#[[ so i gotta pace myself

[akirateku]

[nebrasska-alasska]

Hiatus for 'Party Games and Summer Evenings' Announcement

Hi guys! I have some semi-bad news for you all. Basically, I've been doing a lot of reflecting recently, and I've come to the conclusion that I need to put 'Party Games and Summer Evenings' on a short hiatus. I've updated the tags and included the reasoning in the end notes of the fic, which you can read here:

So yeah, basically, the gist is that I love this fic, I love the concept and setup, but I just need a short break (from this story specifically!). I've only ever written Shadow one way, and it feels like I'm going through the motions. This being a spiritual successor to 'Silly Hats and Party Favors' and me cranking out 'Couch Crashers, Bed Bashers' less than a month ago while also writing this fic certainly didn't help lol

It's not being abandoned or orphaned. Nothing on my account will be, I intend to finish everything I start. I'm just going to switch gears and write a vastly different Shadow to keep things feeling fresh and fun, and then once I feel ready I'll be back for this one.

The silver lining of this is that I'll be attempting to publish a new Shadow POV fic soon, potentially even this weekend if the words are flowing. At the very least 'From the Shadows of the Deep' will see it's next chapter this weekend haha, so yep! Sorry again for any disappointment, and I appreciate everyone's understanding and patience!

[toxooz]

told the employer that ive been drawing online to pay the bills and when he asked what i drew i accidentally hit him with this look

[emily-mooon]

Started watching gentleman jack recently so here’s some 1830s rovickie!

Uncropped versions ↓

[the-introducer]

I want to make a ten hour presentation about my kim and Harry outfits and the entire thought and creative process that went into every detail that got shrunk down into obscurity and lost but I’ll settle for pointing out sailor kim’s kineema shaped boat tattoo

[loverofpiggies]

can we see more of your comic with Winter King being:

Hey! I do my best to update as often as I can, and thank you so much for reading it! I appreciate the heck outta all the reblogs and comments and all that!

Updates might have to slow down a bit though, I do all the writing, drawing, coloring- the whole process is me! And doing as much as I've done for the last month has been a bit insane so I'm trying to have a better comic/life balance. That, and work balance. Comics are my passion but they unfortunately do not pay my mortgage!

Don't you worry though! It'll update soon, I'm working on coloring page 4 of the chapter, but YEAH I definitely have to slow down from my insane pace a bit.

[doomedclockworkdotmp3]

quick lazy thing. ive been obsessed with dungeon meshi so of course ive been absolutely terrified of drawing anything for it but i love falin so much

[gomzdrawfr]

Would it cheer you up at all to see my attempts at trying to create my own chibi style with Ghost (which all started bc of being inspired by your art)?

sure!

[33550336th]

Woke up from nap to see Art Fight started and holy fuck, the vibes is crazy there 😭

[sodaneko]

it's been over a week but i legit haven't stopped thinking about this

[olenvasynyt]

I got several 200K plus fics on my tbr and I'm trying to figure out which one to start first.

[wizisbored]

This is a free pass to ramble about Weird Horses as coherently and as long as desired

content warnings for: slavery, emotional manipulation, abuse

OKAY SO idk how much of this ive already said but fuck it ill say it again. ive been kinda hesitant to say too much about all this since its further in the future of the fic than id usually share and a lot of it is still undecided, but i cant really say much about where astrid is at age 15 without talking about where lydias story is going, so if you dont want 10 paces spoilers dont read this.

first off, ive decided i am folding the centaur astrid stuff into 10 paces. still ironing out some of that combination but it just comes down to the fact that im way more interested in this than where i was originally going with 10 paces.

so when lydia is around 16, beetlejuice makes a netherborne-esque Bad Financial Decision. hes gotten attatched to this filly hes been taming, and doesnt particularly want to train her to junos standards and then sell her, so instead he figures out some sort of payment plan with juno to buy her himself. unsure if beetlejuice lives on junos ranch and lydia stays there or if he lives elsewhere and shes moved, but even if she is its just to another small paddock.

beetlejuices ultimate goal is to have lydia be a bucking horse, but centaur bucking involves some acrobatics that requires training, so in the meantime to make the money to keep her beetlejuice forces her into some sort of manual labour job. currently im thinking shes hauling lumber, because that way on one end of the journey she occasionally, briefly sees her dad (now a logging horse) and on the other end ends up in a town where i can have her run into the maitlands. originally i was going to have her be a logging horse too, but i gotta get the maitlands in there.

but anyway, for a few years lydias life is mostly this unchanging blur where shes being subjected to social isolation and constant emotional manipulation from beetlejuices continued taming efforts. she trauma bonds to him hard. logically she still knows hes her captor and the one isolating and working her, but hes also the only reliable source of comfort in her day to day. cant really logic her way out of latching onto that.

when shes around 18-20, beetlejuice makes irresponsible decision 2 and for some reason i am yet to concieve of starts leaving lydia alone and unsupervised with a young stallion she gets along well with. lydia and richard have a good but short relationship before beetlejuice realises his fuckup, and by the time he seperates them shes pregnant. she and beetlejuice figure it out around the same time, she panics, he probably goes and bangs his head against a wall for letting that happen. centaurs having foals is something their captors generally try to avoid, because a baby centaur is a gangly uncordinated mess that needs a lot of feeding. basically just a 15-year money sink, from a business perspective.

centaur pregnancies last around a year, and lydias mental health doesnt exactly improve during it. then astrid is born, and lydia loves her wobbly little sentient set of legs of a child but is woefully inequipped to look after her. while astrid is young shes allowed to tag along with lydia at work, which includes when beetlejuice finally gets lydia trained for bucking and takes her to a rodeo. lydia actually finds it quite cathartic, but while lydia is bucking astrid is left alone in their holding pen backstage. the noise and bustle and not understanding where her mum went is a lot for a young foal, so she ends up with a lifelong hatred of being there that she refuses to admit is anywhere close to fear.

lydia and astrids relationship is... strained? they love each other. theres a lot of evenings looking at the stars together and lydia does her best to pass on her herds folklore and braiding traditions. when astrid is old enough, beetlejuice gives them a set of brushes so they can mutually groom. lydia has kicked beetlejuice at least once, probably more, for just approaching astrid. but as ive said, shes in no state to be raising a child alone. being in the conditions she has since age 15 means shes kinda immature, doesnt know how to interact with other centaurs, and knows nothing about looking after foals. shes still struggling to grow out of being a scared, grieving teenager. shes aware of this and has no idea how to fix it, and especially compared to her own mother feels pretty inadequete. it doesnt help that astrids coat pattern looks a lot like emilys, so that comparison is constantly staring her in the face. plus, astrid isnt exactly the easiest kid given shes in the process of being messed up by the same conditions that fucked lydia up in the first place.

they argue a fair bit, and a lot of it comes from a lack of communication. obviously lydia is hesitant to give astrid all the details of her abuse, and by the time astrid is 15 lydia still doesnt want to tell her she was the same age when this started. lydia never lied, but she left gaps that astrid filled in for herself. she assumes that lydia losing her mum and being kidnapped were years apart, and she was an adult when she was taken. she doesnt know that she was isolated and emotionally manipulated for years as a grieving teenager, and then broken down over months of training. so she sees her mothers trauma bond with their slaver and dull acceptance of dragging lumber around and wonders why she doesnt fight this. she just wants her mother to fight for them.

im not entirely sure about beetlejuice and astrids relationship. he was initially pretty annoyed by her general existance, since a centaur foal is a money sink, but once she started showing the same attitude that drew him to lydia in the first place he warmed up to her. hes been trying to raise her to be tame, which makes me think astrids relationship to him is probably less plain hatred and more the complicated feelings someone might have towards an abusive parent. an important detail that comes from this though is that being raised around demons means that astrids english comprehension is near perfect. she cant speak it, centuars mouthes and vocal cords just dont allow for it, but she understands it.

astrid has met her dad at least once, but not a lot more than that, and always by chance. beetlejuice isnt about to end up with another foal so astrid and lydia are never left in the same pen as richard, but the kid has been passed over a fence when the demons arent looking so she can hug her dad before. obviously this means her relationship with him isnt as close as in canon, but it also means she idolises him a bit. in reality richard probably wouldnt be in much of a better position to raise her than lydia, but the short bursts astrid gets with him where hes elated to see her are a lot more positive than the day to day with her mother, so its easy to build him up in her head.

so with astrid at 15 we come to the challenge i have made for myself - making jeremy interesting. this has involved removing any romantic aspects of his and astrids relationship because i do not care. hes probably a teen satyr, maybe a teen demon, making some money working backstage at a rodeo when he comes across a stressed looking centaur filly pacing around a small holding pen, waiting for her bronc mother to come back. he knows who she is, and specifically that shes captive-born. which is significant to him because hes interested in centuar linguistics in a very normal and ethical way, and most centaurs who werent exposed to english until they were teens or adults will have a notably worse grasp on it than one raised around it. astrid is unsure of him at first, but is quickly just happy to have someone her age to hang out with and is extatic when he offers to teach her to read and write. lydia taught her to read and write centaur script in mud, but neither of them are literate in english. lydia has a bad feeling about this, and astrid is annoyed that she cant just appreciate how valuable a skill this is for them. because surely jeremy has no ulterior motives right. he would never.

[elitadream]

would you ever have the either of the bros use a 1-up in your art?

Oooh this is a tricky question. 🙇‍♀️

Short answer is maybe. Long answer is "I absolutely want to and have been scribbling down notes for a personal take on this concept ever since I joined the fandom months before the movie even came out, the idea is very much there but I can't seem to narrow it down to a feasible format that wouldn't take me forever to make and there's so much context needed to reach that point it admittedly feels a little overwhelming, so I honestly have no idea whether I'll actually draw it someday or not, BUT the inspiration for it has remained constant and I think about it on a fairly regular basis, so... That's good. I think?" 😅

If anything, the 1-UP mushroom will definitely at least be mentioned in my art eventually, but I can't offer any guarantee other than that. ><

[princesscallyie]

Me after reading my first novel in like over a decade after I got back into reading:

[annalrk-art]

all the tags on the reblogs for my zero escape pmv have me kicking my feet and giggling btw, absolutely so ecstatic people are enjoying it and loving it

[fluffs-n-stuffs]

good sir I diagnose you with found family syndrome, you are these kids' dad now