An ask blog that asks what if Lewis partially survived- and became a half ghost? Please be aware this story will contain angst and heavy themes. Blog is best viewed on a desktop browser! Run by teenageukulelescreamo.
Hi everyone!
I've recently been able to do more work on Update 1, which has been great! It's been slow progress for quite some time, but I recently made some changes that I think will speed up the process quite a bit!
Instead of posting eighteen tumblr posts and clogging your dash with where I've been, and what's going on, I've decided to make a Notion page (click here!) where you can track the status of the updates yourself, and see where things are at! I'll leave this post pinned at the top of my page for easy access, at least for right now, and will probably work out a different solution later.
As always, thanks for being here! Enjoy this complementary Vivi as a token of my gratitude :]
do NOT repost my art at all, please!
tfw you truly Never Sleep Again because you have so much to worry about (im very funny i promise)
i definitely have a headcanon that mystery's dog form does require some level of energy to keep up, so at night when he sleeps, he reverts back to his true form
i also have the headcanon that he is a clinger when he sleeps, so now these things are just Canon in my AU haha- at least he's a good pillow!
progress on the next update has slowed down a good bit because my day job has been keeping me quite busy as of late alas, but next week I should have extra downtime to work on things so stay tuned!!!
hiii im so sorry for the lACK OF ART! still plugging away at the ask blog’s first post- it’s taking a long time because I want to make it the absolute best it can be, and quality takes time, alas! I’m hoping it’ll be out by the end of this week, however that is tentative rn, we’ll have to see! in the meantime, i managed to whip up this little sketch in the meantime just to get smth out for ya’ll… arthur and mystery are having a real bad day
tHE LAST TWO ARE COMPLETE!!! WAHOO!!! these two get split up in this AU- Mystery joins Arthur, and Vivi stays with Lewis- which… well, Mystery holds some guilt about his decision, though he very much didn’t want Arthur to be alone. Vivi also does not totally see things the same way Lewis does- she thinks there’s more to Arthur doing what he did than they realize, and wants answers… this definitely causes some interesting friction eheh…
and soon you guys will be able to see it, because the ask blog will be open very soon hopefully! all the designs are complete- I’m just working on the intro, and wrapping up the looks/info on the blog!! :D can’t wait for ya’ll to see what I’ve got planned!
please do not repost my art ~~~
oookay SO. here’s arthur’s design from the never sleep again au!!!! the ask blog is getting close to launch, and I’m SUPER excited!!! also, i am well aware that i am ass at drawing good ole boomerang brows here, but hopefully drawing him a lot soon will help me improve!!! poor arthur here has a looot on his plate… hitting the road to travel far from home in your chase to find the one thing that’ll prove your innocence to your best friends is quite a dangerous and intense feat! and the lurking fear that something is chasing him as well just doesn’t seem to wanna go away….
im so sorry i keep fucking making new aus for msa but. this one. this one… this is brand spankin new, and- i jokingly call it the flex tape AU in my server but the real name is the Never Sleep Again AU, and it asks a very simple question: what if Lewis somewhat survived?
I say somewhat because… as you might have guessed, he’s still half ghost! there’s a lot more to this AU, but I’d rather not spoil it just yet because, well, I’m planning to open an ask blog for it, hooray! Vivi and Arthur are also going to get redesigns, and Mystery will get a bandana, because… I yearn for it.
But, yes, more on this is coming!!! Stay tuned!
tonight’s warmup sketch became uh… well. moRE THAN JUST A WARMUP, OOPS! anyway, this was super fun to do, and great practice for drawing the boys!!! ask blog is plugging away, hopefully will be out by the end of this week- and if not, it’ll be mid next week!
and for those wondering. yes. when mystery goes kitsune, he absolutely keeps the bandana :]
SURPRISE! I'm NOT dead!
Long post ahead, but TL;DR, I'm not dead, and for the first time in 3-4 years, I finally feel like I can freely work on projects for myself again. Like this AU!
I'm trying to pump out update 1 ASAP, evidenced by this sneak peek right here! I don't have a timeframe yet, so bear with me- I'm working on it far more actively right now, the backgrounds are by far the hardest part of what I'm doing with this ask blog.
That being said, this van interior background is the backdrop for many of the images in this first update, and will be the backdrop for many updates in the future, so this was a big hurtle to jump! It feels a lot easier to sink my teeth into the rest of this update as a result, so definitely keep your eyes peeled for more stuff soon.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask, and I'll answer them! Or, if you still have questions for the characters, feel free to ask those too!
(As always, none of this was traced! All of it is freehand, and yes, I bust my ASS trying to make these backgrounds as close to the original as possible! Yes, I am absolutely insane for doing that!)
(more personal explanation on where I've been for literal years below the cut)
(This has been edited for the sake of being clear and concise, the original version was a little too raw since it was posted much sooner after the event, but I've kept some details in to properly explain where I was!)
The past four years were spent surrounded by toxic individuals in an unsafe, and harmful environment for me. Towards the end of my time in that group, I didn't know what was real, and what wasn't anymore. The near constant stress, anxiety, and pain I was in because of this led to it being very hard to work on any personal projects. This AU, unfortunately, was a direct victim of that.
Now, however, those dark times are over, and those people no longer have access to me and my friends. I'm in a far better place than I have been in a very long time, and I'm truly so happy to be working on this AU again!
If you're reading this, thank you for being here all these years later. I can't tell you how much it means to me, and I really hope you'll enjoy what I have in store! <3
so, holy... cow, thank you guys so much for a response that is just... far bigger than I could have ever expected, I’m so happy so many of you guys are excited about this story!!! so, I wanted to do a very quick little thing to thank you guys for the support and 150+ follower count in the first week of this blog opening! (please ignore how badly i drew lewis here, haha, this was kinda quickly done :,D)
i know i’ve been rather silent and many of you might be wondering where the next update is- that’s gonna be on sunday (1/31). while i wouldn’t usually talk about any personal stuff on this blog, I had a bad panic attack a few nights ago that rudely interrupted everything in my life and left me with crippling anxiety- however, that’s slowly begun to improve as the week carries on, so I’m sure by next week or the week after I’ll be feeling a lot better! and going forward, once I build up enough of a buffer, I’d like to be able to release updates twice a week- I’ll let you guys know when I’m able to start doing that!
in the meantime, thank you so much for your patience, and thank you so much too for your questions!!! I’ve gotten some really great ones that are gonna make this story VERY interesting, and I can’t wait to answer this first batch over these first couple of updates!!! :D
Just a couple of good bois, they deserve some good rest
A little something i did for @teenageukulelescreamo for their recently opened msa au askblog @neversleepagainau you should absolutely go and check it out, they've worked so hard on this, their art is incredible and i'm so so looking forward to the story they're going to tell!!! <3
Hey, I saw a fanart of MSA where Arthur wears a different outfit and I saw specifically his shirt and I thought that I can recreate Arthur's shirt so I talk about it with @teenageukulelescreamo 🤭 and she was agree with it! In fact, you can see how I painted the shirt and my process haha. At the end, I decided to make a prosthetic arm to look close enough like Arthur bc I don't have any wig or something similar as Arthur's hairstyle, and I know it isn't my best prosthetic arm and my best "cosplay" but I tried my best haha. Finally, I decided to take photos and here's the results hahah. Thanks to @teenageukulelescreamo 🤭 and ofc go to check out her MSA AU 👉🏼 @neversleepagainau 👈🏼 I was so excited to see it released and it finally happened 🤩 it's soooo coooool and the story is going to be more interesting 👀 so take a look.
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(I'm sorry, I'm so ugly, that's why I tried to hide my face hahah)
(Maybe, I'll post some of this photos at my IG account so you can find me as @leo_jrz ✌🏼)
at long last, im so excited to announce that this ask blog is officially open! many people know I’ve been working on this intro for roughly five weeks, and I’m very excited to finally share it- possibly as excited as I am to FINALLY begin telling this story!!!
first of all, tumblr completely ruined the quality of that last panel- if you wanna see the full sized gif (warning you now, it’s enormous), you can find that here! And, if the gif is hard to read/hard to view, there’s a static version of this panel below the cut!
There’s also a ton of extra information that could answer some questions you might have, as well as a list of potential triggers to watch out for in the future! However, it is really long, and when I say really long, I mean it’s chapter-in-a-book-long so please don’t feel obligated to read it unless you have extra questions/have some bad triggers you wanna make sure to avoid.
Otherwise though, I can’t wait to see what kind of questions you guys send these two! One has to wonder… where in the world are they headed off to in the dead of night…
First of all, here’s the static image of Panel 8, as promised!
And now for some extra info on things going forward.
On every single canon update, there will be a description of themes in this story that could unsettle or discomfort some viewers. I’ve included tags to blacklist, and explained exactly how these situations might arise so folks who are sensitive to this kind of thing can prepare themselves accordingly!
I would recommend at least skimming this list if you know you have some bad triggers! This story will never get too dark or intense, as I’m attempting to stay true to the original spirit of MSA, but this doesn’t mean it won’t touch on those themes at all.
also, in regards to how much of this art is hand drawn by me- the honest truth is 99% of this is entirely freehanded. I took colors from the videos, but otherwise only used them as reference. However, if I ever used a canon asset to help me, I will always specifically say what exactly was borrowed directly from canon in a way that was more than just using images as reference and taking colors. for this post specifically, I’ll word it a little differently, but this will all be much tidier in the future.
the van asset is 97% freehanded by myself- I did take measurements of the canon asset, and marked my canvas so I’d know the width and height of the van, and vaguely marked where the tires would be. I did trace the antennae ontop, as well as the cloud decals, one of the curves on the right side of the windshield, part of the door window at the very bottom lefthand corner, and the rear view mirror. The logo was not recreated, I directly took that and just altered the colors to fit the van.
Other than that, everything you see on that van was freehanded. The van was also the only thing I used a canon asset to help me with for creation of it, meaning that the rest of the art in this introduction is entirely freehand.
moving on from that- updates will not take an entire month like this did. i will not be doing eight full color illustrations for every single update, and for right now, at the minimum, they’ll happen weekly!
i can provide more information going forward once I work out how I’m going to go about things a little better, since things won’t be as huge as this introduction was. don’t worry though, the quality of the art itself will stay the same throughout the whole story!
and yes, lewis and vivi are in this too! there’s a big cast of characters, and lew and viv are just as much at the center of this story as arthur and mystery are- don’t worry, you’ll see them plenty soon enough!
finally, before we get to the content warning stuff, if you ever have any questions about how I’m running things, or need clarification on anything, please let me know! I’m happy to explain things in more depth if needed!!!
and now, here’s the last chunk of this INCREDIBLY long introduction.
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WHAT FOLLOWS IS A VERY LONG (!!!), IN DEPTH LIST OF THINGS VIEWERS MIGHT ENCOUNTER IN THIS STORY THAT COULD TRIGGER THEM. If you are not super sensitive or have very intense triggers, you don’t really need to read what follows unless you want to. Otherwise, I would at least skim this, so you know what tags to block so you won’t have to see this type of content.
Don’t let any of this worry you too much, by the way! This story is very likely not ever going to get extreme in any manner, I just like to be very cautious, just in case!
Also keep in mind that you can always ask me to add tags to a post, and it’s highly unlikely I will refuse said request. If I do, it will be for a very good reason, and I’ll explain it thoroughly, as well as remain open to any discussion about it. With that in mind, here are things to be aware of:
CHARACTER DEATH/REMOVAL FROM STORY: There may be characters in this story that you will get attached to that end up dying or not being in the story at all or as much as they were before. This story has chances for different outcomes depending on asks, but there are some things I have set in stone and a few of them involve these themes, so please be mindful of that. The tags to blacklist to avoid updates that touch on this specifically are #character death or #character removal.
DISTURBING CONTENT: This is vaguely worded because it is a bit of broad umbrella. There may be themes of body horror, gore, violent/upsetting/disturbing depictions of death (not any worse than Lew’s death, if it ever is I’ll be sure to specify ahead of time), creepy/unsettling designs and environments, so on and so forth. The tag to blacklist to avoid updates that include anything I consider to be disturbing to view is #disturbing content.
ANGST: This story will get sad, and broach on themes of abandonment, loss, trauma, depression, paranoia, self-hate, and things in this nature. What I can immediately promise is this story will NEVER have themes of suicide or self-harm. I do not feel this story needs to go there, nor do I wish to take it there. Also, while there is angst, I do not believe in beating characters up mercilessly- the angst is for the story and their development. This is not going to be a story that is only angsty. However, if any sort of angst upsets you, the tag to blacklist to avoid updates that include heavier, angstier themes is #angst.
PARANOIA: A few of the characters often get a sense of being hunted or followed, or something lurking around the corner, which can be upsetting to some viewers. A few characters may occasionally have moments where they express their anxieties in depth. The tag to blacklist to avoid updates that include heavy mentions of paranoia/depictions of it/make the characters (and potentially audience) feel paranoid is #paranoia.
UNREALITY: Lewis has some powers that can warp space and create illusions, and potentially will be in situations where he uses them in ways that could mess with people’s perception of reality. This can be very uncomfortable for some people to view, so in updates where this may happen, the tag to blacklist is #unreality.
SUGGESTIVE THEMES: This story will NEVER be explicitly NSFW, and will rarely ever feature these themes at all. It is mainly for the occasional joke here and there, but absolutely nothing more. However, if any implications of something slightly more adult make you uncomfortable, the tag to blacklist here is #suggestive themes.
ANIMAL HARM: Mystery may enter situations where he ends up getting hurt during this story, though he will never endure any kind of situations that mimic real life animal abuse. If seeing an animal be harmed in any way remotely upsets you, the tag here to blacklist is #animal harm.
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If you made it all the way to the bottom, you’re a champ!!! While posts will definitely not be this long going forward, I really appreciate you taking the time to read this!
After five weeks of work, my computer crashing and erasing every single file off of it, art block, and some general life stress, I can finally safely announce that my Never Sleep Again MSA AU ask blog will be opening tomorrow (1/20/19, 4 PM EST)!
Many of my friends have called me a masochist for how much I’ve put into this project, and while they may be somewhat correct, I have nonetheless had so much fun planning this out, and I am so unbelievably excited to start telling this story!!! I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed working on it!!!!
(Also, the majority of it will not be animated, I should clarify- I am just extremely extra, haha! And as always, please don’t repost my art. <3)
