#feeling some kind of way about art and the internet as of late

[enjoythesilentworld]

2024 fandom review!

thank u for the tag @willesredlights sorry it took me literally ages to get to it

lets pretend we're not almost two weeks into the new year ok? and what a year it has been. holy shit.

~ Fics written ~

I'll be honest I did go a little batshit crazy this past year. 314k words across 19 published works, plus god knows how much more unpublished on tumblr. listen, I was deep in the ??? phase of my master's (still am, lets be honest) and desperately looking for a new creative outlet. I've always been a writer, always loved dreaming up stories, but I have never quite connected to a universe as much as I have to this one. I resonate with so many of the characters, and i just feel like there is so much room to play and explore. i will continue to add in old people OCs to my fics wherever and whenever i get the chance.

First fic: for the tree's sake (M, 48k) aka tree boys inspired by the trip that eventually led to my discover of young royals in late '23, and my darling baby. yes, that airplane ride that seems weird and random is based on truth!

Fav fic: just if for a minute (T, 53k) aka fake married idiots i greatly enjoyed making Wille suffer for just under 53k. that confrontation scene took days off my life and yet i am so proud of how it turned out.

Honorary mention to Growing towards the light, which was a dream to work on and create with my dear sweet friend Lia. there is one braincell between the two of us and it's full of nature facts and dick jokes. and beautiful stories about getting lost in the wilderness and finding yourself along the way. and tent-dick jokes.

Last fic: Wille på Hyllan (T, 13k) aka christmas shenanigans! another collab with my dearest friends which was hilarious to write and so silly and imo an example of one of the greatest perks of being in a fandom: meeting some of the most incredible people ever. also, dick-lights and dick-tomtar and dick-cookies. what more could you want?

~ Fics Read ~

if i tried to go through my history and tell you how many fics i read this year i would never make this post. i'd be here counting and trying to copy links forever. i read hundreds of fics. i enjoyed all of them, thoroughly. i got a lot better at leaving comments (sometimes). i was consistently and repeatedly blown away by the genius brains we have in this little Swedish corner of the internet.

if you are a writer i love you and i give u a kiss on the forehead.

also: i recently made a lil rec list here.

~ Other Stuff? ~

i had two big, busy months this year. three? : May, Wille's month & July, Simon's month i cannot believe i wrote 62 stories in 62 different universes (give or take a few). that's kind of stupid! but oh my god it was so fun!! some of my favs: -> Food, where Wille and Simon meet and embark on a mistakenly booked couples food tour in Barcelona -> Fashion/Style, aka the Met Gala AU aka the thing that turned into something so much bigger than i could have ever imagined. literally i thought people were gonna hate it. so, thank u for not hating it. and for letting it become 15k+ of pwp. -> Secret, friends to lovers RAHHHHHH -> Home (Improvement), aka grumpy home renovator Simon idk i just feel like this should become a full-blown fic one day

and oh boy who can forget about Kinktober from wax kinks in 17th century Italy to desperate love confession in the middle of wildfires to... whatever that was in the confessional (idk, that's between them and God).

2024...

I did some painting: x x I wrote some real weird lil ficlets: x x and I met dozens of incredible people. thank u for liking my stupid rambling posts from 3am and my silly little ficlets and for reading my stories and telling me about your stories and saving me from the Frankfurt airport and yelling with me about stuff thats definitely not in the Bible and sharing your time and space and art and care.

@bigalockwood @hergrandplan @gulliblelemon @saynomorefic @pagegirlintraining @skibasyndrome @sobadbad @impossibleknots @piebingo @theaviatorthatcouldnotfly @misfithive @sillylittleflower @zee-has-commitment-issues @purplehoodiesandclementines @justfriendsbestthings

giving u a big hug. and! this is by no means an exhaustive list. if ur reading this we are bffs. send me a message ok? ok. y'all keep me sane and happy and i am so grateful for you! live love wilmon

[apencilandpen]

Okay, not to hype on the drawfee train again, but I've been watching their most recent art critique stream while I've been sick and like. They are just such excellent critics. I feel like a lot of "art critiques" on the internet are like "PRO ARTIST FIXES YOUR GARBAGE ART" and then they just draw over your work into their own style, but the drawfee team meets their learners where they are in their art journey. They recognize multiple times that style things aren't flaws, and intention is important. They also don't ever come down in people who are less experienced artists in a way that ever comes off as condescending or "just practice more." They always find something to compliment and gush about, and every critique attempts to be helpful to the person who submitted the art. It's a asked for critique, not an uncalled for roast, which I feel like the distinction between has been lost on the internet a lot.

ALSO they just make art so fun. I actually think that them talking about how art literally doesn't have to be "realistic" bc it's just a drawing, you can make up whatever you want is changing my mindset. Like, you wanna add a secondary light source but it doesn't make sense in the context of your drawing? Who says! You're the one making this up! You can do whatever you want! AND the phrase "it's just a drawing, nothing bad will happen bc you drew it/messed up/did something that 'didn't make sense'" is so important! Ita just a drawing! Art is just lines! Art is just lying! It's not always that deep! Drawfee just makes thinking about art so low pressure, and I feel like a lot of internet artists make it seem like really high pressure. It makes me so sad to hear artists I like on the internet talk about their sketchbook like an obligation or a task or a checklist when like...it's a sketchbook. It's for sketches. Idk, I just really love how drawfee doesn't treat art as this sacred practice that is so serious all the time. It's just lines!

[meownotgood]

my very first fictional crush vs my current one what do you think they'd talk about if they met

[txttletale]

hey what DO you watch on youtube? seems like you'd have some neat recommendations :3

i really loathe the like super-highly edited sound effect post-mrbeast slop most of youtube is now so i mostly like stuff that's like... calm and sedate. stuff i've been watching lately in no particular order:

northernlion vods and clips. he's an OG. i especially like his react court series, i must have watched all of them like five times.

speaking of OGs i've been watching zero puncutation (now fully ramblomatic) for like ten years and if anything it's only gotten better. best game review content on the internet. been really enjoying his more recent, slightly longer and more thoughtful 'extra punctuation/semi-ramblomatic' series too.

any austin's skyrim unemployment rate videos. instant classics to me, it's just a guy going around in skyrim trying to figure out the unemployment rate in every town. it's a very dry kind of humour, he plays it admirably straight, and it's weirdly calming.

kitten arcader's foot the bill videos. in a kind of similar vein, he watches the saw movies and then produces an itemized bill for everything jigsaw needed to buy to make his traps. it's kind of like... if cinemasins was fundamentally curious instead of fundamentally incurious, it scratches a similar sort of nitpicky detail-oriented quantifying itch but without inimical to the concept of art.

shuffle up and play. it's a magic the gathering play series that has enough editing that the gamestate is actually legible but not enough editing (or at least, not enough obtrusive in-your-face editing) that its annoying. i also like that they reguilarly play non-edh formats like cube and pauper.

spice8rack. i'm pretty picky about video essays but spice8rack has very obviously actually read books and has interesting things to say about the topics it discusses (mostly magic: the gathering). sometimes it has a kind of grating Theater Kid Energy but the fact that it actually meaningfully structures essays and analysis to earn the silly long runtimes is a rare delight from a video essayist.

jenny nicholson is a long-time favourite and another permanent fixture in my rotation. she's just extremely, remarkably funny which makes her the only 'basically just summarizing a thing' youtuber i think is worth the time of day.

i watch some sketch comedy, mainly wizards with guns and aunty donna, who both consistently put out really funny stuff that's kind of ITYSL-adjacent in its barefaced absurdism and contenmpt for concepts like "stopping a joke at the logical punchline". i also really like alasdair beckett-king and binging the old clickhole backlog for short-form comedy on youtube.

wolfeyvgc is right on the edge of the level of editing i find tolerable but as a long-time fan of multiple esports he Has It, he's absolutelyt fantastic at t elling the narrative of a tournament, explaining plays clearly, and generally making competitive pokemon esports thrilling and interesting ti someone (me) who#s never played it and doesn't care about pkoemon that much

i religously watch every elliespectacular/dathings YTP, the absolute best in the game right now, top tier snetence mixing and really good at actually setting up and paying off jokes in a way it feels like a lot of ytp doesn't. verytallbart is also pretty good.

trapperdapper is a channel i recently binged, it's a really fucking funny parody of minecraft challenge content that veers slowly from obvious angles of parody into pure absurdism with tons of blink-and-you'll miss it subtle visual gags.

too much future is a great youtube series where the two guys from just king things/homestuck made this world play through every fallout game and analyze them in that context. extremely funny and also just top-tier very sharp analysis. really good

another one of the rare good video essayists is jan misali. they're really funny and will go into topics that kind of seem narrow or strange to begin with in such depth and make them so interesting that it's consistently astonishing.

oh and finally sarah z makes pretty good videos. 'the narcissist scare' is an absolutely brilliant deconstruction of one of the most annoying pop-psych phenomena of the last couple years. and remarkably well script supervised i think did anyone else watch it and think 'wow the script supervisor on this must have been, a mind geniuse'

ok i think that's all i've been watching lately. hope you like whcihever of these recs you check out :)

[kiwiqueen13]

 My thoughts have been preoccupied as of late worrying about https://www.tumblr.com/queenkatluv @queenkatluv ‘s whole situation. She’s the voice actor for Earth from The Sun and Moon Show / The Lunar and Earth Show, and has recently been relentlessly harassed and criticized by her so-called fans about the quality of her work to the point that she decided to quit working on the Lunar and Earth Show as a writer. I wanted to draw something special in honor of her, to kind of say sorry about how all the awful bullies have been treating her, since I haven’t done any art of Earth yet and the character is currently going through something that I personally relate deeply to.

Long story short, Earth has been hurt by Lunar in a way that’s left her in crippling pain that will likely linger with her for the rest of her life. I too have chronic pain in the form of daily migraines, and I have never related so closely to another character before. In fact, I have a headache as of writing this post, and I’m just so used to the pain I don’t notice unless I point it out to myself. The scene where she was talking with everyone else in bed about her condition - wondering what to do, wondering if it can be fixed, wondering what will happen if it will NEVER be fixed, feeling claustrophobic overwhelming dread as reality begins to sink in that the pain will never leave – it struck a chord because of how closely it reflected how I felt when I was diagnosed. It was just so scarily real to me, in a way that shows the true mark of an incredible writer.

I want to say to Kat, thank you so much for what you’ve done for this fandom. The people who don’t appreciate it just have standards too impossible to reach. You’ve done a beautiful job, and having Earth effected like this has evoked so many powerful emotions in me that I never thought possible. You’ve crafted a wonderful story, even if some stuck-up brats on the internet don’t see it ❤️

[the-peak-tmnt]

Hey The Neon Void readers, quick update from the author's sister!

(art commission by @kaysdenofchaos)

Hi readers of The Neon Void fanfic. This is the author’s older sister. She’s been getting a lot of fan art and asks lately. She’s sent me screenshots of a few unanswered ones looking for advice on how to respond.

While all the love and support of TNV is genuinely appreciated, my sister @sugarpasteltmnt is not equipped to respond to a small handful of these asks/comments that are, quite frankly, inappropriate.

Sugarpastels is not a therapist, and she’s certainly not an internet stranger’s therapist.

She’s an adult with an extremely demanding and stressful job for a very large client. Some of you have already experienced and enjoyed her work IRL without knowing it. Her company is close to finishing another project that will bring a lot of joy to hundreds of thousands of people every year, but working on a project of that scale is extremely stressful.

She is writing this fanfic for fun. TNV is a way for her to decompress and put her creative energy towards something other than work.

What’s not fun is coming home to asks/comments from readers who are projecting their own struggles/mental health onto TNV, and even Sugarpastels herself, and demanding some sort of attention from her over it.

Let’s be real: it’s fun to watch our blorbos suffer! So much of fandom is just us putting our favorite characters in Situations because it’s fun. Simple as that. But I think another reason TNV has resonated so strongly with readers is because of the way Sugarpastels writes the internal struggles of these characters.

We are both aware that TNV deals with mental health topics. Since the early days of “modern” fandom, fanfiction has been a way for people to explore complicated, difficult and sometimes even taboo subjects. There’s no shortage of complex feelings being explored in TNV, which is why we’re all having so much fun reading it.

But that’s all it is; an exploration. Sugarpastels is not a mental health expert. I’ve read a handful of books on PTSD and mindfulness for research while writing my own fanfic, and I would never consider myself prepared to help someone else.

It’s okay if you relate to things from TNV. I know I do! Again, fanfic has always been a way to read about things rarely dealt with (or handled poorly) in published fiction/tv shows/movies. I will always argue one of the greatest things about fanfiction and other fanworks is being able to see ourselves and our own struggles through our favorite fictional characters.

But Sugarpastels is not a fictional character. She’s a real person. Most importantly (to me at least) she’s my little sister, and this big sister cannot handle watching some of her readers expect more of her than is appropriate.

So I’m asking you to please be mindful of what you ask/say to not just her, but literally everyone on the internet. Unless you’re chatting with someone regularly, they do not know you. Whether it’s friends, family, teachers, coaches, etc, there are people in your life who know you personally, and are therefore better equipped to help you than a stranger on the internet.

Sugarpastels is so full of empathy that it’s hard to not feel for you when you send things like this. But it just isn’t fair to put that kind of unnecessary pressure on someone who is, at the end of the day, just trying to have some fun writing about ninja turtles bein’ sad.

(That being said, PLEASE DON’T BE SCARED TO SEND HER ASKS AND FAN ART!!! They make her day every single time and are seriously so, so appreciated. She’s texting me about it constantly how much she loves all of TNV’s readers. This whole post is really directed at an extremely small percentage of her readers, but there have been enough I felt something needed to be said.)

[theveryworstthing]

I'm Alive

I posted this on patreon so I might as well post it again here. Hopefully current and past patrons see this as well as people who have just been generally curious about where I've been.

I'm very sorry for not being around and I'm very grateful to those who stuck around. To those who didn't, I get it and I truly appreciate you passing through. 

Last year and the beginning of this year have been pretty bad. Some of you might have heard about my grandma's death and sadly, she was just the first of the family losses in the time I've been gone. There was also a friend's death discovery, my parents' health tanking, my friends Going Through It, and my own physical/mental problems. I didn't want to talk to the internet about these things because they were/are very overwhelming and private and tbh I used all my energy to help with the household and make sure work got turned in on time. When I had spare time after dealing with the near constant disasters, I didn't really feel like interacting with the internet at all beyond using it as a way to talk to far away friends (mostly to give them the thumbs up that i was alive) or watch/read things when my brain was less scrambled. Social media was an absolute no go and I didn't have any non-work art to post so I just kind of mentally crawled under the porch to die lol. 

I only drew work related things for months due to extreme burnout and it took me almost a month off after my last job to remember how to create again. I couldn't draw or write, it was kinda like art block except it was more like nothing was there at all? It's hard to explain. 

Things are still happening but I need to get back in the saddle eventually so here I am. 

I'm going to post the little art I did in June and all the sketches I did in January when I re-learned how to draw for myself. Again, I'm so sorry for being away without saying anything and I'm grateful to whoever threw me a buck, or even just casually enjoyed my art. Leaving like I did was really irresponsible and there's no excuse for not at least making a post about all of this sooner.  Every month I got a patreon payment was another wave of guilt because I literally couldn't give y'all anything but at the same time that money was letting me book flights to funerals and keeping my mom comfortable while she recovered from surgery right after I spent a lot of my savings in 2022 trying to fight my late cat's cancer. And then not posting about what was going on made me more anxious as time went on because there was more guilt every month so I felt like I needed to come back with a bunch of art and energy and good reasons and it was just. A Mess. 

But anyway.

I'm alive, I'm back. The Horrors persist, but so do I.

Thank you for your patience.

[dailyrothko]

Hi! I’m already drawn to Rothko’s art so much just by looking at his paintings on my tiny phone screen. But it is quite unlikely that I’ll get to see his paintings irl, at least not for a few years. Would you mind sharing your experience of looking at a Rothko? Thank you for putting in the work on this blog :)

Hi, I'm sorry I didn't answer this sooner but Tumblr has not been notified me that I have messages and I forgot to check. I've had a coupled of weeks of insomnia so you may have to forgive some languid prose.

In my early viewings of Rothko, I think my reactions were fairly standard exchanges with modern art when you're getting acclimated. Among these, were how big the paintings were, and I duplicated this surprise in my viewings of a couple of other abstract, expressionist painters, notably in my mind, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner along with Rothko.

I think there's a hand in the hand reaction about the size that then you are aware the paintings are not hard edged, the way, say an Ellsworth Kelly painting would be. There's a plastic look effective in pop-art that Rothko strenuously avoided. They are undeniably sensual, almost romantic.

Once you get the size, you can really appreciate this because when you read art monographs or look at the internet, the lens is so reduced, one tends to get a constricted notion of color squares like you would see in a color theory book. However, the face-to-face confrontation reveals quite the opposite feeling of that kind of art.

It's a little hard to describe, but it's not that the paintings are completely soft. They have a lot of minor details, brushstrokes, stray lines and bits of splattered paint, but none of those colliding forces interfere with an overall limitless impression of the form that makes it very different from hard edge or gestural painting (like de Kooning). Part of what's hard to describe, is how it is not soft, but rather translucent, not vague, but flowering out to infinity.

I find with Rothko in particular that when you start looking, you want to keep looking. I suppose one of his detractors might say you're doing it because you're looking for something where there is nothing, but my experience with art is that, where there is nothing you quickly move on. Rothko might be equated in some minds with an Antonioni movie (Certainly Antonioni himself thought this) where it has a quality of nothingness but not one of no meaning. We read meaning into everything we are exposed to, it's part of how our brains process things, but perhaps Rothko's great skill is inviting you to look. i would not be the first to think so.

My tendency to invest in things I like leads me to unconsciously test myself as if from the outside, making sure that I am not fooling myself as to the merit of it (who wants to be a sucker, right?) and, I've seen a couple over the years that I felt didn't age well, maybe, something about them didn't look as alive, not the color combinations, but possibly something with the paint dulling overtime. I don't think galleries like to talk about it because the artist so valuable as an investment, but you do see, if rarely, paintings would you feel maybe age got the better of. Much of this, though can be attributed to the way light works with Rothko. The public tends to gripe when a gallery is not brightly lit, but Rothkos tend to wilt under bright lights and lose depth. This has a lot to do with the fact that Rothko painted in dim light like El Greco, and voiced his paintings to speak this way.

When they do work, which is quite often, it's pretty vivid, and I feel, entrancing. When I first got really interested in Rothko in my late teenage years, I did not know a single person who was interested in it among my group of friends and I bought a poster from the cover of Bonnie Clearwater's works on paper book and I hung it on my wall. It was a conversation starter because nobody liked it! I suppose that's the age where some people are geared towards something more classically punchy.

My feeling of the paintings, especially early in my life, remind me of an effect one might feel from music that you've never heard before, much like the response I had from the early rural blues music of the late 1920s. I didn't know how much I loved it exactly, I only knew that it was powerfully beckoning me to return. And, as one returns, you participate in a communion. You relax into it and the feelings you have rise to the surface, sometimes framing emotionally charged interchange between you and the art. I think that's a lovely thing to get from whatever kind of art you like.

Now, I am kind of an old hand at seeing Rothko paintings, but I rarely cease to be surprised by them and that maybe that is their finest attribute.

I can't imagine this helps much, but I hope that when you do see one in person, you will write and share your impressions, because after all, they are the ones that count

[ohbother2]

Hi everyone,

I know it's been ages and some of you have probably seen this notification and have hoped that this means the fics on this page will be updating, however, I've got some bad news.

This blog was a joint account between two friends who loved creating silly stories of some of our favourite characters in our free time and gushing over character details with one another. Beyond tragically, my friend, the co-runner of this account, passed away a few months ago. Obviously, I'm keeping the details private, but it was sudden and unexpected.

I know this is a shock to all of you, and not what you were expecting to hear after such a long hiatus. Understandably, I've not been active on tumblr, particularly this account, since. It's felt incredibly wrong to login to this blog and even attempt to re-read some of the stuff posted or your comments/tags, especially without her to talk to about all your lovely messages. She really did love reading them, and we'd call for hours to laugh and talk about your kind messages.

Although I acted as what you'd call the 'face' of this account, actually posting, reblogging, commenting and following others, she was integral to the heart of this account, to the ideas and writing and editing that made this account what it is, and I don't want to continue posting heacannons/one-shots/any kind of creative writing on this blog without her. This was our passion-project, and a massive chunk of it is now missing.

I just wanted to let you guys know what the situation with this blog is and why, and I wanted to give a massive thank you from both of us for being the most supportive, kind-hearted, and tight-knit community we'd ever had or seen on Tumblr before. The fact we even had fan-art made of our writing goes to show how dedicated and incredibly talented this fandom is, how supportive and just genuinely excited everyone is to hype each other up and lift each other and appreciate all our passions. It's genuinely insane, and so rare in modern internet spaces.

Regarding the future of this account, because I don't want to leave unfinished fics floating around the website, and for personal reasons, I will be transferring all fics/one-shots over to AO3, marking them as incomplete, and 'orphaning' them. I've really debated this decision, and I believe it's the one she'd be most happy with. I'm just giving you guys fair warning, I'll wait a few weeks before I actually do anything. I don't know if I'll delete this blog, I'm rather attached, but I won't be active for a while.

Probably most importantly, if anyone wants to take our ideas or our unfinished fics/one-shots and complete them/edit the story/adapt our head-cannons/incorporate them into your own fics, please do. I think it'd be nice to inspire and help other fic writers, and see the ideas carried on in whatever way you guys choose. Everything on this account is effectively 'orphaned' already, so feel free to do whatever you want with it :).

This is getting long, but I also wanted to say thank you to everyone who sent in requests, funny comments, little anecdotes, and witty one-liners into our messages/asks, both that we did and didn't respond to, especially lately. We planned to do a great return to this blog after our exams responding to them all/clogging up your feeds. Someone even called us their 'favourite niche internet micro celebrity', and we both found it hilarious.

There's no gofundme or anything like that set up. Sometimes, things just don't go as we plan and there's nothing we can do. If I've learnt anything from this godawful situation, it's that you should do whatever you want as soon as possible. Don't wait to join that club. don't wait to take that trip, don't wait to watch that show, don't wait to visit friends or family, don't wait to begin doing a hobby that you think you'll love. Anything can happen, and the only time we know that we have for certain is now. (Master Uguay was right in Kung Fu Panda after all).

I won't be active for a while, but I'll check in to see how this post is doing now and again, and I'll probably post again just before I begin taking things down.

Thank you guys, and I hope you don't dwell on this post too long.

[ffc1cb]

new art blog

the short version:

1. i made a new art blog: @cbge;

2. @ffc1cb will stay up as an archive.

the long version:

hi everyone. this announcement is somewhat late, since the blog in question has been up for a few months now, and i’ve already started posting art on it. the reason it took me so long to “reveal” it is because i’ve been trying to figure out whether a new blog is something i actually want, or if it's just me throwing darts at a board, trying to make myself feel better somehow.

i don’t know when precisely it all started, but ever since sometime last year i’ve been going through a hard time, both emotionally and creatively. i’m not sure whether being depressed is what made art harder, or art becoming harder is what made me depressed (a bit of both, i think), but lately, drawing has been a struggle. 

i’ve found myself having less and less energy for art, and this lack of energy resulted in poorer quality of drawings, which resulted in me feeling like i’m getting worse at it, despite my efforts. i knew i could make good art, art that i’m proud of - i’ve done so countless times before, - but somehow it felt like i just couldn’t anymore, like my hands forgot how to. nothing looked right. 

i’ve been trying to experiment. i’ve learned some new things, tried this and that - it was enlightening, to say the least, and even though i kind of liked how it looked, it made me feel a sense of displacement. i was at odds with myself, my art, and how i felt about it, when previously i was always in sync. i was making art, yes, and it looked nice, but it felt like it wasn’t mine.

i suppose part of it was also the growing lack of engagement, and i don’t mean likes and reblogs - i never particularly cared about those. they are all just numbers to me; dry and impersonal. what i’m talking about is actual, human interactions: personal thoughts in tags, asks, replies, etc. a conversation. 

i don’t mean to sound “old” or anything, but i remember when talking to artists online was more commonplace. my wife tells me it’s because the internet culture has changed over the years, that people have become more reclusive, less willing to be open with their thoughts, and she's probably right, but in my slump i find it hard to believe. somehow it feels like it’s my fault for being less “engaging”, for seeming unapproachable or perhaps intimidating. maybe it’s “just a skill issue”, maybe it’s because i have stopped churning out fanart for popular fandoms, maybe it’s because i refuse to torture myself emotionally by having an art account on twitter (i can’t fucking stand the place anymore; i still post nsfw art there, but only because it’s literally one of the only places on the internet that allows you to do so. i miss when you could post female presenting tits on tumblr).

i have always, ever since i started posting art on the internet back in 2012, done it for human connection. i wanted to talk to people, and have people talk to me. i wanted to inspire people with my art, and i wanted to bring them comfort. i wanted to elicit an emotional response, and have people tell me about it. it was one of the main reasons i drew in the first place; having lost that, i’ve been struggling to stay passionate about making art.

i miss being a small artist on the internet during the 2010s. i remember when i could make a post going, “hey everyone, how are you all doing today?” and it would not seem weird to people in the slightest. it is just me? does anyone else feel that way? am i too deep in my own head? the internet feels so unwelcoming nowadays, especially to artists. we are all just content machines; people scroll by our stuff, or maybe look at it for half a second and leave a like before scrolling away. i know it’s unfair to demand people’s attention, especially now when our lives are already so overwhelmed by everything - no one has the energy to pay closer attention; i myself am not immune to mindless scrolling. but it feels bad. i wish we were all sincere and enthusiastic again.

anyway (sorry for rambling. i hope i haven’t bored you to death), you might want to say, okay, but how is making a new art blog on a “dying” social platform going to help with any of that? the truth is, i don’t know. i just felt like i needed a change. 

i’ve been running this blog since 2016 (that’s almost 8 full years!). i feel incredibly attached to it, but at the same time, i feel it weighing me down. 

there are people who followed me years ago for one specific thing, still expecting me to post about said thing (i still find it mindboggling that some people follow artists for a specific fandom only, but that is a whole other matter for a whole other post that i will never write). a third, if not half, of my following are probably dead blogs. and with my current struggle with trying to regain the joy i once felt for making art, looking back at all the art i’ve done over the years makes me feel tired. i still love it all; it’s all very dear to me. i’m proud of it; looking at it makes me mourn my younger and more passionate self.

so i’ve decided to make a new blog, where i will let myself post whatever i want, in whatever stage of donness i feel like. maybe it will help me, somehow. maybe it won’t. but if you care about my art, if you want to keep following me on my artistic journey, i welcome you to join me there. similarly, feel free not to - no hard feelings.

thank you everyone for your support over the years; it matters a lot to me. i’m not planning to delete or private this blog; it will stay up, and i will still be reachable on here. i will still answer asks, if there will be any. i’m just not planning to post any art here anymore. this is it for my dear old friend ffc1cb.

i can be found in other places:

@cbge, as mentioned earlier,

@k0nstanta, an art blog dedicated solely to my wife and i’s ocs,

@inquisimail, a dragon age ask blog that has become my dragon age sideblog in general,

and multiple other blogs, none of which are art related, but feel free to ask, if you’re curious.

thank you very much for reading all of this. i hope you have a wonderful day.

[diamondcitydarlin]

'time for round two of making teenagers uncomfortable on the internet'

Listen. No one is shipping beetlebabes for the sole purpose of 'making teenagers uncomfortable on the internet'. Unless the adults in question are your parents/guardians, none of them are responsible for the stuff you might see while being 'on the internet'. None of them are responsible for your discomfort from what you might see. None of them are obligated to stop having fun in their own fandom spaces simply because a teenager exists 'on the internet' who doesn't like it (who is also perfectly capable of staying out of places they don't want to see, I PRESUME) no more than adults at a bar are obligated to not drink because there are people under the age who can't (fittingly, most bars in the US don't admit people under the age at all). You know who is responsible? Depending on your age of teenagedom, it's either to some extent your parents/guardians, but also you. Yeah, sweetie, you. I've been on the internet since the late 90's when I was NINE and I'm here to tell you right now that learning how to cultivate your own experience online is an extremely important tool. If you don't learn now how to keep your nose out of things that you don't like, you're going to have a very hard time filled with round-about arguments and constant drama and maybe worse when you could just be having fun with the things you do like and ignoring the stuff you don't. You see, my sweet summer child, feeling 'discomfort' about something benign does not inherently give you the right to shit all over whatever it is that made you uncomfortable or make up insinuations about the consenting adults participating in it. Unless there are people dropping shipping art into your inbox against your will or something (there aren't) it actually is none of your business at all, and doesn't concern you in the least. Like my goodness, you kids have ALL kinds of protections you can use to weed out things you don't want to see that we didn't have back when I was a 'teenager on the internet', blocking, blacklisting, browser extensions that can help with that, etc, and yet somehow we seem to have better understood back then how to mind our own business and stay out of fandom spaces we didn't want to be in. Nowadays all I see are children running into the devil's sacrament uninvited and claiming to be personally affected by said sacrament when all of us are wondering what the fuck they're doing there in the first place when there are clear signs denoting what sacrament this is. You don't have to see the movie, you don't have to see shipping content, you don't have to be 'exposed' to any of this at all; in this day and age, you choose to be, which makes any discomfort you feel as a result of that your own responsibility. The only person making 'teenagers uncomfortable on the internet' in this specific instance are the teens themselves.

And again, a little crash course in history here since the education system probably failed you, but using simply the existence of children as an excuse for why adults can't do consenting adult activities with each other has historically been used as a way to demonize and weaponize violence against marginalized groups. Yall are literally just stealing pages from homophobic/misogynistic/racist/transphobic conservative playbooks. That may not be your ultimate goal in coming after fandom spaces, but it's where that kind of behavior and thinking always ends up in the end. If you think alt-right entities won't harness that sense of youthful moral outrage for their own ends then I have a bridge to sell you.

Anyway, point being, no random adult on the internet or IRL is responsible for you. Random adults on the internet or IRL are not your parents/guardians. They have no obligation to eschew their own interests just because kids are wandering into places where they shouldn't. I honestly worry for any child on the internet who thinks this way, because there are absolutely predators out there that will abuse this sense of 'every adult is responsible for my comfort'. They aren't, and I'm sorry the adults in your life that actually are responsible for you failed you so much as to not teach you otherwise. Unlearn this now before you get hurt, please.

[nightcolorz]

I know you are not home (home being the internet) but you can answer when you are back

(hey! if you are reading this, welcome back!)

Anyway I've been thinking lately about Marius's handling of Daniel when he was "sick" (crazy) and what it says about him and his core values

Specifically:

Not informing Armand that Daniel was unwell and with him

And

Not tolerating Daniel's choice of creative outlet fully, namely not letting him use recycling and assorted objects to build his little cities and making him use only mass produced packs

I think both things are very telling of who Marius is as a person, he doesn't see Daniel and Armand's relationship as something valuable, he is blindsided when they get back together (which happens basically the second they are allowed the privacy to have a full conversation) and he doesn't think what Daniel is doing with his models as real art

I can't help but think he made sure Armand and Daniel didn't have contact those years because he knew if they did they would both abandon him, but he told himself (and maybe even believed that he was doing it to protect them both out of love)

He thinks love equals control and that love can not exist without hierarchy and subservience

Thoughts?

It took me so long to answer this bcus I have massive thoughts!

I think the way that Marius treats Daniel and Armand when it comes to their creative outlets is rlly interesting and telling and I’m so happy u brought that up. I’ve always gotten the impression that Marius is kind of pretentious about art. He has the whole “control = love” mentality and I think that’s plays into what he thinks art is/means. The way that Marius creates is by making exact replicas of real life or pre existing paintings with his vampire mimicking skills. So his art always comes off as very detailed and fascinating but also impersonal and in some way artificial. When he ends up accidentally inserting parts of himself into his work (like painting pandora into his piece when he’s thinking of her) he considers it in error and erases it. I get the impression that Marius considers art more the act of possessing smth preexisting and making it in his own image, taking control over it by immortalizing it, rather then expressing a part of himself or reflecting on some meaning.

he sort of pushes that perspective onto Daniel when hes under his care by making him use store bought items to create his models instead of letting him delve into his mind to sort through some creativity and make smth of his own. Marius likely thinks that by allowing Daniel to only build things in this specific correct way he is both teaching Daniel how to correctly make art and he is also controlling daniel and any kind of narrative that may be happening by restricting Daniel by exploring any of his self or emotions that Marius doesn’t have a say over. Daniel can’t delve into his “crazy” mind to create if Marius controls what he is creating, and I think Marius sees this as a good thing. The less access Daniel has to his sense of self the less likely he’ll go “mad” (and the less likely Marius won’t be able to keep him docile anymore)

when it comes to Armand, when Armand was a child he was very artistically skilled and inclined. He was so religious and faith meant sm to him that he only drew religious icons, which caused him to be taken advantage of and exploited by figures in his community. When he is sexually assaulted and sold into slavery he represses his childhood memories and his ability to paint. painting becomes traumatically triggering for Armand, and reminds him of how he feels like he’s lost his faith and connection to god bcus of what’s happened to him, and he refuses to do it. Instead of trying to encourage Armand to recontextualize his relationship with art and to use it as an outlet to regain his identity Marius instead takes advantage of the opportunity he sees of Armand being a blank slate and pushes his own views of religion and art onto him as to replace to old ones. I know Marius had good intentions there, and was probably like “by giving Armand a more positive view of this he will be less terrified”, but what he ends up doing is further depriving a slave child from his cultural identity and religious values by teaching him that his faith is the wrong type of faith and he should consume art the way marius does. Marius is once again asserting his control over someone in his care’s capacity for creativity by making sure his perspective is the one that is dominating the creation.

The way I see it, as an artist Marius understands the power of art and creation and knows that to keep his “love = control so these dudes I love need to be under my control” mentality he needs to limit how his loved ones r able to engage with their own creativity so that they aren’t tapping into a level of independence that is beyond Marius’s power.

I think this is also exactly why he limits Armand’s ability to interact with Daniel while he’s “sick”. Armand and daniels relationship is such a hurricane and Marius definitely knows that if he puts those two in the same room they r a force that he can’t push around to his will. But I think Marius is definitely telling himself that he’s separating Armand and Daniel bcus Armand is a mentally ill unstable lunatic who will ruin daniels brain and Daniel is too fragile to deal with that. I also think that since Armand and daniels relationship doesn’t follow this master and apprentice dynamic and is instead this emotional colorful hot mess crazy kid combo who can’t keep there hands off each other and r addicted to each others blood that it’s therefore Bad and Irresponsible (it is but it’s better then whatever Marius thinks is correct 💀) so he needs to be the big parent and protect them from themselves (keep them reliant on him so that they don’t leave him)

thnak u for the ask this is all so interesting !!

[rotworld]

19: Fairy Tale

art by @exorbitantsqueakingnoises

you've forgotten your wild night at a fae festival a week ago, but it remembers you.

->original work. explicit; contains non-con, (magical) drugging/date rape, graphic descriptions of violence, terato, feral behavior, hard vore.

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.

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Your day has been going suspiciously well. 

Despite being a ball of nerves the night before, you wake early and well-rested. Your morning commute is a comfortable train ride and leisurely walk through perfect autumn crispness, the air cool and the leaves colorful. Even the communal breakroom snacks are shockingly delicious today, an assortment of artful chocolate-drizzled, fruit-topped and sugar-powdered pastries almost too pretty to eat, although your coworkers have already decimated the macarons by the time you get there.

Then again, maybe there’s nothing suspicious about it. You’ve been overly cautious ever since the Equinox Faire for reasons that are far too embarrassing to explain to anyone else. You’d have to admit you went to the Faire in the first place—which is fine, by the way, there's nothing wrong with going to a Faire, it’s just not the kind of thing you feel like casually mentioning to your coworkers—and then you’d have to mention that you don’t even remember half of it. Drank so much you got violently ill and then stumbled home by some miracle, waking up in a daze on your living room floor. 

You think something bad happened there, or almost did. Hard to say for sure. Everything’s a blur after sunset. There was live music and handicrafts and some of the most incredible food you’ve ever tasted, sweet, savory, still sizzling fresh off the grill. You met people, danced, partied hard, lost a shoe. Kind of a shame, those were your most comfortable pair of sandals. You have the distinct impression that you hooked up with someone, or tried to. Getting sick in the grass might’ve cut things short. But you woke up with the worst hangover of your life and twenty browser tabs open on your phone with searches like “howf to kno if you rhome for real not a trick/?” and “magic itw ont come off what do u do whenkmlj that happen” and most ominously, “get uncursed.” 

You have no idea what happened or with who, but you do remember that unpleasant tugging sensation the morning after like you were wearing an extra, ill-fitted layer of skin. The internet says that particular blend of bleary exhaustion, lightheadedness and the tactile static of invisible cobwebs is a pretty common sign of residual magic. Someone tried casting a clingy spell, something meant to linger on a person for a while, but it sloughed off for some reason. You’ve been braced every day since for something catastrophic to happen. So far, nothing has. Maybe it was the hangover after all, or maybe it was something you drank. Some people have bad reactions to enchanted wine. You certainly weren’t going slow enough to notice. 

So despite a persistent sense of unease, malaise and waiting for the other shoe to drop so palpable you can barely sit still, you tell you coworkers you’re doing “Great!” and join the pastry huddle by the breakroom counter.

“Is it somebody’s birthday? Who brought these?” James asks, staring contemplatively into the cream filling of his second chocolate eclair. “They’re so good. Like, too good. Are they supposed to be here?” 

Francine shrugs. “Too late now. If DeVries comes out of his office looking for these, he’s gonna have to fight me to death for this tiramisu.”

Harper picks up the half-empty box of cannoli and turns it around a few times before she finds a logo in one of the corners. Her eyes widen. “Seelie Confectionaries. Holy shit, this is expensive.”

“It’s fae food?” James stops chewing abruptly, holding the eclair away from his face like it might bite. “Is it safe? What if it’s enchanted?” 

“It’s for sure enchanted. Not like that, though. It’s just for taste.” Harper shrugs and grabs a cannoli. “I took a fae studies class forever ago. ‘Enchanted’ just means there’s magic in it. All the stuff they ship across the Veil is super strictly regulated—”

“Holy shit. Who is that?” Francine asks. She’s staring past all of you, looking at the breakroom TV on the back wall where the news has been playing at an inaudible murmur. It’s midday and there’s no bright red “BREAKING NEWS” label at the bottom so you’re expecting something inconsequential; local sports, small business puff pieces, cats being cute. You’re not prepared to see the most beautiful man alive smiling serenely into the camera. He’s standing in a park beside a starstruck reporter who can’t stop sneaking glances out of the corner of her eye. He sticks out against a backdrop of college students and dog-walkers in a double-breasted vest made of shimmering brocade, dark green with silver buttons and intricate floral patterns. The long-sleeved dress shirt underneath is shiny black silk with lace at the ends of the sleeves. His hair is midnight blue and long enough to pull back into a neat bun at the base of his neck, the silver pin holding it in place shaped like a wilting rose.

Long lashes, smokey blue eyeshadow, bright amber eyes—you’re getting the itch of deja vu in the back of your brain. Haven’t you seen this guy before?

“Goth or demon fresh out of conservatory?” James wonders. “Take your bets.” 

Harper squints at the TV. “Neither. He’s fae. See the brooch? That’s a guise stabilizer.” 

She’s right. It’s pinned to his left lapel, a silver circle of delicate metalwork and tiny pearls. You can barely see the green flecks pressed and preserved inside the rounded glass in the middle, but they’re definitely tiny leaves. 

Then he’s gone and there’s a slow panning shot of an open field instead. A field that looks eerily familiar, you think. Francine searches frantically for the remote because the caption at the bottom hasn’t changed: “SOCIALITE’S SEARCH FOR LOVE SPARKS NATIONAL SHOE-SHOPPING FRENZY.”

“What do you suppose that means?” Harper muses.

“Not a fucking clue,” James says. “Isn’t that the fairgrounds?”

“Ohhh, I think you’re right! Wasn’t that big festival thing going on out there last weekend?” Francine asks. 

Harper snorts. “You mean the orgy?” You choke on a bite of bread.

“No way,” James says.

“Okay, it’s not literally an orgy but there’s a lot of sex. That’s like half the reason people go.”

“Isn’t it dangerous? Like, super dangerous? With all the enchanted food and stuff.” 

“James, listen, enchantment like the way you’re thinking isn’t something you just sprinkle in real quick. It’s a whole process. They have to know who you are and want to fuck with you specifically—”

Francine nudges you in the side. “You ever heard of anything like this?”

“Absolutely never in my whole life,” you say, coughing.

The camera cuts again and the beautiful man is back again, speaking into the microphone. Francine finds the remote just in time and starts cranking up the volume until you can actually hear what he’s saying. “…don’t often attend events of this nature very often, as you might imagine. But something was different this year. I felt uniquely compelled, as though something was waiting for me…”

Harper makes a joke about him being uniquely compelled by his dick but you’re no longer paying attention to the breakroom conversation. It’s like a dam breaks in your mind. Glimpses and snapshots suddenly come rushing back just from hearing his voice. The night was warm and flickering. Your eyes met across a bonfire. He wore nothing but full-bloom flowers and colorful, rumpled lichen, the forest wrapped around him in winding stripes like a lover’s grasping fingers. His hair was down, waist-length, a woven cord of flowering, leafy vines crowning his head. His hips swayed and his fingers curled under your chin, drawing your gaze up to meet his. 

“My name is Imraude,” he said in a low, seductive purr. “And you are going to be mine.” 

On TV, the camera zooms out slightly to get both him and the reporter in frame when she tilts the microphone back to ask a question. Your attention is drawn immediately to his hands, not resting at his sides but holding something the tender, gentle way a person holds a priceless glass sculpture or a kitten.

That’s a sandal. That’s your sandal. Uh oh, you think.

“And this is all you have to work with?” the reporter asks.

Imraude chuckles. “Yes, this is it. It’s common practice to use aliases or nicknames at a Faire and I don’t begrudge them for being cautious. It does make this much more difficult, though. I know how absurd these public appeals must seem, but I truly am desperate. I would do anything to see them again. We had something special, and I think they know it, too.” 

It was lust at first sight. He was gorgeous, and he must’ve thought you were, too. You drifted back to the refreshments table together to chat and make sure you were both on the same page and his hand settled on your thigh. He was insistent—relentless—that you eat something. “I intend to keep you as long as I can,” he murmured. “You’ll need your strength.” It should’ve been fine. Faire food gets inspected. But did those buttery pieces of bread he pressed against your lips come from the feast on the table or somewhere else? What about those fresh, juicy berries, sweet and tart as he fed them into your mouth with his tongue? You were already tipsy at least and he told you the arcadian wine was the finest vintage you’d ever taste. You were in his lap, you think. You were eating out of his hand and he was purring praise in your ear when everything started to blur. 

“In some ways,” the reporter says, snapping you out of a daze, “your strategy has backfired, hasn’t it? Saying you’re looking for the owner of the other shoe has a lot of eager bachelors and bachelorettes snapping up the exact same design. Stores across the country have completely exhausted their stock.” Unbelievable images of local shoe stores with empty spaces in the sandal section fade in one after the other, followed by online listings going for tens of thousands of dollars. You can’t believe what you’re saying. They’re not some designer brand. They’re just what you had lying around for a night out when you wanted to be comfortable and blend in with the easygoing atmosphere.

“I’m not worried about it,” Imraude assures her. He looks directly into the camera and you stop breathing. “They were unforgettable. When I see their face, I’ll know.”

You remember now. The meadow—not the fairgrounds. He brought you somewhere else. You’d looked up at the sky and even inebriated, even giggling and stumbling and feeling a little sick to your stomach, you’d noticed it wasn’t right. You could barely see it, could barely see straight at all, but you remember how your skin crawled when you looked up and couldn’t recognize the thing you saw every night. Imraude kissed you. He licked into your mouth and clutched your hips against his, and you moaned into his mouth. You tried to touch him—to pull him closer? To push him away? You remember wanting him so badly it scared you. 

But you couldn’t move. Why couldn’t you move? Your arms were stuck in the air above your head and your legs wouldn’t budge. Imraude stroked your shoulders and caressed your sides and dug his fingers into your ass—all at the same time. That doesn’t make sense. You were drunk and it was dark. Is that it? It feels like you’re still forgetting something. 

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. You remember that. Such a gentle whisper right against your ear, but he was rough with you. He grasped you too hard with fingers that were too sharp and too many. He wanted to leave marks. “Ones only we can see,” he promised, smiling against the nervous flutter of your pulse. “So the hungry ones know who you belong to.” He bit you, over and over and over again. Sunk his fangs in—his fangs? Too sharp to be teeth, too thin and precise. It felt sharp and horrible, and then it faded to prickling pins and needles. Tactile static. Tingling, then numb, then good. 

No one has ever fucked you as hard as him. If you’re lucky, no one ever will again. The more you think about it, the more you wonder how you managed to walk away. He was right up against you, fucking you standing. You couldn’t make your body do anything but he was in complete control. He curled his fingers and your legs wrapped around his waist, and then he was thrusting fast enough to knock the breath out of your lungs. His hands cupped your ass and he panted in your ear about how he would fill you every morning, day and night for the rest of time. 

“I will have you,” he murmured. “Your body first. Then your mind. Then your heart.”

He made you ride him. He watched you bounce on his cock while his long, spindly fingers explored the expanse of your chest, groping, caressing, teasing your nipples. He lingered whenever he found something that made you gasp and clench around him, mercilessly exploiting every weakness. You were barely conscious. Your eyelids fluttered and struggled to stay upright. He didn’t care. He tugged your wrist to his mouth and sank his fangs in. 

Or did he bite down, and tear a whole chunk of flesh from your body? He couldn’t have. You don’t have a scar there, not even a puncture. But you remember pain, searing, radiating, the rhythmic sting every time your heart pumped and more blood gushed out, and the redness of his lips as he drank everything that poured out with a groan. 

He fucked you on the forest floor. Had he always been so much bigger than you? You were face-down, your back arched and your hips raised while he pounded into you, a hand on the nape of your neck and a hand on your shoulder and a hand on your hip and a hand stroking your side and more still that are just ghosts of memory. You were bleeding. You were raw and aching everywhere. He was devouring you and you were on the verge of climax with every crunching, flesh-tearing bite. Your stomach churns thinking about it. Was that real, or a nightmare? It’s so vivid in your mind. 

Imraude, with your ankles hooked over his shoulders. He bent you in half so he could kiss you while he rutted slow and deep. 

Imraude, with your neck between his teeth. You trembled and you wept and your head lolled back against his shoulder when his tongue dipped into the wound. 

Imraude, with hands uncountable. He handled you like a doll, a plaything meant for nothing more than his amusement and pleasure. 

Imraude, with—you can’t remember. It hurts to try. You think you saw something you weren’t supposed to. He didn’t make sense. When you saw the haunting, animalistic gleam of reflected moonlight, was that in just two eyes or in four? In six? In more?

He liked to finish inside you. Clutching you by the thighs and hips and stomach and shoulders, he impaled you on a long, thick cock with bumps and ridges and a slender tip that reached uncomfortably deep, and he came for such a long time that you thought you’d never be empty again. Thick, white seed squelched around his length and dripped down your inner thighs as he kept humping and grinding into your trembling body. 

His voice didn’t sound human. It hadn’t since he lured you away from the fairgrounds. It was warped and echoing in your head, unnaturally deep and lightly melodic. “Does it feel good to belong to me?” he purred. “If it doesn’t yet…it will. I promise.”

You should be dead. You’re sure of it. You were more wounds than flesh when he filled you one last time. You shivered and you oozed. Imraude’s tongue filled your mouth as he pulled out one horrible, stinging inch at a time, slipping free from your abused entrance with a sickening squelch and a trickle of cum. He smoothed his palms over all the places you hurt and stole the pain. You felt distinctly that it wasn’t right. It wasn’t real healing. You had gaping holes inside of you, places where he’d stolen something. And then—he left you. Said he’d “prepare the way,” or something like that. The air quivered like a heat haze and then he was gone. 

You rolled onto your side, heaving and retching, clutching your stomach. You tasted bile and acid. Everything you’d eaten at the refreshment table came back up in a stinging watercolor slurry. You felt awful. You wanted to curl up and rot. Fear drove you, hand over hand, one bruised knee and then the other. You crawled out of the meadow. You don’t know where you went or how long it took you to get there, but you knew you had to keep moving. There’s a chasm of time missing; of horrible, furious noises that made the forest shake and the scrape of your fingers through dirt, on and on until they found concrete. You’ll probably never remember everything he did trying to chase you down, but it didn’t matter. With all the food out of your system, the enchantment didn’t stick. He could purr and plead and growl all he wanted, but you were going home. 

“No fucking way,” Francine says. “This can’t be real. His one night stand was gone when he woke up, so now he’s on the news? Make a Craigslist post like a normal person.” 

“He’s rich,” Harper reasons. “Probably paid them to air it. A lot of the fae who end up at the Faire are rich kids from old money. Kind of crazy his family runs that Seelie snack company, though. You think he’s sending out gift boxes everywhere, or does he think his Cinderella works here?”

James tosses his eclair into the trash. “Nope. Too fucking weird. Not eating any more of these.”

You stop chewing. With a sick feeling churning in your stomach, you take another look at the pastry boxes. They’re not in pristine condition anymore, but you see the fanciful wrapping paper crumpled in the trash and the ribbons that had been tied around them. There’s a card in there, too, thoughtlessly discarded. Your name is not on that card.

But your nickname—the one you used at the Faire—is, along with a black heart. 

“You okay?” Harper asks. She’s looking at you. They’re all looking, with worry and confusion. 

You don’t even make an excuse. You just run. Out of the breakroom, through the hall, flinging yourself down the stairs two at a time until you hit the bottom, trying to figure out what comes next. You go home, right? Then what? Pack a bag and go on the run? It’s a coincidence. It’s a wild guess. He can’t know. You emerge in the company lobby where a small circle of people from another department are clustered around the receptionist’s desk chattering excitedly. You see a figure taller than the others. Dark blue hair. Bright yellow eyes. A smile that snags at your heart like a fish hook.

He turns towards you and you catch the briefest glimpse of that wild, possessive hunger you saw the Faire. 

“Darling,” he purrs, your missing sandal clutched in one hand. “It’s so nice to see you again.”

[marabarl-and-marlbara]

Hi Mara,

I wanted to say that all of your writing feels extremely genuine, and I am inspired by the honesty and detachment in your retrospective posts, especially when talking about personal—external—influences. I rarely hear others say that their interest in X is simply gone, or admit that they like(d) Y because the ‘context’ seemingly urged them to. A pattern I often notice instead is personal attachment and the unwillingness to let go of ideas and things which no longer resonate or never really have in the first place.

I wish it was easy to distill all of one’s experiences and likes, remember why and how they came to be, be honest as to how one felt about them, separate the wheat from the chaff, and arrive at something that feels truly genuine and ‘you’.

It feels reductive and probably comes with projection on my part, but that’s the impression I get.

Hope the storm didn’t affect you and your family too much.

Good morning, anonymous--thank you very much for such a kind message!

I wrote about this more vaguely in last months subscriber post, reflecting on "how nothing seemed to scare me" lately and how baffling it seemed that people thought Stephen King's Apt Pupil was a terrifying horror story, and incidentally had been thinking about this during the period of having power but having no internet after Hurricane Milton--I had all these videogames I tried to play but realized they all felt completely boring and uninteresting without something to listen (my favorite streamer, my favorite podcast) to while playing (and in turn, that I needed to be doing something somewhat stimulating while listening to something); I had all these anime shows I could be watching, too, but again little interest because they were all just dead boring--and all I could really manage for myself were to read Henry James and rediscover my old Longmont Potion Castle collection to listen to until internet came back;

but, I don't know how much the genuine 'you' matters; I think about something a sculpture professor told me about the hippies and an adage they had that went kill your parents, and the professor added that it was meant not (always) literally, but to disentangle yourself from 'the origin' or: maybe: the most sacred and profane feelings you see yourself as being a-part of;

realizing I basically have zero interest in being an artist might have been a big hurdle for me to disentangle from way-back in Wilderness when I had some ego-fear of losing my identity as Marabarl and what that entailed: divulging everything about myself, being self destructive, seeming crazy, and using it all as oil to art--severing that all seemed like it would drive me more lonely and leave me with nothing but some bare-dry stick of a person that'd few people would be interested in (but glimpsing at this idea also spoke to how 'being an artist' had little to do with my own desire and more to do with maintaining 'connection' with 'invisible others'). I don't know if killing my parent there had left me a more true version of myself, but it severed connections I mostly kept entwined by wholly out of fear of the loneliness or of letting go of a familiar rot and pain. I'm far more boring than the older Mara, because really now all I'd like to do is go to my weekly sandwich shop, cook, clean, read, listen to audiobooks, be monotonously religious, and try to write bad fiction that I never finish because I keep rewriting the same few parts for months at a time.

There's a quote from a book I finished a few days ago, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain, by Victoria Mackenzie, that I really loved:

"When the day begins, we say that it is breaking. So with my life. Part of me had to be taken into pieces before I could truly start to live. For in my shewings Jesus had said, 'I shall shatter you for your vain passions and your vicious pride; and after that I shall gather you together and make you humble and meek, pure and holy, be oneing you to me.'

My will was broken and I am glad of it. I am only a thing that moves this broom and sweeps the curled leaves and corpses of insects from one side of my cell to the other."

Each layer of myself, as it seems with age, starts to seem more-and-more to be a vanity that I hold to myself well-after it has separated and shed, out of fear and comfort for the more simple figure that is underneath--morosely, I start to really believe the purest part of my-self comes with death when all has been shed away wholly and the carcass is left as the most simple and un-connected atom of Me, and for others: when the Left are shred out to ash and the Right are ate up to heaven; tears and emotion for the dead, too, a type of vanity over wishing that lost other to not be gone from the identity yet though it is truly just another vain callous now shed and clung-to: Dieth and Daniela who I keep getting mad at in fear of letting go-of;

but even in more simple ways--remembering old loves towards things like Narutaru and not wanting to let go because of how fond and warm they felt just a few years ago, and keeping that old passion around like it were furniture that had gone decrepit past any real function except favor; although, during Hurricane Milton, again between time of Power but no Internet, I rewatched some of FLCL and .hack//sign and wished I could be rewatching Hey Arnold's scary episodes--cause really no-matter how much I think I'm capable of letting go of things that seem all vain, boring, and worthless to the simple self, I am a simple creature who wants comfort in the familiar and to things I've loved and felt loved by. And, luckily, I still love Boogiepop! (I think it's easier to keep a love for those things around because they don't really remind me of bad-times as Narutaru does, but I'd like to always keep an effort to keep Hiroko and cute little Ensof in my heart)

Take care.

[lunchtimebedamned1997]

Some fic-art wips and yapping for you today <3

I've been re-editing my early chapters of my ongoing Arcane story A Second Too Late while I work on making a fic guide for myself to make updating easier on myself.

The story is at just under 100,000 words of posted material so far, and it's just gotten to be too much to go back and reread every time I work on something new for it - and I felt like too many details/small plots were going to accidentally be forgotten.

Now I have all my characters organized in order of appearance (Canon characters on the left, OCs on the right)

AND I've been working on doing character portraits (particularly for the OCs) as well as chapter-specific notes on each character when an important event/plot happens with them.

Example of the character portraits:

I also have all the chapters broken down scene-by-scene, and any extra art I want to make upon editing gets it's own reference/planning sub-board as well >:3

I've been doing the thumbnails mostly in my sketchbook and finishing them off digitally which has been a really gratifying experience tbh, I really love doing my sketches tiny and in mechanical pencil bc it gives me the looseness and texture I love while stopping me from going to detail-heavy (bc small) & redrawing 40-billion times (bc tradtional).

Below is an example of the thumbnail sketches vs. the base lines :D

I just moved into a new place, and I don't have a monitor that displays color well, so I've been firmly in the b&w/lineart space with digital work right now, but I'm actually grateful for it bc it's forcing me to slow down and not hyper-focus on any one particular piece.

Idk how many chapters will have art, but I'm having fun with it for now hehe

Sometimes I get kind of down on myself for how slow I can be at updating, but something (I can't even remember what atm it's 3 a.m. rn lmao) resparked the feeling of happy fandom warm-fuzzies I had for years and years, and I just - this is fun. I'm so grateful this is like... a thing, you know?? Ik the internet can be A Lot esp. with the large influx of ppl into the community who haven't learned the culture yet but... idk I'm just feeling... happy about making things again in a very familiar way I had been chasing the last couple months.

Anyways, all this bts work has been a massive undertaking, but I'm really glad I've been putting in the time to do it. I think it's going to make the story a lot better, even besides all the personal perks for my own writing convenience.

[yuseirra]

Hi there, lovely artist! Do you watch the oshi no ko anime? I ask because I wondered if you are excited to see their depiction of Hikaru, because you make such lovely art of him (it's a depiction I quite like :)). It made me wonder if you have some kind of expectations for the anime.

I'm personally very excited to see Hikaru animated and voice acted :D

Hello anon~ thanks for calling me lovely!♥ I love getting complimented!

Oh! I watched the first 2 eps of the second season, then I decided to put off watching it for a while (I can always buy it in our local OTT platform, they have it there!) because the manga... ;v; is already making my head spin so much already. I can only focus on one thing at a time... It was SO good though!!// I remember how the first episode started with stage-play, which was very impressive. The opening animation sequence is amazing too! I'd like to binge it all at once later.

Hmm...about expectations, I personally consider the current arc to be great in terms of depicting Aqua's psychology. It was peak in terms of helping us understand his character, so I appreciate that a lot. We get to see all his pains and trauma and the struggles he had, and it was so powerful. I'm sure the anime would be touching on those currently, if they do a great job with that (along with Akane's rivalry with Kana and how they shine on stage in different ways) I feel I'd be happy with it! Also that scene with Melt. I'm sure that one's been animated because I saw a thumbnail of it on youtube. I'm also looking forward to the aqukana date. That's one of the few peaceful, cute moments we have. I'm sure I'd watch that part the moment it comes out because I'm curious how that's going to be acted out.. and I need to see some happy moments in onk for once. Stuff's been depressing in the manga lately and I feel sorry for a lot of characters;;

OH... thank you!// I'm so happy to hear you like my depiction of him!!/// That gives me strength. Yeah, I'm excited too, because we never saw his color palettes yet, haven't we!! It's going to be all over the internet once it's out, won't it...I'm a little worried if I got it way off.. but I'm prepared to take what they give us! The anime team does the series justice. I trust they will come up with something good. I just mentioned I'd watch the aqukana dating scene as it comes out.. well, that scene with hikaru's also a scene I want to watch (and I NEED to in order to get his color schemes right in the future 'cause I draw! o<-<)

I really want him to get a bright color palette, because his name has to do with both "god" and "light"... or the god of light if combined.. I SERIOUSLY believe he HAS to do with amenouzume, the entertainment god's husband!! That god conveniently is said to have a "shining body" and is called the god of the bright lights!!!! There is no way that has nothing do do with him!! I don't really picture him with dark eyes, I feel golden eyes would really suit him because that gives off the "light" imagery and it'd make sense. It'd also be able to make his black star eyes really stand out as he has them.. and I feel he'd make a good contrast with Ai if he's colored a bit brighter than Aqua or Ruby. purple and yellow contrast each other very well! So I'm crossing my fingers for that to happen. Same here, I'm really curious how he'd sound like, and I'm happily awaiting to see his depiction in the anime. Since I drew a lot of things about him already, I'd be a bit embarrassed if happened to get his colors off... but?? It's the colors I really want. So I won't regret having colored him that way. We can all dream, right!

I drew them upon having received your ask!

it'd be really nice if he has these bright colors that contrasts Ai's dark purple. Saying this again because I really want that to happen ;v;)9999

I get chatty, I hope you can feel my excitement! :) This series makes me both so nervous and excited... I guess it will be like that for awhile.

Let's keep having fun together! I appreciate your ask and I hope you have a fun weekend!