#but there is genuinely so much Good Stuff there the issue is more that they. don't develop/focus on it for some reason

[silksongeveryday]

Drawing Hornet everyday until Silksong comes out - Day 731.

Well, after two long years of posting, I’m finally taking a break.

Thank you guys for everything for the past two years. It’s genuinely been so fun making daily doodles. But all good things must come to an end eventually. I’m tired.

What are the plans moving forward?

read below the cut if you’d like to know!!

Taking a break:

Life in general has been really rough lately. Tons of family drama, personal medical issues making it impossible to function some days, and my childhood dog recently passed away a few days after Christmas last year. So it was a real challenge to “keep up appearances” if you know what I mean.

I’ve said this plenty of times in the past already, however I’ll repeat it since there’s surprisingly a lot more new people that have followed since then. I’m taking a whole month off from posting entirely. So I won’t be active on Silksongeveryday until about March 14th. Why? Hopefully it’s obvious but posting daily content for two years straight really does something to you. I’ve grown tired of this blog just a little bit, and I feel stepping away from it for a month will help me reconnect. I still love the game and its community, and I’d hate for my disinterest in a single blog to ruin that. If a month long break could fix that then so be it.

I’m also taking a somewhat indefinite break from daily doodles. I WILL still be posting doodles occasionally every once in a while after I come back from my month long break. However I won’t be doing daily doodles.

So no daily doodles ever again?

There is only one condition that has to be met for me to return to daily doodles.

A Silksong release date is announced.

Which is…let’s face it, a release date might not happen any time soon. 6 years of near radio silence from TC? I’m not expecting much, especially not in a month.

But WHEN a release date is announced I’ll definitely return to daily doodles and do a sort of daily “countdown” until Silksong is officially out.

Will doodle requests still be open?

Yes! Even if I will no longer be doing daily posts I will still occasionally post every once in a while with doodles! So if there’s a specific doodle you’d like to request and you have an extra $1 hanging around, hornet doodle requests are open on my ko-fi!!

What about the current projects that were happening on Silksongeveryday?

I’m still working on them! Just as mentioned before, a lot of stuff happened irl so it’s kind of on the back burner.

For the Hornet Journal Series: I plan to post the remaining entries after I come back from my month long break. Whether I work on them during that month long break totally depends on how I’m feeling. But there may be a likely chance I work on a few here and there on my own time! But regardless, I do plan to finish this project. So no worries!

For Hornet’s Strange adventures: I know it’s been ages since this particular project finished on the blog. Development for the free game is slow going since I’m working on this project entirely by myself with a game engine I’ve never used before. Progress is being made but it’s unfortunately slow thanks for irl conflicts. But, just like the journal series, I do plan to finish this project so I promise it won’t be abandoned!! I just need a break first lol.

___________

I think that’s all I have to say?? But if anyone has any questions, asks are always open and I’m more than happy to answer just about anything!

Thanks again for the wonderful experience, it’s been an amazing journey with you guys <3

See you all in a month!!

[dangermousie]

Sorry, still thinking about The White Olive Tree which is living in my head - I fully accept that the ending could be nothing but what it was but in my head I want to either write a 40k slow healing fic or, since I know I don’t write, rewatch Hidden Love to see Chen Zheyuan as a good guy who gets fluff and happiness.

But aside from that, I am thinking I haven’t seen a drama outside (pun) the old Taiwanese drama The Outsiders (sheltered rich girl rebellious poor boy fall in love, her fam disowns her he becomes a killer for the Triads as the only way to eat, they end up utterly destroyed by the darkness) which went so hard on the “their love was pure and true and it would have been better for both of them if they never met.” Maybe A Love to Kill kdrama?

All I know they don’t really make them much like this any more - fluff yes and overcoming adversity yes and yes gritty “we are cool and world sucks” stuff commissioned by Netflix and co. But not something that is delicate and tender and following two gentle people and yet such an utter slow thorough breakdown.

It’s old school in the best way which might explain why I love it. I am thinking of Taiwanese Silence and Japanese Taiyou No Uta and Korean Snow Queen - being good not really resulting in a happy ending. (The ending of Silence with Vic Chou’s character speaking into the camera about how terrified he is still stays with me - ooof.) I genuinely think this is one of the reasons this wasn’t a big hit - this sort of vibe is not one current audience see much of and not sure want much of. (Compare it to CZY’s own mega hit Hidden Love which I adore but which is very much on the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of just world paradigm. His character has some tragedies in his background but they never take over the narrative and he ends up loved and happy. It is a much more comforting narrative.)

I think the sort of narrative Olive gives us - trauma stays and heroism sometimes is not enough - isn’t even that common in costume dramas any more (Eternal Brotherhood and Heroes 2024 gave it to us and both were small dramas for a reason - I cannot think of a big budget costume production with that theme in the last five years. LYF got close but ultimately chickened out.) And it is hugely uncommon in moderns. I don’t have any issue with that because everyone has different tastes and I am not one to mandate to others - but for someone who loves the Olive type narrative, it was like water in the desert. (And of course even old dramas or shows from most anywhere rarely dwell on trauma the way Olive did - not inspirational, not dark/cynical. And to give it to one’s male lead, and one in such a macho profession and one who is a bona fide hero, is freaking wild in how unusual it is.)

I mean, Olive stands out in its themes even from my other favorite modern cdramas. If we take a look at Lighter and Princess (another modern love story with a driven damaged ML and a ride or die FL who has been hurt herself but takes on his demons repeatedly) or Will Love In Spring (two differently damaged people discovering love with each other) or Go Ahead (damaged quasi adopted boys healing with help of found fam) - they all have happy endings with the mains so much better off than they started. Because the degree of damage is different and less, because the world is kinder and the environment less extreme. The FL of L&P would follow ML into hell if she had to but she didn’t have to, maybe just a little bit of the purgatory. He’s quite damaged (especially after jail) but it’s the kind of damage that can be slowly healed with love and support, it doesn’t need diagnosis and meds. Olive could have perhaps gone that way before Zan went back for the last time but as is…

Anyway, I am not sure I even have a point other than I love this drama so so so so much. I never thought anything would displace the perfection that is Lighter and Princess from my first place as a modern cdrama but here we are…

PS still shocked how hard Olive went. I was so sure they’d never go as hard as the novel. And then they chopped off his fingers.

[dapper-lil-arts]

Explain in extreme detail why you love Sunset Shimmer

You just poked a bear lol

So here's the damn thing. A lot of bad guys in this show have underdeveloped or basic-ass backstories. Its not always an issue, sometimes it doesn't mess with anything. But Sunset being the first pupil of Celestia immediately raises an eyebrow, immediately calls to attention how she must have had a much more different role in the background, and ages imply that she would have been very young as a pupil of Celestia. Good times.

From that, just that little smidge of concept, you can already consider so many possibilities with this character. Making her being an antagonist that was beaten down and then redeemed is one thing thats already done and fun enough. But she actually joins the main cast of her show, she has to work for it, there's a period where she's hated and shunned, where she has to crawl on her hands and knees to earn her damn place in the light of good

So when she's actively a part of the group and is the catalyst to their victory, literally ASCENDING TO HELP, she proves to everyone just how far she's changed and blows the villans away.fantastic.

And then its not even done there! She keeps growing, keeps improving, becomes a LEADER, A GENUINE LEADER of the mane 5, and then manages to become a goddamn friendship seraphim

AND WITH THIS NEWFOUND POWER SHE USES IT TO ACTIVELY HELP SOMEONE THAT LOST HER WAY, JUST LIKE IT WAS ONCE DONE FOR HER

Hers is one of the most engaging and fun 'redemption arcs' ive ever had the pleasure of witnessing, and of the entire show, I think its the best one, tbh.

It's just impecably entertaining how in the movies, comics, specials, she is always burdened by loss. She has multiple times lost everything, and even then, she makes her way back. she tries to become better, to improve herself, to grow. All of these things make her a character that is endlessly full of potential for creating more stories and developing even further. The canon does a lot right, and yet leaves even more space to develop, such as her relationship with celestia, the potential of what she does after, whether ts in equestria or in the human world, and how far she can go to save those she cares about n stuff.

She comes back! The sun alegory is fantastic, the phoenix allegory is incredible, she's the immortal Sunset Shimmer, and I fucking love that for her. Also I like it when she and twilight fuck nasty. Doesn't matter which one lol

[seradyn]

No cause I need to crash out about this a little bit because YOURE SO RIGHT ABOUT THE MISOGYNY 😭😭

I’ve read SO many fics where Sylus is OOC it’s concerning. People can write what they want, I’m a firm believer in that, but it feels like we aren’t even talking about the same character sometimes. I’ve read fics where Sylus calls reader/mc ‘slut’ during intimacy and I physically recoiled because Sylus would rather die a thousand deaths than call us that. Even if you asked him to he’d double and triple check you actually wanted that and still probably wouldn’t be thrilled to.

Like…genuinely, you can write whatever trope/kink/whatever you want, but if you slap Sylus over it then at least tag it OOC. I read a cheater fic that wasn’t tagged and had a vague summary, and I just had to grimace when I realized that’s what the fic was because Sylus would never in a billion years EVER cheat on us. The same goes for the other Lis. They are designed to love us and only us. They would never be so desperate for sex that they would fucking cheat. ESPECIALLY Sylus, who has stated he’s never been with anyone else. Not to mention, this man doesn’t give a fuck about random flings or one night stands. This man makes love, wants more than anything to just be able to make you feel good and show you how much he loves you. Why do you think he asked for consent multiple times before he dove in, in Nightly Rendezvous? Men like that don’t cheat 😭😭

As for the fic you’re mentioning, I’m glad I haven’t seen it, cause that is just…so far from what Sylus would do 😩 That implies a level of emotional immaturity that Sylus has repeatedly shown he is not down with. He literally encourages us to feel our emotions in a healthy way, and wants to be the safe space where we can feel them without judgment. People like that aren’t going to ghost you out of pettiness, that is just so fundamentally incongruent with how he acts and what he says. I could maybe see Rafayel doing something like that, but even then I don’t think he’d ghost us for DAYS, that is just an insane level of childishness.

Speaking of Rafayel, I read fics of him and Xavier too, even though I’m a Sylus main, and this problem is not nearly as common or consistent in how they are misperceived. Rafayel does get mischaracterized, a lot of people tend to forget how dangerous he can be, but even then I don’t see it as often in fics. And Xavier, I’ve only seen one or two fics where he’s OOC, and usually it’s with the same tropes discussed above.

I think a lot of this issue stems from 1. Infold’s marketing team and 2. Sylus first few interactions with the player in the main story. Unfold framed Sylus as the booktok daddy dom alpha male in his trailer, and a lot of people haven’t been able to look past it to the kind of character he actually is. I also know quite a few people write for Sylus without actually playing the game, which is fine, but again, some OOC tags would be nice 😩 And as for the main story, if you don’t bother to dig any deeper, he does seem like some dark romance dom, but if you look into his lore, especially the dragon myth you can see so clearly just how much pain he is in that you don’t remember him. It breaks my heart replaying those parts now because you can just see the anguish in his eyes that the one person who saw him as more than a monster doesn’t remember him. It’s so fucking sad 😭😭

That being said, I do wish the game did more to address the way Sylus treated us at the start. I’ve read some incredible fics that do, specifically this one, and it’s so fucking good. It holds Sylus accountable while acknowledging how actually romantic and loving he is. That first meeting he wears a mask to hide his pain, and this fic gets it so so right.

As someone who has been writing fanfic for years, a lot of time my fics are almost like a character study, diving into how they would react in different situations, what has motivated them to become the character they are. Sometimes I get stuff OOC too, and I’ll often put little explanations in the notes about why I chose to make them act the way I do, how I came to that conclusion about them. That’s different then blatantly writing them to do and say things they would rather die than say or do for the sake of a kink or trope. Cause that’s what it boils down to most of the time.

I also understand we’re talking about a fictional character, and none of this really matters in the grand scheme of things. But as a fic author myself, it’s painful how much Sylus in particular is twisted into something he just fundamentally isn’t. Why not write for another character at that point? 😭

It’s so clearly misogynistic because woman are always expected to cater to the man. Always expected to make room for his emotions and not get that compassion back. I’ve seen it so often in real life, I just want to tell these woman YOU DESERVE SO MUCH BETTER. And the Lis want to be that better for you. As I wrote in my most recent Sylus fic, he would genuinely be so disappointed if you just rolled over and let him treat you like shit. Like, babes, who hurt you? An intimate partner should not be acting like a child with petty games like that 😭 It reminds me of that video of the guy saying “bitch, what’s for dinner?” to his gf, and when she responds meekly, he tells her to slap him if he ever speaks to her like that. That is Sylus. He’d want you to beat the shit out of him if he ever treated you that way. He loves and respects us way too much to let anyone, including himself, get away with that shit.

I’ve been meaning to make my own post about this, so sorry for the long crash out. I just…AHHH I MAKES ME WANT TO SCREAM. IVE SEEN THIS IN OTHER FANDOMS TOO IT MAKES ME INSANE

Hi! This is my first ask/time doing one of these but I just wanted to come here and say I ABSOLUTELY agree with practically EVERY word you said about sylus. Honestly BLESS your soul for you saying it because damn did it need to be said.

hihi, thank you for taking the time to send me something!

and thank you!!! i'm not usually one to post my 'hot takes' in public because i usually can't be bothered, but this really frustrated me. ESPECIALLY because i write my own fanfic, characterization is super important to me because if it doesn't feel like the character... what's the point, right? i get that there's a certain level of nuance to each character, and nobody but the creator of said characters is going to get them perfectly correct, but for god's sake sylus was CREATED by infold to love you, to be in love with you. this may just be my take, but having been on the recieving end of that treatment: nobody who truly loves you would ignore you for something so inconsequential to sylus as a buisness meeting or whatever. (i have two specific fics in mind but i don't want to reference them speficially because i'm genuinely not trying to call out anyone in particular)

because like. again, from what my friend has said and from what @bloomfalls and @seradyn have added to my og post in the tags, sylus wants YOU and only YOU. he's not the type of man to leave you wondering, to make you second guess his feelings.

^ direct quote from said friend ily dawg ur the realest

writing fanfic is really hard, esp when it comes to characterization, but i feel like in a game where these guys are SPECIFICALLY love interests it's like... guys the writing is on the walls, the floor, the cieling, and a sticky note duct taped to your forehead. it's so easy. for other fandoms, where it's not focused on love interests it's harder to be like 'x wouldn't act like this', so i will 100% give those people grace. but if i wrote something for sylus, (winkwinknudgenudge) i feel like! it would be pretty easy, given how we are GIVEN A MANUAL ON HOW HE TREATS THE PERSON HE LOVES.

and lastly: as i said, writing sylus so that he expects the reader to come crawling back to him after dogshit treatment and having the reader do exactly that, is misogynistic. i'm sorry, it has to be said.

[reel-fear]

Genuinely so curious who Mike thinks is gonna be buying The Cage or the new DCTL GN bc with the way he tweets as far as he's concerned, it's not gonna be:

The queer people he has actively admitted he will never show any representation of in the games.

2. The POC he has actively fought against representing in his franchise. [Who he also mocked for thinking they would be represented in his franchise]

3. The Bendy fandom which has always been concerned with topics of diversity esp in the sense of queer people since its creation. Who he has responded to really poorly esp in regards to the GN.

4. The fans who critique him. [He blocked me for doing so lol]

5. His fans in general who he tweets about like this currently. [He's being vague about why people were mad at him or sent him 'nasty messages' because if you actually looked into why you'd see he was in the wrong. Either way, a very hateful way to speak abt ur own fanbase.]

Reminder while Mike is trash talking his fans he has always treated them rather poorly. The fans who won the fanart contest for Chapter 5 never got their posters actually in game due to it being rushed. Not only was chapter 5 a big slap to the face story wise, but it was literally so rushed he couldn't be bothered to add in the art his fans gave him for his game FOR FREE. [Meatly blames this on a crazy timeline, reminder him and Mike are the literal ceos of this company. The proposal of future updates here is also pretty cruel considering Mike nowadays happily admits he corrupted Chapter 5's source code and therefore literally can't update it At All currently. Because he is a moron]

At least they got to be in Boris and the dark survival, and by that I mean that was the Only game they got to be in so far, isn't that just treating your fans like you love them? Shoving their hard work into a spin off game almost nobody has played or addresses much. [Hell, who knows if with the Lone Wolf rebrand they'll even stay there. In which case they'll be in None of the games, only in the credits of BATIM]

6. The Bendy fans who just generally disagree with him on stuff. Like the new ink demon design where there is literally a public poll showing people generally prefer the old one.

7. The Bendy fans who can see he is actively lying to them. To their fucking faces.

He says this has always been the case, but screenshots and links to tweets regarding the books being canon prove it was not. Does he really think bendy fans are stupid or something? [Unless he's admitting here he lied to Kress when he told her the books were canon which sounds worse!]

8. Anyone who doesn't like the idea of giving money to a guy who laid off tons of employees then afterwards thought it was a great idea to express his anti-union views! Also brag about how good of an employer he was, according to his employees, he was not!

So in summary; Mike is an awful person who has not learned anything from the awful things he did. I will not be purchasing The Cage because, combined with this and his absolute refusal to take any kind of critique or see any differing interpretation of his franchise, I have no reason to think my problems with the franchise will ever be addressed or fixed. I probably will pirate The Cage along with any future Bendy Products [Including the movie] and will do my best to avoid giving it any kind of monetary support. Unless this changes any time soon, I can't see myself making anymore positive Bendy posts soon.

Mike has just managed to make it so hard to speak positively or optimistically of this franchise when he's so willing to broadcast how little he cares about it or its fans. I'm at the point where I refuse to pull any of my punches with my problems with it. What's the point of trying to play nice with my critique when either way the people creating it don't care?

So with this post, I want to invite anyone who feels similarly about the franchise to tell me, make a post or send an ask talking about how all of this makes you feel. It may not change how things are, but genuinely seeing other people share my feelings of anger makes me feel better. It feels nice to see when other people share our same concerns and worries. I'd also love to know if anyone else thinks they'll be avoiding purchasing Bendy products over this.

I'm not forcing anyone to participate in it nor trying to say anyone who doesn't supports mike but genuinely maybe if we can collectively decide to boycott things like the movie, graphic novel and The Cage... It might at least make the bendy devs acknowledge how much they have destroyed their own fandom's faith and trust in them.

The way Mike tweets about his actions like he had no control over why people were mad at him at least proves to me he takes NONE of it back nor regrets it. If you didn't know about his actions and only went off his tweets, you would be led to believe Mike has been needlessly picked apart by fans over things he couldn't control [or in his own words, had his words twisted and taken out of context]. That is not how you speak about your actions if you have actually learned better from them.

anyway, that has been my bendy dev callout post. This is an open invitation to anyone feeling similarly upset about the way the franchise is going to talk about it. It's genuinely nice to see how people feel about this and the more we talk about the more it's likely the bendy devs are forced to address our concerns. I don't think they will but hey, that's why I'm not gonna support them with my money anymore nor am I gonna be nice to them in any content I make critiquing Bendy. I mean I'm also basically making this post just in case anyone asks me Why I feel this way towards to bendy devs/as a way to respond to anyone who thinks I am too harsh in my critique in the future.

As always, it seems the best part of Bendy isn't actually anything about canon but about what the fan's are creating with the ideas Bendy failed to do anything interesting with.

Also the books, the books slap.

[gingermintpepper]

Absolutely the funniest thing about my current corner of tumblr is that pretty much everyone I've recently followed for Apollo-Appreciating Purposes are either genuinely Hellenist or just rather very into Rick Riordan's Trials of Apollo series which is wild because I know a net zero about both of those things.

[asfdhgsdkjhgb]

god is swuarshing me beneath his thumb like i am an aphid or perhaps a clover mite. yeah. its slow and painful and im small. and also meek

[nonsensechemicals]

crying whenever i talk about Cookie9 because all my friends have these interesting and unique theories on them while i take everything too literally and they all just stare at me like “dude… uuugh we r TIRED” <-they dont actually say this they are very kind to me but i can Feel It

[arolesbianism]

Sometimes I just look at Isabeau and just know that if isat came out and I got into it when I was like 16 he would be my favorite character and I would've gone absolutely buck wild over this man and feel like he was laser targeting me. But alas Odile has a grip of steel on me rn due to her virtue of being a middle aged woman

[sunnyscript]

Parallax feels for y'all

[poisonedapples]

Super heavy vent ahead in the tags

[phoenixcatch7]

The problem I'm having with one of my stories is that it is compelling - but not clicking.

It's a sephiroth gets reincarnated into mdzs. Straightforward. I've got several branching paths: lwj, jc, nmj (my personal fave) and the jade twins (one mind in two bodies). All five of them have great potential, but for some reason my heart is set on sephiroth!lwj, because the aesthetic is sublime.

But! It's! Not! Working!

My main problems are a) despite similar surfaces, sephiroth has fundamentally different morals and life experiences to lwj and lwjs morals are a huge part of his and wwx's stories. B) I can't NOT have wangxian. I don't ship often at all, but when I do I'm pretty set on it lol. I don't want to deny soulmates. Unfortunately I HATE writing romance. C) I do not think sephiroth should be in any sort of romantic relationship at all nor can I see him wanting one. I've read tons of fics where he is in relationships (healthy or otherwise) and they're amazing, yes, but... Under my pen it's just not in the cards. And I do feel pairing him with wwx would just amplify wwx's worst traits, which is the opposite of what lwj does for him.

Everything's in conflict, but the lure of sephiroths second childhood in strict gusu and his complicated feelings about it, wwx being a perfect mix of all his important people with a spine of steel and righteousness that they all lost as everything fell apart, the relationship between sephiroth and his new mother, and how he'd inexplicably lose her too, the white on white aesthetic, the older identical brother, the cruel angels aesthetic with the benevolent demon, the angst of wwx's defection and death, his relationship with qi as a planet's overflowing life force, the tragedy of the mourning angel, monster x monster.... It calls to me.

But there's also the way wwx becoming a demonic cultivator was so vital to winning the war, and the way that affected things, gave him a legitimacy. Involve the silver soldier, and well. Everything else becomes a little extraneous lol. And sephiroth himself is such a big mover and shaker, I don't know what I could do to manage that without wiping out 80% of the remaining jianghu after the burial mounds siege with sephiroth appointing himself king lmao. He's not the kind of person to make small ripples, you know?

And I'd love a twin jades au to sort of turn the chaos inwards a bit (nmj and jgy would be Excellent foils) but again, I can't separate wangxian and imagining scenes feels a bit too close to incest for my tastes, even when it's ONE PERSON in identical bodies!

It's frustrating, wanting to write a non romance fic set in a love story lol. I just. I hate writing romance. But wangxian just don't want to be parted.

But the image of lwj in the xuanwu cave secretly covering a feverish wwx with his wing, only to notice a handful of white feathers pushing through the black as he unknowingly becomes a better person through showing care for other people, shaking his own deep belief that he is a horrible irredeemable creature incapable of love. Caught in an act of love. Hnggh.

Any ideas?!

[tomwaterbabies]

sorry if this comes off weird or anything but i wanted to say i’m so glad hugo is one of the characters u choose to cosplay because u fit him so well i’ve seen a handful of hugo cosplays and u just embody him (in my opinion). ur so hugo to me ok bye

did one of the kinnie accusers send you. be honest

[kerorowhump]

Is it lost media or is it stuck in japan only CDs that no one has bought and ripped yet? Like was it ever put on CDs at all...? I don't know yet, but I have seen that actually, there are a Lot of BGM music CDs for keroro that I couldn't find ripped online but are being sold... @mountainfrogs

[nailgunstigmata]

listen we all know about praise kink mac but i also think praise kink dennis. and i also think that if mac told him hes doing well in a completely sweet and earnest and painfully loving way dens brain would make the window emergency shutdown noise and smoke would start coming out of his ears