#and i feel my drawings have been improving as i go

[dogtoling]

General life- and blog update , since I assume at least a few people might have been wondering where I've been and what i've been up to recently. I obviously haven't been posting or drawing much this year in general. This will probably be an important post if you care about stuff on this blog, and I already rambled on Sheezy, but that site isn't very populated yet and it's also very good at hiding journals so let's just ramble again...

The summary of this post if you hate reading: I'm heavily considering just stepping away from Splatoon. That decision obviously would affect this blog (mostly, my OCs, which is kinda most of the blog at this point). I don't think the blog itself will go anywhere, and I'll probably use it for something in the future... alternatively i'll cherry pick stuff from here into an archive for people who like the worldbuilding.

Longer post under cut:

So what have I been up to this year? The answer is quite simple: NOTHING. Like, actually absolutely nothing. Aside from Art Fight, this has probably been one of my worst art output years of all time, which is really frustrating. That's between my horrendous mental health and depression chasms this year and a complete lack of both focus and inspiration (which can also get chalked down to the depression to a degree, yeah). So the very real reason to why there hasn't been much activity on this blog this year is because I just haven't Done Anything in general.

Now because I know there will be a few people who think "that's fine! you shouldn't judge yourself based on productivity!" you're right! I also agree. However the issue for me specifically is that most (if not all) the time I spend NOT drawing or creating, I spend sitting around wishing I could start drawing or creating, because that is like the 1 thing that keeps me sane on this freaking earth. Unfortunately coming up with OC scenarios in my head doesn't really result in output I can feel fulfilled by in any form as much as I wish it did, lol.

Now; The Issue. It doesn't take a genius to see that if you spend 9 months trying to finish like a dozen OC pages that you COULD do in a week or 2 if you wanted to, then there's probably more than just the problem of executive dysfunction (even though that's at least 60% of it for sure). Obviously my other major problem is that I live by imaginary rules and structures that make sense, but aren't actually useful at ALL in reality and are more than a hindrance if anything (the mental to do-list in my head that says i can't do X until I've done Y doesn't do very much if task Y takes 10 months and I also don't want to do it, and it also has no structured ending).

How does this tie into stepping away from Splatoon, you may ask. Well, the issue is that I have foreseeably fallen out of love with the series. Which isn't exactly news lol. Currently, I'm not even sure i will get the next game, if and when the time comes. Yes, the loss of interest is also expected, given that Splatoon 3 has ended and every fandom has this kind of downtime and lukewarm in-between-titles period. But the truth is that modern Splatoon (almost 10 years old!!!!) is tangibly different from the way the series was back when I fell in love with it. That was Splatoon 1, and while the series has improved in a lot of aspects and is thriving, it's grown in a direction that I just don't really like. Splatoon 3 had the most freaking horrendous, immersion breaking story mode they could've done, then they followed it up with a DLC story that was pretty cool but also compounded a lot of my fears about the series' future and played into every single thing i do not want Splatoon stories to be - fully character focused, random fucking villain, mundane event that's unrealistically world-threatening just because a kids video game needs a scary climax even though it's immersion breaking AGAIN, the whole thing taking place in cyberspace and thus offering basically no worldbuilding even though there is SO MUCH WORLD. I COULD GO ON.

The gist of it is that nowadays, rather than playing Splatoon and being inspired and excited at what comes next, I mostly find myself dreading what dumbass plot they will do next to throw a wrench in the otherwise good stuff. And when that's like THE main approach I have to what's supposed to be my favorite series, it is HARROWING. I can't even really blame the game for this; the story is NOT its selling point, the developers probably do their best to get the bits to us that they really want to tell, and at the end of the day the game is unfortunately a product. Worldbuilding for Splatoon is fun to a point. It's less fun when in order to actually write or create something coherent, instead of filling in the blanks, the blanks are 90% of the freaking thing. At that point you're just better off making something of your own instead of being anchored onto an IP that gives more problems than answers and occasionally shoots you with like a machine gun. Working in the realm of Splatoon is frustrating because more often than not, the questions I have ARE NOT MINE TO ANSWER, and the likelihood that the specific-ass questions I need answers to will ever be actually addressed is really low.

Tying this back to my OCs. Obviously I love my OCs more than I love myself which admittedly isn't that high of a bar but you get the point. The problem is that I spend a lot of time mulling over worldbuilding that, again, frankly isn't mine to do. Because if I want it to be Splatoon, then it should be mostly accurate to how Splatoon is! But the problem with that is that there's really not THAT MUCH worldbuilding in the series that you can work with, and most of the core game mechanics are just abstract enough that it's actually horrendous to try and come up with workarounds and ways for things to make sense that don't require just constructing a full knockoff version mirror dimension of the game and saying fuck everything that's in place here because Inkopolis Plaza literally has no roads in or out of there and I have no fucking idea how that's allowed when your only option is to jump the fence (or, nowadays, take the train which also isnt connected to a street as far as I remember). Between the face value issue and the lack of REALLY IMPORTANT worldbuilding, like - I will always come back to this - THE INK TANK'S FUNCTION 10 YEARS DOWN THE LINE - there's a goddamn ocean of plot holes and things that end up being obstacles to creativity rather than inspiration. I feel like I'm pretty solidly at the point (and have been for a while) where hanging onto Splatoon is really only contributing to creativity block and frustration with lack of freedom and the ability to actually do things.

So I guess those are my reasonings that I've put together just sitting here for the time being. The TL;DR is that I wish I could just do stuff without Splatoon's canon getting in the way, which is a really stupid problem to have if you're making Splatoon OCs. I feel this frustration extremely strongly every time I have to work with actual bigger aspects of the world; we still don't have an Inkopolis map, we don't know what the world around Inkopolis looks like, we don't know what the wilderness is like aside from Just Normal Forest and Desert and very few snippets as to what modern wildlife MIGHT be, I still don't know how the fuck the Inklings teleport to the goddamn arctic ocean to play a turf war at Shipshape Cargo co. These are all actually really important things if you're trying to establish a setting in any kind of storytelling that's outside of immediate city bounds (and even there, you need to know the layout of the city and its important areas). Also a fucking mutant bear and a baby salmon and a squid not wearing suitable gear went to space and fought on a rocket in space. These are some things that would give me peace of mind to not have to deal with in my own writing, probably.

So where do we go from here? Unsure. I haven't really made a decision on this front yet, though right now I'm leaning more towards actually going ahead with trying to do my own thing. That will result in obvious design and setting changes for my OCs whenever I get around to it. This blog probably won't go anywhere (again, unless I impulse delete it during a mood swing like i've almost done on like three separate occasions this year), but it will probably get less use, and I will probably end up making a new blog to post about whatever I end up doing once I get to a point where it feels like it makes sense. There's a chance that I will delete this blog and put all the interesting stuff on an archive blog for the people who are here just for the worldbuilding. My actual true passion for a long time now hasn't even been Splatoon anymore, it's just been cephalopods. I'm kind of done having Splatoon get in the way of the cephalopods, as thankful as I am that it introduced me to them...

If you read this to the end heres a treat for you = 🍪

[tavolgisvist]

'So there's a story...'

I'll buy you a diamond ring, my friend If it makes you feel alright I'll get you anything, my friend If it makes you feel alright 'Cause I don't care too much for money Money can't buy me love <…> I'll give you all I've got to give If you say you love me, too I may not have a lot to give But what I got, I'll give to you <…> Say you don't need no diamond rings And I'll be satisfied Tell me that you want the kind of things That money just can't buy I don't care too much for money Money can't buy me love

(Can't Buy Me Love, Jan/March 1964, A Hard Day’s Night)

… Baby says she's mine, you know She tells me all the time, you know She said so I'm in love with her and I feel fine I'm so glad that she's my little girl She's so glad, she's telling all the world That her baby buys her things, you know He buys her diamond rings, you know She said so She's in love with me and I feel fine

(I Feel Fine, Oct 1964, single I Feel Fine/She's A Woman)

Asked a girl what she wanted to be She said, "Baby, can't you see? I wanna be famous, a star of the screen But you can do something in between" <…> I told that girl that my prospects were good And she said, "Baby, it's understood Working for peanuts is all very fine But I can show you a better time" "Baby, you can drive my car Yes, I'm gonna be a star Baby, you can drive my car And maybe I'll love you" Beep-beep'm-beep-beep, yeah …

(Drive My Car, Oct 1965, Rubber Soul)

I started working at a coil-winding factory called Massey and Coggins. My dad had told me to go out and get a job. I’d said, ‘I’ve got a job, I’m in a band.’ But after a couple of weeks of doing nothing with the band it was, ‘No, you have got to get a proper job.’ He virtually chucked me out of the house: ‘Get a job or don’t come back.’ So I went to the employment office and said, ‘Can I have a job? Just give me anything.’ I said, ‘I’ll have whatever is on the top of that little pile there.’ And the first job was sweeping the yard at Massey and Coggins. I took it. I went there and the personnel officer said, ‘We can’t have you sweeping the yard, you’re management material.’ And they started to train me from the shop floor up with that in mind. <…> One day John and George showed up in the yard that I should have been sweeping and told me we had a gig at the Cavern. I said, ‘No. I’ve got a steady job here and it pays £7 14s a week. They are training me here. That’s pretty good, I can’t expect more. And I was quite serious about this.

(Paul McCartney, The Beatles Anthology)

But Paul would always give in to his dad. His dad told him to get a job, he dropped the group and started working on the fucking lorries, saying, 'I need a steady career.' We couldn't believe it. Once he rang up and said he'd got this job and couldn't come to the group. So I told him on the phone, 'Either come or you're out.' So he had to make a decision between me and his dad then, and in the end he chose me.

(John Lennon, Yoko Ono, St. Regis Hotel, New York, September 5th, 1971, interview with Peter McCabe and Robert Schonfeld)

I’d brought a version of it [‘Golden Rings’] out to John’s house in Weybridge, and we stalled when we got to the lines ‘You can buy me golden rings / Get me all that kind of thing’. We kept singing that over and over and couldn’t get beyond it because it was so shockingly bad. Part of the problem was that we’d already had ‘a diamond ring’ in ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’. ‘Golden rings’ was unoriginal and uninspiring. We couldn’t get past it. So we left it, went and had a cup of tea. When we came back, we started thinking of the woman as an LA girl. That improved things a bit. Then she wanted a chauffeur. <…> Once you get into creating a narrative and storytelling, it’s so much more entertaining. It draws you forward so much more easily. Now we were dramatising the interviewing of a chauffeur; we got over that dry moment and finished the song. It became one that didn’t get away. And its success had to do with getting rid of ‘golden rings’ and heading to ‘Baby, you can drive my car’. I know there’s a theory that rock and roll couldn’t have existed without the guitars of Leo Fender, but it probably couldn’t have existed without Henry Ford either. I’m thinking of the relationship between the motorcar and what happens in the back seat. We know that people shagged before the motorcar, but the motorcar gave the erotic a whole new lease on life. Think of Chuck Berry ‘riding along in my automobile’. Chuck is one of America’s great poets. ‘Beep beep, beep beep, yeah’. There you go. It was always good to get nonsense lyrics in, and this song lent itself to ‘Beep beep, beep beep, yeah’…

(Paul McCartney, The Lyrics, about 'Drive My Car')

*Paul means Berry's No Particular Place to Go:

Ridin' along in my automobile My baby beside me at the wheel I stole a kiss at the turn of a mile My curiosity runnin' wild Cruisin' and playin' the radio With no particular place to go

etc

for @m1ssunderstanding because

[babygirlknies]

two ppl in the department im in at my new job have been let go in the month since i started and its making me a lil nervy 😬🥲

[emberglowfox]

all fun and games having an oc hyperfixation and having to make all the content yourself until you lose the ability to make anything lol

[10-59]

trying to figure him out . (Lies down on the floor)

[marblerose-rue]

got asked to draw two of my old wc rp ocs :-) left is cicadahop, right is scallopstar

[goobygnarp]

.

[zerkenik]

LAST BUNCH OF BEHEADED DOODLES UNTIL I WAKE UP LATER.. i was rlly nervous about starting to upload art online, but having a reason to draw is really helping me and i want to thank you guys for even liking my art :^)

Whole lot of rambling in the tags lol

[mw-draws]

any zelda fans out there?

[surreal-duck]

between my laptop battery blowing up and probably being due for a new drawing tablet that isnt a nearly decade old model with nib replacements running out i fear i wont be able to doodle much for quite some time

will probably take out the old sketchbook at best and sudoku books at worst but even so. the agony has come to claim me once more

[imflyingfish]

bahh i want to chat about learning french but its kind of difficult. like either its super uninteresting to most people or i feel like i can come off as pretentious or whatever if im not careful and noo im just excited to both play videogames and learn a language. im literally a nerdd. anyway im going to make a post on that

[noromantichero]

attack no5! solis by kokonutjelie on instagram

+ thumbnail

[brainrot-stitch]

Yall jesus camp DOES something 2 a man

[eggs-can-draw]

Wanted to draw a bit of isolation, I need to do slice of life more often

[cavity-collector]

i genuinely need to be put down like a dog i cant do this anymore man holy shit

[chiropteracupola]

a little pain now, to save a great deal more pain later

[flintlock fortress is a collaboration with @dxppercxdxver]