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paymechildsupport · 1 month

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Doppel!GOJO x Reader // "Looks Satoru Enough.." [JJK x TNMN crossover au] 🥛🔵

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PROMPTS (combined):

"so what about gojo but hes a doppelganger like the milkman. and basically (afab) reader is his girlfriend and doppelganger gojo pretty much is obsessed with reader. so then one day reader finds out and doppelganger gojo is pretty much just scared but all reader cares about is if he loves her. and so he basically confirms that he loves her and is obsessed with her, and then from that point on just smut....

"doppelganger Satoru who tricks you into letting him inside. But once he's in he doesn't care about killing the neighbours he just wants to fuck you and give you all his cum milk. If you're feeling extra down bad maybe some breeding kink 😊(ofc he's the milkman in this)"

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>> @maskedpacific @sadmonke hope I did your prompts justice, a lot of it was winged 😋🥛

JJK TNMN au: all the characters of JJK just in TNMN

-!! Monsterfucking ; oral sex ; overstim(?) ; he has a really long tongue

-!! No pronouns, -- genetalia is referred to as a "hole" -- so creative reading freedom

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Doppel!Gojo who assumed the identity of your pretty boyfriend after devouring his decaying corpse behind a back alleyway,— his first and only thought of entering the complex, your complex

Doppel!Gojo who for months beforehand could only admire you from afar, confined to the shadows. He could look, but he could not touch. He’d glare in envy as his parallel self continued about his normal life,— milkman everyday, delivering your neighbors with their daily supply of dairy. His company slogan: “The Strongest”, because milk made your bones nice and strong (you see what I did there? You see the pun? Yeah.. okay, I’ll stop 😔).

He was your boyfriend,— yet he’d never look at you. You’d simply be off to the side, smiling, forced to observe as you the frustratingly cocky real Satoru Gojo borderlined flirted with your other neighbors. He didn’t even touch you anymore,— so busy socializing, working- stuck in that silly little head of his,— every night your neglected body would have to sleep in a cold bed.

The real Gojo also happened to be the strongest DDD agent out there, — the best of the best— ; when he wasn’t the milkman he was out slaughtering those wretched doppelgängers trying to claw into everyday human life. Single-handedly, he’d manage to keep your specific complex completely Doppel free for the past decade. You often wondered if you’d all survive a day without his protection. He had such a keen eye, always knowing a fake when he saw one. Yet another thing keeping him busy: he’s the strongest, he’s suppose to protect everyone,— and you were just his lover,— no, side piece.

Doppel!Gojo knew he could do better, knew he could treat you like you deserve. If— no, when — he stole the real Gojo’s life his one and only priority would be to shower you in the love and affection you so deserved. He was by far the most advanced of his kind, an almost exact replica,— having all the same defining features as the original: snowy hair, bright blue eyes,— though slightly eerier than the original pair,— and that same cocky, lopsided smirk.

You’d started to branch out, seeing as your ‘boyfriend’ clearly had more important issues— he just wasn’t ready for a relationship,— you being the biggest victim of his inflated ego. Too proud to let you go, but too self conscious to properly stand by your side

So, you’d often talk to the other residents of the complex: Nanami— a spokesperson, and Shoko— the surgeon, have quickly become your newest buddies.

Doppel!Gojo knew you like the back of his charred, clawed hand— the only differentiating key feature,- a staple of all doppelgängers. Covering them with the gloves of Gojo’s milkman uniform was easy enough. He had spent ages observing from afar, admiring,- adoring,- practically drooling everytime you’d double take in an alleyway when you swore you heard a noise behind you. He could watch you for eternity, looking inside of your apartment through an open window, cock erect and unbelievably hard in the confines of those mortal pants.

Doppel!Gojo has been patient, and now that it’s finally his turn, the only thing on his mind is getting your perfect body spread on his bed, fully bare and naked for him to feast upon.

With the “strongest” dead, it would take practically nothing for the doppelgängers to break in and overrun the place,— but all he did was slaughter whatever doppelgänger crossed his path on his way to your room. Practically breaking the door down, you had no time to react before your boyfriend slammed you against the wall, mouth open in a small “o” as he began feasting.

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“S—Satoru.?” it’s been forever since your voice pitched like that, syllables squeaking from the overdose of pleasure between your thighs

“Mmm?” the snowy white of his head lifts up momentarily from your thighs, blue eyes blinking innocently. He hums, playing with the elastic of your panties, pulling and slapping them against your thigh, “s’mthing you need, baby?”

“I.. *hic*” sparks fly through your system as his warm tongue presses against the growing wet spot of your underwear, throwing your head back, “AH– .. *hic*. n-..no-”

He smiles, all teeth, and you can’t help but feel like prey the way he eyes you; hungry, – starving, even.

“Hmm.. if you say so,”

You gasp as he tears your panties off, the cold air slapping you. He licks his lips, an animalistic urge overtaking him as he dips down between your legs.

You're stuck wide eyed, only able to watch as his snowy head bobs up and down, tongue suddenly grazing your entrance.

“S-SATORU– .. G-GAhh.. ngha~.” You mewl, pleasure curling through your body as he curls his tongue, flicking it just in the opening, almost exactly where you need him, “c-CAReful, – Sato..- aa OOh~” he takes long, full strokes with his tongue, the muscle slipping right into your slick hole. He groans at the taste of you, sloppily twisting his tongue inside. You buck your hips, fucking his tongue into you, squealing at the way he slobbers. His lips grace your ass, practically making out with the lips of your soaked folds. You can’t even question how he’s still breathing, being suffocated between your thighs, – nor why his tongue is so inhumanly long, hitting deeper than what even any human cock should, – not when he fucks you with it so good.

Sharp blades pierce the meat of your legs, causing you to shriek, the pain immediately drowning in the immense waves of pleasure racking through your body. ‘Satoru’ grips you, spreading your plush ass further while his tongue digs absurdly deep inside you. Your insides are coated in his saliva, the warm, strong muscle of his tongue finally hitting your pelvis, – and you come hard.

He eagerly laps you up, drinking from you like you were the finest of wines.

“God.. you taste.. Heavenly”

You can only shake violently as his tongue retracts from your inside, done invading your organs. Thick, heavy sobs rack your entire body, thick coils of pure pleasure tighten, wanting more.

A predatory smile donning his features, ‘Satoru’ licks his chops like a dog eyeing a particularly tasty treat. Hastily ripping off his tie and peeling away his clothing, ‘Satoru’ eases your body onto the living room couch, spreading you out perfectly for him before lowering himself on top of you.

You grab his face, cupping his cheeks in your hands. He’s practically glowing, pale, milky skin soft underneath your fingers. His blue eyes bore deeply into yours, absolutely stealing what little breath you had left away.

You should ask what the hell that was, who fuck, – or rather, – what the fuck was he, and what’d he do to your cold-shouldered boyfriend.

But as you gaze into those sapphire windows, you can only whisper;

“Do you still love me..?” voice soft and thick with the tears choking your throat.

‘Satoru’ brings is blackened claw to your face, long, agile fingers wiping away your tears,

“Of course I do… I love you more than everything, – more than you could possibly imagine.” (not like he was wrong)

You smile softly, body too weak to lift itself up to kiss him.

He brings his lips to yours, and you kiss him back.

Looks Satoru enough. --

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milk. 🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛

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sizzleissues · 19 days

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Its May.

Okay so this is in the same AU I had last year its just changed and evolved while also being the exact same. Except now I have 15,000 words of it written, like 7,000 words of planning and lore and hours upon hours of research that I will be pointedly ignoring. Will be posting more stuff this month about the AU and my hopes and dreams for it

Also slight art improvement check? I’ll put their original mermaid designs below the cut.

It’s Marinette as a mermaid and … its not Adrien or Chat Noir but a third worse thing (Catwalker but in the purest manifestation of it being a curse and not who he wants to be) I will be making designs for mer!Ladybug, and mer!Adrien as its own thing later on.

Okay if you want to indulge me look below the cut

Old mermaid designs first. I am going to be talking about my design thoughts, thoughts and ramblings about this AU and what I’ve been up to. You have been warned

As you can see, some things have changed but neither design I hated, I just wanted to go further with it.

My brain is quite specific about mermaids and how I want them to generally look. I wanted to distinguish biological merfolk from transformed humans by having them being anatomically different. So Adrien has a vertical tail instead which is also way faster underwater. His transformation is quite distressing for him and very chaotic. Of course when he accepts it he’s not so raggedy.

Marinette similarly avoids her life as a mermaid by becoming human and I wanted her mermaid design to hint toward her fascination with humans. She wears a top she fashioned from human fabric she found in a sunken merchant vessel. In general all other merfolk either forgo clothes or wear things fashioned from materials available to them. There’s deep fear of humans and human things so even though human clothes are available to them (off dead bodies but…. Whatever) they choose to difference themselves as much as possible. The same taboos don’t exist for them and their bodies are already adapted from the temperature of their environment. Adrien has stray bits of netting and seaweed on him because he’s not exactly the best at controlling his speed and often crash’s through fishing nets and patches of seaweed resulting in stuff being caught on him.

A lot of their designs are still being worked but I’ve definitely pushed them the right direction!

On to the AU. You might have seem me cryptically talk about something I’m writing the past few weeks. This is because it’s been in my brain since last May and been on and off writing it since then. I decided I’d talk about it once May came back around but and then when I finished writing it, start posting sneak peaks and more spoilery art until it was fully edited and I felt confident in it to post with an aim for it to finish posting once May rolled around again. Oh god.

It’s set in the late 1700s in a fictional version of France that’s actually fragmented over a bunch of islands. I have done more fashion research than I ever thought I’d do and in the end we will still be taking creative license but know I do know what they actually wore! I ALSO did a butt tonne of research about sailing ships and turns out they are super complicated and now I know too much and yet too little still about them. It should be super fun and action packed if I can manage. Have some really good scenes already in my head I know you’ll love. We’re already three ships battle deep and I’ve only written four chapters. (It chills out for a bit after that)

This is entirely self-indulgent by the way. I’m writing this for me, you guys are just a bonus. I literally don’t care as long as it satiates my rabid need for the fic that only lives in my brain at the moment. Saying that, I do want to put my best foot forward.

The next thing I will be posting for this is their human forms and more blabblerings about that. For I am insane and all.

#miraculous ladybug #sizzle sketches #miraculous #miraculous fanart #ml fanart #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #mermay #mermaid au #Ml art

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bettyfrommars · 4 months

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Dirty Metal Summer

a Dirty Dancing au

Part 1: Big Girls Don't Cry

Eddie x fem!Reader

MASTERLIST PLAYLIST

It's 1987, the same year the movie Dirty Dancing was originally released. 21-year-old reader is spending the summer with her dad and aunt at an all-inclusive resort in Indiana while she figures out what she wants to do with her life. After that summer, nothing will never be the same. Eddie is in his late 20’s and works as maintenance staff, he is also the frontman for the house band, begrudgingly delivering top 40 hits for the guests, and a secret third thing. When work is over, there is a completely different scene happening at a place the employees call The Hideout. Wayne is the head maintenance man, Chrissy is a metalhead, and a few other surprises. Bonus: Steve as a sexy, tattooed musician because I can't help myself.

my blog is always 18+only, MDNI please. The only warnings for the first chapter have to do with mention of a death of a parent, mention of grief, allusions to depression, a tiny bit of aggression, and alcohol consumption. But please read chapter warnings as the story progresses, because there will be angst, hurt/comfort, violence (fighting), and smut. Reader is called Bird as a nickname.

A/N: this is a rewrite of an OC fic I wrote over a year ago, and damn, I really needed to change a lot because my writing has evolved so much. I know I posted a snippet last week, but it's all been changed. Thank you to those who have been excited about this, I know Dirty Dancing is a cherished film, so I am treating this retelling with reverence, while adding some creative spins, and I truly hope you enjoy. The ST characters in this fic do not know each other in the same way they did in the show. For instance, Eddie, Steve, and Chrissy all grew up together, but I do my best to stick with their original character traits. This first part lines up very close with the film, but after that, it diverges and becomes a bit different. Same story line, but also not.

Part 1: Big Girls Don't Cry

word count: 6.3k

The soft murmur of a talk radio station hummed in the cement gray Mercedes-Benz 560, with your dad behind the wheel and his sister, your aunt Kim, in the passenger seat. From the backseat, you stared out the window with your headphones on, wishing for rain. The scenery was what you would expect from a place on earth that everyone considered idyllic, but you’d been exposed to so much lush greenery with that bright blue, theater backdrop of a sky for the last hour that you were starting to get a headache.

You pushed your wayfarer sunglasses up to rub the bridge of your nose, and then flipped the tape over in your Walkman before clicking it shut to press play. You were listening to a mixtape you’d made especially for the trip, the spine even said “road trip from hell”, but the first one on side b was Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac, and you closed your eyes for the next several songs. You were doing your best not to think about how you’d be trapped in BFE Indiana for a whole month.

You were also doing your best not to think about how your mother would not be home when you got back, or worse yet, the fact that you would never see her again. Never feel her generous hugs in those Laura Ashley dresses, smelling of Shalimar; never hear her voice at the other end of the line reminding you to eat something.

Your aunt said your name and your eyes snapped open. It was perfect timing because tears were beginning to form at your lash line. She had turned around in her seat and was trying to get your attention.

You pulled your headphones down around your neck. “Sorry?”

“The lake,” the expression on her face harbored more excitement than you’d ever felt in your entire life. “Isn’t it gorgeous? We’re going to get pedicures at the spa tomorrow, I already booked it.”

You glanced at your father’s stoic profile and then back to Kim. You felt bad for your aunt, getting stuck on a trip with two sad, mopey fucks who were too depressed to get excited about the things that thrilled normal people. You were the walking wounded.

“Pedicures, great,” your smile did not reach your eyes, but she didn’t seem to notice, as her enthusiasm doggedly refused to wane.

It had been almost four months since you lost her, and the world was still too…bright. Everyone was so talkative and alive and you couldn’t relate.

You looked out over the smooth expanse of lake that was nestled perfectly in the trees like you were in some type of miniature scale model rebuild of a town. Your aunt asked your dad, Owen, if he was still listening to the news, and when he shook his head, she changed the radio station to a golden oldies station and was satisfied with the tune Big Girls Don’t Cry by Frankie Vallie.

“You’ll love this cabin, Bird,” your dad said to you as the Mercedes crested the hill and began to maneuver down to your destination on a narrow, two-lane highway flanked with towering trees. A big green and white sign welcomed them to Hawkins Landing. “There’s a whole top floor where you can set up for your lessons.”

You turned away, back to the window, hiding the way your nose wrinkled. You thought maybe a perk of this getaway would be to have a break from practicing the cello you’d been tied to for over a decade, but no luck. He’d been forced to give up his dream of being a musician, and now you were expected to carry the torch for him.

You tried to come up with one thing you did in life that was not to please someone else, or boost some idea they had about you, and couldn’t come up with squat.

Besides reading. And taking long walks with music to clear your head. Those two were yours, and they could only be taken from your cold, dead, hands.

From the Hawkins Landing brochure your aunt had given you, it was clear that the property was enormous. Some 30 or 40 guest cabins scattered around, a main house that functioned as a hotel but also housed two different restaurants. A golf course, boat rentals, tennis courts, an outdoor theater, and a third restaurant situated on the water. Along with the full service spa, there were indoor and outdoor swimming pools, plus any class you could imagine wanting to take, from salsa dancing and water skiing, to chess and crochet.

Hawkins Landing was like a camp for adults who enjoyed alcoholic beverages.

There was a security checkpoint at the main entrance with two guards inside. The taller one with the neatly trimmed red beard recognized your father from the jacket cover on one of his many books. Thrillers mostly, horror if you squint. He nervously asked for an autograph, but Owen was very polite, adjusting his tortoise shell glass as he took the black marker that the guard was offering him.

After the checkpoint, it wasn’t long before the road opened into an expansive rose garden with a large fountain dead center, and the big main house with its wrap-around porch just to the right. You pushed your sunglasses up to get a look at the people mingling around, getting the idea that the median age there was 45, and it was mostly families.

The guards had given your dad a foldout map of the property and told him to check in at the main house to get the keys to the cabin they were staying in. The car moved at a crawl at the roundabout, and then came to park where a sign announced new guest check-ins.

Your dad told you to sit tight while he went in to grab the keys, and your attention trailed off to a black golf cart with a white awning that wheeled in like a racecar and took position in front of the Mercedes. It sat there close to the curb, idling. You could see there was a woman behind the wheel, and she was looking straight ahead, giving you her profile. Chin length, dark gold hair, just long enough for a ponytail, and the words “Hawkins Landing Staff” written in yellow cursive on the back of her navy blue jacket. Where her sleeve was pushed up at her elbow, you noticed some type of tattooed lettering there, and her fingernails were painted black.

Up ahead, you caught sight of someone strolling down the sidewalk toward the car with a hand in his pocket. It was a guy with honey tipped chocolate hair styled in a pompadour with a curl that bounced at his forehead, wearing tan chinos and a maroon, button down short sleeve with the square bulge of a pack of smokes in his front pocket. A tattoo peeked out from the V of his shirt, and there was another design on his bicep. He wore a pinky ring on one hand and rolled a toothpick around in his mouth as he sidled up to the golf cart to say something to the woman driving it. They bumped knuckles and talked for a bit like they were very familiar, him with one foot up on the running board of the cart.

“Steve, there you are,” from the open window, your attention bounced to a short, dark haired woman who’d just come out of the building and stood alongside your dad on the sidewalk. A closer look told you that her name tag said Joyce.

The guy with the toothpick in his mouth straightened, smoothing the front of his shirt with his hand. “Hey Joyce, I was just—”

Apparently uninterested in what he was about to say, she took him by the crook of the arm. She introduced you all by your family name, and let him know that you were “her special guests”, and you assumed that had to do with your dad being a famous author, or maybe she said that about every new family. While you chose to not do much else than offer a small wave from the back seat like you had no autonomy, Kim got out to greet them properly.

“This is Steve,” Joyce gestured to him with a Vanna White hand. “If you ever want to take guitar lessons this summer, he’s one of our best.”

“Or, if you just want to have some fun,” Steve’s eyes seemed to be searching Kim’s face, and then he shrugged. “I mean, I run the boats on the dock too, so if you want to ski or—”

Kim got flustered and tried to find her words, fussing with the lapel of her corduroy jacket in a way you’d never witnessed before. “I’m…I mean, sure, who wouldn’t want to be on the lake at a place like this?”

Kim hated boats and got seasick very easily, so you found her new interest amusing.

Joyce politely waved Steve off and he went, albeit reluctantly, backing up with slow steps to wave farewell. The smile stretching across his face grew wider the longer Kim couldn’t take her eyes off of him. When he was finally jogging up the sidewalk to get to where he needed to be, Joyce continued to try and sell Kim and your dad on the resort, even though you were already booked for the month.

“Sunday night is Bingo night. There’s karaoke in The Antler Room on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you need to check out our house band if you can. They’re playing tonight on the back patio, and the rhythm guitar is sensational. She used to perform with Vixen and Lita Ford,” she handed over the necessary keys and pointed the way to get to the cabin on the map.

“Just follow us,” Joyce said, hopping into the golf cart next to the girl with the forearm tattoo.

They led the way down a long, winding stretch with lush lawn and manicured hedges on either side, littered with people coming up from the pool in their bathing suits. There appeared to be a Tai Chi lesson happening on the lawn near the rose garden, and some type of painting class going on just above them on a balcony.

Made you wonder why summer people always had to stay so busy.

The cabin you’d be staying in was down a side road, tucked at the end of a private driveway with a view of the lake. It had five bedrooms, which was more than enough, but one of them would immediately turn into Owen’s writing room so that he could work on his latest novel.

You were careful to tuck your Walkman into your bag as the Mercedes coasted into its parking spot. Squinting up at the place, you were somewhat distracted by how much you liked the creepy, old feel of the whitewashed cabin, and you underestimated how far from the curb you were when you stepped out, stumbling to the side.

The girl with the forearm tattoo caught you in both arms, preventing you from putting all of your weight on your twisted ankle.

“Whoa,” she moved her supportive grip from your waist to your elbow as you righted yourself. “You okay?”

Your heart shot into your throat, and then you coughed a laugh, covering your face. “What a way to start the summer.”

She said her name was Robin, and there was a polite handshake exchange. She tripped over her words a bit. “It’s not every day that someone falls for me.”

“Well, I’m pretty clumsy, you might need to stay close,” and the two of you shared a self-conscious laugh as you led the way to the trunk full of baggage.

When you reached in to grab your suitcase, Robin teased, “hey, that’s my job,” before leaning further in to take the oddly shaped black hard case, the satin of her jacket skimming your arm. She struggled with it at first, but then held it up by the handle and gave you a sideways look.

“This yours?” She asked, cocking one eyebrow up. “You’re a musician?”

“No, well, yes I am but no I, I play the cello,” you stammered, not sure why it was hard to get the words out. “But here, I can carry that. It’s big and heavy and—”

Robin winked. “I got it,” and then she snatched another suitcase with the other hand and shuffled by you to make her way up to the porch.

Once you were all settled inside and Joyce had explained all of the amenities, you and Kim pushed back the curtains and watched the two go from the living room window. Just before they took off in the cart, Robin sent you a wave.

“She looks like a nice girl,” Kim had her arms folded over her chest. “Maybe the two of you could—”

“I know you’re worried about me, okay, but I don’t need to make any friends this summer,” you were holding the case for your cello in front of you with both hands, using it as a metaphorical barrier. “I like being alone.”

By the time you put your stuff away in the bedroom you’d be staying in, your dad was already typing away in his writing room, you could hear the keys of his Selectric click-clacking.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” you called across the rustic but spacious cabin living room. “I’m going to look around the main house.”

Kim barely caught your words as she was struggling with her glasses to read an ingredient label as she put some dry goods away in the kitchen. “Mhmm sounds good, have fun. Be back in time for dinner, we have reservations at…whatever that place is called. Your dad knows.”

You tapped the Swatch on your wrist and gave an absent wave over your shoulder.

With your headphones on, you made your way down to the main sidewalk that split off in two directions, bordering either side of the swimming pool and tennis courts. You found the bike path that wound down along the lake to the boat dock, and then up into a lush pocket of dense forest. Two teenage girls on rollerblades almost crashed into you as they bolted around the bend, giggling. Trying to decide if you wanted to go toward the water or into the woods, you watched a staff member veer off onto an uneven stone pathway and your curiosity was piqued.

Creeping along in their wake, you marched up a hill for what felt like forever, with Bring on the Dancing Horses by Echo and the Bunnymen playing in your ears, until you realized with a start that you’d already arrived at the main building. It loomed up ahead like a mansion from some old gothic romance novel.

You continued to plod your way along the trunks of trees, until you spotted a group having a chat on the wide porch, and took a few steps back.

They were all leaning against the railing in a semicircle, facing each other, so that you could see the Hawkins Landing Staff on the back of a few of their navy jackets.

One of them was Steve from earlier, next to him was a girl with a blonde ponytail, and then two others.

“I met that author guy today,” Steve took a drag and then blew the smoke up in the air, away from everyone’s face. “The one who wrote Darkness on the Hill, that one they made into a movie.”

You realized that it was your dad he was talking about.

Not looking where you were stepping, you caught your toe on a tree root and your arms windmilled before you were able to find your balance, floundering to duck behind another tree. Your mouth opened in a silent scream, trying not to gasp at the pain in your foot. Grimacing, you turned the volume down on the headphones that were around your neck to better hear what they were saying.

“That actor from that one show about law and order is staying in cabin 8,” the girl with the ponytail said. “Housekeeping says he finishes a bottle of whiskey a night.”

But then, there was another voice. “Now that sounds like a great fucking vacation to me,” followed by the heavy footfalls of boots on wood as a new person approached the group.

The sight of the new arrival made you feel like your brain was wiped clean—-the whole world came to a screeching halt.

Swallowing hard, all of your attention tunneled on him; his long dark hair with bangs that crowded his eyes, a thin but muscular build, tattoos scattered over his exposed arms, and a leather jacket hooked over his shoulder with one finger. He combed a hand through his hair as he walked, chunky metal rings catching the light, and headed over to the blonde girl. You took note of every movement as she passed him her half-smoked cig and he gave her a quick kiss on the temple.

Was that his girlfriend?

He stepped back to introduce the younger guy he had with him. “This Jamie, my new maintenance trainee,” he used the hand holding his smoke to point to each one on the balcony individually. You really didn’t pay attention until he got to the blonde one. “...that one there is the lovely Chrissy, and the moody one with the hairy chest is Steve. They’re the other musicians I told you about.”

Jamie had short black, curly hair and a hoop piercing in one ear. He lit his own smoke while the metalhead started in with a story about a pump exploding at the pool house, complete with wild hand gestures.

“Hey, there the fuck you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you losers.”

Another voice, another person making their way down the long stretch of squeaky wood planks from the front of the building. You stepped closer, snapping a twig under your foot, eliciting a worried lip bite.

Everyone stayed right where they were, but for Eddie who moved in front of Jamie in a protective way. The guy approaching at a stroll had very nondescript good looks with his wheat blonde hair in a tight cut that looked freshly trimmed. While the others were dressed more casually, this one wore a white dress shirt and tie with black trousers, as if he had some fancy place to be.

“You talking to me?” The metalhead flicked his cigarette ash and stepped forward to meet the new guy before he could come any closer to the group. “Cause, if so, you might want to change your tone, precious.”

“Eddie, don’t,” Chrissy said, and then she stood up, addressing the guy in the suit. “Jason, what the fuck do you want?”

Eddie, you moved your lips, whispering the name to yourself. His name was Eddie.

Jason put his hands up in mock surrender. “Why so hostile?” He turned to Eddie. “Joyce has been trying to find you for an hour. There’s a toilet backed up in one of the cabins, and trash that needs to go to the dump. Sounds to me like you’re having a hard time doing your job, Munson.”

You scuttled like a crab, moving to a spot where you could see their faces instead of the backs of their heads.

So that you could see Eddie’s face.

Steve checked his watch and pushed off of the railing to snub his cig out on the bottom of his shoe. “I gotta run. See you bastards at the show tonight,” he said in passing, shoving both hands into his trouser pockets. He walked right into Jason, shoulder checking him, before casually going on his way. Jason shot him an evil look.

“Well,” Eddie took a deep breath. “Tell Joyce I got the message,” and then he motioned for Jamie to follow him.

“Too bad we can’t take you out with the rest of the trash, freak,” Jason mumbled, loud enough for you to hear every word, and a tension crackled in the air.

The metalhead stopped dead in his tracks and drew his shoulders back.

When he finally turned on his heel, he wore a satisfied smirk, inclining his head, as if he’d been waiting for Jason to say something all along.

Chrissy moved as if she were about to go over and break up whatever was about to happen, but one of the others put a handout and stopped her.

“Just keep sending your laundry home to mommy, baby boy, and leave the real work to me,” Eddie said, and then he flicked the butt of his cigarette at Jason’s face.

Jason moved his head just in time so that the hot cherry missed his cheek by a hair and bounced off the wall behind him, spraying sparks. Chrissy and the others snickered at how beet red Jason’s face got, but he didn’t say another word, he just waited for Eddie and Jamie to be far enough away before he went back around to the front entrance.

When the coast was clear, you stood and made your way to the path again. With a curse you realized you were going to be late for that dinner reservation, and picked up speed to a slow, sad jog.

You found yourself thinking that maybe being trapped at Hawkins Landing for the summer wouldn’t be so bad after all.

—----

Your aunt Kim gave you an exasperated look when you all finally sat down for dinner, being that you’d made everyone 20 minutes late for the reservation. There didn’t appear to be a single open table when you arrived, but Joyce had made sure to keep the one by the window facing the gardens open for your party. She came around to introduce the guy who was to be your waiter, and you sat up a little straighter in your seat when you realized it was Jason from earlier. The way he’d been dressed out on the porch made sense now, as his uniform was the same as all of the other waitstaff.

Near the end of the meal, Joyce returned to the table in her black pencil skirt and fitted jacket, but this time, she was with a guy who you could tell wanted to look like Don Johnson in Miami Vice, but it came off more as Gary from Weird Science.

“I'd like you to meet Troy, he’s the son of Mr. Brenner, the owner of the resort,” there was a reluctance about her, as if she’d been forced at gunpoint to introduce him.

Troy stared at you with an uncomfortable intensity, making your attention fall to your plate.

“I’m in charge when my father isn’t around,” Troy said with a smug grin, putting his hands in his white trouser pockets, and you spotted some type of metal retainer on his teeth.

Joyce cleared her throat, annoyed that his statement was far from true. But she recognized that it was part of her job to indulge the little shit.

“I just graduated with a business degree from Georgetown,” he gloated, giving you a wink. “This place will all be mine one day.”

Your father exchanged a look with your aunt over his chocolate mousse.

“Well, it’s nice to know someone else your age here, isn’t it, Bird? Maybe you two kids should go have some fun tonight,” Kim chirped.

If your aunt wasn’t so far away, you would’ve kicked her under the table.

Troy bent at the waist so that his face wasn’t far from yours. “I’d love to show you around after dinner, if you’re interested in a tour?”

Before you could issue a vague excuse like, “sorry I can’t, I have a headache,” Kim spoke for you again.

“I think that’s a great idea,” she even clapped her hands, applauding it.

In the end, you went with him to make Kim happy, to get her off your back, hopefully for the rest of the trip.

An hour or two with a pretentious prick wouldn’t hurt you.

—-------

Troy wasn’t bad company, but he was quite full of himself. He had interesting stories about his extensive travels, but then he also told awkward stories that were possibly fibs about how many models he’d dated, and expanded on how he wanted to be married with two kids by the time he was 30.

You, on the other hand, couldn’t imagine thinking that far ahead, and he wouldn’t let you get a word in edgewise.

You followed close behind through the huge, busy kitchen of the restaurant you’d just dined in, and he tried to hold your hand when he introduced you to the head chef, but you were sly, and pulled it away to cross your arms over your chest. He gave you a tour of the ballroom and took a stroll through the other restaurant on the opposite end of the building that had a much more relaxed feel, low lighting, red carpet, and a bar at the center.

You went down to the boat docks and walked along the pier. The stars were breathtaking, but Troy didn’t notice, he was too busy trying to convince you to go out on his boat with him. You declined, taking a page from Kim’s book to mention a freshly born curse of violent seasickness.

You had your elbows on the railing at the pier, enjoying the velvet reflection of the crescent moon in the lake, and you could feel your jaw grow tense under the weight of Troy’s stare.

On the verge of telling him you were ready to head back to your cabin, the sound of music drifted down from somewhere on the property.

Yes, no mistaking, it was Take Me Home Tonight by Eddie Money, but it was being executed with someone else’s voice, and whoever that person was had some serious pipes.

And then there was the distinct sound of a feminine voice chiming in with the parts from the song Be My Baby Now by the Ronettes in the chorus.

"Is that a live band?" You turned away from him to try and find the source of the music. It wasn’t coming from the restaurant on the water or any of the cabins to your right.

"There's a cover band every Friday out behind the main house. You want to check it out?" He held the crook of his arm out to you and hesitated before you took it. His ego sufficiently stroked now that you wanted to spend more time with him.

Around the side of the building, overlooking the golf course, was a huge, fenced in back patio garden area with a private hot tub and pool for hotel guests. Troy led you through a white arbor wound with ivy to find that there were plenty of people mingling, drinking, and dancing. The area was mostly manicured lawn, with stone pathways meandering around from a concrete floor that was right in front of the small riser that was meant to be a stage. You imagined that a million weddings had taken place there.

At the door was a bar, and Troy got you a flute of champagne, which you downed with abandon and asked for another. While he was getting your second glass, you made your way along under several boughs of white string lights to get a view of the stage and who was performing the top tier Eddie Money cover.

Just as you stepped into the crowd of people shuffling to the beat, you stopped dead in your tracks.

There he was at the mic: Eddie the metalhead.

Guitar slug low at his hips, wearing a tuxedo with light blue cummerbund and bow tie, his hair neatly combed back and fixed into a knot at the back of his head so that you could really see the curves of his face. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was performing the song against his will.

The rest of the band were dressed similarly, and you instantly knew the one strumming the bass guitar as Steve, and the woman on backup vocals rocking on the rhythm was Chrissy, who wore a conservative skirt and flats. There was also a keyboardist and a drummer, both of whom you did not recognize.

“What’s your major?” Troy asked, breaking your reverie to pass you the glass of champagne. “In college?”

You were confused for a second but then, “oh, I took the year off to…figure some things out.” The full truth of it was that you had dropped out completely and had no intention of going back.

“I spent a summer in Greece my freshman year,” he offered, unprovoked. “The women there are, wow, so smoking hot.”

The song finished and Eddie took his tuxedo jacket off, rolling up his shirt sleeves to his elbows, exposing the scattered tattoos you’d noticed earlier. He leaned over to whisper something to Chrissy, motioned at the drummer, and then stepped back into place, brushing a loose wisp of hair off his cheek.

“Find someone special for this next one,” he told the crowd, and was answered with a rush of murmurs.

The first notes to In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel, a slow song, lit up the space, and your stomach tightened, fearing that Troy would ask you to dance. As he escorted you to the floor, you tried to keep your head down and stay to the back of the crowd, but Troy kept maneuvering you closer to the stage.

I get so lost, sometimes

Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart

When I want to run away

I drive off in my car

But whichever way I go

I come back to the place you are

You watched the performance from over Troy’s shoulder and followed his lead, shifting from foot to foot. You were mesmerized by the muscles in Eddie’s hands as he played each note, and the way Chrissy came in like an angel on the chorus.

He’d captured the attention of everyone in the garden at that moment, and there was a group of women watching him from the sidelines, whispering to each other, possibly about how they wanted to eat him alive.

They were all thinking the same thing you were: Eddie was magic.

He liked to close his eyes when he sang, so you weren’t expecting him to be staring right at you when he opened them again.

All my instincts, they return

And the grand facade, so soon will burn

Without a noise, without my pride

I reach out from the inside

He wouldn’t break eye contact, so you eventually had to; the intensity of it was giving you butterflies.

Troy stepped back and tried to get your attention. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

You nodded, but your gaze only drifted back to Eddie. Troy followed your line of sight and then dropped both of his hands with a frustrated cluck of his tongue.

"What the hell is he doing up there?" He hissed to himself when it dawned on him that Eddie had been behind the mic that whole time. "That's our goddamn maintenance guy. He shouldn't be up there."

In a huff, Troy pushed through the crowd and headed over to one of the other staff members against the fence. Bird could see him shouting and pointing over at the stage. Whatever the staff guy said did not seem to cheer him up a bit, and he came back to your side, shrugging his shoulders.

"I guess our normal front man Drew has the flu," he reported back. "It's just so hard to find reliable help these days."

Eddie was making the song his own, and that was what you liked about it.

“Let’s get out of here,” Troy put his hand on your lower back to escort you out. “The music sucks.”

—--

It was 9:30 when you made it back to the main foyer, standing in the middle of the lobby next to an obnoxious floral arrangement, when Troy tried to get you to go back to his cabin and watch a movie, only to get respectfully declined.

“Don’t worry about your parents,” Troy said, brushing his finger over your chin. “They know you’re with me, so they’re probably the happiest parents at Hawkins Landing.”

The guy had quite an ego on him, you had to give him that. It was unsurpassed by most.

In the end, you got away, and as soon as your Mary Jane’s hit the cobblestones outside the front door, you could feel yourself trotting at a quicker pace, eager to put some distance between you and Troy and everyone else, for that matter. You didn’t stop until you were far enough away from the main hotel to be able to check over your shoulder and not see it through the trees.

It was then that you realized that you had a free chunk of time, and you could do with it whatever you wished. Your dad would think you were still with Troy, and as long as you made it back to the cabin before midnight, they wouldn’t worry.

As much as it was the dead of summer, Indiana by the water had very cool nights, and you buttoned up the jean jacket you were wearing just as you noticed a yellow sign on a lamppost to the right that said: Staff Quarters, No Guests Allowed Beyond This Point

And that made you want to venture in even more.

You checked around to make sure there was no one there to notice that you blatantly ignored the sign, and just kept going. The path at your feet changed from stone to a well-worn dirt path through the grass, and it wasn’t long before you could hear the sound of music erupting in the distance.

You passed by staff quarters, a few weathered red cabins with white trim, lined close together, and there were some people hanging out on their porches who gave you curious looks, but didn’t seem too concerned with your presence.

Following the source of the music, you descended down into unknown, poorly lit territory that no longer looked like it was part of the Hawkins Landing property.

(song playing in the distance is Dangerous Meeting by Mercyful Fate)

It was then that you noticed a pale yellow light coming from the windows of a building up ahead. Just as the dirt path turned to gravel, you identified the music you were hearing as heavy metal, and it was bolstered by distinct shouts and cheers, even a high-pitched scream or two.

“Hey,” a voice startled you from out of the dark and you jumped. “What are you going out here?”

Heart racing, you spun around to find out it was Robin.��

She was struggling to carry several things in her arms as she walked and you rushed over to her.

“Where did you come from?” You asked, grinning ear to ear at how glad you were to see someone familiar.

“My cabin is right over there,” she bucked her chin in a direction behind you.

She had a crossbody bag over her shoulder, an amp in one hand, and she was juggling two guitar cases, one of which she fumbled, and you managed to catch it before it hit the ground. You wrapped your arms around the hard case with the Scorpions sticker on it, silently offering to carry it the rest of the way.

“You don’t have to—” Robin started, adjusting the bag over her shoulder.

“I want to,” you looked back up at the house where the music was coming from, assuming that was where she was headed. “I carry that big cello around all the time, remember? I’m used to it.”

Robin moved her jaw from side to side and she looked conflicted. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Your eyes were still locked on the house hidden in the trees. “What is that place?”

“Listen,” she gave you an imploring look. “I will get in so much trouble if they find out you came out here. Your dad won’t want you here, trust me.”

Her warning did nothing to squelch your curiosity. “I’m a big girl, I go wherever I want. Plus, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Besides,” she gave you a knowing look, raising her eyebrow. “If your boyfriend Troy finds out you were here, Brenner will fire all of us.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” you snapped. But then, softer, you added, “I barely just met him tonight.”

Robin wasn’t in the mood to try and rip the guitar out of your hands, and so, with a heavy sigh, she caved.

“Fine,” she sighed. “But stay close to me, okay? You’re not at the resort anymore, sweetheart.”

You nodded, waiting for her to lead the way.

She took a step forward and then stopped and turned on her heel to point at the instrument in your arms.

“Be extra careful with that, it’s Eddie’s baby. He’ll grow horns if anything happens to it.”

----

Hi! If you are familiar with the movie Dirty Dancing, you have an idea about what scene is coming up next. I've really enjoyed lining up certain events with the movie, but things will obviously be different in this because I want it to have some surprises in store for you.

Every chapter from here on out will start with a list of the songs, ones that will give hints for what to expect. I wanted to make music a big part of this fic, because it was a huge deal in the movie, and the original soundtrack is still dear to me.

as always, thank you so much for reading and interacting with this story! Comments and reblogs are deeply appreciated. or send me an ask and let me know what you think ❤️

------

taglist: @tlclick73 @micheledawn1975 @kurdtbean @katethetank @elvendria @spookysqaush86 @somethingvicked @stylesxmunson @laurenlokirby @sapphire4082

#Dirty Metal Summer #dirty dancing au #Eddie Munson series #Eddie Munson #Eddie Munson fic #Eddie Munson smut #Stranger Things fic #Steve Harrington #robin buckley

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prismarts333 · 7 months

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Why Rayfrog works so well

DISCLAIMER: I will spoil the entire of the Netflix adult series "Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix."

Tw// torture, drug use, sexual themes, graphic violence, Angst, and fascism

Rayfrog is a fascinating ship for me personally and one that I and many other Rayman and Laserhawk fans have gravitated towards. Two characters represent two very different IPs, both aesthetically and thematically. However, when framed in the context of a story that uses cyberpunk as a framework to craft a narrative of revolution to discover a crack ship with legitimacy and the tragedies they might overcome if season two is ever greenlit.

If you're reading this post, you've most likely watched all 6 episodes of captain laserhawk on Netflix. (if not, please watch it! It is so good, and I want season two in my VEINS)

Let me just get this out of the way: despite all the edgy memes about sushi on anthro cows and snorting cocaine and promotional trailers depicting him as a villain due to not having a game in over 10 years, this Rayman is NOT the Rayman from the games. This AU version of Rayman makes sense as most Rayman fans already know what the character is like, so seeing him in an assumed villain role was the perfect hook for the advertising.

In this universe, Rayman was a celebrity and mascot for Eden. Using a nonhuman and nonhybrid to be the face of Eden, they can use Rayman without fearing immediate backlash. And even if they did, they can silence the ones that do. They can do all that while also lying to Rayman about the actual info, and they also have the added benefit of Rayman believing it.

Which makes his realization of all the false propaganda he was spewing hit harder because Rayman, in the games, would always protect the little guy, and now he was suppressing them with a smile on his face. And he learned all of this from a hacked message telling him to seek a frog for the truth.

And that frog just so happens to be declared a terrorist by the same company that lied to him for who knows how long.

Meet bullfrog! Despite him being an original character based on Assassin's Creed rather than his role being taken up by one of the Assassins in the series (like the Assassin he's based on), Ezio. It makes his rise to fan fave all the more incredible. The team also saw this potential since he had a whole trailer dedicated to him before the show came out. And it's not hard to see the appeal. He's the most emotionally mature character in the series. Has some of the best moments in the show, gets the job done, and is voiced by the creative director Balak. Some argue he and Rayman carried the show.

The way Bullfrog tells Rayman the truth also adds to his character as well as Rayman. He's not angry at him; he doesn't even yell at him. He even gives him juice and tells him the truth. He reminds him about how he became Eden's poster boy. He tells him that he was right for being upset, and he got silenced for it by the people he was working for. And even got Rayman to open up about his backstory. And most importantly, he showed him the horrors of Eden's propaganda and how Rayman was advertising a fascist regime. That was the moment Rayman realized how bad he messed up. However, the damage was already done he sat by and let an entire system ruin the lives of so many even the frog that told him everything.

So what does Rayman do? well for a lack of better terms, he became Rayman again but things are so much different now.

With a new resolve, he went directly to the higher-ups to ensure that Bullfrog wasn't executed permanently even though, as bullfrog says in episode 3,

"Be wary of the path to vengeance. That tree will bear bitter fruit"...

the season ends with them alive but their fates are unknown at least for now...

With all that stated, let's discuss why people want Rayman and an Assassin Creed frog to smooch each other.

Combine the fact that both of these characters are nonhuman with the fact that they have the best voice performances of the whole show, the implied character importance and arcs for both of these characters, and the fact that they both have the potential for concern and chemistry (I mean look at these shots after Rayman got bodied by a xenophobe).

Shows the lengths to which the show wants these characters to be happy together, but like the other prominent gay couple in the show, Dolph and Alex, I fear they're trials both must overcome if they want to be together. This includes but is not limited to Rayman coming to terms with being an accomplice to a capitalist hellscape company, the bomb that's still in Bullfrog's head, (Maybe some internalized homophobia for Rayman if the writers want to get spicy), bullfrog's past that hasn't been fully revealed yet, the fact that the aesthetic of this whole show is cyberpunk a genre of storytelling that NEVER has a happy ending for anyone, bullfrog's code of honor, what happened to globox and rayman’s other friends, and EVERYTHING WITH UNIVERSE X. Fans latch on to those theories like a moth to a flame for hurt comfort and fluff fics so much potential to be wholesome and/or tragic depending on what the writers want to do in season two (if it gets greenlit).

You also have to take into account the paratextual context of Rayman ( a dead IP that only recently got closure from the Rabbids that buried him back in the 2000s in the form of DLC) and an assassins Creed character ( a franchise that's currently running and returning back from its roots from what I've heard) being in the same room talking about both of them are used and even abused by Eden (Ubisoft). That incentivizes fans to write complex fics and theories on these two.

In conclusion, this pair not only has the potential to be a healthier ship compared to Dolph and Alex or even be darker and more tragic than that. And this ship has the added benefit of being a commentary on classism, IP usage, vengeance, and revolution.

TDLR: PLEASE WATCH THIS SHOW. I NEED SEASON TWO, I NEED CLOSURE, AND I WORKED TOO HARD ON THIS POST FOR THIS SHOW TO BE CANNED."

UPDATE: Apparently, the original Raymon transformation clip got taken off YouTube, so I decided to clip the scene from a compilation video.

Here's the original link

#captain laserhawk spoilers #rayman #bullfrog captain laserhawk #video games #netflix #Please watch this show I beg of you!#Youtube #analysis #rayman captain laserhawk #rayfrog #bullfrog #captain laserhawk

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inbarfink · 8 months

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It is actually super thematically important that the Gumlee Subplot is, like, the Fluffiest Fluffy Coffeeshop AU in existence.

Because the whole universe-ending danger Fionnaworld faces is, like, to me it reads very much as a metaphor for the value of art and creative works that are self-indulgent?

Like, the whole Problem is that Prismo is not supposed to use his powers of Creation for his own personal enjoyment - he’s only supposed to use it to grant Ironic Wishes for others. Metaphorically, I think this is like a Creative making art for a studio or some other kind or employer, or for the sake of some specific audience or something.

And while Prismo found some creative fulfillment in his job, he also wanted to make something for himself, something private, something self-indulgent. And thus Fionnaworld was born. A personal creative project made with no other consideration but the artist’s own sense of fun and pleasure.

Which is very appropriate considering how in the real world Fionna and Cake, while it grew into more than that, it was originally just the personal lil’ creative doodles of Natasha Allegri did for fun while she was working as part of the AT Crew.

In the eyes of the Scarab, and apparently the greater cosmological laws that he enforces - the existence of Fionnaworld is an ‘abomination’. Prismo shouldn’t be allowed to use his powers of creation for anything but his designated role of creating for the sake of others.

And it seems like the resolution of the whole Scarab and Prismo plot thread is going to be on some level a reinforcement of the value and importance of creative projects - or whole universes - that are born out of self-indulgence and a desire to have fun and nothing more. You know, maybe it's not the worst thing in the world for Prismo to do something for fun, Fionnaworld clearly grew into something more than just God's self-indulgent doodles... something like that...

So it seems only appropriate that our main representation of Fionnaworld once the plot kicks into gear, the thing that gives the viewers a face and a personal angle to the unfathomably monumental task of saving a whole universe - is a Fluff-tastic Coffeeshop AU.

In many ways the icon of silly indulgent fiction that exists just for personal pleasure.

Especially as it contrasts against the generally much darker and grimmer ‘Authorized Universes’ we’ve seen.

Of course, not everyone creating silly fanfics for just their own sake is gonna create peaceful low-conflict Modern AUs. I bet there’s tons of AT fans creating fanstuff for their own sakes that are going to make stuff that’s just as heavy and dark as Vampireworld or even Extinctworld. Sometimes self-indulgence looks like angst and pain.

Buuuutt, the Fluff-heavy fanfiction and Coffeeshop AUs are still associated with wish-fulfillment and self-indulgent fiction in a way that really feels thematically important.

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okanra · 3 months

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FEW FUN BEHIND-THE-SCENES STUFF I DID FOR “THE UNSPOKEN” WEBCOMIC SERIES (still ongoing, of course)

So I’m migrating some of the (public version of) pre-production stuff I did in 2021-2023 for THE UNSPOKEN webcomic (back when it still had the old name “Trunks and Goten in High School AU”) here, since X/Twitter apparently annihilated the old Moment feature for real. These are mostly research stuff, some warm up doodles and inspiring sountrack playlists I did before a chapter or a story got made. I usually do a lot of research offline before working on any creative project, that’s why sometimes it feels like there’s so many information gets jammed into one chapter: it was mostly to make do for all the time that I didn’t get to, or wouldn’t be able to work on the comics.

Will add in the chapters along side the information paper for clearer understanding ✌️

———————————————

1. The warm-up expression practice sheet (or doodles, in my case) of Son Goten and Trunks in my webcomic series (late 2022 or early 2023):

Since the idea in mind for these two in the webcomic was to be more “mature, human-like” than the original manga version to fit with the narrative I want to tell and aim at the older demographic, practices are needed :p

2. The Martial Arts techniques research information papers - Chapter 2 and 3 aka “The Spar” 1 & “The Spar” 2 (2021-2022):

A. Goten’s techniques:

B. Trunks’s techniques:

This research about martial arts techniques was actually very fun to do due to martial arts and cultural aspects are being two of the things I enjoy the most in life. That’s probably parts of the reasons why I went back to Dragon Ball in 2020: motorbikes, martial arts and mixed races culture.

Back then I did plan on sharing my research to everyone in the form of little fun art lessons, so there were interesting tweets like this or this. Later I decided to share this somewhere else more private (like my Patreon community) since I realized pre-production researches (or something akin to visual developments) are not that well-liked for most online viewers even though it’s a very much needed process in a creative project 🤔

This martial art concept is one of the actual main themes throughout the whole webcomic series, not really the (super duper gay) b-romance relationship between Son Goten and Trunks, yes I’m very sorryyyyyyy I like them too but I like worldbuilding more lmaoooo :p

3. The brief character design sheet and Chinese-influenced culture research information papers - Chapter 4: “The Iron Woman” and Chapter 5: “Her Resolution, His Origin” (mid-2022 until now and will be continued):

A. Character Design brief sheet:

B. Culture research stuff:

The hilarious thing about researching for these chapters are: Back when “The Iron Woman” was being made, the research limited at reading articles and some books about Chinese cultures, and watching documentaries on Youtube. But when “Her Resolution, His Origin” was being made, the research tuned into a real life trip to China, to take real life reference photos and listening to real legends and stories.

This research for “Her Resolution, His Origin” will be posted to Patreon later, of course ✌️

4. The Original Comic introduction and comeback announcements in mid-2022:

I must have eaten some edibles while drawing this because the boys look so good here. Goten looks so good, I even made him the profile picture for my Patreon account lmao.

5. Soundtrack playlists for inspirations (2021 - now): always the cherry on top. I listen to these playlists everytime I work on the series.

A. Duo playlist for chapters featuring both main characters: link

B. Character playlist for chapters focusing on single character, or anything related to that character: link

———————————————

All in all, posts like this are for people who like to see what’s beneath the surface when working on a creative project. I completely guarantee you, what you’ve seen on this blog are just the tips of the ice berg 🤫

Def not a PR, but my Patreon has lots of this lmao. Half joking half serious, there’s even a “non-posted” comic up there too and many other things. I’m just stating facts.

That aside, I’m just really happy to be able to work on this webcomic. THE UNSPOKEN webcomic series has always been a long-term indie project, not a daily content so I hope the readers who like and follow this series would stay tuned for more ✌️

———————————————

For easier reading, you can either follow the links that are included above, or just read this Tapas updated version.

#the unspoken webcomic #truten in high school au #my art #my comic #dragon ball #goten #son goten #trunks #kid trunks #dbz #dragon ball z #chichi #son gohan #martial arts #researching is fun and is also my hobby #but honestly i’m just happy drawing comics

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junos-office-drama · 11 months

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Love that fic, but having trouble expressing that love in a comment? Worried that you're leaving the same comments over and over?

Here are 40 comment ideas!

Keyboard Smash. Bonus points for a mix of uppercase and lowercase. End with a brief compliment: "Love it!" "So good!" "Amazing!" "This is my everything!"

Emoji string. Go as long as you feel appropriate. Throw in some 🔥 for good measure.

Quote a phrase, sentence, or passage that resonated with you, and explain why. "I love this description." "This is such beautiful language." "This metaphor is so brilliant." "This is the perfect way to describe [character/thing]."

Ask the author what inspired them to write such an incredible story. (Most authors dream of these types of comments.)

Share how the fic made you feel as you read it. Were you scared for a character? Were you cheering on your favorite? Did that smut make you all hot and bothered?

Thank the author. Bonus if you can thank them for something specific: Sharing this amazing work, introducing this awesome character, creating this cool AU, etc.

Identify your favorite character in the fic, and explain why they're your favorite.

Any indication that you're so in love with a work you literally want to eat it. My personal favorite that I've received is "I want to shove this in my mouth like an entire oreo," but "I want to print this out and stuff it in my face" and "This fic is like an amazing five-course meal, every bite is delicious!" are also winners.

For a multi-chapter fic, any version of "Wow, this keeps getting better and better!" This can really help keep an author motivated, especially if they've been focused on one longfic for a while. Longfics tend to have diminishing engagement over time, so commenting on later chapters is especially meaningful.

Tell the author that something in their fic is your "emotional support [thing]." Bob is my emotional support character, this is my emotional support fic, etc.

Tag it as if it were a social post, with all the hashtags it makes you think of. #myfavoritefic #incrediblewriting #truelove

Did you do something maybe a little dumb while reading the fic? Stay up all night reading? Nearly walk into a wall because you were reading while walking? Show up late to class because you couldn't put it down? Share your dumb thing!

Make predictions on what you think will happen next, and explain why. End your comment with something along the lines of "I can't wait to find out if I'm right or wrong!" Note: Be sure to phrase your comment as to what you predict will happen, not what you think SHOULD happen.

Did the fic make you discover a new side or facet to a character? Talk about that. "I never noticed how [trait] [character] is until I read your work!" Example: "I never noticed how creative Eric was until you brought it out in this fic, but it's absolutely true!"

Have you re-read a work (especially multiple times)? "I'm re-reading this for the third time because I love it so much."

"This is my second kudos!" Repeat as many times as you want. Third, fourth, fortieth, it's all good.

Are you a new subscriber? "Loved this so much that I subscribed!"

Are you an existing subscriber? "Every time I see an update in my inbox, I get so excited and rush to read it!"

Is there an Original Character (OC) in the fic? Ask about the OC! Ask what inspired the author to create the OC. Ask for more information about the OC's background. Ask if the OC is based on any particular character or idea. Ask how they came up with the name, and if it has any special meaning. Seriously, just ask the author about their original creation.

Tell the author how attached you're growing to their story or their characters.

"It was so [emotion] when [character] did [thing]." For example, "It was so scary when Eddie charged off on his own, I was so worried for his safety!"

Having a tough time in the real world? Let the author know if their fic or characters are a much-needed bright spot in your day.

Is the fic something you normally don't read? "Normally I'm not into [thing], but this fic is so good it's changed my mind!"

Did the author portray a complex topic well, with understanding and nuance? For example: surviving domestic abuse, coming out in a non-supportive environment, dealing with trauma, etc. Tell the author! "I can really tell you did your research. You handled [topic] so well!"

Can you personally relate to a scenario or a character in the fic? Did it touch you on a personal level? Say so!

Is it an older story? COMMENT ON THE OLDER STORY! Tell the author that it still has meaning and relevance, and that readers are still enjoying it today.

Does the fic present a pairing (or relationship) you never considered or never liked before, but now you adore? "This fic has made [pairing] my new favorite ship!" or "I was never really into [relationship] before, but this fic is so well done, I've fallen in love with them!"

A string of heart emojis (or the simple <3 ). As many as you feel appropriate. (One is appropriate. So is one hundred. You decide!) Make a rainbow if you want! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

Did the fic make you look at the source material in a new way? Share. "I never noticed [thing] about [source material], but your writing really brought it out!"

Screaming about the pain and agony you're in, especially on whump, hurt/comfort, hurt/no comfort, and similar fics. Some authors are sadists. Let them know you're suffering (in that "oh hell it's so good it hurts" kind of way).

For chapters that end on a cliffhanger: Any screaming about how much the suspense is killing you and you can't wait for the next chapter. (Just remember not to demand the next chapter. "I'm so excited for the next chapter" = good / "You have to update right now or else" = bad.)

Is the fic now part of your official headcanon, right along with the source material? "From now own, this is as official canon to me as the original [book/show/movie]!"

Is the fic's title obvious, or is it a little mysterious? Ask if there's a secret meaning behind the title, or how the author decided on the title.

Ask the author if they have a favorite character, scene, chapter, etc. Depending on the fandom, this can be very specific (favorite weapon, attack, transformation, vehicle, horse, monster, etc.).

Is it smut? Did it make you hot? Trust me, smut authors want to know.

"This [chapter/fic] was so good, I feel like I need a smoke after it."

Is there a mystery that's absolutely boggling your brain? Share your theories! (YES: "Oh, what if Prince Smidgeon is actually killer?"). Just remember to never cross the line into telling the author what to do (NO: "You should make it so Prince Smidgeon is the killer.")

"I wish I could give you a kudos for each word in this [fic/chapter], it's just that good!"

Do you like making art? Ask the author if you can make fanart of their fic!

IF, and ONLY IF, the author has very clearly requested concrit (constructive criticism), then role up your sleeves and get to work putting together truly helpful, supportive criticism. Get started with this guide here.

Do you have other suggestions for this list?

Reblog with your favorite comments to give or receive!

(Tumblr insists on re-starting the list at 1 after the cut and I have no idea how to fix it??? It really is 40, I promise.)

#fanfiction comments #fanfic comments #fanfic #fanfiction #ao3 readers #ao3 writer #ao3 #archive of our own #ao3 comments #fic reading #fanfic readers #commentary

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gracefall-mcyt · 2 months

Text

...SO. Hermitcraft Lifeline AU trailer I made for a class last semester.

Does contain spoilers but they're left vague-ish? Vague enough that I don't think it spoils the experience at all. Go read SlashMagpie's Lifeline AU. Please.

Now crossposted to Youtube!

Notes about stuff under the cut :)

Okay so. I know there are some inaccuracies to the actual fic, major and minor alike. However, this took me around 60 hours to make, and I wasn't able to work on anything else in between because of my deadline. I am not going back to fix things now. I spent the entire latter half of my winter break pretty much just working on this, because, like I said, I was doing it for an assignment.

It was a film studies class, and we had to create a pretend cult classic and then create some creative representation of it. I chose to do an adaptation of Lifeline AU for mine! That's why there are the black frames near the start–originally there was some pretty typical movie trailer text, I just didn't feel like including it here.

I'm going to be real, I would not have been able to get through that project if I wasn't doing it with LLAU. Lifeline AU was my lifeline, in a way. If I had stuck with my original plan, then I wouldn't have come up with such a GOOD final product. I probably would have quit the trailer and settled for a poster. With this, that never crossed my mind. I wound up with a product that I had genuine creative passion for, based on a story that I have immense love for.

@slashmagpie , thank you so much for writing this fic. I have said it before and I will say it again; this is my favourite thing I have ever read. Between its plot, characterization, worldbuilding... EVERYTHING. It's such a beautiful story. It's one of few works to actually make me think, to make me consider what's right and wrong, in a sense. Every time I reread it, even if it's just a small little section (or all of Asking for a Miracle. I'd say that that one has the biggest chokehold on me of the llau fics), I feel myself experiencing the fic all over again.

Going to be honest, I wasn't going into LLAU with any expectations. I found Lost Boys bc i was looking for fics with aliens, and so i decided Empty Oceans would be my "last fic before sleep." I ended up not sleeping that night, spending the next few hours reading through all of the series (aside from Twenty-Eight Days of Delirium, but I did go back to that one later that day), listening to the same song on loop the entire time. I was so engrossed by the story I didn't even notice until I was halfway through Asking for a Miracle.

I rambled on about the fic to anyone who would listen. My best friend, my cousin, my younger brothers, my older sibling, everyone. Eventually, when one day my cousin came over to have a sleepover, I was like. I know you're not going to read it. Would you like me to tell it to you? And she said yes. I expected it to take maybe a half hour. She expected it to take one hour. It ended up taking two and a half. By the end, she said "this sounds like it would make a great movie", so we ended up writing out the script for the very trailer you see above.

My cousin is actually the one who drew the beautiful clock seen at the beginning and on the monks' robes! She gave me permission to use it. I would tag her, but she doesn't have any public social media accounts.

At some point I'll come back and list all the small details, bc I put in quite a few, but for now I'm tired of typing up this post so you'll have to wait :)

Song used is Imaginary Worlds by Tyler K

I forgot where exactly I got the clock ticking sound effect but I will try to find it and link it eventually.

As stated before, this is entirely based on Lifeline AU by SlashMagpie. Go read it if you haven't already, I'm begging you.

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ghcstao3 · 8 months

Note

I saw your tags, you have challenged me!

Scary Show AU (cw for cannibalism and murder)

Ghost is a very well-known yet still semi-anonymous Voice Actor for spooky shit. There's a huge following for him because, regardless of what role he's playing, he does a phenomenal job. He's only listed in the cast list as "S.R.Ghost"

Typically he plays the role of the creatures in this super popular show called "Cryptid Season" which follows a gang of college kids desperate for extra credit in their Biology class so they hunt cryptids as evidence/to study for their papers. He does the voice over and some of the motion capture (he's a big dude) for the monsters and such, his most famous one being "Goatman" (from the demonic Goatman's bridge in I think Texas?)

Meanwhile Soap is this animator who's starting to become really popular, and he announces a new show in the work: "Consume", where he voices one of the two lead roles. It's presented as a show about a normal, if not very lonely man, being tormented by a demonic presence in his home.

Plot twist: dude's actually a cannibalistic serial killer and ends up quickly befriending the demon. The demon helps make the man harder to track by police forces in exchange for the bones and souls of his victims.

Cast:

Soap as the killer

Ghost as the demonic entity

Gaz as a detective who's new to the case but also best friends with Soap's character

Price voices the seasoned detective who's been working this case "too damn long"

Ghost and Soap ABSOLUTELY fall in love while recording scenes together. The banter, the flirting, the sexy scenario of cutting up a corpse together; it's too much not to fall in love irl

(actually such a big brain idea but I don't know how you'd write it tbh lmao. Maybe the show itself, where the boys keep their names? Idk the original idea turned into something much greater)

took a minute to figure something out i'm ngl but i did. something (in any case i would love to see your proper takes(s) if you'd be up to it, seeing as it's your idea!! i feel like i couldn’t do it justice)

Just like any other actor, Ghost had to audition for the role.

His agent books it for him without consultation, knowing the project would be right up his alley—horror, monsters, no face required—and Ghost makes no argument in sending in his tape. He recognizes this process and takes no issue with it, and once out of his hands, he waits patiently for a congratulatory offer or a gentle rejection.

Just like any other movie, or show, or what have you. Consume is no different.

Supposedly. At first.

John "Soap" MacTavish is... many things. He's charming, according to most. Talented. A joy to be around. A man who wears more than several hats of a project, which certainly tells of someone trying to worm their way into the commercial industry.

He has the spirit and creativity, Ghost will allow him that. But he also doesn't know when to stop talking as soon as the important work is done.

Is Soap professional? Sure. Does Soap make sure all jobs are done with efficiency and done well? Yes, he does. Does it make him any less of a nuisance to Ghost? Absolutely not.

But Ghost would be damned if the project doesn’t find its way into his soft spots, despite its nature. He’d be damned if he doesn’t fall in love with Soap’s animations and the hard work and craft he puts into them.

Then he blinks, and the pilot is premiering. It does well (again, considering its content), and Consume is properly green-lit.

Which is when Soap proposes the idea of recording their lines in the same room. Together. Facing one another. Because banter, and chemistry, and whatever other reasons he insists upon.

Personally, Ghost wants to decline. He’s always felt somewhat awkward when recording as such with anyone, but professionally? He couldn’t really say no, could he?

And it is awkward, at first. There’s more takes than usual, and Ghost can sense Soap’s frustration, though the man never expresses it. He just plasters on a tight smile, calls for a break, and pulls Ghost aside.

Surely, surely this is where Ghost gets fired. This is where Ghost is told he’s going to be replaced, where he’s told to say goodbye to Gaz and Price and wish them luck, and move onto his next gig. This is where—

“Have I done something wrong?”

Soap’s face is so earnest. So painfully sincere.

Ghost clenches his jaw. Shakes his head.

“No, I—“ He sighs. “Just have to get used to the… face-to-face. Let’s—I’ll try again.”

Soap smiles wider, now, as he nods, something kind and warm and brilliant.

The second try goes much smoother. Ghost takes a deep breath and eases himself into scripted dialogue, into witty banter and subtle flirts like it’s any other project.

They continue to record lines as such, just the two of them, each episode at a time. At some point, Ghost worries, the line between script and show and reality gets blurred. At some point, he fears, that flirting becomes genuine.

And what would he know—the reviews only get better as that line becomes less and less clear. Natural, real-feeling dialogue, critics say. The relationship is authentic, claim viewers.

The love is actually heartfelt.

And fuck, if that doesn’t make Ghost realize a few things about himself.

About Soap.

Consume is no different, his ass. He might have to have a stern talk with his agent in the near future.

(Or not.)

#ask #john soap mactavish #simon ghost riley #ghost mw2 #soap mw2 #ghost x soap #ghoap #soapghost #ghostsoap #writing #alternate universe

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firefly-sky · 27 days

Text

what each of the boys major/minor in

note i have my own version of post covid. it’s an AU and I recognize that. What I’m doing is an AU. so. keep that in mind.

Cartman

Cartman majors in business

i mean-look at how he was in Dikinbaus. He would be really good at business. He’s really good at bribing people to buy his shit

He’s also smarter than people give him credit for. He just has no motivation.

He minors in food science.

I like to headcanon that once Liane realized she was spoiling Cartman she kinda locked in (like she did in HumanCentiPad) and teaches him how to cook.

He actually comes to enjoy it and he seemed to have some knowledge of food science beforehand so

Stan

Animal science major. You can’t convince me otherwise.

He becomes a veterinarian in the future. He works with pets, though he got a job at a zoo at some point (he hates putting animals down)

Hes really gentle with animals. He’s one of those people that thinks dogs are better than people/hj

He minors in biochemistry

I already know some of you are thinking ‘Oh WhY nOt MuSiC?’ but like…realistically I don’t think science and music would really clash together when it comes to jobs

I think he recognizes that. So he does Crimson Dawn on the side when he’s free.

Kyle

This was the toughest ngl

He majors in Psychology

I like to headcanon he becomes a therapist. He likes helping people. Hes compassionate. And no, I don’t wanna hear the ‘Oh He DoeSnT UndErStAnD dEprEsSiOn How CaN hE dO pSycH’ like he was nine at the time

I think he would be the type of person to do research on the side about mental diseases because he wants to learn

And hear me out on this. He originally wanted to major in law. I feel like his dad would be big on ‘having his oldest son carry the family name on’ but Kyle ends up not enjoying it so he drops out

He double minors in political science and philosophy

He seems very high on his morals, so I think he would find interest in philosophy, a place where he can express his moral opinions

And he’s great at debate. So I like to think he would go into political science. Not just because he likes debate but also so he can say he’s ’qualified to talk about this because he’s a minor in political science’

Kenny

Okay okay but imagine Engineer Kenny

He’s creative. He has the ideas. He has the ability. I like to think he worked a lot of odd jobs and got really into building things. And he decided he wanted to do that in his life.

I like to think he’s actually really smart. He just doesn’t really have the best home situation so he isn’t given as many opportunities as he would’ve liked.

Although I also like to think that he would buckle down in high school and actually gets into the top five for his class. He applies to pretty good schools and gets a near full ride for some of them. But anyway, I’m yapping too much

As for a minor, he, like Kyle, double minors. in accounting and math.

He wants to make sure nobody has economic issues like he had. And he has a leg up in what he does because he’s dealt with money his whole life practically.

He’s fairly good at math. Plus he’s already got a leg up, like I said.

ahe really pushes himself in college to become someone who can help people who were in the same situations as him. So he works hard and actually does good.

#south park #skipper speaks #eric cartman #stan marsh #kyle broflovski #kenny mccormick #south park headcanons #south park college au #college au #eric cartman headcanons #stan marsh headcanons #kyle broflovski headcanons #kenny mccormick headcanons

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moamidzyism · 2 months

Text

txt as ariana grande songs

wc. 1153 (each member is over 200 words)

genre. fluff

tags. non-idol!txt x gn!reader; many different aus

warnings. repost; mentions of alcohol and food [if there's anything else please let me know]

more of my work

yeonjun → boyfriend

i don’t know why i’m allergic to established relationship yeonjun but just think about fwb!yeonjun and it’s just a constant back and forth “will they? won’t they” thing but like all your friends already just function like you’re a couple anyways. and you guys are just like “no we’re not -_-”. but still you both always get jealous when you see the other talking to someone else.

i think this pairs well with frat bro!yj who invites you to one of the parties at his fraternity house but spends the entire night talking to what seems like everyone at this party but you. you decide to entertain yourself with one of his frat brothers who you’ve had some classes with. he drags you to play beer pong with him. from the corner of his eye, yeonjun catches you two laughing together and asks to play the next round against you. you don’t realize how good he is at beer pong. and like the gentleman he is, he urges his brother to drink for you because “you’re twice they’re size, are you really going to let them drink all that alcohol?” so your partner begins to lose his balance, and literally no one is surprised when yeonjun wins.

after the game, he finally gives you the attention that you wanted, when he pulls you to his room. “aww, were you jealous junie?” you tease him as he shuts the bedroom door.

soobin → daydreamin’

soobin is soooo first love class crush coded. he’s just someone you could / would / should fall in love with the moment that you lay your eyes on him. i was originally thinking of a college!au lab partner thing but walk with me. maybe he’s your best friend’s cousin who is staying with their family for the summer and he has to tag along with the two of you everytime you hang out because he doesn’t know anyone in town and your friend’s parents want him to meet new people.

the first day you met him, you and your friend planned to go strawberry picking. they drove over to your house to pick you up and you see him in the front seat. your friend tells him to move over to the back so you can sit at the front. he gets out of the car and introduces himself to you and you feel all the blood in your body rush up to your face because he is the prettiest person you’ve ever seen. throughout the hour-long drive, you keep making eye contact in the rearview mirror and you feel your stomach doing flips and your organs turning to mush.

at the strawberry fields, he trails behind you and your friend but you try your best to include him in the conversation. your friend ends up walking in front of the two of you and he offers to carry your basket for you as you keep talking and getting to know about him.

beomgyu → tattooed heart

okay okay okay this kinda sorta has nothing to do with the song but hear me out hear me out i was listening to this song and i randomly thought of tattoo artist!beomgyun. and he’s so creative and artistic and talented. i feel like he is the type of person that could literally do any medium of art and make a masterwork.

one day, you were walking around and you saw that a tattoo place was doing a flash sale and you had always wanted one so you decided to see if they had any that you liked. you were visibly nervous because it was your first tattoo and at first the artist that was doing yours seemed really quiet. but it turns out beomgyu was so sweet and he really did his best to make you feel comfortable throughout the entire experience. he was telling you stories and cracking jokes and everything. you didn’t even notice that he had already finished.

and after that you keep going back to the same place and working with him only and imagine him telling you that he designed a tattoo for you because he couldn’t get you out of his mind lol.

taehyun → goodnight n go

i definitely was going to go the angsty route for this but i had wayyy to many songs from yours truly in this and i also think goodnight n go fits him so well. this song and tyun make me think of 13 going on 30 which is one of my favorite movies.

i’m thinking about childhood best friends that haven’t seen each other in a while. and one day you invite him over because he has been dying to see what your life in the city is like. you spend the entire afternoon catching up, laughing at inside jokes, and reminiscing about old times. and even though you haven’t seen each other in what feels like years, you still fall back into your old pattern and it feels like you never left. the time slips your mind and by the time either of you notice, it’s already dark outside and he missed the last train out of the city, so he has to spend the night.

of course he doesn’t want to be an imposition so he offers to sleep on the couch but you manage to convince him that “that is ridiculous, we used to share a bed as kids.”

kai → main thing

the fact that this is the only established romantic relationship in this makes me giggle but i was originally going to do this song for yeonjun but i think it fits kai so much better. he would be such a doting partner i think. he’s so lovely and perfect and i definitely have very real romantic feelings for him but that’s beside the point.

you’ve had a horrible day and it literally feels like the entire world is crumbling around you. you text him to tell him that you just got home and you’re probably going to call it a night early. he can tell from your tone that something happened and in twenty minutes he’s at your door with takeout, your favorite ice cream, and a board game. you’re confused when you open the door and see him grinning at you with his hands full, but you’re eternally grateful that you have someone as thoughtful as you. he makes sure you eat as he runs you a bath and stays with you as you unload everything that happened to you that day.

i feel like kai is definitely the partner to play with your hair as you lay on the couch together watching a random show. he feels your breathing slow down and sees that you fell asleep. he only wakes you up so he can help you back to your bedroom to sleep properly.

taglist: @boba-beom @dearlyjun @atinyniki @bgomtori @isabellah29

fill out this form to join my taglist!

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mintytealfox · 2 months

Note

*carb walks in*

*holds up a question*

*yeets*

What the au where norton is big and alice(and melly) are tiny like did they found kurt book but don't know how long it last and norton is now stuck being the babysitter till the their normal size again or is it drugs?

MUAAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHHA AAAAAAAAHHHHHHAHAHAHHAHAHA MUAAHAHAHHAHHAHA

THE AU HAS BEEN ASKED ABOUT MUUAAAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAAAA 🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌

Perfect timing too honestly cause I was feeling sad about Netease being emo as frick with the Norton stuff lol (there is an ask in the inbox about it and I am gonna go so wild once I collect my thoughts 👀)

-rubs hands togetherrrrrr-

so this one with Melly:

was a little one off thing cause I love Navi from Legend of Zelda and I imagine she is so tired of Link and I had Da Capo on the brain and was like 'aw yea these two' LOOOOOOOOOOOL

----------------

The other one with this stuff:

is super MaCross coded 👀🤌 if you are familiar with Zentraedi then you got a gist of what is going on here lol but here is a link to a intro to the au: here Then this one has the links to everything I have written for it so far: here

I am more of a report writer rather than creative writer anymore these days. So, if its bad then my bad LOOOOOL! If you don't want to read all that then here is this to get the gist of what is up with the world

"Some background:

Two species of humanoid now inhabit the same planet. One from another dead planet and seeking refuge and a new place to live (the humans). This was met with hostility from the original habitants (the larger one). A war broke out for 10 years, for the humans to come on top in the end. The larger species are now used as a sort of work horse in most cases. Some manual labor, others protecting the area and hunting, etc. there are still Nobels and high ups in politics but the less well-off tend to be put to difficult work and conditions. Even though the humans have the tech to make it easier, just don’t want to waste resources. It’s a political way to keep them down, busy and obedient basically. 🙃

Norton, of course, works in the mines." ----------- BUT I LIKE WHERE YOUR BRAIN IS GOING -rubs hands together- a thiirrdddd au cookin I seeeee~ LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

Knowing Alice, its probably DRUGS that did it -WHEEEZE- Then Melly having to get involved trying to be like "oh my gosh stop sniffin D R U G S" and tries to take it away but it just gets all over~ nice and cliche 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

But I can see Melly having fun with the size change cause talk about an entire new perspective for her research of insects lol -can pet beetle like dog- "who would have thought they liked little pats on the head" So much new research to be done 🤣🤣🤣 Her command of insects is broadening LOOK OUT -WHEEZE-

Now for Alice, there is no stopping her now, every nook; every cranny is now hers to explore LOL no locks can keep her out now!! No document/letter/sensitive information can hide from her -WHEEZE- No drawer or box left un-sifted through PFF No conversation left un-eavesdropped! She is more of a danger to society's secrets now than she was before IM DYING LOOOOL

Yea Norton is definitely gonna have to babysit these two MY GOSH! Good L U C K BRO LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

(THANK YOU FOR THE ASK!! I L O V E talking about this stuff HA! And needed the distraction honestly SO THANK YOOUUU)

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starry-eyed-steve · 5 months

Text

Sandra's Fic Wrapped 2023

Hello <3, it's the last day of 2023, and I wanted to give some love to all the amazing fanfics I read this year. Each one of the people mentioned here is so talented, and everyone should check out their entire work.

(Disclaimer: all fics mentioned are Steve Harrington x reader)

Here are my top reads from this year (in no particular order)

Wildfire by @curiositydooropened (completed series, enemies to lovers) This fic has one of the best world building, I need this to happen in s5, actually. Doesn't shy away from discussions of ptsd and overall, it was so well done. I still have to finish it, but I know Amanda did an amazing job with it. <3

Glitch by @munsonsreputation (series, friends to lovers) This fic is just so cozy and cute. Reader insert felt like a very well-rounded character. You will love all the interactions with the other characters. It's just so well done. <3

whip it! by @schoopsahoy (one shot) This fic was cuteness overload. Loved the confident reader insert, and overall, the character dynamics were so well done, esp Steve and the kids <3

don't think twice, it's alright by @hawkinsquarry (part of a series, hurt/comfort post s4) I think this is one of my fav hurt/comfort pieces I've read this year. The interactions between reader and Steve are so tender. Overall, this was perfect <3

Into Open Flames by @kurokoros (completed series, established relationship, horror, set after s2 canon divergence) This fic has amazing world building. The original monster is so terrifying and well done that I was on the edge of my seat all the time. I adored Steve's character so much, kinda wish the show would have handled his character that way instead of what they did in s3/4. Overall amazing writing <3

confetti by @slashersteve (series, single!dad Steve) My favorite single dad Steve fic out there. I still haven't read the latest part, but I had to mention this series. It's amazing. The characters feel so real, and you'll fall in love with Steve's daughter <3

become the sun by @headkiss (one shot, strangers to friends to lovers) This was probably my favorite summer fic. I adored the small beach town vibe. Overall, that was such a cute read. I still need to read this year's Christmas fic, which I know will be great because last year's was amazing. <3

the view between villages, part one: good bones by @sattlersquarry (completed series, choose your own adventure, s3) Listen this is one of the most creative works I've read. The amount of work that was put in it is insane. You play an active part and get to choose how your story ends. This was such a fun experience <3

the swindling of steve harrington’s heart by @stevebabey (one shot, strangers to lovers) This was such a cute fic, like Steve asking for dating advice in the Hawkins Post was just sweet. I loved all the interactions between him and the reader. If you need a pick-me-up, this is your fic <3

and they were roomates by @sunshinesteviee (one shot, friends to lovers) This fic was just so cute. I loved Robin being kinda in the middle of this and sick of their bullshit. Overall, amazing writing and a quick read if you are feeling down and need cheering up <3

almost paradise by @hawkinsindiana (completed series for now, ST rewrite covering all seasons) I said it so many times, but this is one of my overall favorite stories. Kinda wish we had the reader character in the actual show because it makes so much sense. The writing is amazing, I even shed a few tears towards the end. I can't wait to see what's in store for s5. Also, check out the various blurbs that go with it. There is so much work being put into this, and it deserves a bit more love. I'm gonna re-read the whole thing next year. <3

steve zombie!au by @luveline (compilation of blurbs and one shots) This is one of my fav AU, I can't just choose one thing, so I linked the entire masterlist Their relationship is just so special. I love the world building and the other characters. It's amazing <3

no good at waiting by @familyvideostevie (completed series, sorta enemies to lover farmer market au) This is one of my fav series, and we got such cute blurbs this year from this universe. It has such a cozy vibe to it, great world building and characters. <3

Any Way Out by @hairrington (one shot, angst, ex boyfriend Steve) This fic was a mix of heartache and comfort. Nadia is one of my fav Steve writers out there so everyone check out her entire masterlist. <3

some kind of muted blue by @thecreelhouse (one shot, dark themes, deals with things like ptsd) This was so devastatingly beautiful, I loved that this fic explored Steve's felings so much, something we don't get to see in the show. This was just amazingly written <3

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington fic #steve harringtion fanfic #steve harrington recs #please let all the links work #sandra says stuff

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dukeofriven · 7 months

Text

To Ravel-Out The Weaved-Up Follies: The Decline and Fall of Homestuck^2

[I first started this essay a few months ago during a strange, brief resurgence of Homestuck^2 discussion that vanished almost as quickly as it began. Because my brain is A Wretchedly Uncooperative Thing this essay has stayed in draft form, being picked at, until—naturally—Homestuck^2 surprised us all by relaunching with a completely new team at its head. I’ve decided to push myself to publish this anyway, because I still think the core of my thesis is correct. So, keeping in mind that this leaves the starting gate slightly later than I would have wished (not knowing I was in a race), let us commence.]

___________________________________________________

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. -Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965 “Once upon a time there was a Boojum——" the Professor began, but stopped suddenly. "I forget the rest of the Fable," he said. "And there was a lesson to be learned from it. I'm afraid I forget that, too." -Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, 1893

Several posts about Homestuck^2 have started to crop-up… adjacent to my dash. I'm not attaching myself to those posts because it seems rude, but their points are largely an attempt at revisionism of the fate of Homestuck^2. Understand I'm not using the term ‘revisionist’ pejoratively: it is common, even sensible for artists to look back at failed projects and try to pick up the pieces and derive some value from them. I’ve done it myself, many times. Nobody likes to say "I entirely wasted my time, my passion, and my creative energy for [X] days, months, years.” It is important to look at a failure and see what you did right, treasure the parts that were worth treasuring.

But equally I don't want to go too far in rehabilitating what was, undeniably, a failure. There's a lot of critical theory being brought-up, a lot of talk of Homestuck^2 from a standpoint of post-modernism, or post-post-modernism, trying to engage with what Homestuck^2 was as a platform for ideas. A habitus, if you’ll forgive the jargon, what Bourdieu famously called (in a Hussie-like masterwork of language) “the structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures.”

I get it. I get what the Homestuck^2 team was trying to do intellectually: where their minds were at, the hostility they faced, the vitriol they were harmed by. I get it.

But that's not why Homestuck^2 failed. Homestuck^2 did not fail because it dreamed too big, or was too intellectual. It did not fail because its themes were not worth exploring, or because its lens was too meta: for most of its original run, after all, Homestuck is nothing but an interrogation of Homestuck. Its brains were not why Homestuck^2 failed. The problem was its execution. The problem was its heart.

There's a lot to be said about not giving fans what they think they want. The internet drowns in coffee shop AUs where everything interesting about a franchise's characters has been vulgarly ripped from the text, leaving a drama-less, tension-less pablum where everything is stagnant and unchanging, everyone gets along, all the romances are cute and smooth, and you can burrow in the comforting ooze of artistic and narrative death. Give fans exactly what they want and frequently nothing creatively meaningful will result. Fandoms famously resisted both The Empire Strikes Back and The Wrath of Khan when they first released because they pushed characters to change, and yet they grew to be beloved as fans realized that what they thought they wanted and what it turned out they could enjoy were not as alike s they assumed. There's nothing wrong with showing fans that there can be more to a story that just doing the same thing over again, retrenching into the pablum wastelands of growth-free comfort fics.

But when asking whether Homestuck^2 did or did not gave fans what they wanted or needed, we must first raise an important establishing question: which fans? That is to say: who was its intended audience? Who was Homestuck^2 written for?

At its peak, Homestuck Classic had millions of readers and a million page-hits a day. There was a whole contingent of fandom who came only for the trolls (in some baffling cases actually skipping the first four acts of the story to jump right to into Act 5). There was another contingent who loved the video game parody, there were Problem Sleuth junkies, and in the early acts there were the suggestion box obsessives: all of these were readers who were fans of parts of the story but largely stopped reading Homestuck as the story got more concerned with the complex nature of stories and narrative itself. Homestuck^2 is clearly not for them—as indeed Homestuck Classic itself had not 'been' for them for much of its run. Homestuck^2 is also not for new readers: if you haven't read the Homestuck Epilogues through at least twice, if you don't remember all its major plot points and the plot points of Homestuck Classic, it makes no attempt to onboard you and is, probably in-arguably, outright impenetrable to those not already in the know. It’s not impossible—there were SBaHJ fans who onboarded with the first context-free SBaHJ and went ‘yeah, I can vibe with this’ and never knew or cared that it was a reference work for something else— but it doesn’t seem likely that many people ‘jumped on’ the Homestuck train with Homestuck^2. I think Homestuck^2’s writers would agree that Homestuck^2 expected you to know the lay of the land. So: nobody new was likely going to read Homestuck^2, and (given its density of Homestuck call-backs) neither was it for more casual Homestuck fans. Homestuck^2 was not even for the truly otiose Andrew Hussie diehards: Hussie was only tangentially involved in the project, they weren't writing it, and there's seemingly no references at all to Barty's Brew-Ha-Ha or Inappropriate Time for Ham, so that's a full seventeen readers it also likely turned off (sorry, comrades. One day…)

So who, then, was Homestuck^2 for? Its intended readers seemed to be those who read the Epilogues and loved them. This is a complicated issue: for those who weren’t there, the Epilogues were… controversial. I defended them at the time: I liked them, even admired them, partially because I believed with the fervor of a zealot that there was still something else to come. I called this final entry ‘Pumpkin.’ Homestuck, a story that always rejected binaries, surely was not meant to conclude with over-the-top Candy and/or grim, dour Meat. I knew in my heart that Pumpkin was coming, where John rejected both of these dark and crazy futures and found a third way in which his friends grew up and matured without losing themselves and their friendship: not a story without conflict, but surely the prime timeline as existed in general fandom imagination could not accept Dirk’s grotesque, manipulative suicide, breastfeeding Gamzee, brutal civil wars, and Dirk and Jane becoming so cruel and hateful. Surely that was set-up to pay-off a better future later: after all, like its author, Homestuck abhorred a binary.

But Pumpkin never came, and now I look at the Epilogues and I find lot in it (for lack of a better term) ‘edge lord showboating.’ It feels like reading 90s comics all over again, including the bits with cannibalism. A lot of bleak and miserable things happen in the narrative, and I find myself asking ‘do they happen because they should, or just because they could?’ (And how many times can one franchise treat Jade Harley like absolutely garbage?)

But if the Epilogues had a true and golden virtue, it was their framing as intrinsically being fan-fiction: Meat or Candy, this was not the 'true' continuation of the franchise (as much as that means anything), this was speculative futures, not much different from Doc Scratch’s story of the Vriska/Noir battle. A one-shot, in other terms, an elseworlds: not a definitive statement about What Homestuck Was From Now On, but an experiment in tone and structure. How far can you push Homestuck before it doesn’t feel like Homestuck any more? (Turns out not nearly as far as you might think.) A lot of people didn’t notice, however, or perhaps simply didn’t care: the Epilogues ripped the Homestuck fandom apart. Homestuck Classic often did things in bad-taste as part of its odd charm: Gamzee’s codpiece, Jack playing dress-up after slaughtering a nice couple on a date, Caliborn’s cartoonish misogyny. Some bits land, some don’t, but for fans—I think for many, if not most—the Epilogues crossed a line that they were not comfortable with.

In some quarters the Epilogues are reviled, and I honestly can not fault people who found them off-putting. They are: intentionally so, provocatively so, and it should be okay for people to be put off by them without insisting that the haters ‘just didn’t get it.’ Often they did: they ‘got it,’ they just didn’t like it. It ‘squiked them out’ as we used to say, and the writers had to have known it would: discomfort is the nature and partial purpose of provocative art.

(Sidebar: Epilogue writers, you wrote a plot-line in which 16-year old Homestuck Act 6 protagonist Jane Crocker grows-up to become a racist dictator who has a cuckolding sexual relationship with Gamzee Makarra that involves kin-play involving public breastfeeding.

Sorry Andres Serranos acolytes, that’s not going to go down super-well with the majority of people, not because they are uptight suburban prudes but because they liked Jane Crocker and felt this outcome was not grounded well in the character they knew: only the obtuse would act shocked and try and argue it was due to a lack of sophistication. You took a gamble, you took a risk, you faced the outcome. You fucked around with ICP Hitler breastfeeding cuckoldry and you found out.)

So: who was Homestuck^2 for? It was for people who had read Homestuck multiple times, had read the Epilogues multiple times, and wanted a sequel that involved those Epilogues.

That is… a small audience. A very small audience. I counted myself among them, but had no illusions that its reach was ever going to be very large. Homestuck^2 was never going to be the Second Coming of Homestuck as a sui generis cultural phenomenon: seemingly by design, it was deliberately written for an insular audience who liked a controversial and difficult interpretation of a famous story and wanted more of that interpretation. So the Homestuck^2 team wrote for them: they came to the table with big dreams and big ideas. They came to the table with lots of critical theory under their belts: they knew their Barthes and Baudrillard, they could reference queer theory and the legacy of post-structuralism, they were the sort of people who knew how to situate Homestuck in post-post-modernism and what that meant for the nature of its exploration of stories.

They had an audience, and they had a plan. They were going to give the fans what they wanted.

So after much hype and fanfare, after interviews and the Tumblr equivalent of a press-junket—which saw the new team saying how excited they were to tackle Homestuck’s legacy, how many great ideas they had, how much having a diverse team was going to see Homestuck ‘done right’—Homestuck^2 first published on the 25th of October, 2019, releasing 32 pages.

We start in the glittering majesty of space. The camera swoops in among the stars, barrelling towards a rushing spacecraft (every frame of Homestuck^2 looks great, the visual arts team's work is its unquestioned highlight). We aim at a viewport in the spacecraft’s hull and slowly the Muti-Narratively-Dimensional Ubervillian Dirk Strider comes into view. Fresh from his triumph in the Epilogues, continuing his wicked schemes, he looks right at the camera, and—speaking directly to the audience—he voices the first line of dialogue in Homestuck^2:

"Surprise, bitch."

…

There is…

…

… there is no coming from back that.

There is no saving it.

It is the 25th of October, 2019, and Homestuck^2 launches with its own death-rattle. It stumbles out of the gate like a beautiful racing pony catching its delicate hoof on the sharp, treacherous edge of an unwieldy analogy and tumbling into the indifferent soil of hard reality, shattering all four legs and immediately marking itself for teary euthanasia at the hand of the devastated young girl with the violet eyes who raised it from a foal and dreamed of making Nationals.

We have established that Homestuck^2’s potential audience was small. The people who were most likely to like it were already an insular, distinctive group who had bought-in to what much or all the Epilogues had to offer. Homestuck^2’s opening-day crowd did not need to be sold on the word of the Lord—they already believe it: they came to see their first glimpse of the promised land.

And in its very first conversation with that audience, in its very first words, Homestuck^2 makes the most spectacular miscalculation of tone since 2013's DmC: Devil May Cry—or for those of us of who remember the 90s: ‘Dirk Strider’s about to make you his bitch.’

There's nothing wrong with starting a story with a villain, there's nothing wrong with a villain being a contemptible heel to its audience, but Homestuck^2 spends its opening 32 entries—which, at over 7600 words are longer than the prologue to the Homestuck Epilogues—jumping between Dirk’s smarmy conversations with fellow characters and a monologue to the audience, pages infused with an arrogance and condescension that is downright enervating. The text is frequently dense, so dense it feels like chewing your way through a plank of wood. It is actively tiring to read: I bailed on my first attempt at reading Homestuck^2 when it originally dropped because I just did not have the energy to squint at my screen and read that much orange-on-off-white text.

It is, to be clear, contemptuous. Dirk did much the same in the Epilogues, but the locus has changed. In the Epilogues Dirk taunts the reader with the changes he is making to the story: he knows they object to his manipulations, and he preens as good villains do. But in Homestuck^2, Dirk speaks not of his changes but of the very existence of Homestuck^2 itself. He treats his audience as inherently hostile to the entire existence of the work they have just shown-up to read (or even support via a Patreon), a hostility that culminates when he ‘opens’ a suggestion box and receives the suggestion ‘Dirk: Stop Making Homestuck,’—which he at-once rejects and goes on to monologue some more.

Dirk is talking to an audience who isn’t there. He is speaking to everyone who didn’t like the Epilogues and objects to Homestuck’s 'sequel' directly following them: but that audience isn’t reading Homestuck^2. They bailed in advance, and any who did try and keep an open mind likely jumped ship the moment the comic started by calling them a bitch and implying they’re idiots. The only people likely to read past the fifth page are those who already bought-in to Homestuck^2’s plan: and they are greeted with some 32 pages and 7600 words of the comic’s villain re-litigating and justifying that plan over and over and over again to people who nominally already agreed with him.

It is draining. It is annoying. It is boring to read.

There’s so much you could critique about Homestuck^2’s choices: from Rose cheating on Kanaya to impregnate Jade to Jane Crocker going full Trump and keeping kids in cages. Equally there’s arguments to be made that Homestuck^2’s very premature cancellation inhibits any ability to judge the story fairly: like any serialized narrative stopped mid-way, we have no way of knowing what narrative payoffs were supposed to be. Decisions that seemed baffling on page 8 might prove brilliant and bold by page 8000. But we never got to page 8000, because Homestuck^2 made one crucial error:

It started by telling its audience they were fools for not being smart enough to appreciate how brilliant Homestuck^2 was going to be, and then spent a majority of some 7600 words repeating itself like the worst self-pitying incel you’ve ever had the misfortune to be trapped with at a party. If only the ungrateful could realize how smart, handsome, and well-educated I—Homestuck^2—am, the love I deserve will come flowing in. I’ll show them all.

Homestuck^2 never recovered from that first, fatal error. The rest of its choices, good and bad, are almost irrelevant in the face of that opening broadside, that hostility, that tedium. Homestuck Classic earned its walls of text and at least knew how to space them: Hometuck^2 took its audience forbearance as a given and opens with a lecture on its principles and quality like an unusually snide abstract on a sociology paper. Homestuck^2 essentially began by telling its audience to leave unless they were willing to give it carte blanche, to roll over for its brilliance from the first, to accept in advance that its intelligence and virtue were first rate. So the audience did leave and it never came back and eventually the whole thing collapsed via artist infighting that was so rancorous and possibly subsumed by NDAs that to this day no one has ever halfway adequately explained what happened at the end.

But that ending was preordained from the beginning, for the balance was hopelessly incorrect.

So to anyone trying to write a revisionist history of Homestuck^2 in which its downfall was the fault of readers who simply didn’t ‘give it a chance,’ who didn’t appreciate its themes, who couldn’t grasp (or didn’t care to grasp) its intellectual bonafides (not to mention its extraordinary self-assurance that it was going to be queer Homestuck ‘done right,’ which is a whole essay about a priori reasoning in and of itself)... in other words, a history in which Homestuck^2' downfall happened because people just didn’t ‘get it,’ I’d like to sum up my counter-argument succinctly:

People didn’t like Homestuck^2 because you wrote it bad.

[Afterwards:

There is something bitingly funny about the ‘return’ of Homestuck^2 with the announcement that, from what I can gather, seemingly every person involved with the original project was fired (or, as they’d probably insist, refused to come back). Dirk’s preening, overwhelming arrogance, that ‘Dirk: Stop Making Homestuck’ prompt, will forever haunt the original team’s unwieldy vision. “I’d bet you just looove for us not to make Homestuck anymore” the team said, with all the confidence of an entrepreneur dismissing safety regulations before climbing into his homemade submarine, and boy were lessons learned. My problem with the return, however, is that I don’t know who genuinely wants to see the story of Homestuck^2 finished: the remaining cadre of die-hard patrons who still have enough goodwill to want the promise of the story’s finale fulfilled is microscopic. I’d argue there’s more people waiting for the conclusion of Wizardy Herbert, and I’m the only person I know who has ever read it. What I mean is: as a choice to revive a struggling franchise it doesn’t make much sense, and further—if it is not clear—I don’t think this is a story worth finishing. What is to be salvaged? Jane-the-Dictator, Rose’s cheating, Obnoxious BabyVriska, Dirk Strider the monster? The problem with Homestuck^2 is that Pesterquest happened, and those who played it went ‘this—this is the kind of story we were hoping for, not your edge lord showboating.’ And we only got one Pesterquest and Homestuck^2 limped on for another year reviled, ignored, and eventually forgotten. When it died, most people didn’t have any idea, because the drama never crossed their screens: nobody was talking about it any more. As my best friend noted, give us more Paradox Space. Give us more stories with joy and some sense of fun, something not written by people who often felt like they had an ‘End of Evangelion’ style hatred of Homestuck, or at the very least took the old joke that Hussie was ‘trolling’ his audience at face value. (Writing a good story with twists, set-backs, and tragic moments is not trolling, it is just writing a good story.) Homestuck^2 never felt like it understood that: it was rude and iconoclastic for no more compelling reason than it thought that was meaningful. But then I think the legacy of Epilogues has been extremely toxic—part of the positivity towards Pesterquest was that it let the Epilogues go, featuring a triumphant moment where YoungDirk confronts his Epilogues self and goes ‘I don’t have to be a huge wanker, actually, I can stay a character people can stand and even love again.’

Do that, new team. Pesterquest is named-dropped on the new site more than once, and my dream is that its cast arrives and overthrows the corrosive toxicity of the Epilogues, banishes it to the far realm of underbaked elsewhere ‘what-ifs’ along with every DC cannibalism story and that time Peter Parker’s radioactive semen gave MJ cancer.

The Epilogues and Homestuck^2 are, at this point, not worth salvaging—but I’d happily see them formally buried.]

#homestuck #Homestuck 2 #Homestuck^2 #homestuck beyond canon #andrew hussie #dirk strider #pesterquest #homestuck team #james roach #jane crocker #rose lalonde #kanaya maryam #homestuck epilogues #Wizardy Herbert #Vriska Serket #Jade Harley #daikatana #john romero

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