maybe? an attempt is gonna be made at the very least. i had meant to finish it by today/actually today but last week was a bit more hectic than i anticipated and i went from thinking i wasn't going to go trick or treating with my daughter today to pulling that off this evening/afternoon. so i shot my own plans in the foot with that now didn't i?
which is to say, keep watch over this space, i'm going to make a truly valiant attempt to pull it off. if it's not here come sunday night come hit me up again, anon, and i'll post my word count and give you a detailed explanation of what i got left to write. ( well, not a completely spoilery one, maybe just me telling you how much i'm probably missing ).
and actually you know what, have a tiny thing to tide you and everyone over anon.
The chicken hits the tablecloth with a soft thud as he sets it down, making a face at little Lizzie who finds herself mildly startled by the turn of events.
"I know, I scared ya didn't I? Didn't tell ya I was sneakin' up on ya like that. Your mama will make it up to you, yes she will." His voice is a soft coo that makes Lilly's heart jump in her throat, marveling at just how sweet he is to a child he only knows from watching at church. It shouldn't be a surprise to her, not after she knows how everyone raves about his talent with children but it's still another thing entirely to see it up close and personal with her own niece. For his efforts, Lizzie giggles and claps at her hands before trying to grab for his glasses.
"Careful there, lil one. Gonna make me blind and I'm gonna make a mess o'the place."
Melly and Jerry share a laugh at the implication before Melly grabs at her daughter's hands and lightly taps them. "You heard Mr. Presley. And hose aren't yours, Lizzie."
Elvis flops down in the chair next to Lilly, the heft of his weight making the chair move ever so slightly on the linoleum before he winces. "Sorry 'bout that, forget my own strength wit' these things."
His strength and not his weight, though truthfully Lilly would like to argue they're one in the same when it comes to Elvis. His ample belly and thighs hide muscle that easily do so many tasks that even Nathan struggles with. They hide that muscle all while providing a cushion and a soft warm furnace for someone to burrow into.
Lilly's eyes drift over Elvis's form, settling on his chest as he takes slow and deep breaths. The view shouldn't be as mesmerizing as it is, not when she has a husband who she loves and who loves her in equal measure, or so she believes. Yet, it's hard for her to slide her eyes away from his form until she hears her sister's soft voice.
finally got some time to finish these guys up! which is sort of ironic considering I started these because I wanted to draw Malleus with a Dragapult, and then I just didn't for a million years!
Malleus has the aforementioned Dragapult, except it's a super special non-canon color Dragapult (like an anime-only form that you could get in-game exclusively through some limited-time event where you have to show up in-person at a specific location in Japan) (it has some wacky overpowered exclusive move/form and the OT is listed as Malleus) (so like that kind of ridiculous specialness) (Leona is extremely salty about this). also hoards and hoards of Dreepy. Dreepy LOVE Malleus. they take naps on his horns inbetween begging him to throw them across the island at mach speeds.
Lilia has a Drampa and a bunch of Woobat that he hasn't actually caught, they just follow him around in swarms because they sense a kinship with him. (also breaking my own rule again to say that he had a Mawile in the past, because...I just really wanted to give him a Mawile...)
Sebek has Sandile for obvious reasons, and also a Pikachu that bullies him relentlessly. :(
Silver has a shiny Corvisquire; I really went back-and-forth on also giving him an Aegislash, but...hm. those pokedex entries though. he can stick with just one for now.
(I hadn't planned on the shiny for him, but after I'd decided on the Corvisquire line and was looking it up for reference, I realized that shiny Rookidee is gold and then turns silver when it evolves and I lost my entire goddamn mind)
gonna say the shift from seeing percy as a cool older kid when i first read the book to now seeing him as my little brother i need to protect at all costs is mind-boggling
Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.
Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):
In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.
It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]
The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]
Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]
In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]
In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]
Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.
[A sad violin song plays over an image of a sad hamster]
Pac: This doesn't have anything to do with me – I wear a blue sweatshirt, you're crazy, this mouse doesn't even have a sweatshirt, this hamster! [Reading chat] Am I a depressed hamster?
[ Transcript continued ↓ ]*
–
Pac: Actually– that's fine! I embrace that idea – of course I'm going to be depressed, are you crazy? [He hits his desk, then starts counting off people on his fingers] Fit is gone, Richarlyson is gone, Ramon is gone, Bagi and Empanada who were always there when we were there are also gone, I haven't seen them! It's just me and Tubbo, and sometimes Philza shows up.
Pac: I lost Chume Labs, I lost the Favela, I lost Murder Mystery, I lost Ilha Chume Labs, it's crazy! Look at how much I've lost, and I've gained nothing! Of course I'm going to be depressed, are you crazy?! How am I supposed to be happy?!
Pac: [Reading chat] "You have us Pac," that's true, thank you. No, that's true, sorry.
* NOTE: Please note that this is an incomplete transcript, as I was primarily relying on Aypierre's translation mod at the time and if I am not confident of the translation, I do not include it. As always, please feel free to add on translations or message me corrections.
Cannot stop thinking about an au where Turnabout Trump doesn't happen/happens but Olga is convicted instead so Apollo is still working at the Gavin law offices for his first few cases. He meets Trucy at one of the crime scenes and she tags along on his investigations, but she doesn't tell him about her connection to Phoenix until after their first case together. Ema likes Apollo less at first bc she doesn't like the fop and you work for his brother, who she also hates bc he's very condescending when he cross examines her in court.
When you meet Klavier in the second case you can ask Kristoph about him and vice versa. They don't interact with each other but you get to learn some more things about the brothers, their opinions on each other and their backstory. You also find out that Klavier was the one who got Phoenix disbarred and Kristoph is apologetic about it, given that Phoenix is his "friend" (though they haven't interacted at all since phoenix was found not guilty).
At one point Trucy is visiting Apollo at the Gavin Law Offices when Kristoph returns and "politely" kicks her out. She then reveals to Apollo who the daddy she keeps talking about actually is. You get to meet Phoenix again in the next case and find out more about the incident 7 years ago.
Over the course of the game you/Apollo starts to grow more suspicious of Kristoph and his intentions, alongside a growing sense of horror that you got an innocent person convicted in your first case. It all comes to a head in Succession when Drew Misham finally uses the stamp, which turns up fixed to a letter in the Gavin Law Offices postbox that Apollo collects on his way in one morning. You hand it to Kristoph and he promptly disappears with it, feigning excuses. Phoenix uses this case to finally spring his trap and test the jurist system. Kristoph gets the double whammy of his brother and mentee turning on him at once and the murder of Shadi Enigmar is properly resolved. It's also revealed that Trucy started tagging along on Apollo's investigations to collect intel for Phoenix.
At the end of Succession, Apollo is offered a role at the newly-renamed Wright Anything Agency and there's a final rise from the ashes-style case that serves as Apollo's first proper case as an official WAA employee and helps tie up some loose threads/lets the characters deal with the fallout of Succession.
Idk I just think it'd be fun/satisfying to realise slowly that there's more to everything than meets the eye.
"I think this is the most inhuman; and human, that I've ever felt.."
MUCH CAN HAPPEN IN A YEAR. IN FIVE YEARS. A DECADE. imagine how much can happen in a century. just ONE (1). How will you grow? what phases do you find? even in 5 years, you will find patterns.
if you would all allow me to be delusional for a moment - so i went back to staring Very Hard at the neighborhood map and. um. well. im chucking my marbles out the window! as always take all of this with a Hefty grain of salt!
i thought i saw a weird pixel in Frank's window so i zoomed in. then i took a screenshot, and fucked with the contrast/brightness settings. and uhhhhhh
UHHHHHH
FRANK??? HELLO???? HE'S IN THERE? i'm pretty sure im Not seeing things bc that is definitely a vague gray tube-outline with a yellow spot in the shape of Frank's nose. hidden in the dark. and i might be seeing things but in the pane next to his face it kinda looks like his hand is on the window? but! Frank's in there! what the fuck!
so naturally i slowly scrolled through the neighborhood Zoomed The Fuck In. obvi there's nothing in Home's eyes, and Barnaby's & Sally's single visible windows(?) are closed. I couldn't find any out-of-place pixels in Julie's or Poppy's.
but! Eddie's kinda freaked me out a little! look at this shit!
on the top left pane... are those fingerprints pressing into the glass? and in the lower left, is that a fucking Face peering out? a creepy ass face that almost looks like some sort of mask? there seems to be another Shape in the upper right... another face perhaps?
and then there's the weird window shine in the lower right (along with maybe Another face...). it almost looks like a string of letters. there isn't a single pattern/design like that anywhere else in the neighborhood. what's up with that....
oh and also, just went back to double check the post office's display window
there seems to be another face - all the way to the right in the darkness. judging by the shape of the paler (yellowish?) pixels between what must be eyes, i think that's Eddie. and i think i see ears and a hat... not sure though. this one is really tough to see but it's There
(side note: Eddie is totally fucked, isn't he? between the faces(?) and hands behind his door, Home sitting in his display, and the hyacinths by his building, the emphasis on his memory (or lack-thereof) in a project that is, in a sense, About memory... i'm concerned! and eating it tf up! hell yeah lets get funky!)
now i couldn't see any, like, concrete Faces or anything in Howdy's store. but! you can kinda see inside! observe~
in the big open window, you can kinda make out some sort of container on a counter and what might be shelves or a kind of brick pattern. and then above the 100% sign... hold on are those fuckign Eyes? lets take a look zoomed in & without the image adjustments!
yeah those uh. i think those are eyes. Wally-esque eyes peering out of the darkness. though they also mildly remind me of eyespots on insect wings. butterfly eyespots, perhaps. inch resting indeed...
WAIT I LIED!!! there DOES seem to be another string of letter-like symbols in the neighborhood, not just the post office's window shine. now it could be just a wild coincidence, but at the same time it seems kind of... purposeful. like that's not normal shading/coloring.
check out the blue window border on Howdy's Place, next to the apples. the lighter blue pixels seem Arranged. i think i see a clear N, and either an R or a P... along with some other symbols that i don't recognize as anything. the lower ones look kinda like faces? what could the top one be? is any of it anything or am i looking too hard?
in short: they're watching us watch them and there's way more to the map than initially meets the eye....
(edit: i've added a reblog w/ the images outlined! badly outlined but a clearer View of what i see nonetheless! + some notes on more little things outlining helped me notice)
A very kind follower let me know that my clones art has been stolen and reposted, again. This time on Tiktok.
So here's a new version of my art. It's called: "Apparently putting 'Do Not Repost' on the art 4 times + in my bios of every social + FAQ isn't enough, so how's this?!"
I'm feeling very defeated and exhausted.
I just finished filing a DMCA yesterday. This new art theft version already has more views than every like/note on all versions of my art on all of my socials COMBINED + multiplied. This art was only posted a few days ago. I'm beginning to deeply regret drawing it.
Art thieves getting views and likes does NOTHING for the community. Imagine of those likes/comments/followers had come to me, on any of my socials. Think of how excited I'd be to connect to new folks, how hyped I'd be to draw more.
(how maybe, just maybe, someone official might one day notice and it might lead to more😭)
I don't think I've hit 10K likes on ANY art I've ever posted on Twitter in 8 years, and certainly nowhere near that on Tumblr in a while. That's ok, I understand that's due to my own lack of skills, which is why i work hard daily to improve!
But ART THEFT DOESN'T HELP. This person did NOTHING but stress me out, make me regret sharing my work, and take away valuable time and mental energy from me producing more work. And I promise you, they will not be able to make my art for you.
Don't worry, I'm not just complaining about it. I've filed a DMCA (tho gosh TikTok's form is WEIRD, really hoping it worked🥲)
But please. If you see an art theft account, please don't give them views & likes. Someone else worked hard on that. They could really use your support.
Anyway, here's the link to my art on Tumblr. On my account. Since, y'know, I drew it.