#isat source call

[timeloop-extrodinare]

hello it’s me siff siffrin !!! do not spoil the game i’m only on act 3

i use they/him pronouns, and i’m a transneutral queerplatonic person . maybe a little arospec but unsure. probably pan. i’m a fictive in a system if you couldn’t tell :)

i’m pro-endo so if that bothers you feel free to block !! i don’t have a dni i just block also. i’m cool with any sourcemates and doubles!!! in fact i encourage them both!!!

umm. let me know if you wanna be friends :) i follow from my host’s blog @aaazzie !!!!

[lucabyte]

i CANNOT stress enough how incompatible the themes of these two pieces of media are. i promise my media literacy ability is actually good im well aware that these character mappings are absolutely nothing. that said. play with me in this space. in this sopping wet miserable space. its bad luck to kill a piou piou

original screenshots (and hypnosis 1904) for reference

[rin-rin-kururin]

So, here's a silly (lying) au about Siffrin stumbling upon a water spirit Loop💧

Once upon a time, Siffrin got lost in the forest. They were very thirsty and were walking for hours before they found a pond. He breathed a sigh of relief but as he tried to drink water, it disappeared right in front of his eyes! And the next thing they know-- It's a slime-like creature that makes fun of them for trying to drink from their body!!

Well, Loop laughed and giggled at them for being so naïve but forgave them eventually (not without reminding him of this ordeal some time later). Loop takes on the form of Siffrin because that's what slimes do, so they ended up looking the same.

At some point, Siffrin loses an eye, and this is a fatal wound because it pierced his head to the bone and nerves (oh my). Loop, in order to heal the wound, must completely immerse Siffrin in their body and thus be able to heal him, but with a catch. Siffrin becomes the same creature as Loop. This little spot in the place of an eyepatch is actually this wound. But Loop mirrors it in their own way. So now we have two slimes... Success?

Grayscale version

And under the cut is a bit long (in image length) mini comic about the situation with an eye. Quite a horror story, to be honest.

[find-a-canonmate]

current name / pronouns: siffrin / hunter / other kin names, he / him preferred, they is fine too

age: 21

source: in stars and time (isat)

ID: spiritual (past life) fictionkin

character(s): siffrin

type of relationship you want: friends! i miss my family very very very badly (including loop, of course!)

canon lenient or divergent: lenient for the most part

how to contact you: interact with this call and i’ll reach out as soon as i’m able! (or message me on discord -> scissorcraft)

extra: i prefer talking to fellow adults (18+)

Good luck, Siffrin!

[sif-is-stardust]

𓏼

　 ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

{ SIFFRIN'S BIO }

˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

╰┈➤.⤷ Fictive from In Stars and Time

╰┈➤.⤷ Bodily 21

╰┈➤.⤷ He/they pronouns

╰┈➤.⤷ Traumagenic system

╰┈➤.⤷ Endo friendly/safe

╰┈➤.⤷ Under 18 please don't PM

╰┈➤.⤷ Radqueer/pro-ship DNI

╰┈➤.⤷ Sideblog, main is @solitary-snails

╰┈➤.⤷ PFP Art is from @bogkeep

𓏼

[angelshymnals]

Oh hey I should make some kind of post to try and find friends maybe? This is a freshly made kin sideblog for someone who's been kinning on main for...11 years or so! I just want to have a place to put more stuff in a nice organized way. My MAIN ID, especially as of writing this post, is Isabeau from In Stars and Time!

(But I have...many sources, and many kins. I'll get a nice clean kin page up sometime. My old one is here on my main but it needs an update!) Anyway I'm good with doubles for all kins, ignore my page contradicting that it's old. I love to talk memories and make friends even if we aren't canonmates. I'm married to a Sif who I adore, and we are dating our precious Loop, but am still delighted to make friends with other Sifs or Loops or genuinely anyone else, even if we weren't friends before! I prefer 18+ people though since I'm in my late twenties. Feel free to message me or DM me or send me a carrier pigeon or what have you, I'll be happy to hear from you!

[canoncallings]

Heyyy

I'm Siffrin from In Stars and Time

Looking to talk to anyone from source. Be bodily 18+ is all I ask

PM me, I can give my discord

K bye

Good luck!!

[fluffy-feathers23]

ISAT Critterbeast AU - Siffrin

Animal: Guinea Pig

initially i chose guinea pig simply because it''s funny to make them a hamster, but Siffrin denies looking like a hamster in canon so i chose something that looks similar

in the context of Siffrin being a hamster, it's like the time loop is them running on a wheel to me, visually. running and running with nowhere to actually go, but you can't stop until you get somewhere.

There's also the other meaning of being a "guinea pig", only there as someone to mess with. make into something else. make fun of them. especially in later acts, where they start leaning into the "performance"

When really excited about something (and sometimes when startled), Sif hops around and jumps up to a foot off the ground, which is called "pop-corning". They can also make flawless guinea pig noises, for obvious reasons.

The worse Siffrin feels mentally the colder they feel physically, which is more noticeable the worse it gets. It starts around mid-act 2, but Siffrin himself doesn't even notice it until act 3, and by act 4, they're visibly shivering whenever they stop moving, and every part of their body feels cold to the touch under their cloak, despite the thermo-regulation Crafted into it.

In act 5, Siffrin is constantly shivering, everything feels like ice, and it doesn't truly stop in act 6 or even post-game, though it does continue to only show up when they feel generally bad.

In addition, the colder they feel, the hotter everything else feels - all sources of warmth turn into a raging fire, including party member's healing abilities, which fill Siffrin's entire body with the heat of all the stars in the universe until they're over.

Completely refuses to drink Sweet Tonics or eat most sweet foods post-game. If it tastes too much like just sugar, or stars forbid, winds up burnt, he just can't handle it anymore.

Siffrin | Loop | Isabeau | Mirabelle | Odile | Bonnie

[torchstelechos]

sometimes i think about the scene where Siffrin has a momentary breakdown over the Universe watching and clapping and not doing anything to help, to lead, and i wonder about an interpretation where the Universe is helping, is leading, is telling them what to do. where the Universe is favoring one of the two people from the Country like the King calls out. its us, the Player, the ones that 'create' their universe in a sense by installing and playing the game and leading Siffrin around through it

i wonder if it'd make it better or worse for him in that moment if they could look through that glass window to the stars above and see a glimpse of how helpless we, the Universe, were in that moment too, trying to guide him and failing just as much as everyone else

do you get me. does this make any sense.

Okay Bell, you do not fucking get how much this means to me. I have been on the theory of “the universe is actually the players” since I started wandering about this fandom. I do think ALL the players are part of the universe, but are not the universe as a whole. Like, one player is one star and yes, they are part of the overall universe, but there are more stars to see in the same universe so they aren't the universe specifically. My reasoning for this is actually part of how I see Loop’s wish, and thus I get to discuss how I think wishcraft works alongside Loop’s wish and how it affected the timeline. >:3c 

First, I will be using a general assumption of 1.) The looping only affected Vaugarde like The King’s “curse” 2.) There is only one Timeline and 3.) The theory Path of Least resistance (will be explained in conjunction with wishcraft).

As I have mentioned in a previous post I do think that Siffrin’s wish piggybacked off the King’s wish and used it as a blueprint for how far the Timecraft went, which meant that it only turned back the time of Vaugarde. The King says, when asked about wishcraft: 

He says that the country is skipping, stopping, rewinding, restarting, and how that must look from the outside. Which! I would like to point out that the king is NOT a reliable source of information because the King will lie to get you to lower your guard, however! It’s corroborated by the change god, even if they don't implicitly state it, during the Who’s on the Phone event they say: 

“Dormont, repeating! Dormont, Unchanging! Stagnating!” + “In this bubble, where everything stays the exact same…” The Change god also acknowledges that the extent of Timecraft is smaller than the whole world and specifies Dormont, which is the last place affected by the Time Curse (and thus the last place to change in all of Vaugarde). I would take this to mean that the whole world is still going on while Vaugarde is, well, glitching like a DVD with scratches. 

Next, which I think a lot of people tend to skip over, is that there is only one timeline! This is confirmed by Insertdisc5 (Adrienne), on Tumblr on their ISAT spoiler Q&A: 

Which has such interesting implications, but it does help explain something that I want to connect with the third assumption!

Now! The path of least resistance theory! Craft is an energy based magic, which uses the users energy unless powered by an outside force (however it appears to still take energy to direct the craft). This means that it has rules and if I had to guess, is very similar to electricity. Electricity doesn’t actually only go down one path when we apply this theory, instead it has an inverse in output depending on the resistance of the path. So if one path has less resistance then it will have more energy go down that path with more output, if the other has more resistance than that path will have less output/energy. We can apply this to wishcraft and how it affected the outcome of the two wishes that directly went against each other, the Kings and Siffrin’s wishes. Since Siffrin had a lot of energy behind his wish and the king less, Siffrin’s wish went above the King’s own in regards to who ended up with their wish “granted.” (the output was greater due to the fact it was less resistant to the whole of Vaugarde’s wish + Loop’s wish)

So, with all this written out, how do we the Players come into this? :3c well… We are a self contained paradox wish! Siffrin’s initial wish was to (insert one of the initial options) and “You want to stay with them!” which is the wish that caused the Timecraft ability for Timelooping (if I wanted to be pedantic I would actually say Siffrin can Travel time and isn't looping but that's a whole ass other post). This wish DID NOT bring us to the loops nor did it give Siffrin a guide, it was just a wish made to stay with people already in this timeline/universe. This made it impossible for outside help as it was VERY specific to only this universe, “stay with them.” But when Siffrin gave up, they made a secondary wish, 

(Loop: For someone… Anyone, to help me!!!)

This wish let us, The Players, directly able to interact with ISAT and SAAP. As they reached out into the universe and called for help, the Universe answered by letting outside help interact with timeline by guiding the new Siffrin. We are only able to help out by Loop making this wish! But, now, how does that make us a self contained paradox wish? Well… Thats because in order for the wish to happen, we needed to help Loop make the wish in the first place! By playing the SAAP, we helped Loop get to a position in which they made the wish which allowed us to help them which allowed them to make the wish etc etc. 

Thus we the players are now able to continue helping out when the timeline goes forward into ISAT, alongside Loop who’s wish allowed for a second try (a Start again if you will). 

The reason I also added the other information is because I think its important to remember that craft takes energy, and what Loop says about their wish is that they “destroyed” themself rather than “destroy the world” which… I think it means that Loop basically blew up like the Big Bang rather than become a Black Hole like Siffrin did. This “restarted” the timeline as a whole rather than just Vaugarde as we can see differences in Loop’s timeline and Siffrin’s, and if they’re the same timeline why are there such big differences? Well, yeah,,, Loop remade the entirety of the timeline rather than just Vaugarde… Oops! Big Bang, yaknow? Its still a singular Timeline, it’s just that it restarted the timeline’s progress pretty far back as a whole rather than specific segments. Also, Loop doesnt appear to help until after the initial ISAT wish, so we can just assume that the Universe plucked them from their wish making directly into this timeline section. 

As for why I added the whole Path of Least Resistance Theory for wishcraft… that’s cause Siffrin having Loop’s wish actually helped guide Vaugarde’s wishes into an easier path which allowed them beat the King easier <3. Without Loop’s wish, it would have been impossible for Siffrin to actually progress and get out of the loops alive. Lol. ANYWAY, this is all to say, I do think the Universe is a separate entity to the Players BUT by virtue of how the Players interact with Siffrin I would say we are part of the universe via proxy measures. :3c

This really got away from me,,, hope this is all good and understandable I had to use a google doc to write this all out,,,,

[apple-onigiri]

This is more of an opinion on fanwork trends more than the source material but...

I think the color red is a bit over utilized in fan art. While in the actual game it's very seldom used, only being there at very important moments. It reminds me of how there's a ton of fan art if Sans from undertale with a shining flaming blue eye while that eye is used very little too and less flashy.

Of course I'm not gonna ask people to stop but it's something I noticed and it's a pet peeve of mine I guess!

i can see what you mean, anon! with isat being set in the world that's been monochrome for, as far as we know, centuries, the red is so foreign to the characters that they don't even know what to call it or how to describe it. i definitely see where you're coming from with how it can feel like it undercuts the sparse utilization of it in-game

i do think i have a bit of a theory for why that might be the case?? a doylist explanation, if you will :o i feel like a. a lot of people are not that used to working in black and white only with their art and b. they instinctively feel like they need to add at least a little bit of color to add something eye-catching. working in monochrome is pretty hard! and since red is both the only actual color in the game and, dare i say, quite good at being vivid, it lends itself as a natural choice

putting aside that theory of mine: it's a valid opinion, i think!! thank you for sharing ^^

[thebirthofvenusfly]

[ISAT SPOILERS]

isabeau having once jokingly called odile, "mom," or, "the mom friend," (don't fully remember; can't check rn) does lead me to believe that her being the eldest + some of her mannerisms does align with what we traditionally label, "maternal," behavior.

she is canonically the most astute of the party and while she isn't always the most empathetic she can recognize when someone is acting out of place enough even if she can't always put her finger on the source, she also tends to be very aware and alert physically of the others (ex. when siffrin cuts their finger on the glass in the House, she is consistently the first to notice and, without room for any debate, is the first to patch the wound herself). although she does not consider herself to be emotionally the most available party member, it is undeniable she gets along with bonnie remarkably well. it is also easy to imagine she has at least one or two hobbies she can do in tandem with a specific party member to ensure they each equally get her time and attention (reading/book club with mira, drinking and talking with isa, cooking with bonnie, antique shopping and walking with siffrin).

i think a mix of her not wanting children herself + her mother having failed her makes her perpetually terrified of being capable of letting the others down similarly, but by no means did she ever want a future post-king's reign where she had to return to ka bue alone, where no one would be waiting for her, where no one would share meals with her, where no one would look up to her and she'd be able to enjoy time with them.

[joannaliangart]

A LIST OF THINGS I CAN’T REMEMBER (2024) 6.5 x 6.4 in 23 page case bound book and handmade pastepaper. Papercut art and poetry

The “list” includes things of the mundane, humorous, and heavy. At its core, this book asks what exactly is worth trying to hold onto in your memory. Whether because of its trivial or traumatizing nature, is it ever better to forget?

---

not sure if this is called papercut art? I'd been referring to it as 'paper art' in my mind but googling that leads to a lot of like, folded/oragami stuff too

final project for my praxis class in 3rd year! Got a good reception towards it during crit which was lovely C:

god this project took fucking FOREVER, I'm glad I did it because it turned out almost exactly how I pictured it but my goodness gracious AUGH it was a lil rough. I'd be working on this thing literally ALL day from morning till Very Late into the night for SEVERAL days straight to meet deadline it was kinda crazy. My floor was covered in a fuck ton of pastepaper I'd made and my finger was getting callused from holding the x-acto knife so frequently orz 23 pages of papercut images AND papercut words?? whhooweee

Watching a full playthrough of in stars in time is what kept me company during those long long days and nights haha, tis a very potent memory I have now (which now that the whole project-making ordeal is over is a p fun memory lol; isat is v v good)

some thoughts about this piece I jotted down in preparation for crit day:

A list of things I can’t remember my intention was to gather a list of mundane unimportant things as well as more like sad or poetically troubling things to disrupt it throughout. At the end it says “if I want to remember these things” because that is also something that I don’t remember, and it’s kind of the crux of the whole piece as this book at its core is about what kind of things are worth trying to hold into in your memory. 

That last page had black text because it’s the hardest to remember or think about, and as such it’s meant to be hard to read/make out clearly. 

The wavy black on the spine area is supposed to be like an encroaching darkness of forgetting lol

used pastepaper to make paper art trying to take advantage of the textures and colours I can make with pastepaper

+crit day installation! There were no white plinths left just this bright pink one?? But I was like. Actually that might fit the vibe lol and I think it did C: made the whole piece pop

For the assignment requirements we had to choose something from one of the special collections we visited, and I chose Janet Kellett's beautiful Qualicum Blue. And was also sooo grateful that googling it brought me to a whole website of theirs that had info on its creation. It's what got me into the rabbit hole of pastepaper and hoo boy! making it was a wholleee process haha; here's the slides I made for when we had to present our material research:

I did a WHOLE bunch of experiments; I really wanted to know what I could and could not do with pastepaper and I'm glad I pushed the material so much in the amount of time we had to complete this part of the project. My prof was surprised at how many experiments I did haha

+fun fact: I asked my prof if they could recommend me a place to source black paper for my book, and they sent me to what looked like such a weird sketchy on the edge of town looking place lmao But it was all good they were like a mass producer of paper or smth and they had a lil storefront? in their warehouse selling what I assume were leftover batches in smaller quantities; that was p fun and! Now I know where I can find paper

Also I got some remarks that the papercut art reminded people of The Very Hungry Caterpillar C:

[kosmical]

alr i'll bite what's isat

Omg thanks for opening pandoras box! You will regret this

In stars and time is the recent food source of my brain eating amoeba and it Will Not Leave. before i get into why im rabid about it though ill give a brief synopsis . putting a read more here because i suspect this post will get LONG.

its a game about a classic rpg party on the last two days of their quest to save the country from The King who is freezing everything, including people, in time. the main character, Siffrin, is the party's rogue who, upon going into the House of Change (the game's dungeon so to speak) and promptly dying, finds out that they're trapped in a time loop. they're the only one who remembers repeating the last two days- aside from a star named loop who helps him try and figure out whats going on, why, and how to break out.

Now personally ive never been invested in a time loop story?? Im not sure if thats because i havent consumed much media thats implemented it before as its main premise or if i just havent been interested but i think in stars and time meshes the two different genres a time loop story can fall into really well (the mystery and the emotional conflict).

The mystery is what drives you through the game (and there are other questions unrelated to the timeloop about siffrin's origin and the world itself that i think handle a variety of themes like loss of culture and personal transformation really well but thats a different tangent) but the emotional parts are what really got me. You have to watch almost in the backseat as Siffrin is like. Slowly depersonalized from the people they care about. All while refusing to tell them anything about their misery because they don't want to burden them or drag them into his suffering. Even happy moments that Siffrin doesnt mind repeating become tainted because it becomes a matter of acting so that the "scene" doesnt stray from its path and his party doesnt become suspicious.

and yet they still DO, both in regards to Siffrin's World Alteringly Terrible Case of the Mondays and the actual time loop. they notice how tired and fake he seems. one of my absolute favorite scenes is one where you interact with a closet and it provokes a conversation about where Siffrin got their cloak from and how long they've had it, because its really one of a kind. it has temperature regulatory magic imbued in the stitches and is made to grow with him. And siffrin just cant fucking remember. not only because hes been looping so long that its created a haze over his mind but because he has no true "identity." and as he's scrambling to fill in an answer for this hole in his head, a gust of wind hits his face because one of their friends, isabeau, flapped his cloak while inspecting it to ground him. and he disguises it by commenting on the thickness of the cloak.

Getting this scene by accident on my playthrough made me feel so many feelings dude like . Siffrin isn't the only one trying to hide things. Their friends care about him so much and they try to disguise how concerned thwy are and its just. Im . Im Normal.

its not just about that though . Like if you start finding shit a little too fast they'll start catching on to whats happening. a little sound effect will play whenever you know something you shouldn't know and the others notice and whenever it happened i was like. Twisting in my seat waiting for them to call me out.

it all builds up into this really fucking painful emotional climax that i will not talk about because i don't want to spoil more than i already have but omg. I was writhing. It was. Hhhggnngh.hfg. Glass shards in ym mouth yummy

On the topic of shit i cant talk about: My favorite character is this fucking thing

I have held off from talking about loop's role in the story because i cant describe to you why they make me so ill. Not because i dont know Why but because it is something you should experience yourself. They're really charming and funny and their dialogue is fantastic. Of course that's part of the reason i lauve them but theres also the underlying secondary mystery of why they're here/who and or what they are/etc. And when u know. Its. I Cant Tell You. BUT ITS REALLY GOOD. ITS REALLY REALLY GOOD. Just know that if you get to the end and are still confused about them. That theres more than the main ending . AND IT IS PROBABLY WHY I AM SO INSANE ABOUT THIS GAME HONESTLY. I LOVE YOU FOREVER LOOP . im ok

In short: In stars and time is a game that is good and you should play it :) Im pretty sure its on sale right now on steam so yeah go get that.

if you made it through this fucking dissertation length post on isat CONGRATULATIONS ! heres some miscellaneous doodles ive done of it in the past month since ive played it love love

[find-a-canonmate]

Current Name/Pronouns: Siffrin. He/it

Body Age: 18

ID: Fictive.

Source: In stars and time.

Character(s) you are: Siffrin. or loop? im. not fully sure.

Type of relationships you want: Anything. will do. i will be hestant about anything romantic though.

Canon lenient or divergent: pretty lenient? right up until the end i suppose.

How to contact you: just dm @siffrin-sourcecall and ill send over our discord.

Good luck, Siffrin!

[shinx-stardust]

FUCK YEAH I FOUND A POST I WAS LOOKING FOR

THIS ONE RIGHT HERE https://www.tumblr.com/abyssal-author-and-artist/763659972027514880/my-objection-to-people-who-say-they-never-would?source=share

CRAB YEAH I WAS LOOKING FOR THIS ONE FOR SO LONG AND I FOUND IT

I was looking for it bc my opinion on what I wrote here doesn't completely translate to isat but some of these thoughts I was remembering and I was like "I should find that timeloop post and relate it to Siffrin because I totally can)

"No one but you remembers the previous iterations of the day. On that note, every single person other than you will take the same actions every single day unless affected by your actions somehow. So here we have our time loop. You, in this scenario at least, are a rational person - a person who has a full grasp of logic and human emotions. You act based on a healthy mix of logical reasoning and emotional impulses. I'm aware this isn't going to be true for everyone, but it's easiest to define "you" as a rational person whose behavioral patterns we can predict. For this exercise, an irrational person is a person who is unable to make decisions based on logic - as opposed to a person who simply doesn't choose to make decisions based on logic. If you are unable to look at a decision logically and take in all information before making a decision, you are an irrational person. If you can but choose not to, you are a rational person choosing to act irrationally."

Those are the rules I set out. One of the rules is missing but that's because I defined the day as being "as normal a day as you can imagine" and that doesn't fit. But other than that, that's In Stars and Time. Like that's the timeloop. That's Sif. Sif is, by this definition, a rational person.

"Let's go hang out with your friends. That should work, right? Well, it does until it doesn't. You get into a fight with your best friend that you're seething about 20 resets later. You meet a new person and hit it off amazingly but can't replicate that energy any other time you meet them (they think you're creepy because you act like you already know them). You can't make or further any meaningful relationship."

Hmm, you can't make or further any meaningful relationship? Using a callback to the rules I laid out "On that note, every single person other than you will take the same actions every single day unless affected by your actions somehow", that sounds like everyone's following a script and you can't change anything about your relationships, and if you do you'd just manipulate them into "changing". Now, where have we heard that before? Oh, what, Act 5? Mal du Pays? Everything Siffrin says to himself?

"You are now an irrational person. ... every single interaction is pointless, so you've lost the ability to engage with the world around you rationally. If this seems fast, keep in mind two things. Two hundred is a lot and this isn't 200 days, this is the same day 200 times. You've lived this one day 200 times. You can't change anything."

Double that so it's the same two days 200 times and that's just called Act 5. Siffrin has lost the ability to be a rational person. They're just a mess. A disaster. Too emotionally destroyed to use logic. Think that's an insane conjecture? Might I direct your attention to Sif's act 5 meltdown again? Where they decide, against all logic, that the only way to break the loop is if he's the one to land the hit on the king. Yeah, that's not a thing a rational person would do.

"In fact, you're likely to kill yourself before anyone else. And you do. Multiple times. Often on a whim - again, you're now an irrational person. You just went "that sounds fun right now" and did it."

"You can now loop back using your dagger." Do I need to explain this citation more.

And look at that! I linked a thing I wrote a while ago to In Stars and Time! Whoo!

[lucabyte]

ppl saying they look to my comics for inspiration and pointers on how to format things is WILDDDD to me (and delightful don't get me wrong!! i am overjoyed) because like. none of you are privvy to the absolute WAHHH I DONT WANNNAAA bitchfits i was *CONSISTANTLY* throwing every time i forced myself to make a comic before i got into isat. like no joke. i considered comics such a fucking difficult medium they always drained my drawing energy so hard because they always felt like they took sooo long and had so many moving parts and were so much harder than storyboards (WHICH I ALREADY STRUGGLED WITH) because you had to account for panel shape and speech bubbles and-- like you get it. but genuinely for real. the sheer amount that i complained whenever i clawed my way through drawing a comic (which thus! was not very fucking much!!) compounded by the fact that i *genuinely have trouble reading comics*. as in, i really struggle to parse the flow of contiguous movement or action between panels (possibly connected to the fact ive got mad aphantasia?) of even really well done best-of-the-best professional comics...

... BUT. basically. what im trying to get at is. if you wanna learn to draw comics, evidently you super can?! I genuinely *didnt* draw comics before drawing isat fanart! I have no idea what it was about ISAT fanart that made it finally click for me? (I think it was... not having to think about colour? Removing a step from the process really helped. Plus, it being fanwork meant I could just start en-medias-res and not have to think about setup... Trying to cram too much explanation and setup into my oc stuff was always a big hurdle too...)

I find them fast to do now! and damn if i dont value speed in art (<- impatient little fucker). its still going slowly on my oc comics.. mostly due to the colour again, i think. but it's not extremely, ecruciatingly difficult anymore. is what im saying. and im genuinely baffled by it every time i put pen to page. its fucked up. did you guys know that practice makes things easier? . fucking perverted if you ask me.

As for looking at other people's things for inspiration. if you want to know where I was looking when I was piecing together the first couple fancomics I did for ISAT i want to specifically point at . well besides everything rebecca sugar has ever done (for hands and facial expressions *especially*), the main person i really dug into the work of was Leo Fox (Website link). I feel like i wanna point people to the source of a lot of the inspiration for my more off-kilter panel choices so you all can get the full experience rather than through my regurgitated mimesis. I'm now at the point where i can wing panel layout so i wasn't in there for longgg but. everyone go add it to your knowledge banks as for SUBJECT MATTER aka why i am i so deranged. those are squarely the 2019 postcanon homestuck golden era bleeding through my CLENCHED BITTEN DOWN JAW. A BULL TERRIER ON YOUR BRACHIAL ARTERY. namely that @/floralmarsupial and @/tomatograter's works (no i am not tagging them . im shy) are things i go back to frequently and floralmarsupials pure black/white inktober comics were *especially* an inspiration. if you've been following me a few months you may remember me reblogging a bunch of their stuff from 2019~2021 for seemingly no reason. this was why. The narratively divorced reality of jade strider & Liminal Space are big in my mind here. I balk to call myself anywhere near as good as these but these are what i'm aiming for, tonally and quality-ways with it. also detective pony but ive mentioned that already and thats farrrr too inside baseball for this post.

BUT YEAH TL;DR: I DIDNT DRAW LIKE ANY COMICS UNTIL UHHHH LIKE, WHAT, LIKE 8 MONTHS AGO? JESUS. ANYWAY. THIS MEANS YOU 🫵🫵🫵 CAN DO IT TOO. BELIEVE IN YOURSELF. DATTEBAYO!!!!