#i did so many things i dont know how to do with this and I'm really proud

[lyxchen]

SOMETHING JUST HEALED IN ME BECAUSE CHARLEY AND YURI KISSED AND IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL AND THIS IS GOING TO FUEL ME FOR MONTHS!!!!!!!!

[velnna]

Hii Maf! Just wanted to say that I really love your work - Im quite new to your webcomics since I knew you bcz of baldurs gate, but Im enjoying stray souls a lot so far! If you dont mind the ask, how did you grow your art presence on the internet?

Thank you!!

There's no simple answer to that, really 😅 it's a mix of things over many years at this point. I'll give you a rough timeline, might be easier lmao:

2010-2013: I joined deviantArt and built a tiny community there through things like art trades, challenges, joining groups, etc

2013-2017: I dropped from the face of the art space online to focus on studying and getting a job

2017-2019: I indeed got a good job and decided that in my free time I was gonna focus on my comic, and that I wanted it to do as well as possible so I built an audience on social media (mostly Instagram). The way I did it was by, again, participating in a shitton of challenges, drawing and posting like a madman (which I still do tbf) and, most importantly, engaging with other people's work. I think an important part of being and growing as an artist online is nurturing the community you want to surround yourself with. If you like someone's work, go out of your way to let them know by interacting with it, sharing, etc. It can't just be you posting into the void and expecting others to magically get on board

2019-2022: I started working with Webtoon which gave me an extra boost, started branching out into twitter, etc, kept just doing my thing tbh

2023-2024: in early 2023 I decided to go full time for personal reasons, and halfway through the year I got swept away with Baldur's Gate 3 lmao. I'll say being in a "fandom" definitely gave me a bit of a boost in numbers (especially on tumblr lol) but as far as ways to grow on social media go, it's not my favourite - I still very much only work on what I want and if that happens to be fanart it's a happy coincidence

These days there's nothing I do to grow on socials, really. I try to direct people to things like Patreon here and there because I need to keep an eye on the financial side, and have ideas I want to be able to create and fund independently, but even at that I'm not great

It's obviously important to note that all the while I've been drawing a lot and improving at it. Ultimately it doesn't matter how much you understand or work on your social media presence if the actual content doesn't stand out in one way or another

[kelpweedkelpweedingkelpweeds]

Ok, so I think I'm slightly ready to talk about the comic (really I'm not but my brain has been thinking about them for an hour straight I have to let some of it out) This comic answered a hundred questions in my head and in the process produced a thousand more to replace them. The exploration of hyuna's thoughts as she was dying, it's so wonderfully complex and exactly what I expected out of vivinos.

Hyuna's feelings towards Luka is less so "I want to hate you, but I can't", rather it's "I hate you, you caused me so much pain and yet at the same time I pity the things that caused you to do this to me and I still care about you". A popular opinion is that as Hyuna spun Luka around her intent was revenge, and my 2 cents on it is that yes payback was part of it, but her kneejerk reaction was to save him.

There's still no official confirmation for Luka's role in Hyunwoo's death but he holds a major part in it. Hyuna cared deeply for her brother; it's no wonder she would hold bitter feelings towards someone who caused her to lose someone she loved. Hyuna knew that Luka loved her more than himself; she knew that she was the only person whose death would make him feel anything, not even his own. So she let herself get shot, made him lose the one person who ever made him feel human, made him feel the human grief of watching someone you care about sacrifice themselves, made him understand how the other performers on stage felt as they watched their friends die in front of them. This was her revenge, letting him feel the same pain she did, the same pain he inflicted on so many others on stage.

But at the same time, Hyuna isn't cruel. Her character is about love, love for humanity and the hope for freedom. As she heard that bullet fired, her first thought wasn't to make him suffer, it was to protect him. That she didn't want to see him die. Because watching him bleed out would cause her so, so much pain. It could be considered selfish, as she is the head of the resistance and he is the alien overlord's favourite pet, the person symbolizing the thing she swears destroy and never return to. But for someone who loves the world so selflessly, her love for Luka is and always has been selfish, and so is her resentment. He is her only weakness, the only person she would sacrifice her life for to teach the meaning of loss and pain.

She tells him that she leaves a puzzle for him to solve, which can be interpreted as figuring out human emotions for the first time. She understands him well enough to know that it will work, for he loves her more than anything else and loves her enough to at least try and move on like she wishes him to. Perhaps he may never find the answer, perhaps he might die before he has the opportunity to, but Hyuna knows he will try desperately, that perhaps in the process he could be given the chance to be human, as he deserved to.

She didn't let herself get shot for the satisfaction of watching him cry for the first time, she died because she loved him and wanted him to come to understand grief and gain the ability to move on, things that he was deprived of since his birth. She never forgave herself or Luka over what happened, but she wanted him to learn to forgive himself, so that maybe he could do what she couldn't. She knew she didn't have to ask him for forgiveness; his love for her poured out of him like water, he could never hate her for the selfish thing she did. So maybe Hyuna died with bitterness lingering towards him for what he did, but ultimately she came to peace with the fact that she loved Luka, that she would die for him, that only he could bring her back to the damned alien stage as her burial ground.

Y'all I nearly cried writing this, can I PLEASE do a self indulgent post next about how pure Luka's love towards Hyuna is I DONT WANT TO DEAL WITH THE COMPLEXITIES OF HUMAN EMOTION IM BARELY HANGING TOGETHER RIGHT NOW

Here have a stupid lil image of them (sorry Hyuna isn't coloured in I know it's really bad but when all you can think about is how tragic they are all I want to do is draw them happy for the rest of eternity)

[loveafterdeath-if]

Heyy dear authoor, I dont know if you are taking question on these but I wanted to ask you about twine and coding. I’ve been interested in writing my own IF but vscode and twee and everything i’ve been reading so far got me super overwhelmed and I tried vscode and everything went red and error with templates I tried to use 😭 I was wondering what is your flow of coding the LAD and how did you started. How is story folders works, how do you structure the files and compile them

Anon... I'm shit at this but I'll try to help as much as I can.

Tbh, I touched a bit of everything before publishing anything. Idk how many games I started on renpy only to abandoned them because I was too lazy to continue and because I dunno how to draw and because I didn't know how to code it in a text only thing. Idk how many IF I started and are still gathering dust in my files and waiting to be rewritten properly, because I wanted to use choicescript at first but didn't understand a single thing lmaooo

I think templates are the most useful for a first IF, especially if you dunno anything about coding etc. I struggled a bit with mine at first (still am sometimes).

You also have to be sure to check if the template was updated for the latest version of twine and if you use the same story formats (SugarCube, Harlowe and... I don't remember the others). Make sure to check in the comments of the template you got too, sometimes some have answers to your potential questions.

My coding flow is a mess so anything I say will probably not help you. I knew some stuff before starting thanks to many attempt at publishing IF, even though I never published any until LAD. We're talking about maybe 2 years of attempts. So in the meantime during those attempts, I've watched some tutorials on ytb for exact stuff I needed, searched on google, on tumblr too (btw check @uroboros-if account, they have a lot of helpful stuff, that's where I found out how to deal with the pronouns, etc. and there's also @outoftheblue-if who knows much more than me (and I used one of their(?) templates! And @manonamora-if definitely will help you better if you got any question about twine!)

I think you should ask or search for the exact things you need. I did that most of the time and gathered it all somewhere in my files. Like, if you wanna know about how to code cycle choices, or how to deal with the pronouns of your ROs, or that kind of thing.

I doubt I've been helpful, but do feel free to head to my discord if you have more question about stuff!

[greyedian]

MAN I'm seriously so sad about season 2. Bc I wish act 2 had the same emotional impact on me as it appears to have on so many others. But rn I'm just somewhere between unable to care and actively annoyed by some of those writing decisions. Seriously the more I think about it the less I like it.

[shivunin]

The Dreaded Hallow-Dragon!

This year for Halloween, I made Rigatoni a dragon costume inspired by one of the Emprise du Lion dragons! It is crocheted with acrylic yarns in a dragon stitch and has cotton fabric with 8-gauge aluminum wire for the wings. We wound up tying the costume to his harness after I took these pictures, which stayed on far better.

Been a minute since i made one of my Dragon Age scarves, but i do have the materials for Josie so that'll probably be the next one after I'm done with my current playthrough c:

Reference under the cut!

[spectascopes]

draw ONE short and fat character from a piece of media as a skinny miss thing and I'm side eyeing. do it to TWO and I know you're just a bitch

[icewindandboringhorror]

Lineup of all of the characters that appear long enough to need a visual representation of them in the game lol

[silverselfshippingchaos]

I miss my mean millionaire bf..

[bunnyboy-juice]

honestly actually ik the "ride or die, you can have complex feelings about these people who harmed you but i HATE them, you're never wrong" type of friendship is super common n praised n i even can understand why that form of unconditional "love" is appealing, but i genuinely think its the most suffocating form of friendship ive ever experienced

[scorpiusmalfoylovesoscarwilde]

most days I'm so chill with the fact I'm non-contact with my father, it was the best decision, I hate him, my life is so much more peaceful without him

then bam it's a random Tuesday at 8pm and I'm sobbing because I miss having a dad, like, excuse me what is this??

[rivilu]

ok you know. the Ellu in dav crossover au is very fun but i am a little bit enchanted by the concept of him AND Rynn at once. Best of both worlds in a sense.

[brick-van-dyke]

Thinking about how batshit Zionists are when they're like *say obvious thing that's common knowledge is Actually Fake* and I just ??? Are they okay in their little echo chambers. I think they should go for a walk and get some fresh air, maybe touch some grass (not the imported one from Europe though, the natural grass preferably).

[wackpedion]

I really don't feel like I'm alive. I really don't. This isn't what living is. I don't know what I'm here for.

[kiyomitakada]

i am going to scream (wip rambling in the tags)

[dullahandyke]

i look at some of u guys talking abt a new show u watched or a new thing u read and im like. holy shit thats a thing u can do. im in awe of u. i spend my time slowly ping-ponging between several interests whose base componants i can never experience because i get scard