#king jones

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Been busy with life and AU stuff but hey I made these in between!

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Okay I may be starting to project a little again.

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Some miscellaneous doodles and stuff

But also, Joxter. Joxter is a round little catman.

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So I have this AU... I've thought alot about it... Hopefully I can make a fic about it but I can assure you it's pretty well-developed so far, I just need the motivation to actually write. But with life and mental health and everything I just feel a small sense of dread every single day.

Let me know if you're interested, though!

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Day 28; King/Daddy Jones, the Autocrat

CW: Death.

As the Autocrat drew his last breaths and as the comet neared, his autocracy had fallen into a deep panic.

News had spread rather quickly from the Finnish observatory to the rest of Europe and soon enough the whole world just a couple days ago, such an event would be devastating especially after the second World War, some might even take it as a sign of sorts. It's the seventh of October, the day it was said that the comet would hit, the Royal Inventor stood by the window witnessing the dry seas and red skies outside, there didn't appear to be much hope for survival in the northern hemisphere, he thought of all that he regretted and that this might be the last few hours of his life, of all their lives.

King Jones coughed and hacked as he did for the past few hours, he was particularly weak to the heat that the comet brought. It was expected he would most likely pass away after a life as long as 115 years, but a few uselessly hoped he could somehow be immortal as he didn't have an heir of any sort, he didn't care to appoint one even for a second, comedian that he is, not caring much for actual royal duty unless it affected him personally.

For the first time in Jones' life, he felt regret for the things he did, for the things he's said, for the things he should've done but didn't. He played a fool and called everyone else the fool, he called them every insult of intelligence he could speak, he used the smartest people he knew as a means to his pranks, as a means to make everyone a punchline in a joke he set up in his long reign since early childhood. The titan sat weak and pathetic with a wilted flower crown, one of the last known humans who crawled near the end of extinction for his kind, and now he can't crawl any longer. Childless, alone, without anyone to take after him or his kingdom.

Forethought truly must be a gift.

"Et ord med opfinderen..." he whispered weakly to his servants, they nodded worriedly and eagerly and rushed to get the royal inventor in his presence. They return with the man in question and stood idly by as Jones lifted a shaky finger for the inventor to come forth.

"Mr. Hodgkins..." the King wheezed and coughed.

"Yes, your erm... majesty?" the Inventor replied, feeling uneasy by the state of Jones.

"I would like to apologize to you... Well, I would love to apologize to everybody but there isn't much time and I assume you're the nearest person in my court so..."

The Inventor sighed deeply and nodded in a partially annoyed manner.

"I'm... I apologize for using your talents for my idiotic, selfish gain, I realize that it's unfair and I sh... shouldn't have done that.. yeah.."

"That's your apology?"

"I'm not good at them, okay!?" the King tried to yell but fell into a coughing fit "I'm dying...! Don't you... Don't you see that...!" he wheezed out after he could speak from all the coughing, then continued even more.

"I'm sorry- Just... A little unfair. After everything."

The King growled and held his head "Tell everyone I'm sorry before this dumb comet whipes us out, that'd be the first useful order I'd given out in a long time..."

The Inventor nodded.

"Jeg er så ked af det..." Jones whispered and his head fell into his hands. His servants escorted the Inventor out of the room.

*

It turns out the comet didn't kill them all and just barely missed the Earth! Huzzah! And the seas are flooding back as we speak!

The servants went into Jones' room to tell him of the good news, but all they found was the human sitting limp on his seat. The two halted in silence, and all that they heard was the echoes of muffled cheering from outside and they stared at the dead man before them.

*

"THE KING IS DEAD!" cried a subject

"THE KING IS DEAD!?" yelled another in response

The whole Autocracy went from cheering to panic in the span of only a few minutes, they didn't know what to do without their autocrat, nobody even remembers a time before Jones' reign, everyone that came before had already passed away! This is unprecedented for those who were born and lived there, what are they going to do now? Do they change systems? Assign an heir on their own? Jones kept calling everyone a muddle-head! An idiot! Surely he meant most of those comments genuinely if he says them so often- how in the world can any of them pull through like this?

Meanwhile, the royal court was in shock at the sudden loss of purpose after years and even over a decade of working under the Autocrat without much choice in the matter. The Royal Inventor and the rest of the court stood idly by as phrases like "The king is dead!" and "What are we going to do now?" and other questions and exclamations were echoing in every sense there was. It was silent in the palace where there was panic everywhere else. The court was mostly made up of educated foreigners who wound up on this island one way or another, they didn't know what to do even with themselves, most of them didn't want to go home or they didn't know where to go from here, they gave up alot just for the opportunity to fulfill their dream in the most bafflingly minimum way there could be. They were just stunned. Now that Jones is dead.

The King is dead, the comet has passed, may the Lady have mercy on us all.

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This was supposed to be some meta humor about Hodgkins/Fredrickson having multiple names at first but it got extended and I don't know if it's funny anymore.

@brivit

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You know I gotta have a Hodgkins spree whenever an art epiphany happens. Featuring tiny Muddler and King Jones!

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Did anyone ask for King Jones/Daddy Jones/the Autocrat backstory? Well I myself did, and so I listened to my own demands!

In all seriousness, Jones, based on his size (I even ran the 30 cm Moomin height calculated back in the early days through a height comparison website), is the only actual human we ever get to interact with, which is interesting, he must've been giant even as a child.

Speaking of child, I reason that he was crowned king way too early in life and found being king as a way to fulfill his own selfish, childish desires and never grew out of it, that's why he seems so childish with his fake death maze to his own garden and keeps calling his subjects synonyms for idiot (in the book). What does this man do with an inventor who built a riverboat with his own bare hands and even had it sail across the ocean? Make him invent new pranks for his future death mazes, like seriously, Hodgkins had to CONVINCE him to let him work on his flying ship every other day of the week.