#what do you mean I made this my self
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yirima-chai · 1 month ago
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I made this Whirl figure as a Christmas gift for @xaraxaltaris
(How can you not just give your best friend a selfmade figure of her favorite Transformer)
↓More pictures of him down here↓
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The figure is made out of paper, some wire a few beads and hot glue
That's how he looked before I painted him
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hinamie · 7 months ago
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Your face in profile, with a look I'd never seen
jjk atla!au with @philosophiums
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nenoname · 6 months ago
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stan twins the canon cptsd brothers i will always think about all your unaddressed issues that would make perfect plot fuel for your spinoff
and also the whole 'stan getting that poem by bill via a website which contrasts with bill getting one from the axolotl via a website' foreshadowing thing
like idk i would love something like su future but like more optimistic, aka not an accumulated breakdown that has to be mostly resolved off screen at the end :/// but something thats being kinda addressed throughout? (although would love to see one of them turn into a monster thats always fun lol)
stan having severe issues from his dad and those years of being homeless that we keep on getting more info on but never really getting confronted on (the drifter catalogue and tijuana incident...), him being completely alone for like twenty years when running the shack before soos comes along to the point that 1998 is noted as his low point, and him not really learning about bill+what he did to ford until ages after he killed him if he ever did get the full context
while i think amnesia and everyone seeing him as a hero actually helped with stan's 'i'm a worse version of my brother' thing its still a lingering issue too and we now got him being insecure over his own hands
ford being immediately thrown from 'being tortured by bill' to 'being stuck in the multiverse and being chased by bounty hunters constantly', him fully expecting himself to die when destroying bill, and him only now being safe for the first time in 30 years ....relatively safe, he's still in constant danger because of course he is
idk in the end the series wants them to be happy and they deserve it, its why i wasn't too worried about the book being like 'ooh bill is back!! and the book is haunting ford' thing cos i knew they'll be ok
#stan pines#ford pines#stanley pines#stanford pines#gravity falls#stan twins#as for the 'still on your mind' thing to me its stan literally thinking about bill despite ford resolving to move past it#or alternatively me on my same coin theory obsession lmao#me yelling and screaming at ouroboros being used to link to the axolotl and bill and how ford didn't actually keep it#which brings up even more questions about it reappearing in the shack when stan takes over#of course even if him realising about reincarnation being a thing i think its still way less to deal with than his actual issues#something something a same soul doesnt mean much when he already proved himself a better person a million times over#idk my thoughts on reincarnation as a concept is like eh??? anyway#also completely unrelated but stan writing fanfic means he knows what soos meant when he was talking about stan fics#soos seems like a gen fic writer especially with the ones we got as those promos#the train one where he comes up with a giant backstory for the setting that has nothing to do with the fic bros is super funny#but meanwhile we have stan the canonical smut writer who had to be writing it that summer#would he be a self insert shipper? would he projecting on the duchess instead? is he both???#i have many questions#then again judging from hows theres a wedding scene that he got super emotional over he might just be a shipper????#this has nothing to do with my original post#...or does it cos the axolotl last appears reacting to stan freaking out about count li--#anyway if you think this post is longer than my usual its cos i physically made myself delete most tags and put it in the actual post
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pepperpixel · 7 months ago
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SAID HE LIKES CRAZY GIRLS,
BUT HE HATES WHEN I ACT CRAZY,
IT TAKES TWO TO TOXIC!
FINALLY!!! Finished these pics of jinx I’ve been working on!!!!! HOLY SHIT, these took so long…. But finally… they’re done… pls enjoy this art of my beautiful princess w a disorder. Featuring alternate colors for the big pic and also a closeup! Cuz I rlly like how both the lines and coloring on her face turned out… like the pink gradients w her eye… her deer in headlights expression,, like uve just startled a raccoon digging thru ur trashcan and r two seconds away from getting mauled.. m proud of it!
#arcane#league of legends#jinx#jinx arcane#arcane jinx#doodles#hate and love how hardcore I relate to jinx…#little sisters w dependency issues.. + a whole lot of other issues#anyway the ‘he’ in the ‘crazy girl’ lyrics is in my mind referring to both vi and silco lol#I’m sORRY! I keep seeing ppl hardcore pitting these 2 bad bitches against each other#and it’s like… silco is objectively. morally worse than vi.. vi is not like. a ruthless crime lord#vi IS 100% trying her best and loves her sister. but she still screwed up w jinx#and silco ALSO truly loves jinx. but also screwed up by fucking. trauma bonding w her ghgh-#like.. silco is too close. he’s like. yes go apeshit jinx I support and love you and understand u no matter what fucked up shit u do.#were the same. and that’s beautiful!!! I love how supportive he is…#but its like.. silcos too close. he just became a new person for jinx to glomp onto and base her self esteem around after vi left#and he doesn’t manipulate that on purpose but. he DOES effect that girls mental state. cuz he needs her too#meanwhile vi is too far away… she thinks she knows who jinx is. but jinx has changed… time marches forward. she’s not that little girl#anymore#and nOW! after the finale jinx has NOBODY TO BE CODEPENDENT W..#her mental state has always been so tied up in how the ppl she puts on pedestals view her#and now there’s no pedestal anymore. she knocked down the statues. she’s alone…#it’s interesting….#anyway I’m not trying to say vi is as bad as silco at ALL. just that she’s an equally important building block in jinx’s mind#that has made her into the fucked up lil person she is today. and I think that’s neat.#lol anyway! I’m hyped for season 2….#aLSO GOD DAMN THIS GIRLS OUTFIT IS COMPLICATED. WHY DO U GOT SO MANY BITS N BOBS JINX??? I mean I get it accessories rock.#but u take so much time to draw ghfhg- require so much brainpower#aLSO ADDENDUM. while silco is objectively morally worse than vi his relationship w jinx is genuinely. like. makes me emotional ghgh-#its not perfect. or healthy. but… it’s. the both of them. being seen. and accepted. and loved and understood.. and I love that shit.
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figofswords · 3 months ago
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i love to cook and i love food! i love cooking and i love eating! i love making food and then eating it! wait what do you mean i have to do this three times a day every day for my entire life and also dishes and grocery shopping and
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i-really-like-phrogs · 10 months ago
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Re-design of my un-named Beetlejuice OC from back when I was thirteen
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Original Reference under the cut:
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#my art#beetlejuice#toonjuice#beetlejuice cartoon#beetlejuice fanart#beetlejuice movie#procreate#I don’t really make OC’s for fanwork anymore… but the ones I had when I was younger almost never got named 🥲#When I first made her I really really liked her- and her story was very self indulgent#Looking at it now is almost way too weird for me… (and honestly a little unintentionally homophobic???)#Basically she was one of the girls from Dante’s inferno… except she got kicked out because she only had attraction to girls#(This was BEFORE I suspected that I was a lesbian— mind you.)#Yeah but anyway she went to the Deetz/Maitland house looking for a place to stay but drove everybody crazy#She was super flamboyant- loved everything pink n fluffy- and was well meaning but did more harm than good trying to do nice things for the#She had this one sided crush on Delia??? Like musical Beej and Adam except less perverted and more flirty/sappy? I was an odd kid- okay? 🥲#Anyway… the old design didn’t really do much to show off her personality… so I ended up upheaving the whole thing#It was okay for what I knew at the time- but I know what I was trying to say then and now I have the knowledge to say it better#Also— the reason I gave her horns here is so silly.#When I was younger I was in a Christian school where I wasn’t allowed to draw witches-ghosts-demons-etc.#So even though I based her on the Dante girls… I refused to give her horns because I thought that was ‘too sinful’#I even remember having so much guilt while looking for references of the Dante workers#I couldn’t even look for more than five seconds!#Anyways… she really pushed the boundaries for me at the time and it’s fun to see how I’ve changed and grown since then.
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windandwater · 1 year ago
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Ed + being a whole adhd mood, part 2 (part 1)
note: first, this isn't a diagnosis, only a very familiar pattern. also I know that we have contextual clues to hint that breaking the record was about more than boredom, but. that is such an adhd line.
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spaciebabie · 3 months ago
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if you are someone like me who has trouble processing life events/mental health stuff create an oc. like. make a guy who's entire story is yours, who knows every inch of your suffering b/c they are you but maybe all their troubles stem from being in an intergalactic war with goob noobs or something. hurt them in terrible ways so that you dont hurt yourself.
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uncleardyn · 5 months ago
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(alan wake-gravity falls crossover) man i love that character. you know, the deeply paranoid author who made a pact with a dark entity that ultimately ended with him stranded in another dimension separated from his loved ones for years at a time? takes place in the pacific northwest? has twin imagery associated with him and a reoccurring specific piece of symbology related to the unfortunate situation they're in? doesn't ever explain the reasoning behind his actions and instead just kinda goes "bro trust me"? yeah he also wears an outer layer of clothing with elbow pads on it, that one.
#my art#stanford pines#alan wake (the man)#ford pines#gravity falls#alan wake#remedyverse#SAtT au#i am. normal about the crossovers i make up.#what do you mean the esoteric weird horror game about stories and the disney cartoon about family dont have a shared audience. sounds fake.#anyways the comic on the right is in honor of a joke i had to scrap in my fic wip due to a perspective switch.#rip that joke i thought you were pretty funny. i like the idea of alan critiquing his own manuscript pages upon the events happening.#oh i should probably do a warning since theres that crunchy image of the aw2 alan death screen huh. uh#blood#aw2 alan death screen my beloved. literally made me go ''oh god'' out loud in shock and horror when i first saw it#anyways did you know theres an au to this objectively already an au crossover. i call it ''bill cipher gets sent to the shadow realm''#bill doesn't show up a lot in this au he gets one scene where he taunts ford abt alan being a danger#with the implication that the dark place/presence genuinely freaks him out. but in this self indulgence of a self indulgence#alan essentially manages to trick bill into swapping places with him and bill ends up trapped in the writers room/the dark place.#lmao get yötön yö'd idiot. YOU are aleksi kesä now.#also i like the idea of zane and bill meeting as well as door and bill meeting. i think they might scare bill a little bit.#just like how zane scares me <3 what a cool character what the fuck is his deal#also you may be wondering why alans in his aw2 look and not aw or awan look despite the fact that lines up closer#to when gravity falls happens-ish. well the answer to that is 1: the crossover uses a lot of the elements from aw2#and 2: i like alans long hair and suit and beard. i like the pathetic sopping look when his hair is in his face
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lethality-of-dual-strike · 7 days ago
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not to worry folks I’ve made more crackship kids
basis for ships below
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They’re NEXT to each other you don’t understand— *pelted with rocks* I live for crack shipping and making fankids it’s so unreasonably FUN
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sharknark · 3 months ago
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⬇️rant about a really good hengren (reverse renheng) fic i read. link at the bottom give it a whirl
i've never read a fic so well-catered to my tastes before in my life and the best part is that i was so caught off guard by how good it was cuz the tags and summary had me like "right this is some omegaverse-esque, rawr XD mating shit"
but from the very first paragraph i realized it wasn't just ao3-typical possessive mating shit it was (dare i say) IN CHARACTER possessive mating shit. underappreciated dan feng lore is the two hearts shit, duty expects him to smother his own empathy and perform cruelty obediently (and that being in his dragon form literally numbs his empathy towards mortals) but then it's flipped around and he's criticized for being too heartless
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there aren't a great many english fics that take advantage of the 'numbed empathy' thing, so this fic using that to explore the toxic codependency that drove dan feng to making yingxing immortal in the first place is so!
dan feng's dragon heart prioritizing it's own indulgence and power, his human heart screaming against it for empathy and restraint, but both hearts united in this possessive adoration of yingxing... dan feng is possessive to the point of harming his partner, forcing them to take his affection, inherently contradictive to the protective impulse to see the other unhurt.
dan feng makes yingxing immortal in a really sketchy operation, despite knowing that yingxing is literally defined by his pride in being a short-life. he wants yingxing to be with him so badly that he does the one thing that would hurt yingxing the most, too blinded by possession, this sickly overbearing affection, to empathetically respect yingxing's death.
yingxing lived cramming every second he could into his craft and his goals precisely because he has so much less time than all the immortal species around him, but when he's forced into immortality, his hands are scarred and ruined past the point of ever crafting again. he suddenly has so much time, all this time he would've cherished as a mortal, but is totally useless to him now that his purpose for living and passion is gone.
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so there being a scene in this fic where dan feng is moping "yingxing doesn't wanna fuck because he's glued to his workshop", being followed up with a scene of dan heng fucking blade while kissing his scarred hand and crying that he's "so sorry", yeah no shit asshole, his dragon heart got what it wanted, blade has all the time in the world to fuck and nothing competing for his now limitless attention and no one's happy about it.
as arrogant about being a short-life as yingxing was, it really is compensation for the discrimination he faced for it. other immortals looked down on him, so having dan feng, THE top dog, be so deeply enamored with him stirred his own toxic codependent urges. he was so desperate to have dan feng's eternal regard that he's willing to die for him (as in the sedition), his death being the force cementing his place in dan feng's heart forever.
so the fic having yingxing ruminate on this, that he had hoped for dan feng to love him even centuries after he inevitably died, only for the fic to end with:
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yeah yingxing... you left an impression... he made you immortal.... everyone's upset by this
(that's what makes dan heng forgetting blade was ever yingxing to begin with all the more painful because, you went and turned him immortal and when it backfired horrifically you went on and fucking forgot, bitch i'd be pissed to the point of centuries long bloody pursuit of vengeance too.)
here's the fic go read it and leave kudos and a comment, technically porn but i got so invested in the character study that part barely registered. also yeah if you hadn't realized already super dead-dove:
blah blah "renheng is toxic" sorry that's why i like it
#hengren#renheng#txt#fic rec#nsft#idrc about who tops but ppl who are strictly top!blade truthers... give this fic a whirl plz it's so good expand ur horizons#so many other insane ramblings i could have about this fic oh my god the way the cloudhymn magic constantly healing yingxing#parallels blade's selfhealing (a self healing he got BECAUSE dan feng made him immortal)#cementing how his current state really was created by dan feng's desire to keep him and his love eternal URHGHG#ppl have the audacity to say blade is obsessed with dan heng when it was dan feng's obsession that created blade to begin with. kms#and also dan heng's guilt the whole while is 🤌 cuz before he was like. wow. that's SO fucked up. good thing dan feng did it#surely /i'm/ not capable of that -- pan to slow realization that he's still very much dan feng#so the initial rejection of responsibility of dan feng's crimes to realizing that it's deadass just his own crimes he has to atone for#kafka being quietly and subtly comforting of blade and that making dan heng possessive . when the reason blade needs comfort to begin with#is dan heng himself. like. it's so ironic i'll die#more honorable mentions is i love dan heng calling blade 'yingxing' because it's so fucking mean#he's the bitch getting pissed everytime someone calls him dan feng or dares to insinuate he's the same person but he's the exact same bitch#totally doing a 180 on blade and treating him way more kindly after realizing he used to be yingxing#'stop treating me like the shadow of someone who's long gone' bud listen to ur own advice#the unreliable narration between the first two chapters is so fucking good like once you catch on to which dialogue is actually happening#and what was a flashback and etc etc it's SO fucking good#another honorable mention is. lmao. love it when the top cries pathetic men you'll have my heart forever and always#tons of other endless thoughts about and inspired from this fic but give that bad boy a read. so worth#also this author writes sunblade so that's how you KNOW they're enlightened
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cyanide-sippy-cup · 2 months ago
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Obviously a lot of season 2 focuses on Jinx's compassion and love and kindness, what with Sevika's new arm, getting her family back, and everything with Isha. But one scene that really struck me is when Ekko tries to talk her off that roof. She pulls the trigger again and again before he can even speak cause she knows he'll change her mind. But what struck out at me was that, when he complains about being blown up, she opts instead to throw herself from the roof. She had it all planned out but would choose to improvise rather than harm someone who considers her a loved one.
#LEAVE MY GIRL ALONE#SHE JUST WANTED TO BE LOVED AND IT WAS ALL RIGHT THERE FOR JUST A SECOND WHY IS IT DENIED HERRRRRR#idk if it's cause he called her old friend or not but that doesn't make it less heartwrenching it honestly makes it more so#UGH and the fact that he succeeded in talking her down using powder's lesson#ugh she had everything for just a little bit#peace and even love with her sister. restoring her dad's mind. a daughter who made all that even possible for her. love rekindled with Ekko#and then it was all snatched away#honestly i kinda prefer her dying. like i get why she faked her death. too many memories still hurting her#but idk i like the narrative conclusivity of her sacrifice and what it means thematically#but i also like the other one so pffffft#jinx arcane#powder arcane#do i like her cause her story is incredible or because shes basically just harley quinn? the answer may surprise you#both the answer is both#jinx#arcane league of legends#arcane lol#arcane netflix#ekko arcane#tw suicide#tw self harm#god i love how every detail is just so precise. remove one piece and it cant work the same#like not only is episode 7 necessary to make their story work but also its SO BEAUTIFUL#that stromae song and fantastic are my favorites of the whole show's soundtrack#and like so many pieces of media will use licensed music but the artists will clearly have no idea what their songs are actually for#so they just make whatever. even spiderverse just kinda winged it with the music and what went where#but it's so clear the artists involved in this show knew exactly what they were making music for and man i couldn't be more grateful for it
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theloveinc · 9 months ago
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Shinsou had a crush on you since like, young kids days and never thought you noticed him, but that was good cause maybe you thought he was a weird kid, so once he beefed up and finally got the confidence to talk to you it gets shut right tf back down when you're like "Of course i remember you!"
I don't know which part is worse............................ Shinso being so absorbed in his own supposed loser-hood in his youth that he essentially ignored you for 5-10 years while he was working out his self esteem issues ... or the fact that you not only DO remember him, berry well at that, but don't really think anything of it because you thought HE was kinda... a jerk for never being nice to you back.
(Cuz on one hand, you're so sweet, smiling at him when he approaches you, genuinely, just like you did back when you were both under ten and you'd smile at him from the other side of the park... but on the other hand, you don't hesitate to turn right back to your own friends after he barely manages to answer your "how have you been" question and you give him pity eyes like you still think he's a shy headass.
It's just... he doesn't want to fuck it up a second time and lose his momentum... but all the confidence he put into the moment deflated the second he realized you were even more beautiful and more kind than he remembered you and it got him tripping over his words)
ANYWAY then there's another 2-4 months of him trying to get your number just to be a fool over text before even managing to convince you he's worth a fucking damn LOL.
(And he is worth a damn, so much more than a damn because he's willing to give anything and everything up for you but... doesn't know how to say it in a way that wouldn't scare you off for good...
Not to mention he's so fucking bad at texting. Yes, his dry humor is funny as hell but he's not trying to be funny with you, he's trying to WOO you and so the whole thing is just him making excuses to reach out to you even tho texting first for him is like plucking ass hair.)
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toorurii · 4 months ago
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Hihihiii
I noticed in your past art its very clean and tidy but your more recent art its pretty loose and explorative in color and shape!! Was it an active journey for you to make that transition or did your style just naturally evolve that way? If it's the former how'd you get over being so clean for a looser style?
Thank you takin' thee time to read this!!!
Hiiii tbqh I think I started loathing the process enough for me to start getting ‘messier’ and less precise with my strokes and color choices if that makes sense 😭 over the past few years I graduated college and got a job which drained the living hell out of my energy, so ig it might have just put me in the mentality of ‘I’m spending way too much time thinking abt this shit’ and then drawing became a lot more fun… and for me that’s what rly matters if it ain’t a comm or something that’s GOTTA be cleaner 🤔
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rxttenfish · 8 months ago
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Asking because I’m extremely curious about this, how did MonProm’s writing get different over time? I remember you saying that the lore and characters feel different, and that it's missing sincere character interactions, too. I know almost nothing about the lore and I’ve only seen a few people mention the characters, so I’d be interested in a rundown of what aspects you think got worse in the series
I wouldn’t mind a very long response since I’m not that active in the fandom, I need to catch up on what happened
sorry for taking so long to answer this! i kinda waffled on it for a long bit, mainly because i started doubting myself again, and whether or not this was me simply overreacting or being tinted by nostalgia or simply being extremely picky and choosy in what i like (the last of which is true, i seldom get into fandoms at all for this reason and stay away from most popular media, but i wasn't sure if it applied here). i've posted about it already, but i'm in the middle of a psychotic episode where i can't feel a lot of pleasure to begin with + most things i do experience ending up solidly in the "very bad" category, so as you can imagine, i really didn't want to mislead and check that i was actually in objective reality.
as it is, this is also when a lot more screenshots started to be posted in the monster prom tag, and that helped me bridge the gap back into returning to the games themselves and feel like i was making a more accurate judgement. if you're one of those people who have been posting screenshots, i sincerely thank you, and i appreciated seeing you in the tag greatly.
for those not in the know — i've been in the monster prom fandom since it first released, prior to even the first additional ending to be added (the "Punch the sun" ending, and i recall the minor fandom drama that happened at that time due to it). my impression of monster prom is very much influenced by this, as what got me into the first game was the fact that the characters genuinely seemed to care for each other and were friends with each other (not merely tolerating each other's presences nor dressing it up, they sincerely thought of each other as friends and were open about that fact), on top of the wide variety of small details and statements that, if taken at face value, could create compounding complexity in the lives of each and every character and had wider implications for their lives.
no, they were not necessarily explored nor even necessarily "real", with so many conflicting events and statements, but i liked this too, because it meant a wider flexibility in what you could imagine, helping to create a more tailored experience for everyone who thought about these characters. this was what i liked about the early fandom too. what was baseline "canon" was so vague and minimal that you could have wildly different interpretations of the same characters' histories and relationships with each other. you would have radically different perspectives on what the world itself looked like, what it was like, that there wasn't really any wrong answers so long as their personalities remained the same. this is where you got the old headcanon of polly and liam being childhood friends who knew each other as humans, or that the world of monster prom was post-apocalypse where humanity itself had gone extinct or only existed in tiny pockets, or my personal headcanon that both monster and human society existed right next to each other and had minimal crossover for petty cultural reasons. this was also prior zoe-as-ro, and there were wildly different interpretations of zoe's personality, with most going for a far more disquieting creepy-cute than the deep nerd we got.
this is why you get stuff like the timeloop theory, where everyone is repeating the same weeks leading up to prom over and over, and are perhaps vaguely aware of it but broadly unconcerned. this is also why it felt like the joke that, the characters were still in high school but were all fully legal adults with most in their 20's, best landed, because it was absurd and strange and didn't quite make sense, but the world itself was inherently absurd and semi-malleable to begin with. realistically, i felt like everyone understood it was making fun of the trope of having adults play teenagers in american sitcoms and wildly casting outside the age range, but for more in-universe explanations it wasn't any different from the way that you would have a large, dramatic ending in which everything changed, but then you'd restart and everyone would be right back at the beginning with nothing different, or even having conflicting events in the same run. it was a dream-logic that fit with the tropes and, thus, diagetically made sense.
to be clear, i don't mind canon having a set, well, canon on which it refers back to itself. i don't mind expanding that or including more things which are set in stone. but there was a perceivable shift in how the games handled this over time, becoming a lot more... bitter, it felt, towards all of these different branching ideas and concepts that, yeah, the people making them knew wouldn't necessarily be "canon" because "canon" already liked to contradict itself so much. most people weren't even sold on any one idea, and there was a much greater sense of enjoying and appreciating all the varying ideas people would come up with even if you personally didn't share them. making the characters be out of character was the real crime, because then it didn't diagetically make sense in the same way, didn't wholly fit.
(again, this is not to say fanon didn't happen and characters weren't smoothed down into a simplified personality that fit these varying fan-interpretations instead of the game itself. certainly damien love/lust was just as bad as it had ever been, and everyone loved to mangle his character into a more stereotypical "bad boy with a heart of hold" all the time. but it certainly felt less set-in-stone about it than it does now, with any deviation from the norm being considered strange and odd and even broadly shunned from the wider fandom.)
all of this is setup for establishing what the writing, lore, and characters felt like in the earlier days. the characters were the strongest part, with their relationships to each other being equally as important. the lore played it fast and loose and was far less interested in setting anything in concrete because that wasn't the important part. the lore wasn't the important part, which was what made it all the more intoxicating to think about, all the more fun to play with.
montrip is easily the biggest offender when it comes to setting everything in all-or-nothing terms and demanding absolutism from the world. broadly i blame the hitchhiker conversations for the worst of it, but i think ultimately the way they handled the entire premise of the game is where this problem stems from. it's not really an exploration in the same sense that you might explore the first game, discovering different perspectives and different people with different relationships to each other. it's an exploration in the sense of a sequel that over-explains the monster, that takes the most boring option out of all those that were possible and floating around and settles on something that was blatant, obvious, typically rejected not because of how novel it is but how trite and par for the course it is in the rest of the genre.
yeah, okay. humans know nothing about monsters and there's a "monster dimension" that exists separately from the human dimension. there's no crossover between the two of them. of course there's a big grand-scale fight between the eldritch powers that zoe used to be a part of, from which not only are slayers the main organization against them, but also the merkingdom has some horse in this race too. it's an urge to make things so universal in explaining them, in revealing connecting threads which unite everything that's ever happened in here, that makes the worldbuilding and lore immediately much more boring than it ever was before.
and it didn't have to be this way! nothing in the first game contradicts any of this too explicitly (see the above, the first game loves to contradict itself), and i would even be happy if this was basically canon but never stated or confirmed to be the big overarching everything going on underneath it all. i believe you should probably know these things about any world that you create and have them in the back of your mind. the difference is that you can know these things and keep them in mind, even focusing on things where its very relevant, and still not reveal them. this is why you have lore bibles, after all. every horror writer knows exactly how their monster works and the full underlying reason for everything that happens, but that doesn't mean the audience will see it or possess this same information too, and leaving it intentionally obscure will make far better stories.
which, this is bad enough, but it wouldn't be the breaking point for me if this was all there was.
but the worst thing of all has to be the slow decay of the very same characters that sold me on this world, this lore, this game in the first place. monster prom is nothing without the characters in it. it's a dating sim, it has nothing but characters to get you to play, and liking these characters are the entire reason anyone would pick up monster prom in the first place.
and the first game pulls this off extremely well. it's all in the tagline: be your worst self. they are, indeed, all terrible people. yes, even that character that you just thought of right now. they all have points in the game where they commit atrocities, where they kill or hurt people, where they do inexcusable things that could not be ignored in a more serious setting.
but that's the point. i think there's something very powerful in creating a character who not only do you love and love their personality and the way they interact with the world, but who also are inapologetically terrible, and to have the humor and the charisma be so good that you don't get bogged down in the "this is awful". likewise, it never feels the urge to really go out of its way to justify what's going on. this is not to say theres no discussion of if someone "deserved it", but usually there's still the sense that the joke is on them, that this is still an extreme reaction specifically for comedy and not necessarily something that can be justified. you can have damien set leonard on fire and have it feel earned, without prompting the needed reaction of what it's actually like to watch someone burn to death.
this is what sets the prank masterz ending apart from the rest of the game, and really establishes it as the first real "bad ending". because nothing that you do or happens in the prank masterz ending is any different from anything else that happens in any other run. you summon evil beings from other dimensions as a throwaway gag on how visiting one location raises your stats. you kill other people and damn them to terrible fates. you watch as body horror happens. the only difference is that, in the prank masterz ending, the laugh track doesn't play.
the rest of the game and the writing echoes this philosophy, this careful interplay of tropes that keeps everything tongue in cheek and yet sincere enough to make sure emotional beats still land when they're needed. the characters feel true to themselves and their own emotions, even when the world is extreme and excessive, when everything else runs on comedy logic.
this is also what i noticed failing first as time went on.
like i said, fanon has always existed and there's always been very specific ideas as to what characters are like in the same way fanon always flattens down characters into the same tropes over and over. scott is stupid and innocent and doesn't know what sex is. damien is violent and hot and too cool for anyone else. miranda is the idiot girl character. repeat over and over and over until you get sick of it.
but it's been an issue as time has crept on that canon has started to approach fanon and began to merge with it. now, scott is so innocent that he can't even curse. polly starts being mean to her friends and saying things that would be very hurtful to hear. the merkingdom isn't really super evil and fucked up, it's just miranda that's like that. they become simpler, easier to digest, streamlined for social media posts and mass-sharing. they become less and less subversions of existing tropes and moreso just another example of them, something else to add to the collection, not their own individual stories.
even further from this, what more complex traits they had are now stated and not shown. polly is stated to be smart and clever in a way that her party girl persona doesn't imply and to be sincerely rather down to earth with the people she cares about, but we seldom ever see this anymore unless its the game specifically trying to make a point about it, in which case it won't let her do anything that implies cleverness and moreso will just outline it in the narration. vera is stated to care for people in a very genuine and heartfelt way, but seldom will get a chance to do so, and every opportunity for her to do so to their faces is missed while she will just outright state it later. it does not feel consistent, it does not feel like any of these are intended reads of their actions. it feels like the devs have something they want to do but no idea on how to actually do so. and forget it if you want these traits to manifest in small ways that show up in unrelated moments and scenes.
the dialogue becomes harder and harder to tell between each speaker, if you are just looking at what's said and not at the pictures attached to it. the characters' distinct voices have been eroded away, so that they speak more and more like each other, relaying the same terms and ideas in the same words. perspective becomes a suggestion, instead of a must.
this is something that started back in monster camp too, as all of the endings in that game felt ultimately the same as every other ending. it's very hard to place or define the full reason why, why there feels like there's no emotional stakes nor investment, why everything feels moreso like selecting different coats of paint and trying to find all the different ending pictures rather than being interested in exploring the characters as characters.
stranger yet, the series that started with the tagline of "be your worst self" has experienced a kind of... softening, for lack of a better word? what i mentioned about being able to handle the balance between terrible people who do terrible things and the light tone of the game starts to change, as abruptly the same characters who were down with violent murder in the first game start to lose their nerve, acting more and more on more typical morality. it's one of those things that feels like it's starting to damage the tone, as abruptly it's not as absurd as it used to be, demands less suspension of disbelief which could buffer and support the rest of the setting on it. there's even a part in one of the endings in montrip which involves current-polly and current-scott looking back on their monprom selves and reacting in horror at how violent and careless their pranks are, in a way that fundamentally felt like it was undercutting and disparaging all the things that felt fun and made monprom what it was.
which is odd, really, because more and more i feel like the characters in these games like each other less and less. the friendships and genuine enjoyment of each others company that brought me to this game in the first place has gone. now they don't mention each other as much, don't care for each other's feelings and reactions as much, aren't as willing to support each other. they are more and more found on their own, relied on their own, seem to seek out contact and interaction with their own friends less and less. it feels like they're all separating out into their own worlds, but also feels like they wouldn't willingly want to interact with each other if they weren't already forced together by some other outside contrivance.
if anything, i'd compare it to every other dating sim out there, where you, the player, are the most important person in these characters' lives, and they only feel ambivalent or antagonistic towards every other character. which, again, is not why i picked up monster prom or why i liked it so much in the first place.
and it's because of this that it feels like the current state of the series has to focus on its increasingly weak worldbuilding and lore, trying to form a more serious foundation without character relationships being so tightly bound together, without the characters themselves being more developed and rich, without an aspect of absurd humor to rely on.
more and more i've noticed monprom has to rely on referencing other series to make itself funny and create humor, which, again, it's always done. it was just easier to ignore back then, if you didn't know what was being referenced, because there was always more going on in the exact same scene to bolster it and give context clues as to the setup and punchline at play. it feels like the current games are much more dependent on you knowing pop culture references in order to have any fun with it, and i'm someone who, again, is very picky in what i like or what i'll seek out. i'm not interested in a stream of references about other things that i would much rather be doing than playing through a game that feels like it hates that i like it at all, when i could, again, just be engaging with the thing that takes itself seriously and knows what it wants.
#all the care guide says is 'biomass'#monster prom#asks#vanillabeenflower#this is. so long i am so sorry.#and its still not my entire thoughts because i have so many thoughts#this is an unedited ramble tbh and im very sorry for that#i have more complaints like#how fucking snide and condescending the narration is to its own characters#which it already had but gets even worse in the later games#which is why despite loving aaravi i dont want to play moncamp at all#where a character says they like something or feel something and the narration has to be so. sarcastic about it?#like how i mentioned about how it feels like how its looking down on them as people#instead of whats probably the intended read which is#more jokingly calling them dumb in an affectionate way like how you might do with friends#and ofc theres the whole miranda rant#i hate what theyve done with the merkingdom and i HATE adrien as a concept i wont lie#just. cool. this female character is too stupid to count as a lore character. we obviously need a MALE character to fill in instead#we cant just have miranda talk about this or center any of the other female characters#and how they feel about this and whats going on for them#no we need to make up a new man to talk to instead#im. im still really bitter about it i wont lie.#like i said i could go on and get way more specific about it#i just feel like any and all emotional weight to this has died and the characters are more and more obviously actors on a stage#for your own self gratification rather than their own people living their own lives#this is so bitter and i really shouldnt put this in the main tag#i am so sorry everyone who will see my rant. but my peace must be made.#dont worry im already asking myself if im just making all this shit up myself#what if some of us liked that the characters were so mean to the player and had no qualms about aggressively rejecting us#because it gave some illusion of them being able to make their own choices and decisions in what they wanted
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fountainpenguin · 8 months ago
Text
Things that happened in Martyn & Cleo Double Life canon:
Cleo hoping to find her soulmate and start a life with them
Cleo dumping Martyn without giving him a chance to explain his side of the story, but hearing him out when he comes to her later
Martyn watching Cleo through his spyglass and telling the audience she seems safe and happy even though he thinks it's weird she's outside at night
Martyn, after he's had time to consider how he wants to play this, spinning a story about trying to be a provider for her and Cleo explaining that she wanted him, not things
Cleo not being remotely impressed by the "I was providing" sob story, lol
Martyn calling Cleo selfish for choosing to be with Scott because she's supposed to be HIS soulmate and he wants a partner
Cleo willing to forgive Martyn if he meets them halfway
Martyn refusing to meet them halfway because he doesn't think he did anything wrong
Martyn screaming about how Cleo's building bridges with Scott but "When will she think about mending our bridges???"
Martyn explaining to Cleo that he doesn't understand why his Session 1 actions bothered them
Martyn centering his character arc and roleplay on trying to win Cleo back without actually apologizing
Cleo giving Martyn a flower and stating that if he loses it, she'll be real cross with him
Cleo chasing Martyn out of her yard because he tried to put an HOA sign on her base and she wanted to make it clear that she wasn't associated with them and their hate for his base (even though she does think his heart base is strange)
Martyn attacking Cleo after she said attacking is a form of affection to her
Cleo setting boundaries with Martyn and explaining what he can do to get her back
Cleo sighing when Scar set her up on a date with Martyn, but taking the chance to talk to him instead of walking out
Cleo genuinely wanting Martyn in her alliance
Martyn and Cleo giggling constantly when they chat
Scar asking if Martyn wanted him to play a romantic music disc for him and Cleo (and Martyn getting excited and saying yes)
Martyn offering to take Cleo's armor and weapons to the deep dark so he can enchant them and bring them back while she stays safe
Cleo gifting Martyn diamonds, expecting nothing in return but not wanting him to die from lack of a good sword
Martyn and Cleo forming a secret alliance that allows Cleo to live with Scott while being on good terms with Martyn
Martyn expressing frustration that Cleo wants to keep this alliance secret because he wants them to be public allies; Cleo softly shushes him when people approach and might overhear
Martyn telling Cleo that she's putting out a lot of mixed signals because she keeps reeling him in and then pushing him away, claiming he is very confused about where he stands with her
Martyn teasing Cleo by punching her off a cliff and accidentally killing her and feeling so bad about it that he apologizes profusely despite roleplaying as someone who refused to apologize for Session 1
Martyn and Cleo immediately threatening Bdubs together when he said hi to them while they were hanging out, sdkfj
Martyn genuinely apologizing to Pearl for dumping her after Session 1
Martyn hiding under Cleo's bed while she defends him from an enderman attack
Cleo offering to let Martyn move into her house after Etho and Joel grief his base; Martyn saying he might take her up on that
Cleo and Martyn agreeing to move out and base together at Box
Cleo trusting Martyn with the location and resources of her red life base
Martyn rushing to Cleo's aid in the deep dark and trying to turn everyone against him instead
Cleo responding to Martyn's panicked shouts for her to eat by opening her inventory to get food (and drowning because she forgot she was in water)
Cleo hanging back and letting Martyn attack Scott while she does nothing to stop him from doing so, implying as much as she likes Scott, she won't kill Martyn (and herself) for him (and/or she trusted Scott to handle himself even though he ran away while Martyn was shooting at him)
Things that did not happen:
Cleo unwilling to forgive Martyn or consider being his friend and partner
Martyn and Cleo hating each other
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk
#Listen. listen. I understand. but consider... them#Zombiewood#ZombieCleo#Martyn InTheLittleWood#Limited Life canon: Cleo making Martyn godfather to her kids#I 100% support everyone taking their own interpretations from the episodes-#but I often see ''Martyn and Cleo hate each other'' and I wonder ''Did we even watch the same thing?''#and with so many POVs that only see them from the outside perhaps we did not!! So consider... them. Let's rotate them <3#This post is about the sheer amount of 'Martyn dumps Cleo for Ren' fics tagged Martyn/Cleo vs. minimal affectionate fics. help??#also fics where Martyn/Mumbo was canon but Martyn claims he was never attracted to him- only Ren?? Fascinating.#sir can the whole plot be about that because hold up I feel like we should unpack your loveless marriage before you date Ren#I will 100% read a story about you charging into marriage with Mumbo and then going ''Uh I just made a big mistake.'' hilarious#I mean I'm not Ren but if my crush confessed he never loved his husband in the first place I feel like I'd have Questions#To each their own! And I for one greatly enjoy how much Martyn will chase Cleo without humbling himself. lol. idiot. get wrecked.#but just to be clear I am a huge fan of break-up 'fics and choosing to be with someone you want. ergo my interest in Grian/BigB#This post is about Martyn/Cleo and Grian/BigB being fandom rarepairs despite having canon interest in each other#which is 100% fine because everyone should write what they want but!! Come rotate them with me because they are so fun and silly#Grian the man who deliberately cuts comments about Grian/Scar and Martyn/Mumbo from his vids but pursues BigB?? hilarious#In-universe this man went from ''Romance? I do not see it'' to ''Actually I want the cute cookie man'' and took the leap??#Yes king tell me more about this journey of self-discovery. I am aspec-beam'ing you.#Anyway. Need more Martyn/Cleo in my life which is why I'm writing fics of that and other people write fics about what they like <3#but sometimes people don't like it when I pair Martyn and Cleo because ''They hate each other'' and I laugh sfdlkj
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