i went through all of my old medibang files to see what was lurking there and found this old sketch i started doing back during techno's birthday stream. the group picture of the syndicate always stuck out to me, and im p sure its because of my own overfondness for group/family pictures in general lmao
anyways, it was a really nice sketch, so i redid the lines and slapped some colors/shading on it. all in all, i think this is one of my favorite things ive drawn this year. i didn't expect to do dsmp fanart, but i think it might always crop up every now and then, the same way i still draw warrior cats every now and then in my sketchbook
also, unless i finish a couple of other things in my drafts, i think this is gonna be the last thing i draw in 2023. so i hope you enjoy it! let the new year be like frozen yogurt in the good place; just okay.
edit: theres a speedpaint for this if youre curious
“Tell me about it,” Techno says later that night, when the fire is low but not quite out and Philza has gone to bed early.
Techno had been reading from one of his many books, hooves delicately turning yellowed pages. Tommy sat with a blanket thrown over his lap, furiously typing messages to Tubbo and Ranboo. They were snowed in at Snowchester, and Michael apparently thought it was some kind of miracle of sorts because Ranboo had been forced to stay in the house a lot with him.
“Tell you about what?” Tommy asks, looking up from his battered communicator. He frowns. “Exile?”
“No. Tell me about your home. L’manberg. Tell me about when it was good.”
Tommy scowls, then softens his face out and raises an eyebrow, casting an odd look in Techno’s direction. Two parts suspicion, one part confusion. “Why?”
“Because it was important to you,” Techno says simply. “I won’t get it, but I’d like to hear about it. All I heard about was a dictator who threw the founders out of the land and all I saw was a Butcher Army on my front lawn. So tell me about it. Tell me about before.”
A nervous sort of energy has entered Tommy’s chest now. He’s not sure why it’s there, only that it feels a bit like a worm has found it’s way from his stomach to his lungs and is now furiously doing the macarena as best as it’s wriggly little body can, even though it has no hands or feet.
It’s also that he’s never tried to explain L’manberg to anyone. Either you were there or you weren’t. Tubbo always got it. Eret certainly did, when they chatted over their fabric projects. Fundy didn’t like to talk about it, but he had brightened when he saw the friendship bracelet Tommy had hung onto. And Wilbur? Wilbur built the damn thing. Even if he refuses to talk about it. Ever.
He knows Tubbo had tried to tell Ranboo about it, the good bits so Ranboo could maybe understand a bit more. Like the time they’d climbed all the trees surrounding the van to try and find the one with grapes in them and then had subsequently pissed off a stray cat that was living in the area. Or when Tommy had sung to the plants in the rain, carefully tending his old carrot patch the way he now tends his small wheat farm and the flowers that dot his front lawn. He suspects Eret has done something similar with Foolish. The golden-skinned totem always has a habit these days of knowing about certain events that played out, though he speaks as if he read it somewhere, not that he’d experienced it.
But Tommy’s never had that practice. Perhaps if he had—like Tubbo, like Eret—he would’ve known exactly what to say to get Techno to understand better. To get him to at least like the idea it had been at first, before the bitter end it’d faced.
He summons all his memories he has of his home, days spent in sunlight; picking berries and petting wild cows. Looking for mischief with Tubbo. Helping Eret with chores. Playing with Fundy and teaching him how to scam. Learning all of Wilbur’s tricks—from the best ways to brew potions to how to confuse the people he was scamming—and soaking up his brother’s praise when he gave it, collecting each soft smile the older man had offered, each ruffle of his hair.
so im a day late but in my defense, i was busy feeling like i was close to death and it only occurred to me later at night yesterday that i could draw something from my own damn fic instead of scrambling to find something in my tired little brain. that's why we're here now lmao.
i wrote a fic back in 2021 about c!tommy and c!technoblade coming together to discuss their differences and try to mend their relationship. because, as i put it succinctly at the time in my partner in crime's dms "if the streamers arent up to the task, im certainly capable of writing a fucking fix-it fic in about a week or 2!"
idk what was in the water back then, i churned out fics like every 2 weeks it felt like and it was insane. now i struggle to finish a oneshot lmao
anyways, that fic does have artwork i drew for it but i wasn't really happy with it as i felt like it didn't capture any of the warmth the fic itself contains. enter this piece that i started impulsively last night and finished today before leaving to go to a plant sale. i did not watch cc!technoblade very long and i got into watching him when i was into dsmp (which i think ive mentioned before) but i am so so glad and grateful for the time he gave us.
if you'd like to read Notos, you can do so here. ive long since stopped lookin at the statistics because the numbers freak me out lmao. if you'd like to see the speedpaint that goes with this, you can click here!
i think this is the first fanart ive ever posted of a fic tbh. anytime i read fics and feel encouraged to draw something, its usually loose sketches in a sketchbook that never really see the light of day or in the instance of my technoblade design, its stuff i picked up from a fic that i never share the origins of. this on the other hand, is a bit different.
for about a year now, ive been compiling the entirety of the fanfiction collection known as ad astra per aspera by @cacowhistle into a document so i could make my own physical copy. i havent been doing this continuously because yknow, work n shit. but i finished gathering everything while i was getting used to the new PC so i started work on a book cover. thus far, there is only this front panel to show for my efforts. this is the "flats" of that cover, as i like to call it, meaning just the illustration part of the bookcover and not the cover itself.
i think i found ad astra per aspera in my very early days in the dsmp fandom, right around when the exile arc was going on, so there were a ton of fics about that and there were a ton of sbi found family fics floating around as well. i always characterize ad astra per aspera as one fic, despite the fact that its actually 15 works compiled into one series, primarily because all of these fics just feel like chapters of a story told somewhat out of order.
its one of my favorite fics of all time and i am so delighted and grateful that the author gave me permission to make a printed copy for my shelves :) it's taken me a long time, but i hope to be able to release actual pictures of it when i finish this cover. for now, im sharing this front panel with the hopes that anyone who hasn't seen it already, check it out immediately. its so good and the author's written some other stuff that's pretty great too!
this particular illustration is actually a copy of a sloppy painting-sketch i did in my sketchbook 2 years ago. i couldnt scan the sketchbook pages themselves unfortunately, and i think this is a p good recreation of what i did originally
even though i dont draw as much dsmp fanart as i used to, i still adore these two. if i had more energy and motivation, id probably draw them more often tbh.
i drew this around the time i actually uploaded another fic (i know, i was active, im as shocked as you are), about beeduo revival. there is actually a second fic related to that one (and in the whole series) that i have in my drafts, i just havent finished writing it. been busy with other projects. perhaps someday, you’ll get it. in the meantime, enjoy this art that i made months ago :)
