malignedaffairs

[malignedaffairs]

goldzweige.tumblr.com

^^^ So, this is my new art blog! I hope you guys will follow me there as well! Maybe malignedaffairs will be unflagged one day, but I have no way of knowing. So for now, please come over to see any new updates! Malignedaffairs will be on hiatus for the time being.

[malignedaffairs]

...I've been flagged and basically shadowbanned for a month with no end in sight. Wonder if I should take this opportunity to make a new blog with a new url.

[malignedaffairs]

Yay for finding a way to post your artwork! 2 questions

1. Is chapter 21 the last one? Or do you plan to upload more in the future?

2. On a completely unrelated note that has nothing to do with anything you’ve ever done ever, especially not any artwork you’ve made that I might or might not idk print out or something like that, do you have a kofi, Venmo, Patreon, etc that I can send money to?

Thank you!

Chapter/double page 21 definitely won't be the last one. I've just completed another double page yesterday and I'm looking forward to all the sketches and themes that are yet to come. But I can only post the full pages in batches because I need someone else's equipment and help for that, so it'll take another while until I can add to the gallery.

I'd like to post pics of the illustrations in the meantime, but now that my blog here has been flagged again for no reason with no clue when or if that will ever get fixed, I'm really not sure where I can still go and find an audience for it.

<3 Oh I have a very dusty, long forgotten kofi, in fact. It's https://ko-fi.com/fifilafumeuse.

[malignedaffairs]

I wonder if my blog will ever be unflagged before tumblr dies

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Anyone else having tumblr randomly remove the avatar of only one of their blogs overnight?

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I've finally found a way to post whole pages of my Elden Ring lore book! Full pages will be visible on my AO3.

[malignedaffairs]

I just saw your post re: losing the spark for I/S, and as someone who’s been wrestling with a similar bear I feel your pain!! I feel like it’s okay to not put pressure on yourself - like, if inspiration strikes for more I/S stuff at some point, cool! If not, that’s also cool and we’re lucky to have your art either way, wherever the spark takes you. I’m so happy and grateful to have gotten to see so much of your art for many (many!!) years in the same fandom; your work still brings me lots of joy. And I shall look forward to admiring whatever you choose to share next! :D

Thank you for reaching out! Oh man, it's so weird, isn't it? I hate letting go. If you've been into something for that long, it becomes part of your identity! And then getting less intense about it feels like a betrayal, and an emptiness. And moreover, it can mean losing the real contacts tied to it. That's why it's so healing to see that apparently a lot of people are more flexible about what I draw than I am myself :D I think that's the way to go, to not put pressure on myself and accept the inspiration for them as it comes and goes. That latest drawing of them was a labour of love that I didn't have to force. It just happens less often now. And also I'm giving this right back to you - you were such a staple in our little fandom for so many years and your fics shaped the mental image of so many gorgeous scenes in my head. When you let me illustrate One love, two mouths it kickstarted me into drawing doujinshi regularly. I'll always be grateful for that, and I love still seeing you around!

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Hi there, saw your post about your blog cleaning and, maybe, the end of your long shiita era. First, i would like to apologize. This is gonna be a long ask, and it's not really pleasant to read. But i wanted to write it all, so you could measure the gratitude i feel towards you. I owe you some of the best moments of those last few months.

So.

I'm 24, currently depressed, in student debts. Wondering why I'm still alive, wondering if I'll still be employed in a few months, wondering each morning if life is still worth it.

That's the kind of thoughts I'm having 90% of the time.

Other times, i escape.

Shisui and Itachi are my escape. My easy mental refuge. They occupy the only part of my brain that still feels alive, creative, and able of feelings that are not about me or my depression. The part that feels some kind of love, not for life but for what it could offer if i was just willing to type a few lines on a keyboard and let myself have fun. They are an easy way to forget and create another reality – and, I'm repeating myself, but that's fun. I enjoy that. There's not much activities i tend to enjoy those days so- that counts!

And your work- your work. Let's say I've never encountered a work like yours. You're filling a void, a want that I had, a desire: to see them. Not to imagine them, not to write them, not too watch their pale anime version or read their rough manga selves. To see them. To see their love. Their sadness. Their anger. Their happiness. Their shared moments. To see them in every context you seemed fit, and you were so right each time. You were on point. There was no face, that you draw, no expression, no gesture, no position, no place, no glance that was over the line or wrong. You were perfect. You succeeded in every drawing. Your style, your touch, everything. Perfect.

And for that, i can't thank you enough. Your drawings are like a dream comes true. That sentence is so melodramatic it sounds stupid but hell- i feel like you've reached directly in my brain to put it on paper – and you've been drawing them for so much time! I don't even think i was aware of their existence in 2013. At least, I wasn't that obsessed with them. That's magic. To think i stumbled upon your drawings years later, when i most needed them – mentally – I'm just awed.

But mostly, I'm awed by your talent and your accuracy and overall, your ability to analyze their relationship through your lense before translating it - transferring it - on paper, whether through words or through drawn lines.

Thank you for existing. For having offered us so much fun, and love, and wowness. For your art in general, you're so talented.

Whatever you decide on your future artworks, i just hope you'll continue to have fun and be happy about it. Overall, i pray life will be gentle, sweet and full of very good moments for you.

Thank you so much for everything.

An (obsessed) ((but usually silent)) fan of your work.

I'm very sorry to hear you're not doing well. I hope your situation gets better over time and you can hang in there.

Please know that your message is so appreciated. Even though I can't keep up the intensity and frequency I used to have with my drawings of them, I still love Shiita and they'll always hold a special place in my heart. Actually they did a lot of the same things for me they did for you, and I'm so glad that we were able to share in that for the incredible amount of time we did! Whatever comes next.

[malignedaffairs]

I apologize for the awful quality of the pics I've been taking of my recent illustrations. For whatever reason, my new phone's camera does close-up pictures much worse than the old one.

It's surprisingly hard to present traditional art online in an accessible way if you don't have access to a good scanner. But I've been asking around for camera equipment to take high quality pictures of the whole pages. Hopefully I can start posting them on AO3 soon!

[malignedaffairs]

Ranni & the gang

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Just went through my very old posts to clean up my blog a little and it's been - phew! Unexpectedly emotional. All these incredibly lovely asks I got and 90% of those urls are deactivated. I wonder where you guys are now, how you're doing?

Also, time is weird in that way. I read some of my own tags about "being nostalgic" in the fandom like two years in and the post is from fcking 2013 :D Those filler Shiita episodes came out in 2014!! I remember even back then I felt like I had already been in the fandom forever. Now it feels like another life!

Also, it makes me feel very sad but it's time to admit that I've lost my spark for Shiita, and that being in online fandom as a whole has been feeling lonelier and lonelier. This seems to be it, the inevitable thing that had to come eventually, but... my heart :(

[malignedaffairs]

Dark Souls 2 ramblings under the cut.

I wanted to like DS2, but at the end of the day it wasn't for me. Elden Ring and Dark Souls made me use up all the empty notebooks I still had lying around and get to work like I was on a research expedition. Only some of the sense of accomplishment in these games comes from overcoming their difficulty. For me the draw is much more about collecting the mythos' puzzle pieces, always on the lookout for these satisfying moments when a new connection just clicks. Something about that feels so intense, inspiring and emotional, and as if it was made just for you personally.

Now, it was certainly a mistake to use a cheat sheet in an attempt to avoid the frustration that comes from knowing you will miss stuff if you don't, especially if you only plan to do one playthrough. The satisfaction of finding everything that way is not worth the loss of wonder and excitement that playing blind can give you.

That being said, I can't say DS2 made me want to put in the same effort to understand the lore. And I'm still wondering why that was. Maybe I was just burned out from Souls games after playing all of ER and DS1 in one and a half years. But maybe it also had something to do with the game just being very confusing, the places and characters feeling oddly disconnected from narrative hooks, almost everything being an exercise in frustration rather than a good balance between failure and success, and item descriptions often feeling lacklustre. It felt overly long, it just never seemed to draw to a close. I've seen much more eloquent comments on it, one of them being that Drangleic, on a meta level, feels more like it was created to be a string of video game levels rather than an immersive, lived-in world, which I have to agree on.

Anyways, towards the end of the game while being stuck on Fume Knight, Vendrick, or Aava respectively, I realized that as much as I wanted to care about them and the story, I just... couldn't care less anymore. I'm obviously being a drama queen but it was hard to accept that I wasn't going to finish this game.

I've since watched a playthrough of the last parts of the game I missed, and saw some lore videos that had me baffled at how much depth there would have been to discover. Confirmed that I had barely scratched the surface.

I still have a lot of love for the series and even feel nostalgic for DS1 already despite being like 13 years late to finding it, and I'm already looking forward to Dark Souls 3. But I'm taking a break so I can fully appreciate what it has to offer, going into it open-minded and as blind as possible. Until then, I'll celebrate Elden Ring by keeping the lore artbook going, and getting myself killed in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 because what do you mean you won't let me dodge roll??

[malignedaffairs]

The Eternal Cities & Astel

Edit: better quality pics, hopefully

[malignedaffairs]

Lying in bed knowing you should have fallen asleep an hour ago but not emotionally being ready to let go of the weekend is SO INFURIATING