#we��re getting into recent art now!

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Lackadaisy Enrichment

[spoonietimelordy]

By the way, for people who did not stay informed about Palestine throughout last week:

Isreal has planned to attack Rafah and to completely close the border to Egypt on the first day of Ramadan. This week is the very last week where we can help disabled people to get out. We do not know when the border will be open again, but it could last month if not a year. And evacuating those people out is extremely expensive. If you can please send money to either of those 2 links:

https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/raindoved

https://venmo.com/u/Rain-Dubilewski

The money is going to Safebow to evacuate kids under 4yo, disabled, and pregnant people. Those are people who definitely will not survive if they are stuck in gaza. They are extremely urgent cases, people with cancer, who need insulin, people with broken mobility aids etc...

please help.

If you're giving at least 20€, you can send me proof of it and I'll count it as an art commission.

Edit 01/03: thank you so much to everyone who gave! But I don't think I'll be able to take anymore commissions. We've now raised more than 483$US 🤯.

Please reblog the edited version now to let people know that I cannot promise to do more commissions that I already agreed to. And I know that I will stil get new DMs, I cannot stop that, and I refuse to disabled reblogs because it's too important. But if people DM me from now on, because they did not see the edit, I cannot promise them any deadline at all.

Edit 2: commissions re-opened because of recent issues they had with funding.

@lightning-in-your-teeth @rearranging-deck-chairs @chaosandwolves

[crowleysgirl56]

Updated with edits!

Timeline of the last 12 months 15 months of the Good Omens fandom.

July 2023 - Good Omens season 2 drops. Fans watch on the presumption this season is based on the sequel idea Terry and NG spoke of in the 90’s and 2006. Reactions are mixed but mostly positive. We’re happy with fluff. Initial thoughts: “I don’t see how this story could have been fleshed out into an entire novel, but I guess it was only ever just initial ideas, so I suppose that works.”

July 2023 - THE KISS.

Fandom reaction: NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

August 2023 - NG responds to fandom

NG: “Season 2 isn’t actually based on the idea Terry and I spoke about.”

Fandom: “What?”

NG: “Season 2 is just a bridging story to get us to season 3. That will be the story that Terry and I discussed.”

Fandom: “What!?”

NG: “Season 3 hasn’t been greenlit by Prime yet so we might not get it.”

Fandom: “WHAT?!”

NG: “Also I wrote the kiss that way by giving the fandom what you want without actually giving you what you want. So like, stop asking me for things or I won’t write them.”

Fandom: “AAARRRGGGHHHHH!!!”

August to November 2023 - The fandom, now lost and depressed, mope through the halls of Tumblr and Reddit, desperately clinging to any piece of information dropped by NG, sharing fan art, creating headcanons and theories, and writing the angstiest of angst fanfiction ever written. Some weep in a corner mumbling about the South Downs. Most just trudge through their daily lives, listless and despondent.

December 2023 - Prime greenlights Good Omens Season 3.

Fandom: YES! OMG HOORAY! WAHOO! Dancing in the streets. Fanfiction turns to fluff and smut. NG is active and happy, answering many questions without actually answering them. Gives us the hilarious gift of Dottie and Sadie.

January 2024 - speculation of when season 3 filming will begin commences. Realisation that it could be quite a while starts to sink in. Actors and writers strike has caused delay to the scripts being written. David and Michael have taken on theatre work which will delay their filming schedules. Douglas McKinnon announces he’s stepping away as director. Fandom has slight freak out, but NG reassures everyone it’s nothing to worry about, and linked to the recent strikes.

Early to mid 2024 - “The invisible and unbreakable line that joins Crowley and Aziraphale”.

Fandom: AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! We inevitably become even more feral. Much fanart is made.

March 2024 - David hosts the BAFTAs and Michael helps him during the opening. David is then nominated for TV BAFTA for Good Omens.

Fandom: OMG YYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAYYYY!!! Much dancing and celebration is had once again. We are so in love.

May 2024 - filming schedule for GO season 3 is announced. It will commence January 2025. The fandom reacts.

Fandom: “That’s still so long away!” “Michael and David will have their hair dyed white and red for the awards season!” “Going by the previous production schedule this means season 3 won’t reach our screen until 2026! No!” “Cannot wait for this to start filming we are going to be so feral!” More fanfiction, more fanart.

June 2024 - David hosts Pub in the Park. Michael joins him.

Fandom: THEY ARE SO CUTE! HOW CAN THEY BE THIS CUTE, WE DON’T DESERVE THEM.

Early July 2024 - horrible allegations are laid against NG and the fandom comes to a terrible crashing halt. Much debate and discussion is had back and forth: “Believe the victims”. “Separate the art from the artist”. “Drop the fandom entirely”. “Step back for a moment”. There is a lot of arguing, but there is also still a lot of love. NG has fled all social media.

Late July 2024 - until it’s January, and the show actually starts filming, Good Omens season 3 has now become Schrödinger’s Series. It both now exists and doesn’t exist. Prime at any moment may pull the production due to the backlash against NG. The fandom now re-examines McKinnon’s departure speculating if he left for other reasons. We once again despondently trudge the halls of tumblr and Reddit feeling the same feeling of this time last year.

This section of the post was made in late July was this was original posted: And that pretty much brings us up to date. Anything could happen in the next six months, which is why I feel we’re all worried. It’s why I’m worried. So instead, keep sharing the art, keep writing the fanfiction, keep speculating with theories and headcanons. Let’s be here for each other. Because we created this fandom for each other. It doesn’t belong to NG anymore. Let’s do this for Terry. Personally, I can’t wait to come back to this timeline and add January 2025 - filming begins.

28 July 2024 - Michael Sheen, the absolute angel that he is posts a picture of his tartan socks clad feet alongside the caption “To our world”. Such a beautiful, beautiful man!

10 September 2024 - Amazon Prime announces production for season 3 is paused. Everyone loses their shit. There is much lamentations.

Unsubstantiated posts start circulating that the show is cancelled. People who have a friend whose cousin’s gardener’s former roommate claim they are involved with the production and therefore they KNOW the show is cancelled. More lamentations.

Amazon stays silent for EIGHT. FUCKING. WEEKS.

The fandom walk around in a god damn haze again akin to what August to December 2023 felt like. Will we be left with the final 15 forever?

Mid October 2024 - for about 3 days straight the fandom receives information that is akin to a rollercoaster of emotion. Head graphics designer Mickey tweets out a now deleted post that everyone is going back to Scotland. Then Peter Anderson Studio tweet out a now deleted post referencing the South Downs cottage. Then random casting company updates their subscription website advertising Good Omens: The Finale a TV movie. Entertainment website releases an article referencing this. The fandom LOSE. THEIR. SHIT. AGAIN. We honestly can’t take much more of this.

25 October 2024 - Amazon finally announces the news we’ve been half expecting half dreading with positive and negative ramifications. Neil Gaiman is gone. GOOD! Season 3 will still happen. GOOD! But now it’s just a 90 minutes finale. WAIT, WHAT, NO! But it could have been worse. It was a hairs breath away from being completely cancelled. GOD BLESS RHIANNA PRATCHETT AND ROB WILKINS.

It’s been a wild ride everyone. I’ve already posted earlier this morning (25 October 2024) my thoughts about the whole situation so go read that there. But for now? Gaiman is gone, and we get our ending.

For now here’s to seeing our boys with their red and white hair again.

[airborneice]

sooo I think this ended up being my tribute art to hilda the series? almost a whole year after the show ended but oh well 🤷‍♀️

if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to ramble about how much the show means to me for a bit -

Soooo I really really love this show. It is so delightful in every way, from the heartwarming and funny writing to the insanely beautiful visuals. You can tell that every aspect of this show was made with so much love and care and it truly has a type of charm to it that I’ve never seen in anything else. I’m really glad it exists and got the run that it did.

While I was drawing this I kept thinking back to a recent quote from Luke Pearson about how iconic to the series that little red cabin in the wilderness is, even though it was only there for a couple of episodes/comics - pretty much everything that happened in the show is because the story moved on from there and Hilda found new settings and characters and her world got so much bigger, but at the end of the day, that place is where it all started.

When I was re-watching season 1 clips to get art references it took me right back to 2018 when the show first aired. I remember often putting on the season 1 soundtrack while I was scanning animations under the rostrum when I was at uni late and re-watching the episodes when I was feeling down and needed a bit of cosyness. I was Going Through It in late 2018 for a number of reasons and this quickly became my comfort show, and that’s probably a part of why I still love it years later - things are way better but it’s just lodged there in my heart now.

And uh…not to get all cliché but…this show really did help point me towards where I am now. While I was at uni I’d study clips of it from time to time to see how the animators achieved what they did and I learned some useful stuff here and there. like..someone’s animation breakdown video on Hilda is what introduced me to the concept of arcs (I was on an animation course so I should’ve known abt arcs already but oh well. better late than never 🫠) and a ton of animation stuff made more sense to me after that. I can look at some of my very old animations and pin-point a principle or a little cheat that I learned from studying Hilda. On top of that, at my uni we focused on hand-drawn animation (on paper first and then. photoshop of all things 😑) so that was the whole scope of my animation knowledge, and I was really fascinated by how 2D rig shows like Hilda even worked.

In the end I got so curious that I took a toonboom course after I graduated and started figuring it out for myself. I didn’t really know what to do with myself in the immediate post-graduation job search hell, but I wanted to learn more skills and Hilda looked like the type of show I wanted to be on more than anything, so I made a point of learning the stuff that might get me there. And learning rig anim was extra fun bc it helped me understand how this show was made and appreciate it even more :) It truly lit up an enthusiasm in me for all the technical behind-the-scenes stuff in cartoons that still keeps me motivated to this day. anddd long story short I’m a 2D rig animator now so I guess it worked out! ngl I think it’s very funny that I stanned Hilda so hard it got me a job on a disney show. how does that even happen. (and I’ve even had the honour of working with some of the people who made Hilda so in a way it feels like it’s all come full-circle now :) )

And obviously, it’s been really fun being in the fandom with everyone and being insane together. It’s wild that it’s been 6 years of that. I’m glad for the cool people I met and all those fun times. I’m really glad I got to be a part of that.

Soo yeah!! lovely show. thank you

[the-remainder]

Nov 7 is the date, mark it.

Available on Steam and Itch

Do you know what we said to ourselves when we started the kickstarter? We were building some gameplay systems for The Hunger, and it was hard work. We said: "Boy, this thing is gonna take years, and it's already burning us out. We should do a ‘small thing, quick-like’, as a break. What if we made a definitive/director's cut of The Remainder? Shouldn't take us long, right? Four months should do it? Six tops?"

Fast forward to fourteen months later, we're finally going to launch it. I recently learned about a rule of production planning: Take what you think a project will need, and multiply it by pi, and you'll get the actual time you'll spend.

The math checks out.

Let's see just exactly how much we expanded the game, shall we?

It started at around 145,000 words, now it is 171,000. You can do the math there. Some of this is new deaths, some are new ending variations, and some just generally fleshing out things that were too thin or adding more flavour and interest in what we found to be bland. Now it should be a feast through and through.

On top of that, we pretty much re-wrote the entire thing over via several editing passes.

We added five new artworks, revised around twenty, a few of which significantly, composed four more ambient tracks, and added 467 unique sound effects.

Also, the new price will be 27.99 usd. This will not affect those who already own the game. Currenty the game is on sale on Itch so it’s a great time to grab it before the price increases. ^^

Once the new release is out on steam and itch.io, we will start producing the physical art, the prints, linocuts, CDs, and original artworks.

It will likely be another few months before all those are done and shipped out.

After that we're onto the next story in Taldun: The Longing.

[geopsych]

re: the tumblr ai stuff, please don’t wipe your blog!! your blog has been so important to me and many others as a place of authentic light and beauty and i would hate to lose it forever 💕

there is a way to download the contents of a tumblr blog (it’s in settings, i don’t remember rn, but i’ll find it if you need it) maybe you could upload to another site or a personal site?

i know this is very serious, and i hate how we are unwillingly contributing to synthetic art, but the world would be poorer for me without your pictures <3

Thank you. Your words mean a lot to me.

This is a dilemma for me. I have loved doing this blog and going out to look for pictures and interesting things to bring here has given me motivation and meaning through years of struggle with depression and several kinds of grief. Going out to look for pictures has put me in situations where I have seen incredible beauty, much of which I never really managed to capture. Also, the many warm and kind messages I've received from people all over the world have given me heart and made me feel less meaningless as a person and more connected. Sometimes I've been criticized for buying the checkmarks and giving money to Tumblr but I wanted to do what I could because Tumblr has been my one happy and safe place online. But now this. To me AI in relation to creativity is just a way for well-to-do but untalented people, the proverbial tech bros, to profit from other people's hard work and creativity. It has no redeeming value in relation to creativity and is actively harmful to artists of all kinds. <trying to figure out how to put a read more link here> I don't even count myself among the real creatives, artists and writers and others who have worked hard and put years into honing their crafts, into learning to translate their hearts and unique spirits into their creative expression. I just see beautiful things and take pictures of them. But it would still make me sick to see AI works based on my pictures, on these times and places that have meant so much to me. Recently I saw a set of cat 'photos' on here that everyone was reblogging and exclaiming over but that to me seemed to just be AI art that was more convincing than most. As time goes on more and more output of AI is going to be almost indistinguishable from real works and unscrupulous people will pass them off as real, getting credit for what was actually created by others. Whether they profit from them becomes almost irrelevant at that point because what's worse is that we will have less and less sense of what is real. And as some have pointed out AI will now also be scraping from AI, muddying the waters further from here on in. This is an apocalypse of sorts, an apocalypse of creativity, ultimately likely to kill the joy of artistic endeavor for many who would otherwise produced brilliant, beautiful, funny, and/or shockingly original things. I'm still parsing and dissecting my thoughts and feelings about what Tumblr has done and how to react. Staying and leaving my blog up feels like consent. I am not confident in the integrity of anyone connected with scraping sites for AI. I'm not convinced that a little toggle in settings is going to make much of a difference in the long run. On the other hand I like posting here and I have received enough messages over the years to know that my blog is a positive influence on some lives. I was looking forward to May and June and posting pictures of the incredible beauty of eastern Pennsylvania in those months. And I was planning on making a side blog for posting some poetry I've been working on. It will break my heart to leave.

I haven't decided yet. Believe it or not this whole thing has given me awful physical symptoms. I'll let you know when I decide. Thank you again for your kind and lovely note!

[deepdreamnights]

Hey there, saw your post re: harassment around artists using gen ai and thought it was great esp with the debunking of data usage myths. Would you share your thoughts regarding concerns that models are being trained to copy specific art styles and thus pose a direct threat to the artists whose art styles are being used?

Well, there's several levels to that.

The main one is that on copyright grounds, styles are explicitly non-copyrightable. Moreover:

No one's style is unique

No one's style is unimitatable by analogue means.

The second point is important, because anyone can go on Fiverr right now and and find someone to replicate any given art style, and every competent draftsperson has to be able to do it to some degree or another. No major animation house, art studio, or comic company has ever hired someone because they couldn't find someone else that could imitate the surface-level aspects of their style.

The first point is just a matter of basic reality. Ex-nihlo creativity either doesn't exist or is so rare as to be a once-in-an-epoch thing. Everyone builds on the influences that they learn from, and if you think someone has a unique style what they really have is a different media diet than you.

For example, Don Bluth. Born 1937, aged 15 in 1952.

Same year Time released this this picture of Burlesque Performer Dale Strong.

Someone made an impression.

Marilyn Monroe was also a national sex symbol when Bluth was a teen, putting some context to most of his other ladies, but especially Goldie Pheasant (or maybe she's more Jayne Mansfield, hard to tell through the bird-ness). His art style has obvious roots with Tex Avery and I would guess he read Mad Magazine a lot as a kid.

And Not to hang the guy out to dry alone, I was a teenager in the 1990s, and most of my sexy fictional ladies are 9/10 some combination of Dana Scully, Peg Bundy, and Rhonda Shear.

The point being that style isn't something you create intentionally so much as an accumulation of influences, drawn from the commons. Attempting to claim ownership of such a thing is by itself an act of theft in my view, and allowing them to be protected under the law would mean a judge being shown exactly how many pieces of prior art the Walt Disney Corporation owns that your work superficially resembles. Why, they'll even run it through a style recognizing AI to make sure they catch them all.

But let's talk about style matching.

It just takes one image now, and doesn't require training.

Which I'm sure sounds frightening, but this has been the situation since February for Midjourney, and it was available in the Stable Diffusion ecosystem long before that. If the threat were as pronounced as feared, we'd have seen the impact by now. And we haven't, and we're unlikely to, for several reasons, several of them listed above.

The largest is that style isn't even close to the be all/end all of what an artist brings to a given project. And the kinds of execs who are making a 'replace 'em with a robot' kinda decision aren't the kinds of people who care about art style beyond how much it looks like the most recent successful thing. And nobody's ever needed a robot to ride coattails.

But the next largest part is that AI style imitations aren't really accurate because the robot doesn't see style in the same way we do. It's all just math to the robot, and it prioritizes what it notices, not what we do.

I'll demonstrate.

Jack Kirby will be my example, for several reasons.

He has a bold and identifiable style, he's arguably the most famous artist in western comics history, and he has many analogue imitators and homagers.

Using Midjourney and prompting "an illustration of dana scully by jack kirby, 1968, in the style of 1960s marvel comics --ar 3:4 --s 15"

Using the base model, on the first roll we get three complete style mismatches and one that's kinda close, though I'd say that's way more Sal Buscema or John Byrne.

Kirby's women had a certain, difficult to describe oddness about their faces that the robot doesn't seem to grok, and it doesn't touch on the kinds of wild patterns and bold black/white swatches that make Jack's work feel 'jack'.

Tom Scioli's take on Kirby is a sort of lovingly flanderized parody, but it captures the spirit of Jack's art much more directly even if a lot of individual details aren't period-accurate. He draws Kirby the way you remember Kirby from your childhood, but I don't question whether the page above is trying to be a Jack Kirby homage or one to Sal Buscema.

But Midjourney has style reference, so we can inject the Kirby right in. Using the picture of Sersei dancing from above with the same prompt, we get:

Well, the work is more convincingly period, but again, we're not terribly close to being on-point. In fact, they're not very consistent between each other. Top left is any 80s marvel fill-in artist. Top right is maybe Kirby-esq. Bottom Left is flat out Jim Lee, bottom right is very Byrne-y.

Using three reference images to give the best shot, I'm also moving to using images of a similar color style, and all with a woman as the central focus. I have included the infamous Crystal pin-up shot because as I said, Kirby women have a certain oddness to them (fondly).

Results (MJ 6.1 on the left, Niji 6 on the right):

It all says 60s-70s Marvel, but I don't think Kirby would be the first guess for any of them. Maaaaaaybe the lower-left Dana in image #2 if you squint.

And that's Jack Kirby. Massively popular and prolific with a career spanning decades. If anyone in the comics space should be impersonatable by this thing, its him.

I'm sure you could train a LORA to get closer, and sure, the tech is only going to get better from here, but by the nature of how the system works no generation pulls just from what is referenced. Every generation is both blended with other concepts and emphasizes only what the machine catalogs as relevant, not what we might.

There's not much to stop someone from imitating your style with a machine, but there was nothing stopping them from doing the same with an underpaid freelancer. The results are likely to miss the mark regardless.

If the client wants you, they'll try and get you. If they just want something kinda like you, they've always had an avenue to that.

Fortunately, you're more than your style, and whatever anyone can do with the machine, you can do better because you've got access to both.

[see-arcane]

The Vampyres--The Bones and Blood of the Book

Good news! I’m not dead and the book isn’t either! Just shambling slowly through the wasteland of the publication process. It’s been a bit since I last waved this bloody morsel around. So, consider this a progress report on the state of the novella, the prospective publishing options, and a few other questions that have been bouncing around in the inbox.

EDIT:

I have a website now! For some reason.

It's See Arcane Scribbles.

Smaller Edit:

Got a Spotify too for story soundtrack goodness:

COVERS

First things first—and the first part of a finished book is the cover. Here are some mockups I’ve been juggling, starting with the original placeholder. They’re far from perfect, but I’m proud of what I managed with a fairly skinny graphic art skill set.

FINISHING, FORMAT, AND FINANCE*

*(OR, THE HEADACHENING)

Copyright: Technically speaking, you have the copyright to your own writing once you put it to paper or screen. But this is somehow a different thing from a legally-binding registered copyright, which everyone declares is a must-have if you want your work to be protected with more than a non-textual trust-fall exercise, hoping nobody steals your work and runs.

That said, electronic registration with the copyright office is $65, or $45 to register one work by one author.

ISBN: I only recently learned the words behind this acronym. ‘International Standard Book Number.’ It’s the ID on a book that marks it as unique and helps commercial booksellers and libraries circulate it. Each iteration of a book—paperback, digital, hardcover, new editions, et cetera—has its own ISBN. When you’re publishing on your own, you purchase ISBNs through a service called Bowker.

One book/version’s ISBN costs $125.

There are better bargains the higher the number of books and/or versions you go, starting at a bulk of 10 books for $295. But as I only have the one (1) skinny novella on the table, that’s a no-go. Which begs the question of how many ISBNs are in store for this little monster. It depends on how many formats I go with.

eBook: The quickest and most cost-efficient option across the board for any self-publication service. Short, sweet, no printing pains of trim sizes or distribution costs or formatting, oh my. Nice.

Paperback VS Hardcover: …But I am now and forever a sucker for physical media. Even though it’s a teeny brochure of a thing, I want to hold a physical copy of The Vampyres in my hands! So bad! And every service I’ve looked through has stated the obvious: Hardcover costs more than paperback. My heart won’t break if I have to stick with paperback to spare everyone’s wallets—hardcovers are pricy in both directions!—but I am a little torn. Especially as physical size might affect the price too.

Here we have two of my favorite quick reads, an anthology of Poe stories and Clive Barker’s novella, The Hellbound Heart.

The Poe book is a clothbound hardcover. 6.5 x 4.5 inches, a bit over 120 pages.

The Hellbound Heart is roughly 8 x 5 inches (about standard for a novella), at 164 pages. But unlike Poe, it looks like Barker took some liberties with the spacing and font size.

Standard size dimensions cost less than unique cuts, which means that whether paperback or hardcover, I sadly have to say goodbye to the petite palm-sized edition I was hoping for. On the upside, good news to us crap-vision readers—the font’s going to get H U G E in order to make the book more than a pamphlet with delusions of grandeur.

Audiobook: The fact is, my voice is not up to the task of reciting anything with appropriate gravitas and I think we’ve all been spoiled by @re-dracula and assorted other podcasts’ skill in orating. I don’t have the cash to hire a professional and I’m not about to accept anyone’s freebie offers. I won’t pickpocket friends for their talent. If an audio version ever comes along for any story of mine it’ll be down the road when it proves worth the format’s effort and cost.

REVIEWS (and a Foreword!)

It was the best of times (People reading the thing! Commenting on the thing! Good good good—), it was the worst of times (The Mortifying Ordeal of People Reading and Commenting on the Thing). Time for what every advice site declares a book absolutely must have the moment it’s thrust into the wild.

Reviews, reviews, reviews.

I’ve already bitten several bullets and passed copies out to a handful of fellow scribblers to scrutinize, their reviews destined to be hung up like literary gold stars on their bookselling site of choice, my own included. Now comes my preliminary grovel to readers en masse to please drop a review, a comment, a blurb of any shape or size where you can once The Vampyres drops. I’ve already gotten some early comments that have consisted mostly of screaming. Screams also count as a review.

As an aside, there are two folks in particular who I reached out to who exist in the stratosphere of Coolest People in the Vampiric Lit scene. They promptly exploded me into disbelieving giblets when they told me, yes, they’d be happy to read my little story and offer up a review and a foreword for the book respectively.

I’m not sure what the decorum here is, but for safety (and surprise’s) sake, I’ll not name names. But they are names I’ve been happy to come across for the past two years while neck deep in the undead book club. I’m infinitely grateful to both of them and am waiting on pins, needles, stakes and kukri blades by my inbox so I can pin their words up inside the book itself.

FUTURE SCRIBBLING

To get one of the biggest questions out of the way, let’s talk about Barking Harker.

My very own object lesson on sunk cost fallacy.

I wrote my way through a goddamn cinderblock of text without even grazing the finish line of the first section of the story. A story made of so many convoluted triple-decker layers of subplots and side characters that it had the structural integrity of a monolithic Nature Valley granola bar, just waiting to fall apart under its own weight. Such is the hubris and curse of too-many-words-itis. The Vampyres remains a miraculous fluke, jotted down during an overdue break from BH’s slog. Not just because I tripped and fell into finishing the story, but because it’s comparatively compact! Brevity at last!

For those still craving the assorted gothic and ghoulish promises of the initial novel idea, don’t worry, those aren’t going anywhere. I’ve just crumbled the metaphorical bloodstained granola by my own hand and have done the sane thing of parsing out the various subplots to become the foundations of their own stories. Which they really should have been from the get-go. Insert 100+ clown emojis here.

On that note, I am turning into WIPs Georg over here. Good god.

I hesitate to throw myself all-in again and make promises of X Story that may leave me spinning my mental wheels or ballooning the plot out into a behemoth that can’t be steered back on course. Even so, here’s a peek at a few ideas I currently have on the brain.

So.

Not exactly lacking for stories. It’s just a matter of seeing which of them breaks ahead of the herd and squeezes out into the publication ether first.

LAST BIT  

Blah, blah, requisite reminder that I have a Ko-Fi where you can donate a buck or commission my best attempt at art, blah. Any pennies are a help.

But I’m betting very few of you came around here for my doodles. Somehow, a good amount of people tripped into this pit with me because you enjoy the rambles and horrors I’ve written over the years. Maybe some of you will even buy my book once it’s out. And you, there, on the other side of the screen—you’re reading this right now. You made it all the way to the bottom of this pile of exposition just because you wanted to. So, thank you.

Thank you for reading this far. Thank you for reading before and reading what’s to come. Thank you for giving me the confidence to even consider shouldering my own work out into the wider world.

Thank you.

P.S. If you want to re-read the preview, go here!

[booksandabeer]

Stucky, Fandom Longevity, and "Primacy Bias"

There’s this post that's been floating around the past few days about how the Stucky fandom in its heyday produced fic and art masterpieces like they were all collectively possessed by an unprecedented spirit of creative insanity. It’s a good, fun post and I agree with the person who wrote it. (not rb'ing because I didn't want to hijack their post with something that's only tangentially related).

It was indeed a magical time and the creative output in both quantity and quality in the two-year period following the release of CA:TWS is—with perhaps a few exceptions—unmatched by anything that I’ve seen before and since. However, going through the notes on that post, I noticed something that left me a little irritated and quite frankly sad since it is in congruence with, and to a certain extent the confirmation of something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

For one thing, there are so many people in the notes expressing sentiments along the lines of “it was such a wonderful time; I wish I could go back; I miss these fics; I want to read these fics again,” etc., etc., you get it. And it feels a little silly pointing this out, but…you can just do that? Almost all of these fics are still right there, waiting for you to be (re)read. Yes, a lot of people left the fandom after The Great Devastation of 2019, but their stories didn’t just disappear. It's not like there is now a big, black hole where the Steve/Bucky tag used to be on AO3. So, if you miss these fics and you want to revisit them—just do it. Chances are the authors will be delighted that people are still finding and enjoying their stories all these years later. And—since apparently this needs saying, too, judging from the notes on that post: A lot of people seem to be very concerned with losing ‘coolness points’ for openly admitting that they still miss the ship and often feel tempted to dip their toes back into the Stucky pool. I don’t know how to tell you this, but if someone tries to shame you for simply enjoying or missing something, they are an asshole. Not to mention that all this is happening on tumble.com—'coolness' doesn't exactly live here. And that is a good thing, to be clear. Fandom is not about being cool. It’s about being as enthusiastic, as silly, as absolutely fucking unhinged about the things you love as you want to be. So, stop caring what other people think and enjoy yourself.

The other thing is that there seems to be a pretty widespread misconception that the Stucky fandom hasn’t produced any good fanworks after 2016.

First, that is patently and demonstrably untrue. There is so much incredibly good fanfiction and fanart still out there. Not as much as back in the day, sure, but it still exists. And more is being posted every day! Even some of the OG Big Names are still around. One of the most beloved Stucky series that started all the way back in 2014 was updated as recently as December of last year. The artist, who I believe the op is referring to as creating ‘baroque’ paintings, posted their latest Stucky art not even two months ago.

Second, I find this “primacy bias” more than just a little insulting to the many hardworking and incredibly talented people who are still putting their blood, sweat, and tears into creating for this community. And it’s one thing if people who have long left the fandom believe or say something like this, but it’s frankly irritating when I see people who are still very much active—and therefore definitely should know better—feed into that same false myth. Yes, it sucks that the Stucky ship isn’t as big as it used to be, but that doesn't mean there isn't any 'fresh talent' to be found anymore. I’m also not saying we shouldn’t still celebrate and recommend older works—I do it all the time! And it sure as hell doesn't mean everyone has to reblog absolutely everything all the time, either. Your blog, your rules.

But maybe we should put a little more focus on the good things, on the creators and the community we have now, especially if we want that community to still exist in another ten years. I mean, imagine you’re a person who’s just gotten into the fandom (because yes, there are indeed still new people discovering Stucky all the time) and one of the first things you’re being told is “eh, nice that you're here, but you’re about 7 years late; the big party is already over.” Does that seem like a fun space to hang out in to you?

So. Let’s all—and I do not exclude myself from this because God knows, I love to complain—spend a little less time mourning the ‘good old days’ that are never coming back anyway, and instead focus our attention on enjoying and appreciating both the incredible treasure chest of an archive we have AND the wealth of high-quality art and fic that is still being created by this wonderful community every single day. With this in mind:

🥳🎊Happy Stucky Week 2023!!! 🎊🥳

*I want to make it very clear that this is a general thing that’s been on my mind lately and that I’m trying to work through here—probably not very coherently. I'm not trying to tell anybody 'how to do fandom' and I’m most definitely not vagueposting about any particular incident, person, or group in this fandom. This isn’t a callout post. It’s an I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this and I don’t know what else do with them post.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Titania McGrath

Published: May 11, 2024

I was recently invited to Meghan Markle’s mansion in California for a brainstorming session on how to challenge privilege. We chatted over a light luncheon of vegan shakshuka, braised turmeric tofu and some truffle-infused seaweed that Meghan had helicoptered in that morning from Guyana.

The Sussexes do like to keep their carbon footprint to a minimum, so they only ever use one helicopter at a time.

I for one have been shocked that Meghan and Harry’s lifestyle and wellness projects have not been better received. Meghan’s Archetypes podcast with Spotify didn’t prove as successful as she’d hoped, partly because nobody seemed to be interested in what she had to say.

My feeling is that the public needs to get to know the real Meghan. People should realise what a positive influence she has been on Harry. For one thing, his toxic masculinity has all but disappeared ever since she removed his testicles for an installation art piece.

Now, the couple are planning to re-establish their brand in the UK. It turns out that Harry’s decision to write a book slagging off the Royal Family hasn’t endeared him to the British people. The masses are so fickle.

It hasn’t been easy for them. The British media is so inexplicably hostile to Meghan, just because she said they were all evil and racist. In the end, the couple were forced to flee to California to live a quiet and reclusive life. As Meghan said to those 17 million viewers on that interview with Oprah Winfrey, she just wants her privacy.

Even now, the press won’t stop writing articles about Harry. They twist everything he says to try and make him look bad. Some journalists even implied that there was something “weird” about the part of his book where he mentioned that he daubed his penis with his late mother’s favourite lip cream.

After the success of their Netflix documentary, though, Harry and Meghan are keen to branch out into making movies. I hear that they’re considering a feminist reimagining of The Godfather, or possibly an all-black remake of Schindler’s List.

[reel-fear]

Whelp, Lone Wolf looks like it's gonna be continuing the trends I've disliked abt recent Bendy releases pretty well. Here are some of the things I noticed in the trailer and my thoughts about it in general. Yes they are mostly negative. They will also be in order of when these things show up in the trailer and some with timestamps & pictures.

So Bertrum is back! So so glad to see him and Bendyland return, I'm pretty willing to bet none of the BATDR cast will ever be seen again considering how forgettable most of them are, so I wouldn't hold my breath on that. I also however wouldn't hold my breath on seeing too many returning batim staff either considering how many of them are related to controversy now.

Bertie mentions it seems like something else has captured Joey's imagination and he's not as interested in Bendyland. I hope this is something like the machine or something and not Yet Another random Joey motivation thing/project to add to the timeline. Like Joey wanted to appease gods, become immortal, get money, get a family and Also do something else? Please just keep him consistent for two games in a row I'm begging.

Fun thing while watching the trailer watch how the video goes from having grey borders to weird black line borders and then none at all a few times. Our very polished and not at all rushed trailer folks.

Boris is using his batim model instead of the kinda weird one he had in BATDR which he shared with Tom. I'm glad for that though it is also a little strange he didn't get a newer one for a release all about him.

Why why why, are we going sci-fi now with all the machines and stuff? The ink machine was only really relevant in BATIM as the thing that brought these rubberhose monsters to life, there was no hint of all this... Nonsense in that game and I preferred it that way! Why do we have to also be like FNAF and lose that interesting aesthetic we started out with to become more like other more generic horror games? Why why why is Gent now the main focus I don't even think Gent was properly mentioned in BATIM?? Idk, I just thought the interesting personal drama of the hell-ish studio and the tortured residents in it was enough to carry the franchise, I didn't need an evil sci-fi company in the mix. I know BATDR already hinted at this direction but that doesn't mean this isn't still a massive leap from that game. We got shows of subtle but yes more advanced tech here and now we just outright have what look like turrents in the 1930s animation studio. Whyyyyy...

This animation looks bad. I'm allowed to finally say that right? Like the fluid simulation looks bad, the ink looks all chunky and low res, I mean it looks like the shit you see in that animated Food Fight movie. What is with the red? Why are we so eager to break the iconic pallete and art style THAT MADE THE GAMES UNIQUE. If I wanted to see a sci-fi adventure with blood and gore, I'D GO PLAY THE HUNDREDS OF OTHER GAMES THAT DO THAT BETTER!!! Don't remind me of better games I could be playing Mike! Why does Boris have a weird, anime ink, demonic power animation?? What is that???

Why are those things alive now, wasn't the bendy animatronic not doing anything enough of a disappointment? Why are we deciding only now to do something with them when most people are probably now gonna just be confused. Why are the machines alive? Did the ink machine do that? Did gent do that? Did the evil sci-fi company really see a boris themed animatronic and go 'ah yes the perfect evil killing machine for our evil motives'?? I have so many questions.

Also that thing was not designed by Lacie. At least the Bendy animatronic was designed in a way to be eerie but you could see how kids would find it appealing same way the Bendy cut outs were unnerving but also cute enough to pass as something kids would love. This is just. Childlish edgy design without considering that these were supposed to be designed with kids in mind. I wouldn't be so hard on this franchise for that if it wasn't something that was better IN PREVIOUS GAMES, like I mentioned with the bendy animatronic and such. Esp since it now has more competition with things like poppy playtime. I'm begging you guys if ur pc can handle Unreal Engine 5 please buy that instead of this garbage.

Also it seem this was the actual animatronic Tom stole the arm of since its design fits the redesign his robot arm got for dark revival. I don't really care too much about that but it is cool.

Now however for the scariest thing of all! Bendy's declining level of polish and increasingly rushed products! You've heard of the uncanny and weird expression Henry made in the cage trailer!

You've heard of the graphic novel being published with an obvious coloring mistake!

Now get ready for the ink demon's hooves stuttering and twitching like it were a poorly made physics object in the trailer for a game! [using a gif from the steam page since it shows it off really well]

I mean I shouldn't have to say anything more right? Like that's just inexcusable. We've reached modern Pokemon levels of not giving a fuck how bad our trailers look and still expecting people to buy it.

Now I'm gonna go into some stuff on the steam page for the game and then I'll get into some more general points:

Why does this franchise have such a hard time animating faces and humanoid characters? What is this Malice expression-

Also hints to the Boris is a person/Buddy thing? Are we keeping that? Is there just a separate version of Buddy for the games without any of the compelling parts of him in his book? Or is this now being used to reference something else?

Sammy shown off uh- touching a Banjo in a way that resembles playing it? Uh guys, could we not have given this trailer and steam page more time to clean these up a bit why are his movements so slow-

"Bendy: Lone Wolf™ will tests your ability to survive against ever increasing odds. Monsters and obstacles emerge from every direction as you journey into the rubberhose halls of the world's most evil animation studio. Every day is a challenge." Lmao rubberhose? Animation? I forgot those were parts of the franchise, after all you sucked them all out of the ink demon a while ago.

One of the gifs which I didn't feature has a jumpscare/flashing lights, I hope it will have a warning for those since Secrets Of The Machine still doesn't. I also don't know why we're keeping the jumpscares since most people rightfully made fun of how bad they were in the og game but. Idk taking feedback has never been good with this team.

Overall everything just kinda, sucks. the polish is gone from even the trailers. The art style becomes less of a factor with each game and the lore is so hard to keep track of even for die-hard fans. The comments on the trailers seem almost purely positive so far so that doesn't give me much hope they'll ever learn though... The top comment is a quote from DCTL too which is hilarious. Also Boris still has NO facial animations, even in his own game he'll never be an interesting character, why am I supposed to care abt saving him in BATIM again?

I'll be playing and checking it out more but probably only because I'm getting it for free since I had dark survival. Besides that yeah I wouldn't waste my money on it. I'll probably rip the assets to look at though. Can we please make some more critical comments on the youtube upload? I don't want people buying this garbage.

Anyways yeah just wanted to say all this, I'm gonna be working on more positive posts soon I promise and they will be Bendy related! Not the canon-stuff but the fanmade stuff so stay tuned! Bye!!

[kingdomoftyto]

I just finished a complete re-read for the third (fourth?) time and the recent updates are barreling toward some climactic events, so I therefore feel compelled to make a proper rec post for something LONG overdue:

The Glass Scientists, a webcomic about Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, rogue science, Victorian repression, and a WHOLE lot more.

Our protagonist is the esteemed Dr. Henry Jekyll, co-founder of the Society for Arcane Sciences, an organization that aims to bring mad science into the mainstream by proving that not all who practice it are dangerous lunatics. This is easier said than done, especially with the violent death of a certain Dr. Frankenstein still weighing on the minds of the public years after the fact. Not to mention...

... Henry's own inner demons.

Edward Hyde serves as a sort of release valve for Henry's stresses whenever the pressure of running the Society proves to be too much. Hyde is everything he can't be: spontaneous, emotional, uninhibited. Free to take what he wants without guilt or public consequences.

And oh, Henry wants.

His transformation into Hyde is a physical manifestation of the repression of his queer inclinations. This is not subtext. It's not even an accident on Henry's part. It's a central facet to who he is as a person (and, by extension, who Hyde is, as well).

...But listen. We don't have time to unpack all THAT! Not when there are so many other delightful characters to meet! Such as Henry's best friend / business partner / old flame Robert:

Or Jasper, the newest member of the Society, a plucky young cryptozoologist who happens to also be a werewolf, and who gets swept up in a VERY cute relationship with the slightly unhinged cook (and Henry's other best friend), Rachel:

Or Hyde himself, who despite all his debauchery may not actually be the pinnacle of evil that he believes himself to be:

Because if you couldn't tell from the sampling of panels in this post, this comic is not only a gripping emotional drama but also an OUTRAGEOUS comedy, when the mood calls for it. It truly strikes a perfect balance of the two, in my humble opinion.

On top of all that, the art is gorgeous, the atmosphere is impeccable (swinging from fantastical whimsy to genuine horror and back with deft skill), and the characters are deep and dynamic and full of gray areas.

I can't recommend it enough. It's hands-down my favorite actively-updating webcomic (new page every Monday!), and I'm for-real having to restrain myself from going back and starting ANOTHER re-read right now, it's that good. I've spoiled a tiny bit in this post, but believe me when I say the cast and events get so much weirder and more wonderful than even this. Please check it out.

[mondaymelon]

MERRY CHRISTMAS !!! gifts ensue.

he really went. blep. hi user @ilyuu. im proud of this one so congrats wanderer takes home first gift wooo

lmao id like to apologise in advance as this was brought on because of me but I got super burnt out drawing like 20 of these over the course of 2 days... if you see the quality of the drawings declining ( which you will ) please don't mind it!! thank you.

@anonbinaryweirdo. sigh. i get whiplash whenever you're super nice and then in the span of the next three seconds immediately do something vile

@soleillunne. we don't talk much but from what I know you are such a sweet person omg !! and your works??? dies inside (in a good way). the way you write xiao maks me so. puddle like

@realkavehgf. we agree on one things (amongst others) and that is that kaveh is. kAVEH IS. MALFUNCTIONS PERISHES.

@emphasisondrvgs. you scare me. please take your ranpo and quietly see yourself out LMAO /j

@pjsk-writin. AMIMI ONE OF MY FIRST EVER MOOTS !!! im so proud of mikoto. sighs. straitjackets are smth else to draw .. BUT HES SO. MMMMMM !!!!

@circyexistforcontent AAAHHH HI PRECIOUS. I LIKE YOU BUT I DONT REALLY LIKE DILUC SO. TAKE THIS... quietly throws up

@whats-it-mean. puka puka. head empty. puka puka. please stop your affairs with my mother.

@falors. UGLY SOBS. UGLY CRIES. I LOVE YOU /P SM. WAAHHHH TEARS TEARS TEARS you are the most talented person ever I S T G gRAAAHHH YOU BETTER GET 18412409128410948 FOLLOWERS THIS YEAR OR I WILL RIOT. mwah.

@dustofthedailylife. omg. hi dust... tbh ive been so concerned for you recently with how much life is running you over with a pickup truck so wishing for your improved health soon !! alhaith is a smort guy what can I say

@the-white-void. DEAREST. literally one of the first people I ever interacted with on this platform and you're actually. like. literally one of the sweetest people I have ever met. KLEE IS SUCH A CUTIE FJSFJDK

@kaeffeinee. OMG. m..my kitten- woah WHO just said that. wild shit right there. have something you don't like?? have something that's been pestering you for far too long?? no worries. its the official nag seal of mendokusai !!!!

@lillonvia. sobs. I didn't do the man justice.loud sobs. DFSDDSF YOUR ART MAKES ME WANT TO LIKE DISENTAGRAT INTO GLOWING BALLS oF FUZZ AND FLOAT INTO THE HEAVENS I DONT KNOW HOW ELSE TO DESCRIBE IT. WE ARE SO DELULU oVER XIAO. FOAMS AT THE MOUTH

@absolutelyobsessedkiya. HELP WHY IS MINORI SO BRIGHT.... she's literally shining what. we need to talk more pspsspsp I just now found out that you're a fan of milgram!! remember like last year I was all 'whose that pretty pink person on their pfp??' AND NOW I FINALLY KNOW THATS ITS MUU RAHHHH

@auroratumbles. meow. cat. what a sweetie. I don't even know what my art style is doing here anymore Istg what even. what even BYE LETS TALK ABOUT XIAO LATER !!

@papiliotao. mwah. a kith for you. mWAH. ANOTHER KITH. SJFKSDJFLS GRAHHH YOU ARE THE SW E. E T E ST AND YOUR THE SWEETEST AND YOUR CAT IS THE SWEETEST AND YOUR VOICE IS MAKING ME WANT TO ELEVATE INTO THE CLOUDS AND YOURE SO SILLY EVEN THOUGH YOU DONT LIKE AKITIO SHINONOME

@yinyinggie. hihihi ying !! it honestly amazes me how you're able to juggle so many events and servers at once. im actually in awe. always look at xiao he's so emo and short

@solxima. GRAHHH HI. I DONT LIKE HOW JINGYUAN LOOKS IN THIS BUT. DLJFLSDJ DIES> I CANT DO THIS AN Y M O RE. your honor. hes so cat coded hes so cat coded he's so PERISHS

@yelshin. WAIIIIT NO YOUR NAME GOT CUT OFF> iM SORRY. I don't know why he looks... so r e g a l in this but its definitely giving off oRAtRice MecAnIquE DAnAlySe CARdiNAle .

@vennnnn-diagram. LOUD SCREAMING N O . YOUR NAME GOT CUT OFF TOOOODJSKFLSD JGAIJFAD JKLJFD:LFS. anyways. I need to see nahida smiling more she deserves everything and then some. aranaras are so silly giggles

@lume-nosity. I hold the slightest bit of guilt for putting your angsty ish drawing right next to happy lil nahida buT AHAHAH IT MAKES IT HURT MORE IG. took some inspo from your blog title... mwah ily lume. I WAS SO SCARED TO TALK TO YOU AT FIRST WHEN I SENT YOU THAT MOOT ASK BUT I AM EVER SO HAPPY THAT I DID !!!

th end. im actually so dead lmao my fingers actually were starting to bleed afklsdjfaskdjfklsdjflkasdjflksjflkjowejtoij enjoy your Christmas gifts mooties !! if anyone asks why I haven't been posting fics as promised. this is why. ill be in a coffin for a while please let my soul rest

OH AND FORGOT TO MENTION I DREW THESE BASD ON THE MOOTIES THAT COMMNTED ON MY THINGY LIKE LAST WEEK WHICH ASKED WHICH CHARACTER THY WANTD I LOVE YOU ALL PSPS I PROMIS

[nightfury18]

I'M BACK!

It took me embarrassingly long time to draw, but! I've finished it!

I've been coping with my creative crisis, and decided to train in sketching. So that's how we get here now.

As I promised, here is another my work based on The Echo Garden fanfic. Unfortunately, it's only a sketch (sorry for awful quality though, my camera refused to focus properly), I wanted to draw something like this in digital, but... Well, I needed to have some rest from my pen tablet recently. I've worked on several arts at the same time plus a comic, so yeah. However, I still love it.

The problem is still the same: RODIMUS, HOW TO DRAW YOU, DUDE?! 😂 Seriously, I searched for references of him and his arms FOR HOURS! The easiest part of him is his helmet and face.

I like to think, that Roddy likes to touch not only Soundwave's tentackles, but also his thin hands and digits too. It feels right and comfy to me idk. It was almost my most favorite part of this sketch. I draw hands not often, but their ones were really a pleasure to draw.

And I think sometimes Roddy prefers to avoid his duties and run from Magnus and Megatron to spend more time with Soundwave. Which has some outcomes, when co-capitan and their sic are searching for him everywhere. OR our dearest Prime has messed up somewhere and is trying to hide from his colleagues behind Soundwave. I think it hilarious 😆 And there's always the "?" sign on his visor like "What have you done this time?", but without any word.

Also when I decided to draw them the first image in my head was the Epilogue scene with Soundwave without his visor. It was so bittersweet, I couldn't handle the urge. It was somehow really difficult to imagine and draw, but I think that he has this little adorable but genuine smile on his wounded face. Smiling Soundwave is something we must protect at all costs🥺

And their crystal. Just because I feel Soundwave and love crystals (and also stones and gems, yeah) like he does. Without color it's difficult to know that it's their exact one, but let's just imagine it's colored, ok?

Of course, again my greatest thanks to AltraViolet for majestic five days of reading her masterpiece 😌 Sometimes I still get back to re-read some chapters and feel like the first time.

[missmonsters2]

First/Second Date Jitters | WDoE Epilogue 1

Pairing: Wednesday Addams x Fem!Reader/OFC

Summary: As Wednesday promises, she re-plans the date the two of you missed. She's meticulous in planning every aspect because if you don't show up this time for whatever reason, she might chain you to her for the rest of your life.

Warnings: Fluff. Enid, playing bodyguard. Wednesday, is overbearing. Scream crossover? Text message posts.

Series Masterlist | Library Blog | AO3

Reminder there’s no taglist but you can follow my library blog for notifications 💘

Note: i love these two idiots.

Part 10

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷†⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

"This is really unnecessary."

"Don't move," Enid stops painting your nails for half a second to give you a look before resuming. "And don't blame me. Wednesday's the one who's all paranoid about leaving you alone."

You give a nervous chuckle. 

You've only started returning to class recently after reviewing all the notes Wednesday took for you. You were lucky enough to be either given an extension on assignments you missed or given a pass since you were a stellar student. 

Things are slowly returning back to normal. There had been plenty of gossip about Henry's expulsion. Of course, given his family's status, bail was posted, which his father immediately paid so his son could be locked in his own home. There won't be a trial as Weems was very firm about what would happen if Morrison Sr didn't work to take a plea bargain. 

It was only two weeks in that Wednesday declared you were to meet her this Saturday at 7PM sharp, and if you were even half a second late...there would be consequences. You smiled at Wednesday, kissing her cheek at the time, thinking her antics were cute.

But unfortunately, with Saturday here, you find yourself unable to have a moment alone. Enid has been with you all morning, not letting you out of her sight for even a second. Not even when you went to the washroom. 

"Are you sure you don't have anything better to do? I thought you were also supposed to be having a date with Ajax today. I'm just going to hang out here," you offer Enid. It's rare to see her without Yoko or Ajax.

Enid sighs. "No, it's fine. Ajax's been busy lately." Enid gives you a look, a quirk on her brow. "And you hanging out alone was why you got fairy-napped last time. Wednesday will erase my existence from this universe if I leave you alone here, even if it's in our room."

You can hear the forlorn dejection in Enid's sigh, and you look at her curiously. "Are things not going well with Ajax? I thought things were going well just a few weeks ago."

Enid scrunches her nose, seemingly trying to focus on painting your pinky nail. It's silent initially as the normally exuberant werewolf gathers her thoughts. 

"It's not..." Enid sighs with mild frustration, letting out a puff of breath. "It's not that it's not going well. It just feels like we're...drifting. Ajax has his friend group and after-school activities, and so do I. All we seem to do when we hang out is make out, which, don't get me wrong, was awesome at first. But now..." Enid's voice drifts at the end. 

"It's not enough?" You offer, and Enid reluctantly nods. 

"Why don't you ask him on a date?" You suggest curiously. Enid was so outgoing; you couldn't imagine her not asking someone out if she wanted to.

Enid purses her lips. "Well, the thing is...I feel like I was the first to tell him I was interested and basically hinted he needed to ask me out on a date. I just want him to, like, take the initiative for once."

"I see," you hum, mulling over the blonde's answer. "Then, will you break up?"

"You ask really hard questions," Enid groans, gently setting your hand down now that she's finished painting your nails. 

You study them, admiring the black nail polish with a white accent on your ring fingers. On the white nail, Enid had drawn nail art of wings in black. It was simple, yet you found yourself feeling joyful.

"Thanks, Enid," you smile at her, and Enid beams at you back. 

"To answer your question," Enid puts away the nail polish and adjusts herself to sit more comfortably while you're careful not to smudge your nails. "No, I'm not going to break up with him. I just...I guess I'll need to talk to him first."

"Very wise."

Enid pinches your sides, which causes you to yelp in surprise. "Alright, miss bliss, I get you're on cloud nine with your relationship." She gives you a warning look. "Don't tell Wednesday."

"You don't want your boyfriend to become roadkill?"

"Where would Wednesday get a car?"

"I'm sure my girlfriend will be the first person to use a Poe Cup boat to turn someone into roadkill."

Enid gags a little, dramatically throwing herself back onto her bed. "I think I'd rather her just nailgun his heart..."

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷†⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

Wednesday stares at the space before her in deep, analytical thought. She plans to recreate what she's done the evening the date was originally supposed to happen had you not been taken. 

Only this time, Wednesday was planning to have the date in your room instead of hers and Enid's. There was a particular appeal about having the space and time alone with you, uninterrupted by the possibility of Enid returning to their shared room early for whatever reason. 

Wednesday has noticed that her roommate spends less time with her boyfriend. But since she had no desire to get into that conversation about Enid's feelings unless there was a reason to murder, Wednesday wasn't going to bring it up. 

Wednesday feels a tap on her ankle, and she looks down to see Thing pointing at the small gap between the end of your bed and the wall. 

"Good idea, Thing," Wednesday praises as she lifts the screen projector and angles it so that it will fit between the spaces. 

Your wings were still healing, and Wednesday considered the fact that having the space for you to lie around with your wings out would be beneficial. 

Honestly, it would've been better to utilize your studio space, but you've been weirdly insistent about being holed up in your room as of late. A part of Wednesday wonders if it's because you're reluctant to return to your space that no longer feels safe. 

The thought of it has Wednesday gripping the pole of the projector tightly, wishing she had done more than gouge out Henry's eyes. She should've taken out his tongue and his thumbs as well. Wednesday feels regretful. 

"Thing, did you get the lights?"

Thing scuddles to the corner of the room before he starts dragging out a plastic bag.

"And where did you get it?"

There are some hand gestures, and Wednesday scoffs. "Of course, Xavier would have them. Grab the tape and we'll start hanging these up."

While Thing is busy, Wednesday mulls over what's been nagging at her for the past half hour. 

It's not that Wednesday feels fear. No, fear is irrational, and it was definitely irrational to dread not knowing your whereabouts when she knew Enid was with you. 

Still, Wednesday pulls the phone out of her pocket, glaring at the stupid device. She sees that she has multiple texts from Eugene and Xavier that she ignores before she shoots you a text.

Immediately, there's a buzz from under your pillow. 

Wednesday promptly walks over and sticks her hand under your pillow, swiping until she hits something solid. When she retracts her hand, she finds your phone in it. Her eye momentarily twitches as she lets out a deep, annoyed sigh from her nose. 

Wednesday shoots another text from her phone, and the reply is prompt. 

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷†⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

"OMG, I can't wait for you two to get on with your date," Enid groans, tossing her phone further down the bed. 

You turn your attention away from Enid's laptop screen. Enid says that if Wednesday was culturing you on murder-y films and documentaries, she would catch you up on pop culture. Hence, you were currently watching Mean Girls with a deep interest. 

"What's wrong?" You ask Enid, eyeing her phone that seemed to buzz every fifteen minutes for the last hour. 

"What's wrong is that your girlfriend is psychotically paranoid that I can't keep you safe and you've forgotten your own phone back in your own room!" Enid grabs a pillow and smushes it against her face. "This is why having a phone is important! But I almost want to kill Xavier for getting Wednesday one. Only she would be able to find a way to torture me with my beloved technology."

You give Enid an amused look, reaching to grab her phone. You swipe at the notification, but the passcode screen comes up. 

"1031, it's when Yoko and I became friends," Enid's answer was muffled by her pillow. 

You merely raise your brow at the information but enter the passcode. 

The text you see...baffle you. 

You can't help but slightly laugh while Enid glares at you, tossing a pillow at you but carefully ensuring it isn't too rough. 

"Laugh all you want, but I have half a mind to make you late for your date tonight. See how funny you think it is when Wednesday chains you to her for the rest of your life. Think how easy it will be to go to the bathroom in that situation."

You stop laughing.

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6:50PM.

Wednesday carefully checks over her preparations for the last time. The food was hot, the movie marathon was set up, and Wednesday turned on the fairy lights while Thing turned off the ceiling light. 

Wednesday opens your window slightly, knowing you like a light breeze before she lit the candles she placed around your room. 

The time grows closer, and Wednesday feels antsy as she thrums her fingers against your desk. 

Wednesday has to refrain from texting Enid again. She admits she enjoyed torturing Enid with her timely texts, but eventually, her roommate put her foot down and told Wednesday she would text if there were any issues and then stopped replying.

This was why phones were so unreliable. 

"Thing—" Wednesday starts to say, but the disembodied hand is already scuttling off to go grab you. She sighs and relents that she was just ensuring you would arrive in a timely manner—a minute earlier even. 

Wednesday waits near the door with her arms crossed over her chest. Minutes pass, but soon, she can hear multiple footsteps. She hears your soft and melodic voice, and the tension in her shoulders seeps out. 

How annoying. 

But when your face is the first thing Wednesday sees at the door, she feels like she can exhale. It's like the satisfying feeling of executing a well-planned strategy, and it might as well have been to make sure you got here. 

"Hi, Wednesday," you greet her with a smile on your lips, clearly happy to see her. 

Wednesday nods, but then Enid's face pops up in front of yours, grinning all wide and excited.

"O-M-G!" Enid squeals. "I still can't believe you planned all this even though it's the second time I'm seeing this. I'm so proud of you, Wednesday!"

"Thanks," Wednesday deadpans. "Now, leave."

Enid scrunches her nose at her roommate, making a disapproving click of her tongue. "You're welcome for playing watchdog today, BTW. You owe me, Addams."

"And I'm sure you will come to collect, but not today," Wednesday grabs your wrist and pulls you into the room. "Bye." Wednesday shuts the door.

You adjust Wednesday's grip on your wrist, letting your fingers trail along the inside of hers before they fall together like puzzle pieces, slotting together perfectly. 

Wednesday turns to look at you, her face blank, but the way her long lashes kiss her eyelids as she blinks enthralls you. The way her eyes trail your form, taking in every last bit, makes you smile.

"I made it in one piece, see?"

"Debatable."

You chuckle, looking around your room, feeling something settle inside you at the obvious amount of effort Wednesday put in. 

Turning back to your girlfriend, you notice that Wednesday seems tense, and you realize she's waiting for you to say something. You squeeze her hand.

You lean close to her, biting your bottom lip at the way Wednesday tilts her face toward you.

"You're so dreadful," you mutter, wanting to compliment her in a way she would find flattering, and you think you saw the corner of Wednesday's lip twitch upward. 

"Flattery will get you nowhere," Wednesday raises her brow at you.

"Oh, I don't know," you smirk. "No harm in trying." 

You're just about to kiss her when you see something from the corner of your eye. You smelled it when you walked into the room, and it smelled delicious, but you had been distracted.

But now...

You stand straighter to look. "Is that a makeshift stove on my desk?"

"We will be having sea witch paella."

You smile but then notice something missing from your desk. You turn to Wednesday with a raised brow.

"And why did you use my picture with Bianca as kindling?"

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"I'm surprised you went with this movie choice."

Wednesday sighs, partly in revulsion at the screen. You were lying on your stomach in bed, your wings out and Wednesday massaging medicine into it as you went back for seconds on the paella. It's gone late into the night, and the two of you have binged through several movies. 

"Xavier was adamant that we watch the movies as the 6th one came out and they'll eventually try to ambush us into a movie night with them."

"I mean, it's kind of fascinating, don't you think?" You tilt your head at the screen just as someone is getting stabbed.

"Fascinating in the sense that it's painful to watch everyone in this franchise be so incompetent," Wednesday counters, but then smiles. "But it's amusing. 

You laugh as Wednesday finishes working on your wings and sit up, placing your empty bowl on the coffee table. "Well, I do suppose if we were in Scream—not as supernatural beings, mind you—Ghostface wouldn't stand a chance against you. Unless you were Ghostface, then maybe it'd be a different story."

"Please," Wednesday scoffs. "If this amateur can kill this many people, it'd be dreadfully boring for me."

"Oh?" you grin at her. "So, you'd rather be one of the good guys?"

Wednesday's expression quickly morphs into disgust and disbelief that you'd insult her like that. 

You laugh again but shake your head. "I would hope you'd stop Ghostface because I would definitely die."

"You're that pathetic that you'd let some fool kill you?" Wednesday shook her head. "You might as well let me end your misery then."

"I will be honest," you nudge Wednesday's shoulder, moving your arm to loop through hers as you pull her close. "I'm unfortunately nearly useless without my wings and powers, as I've never known otherwise. I can't imagine I'd do well as a normie if someone tried to kill me."

Wednesday is silent, seemingly in deep thought about your words. 

You hum. "But maybe I'll be like Tara, which is funny because she kind of looks like you."

"Who?" 

You chuckle, nudging your head towards the screen. "The girl that got stabbed in the beginning and is fighting for her life in the hospital right now."

"She's not awful," Wednesday concedes. "Whimpering and feeble, but I suppose she survived."

You were starting to lose interest in the movie, but in all fairness, you've sat through four movies in a row. You begin to lean over Wednesday, hovering over her as you trap her between your bed and arms. Your wings hide her from the world, and despite Wednesday having a neutral expression, you have a glint in your eye at the way she has her hands on your waist. 

"Well, quite honestly, I'm not that worried. Ghostface should be smart enough to not mess with Wednesday Addams' girlfriend. What do you think?" You grin at her, and Wednesday looks annoyed that you seem to be gloating but also is begrudgingly in agreement. 

Wednesday rolls her eyes before she slides one hand behind your neck and pulls you closer until your lips just brush over hers. There's the sound of screams and stabbing noises in the background, and Wednesday can't think of anything more romantic to set the mood. 

"Correct. I'll kill anyone who even thinks of touching a single hair on your head."

EPILOGUE 2

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Hope you enjoyed! :)

Temp taglist is still open for 25 more people to be notified when the oneshots and sequel is up! Comment or reblog on this post only or part 10 to be added (pls don't send to my inbox bc i will miss it 💔) you can still always follow my library blog for notifs @missmonsters2-library

[disco-elysium-via-polls]

🎵 Precinct 41 Major Crimes Unit

"*SIX* years?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Yeah... Or seven? You're not doing too good there. It's an old-man thing. Two *old-years* equals one normal year. That -- and Dora Ingerlund really tore you a new one. A big one."

"Who was she?"

"*Now* I've heard enough."

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Incredibly bangable?"

"Are you *seriously* using this moment to assert male privilege!?!"

"Huh?"

"Figures."

"No, I meant -- what did she do?"

KIM KITSURAGI - "He is very passionate about this."

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Okay, you're right. She was extremely fuckable, Harry. Gorgeous. A gorgeous bourgeois woman. Waifish. Like a *welkin* basically."

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Medium: Success] - Snow Welkin. Blonde Welkin...

INLAND EMPIRE [Easy: Success] - Heartbreak Welkin.

PAIN THRESHOLD [Medium: Success] - Pain Welkin.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "I've only seen a picture -- but it's obvious you formed a real spiritual connection with how *pretty* she was. One you never recuperated from."

JUDIT MINOT - "Look..." She turns to face the sea. "The sun is going down. It's time to go home."

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "I think she taught in the Académie des Arts, east of the river. Way east. Hard to say which came first -- the middle class chick or the drink? Egg and the chicken kinda thing..."

"My point is, you need to see a *psychiatrist* about this shit. Not a psychologist -- several degrees harder. Is there's something harder than a psychiatrist?" He pauses to think. "A forensic psychiatrist. Go talk to that."

RHETORIC [Medium: Success] - In other words -- he's heard *enough* about this.

3. "Okay. Am I a dirty cop working for La Puta Madre?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "No."

"No? Because a suspect seemed to think..."

"Okay then."

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "You're too unstable to work for a mob boss. You're suicidal, Harry. No mob boss would take you."

+5 XP

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - "I assure you -- I wouldn't consult for a corrupt unit."

LOGIC [Medium: Success] - He would immediately backpedal out of it.

VOLITION [Easy: Success] - I told you it's not that bad.

4. "Precinct 41… what kind of station is it?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Us? We're the *Bloody Murder Station*, haven't you heard? We're the bad guys. No one likes us."

KIM KITSURAGI - "That's not true. Jamrock is too big for one precinct. You're just understaffed. And everyone respects the 41st -- you have Captain Pryce."

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Thank you, lieutenant. You're being kind. It *is* an understaffed station and the district *is* too big -- which is why we need to..." He tilts his head northward...

JUDIT MINOT - "... get back to it. We left Torson and McLaine to run the C-Wing. It's not good."

"Torson and McLaine?"

"And the C-Wing is…"

"And Pryce is..."

"Did we recently shoot up a church by any chance?" (Point to the church.)

"So I work in the Bloody Murder Station?" (Conclude.)

JUDIT MINOT - "Mack 'The Torso' Torson and Chester McLaine --" She arches an eyebrow. "They're not fit to run a wing. Believe me. Things are shaky as it is."

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Medium: Success] - They *are* damn iconic though -- Torson and McLaine!

"An iconic duo I take it?"

Not now.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Yeah -- not like *us*. Two clinically depressed old men. Where's the contrast here? We're garbage."

2. "And the C-Wing is…"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "God..." He sighs. "There are four wings, Harry: A, B, C, and D. We're in C. It's made of losers and clock-punchers. You and I *re-conceptualized* it as a task force. It was a mistake."

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - "There's also a lot of outside help involved. Not only me." He smiles. "Other losers too."

SUGGESTION [Easy: Success] - He's anything but a loser. Although he would like to be seen as one. It's cooler that way.

3. "And Pryce is..."

JUDIT MINOT - "Ptolemy Pryce? He's the son of the old Pryce -- one of the founders of the RCM."

KIM KITSURAGI - "He's one of the most highly regarded men in the force. You're lucky."

ESPRIT DE CORPS [Easy: Success] - Somewhere under the curved roof of a former silk factory, shaped like a ladybird with two chimneys, Police Captain Ptolemy Pryce sits behind a heavy wooden desk. Resident medic Nix Gottlieb pours him coffee. It's silent in the captain's office...

They speak of change. The city. The tension on the streets. They speak of the events of April and the blood on the streets in May.

4. "Did we recently shoot up a church by any chance?" (Point to the church.)

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "So he remembers *that*... Yes, there may have been a raid on *some* churches. It wasn't good press."

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - "Shooting up churches never is. I was out of town, to be clear...."

"What happened? Why did we need to go there?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Our *enemies* were hiding in *a* church -- to the best of our information. That's it. I'm not talking about this anymore. Your security clearance is *shit-tier* right now. You have to wait for it to go up."

+5 XP

AUTHORITY [Easy: Success] - He means it. The RCM and its enemies will not be discussed on this coast.

PERCEPTION (HEARING) [Challenging: Success] - Your clearance will not go up while you're within earshot of the Union headquarters.

5. "So I work in the Bloody Murder Station?" (Conclude.)

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Okay -- it's not the Bloody Murder Station. It's an old converted silk mill with green desk lamps and a coffee corner. A lot of good people work there. Hard. Every day."

JUDIT MINOT - "Jamrock is the largest ghetto in Revachol. Faubourg, technically... but it's divided into *eleven* districts. Jamrock only has us."

KIM KITSURAGI - "The press will blow over," he says in a reassuring tone. "Jamrock is lucky to have you. And it's often considered to be the greatest of the districts -- you're lucky to have it."

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Thank you again, lieutenant."

5. "The phasmid -- I need to tell Lena about this ASAP."

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Who is Lena?"

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Easy: Success] - She lives at 1113 Tabernacle Road, in Jamrock. Remember?

"A cryptozoologist. She lives in Jamrock, on Tabernacle road. She told me about this phasmid."

"No one. Forget it."

JUDIT MINOT - "Tabernacle? It's on the way over. Near where you live, on Perdition..." She looks at Vicquemare.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Fine. If we're gonna drop you off anyway."

KIM KITSURAGI - "She and her husband were conducting the search for the phasmid. It's their discovery -- in part."

"They should know as soon as possible. It would do you good to deliver some positive news for a change."

SUGGESTION [Easy: Success] - She is going to be over the moon.

ENDURANCE [Medium: Success] - Watch out or she'll faint.

6. "Lieutenant Kitsuragi -- what will you do now?"

KIM KITSURAGI - "Well -- first I will go back to my station and write the most detailed report anyone has ever seen. It will have to be good to cover all this. Then I will have a serious talk with my captain."

"About what?"

KIM KITSURAGI - "Detective, we just stopped a small-scale war. Something is happening to Revachol." He takes a look around -- into the deepening shadows of the streets -- then pulls up his collar.

"I don't know what, yet -- but it's going to be a hard spring for the RCM. We need to get ready. Infiltrate. Investigate."

SHIVERS [Challenging: Success] - Distant traffic. A scrap of newspaper drifts by, carried by the wind.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Legendary: Success] - It says: "Tensions rise in Terminal YC In light of the Débardeurs' strike in Terminal B, among representatives of heavy industry in Coal City..." you read.

INLAND EMPIRE [Easy: Success] - Le Retour...

"Wait, you mean The Return?"

"Want to do that at Station 41?"

"Good luck with your report."

KIM KITSURAGI - "Perhaps..." He watches the scrap of newspaper hit the ground. "There are people who say the Zone of Control will not hold up long. They're not on the radio -- yet. But there are parties out there..."

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - "Yes." His face darkens. "I hear worries -- from systems analysts in Vesper and Messina. International risks departments in banks. People like that."

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "We've been hearing whispers in Jamrock too. Ever since fall. I agree that something is happening. People are tense. I hear a fan spinning. Fast. Something is about to hit it."

2. "Want to do that at Station 41?"

KIM KITSURAGI - "Talk to Captain Pryce? I'd rather not ruffle the feathers of *two* captains with my doom-mongering."

"No, I meant *investigate*. Come work in Precinct 41."

"Yeah. Sure."

KIM KITSURAGI - "Work *with* Pryce?" A crooked smile quivers on his lips. "I'm flattered, but I don't know if I..."

ESPRIT DE CORPS [Easy: Success] - Would fit in? Am crazy enough? Can take the stress? He doesn't know how to finish the sentence.

RHETORIC [Medium: Success] - This truly came as a surprise to him. Not a bad one. But he's at a loss.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Flattered? You're Lieutenant Kitsuragi. *We* would be flattered if you even considered..."

KIM KITSURAGI - "I would have to tie things up in GRIH first. But... I mean, whatever is coming -- Jamrock *will* be more central to it than the harbour." The lieutenant turns very serious all of a sudden.

+5 XP

JUDIT MINOT - "And we also have a huge case load, lieutenant," she says with a smile. "Piles that we need to get back to. Mountains, even."

KIM KITSURAGI - "I do like the sound of that..." He returns her smile.

RHETORIC [Medium: Success] - He's *really* considering it.

7. "I'm ready." (End.)

JUDIT MINOT - "Good." She looks at you, then Vicquemare...

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Fuck it, let's go." The man points down the street. "Trant brought his motor carriage. It's a 20 minute drive to Jamrock."

SHIVERS [Medium: Success] - Under the night sky the great district sleeps: A black chessboard of old wooden houses, 80,000 living souls inside. Firetraps as far as the eye can see -- from Main Street to Precinct 41 atop the motorway, to Boogie Street forking into the darkened horizon...

You close your eyes and hear the dogs bark. A lone woman sits by a factory window, dreaming of meteorite strikes. On Rue Saint-Gérôme a square bullet slides into a square-shaped chamber. In Old South a man without eyelids smiles. Spring has come. It's time.

ESPRIT DE CORPS [Easy: Success] - "Torson?" "Yes." "McLaine?" "Yes." "Heidelstam?" "No." "Vicquemare?" "Yes." "Du Bois?" "Of course."

"Really?" Nix Gottlieb looks up from the list. "I hear he's unstable." "You say that like it's a *bad* thing," Captain Ptolemy Pryce gestures with a ball point pen. It's dim in the office and the curtains are drawn. "Harry's our man, he'll pull through. When he does, he'll side with the people." "Understood." Gottlieb returns to the list. "Minot?" "Of course."

JUDIT MINOT - "Wonderful," the woman looks north. "Then can we please just go back to Jamrock now?"