#chaosbound

[unluckyxse7enart]

Next up - some assorted miscellany!

I may make more bracelets themed to the according source idea as I go but since I don't have any solid plans I figured I'd group this bunch together!

The themes for each in order are: pokemon oc theme (you get a cookie if you can guess the theme!); subtle fantroll oc bracelet; Wander from Wander Over Yonder; and Stardust Cookie from Cookie Run Kingdom!

[se7ens-oc-heaven]

More copic markers tests, more lineart from 2022! Very happy with how I handled the bg here given it was on the fly

Bonus wip shot bc I like the quality of the photo, you can see the color interactions much better here:

[chaosbound-official]

As you wake up, stiff and cold, you realize with some horror that you aren't sure where you are... Or when you fell asleep, for that matter. You last recall sitting at your computer, browsing around after dinner.... Or maybe you were scrolling on your phone, just before bed...? You can't be sure now. The memories escape as fast as they had come.

All you know is you're somewhere new. Somewhere strange. Foreign, and familiar, all at once. As you roll over onto your back, on the oddly-shaped bench you'd evidently decided to take your existential nap on, you see a lone pink moon glowing gently down on you. On you, and the alien city you seem to have found yourself in.

[farawayfarleyfan]

oh god am i really gonna make her pseudonym be tess? like tessa? im calling this girl tessa from murder drones?

[inkscapepony-art]

Chapter 1 of my Chaosbound Magnifico is out now! Chapter 2 will be written soon.

thank you to @hallow-grove for assisting me in the writing process. you're a doll.

[tyziia2]

[IDs in alt text]

baby when you go to pieces, i could eat your heart out darling

i listened to this song on repeat for days and it absolutely has Zeerce vibes because she's Like That

characters belong to @chaosbound-official / @se7ens-oc-heaven !!

[clockwork-dinosaur]

another fic featuring @se7ens-oc-heaven‘s trolls, some really good boys getting to know each other and Relate 

you can find out more about them either on the OC blog above or at @chaosbound-official/on the CB/AT discord uwu

---

"So you are, or perhaps it's safer to say were the moirail."

His usually bombastic voice is subdued, but not unfriendly. Cautious, perhaps. Belphe doesn't turn to acknowledge him and continues to gaze off into the molasses-soaked horizon, his legs dangling from the flat roof of his hive and crossed arms resting on his knees.

"What're you doing here?" he asks, voice slow and drawling and yet his words just a bit too sharp and his posture too tense to properly convey inebriation.

Rubele, all too much of him, sits a few feet away and lets his booted legs dangle from the sheer drop. "Usually you're tied at the hip with the teal fellow, I've been meaning to catch you for a private conversation is all."

"Wanted to get me all alone, huh?" Belphe says, carefully neutral. Rubele's face goes deep violet and he shakes his head so adamantly his glasses begin slipping.

"Heavens no! I-I just--"

"I'm fucking with you."

"Ah, right! Okay."

Rubele looks off into the distance as well. It is an uncomfortable silence, one that Rubele struggles to find the right words with which to break it. 

In truth, he isn't sure why he decided to track Belphe down now, aside from the opportunity granted by Harris needing some time to themself and Corinn and the other teal being seen elsewhere together. He wanted to say something, to ask questions or express concerns, anything, and yet...

He can't place it, what he feels about Belphe. Only in passing had they ever known of the other's existence, and last he had heard before Sgrub was that Belphe had been culled on his own lawnring. 

He does, however, know exactly how he feels about Zeerce. Part of him wasn't surprised to learn, once he began untangling the threads of knowledge that lead him towards his own alternate past, that the wretched violetblood had done him in.

He swallows thickly, feeling that odd sense of deja vu again. A whip around his windpipe and a mind too groggy to even consider fighting back--

But that wasn't him, not really. Just as the cobalt beside him wasn't the cobalt who had been gunned down by drones without mercy. 

Regardless, he was the same Belphe who was aligned with Curorr's gang for so long. How willing that alignment was remained to be seen, but his guarded posturing was more than telling.

"So are you going to knock me off the roof or something?" Belphe says finally, after minutes of heavy silence passed. "Can't say that'd be particularly Heroic for me but it just damn well might be Just if you're here for vengeance."

"What? No! You… you didn’t do anything to deserve my ire, I assure you."

Belphe finally looks at Rubele, the visible half of his face unreadable. "I wasn't there when she killed you but I heard about it. Every detail. And I congratulated her for offing some highblood scammer. Didn't mean it, but I sure as hell didn't spare you a single goddamn thought after that," Belphe says, his tone carefully flat to hide the underlying challenge in his words.

Rubele resists the urge to rub his neck. Belphe's words stung, but Rubele could tell they weren't thrown from a place of malice. It was a warning shot, a defense mechanism to strike first and make assumptions of Rubele's intentions later.

Rubele merely studied Belphe. "Yes, well… I thought you were an ill-mannered layabout with a cruel streak matched only by Cruorr herself so I suppose we must all suffer underneath the weight of our initial misconceptions, hm?"

Belphe blinks, then bares his teeth in a bitter facsimile of a smile. "Nah, you were right."

He turns away again, slouching further. Rubele groans.

"I swear to you, ol' chum, I didn't come here to deepen your already morose mood."

"Who said I'm morose?"

Rubele laughs. Belphe does not.

"Oh I'm doing a wonderful job of mucking this all up, huh?" Rubele says, pulling his knees to his chest.

"I still don't know what this is so I dunno. Maybe this is exactly how whatever the fuck this is usually goes."

"I still can't rightly say what this is," Rubele says, frustrated. "I just know that I-I have these memories that are not quite mine but too, um, detailed to easily forget. That I've had first hand experience with the cruelty of your thankfully departed ex-moirail, except that I haven't! I hadn't done business with her since before this blasted game was ever unearthed and even then I was never exactly thrilled to work with her lest she said the wrong thing to the wrong buyer and Harris and I found ourselves at the mercy of her masses. And I know I… dealt with her far less than you had to."

Belphe shifts, pulling one knee to his chest in a not so subtle attempt to lean away from Rubele.

"Whatever," Belphe says far too casually. Rubele picks up on the bitterness he hides instantly. "Count yourself lucky. You only got secondhand memories."

"Indeed I do, ah, for the most part," Rubele says sincerely. "I avoided the worst of her. You… didn't. And I think I'm in a unique position to know the full extent of her evil without experiencing the, well, more permanent effects."

Belphe sighs, then looks at Rubele with an expression bordering on gentle.

"Sounds like the effects are still pretty goddamn permanent to me though. Remembering your own poisoning and strangulation is pretty fucking shitty whether the whip was around your neck this time or another. Hell, knowing anything about her is fucking shitty enough on its own. She had her way of leaving her mark on people and never for the better."

Rubele frowns. "Quite. Heh, well… same can be said for you too, huh?"

Belphe looks away, his breath catching. He takes a deep breath and speaks to the horizon. "Like I said, whatever. Listen Excrim, I don't know you. I'm not your moirail and I'm not your friend so don't try this shit, alright?"

"Fair enough, but we are allies at the very least."

Belphe grunts. Rubele rubs his temples and sighs. He has no idea how to talk to Belphe. If he's honest with himself, he is still trying to reconcile his initial assumptions with the scared, guarded troll beside him. Belphe had surely felt Zeerce's whip against him just as he had, if not physically then mentally. Likely both. Rubele looks back over at Belphe's hunched form, his angular limbs and tired eye, the ill-fitting clothes and hidden face. Everything about him seems to stem from a desire to escape or distract from his own existence.

Rubele isn't one to let things fade from memory if he can help it.

"I… am far from the only poor sap who has faced her wrath and wiles. I merely want to extend understanding. You don't need to take the option now or ever but rest assured I am on your side, my friend."

Belphe seems frozen, his nervous shifting stopped as he stares intently away from Rubele.

"Still not your friend," he manages eventually. "But. Thanks, I guess."

As acerbic as his words are, Rubele catches the barest hint of a weak smile on Belphe's face, subdued quickly but there nonetheless.

[unluckyxse7enart]

Another thing for @shyyren! Since ve gave me my current tablet I promised a few icons for fun, ve wanted a slightly au Makkea as one of them! :3

[eladoobler]

last music: Run Rings Right Wrongs by cosmo sheldrake... wahhhhh

favorite color: blue. because its my favorite color and my lovely darling honey girlfriend Gwendolyn <333

last movie: erm... if half finished counts. the dnd honor among thieves movie :)

sweet/spicy/savory: SALTY because crackers

relationship status: im like if thorium was a girl, but i stay silly :3

current obsession: MODSTUCK CHAOSBOUND AND HOMESTUCK. and yeah the first two are just some servers BUT they are my favorite fansessions ever :) and maybe one day i will show off my blog dedicated to it.

last thing I googled: 5d objects for a baseball game :3

PEOPLE I WANNA KNOW BETTER

Thank you for the tag @rain-on-kamino !!!

Last song: Doomsday -Jared Benjamin

Favorite color: Blood red

Currently watching: Ahsoka

Last movie: Back to the Future

Sweet/spicy/savory: Spicy or Savory!

Relationship staus: Taken (fuckin finally)

Currently obsession: Crosshair. Not even all the bad batch. Just Crosshair-

Last thing you googled: Tup's CT number (CT-5385. Needed it for a fic)

No pressure tags!!

@staycalmandhugaclone @shadestepping @zoeykallus @fulcrum-7567 @kalykat @metalhusbands @arctrooper69 and whoever wants to!

[se7ens-oc-heaven]

Trying to make a return to traditional art in color, so I colored this lineart of Belphe from back in 2022! I wanted to do something a little different too, hoping I can find it easier to color with the markers i have if I tweak my approach some.

[chaosbound-official]

Update

(Note: this is a long and kinda overshare-y post about getting demotivated. Tldr is I still love this project and am leaving the blog as is in case I want to return to it, but it may be another hiatus for the foreseeable future. Feel free to skim, but it's not under a readmore because it feels too important to hide any longer.)

I hate to say it, but I'm thinking about shelving the pollsim - and this blog project - possibly indefinitely. It's hard to say this, because I still adore Chaosbound with all my heart, and I wanted to see this blog through. We got so close to a few milestones I wanted to meet - like seeing the remainder of the cast, the reveal of a sister blog... I was hoping I could push through to those at least, have a chance to work with some of the cast I don't spend as much time with, help everyone get to see some of the plans I have in the works for the gang.

The problem here is, the operative word became "push" somewhere along the way.

I love Chaosbound. I still love its cast and the work I've put into it and the story I still want to tell. But after burning out in art college, art got harder for me to do. Chaosbound, and this blog specifically, became one of the few things I could put my all into - and if you take a skim through any character's tag, looking at the sprites I made, you can probably tell that.

But somewhere around the ghost event, I got really demoralized. The ghost event was an event meant to encourage a lot of interaction and engagement, something for blog followers to also try to puzzle out alongside the trolls. And maybe this is partially on me for how I presented things, I don't know.

But by this point almost all of my engagement, outside of likes and whatnot, was from the same few people - all of them my friends no less. People in the server I had for the blog at the time. And this is not meant to devalue their input in any way at all. I'm still very appreciative because without them, I probably would have abandoned the event altogether, and may have struggled to come back at all.

But I knew there were others following too. Others interacting, and at points earlier on I'd gotten some wonderful anon messages that I still have saved in my inbox.

But for whatever reason, everyone had gone silent. Watching quietly, waiting to see how things would play out. I was practically relying on prompting friends to send in responses just to move things along, and eventually was forced to give up and have the ghost reveal himself. I was like a puppeteer performing in the spotlight of an otherwise pitch black theater, wondering if I even had an audience to speak of.

I hated working through the ghost event. It was meant to be an exciting part I was building up to, from the start of the blog's inception I had the whole thing planned out. But between being burnt out irl and the passive reception I just. Didn't want anything more than to get it over with.

I went on hiatus. And Tumblr collectively got steadily worse about its responsiveness and support to artists.

When I came back, I thought I was ready. I'd missed Chaosbound and was picking up drawing again, incrementally. Pollsim was meant to be padding for my slow work process, so I could chip away at sprites and event art for my next big reveal. But of course, I signed up for too much. I got too ambitious with the idea, but then also found I was much shakier than I thought.

The votes to decide which troll we'd find were a good amount, though I highly suspect at least a few were just passerby who like to click buttons. But once we actually got things underway, Makkea's first choice poll saw a steep drop in participation. I felt the stress from the ghost event grip me once more. But, I reminded myself, things were just getting started. Maybe people who aren't interested in Makkea aren't voting, and will jump back in later. Maybe I'm not boosting the event enough. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

But I also saw something else happen to me. Now I'm reluctant to pick up my tablet pen. And when I do, I'm always agitated. Angry. Asking myself why I'm even bothering, not just for this blog but at all. Each time I pick up my tablet, I'm suddenly reminded of all the times my art - and these blog events - flopped.

I never thought I'd become the type of artist who relied on the external validation online to do art. For a long time, I wasn't. But art college did something to my relationship with art, and I think creating an art project that intrinsically relied on that external validation was the final nail in the coffin.

I don't want that to happen to me. I don't want to give up art, or to only associate it with stress and rejection and being ignored. And I don't want to associate that with my audience here, either. That's not fair to everyone who's been here, past and present.

A part of me still feels bad for even writing this. For even thinking of posting it, behind a cut or not. I've felt bad for as pushy as I've gotten, about how people need to engage here more often. But keeping this locked up I think only serves to keep the lid firmly on the boiling pot, and I'm tired of it all threatening to explode.

So in short, I'm sorry that this is how things ended up. To those who have been supporting me, quietly, loudly and all the ways inbetween, I'm sorry I couldn't find that as 'enough' - but your support does mean everything to me regardless, and remains why I am still open to the idea of coming back.

The fate of Chaosbound is up in the air. I was hoping the ask blogs I started would be a sort of warm-up to eventually publishing a fan webcomic - a low-pressure venue for character exploration and a way to garner a little audience interest so that, once the webcomic dropped, I knew someone outside my social circle somewhere would be there to see it off on its first day.

I still pick away at Chaosbound, and I still have some assets for the blog that are as yet unposted. A close friend and I have some ideas for pollsim to lead to a potential game, second of its kind for this story in fact. I'd still like to see its realization, and to get the fantroll's stories out into the world, someday. But I have other projects I've been picking at too, so I may just have to give up on regular progress here in exchange for energy to post anything at all.

So, I may randomly post pollsims. I may answer one-off asks I get in the inbox. I may go silent for a year or more inbetween posts. But for now, I really need my art to be for me, and that means I can't hold myself to any external expectations, perceived or otherwise.

If you read this, thank you for doing so. Thank you for your patience, and understanding, and support. Despite how ungrateful I sound, it really has meant the world to me. I look forward to seeing you all where I can, and I hope anything I do come back with does not disappoint.

Sincerely, Mod Caspian

[garati-melodicnightmares]

In memorry of my Llusus

he was a kind soull, allways therre by my side, when i was allll allone. he was crrushed by a heavy llid, it was an accident, i hope he knows that. “i dont wanna have to miss you, i dont wanna have to say goodbye, i dont wanna have to lleave you, to the big bowll in the sky”

[farawayfarleyfan]

i hope i can get in on calling the fans chaosboundheads quickly enough for it to stick.

[nonehell]

Birthday book for a friend.

[the-timewatcher]

Anyone else feel weird when you gotta translate your writing from English to your native language?

Me: And there he stood, Void Incarnate himself. Entropy.

Też ja: I tam właśnie stał. Wcielenie Pustki we własnej osobie. Ro z pa d- *wymiot*

[se7ens-oc-heaven]

It's been a hot second year since I've been on my ask blog but I wanna say these two didn't get much attention? (I also need to show them more love anyways so *tosses*)

Lailla, a limeblood raised on an alternately-developed Alternia where limes and mutants aren't technically illegal anymore, but most grow up in the caverns just to stay on the safe side! Lailla is dissatisfied with this setup but is there to give her moirail a sense of ease, so she does a lot of dangerous tasks and the like to pass the time (please help her she is SO bored)

By contrast, her olive friend Purrol is.... Probably the least adventurous troll you'll ever find, and she very much prefers that! She'd rather make clothing for her doll collection or read fanfic than do anything remotely dangerous, although if you're a cute girl she might find herself agreeing to things outside her comfort zone nonetheless...

She often regrets these decisions but she just can't help being lesbean!! Save her

it was fun to reblog all of ur effeminate men so i wanna do another thing like that, except this time, i wanna see the trolls who dont get a lot of attention

so!!! pls reblog and show me ur underappreciated trolls! tell me a little about them too if u feel so inclined! id b happy 2 read :] thank u