#this is a way of saying i should draw more horror considering this story is about necromancy lol

[axel-tiredstudent]

giving my fav oc and protagonist really disturbing sexual fantasies cause they make sense with the narrative's and his own themes 🫡

[ckret2]

Chapter 53 of human Bill Cipher not properly appreciating the fact that Mabel is his only friend on Earth:

Mabel has read a book about Bill's home dimension and is prepared to interrogate him all about where he comes from.

Bill is willing to do anything to avoid being interrogated.

(Featuring SEVEN illustrations, provided by 🌈 MABEL 💖)

####

Flatworld, from what Mabel had read, was probably literally the worst place to ever exist. 

The book was a hundred pages of an old-fashioned formal-sounding super boring guy rambling on about the most egregiously evil society Mabel had ever had the horror of reading about.

Society consisted of a bunch of geometric shapes—which in concept sounded half nerdy and half adorable—but they'd made a brutally oppressive government organized by quantity of sides, with infinite-sided circles at the top and three-sided triangles at the bottom, and one-sided lines—women—oppressed into near silence. Career options, educational opportunities, who you could love, were all determined by your sides. Irregular shapes—quadrilaterals that weren't squares, triangles that weren't equilateral, anyone with a side too long or too short—were presumed from birth to be criminally insane. Each generation had sons with one more side than their father—and they had to, because having higher-ranked sons was the only way families could climb out of poverty. When babies were born with too few or irregular sides, poor families abandoned them—or worse—and rich families put them through oft-fatal bone-snapping surgeries to regularize or increase their sides. Knowledge of the third dimension was considered heretical, and anybody claiming it was real was locked in an insane asylum.

There was a lot of mathy stuff in the book about a square meeting a magical sphere and going on educational adventures to the higher and lower dimensions; but most of it passed by her in a blur. When she'd finished reading last night, Mabel had lay in bed for an hour, staring at the ceiling, trying not to think about dead baby shapes and fighting the urge to wake Bill up just so she could hug him; until she'd finally drifted off and woken up in her own bed.

At least, thank goodness, the bit about banning colors so lower shapes couldn't contour themselves to look like higher shapes was false. But she was sure that at least part of the story was true. And it had happened to somebody she knew. It was a lot to process.

So she processed it the way she usually did the stories that weighed on her: by creating a self-insert and pulling out her art supplies.

####

"You're drawing fan art of Flatworld?" Bill asked warily.

"I wouldn't call it fan art. I'd say it's more of a... thoughtful artistic critique. I don't think I'm a 'fan' of the second dimension," Mabel said. "No offense."

"Sure."

Mabel had designed a shapesona of herself: a pink heart with a rainbow-colored outline, a big sparkly eye, and skinny black stick limbs like Bill's. If, as Bill had said, colors weren't illegal, she didn't see any reason she couldn't be rainbow. The heart shape was maybe unconventional, but Bill hadn't said she couldn't be a heart yet, so she was sticking with it for now.

She'd honestly expected Bill to come over and interrogate her about her creation long before now. Usually, when she was doing art and he was unoccupied, he was hovering right by her, examining her work and dropping hints—some more subtle than others—that she should draw him next. But she hadn't immediately noticed when he'd silently drifted into the room, and she wasn't sure how long he'd been there before speaking up. He was still leaning on the wall, arms crossed, watching askance from halfway across the living room as Mabel worked with her crayons, as if she were playing with a chemistry set and he was trying to figure out if she was building a bomb.

"Is Flatworld really about your world?" Mabel asked. "Did you tell Edward Bishop Bishop all that stuff? With the circles and all the laws about shapes and stuff?"

Bill mulled over the question, staring into space. Mabel had never seen his face look so inexpressive before—at least, not since his first night as a captive, after he'd gotten all the screaming out and had looked too exhausted to feel. "We talked," he conceded. "I'm surprised you got your hands on it. I suppose Stanford brought it up."

Something in the back of her mind pricked up defensively—what was that supposed to mean, he was surprised she got her hands on it?—but she pushed it back down. "Yeah, he told me and Dipper about it when you guys got home yesterday," Mabel said. "But you brought it up to me first!"

"No I didn't. When?"

"A few weeks ago? You mentioned Edward Bishop Bishop."

"I don't remember that," Bill muttered. "I probably didn't think you'd make sense of it."

"Hey!"

"You didn't make sense of it! Ford had to tell you about it."

"Yeah, but—mean!" She shoved aside her drawing and started on another one, grumbling, "I could've made sense of it if I'd looked it up."

What was up with Bill today? He wasn't usually this much of a jerk. To her. Lately. Plus, she thought they'd really had a moment yesterday! But Bill had had a rough couple days. Maybe he was just tired and cranky. 

A wiser person might just leave well enough alone. But a wiser person wasn't exploding in their brain with curiosity about just how bad Bill's life had really been. There was something itching at the back of her head, had been itching since she'd woken up—something about Bill, something important, she was sure of it—but she couldn't quite put together what it was. She just needed to talk to Bill long enough to figure it out.

"So..." She glanced up from filling in a shape yellow, "were lines really executed if they didn't make noises all the time so everyone always knew where they were and they couldn't sneak up and stab anyone?"

Bill scoffed, rolling his eyes, as if the very idea was stupid. "It wasn't that extreme. Making a peace cry is like a human saying 'coming through' when they're trying to squeeze past somebody. Lines are just taught to do it in public because it's easier not to see a line, that's all."

"If they didn't, were they executed...?"

"No. They were just rude."

That was a relief. Mabel had been worried for her fellow ladies. She was plenty noisy, but she didn't think she could remember to make constant sound any time she was around other people. She turned back to coloring her newest drawing, but watched Bill out of the corner of her eye. "Is it true that rich people killed almost all of their babies by giving them surgery to break their sides?"

The corner of Bill's mouth curled in a sneer. "Do I look like a pediatric surgeon?"

"Um." Not a welcome question. She tried to backtrack to something softer. "So, in the second dimension, the outside of your body is just your outline and your guts are everything inside the outline, right?"

He gave her a wary look. "Yeah."

"So your bow tie is basically in your stomach."

Bill sucked in a deep breath; but quickly caved in to the need to be the most correct person in the room. "More like around my esophagus, but. Sure."

"So, where did you wear it when you were back in the second dimension? Was it on your side? Did you have to wear two so people could see them from both sides—"

"I didn't need a bow tie then."

Mabel stared at him. "What do you mean, you didn't 'need' it? What do you need it for now?"

Bill ignored the question. "You know, I didn't think Flatworld was an interesting enough book to deserve this much attention! Especially not from you. You like fun stories." It felt oddly like he was criticizing her for having read it.

"Well—yeah, but it's about your home! That makes it fun!"

Bill raised his brows.

"Right? Doesn't it?"

"Kid." Bill laughed condescendingly. "Don't give me that. You read an entire book. In the summer. About math. With a downer ending where the narrator goes insane and gets locked up. That's some people's idea of a fun time, but I know it's not yours."

Maybe "fun" was the wrong word—but it was still important. She was glad she'd read it. She'd cared about it. She'd cared enough to know Bill was describing it wrong. "That's not what happened. The square got locked up because he kept telling everybody the third dimension's real."

"Like I said! He went insane!"

"But he's not insane. Everyone says he is, but he's right about the third dimension! It's everyone else who's stupid!"

"So what," Bill said. "The things he knows mean he'll never be able to see the world the way other shapes do, and no matter what he does he'll never be happy with his home. If that's not insanity, what is?"

Last year, she'd heard Bill agree when Gideon called him insane. She'd always wondered. "Is that why you're insane?"

Bill shot Mabel a furious look. That was the wrong thing to say. "Shooting Star—"

(Oh no, she thought, he's using my full name.)

"—what's with the third degree." Bill crossed the room to lean on the other side of the table. He gave her the guarded glare of a guilty suspect facing down a cop in an interrogation room—and trying to figure out whether he could kill the cop before he was stopped. "What do you think you're trying to dig up?"

"I'm not trying to 'dig up' anything," Mabel said. "I just want to learn more about you!"

"Oh yeah, I'm sure you do! Who doesn't wanna know all about me! And right after I trusted you yesterday! Do you think you're the first person to start digging into my history? 'Hey, does anyone know what made Bill Cipher so crazy'?" Bill laughed bitterly. " You're not even the first Pines to try it. Not even the second."

"That's not what I'm trying to do!" said Mabel, right before it dawned on her that that was exactly what she was trying to do.

"Right. I'm sure whatever you learn will make a nice two-page spread in Journal 5. Another secret you and Fordsy can add to your Mysteries, huh? Think he'll draw the dead babies?"

She thought back to Portland—to asking Ford what had made Bill so awful. I think if anyone’s ever had a chance of finding out what made him like he is, it might be you. Mabel shook her head. No. She didn't want to be that. "I'm not Grunkle Ford's spy, I'm your friend. I just—I just want to understand you—"

"Yeah, and the 'friends' who understand you are the most dangerous kind." Bill laughed harshly. "Your uncle and brother couldn't figure me out! And Sixer's been trying for years! So what makes you think YOU can?"

He was calling her stupid. He'd been calling her stupid all day. That was why he was so surprised she'd read the book.

"You—shut up!" She wadded up her latest drawing and flung it in Bill's face. (He snatched out of midair.) "All I did was read a book I thought was important to you, you jerk! I thought you'd like that!"

She hadn't meant for that waver to enter her voice. But she was exhausted from too little sleep and worrying about dead baby shapes and worrying about Bill's fear of death and worrying about what Ford had said about not giving Bill a second chance, and now Bill was being a jerk, and maybe he was just exhausted and upset too, but he was treating her like she was stupid—and there was that pathetic little waver.

But it made Bill pause in his onslaught; for a moment, he averted his gaze. Still, he said, "Maybe if you'd thought to ask—"

"You were asleep! I was being nice! And letting you sleep! In my bed!"

"But—"

"Just go away!" She pointed at the doorway.

Bill's face hardened again. "Fine!" He flung his hands in the air and stomped from the room. "Who wants to hang out with you when you're in such a bad mood, anyway."

Mabel glared at her stupid drawings so she didn't have to watch Bill's stupid back as he left.

Why had she bothered?

When Bill was out of sight, she dropped back onto her chair, pulled her sweater over her face, crossed her arms on the table, and buried her head in them.

####

Bill didn't think to smooth out the paper Mabel had flung at him until he was out of the room.

On one side she'd drawn Bill—properly triangular—with an expression that he thought was supposed to be fear and on the other side several angry-looking shapes, pentagons and hexagons, colored gray and black, being led by a pale figure shaped like a human skull and wielding a scythe; and between them, a bright pink heart, standing in front of Bill protectively, hands on its "hips," glaring down the would-be assailants.

The corners of Bill's mouth sagged down.

####

The bell rang and the shapes began filing out of class, muttering to each other about how they thought they'd done on the test. As the triangle cheerfully left the room, the teacher caught him by the arm again to pull him over. "Just a minute," she said. "I want a word with you."

Oh, he bet she did. Breezily, he said, "Sure thing! What is it?"

"Who was the first triangular president?"

"Wh— Th—" He spluttered indignantly. "There's been like—seven of them."

"Nine. And I'm only asking about the first one."

"How should I know!"

"You knew an hour ago."

He sputtered again. "That was— That was a multiple choice test! And it was an hour closer to when I'd studied! And I can focus better in the classroom! You can't expect me to remember anything in the hallway. You're using intimidation tactics. How could anyone focus under these conditions—"

"I don't know what you're doing," the teacher said, "or how you're doing it. Maybe I never will. But..." She sighed, and the anger seemed to leak out of her, and that only made him more nervous. "But whatever you're doing—you won't be able to do it forever. What will you do when you're out in the real world and you didn't learn anything in school?"

Her pity was worse than being hated had been. At least when he was hated, he knew she only looked down on him because she had something against him. What did he do with pity? With concerned warnings about the "real world"? He'd never heard anybody use the phrase "the real world" as anything but a threat. He hoped he was never out in the real world.

"Who cares! I'll never need any of this!" He should have shut up there. He didn't: "You're just jealous that me and my family make a million times more lying to everyone than you'll ever get trying to teach them the truth!"

His teacher gasped in shock; but before she could say anything, he was halfway down the hall with no intention of slowing down.

The next day, he stayed home, and his mom visited the principal. The day after that, he had a new teacher.

####

He was stupid. He knew that. He didn't know when he'd gotten stupid—if it was because he'd started touring so much and missing classes, or if he'd always been dumb and just didn't notice it before he registered just how often he was using his all-seeing eye to pick up answers that other kids couldn't see. It had crept up on him. But there it was. He was stupid, and he was too stupid to figure out what to do about it.

There was a big difference between being able to see everything, and actually knowing anything. And he might be all-seeing, but an idiot like him would never be all-knowing.

####

A trillion years later, he still didn't remember the name of the first triangular president. And look how far he'd gotten without it.

Lunch was toast and peanut butter. The toaster was the only source of heat he could use without having to ask his captors for access; and peanut butter and bread were the most nutritious foods he could reach without asking his captors to open a cabinet or fridge. He was sick of toast and peanut butter.

He wasn't about to ask Mabel to help him get lunch.

Well. He'd succeeded. He'd known just the right thing to say to get Mabel to lay off and drop the topic. Did he feel accomplished?

He stared out the window as he ate—there were hazy gray clouds on the horizon, beyond the trees, slowly inching closer—and he tried not to look at the picture Mabel had flung at him.

####

Mabel felt dumb about being upset that Bill thought she was dumb.

Because of course he did. Sure, he liked her art and he liked dance music and games without rules; sure, he was a willing student when it came to stuff like making friendship bracelets or artistically mixing sprinkles; sure, he was a weirdo fun guy; but he was also a Smarty McSmartypants, just like Dipper or Ford. And Mabel was the Girl Dipper who brought home C's. And even a weirdo fun Smarty wouldn't want to hang out for long with someone who couldn't keep up with nerd talk. He probably just... put up with her for as long as he could stand pretending he took her seriously, but he'd finally lost his patience...

And shown his true, jerky colors again.

Maybe Ford and Dipper were right about him; maybe he couldn't really change.

Except... there was something he'd said. And right after I trusted you yesterday. When he'd cried in front of her. When he'd told her about his fear of death.

He was being a jerk because he thought she'd betrayed him. But by reading a book?! Why couldn't he ever just explain himself? Did he think whatever was bothering him was obvious, and she was stupid for not figuring it out?

Something she almost but didn't quite remember thudded like a drum inside her brain. Dum-dum-dum. Dum-dum-dome.

From the entryway, Bill called, "Hey, star girl. I—"

He stopped in the doorway. Mabel had taped 28 pieces of paper together, drawn on a door knob, written "DOOR" at the top, and taped it across the doorway into the living room. Irritably, Bill said, "It doesn't work like that. This is obviously paper."

"Bill," Mabel grumbled. "Go away."

"No. I'm gonna say something to you."

He didn't phrase that like he was giving her a choice in the matter; but all the same, she said, "I don't wanna hear it."

"You know that horror story about a bride with a velvet ribbon tied around her neck, and her head falls off and rolls down the stairs when her husband unties it?"

She did. She and Dipper had read a book of scary stories to each other on Halloween a few years ago while waiting for it to be late enough to go trick-or-treating. In spite of herself, he'd piqued her curiosity. She reluctantly turned to look at him. "Yeah? So?"

Bill was leaning in the doorway, head tilted against the doorframe so he could see Mabel around the paper door curtain. "That's why I wear a bow tie."

Mabel blinked. "Wait—if you didn't, your head would fall off? What part of you is your head? How did it come off? Were you decapitated? Did you get decapitated for knowing about the third dimension—?"

"It doesn't keep my head on; it keeps my skin on."

Mabel's nose wrinkled. "Gross! How?"

"Remember how you said my outline is my skin and all my organs are inside the outline," Bill said. "That didn't change when we left the second dimension! We had to get exoskeletons on our top and bottom sides so solids like you can't stick you fingers in our guts. My bow tie keeps it tied in place."

"Whoa." So that was why they hadn't seen Bill's organs before. "Do you ever take it off?"

"Mostly when I'm eating!" He knocked on the doorframe. "So can I come in now?"

Of course. He'd been using information to buy his way back into her good graces. (No—that was what somebody who didn't think Bill deserved a second chance would think. He was making up for earlier by answering one of her questions about him.)

She took a deep breath, turned to face Bill, and said, "You didn't talk to me like a friend earlier."

"I—" Bill grimaced, looked at the ceiling for help, and conceded, "I mean—It's how I talk to my friends, but all right, I know you're not used to that—"

"Nobody should be used to that!" Mabel said. "What would Love Bunny say?"

"Wh—?! I— Th— You—" His voice cracked as it jumped higher, "What do I care what a cartoon rabbit thinks about—"

"What. Would. She. Say."

Bill's face screwed up in agony. He crossed his arms. "Ugh."

"Biiill?"

Eyes squeezed shut, Bill said, "She'd say my breath smells like I've been eating mean beans."

"Aaand?"

"I'm not going to say it. I won't say it."

"And you need to eat your nice rice!"

Bill let out a long, slow sigh.

"Say it!"

"This is my penance," Bill muttered toward his feet. "This is my penance. This is fair." He took a breath. "And... I need to eat my nice rice."

Mabel nodded. He'd confessed his sins.

"I think we're out of nice rice," Bill said, "but I've had the peanut butter of kindness and the toast of remorse. Good enough?"

She considered it. "Yeah. You can come in."

Bill batted aside the paper door curtain and ducked into the room. 

He sat across the table from Mabel and set down the paper she'd chucked at him amongst her others. Mabel glanced at the drawing, embarrassed of it now; but Bill didn't say anything about it.

He just propped his cheek against his hand and started looking over her other art.

Mabel sat there with her hands under her legs, watching his spotlight eyes rove over the table, feeling like she was waiting for a teacher to grade a poster she'd made for class. He saw a stop sign red octagon in sunglasses that was labeled "Bill's parole officer" and snorted. She wasn't sure if it was an amused snort or a derogatory snort. His gaze stopped on her attempt to figure out how Flatworlder anatomy worked, and didn't move farther. She'd probably gotten everything wrong, hadn't she?

She couldn't stand waiting for him to pass judgment on her art. "You think they look dumb, don't you."

Bill took a moment to reply. He didn't look up from her drawings. "I don't think you're dumb, Shooting Star."

"You think I'm dumber than Dipper and Grunkle Ford."

Bill winced. "I don't." At her dubious look, Bill amended, "Only Stanford! And that barely counts, all humans are dumber than Stanford. It doesn't mean I think you're dumb-dumb"

"Could've fooled me," Mabel muttered.

"You bet! I'm good at fooling people. All I have to do is say things I don't mean that make people feel the way I want." His voice was flat and matter-of-fact. "I wanted you to feel like the conversation wasn't worth it. That's all."

She stared at him. "By letting me know you think I'm stupid?!" She chucked a crayon at his face. "You could have just told me you didn't want to talk about Flatworld!" Her voice was getting that stupid waver again. "If I'd known, I would have dropped it! I didn't want to upset you!"

"I wasn't upset, it's just a stupid thing to complain about! It's just a dumb book! It'd—it'd take a real loser to be bothered by talking about a dumb book! I'm not..." He sighed harshly. "I know you weren't trying to get on my nerves, kid. It'd mess up your sticker chart." (Mabel hadn't even realized he knew about her sticker chart.) Almost inaudibly, he added, "M'sorry."

She'd never heard him apologize before.

She let out a slow breath. "Biiill. I don't think you're a loser."

He muttered something she couldn't make out as he flipped his hood on and pulled it down over his burning face. "Forget it. Move on. It's in the past!"

"If you're so embarrassed—"

"Not embarrassed!"

She chucked another crayon at his chest. "Then why are you telling me this now?"

Bill shut his eyes; took a deep breath; and, with a look of solemn dignity, and no small amount of pain, he said, "Because. Teddy Tender says. Our friends can't help us feel better if we don't tell them why we feel bad." He almost, almost managed to say it without sounding sarcastic.

Mabel burst out laughing. Bill pulled his hood lower.

Bill didn't even like Teddy Tender—he thought he was the stick in the mud of the Color Critters—and he certainly wasn't actually trying to follow Teddy's friendship lessons. He was just... saying something he didn't mean to make Mabel feel the way he wanted. And he wanted her to feel better.

No matter what anyone else said, he could change. And he was changing.

"Apology accepted," Mabel said. "Gold star!" She peeled one off a nearby sticker sheet and held it out.

Bill eyed it, like a man so hungry he was too nauseous to eat eyeing a pizza; and then snatched it from her and stuck it in the middle of his hoodie.

Mabel said, "And... I guess I'm sorry for getting all diggy about your home world." Even if she hadn't known it was bothering him, she probably should've guessed, shouldn't she? With how crabby he'd gotten. "I just got all excited and curious and... kinda worried about you after reading that book?" She sighed. "I understand if you don't wanna talk about it. You probably hated your dimension."

"What? He lurched forward with the vehemence of his denial—"Of course I don't hate my dimension!" Mabel leaned away at the sudden rage that had flared up in his eyes; but it died just as quickly and Bill immediately reeled himself back in, sitting back, crossing his arms: "I mean, come on, kid, use your head: you read a book about a culture. We're talking about an entire dimension. Would you hold a grudge against Jupiter if an ant bit you on Earth?"

Even as casually as he played it off, Mabel was sure he hadn't meant anything as calm and measured as claiming it was technically irrational to hate an entire dimension. He meant—emphatically, with his whole heart behind it—that he didn't hate his home dimension, at all.

Then why didn't he want to talk about it? (Then why had he destroyed it? Or was not hating it just another fiction he'd made up because he'd prefer that reality? Or was the destruction itself a lie? He hadn't mentioned it once since they'd started talking about Flatworld. Or did he think she didn't know about that and didn't want her to know? Or...)

Something had been churning in her subconscious since she woke up, and now—watching Bill ball up around himself as he squirmed around the things he didn't want to say—it finally dawned on her. Two words. Another piece of the Axolotl's poem. She tried to hold the words in her head until she could write them down, repeating them over and over—Misses home. Misses home.

Quietly, she asked, "Then... don't you want to remember it?"

His face spasmed, like it was nearly cracking in two—and then smoothed out. His face was blank. He didn't answer for a moment. "The last time I told a human more than two sentences about where I'm from... he gave me the universe's most depressing geometry textbook."

Oh. Maybe Bill was following Teddy Tender's friendship advice. "That's because you were talking to a boring old-timey math teacher, duh."

He laughed wryly. "You may have a point!"

If Bill assumed anybody prying into his history was either looking for the reason something was wrong with him, or publishing a whole book about the super bad parts... No wonder he hadn't wanted to talk to her. "So you didn't dislike Flatworld? You just dislike the book?"

Bill grimaced. "Did you read Eddie's biography?"

"No?"

####

As soon as he'd buckled himself into his seat for the drive to Northwest Manor, Dipper read the summary on the back cover of Flatworld, and then the paragraph-long author biography underneath it:

Edward B. Bishop, born in 1838 in England, was an accomplished mathematician, writer, theologian, and closet occultist, as well as a professor at the esteemed University of Fancyton. He published twelve books, the last of which was Flatworld in 1884. After sentencing his square protagonist to a two-dimensional asylum for preaching of the existence of the third dimension, he himself succumbed to an ironically similar fate: three months after publication, he was committed to an asylum for insisting that two-dimensional alien invaders intended to conquer the Earth and were persecuting him for revealing their existence, a delusion he maintained until his death from sleep deprivation in 1886. His most enduring legacy is inventing the margarita glass, which he claimed came to him in a dream. 

Dipper hissed between his teeth. "Ouch."

####

"Never mind, don't worry about it," Bill said. "But no. I didn't like the book."

"You poor thing! All this time you've been homesick for the second dimension, but the only things humans talk about is the bad stuff!"

"Don't call me that."

"Do you want to talk about the non-depressy stuff instead? Like..." Mabel wracked her brain for something nice she'd read in the book. She winced. "Uh... I'm sure there's something. You could choose the topic?"

Bill didn't look directly at her. He just looked over all her drawings again. "Tell me why you want to know so badly."

It was basically the same question he'd asked earlier—what's with the third degree—but his tone was different. Mabel swallowed hard and repeated, "Because... I'm your friend. It's crazy that we've been friends for like a month and I barely know a-ny-thing about who you are or how you grew up! By now, I'd usually know about a friend's family, favorite subject, favorite animal, opinion on glitter, and biggest life dream! Plus all the stuff humans have in common—like, 'do you breathe?'"

This time, Bill didn't argue with her answer. (He could have called her a liar. A month ago, she had just been trying to find out what was wrong with him. But this version of the truth she'd made up was better.) "You already know I'm pro-glitter in all contexts and my life's work is to throw an eternal party. What else really matters?"

"Those are the two most important questions," Mabel said seriously. Tentatively, she asked, "Did you have glitter in the second dimension?" He'd already reassured her that they'd had color, but it was hard to imagine glitter in such a bleak world.

"Sure."

Mabel heaved a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank goodness."

She looked around at the morning's art production, pulled over the first drawing she'd done of her shapesona, and grabbed a bottle of glue to draw a thin line around the heart.

Bill watched as Mabel carefully sprinkled several separate colors of glitter on the line of glue, like a master chef adding a precise amount of spice to a gourmet recipe, to create a glitter rainbow gradient; and then he slowly sat up and leaned toward the table again. "So, who's this freak?"

Mabel gave him an exasperated look. She decided he'd meant "freak" neutrally; but she'd clearly labeled the heart "ME IN FLATWORLD," she thought it was pretty obvious who this freak was.

But Bill cheerfully went on, "He's the most hideously disfigured shape I've ever seen."

"Hey!"

"I'm not joking, it hurts to look at this guy. At least he's symmetrical, but woof."

"She's not a guy! She's supposed to be me in Flatworld," Mabel insisted. "She's a powerful lady and I think she's beautiful." She paused. "Can a heart be a girl?" Lines looked boring, but Flatworld said that girls were all lines and all other shapes were boys. (Or were they? When they'd talked at the mall, Bill had been very clear that he considered himself a triangle instead of male or female, which scuttled the "all polygons are male" concept. Maybe Edward Bishop Bishop had made that part up?)

"She can be anything she wants," Bill said firmly. "I don't see any gender cops around here, do you?"

Good point. "And when there's no cops around, anything's legal."

Bill laughed. "Hey, I like that."

"Grunkle Stan says it!"

"Wise man." Bill leaned forward further across the table and tapped a finger on the deep cleft at the top of the heart. "Personally, I'm more worried about that agonizing-looking birth defect. I'm surprised she survived past infancy!"

Mabel glared at him, but she supposed she couldn't argue. A heart was a pretty irregular shape. And according to Flatworld, almost all irregular shapes were executed in childhood or else imprisoned in adulthood, since they thought irregular shapes would grow up to be depraved, imbecilic criminals—

"Wait," Mabel said. "Wait. Last year, when I called you an isosceles freak—"

Bill cut in, "It was 'monster,' but go on!"

"Was that, like..." Mabel's voice dropped to a whisper, "a slur on Flatworld?"

Bill fought to keep his face straight as he decided how to respond. He went for the funniest answer. "Yes."

Mabel clapped her hands over her mouth and squeaked, "Nooo!"

"It's actually pretty impressive a human managed to come up with it!"

"I'M SORRYYY, augh I didn't know!"

Over her anguished whines, Bill went on, "It's just a good thing you didn't say 'scalene'! I would've had to wash your mouth out with drain cleaner!"

Mabel had pulled the collar of her sweater over her face. From within Sweater Town, she asked, "Was that the first thing I ever said to you?"

Bill choked back a laugh. "Yeah, it was."

She squealed in embarrassment and slid under the table.

"Heck of a first impression, star girl!"

"i'm sorryyy."

Bill reached under the table to pat the top of her head. "Ahhh, it was funny. Get up here." 

As she climbed back into her seat, Bill added, "I'm getting back at you now, I'm not done making fun of your medical miracle yet. You know what she'd look like as a human? A headless, neckless body with an eyeball shoved six inches down her esophagus." He paused thoughtfully. "Actually... that sounds kinda cute."

"Eww, Bill."

"It is, it's cute. Like a clumsy puppy with a neurological disorder! I guess that's how the hideous Miss Heart here must look to humans!"

Mabel looked over her art again, wondering if she should change her shapesona, considering Bill's reaction to it. 

So, maybe she was creating a freak. She didn't see any shape cops around here. She kept drawing. "I'd be fine," she said. "You like weird freaks! You'd keep me safe."

A stricken look crossed his face. He was momentarily silent as he watched Mabel start another picture. And then, as though he were only considering it for the first time, he said, "Yeah. I guess I would."

His gaze drifted to the wrinkled picture of Mabel's shapesona standing protectively in front of Bill. "Freaks can't afford to tear each other down."

####

(THIS is the chapter that's been giving me hell the last few weeks. Months. Last few months. I'm so glad to finally have it out, and I hope y'all enjoyed!! This chapter probably brings up a lot more questions than it actually answers—and completely different questions based on whether or not you've read Flatland lol—so I can't wait to hear what y'all think.)

[dailyadventureprompts]

Deity: Tergrid, God of Fright

"Terror is the natural state of a child, they know they are small, vunrable, glass fragile. It is only once we grow that we delude ourselves into thinking we are safe, that we are strong, that we have control over the world we live in. Show a grown man how little control he really has, and you will see the child he always was: pissreeking, repentant, and pleading for his mother. " - Gerheart, village executioner

A goddess for those who hold close to the light dreading the unknown or those who wander gleefully into the dark seeking it, Tergrid is a deity of imagined horrors and terrible omens.

Depicted as a young woman always bearing a lantern, myths speak of Tergrid's shadow as a monstrous, murderous thing with a will of its own. Unable to kill the goddess due to the light she carries, it vents it's directionless wrath on those who linger beyond the lantern's glow. This duality, as both as the victim of fear and the source of it defines the brightmaiden's worship; as she is both threat and saviour to those who draw her attention.

Adventure Hooks:

The party arrive at a country roadhouse at dusk, only to find the inhabitants have nailed shut every door and shutter as if preparing for a siege. They say some horrid murderous things are lurking just off the road, and as the light wanes they refuse to let the heroes inside. The roadhouse's residents are terrified and are willing to fight to keep the party out, half convinced the party are themselves the things they should be afraid of... which isn't to say there ISN'T anything else waiting for that door to open. After negoitating their way inside (or forcing the issue) the heroes discover the roadhouse residents were warned of the danger by a mysterious woman who passed through earlier, though none can remember exactly what she looked like.

A knight renowned for his fearless deeds wanders the street in a waking nightmare, seeing threats everywhere and lashing out at phantoms and passersby. Even after being subdued it’s clear he won’t awake, and many suspect interference from jealous rivals in the upcoming tourney. The knight’s meek squire asks the party to help investigate the causes and possible cures of her master’s madness, never suspecting that her suppressed resentment at his recklessness might’ve manifested as a curse.

In desperate need of answers, the party consults an oracle dedicated to Tergrid who has them undergo trials of fear and phantasm so that they might know the truth. Chiefest among these is battling in a dark cave full of shadow monsters, while flickering visions of the future are cast on the wall by the guttering lantern light. The longer they can endure, the more they will know, but that isn't likely to be long unless they fight harder than they ever have before.

Inspiration: Tergrid is a shameless lift from Magic the Gathering's Kaldheim setting, which I've never played but apparently keep returning to as a consistent well of inspiration.

Fear both as a mechanic and motif is something I think is underutilized in D&D which is odd considering it's a game about venturing out into the unknown to face potentially deadly challenges. Fear and risk are what our heroes must endure to experience the wonder and rewards on the other side of their journey. As such it makes sense for a goddess of fear to play a role in the thematic weave of the stories we end up telling.

Speaking in less lofty terms, I also think using the lantern as a symbol for being frightened fucks hard. It's a tiny, fragile, and temporary respite from an ocean of darkness and the threats it contains.

Worshippers: The lost and abandoned, Unseele Fey, Shadowcasters and other denizens of the shadowfell. There is also heavy overlap with the worship of the night goddess Nyx.

Signs: Nightmares, unnatural or living shadows,

Symbols: A Lantern, often surrounded by a circle of darkness.

Artsource

[cherrielatte]

genuine question do you even understand what a proshipper is ? like youre okay with people romanticizing pedophilia and shipping minors and adults ? you think thats okay?? GENUINE question.

Hello! Judging from the way you worded this - I'm gonna be honest: I don't think you know what proshipping is. I was very close to not answering this because it was sounding a bit in bad faith ( and this isn't the first time I've gotten belligerent asks on the same topic) But well, I decided to give it a shot and give benefit of the doubt.

 I know it's common ground to jump onto proshipping with the idea that it means you romanticize pedophilia, abuse, toxicity, etc. It's the typical high ground taken when people hear that dark fiction enjoyers exist. But that's not actually what it means. It just means that YOU, as an individual, understand that a drawing is not the same thing as human being. Written characters are not the same as human beings. Harassing REAL people over a non existent character because they put them into situations that make you uncomfortable says more about the harasser than the writer/artist. Proshipping is about taking personal responsibility for your experience online. Not long ago, the idea of a proshipper was just considered having fandom etiquette (ie: Don't like; Don't read type of tag lines. ) I'm a proshipper and there are plenty of things I don't like & make me uncomfortable. But I also understand that I can easily not engage. I can filter tags so I don't see it. I can block people that make that kind of content. I can refuse to click on something clearly labeled as the content I don't like. I can control what I see. And I can also understand that that if someone draws something I don't like it doesn't mean anything about them in real life nor what they enjoy in real life. Besides, a lot of people that consider themselves proshippers are victims of abuse or have had to endure traumatic events in their lives. Engaging in what you might consider dark fiction allows people to cope and navigate through complex emotion/trauma and express themselves in ways they are not allowed to or haven't allowed themselves to. I've seen some people say "I've been through trauma and I don't engage in proshipping." And okay, I'm happy for you. But not everyone copes the same way you do. And no one should be held to the same standard. If we were all carbon copies of each other, maybe I would understand that argument. But that's not the case. I should also mention, that it's become a bit standard for people to only excuse those that have been through trauma to make dark fiction. But only if they publicly acknowledge what kind of trauma they have endured. I am 100% against this way of thinking. I do not think it is anyone's right to demand an account of my or anyone's personal traumas just to validate the existence of certain piece of art. No one is entitled to anyone's abuse story. If a person is willing to share, because they want to, that's the personal decision of the individual. But look, much of the horror genre (movies, books, tv, etc) wouldn't exist if we put these high censorship rules onto art as a whole and unfortunately, I see this happening more and more these days like discussed in this post about someone's experience in publishing gothic horror.

Going back to an earlier point, you have to really understand that the characters are fake. 100% fake. If I ship Sora ( KH) and Ash (Pokemon) neither of them are going to be upset about it because they don't exist. If I draw them kissing, it is a drawing of anime looking characters kissing. That's all. They don't look anything like real human people. Wasting energy fighting over fictional characters is just that. Wasting time and energy. Who are you saving? Ash? Sora? They don't need help, because they aren't real. Fight for real people that actually exist. I have seen people outside of the Soriku fandom genuinely upset about people shipping Riku x Sora because they are underage! Mostly because they are both male but without fail, they always slap on the argument: "they are kids, you sicko!" But you know why they go to that? Because assuming the moral high ground wins over arguments quickly. People are eager to be superficially perceived as morally good. I have seen people ship Riku x Ansem SOD, which could fall into that age gap - problematic shipping you referred to in your ask. But you know what? I get it. I see people interpret their relationship as one of abuse, metaphorical SA, manipulation, etc. I completely understand and see that interpretation and where it stems from. And unfortunately, there are many people in fandom that have had this exact experience. Honestly, without me needing to ask anyone specifically, I KNOW there are people in fandom projecting their experiences onto Riku and Ansem as a means to replay it with a bit of actual control. And even if there are people who don't. I'm not going to ask, because it's none of my business. So again, as a proshipper I am completely in control of my online experience. I can block, mute, filter, and not engage with the things I don't like or things that trigger me. But as long as it is fiction, it remains as just that : Something I don't like between characters that dont exist. I don't have to harass, bully, nor threaten people over fiction. Of course, there are bad apples in every circle. But to me, whether someone is a bad person or not is expressed through action toward real people and the intentional harm done onto them, whether it be through inappropriate interactions, abuse of any kind, exposing personal information, harassing family/at work, or encouraging harm. Those are real actions on real people and engaging in these actions is what counts to me as markers of a bad person. Not someone drawing two fictional characters that haven't aged in the last 20 years kissing or having sex. 

[jules-makes-stuff]

Been seeing ppl on reddit argue about magic in fantasy for a while and I don't want to lose 3 hours bickering over there but I have *thoughts*

By now hard and soft systems are pretty well known but people ague againt hard systems because it "takes away the, well, MAGIC of magic". I think people aren't considering tone and the overall goals of a work and are conflating personal taste with truth again.

In my mind it really depends on the above though. Say you are Hoffman writing The Golden Pot. You want your work to be dreamlike, ethereal, like a half remembered song. Everything operates on dream/fairytale logic and emotion is reality. You should absolutelt NOT explain magic. It should be a strange force adhering only to narrative and emotional forces.

If you are writing a magical realism piece, like One Hundred Years of Solitude, the magic again is there to emphasize the absurdity of reality people at the time faced. Explaining anything takes that away. Same with horror or something like Metamorphosis. You don't know why this is happening and that means you cannot stop it or it doesn't matter how it happened, only the consequences.

Then there are more classical fantasy stories like Lord of the Rings. Magic is something ancient and grand and mysterious.... and none of the hobbits have it besides stray magic items. That is what people miss, I believe, when using this example. Gandalf isn't our pov character. Most characters there do not have magic or only have limited magic w very specific limitations, tools essentially. So we can follow along and anticipate how these will be used. There is big, scary, unknown magic, but it is usually something used by the opponents or characters that come in and out of the narrative. And I think that's a good balance! Its fine that we dont know the science of magic, because we understand enough when we need to, we can make predictions and there is enough wiggle room for something like Gandalf the White to happen. A looot of fantasy had followed this setup: the mc has only a few well defined spells and magic items, the world has more deep magic.

But, I personally do like harder magic, if the mc is supposed to be a wizard (or the equivalent). I would call most battle shonen hard magic (I think this is where ppl might want to kill me) becauss in a good battle shonen we know what everyone can do and we can plan along with the characters and predict how the fight will go. When a problem is solved in an interesting way we can go "I should have seen that comming!"

In BAD versions people yell really loud and whoever yells loudest about friendship (once we wasted enough screentime to call the third act done) wins. And this here is my problem. Because I have seen stories where characters do the same with magic and it breaks my immersion. When magic used by the mc can suddenly do anything and everything what is the point? I'm no longer following a story w interesting twists and turns, Im waiting for the author to say "ok thats enough we can push the win button now". And listen, obviously its a made up story, none of this is real or matters, but its the authors job to keep the illusion alive that it isnt.

This is different from creating a mcguffin that can do anything once and having a quest about it, there getting the item is the challenge, not using it.

And a system being hard doesnt mean we need to know the science behind it, just that we need to know what it can do and the limits. In avatar they can manipulate the elements w martial arts. Period. Why? How? The spirits said so. Most ppl fuck up hard magic imo by starting to write a thesis about magical physics or overcomplicating it instead of taking 1 simple idea and exploring all the cool things that it can do. Witch Hat feels super magical and yet all there is to magic is drawing magic circles and we actively learn how to draw them in the series and the way the characters problem solve w magic and their try-fail cycles are super fun!

The point of this ramble is that I need structure that fits the narrative goals of the work. If we're doing a dream like narrative throw away explanations. If Im a wizard playing mind chess w other wizards you better tell me what chess pieces we have.

[cherimilku]

Hungover Reader x Rafayel (Love and Deepspace). A snippet from full story.

The first thing I register is warmth. The second is the dull pounding in my skull.

I groan, pressing a hand to my forehead as I shift against the soft sheets beneath me. Soft sheets. That isn't right. My bed isn't this comfortable. And it definitely doesn't smell like—

My breath hitched. The unmistakable scent of him.

My eyes snap open, and I immediately regret it. The room is too bright, my head is too heavy, and worst of all—I'm not in my apartment.

I'm in Rafayel's bed.

Panic curls in my stomach as last night comes back in fragments—Jenna, Tara, the jazz bar, too many drinks and then Rafayel. His hands steadying me. His lips, warm and just slightly parted. The feel of his breath against mine.

Oh, no.

I kissed him.

I sit up too fast, my vision swimming. That is when I notice that someone took off my shoes. Someone tucked me in.

And I have a very good guess who that someone is.

As if on cue, a voice drifts from the other side of the room.

"Well, well. Sleeping Beauty awakens."

I nearly jump out of my skin. Rafayel is leaning against the doorway, his arms are crossed with a coffee mug in hand. His dark eyes are fixed on me, the usual smirk tugging at his lips.

I open my mouth, then immediately shut it because what am I supposed to say? Sorry for throwing myself at you? Thanks for not letting me collapse? Please forget I ever put my lips on yours?

He raises a brow, clearly enjoying my suffering. "You look like you're debating whether to thank me or to start planning your escape."

I scowl, my brain still too sluggish to come up with a proper response. Instead, I throw the nearest object at him,a pillow. He catches it effortlessly, shaking his head in mock disappointment.

"I carry you all the way here, give you my bed, and this is the thanks I get?" He tsks. "You're hurting me, you know?"

"Oh shut up," I groan, rubbing my temples. "Why am I here?"

He looks at me like he is considering how much to embarrass me. "Well, you were drunk, you got here god knows how, and you seemed like you were going to collapse next to my door at any moment, so I figured I should probably let you in."

My hands cover my face. "Kill me. Just end it now."

"Tempting," he chuckles. "But watching you suffer through this hangover is much more entertaining."

I peek through my fingers to glare at him, but he just smirks. Infuriating.

Then, as if the most amazing thought just struck him, he leans against the doorframe. "By the way, you never mentioned you get extra affectionate when you're drunk."

I freeze. My heart dropped.

"Oh, you don't remember?" he continues. "And here I thought it was a special moment."

"I hate you." I mutter under my breath.

"Now, that's just hurtful." He places a hand over his heart. "But don't worry, I was a perfect gentleman. You, however..." He trailes off, enjoying the way my eyes widen in horror.

"Oh my god..." I press my palms against my face again. "What did I do?"

"Well, aside from clinging to me like your life depended on it?" He tilts his head, drawing out the suspense.

I am torn between throwing myself out the window and strangling him. "I did not."

"You definitely did." He takes a sip of his coffee. "And let's not forget the part where you-"

"Okay!" I practically shout, shoving the blanket off me and swinging my legs over the side of the bed. "We're done talking about this."

He chuckles, clearly pleased with himself. "If you say so."

He leaves the room, wearing a proud smirk on his face. I will not think about the kiss. I will not think about the way he didn't pull away and kissee me again. And I definitely will not think about the look in his eyes now.

Rafayel returns a few minutes later, a glass of water in one hand and a bottle of painkillers in the other. He tosses them onto the bed beside me.

"Drink."

I swallow the pills, ignoring the way he is leaning against the wall, arms crossed, watching me like I am the most interesting thing in the room. It is irritating.

I set the glass on his nightstand and exhale slowly. "Okay. I think I can go now."

"Bold of you to assume I'm letting you leave in your current state."

I blink. "Excuse me?"

He arches a brow. "After one sip of water, you think you're good to go?" He tsks. "Not happening, sweetheart."

I groan, flopping back onto the pillows. "This is the worst day of my life."

He chuckles. "You're so dramatic."

I turn my head to glare at him. "I drunkenly kissed you, Rafayel. And now I have to sit here and pretend like that didn't happen, while you-" I gestured at him, flustered. "-just stand there"

His lips twitches, like he is fighting back another smirk. "And what exactly am I doing wrong?"

"It's just Infuriating."

He humms. "Well, that's just my natural charm."

I throw another pillow at him. This time, he let it hit him.

Silence settles between us after that, heavy despite the teasing. I don't know what I want him to say. Maybe some kind of reassurance that I hadn't ruined everything. Maybe just an acknowledgment that he felt something too. Full story: The Artist's Muse │ Love and Deepspace Rafayel x Reader (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/story/389702656-the-artist%27s-muse-%E2%94%82-love-and-deepspace-rafayel-x? (On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65074873/chapters/167341744)

[rocketyship]

Okay part 1 of Gormiti nature unleashed except everything is wrong and is it even the same property anymore? Co-written by my friend @technicallyastar

We are starting off with Noctis and the air kingdom! (Super simplified cause no one reads my 2000 word essays)

Okay so starting off like all the characters we keep the core traits, that being (this is literally from the wiki btw): overbearing, short-tempered, serious, stubborn, brave and egotistical. On top of that we are keeping him being the prince of the air kingdom, his daddy issues, and that need to be the centre of attention and in charge at all points.

So what are we changing? For starters all of the characters have been aged up to adults because the setting we have schemed up is much darker than the original and the way the gorm stones function is also very different and borderline body horror.

When watching the show (three times I should add) I noticed that Noctis is a character who is constantly presented with the idea of becoming evil and every time he considers it. So me and my darling bestie decided well let’s just make him evil for the first half of the story. As we have decided that the fire and air kingdoms are in a type of alliance as fire needs oxygen to burn and the whole alliance will likely be a separate post.

In the show Noctis is an all talk character, claiming to be very skilled but usually the first to be knocked down and since we are going the route of making him an antagonist for the first half he is an actual threat and generally a kind of terrible person. Perhaps you notice the lovely metal boots he is rocking and thinking “well that’s not very air feeling” to which I say: listen.

In the show his inspiration is very much an eagle, but we decided to generally make the air people feel more angelic and have a wider array of bird influence. Thus we have decided that he does this thing where he flies up real high and literally swoops down and drops on people ultimately crushing them with the high speeds and the lovely armour pieces. As personally I feel that when you have a character that can fly within a story that fights, I would like to see that character get creative with such a skill.

Following this perhaps you are thinking why does he have fairy wings in some of those drawings? Well simple. His wings get ripped off by his father at a point because he starts to realise that he may actually be the bad guy, and thus starts his redemption. Where for a good chunk he doesn’t have his wings and his overuse of his form storm has left him in a very sickly state (as overuse of the stones in this rewrite can and will kill you), following this Agrom who is more of an inventor-blacksmith type character in this creates a pair of robotic fairy looking wings for him to use. (Will expand on further posts at a point.) This is also done as a reference to the og Gormiti show, as whilst I have never watched it, I saw that the air lord in that was a pretty pink fairy looking girl and I strongly believe that fairies make everything better.

How the gorm stone works is also important to explain here so I will. Essentially the gorm stones don’t just make the person bigger stronger and give them magic powers in this, it literally physically turns the holder into a force of nature. In Noctis’ case he can literally turn into the wind and air, summon powerful winds that can create tornadoes and bring in typhoons, and he has even started doing this thing where he brings a ton of swords into the sky and rains them down because that is cool. Likewise there are smaller more precise ways to use the stone, like creating smaller intense bursts of air that slice things, other airbending rip-off stuff, and just more things that are more opposing than “furious wind twist”.

Like I said this is it super simplified, and I will get into more at a point ✨ thx

Take a guess what this means

[inkabelledesigns]

Belladonna Nightshade - Halloween Dark Fairy

Base Doll: G3 Twyla from Monster High Clothing Pattern: Dollightful's Asymmetrical Dress (read to the end, I have notes about this)

Happy Halloween everyone! Since becoming a doll customizer, my Halloween dolls are usually related to my favorite indie horror game, Bendy and the Ink Machine. However, seeing as I've completed two Bendy dolls already this year, I felt it was time to give myself a break and try something a bit different. My friends over in DollyAnna's Discord server wanted to do a collaboration, so we decided to all make some Dark Fairies for Halloween!

Belladonna Nightshade is a mischievous fae that loves to play tricks and tempt mortals. That said, she's easily bribed with a sweet treat or two, and will usually let you be if you have a little candy or pastry to give her. I haven't decided what I want to do with her yet in terms of a story, but there is a part of me that would love to have her in my Equinox story.

When you consider the fact that most of my other Halloween dolls are black and yellow, it's no surprise she ended up super colorful. XD Would you believe this is my first doll with rainbow hair? Yeah neither did I, but she is! Part of my style is having really colorful and vibrant dolls, it surprises a lot of people that I've never done a rainbow before, but honestly? I'm glad to have finally tackled one! I'm also glad to have worked with another G3. Twyla is very near and dear to my heart, and I was so psyched to work with her mold! You can't see it in any of these photos, but I used glow in the dark varnish on her eyes and neon markings, so that her eyes still glow like the original. I will say, this doll has a lot more acrylic paint than my others, just by the nature of I don't have any pencils in neon colors. It was nice to get the practice in, I feel more confident than I did before in my brush skills. It was also nice to have a doll with dark scleras for a change! I haven't done that since I made Dreamer, it's surprisingly fun to draw on!

I was inspired by a LOT of different things with this one, and I went back and forth on my concepts a lot. Black light skeleton make-up, butterflies, fairies with non-traditional wings, candy, jesters, these were all sources of inspiration, and I think most obviously of all, Dollightful herself. This wasn't intentional, but I ended up using a doll of one of her favorite characters, with a lot of saturated colors which we know she loves, and even her dress pattern! I've been wanting to make this garment for ages, and finally I had a reason to try it!

So those of you who know how this pattern works are probably asking "Kat, how did you make this fit a G3? This dress is supposed to fit a G1 Monster High doll!" Believe it or not, Requiem Arts has a method for easily adjusting G1 patterns to fit G3 bodies. It's as simple as scaling a pattern up to 104% and printing it that way. It's meant for her garments, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work for other doll patterns. So I tried it with Katherine's dress, and I'm happy to say it worked out just fine! I think I probably should have adjusted a bit more on the skirt though. This outfit is essentially two pieces, and the skirt with all the ruffles is a little tight around the booty, it could have used a little more sizing up. So if you own this pattern and want to try this yourself, do keep that in mind!

Do let me know what you think! I had so much fun working on Belladonna, she's so vibrant and fun, I wanna try more fairies like her someday. I also need to try using props more. I got these pumpkins and hay bales on sale, and it was fun using them to craft a little temporary set for photos.

[rolameny]

i played through nine sols a second time and now i am going to talk about it. full spoilers!!

this is one of those works that tells you a lot of things about its world from the jump, only without giving you the context to interpret those statements. it makes a second visit so rewarding. going back through and knowing exactly what each monument means / the things yi is talking around.... really really good.

heng is fantastic on a replay. the first time around till you get the final message i thought yi was haunted. i also thought the ji reveal would be that he was heng and not an adult man

"neither of us made a mistake. we both made different choices" says yi, a man who has made so very many mistakes

game so good it makes you go "man i should learn more about taoism so i can better understand its themes"

it's wild how much this game draws on hollow knight and yet stands on its own as a totally different thing. like, mechanically, the jades are charms. the charged attack is a great slash. the full movement kit is monarch wings and mothwing cloak. the geo/artifacts economy. and you're a little guy who can't quite manage to die fighting your way through a series of bosses and some brightly hued corruption to sacrifice yourself at the end. it's just straightforwardly true that RCG pulled a great deal from HK, and it was enough to make me go aha!!! in recognition many times, but it's completely its own thing. own gameplay feel, own world, own story.

own protag: i love the silent protag in hollow knight but yi is such a lovable bitch [affectionate/derogatory]. guy who sucks so bad. guy it took over five hundred years to internalize a single social-emotional lesson.

it's so fascinating watching him react to the different sols. who does he get angry with. who does he make an offer of mercy to. because kuafu is so much the guy who is there i forgot yi also considered lady e the other reasonable person on the council, right up till he namedrops her when yelling at eigong.

the anger and spite to treat goumang as he did!! and even in the true ending you see neither he nor kuafu thought about her. there are some gaps of consideration in the true ending that i think of as "well we don't have time for that but you get it" -- any other potential apemen on new kunlun (peach blossom village is the 95th livestock pen. girl where are the others), the like 300-odd of 100k solarians left remaining in cryosleep who might like to at least live a little on earth before dying. imo the narrative is just skimming over them, we reach the emotional point of it with the people we know (kuafu and the gang). and it would be a whole narrative diversion to grab her. but the true ending makes sure to show us that goumang is still down there, rather than skimming over her fate. even when he grows a little yi still sucks so much dude [affectionate]. and kuafu's passivity coming to the fore here as well!

kuafu is so compelling because he is The Nice Guy but he is absolutely not necessarily The Kind Guy as well. he was just chill with the whole council plan and didn't do anything except be kind of bummed when yi died. (iirc he does just think yi's head did that. could have thought that one through a little more.) at the ending he pushes back against the idea of saving the apemen!

lady ethereal my beloved elizabeth holmes as a lynx furry. there's a fight that made me nod sagely and go Ah, Nightmare King Grimm. here's a place where i felt a little dissonance -- the full screen huge face digital flashing between normal/happy and manic evil laughter is a horror classic but it didn't quite hit it for lady e imo. huge face crying or snarling would have worked better i think, which i say even though i get the manic laughter through panic beat. idk. i love that in her bossfight she is presenting herself as the villain she thinks she is -- she gets out her heaving-est pushup bra for this one. sorry about it, girl. maybe next time if you know you're consigning a hundred thousand people to slow madness within their cryochambers maybe speak up about it.

speaking of people who learned no lessons. ji like okay well i've seen a lot of horror and so i elect to do nothing about it except contribute my cells to possibly the worst cause on earth. i will continue to wander this grotto for five hundred years while it gets worse. 👍 i'm having meaningful discussions about the tao with your man in the tentacle hole and i am not sorry, ji.

i understand the anglo readability argument for transliterating li er as lear but i, the anglophone in the room, did have to look at the fanwiki to understand that we were not dipping into shakespeare for a single guy. 😔

kanghui is such a fantastic element of this game. you get just enough about him to add to the horror of what eigong was doing, and what the jies are doing, and what the fuck is up with penglai to begin with. his inclusion makes ji make more sense to me as well. it's not that ji is a once in a millennium impossibility. it's that penglai is so so so weird. ji and yi pull up little chairs in front of kanghui's torture contraption for immortality group therapy.

like that one post says. CHIYOU best character CHIYOU

the siscon stuff in this game is so funny. [looking at the fengs] gang what's wrong with you [looking at yi and heng] gang what's wrong with you. congrats to the other characters on not having siblings and therefore having slightly more normal psychosexual hangups such as "getting off to body modification and torture."

RCG funding for one million years please 🙏🙏🙏 i know they said it took them five years to make this one but even with that timeline it's crazy that they went from narrative horror game to a genuinely best-in-class feeling Sekirollow Knight. they are so good at this shit.

okay. i have exorcised my thoughts and feelings about this game. playing a twenty-hour game twice in like 2-3 weeks is normal right.

[crossedsabers10s]

Hi! just read charnal house floor and adored it-- the dramatic irony, the tension, the rising horror; liz calling damon young which is so terrible because she's right he always will be and yet he absolutely isn't.... art.

I did want to ask, how do you think something similar would go down when they are closer, when liz knows damon's a vampire, when they are both a bit more traumatized, when liz has once tortured damon herself and he's forgiven her that?? like if it were around season 3 or so. I ask mostly because I just really love it when people feel sorry for damon shjddk anyway you're an amazing writer and happy new year !

fjkl;adfdsalfkj thank you!

hm, later in the show when they're friends/she knows? Well, the same story line (her showing him the storage room, perhaps even as a show of reconciliation? her showing a vampire the secret stuff?) relies on Liz forgetting she knows about Augustine or just not considering it important so it remains as status quo until that moment and Damon finds out. He is. Less likely to attack her? Probably--tho we all know how Damon deals with sudden strong emotions-- and she'd realize that this is personal to him, even making the leap that he was involved w Augustine at one point. Which would possibly result in her prying a few horrific details out of him--he's sharing them to shock her into not asking more, she's staying calm and treating him like a victim, falling back on her training, which he does notice and switches to telling her he already took revenge, bc he wants her to see him as villain instead of victim, maybe which spawns her researching the Whitmore family and all of his victims perhaps even preventing him from killing Aaron's aunt bc she's like 'does it make you feel better? does revenge help? this woman never hurt you.' and he's all 'it makes me feel better' but then through the power of friendship he's forced to confront the fact that revenge is ultimately empty/isn't going to bring back Enzo or absolve Damon's role in his 'death' and Liz convinces him that tearing apart the organization and dragging the non-supernatural shady shit to light is a better vengeance than random murder of people who are like. Innocent of the original crime and Dr. Whitmore isn't even alive to care that his family is being hunted down. Tearing down his legacy tho? the college and program and all that? Ruining his name and memory? That's where it's at. So they do that, discover Enzo, and bam. Of course, then Liz has to convince Enzo not to kill Aaron/Aaron's aunt. She could probably call them even for her getting the ball rolling on his rescue as long as he doesn't go after them and instead focus on Wes. They drag Enzo back to Mystic and suddenly, amongst the Original Plotline, they have to deal with Damon's... ex? friend? ex friend? no one is sure. Liz and Damon are keeping quiet. Enzo is too busy being free to answer questions.

OR

she now knows vampires feel and think as people do, remembers Augustine exists and guiltily goes out of her way to check in with them--maybe to convince herself that the vampire they have is a bad one and therefore deserves it? and instead finds. Well. Enzo. when she tries to dig further, she's either shut down or they try to silence her. So she starts... going about it the legal way. Do you have a permit for that? Oh hey I noticed you ordered a bunch of medical supplies. Where did that go? Throws the book at them until they Do Something about it and gets kidnapped so Augustine can figure out why she's making trouble/maybe they even found out about Caroline and threatened her. Liz, drawing her gun: Frankenstein wannabes say what? Whatever, point is, she rescues Enzo, brings him back to Mystic and goes hey maybe I should ask Damon for help? Maybe this guy would feel more comfortable with another vampire. Damon, walking into the room because Liz asked him to help her with something: this isn't the last thing i expected but only because i didn't expect it at all. Enzo: *kill bill sirens*

[inkzectz]

these are more meta questions 4 your ask blog, so i thought i should ask them here, lol. is gordon in the story streaming the game and we're the chat? if characters answer our questions, is that gordon typing out our questions and asking the NPCs directly? also, finally, were there any pieces of media u were inspired by? (other than hlvrai and tma, lol)

Gordon isn’t much of a streamer in my AU, especially with how the game begins to affect him, the asks or ‘statements’ people send are not a live chat but Gordon begins to view it as one, I actually had ideas for as it progressed he begins to refer to the senders as “chat” bc it sort of acts like one.

The statement aspect (in regards to the asks) isn’t ment to be one that you think too hard on since that is just how I’ve chosen to incorporate asks into the storyline but it IS something that is part of the game, Gordon says so in the beginning, in tma occasional statements are actually messages directed to Jon and it’s kind of just that.

Gordon recieves papers with strange comments or questions and he just navigates the game.

When talking to the npcs he isn’t always ‘present’ so to say, occasionally it’s just the statement giver ‘talking’ to the npcs, the other members in the archives also have statements to fill out too, sometimes Gordon is present when it comes to asks that are more lore focused (or that are funnier with a second person there) but just general questions to the npcs they can answer on their own.

‘In universe’ I personally imagine that the statements would just appear as papers to them with the messages, they don’t really question it since that is how their world operates and what is normal

For now ;º)

I don’t know if this counts but vaguely DDLC? Just in terms of the visual novel style (where I got the idea for it to be a visual novel game) aside from the fact I already thought tma would have made a great VN game, but also in terms of theme of “this game is very much not what it seems” but that also just comes from combining hlvrai and tma, they are both very different but also pretty similar in a lot of aspects and for it to work it needs to be much more serious which means cranking up whatever of hlvrai could be considered ‘serious’.

So like for example the broken npcs, in tla:ai it’s portrayed in a more serious way which kind of draws back to the fucked up broken npc thing going on in ddlc unintentionally, a lot of the vague ddlc inspo is by accident of just trying to make being self aware a horror aspect 😭

I hope i explained that well enough ^_^

[starrvlight]

should i make a web toon??

chat should I make a webtoon?? I already have some story written out, it's kinda lie sbg?? It's not like taken from SBG I promise 😭 but it's the same genre??and I have not ppl to edit my art / anyone to help out with the comic CONSIDERING IM A MINOR (13-15)??I also don't consider myself good a drawing:p But I'll tell u about it and lmk if I should try to make it a comic??:D

it's about these kids (12-13) I KNOW IT'S YOUNG BUT WHATS A LIL TRAUMA GONNA DO?? And like (I'm still figuring this out 😔(ok nvm I'm just going to copy and paste I have a 2 starts so far starts so far))

starter one: (2nd one I made + still working on)

They use walkie talkies the communicate *FIFI RUNNING THRU THE HALLS OF HER SCHOOL* Hey- I'm Fiona or fifi- whatever u wanna call me. For the past few months I've been having this recurring dream, or simalar to that.. Cut to fifi panting, crying and bleeding a lot from the side of she stomach, running in a hellish realm from a multiple runners going to some massive treehouse and she climbs a ladder and axel rolls up the ladder, and fifi pressing a button and collapse shaking

Cut back to Fifi, running into her class "your late miss Weech." Fifi looks up "sorry Mr mordini" she mumbles

starter 2: (og one)

Fifi was looking thru her dad's stuff and saw some "fun" looking horror game that was shoved way way way in the back1-2 (axel and fifi) people are playing a game, then the game glitches and the game like sucks them in.they were playing some horror game where you had necklaces/ bracelets/earrings rings that they found then they had some type of power (but didn't know||powers:, water,fire,air,earth,flying, manipulate gravity,super speed, instant healing, able to shield Able to manipulate blood, shrink/grow is size, teleport abe to see into the future by a.little bit, lightning yk?) and so they kinda just walked around for a bit and then saw something glowing..it was a crimson shade of red..like blood.. axel grabbed it and looked at it then hesitantly but it on, then continued walking it was really dare,, they came across this neighborhood/ghost town and a whole bunch of houses were like decaying and they walked in, hoping to find stuff,they ended up finding some water, a backpack and a couple flashlights +batteries.. and a ring that had a dark green gem..then l of a sudden they hear EXTREMELY loud screeching and they remember it from the game they the began to run out the house but screeching got louder and louder to they ran the opposite way, but there was no way out so they had to kill the creature (it's a black creature that's completely black and has like a really open mouth andna head that's tilted back, a massive eye on their chest and in the same pllace on their back, really tall massive claws, they r called runners/screechers, then there are other ones that can fly at really high speeds r called flyers) they didn't know how so they just ran and ran, until axel fel...Fifi pulled axel and help him up..but it was too late and the monster lunged at them then the crouchd and covered themselves, then hears some running and then a loud screach,. They looks up and say a trio, one has black, really curly hair, one has a bit with bleached hair and one with browns hair and some hair dye, the one with h dyed hair has black goop on her hand she shirt, then the one with curly blkack hair ran to them

And I drew both comics a bit both have I think 3 panels :p

AND SORRY FOR RANDOM NAMES IN IT I CAN POST THE CHARACTER INTRODUCTION STUFF IF U WANT MORE INFO

ANDDD ANOTHING THINK IM WITTEWLIWLY DRAWING IN IBISPAINT 🤨 LIKE??

[armed-with-a-waffle-iron]

The Beginning of Babs and Helena's Homoerotic Dynamic 💖💜💙 (Huntress: Year One)

I absolutely adore Ivory Madison's writing. I also love that Helena and Babs had a homoerotic thing going from the get-go! So I'll talk about both.

A young Barbara Gordon was the perfect foil to Helena. She's just as resolute and stubborn as Helena. They both stand at 5'11" and tenaciously establish themselves in male spaces. But she holds different ideals of justice, which will of course change over time. Babs is a more traditional superhero, concerned with a rather binary of justice; there're only good and bad actions. Good guys should be revered and bad guys aren't really worthy of respect. It's ironic that Helena protests Babs's toasting to Mandragora's death considering she's his killer. Helena has a complicated relationship with justice. She maintains her devotion to and faith in god but has found herself on a lonely quest for vengeance in a world where blood only cries for more blood. She's lost but who's to say that Babs isn't also?

On the note of foils, I love how differently they're drawn. Helena has darker hair, skin and clothes than Babs. And Babs wears her hair up, paints her nails, and wears a suit and shirt. Babs represents a status quo-upholding good-doer while Helena's vigilante crusade is shrouded in the history of horror and blood that she was born into.

"We get the most upset at others when they mirror what we hate about ourselves."

In what ways does Babs mirror Helena? She's a legal librarian and, as we know, she's Batgirl. She's committed to serving justice, albeit a possibly different type to Helena's. She's also pleased by the death of Mandragora, who Helena chose to kill. The reason Helena dismisses Babs as naïve is because Helena senses a sheen of hubris, dogma and even aimlessness around Barbara's actions and words. And Helena resentfully recognises these traits in herself and condescends Babs to compensate. And Babs sees through this too, to an extent, because she also became defensive for the same reasons.

Helena makes a crude joke and, humoured, Babs seems to think they could be friends. But unfortunately more similarities pop up. Not only is Babs a fellow American but she's a fellow Gothamite. Helena has to take a drink.

"...I'm increasingly favouring kevlar and body armor[.] I'm sure we'd have a lot in common."

I find Madison hilarious. But also, it's kinda important that the humour comes from the dramatic irony of the scene. We know one's Huntress and one's Batgirl but they don't! We know how similar they really are while they're just learning it and they've not even scratched the surface. That's how you write an origin story, like wow!

Moreover, the uncanny familiarity they feel instantly ends up drawing them apart. Helena is scared to get to know Babs because it might force her to face herself. So she retreats, not like Babs would know anything about being a vigilante, right? That "ciao" is also an attempt at putting some distance between her and this (fellow) American. Babs on the other hand overcompensates and unintentionally pushes Helena away. No way this girl's like me, maybe she's more girlie-- I could try to act more girly. The "unlike you, us Italians are always going to funerals" line is super ironic considering that Babs lost both her biological parents to a car crash and that this story is set just months before Jason Todd dies.

Anyways, pretty homosexual, huh? :)

"Someone needs to teach you right from wrong..."

"Funny, I was just about to say that to you."

I love how fucking obsessed they are with each other. And Helena unconsciously reacts identically to how Babs did earlier: "not your best friend, apparently". We all know "friends" can't adequately really describe this.

Again, the conflict of hero vs antihero is central to their story. "[I'm] good. You're bad. End of story" says Babs; again we see her simple, more traditional ethos of heroism. However, as Helena said, we're "at the beginning of the story", not the end; justice is just more complicated than that. "Everyone thinks they're the good guys" vs "sometimes there really are good guys" reveals Helena's self-destructive tendency to self-isolate and look out only for herself. Babs's line foreshadows a truth Helena speaks later: "on the ground, you must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim". The fact that Helena wins this fight indicates an understanding of justice beyond that of the traditional hero's but a failure to grasp the importance of solidarity. It's telling that Catwoman watches the fight from the shadows. Helena later demonstrates her appreciate of the theme of solidarity Babs speaks of in her mission statement as she baptises herself as "The Huntress". Also these fights are the gayest things I've ever seen.

Huntress: Year One #4-6

[badendinggamer]

Ye so after I made lore around echo and corvus I kinda have started a whole story au ish around them and I have decided to probably start drawing all the other sprunki fan kids. I have a total of 16 (4 in each category) ...well technically 13 since 3 of them are the ogs just now older (i think you can take some guess there) but yeah should probably get to introducing them as well as some redesigned sprites

TW: blood and violence obviously, although I don't have sprites for all there horror modes I will still be describing there deaths so keep that in mind

Another disclaimer, all of the fankids here aren't my ships entirely, I just wanted to create some sprunki kids and wanted to base each on some pairing which would fot the lore so just because I made fankids of them, doesnt mean I ship it (aside from the darkcult kids)

I also want to say due to my sprunki lore, echo, corvus, and Ron are the only sprunki kids who are actually biologically related to there parents (at the moment at least)

And because of how sprunkis raise kids, it's common to have half siblings. Echo and corvus are considered more so taboo because of this-

There are a total of 16 tho right now we will go over half of them first staring with

Part 2 here

RONNY

(Oren x Pinki child)

Category- beats(idk yet)

Age: 20

Ron is pretty much that one sassy diva, and despite how he looks, he is straight (the other will poke fun at him for that) tho he's pretty much the one you go for gossip. Despite his attitude he isn't mean and genuinely tries his best even if his attitude doesn't help.

In horror mode, he is unfortunately choked to death using a rope around his neck by ...well the next character on this list

ACE

(Oren x Raddy Child)

Ye so like from this point on the rest dont have horror mode sprites yet ...mainly due to the fact I just didn't how to design them and I was also getting tired so let's just pretend for now-

Category- beats- probably bongo drums or something

Age: 18

Ace is pretty chill believe it or not, but he also isn't aware of his own strengths so he has a habit of unintentionally hurting people. He's also gamer (of course) and NOT THE KIND OF PERSON YOU WANT TO BE COMPETITIVE WITH IN VIDEO GAMES. AT ALL. He doesn't really get along with Ron due to them having veey different vibes but he is friends with Leo and is dating Polly. As well as having some....ties with the darkcult kids

In horror mode he is the one to kill Ron in self defense, which intrigues echo so he spares him. He is still igured with a bunch of burnt scars though

LEO

(Tunner x Simon Child)

Category- Melody- idk probably another whistle

Age: 18

Leo is honestly way too optimistic for his own good. He is pretty smart but he often let's his own morals get the best of him. That said he tends to prejudice people especially based on things he's heard and all though he wants the best for everyone he tends to just follow along like a sheep, especially with Jane. She is kind of the reason he fears the darkcult kids

In horror mode he is accidently attacked and killed by corvus with an axe as Corvus mistook him for a threat (and was also blind at the time)

Gotta hate it when you accident kill your cru- OOPS

POLLY

(Simon x Durple child)

Category- melody-saxophone

Age: 19

Polly is honestly that one 2010's kid, combined with the threater kid aspects. She does art in her spare time ....but she is more often that one fanfic writter and definitely binged the twilight movies. Like I said she is dating Ace and often steals from Ron's stuff cause Ace let's him, which pisses Ron off

In horror mode she becomes abnormal.....idk what else to say i don't have the design at the moment tho I can confirm she doesn't kill anyone ....at least none of the main cast members-

JANE

(Jevin x Tunner child)

Category- vocals- idk yet

Age: 21

Divorce child

I could just leave it at that but I think this gives some context to why she hates the darkcult kids

Jevin basically left her to start a new family with the guy who fucked everyone life years ago mind you. So she has some recent agaisnt jevin but takes it out on echo amd corvus, doesn't help jev probably tried to take her back after echo died which you know isn't a good look (she is also definitely Octavia coded) Tho aside from this she has a lot of trust issues but is very over protective of the people she cares about like Leo and Ron

In horror mode she is the last to be killed by another character who we will meet later, she is hit over head with a bat (with nails mind you) and dies slowly, and in that time echo comes over to make sure he kills her mentally one last time .....through a fucking song you cant take this guy seriously

To be fair she was being an ass to them and corvus just for existing-

PICKLE

(OWAKCX x brud child)

Category- Effects- idk giant bell sound

Age: 18

I'm gonna be honest, I just wanted to design this guy cause I think it would be funny if the 2 idiots mixed. He's probably everything you'd expect, he hangs out with Ace a lot and is probably the only one who probably actually hangs out with the darkcult kids but he's the weird dumb kid so no one cares that much.

In horror he is some how one of the few to survive without any injuries, mainly case he FUCKING ASLEEP while echo was doing his chaos god I love him- anyways he wasn't killed after cause ......Echo forgor (he really is Black's kid)

Pickle is my fav is you couldn't tell

Anyways ill do part to of the others who are left soon

[maddiemuu]

1, 3, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 19 & 20 for ruth and/or nicole?

WAOWWW THAT'S SO MANY... THANK YOU!! i am gonna put them under a cut so i don't absolutely obliterate the dashboard of the ppl who follow me LOL

here is the ask game!

ruth

aaa ok so ruth hasn't actually existed in her current form for super long... she was definitely more nebulous to me than nicole for a long time. so there r sort of two answers to this. initially, ruth didn't exist at all in nicole's story- nicole was much less isolated there, and actually interacted with the rest of the town and her parents on "screen" (aka. in the stories i told myself with her in my head). initially, it was just about her going home and finding that the people there had established some weird and sort of fucked up new religion. but from there i decided they should be worshipping SOMETHING and so i came up with ruth! she was always nicole's childhood friend/crush/whatever/nightmare situationship but originally the ruth in the story WAS the same person as said friend. eventually i just decided it would be more interesting if she was something Different. i like stories about locations that just seem to have had something Wrong with them from the very start- stuff like the land the house (house) on ash tree lane is built on in house of leaves or the town in uzumaki. ruth is sort of like if that concept was a fully sentient, distinct being.

3. appearance but like. ruth 1.0's appearance. i omitted her face for thematic + tonal purposes and from there i just eventually made a design that didn't have one at all! ruth CAN have a face but i don't think i could draw it as scary as it is in my head LOL. so i only ever draw it in parts. the best way i can describe the way i think of it is like. you know how some stop motion doll faces ALMOST look like people if they're made in the right style and have the right lighting?? (what i'm specifically thinking of is like. the stop motion from The Cat With Hands, which is a very good and scary short horror film if you haven't already seen it). she looks sort of like that. she doesn't like to have a face anyways, because nicole doesn't remember ruth 1.0's face well enough. whenever ruth tries to have her face, no matter how good it looks, nicole can tell the details are wrong, but not WHY, so ruth can't fix it. it makes her really mad.

7. i like her weird drippy "face"! and also when i draw her big scary eyes. a lot of it is just aesthetic- i really like drawing things that are dripping, and the eye shapes are super fun to draw.

8. a lot of it was created as a direct response to nicole's personality! i wanted a solid foil for her. more than anything, ruth is much more assertive than nicole- even to an extent that can be considered cruel. she's easy to frustrate and lashes out just as easily. i wouldn't say i'm super similar to either ruth or nicole, but they both have personalities stemming from qualities of mine. i think on the ruth-nicole spectrum, i'm more of a ruth, though.

11. hmm! i think junji ito's character tomie is similar in some ways. not intentional, though i did read junji ito's work with the voraciousness of someone who had trapped inside a cave with no entertainment for months, so tomie's probably in the inspiration soup somewhere. rose quartz from steven universe too now that i think about it. her line about not being able to act like a "real person" because she /isn't one/ has really stuck with me since that episode first aired. that sort of sentiment is definitely a big part of ruth. uhhh what else... the moopies from the phoenix by osamu tezuka!!! especially tamami from the "future" volume of the series. this idea of an inhuman alien CHOOSING to look like a human being and it becoming so fundamental to her identity... that's more of an intentional influence. also. as much as i loathe to admit it. pon-chan from guru guru pon chan. a truly haunting (to me) shoujo romance manga about a dog who has a magic slash incredibly technologically advanced bone charm that can transform her into a human girl! but she still has a dog brain! she is still a dog!!! the manga never lets you forget this! i think a lot of the darker implications of her character were unintentional, but people also still TREAT her like a dog for the most part. she is simultaneously forced into human society and sheltered from it, leaving her in a really tragic limbo where she's barred from full autonomy and full personhood, even. i am sincerely compelled by her, for better or for worse. ALSO. quick lightning round: hal 9000 (2001: a space odyssey), the house from anatomy by kitty horrorshow, both hill house and theodora from the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson (one of my very favorite books!), the thing from the thing, and the cenobites from hellraiser/the hellbound heart by clive barker

12. i DO have a playlist! you can find it here! (cw for the first song, "holy" by the golden palominos- the song describes a character with disordered eating patterns in some significant detail). i'll also list a few extra songs that AREN'T on the playlist for one reason or another:

-i got heaven by mannequin pussy (close, but not quiiiite the vibe. still! close!)

-yeah yeah by cyndi lauper

-sat in your lap by kate bush

-once i flew by white town

-woodpecker no. 1 by merzbow (this one is very loud. it is noise music and sounds like very loud, discordant static and screeching noises, in case anyone reading this is not familiar with merzbow. please be extra cautious if you are wearing headphones. i find his work to be pretty soothing but i'm sure it makes a lot of other people feel very tense. also, warning for eyestrain with the album cover.)

-last lion of albion by neko case

13. sssort of...? not the kind of thing i could link a 1:1 video for unfortunately. there are two ideas i think of for her voice. one is when my laptop speakers get sort of muffled/blocked somehow, and it creates a weird echo-ish effect to the voice of whatever youtuber i'm watching at the time. the other is... once again, from the thing! hooray for the thing! i love the way the thing screams (youtube link), where you can hear all the different layers to what it's assimilated into itself over all the time it's existed... eughh..... it rules. anyways, ruth has a weird sort of crackle/echo/scratchiness to her voice normally- it's sort of uncomfortable to hear. makes you feel like some hair or something is stuck in your ear... but nope! when she gets really upset her voice unravels and you can hear similar "layers" to it like the thing's screaming. it gets harder for her to enunciate like that, too.

14. aaahh, well from other media i already mentioned rose quartz steven universe's "i'm... not a real person". this also isn't something you can read for free unfortunately, but the artist DID post these panels publicly so i feel ok quoting it lol. in a recent page of cheap thrills (original comic here, patreon continuation here, posted-for-free remake/reimagining here. be aware that all of those contain significant themes of drug use/addiction and parental abuse. cheap thrills also contains explicit nudity/sexual content and depictions of suicidal ideation. rigsby wi contains sexually suggestive content) by se case, one character asks another "do you know what i would GIVE to be LOVED like YOU" and it's been on my mind a lot... wrt quotes BY ruth, one thing i come back to a lot with her is the sentiment that if nicole doesn't like her she should just "make something else"- which is a mockery of her. nicole won't make something else of ruth. ever. why would she? there's also her idea that anything she sees as wrong with her is NICOLE'S fault for not even being able to remember "her" well enough. she's mean lol!!!

17. stars and botanical imagery- especially roots and various flowers! i've drawn her with wasps before and would like to do that more often, too.

19. oooh this is an interesting one. i like the vagueness of what "favorite" and "least favorite" mean in this context. i will do my best to give the most well-rounded answers i can lol. i think in terms of like. personality. as in "what would i like or dislike about her if she was real" ruth is a very outwardly resilient and confident person which i think is admirable! on the flip side, she is an asshole. from the perspective of me being her creator, i like drawing her "weirder" designs- i actually feel a little insecure about her "main" look sometimes. i find it annoying when the weirdest thing a story wants to come up with for a woman's design is just "woman with a few inhuman features", but on the other hand- i know that i CAN design more interesting/inhuman things, i just legitimately think that's how ruth would choose to look lol. she wants to be a human! like one very specific human!

20. haha! this one's fun. i unfortunately don't think i have any art to show off here... i post the majority of things i draw. WAIT actually i can show off some very early ruth pics. i think these were the first two things i ever drew of ruth (1.0...) i believe they're from 2021 (left) and 2022 (right). one on the left was drawn with my motherfuckingggg laptop trackpad i think. evil. why would i ever do that.

i will also say that i wanna draw something with ruth's fucked up anatomy soon!!! i made a post abt it and i wanna show off what that looks like...

nicole

nicole has existed since 2021 (according to the first piece i drew of her). iirc her design came from a limited palette challenge i was playing with and i ended up liking what i was coming up with so much i decided to keep her. it was sort of like finding some sad, sopping wet little animal under a car. story-wise her Character Bones come from my deep love of folk horror. i just wanted to make my own folk horror character!

3. appearance! i wanted to draw a character with long, wavy hair lol. she's also always sorta been the protagonist, just by virtue of being the character i came up with first re: her story. her name was also pretty immediate- i just really love the name "nicole" and wanted to give it to a character. naming ruth was a lot harder, actually- i usually choose names for their sound more than anything, but hers is actually one i chose based on meaning. nicole's personality actually developed last, and has changed the most out of those three things. she used to be much more put together. she had a decently successful career too... which. lol. lmao. no. nowadays i think that before she moved back home she was something like a receptionist or executive assistant somewhere but was too nervous + disorganized to be very good at it. very quiet and sort of off putting to her coworkers. also this image was another one done with my TRACKPADDD. WHY. WHY. WHY DID I EVER DO THAT. my hand hurts just thinking about it!!!! i swear it is an actual bible-level miracle i have never had tendonitis or carpal tunnel.

7. her weak chin and big arms are both v defining parts of her design to me... but she actually didn't have either at the start!! her face shape developed by the 4th-5th piece i drew of her (according to my computer lol)... something about it just felt much more like her, plus i liked how distinctive it was next to my other designs. her larger upper arms developed slower- i shifted her design to being fat pretty quickly, but she used to be more "proportional" for lack of a better term. i ended up shifting to making her more top-heavy over time, partially just for the sake of interesting design elements, and partially because i used to be similarly top-heavy. nicole's breast hypertrophy is a feature she inhereted directly from me lol. i also just don't think enough characters have really prominent upper arm fat! it's a cute feature and i really enjoy drawing it.

8. nicole is inspired a lot by traits i personally find very annoying LOL. mostly in others. i wanted to try and find a way to undestand/better sympathize with why people act like her... i can't really speak to how successful she's been in that regard, since i AM still ultimately limited by my own perception, but it's been interesting!! nicole is a selfish person in some very specific, self-infantilizing, victimizing ways, especially. i think in some ways she also probably reflects traits i fear seeing in myself- or traits i fear others seeing in me.

11. visually? uh. griffith from berserk sort of. curse of white person w/ long wavy hair.

in terms of personality/inspiration, there's a fair bit of eleanor from the haunting of hill house (book) in there. her and merricat from we have always lived in the castle are DEFINITELY big influences for nicole. there's also tonta from jaime hernandez's side of love and rockets. los bros hernandez are two of my biggest artistic inspirations... i find her such a fun character, and i love the way her design is rendered. i also read monster pulse by magnolia porter sidell when i was really getting into developing nicole, and i think the character of dr. lulenski definitely had an impact! lulenski's squeamishness and tendency to rationalize her own negative actions to herself especially strike me as influential here. there's also some sally hardesty in her for sure- visually, especially! nicole was definitely inspired somewhat by the archetype of the final girl in slashers, especially my fascination with the misogyny i think is sort of inherent to it. to give one more just to even out these pictures, the character of riley from em carroll's comics the hole the fox did make and the groom. both fantastic short horror stories. riley is a child, but the mood and setting of both stories definitely had an influence on nicole- especially the sense of dread and inevitability i always feel reading both.

12. i DO have a nicole playlist! here it is! and here are some extra songs like i did for ruth :3:

-god take all by glass eye

-bracing for sunday by neko case (another song where the vibes are simply not quite there. but this song is still in nicole's dna. i think if anyone it's a ruth 1.0 song tbh.)

-the river by bruce springsteen (specifically this live version LOL. this is not a nicole song narratively speaking. but in terms of vibes yes. i also imagine her parents' circumstances were somewhere along these lines)

-good for me by aimee mann

-st james infirmary by abner jay

-i was a child by elysium

13. i don't have a specific person in mind who i think sounds like her, but i can describe how i imagine her voice! nicole has a slightly scratchy voice, and she tends to intentionally speak in a higher register than what's natural. aside from the scratchiness, her voice is pretty soft most of the time. she has a southern accent and the strength of it fluctuates a little depending on the situation.

14. hmmm.... do i?! i'll have to think on this one for a second. oh, wait- yeah, for sure. "why don't they stop me?" from the haunting of hill house- this will probably only hit if you've also read the book, unfortunately, but MAN it is such a suckerpunch of a line. it's also the only one coming to mind for me right now LOL. there aren't a lot of specific phrases/lines of nicole's that really stick with me as quintessentially HER, at least not yet.

17. yes!!! lots of flowers- especially sunflowers and daisies, cornstalks, mountains, smoke, and telephone poles, mostly.

19. as a person, i think nicole really does try to be kind, for the most part, just for the sake of it. in terms of negative traits- i would find it incredibly frustrating how averse she is to owning up to wrongdoing LOL. as a character, i'm sincerely really proud of her design. i love how she looks. i guess in terms of least favorite there...? i'd like to get better at drawing her side profile ig. sometimes i really like how i render it and sometimes not as much. that's more of a me problem than a her problem, though.

20. hmmm...! well, i'm almost to 100 (digital) drawings of nicole (🎉). i wanna redraw the first thing i ever made of her for the 100th piece. i've also been thinking about maybe doing a longer series of interconnected illustrations with her sometime soon... i think that could be really fun!!

[veliseraptor]

Hello ! I've read a lot of the posts you shared or wrote about horror, especially in reaction to "pearl-clutching" discourse against the whole genre.

It was very though provoking (thanks!) but I was wondering if/how you draw the distinction between that and, well, honest and "legitimate" bad review / negative analysis of some individual stories who happen to be horror ?

Oh, for sure. Of course there's legitimate criticisms to be made about individual horror works, or even about horror as a genre on the whole. I'm never going to claim that there isn't. While I do feel like there's a place for the "let people have fun" school of thought around media criticism, I don't think it should be a blanket smothering of all criticism - mostly, as with so many things, it is worth considering your time, place, and audience. For your own sake as well, I find.

I do think that sometimes the language of "criticizing" or "being critical" has become a handy mask for people to say whatever they want in some of the same (though less pernicious) way that people use "I'm just asking questions" to shut down discussion of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Again, #notallcriticism, much of it is good and beneficial and keeps things fresh (and me thinking), even the criticism I ultimately might end up disagreeing with. And at the same time, I do see the tendency popping up sometimes to use the idea of "legitimate criticism" as a way to shield a person from disagreement (the somewhat infamous "think critically about x" translating to "and you'll agree with me" comes to mind.)

As far as the how, well, it's certainly a little your mileage may vary - what I might read as an unfair review of a book I liked, for instance, someone else might read as a well-deserved ripping to shreds of a mediocre work, and it's certainly possible for neither of us to be "right" about which it is. Some of this - maybe even a lot of it - is a matter of perspective.

I guess I would think of two things that shape my perception of how someone is talking about a work or a genre, in general and in particular with horror:

1. Is the writer familiar with the genre? Do they have at least a passing familiarity with the conventions, tropes, and other narrative tics that tend to crop up? If not, are the criticisms they are making marked by that lack of knowledge (ime some of the discourse about the A Song of Ice and Fire falls victim to this, sometimes). I'm not saying that criticism is invalid coming from someone without genre knowledge, but I am saying that I'm more inclined to be skeptical of criticism that comes from someone who clearly dislikes the specific genre they're discussing, because it sometimes feels like a willful lack of curiosity and unwillingness to engage with a text/genre on its own terms.

> Addendum to this: is the writer familiar with the genre as it stands recently? Horror now looks rather different than horror fifty years ago, just for instance.

2. Is the argument or point they're making actually coherent? Is the analysis solid and grounded in at least some kind of evidence or source? (Is the author using screenshots of tweets in lieu of actually writing about the phenomenon they're discussing?) I can't always but I'd say I can usually at least recognize, even if I disagree, when someone is actually taking what they're engaging with seriously and when they're not (in terms of the work put in to convince me what they're saying is true, relevant, and important), and if they're not taking it seriously then why should I?

And one more, I guess, which feels obvious but sometimes on the internet isn't, because people love to have opinions (I get it! so do I!):

3. Has the writer actually read (or watched/played/whatever) what they're talking about? This ties in a little with point one but is slightly divergent, because someone can to an extent be familiar with a genre without having read it. But someone talking authoritatively about the problems with something they haven't actually had direct contact with, based purely on a set of cultural osmosis and related assumptions, is frustratingly common, and people will assume that they know what they're talking about from that alone and are qualified to make a sweeping judgment from that position. And I'm just not going to take criticism made from that perspective very seriously.

That's how I'd draw my lines, anyway. I don't claim to be an authority, certainly; I'm a gal on the internet with a big mouth and a lot of opinions. I think the important things here though are a. I certainly don't think that there's no such thing as legitimate criticism (in the negative sense) of horror works or horror as a genre, and b. I have particular standards for how I judge that criticism based on content and context.

I guess it's also worth noting, with this particular example, that the other question is "how much does this feel like it aligns with the present moral panic around dark or disturbing content in fiction?" and if the answer is "a lot" then I'm significantly more likely to dismiss it.