#while i am a massive horror fan

[faeryarchives]

when your hopeless streamer gets a girlfriend (ace trappola x f!reader)

summary: the rising streamer ace trappola has always been teased by his friends and fans about his failed relationships - that is until one certain stream where each and everyone of them were proven wrong.

note: ok i had this idea at 1 in the morning i was like 'hmmm what if we make a streamer series for twst?' and its just full of fluff and crack like no magic au + everyone is just normal

recent fics: happy birthday (malleus x reader) & so what are we? & in sickness and in health

it was around saturday midnight when everyone should be asleep, but ace trappola decided it was a good time to stream a horror game out of all possible games he could play with his friends. they all started as friends before starting the game but i fear he might have none after the stream.

"crabby, where are you~?" the sound of floyd humming through the mic sent shivers down the boy's back as he tried hiding from the hunter. "it's so funny to see floyd just have this tunnel vision to kill ace." jamil's smooth voice rang out, obviously amuse how the scene was unfolding. 

"oh flooooyd! ace is hiding in the house with the telephone!"

"i hate all of you, after this game i am blocking everyone!" seeing him become the victim in the game and everyone turning on against him, his fans flood the live stream chat with laughing emojis and 'take the l'.

"ace, become a good bait while we fix the car." he heard ruggie and deuce laugh at his misery before their characters ran opposite his direction.

"okay who is the one that said floyd should be the hunter this round? hey, hey, hey! stop chasing after me- am i the only player in this game?! epel is right here!" in an act of desperation, ace tried to hide behind epel's character instead but only to receive massive damage when the attack hit him instead.

"eh... but guppy-chan isn't even trying to run away, which is boring!"

"wait, really?" he then stopped running. ace turned to face the hunter's character, trying to see if floyd would actually kill him, only to notice something wrong a little too late. "heh, gotcha,"  ace screamed into his mic, watching his character gets stuck in the tree and meet his demise as floyd split him into half literally. the words 'you died' appeared on the streamer's screen. 

gloomurai: wow you are so great in this game 🤣

"i see you idia-senpai! it's not my fault they all turned against me!"

wani-sama🔧: it's your karma for selling them out to ruggie last game

"yeah, yeah... well, i'm always the last one to get caught, so this can be pretty relaxing." the streamer smirked as he watched from deuce's point of view where he is currently lost in the woods. 

"i get to watch them die but knowing floyd he might quit mid-game." to used to being the first one out, ace sighed, switching from one point of view to another. bored ou of his mind, he looked at the corner of his screen, ace looked at the comments curiously as they try suggesting things.

muscle-red: why don't you do a q and a while waiting then?

"question and answer? don't you guys basically know me already?" ace looked at the screen intently, contemplating whether he should do it.

"fucking viper i swear!" suddenly someone joined the call causing ace to jump in surprised, only to realize it was ruggie. 

"how did you die?"

"jamil betrayed me because we thought it was a four-seater car. it turns out it was only two!" hearing this, ace turned to jamil's point of view and snickered about how he and epel got chased by the sneaky eel. "welcome to the dead club."

as if he could imagine his senior rolling his eyes at his words, he smirked smugly - karma does bite back hard. "hardy har... what were you doing? i heard something about a question and answer?"

"chat wants me to have another q and a portion, what more do i have to tell you guys?"

cowabunga: how is the search for your beloved mwishxr: there is no use in asking that 

"search for my beloved? hey!"

"shishishi! even your viewers are against you!"

it's a running joke in ace's community on how he was immediately dump by his ex girlfriend one week after dating. it wasn't like he wanted to share the story - he shared it as a batsu game after losing a round of uno. usually, when asked about his search for a girlfriend, ace would get all red and try to defend himself from the single until he became old allegations.

but today was surprising because not only did he not become all flustered and defensive - ace trappola looked smug even as he leaned his head into his palm and laughed.

"hmm, i wonder about that?" from behind, ace could hear approaching footsteps stopping next to him, and the live stream chat went wild and even ruggie who was looking at ace's stream right now watched with wide eyes as someone who was wearing the streamer's well-known sweater stood beside him.

"what the fuck?!"

gloomurai: ?!?!? muscle-red: what is with the sudden plot twist wani-sama🔧: WAIT wani-sama🔧: IS THAT-?!

"heya (nickname)~" ace hummed, turning his gaming chair facing your direction, his arms wrapping themselves around your waist as he grinned at you ever so cheekily. "you're late!"

"what are you five? i don't even know why you want me to come over." you rolled your eyes, trying to push him away playfully, only to run your fingers through his hair and chuckle.

seeing him lazily smiling at you causes you to succumb to your urge to pinch his cheeks - hard, making ace cry out in pain. before you could even ask another question, you saw something flash at the corner of your eye causing you to look at his monitor - realizing that he is still streaming. while holding onto you. and he not even on mute!

"this is all your plan, wasn't..." holding his face in your hands, ace could only laugh and nod, his hand quickly pulling you down, making you sit on his lap as he proudly present you to everyone. "as you can see, i am not hopeless anymore!"

wani-sama🔧: WHAT ARE YOU DOING SIS?!

"how is it possible i could hear sebek through the screen..." you sigh, leaning your back on ace and waved at the camera so casually as if the chat and ruggie weren't surprised at all.

"i just want to say to chat that ace didn't have my family in hostage." with you hand wrapped around his, you put up up and showed it to the camera. "and he is stuck with me."

hearing at just what you said made everyone in the chat go insane erupting into numerous emoji and something with the lines of 'oh my god he is not lying!' or just exclamation but nothing beats the reaction of your friends.

"(name) you settled for a guy like him?!" you could hear ruggie's surprised voice through your boyfriend's headset and honestly, you were contemplating if you would agree or just laugh it off.

"what can i say? sometimes, idiots have their charms."

jamil-viper: i can't believe you got (name) of all people... deuce-spade: oh thank god i don't have to keep it a secret anymore. wani-sama🔧: YOU KNEW?! epel-felmier: i think that's the effect of not our gc !!

the stream goes on with ace finally having his bragging rights and the twitter stans going crazy about the sudden girlfriend reveal. oh well, karma does hit back hard doesn't it?

#twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland x reader #twisted wonderland imagines #twst scenarios #twst imagines #twisted wonderland scenarios #ace trappola x reader #ace trappola #twst ace #faeryarchives #a.heartslabyul

[snapscube]

Hi hi i just wanted to say ive been watching a ton of your gaming vods recently while recovering from various ailments as well as personal hardships and i just wanted to say your content has helped me see zombie based horror in a completely different light as someone who previously never really cared for it! to the point where ive played a few games youve streamed myself and am now a massive fan of the last of us and RE (ive even gotten my grandpa into the last of us) and wanted to thank you! ik a tumblr ask isnt much but i hope youre doing well and i appreciate all the effort you put into the things you create!

Aw hey that’s awesome!!! There definitely was a period of time where the genre was very overplayed BUT even within that period there was a lot of great art still being made. Ultimately it’s not the idea but the execution that matters! And stuff like RE and TLOU have become very important to me personally so I’m glad to hear I was able to share them with you!!

[anatthema-art]

Tumblr Men Taxonomy

Ever since the rise of the Spamton fanbase i’ve been seeing a lot of debate on if spamton should be considered a Tumblr Sexyman or not and i think everyone saying he’s NOT is correct, but i’ve been talking with some friends and have realized a pattern in what i’d like to lovingly call a new “branch” of tumblr men/people because it’s an exceedingly common character archetype i feel us as a userbase need to acknowledge and treat separate from your oncelers and the like.

These guys? they’re all classic Tumblr Sexymen right? well, by consulting the primary sources  talking with my friends who were on the website and in the fandoms during the golden age of tumblr men, i’ve realized a massive part of sexyman culture people FORGET is that their appeal doesn’t just come from them being lanky bastard twinks. (we’ll get to sans later)

Their main appeal from a fandom perception is their actual or perceived HUMANITY. That sounds a little weird considering half these characters arent even human, but hear me out. Characters like the onceler and komaeda from dangan ronpa are just... dudes? Like they’re fucked up dudes, but they’re just GUYS. Sans too, even though not a human person, is still a very ORDINARY guy underneath the fandom-imposed angst. the appeal of these characters came from people seeing a spark of relatability and normalcy underneath all their Issues(tm) and fanwork, while portrayed as the “I can fix him” mentality came from a genuine place of exploration into what these people could BE

characters who AREN’T human, like bill cipher, wheatley, and dare I say the goddamn clock from DHMIS were QUITE LITERALLY humanized to explore a potential reality where they COULD be more of... PEOPLE despite their human nature. If they had become popular in THIS day and age, dare i say they fall into our SECOND category more (and as these interpretations of them are fanon i dare say they DO double class considering the disconnect between these common fan headcanons and fans which prefer the source material versions)

and then you get to characters like alastor or jack frost, who were once entirely human, then becoming inhuman entities, and that small bit of something left in there provides intrigue to explore them as people beyond their fun personality exteriors. 

Now, here’s where I’d like to propose the divide. Some of these characters gained less fan notoriety than others (especially because toby fox seems to be the main supplier of these guys) but they have often been labelled TSMs when I see a pretty distinct through line between them, with a little bit of wiggle room

The name i’ve been lovingly calling these guys is Disney Channel Eldritch Horrors. I am very open to new propositions however as the name implies that they are both from the Disney Channel and eldritch horrors which isn’t always correct. I haven’t found a similar name that conveys the same VIBES yet, so if anyone has any ideas for a better name i’d love to hear it. basically, the gist of this trope is that we have some weird little guys who are probably inhuman nightmares who’s appeal comes from sheer force of personality. this is where you get your weird little clown men and goofy loveable abominations. (i feel like some homestuck characters might fit this bill but i know absolutely nothing about any of them)

some of them MAY have some sort of tragedy involved in their backstory (spamton, flowey) but the main appeal of liking the character i’d argue comes more from the sheer strength of their characterization, rather than that stuff. Spamton is the closest to breeching this, but i feel for spamton fans i see way more posts about how people wanna throw him in a microwave than discussing the deep ramifications of his backtory (plus, he wasn’t ever a human person either.) Flowey on the other hand, the fandom has split asriel and him SO far as to be entirely separate characters despite the divide being less of a thing in canon, and people who are fans of just flowey tend to focus less on his backstory. 

now you’ll see i’ve also included discord in here, which is to demonstrate that i don’t think the body type for these guys has to exclusively be “some little shaped dude”, because discord tows that line, but his appeal still stays in that sheer force of personality, and he’s also very much NOT a human being. as mentioned earlier, the canon versions of wheatley and that stupid clock also probably fit this bill more. Bill Cipher is where i see this divide the strongest, between the canon character and fan reactions and he’s such a popular character that his fanbase CAN be split between these two camps i think. 

disney channel eldritch horrors i think, can be classified more on creator intent with their existence rather than fan reaction like a classic TSM. some of these characters gained more popularity than others but there’s a very specific crowd who forms to liking these characters over the TSM variety.

now, one last proposal in taxonomy, is that the twink body type vs lil shaped guy is an indicator of which category a character may fall into but it is not the primary factor and can be overridden by personality 

sans is a weird lil guy in classic toby fox fashion, but i think his status as a Tumblr Sexyman should not be questioned since his fandom was the closest thing to the replication OF the onceler fandom and his appeal was very steeped in his more darker aspects of the character. fizzarolli on the other hand, is very much a lanky beanpole dude, but he also is a stupid chaotic jester man who’s sheer VIBES overpower his body type and his popularity is for that personality. this is a rare phenomenon, but i realized it to be the case through some friends’ OCs, as calling some characters “tumblr sexymen” felt incorrect the deeper i thought about it

so uh... thank you for coming to my ted talk? i have a weird fascination with fan culture around these two specific camps of characters and i felt that i wasn’t able to express why i loved my weird jester men so much until now, as i felt my attachment to them felt a little conflated with a different TYPE of fan culture, and so i spewed my word vomit into something somewhat coherent. 

#tumblr sexymen #tumblr men #sexyman #the onceler #sans #spamton #bill cipher #alastor #deltarune #undertale #disney channel eldritch horrors #this is the stupidest thing ive ever made

[himboskywalker]

Heyy boo, do you have a book that is not star wars related that you wish you could read for the first time or reread all the time?

I am searching for books recommendations and I am pretty open about every genre, maybe not horror but everything else is totally fine.

My number one book recommendation that I will always obnoxiously shove in everyone’s faces is Lord of the Rings. It is my heart and soul and favorite thing in the world and if you’ve never read the trilogy I highly recommend it. But I also have quite a few other recs!

Anything written by Andy Weir. “The Martian” is his best known work,which they made the Matt Damon movie of,and while I do love it “Project Hail Mary” is my favorite of his and one of my favorite sci-fi books of all time.

I loved “To Sleep in a Sea of Stars” which was Christopher Paolini’s sci-fi debut a couple years ago but he just came out with its prequel “Fractal Noise” and I liked it even more.

For some good old fashioned space opera brilliance I recommend the “Final Architecture” trilogy by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The last book of the series just came out and I DEVOURED it. Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time,Ruin,and Memory are also phenomenal, you really just can’t go wrong with him.

For more space opera and politics I highly recommend Arkady Martine,she DEBUTED with “Memory Called Empire” which won all sorts of awards. The sequel also recently came out but I haven’t gotten the chance to read it.

I’m in the middle of reading Pierce Brown’s “Red Rising” saga,which I would describe as adult Hunger Games,and have thoroughly enjoying it as well!

For fantasy I love Samantha Shannon’s “Priory of the Orange Tree” and “A Day of Fallen Night”. You’ll get varying opinions of what to read first,I read Priory when it first came out so that’s my biased opinion.

I’m a massive fan of “She Who Became the Sun” by Shelly Parker-Chan and their sequel “He Who Drowned the World” and I want it to go on record I read SWBS when it first came out and before it blew up *flips hair*

R.J. Barker’s “Tide Child” trilogy is awesome,first book of that series is “The Bone Ships.” It’s high seas fantasy with dragon bone ships and epic war and amazing world building.

I always highly recommend “Gideon the Ninth” by Tamsyn Muir and now also the rest of the books in the series. I think the usual pitch is lesbian necromancers in space.

I cannot cannot recommend “The Shadow of the Gods” by John Gwynne enough! It’s quintessential epic fantasy told as a Norse epic and it’s in my top five of modern fantasy books.

While I have serious beef with Song of Achilles just like our fellow obikin Will,I did love and devour Madeline Miller’s “Circe.” In every way I think it’s her superior work.

I can’t recommend fantasy without recommending “The Grace of Kings” by Ken Liu. His entire series will blow your socks off,but the first book won nearly every award for fantasy books that have ever existed.

I’m a huge fan of R.F Kuang’s “The Poppy War” series although I’ve heard this one is a contentious recommendation. I think this series is hate or love it but if for whatever reason you don’t vibe with this series I also highly recommend Kuang’s “Babel.”

If you want something a little less well known I could chew through drywall over Simon Jimenez’s “The Spear Cuts Through Water.” It was in my top five of 2023 release books.

I can also make a separate rec list of less new books and overall classics I always recommend or gift to people,both fiction and nonfiction!

#book recs #book recommendations #science fiction #fantasy #anons

[nixliz]

an introspective of the stagnation of creepypasta from the perspective of a creepypasta author since 2014

for the past couple of years due to the resurgence of creepypastas amongst a very young demographic, the meaning of 'creepypasta' has gotten so watered down it's effectively lost all meaning.

i've been writing creepypasta since 2014, using the genre as a cheesy way to become a better writer. all of my stories from back then are garbage, of course - what matters to me is the fact that i made them and improved as an artist in the process. if not for creepypastas, i wouldn't be nowhere near a good a writer as i am nowadays, and i honestly owe alot of it to how blunt the creepypasta fanbase was at the time. if a story sucked, you'd hear about it - while this was definitely not done in good faith, a side effect of this meant you ended up picking up on overdone cliches, bad writing and bad characterization just by reading these stories you're constantly told are "bad". by reading them with the foresight of KNOWING they aren't good, there's alot of information you can gleam. you pick up on parts of the story you can recognize as bad, and leave having a better knowledge of what Not to do when writing a story.

of course nowadays the creepypasta community's effectively died off and been replaced by children who care more about powerscaling their edgy sonic ocs than actually writing anything.

it'd be easy for me to just say that the creation and resurgence of sonic.exe is precisely what killed creepypasta as a whole, and in a sense it's not wrong, but i personally believe the thing that killed the genre is less about the story everyone idolizes and more about the culture that the story's appeal ended up cultivating.

sonic.exe fans have always existed. even back in 2014, there were tons of kids obsessed with it. i feel like that initial surge of popularity, while frustrating to many due to the poor quality of the original story, the community was ultimately harmless. they were just socially awkward kids being awkward and making their own stories. the part that i find admirable about the exe community back then is the key word, "Stories". if a kid back in the day liked sonic.exe, they'd download gamemaker and make their own game, or they'd go to the creepypasta/SOG wiki and write their own story. were they any good? more often than not, no. but the effort that went into creating media just out of an appreciation for a dumb story you liked is nothing short of admirable. of course there were stinkers - one of the first ever fan stories was a complete, beat-for-beat ripoff of a sonic creepypasta that came BEFORE exe, but regardless, there was alot of genuine effort behind these fanworks. for lack of better word, there was alot of soul - something the current community lacks.

sonic.exe recently got its second wind (in the form of an fnf mod of all things lol) and now everyone and their grandma knows about it. however, my hatred of the current community stems from something i never see brought up. if someone's bitching about sonic.exe it's only ever about the things you can actually hold people accountable for, like the massively rampant amount of abusers/pdfiles lurking around every corner (and yes, this is extremely prevalent in the community and needs to be addressed) but my problem lies in the lack of sincerety every recent piece of fanwork has. people nowadays don't care about making a story - and this is a problem that seems to infect a LOT of horror media, especially indie games - they care more about making a recognizable mascot.

look at any sonic.exe derivitive made after 2022 (most use the term horrorbrew, i don't know why they don't just use the term creepypasta or exe because there's nothing exactly making them stand out). nine times out of 10, you're not going to find any sort of game, or story, or any official media they're actually attached to. more often than not, they're just a *mascot* for a nonexistent story. that's where my problem lies - there's no more passion in writing creepypastas anymore. the part that people only seem to care about anymore is the recognizable mascot, the 'face' of a creepypasta, so they trim everything that isn't the mascot away, and i feel like doing this completely defeats the purpose of making creepypasta. if you don't believe me, every single creepypasta that people still talk about are ones that have a recognizable 'mascot' - squidward's suicide, suicidemouse, sonic.exe, i hate you, godzilla nes - while ones that don't have an overarcing antagonist or image (noend house, SAR woods) are basically forgotten. people don't care about the stories anymore, they only care about the antagonist. they see the scary, bloody-eyed sonic in the thumbnail of the story and think "i can do that". and when you see one of these nu-exe's actually try and make a story to pair with its mascot, it's either really contrived and tries to take itself way too seriously (needlemouse) or extremely derivitive of other media (sonic limited edition). this has also led to my least favorite trend of the nu creepypasta community, the trend of 'retaking' old pastas and cramming as many analog horror/exe tropes as possible into them. vibingleaf's content is the biggest offender - all he does is take old stories, slap a vhs filter on them, and (in the case of stories without an overarcing villain like the grieving) add some completely unfitting villain character who serves only to give the remake a marketable 'face' for the thumbnail. and people act like his remakes are the DEFINITIVE WAY TO ENJOY THESE STORIES! THEY AREN'T! STOP SAYING THEY'RE OBJECTIVELY BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL! in the case of these inoffensive creepypastas, there's probably nothing more disrespectful than trying to 'one up' the original story! you're just putting another indie artist down so you can soak up all the attention like a douchebag! make and enjoy remakes because YOU want to make them - don't make them just to drag your fellow artists through the mud, damnit!

of course as much of a grouch i am about the state of creepypasta today, there's stuff i've seen that falls into this sort of creepypasta umbrella that i'm actually quite a fan of, even if they commit some of the things i hate to see. my favorite example would be that fake spongebob broadcast interruption (i have no idea if this is the original video because it's gone through retake hell but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0DMBZmuf1Y ). it commits alot of the things i don't like in modern creepypastas - it has a scary spongebob in it that seems to only exist to give the story a mascot and i feel like having the interrupted footage be stereotypically 'scary' doesn't fit the whole 'mentally ill nickelodeon employee tampering with footage' vibe the ending gives off but, in my humble opinion, it stands on its own as an interesting little story and there's alot i enjoy about it despite its faults. i like it because someone had an IDEA - and while that idea may have been derivitive of other lost media stories, it stands on its own and is enjoyable. more creators need to strive to make content like this. care more about making an interesting STORY, not an interesting CHARACTER. someone from the exe community, if given the same prompt, would've instead just drew a scary spongebob, named him some shit like "The Poriferan" and had someone else make an fnf mod about it - this guy went through the effort of fleshing their prompt out, and i have nothing but respect for them for doing so.

rant over. creepypasta means alot to me as a person and i owe the community alot for indirectly teaching me how to write and how (not) to create horror content, so it genuinely hurts seeing how badly the community has fallen.

#rant #creepypasta #exe

[rararazaquato]

Tell us more about le cartoon version of Raincode you have please.

Like of other characters appearing and more dynamics, including episodes.

oh BABY you're in for a treat!!!

i have a whole google doc planned out for this thing, despite me having no animation experience gjgkhkh... this is gonna be the Public Lore Dump Post btw, and spoilers for all of rain code will be under the cut.

so the concept for this whole thing came about while watching the animations of youtuber OkayScreamingNow. super cool animation btw, their "psycho teddy" animation moderately blew up but i'm a huge fan of their "everybody likes you" video.

between watching those, a ton of aimkid videos, wince media's meat bun song, and nicktendo's mighty b review, i started feeling really nostalgic for mid-late 2000s animation, the stuff i grew up on. growing up creepie, yin yang yo, kenny the shark, all these were shows i adored as a kid. so, combined with my current rain code fixation, this little au came to be!

the general conceit of this au is that "Master Detective Archives" is a 2008 animated children's program that lasted for 20 episodes and is majority lost media. only a couple episodes exist in the bowels of shitty piracy sites, and even then those sites keep getting taken down. the more screenshots and concept art i make, the more is "revealed" about the show.

one of the things that interests me the most about children's media is how people worked around the censors. a lot of people are familiar with the story of the ren and stimpy adult party cartoon. for those who aren't familiar, when john "god's mistake" kricfalusi created an adult oriented reboot of ren and stimpy, the show was dogshit. with the new ability to rely on the crutch of whatever grossout sexual humor it wanted, it became a massive stain on john k's career (he has had other horrific stains both before and after apc, but i need to stress, no one liked apc).

for a more positive example, i love pretty much all of jhonen vasquez's work, but i find the humor and even some of the horror of invader zim to be more interesting than the same stuff in jthm, because iz was working under far stricter standards and practices.

what i'm trying to get at is that i enjoy the challenge of seeing how i can take concepts and make them more kid-friendly while still keeping the intrigue and interest the concepts originally had. i worked at a summer camp in 2022, and the driving force behind this little project was "keeping rain code camp-appropriate, but also keeping it interesting".

this ethos will hopefully explain some of the Big Changes i made to the story and characters. i do want to stress that i do not think i am improving on the original work. i think rain code is a story that, inherently, works better as an m-rated, gritty, cyberpunk-y murder mystery. i've just always been uniquely fascinated by this particular genre shift.

so, first major change: nocturnal detective agency has turned into nocturnal detective academy. this is a place where young minds, particularly those with supernatural powers, go to hone their craft. or at least... it was. now it's run exclusively by three people: headmaster Zange Eraser, school nurse and therapist Melami Goldmine, and teacher (and everything else) Yakou Furio.

i grew up with a book series called school of fear, which was about a small group of kids with severe phobias being sent to help conquer their fears at a highly rated school. however, it was actually just a kooky old lady and her massive mansion, and while she helped the kids get over their fears, she did it in unorthodox and occasionally darkly humorous ways. i remember a scene in the books where she put the claustrophobe and the kid afraid of death in a coffin for a few hours, and while that is absolutely NOT how exposure therapy works, the idea of a school that's just a few adults running a lowkey scam out of their house has always tickled my funny bone.

so the nda is a school, teaching detective skills and the like. of course, because yakou is my beautiful failwife, he mostly just sends his students out into the city of Kanai Ward to do their own investigative work and report back with what they've learned... as long as they don't get in trouble with Hecksmile or his goons, at least!

yeah, the other big change is that the peacekeepers are more like team rocket than corrupt cops. while i agree that the police suck, and a lot of older cartoons seem to share that sentiment (even some newer ones like gravity falls), having all the villains be evil, corrupt cops seems like a recipe to get s&p on your ass. so now, the cops just don't do anything, and Hecksmile and his goons just wreak havoc whenever they feel like it.

(i've already explained the hecksmile bit in a previous post, but i dont think any of the other names would need changing. maybe if this was the 90s, desuhiko and fubuki would get their names changed to something more eurocentric, but this isn't the 90s and that stuff was cringe even back then.)

there are only seven students at the academy, and i've de-aged these characters to be more relatable to the target audience: our main character yuma, halara, desuhiko, fubuki, vivia, pucci, and aphex. i'll detail them a bit here, because yakou, zange, and melami can all stay pretty similar (actually, melami doesn't randomly feel up strangers to get their clothing measurements anymore, but that's a pretty minor change).

yuma is still our main character, acting as the straight man and audience surrogate. the whole "number one" twist isn't really a thing with how this whole plot is set up, so his awkward and generally "scrunkly" attitude from the game is his natural state here. though none of the ages of the characters are specified, he's often called out as the youngest detective, probably in his preteens or early teenagehood. his coalescence is used for a lot of teamwork-based solutions to problems, but he isn't that great at actual mystery-solving.

this is where shinigami comes in! in the first episode, after some hijinks, yuma accidentally summons a death god. fortunately, he summons a teenage death god. she can only appear in her cool human form in her summoner's dreams, she can't interact with anyone in the physical world except her summoner, and she doesn't even have her reaper's license yet! regardless, she likes having a friend, so she helps yuma see things from different perspectives. i figured death spirits wouldn't be off the table, exactly (i mean, look at billy and mandy), but i think there's a certain humor in a death god not being able to do any soul reaping. i like to think she talks about it like her driver's license. "ugh, i'm not allowed to reap any souls until i'm 16 thousand years old! i'm only 14 thousand!!!" because of her teenagerdom, her human form is going to be far less sexualized. also because i think her canon outfit is a little ugly.

halara doesn't change much from canon. very mysterious and intimidating. no one knows their gender because everyone's too afraid to ask (and to find out, you'd have to pay them about $100 in cash). they still love cats but have an allergy to them, they still don't trust people, etc.

desuhiko changes a lot from canon. he's less actively creepy and more of a wannabe romantic. he has a tendency to fall for grown women, although he has absolutely no chance with any of them. this is played for laughs.

fubuki is another character who doesn't change much from canon. obscenely rich and super out of touch with everything around her. has occasional bursts of intelligence for comedy.

vivia is still everyone's favorite emo sadboy, writing poetry in the fireplace. his passive suicidal ideation, though interesting to explore in media made for adults, is very dangerous to put in a children's show, so we're nixing that. instead, he's just real sleepy and goth. he's also the least interested in doing actual detective work, so when he and yuma are investigating together, it gives yuma a chance to take the lead.

pucci doesn't change much from canon, but admittedly, we don't know too much about her. she's sensitive to noise, very thoughtful and introspective, but very awkward around people being nice to her.

and aphex. what to say about aphex. i don't like aphex for a number of reasons (anyone who played with jpn audio can back me up on this one), but the idea of someone who is initially violent and cruel becoming your (still somewhat violent and cruel) ally is a fun character trope to me. my go-to example is buford from phineas and ferb, and i think that's the role aphex would play. initially a threat, but eventually becomes softer and more well-developed. well, if the show got more seasons.

and that's our main cast! i could talk about kurumi, makoto, and martina, as i have a lot of cool ideas for them, but i have been writing this for like an hour and i think i need to chill ahaha... ty for the ask!!!

#mdarc #rain code #rain code spoilers #mda nicktoon

[haveyouseenthishorrormovie]

Love the idea of holiday asks! I really like your notes on each poll, so it's fun to get more of your opinions. :) Do you have any favorite or least-favorite horror movie tropes?

Ok so I've taken a bit of time to think about this ask, and I think I've finally made my decision.

There is one main trope that I love very much and that is the Final Girl. Now I am not a fan of the "virgin survives because she's pure" bullshit that a lot of slashers took the Final Girl to mean, but I love love love a story of average person up against something or someone horrific and terrifying. I also love stories of people digging deep and finding something in them that will kick and scream and rage against death. Speaking of rage, feminine rage just hits different.

There are two massive pet peeves for me in horror, that I'm not sure if they are actually tropes, but they do bug me a lot.

I hate with a burning passion when a character is like "I have overwhelming evidence that this entity/phenomenon/creature exists and this is how it works" and everyone else in the movie doesn't believe them. Not a 'boy who cried wolf situation' but in a sort of gaslight-y way.

I really don't like gratuitous violence that is shocking for the sake of shock. This is doubled when it's against women. There are far too many films that treat women with such malice that it feels like the director is jerking off behind camera while their actors/characters suffer. I read a comment on a video essay on rape revenge films that said think about how many times the director, producer, editor, and so on had to watch that scene and none of them thought that it was maybe a step too far, which explains why I hate it so much.

(really 2.5) This is not a horror trope, rather a small minority of horror fans (certainly no one that's interacted with this blog) that defend the gratuitous violence as necessary for the film or that I just don't "get it". Respectfully, I don't have to "get" anything, if I don't want to watch a graphic rape or torture scene, especially if it serves no further purpose than to be shocking, then the movie is not something I want to watch, let alone enjoy.

#not a poll #ask #ask the mods

[be-the-glenn-to-my-maggie]

Do you have any recs for the black phone?

DO I????

Do you guys know how exciting it is to get an ask that isn't about Avatar? Don't get me wrong, I love the Avatar ones, but the other kinds are such a fun change of pace. I have an equal obsession with a lot of other things, if not a bigger one.

So, I have a03 collections for a lot of things, and I do have one for The Black Phone as well. Check out The black phone was legit just like a fine movie it wasn't even that good why am I neck deep in this fandom sometimes I add more. As a massive fan of Steven King's IT (Reddie fics that don't make me think about the fact that this is a horror novel), I absolutely adore horror gay children, and as a massive stan of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch (the goldfinch fics that don't make me sad and feel hatred towards english majors), I also love doomed love stories. Blah blah "the real horror is the blatant homophobia and trauma inflicted on the children that causes the death of pure imagination and dreams" there are better posts and essays written about that. So naturally I am a rinney stan so it's all rinney fics.

WARNING: This movie is a horror movie about a man kidnapping, heavily implied to be sexually abusing, and straight up murdering children, so there are some serious content warnings for some of these recs. Read at your own discretion. Avatar is a fandom I read pretty light shit for, I don't for The Black Phone always, so I'll try to be super clear with them.

the electric, synthesized, rock ballad of why finney blake can't have nice things by ECLIPSEWXTCH. I literally just made a post about this fic in relation to the pink concert. It's a modern au rinney fic where Robin and Finney lost touch as kids and find each other again as young adults, Robin a successful musician and Finney a student in college. If this fic is never completed I will burn this website to the ground. I have no content warnings for this fic unless you have an aversion to pure wholesomeness. Content warning for there never being as good a boyfriend as Robin Arellano? But we all knew that already.

Coffee boy by mikki_strange. It's a coffee shop au, man, it's adorable and it made me happy. No trigger warnings or anything, simply rinney fluff.

Holding On and Letting Go by Nizhoni93. CW: homophobia, implied underage rape, legit so much trauma and sadness. This is SUCH A GOOD FIC, oh my god. It's one I've reread a couple times now, despite it's length. I have recced this before because I brought it up in reference to the beloved and famed nocorro ghost au. Holding On and Letting Go is the INSPIRATION for all my sad nocorro ghost thoughts. It's entirely from Robin's first person pov after Finney has killed the Grabber and they other boys have moved on. Robin can't leave Finney, and spends his time haunting the other boy and watching as he suffers while Robin struggles too. It is. The biggest bummer ever. It's so heartbreakingly tragic. Even as Robin is describing all these big feelings, his love for Finney or the guilt he feels for having hurt all these people with his death, he'll say something like "And I was thirteen" and I remember he's a fucking eLEMENTARY SCHOOLER. I cried a counted total of nine times reading this fic. Highly recommend especially if you're into the nocorro ghost au. The chapter where the psychic tells Robin he's only hurting Finney by being there? I'll literally kill myself. The homophobia is fairly blatant, and although mentioned rarely the rape and Robin's disgust and shame around it is a hard read.

We Stand Together by HeavensAether. Serious trigger warnings for this one. It's almost a dead dove, tbh. Basically a rewrite of The Black Phone where all the kids are alive and in captivity at once, so they develop a fairly strong bond. The main draw for me was the psychological depth it takes into Finney as he works with the ghosts around him and tries to retain his sanity, his relationship with Robin, and the mystery of how they'll get out with Finney's powers. If dark bummers of a fic aren't your jam, this isn't for you! CW: underage rape, disassociation, homophobia, transphobia. Tbh the rape is (while not graphic) fairly disturbing and goes as a method of showing a characters disassociation. If it was in an earlier chapter, I'd probably not have continued reading. As it were, it's pretty easy to skip those parts, which I would recommend as what little I did read I did not enjoy!

And You Keep On Living by Nichknack (BBCotaku). CW: more common The Black Phone homophobia and also trauma and abuse, but I think so far this one is non-con mention free. It's basically just a post movie fic but where the timeline changes essentially, Finney and Gwen wake up and the ghost boys are all back and the world around them doesn't remember the Grabber and all of those events never happened. Some good rinney as always with a side of brance and it's very interesting, I can't imagine where it'll go.

Five Times Someone Discovers Finney is Spider-Man (And One Time He Is The One To Say It) by sleepysheep (mynameistadashi). CW: nothing let the boys be happy and in love and full of friendship. This one is a silly and cute rec, it just makes me smile. Let the boys be happy. It's just as it sounds, it's Spider-Man Finney and a 5+1 of everyone discovering it.

#this was so fun for me #the black phone #the black phone 2022 #finney blake #robin arellano #rinney #bruce yamada #brance #gwen blake #melissa's asks #melissa on the black phone

[majorpepperidge]

So I'm going anon for this because I do not know if my thoughts will get me crucified by Pen fans, so this is me being safe.

For starters, I wanna state, when I got my physical copy of Sandrock, I already knew what I was going into when it came to Pen (and in turn, Matilda, Yan, and Miguel). I already knew they were the big bads thanks spoilers I saw, but even then, I could probably see them as bad guys a mile away (Yan is a sleazy scam artist, Matilda oozes passive aggressive southern bitch, and I say that as a southern myself. And Miguel oozes snob, and while not a villainous trait, is mainly associated with villains). So, even before knowing Pen was a villain, he already gave me major Gaston vibes so I was already kind of sus of him.

It made me very wary and kind of squint at him, but even then I was curious about his character. This man comes off as very showboaty, there had to be more. Cue me seeing his romance stuff and going "Okay so he is like a massive dork! You know, that kind of makes sense, big and tough, comes off as an ass, actually is a dork. That's a neat-" //cue the Knives Out update (i think it was that update), Pen being revealed as a bad guy and his romance dialogue mentioning he had OTHER LOVERS AND THE PLAYER WAS JUST ANOTHER NOTCH IN HIS BELT

"Nevermind you are dead to me you son of a bitch"

And while I say that, I am still curious on Pen's character, but more so in the terms of I want to punch this man as well. Something about that line has always rubbed me the wrong way. Since it feels like Pen doesn't actually care about the player. Which makes it worse since his final quest before being shipped off to prison, his last letter to the player if romance just NAILS it in the coffin but his PLATONIC LETTER MAKES PEN COME OFF AS MORE GEUINE.

Pen's romance letter comes off as just...gross and manipulative. Saying he forgives you for literally doing the right thing and not standing back and letting him destroy Sandrock. While in his platonic letter, Pen seems to see the player as his equal, mentioning how he wishes the player picked up his space punch, but was still confident in the player.

Which leads me to this, yes it took awhile to get to this: I seriously feel like, canon Pen, should have STAYED a platonic option for players. Him as a romantic partner character for players just...dose not end well, nor settle right in my stomach, especially since when you look at his lovey dovey stuff and then how he is at the end of the game, it feels Pen is luring the player, placing the rose-tinted glasses on and capturing them in his clutches. I am probably SERIOUSLY looking to much into it, and it could be just Pathea sucking at writing, which you know, I can see that, even Portia had questionable writing at times.

Now that all said, I do propose a way to make Pen's romance more interesting and less very tittering on the edge of a horrid toxic relationship (maybe). And that answer is simple: BREAK PEN'S FUCKING FAKE ASS JOCK PERSONA. It's clear from what I can tell in game, and in his end game letter, Pen can be genuine. Sure in his own assholeish way sometimes, but Pen can be a genuine person. The problem comes in the fact, from what I can tell at least, Pathea never really gives him the chance to let that shine. It would be fun to see Pen actively struggle with his duties with Duvos and the player, maybe becoming torn between Sandrock or his own nation. Or hell, have scenes where the player catches Pen overhear people talking about the horrors Duvos causes and more, and Pen seemingly so out of characterly TIRED. The man knows his nation is fucked, he knows it is a horrid broken mess that is hellbent of destroying everyone in the search of what they want, but he knows he also can't stop it. Maybe because he has had first hand experience in seeing what they could do or more. Has this become a giant rewrite idea, yeah it had but I feel like I should add it here near the end since while I want to strangle the asshat Pen is like an interesting character still that got done dirty story wise.

OKAY RAMBLING OVER, I AM SO SORRY FOR THE WORD WALL? Uh feel free to like delete this or what, idk, I just had to get my thoughts out and you seem to be the only active Pen fan I could find who I think has proposed decent rewrites or talked about how Pen is written not great sometimes? So yeah, again sorry for the word wall and uh bye

-Writing Anon

Hey, these are good thoughts anon! And I agree! Pen's writing is all over the place and I'm sure some of that can be attributed to weird localization differences/choices alongside the general clunky ending to his story. His characterization can sometimes make it hard to tell when he's lying and when he's not.

Some more time showing the depths of his character, while still keeping his dorkiness (which i believe is genuine, fight me pathea, alongside him loving the Builder and the 'multiple lovers' line was just meant to get under their skin so it'd be easier for them to hate him), and showing that maybe he DID have some internal crisis abt his bond with the Builder, romantic or plantonic, and his loyalty to Duvos. It would've been SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING to have someone like him be more of an unwilling villain. I know for my Exile AU stuff he's not as posturing/boisterous because he's not having to act anymore(and keep a lower profile to keep Duvos from sniffing him and Ray out), but it's still THERE because it's still part of him. I want to keep him being a larger-than-life cocky dork while not ignoring the sins he committed as a Knight and how he's struggling to move past it (and feel like he's worth Ray's love and loyalty despite all he did to her and Sandrock itself)

#Asks for Cheri #My Time at Sandrock #Pen #MTAS Pen #It wouldn't take much tweaking to make him redeemable imo #He just needs attention and tbh he's not the only character lacking in it #MTAS cast is p big and the devs absolutely had favorites that got more writing depth

[andromebaa]

The Big Just the Two of Us Post

In February this year, I started writing a little silly fic for funsies. Well actually, I literally posted a chapter I wrote a year ago on my brand-new AO3 account. I thought, hm, maybe someone might be interested in this? I'm gonna be real with you all - I had literally no plans. Like, none. It was just a one-off chapter. Just a silly concept - what if Kaito and Kokichi got stuck in a simulation? Wouldn't that be hilarious? What kinda silly shenanigans would these two guys get up to? They'd probably just keep killing each other lmao. Nine months and over 140,000 words later, I churned out the longest piece of writing I have ever created. Ever. I'm not even joking.

Did I ever know that my magnum opus was gonna be a horror/sci-fi Oumota fic? No. Am I glad it is? Surprisingly, yes. There is so much I want to say and I don't even know where to begin. Massive shout-out to everyone who has been reading since the beginning. I can't believe you still stuck around even when the fic took like several shocking swerves. All of those kudos and comments meant so much to me too. The actual joy I got every time my comment notification went up by one is a type of euphoria I'll never get over.

Also another shout-out to the people who unbookmarked en masse once it got real messed up I'm so sorry but yeah I totally get it. Trust me I was not expecting it to get so dark lmao. Thanks @theskix for putting up with me talking about this goddamn fic for nine months straight (cheese forgive me) and being a fantastic springboard for ideas (brain fuzzy but I'm pretty sure he's the guy who came up with Miu eating cereal while walking in on them say thank you) Shout out to the concept of Oumota and every single Oumota fan in existence cuz like holy crap apparently people who like scary stuff and suffering just gravitate to these two guys apparently. Like I don't think I can begin to stress that I was never an Oumota fan. This fic turned me into one. I literally cannot stop thinking about them my brain is full of worms (or leeches I'm funni). Now for the fun part - what's coming up next? Well I'm planning on taking a break from any massive projects for the next month and a bit so I can participate in NaNoWriMo. May as well keep riding the train while it's still running, right? Once we get to December, I'm hoping to start the next fic in what I want to call my Dangan Horror trilogy. I'm also wanting to start writing a fic set in the Just the Two of Us universe from Miu's perspective. I may do these both at the same time, but I'll see how I go. I may do some smaller fics from time to time, especially if any fun-looking writing/themed events pop up, but I'll get to those when they occur. As always, my ask box and messages are open so please feel free to ask me anything about Just the Two of Us. I'm happy to give more info on my writing process, inspiration, headcanons, or anything you're dying to know. Thank you so so much for your continued support! It seriously means the world to me and provides me the motivation to continue to write. Until next time! ~ Mosey/Andromebaa

#just the two of us #fic stuff #oumota

[phlurrii]

Hey ya’ll! So I have an old horror concept idea for if Meau ever got hit with a synergy stone based off a prompt we did in the discord a while ago. Fair warning, I am a MASSIVE horror fan and if I get inklings to draw it, it’s 100% going to lean into body horror/generally uncomfortable sights, so the comic I made is not for the faint of heart or anyone who gets uncomfy by blood, the uncanny, or ill-esc creatures. I’ve debated about posting it here, but it’s definitely a completely 180° from my normal goofy cats. Would anyone be interested in seeing it?

#mew #ancient mew #pokemon #the ancient mew #mew pokemon #mewtwo #pokémon mew #ask comic #ask mew #pokemon mewtwo

[brybryby]

VERY LONG POST IM SORRY. DONT FEEL OBLIGED TO READ

HI. Alrighty, this has been on my mind for a while (ever since promotional content for Trials started being released).

I have a TON of analyses in the drafts, but I want to make this post before I release them for public viewing.

I know that I like to make goofy, light-hearted little fan animations and fan art of Outlast, but I think I need to start changing how I navigate through the content. After spending so much of my time deep diving and writing up these analyses, my eyes have been opened to just how much the franchise revolves around fucked up historical events. I feel that some of the stuff I've posted is tone deaf, or at least the way I posted about it is. And I think—for the most part—there's an understanding that I don't intend to be harmful, but I fear that the way I go about it **is**. (And obviously, action takes precedence over intent.)

For contextualization, when I initially got into Outlast at the age of 12, I was enthralled by the horror aesthetics and found a lot of the angsty gore to be cathartic. I felt so “taboo” and “scandalous” lol (especially as a developing child trying to understand myself amidst my puberty stage). I was young and—for lack of a better word—braindead in how I navigated the media. I was naive, mindless, ignorant, etc etc… Now that I have a deeper understanding of the narratives and historical implications/influences, I need to do better in how I interact with the franchise.

What am I getting at?

Pretty much, I'm working on being more careful with how I interact with the media. At the same time, I want the analyses that I post to be educational. And most importantly, please message me if I ever say some bullshit. Seriously. All I ever want to do with my life is to be a positive impact. I genuinely get upset if I cause harm to someone else. (One time I literally cried at a high school football game as a freshman because I thought I hurt someone else's feelings. It turned out they were faking it lmao. Then they started feeling bad and then that made me feel bad for crying and yea yea).

Seriously though. I know that my posts can get public outreach, and anything that has public outreach can be influential and have a good or bad impact. So please let me know if I do or say anything harmful or ignorant. I won't be offended. I don’t want to spread harmful stuff. There are many instances in my life where people sit me down to have meaningful conversations about shit I've said or done and how I can improve myself.

That said, I'll be posting more analyses and making my own syntheses of historical events. My next analysis post will be about Waylon's Asian-coding (specifically Korean-coding), how Trials actually supports this (using themes of US immigration), and why it is apparent to many Asian fans (including me, hehe).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That's pretty much it. But if you wanna stick around a bit further, I'll tell you my (excruciatingly long) story about how I got into Outlast :) along with how much it has invaded my brain and life :') and maybe get a little ~personal~ hehe

STORYTIME:

So, the game came out in 2013. Nearly 10 years ago. I was 12 at the time of its release. Let me tell you…this game was a HUGE impact in the horror community. HOLY. SHIT. It changed the way I looked at lockers and beds. I remember it being critically acclaimed (and rightfully so). It may have not been the most technical video game, but it certainly was a piece of art.

I remember commercials being shown everywhere. The trailer of beta Miles Upshur running and parkouring through Mount Massive while being chased by the tiny beta model of Chris Walker will forever be canonized as part my childhood. I remember specifically heading to the bathroom from my living room and my dad interrupting me to say “Hey! Check this out!” and then proceeding to play the trailer for my 12-year-old eyes. I was scared shitless.

Couple weeks later, Conan O'Brien featured Outlast in one of his segments of “Clueless Gamer” (yeah, my family and I used to watch Conan lol). I was very familiar with Slender and Amnesia, which were the 2 other games featured in this Halloween special, but this was the first time I REALLY got to check out Outlast.

Now, let me preface that during this time, internet culture was very interesting and even less safe than it is today. I had a ton of bad experiences on the internet during my childhood. But oddly (and embarrassingly), the emo/scene/horror/creepypasta culture was what brought me comfort amongst a sea of awful things you could find on the internet. It was probably unhealthy for my developing brain, but I indulged in a lot of angst that was presented with heavy gore and violence. And to be honest, looking at this kind of stuff at a young age helped me process a lot of my own personal shit that I experienced outside of the internet realm. (To be clear, I don't endorse this type of violence, and I don't endorse exploring the internet in the same way I did as a child—it was probably very unhealthy and I think it caused some early development issues.)

But nothing—and I mean NOTHING—scratched that itch more than the way Outlast did. I watched the finger cutting scene in Conan's “Clueless Gamer” and was fucking mortified. I was scared of the dark for weeks. But I remember spending that night in my bedroom looking at more Outlast content to get that cathartic fix to fill my emotional hole of…I don't know…morbid curiosity? I definitely felt shame at the time. I don't know. In recent years, I've been on this journey to process stuff I experienced during my childhood and I struggle to go about my middle-school/junior-high stage because…I don't know…puberty? Access to the internet? I once got bullied by a forum of adult men for posting fan art LMAO. I was 12 years old—I forgot what the fan art even was. ANYWAYS, yea. That was only one instance of my conglomeration of internet experiences. (Like many other peeps, I had to hide my gender & racial identity to preserve my sanity). Indulging in gore art was therapeutic and helped me release negative emotions in a non-harmful way. Horror-genre communities online have been mostly friendly and welcoming towards me. That's probably why I fell in love with Outlast as an art rather than a video game.

I wasn't in the fandom straight off the bat. I had other hyper fixations at times but I navigated through these other fixations with this personal “Outlast standard” where the art and fiction I consumed needed to be horror-themed, gorey, or angsty. And Outlast isn't solely to blame. I was into gore and angst before the game came out. It just so happened that it came out at such a perfect time in my life. (Horror made my queer self feel accepted)

This whole “Outlast standard” stuck with me throughout high school. Uh… this next bit of information may get a little personal. During my sophomore year, someone really important in my life passed away. Then I had this life-impacting thing happen during my junior year that changed how I perceived things forever (lol, this sounds so dramatic). I turned to art to help me process and yada yada… but y'know what really helped? You know what I turned to when I needed to “scratch the itch”? (I bet you'll never guess)

I finally considered myself a part of the Outlast fandom in 2018-2019. I was a high school junior/senior and I posted the Outlast-Outkast animation that got retweeted by Red Barrels. Had a lot of fun in the fandom during that time and it helped get my mind off of things. Also, I loved the fact that Waylon graduated from Berkeley. I was applying to colleges during this time and it made me romanticize Berkeley, lol. I ended up getting accepted. Had an awesome time. I recently graduated and got my Bachelor's. I'm very privileged and gracious for my experience. I spent a lot of grueling time and energy dedicated towards my education.

During my college years, a lot of the unprocessed shit from my childhood started resurfacing and it was becoming hard to navigate through life. I became really disconnected with people who were close to me. Art started to fall out of my life. Stuff happened. Got in touch with psychiatrists thanks to my college's free health services. I don't mean to downplay or normalize what happened, but I'll bring up that many college students deal with mental illness and depression (and this could be attributed to many things: moving away from family, student-life, financial pressure, pressure to secure jobs/internships, living alone for the first time, maturing into an adult, etc. etc.).

But I remember sitting alone in my studio apartment one weekend and started surfing Tumblr. I came across new Outlast fan art and it sparked my hyper fixation all over again. I re-read the comics and—OKAY THIS IS GONNA SOUND FUCKING RIDICULOUS—but I started jogging because Miles went on jogs LMAOOAKJDGHJAHKGFL. I finally picked up the pencil and started drawing again (after like…months) and drew Miles and Waylon flipping off Murkoff. And THAT was when I realized what the narratives of Outlast were actually about—FUCKIN' CAPITALISM AAUGGGHHH. MY LITTLE POOPOO BRAIN AT AGE 12 NEVER UNDERSTOOD THAT. AND NOW THAT I'M AN ADULT—NOW THAT I CAN BLATANTLY SEE MYSELF AND MY PEERS AS VICTIMS/PRODUCTS OF CAPITALISM—CAN FINALLY FIND SO MUCH VALUE AND MEANING IN THIS GAME HHHRHRJGHKSDKFGLAJKDG SAY W H A T IM GONNA *explodes*

Then a year later, I started drawing more and more again. Trials' promotional marketing was becoming more prominent. I started posting my fan art on Tumblr. Then I made the fanimation (thank you Mr. Baichoo, you're so awesome, I will forever be a fan of yours) and now here I am. Still fixated on this silly little game for nearly 10 years. WHEW.

I FEEL LIKE A SHRIMP CHIP. Anyways, thanks. I much needed to get this off my chest.

Also, hey! Just wanted to say thanks for the friendly and welcoming interactions in this space. It feels so much safer and more comforting than previous internet experiences I've had. Since 2013, the fandom has evolved a lot. In my opinion, it has evolved for the better. The resurgence of new fans bring such refreshing perspectives and fields of knowledge that haven't been influenced by some of the harmful internet culture that I grew up in. So truly, many thanks to y'all for making the fandom space a nicer place (especially for such a heavy game). Also, what the heck, everyone in the fandom is seriously so talented and artistic

Uh… fan art time? (old stuff/sketches I haven’t posted)

But seriously if you got this far, thank you

#outlast video essay #brybryby text

[brosif40]

I just wanted to say that me and skulls-soul love your work so much. It's probably not that hard to tell but we are massive fans, your King Boo's are amazing, and your art as a whole is just awesome to look at. We love your art

Anyways I should probably leave an ask since this is the ask box so, which one out of the 3 KB's is your favorite to draw? If you don't have a specific one then which do you prefer the design of. I would love to hear headcanon's about them if you are willing to share

Waaa thank you guys that means so much 🥺

I love drawing them all ofc! It's so hard to choose which one I prefer the design of also, they all have good things 😔 but I'm pretty sure Sunshine's my fav one out of the three designs :3

And I have a few HC's I've been thinking about latley

#1: ALL OF THEM HAVE BEEN HIT BY THE AUTISM BEAM

Dark Moon:

Loves to paint in their spare time, mainly studies of the plants he owns :3. Sometimes Prisboo paints with them-

Doesn't understand most slang words or memes/jokes so it usually asks their siblings to translate/explain some things (poor thang got destroyed by you just lost the game bc of them....and you did too B])

Plays chess sometimes and makes their siblings play with them, Party's good at it while Sunshine is still learning

Learned to cook because of Luigi and has enjoyed doing it ever since, likes baking the most. They also love making Focaccia bread because of the flower designs :3

Hates bright lights, prefers to be in dim barely lit rooms

Very introverted, likes to stay at home most of the time- except when visiting his siblings, Luigi and Peach (I see them as besties)

Goes by Boosimir, only some people can call them that though

Party:

She enjoys reading when they're not busy, specifically sci-fi and horror. They have a large collection of books as well

They love playing video games such as Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing and Pikmin (he also likes games like Doom :3)

Sometimes goes invisible to sneak into games, did this once in Mario Super Sluggers (they do this at Movie Theaters also)

Is the oldest by a few minutes, calls Dark Moon little sibling because of it hehe- and Sunshine is the youngest

Besties with Daisy >:3

Very competitive (Becomes a menace in Mario Kart, mainly bc of how I play hehe)

Likes to host parties sometimes, mainly for other Boo's though- it's not too fond of people

Dislikes loud noises but tolerates them

Used to go by Big Boo before being King (sm64), but is also called Boodwin

Sunshine:

Grows his own herbs (if you know what I mean hehe), DM actually helped them figure out how to start growing them too

It's favorite fruit is durian :3, pineapples and mangoes are also a big fav of theirs

Likes getting tattoos, like the Phanta Manta one on their back :3- also lets others draw on him sometimes, mainly the lil boos

Is more of an cool uncle than a dad to the Boo's, though some of them call him dad sometimes

More outgoing than the other two, usually the best at making friends with others. When you work at a Casino you're gonna be interacting with a bunch of people so yeah-

Sometimes makes people lose on purpose, esp if they were rude to the staff. And finds it hilarious when people waste all their coins on a game.

Enjoys traveling on their free time, been just about everywhere on Isle Delfino and the other Islands surrounding it :3

Goes by Tropicaboo (which is named after Tropicabug from Bugsnax bc I am a nerd)

#brain dont work got a headache but yaeyy #had to figure out some names for DM and Party- this gave me motivation for that :3 #dark moon king #party king #sunshine king #silly-inky #BIG POST... this took me an hour GSJDHZ

[fmab]

This is unapologetically nosy but I am interested in your feelings on tma if you'd be willing to share. I'm not a fan of it but it is something I know I want to get into "sooner or later". So many people sing it's praises but I'd really appreciate another perspective before I put time into it.

No worries if you don't want to, I can see plenty of reasons why you wouldn't.

nah i dont mind you asking, its okay. the following is entirely my opinion take it with a grain of salt because its been years since i have listened but these are my personal thoughts.

To open, i will be honest, a huge portion of my distaste for it is entirely personal reasons. I have a lot of associations between it and someone i had a complicated long term relationship that is no longer in my life, plus weird interactions with other fans, and the tma server i used to run that slowed to a crawl after a while. it was also just a really weird time in my life as i was recovering from a prolonged psychotic break. I was very on edge and paranoid, and the fandom was in general filled with freaks. Another personally annoying thing was you know how it goes when something you were into gets massively popular and suddenly your fave characters are getting mischaracterized left and right.

In terms of the actual content of the show: I enjoyed the first 2 seasons a lot more than the later ones. Especially seasons 4 and 5, the style kind of changed and I felt like the show lost its magic for me as the more was revealed, and the less mystery there was. You know how in horror, the more that is left to the imagination, the more horrifying and scary it is just because your brain fills in the blanks? Well. Without being able to speculate as much it just became more uninteresting to me. I also just. was uninterested in/didnt enjoy a variety of the characters (bg characters we got barely any info abt, cops, one time appearance characters, etc) + the fanon portrayals of them never did anything for me either. Examining the show thru a critical lens reveals a lot of weird racism and other weird shit and just... man. It leaves a very sour taste in my mouth. To me it almost feels like the more traction it got the more the writing changed to kind of. give people what they wanted to see? as opposed to what the earlier show was giving? Idk don't quote me on that it has literally been like. YEARS since I listened. A big reason why the show exploded was bc it had lgbt rep, and I remember enjoying j0nm/artin for a time but in retrospect it just isn't a relationship that feels very compelling or interesting to me anymore.

tldr I am just filled with spite and distaste and as much as I still feel fondly abt a few characters and enjoy the early show, it just. fell off so severely and i have no capacity to enjoy it anymore. and its just annoying when people go through to mass like/rb that content when i dont even like it anymore and will never post shit for it again

#asks #venus.txt

[boxfullaturtles]

I have a question about your fic if its okay to ask

I was wondering what the threads and lights were about that mickey saw? What are those?

Ah yes, the worldbuilding I started for the magic system that I never went anywhere with lol

I'm gonna get kinda long here, please forgive me. I love talking about this kind of thing.

"Mortal Shell" was originally going to be a lot longer of a fic, with Mikey being outside of his body for an extended period of time, something nefarious possessing his body, and then it leading the family on a fun little chase all over New York with lots of collateral damage. It would have gone more into the mystic plane that Mikey was existing on and how mystic powers draw from it and so on and so forth.

When I changed almost everything about the fic (partly to make it shorter and partly because I had started reading Dandy's "I May Be Invisible" and got paranoid about being called a copy-cat), pretty much all of that stuff was scrapped. There was going to be a little scene at the end of the fic while Mikey was recovering where he asked Draxum about the stuff he saw on the mystic plane. I did start writing that scene, but it didn't fit the pacing anywhere so it got scrapped too. Here's the only bit of that scene I wrote:

So first off I am a massive fan of personifying things that are beyond comprehension. Sort of cosmic horror but without the horror. I love the idea of a city being alive simply because it is a city, because lives have been lived there and where there's life, there is magic. Kate Griffin's Matthew Swift and Magical Anonymous series have had a huge impact on me and remain my favorite books to this day for a reason. I highly recommend them if you're a fan of urban fantasy and kick ass women and a protag who is a pathetic little meow meow that could burn London to the ground if they so desired.

Anyway. All that to say, when Mikey describes New York City as "alive", it is in an almost literal sense. New York is living place, it is alive, it breathes, it feels, it IS. The white lines are akin to ley lines; the theory is that there are lines across the globe that important and historical landmarks and monuments fall on. I sort of localized this specifically to New York City and its major landmarks. So the ley lines connect to each other like a dot-to-dot going from places like Time's Square to the Statue of Liberty, etc.

The Threads I think I touched on a little in the fic, Draxum dropped a line about them being the connections of the universe. And that's pretty much what they are. Individual people have thousands of Threads that connect them to other people, to places, to objects--they are powerful in their own ways but can't be seen outside the mystic plane. Originally these Threads were going to be used in a ritual to pull the antagonist creature out of Mikey's body and put Mikey back in. But that ritual got scrapped really early on since I never really figured it out. Mikey was also originally going to be able to see the Threads of his family members, flowing out and tying together and attaching to him. But when I was writing the scene, they made everything wwaayyy too cluttered and would have given away what was going on far too early. So why can Mikey only see the Threads in that one specific scene? idk because mystic reasons. The mystic plane is a mysterious and virtually unknown thing, that's why.

As for the golden river of light in the sky, that is very much inspired by the river of light from Mushi-Shi, an anime I love very much which has also heavily inspired me. It represents life itself, in its purest form.

I think that basically covers everything? But please! Feel free to ask me more questions! I am always down to talk about turtles and my writing! And other people's writing. I can wax poetic about that all day, my dude. <3

#mortal shell fic

[rhythmantics]

Do you think Xander, Alex or Dana enjoy desserts? If so what do you think they like/don’t like? Also what hobbies do you think Xander and Dana have outside their jobs? Sorry I love the smallest and most frivolous of details about characters I love to think about the kinds of things they enjoy it’s fun to me

Dessert:

Xander: Hates sweets. He eats 99% cocoa powder dark chocolate and it is NOT fair trade. Fuels up on sugar only as needed to reach carbohydrate goals. Would not turn down dessert in a social setting, but would rather order a second appetizer or entree in private.

Dana: Likes sweets a normal amount. Would prefer pizza over cake. Eats 80% cocoa powder dark chocolate and it IS fair trade.

Alex: Can and will eat pure sugar straight out of the bag. Even in his lowest-energy form, he has a massive caloric requirement, so he packs away anything high in fat, carbs, and protein. Pretty much a garbage disposal.

Hobbies:

Xander: He has kept his hobbies secret, even from his siblings. Why he feels the need to do this is a mystery even to him. He's a workaholic, so he doesn't take MUCH time off work, and Dana knows he likes to get up at ass o'clock AM and go work out, nearly every day. If you ask Dana, she mentions that he likes hard rock, grunge, punk-type music, and likes to watch horror movies. These aren't really hobbies so much as sometimes he can't be working out or regular working, and he needs something to pass the time. Since she can't be assed to wake up in time to go work out with him, she doesn't know that he practices parkour/gymnastics as part of his workout stuff. This is less "fun" to him and more a way to expunge the murderous energy that builds up in his body so that he doesn't flip out on his coworkers/subordinates. If he couldn't regularly slam his body against concrete and brick walls, he would probably start actively physically harming people. Karen noticed the random injuries he'd sustain and he'd pretend it was from doing kickboxing instead. Problem with martial arts is they're not solo sports and workout time is alone time for him. This is also why he hates going to gyms despite holding a membership. To practice, he has several favored quiet, run-down alleyways where no one else goes. I hope the impression you walk away with is that he is in serious need of therapy.

Dana: Mostly concerned with making ends meet while juggling college and work, Dana also spent a lot of her time just working. Both Mercer siblings are very driven and goal-oriented people. Had she the free time and money, she'd probably be a party girl. Clubbing, recreational drugs, dancing. Xander hammered safety into her head from a super early age, and they have their mom to look to as an example, so she wouldn't wind up in heavy drugs (or even heavy drinking - she's not a straight-edge like Xander is, but she's not a huge fan of alcohol. Weed is her drug of choice) or crazy flings. She just likes the dancing, the music, the people. She'd be into all kinds of weird, on-the-street art stuff - indie concerts, pop-up galleries, flea markets. She'd probably get into owning snakes or bugs, something low-maintenance and kind of creepy. The woman-about-town, always trying new things, going to new places, making new friends, (hustling them out of money), rinse, repeat.

Alex: He likes to run really fast in self-imposed obstacle courses and try to beat his best time. Or climb up somewhere really high and try to land within 5 meters of a round landmark.

#prototype 2009