#ill probably be able to draw some things for the backlog

[daily-riseleo]

[day 18]: Trying something new

this is my first time drawing a pose like this n im pretty happy w/it

[theindiscreetbookworm]

I've had anxiety since before I knew what that was (and it was the 90s so a quiet and careful child was a good child, never mind the reason). I fell in love with stories as a way to escape, at first. I think I probably dissociated for a bunch of my childhood and adolescence.

Stories were my favourite way to experience emotions. When I figured out what being a fan of something was (far later than you'd think), I dove in head first and didn't look back. There's probably more than a decade of evidence of that right here.

Stories climbed into my chest and ached in the most beautiful, wonderful way. Somewhere along the way, though, the edges of the stories got sharper, or maybe the cavity inside my chest got smaller. It started hurting in a bad way, made my head swim and made me dizzy and sick. I started collecting scars, from breakups and failures and letdowns, and they made me afraid to care too much.

2017 may have been the real juncture, although I can't be sure. I used to spend all my time on tumblr and I stopped, really slowly, but surely. I stopped engaging with media I was really interested in; I never watched a bunch of shows that I know I would've liked. I retreated to podcasts and YouTube, and things that were interesting but not fascinating. (Nothing wrong with podcasts and YouTube, I still like them!)

I've been in therapy a long time, the better part of the last decade. It's been great. I've been with my current therapist for 5 years and learned more in long form therapy than I ever thought possible. We got me out of my head, where my anxiety has always lived. (I say that, but I'm still in my head, just less than I was.) I was on the verge of "graduating" therapy. And then new physical symptoms cropped up.

I couldn't breathe. At first, whenever I was a bit anxious. It started happening more and more, culminating in a 10 day period where I couldn't draw a full breath at all. I went to my doctor. Chest x-ray came back clean, as did blood work. We concluded that it must be my anxiety.

I've been afraid of meds for a long time. I can't articulate why exactly very well, but I'm afraid of losing my control of my own body and mind. Of feeling a way I don't want to and not being able to do anything about it. (I am aware of the inconsistencies of that and having a mental illness, yes.) But I didn't know what else to do.

Long story short, I got a psychiatrist for the first time in my life, brand new meds, and a trial period. It's not even a month in, and changes have been gradual. Until I watched Our Flag Means Death.

I'm sure it could've been anything. There's a miles long backlog of shows I will love that I couldn't bear to care about. But I picked OFMD. Watched it in two sessions, the first 4 episodes and then, a week and a half later, the other 6. And my blood is alight.

I thought I'd lost this feeling for good. I want to write, and read (stopped reading books and fanfic too when everything else stopped). I want to engage and ponder and yell all of it from the rooftops. I want to love OFMD, and everything, openly and unabashedly. I care so goddamn much. And it aches. And it feels incredible.

I'm not afraid anymore, of almost anything. I hadn't realized that had happened. This seems small and silly but it feels like my life has been changed. I feel like I've fallen in love. I'm not gonna say I didn't know how bad it had gotten, because I did on some level. I just thought those feelings were over for me. Therapy took away the terror I lived in every day. But I think medication has given me the light back.

[happikattwuzheere]

im being deeply unproductive today, but in my defense i got a set of several complex pictures for the video project done last night, and i still have to actually assemble the files for editing and ill get to that but first let’s bust through some more of this backlog of deer boy au sketches and talk about ronan this time 

this is a LONG one probably, and also, yknow, because its ronan and esp because as you may have noticed he’s not exactly human in this au, there’s gonna be some discussion here of good ole ronan lynch angst-with-regards-to-his-existence-and-religion, so like, heads up there? and. discussion of like. some very sad things, but very very briefly. less discussion and more mention of them. look its ronan idk what to tell you aside from i have at least managed to avoid mentioning kavinsky for now so its not as bad as it could be anyway

(this is probably extremely rambly even for me, im so sorry. i can explain any number of things mentioned here in more detail if anyone would like) 

SO. ronan’s a cambion, at least by dnd terminology, idk how that term gets used in other contexts but the point here is he’s half-human and half-demon, BUT, v important to explain, even tho the characters don’t initially know this and it’s something they work out over time, demons are not necessarily devils; or, more accurately, there’s a category of creature that is not a fey but is somewhat fey-adjacent, follows their own very different set of rules to fey law and are reliant on ley lines in ways similar to a lot of fey beings and spaces, and that category of creatures was granted the name “demons” because that word already exists and this type of creature’s so misunderstood that people mistook them for devils. Whether the biblical demon also exists in this au i havent decided on and dont much plan to because its not super relevant 

BUT. taking inspiration from the horrible bee from canon, demons are, essentially, beings that are created due to a high degree of tragedy on a ley line, and the rules they operate by as well as their motivations are determined by the shape of that tragedy which created them. for example: the hornet demon from the books would be an example of what happens due to violence and bloodshed; it was born of blood shed in anger and life wrongly taken and as a result it exists only to destroy. however, not all demons are evil. example: take, say, a succubus (no stay with me hold on), like the one that niall lynch hooked up with made a deal with over in ireland one day. 

a succubus in this sense is a demon which is born of miscarriage; and they’re Like That because there, the tragedy is not one of destruction, but of lost potential and a life that never came to be. so a succubus is driven to make up for that lost potential in the form of, yknow, making another baby happen, 

and its that power of potential that is also why ronan’s got power over dreams still, it’s aaaall about creation and potential. and his mother, who he never actually met, she hecked off but niall kept the baby, wasn’t evil. just. operating on a different morality system but one which had no interest in hurting anybody. she’s still kicking around in ireland somewhere

RONAN meanwhile still has his two brothers, haven’t figured out yet if matthew’s still a dream thing or not, but. niall never got around to explaining how the demon thing worked before dying because it’s niall he’s terrible at explaining things. but ronan started being able to shapeshift p young--he’s got a fully human form, a fully demonic form, and a form that’s generally called hybrid but really he can shift to anywhere along the spectrum or just pop the wings or the tail out etc etc etc. his brothers both know ronan’s not human, its a family secret, its all chill, except then one day ronan shifts out the wings to help save a baby bird that fell out of a tree and someone outside the family sees that happen and from there things just get real bad and the lynches have to leave ireland in a hurry 

ronan’s demonic form actually ends up being strongly influenced by his own opinion of himself as he grows up; the church has him filled with enough doubt that he grows the horns and becomes more hulking and frightening and all that jazz, and he suspects that he would be burned or expelled from a church’s grounds if he were to shift forms on sacred ground, so he never tries it (he would not, because, as was previously stated, his mother isnt evil, but he doesnt know that) and he just. he hides it real hard. especially after niall gets himself murdered before ronan can finally just ASK about his mother

but! before that happens he meets gansey, who has a lot of interest in the fey and a theory that’s not quite right but is on the right track about demons being some poorly understood class of fey rather than something evil and that gives ronan a lot of hope for a while

yknow until he sees how much iron effs up someone who’s even got a LITTLE fey blood in them when adam gets shot and how when ronan holds that same arrowhead that put adam in so much pain it doesn’t hurt at all, rip 

he tells them that he’s a cambion well before he shows them the alt forms because there’s a point where he feels that they ought to know esp since ronan’s back to existential dread over what exactly he is, it’s kavinsky who ends up forcing him to shift in front of them for the first time, the whole kavinsky thing’s gonna DEFINITELY take at least one post all on its own a lot happens there, but for now: this is why ronan knew that pryderi wasn’t a normal deer (that and also because pryderi is a white tailed deer, which dont exist in england, so ronan was like, thats. thats not a real animal thats gotta be a fey) and also leads to some fun between him and noah because noah, unbeknownst to ronan, has decided that he and ronan are in fact engaged in a game of chicken to see who gets caught/outed for what they really are first. 

(ronan and gansey dont know what kind of fey noah is exactly. ronan assumes he’s something weak like a brownie. noah is definitely not a brownie) 

uhhh any more thoughtsssss 

last picture’s unfinished because idk why ronan’s fully demonic form is so hard for me to DRAW but he’s shaped roughly like beast from the disney movie, except as a big bird monster. also if ur someone he likes and you sleep using him as a pillow it’ll be the best sleep of your life w/ really good dreams and ronan also sleeps v well, its a thing that happens, ronan is in fact the best pillow 

[firemama]

Hey, Folks. I am still vigerously looking for more reliable work than delivery, VICIOUSLY fighting the shit income that is delivery with these gas costs and the shit support of the delivery apps, and just generally trying to budget myself.

But ive got a new serious issue :) because there werent enough issues :)

But i am now having some issues computer-wise. Such issues as "sometimes my computer wont turn on at all because a damaged power supply :)" or "my computers only HDD is over 5 years old and starting to fail :)" and "turns out this graphics card has a manufacturing malfunction that has been groqing worse with stress :)" and all three of these issues have been things ive... simply tried to work around, and has hampered my ability to write or draw for about a year, but theyre... growing worse. And if one of these things finally, completely and totally fails, i will no longer have the means for digital art and art commissions, will have severely limited ability to write or write comissions, and on a lesser note but still one that stresses me the fuck out, lose my primary form of comfort (watching things with my partner, art and writing, and games i enjoy, and ALL of my saved art, writen backlogs, character information, Etc)

This is an issue that i am not able to fix yet. I cant afford to put money toward replacement parts because making rent is already a battle enough, but im also trying to save money to pay off some fun new debt (because Sunpass is a fucking SHIT SCAM that didnt pay my fucking tolls and now theres hundreds of dollars that need to be paid for twomonths of driving delivery on the unbearable toll roads of Orlando, and if i so much as get pulled over before i pay these damn things itll get More Expensive, ill lose my License probably, and fucking hell i might not be able to drive my fucking car around because after the accident listed above in this post it was labeled "totalted" and i have to pay the dmv to say 'oh its not actually totaled' but i cant AFFORD that yet because of everything ELSE...)

Im. Trying.

Hey, Tumblr.

Sav’s 2022 saga of misfortune has come to a spike this fabulous May with a serious car issue. What makes this so bad, Sav? well… my only source of income, at this time, is that I am a delivery driver with shipt. Hard enough with the gas crisis- 5$ a fucking gallon- in orlando traffic, you might say. You’d be right.

I’ve got no savings; most of my money was burned through during a month long period of homelessness, a couple months of not being able to work due to being generally transient and out of town and thus out of my shipt metro and unable to even deliver for income, medical bills for an injury, moving and storage costs, and some other bullshit. I’ve got no savings, and i’m pushing debt on my credit card. And at this time, with my car in need of repair, I have no source of income and another bill.

So I am asking for donations, if anyone has something to spare, however small.

Patreon Paypal Kofi

If Donations arent your speed, or you would like something in exchange, I also do commisions. Moodboards for small cost donation/commissions as low as a dollar, and I also do art and writing commissions. Hit me up to talk about commissions if you’re interested. Some basic information about that is pinned to my blog, and my other blogs.

For those who are not familiar with Sav’s 2022 saga, the summary is:

Keep reading

[thewanderingamalgamate]

Return of the Goopman!

[[Hey there everyone! I’m still alive and decided to give this another go. Missed the goopman and getting them into trouble. Of course I missed all of you blessed nerds as well. 

I know I burnt some bridges in a bad way prior to my departure, though I’m unaware of the complete extent of it. Regardless, if you’re uncomfortable seeing me again then please feel free to unfollow or block, I’ll understand.

So, theres been a few changes over here. *The obvious one being the name/url. I lost wanderandward to a squatter, didn’t want to make a fight out of it. Check it out if you like flowers though heh. All the links here should direct you to the proper pages under the new url, but if you find one that doesn’t please let me know. *Again, I fell out with some people, their characters and interactions with them were pretty important too. I’m not going to erase all that history, specifics will just be glossed over if they ever come up. *I made an aesthetics/personal blog over at @shareourwanderings. It should help reduce the clutter and minimize the chance of losing replies in my drafts. I’ll still reblog friends’ art, fanart, and commission posts here. *Made a few small tweaks and additions to the rules/about too and that’s about it.

I’ll leave what I’ve been up to in the past year under a readmore. 

Hope to reconnect with you folks (and make some new connections of course), without any unpleasantness.]]

The TL;DR version: Instead of wallowing in misery, self-pity, self-loathing etc. with this being my only escape, I’ve started the grueling process of unfucking myself and my life. 

There’s been a metric crapton of thinking, reevaluating, reading, realizing, and understanding happening on my end. Turns out fucking up horribly and getting called out on it can be a great impetus for personal growth if you let it. I haven’t miraculously changed and eliminated all that is wrong with me of course, from what I understand such a thing is pretty much impossible. Its an endless process of figuring out how and why you’re wrong, accepting it, and taking steps to be a little less wrong. And I’ve at least started that process.

I’ve confronted the reality of my mental illnesses. The anxiety and depression. How they’ve affected me, how they’ve manifested, the causes, how my behavior has been affected by it. And how I’m still responsible for my actions despite them. I haven’t been to a therapist yet, but its on the agenda and progress has been made towards it. I have been taking medication for them though, learning how to more actively recognize when I’m being affected and how. I’m getting a better grip on my mental faculties. You might not help how you feel, but how you react to it is always up to you. Sounds simple, but ‘simple’ has never excluded something from being hard to do. Been worth trying though.

I finally have prescription glasses. If anyone ever took a close look at my munday pics, my eyes never lined up properly in them. Untreated astigmatism+nearsighted that led to amblyopia. Corrective lenses, eye exercises tailored to the condition, drawing (mostly tracing from a book). Unfortunately I’m long past the age where the condition can be completely fixed, but progress can still be made. Keeping my fingers crossed for advancements in that field though.

I’ve been taking better care of my frail mortal form. Mostly by cramming a handful of supplements down my gullet and putting it through immense stress and pain. The human body is just weird like that. I can understand why others tell the depressed to get some exercise, its actually good advice just poorly worded/explained. But yeah, been exercising, watching my intake, trying that ‘healthy living’ myth people propagate. Those long infrequent walks I took roughly once a week? Twice a day now. I’ve gone swimming for the first time in about 5 or 6 years. Got access to a proper weight room too. I’ve concluded that bodybuilders are masochists. 

I have a new laptop. Fanfuckingtastic considering the old one could barely run discord, its screen is dead, fans dead, deskbound connected to a monitor, and liked to disconnect from the wifi when I most needed it. The new one might not be some $2k alienware powerhouse sure, but it opened a lot of damned doors. Like being able to write here without constant frustrating interruptions. 

I reconnected with my brother somewhat. Always considered him the more successful one and felt like a disappointment to him. We got past that. Just about every saturday since around january, I’ve been hanging out with him, until well past midnight, playing D&D with him and his friends. They’re all a bunch of shameless walking memes and its great. My brother is the DM, and so far my dragonborn sorc is the only group member that hasn’t be downed. Not for lack of trying. My anxious arse has been palling around, in person, with complete strangers, and I’m pretty happy about it heh. Probably going to put up summaries of our crimes adventure on shareourwanderings.

Between all that, I’ve been reading, poking at my backlog of games and shows. I’ve spent some time on Quora, picking up tips from published writers (Mercedes Lackey is surprisingly active over there), and of course checking out the mental health topics over there. The new laptop has made it easier to catch up on shows I’ve been wanting to watch. As in, I binge watched One Punch Man in a few nights, OVAs included. Mob Psycho is next on my list. Add in some new music, Sanderson stories, and the creative juices are flowing again.

I’m making progress. Life feels like its worth living, despite and even because of the fuckups. Its very likely I’m going to fuck up again eventually, hopefully in a less horrible manner. Just something I have to live with and continue to learn from.

[eriisaam]

I feel like I bottled up so much about my summoner OCs for a long time. Just recently, I had a “final straw to break the camel’s back” feeling, and I’m just... not sure anymore if I should feel I’m being fair about my feelings and anger or not. I feel like at the very least, this will help me clear some air to maybe move on and re-focus while recovering from other things, but I’m also really sorry to the people following me to dump this out of the blue too. You’ve all been incredibly patient and amazing with me, so whenever I get to the point I need to vent, I feel somewhat guilty of it.

But I’m also incredibly hurt and angry in ways I also don’t feel like I’m fully justified or not in them, for a lot of things well beyond the scope of what is currently setting me off... Maybe it’s best I unbottle it even if only for the sake of clearing the air. 

And then after this, hopefully we can move back to regular light-hearted posts and shitpost art... I’m sorry.

For anyone whose seen me play Fire Emblem Heroes, or even played with me otherwise via friend codes, you know that I go by the handle “my butt” (as for why, Takumi is all too happy to share), and the summoner I send out is Eclair. He’s the only one of the OCs I felt was best able to be represented in-game out of the current summoners selection, so he’s been the one out of the six whose remained ever-present with his dumb little quote and eventually his dumb little gifts to go with. Nobody else in my friend group previously had a summoner named “Eclair” (not to be confused with Eclat), and it’s understandably not a very common name. 

So it came as a surprise to me when one of the FEH friends I had for a very long time, recently changed their summoner (I believe from “Kiran” originally, and with the guy with the brushed-over brown hair) into this:

Any other day, this might’ve been funny, if in poor taste. Maybe I would’ve laughed at it and moved on if I was in a better frame of mind and just ignored it.

But lately, as many of you saw in my past few notes, or even privately, I hadn’t been doing well. I had a lot of frustrations online and off. I’ve been incredibly ill to the point of collapsing a lot, I have a backlog of attempts to work on writing and art that wound up crashing to a halt because of it, in ways that left me even more upset and manic, and pretty much for a long time now, I have felt like I was in constant hell that I tried very hard not to bring up often in public, even when I’ve reached my breaking point multiple times in rapid succession under various circumstances, and I was to a point that a single pin-drop would’ve made me go nuclear.

It wasn’t funny, I didn’t take it well, and I ended up removing them after debating long and hard if I was overreacting to do it or not. And even now, I’m not sure if it was as bad as I make it seem exactly because of how they couldn’t have picked a worse time to try to have a go at me through Eclair.  

And the more I think about it, the more I feel bad that this had been the final straw to a lot of old feelings I’ve had stewing and trying and failing to clear in private, a lot of which were things I didn’t bring up that’s been upsetting me about my summoners for a long time, because I didn’t think ranting about it every single time in the moment was fair, and I feel guilty every time it’s come toit. But seeing this, having all those feelings drum up again, now I wonder if I bottled it up too long, to the point of it being on the opposite extreme and being incredibly unhealthy for me, too.

For a long time, I used the summoner OCs I made for various reasons. Some of them tested waters for like-ideas I wanted to try in some capacity on other works, but wasn’t sure about. (For those who read my other longfics, some of it are a little more obvious than others of the overlap.) Other times, and was one of the biggest pressing things about them, is that I use a lot of them as coping mechanisms. Some of them explored traumas I really did endure, albeit of course theirs might be more extreme, or the same in spirit, or represented or experienced things I myself am still processing. They’re also why I tend to work on them heavily in lulls when I couldn’t properly focus on stuff I otherwise wanted or needed to work on more, or as practice when I needed to figure out how to grasp things in plots or art otherwise, which is why they’re so prevalent on my works so often. 

It’s also why I kept apologizing in realizing that they take over so much, but at the same time, working on them helped better frame things or prepare me for how to continue on other projects I was previously stuck on. They were important to me, and maybe, I got a bit too attached, but without them, I think my productivity and quality in it would be significantly worse if the summoner OCs hadn’t picked me up and carried me through how to figure things out better.

They’ve also, unfortunately, had been the subject of a lot of negativity I’ve sat through and stomached for a good part of the entire pandemic year, and even to this day in this year. I’ve made lore docs for them that got vandalized and littered with comments telling me to “try again” or how wrong I did or how wrong about my ships or shipkids are to come about as they had, to the point that I now deleted them because looking at even my private copy of it drums up the same negative memories and sends me into a panic of whether or not I’ll open it up and see it mass crossed out and littered with even more comments of how terrible and wrong it all is again. It was also partially why I lost heart working on old sketched concepts I initially planned to fully realize, only to drop what I have and post them to share, but would rather redo them (sketch and all) instead of work on them: They are littered with a lot of memories too painful to work on them directly.

I’ve had needlessly hostile messages, telling me off for certain ship combinations, or my OCs being misconstrued into horrible ways and based on their assumptions of what they think my OCs are like, assume the worse of them and me and harass me across multiple messages in my inbox over it. This had even boiled down to harassing me over my design choices of certain OCs, maybe not coincidentally my two female ones, or ones who are short and petite in build compared to their far more larger counterparts, despite every summoner and support all being adults. I’ve had people decide for me they knew the ages of my “minor” OCs better than I do. Despite me being the one who created them.

I’ve had people make not-as-vague-as-they-think-they’re-being comments, shitting on my ideas on the core concept, simply because they’re rooted to either a fandom that’s very subtle and low-key now, a game that seems popular-to-the-point-of-being-a-meme to shit on simply to shit on it and everyone who likes it, and had constantly been made to feel like various ideas other people are ok doing are bad when I do it, solely because I’m doing them. 

They have been through a lot. I’ve been through a lot with them. They still exist because certain people I was very close with, among which Saam had been my rock and pillar through and through, refused to let me give in to the many, many times I found myself in such a dark place and in a really shitty mindset, that I would’ve stopped creating in totality, whether or not it’s related to kiransonas. 

And even now, even when I’ve been trying to pick up the pieces and move past that, there’s still little hints here and there of the damage that’s done that I still haven’t fully gotten over yet to try again. Or I’ve been trying in baby steps, and not in the best ways I wish I could yet.

I don’t draw Erin, Ephrel and Sparrow quite as often anymore, despite wanting to try them again. Ephrel’s and Sparrow’s circle in particular, I felt insecure trying to work on anything to do with them as often, especially if it’s related to Chrom that’s not just with him and Robin. I hesitated to do anything with Sparrow’s and Ephrel’s Robin either, despite having many ideas of what more to share of him. I stopped doing plushies, or being open about plushies anymore, due to still overcoming the feelings fostered from what I’ve been made to feel was bad about them and how I did them. Plush designs and sprite designs I wanted to do as open source were put on hold because I felt more closed off and hesitant to be too open in fandom spaces as much anymore. The Scars of Time, I’ve also hesitated to continue most of all out of my current longfics, because even when it’s been the fic that had the most progress in its latest chapter over the course of the pandemic shoving a wedge across all my longfics, the core elements to it were elements deeply rooted to a lot of the above ill feelings whether directly or by extension of what kiransonas already bore through themselves that hit similar beats. Were it not for incredibly kind commenters who still encouraged me and clearly hoped for other longfics to continue, there have been many, many times I was debating on deleting everything and giving up in totality, but held on because of all of them, and all of you, and people like Saam. 

There’s a lot of things I still had to work through, and it shows.

So I see this dig at Eclair, and I’m torn anymore.

Maybe it was meant to be a harmless joke, and I still have second-guesses that I overreacted and jumped the gun to kick them out of my friend lists over something like this.

But as with how long and scattered my thoughts are in a post like this... It’s been a long time. It’s been a lot of really harsh, unfortunate, hurtful things leading up to this. I see this, and it’s like everything that I listed all came full circle all at once, and it painted all of this in a far worse light than it probably was, but unsurfaced a lot of things that, on top of being sick constantly and stressed out with other major fears, I think I finally cracked.

I don’t know what point I was trying to make of this, and I’m sorry too for all of you having to post this. 

I’m just... tired and confused anymore of if this is fair or when I’m overstepping and overreacting anymore. Or where to go from here.