#stuff happened.. backgrounds hard.. i'm lazy..

hiiii omg thank u!!! yesss i can't wait to get back on it, a lot has been stopping me (the universe will NEVER let me have laurmau omg....) 💚💚💚

i'm so delighted by the reactions to him, because i was totally worried malachi would be too out there and nobody would like that addition ehe...

yes you may ask!!! i'm not sure how much of this will be revealed in the fic since it's not the main plot, but i do have more lore for them, so here you go!!! my one note is that this is all pretty loose and conceptual, since for this fic i only needed enough for myself to understand the characters i was writing:]

malachi doesn't have legs out of laziness not lore. and speaking of lore under the cut!!

I'm particularly curious about your opinions on the Wildbow serials; you called Worm out as a prior hyperfixation, but I saw on the chart that you'd checked out early re: the author's other stories.

Did you just not find them interesting? Do you think there's something about what made Worm compelling that was absent in the others? I've always been curious about why Worm in particular was such an explosive success, but it's hard to discuss because the Worm and Wildbow fanbases almost feel like distinct entities sometimes. People talk past each other.

I really enjoyed Worm, yeah, and spent a fair amount of time on the discord, the subreddit, spot-reading, fact-checking, doing analysis, stuff like that. It was ages ago: I read Worm as it was coming out.

As for why I didn't stick with the others ... it's complicated.

I think Wildbow is, for my tastes, actively bad at pacing. This showed in Worm, then showed a lot more in Pact. Part of the issue is that the stories (to the extent I've read them) begin to have this monotone feel to them, like each chapter has the same "energy" as the last, which is often anxious, angry, stressful, cornered, etc. Over the course of, say, half a million words, I tend to get fatigued. So Pact ended up being something that I dropped relatively early, before the Toronto arc.

Ward was just ... not what I wanted. The premise is that the world has ended and they're reconstructing society on an entirely different alternate Earth, and then this felt like it was largely background, and I didn't enjoy the therapy stuff, and the worldbuilding seemed so lazy to me, which was not at all the case in Worm. I wrote some fanfic, fairly early on, which was my attempt to express the things that I wished it was about, and to come to grips with the fact that it wasn't about the things I wanted it to be about. Still, I used to wait up until midnight for new chapters to drop, so I could read them and discuss with people, and eventually the chapter were coming later and later, and they'd come when I was tired, and that's how I fell off, because I also wasn't having that great a time with it. I didn't care about Victoria, who had too much baggage and uninteresting thoughts. One of the things I remember sticking out to me is that she focused a lot on clothes and appearances, giving much more detailed descriptions of them, and I thought that this was something that Wildbow was doing to differentiate her from other protagonists, and also that I did not really give a shit about Victoria's interest in clothing. I keep wanting to go back to it and finish it, just for the sake of completion, so it's not technically dropped by my standards, and I never hit a point where I thought "okay, I'm done with this, I'm not finishing this". I've been spoiled on a fair amount of what happens after the point I stopped reading the updates (I'm not spoiler averse), and nothing really made me think that it would be a good fit for me. Still, a very decent chance that I come back to it and binge the stuff I haven't read in a handful of weeks.

Twig ... people kept telling me that it was good, and I think I tried three times to get into it. I have no idea how far I actually got, but I gave it a fair shake, maybe ... four arcs? I think biopunk is also not a favored genre for me, and the characters didn't grip me very much, and it felt a bit like a "monster of the week" thing except that there was just so much word count, and not in a good way.

I hear people praising Claw, and Seek, and I think "okay, maybe I should check those out", but it's very possible that after Worm I was just too familiar with Wildbow as an author and thought that there was some ... redundancy to reading more? Especially millions of words more?

I've always been curious about why Worm in particular was such an explosive success

🚇 mind the gap — you've found my wips page! yippee! on this page, you'll find what i'm currently... drumroll please... working on! i've included summaries, wcs, some moodboards here and there, as well as a rough estimate for when to expect them. this isn't a full, comprehensive list of everything i'm working on, just the ones that i feel are close to cooking up to the surface. of course, all info are subject to change just because life happens, i lose motivation, or i pick up the plot and realize it's not going anywhere. updates every week! (last updated 7/30)

✒️ MARA'S NOTE: i've been extremely lazy and procrastinating lately, but i SWEAR, i swear i’ve been meaning to make this page. i just kept putting it off because it felt like too much work and i kept telling myself “you should make it look cute” and then i’d open canva or whatever and immediately shut down and go take a nap instead. anyway. here it finally is! pls tell me if you're particularly excited about any of them, legend has it that if you do, i'll work extra hard and get it done. but who knows! (i do pls i run off validation and caffeine) (love u for even caring enough to check <3 pls be patient with my brain.)

Spicy art again under the cut please do NOT click if ur a minor I WILL be mad at you and I will stop posting if I find out minors are looking at this.

Don't ruin this for everyone else.

Okay. So number one. Did anyone notice I put General Vanrouge on the right and Lilia on the left? Bc. He's. the General of the Right? Can we laugh at that? I thought it was silly.

I'm gonna talk about three instances where I encountered A.I music and hopefully this will help out people and they'll know what to look for. I think a lot of people have heard of that one fake band on Spotify but not every liar is gonna get blasted on your local tumblr.

My first encounter with A.I music should have been more obvious simply because I could tell they were using generated art work in the video. So there's a protip right there. If they're willing to cut corners in one area, it's probably being used for the rest too.

This channel styles itself like they find rare vintage songs from off the beaten path and upload them. I listened, thinking some were pretty catchy. But when I tried to find the artists and more songs by them, nothing. Not too unexpected for "rare vintage" but there had to be some record somewhere. And yet I couldn't find anything. So I look into the channel. The description starts with "Waking up at the crack of noon to cook up hilarious tunes."

Huh, so they produce all these tracks? No. They don't. They're quite literally cooking them up.

OH Tangent because I just remembered I fell victim to this specific brand not once but TWICE because as I was looking for the article that confirmed my suspicions I realized it was a completely different channel

Here is a link to the article. It's an interview with the person behind this channel, who is an actual artist and does the cover art, lyrics, and instrumentation but doesn't see an issue in using A.I. generated voices to do the singing. Make it make sense.

Anyway, this section is just to say if you like a song you should WANT to look up the artist and find more and if there's suspiciously little, well there's your first clue. Hard Archive is also just over a year old, which also tipped me off. Obscurest Vinyl is older, but they're not even trying to hide the fact that they use generated music.

The next section is music I did not even suspect to be A.I. until a video pointed it out to me. Here is the link to that video. In essence, anytime you see a video with a title like "cute music to vibe to" it doesn't hurt at all to actually look at the tracks and see where they come from. If an artist isn't listed, your next step should be to check out the channel. After all, musicians post their stuff to youtube everyday. But if one channel is pumping out hours long mixes quickly, there's probably something afoot. Don't get caught up thinking you just want something in the background. As tiring as it can sound, we really gotta be vigilant.

The last instance is something that cut me deeply because it happened to one of my favorite genres - citypop.

I innocently clicked the video because it's been a minute since I listened to a citypop mix and they've NEVER let me down before. But as I'm listening to the first track, I take a look at the cover art and realize it's got that strange blur effect that some A.I pictures have. And then I really listen to the song (keep in mind I only know English) but there's definitely something off about the song that I can't quite pinpoint. So I look at the chapters to see what the song is. There's song titles, but not a single artist listed. And when I go to the channel

"Yeah I'll take a Japanese lady standing in front of a Mazdayota"

Yall......there's literally endless songs in citypop. There's endless beautiful cover art in citypop. This one really cut me deep because how lazy and uninspired. And it's going to keep happening. As an aside, the anime Carole & Tuesday came out in 2019 and is set the distant future where most music is made by A.I. and it's a novelty when not and yall... I don't wanna live in that future.

also the fanart and your own art here is so good /gen

Hi!! ^_^ First of all, thank you so much!!!

Every single artist that's created stuff for this has been AMAZING tbh, I wholeheartedly think you should check them out if their usernames are available<3

Also no problem, I haven't had the chance to reply to some of the newer ao3 comments yet and there's still a few older ones I need to reply to on there, so this is probably the fastest way to ask me something at the moment since it sends me a phone notification lol

This is such a cute question btw ;u; I really hope I'm understanding it correctly, and answering properly. Sorry in advance this turns into a ramble:

Since I saw the update video about Yansim, where in the most recent update the icons I did for Content Checklist back in 2022 (I think, but it was clearly before the grooming allegations happened in 2023) are getting replaced by newer ones. And no, I haven't been working on Yansim nor volunteering for it for 3 (and soon 4) years after what happened, just wanted to clarify. And nor Yandev reached me out after it, just wanted to clarify! While I felt a bit bummed about it, but they're also pretty old and don't really represent my style or original Content Checklist style, so I have plans to redraw them (in both my newer style and also based on old ones) for fun. And I also love newer icons too, they look very well done, although they look even more detailed than older ones.

It's been quite a long time I wanted to share these, but there was always a matter of bad timing, so I was waiting for a better opportunity to do that, and I guess today is the one, even for a bit unfortunate reasons. Also btw, I'm also very aware of r/Osana and folks from it, and I would kindly ask them to only share the Yansim stuff I have volunteered for like icons, covers and stuff like that AND that it also appears in the game itself as well. Newer redraws of the icons and other stuff I have worked on are those exceptions that are also allowed to be posted here. Anything else - nope! Because otherwise I would have to take an action about that.

Anyway, let's start with first icon I made - Miyuki! The pretty magic girl!

She was the first icon I have made back then, I didn't have much issues with it and it's first sketch was straightforward, except for one thing.... Ayano?!

Yes, Ayano was here at first for Miyuki icon instead of Miyuki herself, as a little reference to that Easter Egg of Ayano getting Miyuki's scepter. But it was born out of little miscommunication, as I thought that I was supposed to draw Ayano instead of Miyuki. But maybe in alternative reality, Ayano was here instead of her... Who knows?

Second icon - Life Note and Yamiko from it!

This one was quite straightforward, but I do wish I did make some background like the one from the anime on Ayano's TV instead of white background, it feels a bit lazy from past me. And her hairstyle was a bit difficult to replicate, ough.

But Yamiko had a bit different colors originally! With a bit more red on her cross and her pen, along with her hair having more blueish tone, but Yandev asked me to change her colors (referring to other outfits she had from Mulberry's reference) since she looked too similar to Megami as he said so.

Third icon - the Maid cafe!

One of my favourites and where I wanted to experiment a bit with more Paper Mario-like background and I think it worked pretty well here! In earlier sketches tho, she had a bit more worried look, since wanted to represent that feeling of worrying and rush, and since this minigame can be too fast at times! But Yandev asked me to give her another plate to make her look busier and also to change her expression to happier one, since she had to keep up her appearances as a "normal" girl.

Fourth icon - Panther!

Oof, this one was one of the hardest besides Mission Mode one! It was basically chibi replica of "Panther" cover for Light Music club minigame, but it was pretty hard to do so. Still my least favourite one.

Also it looked a bit different in the sketch, but Yandev asked me to change a bit her chest area, so now it shows a bit more of her boob on final art.

Fifth icon - Snap Mode!

Another one of my favourites, even tho I still feel some edge from it lol, not as much from Mission Mode icon, but still!

On sketches, I wanted to include Osana, Raibaru and Taro on the shards of the glass, but it was decided upon to scrap them, so to not overcomplicate it.

And there is also an alternative version of this icon, but not in Snap Mode colors! Unfortunately I lost that version with glitches, so here is the glitchless one. It was suggested as one of versions of this icon, and Yandev admitted that it was hard to choose which one was more suitable, but eventually he choose the one in the final art.

Sixth icon - Mission Mode!

This one is the most goriest and bloodiest art I have made so far. Not really fan of this one tho, I could have make it better. But I had an idea to make it look like Ayano completing a mission and leaving the school, but it was decided upon that it was less interesting, so it would be better to make it bloodier and making Ayano going through the hall of corpses of those unfortunate targets! Although, Ayano is a professional killer in this universial, she could at least clean this mess up, damn.

This is also the last icon before the art style change, so that's why after it other icons looks drastically different. Why? Because Yandev explained back then that he felt bad about not asking sooner about it, but he also didn't want me to go to redraw them all, so he just asked me to draw next icon in the style that was closer to original Content Checklist icons.

Seventh icon - ABC mode!

Another least favourite one, mostly because of letters and how I drew blood on both Ayano and those letters back then. It was first time replicating that art style, so I had some struggles to do that, so my apologies about that! My main problem was position of those letters, but maybe in a future redraw I could change that.

Eighth (is this a word?) icon - Dance Machine!

I kinda like this one actually, it's very cute, but not a fan of the silhouette one though!

Another one that I had some struggles, mainly with poses for it, so there were three sketches for it, and as you can see, the third one was choosen! Although, I like first one, if I could polish it a bit further and fix the perspective...

Nineth icon - Yakuza!

Not a fan of this one, since it was pretty hard to chibify this guy, and even then, he still looks kinda goofy for me, hahah.

There were sketches of smoke having a different shape, wrapping around him instead.

Tenth icon - Amai Challenge (and now it's Amai Week)!

This is one of my favourites in this atyle, aside from Amai looking a bit too flat imo, but besides that, I like it! There isn't much difference, but in earlier sketches, Ayano had diffrent head shape that got fixed and also different Amai's expression.

Eleventh icon - Yanvania!

It's fine icon, although I still remember the struggle of drawing all of these details on chibi Dracula-chan, hahah. In earlier sketches, there were different expressions and a bit wonky face too.

Twelveth, thirteenth and fourteenth icons - Tapes! So many of them!

Decided to combine into this category, since they all similar, so that's why. Not my favourites, but nothing much to say about them.

Fifteenth icon - Yancord!

Another favourite! Also very cute too, still pretty happy with how I drew Selene's icon here. Although it was supposed to be just Yancord's icon (it's basically Discord clone in the game) with Y letter on it, but I drew other version with Selene's avatar for fun and Yandev liked it more, since it was more interesting, as he said so.

That's all for now, folks!

In my next post, I will share other stuff I made back then, since I'm already hitting Tumblr limits unfortunately, so my apologies for that!