#yay posting gifts!

[art-is-kayos]

Everlasting A5

[doodlebeeberry]

It's that time of year folks!!!

Very very excited to host the gift exchange once again! Past two years have been a ton of fun, so lets hope the third is even better!

if you wanna join, just reblog/reply to this post or dm me with what you'd like. full rules, dates, and details are under the cut, please read those fully first before joining!!! :]

Entries close midnight (est) November 27th!!

For the uninitiated, the osc gift exchange is exactly what it sounds like! you let me know via reblog/reply/dm what you'd like as part of your gift--whether that's a certain show, character, ship, oc, anything! Then, you'll be randomly assigned a giftee and will make a gift based on their request. Finally, once the day comes, you post your gift and @ the person its for!

the timeline looks like this:

Nov. 11-27: enter by letting me know what you'd like! as with previous years, I ask that you keep your gift requests sfw, and to please send me references for any ocs you may want as part of your gift. As well, if there's anything you cant do (ie, a character or paring that makes you uncomfortable) please let me know when you join!

Dec. 1: I'll let you know who you've been assigned! please be sure you have dms (or at the very least asks) open for this bit!

Dec. 1-30: Make your gift! this can be anything from art to writing to music to needlepoint--so long as you include the giftee's request, the possibilities are endless!

Dec. 31: post your gift, and be sure to @ who its for in the post! Please do not post your gift before this date!!! if for whatever reason this date does not work for you please let me know and we'll work something out!!

Assorted other things to note:

please make sure your gift requests are osc/ object show related! if you dont know what that is then this likely isnt the gift exchange for you lol

you dont have to do everything your giftee requests if you dont wanna. If they give you a list of 20 characters, you can pick 1, 5, 10, all 20, the choice is up to you!

if you need to drop out for any reason please let me know as soon as possible so I can reassign your giftee

not a hard and fast rule but if you could shoot me a message when you get your giftee letting me know you saw the message, itd be much appreciated!!!

you can not join anonymously! It wouldnt be fair to your giftee, in my mind, if you did :]

on a related note, while i try to make the exchange as open to everyone as possible, if i deem it necessary i can and will bar you from participating if your inclusion would be detrimental to other giftees. while i dont anticipate needing to do so (so there isnt really a reason for you to worry about it) this was an issue last year. In the very unlikely event that I dont let you join, please dont yell at me about it. just accept it and move on.

as per usual, ill be using the tag #osc gift exchange for the event, so feel free to tag your posts so i can find them! :D

And that's it! if youve got any other questions or comments, feel free to ask and ill do my best to answer them! Thank you! ^-^

[musette22]

Aww that's so cute 🥹💖

[linterteatime]

pwease don't repost! the sillies™

[exoshroommie]

ALL MY EXOCOLONIST COOKBOOK POLLS ARE DONE!

Here are the results:

for soysweets mango, won, with bobberfruit coming in second.

I had two people add ideas.

one person said that chocolate soysweets are mentioned in an ending. since someone I've been talking to about this said they'd love to have chocolate soysweets, if everything goes well, I'll make those after mango.

someone else recommended adding blep tea soysweets. I'll set up another poll later asking if they should be added.

for the question on if I should add tiramisu, kombucha, marzipan, and nougat to the list of foods, most of you said yes. they have can added, and I'll look into how to make them soon. (tiramisu is probably gonna be one of the first foods i make)

progress is probably gonna slow down for a bit, I might ask about cakes soon, but besides for that. I have another project I'm working on, and the next step is actually making the food.

but I'll make sure to post my updates here! <3

[huidol]

yay ^_^

[sincerely-sofie]

Alrighty, the results of the poll I posted asking what people wanted for a finalized product of my PMD2 AU The Present is a Gift are in! About 40% of people who indicated a preference for medium preferred the option of a written fanfic with simple illustrations sprinkled throughout the text, and about 60% indicated a preference for a webcomic. While the webcomic-likers are in the majority of this group, I didn’t exactly present any of my written work as something to judge off of despite posting comics pretty much daily. That definitely skews things.

So! To remedy this, I’m including a little sampler for the illustrated fanfic option, plus another poll at the end of this post to see if said sampler changes your mind on what you would like to see medium-wise. Without further ado, here’s a quick context summary and the aforementioned sampler!

CONTEXT: Darkrai wakes Twig from a nightmare in this scene, but in doing so witnesses a memory of her past that she's been hiding the return of from everyone she knows.

Twig’s surroundings seemed to stutter— jerking back and forth between slow and erratic before beginning to melt. She forced herself to look up from the ground at her feet. She found ice-blue eyes staring back at her from across the visceral scene. And then everything was gone, sloughed off like a second skin, leaving nothing but dripping shadows behind.

Suddenly, she was lying on her stomach, with her guts clenching in fear and a hand on her shoulder. She sucked in ragged gasps as panic gripped her, and when she finally came to enough to recognize Darkrai looming at her bedside, she waved him away perhaps a bit more violently than was needed— though it was hard to care when she desperately needed to focus on getting control of her breathing.

When her lungs finally decided to listen to reason, she spat a quick flame and lit the lamp she kept next to her bed. Darkrai swiftly retreated into the shadows, settling in the opposite end of the room and out of reach of the lamp's illumination, though not that of her tail’s flame. His eyes never left her.

She didn't ask for an explanation. He still broke the silence with one. "You looked unwell. Pained."

Oh. She let out a short, dry laugh at that. Guess he freaked out the same way she had when Grovyle took a nap around her for the first time. She'd woken him in a panic because she thought he was dying, what with how he cringed and contorted himself in his sleep.

"You wouldn't wake when addressed, nor when shaken," he continued.

Another dry sound, though this one walked the line between laugh and sob. The irony was not lost on her— Darkrai, lord of nightmares, unsettled by someone being affected by his powers. It was kind of sweet, in a pitifully twisted way.

Despite her reluctance to ask it, she still found a question falling from her mouth half-formed. “How much did you…?"

Silence.

When he finally spoke, it was with a noticeable discomfort in his unflappable tone, and for a heartbeat, he turned away. "Enough," he murmured. "I saw enough."

Quiet swallowed the room again, the flicker of lamplight the only motion in the awful stillness. The pokemon across from her was unmoving, unflinching. He didn't look away again, and the way his gaze dissected her every twitch was nauseating.

This was, to put it in the most joyous of terms possible, agony. Real, true agony beyond anything she’d experienced. Agony because she hadn't told anyone about this memory since it returned. Agony because it was the only memory that had returned. Agony because it was Darkrai that found out. Agony because Darkrai had already found out, before his botched escape into the passage of time, and he hadn't said anything— and not out of some sense of compassion or pity. It was because she knew what the icy gaze that flashed in her nightmares back then meant, and because he knew she had witnessed him prying. It was because she had a dirty little secret she hadn't admitted to anyone—that she had barely even admitted it to herself— and he had made it into a carrot on a stick, into something to get her to pay attention and follow along with everything he said and did— because if her focus slipped up for a second as he spoke to the terrified people of Treasure Town, he would hint, and people would worry, and she couldn't handle the people who deserved so much more than her fretting over someone who didn't even deserve to exist.

(When Kip and Twig refused to fight Darkrai initially, he decided to give them a bit of motivation to confront him in his trap. Everyone in Treasure Town began having nightmares of their worst memories whenever they closed their eyes. She overheard the Guildmaster quietly discussing an old mentor he was forced to part from with Chatot. Marill came to the market alone one day, looking skittish and fearful, and said Azurill was torn up about the mess with Drowzee bugging him again. Kip cried on Twig's shoulder about seeing his parents in his nightmares, only for them to disappear without a trace as evening fell and the happy memory curdled— a newly christened orphan, the old wound made fresh once more.

(Twig had nothing. No bad dreams whatsoever. No nightly reminders of why she'd left humanity behind. No midnight rehearsals of the reason she kept her distance from everyone but the select few who could touch her under specific circumstances. Nothing.

(Darkrai knew. And this felt somewhere between an olive branch and a debt he intended to collect.

(Twig said she'd been dreaming of the execution posts in the Dark Future. Kip nodded sympathetically through his tears.)

She took a deep breath, staring at the cold, pinprick glow coming from the darkness of her home.

He had known before. And he knew now. Might as well take back some of the control here and explain what he no doubt was registering wasn't just the figment of a stressed-out, weary brain.

"I was human, once," she said.

The light of his eyes dipped and raised, barely, as he nodded. He knew that already.

OMITTED: Twig describes her backstory as a human here. This is not included due to her original backstory now being of dubious canon thanks to rewrites. You can imagine whatever tragic incident you suspect motivated Twig to the surface is described here and it’ll do the job.

"… I couldn't live like that, and I couldn’t stomach the thought of speaking out, so I left. Grovyle found me, and the rest is history."

The glow of Darkrai's eyes in the dark didn't waver.

"It's not… It’s not a big deal, you know. I don't even have the same body that any of it happened to, anymore."

He didn't speak.

This silence was going to strangle her. Would he just react, already? She said all of this to take ownership of the secret’s reveal, but it still felt like he was the one holding all the cards here, even if he had a distinct air of unease about him despite his menacing presence in the darkness.

"You knew,” she said. She intended it to be comforting— a way to smooth over the tension in the air. A lie of omission where one could assume he had been her trusted confidant in an ugly situation, instead of teasing at the truth in front of everyone she knew.

Silence.

"Nobody else did, not even Kip, or Grovyle, or— anybody. But you knew," she repeated herself, feeling her voice jitter with nerves.

But he saw through the lie, because of course he did— because she couldn't keep any secret away from ice-blue vivisection. Not then, and not now.

"You didn't want me to," he murmured, and it wasn't a question. He knew. He always did, and he always would.

She put out the lamp and rolled over to face the wall, and she didn't speak another word all night.

[the-spirited-one]

WIP tribute for @melle-d I’m planning on making her version of Narinder too.

[munchboxart]

Mini rant about fountain pen ink reviews and swatches on online stores.

I hate when stores only show a swab/ink muddler/eyedropper swatch. Sure it shows the properties of the ink, but what's this gonna do for me when most fountain pen inks are used to... I don't know... WRITE? Like I know some people do use them for traditional art and calligraphy, but I think there's a larger demographic of regular fountain pen uses with a f/m nib than someone who has a 2.3 mm nib.

Whatever, it's better than those who don't even post a swatch AT ALL. Like thanks for showing me what the packaging looks like. How am I supposed to imagine what it looks like on paperrrrr GOD HELP MEEE /lh Looking at you Ink Institute.

[kakusu-shipping]

@echoes-lighthouse It IS almost Halloween, so here are Sun and I's costumes (Trick or Treating in the Pizzaplex)

I'm fan favorite character Freddy Fazbear (cobbled together via gift shop merch) and he's a totally nondescript run-of-the-mill Pirate! (don't worry about where he got his costume; no one's using it anymore anyway)

[nygleskas]

happy jr2 day to all who celebrate!!!! 7 years togetherr :33!!

[caramelmochacrow]

the sasago sisters!!!!

[pinklink130]

shaking as i realize echoes of wisdom is next month

[arolesbianism]

Still thinking abt my nuggets and realized that I never actually posted any of my the art I made of them because I did like two shitty doodles and gave up. I'm not posting the Juliet since it's outdated but take a London Gilbert he's ugly 👍

[whitefangz]

please clap

[muffffinnsssssss]

Magical girl!!! X3