YoinkTober 2023 - Tenth Anniversary Edition

[dmeck7755]

Ten little fingers and 10...uh oh

The scouting party was about ready to call it a day.  The search for Survivors did not yield any success.  They may need to call it and return to the base.  It did not seem likely they would find anyone still alive or uninfected.

Finding the bodies was bad, but finding what some people turned into was a nightmare come true. 

They came upon what looked like a restaurant.  "Good!", Mór thought.  If the power was still working there may be meat in the freezers, or at least canned/packaged items.  His stomach gave a low rumble at the thought of something other than field rations. 

The rest of the team returned they had two strangers with them. 

"HO! State your name and intent.."

"I am Alla and this is Bera, We have been coming south looking for Survivors.  We are so glad to see you!!  Your squad here told us of your mission."

The team cleared the old restaurant of any beasts they all went in and settled in.  Mór had an unsettled feeling about the two survivors and watched and followed closely behind.   He watched as they shed their outer coats, gloves and boots. He waited until they removed their sunglasses..

Two shots rang out and Alla and Bera lay dead.. 

"WTF!  Why did you shoot them!! "

"Look at their hands..they were changelings.  They were monsters..they would have killed us in our sleep. You can always tell by the eyes, hands and feet.  They were wearing sunglasses like us, so we could not see their eyes. But hands and feet will give them away also.  Usually they will lose or gain digits.  I caught a glimpse of their hands as they were changing.  If you look you can see their feet are deformed also. "Mór stated. 

As they looked them over closer their feet were longer than normal with the extra toes poking through.

"NEVER NEVER accept people as is.  You need to check them out.  We were lucky this time.  Don't be so stupid.  You can get us killed. "

"Remember
10 little fingers, 10 little toes
2 little ears and 1 little nose
2 little eyes that shine so bright

Anything else is just not right!"

[Jitter]

Uuf dmeck! I kind of saw it coming but… swift and effective!

But what’s this then? Emil is peering at a note, written in appalling hand but nevertheless nearly readable

1 no lazy
2 morning early
3 breakfast good
4 morning run with Sigrun
5 lunch good
6 blankets bed only
7 stand on one foot
8 around village
9 do what cat
10 night run with me

“Lalli! What is this?”
”Ah, you find. Your plan. MY plan. For you”
“?? What plan? What is going on?”
”You cannot run through night. Dangerous. Bad. We think you practice.”
”We?”
”Me. Sigrun.”
“You have been talking with Sigrun about my running?!”
”Sigrun know your running. We talk how you train.”
“How do you even talk with Sigrun?”
”Onni and Mikkel help”
“Onni and Mikkel!? You talk about my running with everyone?”
“No. Not Reynir. Reynir is stupid. Not good running.”
”Lalli, I’m sure you mean well but…”
“Heey! If it isn’t my right hand Viking! And you found our 10 step program already! Aren’t you excited! I am! Morning runs are the most best!”
*Groaaan*

[wavewright62]

10-Step Programme

(takes place between Spot 24 & picking up Reynir)

Mikkel asked Tuuri to join him outside the tank, from where he stood on the bank of a nearby stream.

"Can you see Copenhagen from there? Let me see!"  She hurried to the hatch, fussing to put on her mask, but Mikkel stopped her on the stairs.

"Now, walk toward me - slowly!"  Tuuri complied, craning her neck to try to catch an early glimpse of the wonder Mikkel was about to show her, but he was looking down at the ground.  "Stop!," he held up a hand.  "Stop right there."

"What? What?"  Tuuri looked down at her feet. "I- I don't understand? What is it?"

Mikkel calmly brought his hand down and crossed his arms.  "I've counted out 10 steps.  That, is the boundary of how far you are allowed to go from the tank."

Tuuri sputtered into her mask but had no answer.

--------------

A short one, I was going to elaborate on this concept but have no time.

[dmeck7755]

These are all enjoyable, thank you all!!

Onni's 10-Step Program

Stay within walls including non-immune family
Prevent family from leaving walls
(Tuuri leaves)
Sputter and cry
(Cannot contact through mage space)
Pack and head to Sweden
Leave baggage on dock
Arrive in Sweden sleep in foyer
(Ghost Danger!)
Call forth Kokko
Sleep
Meet surviving family
Go to Finland

[dmeck7755]

Uuf dmeck! I kind of saw it coming but… swift and effective!

I probably could have gotten away with just this...
10 little fingers, 10 little toes
2 little ears and 1 little nose
2 little eyes that shine so bright

Anything else is just not right!"

BTW Wonderful start all!!

Love the 10 toe drawing

[Jitter]

Go to Finland

Out of program steps error! Unable to defeat the Kade!

[Mirasol]

I hope it is a fun trip!!

Thank you! It was! ("out of the country" was a bit of an overstatement on my part though, I live relatively close to the Austrian border so this barely counts in my opinion )

We´re off to a great start! I loved reading all the contributions so far! Here´s mine for day 1 and 2 (I forgot to photograph yesterday´s drawing and now it´s night... Oh well, I´ll post it with today´s tomorrow.)

1: ten things I love about SSSS

Can I retroactively also add all the things that have been said here? Ten really is too little for this prompt.
Anyways, I tried to style this as some sort of guessing-game? So, feel free to guess if you want to. Some objects represent several points because I didn´t want the image to get too crowded. I put the actual list under the spoiler.

Spoiler: the 10 things I love • show

(in no specific order)

1: the community around it. Yes, one can argue that this isn´t really part of the comic, but it is the reason I stayed this invested in it for this long, and the reason I´m still here, so it has to be mentioned.
2: the poetry. Both inside the comic and what people were writing about it. It really gave me a new appreciation for that medium that school (I´m sorry), didn´t exactly provide me... The poems were always the first thing I looked for in the comments.
3: The mythology I learned about through the comic and the people around here. Also the magic-systems in SSSS are just neat.
4: the trolls. I´m a sucker for a good monster-design, even though I´m really bad at drawing scary things. And the ones in SSSS just strike this perfect balance between chillingly scary and tragic, so they´re never just an obstacle to hack and slash through. They have an actual story!
5: The artstyle and colors. Especially A1 is just so nice to look at. And I feel like I learned a lot artistically while trying to immitate its style in fanart.
6: linguistics and the discussions around it the comic created. Another thing I never thought could be so interesting until finding my way to this corner of the internet.
7: Costume Design. I just... really like the clothes people wear in this comic. They´re practical, they´re nice to look at, they´re so fun to draw...
8: The arc at the end of A1 where Lalli was trapped in Emil´s head. It´s probably my favorite part of the story. I don´t really have an explanation, it´s just neat.
9: The whole athmospere especially in the Silent World the comic creates.
10: The Characters and their interactions and relationships, especially in A1. I didn´t really know how to incorporate that without drawing them all, so this is supposed to be represented by the picture frame with the SSSS-logo. Just pointing this one out because I think it´s not that well executed haha.

btw this was the view I was drawing in front of 

Spoiler: show

2: Ten little fingers and 10… uh oh

How fun that most people interpreted this prompt, that I saw as a clear instruction to make something scary, in the completely opposite way.
But I already drew a grossling the day before, so here´s the Cheshire Cat instead.
The paper I used last year was sold out when I went to the store, so I decided why not try something new and use brown paper this time? So I´ll do that while also using up the rests of regular paper I still have lying around. Forgive me that the brown-paper drawings will probably be a lot simpler than the white-paper-drawings, I´m still finding out what works well with this medium.



10 little fingers or rather 10 toes,
10 long talons and one little nose
two big eyes that shine so bright
and one big smile with sharp teeth inside

I wasn´t familiar with the poem this prompt was based on so I looked it up before starting. Especially the line "two little eyes that shine so bright" stuck with me, so...

Spoiler: show

... I dumped glow-in-the-dark-paint on ´em baby!

[wavewright62]

I'm not familiar with the poem, to be honest, and I'm most delighted that I accidentally hit on that reference for many while making the prompt!

I honestly had babies / toddlers in mind while coming up with the prompt (like how everybody seem to look at a new baby & count the fingers & toes? , and like Mirasol figured it could be taken into troll territory.  But hey, it's delight time.

Speaking of delight - glow in the dark eyes! I really enjoy drawings done on different colour papers, even though I seldom do that myself.

(Not getting to any prompts myself for the next few days)

[Mirasol]

Look at that, this wouldn´t have come to my mind at all. (Completely the other way, actually, I looked at the prompt and thought "huh, this must be a reference to some poem I don´t know!")
I´m by no means claiming my interpretation is the right one by the way, sorry if it came off this way! I mean, evidently I jumped on something that wasn´t meant at all. I just really enjoy it when the same prompt turns into something completely different with every person who does it. That´s why I try not to check this thread until my contribution for the day is finished and I can´t get influenced. (Sometimes I´m too curious though...)

Here´s my next two drawings:

3: 10-Step-Program

I was confident enough into my gardening-skills this year to plant my namesake, Sunflowers! ...into pots! (So they´re safe from slugs, was my thought-process) This... was maybe a mistake... But they all bloomed and they´re beautiful and I love them.
Anyways, here´s the ten steps of growing potted Sunflowers, accompanied by drawing:

Spoiler: the ten steps • show

1: plant the seeds into tiny pots. Maybe some more than you need in the end, in case they don´t sprout. Just in case.
2: You now have double the amount of Sunflower seedlings than you have bigger pots, and absolutely not the heart to select some over others. Ergo, get more pots.
3: Repot the seedlings
4: Add fertilizer
5: water every day. Do not forget. they will let you know if you do.
6: Oh no, they fell over! Take your pick of reasons:
    - a light gust of wind hit them
    - they want to be watered and wanted to make sure you get the hint
    - they were just feeling a little dramatic today
7: Put them back upright. Add your preferred selection of items to keep them upright for the foreseeable future.
8: repeat Step 6&7 roughly once a week for the rest of their lifespan
9: watch them bloom and take a million pictures because you´re so proud of them
10: make elaborate plans of how you´re going to plant them right into the garden next time because this was a whole lot of work, slugs be damned!

A friend of mine recently called Sunflowers "real-life Tamagochis". xD He has a point.
Also here they are in real life:

4: These 10 are all that´s left

I´m once again enjoying a nice little morbid videogame with a cute artstyle right now. This time it´s "Cult of the Lamb", which is a mixture of dungeon crawling and farming game where you lead your own cult. If you are a kind leader or an evil one is completely your choice, and in a playthrough you can pick accordingly from a pool of abilities that changes the gameplay almost entirely.

I get incredibly attached to all the little creatures this game throws at me, no matter how stupid they act, so I could never hurt them. Sadly they still die of old age incredibly fast. It took me real-life days to get past having ten followers, because whenever I came back with new ones I´d show up to several corpses in my home base...

[wavewright62]

 

Hey I love your 10 steps for growing sunflowers in pots!  I opened it excitedly because I live in an apartment and the thought of growing sunflowers was very exciting.
Alas, I have now scuttled the idea...
But this is still highly appreciated, as is the insight into your game du jour.

[Jitter]

Such lovely sunflowers! As is the art!

I have not stopped by any means, just busy! More works will be forthcoming!

[thorny]

Hey I love your 10 steps for growing sunflowers in pots!  I opened it excitedly because I live in an apartment and the thought of growing sunflowers was very exciting.
Alas, I have now scuttled the idea...

There are other plants that grow well in pots. Don't give up!

[Jitter]

- Mommy, can I have some moreplease?
- No, honey, I’m sorry, you can’t
- But I’m hungry.
- Oh baby. i know. We all are. Let’s go to sleep now. We’ll eat tomorrow again.
- But I can’t sleep! I’m too hungry! Why won’t you or daddy just go to the shop like you used to? Bring bread and milk and ice cream and…
- Hush now, you know we can’t.
- I don’t WANT it to be the end of the world! It’s unfair!
- Yes it is, baby. Yes it is.
***
- We have to leave, you know that.
- We can’t! It’s too dangerous!
- It is dangerous but we can’t stay. Have you looked into the bag? Three tomato cans, one coconut milk, pea soup, two cans of tuna and two bags of noodles. We are out of food.
- Don’t forget the crackers!
- All right, one packet of crackers. These ten are all that’s left. We have to go before we are too hungry to walk.
- All right, I’ll go in the morning to look for something.
- No, must all leave. It’s not going to get better. We have to find a more sustainable place. We’ll all go together.
- But in the morning, right?
- In the morning. Definitely not now!


This one was hard to decide on because I had so many ideas for it!

[thorny]

Good one!

-- they'd better cook all the noodles before they leave, raw noodles aren't much good to eat. Maybe they might as well be full tonight and sleep well before heading out -- a better chance of getting through the first day may balance against another day or two that they can keep going longer; if they don't make it through the first day or two, after all, it won't matter how many supplies they would have had left.

(Am I overthinking this?)

[dmeck7755]

Everyone!! Awesome stuff!!

These 10 are all that's left
After many years of exploring the team were very well off financially.  They were all relaxing with some schnapps sitting near a huge roaring fireplace. 

"We need to go on an adventure again." Sigrun said

"We are getting old we are not as fast as we once was.." Onni retorted

We'll make our children come and show them how its done..." Sigrun replied unfazed..

Reynir wanting to avoid the pending argument Asked.  "What are the last thing you remember being weird on our trips?"

"hmmm..."

"I know!" Emil said.  "That warehouse where we found all those beans.  We ate beans for months.  It was weird after all those years they were still ok..."

Spoiler: show

Mikkel thought about it and said, "Finding those old buildings that looks to be shopping areas.  We scavenged many a thing from there."

"Yeah, except that one that was flooded and had that nasty water beast."

Spoiler: show

Lalli spoke up.  "Speaking of water beasts, that one we tried to dig out of that lake.  It was ruining the water and it was so big underneath it took us weeks to dig it out."

Spoiler: show

"What about that library that look perfect and the minute you touched the books they disintegrated?"

"yeah!  That was so sad.."

Spoiler: show

"Oh ! I know that jar of pickles on by the road..."

Spoiler: show

"I'll Tell you what  really liked..Those old greenhouses.  The Rose one was wonderful" Reynir sighed..

"Yeah but the beasts within were not"

Spoiler: show

 "How about that creepy road?"

Spoiler: show

"No! that talking cat.  He was so full of himself."

Spoiler: show

"I think that cat was a spirit or a god of some sort.  He definitely helped us out of a tight spot."

"yeah, he was the one that told us it was time to retire..I think he just wanted us away from his space"

"A talking cat is not normal!"

"What in this world is?"

 "I'll make tea.  Emil you said you made cake."

"Oh yeah, I'll get it."


"Now if we could only find coffee..."