Mop
@marvelousmop
Amateur birb fan, he/they, Demi. Creator of Jenny Over-There and various mysterious robed men. Carrd: The 925 Universe Website: #925Universe
And the award goes to Denis Borel - companion to Doctor Omega and non-stop worry machine! He's never had an adventure that he didn't thoroughly regret, and yet he keeps going on them thanks to the Doctor's persistence and the presence of his good "friend", Fred. Art by @aristidetwain.bsky.social
As of "Jenny at the Job Fair", Jenny's looking forward to going down a somewhat new avenue (getting more involved with marketing aspects of the MFS) — how well that'll go is anybody's guess (not even I know fully), but change is better than stagnation, and she needed to make a leap someday
It's all available to read for free on the official 925 Universe website, accompanied by lively illustrations from the equally lively @aristidetwain.bsky.social! ninetwofiveuniverse.wordpress.com/story-direct...
On the extreme flip side to this, @coppercupidcrew.bsky.social series is absolutely hilarious, and the way they capture cartoonish elements in prose has probably rubbed off on me (along with the website design I lightly pilfered from, and the illustrator I also ended up borrowing)
Now maybe I've waited too long to flatter my friends, but whatever, it's there. @arcbeatle.bsky.social's work on 10,000 Dawns really helped show me that, if you're going to go dark with something, you need to go as far as you're comfortable with if it's ever going to stick.
Adjacent to this, the experience of reading the first Oz book back-to-back with Gregory Maguire's Wicked is an experience I'll never forget because of just how well this book reconfigures the Land of Oz for its darker, politically charged reimagining.
I really went this long without mentioning the Land of Oz, huh. I mean, this series was so big that it has its own dedicated section on the 925 Universe website, it's just such a fun, broken toolbox to play around with.
The projects of Radio TV Solutions have also been inspirational for just my mindset to finding material - the way they incorporate disparate, weird bits of pop culture for something new. It's not canon, but I think spiritually the 925 Universe is the same world that made the Gameclam.
Onto some more comedic inspirations, I tap into a lot of dark comedy in my work, and the main guiding light I use for how to do that effectively is the film "Heathers". It has to strike the same awfully funny bluntness as some of the best jokes there.
Adjacent to this is the world of Weird Fiction (Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, etc). It's one of the major building blocks of the 925 Universe - weird corporate cults and weirder gods that nobody can comprehend.
Next up, just Pulp in general (extending back to Jules Verne and such). I take a lot of inspiration from old comics and stories - the exaggerated characters just speak to me on a comedic level, and they're good, simple reading for when I just want to make sure that I haven't forgotten how to write.
Another obvious one, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I mean, if you're a British writer doing anything moderately quirky, you're basically forced to chose between this and Discworld as a major inspiration for your work.
Welcome to my #BluePitHype inspiration thread for unspecified pop-culture ramblings! First off, most obviously, there's Doctor Who - I mean, my earliest paid writing work was Arcbeatle Press's Cwej: The Series, I'd be crucified if I didn't mention it
While the 925 Universe has many crime fighters and such, I believe the honour has to go to the woman best known for killing two witches, slapping a lion, killing the Nome King, and threatening the Man in Grey with a shotgun because he made her wife (Queen Ozma) upset. Give it up for Dorothy Gale!
Jenny Over-There of the #925Universe technically has powers (the ability to locate any tangible thig she's asked to), but really she's the protagonist because, in this world of elder gods, superheroe, and time travellers, she's the most normal person Art by @aristidetwain.bsky.social #bluepithype
In the story, he claims to be the Man in Grey's long-lost father and spends time doing father/son activities with him, while also just going on extremely uncomfortable rants and tangents about business, MiG's mother, sex, etc. It gets very weird. I don't know what possessed me when writing him. 2/3
This year's 925 Universe Father's Day special introduced Arco, who, yes, technically is a pre-existing character (a one-off villain from the Fantomah comics) but, much like most public domain characters in this series, he's *very* different from the source material 1/3
Fellow authors: without any context, what's the first line of your current WIP?
It goes without saying, but give it up for paragon of enthusiasm, DYNAMITE THOR! Art by @aristidetwain.bsky.social, who'd receive a very strong handshake from this fellow if they were to ever cross paths.
It's really unfortunate that so many 925 Universe illustrations (done by the lovely @aristidetwain.bsky.social - in fact, I think "A Change in Management" is the first time I actively enlisted his help) get cropped to *just* feature the torso and nothing else.
Dynamite Thor is a similar situation to MIG, as he popped up in the first story, but made his first major debut in "Open Sourcing". His introduction is a bit longer just to really drive home how terrible a superhero concept he is... and yet I ended this story with him joining the main cast
The Man in Grey was mentioned in that story, but his first proper appearance* was in "Open Sourcing". This line quite succinctly sums up his deal - miserable, grey, and inexplicably wearing robes in an office building.
Jenny Over-There's first appearance was "The Tribulations of Jenny Over-There", wherein we see her dreaming of a world where she isn't tormented by phone calls or the relentless electric signals sent through her brain by those stray sat-nav parts lodged in there. The meaning's quite simple there.
The Man in Grey is the one answer I have ready ahead of time because it's relevant to a story I want to do one day (and of course, one thinks of these things when the character is dating an insect). I think he's a moth - more on the weird, tattered butterfly end of the spectrum. Pure aesthetics. 3/3
Dynamite Thor is a cockroach because both will survive a nuclear bomb, easy as that. 2/3
Jenny Over-There is probably a very fuzzy bee because she sure does like her jumpers, but also will sting you if you start bothering her a bit 1/3 (art by certified cool cucumber, @aristidetwain.bsky.social)
While this is a Father's Day story in a sense, it has enough prominent queer elements to count as the pride month special for better or, in the case of Arco's rambles, for worse