#idea pile

[asterclaw]

the strongest urge to write about Ink and Error being stuck in an elevator. But not as a ship. I want to write abt them 'cause Ink, Error, and Dream are prolly the ones, who have the strongest claustrophobia out of the whole utmv cast. Being stuck in an elevator, with someone who hates you is already a nightmare by itself but imagine you and them both having the strongest claustrophobia e v e r. It is so much worse :)

[plainclothesdisaster]

Danny’s on the Suicide Squad. He’s the defacto team moral compass and ray of sunshine. He plays the role of the camp counselor that keeps everyone in line. He’s not afraid of working with even the gnarliest of baddies.

Everybody on the team wonders how he ended up locked up with the villains- he never talks about what he did to end up behind bars no matter how much they pester him. Then one day they’re out on a mission and Harley or somebody is caught and tortured. Danny snaps. It’s the opposite of brutal- he takes down everyone in the room with clinical, dispassionate efficiency.

After it’s over and the team is safe he comes back to himself and is almost sheepish. He radios Belle Reve.

“Whoops. Add another couple notches on my power dampener collar, would you Waller?”

“Can’t, it’s already at max.”

“Ah. Well. I’ll have a look at strengthening it when we’re back then.”

The team just stared at him slack jawed. Good thing he’s on their side.

[ardenchambres]

idea pile

Do you guys think that, in the HTTYD lore, they say “No shit, Spitelout,” as an insult? Because canonically, Snotlout and his dad, Spitelout, are kinda idiots.

just a thought.

[joycrispy]

One thing I love about Crowley --never stated, but consistently shown-- is that he is, at heart, an engineer.

I have a few different things to say about that. Let's unpack them.

As the Unnamed Angel, we see his designs for the Pillars of Creation are millions of pages long, comprised of cramped text, footnotes, diagrams, schematics, etc. It's very...Renaissance polymath, in the way it implies a particular intersection of artist and inventor.

Also: in the naked romanticism with which he views his stars.

We already knew he made stars, but in s2 we learn that he did NOT sculpt each of them by hand. He designed a nebula ("a star factory," he says) that will form several thousand young stars and proto-planets, and all --aside from getting the 'factory' running-- without him lifting a finger. We also learn that these young stars and proto-planets stand in contrast to those made by other angels, which are going to come 'pre-aged.'

...I'm reminded of Hastur and Ligur's approach to temptations. Damning one human soul at a time, devoting singular attention to it over the course of years or decades, and how that stands in contrast to Crowley's reliance on, quote, 'knock-on effects.'

Ligur: It's not exactly...craftsmanship. Crowley: Head office don't seem to mind. They love me down there.

Hm.

I'm also reminded of the M25.

The M25 may not be as grand as a nebula (sentences you only say in GOmens fandom...), but LIKE his nebula it's an intricate, self-sustaining engine that does Crowley's work for him, many times over. Again.

That's some pretty neat characterization --and so is the indication towards Crowley's disinterest in victimizing anyone tempting individual people. It takes a considerable amount of planning and effort (and creeping about in wellies), but in accordance with his design the M25 generates a constant stream of low-grade evil on a gigantic scale.

Cumulatively gigantic, that is. Individually? Negligible.

But no other demon understands human nature well enough to parse that one million ticked-off motorists are not, in any meaningful way, actually equivalent to one dictator, or one mass-murderer, or even one little influential regressive. That's the trick of it. Crowley gets Hell's approval (which he NEEDS to survive, and to maintain the degree of freedom he's eked out for himself), and at the same time ensures that any actual ~Evil Influence~ is spread nice and thin.

It's some clever machinery. And he knows it, too:

The Unnamed Angel and Crowley are both proud of their ideas.

(musings on professional pride, Leonardo da Vinci, the crank handle, and 'the point to which Crowley loves Aziraphale' under the cut)

In the 1970's Crowley gives a presentation on the M25, projector and all, to a room full of increasingly impatient demons. Maybe the presentation was work-ordered; the 'can I hear a WAHOO?' definitely wasn't.

Before the Beginning, the Unnamed Angel can barely contain his excitement about his nebula. Aziraphale manages a baffled-but-polite, "....That's nice... :)"

11 years ago, Hastur and Ligur want to 'tell the deeds of the day,' and Crowley smiles to himself because (according to the script-book) he knows he has 'the best one.'

(Naturally, his 'deed' has nothing to do with tempting anybody, and everything to do with setting up a human-powered Rube-Goldberg machine of petty annoyance. Oodles of 'Evil' generated; very little harm done.)

Hastur and Ligur don't get it, of course. That's also consistent.

Nobody ever knows what the hell he's talking about.

It didn't make it on-screen, but, in both the novel AND the script-book, Crowley was friends with Leonardo da Vinci. The quintessential Renaissance polymath. That's where he got his drawing of the Mona Lisa --they're getting very drunk together, and Crowley picks up the 'most beautiful' of the preliminary sketches. He wants to buy it. Leonardo agrees almost off-the-cuff, very casual, because they're friends, and because he has bigger fish to fry than haggling over a doodle:

He goes, "Now, explain this helicopter thingie again, will you?" Because he's an engineer, too.

(It is 1519 at the latest, in this scene. Why the FUCK would Crowley know about helicopters, and be able to explain them, comprehensively, to Leonardo da Vinci?

...Well. I choose to believe he got bored one day and worked it out. Look, if you know how to build a nebula, you can probably handle aerodynamics. And anyway, I think it's telling that this is his idea of shooting the shit. 'A drunken mind speaks a sober heart,' and all. He probably babbled about Aziraphale long enough to make poor Leo sick)

Apart from Aziraphale, Leonardo da Vinci is the only person Crowley has any keepsakes or mementos of.

Think about that, though. Aziraphale's bookshop is bursting with letters, paintings, busts, and personalized signatures memorializing all the humans he's known and befriended over 6000 years (indeed: Aziraphale has living human friends up and down Whickber Street. He's part of a community).

Crowley doesn't have any of that. It's just the stone albatross from the Church (for pining), the infamous gay sex statue (for spicy pining), the houseplants (for roleplaying his deepest trauma over and over, as one does), and this one piece of artwork, inscribed, "To my friend Anthony from your friend Leo da V."

To me, at least, that suggests a level of attachment that seems to be rare for Crowley.

...Maybe he liked having someone to talk shop with? Someone who was interested? Someone engaged enough to ask questions when they didn't immediately understand?

...Anyway.

There's also the matter of the crank handle.

This thing:

This is one of the subtler changes from the book. In the book, Crowley knows Satan is coming and, desperate, arms himself with a tire iron. It's the best he can do. He's not Aziraphale; he wasn't made to wield a flaming sword.

The show, IMO, improves on this considerably. Now he, like Aziraphale, gets to face annihilation with what he was made for in his hand. And it's not a weapon, not even an improvised one like the tire iron.

He made stars with it.

[both gifs by @fuckyeahgoodomens]

If you Google 'crank handle,' you'll get variations on this:

Crank handles have been around for centuries. Consisting of a mechanical arm that's connected to a perpendicular rotating shaft, they are designed to convert circular motion into rotary or reciprocating motion.

Which is to say they're one of the 'simple machines,' like a lever or a pulley; the bread and butter of engineering. You'll also get a list of uses for a crank handle, archaic and modern. Among them: cranking up the engine of an old-fashioned car... say, a 1933 Bentley. That's what Crowley has been using his for, lately. But he's had it since he was an angel and he's still, it seems, very capable of it's angelic applications.

Stopping time. For instance.

(This is conjecture on my part, but, I like to imagine that Crowley has the ability to stop time for the same reason I can --and should-- unplug my computer before I perform maintenance on it. Time and Space are a matched set, after all, and in his designs in particular, one feeds into the other.)

I know everyone has already said this, but: I REALLY LIKE that when he needs to channel the heights of his power, he does so not with a weapon but with a tool. Practically with a little handheld metaphor for ingenuity. One from long-lost days when he made beautiful things.

(And he loved it. Still loves it --he incorporated that metaphor into the Bentley, didn't he?)

Let Aziraphale rock up to the apocalypse with a weapon: he has his own compelling thematic reasons to do exactly that. Crowley's story is different, and fighting isn't the only way to express defiance. And if you've been condemned as a demon and assumed to be destructive by your very nature, what better way than this?

He made stars. They didn't manage to take that from him.

Neither Crowley nor Aziraphale are fighters, really --they have no intention of fighting in any war. They'll annoy everyone until there's no war to fight in, for a start. But between the two, if one must be, then that one is Aziraphale. Principality of the Earth, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, Wielder of the Flaming Sword... all that stuff. Even if he'd prefer not to, it's very clear that Aziraphale can rise to the occasion, if he must.

Crowley was never that kind of angel. He wasn't a Principality. He doesn't have a sword.

...And yet.

It's Crowley who protects. He's the one who paces, who stands guard, who circles Aziraphale and glares out at the world, just daring anyone else to come near.

In light of everything else I've said here, I think that's interesting.

Obviously part of it is that Aziraphale enjoys it and, you know, good for him. He's living his best life, no doubt no doubt no doubt. But what about Crowley? What's driving that behavior, really?

Have you heard the phrase, 'loved to the point of invention'? Well, what if 'the point of invention' was where you started? What if where you end up involves glaring out at the world, just daring anyone else to come near? What is that, in relation to the bright-eyed thing you used to be?

What do we name the point to which Crowley loves Aziraphale?

...Thinking about how an excitable angel with three million pages of star design he wants to tell you all about...becomes a guard dog. Is all.

[umblrspectrum]

i got lazy in the second panel

[proxythe]

aki cussing ppl out over the phone is like a sweet sweet lullaby <3

[skylar-325]

oh my god

[sleepytroll]

[theoldkyokodied]

posting all my genderbent sunny (mostly toxic yuri macden) art at once like i'm known to do tehee :) ft Charlie in a little mini comic where mac and den try to give her a make-over for a scheme, based on a conversation i had with my friend kath, who is THE person i'd trust most with writing an actual iasip episode btw.

[wishfulsketching]

Mind yo own business, Harvey!

(are those open-plan cells really the best idea?)

[asterclaw]

Platonic errink to Lemon Boy by Cavetown, guys Platonic errink to Lemon Boy, guys... to the idea pile

[corethetrueidiot]

chat i apologies for forgetting to post HAHSHHDSH heres what ive recently drew . projecting my autism behavior onto ena shinonome

[somegrumpynerd]

A little animation I made of Dream and Nightmare for fun, it's pretty short and simple but not bad for my second go at animation I think ^^

The music is from here, I highly recommend listening to the full thing cause it's so beautiful!

Quick explanation for the song and a gif version under the cut

So when I was first dipping my toes into utmv stuff like a year ago, I made a slideshow for my sister with a bunch of au Sanses, let her guess what kinda vibe she thought they had and then gave her a list of names/ aus to see if she could figure out who was who (she did surprisingly well and I'm proud of her).

Well, when I first showed her pictures of Dream her immediate reaction was "this guy looks like he's from zelda" and it's just always stuck with me. Somewhere along the way I started headcanoning Dream playing some kind of instrument when they were kids and when I heard the pan flute version of zelda's lullaby everything kind of fell into place.

So here they are, having a little moment of peace finally, brothers together again c:

[kithtaehyung]

are we ok with a little holiday fic that’s mostly cookie cutter rom com with that little twist of angst that makes you wanna cry into your warm cozy drink? with this guy?

[blabberoo]

That fiddauthor animation will haunt me for the next few months...

[beneathsilverstars]

The Traveler And The Pit

(748 words, major ISAT spoilers)

"Once, a long time ago, a Traveler jumped into a pit.

He tried to jump back out, but the pit was too high. He tried to climb out, but the dirt walls crumbled under his fingers.

'Oh no,' they lamented. 'Woe is me! I'm stuck in a blinding pit for some reason!'

But obviously he couldn't expect anything to change if he just sat there lamenting, so he tried climbing again. Digging at the walls, embedding dirt and rock and root under his nails until they chipped and broke. Forming handholds slick with sweat and blood. But he could only dig for so long each day before he collapsed at the bottom of the pit, and each morning when he awoke, his hands were pristine and the walls smooth and straight.

The Traveler dug for a long, long time. They dug until they couldn't remember anything else but the pit. They dug until they forgot that the leaves far above their head were attached to branches and trunks and roots. They dug until their pristine morning nails felt alien. They dug and dug and dug and every handful of dirt that they moved they dumped straight into their soul.

They didn't notice when they started crying. It could have been days or months or weeks or years, but they didn't notice the tears running down their cheeks until the evening that they realized: the pit had turned into mud so thick and wet that they couldn't dig at all anymore. Dirt and tears had mixed and now each scoop slid between their fingers, now the walls flowed to fill each indent, now the floor of the pit sunk under their feet.

They were being pulled in. They would soon drown. And yet, they couldn't stop crying.

'Please!' they cried, 'Someone, anyone, help me!'

The Universe frowned. A Traveler stuck in a pit, huh? That wouldn't do. It would have to send someone to help.

Someone who was an expert on pits, maybe.

The Universe reached down and scooped out the Traveler's insides. The poor thing was full of mud, of course, mud and only mud from head to toe. The Universe scooped all of it up, took the mass of dirt and tears and shaped it into a simulacrum of a person, and stuck a star on top.

'There!' it said. 'A Helper.' And it gently set its creation down in the pit, next to their old body.

Since the Traveler's body wasn't full of mud anymore, it had space for other things again. Things like memories and ideas and plans. The Traveller woke up and he knew what tree trunks were and he wasn't surprised by the cleanliness of his hands. He looked around with fresh eyes, and quickly realized that he was stuck in a pit. He even remembered jumping in.

They tried to jump back out, but the pit was too high. They tried to climb out, but the dirt walls crumbled under their fingers. 'Oh no,' they lamented. 'Woe is me! I'm-'

'Don't bother,' said the Helper. 'Digging doesn't work.'

'Oh,' said the Traveler. 'Hm. I suppose... I'll have to try something else, then?'

The Traveler inspected the pit, and the Helper warned him of the spot where worms would fall out of the dirt onto their head. The Traveler squinted up at the sky above, and the Helper assured him that the weather would never change. The Traveler patted down his pockets, and-

The Helper hadn't remembered that they had pockets.

'Thank you!' said the Traveler, smile wide, eye brimming with unshed tears, rope in hand. 'I never could have gotten out of here without your help!' And he tied a loop in the rope and threw it, and hooked it over a high-up root, and used it to climb up and out of the pit.

The Helper figured, well, they might as well climb the rope too. So they did! They climbed until they stood on solid ground, and they looked around at the tree trunks and the grass and the road that stretched from one horizon to the other. They were out of the pit, and now they could leave it behind forever!

But it didn't matter. No matter how far they traveled, they would still be made out of mud."

The bird chirped, "piou, piou." It pecked at the ground one final time and then flew off.

"Yeah," said Loop, "I didn't think it was a very good story, either."