I normally don't repost my art like this but since most of these are just posted as one picture I also don't wanna reblog a lot of posts. So! Please look at my Dream Wardens. I love them so much.
For the outfit meme thing btw, I would like to point out they don't really need sleep and they exist to work so no need for fun outfits. HOWEVER! Marcus and Colette's ties are the other's eye colors. Sil and Luce have gray ties because Luce was more recent (still a hundred years of partnership) so it's pretty much "you're being scored to make sure you can keep the job" and they eventually would get ties to match the other's eyes color.
The basic premise is! They live in a realm filled with dreams which they have to keep watch over to make sure don't escape. Whether dreams or nightmares, they must be contained. So it's kind of like a prison - each person has a cell that contains their dreams. There are.... a lot of wardens. But each "floor" has eight wardens and it's a circle where the wardens work in pairs. So Marcus and Colette are the focused pair and then they make rounds, they'll end the shift in a rest area where they either hang out with Luce and Sil or Sophia and Ruby. Those are the four they interact with while those four have another duo that they meet on their rounds.
The wardens cannot die. Literally impossble. They can get injured but it heals really quickly. So while Marcus would prefer to not be impaled (again) it wouldn't actually kill him. He'd just be sore.
They also just do not age. So they're centuries old. That said, for a while Colette had a different partner who retired and she got Marcus... and Marcus was incredibly quiet and reserved and scared of messing up for like 10 years before he started to warm up to her. (Time do be feelin' different there) And then he opens up a bit to Sil and Robert who was his partner at the time. And then hundreds of years pass and Marcus is super comfy with them (Sophia and Ruby still intimidate him a bit but that's different) and suddenly! No more Robert. Now it's Luce. And Marcus spends five years avoiding any and all conversations with him because oh no he's hot. Sil gets interrogated by Luce because "have I offended him in some way? he won't even look at me" and Sil is just "dude's shy. took him ages to warm up to me and my previous partner" and eventually Marcus laughs at something Colette says and Luce is like "ohhhhh nooooo I'm doomed he's so cute". While the entire time Marcus has been refusing to attempt conversation because "no he's handsome I'm doomed since I'm bad at conversations".
And they mention Robert sometimes (Colette, Marcus, and Sil) around Luce and Marcus seems chill about it. But then Marcus gets a serious injury that will recover but it would impact his job too much to patrol without a head so they send a temp replacement and it's Robert. And Sil is like "oh oh trade you Luce for my old partner give him" and Colette "are you kidding? you had him for sooooo long I wanna patrol with Robert now! it's only gonna be a little while!" and Robert just .... doesn't wanna be there. And when Marcus is fit to return he begs the people in charge of their routes to NOT LET ROBERT LEAVE until he can say hi and they let him. Unfortunately it involves Marcus busting into the break room saying "ROBBIE ROB!" and Robert sighing but standing up and extending his arms for a hug. Two pats on Marcus' back. and "okay bye". Luce is left in absolute despair cause he's never seen Marcus that happy oh boy.
Anyway my dream wardens mean a lot to me and I really miss them now.
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admittedly, i am afraid to talk about this, but have wanted to for a long while. i don't see a lot of people discuss this kind of thing, but i decided to do so for the me who was struggling and didn't know. also i have no idea where i am going with this and it's very late for me rn so here's a whole ass ramble on vent art. and also a bit more on how it's impacting how i view my art, now. i am terribly sorry if it's not very cohesive, my thoughts on it aren't yet cohesive either WOOPS
i wanted to talk a bit about how vent art really impacted my mental health, and how the idea that art needs some kind of meaning to have meaning really has been weighing on me lately (i know this is a concept i am assigning to my work and is not actually the norm/standard expectation of others consuming art. but it IS a sentiment i have seen enough that does impact me).
i want to specify, obviously i am not saying vent art is bad.
nor that doing vent pieces, or vent blogs, will ultimately result in what i went through for a number of years. rather, that this did happen to me, and there is a near impossible chance i am a unique case in any experience i will ever have. if you do vent art and it helps you, that's good! im not judging anyone for anything here. if your experience does not match my own, that's what it's like to be human~. i am not invalidating anyone on purpose by sharing my own experience. sorry for the insane disclaimer but it will eat me alive if i go to sleep thinking "what if they think x cuz i didn't say y and think im a terrible person"
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i used to do vent art frequently (you won't find much on here as it was uploaded to a personal at the time). anytime i felt down or had a line of dialogue in my head making me feel bad in a way, i would draw for it. but the way i had interacted with it was really unhealthy. it became a terrible feedback loop where i'd feel bad, draw how i felt bad, look at the art, and ruminate even more on how i felt bad, until it spiralled so out of control i would lose touch with reality and get lost entirely in feeling like garbage.
i would just get so lost in the cycle with vent art that it would make my mental space worse and worse, and i would use the vent art as a negative confirmation bias. the words that hurt me i wrote down and anytime i looked again, they would hurt me again. but i would keep looking, and i would keep drawing.
i have always used art as an outlet, but for some reason the way vent art impacted me was unhealthy. it wasn't a good outlet. and it took me years to cut ties with it. i relied on vent art for a long time, but it took a lot of introspection and thinking to realise it wasn't the release i thought it was. and it was hard to let go, too.
i haven't touched the blog in a few months, now. i haven't done much vent art at all since then and genuinely, i've been doing SOOO much better. i no longer ruminate nearly as much as i had done so, i no longer get caught in a feedback loop that lasts for days to weeks. i still feel like garbage like people tend to do, but i don't put myself in a cycle over it anymore. i have gone back to it a few times in moments of desperation, but what used to be every week/every few weeks is now once a month maybe. and not to the extent at all (i would oftentimes post ~20 images in one night, before).
but i keep thinking about how, while the way i had done vent art was bad for my mental health, i keep feeling that just because i do sparkly cute and happy drawings, now, or drawings with no real meaning, that my art has nothing beyond face value... i do like a lot of my vent art. i think their compositions, or hidden messages and meanings, or colour use, was interesting.
but it wasn't worth the price for me.
so i am a bit caught in an in-between, here. my favourite form of art is the expression of love-you liked something so much, you dedicated time to draw it. and yet i cannot ascribe that to my own work very often. i think that man i wish i could make art with some kind of deeper meaning, that speaks to people, that's more than just pretty colours or shiny shading or a character everyone likes, or a character i like. but i just... don't know if it's for me.
ultimately, i could develop a healthy relationship with expressing and exploring negative emotions or experiences through art, but... do i want to? do i have to? do i need to? is it not enough to just draw something because... i like it..?
of course, the answer is yes, draw what you want, draw how you want, it's your art. but i am still trying to come to terms with that idea. i dont want to be seen as some shallow artist who just draws what's cute and pretty because they can and it's all they can think of, but like what if that's just what i like to draw??
in the end, that alone is good enough, drawing because you like to, because it's fun, because you like the thing you're dedicating time to creating for. it's just hard to grapple with after discarding a type of art that i felt was the only way i drew "for real".
anyways i am sorry this is soooo fucking long, and for all the clarifications (IM STILL NOT SAYING VENT ART BAD AND EVERYONE WILL DO WHAT I DID!! Dx) and the fact i had no real point here (probably)
anyways i will continue to draw what i want because i like to, as i have always been.
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I've struggled so much with english these past few days and it's so annoying and embarrassing, and what's even more embarrassing is that I'm embarrassed at all in the first place!!! Everytime I make a rushed error with my unmedicated brain, or swap around with word order, or struggle to pronounce things or outright just fail to recall even basic words entirely I get so ashamed and stressed out.
And I hate being told things such as "you're better than some native speakers" because I know that isn't true! And I wish it could just be fine that I'm not! Sure, I've improved immensely ever since I actually tried to learn it properly 10 years ago, but it was such a bumpy and embarrassing road that it's practically a mercy for my self confidence that I was psychotic for a majority of the time, what with all the things I've forgotten or outright never memorized in the first place as a result lmao.
Everytime I have to edit captions and such after hitting 'Post' I always feel this overwhelming sense of dread that people will just pour in to nag and to correct me even over the smallest things, all without anything good to say. Which sucks, cause so many times where I've had people be condescending or outright degrading, the errors in question didn't even impede on the clarity of what I was saying. Just stupid, unimportant things like using 'has'/'have' wrong, using 'were' two times in a sentence, putting words in the wrong order in a sentence etc.
It's been years now since that was a thing that happened regularly, but that fear is apparently still so deeply imprinted that, even now, I can't read what I'm writing right here and now without this looming fear about how it will serve to make native speakers perceive me as stupid and unintelligent or outright infantilize me. Even though I know that's more than likely irrational of me to feel now. I seriously need to figure out how to overcome this mental roadblock, or at least not let it get to me like this. It's rarer these days, but I still feel it too strongly for my liking whenever my reservations do kick in.
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