#cramming like there is no tomorrow

[wolfythewitch]

how do you manage to balance schoolwork and like,, drawing in your free time?? like how do you do it hahaha wolfy do you sleep? or is sleeping for mortals??

My answer to that is that it is currently 2:30 am

[cult-of-the-eye]

I'm going to bash my head into a fucking WALL

[dreadnotau]

Happy three years everybody! As always, there’s a lot to say on the occasion, so pop in at the end of the post for the tl;dr if you don’t have time for my detailed diatribes, haha

Boy, time flies, huh? Feels like the second anniversary was just yesterday, but maybe that’s just the several long hiatuses getting to me. I’ve been scarce on uploading anything anywhere for a while now, even though I promised I’d actually pick up the slack this time around. What gives? Well…

For one, college hell, and for two, a lot of unfounded anxiety about putting my art out there. Allow me some theatrics for a moment and I’ll actually get back to the comic at hand… I’ve never had an exceptionally supportive environment for making art. It wasn’t suppressive, not in the slightest, but it also wasn’t… encouraging. It was always treated as a hobby or a distraction rather than something I was allowed to be fully proud of, especially because a lot of my art focused on more cartoon-y and fantasy ideas, rather than still life studies and painting (which people generally outside of the art sphere tend to value more, arbitrarily). Couple that with a childhood full of being bullied over minute shit you hadn’t even considered could be an issue before, and you get a teenager hellbent on never sharing his interests or ideas with anyone, mostly due to the fear of rejection.

I’ve grown, thankfully, but that paranoia and fear doesn’t go away overnight. As I’m sure you all know, Meowchela was the one who originally encouraged me to post this comic, and the only reason she succeeded was because she was the first person in a long time who listened and engaged with my interests and my art in a meaningful way. It’s kind of obvious her friendship had a profound impact on me, and I’d cite her as one of the reasons I was even hopeful enough to apply to an art college in the first place! This comic, and that bond with another person, proved that maybe these things I’m so passionate about weren’t duds, and weren’t something I had to keep to myself.

So, fast forward a few years. About three years, in fact.

During one of my classes, right before this hellish two weeks of exams started, one of the class assistants talked me into showing my comic pages to one of my professors. He’s generally a pretty open guy when it comes to new mediums, but I’m always… apprehensive about showing my less “traditional art”-y things to professors, but, he ended up being genuinely proud of it. Specifically, I showed him pages 85-87 (because they’re my favourites) and, he didn’t read the text, just the visuals were enough for him to say “good job, keep it up” (which is HIGH praise from that guy). When I mentioned I’ve been meaning to simplify the visuals because I didn’t have time to work on the comic very often because of college and classes, he dismissed it on principle. I was honestly caught off guard. Heavily paraphrasing, he suggested that worsening the visuals for an arbitrary deadline was counterproductive to making something that’s Good™.

That’s kinda stuck with me. For a good few years now I was more focused on optimisation rather than visual improvement for the comic, and though it HAS contributed to better visuals in some ways (cutting corners sometimes makes for a less pointy and jagged end result), it’s kind of weird I’m treating an art project that way, isn’t it? I set a lot of… arbitrary deadlines and standards for myself, in the form of expectations and what I “should” or “shouldn’t” be doing at certain stages in my life. I’ve thought of Dread Not as a passion project second and a stepping stone first, if I’m being honest. As if it was too… fandom-y and derivative to be treated with more gravity than that, like it’s an immature project because I was still a child when I came up with it. As if it was something I’m making to Build Up to Something Else, something Bigger and Cooler and More Important, and… the more I think about the future of Dread Not, and even my future career options, the more I realised that’s, ironically, a really immature way to think about it.

If there’s one thing going to this art college has taught me, is that there’s no “right” way to make art, and there’s no “right” way to success as an artist. There’s no clear-cut paths, just more commonly treaded roads, but even those are heavily overgrown. Why should I try to box myself into thinking I have to make things from complete scratch to be taken seriously? What’s so bad about Dread Not as a story and as a comic that’s caused me to vaguely keep it under wraps when conversing with people in my day-to-day life? Why wouldn’t I put all these skills I’ve acquired to improve and expand this project that’s Right There, WAITING for me to finally get off my ass and get pages out there again?

I wish I could say I’ve used all this time away in a particularly clever way, but I really haven’t - at least, it feels like I haven’t. My art has undoubtedly improved over time (though admittedly the art for this post was Very rushed, fuckin exams), and while I’ve been working on projects in the background, chipping away at them in a VERY disorganised way, I haven’t been posting that progress anywhere, and I haven’t made any good progress on my biggest project, Dread Not, because of the other ones. And, honestly? Admitting that kinda stings. This comic means a lot to me, and I wish I actually gave it the time and attention it deserves instead of letting it sit out hiatus after hiatus because I keep failing at structuring my time.

So, my new plan is a little more abstract: find a way to work Dread Not into my school schedule, and slowly build a habit of working on it more often. No clue how long that’ll take, but I think it’ll be worth it to consider it as an option, and hopefully finally end these long, drawn out hiatuses with short bursts of uploads in-between. HOPEFULLY. Building habits was never my strong suit, so please bear with me while I figure this out in what will probably be the most hectic upload schedule in this comics history, which is: no schedule at all.

From now on (until the end of Act 1), I’ll upload pages when they’re ready, and depending on how the weeks go and how complex the page is, they could be weeks or days apart from one another. Hell, some might even take a month to finish if school stuff gets REALLY hectic (god knows Hellish Exam Week number 1 and number 2 won’t be giving me much time to work on the comic), but I’m determined to do this. I want to be able to put my all into this project again!!

(And hopefully finish Act 1 by the end of this semester…)

TL;DR: College is giving me life lessons I didn’t expect, and because of them I’ve decided to give myself a non-existent upload schedule for Dread Not: Pages will be posted when they’re ready, and the spacing between pages could wildly vary depending on circumstances and the actual complexity of the page itself.

As always, thank you for being here, thank you for reading, and thank you for being patient!

If all goes well, there will be new content very, very soon.

[bookwyrminspiration]

current writing mood

[lavendel081]

I think this is the first fully lined and rendered Piece I did of them and its Vampire Seb...

[justicecaballer]

making 3 minutes of music is not that hard. ive done it before. surely i am capable of doing it again, for a deadline <- fool

[sexynetra]

• how many characters are in your current wip?

• current fave fic?

• share a line from you fic that contains: year, open, flower, or tell :)

• what would your current wip get cancelled on twitter for?

here are the questions about your wips too because i need to know <3

Hi Gi welcome to the rawnsyf q&a section because I am legally banned from working on other stories until this chapter is posted <33

1. Oh gosh uh… 10 so far with speaking roles I think, 17 I believe, including people mentioned who don’t speak? That’s what you get when a work gets that long I guess 😭

2. That I’ve read or written? That’s honestly such a hard one I’ve read so many incredible amazing fics. I am currently in my @aqpippin obsession era and sleeping with strangers actively changed my entire life by being so good, you already know that the as of yet unpublished halldoll hanahaki WILL be on this list as soon as you finish it and let me see it 👀 and then of course I have to include the fic that inspired me to start writing and publishing my own drag race fanfic, no different from anywhere else (lovingly called bodyguard au by me). As for my own fic? I’m very proud of my newest one :) and I have a few things im working on in my brain that I’m excited to get onto paper

3.

Year- “oh my god, what are you, four years old? They’re olives, Anetra. Who hurt you? What kind of person doesn’t like olives?”

Open- Anetra seemed uncomfortable, looking around the room — at the posters in the wall, out the open window, anywhere but Marcia.

Flower- “There’s pepperoni on there, you delicate flower. Just pick off the olives before you eat it and you have your boring pepperoni pizza right there,” Marcia remarked.

Tell- “And for the record, you initiated everything. Every time. I have never pushed you to do anything you didn’t want to do, that you didn’t literally tell me you were sure you wanted to do.”

4. Homophobic main character for sure :)

[satandidyoumissme42]

The gayest thing in my science text book

[im-still-a-robot]

I have.. twoo interview tomorrow orz

[2minutes4yeehawing]

I went to Mass tonight and the priest started off his homily with, "I saw a video recently of Patrick Roy playing hockey on the floor with his grandkids - who are all about the age of four or so. And as he's down on the floor playing with them, one of the grandkids says, 'Hey, grandpa, you're pretty good at hockey!' " And the entire church was SILENT lol. Father continues on with, "Patrick Roy, is, of course, a hall of fame hockey player with multiple Stanley Cups, and (rest of his hockey-free homily)" but it was so funny to me, NO ONE reacted to the story because nobody knew who Patrick Roy is

[ophthalmotropy]

You can barely tell because I'm still, you know, posting, but the amount of time I spend here has decreased massively. Most of it was just scrolling out of restlessness and not actually wanting to post something lmao.

[w-for-wumbo]

I have decided that this upcoming week and a half are going to be extremely not "banana bread at work dude hell yeah"

[todayisafridaynight]

SORRY YOU REMINDED ME OF THE GOOFIEST THING WHEN YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT TSUTSUMI ON STREAM so you know that show about law students I compiled some funny Tsutsumi moments from for you...

They had this one singular shot in one ep and then he's never seen like this again. You ever study the law while completely shirtless

YOU LITERALLY HAVE TO BE FUCKING JOSHING ME STOP !!!!!!!! LET HIM KEEP HIS SHIRT ON

[daydreamdoodles]

guys remind me tmr to wake up so early and irresponsibly drink coffee before I do anything else productive with my day

[phagodyke]

I will say while I've loved most of elden ring I'm really glad I'm down to just 2 more main boss fights (malenia + maliketh) before I start the endgame boss fights... whew 😮‍💨

[cantankerouscatfish]

bits of conversations from today:

driver, showing coworker his phone: is this poison ivy??? coworker: 🤷‍♀️ driver, turning phone screen to me: what is this. me: THAT. is a trillium. keep it.

T the florist: I said I wanted more arms, but [other florist] said then my shirts wouldn't fit. I said I'd just wear baggier clothes, and, y'know, it'd be fine. I'd manage. me: I could add extra arm holes to your shirts! or teach you how to do it!! 🥺 T: I'd commission you to fix my shirts! 🥺 but yeah if I had more arms, I would still try to carry too much at a time. me: oh yeah same.

at one point, me and T tried explaining Stardew Valley to the resident computer programmer/maintenance guy. I couldn't tell if he was actually paying attention or just being polite. he asked 'what's it coded in?' like either of us are supposed to know. letters and lines probably!

(during my lunch I like to sit in a corner of one greenhouse. manager was watering the next bench over) J over the PA system: [manager] to house 6. hanging basket. manager, loudly and mostly to himself: 'hanging basket'? what ABOUT a hanging basket. what does she mean 'hanging basket.' 'hanging basket' what. I need DETAILS. manager: *leaves, comes back a few minutes later* me: so. what was 'hanging basket'? manager: a customer wanted to match a basket from out in 6. I found one for her. but then she was like, 'well, this plant is fuller than that one.' and I was like, 'Yes.' me: ... manager: ... me: ... manager: she took the baskets. me: yaaay.

floral shop manager, sweeping up after an 11-hour shift: we need better hobbies. :/

floral shop manager: alright, it's been fun. me: no it hasn't. see ya tomorrow. floral shop manager: 👋