#this is actually the very beginning of that wip

[beatcroc]

been dying to formally introduce these guys for months now FINALLY got a general ref done. designs for sales and mean as their own individual....designs! which i made for my own nefarious purposes, but if this is something you ever had need or want for your own you're welcome to them.

i'm fascinated by how willfully confusing the game is about what traits belong to what side whenever there's any call to distinguish between them; the voices and colors and such have all been assigned to a contradictory side at least once and it's an extremely cool way to portray that despite ena's duality theming, she's still very much one being & it's futile to try and draw lines about where one part of her ends and the other begins. but, yknow.... it's interesting to try and do so anyway, and a very fun challenge to make something that still line up with my interpretations of each's role in the bigger picture.

anyway. rambling about my own business with them under cut

ok if you're down here i will be blunt. i made them for unbelievably toxic selfcest. really obsessed with how worker ena is kind of just the absolute worst to and for herself. mean Cannot Fucking Stand sales, and sales is... as indifferent and uncaring towards mean as they are to everything else.

it's intentionally very nebulous how much each are "themselves" vs. the whole entity of "ena", but the important vibe is just that they both know basically everything there is to know about the other and how they work. no lying to or hiding from themselves through the other, which is something ena loooooves to do normally. shes got to confront it here.

this being what it is i haven't made much effort to give them actual extrinsic reasons for being/staying together; being part of the same entity means They Just Are A Pair And That's How It Is; but there's maybe something there in the ways of "sales really likes getting to do as they please and mean puts up with WAY more of their shit than anyone else", + "mean is just glad to not have to engage with anything herself and knows they know her better than anyone else will". 

there's an unfortunate amount of....trust? which is a word i that does not feel right to use here, but i've been unable to find a better one-- on her part, in the general familiarity they both have; in knowing no matter how much they piss her off that they're not going to try any shit to actually hurt her; being the same being and all, it would be detrimental to them both. meanie is also, i would say, Rather Particular, and feels like she hasn't got much else outside of them- which im going to be frank seems pretty damn substantiated by the game, but for the sake of this isolated dynamic i suppose it comes more from the passive dehumanization she’s been with from sales’ never giving a shit about her. 

for sales i suppose there is.... the satisfaction of being effortlessly great at what they do. mean is a tough nut to crack but they have explicit insider knowledge of how to do so, and again for her own lack of desire to engage with anything, really just kind of lets them do whatever; meanie is really just to all ends their favorite to mess with. and while she's definitely way more dependent on them than they are on her, they do also need her to keep them in check since their "doesn't give a shit" nature also extends to their own being and they're bad at recognizing/respecting their own limitations and weaknesses as well.

it does bear to stress also that they are both terrible. don't get me wrong, salesperson is way more of a piece of shit and i do generally think meanie is getting the short end of the stick here, but also they aren't harmful by intent and meanie is still very much... well, mean about everything, on purpose, and even if it doesn't really phase sales at all i think somewhere she enjoys getting to take out that vitriol on someone, even if it is herself. maybe even especially then.

anyway i dont normally release wip's this scrappy but it's all i've got rn and it's tested well in friend circles for getting ppl on board w/ what im trying to cook so here's an Extremely basic vibes sketch

come with me. my awesome ship where everything sucks and nothing is good.

[olderthannetfic]

So I watched that movie you recced, and it hit all my favorite relationship tropes and I really want more of those two. The youtube comments seemed to indicate there’s a book series, but I cannot read Chinese and am deeply unlikely to learn in the near future. Do you know if there’s an English translation somewhere (and also what the name of the series even is)?

--

Ohohohoho!

Okay, so, I will preface all this by saying that I haven't read most of the books and have only seen like half of the adaptations, so talking about this franchise in public is a little like being stupid about Sherlock Holmes stories in front of the ravening hordes of ACD fans who have Opinions™.

(In fact, Holmes is a pretty good analogy in terms of there being one original author, a lot of broad popularity, and a bajillion adaptations with new ones coming out all the time and many of them causing anger over the OOC.)

--

Big picture, the franchise is DMBJ/Graverobber Chronicles/Lost Tomb. (Not Locked Tomb—that's the lesbian necromancers—but Lost Tomb.) It's a series of mega-popular webnovels about a naive young guy from a family of tomb robbers and his two besties he runs into at the beginning of the series. None of these three characters appear in the tentacle movie.

In addition to finishing the main novel series, the author has written a number of side stories or stories set in the future after the main plot. A lot of this stuff is unfinished. Multiple WIPs is not only the fanfic author way but the webnovel author way!

At some point in the books, our three heroes encounter various cool and mysterious side characters, including Black Glasses/Shades/Hei Xiazi/Hei Yanjing and Xiao Hua/Xie Yuchen.

In Ultimate Note, the actors had fantastic chemistry. The characterization was a little off from the books, and the timeline was butchered, so the Trufen™ were annoyed, but everybody else was like "That! Now! Yes!" The characters seem much younger there and Xie Yuchen is supposed to be actually young. The vibe is different than in the movie, but I ship both versions hard.

The author has teamed them up in some stories (as a consequence? Was this after Ultimate Note came out? I'm still a n00b to this vast and confusing fandom).

The book you're looking for is the adventure in Russia that is referenced in the final scene of the tentacle movie. The fan translation is machine translation that has been cleaned up, but the fan has done some research to clarify cultural points and improve the translation, so it's pretty decent as these things go. Would I love a really artistic, skilled translation by a bilingual fan? Sure, but them's the breaks. I thought it was still a fun read, and it's quite slashy.

I will say that some fans interpret "immortal" in the scene where Xiao Hua talks to the corpse as being the same kind of immortal as Hei Xiazi, and this is something a better translation could address. But even if they're different types of immortal, I still find the scene very interesting in light of how shippy I find heihua (the smooshname for our two dudes) and the fact that Hei Xiazi is listening to Xiao Hua's whole speech. I just... have a lot of feelings! You'll see what I mean when you get there.

--

In terms of the franchise overall, the main three are Wu Xie (young, naive, goes through his "mob widow era" later and gets all dark), Zhang Qiling/Xiaoge (amnesiac, mysterious, turns up to save Wu Xie a lot, often with his shirt off and tattoos on display), and Wang Pangzi (The Fat One™ but also the hottest in some adaptations, fight me!).

Fandom mostly ships Wu Xie/Xiaoge (smushname "pingxie"), but some people—who are correct and right—ship OT3.

My faves are partly popular as a ship because they're fun together and partly because it gets both of them out of the way of pingxie. Hahaha.

--

Anyway, the side character side story novel is Moving Forward Through the Flowery Night; The End Comes Without A Sound.

Black Glasses and Xie Yuchen head to Russia to investigate a mysterious floating corpse in an Orthodox Church. In the midst of it all, they are recruited to help protect a Russian family from a deadly attack by a feng shui master.

The main fan translation is by merebear. You can find it here.

[crockpotbuddie]

wip wednesday

a little break from all the spotify wrapped posting to share some of my writing. i've been working a lot on this for past week.

Something is up with Eddie. It’s driving Buck up the wall because he cannot figure out why Eddie is acting like this. He has been gathering evidence all morning to solve this mystery. 

1. Eddie was almost late today. 

Not actually late, because he did make it to the station well before the start of their shift. He was already there and changing into his uniform, in fact, when Buck stumbled into the locker room while simultaneously pulling his shirt over his head. (He had overslept because he went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole on orcas and their fashion trends last night after reading about salmon hats being back). 

By the time Buck had managed to wrangle out of his shirt, Eddie had stuck his head in his (their) locker like he was searching for something. Very intently. He stayed like that for so long that Buck finished changing and made it out of the locker room before him. 

2. Eddie kept spacing out during the morning briefing. 

This basically never happens unless he’s truly preoccupied with something. Usually, Eddie is extremely attentive, quite literally standing at attention with rigid military posture, probably still ingrained in him from his army days. But today, Buck had to nudge his boot against Eddie’s to startle him out of whatever thought he was caught up in when Bobby said his name and read out the chores he assigned to him. 

But the most incriminating piece of evidence was gathered before Buck even arrived at the firehouse, actually. 

3. Eddie used an emoji. 

And not just any emoji, no. It was a heart. This morning, Buck texted Eddie that he was running a little behind (in case Bobby asked) to which Eddie replied with, and Buck is not kidding: 

Okay. Will have a cup of coffee waiting for you. ❤️

Buck had stared at the heart for a good five minutes, probably, which had made him even more late. 

(In the end, Eddie did not have coffee waiting for him on account of taking forever in the locker room. The liar.) 

“Eddie is acting weird, right?” he asks Hen. He’s helping her restock the ambulance and she is holding very tightly onto the clipboard. Buck is not even allowed to look at it, all she’s letting him do is hand her the supplies she is asking for. 

Hen raises an eyebrow. “Weird how?” 

“I don’t know,” Buck whines and throws his hands up in frustration. The gauze in his hand flies halfway across the ambulance bay. He scrambles up to retrieve it before Hen has the chance to turn the full power of her glare onto him. 

“He’s just… being weird.” He drops the gauze in Hen’s outstretched hand. “Like, okay, he’s being quiet but he also isn’t. Not in the way he usually is when he just doesn’t want to talk about something. It’s more like– like he actually wants to say something but just doesn’t know how.” 

Hen considers this for a moment. 

“Why don’t you just ask him about it? If it’s bothering you that much.” 

If only it were that easy.

i'm just going to tag a couple of mutuals for them to see this - and of course also to share something if you guys have anything to share!! <3

@livingincolorsagain @queerprincesseddiediaz @eddiesbian @moonyslesbian @girldadbuckley @cafecitoeddie @4thbrighteststar @housewifebuck & if anyone else wants to share their wip please feel free to also tag me in it!!

[daisywords]

back towards the beginning of DaDBaB and I get to introduce the King (yay!) but idk if he is coming across as unsettling as I imagine idk the words aren't wording but someone tell me like are you picking up what I'm putting down?

[ismyteadoneyet]

"ɪ ʀᴇᴀʟʟʏ ᴀᴍ ᴀ sᴜᴄᴋᴇʀ ғᴏʀ ɢᴏᴏᴅ ʀᴏᴍᴀɴᴄᴇ"

•

~ ''Chapter 13 - A Judgement', 'Guilt of the Helpful', by @draconicstella88888

AND HERE IT ISSSS <333 OUR COLLECTIVE FAVORITE INSANE WOMAN 🥰🥰

This moment has been living rent free in my head since I first read it as a BETA READER for my loveliest bestie <<333 Yes I will brag about this until I perrisshhhhhh Hope you like it as much as I do, Tavi !!! 🤭🤭💕✨️

On the more technical side, this drawing gave me so much grief but also worked WONDERS as a milestone for my skill progress?? I think I started on this back in the beginning of May, and simply Could Not Get It Right. I redrew the face like... 6 times and still ended up erasing it. I drew some other things inbetween to get some distance to it, and decided to revisit this one just a few days ago to redraw the entire sketch, and suddenly everything clicked, first try??? 😭 the pose, the face, the CLOTHES even??? Everything went so incredibly smooth and the thing that ended up taking the most time was for me to clean up the lineart and figure out how the hell Verdict would look at that angle (and tbh I'm still not entitely sure lmao)

I'm so insanely proud of this one and to think that I've gone from that one Lark profile drawing to this in less than a year makes me ✨️feel things✨️ 😭😭🥺🥺 I have never been more motivated to draw more than now and to try more interesting perspectives !! 🤭🤭

As always, thank you Tavi for writing out these cool af scenes and for letting me be part of your creative process <<<3333 MWAH LOVE U BESTIE 🥰🥰

[good--merits-accumulated]

going through some old left-for-dead projects and just found this one where I was like. INTENT on dissecting jeff's brain on the operating table (i.e. google docs) but only from todd's weird skewed pov

[professor voice] it's about brothers as eternal combatants and it's about being so convinced of your own goodness you excuse your shitty actions. it's also about comparing yourself to a dog because you feel less fully formed than your brother. lol.

[deadallover]

Studies of how the design of my first fursona, bandit, changed over the years. Interesting to literally nobody but me.

[stellarsightz]

🌠wip whenever🌠

Tagged by the lovely @priafey 🫶 thank you for the tag and sorry for replying so late hahah

I think my cicerlyn hyperfixation is starting to leave me, but i keep thinking about them all the time lol. Enjoy a handful of snippets i particularly like that i found in my notes app

Tagging: @azures-grace @cicerosfavouritelistener @abstractredd @vestigme @rustyram035 @v1ctory-or-sovngarde + anyone who wants to join <333

1a.

Fire and smoke. Long wooden beams snapped in half, crumbling to the ground. Lynwallyn gritted his teeth and dragged himself up, fighting off the sweet lull of unconsciousness as it threatened to claim him. He couldn't afford to pause.

He dragged himself out of the rubble, barely stopping to inspect his injuries. He wrenched a sword out of the nearest corpse. He snagged a pile of clothes he found in what he assumed were the barracks. He took anything his bruised and charred arms could carry. He left and didn't look back.

Days blurred. He found an abandoned shack in the middle of a forest. He used the bedroll, took everything he could and left.

Rinse and repeat.

He slept through most of the day. At night, he prowled the forest and searched for unsuspecting prey. He let himself get lost in the hunt, savouring the feeling of warm blood running down his hands. A few stray dogs tailed after him as he walked back to his camp, licking their teeth and eyeing the mangled corpse of the poor animal he just caught. He snarled at them and watched with satisfaction as they whimpered and scuttled away.

He took what remained of his meal to his hideout and skinned it, slicing it into smaller parts and making what passed as a meal for the next day.

He was gone as soon as the sun rose. He soon found a small village, River something. He sold the few pelts he got from the animals he caught. He ignored the curious, if not apprehensive, looks the locals cast his way.

He exchanged the stolen sword for a set of daggers at the local blacksmith, humming appreciatively as their familiar, comforting weight settled in his hands. His last stop was the general goods store where he purchased a single healing potion and some rations. He left without a word.

[Lynwallyn travels for a while]

1b.

Cicero whined for what must have been the fiftieth time, fists clenching and unclenching as he paced.

It wasn't fair! The cruel, awful farmer refused to help in spite of Cicero's pleading and begging. Oh yes, he had done lots and lots of pleading and begging, he had even offered coin! He had seen that look in the farmer's eyes when he produced his purse, gleaming and scheming. Trying not to show just how much he wanted to reach out and snatch it. And yet, he refused to even lift a finger. Anger coiled in Cicero's stomach, burning so bright it made his hands shake. He let out a strangled groan.

"Awful! How awful! Cicero and his poor, poor Mother are stuck! Oh, how will Mother get to her new home now?"

He spun on his heel, shaking a fist in the direction of where Loreius' house stood.  "That damn farmer is of no help! So are those stupid guards!"

1c.

The Mer stared at him with a strange expression. His brow creased, eyes flitting over Cicero's face. "You could have killed me. But you didn't. Why?"

Why didn't he indeed, Cicero pondered. He remembered his fingers tingling as he reached for his knives, but something stilled his hand. He still has no idea why.

"Cicero is just a poor, humble jester, he knew a beast such as you would look for something different to eat. Yes, yes, Cicero imagines he would not be very tasty," he lied smoothly, giving the other man a wide grin. The Mer laughed softly.

The rope fell around his ankles before Cicero could react. The Mer closed the distance between them in a heartbeat. Cicero yelped, wriggling, as he was lifted off the ground and slammed against the nearest tree.

The man's eyes were even more impressive up close, his gaze almost burning into his skin as he leaned forward. Appraising. Analysing. Hungry.

[felixravinstills]

re: tag game

i think you already know which doc i'm going to ask about haha

felix time travel au 👀👀

How could I have ever suspected that you would ask this? lol. No way for me to have known. None at all.

Anyway, remember this post/conversation? Yeah, still jumping off that. I also vaguely mentioned working on this AU to you many months ago, and it honestly hasn't moved too much since then. It's at 2.5K, and it would probably have to be a chapter fic to accomplish what I want to accomplish, but so far all I have is Felix realizing he's actually back in time and plans for him to basically become the most responsible adult in any given situation, and the frustration of being that but also being perceived as like a child.

I get kind of sad for him, because through time traveling to his childhood as an adult, he kind of gets to see how the adults failed him. (And also all his classmates and friends are all slightly different in reaction to him, so they aren't really the people he knew). It's like... he almost thought he was getting a happier childhood, but it's not that... it's him picking up the slack for his great-uncle and supporting other people, and I think it's just so... sad.

Fun fact: Livia doesn't hate him in this world, because mentally 35-year old Felix is like "well, I'm not gonna beef with a child" and just goes along with her demands, so she only finds him annoying at times (everyone thinks he's patronizing). Felix misses her hating him, because he misses his old life...

It's a very lonely existence. He learns to care for the people of this new world but there's a lot of baggage thinking about the old timeline

[bmpmp3]

on another midi-ing roll.... love live edition

[pagesofkenna]

I've got to name the like mountains and rivers and things in my book's setting, and since i'm working with fantasy creation gods here i'm now outlining the steps in 'gods creating a populated world' to figure out when these land features would have been first named

[windor-truffle]

"Yup, I'm right here! See, you can touch me and everything!"

--

Richard and Pascal friendship is something I didn't know I needed to write

[bluberimufim]

My brain keeps telling me to rewrite "Black and White" as one of those novels that are more like a collection of documents (whatever tf it's called) and I'm like!! Bestie, writing a novel as a series of documents is exactly what made me write the second draft as third person in the first place!!!!

(ok technically it was just Darius's normal POV + Diedrich's diary for some reason, but still!!)

[drowninginthoughts27]

Title tag

Thank you sm for the tag @theicarusconstellation and @bellaxisworld <33

Rules

1. list the titles of your top five priorities for WIP updates

2. an upcoming scene, event, or detail in each fic that you're looking forward to writing

3. make a poll for your followers to vote on which top 5 WIPs they're most excited to see an update on

4. tag 10 writer friends

Titles

[title pending] Jeggy 👑 au - Jegulus royalty au

The Things We Never Said - Jegulus ex’s au

The Angel Of Small Deaths sequel - Jegulus one night stand pt.2

Lost in You - Friends with Benefits Jegulus

Details

[title pending] Jeggy 👑 au - so so so much angst

The Things We Never Said - the big reveal of why they broke up in the first place

The Angel Of Small Deaths sequel - Regulus being two steps ahead of James at all times and Regulus moving closer to Sirius (and James)

Lost in You - James revealing his feelings

Poll

Tags

I think everyone ik has been tagged so if you see this and wanna do it pls tag me, I’d love to see :)

[muffintonic]

I know the feeling! I love collecting figurines and toys so they can get dusty pretty quickly, some moreso than others (no idea why). I have his amiibo as well! He's being guarded by Falco Lombardi's amiibo. I wish they would have made something for Teba, Kass, and Tulin.

I don't have room for a lot of figurines, but it's definitely a hassle keeping the ones I do clean! Hahaha, that's so perfect since he and Falco are similar in a lot of ways! I'm surprised they didn't for at least Tulin and Teba since they were featured in HWAOC and played a larger role in TOTK.

[themyscirah]

Started thinking about the Amanda Waller + Ben Turner relationship again.... fuck, I'm gonna need a minute