#long.post

🥰 reblogs 🥰 >>>>>

hihi I have more lame hcs and I’m going to make it everyone else’s problem ^__^

>out of the alpha kids jake is the shortest

>>out of the beta kids rose is the shortest (with june coming in at a VERY close second)

>>height lineup from shortest to tallest is jake>rose>june>roxy>jade>dave>jane>dirk

>janes favorite thing to bake is red velvet cakes

>deemed too violent, flarping isn’t really allowed to be played on earth c so everyone joins a dnd campaign (game night is every other thursday)

>after a sunburn dirk tans while dave freckles

>roxy’s gender fuckery made things click for june

>in terms of lameness edrian is a redditor, sollux is a discord mod, and karkat is a twitter main

>roxy and rose go out to dinner together monthly and talk ab how much they love their alien partners

>towards the end of the meteor dave lowkey moved into karkats room (dude just kept showing up and ended up sleeping in there a good chunk of the time)- no one brings it up besides rose to fuck with him

>karkat needs glasses but refuses to get his eyes checked

>terezi has a preference in women but didn’t realize that until after her thing with dave

>dirk has a shitton of plant allergies due to not being in contact with them until he was like 16-17

>if roxy lived in our time period she’d be a twitch streamer (develops games on for itch while streaming)

>jade has never been to a store in her life. it agonizes every other beta kid

>I personally believe in juneskarezi supremacy

>karkat used to make a big deal ab his bday (mainly to cover up the massive relief he experienced knowing he survived another sweep) but stopped doing it on the meteor.

>aradia and dave love talking ab their dead thing collections

>jade is the only one of the kids that can actually sleep in a recuperacoon for some god forsaken reason (june is the only other kid who has attempted)

>kanaya is so excited ab june feeling comfortable in dresses and regularly tries to reramp their closet (although june mainly wears tshirts)

>speaking of shirts: dave just has a shitton of random ass shirts following the vibe of ‘women want me fish fear me’ + this shirt

>kind of like how u can do body mods like giving urself sharp teeth I think some trolls will carve patterns into their horns (it’s not common but it’s cool)

>dave malfunctions every time he sees dirks/jakes sbahj tattoos like he cannot rap his head around it being a massive franchise (he plays it off in a cool way tho)

>calliope and nepeta are best friends

>terezi is banned from bath and body works

>dirk really likes the aquarium

>I think it was only hinted at in the credits so unsure if it’s canon or not but rose is jewish

>dirk isn’t religious but will do activities with u if asked to join in

>speaking of the wedding: june played the piano at rosemary’s wedding

>earth c gang did a massive group cosplay as the adventure time cast for halloween once

>alpha/beta kids favorite holidays are as followed: june- april fools, jade/dave- xmas, rose/jake- halloween, jane- new years, roxy- valentines day

>>dirk doesn’t have one

>true love is modding doom and playing it on ur robot girlfriend (arasol on the meteor)

>the strilondes are all hella fucking awkward ab their relations so they’re just like an awkward sibling group (except roxy and dirk ofc)

>sollux was a DARE kid + is against all drug consumption but he vapes

>>alternatively aradia likes weed sometimes

>beta troll height line up goes as follows: feferi>karkat>nepeta>terezi>aradia>tavros>edrian>equius>vriska>sollux>kanaya>gamzee

karl cares so deeply for his friends and his fiancés (well, when he could remember them both). and i think that’s a big part of why he switched sides mid-war. even after Schlatt had annexed his own country (rutabagville), he switched sides to support them. and then he says himself when mexican l’manburg was created that it was his favorite place because that’s where his friends were, nevermind his home and party island in l’manburg. karl dies for mexican l’manburg. he literally sacrifices a life for his country and his friends, which is probably the ultimate act of selflessness.

and then he starts time traveling and he does have something for himself but he still protects others. he tries to save the people in the times he travels to and protect his friends from the weight of his secret all at once. he builds a new country so he can keep going back and helping people and doesn’t let anyone know about how his memory is deteriorating because it’s nobody’s burden but his.

i think that’s something that makes this decision between the inbetween and the other side so difficult. he’s drawn to the other side because it’s the selfless option, in his eyes. he gets to save so many people throughout the history and future of the server. literal lives lay in his hands. the inbetween is the more “selfish” option. it’s the option that preserves him and the one that’s he’s not compelled to take until he thinks about his friends. he knows that his memory loss could hurt them and that they’d be upset if he was just gone all the time. the inbetween would let him keep them in his life. as much as karl wants to choose the more selfless option, he finds the “selfish” one compelling for selfless reasons.

here’s a side by side just for fun also, because i actually put THOUGHT into a drawing for once and i wanna talk about it because i don’t think very often so i’m proud of myself when i do

random note that isn’t very important is that the background is exactly the same in both drawings !! i even made sure the sun and the moon are exactly the same size (big)

the chromatic aberration around the edges of the second drawing isn’t as intense mainly just to add to the lighter airier feeling, while in the first drawing it’s more intense because Emotions and shit. it makes sense in my head

speaking of airiness !! every part of scott that can be floating a lil is. it’s rlly just his hair, the weird gossamer thing ? (idk what it actually is lol) and the. i don’t wanna call it a loin cloth idk what you would call that. i think it was originally a skirt thing i might’ve forgotten some parts of it oh well. i only did like 4 days of a fashion design course and no part of it covered this okay okay. anyways this is also part of why his wings are up in the air like they are! just adds to the floaty vibe i think

ANOTHER reason his wings are in the air is because i wanted him to take up much more of the canvas this time. in the first one he’s small and all close to the ground, a much more defeated version of practically the same pose as in the second drawing (kneeling with his eyes closed and hands by his sides) while in the second he’s much more in control of what’s happening to him and confident of his powers and so like. big = confidence

there isn’t actually any significance in the difference between the halos besides the second one looks more like a sun while the first is just spikes lol. tho if u wanna be pretentious u could interpret it as his head being clearer and him not being stuck inside his own mind so much. idk

(Quackity has never killed before. He has now. This, he thinks, looking at hands permanently etched with invisible blood, is something that doesn’t ever go away.

He wonders a few things about that invisible blood. If he can wash it off, is one; if there is some holy fount strong enough to erase the stains. If hands folded in prayer and washed in water counter the sins committed with them.

The other thing is to wonder if he is, maybe, righteous in all of this. In the moment with a bowstring touching his cheek and an arrow about to be loosed, he had felt something like holy himself.)

fun fact lent by autoheart came on my spotify just as i went to answer this ask. talk about perfect timing.

THANK YOU FOR SENDING THIS REN!! so lent (or, ‘for lent this year, give up your lofty ideals and embrace the carnage of holiness!’) is my least read dsmp fic but one of my favorites anyway. i spent a lot of time cleaning up the lines and editing word choice, and i’m VERY happy with a lot of quotes out of it. including this one: “In the moment with a bowstring touching his cheek and an arrow about to be loosed, he had felt something like holy himself.” the themes in that oneshot very much are about the corrupting force of anger and violence, and the disguise of those things as something righteous and good. the whole fic is one big unreliable narrator too - do we trust quackity’s point of view here? was it righteousness when he killed schlatt? what about any other moment throughout the fic that he displays that “holy” rage? it’s a question, and an exploration of a theme, not an answer. i had a lot of fun setting it up that way on purpose!

another fun metaphor thing is the idea that quackity has blood stained on his hands throughout the entire fic. that “invisible blood” is his own anger and guilt, and it grows throughout his history until the point later on when he says it’s not just on his hands anymore - “It’s in his mouth and down his throat, in his stomach and in his guts and in every part of him. A baptism is not enough to wash it away.” - his whole self is corrupted, in some way, by those stains of blood. he compares the blood to wine as well, and there’s another bit at the end - “There is no water holy enough to wash him, so he doesn’t bother with water at all.” - and that’s a fun little bible reference there. something about water being something cleansing, but water is not enough for him now; with the references of “blood like wine,” we can look at that good ol’ miracle of water turned to wine and find our answer of what it is that he’s referring to instead - q’s baptism is in blood. giving up lofty ideals and embracing the carnage of holiness, indeed.

Hmm I'll do my best, but I'll admit writing advice is not my forte!

To start, here is a handy guide to writing dialogue for a ton of dsmp characters, although for me personally, I tend to just watch their lore and just, copy their style of speaking pretty much? But idk if that works for everyone. As for getting started, my first dsmp fic I basically wrote one scene I would've liked to see in canon, at the time Tommy and Techno talking while Tommy was first exiled, and that evolved into seven chapters! You don't have to start with any big over-arching plot, starting small is okay! It can just be a single scene, or something you wish they explored more in canon, anything! And I tend to write pretty in-universe stuff, I haven't attempted any au fics so far, I prefer writing stuff based on canon, that way you can let canon sort of guide your narrative!

As for specifics– Writing c!Sam, knowing his moral compass is key, I've found. As well as understanding that his strength is largely a facade and deep down he's terrified. Here's a great meta post about the way his stupid little brain works.

Wilbur stares. “What?”

Three years ago, his father murdered his mother in those woods, and they never found her. Wilbur shot him dead, and they both lied and said he’d done it to himself, and they never told anyone. They’re both cursed.

And now Karl tried to kill him.

The thought of it - blunt and real and settling into his head - startles another laugh, another sob, out of his mouth. Karl tried to kill him. Karl tried to kill him in the woods and no one would have found him.

Time is a circle.

“You were right,” Quackity says. “You were right. Time is a fucking circle. It’s always going to catch up with us.”

(dt!quackity lives in my head rent free!!!!!!)

HEHEHHE okay so if ur a fic writer you are probably well acquainted with the phenomenon of having A Scene™️ in your head that happens way late in your story, so everything you write is like “just a few more chapters until The Scene™️” the entire time you write? this is The Scene™️ in devil town. like, down to the exact snippet you picked out. quackity showing up on the sbi porch, soaked in rain and blood, a little hysterical in both tears and laughter, and the exact dialogue “time is a circle. it’s always going to catch up with us in the end.”

i had this shit planned from DAY ONE, babey. that’s early early outline stuff, and BOY was i excited to finally get to write it when i did - this whole chapter took me one day to write. start to end. it was SO FUN.

a fun thing to pick out here is the use of the phrasing “no one found her / no one would’ve found him.” that’s a phrase that comes up a bunch in dt, because i wrote it in there on purpose! the people who say it are always people connected to the disappearances in the woods. the first use comes from q back in chapter two - “Tommy is dead, Tommy is gone, they will never, ever find him.” other characters who say it are notably wilbur - “They never find anyone in those woods.” - techno at least once, but interestingly his line is about himself, not someone else - “Maybe they’ll find him. Maybe he’ll be the first one they do find in these woods, suffocated to death by something growing in his chest right here over his brother’s bloodied jacket.” - and tubbo references it some point as well if i’m not mistaken.

they never find anyone in those woods. it’s a very hopeless phrase, and the ones who use it know exactly how hopeless it is. makes sense that quackity uses it the most!

Tubbo’s shaking, from the cold, from the ache in his chest, from the truth he’s letting Ranboo see, from all of it, he doesn’t know. “Because that’s just what happens. People aren’t allowed to care about me, Ranboo. And I’m not allowed to care about them, because if I do, they leave. They either get up and go, or something takes them away, because I’m not allowed to keep hold of anyone.”

There are tears on his face again, but this time he doesn’t try to wipe them away. Ranboo’s eyes are sad.

“I’m really sorry,” he says quietly. “That’s—that’s really awful, I’m sorry, Tubbo.”

“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this,” Tubbo tells him. “Maybe to warn you. Y’know, let you know what you’re getting yourself into. Maybe you just wanna stop before you have to leave too.”

“I’m not going to leave,” Ranboo says. “Tubbo, I know we’ve just met like, four days ago, but I care about you. You’re a good friend. I’m not going to just leave.”

“You might not get a choice,” Tubbo says with a bitter laugh. “Tommy didn’t.”

The laugh turns into another sob. He’s really not allowed to keep anyone he loves, is he?

AHHH yes this one. this chapter was simultaneously a bitch and a half to write, and also a breeze. i took like, four days to write the first 2k and then the remaining 8k in one afternoon, which admittedly doesn’t sound like that long when i put it that way BUT i was writing daily back then, so only getting out 500 words a day was misery. getting into tubbo’s headspace in particular was so difficult for me in the early half of dt, but this chapter is where i think i kind of hit my stride with him and really figured out what was going on.

there’s a lot of big confessions happening from him, in this chapter in general and in this snippet in particular. these lines illustrate the biggest of them:

“People aren’t allowed to care about me, Ranboo. And I’m not allowed to care about them, because if I do, they leave. They either get up and go, or something takes them away, because I’m not allowed to keep hold of anyone.”

and

“You might not get a choice,” Tubbo says with a bitter laugh. “Tommy didn’t.”

tubbo blames himself for tommy’s disappearance. we already know techno harbors guilt for it, and we generally know that tubbo is carrying some guilt of his own but what we’ve seen so far is the more “manageable” guilt that tubbo staves off regarding their last argument. the deeper, harsher guilt that tubbo has is this: he believes that by value of caring for him, by exposure to his own “curse” that causes him to be left behind again and again, he caused tommy’s disappearance. tommy loved tubbo, and that is what did this. as he says, you don’t get a choice to leave tubbo behind; it will happen no matter what.

this snippet is sad, anon! you picked a sad one.