war and hate on planet trauma

Heyoooo. I wanted to say, I'm sorry about that mean-ass, insulting anon you got a while back. That ask ended up pissing me off so bad I ended up actually reading your Marchil analysis posts. Originally, I was meh and kinda confused when the ship showed up in Ao3 because I didn't see what people liked about it. Reading your posts about how they were narrative foils opened my mind more, and I realized, Oh shit yeah there's a lot of potential in this ship for how these two can develop each other.

Part 2: Marcille and Chilchuck may not have scenes like the infamous bath scene with Farlin, but the concept of someone who's terrified of being alone, the reality of her friends' mortality, a hopeless romantic catching feelings for a repressed, divorced man whose wife left him--okay yeah, I absolutely understand the appeal of this ship. Marcille would be like, Why the fuck is my heart thrumming for this sharp-tongued bitch, and also the terror from falling in love with someone so short-lived Part 3: Either way, love your analysis posts. I am going to be contemplating the potential of Marcille and Chilchuck for a long while. There is something so tragically sweet about it

You get it, you really do… I could list off everything I love about them but I’d be here forever because it’s literally everything and there are so many fun ways to spin it… You’re very right about them being tragically sweet, overall where their arcs meet the most is "Loving is something worth doing even with the risk of loss", and I say risk but really it’s more the inevitable eventuality of it as canon does love to point out. If you want the reward of being loved you must go through the mortifying ordeal of being known. No love however brief is wasted. Let me see you and stay. It’s very much sort of the final boss to their arcs for them to get invested in each other in such a way, to get involved romantically— emotionally with someone knowing what’s coming and that she barely has two decades left with him (who mistreats his health so much he very well could die early), and to shoot your shot for something new with hope in your heart and enough confidence that you’re worth loving. He’s not a prince charming but to her he sort of is, all virtuous husband this reliable dependable Chilchuck that, all "you may be flawed but I’ll still romanticize your qualities and convince you that you and your love for your beloved are something worth fighting for".

What if I was old bread that solidified to be hard as rock and you were like warm soup and by soaking in your presence I softened……… What if you stubbornly grew on me like yeast and it brought out my flavor like beer as I opened up and allowed you in………. What if your hair was golden, the epitome of beauty to me, and my hair turned silver, your worst nightmare……. I think about them a normal amount

i also want to point out that you're literally punished by the narrative if you don't accept rebecca's help???

from what i get from the game is if you have rebecca go with you to the auction, then you get the chance to go inside and actually try to execute your plan BUT if you outright refuse her help you won't even make it to the auction itself? (based on routes, either bobby or douglas shows up)

also sidenote: i get that there's no real stakes in any case, bc so far it's been very clear that books always end on a positive note, plus our detective can't even die (sera said she's not gonna kill the mc), and each branch, with or without rebecca, will always have the same end result anyway, with the bad guys being taken down and everyone happy and together so ultimately it shouldn't matter

HOWEVER. still, the fact that the whole plan is sidetracked by bobby/douglas showing up??? and it has nothing to do with rebecca either! it's not like she could've thwarted them without revealing herself so? it's literally just the variable is coded that way, which i assume could've been done differently! maybe how much bobby suspects or douglas is hardened?

but no, those detectives who don't want rebecca's help (i.e. likely don't have a positive relationship with rebecca) are instantly just thrown into a cell and end up getting sold at the auction? i wonder if sera wants us to forgive rebecca or sg🤔

tl;dr: so the ways it can go: you accept or refuse her help - if you accept, you get inside the auction where it's basically up to you to mess it up or not (but no real stakes either) - if you refuse, bobby/douglas shows up and gets you both taken by the trappers, messing up your plan and leaving you locked up and literally sold at the auction

I love that in NFCV, characters beat you over the head insisting that Hector is a manchild, a child in a man's body, just a little boy, a simple creature unable of betrayal - the writing tells you what to think even though what is shown doesn't reflect it, Hector in S2 is actually more proactive than the supposedly smart Isaac

but Bojack Horseman doesn't need to do that. no one shows up to yell in your ear "btw Bojack's emotional maturity is stunted". You see him acting as an actual manchild: he has poor impulse control, he's self-destructive, he gets along well with teens (too well...), he's self-centered, he wants fame only to feel loved, and he does not understand in the slightest the amount of power he holds over the people he interacts with.

Bojack Horseman is an excellently written show with excellent, nuances characters, whose writing respects your intelligence

i love when good products exist and can be enjoyed 💖

good writing exists. and it is beautiful 💖

It's so funny how different pieces of media can pull such different reactions around similar concepts. Like. I've never been super drawn to the gods in the pantheon in cr for some reason. I'm a Cleric Stan but don't connect super heavily with any of the cr gods. I liked the Wildmother from cr2 fine enough bc I love Caduceus and Fjord and their relationship. The Matron of Ravens is cool mostly just bc im interested in her ascension. And the Changebringer has a fun aesthetic with all the floaty hair. The god I think im probably drawn to the most that we've seen in cr is Asmodeus from what we got of him in Calamity and now in c3. But other than that I don't have very strong opinions on them. Which is totally fine, I don't watch cr for the God stuff so it doesn't detract anything for me. It actually kinda makes me like cr3 more than most ppl I think bc I'd be ok with and interested in any outcome we get from the major storyline we're following about the gods rn.

With WBN I'm on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. The Spirits are what interests me most about that world right now. The bits we've gotten of Naram and Orima have been my favorite parts of that story so far. I'm so interested in meeting more spirits and understanding more of how that pantheon works. I can't wait for when The Man in Black comes back into the picture. I am 100% a spirit apologist and will defend all of their rights and wrongs. I want only the best for them and would lay down my life for any one of them.

Listening to NADDPOD im smack dab in the middle. Obviously the vibes are different bc its majority a comedy podcast but I find the gods and pantheon interesting and fun but am not super invested either. Moonshine and Bev have a funny and cute relationship with their gods and I enjoy their interactions with them but I'm not as fervent a God apologist as I am with WBN. The major baddies being evil worshippers of a near godlike woman who think theyre the righteous good guys is a great concept which I enjoy. But the thing I like most about that concept is she was a person who got to god level power, and not that she just is a god.

None of these things are better or worse in my opinion. I love all of these worlds and stories. I love Matt and Brennan and Murphs dming and am greatful to have all of their beautiful works of collaborative art. It's just interesting how with the same framework of dnd different reactions can be pulled about the same subject. I just really love ttrpgs and the ppl who play them <3

i had to go look up what you're talking about lmao but like the anon was obviously a mean spirited asshole but you straight up asked people to tell you their opinion on your steve voice....

yk what anon i see where ur coming from but i also said be nice. and that's a real fucking easy thing to do. so you can fuck off too <3

Family members when you try to set a boundary:

had to cancel my last post because i saw a dragonfly drinking from a dew drop ❤️

GOD THANK YOU FOR TALKING ABOUT GABE I was going nuts seeing people say how he wasn't Evil Enough like legit it's nuts to me that people watched the scene with him and all they gathered was "meh he was just sort of sleazy and goofy" like. what the fuck

ye and something that going pointed out in my notes (thank u clings <3) is that like. they had to condense So Much into one episode. we didn’t even get the fates!! u know. the thing that percy goes crazy paranoid over for the entire series. things are going to change both due to medium and time constraint and u just have to let urself chill and properly analyze Why that was changed and Why you feel the way you do

I emailed my professor sobbing in the middle of December being like please sir my life is so pathetic I’m on the edge of a breakdown can you give me a few days extension on the final essay here’s all my medical documentation certifying that I am so so fucked up and he gave me a month extension bc he was like I’m not gonna read any of this shit until the middle of january anyway so i don’t care

im enjoying the worstsongever bracket but like. I know what the worst song ever is. it's perfect by ed sheeran.

i am now 27 :) yayyy!

I love when it’s early morning and there’s only a few of us online so we all trade the same posts back and forth

https://youtu.be/ZpsdxiDkHwg?si=vvIR8s5XxyaDuGWy

Remember when the first show explained that Vampires fear crosses because their shape confused their senses or some shit? 'Cause this show doesn't

Also I would tell you to look at the comments....but don't

Yeah, I do. I pointed it out as well. In theory I would like that the answer to the question "why do vampires fear religious symbols? and what about non-Christian vampires?" was "they are weak to the symbols of the religion they were raised with", so even if Annette doesn't believe in the Christian God, she can use His power against Vaublanc because he used to be Christian in life. That's a good compromise that works in a setting that acknowledges non-European cultures!

But the OG show already established that vampires don't like crosses because their vision is messed up and "geometric shapes confuse the shit out of their brains". This is a dumbass explanation on par with "Twilight vampires sparkle in the sun because their skin is made of marble and they can move around because venom lubricates the cells", but sadly it's canon, and it's too late to fix it, unless you want to paint Trevor as a complete idiot who doesn't even know how the creatures he hunts for a living work. (then again, the show would do that :V)

But what can you expect from the series that can't even establish the internal rules of Devil Forging, from the stupid ass water-blessing zombie to the DEVIL FORGING MACHINE? From the series that randomly includes the presence of vampire children but treats their killings as a horrible crime the Belmonts have done, and not as a result of the vampires' depravity, as if they were having children in a natural way because they're actually elves in a vampire skin?

2021 - 2022 - 2023

Here's my art summary for 2022! In 2021 I had hoped that the inspo kick would last well into the new year, and... here we are. I produced WAY more this year than I initially thought and actually ran into the strange dilemma of having too much to choose from for this template :0

What a year for art.

I think because of the slow speed at which I produce-- and the relative stylistic consistency of what I do make-- I tend to fall into this trap of thinking I'm not actually going anywhere with my work, but looking back at my portfolio... this really isn't the case.

To put it bluntly, I see improvement from last year to now in the form of risks.

I hit a lot of milestones and firsts since January: I drew another comic, dabbled in several projects in grayscale, drew plenty of complicated backgrounds (or "whole pieces," I suppose), put together at least one .gif sequence, made mockups for merch, made real merch, zine entries... And even beyond 2D work, I wired up my first custom model kit, experimented with new materials, archived an entire TCG set, put together another cosplay, and (maybe most significantly) started writing fic again!!

I'm genuinely surprised by my output. While this year was creatively fruitful, it was maybe one of the worst on my health-- and by extension, my funds-- all around (an ER visit, COVID, some Mystery Issue with my feet... still a mystery to this day, actually) so I am pretty stunned that I managed to tap as far as I did into my creativity overall, especially when compared to 2021, a year I also thought went surprisingly well for art. Deadlines and community events and contests all pushed me into making more than I would on my own terms, so challenging myself a little definitely paid off... who would've thought? >___<

(while shoving my 2022 body of work under the bed) On the flip side, it turns out that throwing my dignity to the wind and shamelessly indulging pushes me to create, too! How many Evil Conans can one person depict in a single year??

...On a more personal level, aside from challenging myself with external motivators I think I was only able to produce as much as I did on account of simply learning to love what I make the way I make it. The vast majority of what I drew this year falls into what I've been referring to (to myself) as "drafts." But they're not drafts as most people would think of them - they're just not fully-polished works. March/November are good examples - contrast against June/August, which are definitely "polished."

It's probably not that big of a deal to other people how I refer to my work in my own company, but this year I seem to have realized that thinking of it in this way-- dismissing the time and effort spent on any one piece as merely "unfinished"-- is actually quite harmful. I have a habit of being harsh on myself and to call these works "drafts" undermines the amount of effort I put into them, and for what? Because they're not "clean" enough for (my own, self-imposed) impossible standards? That alone implies that there's only one way a work can be for it to be good enough, when the truth is that no-one would be none the wiser if I called them "finished" instead.

That's not really to say that I would stop trying to achieve this high-effort "finished" standard since I can get the same amount of mileage for lesser effort or whatever. I don't operate that way, there's a lot of pride and self-esteem tied to my art and I subscribe pretty unconditionally to delivering something that I'm proud of. I guess the key here is that "high" standards should not be "impossible" standards.

Starting from March (probably right around the time of the first DCMK FF Server Exchange), as year the progressed I slowly started warming up to this idea that I don't have to make something perfect to "get credit" for creating it. Perfectionism is an itch I'm still learning not to scratch every time it calls for my attention. And, relating to the exchange, there's something about a gift well-received that puts my guard down, and maybe it's because I'm always bracing for the worst (some imagined rejection of effort, perhaps) that I don't really expect people to so plainly like things I don't consider "good enough" for myself.

I guess what I'm saying is it's probably not an epiphany I would have just had for myself one day. I really don't think I would have realized the inherent hurt in my system if people didn't indirectly point it out to me time and time again, whether that gushing over artwork to my face or in tags or whatever, so... for that I am very grateful T___T

On that note, it has been a rough year for me so I want to express my deep appreciation for everyone who has supported me, whether you're just an art appreciator or an internet buddy, whether you came for ponies or animal mecha or ducks or detectives, whether you've donated at any point or bought something from the shop, commissioned me, etc ;___; I appreciate you all very much and truthfully I would not be creating so much if I didn't think I had an audience who could enjoy it with me. Thanks from the bottom of my heart <3

Wishing everyone a creatively fruitful and healthy 2023!!

if you've gotten this far tysm for reading i'm very stingy about good feelings and being this saccharine about anything takes effort, capital E