themes and description of each drawing:

1. Apple - closeup of a bottle labeled "Inktober" with a drawing of an evil apple on it, next to a bottle of poison.

2. Relic - an ominous necklace floating, unclasped. magical particles eminate from the chain and the bottom of the necklace's gemstone, forming a faint grin.

3. Miniature - shelves stocked with Jerry figurines on sale (reference to Lego Master Builder Alec's Mini-Jerry prank). two of the figurines are ballet dancing while an instructor watches

4. Cactus - a sad cactus with an exposed brain.

5. Smack - a wizard with a staff beholding a large hand monument near the ocean. the monument vaguely says "SLAP" on the tips of the fingers. the night sky has circular patterns.

6. Ogre - a judgy ogre in a suit and bowtie.

7. Panic - a bloodied office with an alarm going off and a monitor that says "RUN". someone looks through a window from outside, shocked.

8. Stinky - smelly durian next to a dead person on the floor of the same office. a plant on the table is dead.

9. Ram - a HAL-1000 like computer with a display asking for ram. a human hand feeds some ram into a slot.

10. Mystical - a woman with her regular eyes closed and a third eye on her forehead, summoning many symbols. her hands glow dimly.

11. Rescue - a diagram of John Edward Jones stuck in Nutty Putty cave saying "help...". a magnet on a rope is attracted to one of his feet.

12. Toss - a robed hand tossing a diamond into a rubbish bin of diamonds.

13. Flimsy - a sad girl made of cardboard tubes and boxes. her right hand has fallen off.

14. Lady - a lady in a fancy red dress holding wine and a handbag, and wearing the necklace from the second drawing. the bottles from the first drawing are on a table.

15. Hooray - the front of a black greeting card that says "it's time. Hooray!". the text is in the shape of a weird green face, smiling creepily.

16. Gangly - a barely visible gangly figure in a forest, glaring. it has the green face from the last drawing.

17. Contraption - a bunch of simple mechanical patterns.

18. Flightless - a penguin on an iceberg looking up at the moon.

19. Confused - me curiously looking at The Orb of Confusion (reference to a Spongebob episode).

20. Lounge - the employee lounge from The Stanley Parable. the yellow Adventure line is sprawled all over the walls and blinds.

21. Hero - Miles Morales swinging in his Spider-Man suit next to a building in a city at night.

22. Beacon - a Minecraft landscape at night. a level 4 Beacon lights up trees nearby, and a path connects it to a Nether portal and a house.

23. Dapper - Minecraft YouTuber TrapperDapper reaching for the Dragon Egg on the End exit portal. BlackYoshiX creeps from the shadows with a sword, ready to strike.

24. Bake - a black bird peeking it's head out of a pie on a counter next to a window.

25. Fracture - two people in red berets standing in front of a painting split in two (vaguely referencing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33).

26. Zip - a zip file named "virus.zip" surrounded by other files. the zipper is open; the file has a small green creature inside.

27. Dumb - a child with a propeller hat and a lollipop saying "hi dogy" in front of an Eyeless Dog from Lethal Company.

28. Trophy - a trophy with a face styled after the Monstrosites from Minecraft Dungeons on a pedastal. Minecraft souls float in the background.

29. Tusk - a closeup of a creature's face in darkness. it has a long eye, a nostril, crooked teeth and a very large tusk.

30. Cookie - the cookie from Cookie Clicker spewing out cookies above a ruined city. the Statue of Liberty is knocked over in the background. the foreground is full of cookies.

31. Flex - a very buff woman with glasses and four huge arms flexing in a gym.

-

This is a test

first and foremost

The exact words will be important later

once everything seems correct.

-

I wanted to start with a higher quality product

trust me

my inner perfectionist still demands it

but to make the first real one perfect,

a simple test like this is all but necessary.

-

That brings us to page two.

-

On this page

things are different.

This time, there's an image of a cat

made of glyphs and symbols

laying flat below this paragraph.

-

I won't describe it any more

aside from the alternate text in the full transcription,

which you may have just heard

This seemed like the best way to do it

the script stands on its own just fine

without any additional details

and I thought you should hear it alone, first.

-

There is nothing on the other pages except words

just so you know.

You could argue that goes for this one, too.

-

And so, this is the final page

before this begins for real.

What comes later? More posts like this

that are less meta.

When is later?

In weeks to months

knowing me.

-

What is this?

Where can I put it? Does it belong somewhere?

What does it count as?

Poetry? A comic? ASCII art?

All? None?

-

I don't know,

but these are words

and there will be whimsy.

• The title, "Testing, Testing" is in the top left.
• The series name and comic number, "Words of Whimsy 0", is in the bottom left.
• The release date, the 17th of January 2026, is written in shorthand in the bottom middle.
• The page number is the top right.
• The author's username, "Miner_Fabs@lemmy.world", is in the bottom right.
• There is only one panel per page.

Page 1 has 3 spaced out paragraphs:

"This is a test

first and foremost

The exact words will be important later

once everything seems correct.

-

I wanted to start with a higher quality product

trust me

my inner perfectionist still demands it

but to make the first real one perfect,

a simple test like this is all but necessary.

-

That brings us to page two."

Page 2 starts with one paragraph, split in two:

"On this page

things are different.

This time, there's an image of a cat

made of glyphs and symbols

laying flat below this paragraph."

The cat is orange, and has a blank expression with squinting eyes. All four of its limbs are outstretched, and its tail is curled up. It is centered on the page.

Page 2 has two more paragraphs:

"I won't describe it any more

aside from the alternate text in the full transcription,

which you may have just heard

This seemed like the best way to do it

the script stands on its own just fine

without any additional details

and I thought you should hear it alone, first.

-

There is nothing on the other pages except words

just so you know.

You could argue that goes for this one, too."

Page 3 has three spaced out paragraphs, and the first two are broken into multiple lines:

"And so, this is the final page

before this begins for real.

What comes later? More posts like this

that are less meta.

When is later?

In weeks to months

knowing me.

-

What is this?

Where can I put it? Does it belong somewhere?

What does it count as?

Poetry? A comic? ASCII art?

All? None?

-

I don't know,

but these are words

and there will be whimsy."

The words "I don't know" in the last paragraph are closer to the middle compared to the rest of the paragraph, which is right-aligned.

i wrote some poems a while back, with the intention to turn them into this kinda thing and post them here later.

this test post exists for two reasons:

• to ask about accessibility. as the original form of these is poetry, i thought to present that on it's own first, then the full transcript, then the rest of the post's images, then this commentary. it's important i get this right now, since there will be more visual stuff in later instalments.

  • should i be adding proper alt text for each image, or is this good enough?
  • does it matter for screenreaders that the transcriptions are at the top, or could i keep them lower down next to this commentary without issue?
  • spoiler tags on lemmy seem to ignore single new lines, so i used dashes to seperate the paragraphs instead. is there a better way to do this?

• to ask where i should post this series to. i intend to always share these here (!onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone) as penance for continually breaking the rule by lurking, though i'd like to crosspost it elsewhere (unless that breaks the transcripts...). !Funhole@lemmy.sdf.org seems like a good candidate, but what about communities like !comics@lemmy.blahaj.zone? or !Poetry@lemmy.world? as i said, i don't know what this counts as. it's not even ASCII art, technically; i sometimes use unicode symbols like ellipsis.

also going to use this post to shoutout my two major inspirations for this series:

• Luke Humphris, who makes animated short videos with slice-of-life writing that i will be shamelessly imitating for a lot of these. he has some one-offs and a few ongoing series, one of which he's currently turning into a TTRPG. you can find his work here: https://linktr.ee/lukehumphris

• Stone Story RPG, a PC/mobile game that uses ASCII graphics. originally, these would've been in a more traditional webcomic style or pixelart, but it hit me at some point that i love how this game looks, and i wanted to try something new. the gameplay loop is simple, and there are very occasionally ads (at least on mobile), but it's a good time killer, and it gives you a full-on programming language as a late-game unlock. see more about it here: https://stonestoryrpg.com/

feeling nervous now i've put all this effort in that this post is gonna get no traction, or the formatting's broken, or... whatever! i enjoy the process, so i'm gonna keep making my art until it means something to someone.