#no I don’t know how to draw but the brainrot compells me to draw anyway

[beholdingstranger]

Rough sketch of season 2 paranoia Jon cuz he lives rent free in my mind

[rowan-guerrins]

9 fandom peeps to get to know better:

thanks @dragonagelesbian for tagging me! i am so eept rn so i have,,,, no idea how coherent this’ll be lol

3 ships you like: gigolas (gimli and legolas; i refuse to use any ship name other than the most ridiculous one lmao) (they invented love methinks); nerdanel x fëanor (their love and epic divorce compel me… rotating them in my brain like The Cube); and bagginshield (idiots 🫶). i like (love, even) many ships akfkskf but right now im in my tolkien era (again.) so uhhh yeah. all tolkien ships here. shoutout to dinkus tho.

first ship ever: literally aragorn and arwen. i was obsessed with them and wanted them to be my parents. in after-school daycare i would sit in front of a whiteboard and draw a big ole castle and draw out my elaborate fantasy role play i had w a friend in which i WAS their child. this brainrot has been with me for as long as i can remember i inherited it i will live forever with it. incurable disease (liking tolkien) haver.

last song you heard: squints. well earlier i was SINGING many songs from the broadway beauty and the beast musical but that was acapella so that doesn’t count. it’s uhh. (opens spotify). well i’m halfway through doom days by bastille (doom days by bastille my beloved). so that. (unless you do count what i was singing for some reason. in which case. uhhhh. if i can’t love her. THEE beauty and the beast song of all time. helloooooo is this thing on do you hear me? do you understand? it’s the musical song of all time to me actually. it’s so good. listen to it. evermore wants what she has.)

favorite childhood book: uhhh so i only remember really early childhood and later childhood. i know i had other favorites between like 5-8 or so. but you’re getting what i can remember ajdjwjd. as a YOUNG kid i loved “goodnight moon”. the kids book of all time. and in later childhood, outside of my obsession with the warrior cats franchise (a given), i really loved the inheritance cycle books. i need to reread them so bad SO BAD. also i need to get the illustrated edition of eragon. shakes.

currently reading: “the fellowship of the ring”. don’t look atme. don’t— look. look. when i said it’s my tolkien girlie era again. well. yeah. anyway. i am. 97-98% thru it so probably it will change to two towers. also TECHNICALLY. i am still. technically. reading “carmilla” (she’s somewhere in my room but i don’t know where oops). and also. technically. “the silmarillion” (LOOK.), because i need to actually read it all the way thru for once and not just skip to the bits about my favoritest worst guys alive who are hated by god and also do war crimes but they’re funny. so it’s. look. it. it’s okay. hey look at me. the murder is not a big deal. it’s all so catholic here. i’m more worried about that.

currently watching: stares into the distance. it’s been so long since i’ve watched anything. at least TV/movie-wise. i watch a simmer’s streams and youtube vids is that anything? no…. naur…. i think the last. thing i watched was. uh. an episode of ATLA.

currently consuming: BALDURS GATE THREE. i am obsessed w my tav rn. i restarted my playthru bc i wanted to good recruit minthara bc i feel like she’d have a crunchy dynamic w my tav, lleuad. somehow less crunchy than i expected but we just got her so who’s to say. anyway. shakking,,,, look at Them. (talking to one of the besties.)

currently craving: japanese curry……… mmmm. with. chicken katsu. yeag

tagging: open tag bc actual tagging always gives me anxiety lmao. if you want to do this, consider yourself tagged!

[cynicalmusings]

WAAA I HAVEN'T INTERACTED IN SO LONG!!!

life just got so busy ;=; with exams, upcoming colleges i have to think about applying, my future – it's really held me back from breathing and interacting with what i like :( BUT I AM HERE TO INTERACT ONCE MORE!!! maybe i can finally draw again bwoah, it's been weeks since I've picked up that dusty ol tablet

anyways, that writer ask game heehoo o_o : 🌈 🍉 🤍

it’s good to see you again! hopefully things will calm down soon for you.

(don’t worry; i haven’t properly touched my genshin writing in ages, so you’re not the only one who’s let dust gather in some creative areas…)

now, onto the ask game:

🌈 - is there a fic that you worked *really fucking hard on* that no one would ever know? maybe a scene/theme you struggled with?

cyno’s dark fairytale au is… pretty hard work. i love working on it, don’t get me wrong, but the elaborate writing style paired with actually having to follow a planned out storyline and make sure the plot is tight and makes sense etc. as opposed to winging funky little oneshots is quite difficult sometimes, considering i have the attention span of a hummingbird (do hummingbirds have short attention spans? they just came to mind for some reason.) i’ve also talked sometimes about how i pride myself on that 100 followers special fic, because it took time. i had to visualise the character designs and do some brief research on mask designs (primarily venetian masks), and it took me literal weeks to choose which waltz/ piece to assign to the characters that matched their personality and their scene best. then i also needed to write the whole thing up, and the level of detail in that is up there with my dark fairytale au. i’ll always be a tiny bit salty that it has below 100 notes whereas some random brainrots i slapped down on a whim get, like, five times as many, but hey, what can you do?

🍉 - in what ways has writing helped you process trauma and/or navigate through your own life?

i use writing (and reading) a lot as a sort of escape mechanism. when i’m stressed or going through a tough mental spot, it really helps to lose myself in fiction and especially in fictional characters that i like, and not have to worry about real life for a bit. call me painfully self-indulgent, but sometimes i imagine how certain characters might comfort me if i came to them with my troubles, and it actually helps me wind down a bit. i realise it’s… slightly worrying that i’m literally coming to fictional characters in my own brain for comfort instead of real people, but, uh… it’s nice, so… good for me….?

🤍 - what's one fic of yours you think people didn't "get"?

oooh…. i don’t know, actually. i already sort of mentioned my 100 followers special, and i don’t want to repeat myself, so let me look through my masterlist quickly.

…funnily enough, this isn’t actually on my masterlist, but maybe that continuation of a the kazuha royalty au i originally got as an event request ages ago. i did a touch of worldbuilding here and there and it was pretty fun, and i remember being somewhat proud of the reader’s character development; something which maybe might not have been ‘gotten’, or at least registered that much, by the audience because of the reader meaning to be self-insertion-y instead of a full-fledged character, and i definitely leaned more heavily towards making them a character of their own for that. i don’t really regret it, though, because i enjoyed writing for them and treating them like a character rather than a blank slate— to be honest, i find writing a reader with a clear personality more satisfying than one without, even if it’s not really the point. basically, i’d rather be compelled by a character than see myself in their shoes 100%, even if it means sacrificing some of that self-insertion. to be honest, i could go into a full-fledged essay (ramble) about how i write reader inserts and why and some pet peeves i have with their characterisations (or lack thereof, in some cases), but i’ll spare you poor souls for now.

[randomrulz]

DSMP Life Trade Headcanon

Have you ever had a headcanon you really like and you end up making a few thousand-word essay for it?

Yeah.

This is going to be a long one, so strap in.

So, I've been into the DSMP for a while now, a good few months or so, and in that time I had ample time to see a lot of the fan content made for it, which for the most part have been phenomenal. And amongst the fan content, I've seen a bunch of headcanons for a lot of different characters for a lot of different things for a lot of different reasons. And while I don't agree with all or know all, it's fun to see everyone sharing and creating all these different takes and ideas and concepts about the same set of characters.

And eventually, I even came to create my own.

I then proceeded to brainrot about it ever since its inception and here I am making an entire goddamn essay about it. But I had fun making this so what of it, you know?

This particular headcanon of mine is one I’m going to be calling the “life exchange” or “life trade” (interchangeable) headcanon because I suck at naming. And you'll know what I mean soon enough.

To set the stage, here's something I'm sure the majority of the DSMP fandom and community are aware of: the canon lives.

Every member of the DSMP (for the most part in one way or another) has three canonical lives. And after their third life, they're gone. They're permanently dead to the server.

Unless of course some...thing happens to them and makes it so that isn't the case anymore.

Now, to my knowledge and in my opinion, outside of them being, you know, extra lives for the characters, in the structure and the technical function of the world of the DSMP server storywise, the canon lives don't add much. Again, they seem more like "extra lives" so that even if characters get killed, they will still be able to make a return in the story. And yeah, some deaths are very important for the story, it still feels, I don't know, lacking? Just a little bit.

So that's when I decided; hey, why don't we up the stakes?

Instead of them simply returning after losing a canon life and obtaining whatever sort of scar or alteration from whatever killed them, something extra happens?

What if, every time they die, they lose a little bit of their "self"?

Let me explain.

One of the driving factors of me getting into this fandom are the character designs fans have made for the DSMP. And let me tell you, I've seen so many amazing and bizarre and wonderful designs, and it still boggles my mind that these incredible designs are based and/inspired by block people in a fucking block game.

Like I mean it's awesome, don't get me wrong. Mad respect to every artist out there.

But damn.

Anyway, everyone I've seen make art for this has been fantastic. However, this became a personal problem for me, though not in any serious way. More like a personal dilemma.

There are so, so many variants of the designs, and I was compelled to make my own. My only problem is that I was overwhelmed with a bit too much inspiration. I wanted to do all designs, but I also wanted each character to also be, like, consistent in how I draw them. Overall, of course, I'm aware that over time my style and to an extent their designs might shift little by little.

So what was I supposed to do in this situation?

The simple answer is to just have fun and just make what I want to make.

The answer I took was not that. Instead, I went careening off the edge of the headcanon cliff at full speed and dove straight to the bottom and continued digging deeper.

The main premise of this headcanon is that "in exchange for another chance at life, something important will be lost".

The way they look (their designs) will be directly tied to their canon lives. With each new life, something will change, and it will double as an indicator as to which life they're on right now. This way, it makes all the different designs "canon" (and lets me use any of them whenever I want and is just really fun for me personally).

But also, I think it also ups the stakes a bit. Gives them another reason why not to risk any of their lives outside of the threat of having a permanent death.

Losing one of your lives? Sucks.

Losing one of your lives and then losing an important part of yourself in your next? Shit.

Oh, and when I say they lose a part of themselves, I don't mean that something will be taken from them before they're respawned for their next life.

Oh, no, no, no.

They're the ones that have to make the decision of what they want to trade for their next life. And this in turn will affect them in their next life, in one way or another.

Why did I choose to make it like this? Simple.

"How badly do you want to return? And what are you willing to give to do it?"

The trade will determine it.

However, there are a few more details about this exchange that are important to note. For one, they cannot give away anything material, i.e. any of their supplies or tools or anything like that. Things that they created or built in the living world do not count for the trade. After all, once you're dead, you can't really bring anything else with you but yourself, now can you?

It has to be something that's part of their "self".

So in exchange for another one of their lives, they must give up a part of themselves. It can be anything. Their powers, their bodies, or something else entirely - as long as it holds any value to them and is what makes them "them", it's valid for the trade.

Oh, and if you thought the trade was just so they could come back to life, no. That's not all that the trade does. There is an upside to it, in favor of the characters.

In exchange for them giving up a part of themselves, they're not only given the chance to come back to life but they're also given compensation for their sacrifice. Think of it as an equivalent exchange sort of deal - you gain as much as you lose. Depending on how vital or important whatever they traded away was, they will be healed and fixed up from whatever had occurred to them during their death.

For example, let's say someone got run through with a sword - a fatal blow. It's nearly impossible to fix. And even if it was fixed, it would still have life-altering complications for you. Well,  if they trade something important enough, it might be enough to compensate for the complete restoration of that wound. So in the next life, you're practically as good as new.

Again, it varies from person to person, trade to trade, but that's the basic gist of it.

Not bad, right? At least you aren't completely fucked up for round two or three.

That being said, even if they were to be completely healed from whatever injury they sustained, it will still leave a scar, or more likely a mark (like discolored skin or something like that). I like to call this the "mark of death" - something they "gained" from their last life, and the thing that stands as proof that they did die.

So that's how this headcanon works. I think it's pretty neat, as it adds an extra layer of risk. Makes it like, yeah, you might have multiple lives, but they're all equally potentially detrimental to you. Even if you don't lose everything, you will lose something.

But I want to take this essay one step further. I want to show this headcanon in full effect with a proper example in a character.

And for that, let me bring in one character in particular: Tubbo.

I've seen numerous headcanons for Tubbo's design. So, so many. And what's fascinating is that as far as I can tell from the wiki and after talking to a friend of mine who's been in this fandom longer than I have, the only parts that are truly canonical about Tubbo's character is that he has scars (from his execution during the Manberg Festival) and that he's very possibly a goat-hybrid (from what I can find, this comes from two sources; one is Tubbo himself, where he clears up theories about Schlatt and Tubbo being related as non-canonical, but that Tubbo as a goat/ram-hybrid might be, and the other is from Captain Puffy mentioning that he has “little horns” when talking about goat/sheep people on the server).

That is literally it. That is literally all we have in terms of canon traits as of writing this.

And even with only those two key details, people have made an array of fantastic and curious and wonderful designs for him. Some have taken the more human route, making him look more like his MC skin or just CC!Tubbo, while others went absolutely HAM with the possibilities brought on with him being half-goat, to the point that it's literally nothing like what we see in the actual gameplay and videos.

And after much consideration, I created my own designs.

I would also like to credit my friend @nivorann​, as they were the one who gave me the prompts to work with here.

As you can see, I went with a sort of winged-satyr sort of thing.  And I'm really happy with this design!

The satyr thing is there for obvious reasons. And while I don't really know much about the context for the dragon!Tubbo design, it looks cool so why the hell not? My design, my art, my rules.

But I do want to mention a fun detail about this design - I tried adding a little bit of bee elements into it (like the colors and the translucent-ish, bug-ish wings) as a reference to Tubbo's fondness to bees. It doesn't add much, but I think it's adorable and just plain fun.

Though I am a little bit ashamed and guilty to admit that, despite this design, I think I'll mostly draw him in his more human design. After all, he lost his two canon lives near the beginning arcs of the DSMP, and so that would mean we would be seeing more of this current third life form, anyway.

So, yeah.

But anyway, I wanna talk about those two lost lives.

For his first life, I don't have much to say, considering my knowledge about the early days of the DSMP is still pretty spotty. But according to the wiki, he was killed during the War for L'Manbergian Independence.

For this death, he traded away his wings. There isn’t much significance here for that at the moment. From a logical standpoint, it's the more "risk-free" option of what to give up, since he's still able to utilize the rest of his body quite fine. And in IRL terms, there's nothing to indicate that C!Tubbo was capable at any feat of flight (unlike how Philza canonically has wings and that Quackity is popularly headcanoned to have wings himself due to him possessing an elytra).

It's his second trade that I have more to say on (again, partially due to the fact I genuinely just know more about the events surrounding it).

Tubbo was executed by Technoblade during the Manberg Festival under Schlatt's orders after being outed as a spy. And for his third life, he traded away something much more substantial than his wings; he traded his entire body.

Specifically, he traded away his satyr/goat-hybrid form.

So now, during his current third life, he's been reduced into a "regular" human.

There are two main reasons as to why he chose to trade his entire body. The first has to do with that compensation thing I mentioned before; by trading it all away, it was enough to heal the majority of his blast injuries, leaving his scars and a blinded eye which act as  his mark of death. Of course, there might be phantom pains, but for the most part, in my version, Tubbo still maintains most of the function over his body like before.

The other reason is more emotional, or psychological (-ish? I'm not sure of the words here).

During the Jschlatt Administration, Tubbo was treated pretty poorly by Schlatt when the two of them were working together. And this was long before they found out to be a traitor. From what I could gather, Tubbo's opinion on Schlatt was always pretty neutral even though he did dislike him, but I can't help but imagine there must be some scrap of like, slight hatred. Especially after his execution.

Yet, despite that, when you think about it, he and Schlatt are also quite similar. Not only are they both sheep/goat hybrids, but they both acted as president of L'Manberg, with Tubbo succeeding Schlatt as the third and final president after the former's final canonical death.

Knowing all that, you can imagine how much it would fuck him up.

During this point in the story (The Manberg Festival), I would think that Tubbo would want to get rid of as much of "Schlatt" he could see, at least in the moment - and that included being seen like him in any shape or form. Emphasis on form.

So not only is he trading away something important to himself, but he's also getting rid of something that reminds him of the one who cost him his second life and who he will, eventually, succeed in the future.

.

So yeah, after that lengthy spiel, that's basically how this "life trade" headcanon works. It might be a little complex, but personally, that's why I love it. I like working with the information we have and piecing it together with "what-ifs" and other ideas and concepts I see being floated around in the community. It's really fun to brainstorm.

In all honesty, I have an assortment of ideas and headcanons in regards to a lot of the characters, including little quirks and also how it ties into this "life trade" headcanon of mine, but I'll hold onto that for another day. Granted, I don’t have ideas for everyone, but I do have some for a good chunk of 'em.

So yeah, that's basically it.

.

P.S. Go check out my friend @nivorann​! They helped out a lot and put up with me brainrotting and brainstorming this shit.