#I’ve been in the process of moving so I haven’t had much time to draw

[justcallme-ange]

May we see what you have instore for the rivals childhood AU? 👉👈

Yes of course! Sorry I didn't mean to leave everyone on read. ^^; Oh geez where to start.

So the whole AU started with this little idea of Dream and Techno having a shared language they could talk in secret in - and then snowballed into an entire story/history between the two haha ^^

A majority of it focuses on their early childhood together and then with Phil and Kristin and their eventual family with little shenanigans and flashes here and there of their future (current?) selves.

[ripeteeth]

Self-rec time! What are your favorite five fics that you've written and why? After replying to this ask, feel free to pass on to five other writers to spread the love. 💗"

Thanks, @danpuff-ao3! You’re always a treat to see on the dash and I hope you’ve been having a lovely break <3.

I’m always a bit awkward with these, both from an itching sort of discomfort with staring my own artwork in the face, and I think from a lifetime habit of denying compliments out of a feeling of guilt or fear. So! I’ve had a glass of wine (and an edible) and I’m going to try to kinder to myself. I might be in the mood to talk right now. (Honestly, that’s a good sign. One of the big elements of my recent writer’s block has been an inability to express myself in any written way, even tumblr posts and comments. Maybe this is why I hit twitter so hard.)

My five favorite fics. Not my five best fics. Not my five most popular fics. My favorites. Hmm.

5. blood, bones, and butter | MDZS/The Untamed] SongXueXiao | E, 12,443

“A relationship, deconstructed. Served three ways.”

Ah, Yi City, that deliciously painful Shakespearean tragedy echoing Wangxian’s romance. The specific notes of obsession, revenge, love, and grief that run through these three make me completely unhinged. I love the quiet service and stoic devotion of Song Lan, the otherworldliness and power of Xiao Xingchen, the unchecked brilliance and cruelty that fill up Xue Yang. The Yi City fandom is easily one of the most incredible fandoms I’ve ever been a part of, full of uniquely talented and deranged writers and artists who love to really explore the dark edges and nitty-gritty of these character and let them be their fucked-up selves. The appeal of SongXueXiao isn’t to make it better for them, it’s to see how much you can make it worse.

It’s two pretty classic tropes: a first time after meeting at a bar, and also a story told from alternating POVs. I really wanted to focus on trying to carve out distinctive interiorities, like their motivations, their assumptions, their fears, their memories, and allow the reader to draw their own conclusions without spelling these all out outright. I’d recently rewatched Rashomon, and I love how the understanding of an event can be so differently shaped by each person’s POV and I wanted to show their first night together in that way, moving the lens over the night a few times, before it gets clear. It was a really fun process to focus on and I think it’s one of my best pieces of recent writing.

4. in search of the wind | Good Omens | Crowley/Aziraphale | E, 27,112

After the World Doesn't End, Aziraphale is not returned to his body. Crowley tries to find a way to get to Heaven's fast-shut gates. Aziraphale tries to find his way back from the sky (and back in time).

I remember writing this almost immediately after the show aired, in that heady summer of 2019, when I feel head over sweaty heels for that charming demon and his delicious epicure of an angel. This is essentially how I saw canon going on, this is the headcanon of my soul. Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen season 2 yet? It was a pleasure to write, almost like knitting together different scenes, different pieces of history, like an extended version of the s1s3 cold open. It’s Aziraphale without a body, unmoored in time, turning up at different points along his and Crowley’s history, and realizing that his friend is in love with him. That his friend is heartrendingly in love with him. I love stories that play with structure, striking different chords each time.

I couldn’t write this kind of story again. This belongs to a very specific time.

3. White Light, White Heat | Harry Potter | Snape/Harry | E, 32,107

“In 1347, Benedictine monk and scholar Severus Snape goes to fetch a young man joining the abbey. In 1347, rumors come of a strange and unrelenting plague from the east.”

An AU set in a fourteenth-century Benedictine monastery in Britain during the period of the Black Death where the two men develop a bond through a special sort of crucible. Snape, as always, falls in love with all the grace of a cat being given a bath. As dark as the material is, this was a pleasure to write. I had so much fun describing the setting, peppering fun little facts like a Pop Up Video of Medieval History. I wrote this in a fever-fueled three weeks, absolutely obsessed with getting it down exactly as it was in my head. I loved writing the monster theme and using it as almost a leitmotif for Snape. There’s probably a literary term for that. Is there? Anyway.

2. the body as anagram | The Terror | Crozier/Fitzjames, Crozier/Ross] | E, 3090

“In the dark, it doesn't matter which James is in his bed. As long as Ross doesn't speak, the illusion holds true.”

I took the title from a passage on J.G. Ballard’s Crash by Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulation: “Technology is never grasped except in the (automobile) accident, that is to say in the violence done to technology itself and in the violence done to the body. It is the same: any shock, any blow, any impact, all the metallurgy of the accident can be read in the semiurgy of the body — neither an anatomy nor a physiology, but a semiurgy of contusions, scars, mutilations, wounds that are so many new sexual organs opened on the body. In this way, gathering the body as labor in the order of production is opposed to the dispersion of the body as anagram in the order of mutilation.”

There’s something a bit haunting about the parallels of the two men who held the intimacy of Francis Crozier’s friendship. The name. The confidence. The bravery. The charming manner and handsome face. I love the idea of a Francis who sails out pining for one man and returns home loving another, switching between true love and placeholder. And I’m notoriously a slut for both proxyfucking and Gremlin!Francis, who just can’t stop pressing on the wound of his grief. It’s not the drink but it may as well be, for all this is good for either he or Ross, but Francis is a fool in love with a dead man and he does what he does to get by.

Something about this came together, from concept to finish, in a way I’m quite happy with. It was fun to play with concepts and free associate from them, focusing less on plot, but more on the vast empty grief in Francis’ chest. Everyone here knows this is a bad idea. No one is having a good time.

1. Revachol Calling | Disco Elysium | Karry/Kim | E, 35,321 [WIP]

“Somewhere in Jamrock, a church burns. A study in Kim Kitsuragi.”

Sometimes you just feel the next part of the story in your bones. When I first played Disco Elysium in 2021 it hit me in an incredibly familiar, emotional way. There’s something somber and hopeful about it. The writing is sardonic, dark and humorous. It’s nearly cynical but it’s cynical with a sad old smile, because cynicism is born through disappointment, and through not quite being ready to give up. I think we can all find ourselves in it, in one way or another and, like many, I’m hopelessly in love with Kim Kitsuragi, a wild creature who’s built himself within thousands of rules. I can’t play the game without craving his side of the story, his interiority, his history, so I grab at the little crystals of information, such as his secret love of Speedfreaks FM and his past with Eyes, and I try to imagine it might go. This is my sequel to the game and, more than anything, this is my love song to Revachol, a character of a city, and one that echoes vastly in all those of post-Communist country and family.

For some reason, this fic is extremely visual for me and usually in a Wong Kar-Wai sort of fashion. Think the saturated aquamarines of a neon diner sign. Think a studio apartment with cheap wallpaper and the yellow-orange flicker of sodium lights. It comes alive at night, when Kim is left alone with his thoughts, running out of rules to keep him safely in. I love that Disco Elysium has such a vast world to explore. It’s an endless playbox.

And this is also, in a way, a bit of an elegy to a belief I’d once held in a motherland, and do not anymore.

I’m almost done with Chapter 8, so hopefully it will be up soon <3

Tagging! @jaggededges123 @soft-october-night @wildcard47 @rcmclachlan @brawlite @zaxal @pearwaldorf @kiingbooooo @darcylindbergh @et-in-arkadia @itsevidentvery @iodhadh @iamwestiec @mia-ugly @laurashapiro-noreally @pinehutch and anyone else who wishes to!

[irisbleufic]

Of all the bullshit I never expected to be back on with the same intensity of October through December of 2000, Beetlejuice was not it. But I finally got to see the musical yesterday, and the part of me that has adored all 94 episodes of the animated series from the moment I started watching them on ABC Saturday mornings in 1989 just fucking flared—this fond, awful tightness in my chest. It’s the first TV show I ever imprinted on; it’s been with me since childhood. Surreal.

About 4 years into watching the cartoon, I finally saw the live-action movie that the cartoon was based on. I hated it, because it was so malevolent and empty compared to the incredible world-building characters in the animated series. Serious shout-outs to Stephen Ouimette and Alyson Court for all that stunning, hilarious, and often moving voicework.

Now, okay, I need to go back to 2000 again to make this all make sense. I’d watched the show from 1989 until whenever the 4th season ended. It wasn’t until I was in my first semester of college, newly transplanted to New England, that I found a couple folks within my program who had loved the show growing up, too. I ordered all of the episodes on VHS. It was difficult to track them all down in 2000, and it was expensive. But I pulled it off, and we had Friday night watch parties for weeks over the month of October. But that is not where this ends.

I was in the process of winding down the writing I’d been doing on Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow for the entirety of my senior year of high school. Suddenly, I’m in college and watching this fucking cartoon and thinking, there is so much heart in this. How the fuck is there so much heart. I haven’t seen two characters this wholesome codependent in, well, ever. I went looking for forums and mailing lists devoted to the cartoon. I found a mailing list. There were a handful of artists drawing amazing fancomics on there, and they were like, what do you do? Oh. I write. And they were like: do you understand how desperately some of us have wanted fic, but just can’t find it?

That is the wrong thing to say to me when I’m on a downward spiral of realizing I’m not going to escape a fandom without getting myself into a project so long that it’s all I’ll be doing for fucking months on end. If you’re one of the people who knew me back then, you know what I did for those four months in the fall/winter of 2000. I wrote a novel. Sure, I came close to failing a couple of classes, but it was the first time I understood exactly what I was capable of building as a fanwriter. Maybe even as a real writer.

“Time Will Tell” was hosted on a friend’s Angelfire site for a handful of years. People found it via LiveJournal, too, because I linked it there. I put it on AO3 somewhere circa 2012 and took it down again in 2017 because I didn’t feel there was enough interest in it, and also, my 19-year-old editorial foibles and typos were aspects I wanted to amend in it.

The musical took more inspiration from the cartoon than the film. I’m stunned and grateful for that. I found the “Time Will Tell” file buried pretty deep in my Gmail folders. I’ve been reading it since the drive home last night. I just can’t believe there’s now enough of a fandom for me to consider finally polishing it and getting it back online. It’s one of my two oldest surviving pieces of writing.

Anyway, sorry for the Gotham fic delays that I’d been trying to get a handle on. Now that the semester’s over, I feel that getting this thing I wrote twenty-three years ago back to the light of day is the best use of my time for a couple weeks.

If you’re one of the people who read “Time Will Tell” back in the day, thank you. I don’t know how many people out there still remember it beyond maybe ten or so friends I’m still in contact with all these years later. I’m sorry it disappeared for a while.

[project-reaper]

Moving forward into 2024!

I haven’t really had a proper chance to say Happy New Years, so this will have to suffice, with a little breakdown of what’s been going on and what’s to come!

WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO

I’ve been spending the better part of the last year working on new projects and endeavors. Both with Time Gate and outside of it. From vendoring at markets and working expo’s for the first time to working on art pieces completely outside of Time Gate, 2023 was a hell of a year and it makes me all the more hyped for 2024. That said, I’ve been carrying a weight with me through 2023 that’s made it difficult to enjoy it to the fullest - the weight of knowing that [AFTERBIRTH] is still on hiatus.

This isn’t the longest hiatus that I’ve been on, but it’s certainly starting to approach the record and I wanna get it back on track. Like getting back in shape after spending an entire winter hibernating and eating nothing but junk food, getting back into drawing [AFTERBIRTH] on a schedule is gonna be a process of rebuilding good habits and learning what I can do better to keep those habits alive and well.

The fortunate side to taking hiatuses is that it always does give me a new sense of perspective. In this case, I learned that I put myself through a lot at the start of [AFTERBIRTH]’s production. Like, way more than I realized. At the time I thought I was super capable - and I am! - but now in hindsight I can recognize it wasn’t healthy or sustainable for me to manage that sort of output all on my own. I’m still grinding away at comics like I always do with those other projects I’ve mentioned, but it’s still nothing near the amount of work I put myself through just to meet my own deadlines with [AFTERBIRTH]. I also have this thing called help now in the form of a background artist who’s been working with me on those other projects, which has been an amazing and enriching experience.

Having that time away from [AFTERBIRTH] not only gave me the breathing room I needed to recuperate from the burnout I got myself into, but also got me out of the routines I had stuck myself into, which has given me some new tricks and skills that I’m really hyped to bring back into Time Gate with me.

This does, in a way, mean that I’ve had to really reflect on Time Gate, a lot. It’s a project I’ve been writing since I was a kid, and drawing as a webcomic since I was around 18-19. It’s changed a lot in that time, but I’m finding while a lot of those changes have been reflected in the comic as it is, there are still so many more I want to make - because like the comic, I’ve changed a lot, too, both as an artist and as a person, and considering Time Gate’s always been a sort of personal extension of myself, I no longer resonate with a lot of parts of it that I’ve since outgrown. It’s not so much that I want to hide or take for granted those parts of it that are ‘uglier’, but I want the writing and art to be expressed in the best way it can be because at the end of the day, I’m trying to tell a coherent story that’s enjoyable to read and experience. I’m also the sort of person who learns best by just getting their hands dirty and learning what not to do, and boy, have I spent a lot of years doing just that through Time Gate.

GOING FORWARD

So, going forward, I’ve adjusted my schedule with my other projects to accommodate the time I need to both get back into Time Gate: [AFTERBIRTH] as well as prepare for the upcoming convention season. I’ve got a bunch of plans for this year’s markets with new ideas for prints and stickers and other goodies that I’m really excited to make! And I just, overall, want to pull myself out of the burnout funk. You can’t force recovery to happen on your own time but there does come a point where you gotta start taking steps otherwise you get stagnant, and I feel like that’s where I’ve been the last few months.

AFTERBIRTH FORMAT CHANGE

[AFTERBIRTH]’s format will be changing back to page format in its second season. Vertical format works for some projects and stories, but not for Time Gate. It’s been fun, but part of learning what I’m best at is learning what I’m not best at and the vertical format is too limiting for what I want to do with Time Gate in the future. Color will still be remaining!

REAPER RECOMPILED

I will also be working on the Recompiled editions of Reaper. These will predominantly be the first few volumes redrawn and rewritten to accommodate a tighter story down the road. I know, I know, “don’t get trapped redrawing/rewriting stuff”, but I feel the changes that I wanna make are so necessary that they’re part of what’s holding me back from continuing with [AFTERBIRTH] into Thread of Fate and beyond. There are a lot of really silly and otherwise unnecessary writing decisions I made back during Reaper that I currently feel aren’t working for what I’m trying to accomplish in its sequels, and let’s face it, I wrote it almost ten years ago when I was still very much learning, so it’s due for an upgrade. It'll be the last time too, because it'll be putting us on Loop 9999 and remember what Matty said about surpassing 9999-

This will be something I’ll be picking at slowly but surely. When it’s ready I’ll basically be replacing the old pages and updating any new mirror sites with only the new version (I’m currently planning on trying out NamiComi and Lemoon and of course I'll be continuing to post on ComicFury and GlobalComix).

THE BIG GREEN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM-

All of that will basically be working towards my biggest step - getting the flying fuck off Webtoons. Because let me tell you, I've basically spent the last two years like this:

Y’all know that I’m not really one to roll over and take shit from massive platforms, and Webtoons is no exception. I’ve been posting to it since 2016 and I’m very very much done with it; just like with Tapas it’s no longer the site it used to be and there’s fresh competition entering the market that I’d rather put my focus on. At the very least, I want my independence back, if I’m gonna be stuck having to market and network my own work anyways I’d much rather be doing it for my own site or platforms that aren’t constantly undercutting its creators by removing core features and not implementing necessary ones. I as well as many others have been doing our own investigating into Webtoons and we’re basically feeling like canaries in the mineshaft right now, picking up on some massive warning signs that we want to get ahead of. The worst that can happen is that I pull the same stats I pull on Webtoons somewhere else, what a tragedy that would be LMAO

LIVESTREAMING

And then of course there are my livestreams. Like learning the hard way that I shouldn’t have been drawing [AFTERBIRTH] on such a strict schedule, I’ve learned that streaming on the schedule I used to be streaming on just ain’t for me. Call it the ADHD but I’d much rather stream when I have something to legitimately talk about or showcase rather than force myself to stream even on days when I’m really not feeling up to talking. And I’d like to get back into doing actual video editing content, whether it’s speedpaints or gaming videos or commentary stuff, whatever have you. Now that I have a proper PC rig that’s actually built to do heavy duty stuff, the possibilities of what I can create are a LOT more vast and I wanna take full advantage of them!

That said, if you wanna see an example of what the streams will look like when we return, check out this lil’ time lapse demo:

Definitely couldn't do that on my old setup! It might not be regular streaming like before, but it’ll damn well be higher quality and more fun to watch haha

WELL THAT WAS A BIG WALL OF TEXT WASN'T IT

So yeah! That was a lot of words but I hope it clears up everything that's been happening on my end. Thanks for following along with my work all these years, whether it’s Time Gate or my lil’ secret projects or my streams, through all the ups and the downs. Long-term projects like these may take their toll but there’s so much joy in seeing them change and grow over time, and I want to fully embrace and reflect that growth as best as I can through what I bring you guys.

Thank you all so much, let’s make 2024 a good year <3

[roebeanstalk]

general commission info/process update

Howdy y’all!

tl;dr:

-Commission prices are increasing to account for cost of living, increased quality, and more. -Those with colored sketches currently outstanding are being upgraded to my new "Standard Commission" as a thank you for your patience. -A new Patreon tier has a 5% commission discount as a perk. -I've adopted a new workload management system where I focus on 5 pieces at a time, and reload the workbench on Mondays. My Trello has been updated with general info on this.

The whole update:

I am raising my commission prices. This has been an incredibly difficult decision to make, but it is ultimately for the best for myself, my clients, and more.

Since I’ve started doing commissions regularly, the amount of time I want to spend on any particular piece has grown, but I haven’t had the time due to a large workload. With this price increase, I’m able to spend more time on each commission and create work at a quality that I am happy with. I’ve found myself working back and forth with clients more, creating more technically sound drawings, and being happier overall with my work. That being said, the prices I have been charging are not enough and often work out to less than minimum wage.

I have added a new tier on Patreon that gives a 5% discount on all commissions from me, in addition to all the perks on my $5 tier.

Pay What You Want commissions are something I have loved doing, and I want to be able to continue to do them moving forward. I love being able to offer a more affordable, sliding scale commission. This allows access to folks who might not otherwise be able to commission artwork from me. The price increase on my commissions will also make this more sustainable.

In addition to the price change, I have recently adjusted the way that I handle my queue. I have a “Workbench” which contains five things that I am working on currently. This allows me to focus on a smaller amount of projects despite how many pieces are in my queue. I can specialize and give each piece the attention it needs. Each Monday, I refill the workbench to 5 pieces by pulling them from the queue.

I’ve been doing this system for the last few weeks, and it has been a revelation. I am much calmer while working, and I am able to work back and forth with clients in a more personal way that feels really fulfilling. I’m also less likely to be super worried about everything I have on my plate, by focusing on a smaller portion. My work quality has increased from this alone.

My new Standard Commission is an upgraded version of the colored sketch commissions I was offering before. Those who are on my queue for colored sketches have been waiting for a bit, and I am so grateful for their patience. It will still be a little bit, but I am excited to deliver them good quality commissions. As a thank you for their patience and to slightly make up for the time, I’m upgrading all colored sketches on my queue to the new Standard Commission. This means a bit more back and forth, making it a piece we’ll both be happier with.

With all of these changes, I am hopeful that so many other things about my work, my life, and more will improve. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me through commissions, donations, kind words, follows, reblogs, everything. It means the absolute world to me, and I am so excited to keep pushing forward.

<3 Robin

[lokiiri]

An update.

Hi friends! This is Lokiiri, also known as Loki and formerly known on Twitch and elsewhere under the names LokisObservatory or LokisAdventures. A lot has happened since I kinda dropped off the face of the planet over a year ago. So, as I’m trying to ease back to things, I wanted to give y’all a little update! If you don’t want to read all of it, there’s a summary towards the end.

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

This year has been absolutely insane for me. I had SRS in January, and had a rather rough recovery from it all things considered. After a long recovery that saw me on constant pain meds for close to three months, I immediately got sucked back into tax season at my job. As soon as that was over, I finally moved halfway across the country - something I'd wanted to do for over a year at the time. 

I've been using this time of relative solitude to reflect on myself and improve on myself. I feel like I've found a lot of resources that've been just the right thing for me, and I feel more in touch with my true feelings and wants than I ever have been - and it feels incredible. I feel like I'm learning so much about the anxieties and feelings that have driven my life so far, and this learning is slowly enabling me to dismantle those things I want to overcome, and figure out who I really, really am, unfettered by them.

I'm really passionate about where my journey has taken me, and I'm excited to announce that I'll be doing a panel at Midwest FurFest, where I'll try my best to do the topic justice and share some tools I've found helpful for myself on a journey of this kind. I also plan on streaming and recording an online presentation of the panel for those who can’t make it to MFF. 

The furry fandom was instrumental in helping me find my genuine self in a world that had convinced me that life was about locking that self deep within me. I can’t express how much this means to me, and I want to do whatever I can to pay it forward. I hope I can do this topic justice and be a voice that helps others find similar happiness to that which I have found.

Speaking of streaming, I’m going to be returning to that soon as well! I retired from it last year for a number of reasons, including how crazy my life had become as well as some traumatic situations streaming had put me in that I didn’t feel equipped to handle before. But my life has stabilized now, for the most part, and I feel as though I’ve grown, faced my fears, and am ready to come back to something I’ve really missed. 

That said, I want this to be a new start for me, and for a number of reasons, I’ll be using a brand-new account going forward - I’m now Lokiiri on Twitch (https://twitch.tv/Lokiiri)! (You can still call me Loki if you prefer!) I know starting over will make things harder, but I definitely feel more comfortable starting small, with some distance from my previous identity. I have no plans to delete the old account, LokisAdventures, but I also won’t be using it anymore.

Relatedly, yes, I have a new sona now! I love how she turned out, and I’m excited to keep struggling to draw her until I eventually get good at it! I’m also excited to share lots of lore about her! She’s weird and wonderful and she feels so me :>

That said! I also have some news that, at least for the time being, is making me quite anxious. I want to be transparent about that too, because my hope is that my way forward involves the fandom.

Remember how I said I’d been getting more in touch with how I really feel? In the process of doing that, I’ve uncovered a truth that I’d been suppressing because it’s very, very inconvenient in the society I live in:

The usual 40-hour-per-week capitalism grind has a tremendously negative effect on my mental health. It really, really doesn’t work for me, and it never has, and it never will.

See, I’m autistic. I’ve always masked it very well (still haven’t been diagnosed!). The early parts of my life were all about masking, and beating myself up whenever my undiagnosed autism showed. I even had myself fooled by my masking: I operated under the assumption I was ‘normal,’ or that if I wasn’t, then I had to make myself normal in order to survive. It’s something I think a lot of us in the fandom and outside relate to.

I was willing to push myself very, very hard to this end, because I was scared of what would happen if I didn’t. I basically got used to my career requiring me to work myself to the bone to pass muster as a ‘normal,’ neurotypical, productive employee. I managed to do okay at that from time to time, in jobs that were less demanding, but even pretending to be a mediocre ‘normie’ left me totally bereft of energy for anything that I cared for. What free time I had, I could only get myself to use on idle things that ‘pass the time’ rather than being interesting to me. It made me financially comfortable, but the cost was that my life was hollow and unhappy. 

And I find, if I truly search my heart now, I don’t want to go back. And as joyful of a discovery that would normally be in a world in which I had the freedom to pursue what I want… that’s a very scary thing to realize in this world, in my position.

One of the surest signs of my healing right now is that I’m finally unearthing genuine, actual interests - things that I know I want to do, and would love to have already been doing for years. Things like art, music, writing, voice acting. But the problem is that I’m realizing I haven’t developed much in the way of skills in those things. There’s a lot of reasons for this, but probably the biggest one is that, as a former gifted kid, I was always told to stick to what I was “already good at.” If I wasn’t automatically good at something the first time I did it, then it was shameful and uncomfortable and what was the point? I hate how much time that cost me - how much time I could’ve spent getting good at something I actually love doing.

But capitalism isn’t friendly to people in my position. My interests already are more artistic in nature, which usually doesn’t ‘pay the bills’ as well, and I’m behind the skill curve on everything I actually want to do. I’ve tried looking for jobs in my new place that look more laid-back, in hopes they might give me time to build up skills, but so far the job market here in my new place has seemed much less interested in me than I anticipated. 

Combine that with a potential complication with my surgery that I may need some intervention for, and… well, I have savings enough for a few months, but that number just keeps going down.

I don’t know what to do about this, but I have one idea, and I think it’s one that makes sense to try no matter how successful it is. I want to spend a lot of time working on the various things I’m passionate about, and try to open myself up to paid opportunities in those things as soon as I can - as a way of encouraging my work and keeping myself accountable. 

I’m honestly anxious as hell about this all. I’m dealing with a ton of impostor syndrome about it. There are a ton of voices in my head saying this is a bad idea, that it’s ridiculous for me to do this so early. I know most people’s advice would be to just ‘suck it up’ and get a ‘real’ job.

But I have to try this.

I keep thinking about what Badeline tells you early on in the video game Celeste: “You’re not a mountain climber.” It’s so easy to focus on labels and have them box you into things you just ‘can’t do.’ It’s so easy for me to say to myself, “You’re not an artist, a musician, or a writer. This is stupid. You’re wasting your time on something that’s just going to end in failure.”

But I won’t ever know that unless I try. Unless I give myself permission to climb that mountain anyway, and see where it takes me.

So, yeah. I’m in the process of setting up a Ko-Fi along with my stream so that there’s at least a framework for this. I don’t know what to expect, but for now, I’m seeing where this path leads me. Notably, I do plan to make use of my professional background to offer tax and accounting services to the fandom!

Thanks so much for reading, and I hope to see you around. ♥️

Summary:

I’m back, starting fresh under a new name with a new sona! You can find me at https://twitch.tv/Lokiiri!

I took a break for a while due to a combination of real-life things and some traumatic events I didn’t feel equipped to handle, but I feel like I’ve grown a lot since then. I’m hopeful that should similar circumstances arise in the future, that I’ll be better equipped to handle them in a self-loving, respectful way that’s healthy for me and everyone.

As part of my self-discovery, I’ve come to realize the true cost of me trying to shove my autistic, square-peg self into the round hole that is capitalism. Trying to do something different is a scary proposition, but I really want to try. So, I’m trying to gradually move towards being self-employed and making money through what I create. I expect this to take time and work, so I’m trying to be patient with myself! I super super appreciate any support along this journey!

By the way, if you like long-form musings and updates on my life like this, I’ll be using this tumblr blog for that! I want to get in the habit of being more transparent and open about my feelings, but having to do so 300 characters at a time is annoying x3 So I’ll be using this space as a kind of public journal, to talk about feelings and subjects that interest me. If you like that kind of thing, feel free to tune in! (I'll have to learn how all these tags and things work though, weh xD)

Thanks so much for your time, and have a lovely timezone! 💖

[enbyleighlines]

Damn I had a long, rough weekend.

(exasperated ramblings under the cut)

Actually, it started before the weekend.

I recently switched insurances because I now make too much for medicaid, a process that took several months because why not?

But finally I had insurance and I could go see my doctor, yay me!

They upped my dosage of zoloft, because I’ve been super irritable lately and I think it’s mostly burnout from work, but it had been a long time since my dosage had been adjusted, so I thought it probably wouldn’t hurt.

I start taking a higher dosage, work still sucks, but I feel a bit better, so yay.

Then a few days later, I get a letter from my insurance saying that they will not pay for my zoloft, because it’s not on their list, and I will have to find a different anti-anxiety medication.

My doctors receive a similar letter and message me, asking me to schedule a time for another apt so that we can work on that.

Fuck that, I do not want to go through the emotional turmoil of trying a different anti-anxiety med. It took a long time for me to find one that works for me, and I don’t want to go thru that process again, esp with all the stressors currently in my life.

So I tell them, pls just let me stay on this for now, I will pay out of pocket, I don’t have the time or energy for this at this moment.

Flash forward, and it’s time for me to get a refill of zoloft. I’ve already been paying for it out of pocket for those months I didn’t have health insurance, so I knew it was gonna be costly, but I think it’s worth it. I ask my doctors for a refill, as per usual.

That was on Thursday.

Unfortunately, due to my adhd brain, I forget to go grab my prescription from the pharmacy. But that’s okay. I can go one day without zoloft. I’ve done it before.

But by the end of Friday, I knew I needed to pick up my prescription. I don’t want to go two days without zoloft, or else I start to feel funky: brain zaps, headache, nausea, etc. And of course there’s the anxiety and depression coming back, stronger than ever.

So I remember to go to the pharmacy on Friday afternoon, after work.

Except… they don’t have my prescription.

I call the on-call doctor, and ask them what happened to my zoloft.

They say they sent it to hannahfords.

I’m at cvs.

I haven’t used the pharmacy at hannahfords in the past 4 years, because I moved, and now cvs is closer.

Weird, but fine.

I could go to hannahfords, but I would have to take the bus, and it’s raining super hard, and I don’t want to walk from the bus stop to hannahfords in the pouring rain.

I ask cvs if they can transfer my prescription. They say sure but not right now. We can do it tomorrow.

Alright, well that’s fine. I can pick up my meds in the morning, and then I will still have only skipped one day. No biggie. Feeling relieved, I head on home.

The next morning, I return to cvs.

They say it’s too early, they just opened. They can transfer my prescription later in the day. They will call me when it’s done.

Alright. So it looks like I might be skipping another day of my meds. It sucks, but okay.

The hours go by. I don’t get a call. I focus on drawing and watching anime, and I try not to think about it.

The evening finally comes. My head is starting to hurt a little bit.

I get a call.

Good news: cvs successfully transferred the prescription.

Bad news: they are out of stock of my medication and will need to have it shipped in. It may take a couple of days.

I can’t wait two more days.

I have a panic attack.

I calm down. I tell myself I can go to cvs tomorrow and see if they can help. Maybe they have some zoloft in the back? Idk, I just need enough to tide me over until the shipment, and I’m desperate.

I go to cvs. I tell them my predicament. They are sympathetic but their hands are tied. They have no zoloft. They tell me to maybe check another pharmacy. Except it’s Sunday, so the closest pharmacy that’s actually open is…

Hannahfords.

Well, okay. It’s a beautiful day, no rain, so I don’t mind taking the trip.

I get to hannahfords. I say hey can you please transfer my prescription back here so I can have my medicine.

They say, sorry. They’re out of stock, too.

They’re also all out of zoloft???

Except, no. The woman at the desk explains they have plenty of the 100mg tablets in stock.

I say great, I take 2 of those a day, per my doctor’s instructions.

But that’s not what is on my prescription this time.

The prescription my doctor wrote says to take 1 200mg tablet a day. And yes, that amounts to the same, the woman explains, but because your prescription asks for the 200mg tablets, I can’t give you the 100mg ones.

I can order the 200mg tablets for you, she tells me. It will take a couple of days.

Now that’s just infuriating.

I ask her, please, is there any way I can get my zoloft sooner?

She tells me I can call the on-call doctor and have them change the prescription from 1 200mg tablet a day to 2 100mg tablets a day.

So I do.

And finally, finally, on 2pm on Sunday afternoon, I get my medication.

God fucking dammit.

Why was all of that so complicated???

[whinlatter]

Hello,

(Apologies in advance for my poor English - it's my third language) I want to say how excellent your stories are, particularly Orchards and Beasts. They're both favorites of mine and I reread them often. You're so skilled at writing emotional moments - it's like Ginny's and Harry's (and Hermione's, Ron's, Bea's ect) emotional states come off the page and into life!

<He looks down at his plate and is surprised to see four immaculately crispy roast potatoes, truly world-class crispiness, O, outstanding>

^^ Insane - in a positive way - for you to write that segment.

I also have a question, if you don't mind. I'm not new to writing fanfic, and I've had serious relationships, but I have never been in love (Thank you, Catholic parents and Catholic country, for preventing me from discovering my true sexuality until the age of 26 🙄). Cause of that, I'm struggling to show characters falling in love in my own works. How did you represent the process of Harry falling in love in Orchards so truthfully? I understand this process changes between people, but there must be some things shared? Many thanks!

Really, really treasure this message — thank you so much, anon 💌

Have been mulling over your extremely kind and incredibly interesting question ever since you sent this, and trying to think of a response that is better than ‘I’m extremely honoured you think I managed it but I mostly just winged it and worried about it and hoped other people thought I’d got enough of it right’, which was honestly my first thought (other than yes! for sexuality discovery, especially under adverse and/or hostile circumstances — you’re a boss, and I wish you only good things, including tons of love in the form that you seek it).

The thought I’ve settled on is that I absolutely don’t think you have to have been in love to write about falling in love. Works of art that I love that depict falling in love, or any kind of emotional arc that feels true, feel that way not necessarily because the authors lived them themselves, but because a) the authors saw the characters involved very clearly and deeply and rendered those characters shrewdly, and b) because they didn’t claim to be depicting something universal (‘this is what falling in love looks like’), but instead let the love story or whatever other emotional arc between characters be extremely partial, individual and particular (‘this is what this very particular example of falling in love might look like’). I feel wildly unqualified to be discussing this, but I’ve tried to think through some of these ideas in a little more depth below and hope some part of it is helpful to you for your own writing, (which I know will be good because good writing comes from people who care about trying to get it right). It’s waffle because I don’t know what I’m talking about! But hope there’s something in the waffle that means something to you!

It’s true that there’s a lot of power in people telling stories about or based on their own experiences of living in and moving through the world. Writers writers put themselves into their work, both consciously and subconsciously, every time they write, and the results can be very compelling. It’s also true that people writing about things they have no knowledge or experience of can go horribly wrong (and, in the case of depictions of marginalised and dispossessed groups by people who do not belong to a marginalised or dispossessed group, can be wildly offensive). If the aim of writing is to make things that feel true, drawing on personal experiences can be a powerful way of making art that does just that.

Equally, though, lots of people have been in love and would do (or have done) a horrible job of rendering it in art. People don’t always see themselves that clearly, especially their own experiences of romantic love! And lots of people haven’t been in love (or at least, haven’t felt or received romantic love either by choice or by circumstance), and yet can still write a story of people falling in love that will feel true to readers. I say this because I think sometimes we mistake the liberating potential of sharing our experiences of the world as being the only way to truth, when actually most people writing fiction are writing things that haven’t happened to them all the time — yet there still tends to be all this stuff that feels true and real around that must feel that way for reasons other than personal experience.

I actively draw on some of my life experiences in my writing. How I see the world shapes the work I produce in ways I probably don’t see all that clearly. I also write stories about experiences I haven’t had. I can’t say there aren’t elements of my real-life experience of romantic love folded into Orchards, because there absolutely are. But my experiences of falling in love are partial and particular to me, and I’ve never been a traumatised, griefstricken, obtuse (sorry, Harry) teenage boy falling in love, which is what Orchards is about. Part of the fun of writing Orchards was imagining how a character who is so very different to me could possibly develop the strength of the feelings Harry develops for Ginny in canon and not notice. I found it much less useful to think about my own experiences of falling in love than trying to think specifically about what fifteen-turning-sixteen year old Harry looks for in people he is drawn to (eg. compassion, loyalty, deep mutual understanding, a sense of emotional shelter), what he finds sexually attractive (humour, daring, athleticism, bangin’ hair, frankly) and also what he searches for in life as a character (family, permanence, futures).

Another example is that I also write a lot these days about grief and grieving. I’ve been very lucky in my life (touch wood) that I haven’t yet had much experience of really deep grief for someone very close to me. I worry about rendering that truthfully in my work, and am trying to do the work to approach writing about those topics by reading a lot of other people’s works, fiction or nonfiction, about them, and trying to hear the people around me who have experienced huge grief when they describe what it is to live with it. Would I do a better job of writing what it feels like to grieve someone close to you if I’d experienced that? It’s very likely. But it felt less truthful to the stories I’m trying to tell in the fanfiction I’m writing to avoid that topic because I don’t share the experience of it with the characters, so doing the work it is.

The thing I think it boils down to is it’s more important to try and see people and their stories clearly, and to understand what is individual and specific about them, than it is to have had some dubiously universal experience of falling in love. I think it’s much more important to do other (quieter, harder, more underrated, boring, crucial) things like be empathetic, be interested in trying to understand who people are: their influences, their worldview, their fears, their way of conceptualising and expressing themselves, their hopes and fears and capacity for change. For what it’s worth, if you’ve had any kind of meaningful relationship with another human being, I reckon you can draw on that to write about being in love. Making characters’ emotional arcs feel true as a writer, including but not limited to them falling in love, is about working hard to see people for who you they are, and that’s the basis for having any kind of good relationship with another human being, including platonic and romantic relationships: empathy, selflessness, generosity of interest in all that a person is, seeing a person clearly, not idealising them but admiring some parts of them and accepting the others without judgement. We definitely reify romantic love at the expense of platonic love, even though the latter demands all of these things just as much, if not more, than romantic love, and I think you should trust yourself that you probably have it in you to write and render these stories well if you come from a place of humility, empathy and deep care and investment in the characters whose stories you tell.

[crescencestudio]

Devlog #25 | 11.28.22

Hi everyone!

How have you all been? We are slowly approaching holiday season, so hope the end of the year has been bringing some moments of rest and connection with loved ones <3 We are back with another devlog, so let’s get into it! 

Writing

Writing has been where the bulk of my time has been spent this past month. I’ve been working closely with Wudgey, our developmental editor, to flesh out routes, endings, and information cohesion between everything. We’ve officially finished the route summaries for each character, and I’m quite happy with how the lore, endings, and character development has turned out! I think the magic, backstories, and characters have really come to life after talking with them, so I’m eternally grateful <3

Aside from that, my big, big focus has been Kayn’s route. I’ve begun writing the actual script for their route based on our outline and am currently sitting at ~25k words. At first, I was beating myself up a lot with the progress --- I felt like I wasn’t moving fast enough. But now that I’m actually seeing that number and realizing that’s from one month’s work, I’m pretty proud with myself, haha! This is just a rough draft, and it doesn’t include fleshed out choices, the fun characterization scenes where we get to just have fun with the LIs, etc., but I’ve written up most of the basic plot (I’d estimate about 80%). I anticipate this first draft without fleshed out choices and extra characterization scenes will end at around 30k-35k words, so almost there!!!

Art

Last time, I showed you all one of the BGs Vui had finished. And honestly, most of the art development process has been on Vui’s side since I haven’t been spending as much time on Alaris art (((you will see why below LOL))). Above is the most recent background I got back from them, and I’m honestly blown away by how it looks. I find it so unbelievably stunning and can’t believe it’s going to be featured in the game. Hope you all like it as much as I do and are just as excited for future BGs Vui cooks up! 

I have been working on some CGs, but I’ll be keeping those a secret for now hehe ^^

Additional Features

Finally, the sound and music! I’ve already started receiving some of the voiced lines back from the VAs for the demo portion. I haven’t gotten a chance to review them yet since I’ve been preoccupied, and they’re not ~as~ time sensitive. But I’m hoping to start reviewing the lines next month and hope to have a better idea of how the characters are sounding! Regardless, I’m very excited to give them a listen <3

I’ve also been working with Peter for song composition for the soundtrack. We have three songs complete, specifically the main theme song, romantic/tender track, and the tense track. I’ll be previewing them in the near future, so be on the lookout!! 

"Market Research” 

I’m going to have to start unironically having a spot for fanart highlights, haha! Lately, I’ve been trying to improve my rendering and other aspects of my art that I don’t have as much comfort with. Because I don’t want to only draw Alaris all the time, I use other works as a way to practice my art, so that when I work on CGs and sprites, I’ll be able to use those new techniques to hopefully deliver a better visual product for you all! 

I was quite proud with how all of these came out. This month, I took a dive into Mystic Messenger and Blooming Panic, two games I’ve heard so much about but have never gotten the chance to play. I felt so inspired with both of them since I have little exposure to chat-based games and fell in love with the GUI (the discord layout of Blooming Panic is especially creative!!), characterization, and voice dynamics between the cast. 

While playing games doesn’t seem directly related to game development, it helps me see what’s out there and improve on things to bring to Alaris. I’ve already gotten a lot of ideas floating around that I hope to implement, so I hope you all look forward to it! Until next month, and I wish you all an early safe, warm, and happy holidays!!! <3

[marmotish]

Sometimes I look at your blog, and I just want to cry.

Your art is so good, you are so talented, and from what I understand from some of your answered asks, you aren’t planning on making a career out of it. You make art when you feel like it and it just bleeds with emotion and story and heart. It is gorgeous.

Meanwhile, I have been dying to be an artist my entire life, I take the available classes and struggle with the assignments and techniques, yet when push comes to shove, I clam up when I attempt drawing and struggle to make myself create what I love, I put it off for days if not longer until I feel confident enough to make something, and I find myself second/third/infinity-guessing myself, my ideas, my direction, and clam up all over again unless I’m in the rare golden moments when I’ve found and am flowing in my groove, until I look at it again after an hour—day and my confidence crumbles all over again.

I guess I’m saying that you inspire me, and I hope I will allow myself to let go of my anxiety and low self-esteem and just create when I want to and feel like it and just let the image and process be so I can move on and enjoy the journey.

Thank you for your art and your blog.

oh my god anon 💖😭💖

you know something? i read this ask yesterday and it filled me with such a boost of creative energy that i haven’t had since december and since then i smashed out two pieces of art and am now halfway through another??? i think a lot more about drawing then actually doing the drawing tbh, and for every piece i upload here there is like 5 failed attempts to do it.

and you know something else? the entire second paragraph of your ask? i get the same way. i am never 100% happy with what i draw, because i imagined it to be so much better before i even started drawing it. i just upload it anyway because you know what? it was close enough, it was the best i could do at that time. and that’s ok. and honestly, i want to draw pretty much all the time. but i can only bring myself to actually draw when i’m in the right mood and have a clear picture of what i want to draw in my mind. vibes are not enough to push me into it. which is a shame because the feeling you get when i drawing starts coming together is pretty awesome, and it’s the “starting the drawing” part that i find the hardest.

you say i inspire you? anon you literally inspired me. please don’t put down or underestimate your abilities. i have complete faith in your ability to produce art that makes you happy, and you’re working hard to do it. i hope that i can offer you even half the inspiration that your message gave me. 💐

[addieraesfanfic]

LOVE AND WAR CHAPTER 1

goodnight robicheaux x oc

summary: addie and goody haven’t seen each other for years. what will happen when they see each other again? will their love re-kindle?

The second I heard a knock at my door I had a bad feeling in my stomach. I don’t know why, but I did.

“Who is it?” I called out as my hand grazed my pistol that was sitting on my bedside table.

“The name’s Faraday. Joshua Faraday. Sam Chisolm sent me.”

“God damn,” I laughed to myself in pure shock. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Sam. I walked over to open up the door. The man was a little under 6ft, he was probably give or take 4 years older than I was. I gave him a small smile as I held my hand out to shake his. He responded and tipped his hat to me.

“So how did you meet Chisolm? You seem to be a hell of a lot younger than he is.” Faraday asked as we trotted our horses to the “meeting spot”.

“For the record I’m 32 so not that much younger if you ask me. About seven or so years ago I knew a fella named Goodnight. Him and Sam were friends so I knew him.”

“Goodnight Robicheaux?” He asked in disbelief.

“Yes sir, we were um… good friends but my Daddy wasn’t a huge fan of me and him being together if you know what I mean.” It was true, I was in love with Goody but my Daddy hated him so much he made us move states. But he’s been dead for five years now and I live on my own. I wish I could go back and tell him I wasn’t leaving. Faraday didn’t respond, all he did was let out a little chuckle as we stopped at this huge tree. There were a few people scattered around the tree. I hopped off my horse as I ran up to Sam and gave him a hug. He groaned as our bodies collided and held me tight.

“Goody’s here,” he whispered in my ear as he pulled away from me. I saw him. He was leaning up against the tree, cigarette in hand.

“Who’s the lady?” I asked as I tried to forget Goody was a yard away from me.

“That’s Emma. We work for her,”

I smiled kindly as I walked over and shook her hand.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Glad to see another woman,” She laughed in content as we shook hands. I let go of her hand and walked up to Goody.

“Hey,” I greeted quietly. His head shot up so fast you’d think he’d heard a ghost. I couldn’t quite read his facial expression as he took a long draw of his cigarette, never breaking eye contact with me. I was horrified, I know that sounds stupid. I didn’t have a reason to be horrified of him, when I told him I had to leave he was nothing but kind and understanding. I’ll never forget what he said to me that day. “maybe someday we’ll see each other again and we can start over,”. I still loved him, I never touched any other man since him. It sounds pathetic but I couldn’t. I guess I held onto the hope that someday we’d see each other again.

“How’s your Daddy?” Goodnight asked in a smart-ass tone.

“Dead, heart attack,” I responded with a light laugh. Sure I liked my father but I���m not the most forgiving person on planet earth. I certainly wasn’t gonna forgive him for taking love away from me. Goody stood up tall and started walking towards his horse as he walked by he made sure to get as close to me as possible. I could feel his breath on my face as he spoke.

“It’s good to see you Addie,” He smiled as he put a kind hand on my shoulder before he continued to make his way over to his horse. I sighed as I wiped the sweat that gathered onto my forehead. This was gonna be a long trip.

“Who’s that?” I called out as I pointed in the general direction of a man I’ve never seen before.

“Billy Rocks he’s with me,” Goody responded as he put his hat back on his head. I walked up to Faraday as he was having a conversation with Sam.

“Oh good we gotta mexican,” Faraday said sarcastically as he walked up to the poor guy.

“Ole muchacho,”

“Faraday stop being an ass,” I criticized as I walked past him, grabbing the hat off of his head in the process.

“What a merry band we are.” Goody commented as we trotted on our horses down a dusty path. He went on to give everyone a stereotype such as a “texican” and so on. But there’s one thing he said that stuck with me.

“This is not gonna end well.”

[hmspogueobx]

Sunshine and Pine

Chapter Five: Pit

The heavy rain from this morning has turned the air misty, and all I can see from my kitchen window is fog. After watching Aunt Sue drag a half-asleep Seth around the kitchen all morning, insisting he learn this stuff so he can treat a women right one day, and sitting down to a family breakfast together, my shirt is now fifty percent water as I scrub dishes in the sink, mostly staring out the window pondering life.

I'd been cautiously excited when moving to LaPush. Knowing I needed to get some space from my trauma, but also, change is freaking terrifying. But never had I imagined life would take such an amazing leap into wonderful territory.

It's in the middle of this daydream that a howl resounds somewhere deep in my bones, making the plate I'm holding clatter to the bottom of the sink.

My head whips around to see Leah and Seth behind me. They're both standing at full attention. Something about the sound of that howl has all of our hackles up, and we all break for the backdoor and into the woods. The sound of clothes ripping echoes around me and then my mind is flooded with images. Horrible images of bruises and pain. Someone's head is being ripped off. I see a baby, but it's not quite a baby. It looks normal and innocent, but then all of a sudden its eyes are bright red and it's the one ripping people's heads off.

It takes me a while to sift through it all and put the pieces together.

Jacob is talking to Bella, his eyes fall down to her stomach which has ballooned out and is more black and blue than not. Bella tells him everythings going to be alright. Edward says he can kill him. Bella rubbing her belly and smiling. The Cullens are arguing "The fetus isn't good for Bella!" Alice hisses. But Jacob is looking at Bella, she's trying to mask her wince. "It's just a little baby!" "Possibly".

Possibly.... Possibly. What is growing in there.

That's when the rest of the pack's thoughts start to chim in. I can feel everyone's rage. Everyone is seeing red. We're all running towards Jacob. We're breaking through the treeline and I still haven't decided how I feel about this.

My head turns towards the big black wolf as Sam starts to talk through the mindlink.

"We have to protect the tribe. What they've bred won't be able to control its thirst. Every human will be in danger."

"We're ready" "No time to waste." Everyone starts voicing their approval.

Everyones getting ready to go kill Bella like right this second. The cloud of outrage surrounding me is making it hard to make up my own mind. I keep sifting through the memories Jake showed us, but the one that keeps coming back is Bella, holding her belly and gazing down at it, so much love in her eyes.

While I've been processing, Jacob has charged off. I don't even realize that I'm slowly retreating until a massive gray head is whipping in my direction.

"No" Paul had been so consumed by everything he hadn't tuned specifically into my mind until right now. "Lucy, you can't be serious."

"I can't do this Paul. WE can't do this." And my mind is flashing back to that loving look in Bella's eyes. "It's just a baby."

Paul echoes the words we heard in Jake's memories. "Possibly."

I haven't stopped inching backwards while we talked and my feet squish into the dirt of the forest floor.

Every part of me is pulling in a different direction. My body seems to be moving of its own accord, drawing me towards Bella. My mind is trying to tell me that I should never leave my pack like this. THEY'RE my family, not some band of silverspoon leeches.

My heart and my soul are the only two working in synchrony. Screaming in desperation to stop moving away from the gray wolf in front of me, the emotion in his eyes completely human. The minds of everyone else are obviously still there, but I can't hear them anymore. All I hear is Paul. He seems to be going through a similar battle to mine. Up until he felt me retreating, there wasn't a doubt in his mind on what was happening. Honestly, there still wasn't. But he could feel his very soul dragging her feet hesitantly through the dirt. Moving further and further away from him. He was battling between the outrage that his partner and packmate dared defend the enemy, and the dark pit that sank deeper and deeper in his chest with every inch I retreated.

We'd obviously been physically apart before. But this was more than that. This was physical, mental, emotional and everything in between. The imprint embedded into our genes wants to reach out and smack us both upside the head, shove us back together. But we've never been so far apart.

"Bella hasn't done anything wrong. Jacobs right, our protection applies to her too." The words pour out of my mouth without thought, as if I'm running on autopilot. Like a puppet on a string. The pull - correction, the vicious clawing - to run back to Paul's side seems to have no say here. That pit that Paul could feel, starts to unravel in my chest too.

"Come on Lucy, tell me you aren't that stupid." And that's what does it. I can feel that Paul regrets his words immediately after he's thought them. But that's the tricky part about sharing thoughts... Everything is always out on full display.

The image of my wolf form turning full tilt into the forest, clouded in pure agony is all I see in my head as the trees rush past me. The farther I go, the deeper and darker that pit sinks into both of us.

The last thing I see before my link to my pack is severed, is everyone else watching as the fight leaves Paul's body, and his naked body slumps to the ground. His hand is clutched to his chest like he's trying to keep the pit from consuming him whole.

It's not until I see the Cullen's house peeking through the greenery, that I allow myself to stop running and collapse into a ball of fur in the dirt.

[paintfroge]

Finishing All Old Asks

Hi guys, I’m feeling a bit more artsy lately and also I won’t have a desktop in about a month so I’m going through my askbox and doing all the requests that have been gathering dust (some for over a year 😭) So, if you ever sent in a froge request and it didn’t get done, you can look forward to that soon

I’ll be queueing 1 a day until I run out of requests. If you send in a request after this post, it will go after the others since they’re Long Overdue. After queueing up the old request art, I’ll try to stockpile some froges in my queue for every few days so the blog remains active while I’m busy irl. I really do hate to have been inactive for so long; I’ve just been in the weird and prolonged process of moving to a different country so I haven’t had the time or space to draw much until now.

If you’ve ever wanted to send in a froge request, you should!

I would love requests for my stockpile inspo. They’re free! You can request anything you want if it involves a froge!

[josiebelladonna]

okay, it’s the mother of all long stories and there’s way too much i can’t talk about because of legalities, but because my mom and stepdad were basically given this house that we currently live in, the whole financial situation around this place has been extremely tricky since we moved here in 2015. it belonged to my stepdad’s mom, who passed away in 2014, and he and his sister inherited her estate; she passed in 2019, and he went in 2021, so it went to their children. i never met her kids, they have never even been here to this house; and his son (my stepbrother) who quarantined with us with his girlfriend and their daughter, took off back in january, so it’s been just my mom and me here. my stepbrother promised to take care of this (i won’t say how much is owed just from confidentiality, but it’s a lot, though) during quarantine because he’s technically the owner of the house… and look what happened. 👀

it sounds scary, but i promise you it isn’t: the mortgage was paid for a long time ago and there’s no rent, either. but my mom and i have two choices: find a way to get her name on the deed and do the whole “redemption” process there (because of the pandemic interspersed with the delinquent period, we figure we could qualify for assistance), or… we pack up and bounce this summer. we’re both vouching for the former because while we’ve wanted to care for this house and then move coincidentally since 2018, and it’s seriously getting harder to live here given where it is and the fact we’re probably facing an el niño this year (read: another wet winter), it’s pretty sudden. plus, the economy is getting bad again: it’s not like we can readily find a new place, be it in nevada or oregon, on such short notice. in other words, it’s more daunting than anything.

but. if it does get to that point, like it’s not possible to put her name on the deed… her job is internet based, i.e., she can take it anywhere and it’s assignment-based, in that she works for four weeks and then has time off until the next assignment. i have my tablet with me, i always have my tablet with me, especially after my laptop went belly-up back in march: i haven’t been updating my fics lately because i’ve been doing yard work and housework, stuff that’s physically demanding and i just haven’t had the brain power to sit down and write the last few days (make art, definitely, but not write, though). this being said, when my stepdad died, i had this inexplicable feeling that i was going to have to start writing more on mobile. given the mobile devices, i can promise you that i won’t stop: it’ll just be… you know, a little slow.

i’m saying this here on tumblr, but i’m not expecting anyone here to give a shit. this site has a reputation for handing out likes when someone asks a (usually important) question, and it’s only gotten worse with the tiktok generation, and i have a reputation on here, too. people on here don’t like me, like there’s a reason why i have my ask box turned off and i’ve had it turned off for years. i shelved the idea of starting a patreon or a tip jar a long time ago because i got literally no response, nobody cared—despite the audience i’ve acquired on instagram, i still don’t believe anyone cares or would care, who the hell wants to watch me draw? i’m lucky to get more than 3 notes on a drawing i made, what makes me think anyone would shell out money to see it happen? this site has gotten so fucking toxic the last few months alone that i literally have no faith whatsoever. plus, i’ve gone to great pains to shake off the whole green druidess situation but i still feel the animosity and the repercussions towards me: there’s way too many people on here with a sense of entitlement like her, like they think i should just give away everything that i have, and way too many people on here with a victim mentality as big as hers. who am i talk about my problems like this when the economy is tanking and other people don’t even have a roof over their heads? and, like her, people on here don’t listen. there’s a reason why tumblr has the reputation that it has, like sometimes i wonder what i’m still doing here because there’s no respect, for art, for anything genuine.

i’m telling you all this for my own good. there’s a 50/50 chance that my mom and i could be doing the nomadic thing in a month and i don’t know where else to say this.

[substituted-shinigami]

Writing Update: March 2023

Hello everyone, and welcome back to “Writing Updates”. I’m going to try to do these once a month, but uh… we’ll see! 😅 (Anyone remember Bleach Free Mondays? I definitely didn’t forget about Bleach Free Mondays… 🥲)

Good news: I wrote an awful lot this month! ☺️ I put out a request for prompts, and I got two!!! (Thanks again! 🥰) And both fics turned out okay, although I think they need some more time in the oven before they go on AO3. However, I also do have a different AO3 fic ready to go for the end of the month, which is great! I had it written before, but I wanted to put it away so that I could look at it with fresh eyes, hence the prompt ask. That and while I really felt like writing, I didn’t like editing, and especially not editing FREAKING BLOODLINES (more on that later). I’m really happy that I’ve been able to keep up with my chapter a month goal so far, and I think taking breaks from my longer fic has really helped with that! 

Bad news: I haven’t done a lot of art recently… Although to be fair, part of the problem is that while I can do writing anywhere (at home, at doctor’s appointments, on the road, …when I’m in the ER…again 😅), I can only draw at home. Another problem is the editing process. Even when I think a writing piece is solid and completely done, if I think of something later I can just go back and edit it anytime (Heck, I just did it with the piece coming out later today!). But with art, once I ink and color it, that’s kind of it. It’s done. That wonky eye is just going to be a wonky eye. So maybe I just need to be more okay with that? Idk. Oh but, I do have a couple of things I do want to draw though!  So hopefully I’ll be able to finish those up and get them out. 

Semi-Good News? (Okay, let’s be honest, I’m just going to complain about Bloodlines): Sigh…  Bloodlines, the fic I originally had slotted for January and now it’s almost April. 😅 Last I checked on it, it seemed good. Heck, parts of it I even really liked! But it felt good in the “this is as far as I can take this right now” way, not in the “this is actually good” way. Plus I’ve been learning to put fics away and look at them again weeks later to get a fresh perspective. This is especially important as a new writer because since I have so much to learn, there's a high chance that something new is going to click like a week down the line. Which is sort of what happened??? Like the fic I’m posting later isn’t perfect and is a little weird, but I’ve always been very bad at “show, don’t tell” when it comes to writing, and I feel like this piece does it a little better than some of my others? So I’d like to incorporate some more of that into Bloodlines. It’s got a little, but not nearly enough. Honestly, with all the little changes I’ve been adding over time, I’m half tempted to hold on to it all the way till December and just post it as my big, “end of year/this is everything I’ve learned” piece. Unfortunately, I’m also very impatient, so we’ll see what happens! Plus sometimes holding onto something sometimes keeps me from moving on so…. Eh, I’ll figure it out eventually! 

Welp, this has gotten long. Thank you for reading! This month’s fic should be up later today. Like I said earlier, it’s a bit different, but I had fun writing it! See you all next month! 😁

[kianlonart]

Happy Valentine’s Day! I re-drew *that scene* from How to Train Your Dragon 2 with Mossy and Joyce because, well... let’s just say it fits. Lore and process talk under the cut.

February 2023

I don’t know how much lore I’ve actually dropped on these two over here, so I’ll start from the beginning. Mossflower joined the Brightvale Guard to support her younger siblings back home on Mystery Island. Joyce came over from Meridell because she wanted to get out of her family’s over-crowded farm in a way that wasn’t “get married and move down the road”.

She thought it’d be better over in Brightvale, but without the extensive education that most of the kingdom’s populace had, her job prospects were limited. Fortunately, there was a wraith threat looming and the one thing she had a lot of experience with was fighting.

Joyce and Mossy were assigned to the same unit and quickly became Very Good Friends. They weren’t intending on becoming anything more... until they went dancing together and found themselves dancing together long after the circle dances were over.

They started making plans. After their service was over, they’d move back to Mystery Island with Mossy’s siblings and start a life together. Jobs were still hard to come by there, but with no more schooling to pay for they could live comfortably enough on fruit and whatever savings they left with.

And then the wraiths attacked.

Their unit splintered, and the two were separated. Joyce tried to fight her way back through and it didn’t end well. She had unfinished business, though, so she stuck around. It was several days until she could bring herself to talk to her girlfriend (”Oh Fyora, get a grip! It wasn’t your fault!”) and several more before Mossy could see her.

Except... she wasn’t really seeing her. Joyce was fully capable of making herself visible and tangible, but she didn’t want to. It was better for Mossy to think of her the way she’d been before her death. Sure, it resulted in a discharge for her because she’d started talking to her dead girlfriend that no one else could see or hear, but they both thought that was for the best.

When Mossy went back home, Joyce came with. Things were good for a while, but then Joyce caught Mossy crying because she wanted to be able to hold her, and introduce her to her family, and...

“Well... what if you could?”

Joyce had been fully expecting rejection, but that was not what she got. She was still afraid of officially meeting the rest of the family, but she and Mossy could work on that.

Together.

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So it’s been a long time since my tablet was up and running, but it’s back now, which means I’m back to finishing sketches I’ve been sitting on for a while! Not too much has changed for my process, except for remembering to put different characters on their own layers when I want to do blur effects (which, there’s gotta be a better way to do those in Krita, I just used the first brush from the pack my sister downloaded that looked decent).

But yeah, I had fun drawing these guys again, and there’s more Neopets art coming. Because that’s what I do now I guess lol. It’s not even that I haven’t been drawing humans, it’s that my interests cycle uncontrollably and I only feel like writing/gaming/drawing/knitting/what have you so often. But I feel like there’s definitely gonna be more Fashion since markers are fun and I wanna draw with them.