#its also my first finished digital piece in months!

[cae-ruleam]

spiritual redraw of this piece from last year! which was also my first bigger dp piece :]

[scatterbrainedbot]

redraw of one of my very first tmnt drawings!!

had meant to do it exactly the one year later mark, but i blinked and suddenly april was may was june -- so ended up being more like a year and 1.5 months lol

May 11th, 2024 vs. April 6th, 2023

its so funny seeing them nest to each other now, but i remember when i finished the first version last year, i was so proud to have finally made a proper 'finished' piece.

like, yall, i struggled for years to every be able to create a piece i would ever call close to 'done'. part of that is me being a very knit-picky kinda person, and wanted to continue to tweak everything all of the time forever, but on top of that i also do work slow af, and before last year i didnt really have access to any digital media. and i love traditional mediums, but im defintiely not practiced enough to be able to get the results i was looking for with any sort of speed. like im genuinely not sure i created a single 'finished' work in my life -- not in school, not in work, not even in the free space of silly fandom doodles.

and then this piece happened!

and i knew even then that it was messy and rough af, but it had a background!! and color!! sure, the linework wasnt polished at all but still, for a silly little fanart? it was defined enough to distinguish the separate characters, and read expressions! there was even a little tiny bit of lighting!! i hate lighting!!

seeing the two versions side by side honestly i kinda have to laugh at how Rough the first version looks now. but you know what. im still so so proud of it. the colors are muddy, theres no shift in value; their clothing designs arent at all defined, leos teeth look weird af and theres lines on caseys face that are definitely from me accidentally dragging my fingers across the tablet when i didnt mean to but like. its there! its finished! i did it!

idk. ive never had a piece ive ever wanted to hang on my own fridge before. :)

[crescencestudio]

๋࣭⭑ Devlog #38 | 2.27.24 ๋࣭⭑

How is it already almost March omfg.

Anyways Happy Valentine's Day month!!! This year, I was swamped with work, so I didn't get a chance to make Valentine's Day art. I did make a Valentine's piece last year though.

BUT we did have beloved @magunalafay make these Valentine's Day cards this year for the community!!! <3 If you missed it, well Happy Valentine's Day!!!!!

She made these as a gift, and I love her very much. Maguna u r so talented

This month was pretty busy for me, but I'm super happy with the progress made this month ^^ I feel like I've started the year off in a pretty good groove after it being all over the place for a hot second, yay!!!

This past month, Etza and Druk's routes. With the revamped demo finishing its revisions, it left a lot more time for me to focus writing on full route development.

If you missed the announcement, I FINISHED Etza's first draft!!! YAAAYYY!!!! FINALLY!!!!!!

That means 4/6 routes are finished in terms of the base writing, which is so exciting to MEEEEE. I've always seen Etza's draft as The Milestone because with their route finished, it would mean the four Central routes are done writing. And to me, while there's a good chuck of writing left, we are nearing the end of it.

There's only two routes left and that means it's about ~100k words which is CRAZY compared to when I had ~300k to write (:cries:). Even if that sounds like a lot, once I start chipping away at those routes, that 100k goes into the "double digits" aka 90k...80k... etc. and that makes me want to pee my pants

We also finished editing Druk's route, yay!!! So we reached a lot of milestones this month ^^

We are nearing the end of the Vui background commissions. It's very bittersweet; I'm so used to mentioning him in my devlogs now </3 There's only like 3(?) more BGs left for him to make, and then all of the BGs for the game will be finished. Very Wild! I think Alaris will have 25ish BGs, and they are all Stunning.

It's been a while since I showed you all a BG, so I'll give you all a preview of one I just got in!

Isn't it cozy? Guess whose house hehe

I personally have been doing a lot of sprite work this month to finish the final art assets for the demo. I added some expressions to Druk and Aisa that I'd been procrastinating (I don't even know why I was procrastinating them). And I finally finished Mom and Kimura's updated sprites! Patreon already saw them, but I'll show the new versions here too ^^

Preview of Mom (left) and Kimura (right) updated sprites. Now everyone's sprite styles are cohesive YAY!!

Aside from sprite work, much of my "art" time has been on finishing up/putting together the last of the screens for the GUI. Specifically, I got THIS BABY up and running. She is my crowning glory.

Memory Screen to Replay Unlocked Free Time Dates

Oh my god.... You all have NO IDEA how much of a pain this was to code. There is a transparency gradient going on in the left and right B&W previews (courtesy of community programming angel feniks/shawna).

And then the effort to have the Titles and Descriptions of the Previewed Date change tilted me on Multiple Occasions. But we finally got it to work thanks to bestie @siyo-koy pointing out I just coded one stupid "if" statement wrong LJAFSLIEFJIEJ. But the effort was WORTH IT because I'm so proud of her!!! I hope you all like it too as a way to relive Free Time Dates. I had a lot of fun with the Titles and descriptions.

I also put together the Stats and Affection Screens

Preview of Personality Stats & Affection Screens

So I coded both of them a bit differently from each other. The Personality Screen shows you a breakdown of your traits so far. Think of it like a pie graph! So in the preview picture, your choices indicate you are 33% Brave, 16% Charismatic, etc. I felt like this was a more natural way to portray personality rather than how many bravery points you've collected so far!

And then for Affection, it works in a more traditional way, where it counts it based on how many you've gotten out of the total amount you can get. This way, as the story progresses, how close you are to the person reflects how much your relationship as developed!

I've also added little descriptions underneath each that change depending on the percentage. So for example, if you have gotten 82% of the affection points for Kuna'a, the description of your relationship might change as well hehe

Other than that, I've mainly focused on getting the demo together. We released the beta demo earlier this month (? LOL). And the feedback has been so kind!!

A lot of this month was spent polishing so that the demo can be ready for early access and eventually public release. I updated sprites, made sure music crossfades with each other so that transitions between soundtracks feel smoother, I added/polished all of the screens I needed to (e.g., Memory Room, Full Credits, Cleaning Music Room, Adding Stats Screens), and I FINALLY as of yesterday added the Voiced Lines!!

One thing I added in the Extended Demo that I'm really happy with is the use of Extended Pronouns (courtesy of Angel Feniks). Below is a preview of how it works now!

Preview of Extended Pronouns Function. Credit to Feniks

Basically, you can choose multiple pronouns for yourself, including custom pronouns (e.g., xe/xem, fae/faer, etc.). On top of that, you can choose how often you'd like the pronouns to alternate (e.g., every line versus every scene) and what kind of terms you'd like to be used for you (e.g., neutral vs. masculine vs. feminine)!

Overall, the demo is getting closer and closer to release!!! Early Access will hopefully be ready by the end of this week or next, so if you all would like access to it, please feel free to subscribe to my Patreon for this upcoming month! Available to Wyvern tier ($5) and up.

I didn't have any time to really play any games this month because I was drowning in work LMFAOSLJIEF. I did play the Threads of Bay demo by @lavendeerstudios and it was GORGEOUS! Very cute game with lovable characters and charming visuals. Andrew, I will have your number

Every other section was really long, so I'm going to throw it here even though it's not market research. But Intertwine recently hit 600 ratings, which is crazy. Thank you for still enjoying that game even if it's not one that is my main focus anymore. I'm really happy people still like it :on the verge of tears:

Anyways, this has been a long devlog. Here's to continuing to Ball in March. Hope you all have a great rest of your month, and I'll talk to you soon! <3

[artsycervidae]

I finished my short story. It's set in the Boku no Hero Academia universe, but the cast consists of OCs. Heed the trigger warnings; this is intended to be a thriller/horror, so it's exploring heavy themes. Though these are also themes touched on in the series itself, tread with care.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Graphic imagery, Unreliable narrator, Ableism (internalized and external), Chronic illness, Attempted murder-suicide, Attempted suicide mention, Severe depression, Animal death, Familial Abuse (specifically child abuse at the hands of the mother), Codependent relationship between family members, Longstanding acts of harm/sabotage, Quirk eugenics, Stalking, Organized crime, Body horror, Theft of personal belongings, Abuse of prescription drugs, Dosing/poisoning of someone's food

     Sato Hikaru came to consciousness unwillingly. He was at first aware of the coldness tickling his feet and legs, so he balled up to retain what little heat he insulated beneath seven layers. It didn't matter-- he was awake now. The blurry red digits on his alarm clock seemed to glow through his eyelids even when he rolled to his other side; the room was devoid of personal affectation, so the light bounced off the bare, eggshell walls. He flopped back over and stared back at the clock. 4:16 am. He supposed that was early enough.

     Hikaru pat blindly for his laptop, found its power cord, and carefully pulled it toward himself along the floor. Still partly under his mountain of blankets, he logged onto his email and went into the drafts where he had prepared a sick note: something believably miserable about being unable to eat or sleep, but still coherent enough to assert he could work remotely. Mysterious pain and nausea wasn't uncommon given his medical history; so long as he didn't wear thin on his coworkers' graces, nobody would begrudge him for staying home. His agency performance reports were already encrypted and attached so that he only had to send them. Then he went into the work calendar and helpfully logged his absences ahead of time so that he could receive meeting notes. Each and every sick day had to cause as little disturbance as possible.

     One of the benefits of being under the Hero Public Safety Commission's employ: as an office-holding, audit-accurate salaryman, there was a benefit of the doubt afforded to him automatically. This was further buttressed with behavior. He had never before been tardy-- ever. He didn't play hooky like others had. He attended mandatory dinner parties. He was civil, clean, and convenient. Unfortunately, not everyone could be relied upon for such predictability.

     When the streetlight directly outside his window elbowed its way through his curtain, he picked up his phone and texted his mother to give her the same overnight illness excuse-- this time, embellishing a sleepless night of 'work catch-up' spent with his nose to the grindstone. Then he abandoned his phone beneath the blankets, slipping from his cocoon to pluck pajamas out of a nearby heap of clothing. The truth about his work was that all this and next months' assignments were drafted to near completion, sitting prettily on his harddrive for the chance to defend his reputation. There were some bits and pieces of information left blank for future application, but all the mundane busy work had been taken care of two weeks prior, during a particularly animated frenzy to get as much bullshit out of his way as possible. So long as he drip fed his supervisor with satisfactory and timely submissions, he could continue to devote the rest of the month entirely to his true work.

     In the bathroom, he unscrewed the hoses from to the faucets, rolled them up, and properly stored them on the hooks he installed in the corridor. That way he could close the door as he readied for the day. Not that he needed the privacy. He no longer shared this space with anyone, and didn't intend to make room. He just liked to see closed walls on all sides of him and know he was secure, if only in the bathroom and at his most vulnerable.

     Once he was cleaned and dressed comfortably, Hikaru replaced the hoses then wandered the darkness of his apartment. He unconsciously stepped to the side of the bundled cords lining the hallway, placing his bare feet one after the other to avoid tripping on or dislodging anything. He started by staking out the living room, which was furnished. The locks on his front entrance were still engaged. The door to the patio (which was more like a windsill with how narrow it was) was locked and shuttered. A laundry pole scavenged from the trash was jammed solidly into the track for additional security. Even so, he didn't relax. He always acted with a vague image in his mind of what would happen if he lowered his guard.

     This brought him to the 'study,' the spare bedroom that all the hoses and cords fed into; also a room which his mother always insisted he keep available for her. Nevermind that she hadn't been in Japan for longer than twelve combined hours in the last two years since she ran off. Sato Hanami was probably already planning how to make her next escape: they were supposed to go shopping and grab lunch together before she moved on to her next event... but before she could cancel plans on him, he left her high and dry first.

     The last night they were really together was meant to celebrate his acceptance into medical school. They had arrangements at a fancy restaurant, tickets to a theater play, and each other... but he couldn't appreciate it. Frankly, the cracks in their foundation preceded that night. Hikaru, for a long time, had felt his mother was keeping more from him than the potential identity of his father. Despite the unanswered questions and sidestepped conversations, he respected his caretaker's authority and secrecy even when it involved him. But he was freshly eighteen and due his own share of responsibility and respect.

     That was the night he told her he knew he had a Quirk. Rather than react with equal enthusiasm, bafflement, or disbelief, she nervously batted the subject around. It may as well have been a typhoon on the other side of the world. Then she 'innocuously' got up to use the restroom at some point. Hikaru waited-- their entrees going cold on their plates-- for twenty minutes before he realized she was gone. She picked up his phone call, already in the cab and babbling some story about being summoned to America: she was to co-host a lucrative wellness tour with her longtime friend. She was on her way to dine with ultra rich celebrities interested in the procedure of her treatments. When he tried to insist to her again that he needed her to guide him, to help him understand what he was now and how to handle it, she snapped: "Don't tell me about it! Shut up." It took him aback so much, he obeyed automatically. She nervously filled the silence, "... Besides, it's taken so long to show itself, it's bound to be a busted one." Each insistence was another stab to the heart, and he quietly assented until she ended the call with a small silence and an exasperated sigh: "... Work hard, no matter what, okay? I can only stay away so long."

     So befuddled and frustrated was he, that he went home and sold the furniture from their bedrooms. He was so disgusted with her. With himself. She loved him as any mother loved her son, but she especially adored when he ached for her approval to the point of hysteria. She did this often, especially when it came to his school career-- dangled a tantalizing prize in front of him before throwing it over the ledge, hoping he would jump off after it as some extravagant expression of devotion. Needless to say, his grades were flawless. But this was different. His mother overshot her mark; he knew something she hadn't, and she ran instead of taking him seriously. Instead of doubling his efforts to gain her attention, he stopped playing her games.

     He never told her about her former bedroom. Nor did he share that he'd dropped out of that medical school and began his career as a desk jockey for the government. She had been told, surely: a career change wasn't as easy to hide as a personal interest or private thought. Shortly after he began working is when her checks started coming in. It was their first line of communication since she 'fled' Japan, and he let them pile up in the cubby he kept by the door.

     He waited for her to be the one to message him first-- those first weeks had been filled with playing a façade for the world, succumbing to depressive crying and anxious fits when he was safe at home. When she finally texted, it took all his willpower not to respond immediately. Not that it mattered: he would soon learn that she never stayed anywhere for long. Even if she remained in the country, she was skipping like an airborne stone across the surface of the globe.

     He almost envied her freedom of movement. She seemed so unrestricted, though he knew she was with Iwamoto Kaede: she was his mother's 'dearest confidant,' fellow wellness guru, and probably the one who Hanami convinced to accompany her, expanding their 'career' to the horizon. Hikaru still harbored both gratitude and a grudge for that. He never liked the way Kaede hovered around their lives, as if being a close friend and neighbor wasn't enough.

     But with her gone, his surveillance had to be careful. They operated from her 'empty' apartment, though Hikaru knew there was someone in there at most times of day. He'd never heard or seen them, but he knew they were there as surely as he knew his organs existed despite hiding inside his body.

     His mental fortitude nearly unraveled with the isolation. For a while, he was convinced that he was the one Hanami was running from. Why else would she have left in such a nervous hurry? It wasn't that he was unimportant to her-- it was that he was dangerous.

     She was scared of him. Of what he could be. And rather than discourage him, this fantasy instilled him with autonomy and independence. He made changes to his life. He reflected on himself.

     After confirming the integrity of his lair, he stopped outside the study door and stared at the doorknob. He had to shed the alibi of that cowardly man: someone who went straight to work and then straight home, who bought all his necessities once a month without fluctuation, who was always the one apologizing when someone deemed him inconvenient. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and entered.

     His eyelids fluttered rapidly, adapting to the lilac-blue lightboxes. Plastic tarp crinkled underfoot. The only similarities this room held to an actual study were the row of composition books stacked against the wall, various pens of many colors contained in a nearby cup, and the apartment's provided router installed into the ceiling corner. Otherwise, it resembled mostly a greenhouse: rows of potted, pooled, and hanging plantlife filled the room wall to wall with very little space for their caretaker to tiptoe through.

     Hikaru went to the notebooks and selected the topmost one, plucking a blue pen from the cup. Then he cast out a gentle "Good morning," to his companions. He worked his way through the nursery, weaving between leaves and stepping over water hoses. The plants were weeded and inspected. He was only making the first subjective notations before he got into the real work: the testing and sampling, which gave him concrete results. Numbers to back up his theories.

     Blackout curtains kept anyone from asking questions about the artificial lights that stayed on all day and night, and he budgeted all other use of his electricity by charging everything at work on the occasions he went in. He was running dangerously low on battery packs. Perhaps on his next commute, he would stay the night with the excuse of making up for his absences. At least all the work that mattered was on paper: untraceable, easy to take with him anywhere, written in shorthand, ready to be burned at a moment's notice-- the greatest complications were his rebellious carpal tunnels, which would inconvenience him during productive flows. He began to wear wrist braces regularly. Despite how long he coasted under the radar, people eventually noticed. By then, however, he was as good at lying as his mother-- even better at omissions and excuses.

     He was lucky his wrist began to cramp when it did, for once. He put his work down and meandered, loosening his brace to hang by his thumb. Sighing, he rolled the joint in slow circles and stretches. He was caught between the study and hall when he heard the front doorknob click. His skin jumped as the intruder's entrance was abruptly stopped by the other locks. "For the love of--" a familiar voice uttered from outside before Hikaru could bolt for the matches and set the building aflame. Then the doorbell began ringing.

    "Coming!" He hollered to his impatient guest before racing clumsily for his bedroom. He snatched up his phone after flinging the blankets aside. Several missed texts. A couple missed calls. All from Mom.

     He couldn't believe it. His head buzzed, nearly afloat with fear and excitement. What was she doing here? What was he going to do about this? He couldn't think-- didn't have the luxury. His body moved of its own accord. Once he passed the study threshold, he had to revert to Sato Hikaru again. Above all else, he knew he must keep these lives separate. He walked to the front door and unlocked the chain, the deadbolt, and the barrel bolt. The knob, of course, had already been unlocked via a spare key.

     He opened the door right as Hanami's finger hovered over the bell button again; she startled and her filtered mask shifted on her grinning cheeks. "Hikaru," she sang out, "you're still in your pajamas! Did you oversleep?" As she was saying this, he squinted against the sun blazing behind her shoulders. Had he truly been making observations and notes into the afternoon?

     "Mom, what are you doing here?" He asked, and although he treated her with a consciously cordial distance, he wanted to welcome her back home with an embrace. Two years ago, he would have been desperate for her to show up out of nowhere like this. It wasn't hard to feign illness-- he was trembling, physically fighting himself as he stepped aside to let her in. "Did you come here from the airport on your own? Haven't you been keeping up with Japanese news? It's dangerous to go around alone--"

     "What? Nonsense," she replied, shifting her convenience store bags into her other arm. "All Might may be retired, but he was still the number one hero, and always will be in my mind so long as he lives." The irony of those words: invoking a hero whose presence had never once shone light onto their horrible situation made Hikaru frown.

     "But the random sightings of those things-- those Nomu--"

      "I won't be listening to any paranoid drivel, Hikaru. If I want that, I'll turn on the TV." (His armpits prickled-- he had sold that long ago for money, for his nursery. He wondered when she would notice all the empty spaces in their home.) She moved to pat his face, but he swiftly stepped to her burdened side in an attempt to take the groceries. "Oh-- dear, you don't have to do that." The gesture successfully distracted her and she took command by moving into the kitchen, setting down her bags and removing her mask. "Wow, it's so dark in here." But when she flicked at the light switch, it didn't turn anything on. Nor did it obey when she aggressively tried three more times.

     "I don't have light bulbs, Mom. Migraines."

     "Right," she seemed only marginally discomforted by how poorly she fit back into this life. She returned to her bags, rifling through them in search of something. "I thought you would be hungry. You work so hard and rest so little when you're unwell... even as a kid, you were always sneaking out of bed, trying to squirrel yourself away in dark, quiet places to read. Oh!"

     She turned around with a paper packet. A chill rooted itself along the curve of Hikaru's spine at the sight of it. This could spoil the whole visit. "For you," she said, amiable and at ease. "You've got the flu, right? I talked to a doctor friend of mine-- this will help you sleep it off. And probably help with those migraines!"

     "Thank you," he said softly, trying to seem more pleasantly surprised than quietly horrified. She must have sensed his cautiousness-- there was always the chance he wouldn't let her touch him again, so this was her thinking three steps ahead of him. He didn't expect her to go so far as to procure him a prescription or behind-the-counter medication. It was too obvious, too dangerous... unless it wasn't. He wanted to take a look at it, but she didn't hand it to him either. Rather, she set it in front of her with the produce and pantry goods.

    "I brought you tea, too."

    "Thanks, Mom." Under the guise of setting up his electric kettle, he watched her unpack dinner ingredients. "... How was Sydney?"

     She stuck out her lower lip in theatrical disappointment. "I was in Sydney last week, dear. I came in from Paris." He knew it would hurt her feelings if he wasn't obsessing over her every movement. They had to watch out for each other-- nevermind that she was the one who left him.

     "How was Paris?" he smiled, glad to gave gotten a reaction from her that wasn't completely staged.

     "Boring. I missed you the whole time."

     The sincerity softened and humbled him. "I've missed you too, Mom." ... Was he being too cruel? The fact she showed up in a time of need meant she was trying. She was even filling the quiet for him, breaking the ice by launching into a story about a little Parisian café she frequented with Kaede.

     When he tried to fall into routine next to her, she looked at him. "Go sit!" she insisted, and he remembered his white lie. He continued to watch her work from the couch, his arm stretched along its back. She cracked open the window curtain first for some natural light to see by. Then she spoke to him as she washed, cut, and assembled ingredients. "As I was saying, Kaede's daughter was recently engaged, so we had a drink to celebrate. We also got them a nice bottle of dinner wine," she gave a little chuckle, "they might have need for it. Kaede said that their first goal after the wedding is to start growing their family."

     "Give the couple my congratulations," Hikaru said warmly, though he hardly knew Kaede's daughter or her partner. He doubted they were real.

     "Have you been seeing anyone?" his mother asked suddenly and shamelessly.

     "No, Mom," he sighed. "I'm busted and broken, remember?"

     "You're not--!" she argued defensively, rounding about and casting a vicious gesture with an unsheathed knife. The motion had been so abrupt that they both felt the air crackle. A past recrimination lingered unspoken before she turned back to chopping vegetables. Hikaru could have pressed it. But the last thing he needed was an explosive argument-- much less the forced, heartmelting reconcilation in its aftermath. He resisted the urge to needle and squirm under her skin, to annoy her the way she annoyed him now.

     "... No, I'm not seeing anyone. I'm Quirkless, so I'm at a disadvantage."

     "So what? What does that have to do with dating?"

     This was the invisible wall they broke their noses upon. Although her Quirk was supposedly dubbed "Empathy," sometimes it felt Hanami was anything but. Or perhaps she relied too much on the Quirk to bother with context anymore. She needed only touch someone and she would be granted the knowledge of their emotional state, their physical well-being, and their memories. Her Quirk appealed to human desire-- to be immediately understood, to have needs and wants realized without the work of expressing it. It couldn't hurt that she was a natural beauty: petitely formed, clear-skinned, dark-lashed, and pouty-lipped. Meanwhile, her son was comparatively average: soft-bellied, beetle-browed, pockmarked, and gloomy-faced. Even though she was over fifty, she had an uncanny knack for makeup and lighting. She looked like a movie star in public, while people barely spared Hikaru anything longer than a brief glance. He struggled to explain this concept, despite appreciating his privacy. "Mom, I have boring looks, a boring job, and boring hobbies. On paper, I'm Quirkless; even if I found someone I was comfortable telling personal information to--"

     "Hardly personal," his mother muttered.

     "--then it's not like anyone would have an optimistic view of me. The only people who make me feel wanted are the ones who like me... at a disadvantage."

     Hanami paused. Strafed past the implication. "Well... I'm your mother, so it's my job to make sure you're happy and settled in life. Someone who can't give you the support you need in this time of your life isn't worth your time anyway."

      He stared at her. She was too engrossed in measuring out bouillon. He understood the message: he just didn't know what she expected him to say. *'Sure, Mom. After all, that's what the people watching us want, isn't it? They want whatever I have. They want what my father had.'* He wondered if she was really giving up, or if she had simply forgotten all the pains and suffering he'd been through.

     Well, he still remembered the innumerable meetings with Quirk professionals. His world had flipped upside down with every sheepish diagnosis, every nuanced discussion that Quirks were still actively studied, that humanity learned more every day. She wanted to be sure: It was imperative that every doctor that saw him support her alibi. And her scheme worked. Each one said the same thing: Quirkless kids were becoming more common, and it was possible to be born with an 'average' amount of toe bones and still be Quirkless. It wasn't a direct correlation after all-- human evolution was messier than that.

     When the children at school sensed an otherness in him, the bullying began. Then the constant moving. Then the sicknesses. His immune system succumbed to the stress, weakening his body so that he couldn't leave bed. His primary sickbed companion besides his mother was his childhood friend-- an adopted Shiba Inu named Koyubi.

     Every morning, when there were only doctors' visits and existential crises to awaken to, he could only be comforted by her immediate presence on his stomach. Her square head tucked perfectly into the groove of his arm, and her worried little brows puckered anytime his breathing went shallow. Hanami hated the dog to be on their furniture, but Koyubi's unwavering faith in him made it easier to live. He would pat the empty space at his side, specifically reserved for the canine. She never bounced or jolted him-- her clambering was sweet and polite, and she wanted nothing more than to rest with him... So constant was her loyalty that she too became sick. She must have contracted something from him, his mother said, and she quarantined them both. Then Koyubi died in the other room, when she ought to have fallen asleep next to him.

     Surely Hanami remembered the suicide attempt of his adolescence shortly after, when he was sick and tired of being sick and tired. It wasn't about the dog-- not entirely. His world was shrinking, his future slipping through his fingers like sand before he had the chance to appreciate it. He could feel himself, as a tangible thing deteriorating, eroding. The suicide attempt and depersonalization, followed by long sessions of therapy and reduced freedoms, was never in the past for him, even after he persevered through the worst of it... As a child, he had already grappled with the harsh truth that nobody's life was really their own.

     He couldn't bring himself to believe Hanami would actually forget any of that. She had seen his suffering through it all. Everything she did, she did for him, because she loved him and wanted him to be safe and happy.

    But then, if she loved him so much, why did she let him believe he was Quirkless for so long? Why was it that when he confronted her with the truth, she ran, absconding across the globe to get away from him? Why did it take him 'falling ill again' to draw her back into his life? He once believed she was his greatest advocate. But that was wrong-- he held no possession over this woman until he uncovered her most shameful secret: it had always been his life in her hands, and she wasn't used to the roles being reversed.

     "What about that girl, Izumi?" His mother asked, apparently stubborn on this particular subject. "The one who gave you the spider plant?"

     "Mom, we were just schoolmates. I haven't spoken to her since graduation." Of course, because Hanami had never cared to actually learn the inner workings of his life, this was a huge leap in logic. Izumi was his only friend when he rejoined society. Everyone else greeted Hikaru politely and that was all-- his desk had been empty for the majority of his transfer. It may as well have remained that way. But she had gotten him a small plant as a 'welcome back' gift, though they had only met at the beginning of their term. She offered to help him catch up on assignments before finals, not that he needed it. His mother's carrot-and-stick approach to childrearing had elevated him to an intelligence above his peers.

    But he never forgot the kindness with which she offered him help. Almost every day, she would coast by his desk and make her offer. She didn't put it upon him or assume, and neither did she feign blindness to his hardship. He had secretly used Koyubi's ashes as fertilizer for her plant, which felt right to him at the time; taking care of something else made him want to kill himself less. Koyubi lived on through the spider plant. What it represented to him became something irreplaceable: it wasn't just for him to nurture, nor was it a distraction from his compulsive mental unraveling. It was a seed of thought, germinating into a tangle of unburied lies.

     That plant was still alive and well in the study. He had taken care of it religiously, hoping to dry and press its blossoms to show his appreciation to Izumi. But rather than sprouting tiny bone-white flowers, it had produced a bud that opened and dropped a little calcium deposit on his floor. He asked Izumi about it, whose psychometric Quirk could identify small objects. He told her he found it not far from the potted plant, but she laughed and shook her head. 'Your puppy was probably teething nearby and the tooth came off into a chew toy,' she said with an assuring smile. 'I didn't know you had a dog!'

     After that, he could never have a normal relationship with her-- much less a romantic one. She knew too much.

     "Well. What about your neighbor down the hall? Watanabe?" She snapped herb leaves into the steaming Dutch oven. "You two seemed close." By which she meant, she had become envious that her son was outgrowing her company. And still, she was expected to shrug him off onto someone else.

     "Watabe?" Hikaru corrected. "She moved away before you left. That's why she brought me that peace lily." The flower had been her grandmother's. At first Hikaru was against accepting such a gesture, but Watabe made it clear that it would mean more for him to have it. 'Really, I have a rotten thumb,' she'd said, by then fatigued. Life and its hardships was slowly sapping her natural warmth and loveliness. 'I'm so busy putting things in storage and helping my family arrange the funeral-- I'm already killing it with my negligence.' She hadn't been wrong, so he accepted the lily. He never saw Watabe in the halls again, but returned the flower to its former beauty and health in her honor... and over time, in place of the stamen, a meat-encrusted phalange grew from the pale cupped petal.

     "Whatever happened to that lily?" His mother asked, suddenly deciding to give a shit about the mundane details. She took the opportunity to take a good look around the apartment, faltered, the corners of her mouth twitching down. "What happened to the TV?... Where are all your plants, Hikaru?"

     He slowly rose from the couch, wiping his clammy hands onto his fabric pants. "... I sold the TV. The plants are in my office, Mom."

     "Oh!" She was surprised and almost let it slide, but now the gears in her head were working. She returned to the soup and stirred up its contents. "... All of your plants? Do you have the space for that?" Even though he couldn't see her face, he could envision her eyes darting as she fumbled with the impossibilities. If she wasn't regretting her actions now, she never would.

     May as well get it over with.

     "My home office, Mom."

     She paused for a moment. "Oh. Do we share a bedroom again? We haven't done that since you were--"

     "No, Mom. I have my room and my office. That's it." He hesitated before awkwardly muttering, "Well, the bathroom and hallway and--"

     "Where am I meant to sleep then." It was a question, but spoken with such seething vitriol that Hikaru could only sigh. It was as he thought: she wouldn't reconsider her behavior. Not now. Not ever.

     "Did you really leave for two years and expect me to keep that absence open for you?" He wasn't talking about the room.

     Hanami wouldn't deign to respond. Once again, asking for her thought process was taken as a passive aggressive barb. She slowly opened the cupboard where the bowls were stored. She spooned out soup then brought the servings to the wall-attached bar table, which separated the kitchen and the living room. Hikaru circled the couch to the two stools, but Hanami remained standing on her side of the bar.

    "Well... you can just throw them out. Make room for me." She stirred her spoon around the bowl and dipped her head low enough that Hikaru felt safe glancing past her.

     The paper package was open. He hadn't been watching close enough.

    "Hell no."

     Her head jerked up again at that. Her eyes boggled out with such nausea, a coldness washed plunged down on his head. "Why can't you convert it into a bedroom again?"

     "I got rid of the bed. I need somewhere to do my work, Mom."

     "Why can't I share your room then?"

     "I don't have furniture in there either."

     "What?!" She shook her head in disbelief. "Why would you do that?"

     "Because I could!" He nearly lost control of his volume. He cleared his throat and mimicked the way she formed an endless spiral in the soup, just so she could see how stupid she looked. "I'm not a toddler anymore, Mom. I'm a grown adult and I want my space. I haven't been cashing your checks, either. You can take those back. I got a job so I can support myself."

    "But your sicknesses--"

     "Don't start," he warned her. And for once, she seemed to listen. After all, he hadn't had a real sick day since she'd been gone. Without her anxiety polluting his life and body and decisions, he had gained his strength back all on his own and lost his parasitic neediness. He was thinking clearly for once about all the things his mother said that didn't make sense. All the things she did-- supposedly for his benefit-- that only made him worse.

     "You wouldn't have to anymore," she insisted. "I make enough that you don't have to work at all!"

     "I like to work."

     "We could move out," she decided then and there, "find a seaside condo!"

     "I like this apartment."

     "Most men would like for their rich parent to take care of them, you know," she teased, as if comedy could make this any less uncomfortable for him.

     "I don't. It's embarrassing."

     "Your disrespect is embarrassing."

     An awkward quiet punctuated her bluntness. Hanami smoothed her cinnamon-hued hair down and came out with her concerns. "Maybe... you could at least convert it into a bedroom for a roommate. It doesn't have to be for me."

      "Mom," he groaned, inwardly rolling his eyes and dropping his shoulders.

    "You don't have any friends to rely on if things go badly Has anyone at work even messaged you to make sure you're well?"

     "What does it matter to you?"

     "I'm your mother," she said, as if that meant anything. Her face slacked, and she looked at him solemnly. "I love you... I know we've had our fair share of secrets between us, but that doesn't mean you can do this alone. It's been just you and me for as long as you've been alive, Hikaru. I've kept you safe for this long, suppressing that Quirk of yours so that there's no target on your back... Doesn't that mean anything?"

     He should have known better than to hope. Of course this wasn't about them-- it was always about her. If she did the minimum what she was told to do (such as raise a boy with a rare Quirk and encourage his reproduction) without cooperating with demands, then she couldn't be blamed for anything. Her conscience was clean now that he was an adult: she meant to leave him on his own. Hikaru stood with his untouched soup. "Thanks for the dinner," he said dryly. This was the final mercy he would give her. She had pushed them to this breaking point-- but he cared for her so deeply that if she backed down now, he would at least pretend to forget. He couldn't forgive her, but he could spare her.

      She didn't take the hint. "Hikaru, tell me what's going on. Why are you acting so cold to me? Don't you love me anymore?"

     "Let's not keep secrets then," Hikaru began, his voice aloft with unrestrained bitterness. "Since you're so willing to make amends, I have questions of my own. What are you hiding?" As he moved, so did she. She rotated her body so that he was never behind her, turning fully from the table as he approached the sink.

     "What?" Hanami cocked her head.

     "You never did ask about my Quirk. You didn't even want to know how I found out about it. The first thing you did was get as far from me as possible." He dumped the soup down the drain slowly. The overcooked vegetables plopped and disintegrated into a mass, clogging progress. "... I'll get to the heart of it. I know you're scared of what I could be. So I have to wonder..." He looked her in the eye. "Who was my father?"

     Her breath hitched, and with a glistening in her eyes, she whispered, "Don't ask me that."

     "Why can't I know?"

     "It's for your own good."

     "I don't want my own good. I want the truth."

     "Then it's for my own good!" she cried. "Do you want to hurt me?" Her voice had sharpened to a sleek edge, defensiveness creeping into her words.

     "Fine then. Dad's off the table." He stepped closer and noted how she didn't shrink away. She was scared, but not of what he could do to her. She believed she had him outmatched if it came to a physical altercation. But she still held back, giving him the upper hand somehow... "Tell me about you, then."

     She blinked innocently. He went on. "I know Empathy isn't your real Quirk. I know that Sato Hanami only officially existed at all twenty-one years ago. And that her entire history is fabricated." Sato Hanami, as an identity, was only a little more than a year older than Sato Hikaru. "Whoever falsified your information did a messy job. I'm surprised I'm the first one in the HPSC to notice... but I guess they have more 'friends' to wave those concerns off for you."

     She didn't answer for so long that he wondered if this was how she planned to salvage this nightmare: to get her purse from off the kitchen counter first, bid a farewell excuse for her next event, and she would be gone. Maybe for another year or two. Maybe for only an hour, returning at the ripe opportunity to find Hikaru in the throes of regret, malleable and desperate.

     Hanami squeezed the countertop edge until her knuckles paled. "... Why are you doing this?"

     "Answer me or get out."

     He saw her consider it. Saw her eyes flicker to the door before she heaved a sigh. "... Think carefully about whether you want this or not."

     Hikaru dropped his bowl into the sink with a clatter, and before he could grab her and force her out of his apartment, she started: "My name used to be Kumagai Misato. You probably know me better as Vitality." This made him sink into the counter himself. He stared at her, trying to recognize the former hero. She stared back, knowing he wouldn't.

      His suspicions had been off. Perhaps it was his bias. He'd assumed she'd been a villain, or some no-name civilian snatched from her home. The fact she used to be so high-profile gave him further reason to hesitate. But he'd had enough of her kicking out his every attempt to gain freedom. "It's nice to finally meet you, Kumagai," Hikaru said dryly. "When were you planning to tell me that my Quirk is an offshoot of Biohack?"

      "Don't act like this." She couldn't look at him. She was staring right past his elbow, to the cold stove and its unwanted nutrition. "I still raised you. I'm your mother, and I'm due that respect at least."

     "... Someone changed your appearance. So they didn't want you to be recognized."

     Her lips twisted in mock dismay. "Give me some credit... I didn't want to be recognized." Her eyes briefly glanced to the leftover soup on the stove. Hikaru drew the connection between her plastic surgery and the readily available prescription pad: hot anger washed down his body, realizing that she had means of subtlety which she never shared.

     Their blood relation couldn't be argued. The confirmation of her true Quirk suddenly filled in part of the puzzle for him: like Empathy, Biohack allowed its user to interphase with a living thing and procure a mentally itemized list of its target's components, statuses, and logistics. The most outstanding and vital difference was that Biohack operated on a cellular level: Vitality couldn't produce or evaporate new matter, but could 'persuade' microscopic lifeforms to override their natural lifespans.

     With a power like that, given enough work and resources and practice, she could probably help cure cancer. She could be tinkered upon and made into a walking bioweapon. Instead, she was playing a pretend game of house, a warden's simulacra of a mother, soothing yet antagonizing a child's pain, snipping the wings of his unpracticed ability. "And I bet Kaede is your handler. Or," and his eyes narrowed at her, "your work driver."

     Hanami-- Kumagai, whatever-- smiled. He steeled his heart against her approval. "Technically she was our handler. But there's no point in keeping a close eye on a Quirkless citizen." Just like that, the power structure changed. He realized now that his biggest mistake was confiding in her back then. "Relax. I'm not going to tell her."

     "How can I trust you?"

     "Because I still haven't told her all this time," Hanami--Vitality-- huffed. "Because I've been doing all I can to keep her away from you as you figure yourself out."

     Hikaru tried not to find himself distracted. Just because she was being cooperative now did not absolve her of past actions. "... How many of our family members are our actual family?" Not that blood relation meant much to this witch, but not everyone was as callous as his mother.

     With another twisted smile-- so proud, but so resentful-- she said, "You've been quietly mapping your way out of the dungeon. Good boy. It's good to know how many soldiers you'll have to fight through to get out. The answer is: none of them... they've never been our allies."

     He had guessed as much. Before Hikaru had become 'reclusive and unfriendly' in his spiraling health, the Sato family gatherings were mandatory; he had assumed his 'relatives' grew tired of accommodating his needs. Not that he would attend again, if given the chance. Now he knew 'reunion' meant submerging himself into a pit of vipers. The only thing that made such events tolerable had been his mother: the one who always made sure there were wheelchair options, who held his things when he became winded, and who knew when to guide him somewhere dark and quiet when the onslaught of stimulation drove him to silent suffering. Little acts of consideration held the stretched seams of their bond together.

     "They're not so smart." He couldn't help commiserating with her, maybe out of some misplaced sympathy still clinging to the wrinkles of his heart. "I always got the feeling they never knew exactly what you told me about my dad."

A 'second-removed aunt' would suggest his father died before he was born, and then suddenly a 'distant cousin' around his age would insist they had known of him after Hikaru's birth. It was a gas leak, someone recalled, and another would wonder if it was an explosion, and someone else would combine the theories to a gas-based explosion. Their dodginess always put the spotlight on his mother.

The only thing Hikaru knew for certain was that even if he asked his own mother about his absent parent, it would produce nothing helpful. She would either clam up completely, overwhelm herself with her own crying, or refuse to answer anything with any certainty. She was like this with everyone, and for the longest time, because he never wanted to hurt her, Hikaru let that sleeping dog lie.

Until she hurt him first.

Before he could open his mouth to ask how she met his dad, she moved. He moved too. In that second his mother lunged for him with an arm outstretched, he reeled back wildly across the counter. His hand found purchase and he swiped out at her with the chef's knife. "Stay back!"

Neither of them harmed each other. As seasoned and experienced as she had been, his mother chose not to strongarm him. All she'd had to do was knock the knife from his hand and seize him. She could inflame the cells in his lungs, turn the water vapor into a pathogen (depending on how good she was), and give him pneumonia. She could make his bones porous and let his legs snap under his own weight. Or maybe she could just flip a switch in his head. He truly didn't know what kind of person Vitality had become in this new life... he didn't know what she was willing to do to survive.

Instead of doing anything of the sort, she looked at the knife. And then she burst into tears. He stood there as she sank down to her knees, bawling like a child. All the while, she babbled on about how she never wanted a motherhood like this. She loved him, she was trying so hard, and she was sorry that she failed him. She was frightened that any day, the people watching them would realize they'd been conned. They would come to take Hikaru away, and she was powerless to stop them. The world would only get worse.

"I'm sorry," Hikaru said, crouching next to her. He left the knife on the counter and scooted closer. His mother was so slim. She had curled her arms around herself so tightly that she seemed to be crushing herself down smaller and smaller. In his mind, he held her and hid his face in her hair as she cried. They were both victims of their mutual circumstance...

'This is exactly what she wants.'

His insides felt hollow when he caught himself. He nearly fell for it. She could have done anything in that moment's weakness. Immediately, he pulled away and got back to his feet to look down on the sight. From an elevated view, he could see all the moving parts. The abandonment, the big fight, the melodramatic apologies. The medicated soup neither of them ate-- for after all, she never intended to dine with him. This was not a meeting of equals. His mother could have simply left the packet on the counter... but she had to take control of him. She needed to have control of something.

He began to clean around her, letting her sit and sob on the kitchen floor. He couldn't build up the strength to abandon his post, so he took his time tossing out the food, tidying the dishes, and putting things away. Eventually her wet hiccupping stopped, and he glanced her way before a horrible nausea rolled his stomach. She watched him with an openly curious expression, her nose and cheeks pinkened. Her eyes shone with tears, yet there held in them a sharpness... a bitterness that he had not done the proper thing and comforted her, like any son would do. She hated that he didn't trust her.

A dim memory flashed before him: fat baby hands patting her back as he sang to her her, 'It'll be okay, it's all okay,' in an astringent waiting room. She held his little hands and squeezed them. He took one back to cover his mouth as he coughed. And then that same glimmer of inspiration appeared in her eyes.. The recollection blended with all the other examinations he had undergone, though he knew without doubt this was one of the first ones. This was the important one, he realized by way of hindsight: it decided their entire, mangled future.

He wished he was capable of Empathy instead. If only he could tell when she was lying to him and when she was sincere. For so long, he battled with the idea that his suffering had been at the hands of his mother. His mother, the one who worked harder than anyone else to keep him comfortable and safe, she who had never before left his side. Had she been protecting him, or was that an excuse to keep misery as her company?

He knew the night would be cold. He began to fill his electric kettle with water, preparing to make her a large serving of tea to keep her warm on her way to the airport. "I can't let you stay here," he told her. "Especially not if Kaede is expecting you at your next charity dinner." He didn't want to go out... but he still ought to protect what mattered to him, so he planned his route back after accompanying her to the train station. He was loathe to give up his sentry, terrified that by drawing him away from the apartment some fiend would infiltrate his privacy, but... he still loved her, even after everything she had done.

She could be so quiet when she wanted to be. If he hadn't turned to prepare her tea at the table, he would never have caught her in the hallway, staring at all the cords and hoses. She reached for the door that his other self hid behind.

He must have scared her. It was one thing to grab for a weapon, any weapon, in the face of potential danger. It was another to vault over the bar, graceful and gravely swift. Without thinking, he grabbed her by the wrist. She let him yank her, and did not scream or cry or wrench herself away. In that instant, he felt something slam into his sternum-- a sudden ghost pressure that made him release her and stumble back. They froze again, caught in another disjointed conflict. They watched each other, more or less unmoored as they processed everything. She had felt the hand-laid mental wall he built up against her, knew now what he was capable of. Whatever fears he was feeling, whatever his problems might be, she was no longer privy to them. He had categorically shut her out, compartmentalized into a 'public' personal file that only knew Hikaru to be a sleep-deprived workaholic.

"Please leave it alone," he requested. "That's private."

---

Hikaru began to cough during their walk. Softly at first like clearing his throat, but the fits soon became frequent. Hanami seemed to consider offering her tea, but decided against it. Instead, she gestured vaguely with the thermos he gave to her: heads up. He was grateful for that-- after all, they now had company. Two people were behind them. The lurkers from Kaede's apartment he assumed, and supposed another two would be waiting for them at the station. He kept his mask on, and they didn't dare to speak or even look at each other as they walked, instead pretending to ignore their invisible surveillance.

It took all his self-restraint not to turn on her in their last seconds. The vile desire to hurt her as much as she had hurt him still hummed just under his skin. He considered shoving her onto the tracks just before the train pulled in-- causing a scene that would force the faceless henchmen to react. He wondered what would happen if he ever needed to run. He considered what it was like to destroy yourself completely, to be reborn anew... how would he leave everything he knew behind and try to get out of reach before the walls shrank in on him?

"... I never knew what to do with you, you know," Hanami murmured under her breath, so that only he could hear. "You were always the kindest, smartest kid I knew. Kids half your age could hurt your feelings... I knew if anyone else got a hold of you, they would render your heart into pieces and you wouldn't stand a chance."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," he muttered back.

"You're welcome," she said, and they were quiet again until the train pulled up. "The tour will last another year. You have until then. Goodbye." How considerate of her, to keep it brief. To buy him time. But as she stepped into the train, his heart stopped in his chest, and he found himself calling to her.

"Hey."

His mother glanced back. Either time slowed, or she sustained this gaze for several deliberate seconds. He couldn't tell. He stepped past the yellow line and wrapped his arms around her body. She tensed, then relaxed, settling her arms over his shoulders. With his face so close to her ear, he asked, "... Your doctor friend... they're the same one who did your surgery, aren't they?... Who are they?"

She pulled away and scrutinized him. Then tilted her head forward, as if to ask one final time if he was certain he wanted to know. He didn't budge.

She slipped out of his hug, brushing his hair from his face using her wrist. His nausea settled only fractionally. "Body Shop," she said in English. Then she turned and walked back into the train, the doors closing between them.

As the train pulled away, Hikaru felt it take a piece of him with it, unraveling his insides like a busy spool. When he saw the three figures stand and close in on the woman before he lost sight of her completely, his head spun with delirious rage and fear... even though he knew she wasn't so easy to corner. She would squirm out of the pan before determining whether it landed her in the fire or not, and deal with the consequences then. Before her absence took more than he could stand to lose, he cut her free, turned, and walked away.

---

He made it home after dark, just in time to fall into an uproarous hacking, his bones aching for relief, muscles burning with exertion. He wheezed air into his lungs laboriously and went straight to the kitchen sink for a drink of water. There, he found the disembowled paper bag next to the sink, right where it had been forgotten.

He grabbed it, sought identification to no avail, then tore open the rest of its contents. All the medicine was gone. He took a moment to stare down at the mess, considering what might have happened if he just pretended he hadn't noticed. Would she have eaten if he did? Or was all of her effort for him and only him?

He couldn't return to his work. The chance of contaminating his specimens was too great. He would have to finish scrawling his reports and measurements down by his dying phone's flashlight, away from them all... to be alone was torture, but he wasn't as selfish as his mother was.

So he went back to the bathroom and scrubbed down. Spending that energy was necessary, but his strength waned. By the time he was in his hazardous material suit, his throat was scratchy and his body was shivering. Hikaru weakly approached the study, opening the door slowly so as not to overexert or jostle himself. He picked up his notebook and looked out over the room.

The spider plant hung overhead, a small tarp catching Koyubi's puppy teeth as they bloomed and fell. Arms protruded from garden pots with fingers lifting and curling with invitation. Brown-eyed Susans rolled around with no particular field of vision and blunk their yellow-petaled eyelashes now and again. A human spinal column-- or at least, a rope of nerve tendrils soon to become a spine-- braided its length along a custom trellis. A brain floated in an artificial pond like a lily pad, the stem rooted to the muddy bottom. Organs grew in wall-mounted, and tight-lidded aquariums: the brackish water beheld lacy scum and mold rings diversifying into innumerable flora and bacteria, converging into a singular whole.

Any sane person would have thrown the plants out immediately and never so much as looked at a cactus. But using his Quirk made him feel better; even the most vicelike grip on his brain now was lessened by the presence of his plantlife. It was as though there was something excessive in him, poisoning him, and by nurturing his garden to its anatomical apotheosis, there was less of that something. It was rewarding. It was euphoric. The only thing he wanted to do was grow, study, and learn. He was good at it, and it presented a puzzle in a language only he could parse.

But he knew it was a two-way street. He couldn't risk getting all of them sick, or all his hard work would be for nothing. "Goodnight." His farewell sounded tinny in the confines of his hood as he shuffled out the door.

By the time he was tucked into bed, Hikaru's chills were so severe that the shivers shook his handwriting. He could only reflect on his previously collected data and marvel at the possibilities of his Quirk. The variables were endlessly fluctuating: all his creations were vulnerable to soil composition, water levels, light intensity, bodily fluids... he reread the section regarding biological material. Hindsight and obsessive studying had cast light some of the mystery.

According to the Quirk singularity theory, the combination of hereditary genes could combine into more complex, powerful Quirks. A lineage of autonomic-override Quirks, such as his mother's, could lead to interesting combinations. But he couldn't explain the plants... the only inheritance that remained of his father, the most nebulous aspect of his power.

Hikaru understood why someone would want his Quirk. Growing bodies came incredibly naturally to him. Over time, as sweat and skin mixed into the nutrients, the microscopic formula became stronger. Semen, as awkward and uncomfortable a phase it had been, worked fractionally better than sweat or saliva. Blood was easier to extract though, and paper cuts were easy enough to explain.

But the more ineffable aspect was the proximity to his plants: the way he knew they were sick or dying, because then he too would wilt. His strength correlated to theirs. There was more to his Quirk than merely imbuing it with his essence... if it were so simple, then he wouldn't be a hostage in his own life.

The spider plant's first blossom was the revelation: he was as much a victim as his mother, and the things he did to explore his options came from a need to save himself. He wasn't proud of it, not entirely. But he also hadn't hurt anyone. He had taken hair from strangers' sweaters, stolen misplaced beverages, and even gone so far as to filch used dental picks from the trash, for their saliva. Was it such a crime to be thorough? Were people really so fond of their discarded napkins and bandages? He had to be sure-- he had to prove to himself that there was a rhyme or reason to his experiments, so he randomized the test subjects. He wanted to see how precise his Quirk could be.

Thanks to all the groundwork, he had a project and a hypothesis. Could he be criticized for being thorough? And given tonight's revelations... it would be possible.

In another life, maybe his mother could have trusted him. They could have talked it over together, and maybe he wouldn't have to do this. The only way he could think to trace back his Quirk to a different progenitor-- without anyone knowing anything about what he had done or planned to do-- was to recreate his and his mother's and dissect the differences.

In a matter of time, Hikaru would know whether or not he could grow a Quirk. He would find out more about this 'Body Shop,' and he would escape the confines of his cage.

One day. One day.

[kino-rogers]

He is always a call away (Tangerine/Reader)

Word count: 825 (reasonably short and sweet)

Song: 0800 HEAVEN | Nathan Dawe, Joel Corry, Ella Henderson (listen, I know the vibes don't fit but the lyrics inspired me to write this aha)

Short summary: Bullet Train happens and everything goes down as it does in the film. Reader is trying to process that Tangerine won't come home again.

Warnings: Canon typical swearing, angst, (light) past trauma mention

notes: thank you @nocturnest for jumping on this to fix my broken English and being a wonderful beta!! what an intro but uh [coughs] i'm already excited to write more for this fandom (bits in which Tangie is very much alive ehehe) anywaayyy, hope you guys like this!! - 🥝

It's not been the… easiest time - it has to be said.

Since that phone call from Lemon, you've been struggling with sleep. It doesn't show in your work, of course. Keeping up appearances has always come to you rather naturally. Some of it being from your repressed trauma, that even years of therapy barely scratched the surface of, but also because of your line of work too. It doesn't sit well to be an emotional wreck after every kill you're paid to do.

The call was from a number you didn't recognise. The passing sound of traffic suggested it's from a payphone as Lemon sighed heavily down the line.

"You lost your phone? On a train?" You answered the call lightheartedly and you recognized his sigh immediately, you hoped it was just a release of pent up tension over a job well finished. Although, the fact that Lemon was the one to call, put you on edge, hoping it's not coming through your pretend jolliness.

"He's gone." His statement was simple and sudden. The tone, stone cold, as his voice was raspy, possibly from crying.

"Who's gone, Lemon?"

Your throat ran dry as you swallowed around a lump. Your chest quickly tightened as you tried to piece together what he could have meant. You couldn't- no, didn't want to think about the most likely possibility.

"Tan-" He took a pause, cleared his throat before continuing. "Tangerine, was shot in the neck, he is gone."

It's not like you guys were dating, no, it wasn't anything like that. Neither of you had the emotional capacity for that. What, with your jobs requiring you to spend weeks, months away from each other at a time, sometimes in different countries, opposite sides of the world. But he was the first person, in a long while, that you genuinely cared for.

~~~

You turn to your bedside table, glance at the alarm clock there. Its digital display shines in orange numbers, 01:54.

It's a month, today.

You suddenly have a stupid idea. What would happen if you called his number? Last time you checked it was still live, it'd probably just take you to voicemail. Weirdly, your therapist at your last session suggested writing letters to him, in your bereavement. Bereavement. Such a weird word. You're not even sure that's what this is. But maybe leaving a voicemail would be an equivalent. Maybe he can listen to his voicemails, wherever he is. You scoff at the fleeting thought but reach for your phone anyway.

Tangie is still in your recent calls. You tap the saved contact and wait for it to ring.

You're not expecting anyone to answer, of course not. Your grief hasn't driven you completely nuts. But as the phone rings, you can't help but think about getting to talk to him, just once more. By some divine intervention, you'd be connected through to him, in the afterlife and you could tell him everything you couldn't the last time you spoke.

"-after the beep BEEP"

"Hi Tangie," You scoff in embarrassment, not really sure why you're doing this anymore. "I uh,"

You sigh heavily, all too aware of the silence the machine is expecting you to fill. You sniffle as you start to speak again.

"I know you won't hear this. That… Isn't really the point." You draw a shaky breath. "I know who did it though. Well, knew. Lemon and I took him out last week. What kind of an assassin's name is Ladybug anyway?" You snicker. Can't avoid the tightness in your chest though.

"I just… I dunno. Apparently I should be writing letters to you, as if I could send them off with a pigeon and they'd get to wherever the fuck you are. So, this is the next best thing. If this was anyone else, you'd tell me to fuck off and to suck it up. We always were on the same wavelength, when it came to feelings." Your chest deflates with a long exhale as you realise you need to stop dancing around whatever it is you're trying to say here.

"I guess I just wanted to tell you I really fucking miss you." You sniffle again, tears gathering in the corners of your eyes. "I miss your stupid grin, your teasing, your annoyingly cocky attitude, your… The way you looked at me."

"I wish you were here right now so I could tell you I love you. I wish I didn't, I really goddamn wish I didn't care for you so much but I fucking love you. And I hate that I can't see your face as I told you, for the first time. Please call me back."

You bury your face in your pillow and you howl into it, sobs shaking your body as the voicemail recording is saved and you continue to wallow in your bereavement. You're supposed to be feeling better. You need to stop paying your therapist.

[ikoarts]

September 2023 Art

train derangement in full swing x

vvv dates + info under the cut vvv

1 - 03/09/2023 : really wanted to draw Ru n Toni in some eveningwear, was a fun opportunity to draw Toni a bit more masc... shes so hot wtf!!! i love these ladies

2, 3 - 04/09/2023 : a Trixie pen doodle, which I ended up turning into a full digital piece..... which i procrastinated on for months, but hey at least i Did finish it! also a little human TTTE au doodle... its Diesel and hes silly... i doodled him in the oingo boingo only a lad pose bc, damn, he really is only a lad

4 - 05/09/2023 : another human Diesel, i did end up tweaking a lot of these initial human designs, so don't get too comfy with em, but oh my.. could it be... Goopy makes another boingo reference? how peculiar that never ever happens..... anyway Perfect System is my fave Diesel song.. in my head is an AMV that will never be made

5, 6, 7 - 06/09/2023 : first, some ideas for my human Edward, thought i might as well include these, for the craic i guess x ... then a rare one of Toby (i havent drawn him since.. i should change that) and Diesel, then that one barbie meme with Edward n James, dont get comfy with either of these designs coz they're not sticking x

8 - 07/09/2023 : a pencil drawing emerges.. Eddie again, with his initial design i was gonna go with, i think the side profile is especially cute..

9 - 09/09/2023 : aaand heres the design i've currently settled on! im much happier with this, and its one of my fave drawings of last year, even if its nothing too special, hes just so cute, and thats really it

10 - 10/09/2023 : silly phone doodle of my human percy.. he drank 2 meny monsters.. cuz i think he would ig.. splort on the floor

11, 12 - 15/09/2023 : another silly (very quick) phone doodle.. i like the idea of Edward taking Diesel under his wing and nobody else can quite understand why, ALSO Edward n Emily friendship? lets go... gays stick together and listen to belinda carlisle its true

13 - 17/09/2023 : YET ANOTHER silly one... oo shes so silly so quirky... i just think if Edward ended up in TATMR he would destroy D10 like thats probs why he wasnt included... hes too powerful

14, 15, 16 - 21/09/2023 : human Diesel shenanigans, first isnt my fave thing ive done and again his design is now outdated BUT the little one of him flipping you off is so funny to me like you get em lil guy!! also Edward again big surprise. holding his little gremling

17 - 29/09/2023 : watched tobias and the last pariah and all i could think about was this meme of the brown eyes vs blue eyes thing so i doodled them on my phone

[sneakygoldie]

Current Fandoms and Stuff I like! (will update often)

(Most favorite ones are Sailor Moon and Ojamajo Doremi, but the rest are a fight for second place! >:3)

Ed Edd N Eddy

South Park

Digital Circus

Murder Drones

BFDI/BFDIA/BFB/TPOT (most recent fandom)

Leo (2023 movie yeah 💀)

Regular show

Sailor Moon

Ojamajo Doremi

Precure

The Amazing World of Gumball

MHA

Cute High Earth Defense Club

Catscratch

Bluey

Marvel stuff (hehe)

Dragon Ball

Demon Slayer

Spooky Month

One Piece

Naruto

PPGZ and PPG

Canimals

Jewelpet

Pripara

Cardcaptor Sakura

Tokyo Mew Mew

Housebroken

Princess Tutu

All of Aphmau’s series! :>

Percy Jackson

Warrior Cats

Aristocats

Oliver and Company

Proud Family

Peanuts

Adventure Time

Lucky Star

Talking Tom and Friends

FHFIF

The Owl House

Gravity Falls

Whatever Happened to Robot Jones

Steven Universe

101 Dalmatians the Series

1O1 Dalmatian Street

Animal Jam (Play Wild and OG)

Roblox

Genshin Impact

Canimals

The Amazing Digital Circus

Bitlife

Sims 4

Dungeons & Dragons

The Simpsons

12. oz Mouse

(still fairly new to some of these, so yeahhhh)

Now time to explain the rules in this blog and some stuff about me!

-fav animal is seals bc they so silly, also one my most fav youtubers, leamon puppy has her main as a seal, think that’s where I first started loving seals so much but idk XDDD

-I absolutely love vintage vids, just something so interesting about them to me! I love animes from the 90s-2010s most, but my most FAVORITE anime genre is magical girls!

-My first magical series was probably Glitter Force (SMILE PRECURE DUB YALL), but then Sailor Moon caught my eye and it is one my favs to this day! I finished Tokyo Mew Mew first though!

-Fav character is Pop Harukaze! She doesn’t get much of a role in Ojamajo Doremi as a Ojamajo, but something about her personality or something.. I am just living for it!

-Some other favs.. and yes I have a long list bc my autistic brain can’t choose favorites when they are so unique.. are Tsubomi/Cure Blossom, Komugi/Cure Wonderful, Ice Cube (BFDI+), Bubble (BFDI+), Ruby (BFDIA+), Gelatin (BFDIA+), Flower (BFDI+), Two (BFB), Firey (BFDI+), X (BFB), Teardrop (BFDI+), Four (BFB), Bloo (FHFIF), Mac (FHFIF), Aiko (Ojamajo Doremi), Onpu (Ojamajo Doremi), Chibi Chibi/Sailor Chibi Chibi, Saki/Cure Bloom, Minako/Sailor Venus, Erika/Cure Marine, Nagisa/Cure Black, Bu-Ling/Mew Pudding, Yayoi/Cure Peace, Love/Cure Peach, Hana-chan (Ojamajo Doremi), Pollun/Porun (Precure), Jewlulu (Pripara), Tweek (you know what), Oz (Canimals), Muffin (Bluey), Zane (Mystreet/Aphmau), Garroth (Mystreet/Aphmau), Kim (Mystreet/Aphmau), Ian (Mystreet/Aphmau) and Noi (MID/Aphmau)!

-Fav color is lavender and pastel yellow

-Im scatterbrained at times, but can try remembering anything you say! Im clumsy and shy! <3

-“Do you have games on your phone” YES BUT LEAVE THEM IF ITS MY PHONE OR IPAD XDDD, especially my dear Animal Jam >:3

-I don’t really prefer to talk on email or text.. just tell me something on here or a social media platform like Youtube or Deviantart! I still use Gold the Ostrich as the user!

-Fav thing to say is “HOR HOR HOR HOR HOR” all i freaking know about fnaf is the movie with unnecessary add on lore 💀

-I don’t mind cussing, it’s just not a full on “lifestyle” for me

Now some rules! <3

-Everyone is allowed on my blog, it is mostly a tickle/random blog, but it’s quite decent so far!

-If you dislike this blog, please don’t say unnecessary stuff in your blogs, posts in any other media, etc if so. Just try ignoring this blog if possible.

-I can do commissions, especially of the following fandoms, but pls don’t get too upset if I don’t know a certain fandom, sometimes I forget to add a fandom to here.

- I am a minor, 13 in fact! So no sussy requests pleaseeee!! any other tickle requests are okay, even from fandoms I dont know, or your ocs! pls dont be mad if I don’t want to do your request! I will do anything that is sfw and accept lgbtq+ characters aswell!

-Might update this later, but this is good for now! Also this might stay as my only blog due to having no other ideas for blogs at the moment

[quaranmine]

Next steps for the AU:

-I have a couple of analysis-type posts to make. I love talking about this fic lol so I have a lot to say still. Included in this will be a review of art symbolism, setting as a character, and some selected real-life cases and research I ran across. I may also talk a little about fire symbolism as well as my fun fire-related words I purposefully scattered around (if you noticed me describe feelings as a spark a lot, it was on purpose lol.) I also may talk about a couple things that didn't end up happening, or did happen but almost didn't.

-This weekend I am going to revisit the fic chapters 8-12 to see if I can add more art to them. I had initially wanted more art pieces throughout the fic but the art would sometimes delay finished chapters for weeks (i have to both draw and color it traditionally, photograph it in good light, and then digitally edit it) so I started worrying less about it. If I do I will post those pieces and retroactively add them in the chapter.

-Speaking of retroactive edits, some earlier chapters of the story on AO3 have some issues with em dashes appearing smaller than they should be. This is corrected in my original document but I never got around to correcting the published chapters (i am always mildly worried the formatting will break lol.) When I do this I will also add cocoabats' cover into the first chapter. I also plan to retroactively edit some of my Fire Finder Math in chapter 3 because I think I made Grian's tower taller than it needs to be/at the wrong elevation. This won't affect the chapter outcome at all I just Need that to be accurate for myself

-I have a great many web weaving materials that I have slowly collected over the months that I would like to mess with again. I have been saving them in a #f tag on my main blog, but I didn't make any except for one because I wanted the full context of the story to be published.

-Going to upload the Letters from the Lookout drabbles into the AO3 series. Hopefully in the future I may add more. Or, I may not. We'll see. I also have a Scar-centric story called "Alpenglow" in my outline. based on its structure it may have multiple chapters, but it will not have any sort of through-line plot. It's selected scenes from his 8 years career as a lookout. I want to write this, but I don't know if it will be or not. With the main fic done I will be releasing my brain to work on other projects/ideas that I didn't want to get distracted by earlier. That doesn't mean it won't happen, it just means that it may not happen on a fast timeline.

[neojayink]

Splatoon Neo’s hero story updates:

Light spoilers for DLC SIDE ORDER below. (Speaking of the general story)

Brief story time of bts hero shenanigans.

I’ve recently finalized a few facets of how I’d want the story to play out for sneo. The story has been under a few revisions over the years but in the last six months I think I’ve landed on something quite cool. Took my time thinking of ideas for my story so that Splatoon 3 could run its course and so that I wouldn’t have any overlap with cannon to the point I’m telling their story twice. And after finishing the dlc I’m now going back to the drawing board on some details.

Not sure if I’ve ever specified how the world of sneo compares to the cannon world but the universe of sneo (the neoverse I like to call it nowadays) is like an alternate timeline in a new dimension. So both sneo and cannon exist at the same times. Even tho sneo is slightly more futuristic, time works differently in the neoverse and the entire first story takes place and ends just moments before Octo expansion and beyond as of right now. This may all be kind of complicated to drop so suddenly but I do plan to explain all the cool bits when I get to covering the story. This worlds version of alterna logs are called “think pieces,” small cards that hold the knowledge of everything that happens around the neoverse.

I’d like to take this opportunity to go over a few of Splatoon neo’s scrapped storylines. Starting off with the one most closest to the current Splatoon cannon story.

1: “Homecoming”

“In this version of sneo story 1 the hero will come across databanks that detail the specifics of the universe they reside in. A world created by a long gone scientist that hoped to store souls inside a super computer called the “LOTUS” so that one day when the earth heals itself after the incoming devastation humans can return with a fresh slate to try life again without destroying the planet. The Lotus will be tasked with monitoring the planet for the next spiritually awakened intelligent life form to rise and humanity will live on again.

Someone in the real world (cannon) finds out about this device and hacks their way into it to use the power contained for their own nefarious acts. They promise a group of Octolings a better life and a do-over if they fight for his cause. The Octolings were easily on board as their leader was power hungry and would do anything to claim more turf. Little did they know that they would be an army fighting against their own best interests. At the end the Octoling army would be helping destroy their original world to make space for the return of humanity. This entity would use this group of Octolings to start trouble that leads to another global extinction of intelligent life. This biomass would then be modified by the Lotus and edited to reassemble human dna from scratch. “

This iteration of the story looks similar to alterna when it comes to humanities last ditch effort to survive. This story had too much back and forth between realities so the newer story will be much more simple and contained. Think of the lotus as a super computer that can simulate realities. It’s also based on fusing nature and technology. The lotus is so powerful that it can spawn constructs from within itself to the outside world if it has all the necessary matter. The greater villain would’ve used this technology to create an octoling anomaly that would go on to destroy the earth and collect back human dna from inklings / Octolings. Another similarly to tartar using agent 3 as a host body to go about their plans. There was also a huge focus on dna and GMO. Genetically modified Octolings would be a threat of Octolings that turn themselves into “super soldiers” for their cost. (Kinda like how color pallets work in side order)

A digital world and humans returning. It hit both marks but this inspired me for the better to create something more focused and not trying to explain “what should come next for a Splatoon 3.” Honestly shocked how I could’ve guessed the cannon story but back then I tried to make my story more of a “Splatoon 3” before Splatoon 3 existed. But overall I’m just glad to see the devs explore ideas I’ve once wished for. Really like a dream come true and s3 has my second favorite story mode of them all after Octo ex. (Close ties between all 5 don’t judge)

2: “Out of order”

“The neoverse inkopolis was overrun by chaos so bad that there had to be crack downs on turf wars. An octoling army gladly took the job of enforcing rules and curfews to please city officials. They were hypocritical and broke the same rules they enforced but higher ups didn’t seem to care. The hero fellow neighborhood watch gear up to figure out what’s going on in this city. They end up finding back to back scars of corporate greed. The city is so nice and clean because all of its trash goes underground into less fortunate habitats.

The hero finds out that the leader of the octoling army was bribing higher ups so that they could slowly take over the city without force. This octoling leader was universally feared and didn’t need to use brain washing to get their way. But they needed saving too. As fearsome as she is, she wasn’t immune from fearsome control themself.”

This version of the story played into fear vs respect heavily. We’d see the villain scare the city into submission while she figures out how she will save it from the entity that is above her. She’s like a trojan horse to the world and she hides in the deep sea, away from civilization in case she fails her mission and is turned into a weapon of destruction. As harsh as she may seem, she’s only following orders to keep whatever peace there is left to be had.

A lot of aspects of this version will return. Took me months to create a backstory of the new villain but she will probably get a post just like this one explaining all her scrapped stories and evolution. I really can’t wait to introduce her.

To not bore yall too much we will end things here for now. Now that splat 3 is pretty much complete with story for now I’m feeling a lot more confident telling the story I’m crafting now. Can’t lie, telling the same story as the cannon was a big fear of mine so I just stalled until things came out.

Splatoon neo is still alive. Unfortunately nowadays I find myself just sketching away and making complete works a lot less as you can tell. Hope this was a cool update for dlc time. As the storyline gets confirmed for sure I will try to make more text posts about it even if there’s no drawing to come with. I do plan on covering hero mode with a lot of drawings and possible 3d work if the artblock gods will let me. Could even be a comic covering it all.

Also decided to share this last thing. Splatoon neo will have more than one story once the first once is finished. It will probably take over the name “cross contamination” from that one sketch and be a direct sequel. It’s only been thought of for about a month so far so it’s still to early to spill details but heres some concepts of the new species I will introduce called “exolings” for now and a mystery inkling who shows up. They’re very “alien”-like in nature.

[bikwin5]

"ELLY'S ADVENTURE" notes and retrospective

It's been almost a month since I released "ELLY'S ADVENTURE," my first finished game in quite a while. I kind of dropped it without any context so I want to talk about it a bit. This is going to be a long post.

If you haven't played it then GO DO THAT CLICK ON THIS NOW!!!!! Just now I uploaded a recent 1.2 version that fixes a couple more bugs. I highly recommend you read this after at least beating the main game.

THE ORIGINAL

The first thing I want to reveal about Elly's is that the characters and setting did not begin with this project. How scandalous!!! They were actually conceived for a different project that I started thinking of as early as the end of 2015. This was also a game maker project, but it was much larger in scope than what Elly's Adventure became. It was going to be a "METROID MANIA" type game that many indie devs love to make.

The characters themselves didn't change that much in terms of roles. Elly was still the protagonist with Natalie as a supporting role, and I even had the idea of a hard mode where you play as Natalie back then. The plot was that there was like a magical item that got stolen and Elly and Natalie accidentally end up in a situation where they get recruited by the military and sent to take it back from a factory being used as a front for a base of very evil operations. The tone was still kind of funny but a little more serious than Elly's Adventure.

These are the earliest digital drawings of Elly and Natalie from 2015 and they look like FUCKING DOGSHIT!!!!!! SOmehow worse than I remember. I'm glad I learned to draw a bit better if nothing else.

Chandra was also a part of this project but she was not the main villain, rather she would have been the main henchman you fight multiple times throughout the course of the game, getting new attacks each time. She was to work under a character who I called MINERVA, THE CYBER-QUEEN who was to be the main antagonist. Chandra was more of a funny character who displayed moments of incompetence while the Cyber-Queen was more serious. I never really settled on a finalized design for the queen and I didn't even really like her that much in retrospect so Chandra ended up being the main antagonist of Elly's Adventure due to its more lighthearted nature. The enemies were also always meant to be weird round robots with green eyes, and I reused some designs for Elly's Adventure.

Old sprite sheets of Elly and the enemies. Was never really satisfied with Elly's animations.

Yulie was also part of the original project but she was to not make any physical appearances. Rather she was to give hints and bits of lore from pieces of her writing you would find around the factory, from a time when she worked there and slowly discovered that something sinister was going on. Surprisingly Yulie was never actually intended to be Elly's mom from the start until I started thinking of her being a support character in Elly's Adventure and I was like wait why should she be helping these kids... well her and elly both have blonde hair so she's her mom now LOL

This project never had a proper name, I think I also considered calling it Elly's Adventure but I didn't want to exclude Natalie from it so I was thinking of names like "Sky Diamonds" but it doesn't take place in the sky so that's stupid. I got as far as laying out the whole game and getting basic controls and some of the opening area down but that was about it. Truthfully I was never really satisfied with how it controlled or the art direction I was going with and making a metroid type game that lasted several hours felt so daunting I didn't really want to work on it anymore after a point.

Here are some old gifs of what it looked like. The main gameplay idea was that Elly was going to have a propulsion as a double jump that could be upgraded, sort of like the booster 2.0 from Cave Story. That idea ended up working its way into Adventure as a powerup. There was to be other mechanics like shot upgrades and secondary items that would do fun things but I never got around to that.

THE INSPIRATIONS

Now that I've spent long enough talking about Elly origins I can get to the actual game that, if you are reading this, most likely played. While it uses the same characters and setting as the last project, Elly's Adventure has a much smaller scope and style of gameplay. I am not a huge fan of the word "inspiration" something about it pisses me off. But with everything there was stuff that Elly's was inspired by.

First off only the most keen of observers may have realized that Elly's Adventure very much emulates the look and feel of titles played on a certain handheld system. It is the GAME BOY and it's one of the greatest things ever made. It has TI-84 ass graphics and sold a hundred million. I think the Game Boy might be the most rudimentary electronic game device to ever be so popular and I love it for that.

What's really ironic is that I actually did not have a Game Boy growing up YES that's right my first system was the Game Boy Advance. I know it's backwards compatible but I didn't know that as a kid and the only way I knew about games was either seeing them directly in the store or the sears catalog. And I loved Yoshi so much that I wanted a GBA specifically for the Super Mario Advance games with Yoshi in them. I enjoyed my Yoshi's Island port very much. So any original Game Boy title I've played I was either a teen or older since that was when I discovered the magic of emulation.

Anyway this is getting too anecdotal so I should start talking about the specific games that actually did inspire Elly's: Mole Mania and Link's Awakening.

MOLE MANIA is a puzzle game released by Nintendo in 1996. No one bought it because the Game Boy was dying and Pokemon had yet to breathe life into it again. People like to call it "Miyamoto's forgotten masterpiece" and then not say anything else about it. But it is legitimately a very good puzzle game that manages to do so much with so little and it's surprisingly difficult too. Each level is a series of one screen puzzles where the mole has to get the big ball into the goal, like this:

I got this from a youtude video so it has the cool Super Game Boy border. Anyway Muddy Mole can go underground to get to places and push and pull the ball around and all sorts of stuff. It's all designed in a very competent and concise way and I love everything about it except for the bonus stages and final boss. It feels unique among Nintendo games because it feels like they almost never do pure puzzle games that aren't some sort of falling block variant.

Of course Elly's is not a puzzle game so you might be wondering why I'm even bringing this one up. I felt compelled enough by the concise puzzle design that I wanted to make a Game Boy styled thing myself, something that I was considering for a while. I thought the idea of moving from screen to screen and clearing everything out would be fun. So I ended up digging up the handful of characters I had hardly thought about in years and set out to make a game with them.

Funny enough, even back in the day I was considering making a Game Boy styled game with Elly as a sidescroller. The idea was that it would have been a primer before jumping into a big game. It would have been something really short, like only 20 minutes, and the only characters would have been Elly and the Queen. But I didn't really get into it, not even writing down any ideas. So I suppose I was itching to do something with the GB style all along.

LINK'S AWAKENING is a much less obscure Game Boy game, and is probably the most well cherished GB title ever that isn't Pokemon. I went and played it shortly after Mole Mania because I wanted ideas for Elly, which was to be a small funny game of action. It wasn't purely for research, I just realized it was one of the few Zelda titles I hadn't played yet and I figured now would be a good time.

Of course it's a very good game. It uses the Game Boy's capabilities to its fullest and the color version enhances it even more. The overworld is made to feel bigger than it really is and the dungeons are honestly a lot more elegant that what Link to the Past had to offer. But mainly the thing I took away from this was level design stuff that could translate to Elly's well. I think STAGE 10 with the waterfalls was a good example of stuff I took away from this. A lot of the background graphics were also inspired by Zelda, such as the cliffs and castle walls.

did you know between DX and the remake its impossible to find any good screenshots of the original GB link's awakening... anyway just imagine this screenshot in monochrome and that's pretty much everything the desert stages were referenced from.

The Kirby series ended up being another source of inspiration, despite not taking many gameplay influences but rather style influences. Kirby is a funny little guy with awesome power and Elly could be considered similar, maybe even a ripoff if you think about it. I took a lot of ideas from the GB games in particular but moreso the spinoffs than anything. I think Kirby's Block Ball is a neat little title that's probably the best you can get with Game Boy breakout. Stuff like the structure of the game and the concept of an Extra Game were also taken from Kirby.

There are a couple of other minor GB titles that served as inspiration. Painter Momopie is a Japan-exclusive game about a little witch that has to paint floors. It's not an amazing game but it's cute and small. Elly's sprite, which was the first thing I drew for the game, was in fact based off of Momopie, and that's how I set the graphical style in motion.

There's also a game called Out of Gas which has these full screen cutscenes with fucked up looking people in it, which I tweeted about once.

I don't remember how I found out about it. This pic stands out to me a lot because there is not a single other game on the Game Boy that looks like this. This was dated May 10th and the notepad file where I started writing ideas for Elly's Adventure was also May 10th. So it's very much possible that this somehow ended up pushing me to make the entire game LOL

Moving on to Elly's Adventure

As implied by the last section Elly's Adventure started development around May of last year. This was probably my fastest turnaround from concept to development ever for a game idea. Somehow I still have the first things I wrote in the notepad file here unchanged:

There is a LOT more to the file than this but also I want to show that my process of making big projects is stupid as shit. Just take a big notepad file and start putting things in it until it gets so big I have to make a separate one. It's not the best but it works for a one person team.

You might also notice I intended the game to be about 30 minutes long, which did not happen as now it's more than twice that length. This is something called "scope creep" and it happens with every video game ever made by an ambitious indie dev. Honestly not sure how I intended "20-25 stages" to only take 30 minutes. Regardless scoping as small as I did I expected this project to take maybe a year and it ended up only taking a year and five months!!!!! I probably could have done it sooner if other projects and real life things like moving didn't get in the way.

Regardless it was relatively smooth to get Elly's Adventure off the ground. Since earlier last year I was already playing around with making a prototype of a different top down game that was puzzle based (don't count on me picking it up again) it wasn't too hard to do something similar on a smaller screen size, with already existing characters. I had some ideas that I scrapped early on like a score counter and a timer and decided to make Elly's a simple action game where you are simply focused on destroying everything you see.

This video is the earliest footage of Elly's after only a couple of weeks. The music was added by me, it wasn't in the game yet.

There's only one other bit of gameplay that's different than usual and that's the bonus stages, those were added fairly late in devlopment. I had the idea because I realized that a handful of Yulie locations was a pretty slow way of gaining 1ups by itself. I kind of forget they're in the game until I play it myself.

Truthfully I made Elly's as small as I did because I really did want to have a whole game out there that felt complete and polished. My Kirby games of the past might be funny but they're derivative works and VERY unpolished. With Elly's I wanted to give myself as much time as possible to refine a smaller game and I think based on reception it turned out alright.

THE DEVELOPMENT

Elly's Adventure was made in Game Maker Studio 2, a platform that I used because I had prior experience. Is it the best platform for making games? Honestly not sure. It's ok but it's obviously built off of an old codebase, much to its detriment. But I think Game Maker is very good at making 2D games that you can compartmentalize into a series of rooms, and Elly's was perfect for that. So I ended up doing that instead of learning GB studio or something because I didn't want to deal with actual GB limitations.

The development timeline of Elly's Adventure I ended up splitting into three phases. The first phase was to send the game to a couple of friends in secret and see what they think, purely as a proof of concept. The only feedback I was looking for was confirmation it was a good idea for a game. This was about three months in development and it had stages 1-10 without the stage 10 boss or the bonus stages, something I hadn't even conceived of yet. I got enough feedback that I knew I wanted to continue with the project.

The second phase was the longest, spanning like nine more months. This was the bulk of creating the game's content, as well as stuff like me moving that got in the way. I was more open about the game at the end of this phase and I sent it to a number of friends who are listed as "Generous Playtesters" in the credits. Special thanks to them, again, for doing this. I had more people than I expected willing to give me feedback for free. It took them a while, I think because I ended up sending it out the same time that fucking Zelda came out.

The "demo" I sent out was in fact the full game in a less polished state. All 20 stages, the intro and ending, and even a less refined options menu was all in. I did this because I really wanted the whole game to be polished as much as possible, especially since the last big game I put out (PEKSCTG2) was a hellscape tested only by me. Most reception was actually pretty positive and I think the thing I ended up changing the most apart from bug fixes were the bosses. I think all of them had a bit of rework to adjust their difficulty. This build actually did not include the Extra Game you get from finishing the main story, so all those stages actually are an untested hellscape. Have fun!

The third phase went from May to now, taking longer than I expected. Pikmin 4 coming out in that time didn't help either. When making the extra game it turns out making 20 harder versions of the existing stages takes a while!!! It was that + refining pretty much everything else and getting it ready for release. Speaking of level design here is a little snippet of the MS Paint type stuff I did for that:

Later I would put the actual sprites in instead of these shitty placeholders. Note that some rooms are not the same as they are in the finished game, I made some changes on the fly. That's kind of a fun thing of working by yourself, you don't have to like tell a separate design person to do something if you want changes.

Sometimes I see sentiment that making a project is easiest at the start and really hard in the middle but for me it's the opposite, at least with game dev. Getting something off the ground beyond just an idea is hard but making the content is honestly pretty smooth sailing. Then you have the end where the last bit of the game is most of the work. It's a bit painful having to comb through such a big project multiple times to make sure everything is there and running. Despite this project taking way longer than expected I'm still glad to finally get something done and out there.

THE GWAPHICS

If there is something between 2015 and now I have done a lot it's drawing. I'm not exactly an accomplished artist but I think a lot of my stuff has improved in past years. Or at least that's what they say. Taste is subjective after all.

However I didn't do very much pixel art for a while. Especially not anything with a palette as limited as the Game Boy. So making all the graphics for Elly's was something of an exercise in trying to figure out how this pixle art shit works all over again.

Almost everything in Elly's is drawn by me. A few images are actual things shrunken and convered to 4 colors but otherwise it's all me. And as it turns out drawing all the assets for you own game takes a long freakin time even when they're this simple!!!! While no one sprite took very long apart from bigger ones like bosses it all adds up to a lot of hours.

Not all of those hours are on Elly's but still. I think doing the tilesets took up a lot of time, in particular the playroom area because I was insistent on including a bunch of funny easter eggs and references. I can't explain all of them here because it would take much too long, but let it be known that this thing before the third boss is called "The Fumpship" and has like 3 layers of inside joke to it.

As for the character designs they were simple enough that transcribing them into Game Boy sprite form was actually pretty simple. Elly and Natalie in particular I had to remove the symbols on their clothes since it wouldn't translate in sprites.

You already saw this at the start of the post. These are character sketches I did around the start of development. Note that Natalie's outfit color is different, later I made it lighter to make her more distinguishable from Elly in-game. There are very few "concept art" things for Elly's, most of it I started with doing the sprites.

As for the enemy sprites since the ones I already had (see sprite sheet 10 pages above) already worked pretty well in this setting so I used that as a base for other enemies. The "Big Boy" enemies in particular took a while to figure out their sprites but I do like how they turned out. My favourite enemies are the exploding dolls, so much that I even used them as the game's icon.

THE COADS

This section is very technical and vague so you can skip it if you want. I'm something of a programmer... I think. I don't talk about it that much. A lot of what I know is not exactly suited for game dev BUT I did have a lot of residual Game Maker Language knowledge from my past projects. And there was a lot to learn too, since this was my first time using GMS2 in particular.

Truthfully since Elly's is kind of simple there wasn't THAT much that was that difficult programming-wise... I think the hardest shit for me is doing collisions and stuff. Collisions for Elly weren't too bad but for certain enemies like the grinders it was a pain in the ASS!!!!! That's why getting any game off the ground is hard for me, trying to make the groundwork for everything is daunting because I'll worry if it's good enough to accomodate the rest of development.

I think a lot of the challenge was not from getting things to work but rather having everything neat and organized. When you're making a game there is a lot of stuff to keep track of and even sometimes with the way I organized things I get lost in the game maker asset browser. I also made sure to comment things a lot... If you ever decompile the game i'm sorry if my comments are weird and embarassing.

The reason why I'm even bringing this aspect up is because in my past projects, particularly Pik's Epic Kirby Sprite Comics 2 I didn't know SHIT about programming nicely or efficiently and a lot of it was brute force via if statements. I did not want that!!! So with Elly's I made it so that adding new things like powerups and enemies was as easy as possible and I think that ended up making the project bearable.

This was also my first time making certain things like an options menu which was kind of strange and daunting as Game Maker does not have anything build in for menus. You just kind of have to do it from scratch. I was really insistent on having remappable controls in particular because I feel like that's essential for PC games these days. Also I enjoyed making the map system a lot, which was something I only added late in development. It uses a very hacky method of finding hard-coded arrays for each stage and drawing boxes for them but it works.

THE BOSSES

I think bosses in video games are a very novel thing on how inefficient they are for such a capital-driven industry. You have these things that take up a lot of effort and development time and are usually a small part of gameplay but they get made anyway because they look cool and also maybe you can use them as marketing or something. Maybe "boss fights" can be viewed as a disruption of power making its way into the hands of the workers? Ok I'm just talking out of my ass here.

There are not a lot of bosses in Elly's and they don't last very long but I wanted to discuss them anyway because there are some fun things to say about them. The first thing is that I wasn't even sure if Elly's was going to have more than one boss at first. Then I came up with the idea for the first boss (Death Orb) and started getting ideas from there. Fun fact, the Death Orb is named and modeled after the enemy (obstacle?) from Warframe:

I honestly thought it was really obvious but no one, not even my Warframe-playing friends seemed to notice. Anyway I just wanted a very simple boss that doesn't move with one attack. For a long time it didn't have the beeping sounds that telegraph its moves and therefore was very difficult to avoid the second phase without getting hit at least once! It was a bit bulb shit once I realized so I did that.

The second boss is a fish and funny enough, the only surviving boss idea from the original project. The major bosses were planned to be massive weapons named "______ Guardian" and the fish is loosely based off of an underwater boss idea I had back then. Of course the current day Water Guardian fight is not anything like that, and instead likes to flop around. Fun fact, the boss was a lighter grey color for most of development until I decided to make it dark so the weak point was more visible. I also changed the second phase movement late in development so it would flop less, making the grenade powerup feel more useful against it. The way it acts in Extra Game is a lot closer to how it originally was.

The third boss is a hat and is largely based off of "WIZ" from Kirby and the Amazing Mirror. Wiz is just a clone of Paint Roller from Kirby's Adventure but I thought the design was neat enough I even based the intro animation off of it. I also really wanted to tie into the toy theme and the doll enemies so I figured why not a funny magician doll? This boss used to always spawn in the middle after a cycle but then people would spawncamp it so I made it appear in multiple spots instead.

^^^WIZ

The Pillar Knight boss is honestly not that hard for how late it is in the game but I made it to just be a surprise at the end of a boss rush. I don't have that much to say about it really, I based the name and greatshield off of the Tower Knight from Demon's Souls. The big stomp it does in the second phase used to summon a single bouncy and nothing else but that was kind of pathetic so I changed it to falling rubble instead.

The "Antlion" final boss was actually a boss idea I had early on, possibly for the second or third worlds. It's kind of similar to the "head and hands" type bosses you see in so many Nintendo games. It was moreso going to be based off of the "Giant Enemy Spider" from Jerma's car game video. Then I figured that having the biggest boss for last would be a good idea. Funny enough this was the boss I received the least feedback on, most people seemed to like it. It was also a bit of a pain to test because I had to ensure that all 5 powerups would be viable, but I'm pretty satisfied with the end result. The second phase where Chandra shows up in a pod is very much based off of Eggman fights from Sonic, I'm sure you can tell. Something about seeing a little round flying thing is very satisfying.

THE SOUNDS

The sounds and music in Elly's are not mine. It's why I released it for free on itch instead of bothing to publish it on Steam or anything. Why am I even writing about this? I think that there is some fun to be had from digging through existing sound or music libraries and picking the best ones.

The style of Elly's is very upbeat happy scrimblo type game as you can tell, so I went out of my way to pick songs that fit that. The first levels having Mole Mania's first world music is pretty emblematic of what I wanted. I wanted to pick songs that were not necessarily obscure but not too well known so I made an effort specifically to avoid Mario, Zelda, Pokemon. Then I broke the rule because I liked the Link's Awakening nightmare battle enough and that's not exactly a super recognizable iconic song. I think the style of the music is not always consistent, as you can tell with the Belmont's Revenge music in later levels, but I tried to keep to songs that I felt fit the game well enough.

The sounds were taken from various Kirby games mostly because those are the easiest to rip, as those games have individual sound tests. With everything being kind of Kirby inspired I also thought it was the best decision. I think if maybe I were to ever do a Steam release I would hire some bastard to do a GB soundtrack and play around with making sounds myself but I DIDNT FEEL LIKE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE LAST PART

There is so much more I could say about the old project and the finer details of development but I think this post is already long enough.

Elly's is not something that I think is ever going to go viral. It did get more attention than I expected for the first few days but it's petered out by now. Elly's is not meant to be anything groundbreaking or revolutionary. It's not going to turn heads all over the world. It's not going to make me the new Tony Box and that's OK. I wanted Elly's to evoke the sort of feeling of finding a weird cartridge in a Gamestop bargain bin of the past or maybe a thrift store of the present. The feeling of digging through an archive of every Game Boy ROM ever and finding something refreshingly decent after playing 10 crunchy janky sidescrollers in a row.

QUICK LAST MINUTE EDIT: Apparently Elly's Adventure was featured on a Hungarian news site??? Not what I expected but I'm still honored to be mentioned by a publication.

I don't really know what's next for game dev from me. I am not interested in breaking into the industry, I just do this for fun. I've considered doing more things with Elly, which may or may not be in the same style. I've also considered ideas with other characters, and even using things that aren't Game Maker. Maybe in another 8 years there will be something. Keep an eye out!

Overall I am satisfied with Elly's Adventure. I mostly enjoyed making it. I don't know if I would call it my magnum opus. It doesn't have the same sort of unfiltered eccentricity of my Kirby things and it's hardly character or story driven enough to leave much of a lasting discussion. To be honest I liked making a game with no dialogue because in the cases where I do have a more character driven game idea I think about the funny dialogue more than I do the actual game. Regardless I think we can all agree that Elly's Adventure is, and always will be, a small funny game of action.

if you bothered to scroll to the end of this post here is a FUN GAME TIP: on stage 1 from the starting position go one screen right and investigate the rightmost flower on that screen. this can be helpful for those wishing to see the 1CC screen.

[violetvelourr]

How long I have been doing art

People occasionally ask me how long I’ve been drawing and that question gets me utterly confused 😅 um, probably since I remember myself?.. 😅

First of all, big reveal. I’m old. Much older than you probably ever guessed. Because I’ve been doing digital art since 2003, and I was not exactly a toddler at that point, he-he. Don’t ask me my age though – I’m still a lady and I consider it impolite 🤭 but that might actually answer the questions of many teenagers why I don’t particularly interact much 🙈

So anyways, now we have settled my “art career” span. But saying “I began doing digital art in 2003” – well… I don’t want to do that, because people will be like, “whoa, 20 years”?! And will freak out at such a prospect – 20 years to get to my level, which is, frankly speaking, far from professional. Not to mention that before digital art I also drew traditionally quite a bit.

But the main reason is because “doing digital art since 2003” does not equal “for 20 years”.

How about we revisit these years and look closer at my digital art journey? I can’t promise that I will recall everything 100% accurately, but I’ll do my best.

So around 2003-2004 I tried drawing in Photoshop for the first time. It was an image of a lion, and to be honest, to this day I’m hella proud of myself.

Yes, first attempt. Yes, I drew with a freaking mouse!

My second piece from the same year span is the “Dancer”. oh yes, the remakable hepatitis skin tone 🙈

To be honest, I don’t recall having a drawing tablet that long ago, I'm quite sure I got it only in 2008, but looking at it, despite its flaws, I can hardly believe I drew that using a mouse… I’m not sure, it’s a mystery. The Lion was definitely a mouse artwork.

From thereon I abandoned digital art for a while due to studying, then work, and finally online RPGs…

In 2008 I posted my first digital WIP after a 5 year break.

Oh my gosh... Remind me to never try realism again, clearly not my thing 🙈

I think I was trying to draw an avatar for myself, which doesn’t exactly justify drawing a woman aged probably around 40 🙈 I was not that old!! As far as I can see from my journal, that artwork crashed and only this snippet of it was what I had left. I think it’s for the good. I ended up commissioning the avatar from a proper artist, ha-ha…

Over the span of 2 months I posted 5 more digital art pieces, none of them ever completed actually 🙈 And yes, behold how ugly they are...

My ambitions were growing faster than my skills were improving. The piece with the couple with that naked girl is my special pain because I even attended a digital art course by an amazing artist I was really looking up to back then – Anry – to try and finish this piece, but I failed miserably. I was the only person in that course (5 day 12hr/day intense course) out of 15 people who came “just for fun” – the rest were pursuing a professional digital illustrator career.

This is what I left off with after that course.

In this collage you see on the left what I came with, the middle – what the teacher did after I explained my concept, and on the right – my attempt to take the piece to its final form. But I could never accept that the base was made for me and not by me...

It still grips my heart when I look at it because it was one of my greatest fails. I think that to die peacefully, I need to finish this artwork 😆 If anyone is curious about the story behind this artwork, I’ll post it separately.

Anyway, as I said, I didn’t reach my goal, was hugely disappointed in myself and dropped digital art in April 2008.

However, I came back 1.5 years later, in November 2009, when I got into anime 😂

I think that’s also when I first tried Paint Tool SAI. Up until March 2012, I uploaded roughly 20+/- digital artworks/WIPs. The quality was a bit inconsistent, but I was beginning to get the hang of it a bit, finally. Here are some of them (yeah, the span of the mood is extraordinary):

So, in 2.5 years – merely 20 artworks. Just to compare, in 2022 alone I made 75+ artworks, which doesn’t even include animations and stuff I considered to not be proper artworks.

So, my last artwork from that period was in March 2012 (the one with the winged dude blocking the way for the girl), after which I abandoned digital art again, for good this time. I actually thought - forever, to be honest.

I’m not sure what happened then. I guess I just lost my motivation, got over my fictional crushes, was depressed and not happy with myself…

Problem is that in reality, I don’t have any imagination at all. Part of the reason why I always suspected that despite being quite decent in drawing, I would never succeed as an artist, so I could only say that my dream was to draw for Disney. But I knew I never would. And I knew I can’t do original art. Fan arts – yes, subject to being highly inspired, a feeling similar to a crush. I was too dependent on the mood. But even so… my artworks never were particularly fancy or original, I admit it.

Part of the reason why I’m also so sensitive about AI now. I see people actually living my dream, and I'm so happy for them. Working as illustrators, having an income from what they create... And that is being stolen from them now. That’s why I will probably never accept AI.

Ugh, turned off the subject…

Anyway, as I said, I abandoned art in 2012 and only picked it back up in October 2021 because of Kakashi. 😆

If my math is correct, that’s a 9.5 year break. I have been going non-stop since October 2021, so I would say that my ongoing artistic journey lasts for almost 2 years now. The previous 2-year period with 20 artworks – I’m not really sure about the value of that. The previous 7 digital artworks – even more so.

If I had to sum up my entire digital art journey, – I would say it is around 5–6 years, but in reality probably won’t add up even to 3 years, because the 3 years adding up from a bit of 2003, a bit of 2008 and bits of 2009-2012 had me produce only around 30 artworks, a majority of which were never even completed.

My main progress happened between 2021 and now, so in the last 2 years. And to be honest, I understand that if I am to continue - this is only the beginning...

[pastelprince18]

✨🌸INTRO🌸✨

✨Hello their my beloved little fellas, Names Ray [Nicknamed not real name]! I usually post my art weather being doodles, wips, sketches, paintings or finished pieces being fandom stuff or my own  projects [which is rare because I am so shy to share my very own content and don't know how people will act, maybe someday I will talk about it] I would appreciate if you do see my art anywhere to DM me and NOT harass anybody <:] , but if you do share my work PLEASE CREDIT ME!!I IT WILL ME A LOT TO ME /Gen✨

✨ Short Info✨

💖Ray [Perfered] , Raylin, Pastel

💖Adult

💖 Puerto Rican

💖 Demi Girl [She/They/Her/Them]

💖Lesbian, Ace

💖Taken 

💖#Kbyeart is my arttag 

💖Self-Taught Artist 

💖Can Be a bit too talktive </3

💖Gamer [if you like to add me on switch lmk CLOSE FRIENDS ONLY!!

💖COMMISSION CHART HERE If intrested please dm on my platforms: Instagram, Tumblr, Discord, Deviant Art, and Twitter all under the same name :]

💖Can get anxious meeting new people either too shy or too excited 

⭐️Interests⭐️

🌸Mario Rabbids Series 

🌸Rabbids Invasion

🌸Cuphead

🌸Sanrio

🌸Spongebob 

🌸Mario.Bros 

🌸 Pastel, Hospital, Nostalgic Core Aesthetic 

🌸Carebears 

🌸Regular Show [Been a while but I still love it <33]

🌸Plushies 

🌸Pretty Blood 

🌸The Bad Guys 

🌸Happy Tree Friends 

🌸Rayman

🌸BFB

🌸Inanimate Insanity

⛈DNI⛈

Proshipper

Basic Racism,Bigots,Homophobics, Transphobic 

Art Thief

Discourse Accounts 

NFT’s Cryptic 

DDLGS 

Cringe Culture [Ya know the people who say “THATS CRINGE EW”]

You harass me or any of my friends/ mutuals. That is automatic block

Also Spamming inbox + Dms will be blocked 

Dream SMP Fans 

Fetish Artist 

Vizpop Fans

HH and HB stuff, I don’t wanna hear nothing of that shit, please block me or i’ll block you I don’t nothing to do with it or see it on my damn feed /srs

🍒BYF🍒

As stated before I do talk a lot, I usually ramble about my own HC, Oc Stuff, Ships, Ideas or even things I really enjoy from games, shows movies ect. I hope you are prepared on what I will share here. And just know it is for fun and I would love for ya’ll to also share your ideas <3 

I tend to have depressed episodes sometimes, if you do see me writing things on here mainly at night, its where I can show during that time since I feel bad for venting too much to friends. I feel bad even venting out just to let steam off, sorry for advance :’]

I open request when I feel like it weather being I am art blocked, have no ideas or no motvation. IT IS A RARE MOMENT, PLEASE DO NOT SPAM MY INBOX!!! IF I HAVE NOT DONE UR REQUEST I WILL GLADLY DO IT WHEN I AM FREE 

 Speaking of the first one. Do not spam inbox please, I have gotten that lately and I tend to get anxious or annoyed since I can't always answer stuff, I do have a job and I tend to get sidetrack, even if I am not in the best mental state please do not be on top of me, I do not like that.

My art takes quite a bit to post weather being a painting or digital art, I work 5 days a week and usually it drains me where I am at. usually cause of that my motivation drains fast. I know I say I promise to do things and I will keep that promise, even if its months too late I'll try to work on it <3

Don’t call my art hot or sexy if I don’t know you at all and especially if you’re a minor- I don’t like when people in general call my art hot or sexy [Unless you’re my close friend than idm <3]

Thank you all for dropping by and hope to get to know most of you all :’]

[pondering-gales-left-orb]

I actually finished a peice of art (digitally) !!! Took me a week exactly which is alot of time but compared to the fact that it used to take me months to come close to finishing a piece and considering it only took this long because work got in the way (haha how dare they ask me to work during work hours) a d also the fact that im getting out od a massive art block this is so much progress!!! Also its my first finished piece too! I did forget to sign it and i need to run it through nightshade and glaze whichever program i can run before i post it but omg im so excited!

[pine-niidles]

April Project Updates

Hiya! I hope you've had a good April. Me, not so much. The month started still heavy with artblock and outside of art I've also not been feeling great. At the very least I've kept up with regular life drawing but I decided pretty early on to focus on making progress on things I needed to get done unrelated to art. It's possible I did just need that time to rest as in the last couple of weeks the artblock has been going away! I've been able to slowly make progress on my art pieces without hating every step :) In other positive news the tree outside my kitchen window has fully regrown its leaves & there are lots of beautiful flowers growing on my regular walking path to the pool. 

2023 Sketchbook

The finish your project jam helped give me that last boost I needed to finish putting together my 2023 sketchbook pdf, which is a mix of my physical sketchbooks & misc digital art from last year. You can get a copy on itch.io.

2024 Hourly Comics Day

Same as above, I did the last couple of steps I needed to finish my hourly comics day pdf, also up on itch.io. 

There's very little new there, I just wanted to have all the hourly strips together in one easy to read place + share the printable booklet version that I made for myself in case anyone else was interested in printing themselves a copy.

Impractical but Cool Fantasy Swords

I've been chipping away at this zine in my off time for a while, now I just have these last 6 swords to finish shading and then finalizing the layout for the whole zine.

​Hopefully marking this as done will help push the last bit of artblock out of my system and I can get back to drawing new things rather than just finishing old art!

Life Drawing

I don't normally share day to day life drawing in these updates but since it's pretty much all the art I've got to show this month here are a few of my fav sketches from April:

Plans for May:

​Zines

I currently have 4 small-medium zine ideas bouncing around my head, I'd like to finish two of them this month but I'm undecided which two.

Don't Wake the Sleeping Dragon

There's a lot to rework with DWSD mechanics based on feedback from the first playtest, the biggest change will be that I'm no longer trying to keep it to two pages max. That was an ambitious goal for my first ever ttrpg, and letting go of it will give me a lot more freedom to explain the rules a little better and add mechanics to facilitate rp. I'm aiming to get a second playtest draft out this month & to start on some art for it.

[tychodorian]

🌟✨ Artwork Showcase: Leo ✨🌟

I'm thrilled to finally share with you the completed digital artwork of Leo from my ongoing Zodiac series. 🦁🎨

This piece was a true labor of love, but it didn't come without its fair share of challenges. I had a rough day when I first started working on Leo, and I'll admit, I had a good cry during my art stream. It was tough, and I even considered giving up. But sometimes, taking a step back and allowing yourself to process emotions is necessary.

After taking a break from the piece, I eventually gathered the strength to revisit it. And now, I'm proud to say that Leo is finished and ready to be printed! 🌟

Once all twelve Zodiac signs are completed, I will be printing these artworks with metallic foil, highlighting the silver and gold accents. I'm so stoked for the final results, and these prints will be limited edition fine art prints.

Currently, I have completed five out of the twelve Zodiac pieces: Leo, Gemini, Pisces, Sagittarius, and Aquarius. I can't wait to see the entire collection come to life once it's ready for printing.

If you'd like to participate in deciding which Zodiac sign I tackle next, I offer polls on my Patreon page. For as little as $1 a month, you can be part of the decision-making process and help me choose my next project. With so many creative endeavors on my plate, your input truly makes a difference!

For those who wish to support my artistic journey, consider buying me a coffee by pledging on my Patreon. Not only will you have access to a free trial and the ability to cancel at any time, but your pledge also supports an independent trans artist like myself. Your support means the world to me!

Thank you all for being a part of this incredible artistic journey. Your encouragement and enthusiasm keep me inspired and motivated to bring more magic into the world. Stay tuned for more updates, sneak peeks, and exciting projects to come!

✨🎨💖

[clovariia]

thank you for all the support on my art and writing this year, everyone! here's my art summary for 2023!!! 🥳💕 happy new year!!!!!

i've rambled a bit about this year under the cut.

this was the best year ever for me on a personal level, even though my art didn't change very much. i got into south park thanks to my wonderful girlfriend that i started dating this year, and it transformed my art and writing. here's a list of some things i made this year!

i made one animatic!

the toh grimoire zine hasn't been completed yet due to some complications with paypal so i haven't been able to share my fic for it yet, but i'm so excited for it to come out!!

the amphibia tribute zine that i participated in last year came out and matt braly retweeted it, which was super awesome! here's my drawing for it!

the our duet: raeda fanzine came out! it was so thrilling to receive my first physical zine with my own writing in it. i also made merch for the first time because i contributed art for the polaroid keychain charm a few people collaborated on. avi roque also got a copy of the zine. i'm really proud of myself for this zine!!! you can see my pieces for it here.

i participated in the oops! all autistic! zine!!! you can find the amphibia fic i wrote for it here!

i'm participating in the k2 fanzine! it won't be released until 2024, but i wrote two fics for it and did a little bonus drawing for it that you might see in my art summary 👀

i'm the beta reader mod for the second huntlow zine, golden garden! i also wrote a fic for it. i'm really excited for everyone to see the work we've been putting into this project!!! i hold it so close to my heart.

besides zine stuff, i wrote fics for the huntlow hearts exchange and tweek week 2023!

since i shared my ao3 statistics last year, here are the updated ones from 2023 and overall.

these numbers aren't totally accurate because there are things i wrote this year that i haven't posted yet (shoutout to my big multichapter south park fic wip...) and things that i never finished, but they're interesting to look at anyways. although less people read my south park stuff than my toh stuff, i'm having so much fun with this show and i intend to write a ton more for it. south park gives me so much creative inspiration and i'm really glad that i got into it. thank you so much to everyone who's supported me through this transition period of my art and writing. ❤

i also wrote some goals for 2024 in my art summary post from last year. i didn't accomplish some of them, but i'm proud of myself for the stuff i did achieve. here are a few more resolutions for 2024:

write more multichapter stuff

write for a wider variety of fandoms

make at least one south park animatic

get more relaxed about my art style and stop being such a perfectionist. i want my art to get messier and cartoonier. i'm hoping to change my art style a lot, and you might be able to notice that in some of my recent drawings.

do at least one piece of colored digital art a month (i have to list this as a resolution every year so i actually do it...)

do more large and detailed pieces

experiment more with procreate (i've finally figured out how to use it, but i want to make use of more of its features and brushes)

write more consistently...i kept going weeks without writing at all in 2023 and it sucked so much. i want to do it at least a little bit every week.

participate more in the south park fandom. i'd love to join in on more fandom events like the k2 zine and tweek week.

thank you so much to everyone for supporting me again this year!!! i'm excited to see where 2024 goes!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!! 🎉🎉🎉