmo is conscious again.

"What happened?" he whispers to me.

"That's what I'd like to know!" Mammon exclaims before I can answer, walking over to the two of us. "Seriously, Asmo, what were you thinking, walkin' around in this state?! You're lucky me and MC came when we did, or you coulda died in here!"

I don't think I've ever seen Mammon like this, genuinely terrified over someone else's safety. I knew that he cared about his brothers, don't get me wrong, but I had no idea it went this deep.

"I...I don't know." Meanwhile, Asmo sounds like a lost, disoriented child. "I remember waking up incredibly sore and thinking that a bath might help me feel better, but as I was getting in the tub, I felt really dizzy all of a sudden, and..." He takes a deep breath, trying hard not to cry.

"It's okay, Asmo," Mammon tells him. "I'm not mad at ya. Just worried, that's all." He pauses. "Do you want me to get Lucifer?" Asmo shakes his head.

"He's still asleep. I don't want to disturb him." Mammon gently pats his shoulder before turning his attention back to me.

"Get Asmo back in bed," he instructs. "I'll take care of the rest."

~~~

Once I've made sure Asmo's sound asleep, I quietly leave his bedroom. There's not much more I can do in there at the moment, and Mammon might need some help cleaning up.

However, as soon as I turn the corner, I bump into someone.

"Hello, MC."

Solomon?

I didn't hear him come in, and I'm sure someone would have caught him earlier. If not Mammon, then one of the other brothers at the very least.

Except...

His energy's different. Living with Solomon has exposed me to his various moods, and this isn't one of them.

"Who are you?" Not-Solomon smiles.

"Very good," he replies, not answering my question. "You're further along than I was led to believe."

"Answer my question."

"In due time. Just know that I mean you no harm."

"What do you want?" He steps closer to me, and I step back.

"Fair enough," Not-Solomon sighs. "You don't know whether I'm telling the truth or not." He pauses. "The future of one of your closest companions is uncertain. He's standing at a crossroads, so to speak. He can choose to remain as he is or change into something different. He needs your help to decide."

He's being serious.

I should turn away and find Mammon.

But I can't.

"Who?"

"I cannot say outright. That would negatively affect his future. I can, however, help guide you."

"How?"

"By allowing you to observe the past. History often repeats itself, and it's our job to find those patterns and learn from them, use them to inform our future decisions."

He could be luring me into a trap. If I do as he says, I might end up dead.

Not-Solomon extends his hand out to me.

I'm willing to take the risk.

[shesalittlelost]

Hotd is just not team black centric enough for me to give two fucks about it but I'm disappointed coz I've been waiting for it since the first time it was announced. Too much greenies is such a turn off. Nobody cares!! We need more of the best and cuntiest Targaryens not the lewser group.

[kinun]

Surprise attack with my boys!

These two live rent free in my head and have done so ever since I was introduced to them.

And they would've stayed in my head if I didn't seethe pony posts @ameeby did of them.

I'm not someone who draws characters in other forms but since I still struggle with drawing humans for some reason (I think it's the faces idk) the post just made me think "why not? That way you atleast draw more and also collect some of your many chaotic thoughts" so I drew them. And kinda couldn't stop for a while...

So here you go. A collection of my favourite boys in pony form! :D

[wildflowercryptid]

thinking about kieran again... particularly about how i feel like he struggles with a weak sense of self and how him identifying so heavily with ogrepon, (or at least the version of ogrepon he originally knew,) probably helped him stabilize how he saw himself, only to have something he considered so core to his identity essentially ripped away from him. not only that, it was by someone he seemingly wanted to trust and open up to, (which i doubt he does very often.)

i definitely think that the way he's handling things is far from healthy, but i can get why he'd have such an intense reaction to losing something that was so important to him and basically being betrayed by someone he wanted to consider a friend.

[bookwyrminspiration]

"Amy was Sophie's opposite in every way, from her curly brown hair and green eyes to her lower than average grades and incredible popularity." (Book 1)

"Amy's hair was longer and straighter, with a few layers framing her face. And her skin had picked up a whole bunch of freckles. Somehow the combination made her look so much older than Sophie wanted her to be and much too young for what they were there for, all at the same time" (Book 8)

so having curls is childish and something you can grow out as you mature the way she's writing it. shannon genuinely cannot let a single curly haired character exist in peace can she

[clowndensation]

me doing absolutely everything in my power to not play the game that inesca is in: i miss inesca where is my friend inesca who is so sweets to everyone.........

[crystalleoi]

5C

[callipraxia]

As I sat here, mercilessly butchering some time with my thoughts, a thought about The Book of Bill occurred to me: "no, but really - what, exactly, tipped Ford off that Fiddleford wasn't the crazy one and that Bill was up to no good?"

Okay, so, his best friend came back speaking in tongues and rhymes for a bit before he started ranting about how Ford needed to destroy the Portal before it could destroy everything else. This is, admittedly, a dramatic event, the kind of thing that you'd expect to shake Ford's confidence up a little...but that morning, Bill had been, in Ford's own words, "the center of my life, the sun in my galaxy" (The Book of Bill). Ford had, over the years, been manipulated to the point that he'd do almost anything Bill said with very little pushback, as we see with the Frilliam incident (notawebsitedotcom). Ford had a full-blown shrine to Bill set up in his home, in his personal space ("The Last Mabelcorn"). Even after he accepts that Bill is a bad guy, he still refers to him as a god ("he may be a god, but I am a scientist"), so it's probably not an exaggeration to say that when Ford woke up on that fateful January morning, he literally worshiped Bill - Bill's personality and tendency to mirror the speech patterns of Ford's brother and father might have taken the edge off his impressiveness enough to prevent Ford from descending into outright fanaticism, but he certainly doesn't seem to have been a casual dabbler in the little one-man religion he'd built up around his 'Muse.' In the present, he arguably goes a step beyond calling Bill a god when he instead alludes to him as something akin to an addictive substance. So when and why did he flip to the opposite extreme so quickly?

The exact timeline is difficult to reconstruct, but it would seem that the angry confrontation between Ford and Bill in the Dreamscape would be the next event chronologically, probably predating the "my Muse was a monster" (Journal 3) page of the Journal and very likely predating the "damn it all" (The Book of Bill) page. It's possible that it was not, and that the confrontation happened after Ford had already had a breakdown and then shut off the Portal, but the dialogue implies otherwise, as does Bill's jovial comment that it would be 'cute' to watch Ford try to prevent the formation of the bridge between their universes ("The Last Mabelcorn"). If we accept that this confrontation precedes the relevant Journal pages, though, then it must also only very narrowly precede the point at which Ford got the idea to install a retina scanner, after which point, it seems, Bill rapidly stopped finding his efforts 'cute' and started a campaign of outright psychological warfare. Events seem to have progressed extremely quickly between the point where Ford discovered that Bill had betrayed him and the point where he figured out something to actually start doing about it, but there probably was a time lapse - a period where Bill could have done something. I always wondered why he didn't try to talk Ford down in the Mindscape, but even if he didn't want to do that, there's still the fact that Ford was, presumably, asleep when the confrontation depicted in "The Last Mabelcorn" (or at least something similar to it, given Ford's tendency not to so much lie as just...strategically omit facts) took place. Bill could have hijacked his body right then and there and put a definitive stop to Ford's counter-plans - ie, killed him and just gone on possessing his corpse until he could break through to reality and build a body for himself, since apparently, per TBOB, Bill can possess corpses. Bill is certainly more than willing to dangle the thought of a staged suicide over Ford's head later, so why not just save himself the trouble and actually do it?

There are some pragmatic answers, of course. Perhaps he didn't figure that, even if he kept it outside in the snow whenever he wasn't using it, Ford's body would retain the necessary degree of solidity for long enough to him to get the Portal operational for long enough to create a Rift. Probably he did not seen retina scanners coming, since I didn't even know those existed in the early eighties and Bill had Ford exhausted and rattled enough that it's surprising he was able to think at all, much less to think of something that actually worked. Bill also might have still needed to go steal more nuclear waste in order to fuel the Portal for long enough to open a Rift - it seems Stan, at least, needed a lot more of the stuff at once than Ford did in the day, and it's impossible to say whether this was intrinsic to the design or if it had something to do with Stan apparently modifying the Portal to find someone instead of just...opening into chaos. If he needed more time and was caught off-guard by the retina scanner, then, that would explain how drastically his efforts to subjugate Ford escalated in a relatively short period of time. But there are also...other answers, and they might actually be more disturbing.

Something that most people in this fandom who know me probably know about me is that I...am not fond of Bill as a person. Like, I don't quite dance about going "ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead" when he's defeated out of respect to Stan, but I do tend to cheer when Ford shoots him in the back of the head in Weirdmageddon I, despite knowing perfectly well that it isn't going to accomplish much besides making everything worse for a while. Heck, I even liked the "but my aim is getting better" bit in TBOB, even though Ford blasting a possessed corpse with a shotgun only had the slightest of effects, all of them on the corpse instead of Bill himself. Not a Bill fan, me, and I'm very quick to assign the worst possible motives to him...and to assume he's smart enough to have avoided obvious pitfalls in various plans if he had just not been too arrogant/enjoying the show too much to act sensibly. This is a point of discussion sometimes between me and other people who share my general distaste for the guy: whether or not he's actually smart enough to think of a good idea and then not follow through on it for a stupid emotional reason instead of just being too far into "the dark side makes you stupid" to think of a better solution. Also sometimes segways into discussion of how if there were magic in our world, there's a...non-zero chance that I'd be a supervillain, but I digress. Point is: I couldn't help but wonder, "so if Bill isn't just stupid, what explains this behavior of his?" And I wonder...what if the point was never to keep the wool pulled over Ford's eyes until the very end of the project?

I'm venturing into thoroughly speculative waters here, but bear with me. What if the reason Ford somehow figured out Bill had betrayed him so quickly was that Bill wanted him to find out, so that he could then push him to the point where turning the Portal back on was technically something Ford did of his own free will, just as it would have technically been his free choice to shake Bill's hand during Weirdmageddon? It's implied in Weirdmageddon that Bill planned to kill Ford once he had what he needed ("even when you're about to die, you Pines twins just can't get along!"), so I remain uncertain if Bill actually meant to keep him around as a Henchmaniac during their original association, but this notion...kinda works either way, honestly. Because in either case, Bill is some kind of platonic ideal of an abusive person, which means that for him, it all boils down to power. If Ford was addicted to Bill's flattery, then Bill was addicted to having that much power over someone else. He'd want to keep the game going as long as possible, even at the expense of practicality. And if he did want to keep Ford as a follower...well, Bill knows full well how thoroughly you burn your bridges when you make the choice, for whatever reason, to facilitate the end of the world you were born in. Sure, it would have been a heavily coerced choice, but it still would have been a choice in this scenario, not something Ford was hoodwinked into doing unwittingly from first to last. He'd also have had nowhere else to go after Bill's victory and nothing, nothing and nobody, else to turn to for the validation and emotional support he's spent his whole life desperate for - ending the world is, after all, something most people would consider an unforgivable sin, so you're going to be utterly outcast afterward if you don't have some accomplices going in. To borrow words from the novelization of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, just after Anakin/Vader finds out that he's killed his wife, which in his view might as well be the galaxy:

"...in the end, you cannot touch the shadow. In the end, you do not even want to. In the end, the shadow is all you have left. Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself - " (Stover 429, Kindle edition)

So what did Bill expect when he gave Ford seventy-two hours to either restart the Portal or go through another night of Puppet Hour? It seems quite possible to me that it was exactly (well, more or less - thematically?) the outcome Palpatine got, where even though Anakin realizes finally that he's been led into a trap by someone he'd now very much like to kill, he ends up bending the knee anyway because as far as he's concerned, the rest of the world has ended and after all...Palpatine does seem to understand, just as he always did, and Palpatine forgives, at least for a certain value of the term, and Palpatine will gather him in so that he doesn't have to be alone, either literally or with what he's done. I wrote my parallel case study of the characters in Gravity Falls and Star Wars mostly in jest, but it...actually really is pretty darn close in some ways. Ford arguably even plans to go further than Vader ever did in Weirdmageddon III when he announces his intent to take the deal: Vader slaughtered almost everyone he got anywhere near for a while for a slim chance of keeping...anywhere from one to three people (Padme definitely, who he thought was having a dangerous pregnancy with one baby, which turned out to be two babies) alive, but Ford basically admits what he's about to do will make him responsible for the deaths everybody on Earth and some beyond it, sooner or later, when he notes that Bill will destroy the galaxy "or worse" once he has what he wants, but...y'know, family's family, he's got to try to save those three and never mind how unsavory everything else he has to do in service of that goal might get....

Of course, there are important factors there which help contribute to why eighties Ford didn't ultimately give up and start down the path to being the second-most feared being in the galaxy when things got sticky the way Anakin did. He may be extreme in his attachments, but not as extreme as Anakin; fan theories have proposed borderline personality disorder as an explanation for why they both are like they are, but even if they can both be classed under one label, then Anakin's case is clearly worse, along with the degree of just how unhealthy his attachments get due to the extremity of his conditions in...basically every phase of his life. Ford's really, really screwed up, but not quite "was a child slave before being taken in by sheriff-monks before going through a war and also afflicted with a clairvoyant capacity that specializes in being as unhelpful as possible" levels of screwed up. Also, the people he cared about were still alive even if they weren't speaking to him at that time, and he still had one option other than Bill left (that being Stan). And maybe Ford's just got a little more moral fiber than Anakin, who knows. But I'm...still kinda glad that nothing in the sequence of events after Bill's betrayal resulted in Ford being unable to shoot a gun, the way that the events of RotS ended with Anakin unable to draw upon enough of the Force anymore to have a hope of killing Palpatine. There are several results that could have had, and none of them are probably good.

[jemichiart]

From time to time people ask for a reference image of Hamramon, so it's high time for me to draw him a proper reference sheet!

I've had him since 2005, and I've made plenty of art of him since then, so I already know his design by heart, but this should be useful for anyone else that wants to make art of my boy. ^^

And just because I feel like it, here are some little images of him cropped from art that's over ten years old now:

[katsigian]

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

I may be laying on the floor staring into the void, merely vibrating as my brain rots about Veilguard, Rook, the companions, and Solas.

...this is the perfect excuse to replay my canon route.

Apologies in advance: I'm about to make my brainrot replay a problem for everyone and everything in my vicinity.

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

How would anti Tails react to nine?

You know, in general I'd say it heavily depends upon the situation. However, no matter what, I think they'd both meet each other and immediately not trust each other. They could end up working together, but it would take a lot to get them to trust each other.

Honestly I think if Anti-Tails got to know Nine a little, though...he'd think Nine is wasting his potential in some ways, and he'd be jealous of Nine in others. Maybe Anti-Tails had people around and didn't grow up alone, but just as Nine was bullied and tortured and had to learn to defend himself, Miles's only "support group" were people who took advantage of him or used him or didn't seem to really care about him. But while Nine built inventions and protected himself only to isolate himself, Miles uses words to his advantage. He doesn't act out too much (especially wary of Scourge), but it’s kind of clear that once Scourge left Moebius Miles manipulated his way to the top, the secret mastermind masquerading as the lackey or number two. Even Anti-Sally admits that she's the figurehead, leader only in name. Miles is the one with real power and influence.

Perhaps to Miles, Nine had all the power in his hands (both when he had 2 shards and when he had the nearly complete paradox prism). Wouldn't that have been the perfect time to exert his control over the city he'd been born in (if not the entire shatterverse)? Would it not have been his chance to make sure no one could hurt him again, or to mold that world into his vision? Using absolute power to isolate oneself in an empty world is coward's talk, right? To Miles, why spend all your time trying to get away when you can make sure you're on top this time, ensure you can never be victimized again (not from strangers, your own "friends", anyone)? I can see Miles thinking that Nine limits himself, that he has so much potential he refuses to take, and I can see him jealous that Nine had such ability, meanwhile he was stuck trying to manipulate his way up, play the feelings balancing game, and essentially placate people (and scourge) while trying to rise to the top while trying to limit the amount of hurt he experiences.

But in a way...I can also see him jealous and annoyed regarding Sonic. Just like with Archie Tails, I think Miles would catch onto Nine's attachment to Sonic pretty fast. And I think he would think "Why are they all attached to Sonic?" (given his experiences with Scourge), chastize or tease Nine for being weak or limiting himself because he fixates on Sonic, and I think he would be jealous deep down (even if that idea of a Sonic who is a completely selfless hero is a lie) that Nine could know a version Sonic who cherishes him (or, at least, Nine believes he does).

But yeah basically my answer in the end is that Miles would see Nine as someone wasting his potential, someone who could or could have become him, and be jealous of certain things that Nine has or had

Although, as a final note, if Miles' only reference for other versions of himself is Prime!Tails from the archie comics, I can see his immediate reaction to Nine being "I wonder if he's like me?"