confettininjabean

[confettininjabean]

[confettininjabean]

the person reading this is going to survive the rough patch they’re going through

[confettininjabean]

i watched one (1) video on how to draw hands that changed my life forever. like. i can suddenly draw hands again

these were all drawn without reference btw. i can just. Understand Hands now (for the most part, im sure theres definitely inaccuracies). im a little baffled

[confettininjabean]

why does nobody ever talk about tyrdda bright-axe I mean she was a female leader of an Avvar tribe, a lesbian mage whose lover was an elf. she kept her people strong and took no shit from anyone like??? what a woman

[confettininjabean]

i just think that, most of the time, you really do need to teach people how to love you. and equally, you need to be taught how to love others. this can feel scary and hard and even like a failure, especially if you're approaching a relationship with trauma - shouldn't it be easy to love me? yeah ofc. but love is an act of translation between people across experience, geography, culture, memory. it's constant, purposeful translation. and though it can be hard, there is real joy to be found in the teaching and learning of love.

[confettininjabean]

[confettininjabean]

I think something a lot of other people can relate to is the way that you get so conditioned to discomfort that you stop registering it.

I remember sitting at the table with my family, eating dinner as a child. I’d try to eat, because of course I was hungry. But sometimes the flavor or texture was so repugnant that it moved into a category of Not Food.

“Two more bites before you can leave the table.”

“I can’t,” I’d say, trying to explain the impossibility.

But because I was a child they heard, “I won’t,” and made me sit at the table. I’d sit in dull agonized silence, bored and hungry for hours until bedtime when they’d give up. I’d hate myself for not eating and my parents for forcing me to sit there. The few forcefeeding moments ended in vomit.

They’d say, “If you don’t eat this you can’t eat a snack later,” and I moved past trying to communicate my discomfort into accepting that I’d just be hungry.

That state of affairs didn’t last, because my parents realized nothing could force me to eat so they catered to my palate, worrying they’d starve me. But the message stuck. If you can’t do anything about a situation, just accept the suffering.

A few years later my mother called me off the playground to ask, “Are you limping?”

I shrugged. My feet had hurt for a long time, but that was just the way things were now. My mom pulled my socks and shoes off and gasped. The soles of my feet were covered in huge painful planters warts.

“Why didn’t you say anything?!” She demanded but I could only shrug at her. I’d learned a long time ago that saying things about my discomfort didn’t matter, so now I had no words. Sometimes things hurt and sometimes they don’t. I simply accepted and did my best.

Now as an adult trying to learn to improve my own conditions can be hard. If I make food that I can’t eat I’ll force myself to sit at the counter still, full of guilt and self loathing, trying to will myself to eat it.

At first I needed my betrothed to gently take it away to present me with something I could eat. Now on my own I can usually admit that it’s not happening before too long and get something else, but I still feel guilty.

Laying in bed at night waiting for my betrothed to finish getting ready I let out a huge sigh of relief when they turned the lights off.

“Why didn’t you turn them off if they bothered you?” they asked the first time it happened.

“I didn’t even know it was bothering me until it was gone.”

Assessing my physical state now to see if I can improve it is something I’m still relearning but I’m relieved to finally have the space and support to do it.

[confettininjabean]

medieval backstreet boys: you are… my friar

[confettininjabean]

I think at some point in time we need to sit down and start explaining to artist who want to make a career out of art that there are FAR more options than just "living off of commissions" and "posting my art online and praying I get paid for it".

[confettininjabean]

This is.

Brilliant!!

A few years ago, @confettininjabean bought me a copy of Sunless Seas as a Christmas present, but I'm a weenie when it comes to roughlikes and my OCs dying, so it took me until last week to start playing it. I figured I'd give it fifteen minutes and maybe my first captain death before I moved on to another game... and I'm on my fourth captain now

Since Sunless Seas is a Fallen London spinoff, I was somewhat familiar with the world already, but it had been long enough since I'd last played there was a lot of surprises/relearning, mostly just me getting jumpscared by the Lovecraftian atmosphere (a lot of which is the casual amount of cannibalism present). Sometime during the second captain's run I was like "fuck this, this is too stressful" and installed a mod that mitigated the frankly ridiculous micromanaging of food and fuel.

And none of this will make much sense to anyone who hasn't played this game, but still, let me present to you, my legacy of Steampunky captains, who have been furiously passing charts to each other right before their deaths mostly so I don't have to reopen the gd map every single time, as they have captured my attention this past week or so:

Captain #1 - Renley:

I think I subconsciously named him after "Renfield" in Dracula. In retrospect, this was probably a mistake. Renley was an excommunicated priest who's daddy was a zeecaptain who mysteriously died on the dark waters, and he went to zee to try and find his papa's bones. He started an affair with his surgeon at the first opportunity, and I never did find out why he got kicked out of the priesthood as he descended to cannibalism and ran out of food a few miles from shore. He died as forgotten as his daddy's bones, except for his apparent pen pal...

Captain #2 - Farris:

Bisexual disaster with a heart of gold. Grew up a street urchin, but apparently got too tall and was cast out from her crew, so she bought a ship with what she got from her last big score, determined to make enough as a zeecaptain to retire rich and comfortable. She insists everyone call her "my lady", not because she's actual nobility but more because one day she's sure she will be.

I fully expected her to go the Renley route and die very quickly, but she surprised me by like... making good decisions?? She somehow just barely survived to the end of my first night of playing, making several successful runs into the zee without me cheating. She accepted a deal for more food and fuel from a very shady individual before I logged off for the evening, but it wouldn't be enough for us to continue on. As I had grown a little fond of her scrappy ways, I installed the first mod so we didn't have to worry about her going full Renley. SHE THRIVED.

She opened up so much of the map, also struck up an affair with the surgeon on her ship (look, it gets lonely and scary on the zee), but then... actually fell in love with a sweetheart back in London on one of her return trips. A dapper, fancy fellow who gave her a locket, and just so happened to keep meeting her at the docks whenever she arrived back home. Slowly she started to accumulate enough funds that she was able to purchase a townhome--

--and then she accidentally sailed off the north side of the map, nearly died of terror at the North Pole, which somehow summoned evil Santa Clause to her residence who made her go zip all around the unterzee delivering, uh, something evil Santa Clause considered to be presents (I guess), which culminated in her using her blood to create a little child made of snow, which apparently evil Santa Clause immediately abandoned so Farris decides this is her kid now, because growing up a little street urchin she knows the feeling of abandonment, names him Boreas, and takes him back to London. But uh. He's made of snow. So he starts to melt.

And this damn game is so unforgiving, it gives you conflicting pieces of information, so by the time I realized I needed to sail south to a relatively close port to London (instead of all the way across the gd map like it led me to believe), this poor kid was melting in earnest, and Farris goes to talk to a devil, who's like "you can stop this child from melting and dying if you have xyz items". And I had xy items, but I had unknowingly sold off "z" component to free up room in my cargo hold. And "z" component is not a readily abundant resource, so I look this up on Google at some point, as the kid is like "LOOK MA, I'm getting shorter! :D" and leaving puddles across the deck. And there's supposed to be an island around here somewhere where I can just go get the two quantities of this resource I need to stop my icy boy from melting. Except the map is randomized, and nowhere I go can I find this gd island. Farris basically spends like 3-4 months of time in-game just sailing the open zees, her terror rising as she desperately tries to find some way to save this kid. And there's some point where I know there's not enough time to make it, and yet she can't give up...

...and eventually, somewhere in the south zee, while she's still trying to find this stupid island, she gets summoned to Boreas's side to hold his hand as he finishes melting away. And at this point, Farris is pretty done, and just sort of numbly goes about her business, ferrying around the zees. I think she returns to port one last time and seriously looks around her townhouse, considers retiring, but writes a will just in case, sees her dapper chap again, before setting off one last run. And she's sailing down the southern portion of the map, looking around one last time for that goddamn island because it's personal now, when the ship is set upon by what amounts to a swarm of super bats that have 400 health to her ship's 30 health. She desperately tries getting away, but in the end, the bat's sink her ship, and poor Farris, who paused her quest for wealth on a doomed mission to save a dying child, sinks to the bottom of the zee. And never sees her dapper chap again.

Captain #3 - Vestry:

A certifiable dumbass. No, seriously.

I'm a little numb at this point, and still mourning Farris, who I got way too attached to. Vestry is a natural philosopher who came to the the Neath, because she was just too edgy for the surface world. Her ambition was to become the London's greatest explorer, and so sailed literally everywhere without any consideration for anything. At this point I broke down and was like "fuck it", installed a second mod so I could have money and not scrape by constantly. Caused a few international incidents, created a few spy networks. She was constantly pushing her engines, which meant they kept exploding at the worst opportunity, and at one point had to limp across the entire map with a single crew member at a snail's pace. Somehow this did not scare off anyone she paid to fill back out the ranks of her crew. She did manage to open up a large portion of the map, and then saw the absolute most southern point of the world with foreboding menacing statues trying to warn her away and was like "ALL POWER TO THE ENGINES" and sailed off the map. Everything exploded and she died as she lived -- a dumbass to the end.

Captain #4 - Valeria:

Started off like Vestry with the same past and ambition, but quickly decided "you know what? Nah, I've got this map almost opened up, I'm going to settle a colony in this tiny patch of sunlight instead". She is still slowly growing her army, ferrying sailors across the sea by the dozens. I am terrified she's going to get her ship sunk by monsters and make me start over again, but she's managed to hold her own so far. If the game actually ends after she achieves her ambition and retires, she might be my last captain, because I don't think I have it in me again to open up this map after how long it's taken to get it this complete. Also, Valeria finally found that stupid goddamn island that tripped Farris up, so if evil Santa Clause rears his head again, we'll be able to save her baby boy this time around.

Anyway, all of this to say, Farris is somehow still living in my head rent-free, despite dying nearly a week ago. Since there are no actual character portraits in Sunless Sea, I decided to honor her by creating an approximation of what she could have looked like in a 3D program I'm trying to learn, posed and rendered her out, and then with a little photoshoppery and paintover in CSP have immortalized her in pixels:

RIP Farris - bestest urchin baby

You really, really tried, and almost made a good decision, but your greed for "one last run" got you in the end. One day, someone will kill those fucking bats for you.

[confettininjabean]

My elf son is looking much better this go around. Last one I tried was definitely an exercise in remembering how lines work lmao,

[confettininjabean]

Oye.....it's too fucking hot....

[confettininjabean]

“ICEBERG , ICEBERG!”

[confettininjabean]

I really can’t remember how to draw sometimes,…..

I want to burn this with fire. Lmao,

[confettininjabean]

So..... If I follow you and you suddenly see like after like in your notifications especially on your art.....

It's because I am inspired and adore what you create.

Not to mention, I will go back in very now and again to like your stuff again. Yes that means since this site only allows me to like stuff ONCE I will unlike then I will LIKE it again.

Also reblogs.... I don't reblog everything but I do reblog stuff.

Mainly, if you see I've liked several things of yours ...

It's because