Content warnings: brief mention of sexual abuse, cartoon imagery of blood, cigars, cigarettes, discussion of struggling to transition, discussion of physical trauma. This AU is centred around a criminal organisation and by default involves mature themes.
Over hours, through a painstaking design process, I created an illustrated map detailing the relationships between frontal characters in my Simpsons alternate universe, The Good Ones. A lot of love and effort has been put into this, so I hope you guys like it! If there are any characters you'd like to see drawn, just let me know.
More info and close ups of icons beneath cut!
I know I always say this, but interactions, especially questions would mean SOSOSOSOSOSOSO much to me, as I've put so much thought into this and would LOVE to yap to interested people about it. I know art is done for oneself, but it feels really good to share my creations and hyperfixations with the Simpsons community :)
For every character, I drew a little icon and wrote a line of dialogue, in order to give some inside into their personality and traits in a concise way. A few further explanations and elaborations are given below!
Valentina 'Tits' Albertini
Her icon is a visual pun, featuring two Great Tits drawn in the colours of the transgender flag.
Aside from Memphis, Valentina is the only other explicitly genderqueer character in the AU's focus (Lucy-Mae is heavily implied to fall under the nonbinary umbrella, but she never personally feels the need to explore it further, and is happy with identifying as female). Her former nickname was a play on how ballsy of a person she is within the mafia - though Cora is a wildcard, she makes very rash decisions: Valentina is both calculated and bold, and her current nickname is a crude (fittingly), but well-spirited adaptation introduced by Memphis. After coming out, she experiences backlash from Tony, who is concerned her late transition will impact the image of the mob. Memphis, being a trans man, asks him why Valentina is any different from himself, and in the heat of the moment, Tony exclaims that half the people in their own family have no idea that he's transgender, which leads to some tension between the two. Tits' main character arc revolves around her exploration of gender and gender expression, and the character that plays the biggest role in it is Tony's son, Michele (purposefully drawing parallels between Tony and Memphis' own relationship, and showing social change between generations).
Michele 'Softfoot Mikey' D'Amico
His icon is a nod to his (in this AU) love of ballet, and how he uses it to his advantage in his role as an underboss.
Michele is a simple evolution on Tony's canon son, Michael D'Amico. In this AU, he's been aged up to 23, and instead of having an unconventional love for cooking, has an unconventional love for ballet dance. Most all of his other traits have been kept the same, however, aside from the obvious fact that he's more rational and mature than his in-canon counterpart. He's straight, but is portrayed as very effeminate - and comfortably so. Mikey really just is a girlboss who never fails to (sometimes literally) slay.
Cora 'Connie the Howler' Mezzasalma
Her icon plays on her nickname, portraying a dog with some of her key characteristics, such as a matching necklace given to her by her adoptive brother, as well as a splatter of blood - presumably from one of her usual 'errors'. Her nickname refers to the colloquial term howler, meaning a laughable mistake.
Frankie's awkward adoptive sister of Greek origin, Cora was initially made with the sole purpose of providing a dynamic for Frankie, outside of his relationship with Johnny (which is still the primary relationship explored), but she really grew as a character. Initially I made the name 'Connie the Howler' on the fly as a sort of female version of 'Frankie the Squealer', but I ended up actually putting the effort in to rationalise it and bring it into her character. The result was an awesome little dynamic between two characters who were equally stupid, but in very different ways. She may be responsible for a number of incorrect hits, as well as a good few accidental deaths and injuries, but at the end of the day, she's a silly girl at heart who really synergises with her brother's anxious energy.
Maximus 'Legs' Legman & Luis 'Louie' Walters
Both of their icons refer to an car accident the both of them got into, wherein Legs, ironically, suffered severe damage to his legs (resulting in the amputation of his left one), and Louie underwent significant cranial trauma.
The two do admittedly have a closer relationship because of the shared experience, though they both experience significant impacts. Notably, Louie develops Broca's aphasia (yes, I know the injury is on the wrong side, that's my bad), a form of non-fluent aphasia where one's quality of speech and grammatical structure is significantly diminished - even though the words are in your head, you cannot get them out, usually due to damage to the area of the brain responsible for the production of speech. Louie really struggles in the aftermath, and has a difficult time adapting to his disability. Thankfully, he's got his friend there to help him through it.
pic unrelated but I reallyyyygh need to remake my headcanons that I posted for the tgo caporegimes but I am Too busy worrying about whether my idiot children (about a hundred common fruit flies) are going to die or not before I can send them to college (two hour behavioural test)
staring at this sideblog genuinely distraught because I miss this community so much but my simpsons hyperfixation kinda petered off
if it's anything: I have a genderbent mafia au of the simpsons that is sorta almost entirely removed from the show itself by this point (genuinely they're more OCs atp but stilllllll) and it still lives rent free in my head to this day
some doodles of johnny (Giovanna "Jo Tightlips" Sablone) and frankie (Francesca "Frannie the Squealer" Mezzasalma) in said au 😝
Meet the redesigned (and present-day) Jono! I realised I'd originally subconsciously coded him as Aboriginal in some little chunks of experimental writing I made of him and Memphis, and I wanted to make him explicitly so because a) NO SIMPSONS ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIAN CHARACTERS? NOT ONE? b) I thought him having ties to the Stolen Generation (on his mother's side) brought valuable depth to his character (and the Stolen Generation is also something I've wanted to explore a bit in my work) and c) I was already subconsciously writing him as Aboriginal and there's literally only one rough artwork of him made before all the development I gave him, so why go against my instincts for his character?
For context, this is only other appearance in a visual work, back when he was just a two-dimensional placeholder, haha.
Pic unrelated. I just think they're cute here. Lol.
SOMETHING IS WRONG.
A short fanfic set in The Good Ones [AU], featuring Johnny and Frankie.
STORY BELOW CUT!
"Something is wrong."
As he speaks, his leg taps incessantly beneath the dining table: little creaks and the rhythmic scuff of his socks against the linoleum punctuating the syllables and iambs in his anxious words.
"Somethin's always wrong with yous," I mutter. My words are muffled as I lazily press a chunk of bread, drowned to limpness with pumpkin soup, into the pocket my right cheek. "What's the matter, coniglio? Jeez, is it the bread? Sorry, baby, I know you ain't a fan of them baked-in olives, but it's all the bodega had out when I got there-"
"Gio, damnit! I ain't a frigging toddler, I can stomach some damn olives!"
...Jesus.
I like his skittishness. I know it sounds a little patronising, but it's endearing to me; the constant fidgeting and wriggling is as much a part of him as the borrowed trace-scent of my cologne in the crook of his neck and the way he gets little crow's feet by his eyes when he smiles. But this, right now, is more than his day-to-day restlessness: he's cagey today: more so than normal. I can see it in the way his eyes dart frantically around the room, the way those dilated pupils can never quite seem to sit in one place, caught in that same little loop of endless motion as his squirming lower half.
"...Sorry."
As soon as he breaks the silence, I realise I've been absentmindedly holding my breath in - as if, if I had let it go, some inappropriate response to his seemingly unprovoked outburst would have slipped out with it. But he's taken the weight of the reply off my shoulders, leaving me with nothing to do but give a barely audible, shaky out-breath after I choke down the food still in my mouth with an unwittingly stilted swallow.
"I... I, uh, don't apologise, Frankie," is all I manage to offer, at first. "I shouldn't 'a cut you off like that. My foul, alright?"
"No, Johnny, it ain't your fault, babe, I just... I just-"
Ironically, he's never been very good at expressing himself: it's no real surprise that the words he wants to get lost at the tip of his tongue, leaving him with nothing but stutters and frustrated little grunts - and once he's run out of those, all he has left to give is a big, defeated groan as he buries his face into his hands.
"It's just... Things have been good."
That confession, meek and padded by the hum of his lips against his calloused palms, is the absolute last thing I expected to hear.
"Good?"
"Too good," he whines, still refusing to look me in the eyes. "Everything is too damn good, and I feel like somethin' awful is about to happen. I can't freaking relax, Gio, I feel like- Damnit, I don't know, it feels like my brain is full 'a fluid, and- And my head is going to explode- Or somethin'-!"
"What, like, a fever? Frankie, if you got a fever-"
"No, no, it's metaphor-ismical, or freakin'- Whatever you call it! I just... It feels like there are a million bees inside my skull, Johnny. Does that make sense?"
No, not really. The bees, at least: I can't particularly envision something like that, I've never been all that good at creative thinking - or whatever the ability to picture insects in your head is called.
But, what does make sense is the look in his eyes as he raises his gaze: only slightly, just enough to meet my own.
There's a frenetic, anxious energy there, one that I've seen time, and time again: in the eyes of the lanky, up-town sixteen-year-old who'd ride past my shop on his bike a suspicious amount of times every day, in the eyes of the point of contention sat across from me at one too many impromptu meetings of DiMaggio's inner circle, in the eyes of the disgraced caporegime reluctantly settling into his new place among the ranks of my crew...
at first I tried so hard to view kostas as a romantic f/o but it just didn't feel right. and then I was like WAIT A SECOND I dont want him to be my daddy I want him to be my dad
Some art for my half-baked AU where Ned and Tim first meet as young men at a conversion camp 😗
Ned, who struggles heavily with internalised homophobia, enrols himself, where Tim is forced to go by his mother and father.
They’re supposed to embody a bit of a dichotomy in religiosity and its interaction with conservative religious beliefs around queerness: where Ned finds God in shame and fear, Tim finds God in hope and perseverance, and that then shapes the kind of Christians they grow up to be.
