#i just realized this is my first homestuck art on here i think

[emoreooo]

how far we’ve come

[sysig]

for requestober ! my heart's been aching for yanderapy for a while and i would like to get something about them :3 i don't have a specific prompt . i do like to see them more on the angsty-unhealthy-relationship side lol like some of the requests you made last year . overall , just seeing anything about them would be nice . X3

Day 1 - Sodium Chloride Couple

[tiredandoptimistic]

As someone who likes a lot of "bad" media, or media that starts out kinda slow but builds into a bigger plot over time, I see so many different opinions on what bits are "okay" to skip in order to get to the good part, and it's just wild to me. Bouncing around between the highlights doesn't actually give you the experience, and filler is so important when it comes to just...creating a vibe and building up the relationships between characters and with the audience.

For instance, Red vs Blue is probably my favorite show (ever, of all time), and while I will admit that the first five seasons are not my favorite, I still think they're essential to the show, because those five years of relatively low stakes adventures set the tone so that it can be upset by the bigger plot points. The impact of a big twist is reduced if you haven't spent the time to get invested in these characters when they're just hanging out and being silly. Most importantly though, even once the plot really gets going in season six and we get into the more serious Freelancer and Chorus arcs, Red vs Blue is still fundamentally about a bunch of idiots standing around and talking. If you have to force yourself to put up with the majority of the show, then you might just not like this show.

I was talking about this with my friend, and they said it's kinda the same thing with Homestuck. Yes, it does get "better" as time goes on, but it's still the same thing it's always been, and if that's not something you enjoy then skipping to the bits you do like won't change what it is.

Or like, I freaking love The Order of the Stick, and last year I reread it from the beginning for the first time in a while, and I half convinced myself that I'd just made up how good it is (because volume one is funny enough but nothing to write home about). However, I hit a certain point where I realized that I wasn't just reading out of a sense of obligation but because I adore these characters and am unspeakably invested in this plot. You can really tell that it's been a story happening over the course of 20+ years, you can see the writing and art improve dramatically as time goes on. I could just recommend that someone start with volume two or three, and summarize the plot up till then so they don't feel lost. However! That would rob them of the experience you get from watching these characters grow. You can't fully appreciate Belkar's arc in volume six if you didn't see what he was like on day one, y'know?

On another note, I love the Shadowhunters Chronicles, and I know that a lot of people will give The Mortal Instruments shit and call it the worst series or whatever, but those people just hate fun. Yeah, there are other series that might have stronger plots and better writing, but there's a reason that TMI's main characters have been iconic for years. Sometimes, things are just silly, and if you don't like that then you're not gonna have a good time here.

I could go on! I also like a lot of episodic shows like MASH, Community, Tangled: the Series, the whole DC animated universe, Supernatural, etc. I could come up with lists of my favorite episodes to try to hook somebody, but all of those episodes lose a lot of their impact when taken out of context. Skipping the filler doesn't give you the ultimate experience of Only The Best, it takes away your chance to fully spend time with these characters in a variety of settings. And sure, lots of shows with multiple writers do have some episodes that are just bad, but that's not what I'm talking about. There's a difference between something being bad and something being low-stakes. Maybe you personally don't enjoy things that are low-stakes, but that might just mean you shouldn't be watching a sitcom.

So yeah, this has been an excuse for me to rant about things I enjoy for a while but I'm sorta out of time and need to eat lunch, so I suppose this post has reached its conclusion. All my favorite media are my favorite for reasons I couldn't articulate in an elevator pitch, and putting together a highlight reel will never substitute for truly being in the trenches. If you're truly having a good time with something then you won't need to skip to the good part, because the whole thing is enjoyable.

[nerves-nebula]

I thought you read all of Homestuck? Sorry this is not an accusation or anything, I just swear that I remember you saying that... Memory is weird lol. And it's not like I have read it or planning to do so anytime soon, but yea

went on a bit of a rant here oops

i have read all of homestuck and it sucks. sometimes you become older than 14 and understand more about the world and realize this thing you used to think was cool actually sucks in a lot of ways. to be fair though, i did also think parts of it were shit when i was 14, so like. yknow. there were also parts i didn't understand before which i now understand, which makes me hate them, cuz they sucked. mostly the ableism and racism. there was other stuff but i refuse to re-learn anything about homestuck so I guess my other complaints will fade away as i live a life free of homestuck.

coming back to finish it when it ended was a slog but i couldn't stand the idea that I'd read most of this really long thing and had tapped out near the end.

the fans of it can also be a pretty mixed bag. what annoys me isnt normal fandom cringe stuff, but rather that a lot of them don't seem to be able to disconnect homestuck with the common tropes homestuck is pulling from. sometimes it's like homestuck is the first and only piece of literature they've ever actually engaged with meaningfully so they go into other stories and go "this is just like homestuck" because homestuck is so big it's got tropes from fucking everywhere.

someone once called Maureno a Lusus cuz she's a big animal who takes care of a kid, as if being raised by a magic animal isn't one of the most classic tropes out there common in mythology all over the world. it'd be like if every time i saw a mentor and their charge i was like "omg this is literally eda clawthorne" regardless of context or if the dynamic was the same at all. it's funny a few times but after a while it's just obnoxious. at least it is to me.

i'm biased tho since i hate homestuck, i don't usually care about people saying "this is just like my blorbo" about literally anything, ever, but for homestuck it's just slightly annoying. cuz i don't like it.

that being said i have been known to reblog homestuck art from time to time. cuz it's good art. and i don't begrudge people for liking homestuck, i used to like it too.

ALSO I'mma be real that post I made before was a jokey joke. like, drawing the characters as black is some of my favorite fanart. it won't make me enjoy homestuck again but it WILL make me appreciate the black artists who put so much time and thought into their fantastic designs.

[broadway-aradia]

Hello!

I think I have been following you since 2014 or 2015 maybe and I felt like taking a trip down the memory lane.

Could you talk about why you joined tumblr in the first place? What was your first fandom vs what is the most recent one? How your life changed since you've joined vs how is it going now?

Have a wonderful day or night!

HEY! thank you for following me for so long! that is such a big chonk of time. i love that you’re still here!

i have a really hazy memory from my ADHD sadly and rely a ton on my brother and one of my besties whose memory is damn near perfect to keep my own story straight. but i definitely joined tumblr because of nerd word of mouth—i believe it was back in 2010 when i was working under the table at a local comic book store as a young teen!

i guess you could say my first fandom experience was with DC comics, pre-new 52 reboot. i was really into it on my own before joining tumblr so it was amaaazing to explore all of the fan content and finally connect with other people about an interest that was pretty solitary for me before that. the series “young justice” airing on cartoon network around that time helped expose a lot of new fans to the DC universe too! that was such a fun show. and i’m realizing now that the anon i replied to before this one asked about PAST fictional crushes of mine, and i totally fumbled on answering—i would have taken a god damn bullet for wally west during this era. i probably still would!

DC rebooted their entire comics lineup and retconned and fucked up everything i loved in 2011 and then young justice was cancelled not long after so that was kind of that for me. i became a generic superwholock shitposter for a while, then the homestuck era began :)

these days i still get hyperfixated on media but i feel like fandom has diminished a bit in that there aren’t tons and tons of people online with the same brainrot who want to gnash teeth and howl at the moon with me. maybe i’m missing out because i didn’t join twitter? but getting into gideon the ninth/the locked tomb has been really fun for me the last few weeks because there’s so much good art, fic, and engagement on here for it :)

as far as how life has changed—basically i just, grew up! i finished school, went to college in vermont. my mom passed away. came home and have been working random jobs. i live with my partner in a very small studio and really miss having a piano. but i still practice singing and mess around on my baritone uke. i’m 26 now, very much feeling like i’m in a waiting period before my real life starts. i wonder what will happen! :)

[hms-no-fun]

i both really wish (and dont wish) cohost had a similar ask system to tumblr because im 300% more comfortable on that website than this one but ive had this particular burning question since i binge read godfeels during a covid ridden fugue

The more general version of this question is: how has optiministDuelist been involved in the writing of godfeels 3.1? (or even the future parts you're working on, if you can do so without spoilers)

The more specific version that makes this a question better suited towards you rather than shooting the question towards optimisticDuelist, and is rather a series of questions extrapolating on the first one is: why did you involve them? are they helping you write dirk or jake? are they providing input/advice? and that goes towards other people you've had help with the project too, if they're comfortable with being spoken about - i was just a fan of od's analyses and was surprised to see his name attached to godfeels! in fact im so curious about the nature/process of collaboration in godfeels it seems reductive to even try to condense it into questions that would be easier/faster to answer, in that i fear that what i put in will be what i get out, and that logically it's silly of me to bank on the fact that you might go more in depth than how these questions may imply on first glance. i fear my words make no sense and rather instill anxiety into the reader. anyway these are more like guidelines for something i was hoping you could talk about

oooooo this is a good one! i've written a fair amount about my collaborations in the past. here's a post where i talk about working with taz on chapter 8.2. here's a post where i talk about working with janet girlpillz on chapter 8.6. and here's a post where i talk about working with julia on the nsfw interlude 'stomach'! and then for bonus points, here's a piece my gf zoe wrote about working with me on the first official godfeels art in chapter 7.

but you want more, so here's more.

to start with, taz and i have been friends for some years now! back in early 2019 i was on the hbomberguy donkey kong 64 stream where i (briefly) tried to defend homestuck, which i guess gained me some form of notoriety/infamy. i can't remember if it was taz or kate who reached out to me first but i know taz liked my stuff (and i liked his!). then kate had me on pgen, i joined the pgen server, we all started gaming together and talking about homestuck in group chats. this period, pretty much through the entirety of 2019, is when i went from feeling like i had zero grasp on homestuck to becoming cohost of an at-the-time popular homestuck theory podcast! it's funny going back to my first appearance on pgen because you can tell i was so in over my head. i couldn't remember the names of the hiveswap trolls and still didn't even really know all the homestuck trolls by name. AND I OPTED OUT OF TALKING ABOUT VRISREZI LMAO. oh how turned the tables did the tables did turn

[[[oh god i just realized the pgen website expired and i'm not sure if the eps are still up anywhere... i should talk to kate about that lmao]]]

anyway, i actually talked to taz a bunch when i was first writing godfeels 1!

shortly after this we all did a stream for the launch of the epilogues with folks from the pgen server as well as hiveswap writer/director aysha u farah. i played gamzee lmao i still have the clown horn app on my phone from that

i guess i don't really know to what extent any of this is common knowledge anymore now that i think about it! this feels sort of superfluous to me but i guess this was FOUR YEARS AGO lmao

early godfeels straight up would not have existed without all these people. i cannot stress enough that literary obsession is a social contagion. i was not born a homestuck, i was made. and i think maybe some of the extremities of gf2 especially feel a little weird or dated these days, because on top of everything else godfeels was responding to it was also responding to the particularly toxic 2019-era vriscourse. so a big part of june's confrontational nature came from me being fucking sick of the baby's-first-conservatism that took root in the wider fandom when us cancelable queers had the audacity to like problematic womens and not apologize for it. i won't say anymore about that because like, whatever, it's all dead and buried now even if the ghost lingers. that ghost will have its day eventually! but not anytime soon.

ANYWAY, so, going back to the beginning even though i wrote godfeels alone, it came about in a context of lengthy conversations with other homestuck theorists. so when gf3 started to blow up in scale and become less about my trauma specifically, it made a lot of sense to broaden my horizons and get some new blood into the mix. the posts i linked at the start will fill in a bunch of gaps for you there, i think. it’s worth noting that a bunch of us already had a history of at least attempting to collaborate. we had a thing building for a while like a visual novel with one choice that was basically, what if we wrote every possible version of “transgender john” and just had them all together as branching paths. this was before some of the broader fandom really dug their heels in on the reactionary transphobia, after which point i at least lost some of my taste for that project. maybe we could come back to it someday, we wrote some cool stuff for that...

as far as my collaborative philosophy goes, idk. i first started writing fiction on the zeldapower forums in the early 2000s and developed a thick skin for critique pretty fast as a result. i wrote and rewrote constantly, shared what i could with friends and talked about plot/story/character ideas with them. when i realized in year two that writing school had nothing to offer me, i transferred to film. but i did so explicitly not wanting to be a director or writer or anyone above the line, really, because i didn't know what i wanted to make or even if i wanted to make something of my own. what i wanted was to help other people realize their own visions and see how they did it. so that's how i ended up working grip/electric in the oklahoma film industry, because it turns out all it really takes to get your foot in the door is to lose the ego and make yourself useful. it helps that i am cursed with constant psychological awareness of absolutely everything in my vicinity at all times, so i gained a reputation for being practically psychic the way i could know exactly what my bosses wanted lighting-wise before they even said anything.

i miss that job tbh. i loved the people, i felt more physically and psychologically fulfilled than at any job i've ever had. oklahoma has a relatively small film scene so it wasn't long before i was on a first name basis with most everyone working on my side of the state. when a crew is all on the same page, man, there's nothing like it. not every set can or should be like this, but some of my favorite experiences were on sets where it felt like everyone was the director. the director had their own vision but they knew how to adapt it to the location, to the ideas of technicians and craftspeople who had their own insights. a good director knows how to let their collaborators take ownership of the work, even when they reject their suggestions! i loved film work and i think about getting back to it sometimes. problem is it's extraordinarily physically demanding work and it leaves no time for anything else. 12 hour days five days a week minimum. i quit because i wanted to focus on video essays, one thing led to another, now we're here and homestuck changed my life lmao

so that's where i come from as writer. i have very strong opinions about my work and what it means and what it needs to do, but i try very hard not to have an ego about it.

the way we work together is pretty simple. when i finish the first draft of a chapter i’ll post it to the work server, and then folks will leave comments. but also, every member of the team has their own little corner of godfeels that they’ve adopted. taz is the dirkjake whisperer, julia is the queen of dana and the upsilons, etc. so when i write these characters i’ll ask for their insight, and invite them to modify or add to the scene as they see fit. sometimes this means prose, sometimes this means dialogue. our understanding is that nothing goes in the final published work without my approval, but that also that nothing is entirely off the table until we’ve had a conversation about it.

i get a lot of my storytelling philosophy from the tv show LOST, where every question was introduced with an explanation in mind but with the caveat that those explanations only remained true until the writers came up with something better. this gets back to something i said yesterday about needing a story to be dynamic and not planning things out too much in advance. for more detailed explanations, here’s a post i wrote about my hooks & hats philosophy, and then here’s another post about my process in general. but basically, i have this massive web of interconnected plotpoints going out very far into the future right? so when someone makes a suggestion i know exactly how possible it is to fit within that framework. i know how much information about any given hook has been introduced, so i know whether one explanation has been seeded too thoroughly to be changed.

but the flipside of that is that now my collaborators are inventing OCs! taz created a fantastic character named xifus that i can’t wait to write more of in 3.2A. we talk about this setting all the time, we talk about what makes sense for it, what would be cool, what mistakes would absolutely RUIN IT, how we can avoid the mistakes of our predecessors, all that fun stuff.

collaboration is all about honesty. godfeels has become what it is because we’re all fans both of homestuck, of anime, of broader culture... and of godfeels. my dirty secret is that i love writing godfeels because i’m its biggest fan. it frequently does not FEEL like i am composing this story, but rather that it is just happening to me. always i am wrangling cats in this petting zoo. i don’t want to be making this thing for the rest of my life but also this story is SO COOL and we are all chomping at the fucking bit to get to the upsilons and so much other shit besides. is that egomaniacal? idk. i think the idea that you’re supposed to be neutral leaning negative on your own work is kinda bullshit. but also, i don’t see the creation of art as bound to suffering or even being a process that requires much expertise. writing isn’t magic, even if it can feel that way sometimes.

i talk a lot about my work and how i write because i want to help demystify the process and try to show that it’s a learnable craft same as anything else. imo the preponderance of mediocre-to-great artists is not proof of Exceptional People but rather that it’s actually dirt simple to become a mediocre-to-great artist. all you need is time and money and access to the right tools! which is why so many mediocre artists are the rich failsons of killfactory millionaires. which is why every artist should be pro student debt relief, pro public transit, pro affordable housing, pro welfare, pro socialized medicine, pro deprivatizing mass media, and pro wide-ranging government arts funding. our nightmare neoliberal media landscape is the result of decades of making the creation of art & culture economically inaccessible to the working class, hence everything being set in rich suburbs with giant houses, hence the inescapability of pro-capitalist pro-nationalist messaging, hence the refusal of all national media to talk to trans people about trans issues, because only the middle and upper classes get to touch the levers of public perception and they have a direct economic incentive to convince the working class that they are middle class.

the notion that this stuff is at all mysterious or naturally the purview of those who can afford expensive degrees is just the narrative they sell to working people to cover up the fact that once you ascend past a certain income bracket, absolutely everything is just nepotism. it’s all just rich guys giving their rich friends and their rich friends’ stupid fucking libertarian manchildren high paying jobs forever. that’s why they never go away, that’s why they always fail up, that’s why trans women and queer people can get bullied off the face of the internet for half-joking that a fictional woman who did a murder was blameless in her crimes while grifters who moonlight at raytheon can weather blow after blow and stir the pot and solicit donations they don’t need and never disappear no matter how hated they are, because they HAVE money and they HAVE security so none of this shit is a real threat to anything besides their shallow fucking egos. which, you know, to be fair, threatening a rich person’s ego is basically the same thing as killing a man in cold blood, so who can say what is wrong or right?

there’s obviously a lot of complicating factors to the anticapitalist yarn i’ve spun here, but that’s how i see it. the rich want to own culture, they commodify it through copyright and box it up and insist that we are trespassers if we try to reflect those “““properties”““ through ourselves. that is, in part, a big reason why i haven’t given up on godfeels or tried to “file the serial numbers off.” i love this story and i am treating it with as much care as i would something original, because i believe this is art that stands up even with its imperfections and it’s insulting to me that “fanwork” is considered naturally lesser than “original” work when literally everything around us that is owned by disney et al was stolen from what was once an open culture. i reject the enclosure of the commons of our imagination, and andrew hussie themself quite famously said that postcanon homestuck belongs to the most conscientious and invested members of the fandom.

and frankly, even as i wish i COULD make a living off of godfeels alone, i like that my art isn’t particularly monetizable. i like that it is considered low art. i like that many people see it as shameful or a waste of time. i do not want to create a commodity. i do not want to run a business. i do not want to be famous. i want to make art that is freely available that maybe, just maybe, can help a handful of queer people deal with the shit going on in their life and have a good time in the process.

in short: we have no choice but to revolutionize the world.

UHHHH wow that got off the rails at the end there didn’t it? i love giving writing advice hahaha!

[davestriderascend]

the mspa reread, pt 7

after finishing homestuck, ive been working my way progressively through the other content available on the unofficial collection. at this point, all thats left to reconsume is problem sleuth, so ill just recap my feelings about everything else in one singular post here to keep the flow going.

if youre new here, dont even worry about it. the previous parts dont matter, unless you want to read my homestuck recaps.

so heres the recap of the unofficial collection bonus material, ig

Skaianet

i was one of the few people who was there when this came out and managed to read the whole thing before it was shut down. i reread it. no further comments.

Sweet Bro & Hella Jeff, + Team Special Olympics

i am not reading either of these. ive glimpsed more than enough in passing.

The Vigil Prince

i read this but i genuinely have no idea what the fuck its supposed to be???

Ryanquest

probably the shortest thing on the site outside of the vigil prince. its pretty funny ig

Namco High

ive played a decent number of dating sims in my life, and this is my least favorite. i played through davesprites route and then resolutely decided i wouldnt bother playing any more. there are too many fucking characters, there arent really any choices, and the whole thing is just a drag. i tried looking up walkthroughs or playthroughs for the purpose of this recap, but i found nothing bc of how unpopular/how little time this game was available for. i was unfamiliar with all characters except the cousin, teh ship thing i GUESS? nad obviously the hs characters. this did not help anything. i think davesprites route was probably the most interesting one anyway.

Paradox Space

i owned this book, i think. i know when i first read the comic i read the physical version. its in storage now, so i just reread it thru the collection. its still really good. i didnt realize hussie had actually written some of the comics. its funny, and parts of it are really great bonus material or commentary on hs.

summerteen romance surprisingly enough holds up for me as both comedic genius and a surprisingly sincere commentary on hivebent and karkats feelings about it on the meteor trip. mister seven remains my favorite comic, but the last one with vriska and equius was particularly powerful, leaning into a chaotic art style that really emphasized vriskas desperation and incoherence as she lost more and more blood. it made me think of what arkham asylum by grant morrison wanted to be. in general though, there are a lot of genuinely really sweet and funny moments in the comic as a whole. i think i loved it more on my reread than i did on my first read.

Jailbreak

jailbreak is a short comic with one splitting track (with no real consequence) wherein a guy tries to escape from jail with some other guys. if i recall, this one is entirely based off of reader suggestions, so its really random and all over the place. its also very characteristic of hussies earlier era humor.

i remember loving it the first time i read it, but honestly? a lot of the jokes were just kind of distressing on my reread. the dark humor just really isnt my thing anymore i guess. its just kind of... gross now.

still, it has a lot of influence on jokes in homestuck. lord jack's entire jail sequence is like, a direct riff off of this comic. this is also where the what pumpkin joke comes from, and the porno sword. the elf saw a penis and began to cry meme is from this comic.

Bard Quest

hussies incomplete short comic. this is where she really experimented with splitting tracks. however, unlike in homestuck and jailbreak, none of them are resolved, which can result in a clunky narrative where you just have too many damn tabs open.

this is very obviously where the codpiece thing started.

Albums

once youve finished homestuck, hiveswap acts 1 and 2 ost unlock, as well as the friendsim ost, a "grubbles" album based off of the fictional hiveswap band, and the final "beyond canon" album.

Hiveswap OST

im a sucker for the hiveswap soundtrack, absolutely. act one especially is fantastic. but the real highlight of this album is toby and james's track commentary. they bicker back and forth and joke around in the notes, and honestly, its fucking hysterical. act 2 is also good, but it doesnt have any of the commentary.

The Grubbles

its good! it has a nice, consistent sound, and the tracks are pretty solid. its very short, though, and i dont have a ton to say about it.

Friendsim OST

the reality is that everything james roach makes is pretty fire. some of the commentary on this albums really interesting, also. i really like M O I S T and >tfw another james roach song, i think theyre some of the most powerful tracks in terms of atmosphere. however, service car is definitely my favorite. its just so funky.

Beyond Canon

something i think is interesting about beyond canon is that its largely new artists. in all of the previous hs albums, you got the sense that a lot of the musicians knew each other and worked together or listened to each others work, and as a result, you really see them build off of each other. there are so many repeating sounds and motifs, with people constantly remixing each others works, or sticking to similar themes in instruments or sounds- ie; favoring piano in songs about john, whatever. theres a distinct sound to those early albums where you listen and youre like, oh yeah, this is a homestuck album.

i dont get that with beyond canon. it doesnt reference any older stuff. these arent recognizable artists whove influenced homestuck for ages. its all new.

robert j, one of like four returning artists, says this in the track commentary:

about five months ago i was contacted to be a part of the homestuck 2 music team and was told the lowdown: it was a clean slate, and a chance to establish the musical rockbed for homestuck 2 going forward. no quotes of hs1 songs whatsoever, but we'd be making new songs TO quote

which pretty much backs up everything i said. and i get the purpose of something like this, but it does present a challenge for new musicians because theyre working without the same base for nostalgia. the fact that there isnt a ton of really distinct musical diversity in this album, with a lot of it relying on a very electronic sound to the point where i originally thought the album was themed, rather than a supposed new start for this new era of homestuck, also may be challenging when moving forward with new albums.

idk. its a fine album, the songs are fine, but nothing about it really sticks out to me.

Final Thoughts

anyway, all thats left now is to reread problem sleuth, and then i can uninstall this massive fucking thing. i might replay the games, or reread the post canon stuff eventually, but the light is shining at the end of the tunnel at last

[whetthypsycho]

Good morning to my new home on the internet???

Now that I've moved on from the god forsaken bird app for good now, it's time for me to figure out how to make this account feel me and get used to all the unwritten rules of this site.

Also gotta figure out how I'm going to be posting and what. The last time I had a Tumblr account was in highschool and I originally planned on making a webcomic with it.

It was called Prolonging Nothing. It was about three teenage kids accidentally causing, surviving, and preventing (time shenanigans) an end of the world where everything is swallowed by a matterless void.

Obviously I'm not doing that. I can't even remember the plot I'd planned out and I'm not even sure my original account is even anymore to take inspiration from, and even if either of those were true I'm not the same person who came up with those ideas anyways.

So what will I do?

Well, I need somewhere to post my art, and now that this place has once again legalized more sensitive artwork, I'm more comfortable posting here. Obviously I can't go all the way as to draw people engaging in intercourse but I wasn't planning on doing that publicly anyway nor was I really known for it in the first place.

That being said,

If you're familiar with my twitter, you might be aware that I wasn't really posting all that much art in the first place despite labelling myself an artist/creative. This is because I lacked drive. Still do, but I'm hoping that the nostalgia of using this site will help push me back into the groove of it. If it doesn't, well...

So what else will I do?

I'm a little bit shy about my interests, and I don't tend to talk much about them. This has always been true of me. When I was younger I used to be big into things like Homestuck and Doctor Who and Gravity Falls but you wouldn't be able to tell unless you asked me. This was despite the fact that all of my friends at the time would not shut up about them and were frankly a bit obsessed

In other words, I sucked at being a fan of things. I didn't participate in fandoms because it felt weird and unnatural to me and frankly I found it kind of cringe. But a part of me was jealous that people could be that carefree about what they enjoy. That they just ignored how other people saw them and just enjoyed what they wanted to enjoy.

This time, I plan to do that. I plan to be the cringe I used to be jealous of.

I'm an adult, and I've realized I don't need to hold myself to these weird restrictions I placed on myself as a teenager that made me think having fun and getting invested in things was cringe and weird and makes you look bad.

I want to enjoy life, and that means trying to undo all of that weird internalized ableism and misogyny and feelings like I need to cultivate an image to get people to respect me.

It's okay to be cringe.

It's okay to enjoy things.

And it's time I allowed myself to be cringe and enjoy things.

I allowed myself to be who I am once and it made me happier than any other time in my life, what's the worst that could happen by doing it a second time?

So, now what?

Now I see how this experiment pans out. I want to make it work, but the culture on tumblr now is entirely different than the culture on tumblr back then. All these desires could be distorted or altered into new shapes that better reflect the times, and frankly I kind of hope they do at least a little.

But I still want to have fun.

The world is going to hell, the economy is collapsing, people are getting radicalized to the breaking point, and I've got a bunch of unexplained health issues that are causing me a fuck ton of anxiety.

I don't want to live in that world or be stuck thinking about all the terrible things happening around me. Frankly I could get hate crimed tomorrow, or one of my health issues could turn out to be as bad as I'm terrified they actually are, or my entire family could die and my neurodivergent ass gets left to fend for herself with no idea what to do, or worse.

Any number of bad things could happen to me and ruin my life. I don't want to think about it. I just want to be happy while I have the chance to be happy, rather than succumbing to the morose nature of the world that we live in.

So I'm not gonna.

I don't have a plan, but this is a start. I'm gonna blindly take my first steps and see where they land me. If where I am at the end of this path is happier than where it began, I'll call that a success.

Even if the world and I should burn, I should at least get to enjoy it until we flicker out into the great dark unknown once again.

So to the people who stumble upon me while I'm here:

Hello!

[whoiskt]

Evolution of my art. Made this for myself because I wanted to see my own progress but I accidentally just made myself sad with how much of my art I've lost and the years when I hardly drew anything.

2011- One of my first digital art pieces. Redraw of a photo I found on Google. Eyebrow and mouth are immediately off-portion, but as a fully colored piece I think it is pretty good for a beginner. It was really small tho, I didn't understand resolutions yet!

2012- Homestuck phase. A year full of art to choose from, this was one of the last drawings I made that year, and honestly I still think it looks really good. The way I drew eyes back then was totally different.

2013- Supernatural phase. I was doodling a lot on homework and notebooks, but actual finished pieces are hard to find now. I've lost sketchbooks from this era. Perhaps even burned them, haha. This was done on whiteboard.

2014- This self-portrait was my magnum opus at the time, done for art class. There was a level of detailing textures here that I'd never care to revisit and this piece easily could have taken me 50 hours or more to complete. The nose/mouth feels so off to me, now, although I clearly broke my bad habit of drawing small pointed chins with this one. Each year I look at it hanging in my parent's house it makes me cringe more. Charcoal.

2015- Mostly MIA. I have some pen drawings from this time but I thought they were skippable and I only had room for 10 years here. I went to film school so I was focused on that creatively.

2016- Got into watercolor this year. Wasn't done on watercolor paper so it warped a lot. I don't really mind. End of my vanity era. I was in an art class, animation class, and character design class this year. Maybe got a little burnt out on art.

2017- Height of my pen drawing obsession, although most of the drawings I did were at work, and were hung up at work, and may still be there even though I am long gone now? Sorry about the weird crop it was a horizontal piece.

2018- Yes, similar to the previous year, but I see improvement in pen technique. I rarely took time to just sit down and draw other than in-class doodles.

2019- Wedding gift for my sister of her and her husband (although I cropped her out lol). Large watercolor piece where I was rushed and had to finish the background as an abstract fall leaves. I'm still on the fence about it overall.

2020- My digital art renaissance. This was the year I started to really realize I was utterly incompetent at backgrounds.

2021- I was really focused on photography this year, although I did do some sketching here and there. My laptop became mostly unusable for digital rendering so that cut down on my motivation.

2022- I discovered watercolor brushes, my beloved. I closed the door on many of my other creative outlets which seemed to bring back my love, passion, and motivation for drawing again.

Hopefully I can share a 2023 piece with you soon to show my improvements 🤗 I've been sketching a lot like I did back when I was 13 and it feels good!

[doberbutts]

Undertake already was going to be widely popular because it was a game that in its inception already had a gigantic fan base because many of the early fans followed Toby Fox from his work on Homestuck. Homestuck was HUGE, at one point one of the most popular if not THE most popular webcomic out there during its heyday. And while Fox didn't come up with Homestuck itself, he DID put forth a lot of effort into helping Hussie with it, and Hussie was also partially involved with the making of Undertale as the two of them at least *were* friends during that time.

Then you add that as OP said Undertale was 10 bucks and could be played on a toaster if necessary, so not only was there already a gigantic rabid fan base at launch but also this gigantic fanbase could play it regardless of the machine they had.

But wait! There's more! When undertale first released on Steam, it was marked as playable on Mac. It very wasn't. I bought it at launch and the damn thing wouldn't open. I was in art school playing on the school-supplied macbook pro. So I did the only thing I could think of without refunding and negatively impacting an indie creator, and emailed Fox directly based off the email on his website at the time. I asked him if he knew about the glitch preventing the game from opening and if he knew of a workaround. His response was more or less "I told Steam their UI broke it and they wouldn't listen to me, I knew this would happen, sorry about that here's a DRM-free version no problem".

He then announced to his fan base that the Mac version was broken and if anyone bought it not realizing that, to email him and he would do the same. To my knowledge he made good on it for every person who contacted him. He didn't ask me for a receipt. He didn't ask for proof of purchase or proof it wouldn't work. We didn't email back and forth troubleshooting. Simply "sorry, here you go" and a download link that, btw, still works last I checked tho I don't have a Mac anymore and can play it on steam easily with my gaming laptop I've purchased in the mean time.

And also. It was just a really good game, with great sound design, a fun game play loop, and an interesting story that gets more interesting the more you investigate it. Of course it's hugely popular. Fox grew up in the age of cult classics and went "I can do that" and then did it.

But also I think with all of these things going for it, plus the fact that Fox clearly knows how to take care of his fanbase, he would have had to have been *trying to bomb it* for it to fail. And to this day he still holds my respect for making things right immediately.

can i be so honest for a second. with the initial disclaimer of 'undertale is also just a really good game', i cant take anyone seriously who asks why undertale got more popular than like, any triple A game or game that requires a console/beefy computer. undertale was 10$ and could be played easily on my 6 year old apple laptop that used to emit sparks. it was accessible to the most powerful audiences: broke people and teenagers

[the-mspfa-200-favourites-project]

FIRST CONTACT

Welcome to the nightmarish year of 2017, AKA a year with. About 50 Fanadventures to it.

Yeah. You heard me right.

About 50. Fanadventures.

Which is, a lot, and kind of also needs explaining. See, the only thing I can think of that could cause such a rise is A) by this time, the official forums that a lot of these fanadventures would’ve gone to were basically kaput, so basically all of those who would’ve only gone to those forums needed somewhere to put their forum adventure, and HEY! Here’s a cool site!

And. B) There’s a huge RUSH of people now on the site, since this is the only site that’s remotely capable of filling the Homestuck Hole in people’s Hearts.

Not only that, this year’s big Homestuck release is Hiveswap, Act 1, so that also means anybody NEW to the fandom and wishing to see more things might be steered towards MSPFA, where they think hey! When in Rome, Right?

And thereby there’s a new influx of people who CAN favourite fanadventures, thus causing the crushing weight of about 50 fanadventures to be delivered to us today.

Anyways First Contact is like, a non-MSPA? So forget all that MSPA-focused stuff I was saying. Another thing I want to bring up is that usually the spiel on the front pages are like. “Hey don’t worry the art gets better.” And I wonder…why is it never “Hey Don’t Worry The Writing Gets Better.” Almost as if people think the art trumps the writing? Or maybe I’m just being a mean, weird pedant. Probably the latter.

Oh no. The “Strip For Money” Audience is back for this one. I thought they were be doomed, banished to their own little area, but sadly, I guess they can re-appear at any time. Though, it’s always a good sign when the author basically goes “no.” to that kind of suggestion.

Okay. This one’s very charming. I’m being charmed right now. Also, I like how certain characters are more accommodating to the commands than others, that’s a neat touch :3

I just realized the reason why I probably like this one so much is like. It’s basically what SuperEgo would be like if it was like. Lighter in atmosphere? A little more Sci-Fi, a little less Horror? Maybe that’s because the plot beat “bunch of characters in an unknown place, nobody knows anything, they all meet up in pairs, vague plot in background” is just. A Pattern. But still. These are my notes, and this is what I’m noting in my head, so better note it down.

OH. Okay. So. Go read this. Go read this right now. I have never heard of First Contact. It’s really good. It’s really, really good. As good as Oceanfalls or Superego? No. But it’s very good at what it wants to do and sets out to do and I like what it wants to do and sets out to do, and that’s enough. In other words, I’m INVESTED, BABY! Anyways.

[ottiliere]

Ok so, 2 things

1. Oh? System Dirks are coming in here to show their appreciation? Because ours also DEVOURS this AU. It is genuinely so relatable and cathartic. When people don't think sharing vent art is good, I point at this AU and how it shows the ugly side of recovery so perfectly.

2. I was idly scrolling through the JTHM tag as I do frequently and got such intense whiplash seeing your recent post about asks in it. Like. Complete opposite side of our dash radar. What is this I hear about a JTHM ask?? I am fascinated already I font care if it's related to Dirk or not I just genuinely would love to hear your thoughts on it.

1) pulling all the dirks who follow me in for a hug through the walls of my plastic isolation bubble. it really makes me so happy to hear this. I can't give an extended answer to this point because I spent so much time talking about the next one but I hope you feel the mind waves of love I am bombarding you with.

2) The ask I got was in fact about Dirk, but as I'm drafting it it is...drifting...very much...into being about JTHM. "hear my thoughts on it" … this would be nothing shorter than a dissertation. I think about JTHM very often. I don't think it's possible for me to be concise about this in any sense of the word.

JTHM, to me, is one of the formative experiences that made me who I am. It is one of my favorite pieces of fiction ever made, that I have ever engaged with, and I know for a fact I will struggle to find something that is told in such a captivating way from an author with such an open soul. I discovered fanart of it by chance on DeviantArt, and, being naturally drawn towards edgier themes, searched everywhere on the internet until I found it uploaded onto some woman's livejournal account. I was obsessed with JTHM for a very, very long time. I reread it periodically, once or twice a year, and I have been doing this since I was 12. It has heavily influecned the way I go about making art and telling stories and engaging with everything I watch or read or what have you.

Everything about this comic blew my mind as a child, artistically absolutely, thematically especially. The narrative style that is glib with occasional moments of morose clarity that never lasts too long... we will never see anything like the suicide scene in anything else ever written again, of that I'm sure. It is unique in its existence. once you read that it unlocks something in your brain and you just can't go back. Multiplied by a million if you read it at a formative age you weren't really supposed to be reading it. Like homestuck.

Nny... he is the base of the character trope I always return to in fiction, usually unconsciously. I didn't realize that what I was doing to dirk mirrored nny until some friends pointed it out... it is a fascinating phenomenon. He is the first of his kind I have ever encountered in anything, ever. Blatantly unwell, the focus of a story that isn't necessarily slotting him into an antagonistic role. Like, he's the protagonist who I guess is also the antagonist but he's also a human. He's this guy with severe mental illness who is lead around like a puppet on strings first by the society that torments him for existing and then by the creature living in his walls that steals his memory and cognitive ability and manipulates him into doing his bidding. I had never seen that before? Usually I am not one for "made mentally ill by inorganic sources" trope, but the fact that it's stated in the comic that he was already seriously unwell before he became a flusher... it's just sad. He is not a good person, but his life is inherently tragic and the outcome of a society that does not care for him, or people like him, at all. forgive me for the comparison, but he is like the joker 2019. I mean this in a way that I love joker 2019. if you didn't like joker, well. sorry. but it's true.

This ties in, obviously, with the way that Jhonen goes about fiction: he does whatever he wants, to an extent. I have recently very closely befriended some individuals and while pondering how we were meshing so well on the creative side of htings, it eventually came to light that the singlemost defining moment in our lives was how we all read JTHM at a very young age. And it is insane, stepping back and looking at all of our narrative and art styles and seeing that the similarities we've all evolved independently stemmed from JTHM, in addition to our view of what it's like to be an artist. we are but jhonen's warriors in a world that is currently characterized by a very homogenized mixture of “art”. I mean, just look at the current box office trend. look at the “genre” that is marvel movies. not that I don’t enjoy marvel movies, I DO like them, my loki phase was strong and hard, but objectively... these things are what they are: mass-produced consumables. there is a reason people got excited when it was announced that Cronenberg was making a new film (which was awesome btw); art is dying. milquetoast narratives, stories afraid to push boundaries and be "weird", authors not trusting the audience to pick up on their intended message so instead of leaving it just a little ambiguous, they must instead spoonfeed it to every reader... There is some equation of what it means to make art and how it equates with your moral standing; my stance has always aligned with dear Jhonen's.

in a way my view of the world is the direct inverse of nny's; I truly believe in the best of people, I love humanity, I love the world and I am fundamentally incapable of being outwardly cruel towards others. my natural setting is to logically empathize, to put myself in the shoes of other people and look at their life the way they're living it. there is nothing more important to me than showing unconditional positive regard towards others. I have not always been this way. I used to foster great amounts of animosity in my heart for the things that have been done to me. I used to be an abjectly miserable person, I used to be violently suicidal every day for years and years and years etc. now though... I don't know how to describe it. something alights upon you after vast quantities of self-reflection, detached from the scrying eyes of swathes of people, of strangers, fandom most relevantly but I do also mean society as a whole. at this point in my life there is nothing more important to me than being a nice person, and helping others in what ways I can. if that's through posting raw depictions of mental illness, I will happily do so. I didn't realize that people didn't KNOW they can do this, and it is heartwarming that I can touch people in such a way even parasocially. I have worked on myself, I love people and I love when people are weird and their true creative selves because that is what the world needs in this day and age. art is dying. If you let bitterness into your heart it will consume you. it will cloud your judgment and prevent you from making a true connection to the medium, it will block you from making what you REALLY want to make. It will poison how you interact with other humans on a fundamental level, if you are constantly walking into interactions suspecting the worst intentions.

it almost seems like critical thinking is a dying skill...or, at least, it is when it comes to interacting with art and not relying on other people to tell you what to think. but even still I still do not hold ire towards those who seek me harm for what I make. I do not answer many of the asks I get on purpose, the death threats, etc... because these people are hurting in a multitude of ways, and they have not yet learned how to cope with their own pain. You could call being an optimist a character flaw, maybe it is. I don't know. That is, for better or worse, the epitome of what I am: an unrelenting pollyanna who believes in the best of people and the potential they have to heal. The one anon hate I got about the AU months ago that I actually deigned with an answer; they eventually came off anon and admitted they were just frustrated they didn't know how to properly use tumblr's UI to filter me off their dashboard and displaced their emotions onto me. They apologized. Such is life. We are all humans inhabiting this great big earth and I love to love people. contrary to what I depict in my art, I am a very happy person. I love my friends and I'm currently in a very good life situation with occasional downfalls and eventual upturns. Jhonen, I know, as stated in the second interview image, was often like this as well. nny was a speakerphone for little observations about life and pessimism; he was a character, a means to tell a story.

so ya I guess those are some of my thoughts about JTHM. not all of them though. here’s some nny

[ivyalive]

person things

Twitter is like, busy burning to the ground or whatever I guess, right? I just realize that my Tumblr currently is all business/art posts and that feels weird for Tumblr. Tumblr was my first big social, I think, after dA. I used it for years, a lot as an artist drawing homestuck and my ocs, but also doing sims. It's kind of a place near and dear to my heart, but I've changed so much since then. I've always liked how Tumblr allows for you to know a person in a way that Twitter never really allows for.

I just wanna say hi, basically. I hope Tumblr has a resurgence in a meaningful way because I've always liked the presentation here, it was just so dead for ages, I lost so many friends here. I hope to make some new ones.

Anyways, just hi, and never be afraid to reach out if y'all have any questions or just wanna shoot the shit on some dumb thing. I don't have the time anymore to respond to "hi" messages or anything, but I do love getting to know y'all. ♥

[drchucktingle]

first of all thank you to buckaroos @headspace-hotel @dduane and @tkingfisher for their kindness and standing up for my way. LOVE IS REAL and your words have proven this to me today. i genuinely appreciate it very much.

i noticed this post float by and thought i should trot on over to say a QUICK SOMETHING so here goes

it is true i have addressed this many times and the BASIC POINT is that i do not like this comparison because i have had encounters with those who make something called HIVESWAP (which is connected to HOMESTUCK in some way and honestly i still do not really understand what EITHER of these things are just that they are some of the same folks). what i DO know is that these encounters have not been good.

usually when i talk about this i delete post because i do not want to start gossip or have a CALL OUT POST WAY. it is not my intent to make this into some big public battle, but it keeps coming up so i will say what i can and try to leave this one up

FOR THE RECORD i have never met andrew hussie but from my understanding his connection to way of hiveswap is tangental. i do not know if he is a kind buckaroo or a scoundrel. i really have no idea but since we have not met i will say that i have no ill will in this way

the folks of hiveswap are another story (i should also say there that i am only comfortable reposting these screenshots because they are all public. i am not leaking some private conversation these posts are just sitting around online still)

hiveswap folks have said terrible things to and about chuck. they have been ableist and they have been biphobic. they have been gatekeepers who said my autism was fake and that me saying 'bi is valid' is a joke.

this second one is saying that buckaroos need to know the history of every person in each gif they repost? i guess? i do not even understand this trot but i do understand the darkness of equating THAT with saying 'bi is valid'

long ago these folks asked to make a video game with the tingleverse and i said okay, then they pretty much disappeared. over time i have realized my first clue that something was amiss should have been the fact that i am a professional writer and SOMEONE ELSE (one of the folks above) was brought in to write this game. what this says to me is that while intentions might have been good at the time, subconsciously i was absolutely not taken seriously as an artist and seen as a joke or a meme or some member of whatever internet forums they trot around on. imagine asking stephen king to make a game and then not at least ASKING him to write it, or jordan peele, or junji ito.

i make real, important, valid art worthy of consideration. i am sincere. i put my whole heart into everything i create. i am not a meme or a character or a joke.

i am a person.

so every time this andrew hussie connection comes up online and i see it i am faced with all of these feelings about how these people treated me. i think about the way they invalidated my neurodivergence and queerness. but what is most troubling is that i am faced with questions of WHETHER OR NOT TO EVEN ADDRESS IT.

i did not want to write this post this morning. i did not want to consider whether or not i should defend myself and stand up to gatekeepers or just let it trot on because i really really really am not trying to start a dang fight with these folks. i have better trots to trot and i am sure they do to.

so hopefully for the last time (unless i feel dang strange and delete) i would appreciate if buckaroos could retire this little andrew hussie theory

This isnt a conspiracy Chuck Tingle is literally, without hyperbole, the pen name of sir Andrew Hussie, the author of Homestuck. Something wild for you to keep in mind as you read this and just so you know hes not only read Harry Potter but done a whole parody draw over of the first book in the past.

Why is there such an obsession with insisting that Chuck Tingle is the alter ego of [existing well known writer] instead of his own person

[patchdotexe]

the KG masterpost

aka "icarus and pat collectively lose their minds"

the core concept here is basically like. what if all the AUs of somebody were literally the same person? in the sense of like... you bump into somebody in one universe, hop to the next one over, and when you find them again they recognize you even though there's no way you met before-- or you're just minding your own business when somebody runs up and claims to know you and, when you press them on it, they get embarrassed and say "sorry, i mixed ya up with the other you". slightly different appearances, vastly different backstories, different nicknames, but still the same person.

side effects of existing like that: easily overstimulated, memory constantly scrambled because of remembering Literally Everything From Every Version Of Themself, extremely confusing to be around. depending on the setting, either they mask it or they just don't give a shit because This Is Already So Goddamn Weird

tl;dr: local teenager breaks reality and now exists in several dimensions at once. this is a problem. (or, we tried to make all of our old rp self-inserts canonically the same character, ran into Several Issues with logistics, and somehow exploding the fabric of spacetime was the best solution we could think of)

(individual KGs in vague chronological order under the cut because this post is MASSIVE)

KG / PRIME: human, usually. (sometimes a catgirl?) they/he/she. the "original" KG, template for all the others, and the core of this mess. goofball with phenomenal cosmic power. got isekai'd into the original version of our long-running RP multiverse and then oops! all KGs! a side-effect of the Isekai Incident is that Prime kinda is just vibing somewhere outside of reality and is basically just in noncanon scenarios for comedy reasons, which they are very aware of. they're the reason why the other KGs are fourth-wall aware because they're kinda clipping through it and just have to deal with that. does not like shoes because they're hard to draw

SELF: Persona 3! she/her, is so old that all of my art of her was in mspaint. is the reason for this mess because initially i didn't make any distinction between Self, Plus/Minus, kh!Katie, and Prime despite them all having different backstories and powersets. persona was Nekomata i think? the "SI" literally stands for "Self-Insert", so uh.. she's Self now. this is the first time i ever drew her in a reasonable outfit. was, unfortunately, a Fucking Weeb because i was 13. there's info on her out there somewhere but i don't want to look for it or else i'll explode

PLUS and MINUS: Mega Man Star Force! she/her (individual), they/them (plural). basically "what if Gemini Spark was me" except.. i didn't know i was a system yet.. so this specific iteration of KG is very weird to look back on lmao. absolutely horrible plural rep but they were somehow instrumental in me figuring myself out so they get one (1) rights. there's also a version that has a fan FM-ian partner instead but then they got reworked into an unrelated oc. has lightning powers even when not wavechanged i think? Plus is harmless, Minus is teenage angst and a boatload of trauma incarnate

kaoticGenome: homestuck! human, she/her. breaks the mold and has different initials (not counting chumhandle)! originally thought her last name was Grant but it got revealed to be something else when she learned about her session's ectobiology stuff. which included "one of the genetic samples for her and her brother was the past self of the first guardian before he turned himself into a FG", it was ~2010, it was a Whole Thing, she's very disappointed that she didn't "inherit" any powers from it (and then i realized she's biologically related to Ninten and had a 404 error). was the Scribe of Dawn before we knew what the canon classpects were, probably a Heart player nowadays. very good at being the goofball but was usually the straight man. was like the only KL-era KG that wasn't interchangeable with the others but HAHA NOT FOR LONG

KATIE: Kingdom Hearts! human, she/they/he. this design was "ica wanted to draw a smash sona that's 'KG but ica's mains put together' like how Spark is pat's mains put together" and then i realized the sora half of the equation is Basically the Kingdom Hearts KG that never got a unique design so uhh. she's them now! design liable to change. is the weird outlier of "doesn't have a unique nickname" because even Katie A. has her chumhandle, but also her Nobody is named Teixak so uhhhhhh. speaking of, she kinda got upstaged by her Nobody lmao. keyblade wielder solely because i was playing Days, had a crush on Roxas (i was 13).

LANDIA: Minecraft! catgirl, they/he? last of the "original era" but they predated us knowing minecraft storytelling was a thing so they didn't have anything going for them besides shitposts until we brought him back a literal decade later. kinda part of their own sub-group of KGs because there's like 3 Landias running around. predates the existence of dogs. leans hard into being a comic relief background character. currently planning to fling themself into the deep dark for fun and profit (there will be no fun and no profit). resident self-proclaimed memelord

FOXCAT: Sonic! Outsider foxcat, she/they. shapeshifter and realitywarper due to being an entity from another dimension masquerading as a normal mobian. has made it her life mission to bother as many au Tailses as she can (mostly bothers T1 because he's Their Best Friend). has Klonoa's hat because Zephyr exists. may or may not know blood magic because of a one-off joke. is difficult to place chronologically because this design is new but got retconned into taking the place of proto-SK in a specific RP arc, which KINDA makes her the first KG (besides Prime) but not really..??

KAY GEE: Stickmin! they/them, first fully "new" KG after establishing the bizarre convoluted multiverse stuff. older sibling to a CCC agent while also being somewhat on the run from the CCC itself because of having similar time anomaly / "retry" powers as Henry. does not take things seriously at all because of just being able to rewind and try again. keeps getting reminded their actions do in fact have consequences. is in SO much trouble

ZEPHYR: Klonoa! four-eared cabbit, she/her, lovable pest. grew up in breezegale as one of the various phantomilians you can rescue. she's friends with Klonoa and causes problems on purpose because it's funny. Dream Traveler status debatable. also difficult to place chronologically because despite being VERY old she got retconned into being part of this mess wayyyyy later (which is why she has a fully unique name). currently Fucking Haunting Me because tying her in to the KGs ended up being an accidental explanation for Foxcat's hat and then i went on an unhinged rant and started this masterpost

..this isn't even all of them, i just hit image limit

[peevishpants]

Woahhhh your art is so good!!!! I adore how you use colours sm!! Could I ask if you have any advice on environment design? I love how you draw backgrounds and I've always wanted to learn more about coming up with settings for a story ~Aqua

Thank you!!! :D

I get this question pretty often and never really know what to say - there's so many avenues of advice to give, and difficult to tailor it in an AOE (area of effect? howdy ya do gamers im a bit of a gamer myself please believe me) format. Be aware that my "advice" may not be the thing you need to hear or apply right now, so maybe just store it away in the back of your brain for a while, or just discard it if you feel like you're past that point or moving in a complete different direction with your current art level.

But here we go, a little tidbit about environment design for story-telling (sorry long post):

A game I like to play with myself is "what if X... but Y". Like madlibs - what if [bookshelf] ... but it's [meat]. (I'm sitting beside my bookshelf and I just ate haha). Ok, now let's answer that - why would there be a bookshelf of meat? Maybe I'm a nerdy butcher, who collects exotic meat samples. Maybe the meats are monstrous and I'm a demon taxonomist. But meat decays so quickly! How would I keep them? Maybe I preserve them with a magic balm, or my bookshelf is so high tech it keeps the collection of meats cold through uhhhhhh cryo.... cryo uhhhh technology. Maybe I'm a meat wizard and these meat slabs carry runes that I can read and use to do ... Weird Meat Magic. Maybe I have a magical BBQ and I need to grill selected meats to release their Magic Juices. OH, FIRE! What if one day, my house gets set on fire (malevolent spirit? stupid accident?) and my bookshelf full of meats all gets cooked at once, releasing a Pandora's Box swarm of magical atrocities into the world? And now it's my mission to hunt them all down, butcher knife and tongs in hand. Actually wait this is a banger idea for both a Yan NPC AAAAAAAAAAAAAAND a DND character LMAO

But with this utterly random framework, we've already set down a couple world and story design beats to riff off of - there's Meat based Magic, there might be an Enemy somewhere who hates me and my meats, Meat = Jail for Evil Demons and I was a sort of prison warden? Now I have to work in a scene where I say "my MEAT IS HUGE" or "I've FINALLY BEATEN... MY MEATS". I want to design what my meat bookshelf looks like, and how it preserves the meats - different kinds of compartments for different kinds of meat! a special section for seafood? - my home and how the evil spirit got into it to commit arson, and what kind of person would live in a home like that. That's when worldly knowledge and research come in - I'd want to research real cryoprotective tech to help design the bookshelf, maybe base the meat demon designs off of... uh... I dunno? Metallica/KISS facepaint patterns? Rorschach test patterns?

Two skills help a lot in the process of grabbing idea threads and developing them: 1. Expanding your mental library of Concepts and Things and 2. Just being Curious about the world! Constantly asking questions and making little headcanons and never shutting up. Think of it as trying to entertain yourself!

Anyway this is just one quick way to get the brain rolling on world design! Sometimes you'll play "what if X... but Y" and come to a dead-end or realize you've just re-made homestuck (valid), so just try again with another set of concepts, or pick a train of thought you liked from your first game and expand on that. And of course you can always go back and change your ideas - like, maybe instead of a meat bookshelf I think a seed bookshelf would be cooler. I dunno. The point is to fully explore your ideas and through that, assign meaning to them so that they are compelling.

So tldr: read and learn things to expand your knowledge base, be curious, and try to connect cool visuals with a clear reason for their existence.