mind-of-moth

[mind-of-moth]

Oh! And here's more Old Ponytown:

Mind of Moth is, first and foremost, about my fear of my own mortality. NE and Moth are the same being. Moth is the part of me who buries thoughts of death, and NE is the one who dwells on them.

“Moth”— short for “Behemoth”— is, in my mind, a singular, massive entity in the void of space. The entire story so far has taken place within her skull/imagination; the Moth that’s seen interacting with characters and such is kind of her self-insert that she fantasizes about being.

Moth is a maladaptive daydreamer. The entire world is the fantasy land that Moth retreats into whenever she fears the world, one that’s supposed to be free of sickness and death. But her fears are deep, crawling in from the pit of her stomach, represented by the weird, multiplying pieces of robotic scrap everywhere.

NE is the part of herself she dumps all of her difficult thoughts onto, but she can’t hold them back forever.

Eventually, NE would have been “swallowed” by Moth, and she would have come across the partially digested ruins of the fantasy world before hers. There, she would have found the “G3” counterparts of herself and many of the ponies. (You guys already got a brief glimpse of it in the "COME BE A FISH IN THE BOWL OF MY FRONTAL LOBE" video.

Outside of Moth’s mind, in her stomach, nothing seems to actually die. Many of the ponies would have already fallen into the acid, and would have had missing limbs and skin; sometimes you would see a pony who’s just a head in a jar. The gastric soup would have been filled with a homogenous pony-liquid, implied to be fully conscious.

Her previous version, LB, M.D., would have been her foil throughout the narrative. Unlike NE, LB and the old ponies not only don’t fear death, but welcome it.

The very same mechanical parts that represent Moth’s fear of death would have been used by LB to repair ponies and buildings.

NE would have found the idea of a guaranteed continued existence to be comforting, even if it’s in the form of digestive soup. After all, there’s no way to know if that’s even a bad thing. Maybe it could even be peaceful in there?

LB, on the other hand, would have been doing everything in his power for him and his ponies to avoid that fate. His ultimate goal would have been to find a way to crawl back up Moth’s throat so that he and the citizens of Old Ponytown could all die at once.

It would have been up to the audience to decide if they thought that this was the right thing to do, or if LB was actually the leader of misguided suicide cult.

At some point, I wanted NE to go even further down Moth’s intestinal tract, coming across even earlier iterations of Ponytown.

The oldest one would have been well before most of the “conventions” were set up; it wouldn’t have resembled My Little Pony in any incarnation (the horses wouldn’t even talk) and would have been drawn in a realistic black-and-white charcoal style that wouldn’t look out of place in a paperback tween chapter book

(not my art, but that’s the style I would have gone for)

It would have been the only place where you guys would have seen non-doctor human characters. And these teen girls would have been weird for the setting. They would have gossiped and cursed and would have a very blasé attitude towards death that NE wouldn’t have been able to understand.

Some cute little details:

Moth’s outfit is based on this one Megan doll:

NE is wears a dressage uniform, just with the blazer swapped with a lab coat:

NE and LB both have pony-style two-word names, but go by their initials. I'll let you all guess what they stand for.

Oh, and here's the next panel. I never ended up finishing the prose portion for it:

Overall, the themes just felt a little too fuzzy to me? I felt as though I didn't know what I was trying to do or say with Mind of Moth, and there wasn't any artistic synthesis between the themes and the medium of an interactive blog. Additionally, I began to work on projects that felt much tighter conceptually, so MoM just fell by the wayside.

This might not be the last you see of NE, but only time will tell.

[mind-of-moth]

Mind of Moth is, first and foremost, about my fear of my own mortality. NE and Moth are the same being. Moth is the part of me who buries thoughts of death, and NE is the one who dwells on them.

“Moth”— short for “Behemoth”— is, in my mind, a singular, massive entity in the void of space. The entire story so far has taken place within her skull/imagination; the Moth that’s seen interacting with characters and such is kind of her self-insert that she fantasizes about being.

Moth is a maladaptive daydreamer. The entire world is the fantasy land that Moth retreats into whenever she fears the world, one that’s supposed to be free of sickness and death. But her fears are deep, crawling in from the pit of her stomach, represented by the weird, multiplying pieces of robotic scrap everywhere.

NE is the part of herself she dumps all of her difficult thoughts onto, but she can’t hold them back forever.

Eventually, NE would have been “swallowed” by Moth, and she would have come across the partially digested ruins of the fantasy world before hers. There, she would have found the “G3” counterparts of herself and many of the ponies. (You guys already got a brief glimpse of it in the "COME BE A FISH IN THE BOWL OF MY FRONTAL LOBE" video.

Outside of Moth’s mind, in her stomach, nothing seems to actually die. Many of the ponies would have already fallen into the acid, and would have had missing limbs and skin; sometimes you would see a pony who’s just a head in a jar. The gastric soup would have been filled with a homogenous pony-liquid, implied to be fully conscious.

Her previous version, LB, M.D., would have been her foil throughout the narrative. Unlike NE, LB and the old ponies not only don’t fear death, but welcome it.

The very same mechanical parts that represent Moth’s fear of death would have been used by LB to repair ponies and buildings.

NE would have found the idea of a guaranteed continued existence to be comforting, even if it’s in the form of digestive soup. After all, there’s no way to know if that’s even a bad thing. Maybe it could even be peaceful in there?

LB, on the other hand, would have been doing everything in his power for him and his ponies to avoid that fate. His ultimate goal would have been to find a way to crawl back up Moth’s throat so that he and the citizens of Old Ponytown could all die at once.

It would have been up to the audience to decide if they thought that this was the right thing to do, or if LB was actually the leader of misguided suicide cult.

At some point, I wanted NE to go even further down Moth’s intestinal tract, coming across even earlier iterations of Ponytown.

The oldest one would have been well before most of the “conventions” were set up; it wouldn’t have resembled My Little Pony in any incarnation (the horses wouldn’t even talk) and would have been drawn in a realistic black-and-white charcoal style that wouldn’t look out of place in a paperback tween chapter book

(not my art, but that’s the style I would have gone for)

It would have been the only place where you guys would have seen non-doctor human characters. And these teen girls would have been weird for the setting. They would have gossiped and cursed and would have a very blasé attitude towards death that NE wouldn’t have been able to understand.

Some cute little details:

Moth’s outfit is based on this one Megan doll:

NE is wears a dressage uniform, just with the blazer swapped with a lab coat:

NE and LB both have pony-style two-word names, but go by their initials. I'll let you all guess what they stand for.

Oh, and here's the next panel. I never ended up finishing the prose portion for it:

Overall, the themes just felt a little too fuzzy to me? I felt as though I didn't know what I was trying to do or say with Mind of Moth, and there wasn't any artistic synthesis between the themes and the medium of an interactive blog. Additionally, I began to work on projects that felt much tighter conceptually, so MoM just fell by the wayside.

This might not be the last you see of NE, but only time will tell.

[mind-of-moth]

I’d be revealing things like who/what Moth even is, the overarching themes of the story, major characters and scenes, etc

I have so many other projects going on that I’m not sure if I’ll ever get back to Mind of Moth—

[mind-of-moth]

I have so many other projects going on that I’m not sure if I’ll ever get back to Mind of Moth—

[mind-of-moth]

Everything. Everything is infested with steel and wires. Strewn about as if it were once alive, only to be ripped limb from limb.

This was her own fault, wasn’t it? Something terrible happened while she neglected her duties to Moth.

NE swings open the double doors into the patient wards. The air is putrid beyond measure— within the last few hours, the heavy smell of feces and rotting flesh had irrevocably permeated the air.

DR. NE: No, no, no, no, no—

It’s a smell that NE is quite familiar with, but never before had she experienced it at this magnitude.

With a press of a button, she disables the locks on every single door in the ward and breaks into the first one on her left.

DR. NE: I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

[mind-of-moth]

(things are cooking)

[mind-of-moth]

[mind-of-moth]

(Mind of Moth isn’t dead, I promise! It’s just on hiatus while I work on art fight)

[mind-of-moth]

[mind-of-moth]

(with the scenes getting more and more visually complex, the gap between posts is definitely going to continue getting wider)

[mind-of-moth]

If this blog is in the Genshin Impact universe, where is there no mention of Raiden Shogun or the Snezhnaya

or the Liyue 璃月;Líyuè)

[mind-of-moth]

The doctor does not return to the party. Instead, she slowly makes her way back to the hospital where black gas pours from a singular tall smokestack.

She’s no doubt taking her time because she’s scared of what she’s left behind.

It would be nice if she could just shove her responsibilities away.

It takes her a good long while to push open the door to the reception room.

[mind-of-moth]

(I don’t have anything written for today, so please take this epic drawing from @grandemadre https://grandemadre.tumblr.com/)

[mind-of-moth]

Wait, why doesn’t moth like the sound of her own blood?

DR. NE: The same reason why she hates most of the things she does, I suppose— it reminds her of her own death. I don’t like thinking about it too much, either. After all, Moth’s death will be my own death as well.

I’m just more able to mentally separate the shapes and textures from what they mean.

[mind-of-moth]

(I'm running through some logo concepts; this one seems pretty solid)

[mind-of-moth]

that wall looks FREAKY 👅 seriously what is up with that 😢

DR. NE: It’s just Moth’s brain— it lies beyond the sky. We come here when we want to be alone; Moth doesn’t fancy the sound of her own blood.