Latest Posts by faint-taste-of-almonds - Page 9

god i love making animatics in my head i wish drawing was real

Hey quick question, who’s on first?

Follow up: what’s on second?

screaming, crying, throwing up, as I force myself to write a story i'm very passionate about and love writing and have no obligation to write except that i want to

AI disturbance overlays for those who don't have Ibis paint premium. found them on tiktok

it wasn't all bad, was it?

ik they're Jewish, but "Merry Christmas, Please Don't Call" by Bleachers is so Stan Twins-coded it honestly makes me cry

no actually I'm not done with this

I don't have the ability to animate for shit (maybe one day) so y'all will just have to suffer through my vaguely-described brainchild bc this makes me so ill not even joking

ok so:

(intro music) We see a split screen, on the left (LSS) is Stan and on the right (RSS) is Ford. Stan is early into his grifter years, and Ford is in college. Both look a little older than when Stan is kicked out. Both are laying awake at night staring at the ceiling, Stan in his car and Ford in his dorm bed.

To the tempo of your uptight Uptight being a synonym for an anxious state, we see each of them tapping a foot or a finger

Is the flicker of a street light A streetlight is visible from the Stanleymobile and from Ford's dorm window, though visibly different ones. The light is flickering, for both of them.

You know this moment don't ya Both twins squeeze their eyes shut, and the lights combine into a single one, different from the ones before. This is the light from outside their Jersey home, the night Stan is kicked out.

And time is strangely calm now Both twins stare off into space, the split screen back in place. Stan is in his car, and Ford in their his room. They are young(er) again. (so, so young)

'Cause everybody's gone it's (LSS): Stan looks to his passenger side, where Ford would sit if he were driving them both. (RSS): Ford looks at Stan's empty bunk, at all the stuff he's left behind.

Just you and your anger We see Stan's fists tightening around the steering wheel, and Ford's around the pamphlet. They are both gritting their teeth while tears drip down their faces.

Oh golden boy We now see singularly from Stan's perspective. The boys as children run past, Ford beaming while playing around with Stan. This is tinged with fondness.

don't act like you were kind This is Ford on the swing, talking about West Coast Tech. This is Ford, shutting the curtains, leaving Stan hanging with his High Six in the air.

You were mine but you were awful every time This is Stan with Ford in the basement, smiling about reconciling before being handed the journal.

So don't tell them what you told me Stan and Ford argue in the basement - This is specifically the line "I'm giving you the chance to do something worthwhile for once in your life."

Don't hold me like you know me Ford and Fiddleford, either in college or working on the portal. Ford looks at a picture of the twins before Fidds calls his attention and he stuffs it back in a pocket.

I would rather burn forever Stan, smoking a cigarette down as far as it will go

But you should know that I died slow Stan, alone in Ford's bathroom, tending to his brand.

Running through the halls of your haunted home Stan looks around the mess that is the cabin while Ford is in his deepest paranoia.

And the toughest part is that we both know Stan leafs through Journal 1, desperate for answers.

What to happened to you Stan, hurt and angry, shoving Ford toward the portal accidentally.

Why you're out on your own Stan, watching Ford begging for him to do something as he is swallowed by the portal.

Merry Christmas, please don't call We see Stan's figure outline sitting in the darkness of the broken portal, hugging the journal. He wants his brother back.

You really left me on the line kid 17 year old Ford in their room, cradling something that triggers a memory of Young Stan and Ford

Holding all your baggage Ford puts this item in a box labeled Keep.

You know I'm not your father Portal-Years Ford stares into a mirror. A comparison of Ford, Stan (the way Ford remembers him), and Filbrick in a mirror. Ford looks away.

Who says welcome to your uptight Filbrick stares at a college-age Ford, inquiring about money.

While it flickers like a street light Ford is still nervous in the face of his father. He remembers what happened to Stan.

He flickers through your damage Ford looks at his hands. Five-fingered hands, rough with callouses and boxing scars overlay them. He curls them into fists and looks away.

Oh golden boy you shined a light on our home Ford's view of Stan, a strong and sociable protector and companion. Similar to the photo of them boxing, with Filbrick in the background.

And at your best you were magic we were sold Young Ford, enraptured by the story that a young Stan is weaving for him.

But don't tell em what you told me Post-Portal Stan and Ford, when Stan renounces Ford as family.

Don't even tell em that you know me Stan with the twins, explaining Ford's relation to him as Ford watches, missing something that he can't quite name.

I would rather burn forever Ford, working himself to the bone to prepare for Weirdmaggedon, ignoring Stan.

But you should know that I died slow Ford's time in the portal. He is constantly reminded of Stan, his memory version of Stan (young and loving) wherever he goes, and it pains him incredibly. Hunted and injured, he goes to talk to his brother, but there's only air.

Running through the halls of your haunted home 17 year old Ford walks past family portraits in their childhood home, pointedly ignoring them.

And the toughest part is that we both know We switch to split screen again. Stan is alone and grifting, Ford is at his HS graduation. There is an empty seat next to him.

What to happened to you Single screen again. This is the packed duffle bag by the door.

Why you're out on your own This is the perpetual motion machine, spinning until it breaks. Stans horrified face appears, then Ford's furiously betrayed one.

Merry Christmas, please don't call Split screen. Snow falls gently, Stan in his car and Ford in the cabin. Phones are in frame for both of them. They don't even look at them.

One ticket out of your heavy gaze Post-college Ford, feeling guilty/remorseful looking at an old picture. He flashes back to Stan pleading eyes looking up from the street that night.

I want one ticket off of your carousel Ford then lays awake at night, thinking about how Stan might be doing.

I want one ticket out of your heavy gaze Grifter Stan, staring at the boxing picture. He flashes back to Ford's betrayed face looking down from the window that night.

I want one ticket off of your carousel Stan then lays awake at night, thinking about how Ford might be doing.

But you should know that I die slow Split Screen: Stan and Ford, fighting/running from Nightmare creatures separately during Weirdmaggedon.

Running through the halls of your haunted home Single Screen: Both running to save the Mystery twins.

And the toughest part is that we both know Both twins locking eyes while caged, the plan forming silently.

What happened to you The memory gun being set to "Stanley Pines"

Why you're out on your own Stan in that clearing in the woods, Ford and the twins running to hug him.

Merry Christmas, please don't call Young Grifter Stan, standing at a phone booth as it snows. Ford answers, but Stan doesn't say anything.

Merry Christmas, I'm not yours at all College Ford sits at the table with his parents and Shermie/Shermie's family, having a holiday dinner. Caryn has put out an empty chair. Ford keeps glancing at it.

Merry Christmas, Please don't call me Slightly Older Grifter Stan stands at a different phone booth, holiday sales being advertised nearby. Ford doesn't answer this time.

Please don't call me The landline in Ford's house rings. Bill symbols have begun to appear.

Please don't call me The landline in Ford's house rings. There's even more of Bill this time.

Please don't call me The landline rings, and Soos answers. The Grunkles are at sea. Stan calls something out to Ford, who is standing at the bow. He turns, and answers. The water is calm, and their arms are now around each other. They don't need a phone, they're right there with each other.

Anyway thanks for bearing with me, I hope you can see my vision :)

AHHHHHH I’m in love with everything about this

I need someone to draw this:

Odysseus, covered in blood, ragged and looks like death warmed over: *wearing a sash that says “most valid crashout” across it with Hermes/Athena bestowing a pageant crown upon him*

Optional skewered Poseidon in the background

"Nice characters are boring" to YOU. I love characters who no matter what, will always have genuine love for humanity in their heart. Characters who dance and laugh and sing with sincerity. Characters who believe in others, and are willing to extend a helping hand to people when no one gave them the same luxury. Characters who have gone through so much but believe, no matter what, that humanity and life is something beautiful and worth protecting

bold of movie studios to think anything live-action could be an improvement on the original animated material

So anyways I think the worst part about Emma May is that she was so so loved. Fidds almost destroyed a city because she left him. Can you imagine loving someone that much? To the point of wanton destruction? She just couldn’t give him what he truly wanted so she lost her place in his list of priorities. He got carried away in Ford’s dazzling world and forgot that she was a person who needed companionship and attention, that she wasn’t just a concept to yearn for from a distance. Fiddleford forgot that she was a person a PERSON and all we see is this negative space, a garage in Palo Alto, an imprint left in their marriage bed, half a face on his desk, this forensic scattering left in her son’s existence and a crazed lunatic missing a Family, a Wife. She once existed. And he dug such a deep well of sadness within her that she quite literally disappeared completely from the narrative. Something something there’s a particularly cruel pain left by the selfishness of kindhearted men. Emma May, was it worth it?

ALSJJDLAJF SO EXCITED TO SEE THE END RESULT

I need someone to draw this:

Odysseus, covered in blood, ragged and looks like death warmed over: *wearing a sash that says “most valid crashout” across it with Hermes/Athena bestowing a pageant crown upon him*

Optional skewered Poseidon in the background

I need someone to draw this:

Odysseus, covered in blood, ragged and looks like death warmed over: *wearing a sash that says “most valid crashout” across it with Hermes/Athena bestowing a pageant crown upon him*

Optional skewered Poseidon in the background

draft dodging via intertwining yourself so heavily with the story that you cannot be removed without fundamentally altering it

stop haunting the narrative we need you in the War

We can all agree that saying “glad we see eye to eye” to a CYCLOPS is foul behavior, but you know what’s worse?

Saying “I am your DARKEST MOMENT” to the guy you just BLINDED

man this piece of media i like that's bad and sucks would be so cool and awesome if it wasnt bad and didnt suck. unfortunately,

my central padmé take is that she is someone who constantly and increasingly feels like she has blood on her hands that she can never wash off. this is the core of her deal to me. ever since i started seeing her like this she has never ceased to make perfect sense to me

yes there's a lot of things to criticize about Star Wars but one thing i will always love it for is being so unabashedly tragic

i'm sure it's been said before, but one of the main things i think powers the SW fandom (fics in particular) is the (in)evitability of it all

time travel fix-its are one of the most popular sub-categories of fics that i've seen (for the prequels at least) but i see it much more rarely in other fandoms. i know each fandom has their own niches that they dig into but star wars fic writers took one look at this decades long story of people who were doomed from the start and said 'not in my house bitch'

and i'm never tired of it, because there's so many places where just one different action could have changed the story entirely, but didn't

was it over the moment Palpatine succeeded in feeding Anakin's fears and his distrust toward the Jedi? the moment the Sith gained control of the senate? what about when the war started, when the Jedi were made generals of men designed to be their executioners? what about when Dooku left the order? when Qui-Gon Jinn died, leaving barely-knighted Obi Wan Kenobi to raise a child he had no idea how to care for? when the Jedi massacred the Mandalorians at Galidraan, leaving Jango Fett primed (hah) for revenge? when Palpatine, and thus the Sith, first gained influence? when the Jedi were tied to the Republic, all the way back at the Ruusan Reformation?

there are so many little moments that turn into this huge web of cause and effect when you take a step back. and in canon, these characters are dooming themselves while we watch, but what reason do they have to do anything different? they don't know they're in a tragedy - its dramatic irony at its goddamn finest

but there's this thing about decisions: for it to be a choice, there has to be another option. and our heroes make their mistakes because that's what they do, while we aren't privy to that other option, leaving that little what-if. it's a favorite human pastime, to think about what might have been.

we start at episode 4, though, fourty or so years after what you could arguably call the start, and find ourselves watching the dominoes fall in place throughout 1, 2, and 3.

and we can hate the choices, hate the tragedy, hate what happened to our beloved characters, but we knew. we had the luxury of knowing.

it's a love story, it's political intrique, it's sci-fi at its finest, and they were dead from the start.

im seeing a lot of "queer people dont kill yourselves" posts and yes, i agree but also poc folks dont kill yourselves. you're needed in this space just as much as the white folks are. we will get through this hand in hand together

*grits teeth* im hopeful i believe there is good in the world im fucking hopeful

some of you didn’t have mothers that told you ‘everyone gets anxious like that’ when you described your horrible anxiety around new places or things or that ‘everyone struggles with that’ when you described a symptom of ADHD only for you to get diagnosed in high school with both and subsequently motivate her to get diagnosed as well and be so mad that all that time she was dismissing you but also sad because she’s been struggling by herself for so much longer than you have even been alive and now you listen to her talk about how different she feels on meds and feel the rage and joy battle in your soul and it shows

Fiddleford was okay with not knowing definitively whether the world was ruled by science or by scripture, but when his head went through that portal he realized what he and Stanford were doing wasn’t natural for either

the thing about fiddleford is imagine this small town farm boy. born and raised in rural tennessee, all he knows is raising pigs and slaughtering pigs and serving up pigs at the dinner table where they say grace before each and every meal. his world is so small but he knows there's something bigger out there and maybe it's god but maybe it's something else so he goes to college far away from everything he's ever known. and maybe he's the first in his family to ever do it, maybe everybody is so proud of him or more likely theyre cursing his name for abandoning the family business and going off to live some heretic pagan lifestyle. but it's okay because he's found that bigger thing and it's not god but it's this strange city boy who's so alike him in ways that he never thought possible. it's this city boy who listens to him when he spouts crackpot theories and thinks he's onto something and sits all night with him until they hack it and the feeling of being heard and seen and believed is so incredible that he didn't even realise this city boy has six fingers on each hand until theyre high fiving at some unholy hour of the morning and frankly that makes him all the more special. and maybe that's love but he pushes that down because he knows what happens to men who fall in love with other men. and then college is over and the city boy moves on to bigger and better things and suddenly he's alone again. so he moves to california and he gets married and he has a son and he KNOWS he loves them he KNOWS he does but it doesn't feel the same. so when he gets the phonecall and that feeling comes rushing back of course he says yes, of course he drops everything, of course he doesnt think twice because how else is he going to feel like that again ? and for a while everything is perfect again until it's not. until it's scary, until it's keeping him awake at night, until it's starting to feel a whole lot like a punishment from god. he had his chance to stay in tennessee, he had his chance to raise a family who he could provide for. but instead he went looking for something bigger than god, and he found it, and now he has to live with the consequences.

first time vs last time in the nightmare realm

both done on an aggie/magma/drawpile

some type of deja-vú….

there is something so important to me about what happens between who you were and who you became, because the answer is ‘nothing you will ever be able to forget’

We need more young stan content out here.

And nah I ain't talking about 12 year old Stanley or 30 year old mullet Stan, I'm talking 17 year old, slicked back hair, acne riddled Stan pines.

Yeah that one.

I am so happy mullet Stan is so popular because his fit slaps ngl and the angst is so potent I can't not respect it. But teenage Stan has so much potential it's driving me insane.

There is a line dividing the 17 years of relative happiness Stan had with Ford and the 10+ years of depression and crime he had on the streets, and teenage Stan uses that line as a goddamn jump rope.

Seriously, depending on how you look at it dude is either living his best life or is fighting for said life in the trenches of homelessness and poverty.

I see a lot of content regarding Stan on the streets but it only ever focuses on 30ish Stan in his later years of homelessness where he's already a hardened adult after years of dealing with this bullshit. But Stan didn't just drive away and then magically turn 30. There were times in those first few months after Stan got kicked out where he was in his car, trying to sleep, probably starving, while still being fundamentally a child.

Hell, compared to the 30ish age of mullet Stan and the 60+ year old con man he'd later become, teenage Stan is damn near a baby. There's a certain brightness about him, a sort of warm naive optimism that still clings to him because he's straight up just too young to know any better.

He's still fully convinced he's gonna make it rich and go back to his family in a few years. He still believes wholeheartedly that even if shit sucks right now, eventually everything is gonna be okay. It has to be. But it's not gonna be okay. It's not gonna be okay for a long time. And some parts are just never gonna be okay.

Seeing a happy and oblivious teenage Stan feels like watching a baby lamb walk into a slaughter house.

The next 10-something years are going to tear him apart limb from limb. In 40 years he's going to wake up on a boat during a bout of amnesia thinking he's in Columbian prison, or he's locked in the trunk of a car and about to drown, or his shoulder is on fire and his brother is gone, or it's the end of the world and everyone he ever dared to give a shit about is about to die in front of him and it's all his fault because he was too weak to stop it.

At some point, a young Stanley is going to get into his first true life or death fight. He doesn't even have to be involved with crime yet for it to happen. He's probably bruised and bleeding, with not nearly enough money to afford a doctor. He's sitting in the driver's seat of his El Diablo having a complete and utter break down because he almost died and suddenly everything is real.

Nothing is okay, absolutely nothing is going to be okay and whatever is left of his teenage innocence, naivety, and warmth dies in that car and it never comes back.

The next 10+ years are going to fundamentally change Stanley as a person and he's never going to be the same ever again. But teenage Stan doesn't know that, he's still a kid trying to sleep in the back of his car, ignoring hunger pangs and finding comfort in the half baked business ideas his mind cooks up because he doesn't understand how utterly done for he is.

12 year old Stanley I believe is so appealing because of his bright rambunctious spirit. He's still just a kid playing on the beach with his brother, but so was teenage Stan. I just wish the wholesomeness that comes with that and the subsequent hurt that follows as that spirit is broken over and over again by the world was explored more.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

when the artwork is a character and their past/future/alternate selves layered over them like a cracked mirror reblog if you agree

i’ve been predicting that my responsibilities are gonna hit me like a truck and man am I starting to see the headlights

the holy trinity: the father (fuck it we ball) the son (it is what it is) the holy spirit (to be cringe is to be free)

been thinking about fantasy/scifi rule systems and free will

when I say literary parallels this I what I mean

idk man but something about Stanley "taught himself extremely advance physics/math/probably many other things while running a relatively successful business" Pines and Stanford "is wanted in almost every dimension with a judicial system of some kind" Pines is sooo fucking funny to me

yeah you’re her boyfriend but we exist as wretched mirrors of each other, never free of the knowledge of how fate will never let us untwine, so fuck you dude