#I am trying to process bad feelings

[iamamythologicalcreature]

Having a rough night, so here's a rough sketch of snowbaz on a rough day at Watford.

I rarely post stuff this raw. If ever. But fuck it. I have to do something with these feelings. Might as well do art. No model, no references, no beta; we die like the mage.

[julijbee]

girlbossing too close to the sun.

[lunarharp]

scrappies cause HE'S BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 📖

[ganondoodle]

i dont think i have the right to ask this, since i so rarely have the energy to reply, but .. i want my drive to draw art back and this awful depression gone (or at least made less bad..) so desperately that i will bear the shame of asking it anyway, just in the hopes of something getting that spark i had held onto for so long to light back up

though .. im not sure what i want to ask for, i guess .. anything? something you'd like to see me draw, a compliment, a question- whether zelda or oc related, a little totk rant of your own, a picture of your cat, a random fun fact-

[deoidesign]

Hii! I have been recently getting more and more obsessed with your art and webcomic and was wondering if I could use your art as like a profile picture? (With credit!!) If not that's perfectly fine! :)

yeah you can use my art for whatever as long as you're not stealing it or selling it

I don't mind if people print my art out for themselves either. I do sell prints, but it doesn't bother me either way

In general I don't post anything that I haven't made my peace with all that comes with sharing my art publicly! So feel free to use it as you please pretty much.

Giving me credit for the things I've made is respectful and helps me in my career, and I would hope that most people intend to respect my work... And the people who don't respect my work were never going to whether I asked or not.

I make my work for other people to enjoy it, I want you to enjoy it!

[uncanny-tranny]

I think another aspect of conservative thought people need to understand is the idea that it's all about dominance.

The reason why sayings like "we don't want to trans your kids, we want trans kids to live" is because, in the conservative mind, you are replacing their dominance with your own. It can never be about what is best for others, it is always about expressing absolute power and control.

Natural selection, at its ideal, will weed out the people who "shouldn't live." If their existence is a threat to the already-established hierarchy, then it's obvious that they shouldn't exist in order to challenge hierarchy.

While this certainly isn't a "conservative-only" mindset, it's a trend I have noticed more in conservative spaces. This is why I don't always think it's helpful to go on about how, "Oh, we don't want to threaten your worldview. We just want people to live 😊". You will fundamentally be threatening their power in their minds. Therefore, nothing you say can truly take away from the anxiety, fear, and anger at losing control that may be instilled.

[shazleen]

Everyday i draw comics and every day i wish i was drawing something else

[repurposedmeatlocker]

On one hand, I agree that there should be a more diverse field of subject matter utilized in "adult animation". Not all "adult animation" should be used as an excuse to revolve around shock content and gratuitous potty humor. At this point in time, stuff like this being seen on prime-time television is no longer out of the ordinary. And, from my observation, is done well even less frequently. There should be more films that treat themselves seriously and explore an array of topics rather than just comedy with a middle-school idea of mature subject matter.

ON THE OTHER HAND. I don't think there is ANYTHING wrong with animated movies and shows with lots of drugs and boobies and sex and gross jokes. I think cartoon characters having freaky sex is funny af. Both have the right to exist together. Art should not be pigeon-holed through a lens of "respectability" in order to be taken seriously. Demanding adult animation be "palatable" for an "adult" audience ultimately strips it completely of what makes it a unique medium for expression in the first place.

[padfootastic]

please say more about jilypad + diverging parenting styles... perhaps even a possible scenario >:) i imagine harry has very cunning tactics for using this to his advantage

helloooooo <3 thank u for this ask bc i love talking about these three and harry. i went looking thru the archives to find this post; my first foray into this side, and really, i’ve never looked back after that.

so i’ve talked ab this a bit before but i fully think that james was a very overprotective ‘mother hen’ type parent. i tend to read his behaviour in lily’s bday letter to sirius as being scared of his child on a broomstick and i fully, fully think he’ll never be able to let go of that as harry grows up. he’ll be anxious and suspicious and paranoid, and his first instant will always be to wrap harry up in cotton wool and hide him away. (i low-key connect this to his childhood as well; going from being spoiled and sheltered to dropped in the middle of a war, black & white thinking, living in extremes etc etc makes it v hard for him to be Normal about his child. as he shouldn’t be, really, but yeah) that’s why he thrives during the initial years; he never minds the hard parts of being a new parent, loves it in fact, and it makes it better that he can keep harry close to him at all times w/o coming off as a helicopter parent (not that the notion bothers him ofc).

it’s good, then, that he has two partners to even the scales, no? i think lily was the most…balanced out of the three. she had a relatively normal childhood, grew up in a working class family/neighbourhood and had to deal w adversity from a young age so she’s developed a nice, thick skin. she also has a sibling with whom she has a v rocky relationship so she knows that kids are, ykno, a bit unhinged. and a little bit of hardship is not a problem. i hc her as needing time to get used to parenthood, unlike james who stepped into it natural as breathing, or even sirius who loved harry on much on first sight that it made up for everything else. ofc lily loved her son, but it didn’t come w the same blinding intensity of her partners and made her feel really shitty in the beginning. but, i think she’d shine during his teen years actually, because she’s not overbearing or intense and becomes the quiet, calm strength that a hormonal, spotty teen boy would probably need.

and sirius <3 our poor baby falls in love with harry, perhaps even more quickly than james, with such startling speed that it shakes his entire foundation. he doesn’t regret it but he’s constantly discombobulated. i also imagine that…it takes him longer to settle into the role of parent, esp bc he’s not biologically one ykno? not like it matters to anyone, ofc, but it takes him a long time to truly accept his authority and place, to believe that he has just as much right as j&l to be there, to parent harry. this has the consequence of him always being more indulgent than the other two; after all, he considered himself a godfather before a parent and a lot of that thinking stayed. he lets harry get away with stuff the others might not (and the little mf figures this out later); some of it also comes from sirius seeing so much shit, and facing so much shit himself, that he rationalises a lot of stuff as ‘well, this isn’t the worst it can be, so what’s the harm’ (because his life has been such a roller coaster that he’s forgotten that not everyone’s like that, if that makes sense?)

its obviously not this clear cut but i imagine harry looks at it like this: if he needs unconditional love, he goes to james; rationality and logic, lily; acceptance and calm, sirius. when someone has to be beat up for hurting harry, james steps in. if he needs help burying a body, it’s sirius. dealing with some asshole boss/teacher/classmate’s mother who’s making harry’s life hell? lily. i can keep going but,,,u get the idea, right? this makes sense, i hope lol

i actually think harry’s first birthday is a great example. sirius pushes the boundaries by gifting lil harry a broom; james loses his mind running after him; lily places an industrial sticking charm on harry’s butt, leans back with a glass of wine, and enjoys the show. even as he grows up, lily and james act as the disciplinarian, and sirius is the emotional outlet. all of them fill in each other’s cracks so well, and it’s only when harry grows up that he realises how effortlessly they worked off each other to parent him.

also oh man o man. harry being cunning is,,,,,see, i’ve not considered it this far but it makes perfect sense. i think canon harry actually had so much manipulative energy and it’s often overlooked for his goofier traits but! this is the same dude who used his dead parents to trick slughorn into revealing sensitive info! imagine if that could be channelled into his jilypad interactions 😈

it’s like, it takes him a bit, because his three parents r so smooth, but once he realises that all of them have certain weak spots, he does NOT hesitate to exploit them. (it has the unintended consequence of truly strengthening the jilypad relationship into an unbreakable one bc one thing their kid taught them is to have ironclad communication going at all times so nothing they’ve said, or not said, is used against them). so like, he knows if he wants to sneak out to a party, it has to be sirius and in a specific way—‘i’ll be totally safe, papa, plus i really wanna see what it’s like and idk when it’ll get a chance to again’. if he widens his eyes to pitiful levels, pouts a little, and blinks faster than usual, then james is putty in his arms as long as he’s separated from the other two. divide and conquer becomes the main tool in harry’s arsenal, actually. lily’s the toughest nut to crack, purely bc she doesn’t run on emotions or irreverence, but harry soon learns that if he comes up with a solid, logical case that proves his argument has unbiased merit then he has a good chance of getting her to say yes. (this is good, bc u can arrange words in the correct order, but u can’t always control emotions)

so overall yeah, you’d think one kid + 3 parents would be an easy bet, but harry keeps them on their toes all the fkn time.

[not-poignant]

I love the way you write and FFS is my favourite fic of yours. It was very healing and comforting watching a character go through such a difficult mental health journey. It made me feel less alone. Ef has motivated me to keep going on because things can always get better.

I just wanted to say thank you very much, and I hope you rest as much as you can while you're on break. (P.S. I am super excited for Constellations!! When you mentioned Leo in the last chapter I was like YES! They're still friends!)

Hi anon

I'm so glad you enjoy Falling Falling Stars, it was such a huge undertaking but it was so cathartic even writing it and sharing it at the time, I think it's been pretty humbling honestly that so many folks have brought so much of themselves and their lives to this story, and connect with it and the characters in it.

Efnisien is pretty awesome as a character as a vehicle of 'it sucks and you might even have done bad things but you're still allowed to have good things and you can always improve / better yourself' etc. I used to get a few 'I've never done anything like Efnisien but I relate to him' and my thoughts on that have always been that many of us know what it's like to feel like the worst, even if we've relatively never done anything that bad at all. And it's hard to recover from that feeling, but...perhaps seeing how someone who has been literally the worst is doing it might help.

We all deserve a redemption narrative, even the people who didn't need redeeming in the first place.

[e-b-reads]

Short explanation: working on a story draft and decided to crowd-source this detail:

Overly long explanation:

Instead of spending much time on any older writing projects this summer (oops), I ended up hashing out a totally new idea for a mystery (series) set at a summer camp. Kind of embracing the inevitable. (If you don't know, I work at a camp/retreat center full time.) Within the story timeline, it works well for COVID not to be a major plot point: the main characters (camp directors) were probably doing work around the inherited future summer camp property in 2020 (so, easy to social distance), and then opened as a (very small) summer camp for the first time in summer 2021. The book is set a couple years past that. I'm just curious whether people would be more thrown by a mention of past COVID protocols, or more thrown to have it ignored entirely!

[kermakatti]

I have become päärynä 🍐

[bunnyboy-juice]

spent the first hour and change at work deleting some old files and am having a grand ol time laughing at myself for not realizing i was a lesbian sooner

[deoidesign]

Can you make a tutorial on how you world build and make ocs? I can't seem to make any people in my brain, but then when I try to come up with environments jobs, beliefs and little details to slowly come up with someone, I think: well I don't really know how people have influenced the world- it's a weird loop

To be honest, I don't think I can! Writing is an extremely personal process. The way I write is directly related to how I process things, what I find important in stories, years of my own analysis of my and other's writing, etc... The way you write will be unique to you, as well. But I can explain how I personally think of it.

The short answer:

Write. Write anything and everything, it's a tool to explore your ideas. Analyze your own writing, and write more. Then, as you discover which ideas you want to develop, write more to explore them more. You won't know what you want otherwise!

The long answer:

I think this kind of loop is common. It's easy to feel like everything needs to be done "at once," because our job as writers is to make elements logically fit with each other for our readers. But as you've discovered, developing multiple elements simultaneously isn't really possible, or at least is extremely difficult.

Personally, when I think of writing, I break it into three major elements; characters, world, and plot. As much as possible every scene explores one or more of these, and as much as possible these three things tie back into what I personally consider most important: theme.

Everything I do is in service of the themes I want to present. Without them my events feel aimless. It can take a while to discover them, but they're the core of my work. You will have to discover what you feel is the core of yours. Analyzing other media helps with this too.

Concepts in your brain exist in a state of infinite potential. But when you start writing you have to start making choices, which removes potential as you move forward... But you have to move forward anyways. If there's ideas you want to explore later, you can always explore them later.

What this ends up meaning, to answer your question, is that I don't think of my characters as "people in my brain" or my worlds as something people have influenced... Not at their core, at least. They are tools that I use to represent specific ideas. Obviously they're also my blorbos, but mostly they're serving a specific narrative purpose.

So above all else... Write. Write, and discover what you're writing about, and then start over and write with that in mind. Keep doing this. But you have to write!

[trainingdummyrabbit]

they should really make the whole dealing with emotions thing easier ithink. maybe include a manual perhaps

[angelstrawbabie420]

grief will have you saying shit like goddamn and fuck maybe the abuse was worth it