sootbonnie

[sootbonnie]

to no one's surprise derek is getting yet another iteration for @sootbonnie's worldbuilding >:)

it's weird knowing how to draw horses but not deer .... what are these things .....

[sootbonnie]

// Seeing an Instagram reel earlier today about hypernormalization in history, and seeing a tumblr post this evening that stirred up my embedded nihilism, I feel more lucid about what our worldbuilding tackles and why I choose those particular themes...

// I enjoy "cycle of humanity" themes in stories, but more particularly those that posit humanity as a negative thing. Stories like Houseki no Kuni, for instance. I engage in alternate history worldbuilding and like to map real-life issues into the world as a way to, of course with a critical eye that you'd expect with real-life. Stories like Arknights, for instance.

// I think growing up, being constantly told to mind manners and interactions with people my age in the lens of "be normal and well-mannered" "whatever you're doing that you didn't realize you're doing is actually weird" built up a rather antisocial (I do NOT mean "asocial") facet of my unconscious. Observing and learning from people around me both in-person and from the internet (in regards to how "normal people" behave and talk) taught me a LOT about morals, ethics, and the fluidity of those when you stretch/distort those for different stories and civilizations that would differ from ours.

// I think it's naive to say that it costs more energy to be hateful — it becomes easy to use those same techniques of hatred if you're ever pushed to do so, because you've taught yourself the exact ways to deflect them when they were used against you. So it becomes easy to be filled with hate as easy as it is to be filled with love. Instead, we should frame it as "it costs more energy because in our frame of morals and ethics we realize our hateful actions, then regret and reflect on them". And thus for those who lack the proper morals to have said regret/guilt over their hatred, it costs no energy for them to be hateful just like being filled with love.

// Chains of hatred and disagreement, even within communities, give me much disappointment. Whenever I look at stories of a "divine being" asked to make a judgment on humanity, I always see it as fair for them to judge the entirety of humanity as irredeemable. The arguments we trap ourselves in stretch across all genres — from being queer, to whether we think water is wet or not, to the polarity of putting pineapple on pizza, to immigrants and refugees, to the property lines of your house... To us, they have vastly different weights; but to something beyond our perception of "human", is there a difference?

// Combined with that is my dissociation (?) from reality. My sense of time is bad, and I find myself unable to relate to memories even a few days old — as if I've found myself in a completely new timeline and anything I've done in the past no longer applies at all. Were my actions real? Did I experience those emotions? Did I have those interactions with people? Was I alive in that spacetime?

// Is the concept of "humanity" good or bad inherently? Should we NOT try to assign our own limited scope of values on our existence? Are we redeemable? Is all love good? Is all hatred bad? Can the actions of one part of a population outweigh those of another? Does history have a long-term effect? Should we expand our perspectives? Are some perspectives inherently toxic? Is it possible to stay mindful and composed while having worldly knowledge of all that is good and bad? Are ANY answers to these questions absolute?

[sootbonnie]

i get that americans love their cultural imperialism, but it really does piss me off that june is “international” pride month just because something happened in the united states.

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. martha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1989. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

anyway, happy pride, americans. i’m truly sorry that most of you don’t see the negative impact your nation’s culture has on the rest of the world. and to the rest of the world reading this, try searching for your own country and culture’s queer history, don’t accept the american narratives as your own. we deserve our own histories divorced from the cultural hegemony of the USA.

[sootbonnie]

The closer you get, the less I recognize

[sootbonnie]

// As an appetizer, our OCs dwell in the world of PSYCHO SHUFFLE, taking place in our equivalent 1980s during a "Cold War". A lot of things differ in this alternate history story considering the presence of psychic phenomena; but sociopolitical tension, activism, and rapidly accelerating technology all remain. Our current plotline revolves around the spontaneous manifestation of a town in Brillo, likely the result of concentrated psychic perturbations. The ensuing chaos attracts attention both within the country and internationally…

// Researchers seek a deeper meaning to the existence of this town named Milagrosa. Citizens in Brillo seeking a new life occupy the rows of empty housing. Tourists fly internationally just to brag that they've been to the "town born from a miracle". Politicians vie to control and manipulate a new region of constituents. Groups of different ideologies collide violently.

// The story of PSYCHO SHUFFLE tackles the theme of subjectivity and perspective — everyone is dealt different cards, and they experience life and make decisions in their own ways. No two individuals share the exact same beliefs, morals, or ideals; so people clash and argue over right and wrong.

[sootbonnie]

being an artist and revisiting media you liked when you were 11 is like. oh ok. this shaped my sense of humor and the way I write characters and the way I pace narratives and the tropes I'm drawn to. and I vastly underestimated how much of an impact it had on me because I literally have not thought about it for 15 years. but it was there inside me the whole time. ok. ok cool! c ool

[sootbonnie]

good ol' Weiss — best technician we've ever had around the inn!

// YIPPEE all of my OCs so far have reference sheets! But now that i've solidified my world/story named PSYCHO SHUFFLE, I now have to spend the time remaking the other reference sheets to match this vibe 😭

// Figuring out the names of the races in my worldbuilding is tough; we've done like...at least 3 changes already......

[sootbonnie]

ehehe a bit late but

drew some horses with @cltrona last Thursday! very fun but also very difficult KLSDJGKLSDJG

[sootbonnie]

TWO horses* today drawn with @sootbonnie on stream !!

[sootbonnie]

You’re not depressed. You just need $250,000 in your bank account.

[sootbonnie]

apples to apples 🍎🍎

did a color theory + stylization study last night on stream! we've been wanting to move toward more iridescent / impressionism-inspired coloring, so studying how other artists do their stuff was helpful! ^^

[sootbonnie]

greeting the sunset 👋🌇

happy birthday to VaporSkull! B)

[sootbonnie]

Frodo and Sam 💍🍃

happy birthday to my precious VT_White :3c

[sootbonnie]

hey batter batter batter SWING ⚾💥

happy birthday to the soupie bestie Citrona!! <:3c

[sootbonnie]

take me out to the ball game ⚾🥜

happy borthday to our friendo SyoBones :~)

[sootbonnie]

dance pose studies using STAYC, from stream

[sootbonnie]

let's play marbles!

(fanart for @/RoshanGalaxy on Twitch)