#side tangent

[bugboibin]

Fun one to make, just sad I didn’t have enough color slots to add his scars and some texture. Also wish we had better hair colors, but oh well.

@bonus-links

[thatssomegoodsoup]

Zero (Creepypasta) :)

I gotchu ravioli! (proceeds to hit you with a salmon)

ZERO x READER HCs

ART CREDIT: ✩🍰𝒮𝒶𝓇𝒶🍰✩ on Medibang (link)

Zero used to flinch whenever you went to touch her in the beginning days of the relationship, but now she knows you wouldn't hurt her

^ Similary, she'd prefer to take the relationship slow, and wouldn't let you touch her at first

^ Afterwards, when she feels like she can trust you, she'd be really affectionate and touchy.

You're one of the few people she can see in color

She is the small spoon when cuddling

She likes handholding

Dates include walks in the forest, going out to eat, going out to kill, walks on the beach, travelling, going to ice cream parlors, or anything else you'd like to do! (she likes doing typical couple stuff despite being a killer and all)

Zero likes drawing little doodles for you

^ She'd like anything you make for her as well!

Zero would give you art tips

^ And give you ideas during drawing block and encourage you

She'd protect you from the other pastas in the slender mansion (if you believe in that HC like me lol)

She prefers gifts that are monochrome in color, but doesn't mind colorful gifts

Zero gives love bites, like a cat

She can get jealous easily, and needs reassurance that when you go out, you're not cheating on her

When she kisses you, she will grab you by the face to do it

She would support any hobbies you have

Zero would not want to meet your family right away, again, she'd like to take it slow. She'd probably want to call them first, and get to know them.

Her nicknames for you include 'baby', 'babe', 'bae', 'angel', 'darling', 'sugar lips', 'babygirl' / 'loverboy' / 'honeybun' (depending on your gender), sweet pea, and anything else you'd like to be called!

You come to girls night with her (if you want) with Clockwork, Jane, Nina, Sombra, Dina (Judge Angels), Killing Kate, Laughing Jill, Kate (the chaser), and (Nurse) Ann

You two like gossiping about the other pastas

You two will often paint each others' nails

Zero is loud and obnoxious around others, but around you she quiets down and listens (though she might interrupt on accident a few times)

Her love languages that she gives are quality time, gift giving, and acts of service

^ What she liked to recieve in love languages are acts of service, words of affirmation, and quality time

Zero would like any pets you have and accept them as her own

Reader and Zero have binged Criminal Minds together

^ Y'all also have horror movies nights

Credit for divider: @thecutestgrotto (you make great dividers btw, and if you're seeing this post, I hope your knee surgery goes well!)

Hope you enjoy @yourlocalraviolithief!

One of my personal HCs for Zero is that she and Alice's personalities have merged into one, making her monotone, not empathetic, and morally gray, as well as kindhearted, able to mask her rage and "emotionlessness", as well as the ability to be friendly. Alice no longer exists, but neither does Zero. They are one entity now.

Ravioli and I came up for that HC together during our old creepypasta roleplay days (GOD we were edgy then), and it kinda just stuck around, thought I might mention it for a little context on Zero's personality in the story.

Also Ravioli's wife HCs that Zero sees those she likes in color, as the monochrome vision was implemented by the demon that inhabits her, and the "Alice" part of her brain can see color, it's just surpressed, so she only sees those she likes in color instead of seeing them in monochrome! I decided to include that as well.

Anywho sorry for the side tangent, hope the rest of y'all enjoy these! I put a lot of work into em :)

[fansta]

Absolute ramble about the TADC drama ahead be warned

Most controversial thing I might ever post but this TADC drama is actually disappointing me. All because so many people in the fandom are pissed and losing their shit because Pomni and Jax are the main characters.

Ive seen people say the whole show is bad now because it's pandering "hetslop" ( real fucking nasty thing to say after Goose has said the show is not going to be a romance ) (( Also way to say you can't view male/female friendships as anything but a precursor to a romantic relationship )) And Ive also seen people say that the TADC is bad now because its just The Jax Show and all the female characters are purposely and malliously being ignored in favor of Popular Male Character TM.

Now on the subject of male vs female characters, I think its fair to be critical of writing and to be aware of trends in media and fandoms, especially relating to how male vs female characters are written and treated.

But I feel like this specific kind of criticism towards TADC has been wildly blown out of proportion when compared to the actual content of the show.

To start with are we so goldfish brained as a fandom to forget how much the first 3 episodes were focused on the main FEMALE characters development???

Pomni is given so much character growth in the first 3 episodes alone, and she continues to get that attention even in recent episodes.

Even episode 4 was far more focused on Gangle and her character development than anything with Jax.

Only in episode 5 did the show actually start to focus in on Jax more and start exploring his issues. And it seems like he is being used as to have us learn more about abstraction and what it might look like for someone to not want to leave the Circus the most recent episode.

Now onto the flipside of the arguments with shipping, (and this is the stuff that really pisses me off) there has not been a single directly romantic interaction between any of the characters, except for Kinger and fucking wife.

Noone's ships are Canon! Not your's and not mine!! No matter how much two characters interact any ship with them is still... say it with me

NOT CANON

So its feels really unfair to treat the writing of the show as a funnybunny circle jerk when its just not.

But also TADC is not even done yet and Im tired of watching this fandom jump to the conclusion that the show sucks over male main characters and fucking ships, when we dont even know the ending of this story.

Anyway most of this drama has already died down and people are calming down about some of their harsher opinions, but I already typed this all out so I'm posting it anyway

[calm-carrot]

⋆ More doodles! This time with Shifty and Director! I miss drawing these two together, but I'm too tired right now to do anything fully rendered so- Winter shenanigans doodles it is! ❤️🩶⋆

[analogousstructureamrod]

Some Elwing headcanons

Wants nothing more than to eat the sweet bread her mother made when she was young

Is a big dog person actually-Finarfin gave a her a dog a few years after the war of the wrath & it’s one of her top 10 favorite people.

Yes the dog is included in the people category, she’s been talking to birds since she was very young

She has a lot of trouble figuring out who Elwing is from Elwing the Lady of Sirion, Elwing daughter of Dior, Elwing who jumped off the cliff and flew

There’s a entire room in the tower dedicated to growing saplings from all around Valinor

Elwing has fallen asleep in this room many times

Still hasn’t visited Olwë & kin after the war of the wrath (She blames the amount of work the tower needs, but in truth she’s not ready to be apart of a bigger family again)

(It was fine when it was Her, Eärendil, Tuor & Idril, and then Her-Eärendil-Elrond-Elros. But too many people that know her and care for her because she is Elwing hurts, it was supposed to be Her-Elurín-Elured-Nana-Ada-Melian-Thingol. Not just Elwing)

She does in fact have a favorite bird out of the lots of them that follow her

Eärwen is her favorite relative in Aman, she reminds her a bit of Eärendil, and a bit of Nimloth-her mother.

They don’t go sailing together, instead they spend the time at Eärwen’s house that’s she’s named ‘Escape from Tirion’. Elwing loves hearing all of Eärwen’s stories

Eärwen is slowly dragging Elwing out into more social places, and getting her better clothes. They also spend a long time shopping for toys for the dog (Eärwen was the one to suggest the gift).

I do think that some of the isolation that the tower gave her was actually helpful, it gave her a rest from being the essential Queen to so many people that were hurt and still hurting.

But the bigger problem is now balancing that with actually talking to other people (Eärwen is this close to just dragging her to a family get together, so she’ll finally speak with her family)

Elwing has a growing number of friends with close by teleri populations-though many of them have yet to be invited to the tower, the day they do Elwing’s going to realize she hates baking.

Also please never ever compare her to Lúthien, she will never talk to you if you don’t apologize for that (the amount of times the people of Sirion whispered that about her, you’d think it was her name)

[btr-project]

Side Tangent #1: TeenNick & The Big 3 - A Retrospective

Boy bands, web shows, elite performing art high schools - and everything in between. exploring Nickelodeon's experimentation era of the early 2010s, while also creating their own holy trinity of zany talent.

Imagine this: You're arriving home from a long day of school, grab a snack from the kitchen, turn on Nickelodeon and you see a bunch of in-house talent from various Nickelodeon live action shows appearing either in bumpers with the white backgrounds & other sets or screen bugs at the bottom of your CRT-TV screens, seeing different program blocks for upcoming episodes/marathons, and third party ads promoting McDonald's, Burger King, Sketchers, breakfast cereals, snacks, boy/girl centric toys ala dolls or Nerf toy guns, or the latest family friendly film releasing to theaters.

On September 28th, 2009, Nickelodeon embarked on a major rebranding, which went through major changes. The iconic messy splat was soon replaced by a cleaner, more fourth wall breaking look for the logo. Their titan cartoon SpongeBob was celebrating it's tenth anniversary, making ways for more animated shows to premiere, their live action slate is about to get larger, and all of this happening just two days after my 11th birthday. Just like the one random YT comment states, “The late 2000s and early 2010s had a feel of their own. The electronic-sounding pop music, transitioning from SD to HD TV, streaming was an option but cable still reigned supreme, social media hadn't fully taken over yet, etc. Just a great time to be a kid.” How I mostly view this specific era of Nickelodeon is the similar fondness Millenials feel for the shows of the 90s and the early aughts. The same fondness I mostly felt for the Disney Channel shows during the core 2000s and for the rest of the people who were there for Cartoon Cartoon Fridays/Checkerboard era for Cartoon Network. I know my stance really falls on the unpopular opinion side of things. There's gonna be different responses for different people for saying which era of Nickelodeon that's specifically the best because of the company's long history (see the Nickelodeon's subreddit, the mixed comments whenever someone posts about 2009-2013 era mainly coming from the 90s kids), but for me this era was no question the one that I'm the most nostalgic and resonant for. Throughout that whole decade, Nickelodeon was really throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what would stick with their programming and certainly there were some shows that I did not care for as a result. To make sure I'm not completely glazing every show Nick released during this time, let's start with the shows I disliked.

On the cartoon/animated side of things (or Nicktoons, which actually became it's own side channel at the time) is where I think they suffered the most. Not only the writing and humor, but the art style started to decline. Starting with Fanboy & Chum Chum looked abysmal to me just at first glance. (Sorry.) I didn't care for it back then, and I still don't now. Starting this new transitional era with this show was definitely a bad look for older audiences at the time. Sanjay & Craig and Breadwinners both represented what I disliked about modern cartoons at the time that I'm not sure if I want to revisit even on my worst day. Bright colors, the potty and obnoxious humor, were all unappealing and tiring to me. Even the animated titans SpongeBob and FOP were on the decline of quality. (For the latter, unpopular opinion, I don't think the show gotten worse when baby Poof was added, like so many viewers claimed. It gotten worse when Fairy dog Sparky and the little girl Chloe was introduced. FOP became unrecognizable to me after that.) The DreamWorks shows shouldn't count because Nickelodeon didn't actually own these shows, but they were decent and enjoyable enough that I didn't mind them when on TV. (Kung Fu Panda, Monsters vs. Aliens, Penguins, etc.)

For the live action shows, the network started to do a more broader approach to their programming. Bucket & Skinner: Epic Adventures, some people thought the series was a poor man's Zeke & Luther with surfer dudes. I only know it bc it starred Ashley Argota from her previous show True Jackson VP. It was alright, but nothing special. Fred: The Show & Marvin Marvin was the network's attempt to capitalize the craze of combining TV and Internet together with a social media star which flopped in the long run. I'm sure the actor Lucas Cruishank is doing well on YouTube now. In case of which by the thumbnails, he's actually thriving right now posting his own material as himself and not through a character. (Although, I admit the first 2 Fred movies while not great were a bit of a guilty pleasure, didn't really enjoy the third movie when Fred goes to summer camp for whatever reason.) The rest of the shows that would air later on that decade at least after Sam & Cat (Thundermans, Haunted Hathaways, NRDD, etc) wouldn't personally hit the mark all that well either. Overall, the 2010s decade for the channel was very trial & error on seeing which show would stick to the viewers.

However, there were 3 shows in the earlier half of the 2010s particularly that absolutely stuck with me very early on - BTR, Victorious, and iCarly. Quality, music and enjoyment wise, I thought those three shows in particular were equally on par with each other for Nickelodeon and were the centerpieces of my Saturday night/weekend watching during my middle & early high school years. I would also made sure to watch episode reruns throughout the week afternoons and evenings after school. As someone who mostly grew up with Disney Channel's golden age TV shows in the 2000s (Wizards, Suite Life, Raven, Lizzie, Hannah Montana, etc.) as that lineup was ready to wrap up, these shows were the SOLE reason I made the switch to Nick and were the perfect replacements, imo. It's crazy in hindsight that the network's last popular moment in my eyes came when Nick was trying to mostly emulate a rival network around this time with incorporating their own stars, especially with their bumpers or the teen stars singing the Nick jingle. However, I wouldn't lie and say it didn't end up working on me, because it absolutely did.

Right before this era, Teen Nick was absolutely dominated by shows like Drake & Josh, Zoey 101, Ned's and other shows in the early to mid 2000s. I was really young to really watch Nick around that time, but I knew the shows were still primetime quality viewing would predate everything leading to this era. I do remember watching reruns of Zoey 101 on TeenNick while vacationing in Florida back in 2013, and really enjoying the characters and the PCA setting. As a result, this proceeding era is how most of the audience got to know Victoria Justice and Miranda Cosgrove in the first place. You might remember Vic & Miranda as either the evil, malacious little sister to two stepbrothers and a new roommate at a beachside boarding school to the title character aka played by the younger sister of the greatest pop star in the 2000s. To then both actresses now evolving into leading roles of their own - from a Seattle teenager and her friends starting a webshow and a girl attending a prestigious performing arts school and finding her place as a future artist. Y'all remember the I Fight Shelby Marx special with Justice and Cosgrove duking it out in the ring at the MMA fight? Who knew it predicted Jake Paul (a more recent former Disney Channel star, mind you) down a similar path with well known fighters on Netflix PPV live streams? Pair those shows for a future crossover and air it alongside another show starring budding small town friends turned pop group, and you got a formulaic yet winning lineup of shows that not only will keep my interest but stay along for the fun chaos it all ensued.

Quite frankly, this lineup of shows (along with other decent notables like True Jackson VP, House of Anubis, etc) all represented not only simpler times in life but the last real time I gave a s**t about watching TV. It was truly the last hurrah of kid's TV if you will, right before streaming took over and I owned a proper cell phone. If you actively watched Nick during this time, every day felt like a event & was something to look forward to, no matter if it's a rerun or a new episode. It also helped that I was the right age & the PRIME target audience to enjoy these shows, between around 11 - 14 (ages 8-9 for the iCarly premiere, 11 y.o for BTR & Victorious) while on air. If I was any younger, I'd probably wouldn't have as much strong memories nor the appreciation about it as I do now. The best description I could describe it was: the HSM-ification of Nickelodeon: taking what worked about Disney Channel around the 2000s decade, the glamorous and appealing casting model ripped out from CW/ABC Family, and the earliest music video 24/7 model of sister channel MTV all wrapped in orange, surreal, high energy packaging.

As much as I do enjoy the Disney shows and you'd watch them as long enough as I have, the humor (while funny) does lean into the pristine, saccharine, family friendly tone that could be at times cringey for older audiences. With Nick shows, they weren't afraid to dive into “adult” humor at times that will fly over kids heads but would make their parents laugh, which was a part of their appeal. The tone and humor is very chaotic and zany, which lead into actual laugh out loud moments, believable character interactions and at points dramatic or heartfelt moments when called for it. Kids and their older siblings I feel could watch these shows together and bond over them and be entertained by it all, no matter the age group. At the very least, I was more entertained by this lineup than anything Disney Channel was airing around the early 2010s: A.N.T Farm, Jessie, A&A, Shake It Up, etc.

iCarly, Victorious, and BTR all gave their own impact on the network and left their mark one way or another. iCarly, as much as it was a worthy follow up of sorts to D+J, was ahead of their time in terms of just how much it predicted the rise of content creators and social media that is all too prevalent today - with sponsorships, (Techfoots) psychotic fans (the Nora Dershlit iPsycho saga, webcon fan war), mob mentality/rage baiting (Fred guest star), etc. Victorious, the sister show to iCarly, not only platformed Victoria onto her own leading role but introduced the viewers to a talented ensemble cast that would go on to do bigger and better things long after the show concluded (especially for two the cast members, just not the one we all thought). Not to mention, the crossover between the two shows I Party with Victorious that broke the viewership back in 2011 with the special inclusion of SNL and All That alum Kenan Thompson. BTR ushered what it's like to be in a boy band for a new generation and made that concept cool again for a younger audience like myself. At least for me, the show made me see the proper appeal in boybands and appreciated them in general. Plus, we can all count on the game shows Brainsurge and Figure It Out, as well as other Nick events such as the Worldwide Day of Play and the Kids Choice Awards to occasionally bring all these stars together.

I also thought the music especially from the latter two shows Victorious and BTR were genuinely great earwormers and filled some of my yearly songbooks and Spotify playlists later on. From Beggin on Your Knees to Boyfriend to Freak the Freak Out, to many others were some of the best songs kids had the pleasure of listening to. Even Miranda had her own set of bops, albeit a very short music career due to her tour bus incident. Her songs, “About You Now”, “Stay My Baby”, “Dancing Crazy”, & especially “Kissing U” were all popular hits for her, as well as the songs from BTR & Victorious. Nick was for sure taking the Disney route playing these hits during ad breaks. I think Columbia Records and the producers/songwriters involved did a good job on making these songs feel modern & timeless that it wouldn't sound out of place if played on mainstream radio. Basically, as good as as it could be while still retaining the young audience. Similar to their parent company, MTV was known for in its heyday playing music videos 24/7. I even owned a piece of merch through all three shows: an iCarly DS game which I rarely played back then, a Victorious CD + booklet I got for Christmas 2012 that I know my best friend from high school has borrowed from me for a week, and a BTR poster book that I bought at a book fair in 7th/8th grade, along with a shirt, two CDS, and a DVD copy of the movie (also Christmas 2012).

It was all bliss for my tweenage/early teen self to dive into, and I couldn't be thriving more by watching episodes of these shows week by week. However, as with all good shows on television, these batch of shows slowly & quietly disappeared one by one. Soon after the live action shows ended around 2013 (some of which ended quite abruptly) and learning what we know now about some of what the cast members went through (specifically the creator's shows), let's just say Nickelodeon was never the same as we remember them. A shell of its former self in a lot of ways, unfortunately. However, for those of you who have seen BTR, Victorious and iCarly, and the other shows at the height of their powers growing up, you can't deny the lasting impact, popularity and the fun vibrant encapsulation for this era of Nickelodeon over a decade. It was just a blip of the network's long history and didn't last long, but for that moment it was good while it lasted. And oh how I'll hold the memories from these choice shows closest to me for many years to come.

[mintandrea]

Heart.

I honestly struggled with a name and just kinda gave up. They're based on my actual heart shaped rock I have. I don't know if it's red jasper? But that's what was guessed.

i made them sharper than my heart because- not a processed heart rock. But tried keeping heart shape.

They have no lore.

Just rock.

I usually make a design and come up with lore later.

This is my way of original character creation. Minty is actually my OC from middle school, and their basic design aspects have been almost the same since 8th grade. Their lore tho? Changed a whole lot.

[blackcanary567]

Nat aligning herself more and more with femininity in her guilt because she finds it easier to be her father's disappointing daughter than his disappointing son.