#The Small Ponds

[madamemiz]

saw a post recently about the sun and moon fandom and how non-selfship content is rare, and how that's frustrating, and it struck me, like... how rare that is. genuinely in all my 20ish years in online spaces, i've never seen a fandom that not only welcomed selfship but actively encourages it, when usually the rule of thumb is that it's tolerated at best and despised at worst

so why is this fandom so selfship centric?

the answer is a combination of factors, of course, but I think it was mostly just a perfect storm of the right character with the right traits at the right time. many people between about 23 and 33 were and still are experiencing intense childhood nostalgia that's being perpetuated by online culture and various media, often through a distorted or slightly unsettled lense. the daycare attendant is fun! they're childish, but decidedly not children. they're not human, unattainable in reality, but plausible enough in the age of ai that they make you ponder. they make you long to nap and play and color and do all the whimsical things you wish you could take a week off from your dull job and do! but there's something... off about them. an element of danger that's intriguing. they're dangerous, but what if they aren't to you specifically? or, if they are, what if they overcame that, just for you? what if you were worth it?

people our age are lonely, and if not, often working through issues they didn't have time to contemplate in their teens and early 20s because they were still living throigh the issues. younger people too, of course, but it's especially rampant in the aforementioned age group. past college and college friends, too caught up in work to make new ones. if the dca really clicked with you as a character, it's kind of fun to imagine what it would be like to hang out with them. what if they were your friend? what if they were more?

which leads to my last point--cringe is dead and we stomped on its corpse

maybe it started with a few people drawing a y/n with the dca, and wow the art is cute! who's the cute jester character? ... is that a self-insert? huh. and then more people join in. is that allowed? yes! and the crowd cheers for it too! the right people drawing the right character dynamics at the right moment, drawing others like a moths to a strange robotic flame

ultimately, the fandom attracts so much selfship because that's the bedrock, the foundation the rest of the fandom built its home on. almost all of the common tropes and characterization have roots in selfship fic and art. the dca's popularity very much kicked off from that, and seeing other people using them as an outlet for their loneliness, friendship, romantic or sexual desires, or even just for creative character and plot setups that are only tangentially related to canon actively encouraged others to join in, in a way that could only happen while riding the funerary coattails of cringe culture

it's very much a lightning in a bottle fandom, the likes of which i doubt we'll see again for a while

[canecutter]

Retention Pond

[13percival]

this was inspired by some similar illustrations i found on Pinterest the other day :)

[xxv-winter-vxx]

Glub glub new fish 🐟🐟 requested by: @the-lonelyshepherd

I wanted to try mixing colors more and go completely out of my comfort zone with this one!

[little-pondhead]

On the supervillain Danny au, can about Jazz and Dan? I would love to see the JL think they finally have the trio pinned down before a strange amazon and a god-damned demon storm in and start throwing people through walls.

Well, I just made this post about Jazz to answer another question, but I didn't think about Dan! However, I was going through my sketches, and I think this old one would be perfect for him. Dan's still a demon; he's just a little man now :) The JL Dark is terrified of him.

[fluffle-writes]

It will never not be funny to me that Riddle is only older than Ace by 1 month AND he was house warden a week into his first year at NRC

FR imagine the third years telling their peers about it like "You're not gonna believe this shit but the tiniest first year throttled the dorm leader in a duel. He's ordering everyone around like a bloody dictator but he somehow manages to be terrifying enough about it that we just. Listen to him. He's literally the tiniest pipsqueak but he wipes the floor with any challengers - what the hell even is this school"

I HC that he got a growth spurt a while into his first year at NRC so he was just. Even tinier than he is now.

[mammomlette]

People don’t talk about MC needing to wear a magical ring to not accidentally yk cause NATURAL DISASTERS with their powers??? Not only accidentally but without realising???

Diavolo or smthn is asking too much of MC or being a bit too annoying and their other hand slowly drifts towards the ring and they hold onto it while maintaining dead eye contact. Like continue to piss me off hoe I’ll blink and blow a hole in your castle idk

Obv they never do it (or do they?) but the threat is there and it’s a risk dia (or whoever but I’m using dia) can’t take

[girlgrian]

obviously im a scarian girlie but solidarian really is such a close second. i love them so much grian really thrives the most when he has someone to relentlessly bully and tear apart with his claws and jimmy plays into it so well. in my head grian is having his epic multi season long divorce and romance plot with scar but every season he still needs to find jimmy and kick him in the teeth and make his life miserable because thats just how they work. i keep going on twitter and getting posts suggested on my FYP from people i dont follow doing the most insane discourse about how its problematic to ship them because theyre literally siblings and it scares me

[donovandoodles]

Finished!

Little sheep and frog by the pond..

[transcendragon]

Keep Looking Forward (or, Two Unideer Together) - I took a photo of some deer and I decided I really wanted to turn them into art. It turned into gentle affirmation art as I’ve been telling myself to look forward a lot recently.

By original art made in Procreate, image description in alt text.

[captainjonnitkessler]

Three very important things:

There is a bunch of milkweed growing in my backyard. This is perplexing because it's growing right where I planted a bunch of milkweed, but I planted it like four years ago and the seedlings were immediately mowed down by rabbits. So I'm confused but very pleased that it all somehow worked out.

The bees. LOVE. the milkweed. There are dozens and dozens of them just going absolutely ham on every flower.

There is one other animal that loves the milkweed and it is. inexplicably. frogs. There's a half dozen tiny green frogs hanging out on the massive leaves of these six-foot-tall flowers.

Look. Look at my bad blurry pictures of tiny frogs. I could not be happier.

[sketchingdemonss]

i pull the crops from my mind fields and all i harvested were these vintages what the hell

[freakartack]

Ok, so first of all, I love your art so much. You are the sole reason for my Orbulon and Mona hyperfixation, and it is wonderful. thank you for introducing me to the creature that is orbulon. second of all, I have had many headcannons about orbulon, and one of them is that he has some sort of anxiety disorder. I also thought that it was a much rarer condition for his species than it is for humans. I want to know if you think he has an anxiety disorder or if its something else?

Over all though, have a great day!

THANK YOU!! what an honor. I personally feel that most of the things that orbulon is anxious about pertain specifically to his ego, but I think that there's nothing wrong with people seeing themselves in cartoon characters and interpreting them accordingly, so don't let me rain on your (or anyone's) parade. He definitely does have a neurotic personality despite his veneer of grandiosity. What I will say is that orbulon's wildest bouts of anxious behavior - such as when he spiralled over possibly losing a game of dr mario, or became extremely self-conscious that he was the only one to not catch a cold - stem specifically from his fear that people on Earth, despite seemingly having the intellect and lifespan of ants compared to him, will see him as Stupid. Something to note about that:

Hm. Hm!

Orbulon doesn't give us a lot of clues about his home planet, but it's interesting to consider what he doesn't tell you. Regardless of how you choose to interpret it, there's definitely some credence to the idea that he's Not Like Other Aliens. But that's enough Orbulon Psychoanalysis for today

[amybugz]

behold! my shop launch

✨ amybugs.bigcartel.com ✨

ever wanted a wii play fish of your own? preorders for my latest vinyl stickers are up right now!

to celebrate my new shop opening, you can get 10% off your order by using the code LAUNCH10

(uk only)

[kinokoshoujoart]

the coolest kids in forgotten valley!!☆

(…it seems there may have been a stretch of time where rock and lumina were the only kids in forgotten valley…🥲)

poseref

[seraphimankh]

Popping in to say how much I adore your fic, particularly how you write Boq! He's such a complex character, and I feel you've really captured that in your work! You can tell that he's a good person at his core, he's just been put through so much that he's become an extremely bitter and angry person

Heck if I was ENSLAVED for however many months/years by a person who, apparently, loved me, then essentially murdered by said person (if the spell worked correctly Boq would have been FORCED to love Nessa which is... icky at best) AND THEN put through actual body horror so I could keep living? I'd be a little pissed too! And severely traumatised, but I don't think Boq (or Fiyero for that matter) have had any time to really sit down and properly unpack that trauma

Really happy that you're not writing Boq off as a villain, I've seen one too many fics where he's portrayed as this 100% evil guy :(

Hh thank you! I adore Boq and his character, and it’s really sad when they make him be out to be the villain of the group.

He’s angry, hurt and feels there’s an injustice that happened to him. Not only did he loose his life to a dictator because he thought he was doing something nice to her and couldn’t get out of the relationship, but he was forcefully changed against his will. Sure it was in an attempt to save him, but it’s still not a good situation!

And not only that he was just left alone! I know he kinda runs away but still!! He was left to his own devices forced to struggle and deal with this new body.

It’s terrible and I don’t think a lot of people realize that. People saying he could have just left Nessa don’t realize how abusive relationships work, especially with one that had a major power imbalance. And if Nessa’s spell DID work he would have lost his autonomy in a different matter.

I love Boq and I will defend him so hard man