Jan-Mar 2024 Art Dump · 4:07am April 4th
January
Time Ram - Terror of the Crablikes!
The Doctor and Romana arrive in a colony overrun with crabs insects Garthim alien insect things that Shawcraft worked very very hard on. (Nobody in the colony believes in the Macra!) The only person they can seem to rely on is a young rebel called Adric, who claims to have seen these beasts. (Nobody in the colony believes in the Adric!) But when Adric encounters the Rotating Brainhell, he suddenly recants and betrays the TARDIS travelers. How can the Doctor stop the Macra when K9’s had his head snapped off and Romana’s been taken up the Old Shaft? (Nobody in the colony believes in the Carry On films!) What do the hardworking people of this colony believe in? Work ethic, Legs & Co., and the terrible Math Claws of Bidmead, swooping down from his Maths Perch on high!
Incidentally, thanks for the shoutout on the most recent episode, chaps! Much appreciated, it absolutely made my day.
Here's some character art for a one-shot game of Throne Rats I played with some pals recently. Alec, our overcaffinated badger healer; Ceillia, our bioweapon skunk tactitian; and Lennox, our cheerful wolf assassin!
February Fearsonas
A collection of what yours truly would look like as an avatar of each of the 15 Fears. Contains some blood and also furries.
My Fearsonas Day 1: Slaughter
If I’m going to become an out-of-control murder machine, I’m going to do it to my own soundtrack, with my personal cursed music player. I’d be that person on every bus blasting their tunes without headphones and singing along, the long-lasting sensory hell that makes you despise all of humanity and especially the people in your immediate vicinity. Someone will sneeze, or laugh too loud, or look at you wrong, and you’ll just go ballistic.
My Fearsonas Day 2: Desolation
BURN IT ALL DOWN! BURN IT ALL DOWN! BURN IT ALL DOWN! Who cares if that won’t fix anything? What does it matter that there’s nothing to put in its place? The catharsis of burning, the righteousness of the torch, the glee of dancing in the ashes – these are all that matter. BURN IT ALL DOWN! BURN IT ALL DOWN!
My Fearsonas Day 3: Spiral
Listen. If I’m gonna be a personification of the fear of losing your mind and not being able to trust your senses, there’s no reason not to do it as a big goofy toon hyena that shows up one day on a channel you’ve never seen before, you feel me? And then you start seeing that hyena everywhere; in other cartoons, advertisements, the evening news, like they’ve always been there, with its big dumb grin and their piercing laughter. After that, you start hearing that laughter in your dreams. Then, while you’re awake. You see its face, first in reflections, then across the street. The people around you don’t notice – it’s not that they can’t see it, just that they don’t think it’s odd. “It’s just a hyena,” your best friend says. “What’s so weird about that?”
You agree, hesitant. Something seems off about your friend; her little bowtie, perhaps, is the wrong color, or she’s done up her feathers differently. Shaking your head, you amble away, tail tucked between your legs and ears flat against your head. It’s a beautiful day in Toontown, but you can’t help but feel that something’s wrong.
And on the other side of the screen, the hyena laughs and laughs and laughs…
My Fearsonas Day 4: Corruption
Bugs? Out. Disease? Out. The hot new Corruption motif is rats. I mean I wouldn’t have to change much. I already like to hoard interesting junk, burrow into nests made of fabric and paper, and scrounge for cheese in the wee hours of the morning. Catch me scurrying through these pipes!
My Fearsonas Day 5: Extinction
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
My Fearsonas Day 6: Hunt
Well, look, the dog/wolf motif is great and all, but I’ve always been more of a cat person. If I were to fall to the most furry-aligned fear, I would absolutely lean into it. uwu. glomps you. starts biting and biting and biting adn biting and biting an
Also the dark glowy stains are meant to be blood under a blacklight, but they didn’t quite turn out how I wanted.
This one gets their power from the horror and fear wrought by getting trapped in the news cycle, witnessing the constant barrage of horrors happening around the world every day and being unable to look away or do anything meaningful to help. What do you mean I have an unhealthy relationship with the news.
My Fearsonas Day 8: Buried
I should get up. But the blankets are so comfy, so warm. They tangle around me, and lost in the haze between waking and sleeping, I’m not sure which way is up, not sure whether I’m rising and shining or falling still deeper. There are things to do – they can wait until morning – they can’t wait, I must do them now or I’ll never get to sleep – I don’t have the energy to do them now – if I wait, I’ll forget – how would I even do it at this time of night? What time is it? It’s been so long since I’ve seen the sky, so long since I’ve moved. I should get up and look. The blankets are no longer so comfy or warm, now that the heat from my body is fading. They tangle around me, and lost in the haze between waking and sleeping, I’m not sure which way is up, only certain that I’m falling still deeper.
My Fearsonas Day 9: Vast
Why should the Slaughter get all the musical fun? A Vast avatar that can cast Thunderwave would be excellent. Songs that capture the vibe of being on a roller coaster – when you hit a certain point, your stomach drops, and so does the floor.
My Fearsonas Day 10: Lonely
Is there any lonelier feeling than driving at night? The rush of cars has faded to a trickle, and between the all-swallowing dark and the dazzling headlights, you can see no one behind the wheel. The only company you have is the voice on the radio, calm and friendly, but so distant. He is hosting a late-night call-in show for lonely hearts, people separated by distance, or circumstance, or that which can never be overcome. The man on the radio listens and hums along sympathetically as the caller tells their tale of woe, then offers some placating words and puts on a song. You wince as you remember – this was the song that was playing when your boyfriend broke up with you.
You turn on your brights; there’s a fog rolling in.
The show keeps playing as you drive, the same format repeated time and again; a tale of loneliness, a platitude, and a song. A song that played when you were getting together with someone from whom you are now apart. A breakup song that bounces around your hollow chest. A song you listened to obsessively when you were mourning.
How long have you been driving now? How long has it been since you’ve seen another car. The fog is so dense you can barely see the road ahead of you. Maybe you should pull over. You’re not even sure you can remember where you were going anymore.
“That’s our time,” says the man on the radio. “It’s goodnight from me to all you lonely hearts out there, but to send you on your way, here’s one last song…”
The rest is static. When the mist rises, the morning sun will shine upon your empty car, lying on the highway’s edge. But it will not shine on you.
My Fearsonas Day 11: End
The End strikes me as being quite easy to serve and very difficult to be extra about. I think I’d probably just run a creepy funeral home. People come to see their dead loved ones, but someone accidentally goes into the wrong room and find that all of their loved ones are laid out in caskets. And at the end, they find one lying empty. They know there is no escape from it but to lie down within and let their life slip away…
And then they wake up! Everything’s fine, they just fell asleep on a chair somewhere and had a nightmare. Quite understandable, this must be a very stressful day for them. And they go to the funeral and then go home, and that’s that.
Except, of course, the Fears don’t let go that easily. The victim will not die on that day. They will not die until their time. And that time will not be until every other person they saw in those endless rows of caskets is dead and gone. It won’t be rushed, of course; the End is nothing if not patient. But they will live to see everyone they loved die before them, and will not be permitted that same release until that time.
My Fearsonas Day 12: Dark
First order of business as an Avatar of the Dark; immediately adopt the Faction Paradox aesthetic. If you think about it, the sombras que corta are basically the same as the shadows in MAG 63: The End of the Tunnel, but with shadow weapons. Also, the skull masks from animals that never were fuck severely, although I might have to trade with the Flesh or Extinction to get an accurate one. But yeah, murderous shadows, lurking in abandoned buildings. I’ll let people escape sometimes, but only after stitching something onto their shadow, like horns or a tail, something obvious and inhuman that they’ll feel on their body in the darkness of the night.
My Fearsonas Day 13: Web
You’re pretty sure your DM is evil. They’re not evil in the way of most RPG horror stories, though. They’re cheerful, polite, and walk that fine line between letting players do what they want without letting them derail the campaign. Really, on paper, they’re practically perfect. They weave brilliant plots, they encourage everyone to participate, and they don’t have any patience for creeps. There was one guy at the first session who kept making people uncomfortable, but the DM took them aside and you’ve never seen him since. Nor has anyone else, actually…
The thing is, they’re never caught off-guard. Nothing any of you players have done have surprised them, and you’ve done some batshit stuff. They just smile and weave your actions into the story as though they’d planned it all along. It never feels like they’re railroading you. Either they’re a genius at improv or they can see the future. Or… well… there have been a few times where you’ve spoken or rolled where just for a second, your body felt numb, like that feeling you get when you’ve been underwater too long and your limbs feel like they’re stuffed with cotton. And then you’re fine again. You’re not sure why you just did what you did, but everyone seems to be going with it, so you do the same.
If it was just that, then that would be fine. You play pretty late at night. Sometimes you feel a little weird. But now it’s started happening in the real world, too. When you talk your boss into giving you a raise after getting a crit on a Persuasion check with a king the night before, or beat your buddies at basketball when you just made a killer Athletics check. When one of your fellow players got a side job tutoring after multiclassing as a wizard. When a different player got hospitalized for a nasty electric shock after nearly dying to an adult blue dragon. When your boyfriend cheated on you after an important NPC betrayed the party.
You could leave. You should leave. There’s something so wrong with this smiling DM and their game, and you need to leave it before something irreparable happens to your character. But the story is so compelling, and you’ve got so many friends there, and in more than a year of playing, not one person has missed a session. Not even the one that got electrocuted. You know that your will isn’t strong enough to leave the table until the game is over, whatever that might entail.
Oh, well. At least the arbiter of your collective fates can be bribed with pizza. Better get extra-cheesy garlic bread, just to be safe.
My Fearsonas Day 14: Stranger
BOOPOOPADOOPOOPABOOPADOOPBOOP Haunted Doll Watch. It’s me I’m the Haunted Doll hello. Do you like my dress.
I don’t have terribly much to say about this one. I’d take people apart and stitch their still-living brains and organs into plushies and fursuits because if I can see a way to swing my service of a fear god into being a furry, I’m gonna take it. I’m the regional manager of this evil Build-a-Bear, and you best believe I sew a heart into every one of my creations!
My Fearsonas Day 15: Flesh
Honestly, what wouldn’t I do as a Flesh avatar? I can take myself apart and put myself back together again, but better, stronger. I can provide free gender-affirming surgery for anyone who wants it. I can have horns and extra arms because, frankly, I deserve them. I can give people the bodies they want, whether that be in a trans way, a furry way, or whatever else their hearts desire! Our bodies are so weak, so fragile, the grotesque weight of meat in which our minds and bodies are held captive. We deserve the right to customize, at the very least. We deserve to match the beauty and horror and wonder of our inner selves. Come into my studio. Let me make art of you, with my ink and needles and knives, my hands and hooves and fins and paws, eyes and tongues and gills and wings. Whatever you want. You have only to ask.
March
Reimagining Doctor Who episodes as TMA pt. 3: Knock, Knock as the Buried. Man, this episode freaked me out. Gotta love it when the house is alive and hungry. Really pleased with how the guy in the wall turned out.
Geometric-style poster for Knock, Knock, because I really liked the contrasting colors and simple shapey style.
TARDIS Tarot
7 of Wands: Tegan Jovanka
TARDIS Tarot
Knight of Cups - Iris Wildthyme
Time Ram - Drashigs or Dishrags?
Roll up, roll up! Come and see the funny little actors rammed into a story from the Pertwee era! Thrill as Vicki attempts a triangle! Shriek at the extraterrestial bureaucrats and their malevolent schemes! Gasp as Ian and Barbara face down a man in a sack with prongs (or possibly still just glove puppets)! Look at this turtle! That’s prehistoric, that is. On after The Pyramid Game.
I do love these blogs. And after going over your assorted Fearsonas and my inordinate love for the "your body is what you make of it" philosophy of the Simic Combine, I'm at more risk from the Flesh than I realized.