#okay i think i've got all the art out of my system for now

[benevolenterrancy]

pet fish revenge fantasy

[erinwantstowrite]

i feel like if you released a 24 hour + video of you talking about your plans for your original book i would sit and watch all of that with no breaks. so: would you be willing to share at least the bare bones of the plot you have now? or even some tropes that would be in it? or maybe random questions like how many main characters? how many povs? if it's sci-fi or fantasy? just stuff like that!

ahhhh!! i'd love to talk about them because they're constantly rotating in my brain!! i hope this doesn't get too long but we all know me, i can never stop yapping 😭

(okay this is present erin editing before posting and yeah this got long guess who called it. anyways there's art and stuff under the cut as well)

(Marked this as mature with violence only because there is an image below where I drew injuries/cuts on a character)

This book has been a thousand different books in all kinds of settings, plots, lessons, etc, and that's because I've had these characters since I was in middle school. At first I was so obsessed with them that I'd write and draw them all the time, to the point that my teachers were concerned I wasn't paying attention. I was seriously into magic and fantasy at the time because Harry Potter books were still the epitome of writing to my middle school brain. Ruby was a wizard with a bird theme that lived in the countryside and one day found out that her town was "alive" in a sense... But after I lost that sketchbook with all of the details (devastated to this day), and started venturing into other books series and shows, etc, I sort of forgot about the og story or what it was like. What remained was a love for the characters I had made over anything else about them, so I'd end up writing stories with a different theme each time, but the ocs being the same, just with their backgrounds shifted. (Around the time I was obsessed with VLD, Ruby was in a sci-fi plot set on a planet in another solar system.)

One of the most recent iterations was Ruby and the other characters essentially struggling to understand death, life, and everything in between. The story is called "Behind the Blue Glass" and I still really like that title lol. All of them had died on the same day, at the same time, just in various different ways, and then all of them came back to life in the same manner. They all developed different powers from the experience: Liam could float/manipulate gravity), August's body was essentially a phantom that could go through objects and disappear, Vin could possess people, Jean had an empathy link with the dead and could talk to and see them clearly, and Maya could figure out someone's cause of death/also tell when people were about to die. As for Ruby, she's the only one who can move freely between the land of the living and the land of the dead. It's different from Jean seeing the dead, as she's still in the land of the living.

The plot of that story was Ruby having dreams/visions of these other people she had never met before and knowing she needed to find them and set "something" right, but she didn't know what. She sets out to find them anyways, and they each join her on her quest to find everyone simply because they never got an answer to how they came back from the dead and find it weird that they all died on the same day and time. They solve deaths of ghosts they come across, meet people who are still grieving lost ones, have to lay some of the ghosts down to rest- all while figuring out why these shady people have started following them and trying to stop them from figuring out what happened to them. I even made some first draft titles (definitely, 10000% inspired by PJO because I was reading it at the time):

to top it all off, it's set in the 2010's I believe? Around that time. Just because I think more books should write about the time era

I have some (recentish) art of the characters:

first image: (Liam on the right, August on the left)

this is what Ruby looked like when I was first designing them for the story:

They're meant to look dead-ish but this art was SO long ago when I wasn't confident in my art so Ruby just looks like a wet rat or smth idk what is going on here

And here's Vin!! I don't hate this drawing of him that much, surprisingly, but this was also drawn a while ago

and this was some art i was planning at the time:

i think that's all of the art that i have for this story (at least on this computer. My old laptop might have more but it's been laid to rest)

to be honest, i'm still thinking about writing this story, but Ruby's name would be changed because at this point, this iteration of her character is VERY different from present day. She's two different characters at this point 💀 that's how you know I've had her for SO long because she looks so different from her original drawings.

The latest version of Ruby ended up in a story with completely different characters in the cast and a completely different setting (even if some of the characters were inspired by their og versions). It's called "The Clocktower's Chime"

It's very much inspired by those reincarnation manhwas. I like those stories but they all have the same plot over and over, and while I was more interested in the versions where the character is sent back in time to live their life again but with all the knowledge they had in the future, I always struggled with the aspect that the characters' mental age is far older than they are. It makes the dynamics a little weird, but they can be excused unless it's a romantic dynamic, I would think? I dunno, it was hard to get into the plots mostly because of that.

So I used Ruby as a placeholder OC and came up with a story where upon their death in the future, someone casts a spell or a god sends them back, and instead of having a mental older age, they get a journal with all of the details of their future. Ruby woke up one day and found a journal written by herself that detailed everything about her future up to the point of her death. It was more like a book, however, rather than a journal. It just looked like a journal because it was in her handwriting.

So Ruby gets this book, doesn't believe it at all, until she notices that there are way too many "coincidences" lining up with the events of the book. She starts believing it could be true, and then decides it must be when she finds out that a prominent family in the country she lives in is going to visit her hometown. In the book, they were there because they learned that Ruby was their daughter that had been kidnapped as a baby and believed dead. However, in the book, Ruby had spent her entire life living as a weapon instead of a daughter, and she died by their hands when she refused to kill a woman that is prophesized to end a war that would devastate both countries.

Ruby is, like, 12 at that point. So her kid brain is like "obviously I run away and go to school in a different country and tell everyone I have a different name and there's no way this could go wrong." Except before she can even do that, she runs into Julias Parlia, a Duke's son from the country that is supposed to be her enemy in the future. Ruby is like "shit this is THE worst adult to run into and I haven't even gotten to the running away part of my plan" and Julias ends up being the reason she doesn't even get to the train station. He's fucking hilarious by the way. He's got a well adjusted family with two loving parents and a bunch of little siblings and he basically picks Ruby up by the scruff of her neck and is like "I want this one she's insane."

This is Julias (kneeling on the ground to talk to Ruby) and Emelie (Julias' knight and childhood friend, she's so silly)

and this is the part where I share art from many months ago... when I posted my most recent art and said Ruby keeps getting buffer every time I draw her, I meant it 💀

Ruby and her love interest, Cecelia

This is Vekenti, a character that was also supposed to be a "villain" in the original timeline. Ruby goes looking for him to prevent his death as well, and Julias obviously is like "Omg another weird kid, how delightful!" Everyone thinks Vikenti and Ruby are related, but they are not. They're just raised as siblings in both timelines and have a lot of the same mannerisms

Julias' love interest (unnamed? I can't find her name anywhere) and him

REALLLY old drawings of what they looked like in the OG timeline (I desperately need to redesign these because I could do better now)

Julias and Ruby again

and that's all the art I have for this one (besides the other post of Ruby I posted today, this is the story that that version of Ruby belongs in. She's looks very different now!).

All of this has been in the back of my mind for a while, and I've been trying to figure out which story I would want to write first. Middle school Erin would love for me to finally write Behind the Blue Glass, but sometimes I find myself wanting to write a fantasy story like Clocktower's Chime a lot more

[mixelation]

I would enjoy hearing your rant about how a/b/o reproductive/mating systems drive you batty if you're willing! As someone who is not well studied in that subject omegaverse has still made me furrow my brow and wonder how society has not collapsed

i got this a while ago and debated answering, but i do like rambling and have time tonight. i will not go into specifics because i do not intentionally seek out omegaverse content; my experiences with it are from being in fandom and spec bio spaces where someone just starts talking about it, or every once in a while i read it by accident (i am not actually good about reading tags). i am aware that not everyone follows the same rules and i don't need anyone coming into my askbox to explain how their personal version doesn't do the following things i'm about to say. one reason i know more about omegaverse than i want to is the strange phenomenon of people thinking that a person can be "converted" if only they understood it more....! so: yes, i support any hypothetical fans on my blog writing and enjoying whatever version of omegaverse they want, but no, i do not want you explaining it to me.

anyway, i guess we should first talk about the biological definitions of sex and gender.

sex can be defined multiple ways by biologists depending on what they're trying to study. the one i use for animals & plants is the evolutionary definition, which is based on gametes-- basically, are you set up to make small gametes (male) or big gametes (female)? this is called anisogamy (two different sized gametes within a species) and it's shockingly universal in plants and animals, which is why it's my preferred definition. (although note that gametes size and morphology can vary a ton between species and even between individuals-- the only constant is that within a species, sperm are smaller than ova.) the resulting traits that go along with sex (physical traits, chromosomes, etc) are NOT universal, but i'll talk about some patterns.

note that there ARE isogamous organisms-- such as fungi or algae-- which do not have differently sized gametes. usually instead of sorting them by "sex," they're sorted by "mating type"

also important to know-- lots and lots of plants and animals make both types of gametes. the technical biological term for this is hermaphroditism, but if you're reading this for spec bio reasons i highly urge you NOT to use this term for humans/near-humans. that is because it's unfortunately also a pejorative/dehumanizing term for intersex people (and biologically inaccurate to them). i've seen people use "dualsex" but another scientific term would be "monoecious" (although i have never seen this used outside of plant scientists lmao). technically "bisexual" also works but you can imagine this could be confusing and someone who's never read an old scientific paper might yell at you

okay. so now we've defined sex. what is gender? i am by no means an expert in this, but most people will define it as some sort of social role. for some people it is very personal and definitions are individual. i am only including this paragraph because there was briefly a trend amongst biologists to define "animal gender" as social roles animals play when interacting with each other. i don't personally like this because it often ends up tying the concept of gender to genetics or underlying biological traits. i prefer the more historical term alternative reproductive tactics (ARTs), which refers to when there's multiple strategies/phenotypes/"genders" within a single sex of a species. for example, side-blotched lizards have three different male phenotypes which all exhibit different behaviors with different advantages/disadvantages in terms of procreation.

so, biologically, omegaverse is a mating system where both sexes (that's male/female) experience ARTs (that's the alpha/omega/beta), and mating occurs in a disassortative way. Disassortative mating means that individuals are more likely to mate with (and are perhaps are more likely to successfully produce offspring with) other individuals that are "different" from them in some way. for example, white throated sparrows have two morphs per sex. both "tan" males and females invest energy into parental care, and "white" males and females invest energy into acquiring multiple mates, which white females even using brood parasitism (leaving eggs in a nest that's not hers). tan males mate with white females, and tan females mate with white males (i know there's been studies where two of the same mate with each other and the outcome is less good, but i forget what it is just now lol).

one puzzling part of the omegaverse is that by the definitions i see most often (where humans are born male/female and then develop "secondary dynamics" later), alpha males/omega males shouldn't be able to have children. Sperm do not have enough physical "stuff" to make a baby, even if you ignore genetic imprinting and other mechanisms that prevent people's own gametes from fusing. I don't like mpreg on the grounds that i just don't like stories about pregnancy in general, but I get confused when people go in depth about the biological set ups of their AU and then just don't go into what sex even is? Like, if it were just magic or completely handwaved, sure, fine. But why delve into biology and then get basic things wrong? Like, does your world just have mating types? Are some people dualsex? Are your males actually not males? If any of these things, why are the genital configurations they way they are? I will accept "because I think it's hot/fun/whatever" as an answer, but please be honest that that IS the answer. A lot of time people try harder and harder to explain biology and just get nonsensical. Which, again, that's fine for having fun, there's nothing wrong with it or enjoying reading it-- but it will bother me.

im sure someone is already opening their bookmarks to send me an example where one of my suggestions happens. don't do that. i know different people do different things and probably there's examples of at least a few of the above. i know this because people keep sending me things i don't want to see, and often times they're still wrong. don't be that guy

my biggest gripe re:biology in omegaverse, like many people, is with the bioessentialism in sex/ARTs/"gender" that omegaverse aus tend to hang on their invented mating system. like, obviously, the aspects where heats/ruts/whatever make people so horny they have to fuck or end up in extreme pain is already dubcon because it's basically just rebranded sex pollen, and it gets worse when writers choose to also include biological mechanisms where one individual can "force" or compel another one, especially when it occurs along sex-specific lines. and like, don't get me wrong-- i like some dubcon tropes. i do not have an issue with people enjoying what they enjoy in fictional scenarios. what bothers me is the shocking frequency with which i will run into people preaching their "moral omegaverse" and then they literally just describe slightly more complicated dubcon. this isn't just an omegaverse fan issue-- people do this with all sort of other tropes and AUs too-- but it is a pattern and it's annoying.

and! here's the thing that extra gets my goat. a reason why a lot of people (not everyone ofc) like sex pollen and other biology-compulsion based dubcon tropes is that the fact that it's "biology" feels like it should free the involved characters of responsibility for their actions. but this is not how human behavior works, and it's literally not how biology works. animals have coercive sex all the time, but evolution does not actually favor this. it is not evolutionarily advantageous to be at the whim of your alpha a male. female mate choice is incredibly important to evolution, and if coercive sex is happening, then something is simultaneously also evolving to re-establish mate choice. that's how you get things like weird shaped penises to match weird shaped vaginas, or females being able to selectively kick out sperm.

also the world is filled with interesting mating strategies and it makes me sad that people want to "explore" it and then just stick to made-up quasi-wolf dynamics. :( where are the anglerfish dynamics. the whiptail lizard dynamics. the dynamics based on whatever that frog is that can only mate with a different species of frog. why aren't so many people at least googling how seahorses work, and also why do so many people spend so long describing alt biology for how they're getting (insert man here) pregnant only to get the very definition of sex wrong. even if i were into omegaverse, i think i would leave the most unhinged mean comments............

[russeliarat]

So I've encountered some WILD vague posting about the CCCC fandom and it's arguments about gore fics. I haven't directly interacted with this fandom for over a year - not because of anything bad, I just moved on to other interests to be clear, however the fact that this issue that I encountered a full YEAR ago is still a prominent issue in the fandom is crazy. And according to my boyfriend, who still actively engages with the main section of the fandom and their fanfictions, it's apparently gotten a LOT worse.

So I'm gonna be clear, I still engage with CCCC and CJ's media. I still listen to his music, I still engage with art on tumblr, as well as headcanons, I still draw HMSW (plus two of my system's cohosts are directly sourced from the media). I just haven't read the fanfiction or gone on CJFS for a while. Hearing that this has been so bad, it's come to vague posting back and forth on tumblr makes me so fuckin fed up with this shit.

Read to the end of my post before you form an opinion on this, I have nuance, okay?

Hi people, maybe it doesn't take a genius to take a step back and figure out that saying that you should be allowed to make reasonless and intense gore, abuse, and torture fics about a REAL GUY'S personification of his own personal struggles with mental health and suicide is insanely entitled /neg.

Heart, Mind, Soul, and Whole are not just independent characters from Chonny Jash. They are his (self-admitted) personifications of his mental health struggles, thusly, they are him. CJ has said that Whole is just him.

Excusing making fanfiction about intense abuse and gore and torture and cannibalism and god knows what else about HMSW on 'they're AUs' or 'they're interpretations' is not okay. Usually, I'd agree that you should be allowed to make fanfiction freely without people telling you what to do. HOWEVER! This is a real man's struggle with his mental health so I think that there are certain lines and boundaries that should be placed out of respect for CJ. Reasonless gore isn't necessarily bad, but reasonless gore about a real person's struggles is above and beyond disgusting. I've seen someone argue that saying that is government state censorship...

Guys, there is a distinctive difference between 'reasonless fluff' and 'reasonless gore'. One is wanting them to get along and be nice. The other is wanting them to torture each other. I don't think it takes a genius to understand there's a huge difference between 'I want them to snuggle' and 'I want violence to be done upon them'.

I think over the past year, I've kept this idea to myself because I wasn't directly involved and I didn't want to face the backlash at the time. Then my boyfriend got slammed in dms by someone who had these views, so now I'm pissed. I have personal shit in the game now and I cannot hold myself at bay anymore because I'm at my wits fucking end.

I think a lot of writers who delve into these intense topics should keep in mind 'what would CJ think if he saw that I was making fics about gore/abuse/torture with characters that personify himself?' Not because all gore or abuse is bad, they can be used for some wonderful symbolism or tension when pulled off with meaning and though and tact - rather, it's because some people take it way too far, sometimes without realising. I've seen a lot of people I was close to get stuck in an echo-chamber and not realise they spiraled from the headcanon that The Juno Incident was a violent blinding to something as intense as frequent abuse or gore between HMS.

I want the people on the opposing side to realise that I'm not going after gore or violence or intense themes. Some of my favourite pieces of media contain very violent, gory, abusive, intensely triggering themes, and sometimes, they are reasonless and because the developer or writer wanted to explore different forms of horror and fear. I don't personally believe that those kinds of themes should carry over to CCCC because (for the fifth time I'm mentioning it but I feel like I really need to drill it into some people's heads) the album is about a real person's struggle with suicide and his own mental health.

I'm not trying to censor anyone's views, it's just that I think sometimes there's just general common sense boundaries surrounding fandoms that are about someone's mental health.

An additional point is how often these fics tend to be quite ableist and I do see these writers project their internalised ableism onto HMS, which is a much bigger issue in the fandom since about 90% of people headcanon Heart as being somewhere on the blind spectrum and Mind as having some sort of issue with his voice that means he needs to use a vocal implant/Mind being a robot (which can very quickly spiral into ableism depending on how it's used).

Frequently, I see people portray Heart's blindness as making him weak or helpless and the same with Mind and Soul if people headcanon them as having implants or prosthetics or some form of disability and use it in their gore fics. Due to a lot of gore/torture fics using helplessness from injury as horror, it can very easily become quite ableist. I've been in fandoms with a whole month dedicated to harming their faves, and this can be an issue with them as well, not just the CCCC fandom. It can be done without ableism, but more often than not (especially in the CCCC fandom) people aren't looking for it when they write and can create ableist fics about a helpless character because their new/old disabilities.

I also saw someone talking about mischaracterisation and how that ties into this whole thing, but that's for another time because it's partially a separate topic that I could do a full length thesis essay on, so I'll do it another time.

TLDR; Don't make gore/torture/abuse fics about a real person's personifications of himself and his mental health/suicide struggle. That's fucked???

[firesnap]

Honestly, the more i learn the more upset i get. I've been here since pretty much the beginning of L'manburg, and got so attached to these creators and characters that seeing them one by one turn out to be assholes just hits so hard. I feel dumb but i feel like I'm in a mourning process now- I've drawn, written and thought so much about Wilbur it feels so disheartening looking back on all of it. A part of me still feels in denial, and i hate myself for it, because Shelby made it obvious and I can't ignore the victim - i support her, I'm happy she's healing, but by god do I wish it wasn't him. I wish this person i spent so long admiring and watching wasn't an abuser and i feel stupid for feeling this way, if it makes sense. I almost don't know what to do with myself now, because so much of my creative process was tied to these characters which included music, drawing, writing - I truly hope you're doing okay, since I've been following for a while and I know you were very attached to him too. I only hope for the best for Shelby and the victims, it still doesn't feel real

I'm happy she's healing too. She's got a great support system too and it's heartening to see people who knew Wilbur be on her side.

I didn't make like... true creative fan content for this community. I argued with people, I helped lazily with an update account, I wrote meta about RP characters. But I do understand that sort of "what happens now" thing. Because I still loved the things I wrote and the fun I had with that story, but it's so tied TO him that it's hard to separate. I don't think I'm deleting anything.

For everyone who has created any kind of art/writing around his character, it's up to the individual if they want to continue or not. Because these characters are ours now and have been for a long time at this point. Don't let a terrible person take that joy of creating away from you. But if you don't feel comfortable continuing to create around his character that's fine too. Just take time to figure out your feelings. Don't make any rash decisions.

I also want to emphasize that you should not feel bad about wishing it wasn't him or feeling betrayed or tricked. We don't know these people and we could have never known what he was like behind closed doors. Honestly, he was better at putting on a persona than 90% of other streamers so of course we didn't see it.

[fereldanwench]

I think I'm just about done with my impromptu blog clean-up! I'm still sorting some tagging systems out, but I've got the fandom and personal stuff squared away at the very least, which was where I really wanted a little refresh.

For those who are also organizational enthusiasts, these are a few of the tools and methods I used to make it a little easier to sort through over 25,000 posts accumulated over about 8 years. One major caveat is that most of these have to be used on a PC browser.

Tumblr Tools

Your Tumblr Mass Post Editor This is Tumblr's native mass post editor; the link is on the right-hand sidebar on your blog page (right under settings). It's very limited without any extensions, but you can do some batch actions like deleting a ton of posts or changing tags.

Your Tumblr Blog Archive This looks very similar to the post editor, but you can actually narrow down the posts by tag, which is super helpful. You can access this by going to your blog.tumblr.com/archive (e.g. fereldanwench.tumblr.com) but you must have custom themes enabled to view it (you can find that under your blog settings).

Tumblr Secret URLs Okay, they're not that secret, but they aren't readily accessible anywhere either and you have to manually enter them. There's a list here with the most helpful ones.

External Tools

Tumblr Tag List Generator This web tool will let you generate a list of the tags it can find on your blog. It's not 100% accurate--The "tags to exclude" option never seems to work for me, and it does miss stuff--But I love using this to find posts with random tags or tagged with a typo.

Tag Replacer There are a few different tag-replacing tools out there, but I like this one a lot because it'll let you play with different combinations of tags to delete, replace, or amend. For instance, I wanted to separate my community OC tags from just "other's ocs" and organize them by fandom: with this tool, I was able to search for posts that had both "g: cyberpunk 2077" and "other's ocs" and then I could replace those tags with "g: cyberpunk 2077" and "ocs: cyberpunk 2077" without replacing all the posts that also had "other's ocs."

Xkit Rewritten & New Xkit Browser Extensions These are increasingly less reliable without regular updates, and you can't even get New Xkit on some browsers right now because it's been flagged as a security risk (so obviously, use it with caution). Xkit Rewritten has a mass private tool for posts, and New Xkit adds a tag search in the native mass post editor--It's pretty glitchy and limited, but it helps.

And I'm just gonna drop some deets under the cut about my housekeeping because it's interesting to me:

I made this blog in March 2016; it was my 3rd or 4th account remake since first joining Tumblr in 2010.

(Tangent: 2 of my remakes in 2013 and 2015 were actually because I didn't like having as many followers as I had, lmao. This account has well surpassed those numbers, but Tumblr doesn't have as many active users as it used to, so it doesn't feel as daunting.)

I did not record the exact number of posts I had before I started purging, but it was around 25,000.

It's now down to 16,947!

Most of the stuff I deleted were TV and movie gifsets and non-fandom artwork, but I also purged a lot of fandom posts that no longer sparked joy. I did get a little overwhelmed for some months because there were so many posts and I know I probably removed stuff I would have preferred to keep.

Although seeing some stuff brought on Bad Feels, I also got a huge surge of inspiration diving through my archive, which is great, because that's exactly what I want out of my space.

Cyberpunk OCs absolutely dominated my OC tag--I ended with about 2700 posts for other folks' CP77 OCs. Dragon Age was next with about 800 posts.

One thing I would like to be more conscious of is minimizing reblogging art from "curator" blogs and finding more artists who are actively posting on Tumblr to support. I don't mind the curation blogs as long as they're sourcing the artist, but I'd just rather give love to the folks who are actually here.

My quietest year was 2019, likely due to a combination of a lot of people leaving after the great tiddy purge and getting more into Twitch and by extension Twitter.

April 2019 was my quietest month, which had 3 posts!!!! 3 posts!!! I post like 4x that amount in a day, lmao.

The Outer Worlds coming out at the end of 2019 brought me out of my semi-hiatus.

Not sure exactly what was my most active year/month, but I'd guess either 2022 or 2023. I do vaguely remember going from about 8000 posts in the middle of 2021 to feeling like that practically doubled by 2022. Cyberpunk really got me using this space again (to the point of my own mental and emotional detriment in some cases, but I got better, lmao).

[celerydays]

☁️ 2024 Artist Resolutions ☁️

Happy New Year, everyone! 🌻

Just sharing my annual artist resolutions (this is my 3rd year doing this, I think?):

colors & palettes: I would like to try and experiment more with color, including probably (re-)teaching myself color theory (and actually trying to understand it this time lol), working with more mindful color choices like limited palettes and overall trying to use color to make more visually interesting pieces.

video content: I actually really like the process filming and editing little progress/behind-the-scenes videos, but I didn't do much of that at all this year. I'd honestly like to go back to doing some of that again! Also I had a brief stint of streaming art on Twitch around this time a year ago and haven't gone back to it...still on the fence but I may revisit that as well this year.

comics: I've always enjoyed drawing silly little daily life comics and would like to continue with that, but 2023 made me realize how much I also enjoy creating more long-form webtoon and comic book-like pieces as well! I definitely want to explore and expand more upon that in 2024~

composition: I've been very lazy about composition! Going back to wanting to use color to create more visually interesting pieces, I'd also like to focus more on composition to do the same as well.

(soft) freelance: I used to have an online shop that I shut down almost 3 years ago now...I don't know what I feel brave enough to tackle this year in terms of being an independent artist outside of my day job; whether that's commissions, ko-fi/patreon, product design for a shop reopening or tabling at conventions, but I hope I'll figure it out and get over my hesitations about it...soon.

sketching & journaling: I really super-mega-absolutely neglected sketching and journaling for the entirety of 2023 which TRULY HURTS MY JOURNAL-LOVING HEART. I want to try some things to find a new system of sketch-journaling that fits my time and lifestyle better these days so I can incorporate that back into my life.

My previous artist resolutions from 2023 and 2022~

I think I only really got to two goals from my 2023 list; drawing more backgrounds and entering my 'villain era' by drawing more selfishly (though I'll be honest: I didn't expect that to manifest the way it did when I had written it out, but yeah okay, smutty art it is I suppose lmaooo)

We don't talk about 2022 lol.

Hope everyone is having a great start to the new year~ Relax! Rest! Recharge! And may we achieve all (or at least most of) our goals we're hoping to in 2024 💗

[labyrinthe-exe]

laby_log 0.1

gosh. where do i even begin? yes i'm totally writing in lapslock, because that's just how i am... LOL

anyway, wow!

okay...

where do i begin?

last year i did a 100 day art challenge at the beginning of 2024, i totally knocked that out of the park. this isn't really a year wrap-up sort of post but i promise it's relevant! so, flashback to early 2024 in like april, i've been drawing 100 days back then and finished in april... and then for the rest of the year i spent it procrastinating...

i had FINALLY progressed my art, jumpstarted and kicked back into gear the budding sprouts of falling head over heels back in love with art... and i totally wanted to jump to the wind and just shout...

"HELL YEAH, I'M SO BACK!" and catapult myself into the most productive year of my life.

so did i end up actually keeping up with art? no. i arted very intermitted...ly... and then i worked on like everything else but art ( my mental health for instance, cause woo boy i went through a LOT of changes in 2024... but not gonna get into that, wow boy howdy totally a wild ride mentally... )

i ended up being inspired by artists that i follow and interact with, like wow :plead: they're literally all so amazing :sobbbb: crying all over the floor, for the fact they could all pull through, so could i!!!

i knew i wanted to do winter jam, i wanted to do and make visual novels and games... I HAVE LOTS OF AMBITIONS! but golly, gosh... am i a procrastinator... with a perfectionist streak...

i wanted to do spooktober, otome jam, etc and failed all those... that's why i was finally WINTER JAM WILL BE THE BEGINNING and it was!

in like three days i created a shitty visual novel demo called "it's only december, always december" about seasonal depression and it was like a psychological horror... i had LOFTY AMBITIONS! and it's not that i couldn't do them... its just the entire month of december was hectic... crazy... totally batshit insane... i was robbed of both time, mental energy, and my goals until i was nothing but a collection of ambition, fatigue, and all my wirings all sticking out... totally a not good sight!

but i promised myself, i will make a visual novel! so i got my ass up, collected the time that i had... and birthed up... "it's only december, always december" and finagled it on the last freaking day and WHAM BAM! that's the beginning of my wannabe villain origin story!!!

and thus after december ended ( finally ) it was decreed that january was to be born and it was 2025... THE TRUE BEGINNING of my totally super cool and amazing visual novel developer journey !!!

i decided like idk like 2-3 days into the year that i was going to make the most crazy and ambitious idea ever... for a complete newbie beginner fledgling dev... yes... i was going to make a gothic horror romance visual novel with SWAK ( sealed with a kiss jam )... with a whole whopping... you guessed it...

EIGHT WHOLE LOVE INTERESTS!

A MAP SYSTEM

POLY ENDINGS

A TOTALLY SUPER COOL PROTAGONIST ( CAIN my baby )

STAT BUILDING

AFFECTION POINTS

POINT AND CLICK MECHANICS

INSANITY COUNTERS

now if this sounds unrealistic, believe me, it is. LOL but i am nothing but incredibly idealistic... so i charged on with an idea! no programming knowledge! no idea how to make gui! and like literally no story or outline because i'm a fucking pantser! honestly, it started out pretty fun?

i concepted some gui, i made some progress and i was having fun thinking about and talking with dev friends about my totally wacky dreams! i spent the first week really researching gothic horror and like trying to get myself in gear, drawing concept art of beloved characters and trying to figure out the art direction i wanted to go for!!! this is where my first mistake was...

trying to change my art style!

my art style is naturally kind of super sketchy and retro inspired, my art direction was also super retro inspired: think matsumi inomata, castlevania, yuki nobuteru ( sorry if thats spelled horribly ) ... you know !!! vibes! but the thing is...

i'm still not a proficient artist, so consistency is something i really really struggle with UNFORTUNATELY!

pictured up here are sketches i went through, trying to design the love interests ( focalor, october ) and cain my beloved baby boy is the one that looks like griffith's child... yes i'm super aware of the resemblance but i swear they're totally not the same!

at this point, i was still super optimistic! i ended up discussing with a friend who told me some of my gui wants were possible!!! and also opening up renpy documentation and fully prepped to spam another friend w/ like a million programming questions... but also super excited to just tough it out! cause i _do_ love coding... mostly from a css/html background though...

i love learning though!

but golly, i underestimated how much the gui would send me into emotional turmoil. i was constantly second guessing myself like "does it actually look good? does it look nice? is this going to be slop just like always december was? am i going to give up? am i even cut out for game dev at all?" things like that...

keeping a positive mindset and taking care of my daily irl chores, spending time with friends, and being a cheerful person was kind of hard and especially as i hit a low point this past week...

i really really wasn't feeling up to par this week... i wondered if i sounded silly or irresponsible to my friends or like a totally dumb scatterbrain... i wondered if people looked at me like a totally naive super unrealistic nobody who would never achieve anything at all even dialing it back... i nearly spiraled!!! but...

good news though, i practically finished the gui!

but before that, i ended up drawing some more beloved characters in hopes to cheer my mood up and contemplate the story i would tell for yandere jam... and if i hadn't mentioned it before then... yes... i do plan to join jams literally all year and release a full game of always december for next winter jam!

it helps because i'm a hikikomori coded neet... i'm just trying to push myself into a more consistent schedule so thats why i'm doing the whole "go big or go home" because if i don't push myself like this, i'm just not going to do anything at all... so even if i fail or stumble, it helps me in the long run!

ta-dah!!! one part of the gui... i had so much lovely and amazing help from dev friends getting this all squared away from colors to how to shade better and encouragement to keep going! i love them so much ;--;

i spent like 2wks totally fluffing about, still haven't written jack shit ( but i'm confident in my writing ) and now venturing into sprites and background artwork!!! and since today is like 11 at night on the 17th... well i only barely hve 2 weeks left to get everything else squared away...

thank gosh, this is only supposed to be a demo! so all those lofty features i mentioned earlier... thats just for the full game! haha!

so where am i now? well...

ive made like two sprites! the gui and.... i'm a bit bummed out... i wanted to do full body but i decided today in the middle of drawing them after being unsatisfied and nearly crying over it...that i can just cut their knees off! :D ( which was suggested earlier but like in an actual cut their height down way cause they're all tall giant not human love interests )

it really sucked running into that roadbump, cause i realized i am lacking when it comes to my art... yes i know i'm improving but i am not proficient in full body and 3/4 angles and other angles at all and i really need to practice but i told myself i would try to get creative and look for other solutions... i did!

so now, i feel confident i can complete the rest of the cast... which i'm thinking that i'm cutting the demo interactables to just 4! which honestly is for the best and i can finish the next two tmrw or tonight... if i feel like drawing again..

but while i've hit hiccups and i'm not doing as much as i could be doing throughout the day... i am having a lot of fun! i'm learning a lot, what works for me and what doesn't... i'm learning that chatsims are actually massive ( i wanted to do one... i guess i'll hve to spend some time researching it ) and honestly... i haven't even TOUCHED music or audio but i'm excited to deep dive into that too...

and here's another side quest of art that i did while i was trying to improve my mood the other day... i really do yo-yo hard and while i wanted to cry today... i'm super glad i persevered... that's to say... uh... dont always do that LOL

OH! and here's what it was gonna look like if i managed to do all full bodies but i hated it cause like his feet was too big and his head was just- it was hard! okay!!! anyway... i'm also gonna have to learn proper marketing too but overall... i feel good? i feel like this year i will learn like super much like a million amount of knowledge...

i look forward to posting another log like idk next week ( don't hold me to that, i'm like all over the place... )

...and maybe i'll actually get up a site or post more art here or like on bsky... etc... but for now! i'm just doing my best to get a consistent schedule!

anyway, laby logging out <3

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

It's Showtime! - October 2024 Devlog

Howdy Cobalt here! This is really late I know, that's my bad. Again. I want to say right away this dev log isn't particularly exciting. Mostly because almost everything I did this month was in preparation for future things to be added so while I may not have a lot to show… Hopefully everything I did this month will mean soon I will!

Got Cutscenes mostly working! There is a placeholder cutscene that's an intro and another that activates upon opening a door! You can skip cutscenes by holding E for a bit but I have not yet implemented the code that keeps track of which cutscenes you've seen before to activate it. [I want there to be a system that keeps track of if you have ever seen a given cutscene. Since this game is story-heavy I wouldn't want people accidentally skipping cutscenes that may have been vital. This system will hopefully be able to keep track of this even through save files. So if you decide to replay the game after fully beating it all the cutscenes will be able to be skipped since you already know what's happening and such. Also for speedrunners]

Okay I know there's not a lot here but the cutscene system took. A while and that was cause I wanted it to be as optimized as possible [we'll be having quite a few cutscenes after all~] And that always makes coding take a lot longer. If I coded it in a super messy complicated way it probably would've been done in a way but I wanted the code to be mostly clean and most of all not tank the performance. So it took a lot longer than I thought it would.

Been doing some loose writing here and there. Honestly haven't done any major writing this month, I wanted a break from it. I have since taken that break however and I'm sure I'll come back swinging!

Haven't done much art myself, been doing some tweaks to the props I showed off in the last dev log but nothing more than that. However I have been working relentlessly on Henry's first model [I say first cause I'm sure with time, I will want to update and change it] and I can say confidently it is fairly close to completion.

In terms of 2D art, I've done a few textures and Roddy has been working hard on character designs! We got one of the major characters in their cycle form done and that'll help a lot for establishing the style for the others ones as well. We don't have much that wouldn't be considered spoilers though so for now, you'll just have to trust us.

HUGE progress has been made on figuring out rigging. I have a rig that works really swell, [one that was created by that very person I talked abt helping me in last month's devlog] now I just have to learn how to modify it for my own purposes which shouldn't be too hard since I now know all the little mechanics that make it work. With that I can hopefully start on making a good generic rig for humans and toons alike to act as a base for all of them but still be able to customize for any deviations they have in design. This took. Days. But I think it'll be worth it when you guys get to see these characters start to come to life in their first few animations and such. I think next month, I'll have at least something swell to show off! Thanks for your patience as always!

[sopheadraws]

Thanks for the tag, @birdofmay!

Okay, so I don't actually have any playlists of my own; I entirely use playlists made by other people/generated by Spotify/actual albums, so I had to improvise. I stuck all six Spotify "Daily Mixes", my top 100 songs of 2021, 2022, and 202; my "On Repeat" playlist, and my "Repeat Rewind" playlist into a brand new playlist that contains 563 songs. I'm not good about favoriting songs, so I thought this was the fairest system. Some songs I don't actually know may come out of the Daily Mixes, so if that happens, I'll listen to it for the first time. Okay, cool.

1. Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran do a cover of the "Thriller/Heads Will Roll" Glee mashup.

Well, Taylor and Ed are two people, and this is a duet, so that's a good start. However, that's as far as my enthusiasm goes. Taylor has a *good* voice, however, she's not really a belter, which is all the "Heads Will Roll" part is. And Ed Sheeran covering Michael Jackson is not something that needs to happen.

2. The Warblers from Glee cover "I Feel Pretty/Unpretty"...also from Glee.

This is a song a female insecurity (arguably with lesbian undertones). I do not want an all male a cappella group involving themselves. Terrible idea.

3. Johnny Cash covers "Girl on Fire". Specifically the Glee arrangement.

This is so stupid that I love it. Johnny "Ring-Of-Fire" Cash covering a 2010s pop song about a woman being metaphorically on fire is hilarious to me. And the Glee arrangement is the icing on the cake.

4. Johnny Cash covers "champagne problems" by Taylor Swift.

Interesting that I got Johnny Cash twice in a row. Anyways, I think this just might work. I can't explain why. But it would.

5. Brittany from Glee covers "Million Reasons" by Lady Gaga.

Brittany can only really pull off heavily produced dance pop, and this song is a belting-heavy ballad. Sorry, Britt, but it's a no for me.

6. Simon & Garfunkel cover "obsessed" by Olivia Rodrigo.

I can't * f a t h o m * how this would sound. I am intrigued to hear it, but I sense it would be terrible. But, then again, Paul Simon is a musical genius and I could listen to Art Garfunkel sing anything.

7. Natasha Bedingfeld covers "Last Kiss" by Taylor Swift.

Natasha Bedingfeld is one of the never-heard-of-this-person-before-in-my-life musicians I warned you might appear on this playlist. Having heard one song, she's a generic pop artist. Sort of a Beyoncé vibe. I'm sure she'd do just fine covering Taylor.

8. Avril Lavigne covers "Operator" by Jim Croce.

Avril is another person I don't actually listen to (I actually know who she is this time). Uhh.. this cover would be wack, but I'm not sure if it's wack in a good or bad way.

9. Darren Criss covers "Talkin' Bout a Revolution" by Tracy Chapman.

(Yes, this was a DC original song, not a Glee cover.) Okay, so, having been on Glee, Darren knows how to do a killer cover, and I'm sure this would be no different. Kind of a tone deaf song selection on his part, however.

10. Olivia Rodrigo covers "Heaven Is A Place on Earth" by Belinda Carlisle.

I do know this song, and it's not *out* of my taste range, but I don't think I've ever listened to it on Spotify before, so. Anyways, I think this is the best combination I've gotten! I really want to hear this now! Best for last!

Well, Sina, and these the crazy combinations you expected from me? Very Glee heavy and most of the combinations would be horrid, which seems in character.

I would like to see what @doctor-whu @porcelainvino @wheresurboytonighthelookslikeenj @katyobsesses @angelhummel and @hevanderson get if you want to try :))

[itisbop]

And now... the moment you've all been waiting for (or not, which is fine)! Let's talk Brawl Talk because OH BOY am I excited.

This is gonna be a pretty long post, so bear with me! I'll go over one section at a time and go over what I liked and disliked. Spoilers ahead! If you haven't watched the latest Brawl Talk, go do so! One more reminder, these are just my thoughts! You don't have to agree with me!

Without further to do... let's talk!

New Brawlers (Angelo and Melodie)

Now, when I first saw Angelo, I immediately went, "HE'S UGLY LMAO." After getting used to him, though, he's actually not that bad. His design is really good and is somewhat of an anti-cupid (perfect for a gal like Willow). Also, his voice actor did such a good job so much energy was put into him.

He doesn't seem like he's gonna be incredibly busted, but he is gonna be good in the right hands (while I'm at it pay your respects to Mortis Mains ya'll, they just took a major l with this guy). Sorry Larry and Lawrie, but you two are gonna have to step aside, I NEED this man as much as I need the next brawler.

I. LOVE. MELODIE!!! I did think she was a League of Legends character at first, lol.

Apparently, I've heard people say she is the first female assassin, which is very interesting! Out of the two, I feel she poses more of a threat. She might be broken, though her main attack is WEAK.

I've been through the Reddit and have seen so many people talk about how she looks like Janet, and I'd like to take the time to bring up a little theory... what if she was Janet and Bonnie's mom? I would go into this further, but we have to keep going!

Overall, I really like these two! Their designs are really good, and the character designers did a great job! Their pins and profile pictures show SO much personality! Expect some art of these two soon! However, if I may say something, I wish their skins were cooler. Why couldn't Angelo have a Sands of Time skin too? 😭

Speaking of Sands of Time...

Sands of Time and Ragnorok + Skins

Out of both seasons, I'm very hyped for Sands of Time. The "Sands of Time" is a very interesting concept that can be used very creatively. Can't wait to see what the animation brings! Though I think we all know why I'm hyped...

My best guest was that this skin was gonna be a Epic/Mythic skin, but a LEGENDARY?????? WHAT?????? Chuck fans we just fucking WON. I've seen the sneak peaks and heard his voice lines, Nicolai did an INCREDIBLE job as always. I'm am SO READY to go broke for this skin, but first, I must purchase some seasonal skins since they've been on my agenda for a while.

Loki Chester has to be the one I'm looking forward to getting the most for the Ragnorok seasons/skins. Plus, it's free! (If you have good luck).

Side note and honorable mention, Thor Bibi was just the icing on the cake for Bibi Mains this update. While I feel like a few more details could be added for this skin to make in truly "legendary," everything else about it great, including the voice acting! Poor Bull, he's the only one in his yet to get a Legendary Skin.

Ranked and The Report System

Okay, not related, but I love how they disses on the community a bit in this section, LOL. They know what, at least Reddit and Twitter are doing (and let's keep it that way, they don't need to know what's going on over here lol).

Anyways, while I'm excited (and scared) for Ranked with modifiers I wanna take this time to talk about a concern... the report system...

Now, I know there's a reason why we have 10 reports; but what's gonna stop so angry guy from reporting me if I didn't do anything? I feel like there's a chance this could backfire, that's all.

Hypercharges and Balance Changes

No Mortis or Poco hypercharge :(

Cordelius was definitely unexpected and very scary. Getting slowed in the shadow realm is a death sentence.

I wish Belle got a little more this update, but I'll take the hypercharge.

Move over Charlie, there's a new spider person in town, and he's a DINOSAUR.

Onto to balance changes. 84???? GOD DAMN. Adrien wasn't fucking around this update. Edgar is dead (and rightfully so FUCK HIM) and Doug might actually stand a chance in this Meta. I'll miss the days when Hypercharges were game breaking just for the community's rage, but it's probably for the greater good.

Whatever the Fuck the Random Skins Were

Now Primo Shark, I can take (though I'm definitely not gonna be able to take Baby Shark as a in game theme, I'm muting music for that entire time period). Pitcher Fang is a good skin too. Squeaky note is very... meh, but it's a rare skin so you can't expect much.

BUT POOP SPIKE.

POOP SPIKE.

What

the

FUCK?

It was tolerable until I saw the losing animation, and to that, I say EWWWWWWWWWW 🤮🤮🤮. WHYYYYY!?!?!? THAT'S SO NASTY!!!

I get that this is an April Fool's skin, but WHYYY THAT??? Thank GOD this skin is expensive. If I catch any of you with this skin, I'm gonna need to ask if you're okay. I don't wanna show a picture of this skin to you all, or else I'm pretty sure Tumblr would kick me to the curve. This is easily what I was least excited for for this update.

Overall Rating and Final Thoughts

Now, it's time to throw the final ratings on screen and say anything else that's on my mind.

New Brawlers - 9.5/10, definitely getting both! Let's hope they get some cool skins soon!

Sands of Time - 7/10, the concept and Chuck carry this season don't fight me on this. /j

Ragnorok - 6.5/10, I'm not as hyped, but I will grind for that Chester skin!

Ranked - 8/10, now I have a reason to actually play this mode. Hopefully, the report system is fair enough...

Hypercharges - 6.5/10, again not as hype, but I will be snatching that Belle Hypercharge since she's the only one out of the 6 I maxed out. She deserved more, though. :(

Balance Changes - 10/10, bye Edgar begone. F for the twins, however; I liked them.

Random Stuff - 3/10, not even Pitched Fang can save us from whatever the devs were on.

Overall Season 24/25 is...

8/10! (Poop Spike ruined it >:( )

And that's it. For those who have read to the end, thank you so much for heating me ramble it means so much. Expect some headcanons and more little theories soon (as in some time this week). Until then, ciao!

[exercise-of-trust]

how it started -> how it's going:

(left: a 10-year-old sketch of a friend's oc; kiya if you're still out there i hope you're well. right: an éowyn from last year i'm much happier with now, lmao)

it's about a year since i really got back into posting fanart! and it's been a lot of fun and you all have been very nice, and i want to get the art bug out of my system before i tackle nanowrimo this year, so i'm taking art requests all through september! send me a character, get a drawing, i'll keep going until i get sick of it (or until october 1, whichever comes first).

guidelines? info? idk i've never done this before:

open for requests september 1 through september 30 (although i do reserve the right to quit early if it turns out i've wildly misjudged things)

everybody gets at least a flat-color headshot (digital or traditional), but you may end up with a rendered painting if i'm on a roll. we'll see how this goes!

similarly, the most i'll commit to up-front is a single character per request. you're also welcome to send in pairings if you like but a) poses with multiple people are way harder and i'm lazy and b) i'm an extremely picky bastard about shipping, so, like, be emotionally prepared to just get whichever half of your duo i like better ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

just to keep this sorta manageable i'm gonna say tolkien book characters only, but anything is fair game within that band - if you've got an obscure blorbo from the appendices, or a popular blorbo i never post about, now's your chance to send 'em in.

okay! think that's about it! if this goes well i might do it again next year; if it goes poorly we'll just pretend it never happened lol. have fun!

[misc-obeyme]

that fem villain mammon art makes me feel so many things, i went crazy when i saw it and my tags for it reflected that

LIKE I'LL JOIN YOUR SIDE ANY DAY MA'AM, JUST ONE CHANCE IS ALL I NEED PLEASE INCAN MAKE YOU SO HAPPY

if there was ever a curse where mammon got turned into a woman, I'd die on the spot. Solomon had an experiment that went wrong and now him and Mammon are affected (mcsolomams heart says it's because they were all hanging out together in his room)

I can only imagine what they would do if they both got turned 😭 team up and mess with me probably. please guys i am fragile, and i WILL run away and hide for my own sake. Like they think i get flustered now?? crank it up to ten. THEY'D GET A KICK OUT OF IT TOO !!! i hate them (said with sickening affection)

like the dame events had me in a chokehold. I can tell you I definitely dropped my phone and yelled when I saw the mammon card like HE HAS A THIGH ACCESSORY AND MESH PANELING AND LIPSTICK that i want to ruin WHO SAID RHAT

i am just a weak woman when it comes to pretty women *head in hands* it's the bisexual in me

anyway HOPE YOU'RE DOING WELL !!! work is breathing down our necks to meet our credit card goals, and my store manager is trying to plead for me and the replen manager to get a raise so HOPING !!! (IT WASN'T A RUMOR TECHNICALLY YIPPEE)

I've started giving my cashiers stickers for getting any kind of sign up or application and 😭 it's kinda endearing how excited some of them get. Like even the one's who seemed kinda skeptical/thought it was silly are immediate telling me over the walkie when they get something

barbatos giving mammon stickers when he gets good grades, or a shiny sticker and a kiss when it's an A grade

ALSO MY STORE MANAGER GAVE ME A $25 GIFT CARD TODAY AND BOUGHT US PIZZA BECAUSE I WAS WORKING THE MORNING FOR ONCE 😭 HE SAID THEY REALLY MISSED ME WHILE I WAS ON VACATION LOLOL

okay im done I think HAVE A GOOD DAY/NIGHT/AFTERNOON!!!!

OKAY RIGHT. The bisexual in me was also freaking out lol. I was like wow I don't think I've ever wanted anyone to step on me before, but FOR HER-

They would absolutely mess with you, there is no way that scenario could go down any other way lol. Like oh? You like us this way, huh? Let us show you just what we can do~

Cue heavy flirting and teasing and wow I would not be strong enough to resist them.

Oh yeah Mammon's dame card nearly killed me with his stupid thighs I was like EXCUSE YOU. How dare you, you were already pretty enough as a man, now you're gonna go ahead and hit me with the thigh bling??

OH YAY I hope they get you that raise!!! You deserve it!!

Listen, I would be thrilled if someone was giving me stickers for doing a good job. It's the simple human brain, we like rewards. I have a sticker system for when I'm actually writing my novels where I award myself a sticker for every 500 words I write. Needless to say they haven't seen any use in ages because I abandoned my novels for fanfic lol. I tried using them for that instead but it was harder because I never know how many words things are gonna end up. At least with novels I know it's gonna be over 50k so like 500 is a good goal for a daily amount. (And I always wrote more than that anyway so my little section gets full up with sparkly stars tee hee~)

Anyway, the point here is that stickers are fun and make people happy!

Now listen... Barb's rewards for Mammon are officially in smut town because of the tags you left on that fic, by the way. I was like OH. That's right, he did abandon his homework to come be with Barb and if Barbatos knew that...? Anyway part two is going to be posted soon and you'll see. Not me already thinking about part three, I have a problem.

YESSSS pizza!! This is the thing, employers don't know how much they rely on you until you're gone! LOL!

I hope you have a lovely day/night as well! 💕

[microwavetoaster-selfships]

for axelrod: 💞, 🧶, 🌺

for finn: 🩷, 🌷, 🌺, i also want to hear any ramblings about miku by anamanaguchi specifically if that is something you would like to share

i also think 🏩 is a very good question but in my heart it's collision of worlds at least for finn. i accept the possibility you might answer all of the finn questions with collision of worlds. almost poetic one of the questions is about the credits to a theoretical movie

-@markbeakskisser

Okay preface before the preface-preface that prefaces the preface-preface preface. Preface. THIS IS LONG, Like, perhaps even "This is long even for Kane" long. At least for typing. I say several things adressing the longness of it but I wanted to add the extra preface of I managed to essentially go on a tangent at every single question because I am a madman and regauardless of if you read this in intervals if anyone reads this entire thing you might also be a certified madman because WHY and HOW. And GENIUNELY no one has to read this, this is like a borderline memoir. But I have super enjoyed doing this thank you so so much, I've spent all day writing this out and actually really loved dedicating a good portion of my day to this!! So thank you lots. This post needs like three read-more options. This was really fun to get out of my system thank you for the ask and your words. There was originally just one preface and now this is one preface of four, the read more is going here. I hope you have a brilliant day, I'm feeling awfully sappy and feelingsy right now as I just got done with this so I just wanted to add and say thank you for being my friend and sending me handfuls of questions for each ask game and listening to my rambles and nonsense and supporting me, I owe you a 50$ card to your favorite place to eat/shop at, digital stores like Steam or Amazon are included.

I saw this first thing when I woke up and your reply to my art and you answering the Animal Crossing thingy and I was like okay let me do the ask game thingy here first just to savor everything else like when you get good food so you want to eat it slower but then I got so caught up in responding to these questions that I started daydreaming and I got a little tooooooo cozy daydreaming and fell back asleep till like 9pm. But also thank you so much this was such a pleasant little surprise cause I had reblogged it a couple days ago! Glad to see you again :)

I do want to preface that I have a really bad habit of not always picking up on the actual meanings of songs and unless it is truly something downright diabolical that I must be aware of LET ME BE BLISSFULLY UNAWARE!! I've had a couple people point out to me that what I THOUGHT was a love song was really like a break-up song or was about someone missing a relationship that was actually toxic and of course I do not mean those undertones!!!! Art is for interpretation and just like any painting or book it's good to respect the artists original intentions but part of the fun and having a song resonate with you is how your brain decides to read it! And I'm too tired of having songs ruined for me because of hidden meanings being pointed out to me. Waugh.

I'm beginning to think I'm just getting longer at longer at typing. Or this is one of those beaver dam things where I never really talked about it so now that I am it all bursts open. You might have to sit down and grab a snack and drink and a text-to-speech and pretend we are having a podcast here. Maybe have it as a Part A. And Part B. Thing to read. Or skip to the part where I unironically start rambling about the Miku song in Finn's playlist.

For Axlerod:

💞 - which song off of your playlist would your f/o associate with your selfship, if they were selfshipping with you?

It's too early in the morning for my hands to be sweating like this. Uhm. I knew I was going to be quick at finding a song or it was going to take me a hot minute, no in between, and it is taking me a hot minute. But I am super enjoying getting to go through his playlist again cause I did a lot of my song listening while at school or walking to and from the bus and I haven't done that in a while so I haven't done as much listening to music! I am think I am thinking far too deeply and hard about this but me being indecisive does not help at all. I was tempted to purposely lean towards adding an Arctic Monkeys song(or that general area like The Last Shadow Puppets) but then I was like wait no, thats what I associate with him. But then I was also like maybe it would also go the other way around? And he would find those songs and associate them with me as well?

I actually have a little journal where I wrote out every song on my playlist for Axlerod(and afterwards for Finn) and with each song I wrote out what the song reminds me of/why I added it/the little AMV animatic that runs through my head, and in some of them I jotted down who's perspective the song is from, so I kinda have a little cheat cause I'm particularly looking for ones where I wrote that it was Axlerod towards Kane. Okay. I think I've narrowed it down. Since I'm jotting down several and I have somehow already yapped I'm not going to individually go on about the songs in length here just to try and keep it from turning into another love letter.

Past Kane was saying Royalty by Conor Maynard as a half joke, thank you past Kane, you're very funny.

Touch-Tone Telephone by Lemon Demon is also really good, I mean that is literally just him. Rewatch Cars 2 and tell me that he wasn't just preaching that song the entire time. Cameras cut, we break away to a behind the scenes shot between Axlerod and Kane and this song is just that. Like borderline this song is just a thing that was written particularly for a Cars 2 breakaway of this. No words are spoken it is just this song playing except for maybe that thing where the characters turn around and silently mouth some of the lyrics to themselves. Repeating secondary AU where instead of Kane having entirely seperate story it's the one where he's directly inserted into the Cars 2 plot.

Tear in My Heart by Twenty One Pilots. I almmoosyttt didn't mention it just because my idea for it is it being a very important song to me(which it is) and me then introducing it to Axlerod. But again that could just be his own little imagine that he has in his own head.

There are also a few other honorable mentions but I would not be able to narrow those songs down. And that's just like.. the main big ones where I'm like "I hesr this song and my immediate first instinct is thinking about it as an Axlerod towards Kane song." He would have his own whole playlist okay.

🧶 - what's the most out of place song on your playlist? why did you add it?

"Hmmm... I don't know, I don't think I have really any silly funny songs in this playlist, maybe something like Change The Formality by Infected Mushroom because it is so intense and not really sappy, it's just something that reminds me of Axlerod himself and not necessarily the relationship?" He says, knowing full well he just went through the entire playlist and Shredded Metal by NSP is in there where it is just Danny hyping up this metal song they worked on for the past three and a half years and asking Ninja Brian to play it and Ninja Brian proceeds to play bloopy motifs and nothing else and when Ninja Brian finally goes to play the beginning bit of it and Danny starts singing he switching it back to the bloopy song(this entire thing is just a skit that they do in their albums as an intermission or intro/outro).

And all I wrote in my journal was, and I quote, word for word, "Something that would happen between me and Miles(Axlerod). I mean, not that particular 1:1 scenario but same silly funny fun vibes." Except I was numbering the songs as I went and highlighting the numbers so it was easy for me to find them later and accidentally highlighted the 1:1 ratio. I wrote this about almost squarely a year ago(it was over the course of Febuary-ish of last year, maybe extended into January and March as I was taking my time with it and also did Finn's afterwards) and I still perfectly agree with that statement. It is here just because it is silly and something that I feel like would happen between us.

🌺 - which song off of your playlist has the most impactful lyrics? why do they mean so much to you?

I'd say either Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John or Mirrorball by Arctic Monkeys. Deep breath cause I'm going to get a little opening my heart up here and mildly embarrassing myself. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was one of the first songs that I properly imagined an entire thing to it, like essentially a time-lapse of the process of Kane going from "dog that Axlerod found on the street that needs serious remission" to a tiktok of words over the screen saying "This was a stray ally dog I found..." and it's showing the most happy bubbly possibly spoiled looking dog who is plump and well fed and just seems like how a dog should be! Tail wagging like it is a helicopter that might take off at any point. It is also(asides from the other song I mention here, I can't remember which came first) the first song that I imagined a little wedding thing to and then had the entire "ah piss, do I wanna run away and have an unconventional marriage with him in a flower field?"(the answer was yes.) And there's just like. The whole lyrics of course are just. One million firework and explosion emojis right now ASAP. I will need to pull out a Google doc and go over but I swear it is all just verbatim of what I've laid out here. Kane warming up and Axlerod letting him warm up and being easy on him and just pretend like I went on an entire tangent about the chorus because I'm gonna go on a tangent about the opening bit and if I go on about the chorus as well it will just be. More lengthy somehow.

I'll try and shorten it but the opening lines of "I'm not a present for your friends to open/// This boy's too young to be singing the blues." Like, first line. Kane is spy, we now know the whole ordeal of spies conflicting with lemons, Kane has lost it by this point and doesn't know anything anymore. Second line now. Okay. Axlerod responding with concern of "..You know you aren't supposed to be feeling this way, right? You're just fighting a group of what you already are. You shouldn't be feeling this way.." and then the entire rest of the song and plot break out, there's the turning point right there, Axlerod being someone that calls Kane out on the fact that he is clearly not feeling okay and something should be done about that and who is Axlerod if not the staple person to be helping a lemon? Whether the man is aware he is a lemon or not.

For Finn:

🩷 - which song off of your playlist has the most interesting reason as to why it's on there?

Okay so this is a little tricky for me just because I have so many songs on here and so many of them that I like and think have little interesting things behind them!! Though I suppose I could say that for all the questions here...

I mean, there is perhaps the more obvious answer of the Miku song, I'm sure that is quite interesting thing to have here, but there's also little things here like having a cowboy song in here cause Finn geeks out a little about that stuff and embarrasses himself a bit over it in the Disney Infinity game, or having Temperature by Sean Paul in here because uh i uh I'm not explaining myself on that one. Or some songs are in here just because some particular lines are in them that I think are really neato and could lead me going into an entire lore drop tangent about Finn and how I love how beautifully complex he is. Or the Cars 2 song Mon Couer Fait Vroum, which it is sung in French but it actually has some really depressing lyrics!

I'm gonna put my little Miku by Anamanaguchi tangent here just because! But it has a very silly reason for being here, nothing deep or anything, the original reason it got in here was souly because of the lines of "blue hair, blue tie, hiding in your wifi" and I had actually misheard it for a long time as "blue hair, blue eyes, hiding in your wifi" and I was like heyyy!! Finn has blue(silver) hair and blue(greenish) eyes!! This is silly I shall add it. And now it is partly because of the line before that of "Miku, Miku, you can call me Miku," because that like. hh. Am I really going to make a drawing over this to explain myself? I can't explain it without drawing the vision but it just gives off this very polite happy sort of introduction that I think fits Finn. Think sort of like how when the little Animal Crossing villagers do their little wave and there's that little chime noise and they like close their eyes and get happy. Like that. Just like a really polite happy sort of greeting. That is it ISDFKLSD. This is one of those songs where the only reason it is in here is for a couple of lyrics and lines. I've also had the now new mental image of Finn in the Hatsune Miku outfit so that's been. There. And I am saying less now. But it stays because it makes me smile and giggle and I have had previous moments of intentionally trying to find more silly songs to add but it hasn't been a complete suceess, I suppose it must arise naturally.

🌷 - what's a song off of your playlist that really encapsulates your selfship? what about the song makes you feel that way?

Okay, I have several things I could say here of course, but there are two main songs that come to my mind that are like THE songs to me. Like, these are songs about us by us for us, are Careless Whisper by George Michael and La vie en rose by Michael Buble and Cecil McLorin Salvant(I'm on my computer I can't add the accidentals). I KNOW CARELESS WHISPER IS A MEME SONG I DONT CARE. It is so important to me. There is an entire movie that goes on in my head during that song it is literally like one for one ratio of when we first meet and how we feel over each other. I am getting closer and closer to opening up a google doc and writing out how I feel over every single song over again regardless of if I will be the only one to bear eyes on it or not. It is one of my top streamed overall songs, when it comes out I need to stop everything else so I can mentally shout the lyrics at the top of my soul. The entire song is just longing and yearning and I could pick out every single last lyric and be like "okay this is what is happening here in this scene and then the next ones they're saying this and then we transition to this scene and-". There's really a whole thing to it aaiiiogguouggiuhgighg.

La vie en rose doesn't really have an entire movie to it but it is everything I looked up the french lyrics it is so fitting I just. Is this not just the entirety of Finn's heart. I don't need to explain anything about our relationship or how he feels about me I can just show someone this song and be like "Yeah, and it is all mutual." There is a particular part in the song that I can't really describe or explain without giving the audio clip of it but it grabs my heart and squeezes and wrenches it I love him so much I need to grab him like a pillow and just RHGHGRHGRHGHRHHGHTGGHAAURURURUAHF squeeze as tight as possible. Sorry I. Am listening to the songs while typing so you are getting a pure and most geniune unedited authentic response. Life will always be through rose tinted glasses. Good grief I might just explode.

🌺 - which song off of your playlist has the most impactful lyrics? why do they mean so much to you?

Okay I will pick a different song since I think I uhm.. Very well expressed how much Careless Whisper and La vie en rose mean to me and how impactful those are. Again there are several I could pick here but the one that really jumped to my mind is a little angstier, it is Impossible Year by Panic! At The Disco, I can't remember if I ever mentioned it here or if I only said it like once, but I originally the story between me and Finn was supposed to be a little extra angstier and sadder, it was supposed to be after meeting him instead of being pushed to make the exchange between phone numbers and stay in touch, it was going to be that they do the thing of just..saddly staring at each other and looking like sad dogs because they got really attatched and hooked on one another so fast and quickly and it is really hard to say goodbye now, nonetheless one that they are unsure if it will be a permanent one or not. But I am awful with angst so I changed it that we keep in touch and don't have that really bitter sort of "will they wont they ever see each other again" thingy. And I think that this song still really captures that, that bittersweet thing of someone meaning so much to you, a lot, and having to look at them and have them look at you and knowing that neither of you want to have to go but there might not be a choice. "There is no sunshine, there is no you and me, there's no good times, this impossible year.." <- those lyrics right there. Mkay. I am getting myself a little choked up here which isn't good because if I am about to talk about Collision of Worlds then tears are inevitable. I know when we watched Cars 2 I didn't really go on about the lyrics but those three end credit songs mean so much to me. Maybe I need to write a speech or presentation on those.

💒 - if your relationship with your f/o was a movie, what two songs off of your playlist would be the intro and outro songs? why do you think those two songs would fit?

Probably one of the most heard and called out moments I've felt of you even mentioning Collision of Worlds, nonetheless that you are prepared for the fact that I might mention it for every question cause if I'm being honest and truthful I absolutely could because on a surface level it is a silly lighthearted song cause haha they're singing about meat and potatoes or bangers and mash or something and I am curled up on the couch weeping to it. And to think I just wrote a love letter to the UK government as well. I just. I lost my entire train of thought if there ever was one now that I'm playing it and SOUAGH. TEARS. My eyes are watering. Those marbles I gave out in my last post I will be needing them back I fear I've lost mine /joking/reference. I am going to try and actually answer the question and not turn this into my essay about Collision of Worlds. Cause I mean, that's what happened, now isn't it? It makes the world feel a little smaller but like..in a good way? Same sun, different shore. Same stars and moon, different position in the sky. Across over the pond. There was actually a pond at a park by my school that I went to and I sat at the benches at each end and made that joke several times. Somehow I feel like I've said so much and nothing at the same time. Okay I'll be real, any outro songs could I kid you not just be the same exact outro songs that are played during the Cars 2 movie. Nobody's Fool also makes me want to tear up and gets to me really badly and is partly why any time I hear the word "fool" my brain process just immedietly zaps to Finn, I associate that word with him now, that is like his word to me and I actually really strongly stand by a quote from that song that has actually gotten be through some things which sounds a bit silly but I love it. "Y'know what they say, truth sets you free, and that's just great unless you don't wanna be." Okay, I gotta stop listening to these songs I am just making myself cry now.

Intro song would be the previously mentioned song of Careless Whisper by George Michael, again there's an entire movie that I imagine to this song so it is a whole novel of a post in itself, but it sums up our entire meeting nearly 1:1, it's just mushy smooshy love at first sight sort of nonsense with pining, yearning, longing, it's like finding something at a grocery store that you really want and you keep it in the back of your mind for weeks until you can afford getting it or have the opportunity for it.

[margindoodles2407]

ALL OF THEM!!! GO!!! :DDD

oh gosh cheeto. why would you do this to me. i love you my friend but whyyy (light-hearted)

alrighty let's go

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1. what medium do you use most (if applicable, what software)?

Graphite, ink, and/or colored pencils. Occasionally watercolors, but that's usually for my bigger pieces that I don't often post online.

2. most popular piece?

This one, apparently (yeah i'm still really proud of it though. it held up well. canNOT say that for some of my old star wars doodles.)

3. your favorite piece(s)?

In Chronological Order: Dryad!Deku Tree, Arwen, Hero of Winds: Conductor of Tempests, Twilight of the Republic, Evil Artsyle Challenge, Philomena, The Best Captain Rex I've Ever Drawn, Shinies, Sacred Heart, Experience, Fives and Echo Number ???, and Necrosis

4. piece you wish got more love?

In Chronological Order: Ninety-Nine and Hevy, Sun-Dragon Heart, Ahsoka and Shaak Ti (for #jedi june), and We're Going To Kill Dracula

5. how would you describe your art style?

Hmm. I guess... "Stylized Realism" might be the best way to describe it. I'm big on realistic proportions and detailing, but it still betrays the influence animation and storybook illustrations have had on me.

6. favorite thing to draw?

...take a wild guess (it's the clones)

7. easiest thing for you to draw?

People!

8. thing you struggle to draw?

Anything other than people!

9. whats something you always come back to when drawing?

Ahsoka Tano. She was one of the first characters I drew when I was getting back into Star Wars, and I literally measure my art progress by how she's changed in my style. I guess you could say she's my comfort character to draw.

10. how do you deal with artblock?

I don't.

11. do you listen to anything while drawing?

Yes! Actually I kind of need background music or noise of some kind while I'm drawing, otherwise I've found I just can't get into the groove. Mostly I listen to my various character playlists.

12. describe your process while drawing

I am granted a Vision (tm), I get my materials, I tear my hair out because my picture is not exactly how it was in the Vision (tm), and then I redraw it over and over until it slightly resembles the Vision (tm).

13. talk about a wip you like!

Oooh, okay! Right now I'm in the process of painting a watercolor of... Ahsoka... for my High Fantasy AU, and the drawing actually is turning out great! I just haven't had time to paint her yet.

14. whats your favorite thing about drawing?

I like to make stupid memes in my overly elaborate style. I think it's the best use of my gifts XD

15. least favorite thing about drawing?

I can only really draw when Inspired (tm), meaning I can go days or even weeks without anything getting put on the paper.

16. how do you motivate yourself to draw?

I sit and yell at myself in my mind. Just kidding. But again, I do have to have an inspiration for anything to actually happen; I can't just go in cold.

17. what is something youre confident about in your art?

I can draw people, and especially everything above the knees, really well. I know a lot of artists struggle with people.

18. something you feel like you need to work on?

Lower-leg anatomy, and literally everything other than people. There's a reason I usually draw memes.

19. where do you find inspiration?

Things I like, my faith, the world around me, and music especially. And memes.

20. is your workspace, digital or not, organized (not neat, organized)?

In a manner of speaking. Everything has its place, and I have a system for the order in which I draw.

21. what do you think your artstyle would taste like?

Well, @luke-shywalker once described it as looking like it would taste like candy. I personally think it would taste like. Woodsmoke. Or something like that. Maybe like,,, the smell of sawdust. If that makes sense. I dunno.

22. do you have a favorite color palette to work with?

Rich but muted colors. Or like, blacks and whites with a single splash of highlighted color. You know? Like this one.

23. how many artstyles can you work in confidently?

At least two: one that leans more towards realism and one that leans more towards the cartoonish side.

24. whats a compliment about your art that has always stuck with you?

I've often been told that my drawings look statuesque, like they were hewn from marble, but in a good, regal way. This is my favorite compliment to get.

25. what size canvas/paper do you use?

Literally all of them.

26. what do you physically draw with (pencil and paper, tablet, etc)?

Mechanical pencil or like, a very finely sharpened traditional pencil for all my sketches. For my more formal pieces, I usually go over the sketch with micron pens.

27. do you ever have multiple wips going at once?

All the time every day.

28. whats a piece you would like to redraw at some point?

THIS ONE :D

29. do you use a lot of references while drawing?

No. I have most characters committed to memory and I can usually figure out poses. That being said, I do use references for difficult poses or when I can't figure out what exactly to draw.

30. whats something youre proud of about your artstyle?

I alluded to this earlier, but I'm happy that I can have a realistic but still stylized art style. And I like how I draw faces.

31. which fandom have you drawn the most for?

Uhhhh I think it's Star Wars at this point. However, I did draw a lot of Gravity Falls art back in the day, so between that and The Legend of Zelda I think it's pretty close.

32. have you done a lot of collabs?

Unfortunately no :( If anyone would like to rectify that, I'd be more than happy to do stuff with you!

33. have you taken a lot of classes for art?

I am mostly self-taught, but I did take art classes from preschool all the way through eighth grade, and Intro to 2D, Painting I and II, Intro to 3D, and Ceramics I in high school.

34. whats something you still like from your old art?

I love my vivid colors (this is mostly in my old, unpublished art). And I think back in the day, my poses were much more dynamic.

35. if you had one piece of advice to give your younger artist self, what would it be?

Don't beat yourself up over your art not "being as good as everyone else's". I promise you, you'll get to their level someday. Just have fun and keep working hard. Also, your drawings aren't cringe, and you shouldn't be afraid to show them to the people you love.

OUGH that took. So long. But thank you! I genuinely appreciate it so much!

[scoutbert]

Heyy idk if anyone here remembers me or cares but I figured I'd make a little life update just in case. And if not, maybe I'll just look back on it in a few years and smile.

I've had this blog for about ten years now. I was a freshman in high school when I began. It was memes, fandom, and the occasional depression. I even posted some pretty dark stuff a LOT of the time because I felt like I had nowhere else to vent.

Now I am 24. Twenty four!! I can't believe it. I lived!

I've been homeless, I've been traumatized. Went through a lot of stuff! If you like to feel sad and lurk, feel free to check out my tags for more context, haha. Some of it is pretty triggering and downright toxic so yeah take care of yourself.

But yeah. Twenty four. Sheesh. I am in a much better place now. I have an apartment with some friends and my partner. We have a little dog. I got a new car that I don't have to live in anymore. I work gigs like food delivery and dog walking. Money is always tight, but what else is new?

I still have a little problem with the booze and the weed, but I'm not searching for ways to destroy myself anymore. I don't seek chaos just because that's where i felt the most normal.

I'm learning to be okay with peace. And mediocrity. I used to- well, still do sometimes- compare myself to everyone I knew my age, people who had support systems I could never dream of, who went to college, and found their dream job. Who never wanted for anything. Always smiling.

I learned that it's not a competition. Life, that is. As long as I wake up every morning, I call that a win. It doesn't matter that this person from school makes six figures and already has a house and a kid. I get to wake up and walk dogs and look at trees and flowers, and I get to come home all sweaty and take a hot shower and make a sandwich. That's enough for me, for now. Much better than couch surfing and showering at planet fitness and eating gas station sandwiches.

Anyway. At the risk of overdoing it, I just wanna say thanks Tumblr. You were my anonymous diary for years. I received support from strangers I can never repay. I laughed at memes, made art, got in arguments about stupid shit.

I'm not leaving! Just expressing gratitude I never had. I am no longer full of hate. Just a morsel now, haha. There will always be a part of me that is bitter about everything I had to go through, and embarrassed at how I handled it. But I did my best and most people met me where I was at and accepted me anyways, even when I wasn't at my best. Thank you.

If I ever hurt you or exhausted you, thank you, and I am sorry.

Anyway. Yeah. Thanks. I'm doing okay. Good, even. Now that I'm not in crisis constantly- and I was in crisis for the better part of those ten years- I think I will find something I am passionate about, and work at exploring it. That sounds nice. :)