#im working on some actual dr art I swear im just taking my time with it ;v;

[kordeliiius]

This week was such a big win for video games

[uhhhhhhhhhsblogyea]

♤| dragon ball shapeshifter au

storyline rundown

part two

tw: profanity !! a bit of gore and such

the story begins on kakarot's farm! he lives with his parents, bardock and gine, and his brother raditz.

kakarot takes his produce to the market to sell, talking to krillin who is a police officer watching over in case of robbery or stolen goods, with his wife 18 and his daughter marron.

he hangs out there and sells all his produce, making a whopping amount of money to give back to his mother to go towards their farm. so thats what he does.

later that night, raditz barged in through the door, huffing loudly and covered in purple blood. it had a reddish tint. gine and bardock jump to their feet, bardock still in his training gi and gine in her white shirt and some sweatpants. "raditz!? what happened?" bardock exclaimed, gine following up with "why are you covered in... purple blood!?" this caused kakarot to come out of his room in a rush, "h-h-holy s-shit! i didnt kill anyone i swear mom, mom, dad please, i wouldn't do that!" raditz panicked. "s-something tried to attack me! i didnt know what to do so i attacked back!!" he tries to wipe the blood off, it being on his face.

whatever happened, scared raditz enough to make him shake in fear and what seems to be regret despite it being to protect himself.

kakarot however, still was unsure what happened. his father said he would explain in the morning, the situation was too dire for kakarot to get involved - especially with the police.

in town, vegeta covered his bloodied chest, panting as he hid deep in an alleyway. "goddammit," he huffs, slicking his hair back to keep the human bangs out of his face. hes got a huge gash across his chest, thanks to that damned raditz he happened to work with. luckily, he was morphed into some other alien lifeform and not his original shift state. he slowly morphed into a bird, a finch, and flew off to him apartment. he always kept his window cracked just in case this were to happen. just his luck, we wont be able to eat and to heal he needs that energy for food or else hell be out asleep for awhile.

he decides calling off work, so thats what he does. what he doesnt expect is a man with a thick ass fucking tail and slicked back purple hair and red eyes to be reading a book, lounging like a king on his bed. "f... frieza!?" vegeta says, startled.

"ah hello my creation! lovely seeing you here, dont you think?" he throws the book off to the side, getting up and striding over to the bloodied vegeta. "aw looks like you got a paper cut." he jabs a finger into vegetas cut across his chest. vegeta groans in pain, a tentacle whipping around to hit frieza away into a safer distance, but the icejin blocks smoothly with his muscled tail.

from here:

wow!! you found out vegeta is a "creation" of friezas, but what exactly does that mean?

raditz gets taken in for questioning. he gets blamed for a murder that happened on the otherside of town, the law system being dumb sentenced him to 25 years in prision for a murder he didnt do

kakarot is confused, bardock telling him there arent any alien threats and it was a misunderstanding on the jury and judge's parts bc raditz was getting mugged and a murder far away happened at roughly the same time, and they were desperate to throw someone into jail.

this is a lie, to some extent. kakarot believes it, living happily thinking there are no threats

vegeta attacked raditz, needing food. shapeshifters need to eat hearts and lungs of animals as food

raditz is the one who cut him across the chest (thatd why he has a scar on his chest in the ref sheet)

kakarot has to bring crops and milk into a market farther into town sometime in the next week, it being an event ran by capsule corp, a company that produces a lot of housing and vehicles and being in business for 40 years being the anniversary that day.

vegeta is a mechanical manager, wearing fancy clothing that day since its technically a high spot in the ranks for capsule corp.

vegeta likes milk, surprisingly. it helps a lot when recovering damage, especially his species. this is when he meets kakarot

kakarot is running his stand with the crates of crops and glass jars of milk set out on display with their price, krillin with him

vegeta is annoyed he has to speak up to get the seller's attention so he grunts with an "ahem"

kakarot jumps, apologizing and asking what he wants to buy. vegeta gets his milk and some vegetables for someone he knows

"hey, whats with the fancy suit?"

"you dont know who i am?"

"no. should i?"

"i-? im vegeta! im manager of the mechanics in capsule corp!"

"oh. is the job hard?"

they conversate, as kakarot sells his produce happily listening as he was able to get the short man with a temper to talk about his job.

vegeta himself was caught off guard by this action but happily talks

this ends in kakarot running behing the stand's curtain and grabbing his business card so vegeta can have a discount on milk next time he decides to buy

vegeta takes the card walking off

the card has kakarots name and number on the back, a message saying "text me personally if you want extra, i dont mind taking some. you seem cool!"

vegeta is a bit ticked, but pockets the card

over time, vegeta and kakarot talk over text a bit, kakarot delivering him milk like an old time milk delivery boy

turns out he actually used to be one as a kid

turns out hes been into marial arts as well, a long time interest of vegetas

they bond over this, kakarot find himself growing a crush on vegeta

one time kakarot stops buy with a delivery unannounced, not knowing he typed the text but didnt send it. he knocks on vegetas apartment door, but no answer.

he checks to see if its unlocked, and it is so he lets himself in, just wanting to put the delivery on the counter and head out.

he doesnt expect to turn around and see a vegeta with a towel wrapped around his waist, tentacles coming out of his back, green eyes, and sharp ears, teeth, and claws. "K-KAKAROT!? WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?" he yells, surprised. he doesn't have bangs either

"why do you have tentacles?? why do you look different? why do you have that scar?"

vegeta is caught off guard, not sure if he should push kakarot out or tell him the truth. one way or another he knows the truth will spread, so he carefully debates his options

he tells kakarot the truth, hes a shapeshifter and hes insanely dangerous

kakarot is surprised dangerous aliens exist

he tells vegeta this, and deep down vegeta is mad kakarot is sheltered

little do they know as they conversate and bond, growing closer to each other kakarot finds out vegeta made a vow not to ever get in a relationship no matter how much he envied them, especially a human relationship, a certain someone is watching them and listening in, theyre keeping tabs on vegetas and kakarots feelings

trust issues amirite?

later that night, kakarot says his goodbye heading home, heart pounding. wow!!!! vegeta is... great. very great. kinda cute too, i mean what!?? no!!

kakarot rants to himself aloud in his room, window open to keep himself cool, about vegeta as he debates his feelings. he doesnt care if this seems out of character in his friends terms, all they see from him anyway is a dense fightcrazed guy with a dysfunctional relationship with an ex and his son. he realized vegeta doesnt see him like that, but, what DOES vegeta see him as?

he calls it a night

he wakes up to a "thwap, thwap, thwap" against his wooden floor

he sits up, looking around and seeing a short figure sitting at his desk.

"whos there?"

"ah, youre awake monkey! i have valuable information for you, about your lovely vegeta." the voice is squeaky

"and, who is telling me this?" kakarots interest is piqued, not seeing the mysterious figure as a threat, as of now at least

"oh-hohoho! im dr. cold! but please, call me frieza. doctor cold is my father's name."

"and what do you have to tell me about vegeta?"

"mmm, are you sure you want to know?" he gets up, beginning to pace

"theres a catch isnt there" kakarot realizes, serious

"oh! maybe you arent so dense afterall. yes, there iss monkey. its simple, deliever some of your left over crop to my facility tomorrow, i already left the address on a paper over on that... pitiful little desk of yours." frieza pauses. "vegeta will kill you if you arent careful. hes hungry, and he wants that heart. but... i think the poor creation wants it in more than one way. kill him before he kills you."

frieza hands kakarot a box cutter

"thats the only thing that will kill him. if you dont do it i expect that delivery tomorrow by midnight. if you dont show, and theres no news of him being dead, youll be a brilliant collection to my creations, monkey!" the man laughs in joy, clasping his hands together as his red eyes pierce through kakarot

kakarot reluctantly agrees, unsure how this will play out

PART TWO WILL BE MADE SOON!!!

anyway heres the part 1 of the rundown.

[asterythm]

I'm honestly a bit confused on the problem with making fandom related blm art (as long as its not tagged blm and provides links to supporting blm). Could you please explain?

please realize before you read any of this that i am speaking as an nbpoc person who has been mostly off tumblr for the past few days, with the exception of occasional nighttime reblog sprees after my productivity blocker extension times out. i have been doing my absolute best to educate myself as well as possible so as to be the best ally i can be, but i am nevertheless imperfect and i very well may say something wrong. above all, please keep in mind that the voices that really need to be heard and raised up right now are the voices belonging to our bipoc friends, not my own.

also, i’m real tired -- im not saying this to seek pity or make this conversation about myself, just to ask you to forgive any spelling errors/grammar errors/run-on sentences. thanks. ill also definitely be putting a tl;dr at the end, because I can already tell this post is gonna get longggg.

that said, i appreciate that you’re actively seeking to learn, so i'll do my best to explain what i've gleaned based on what bipoc fanders have been saying. for starters, @/hazelmagix put one major issue very succinctly in her post on the matter (tw for swearing, but this is really the Big One):

in addition to the above Big Issue (ie. needing to bring Real Experiences That Real People Are Facing down to the same level as works of fiction), i believe that one of the specific issues that the tss fandom is facing right now came about after @/bleepblopbloop56 drew a lovely piece of art involving a black, trans roman that originally (to the best of my knowledge) had nothing to do with blm. if you’re a part of the fandom and you’ve been on tumblr at all these past few days, you’ve likely seen the results of that, but i don’t know how many people are aware of the full story right now so just bear with me here:

what happened was that some people outside the fandom (mostly bipoc!!!) came across the piece and voiced their discomfort about it (some kindly, but many not-so-kindly), presumably because they thought that the artist was drawing Real Person Thomas Sanders as black, as opposed to a fictional character who is often portrayed in all manner of diverse interpretations. eventually, it got to the point where the artist felt pressured to take their piece down. 

(for clarification, i don’t think it’s ever okay to harass creators to that point, but that’s a whole ‘nother matter entirely. the point is, it was mostly people outside the fandom.)

anyway, the situation ended up sparking outrage after someone else made a post pointing the issue out under the assumption that the attacks had stemmed from racism and transphobia within the fandom (not true). in response, people (predominantly white people, if i’m not mistaken) began to draw art of black trans roman. which would be great on its own, except it didn’t take long for folks to start attaching it to the black lives matter movement. which was less great (see above screenshot). the least great part of all is that so much of it stemmed from spite at the people who had originally been voicing their discomfort about the art -- the same people, mind you, who are not a part of the fandom at all.

not only was this effort misdirected, it was also hurtful because people (again, majorly white) were now using black skin tone and even the blm movement itself as a form of spite. the focus was not on explaining the situation to the original poc outside the fandom -- it was on using art and fandom to appear “woke”, and in the process, ignoring the black voices who were saying they were uncomfortable. and i want to make it explicitly clear that i’m not accusing those who have been drawing bipoc sides of having bad intentions; just that almost all of it has been extremely performative. in using blm for fanart in this way, fanders are taking a real-world issue and turning it into a tool to further our own fandom issue, and that is absolutely not okay. and even when it’s not being utilized for discourse, it can still be extremely insensitive to put real-world struggles side by side with fiction.

my original post about adding resources to fanart was never meant to imply that adding links automatically makes it okay, either. again, i haven’t been on tumblr often and so i had no idea what actual bipoc fanders’ stance on the issue was, and i didn’t want to speak over anyone. what i was trying to say was that if the fandom is going to be so keen on pushing blm, the absolute least that we can do is to actually take the time to educate ourselves on the movement and contribute in other ways as well -- such as signing petitions, donating, et cetera. otherwise, not only is the content performative and potentially hurtful, it’s just plain meaningless.

tl;dr -- 

black lives matter is not a trend for white and nbpoc people to take advantage of so that they can appear “woke”. 

putting fictional fandoms side by side with real life can display an unwillingness to acknowledge the real-world impacts of current events unless presented in a way that specifically appeals to you.

above all, listen to black voices.

(oh, and also: in the interest of raising up bipoc fanders, some wonderful blogs to start with might be @skyscrapersanddandelions, @mxnte​​, @lamp-calm-sanders, and @aleiimm​. however, do not go asking these lovely folks to explain something to you/to provide you further resources. it is not their responsibility to personally educate you. i’m only linking them so that you may support them and -- i really can’t say this enough -- listen to what they have to say.)

[akalegos]

Could you tell us a little about your characters?

Y E S !

but due to me having at least over a thousand characters I’ll just give a quick summary of the 25 I manage to dig up over 3 sketchbooks.

Y’all can pick and choose which of them interest yall or who you wanna hear more about!

Also because I’m extra, I made sketch icons for the 25 characters, info under the cut

I’ll talk a bit more about my actual Original Characters first, starting with

Aiko! Otherwise known as Echo

- A marked individual in a steampunk world that gets mixed with magic, because I like both of those things

- Echo runs an underground lab that does helps the underground world with replacing body parts, illegal surgeries etc etc

- Even though she marked, which puts a bounty on her head already, she is well respected by the community for not cheating for your money, stealing your cash, or shanking/killing you mid-surgery

- however, Echo does long for adventure and sometimes do get bored in the lab

oh yeah,, Echo like stealing eyeballs, so if you’re low on cash and wouldn’t mind losing an eye, you know who to call!!

Bonus:

Here’s Echo’s boring, undeveloped sidekick!! I don’t like her and I don’t know how to make her better. Yes, she doesn’t have a name.

here’s my god playboy that left “heaven” due to having an early mid-life crisis, I call him God boi cause;

- He goes by many names! 

tbh, he’s probably the closest character I have to being genderfluid/-neutral? I’m not sure,,

- The god has many powers, from lightning to shapeshifting

- The shapeshifting part allows him to change every part of himself, allowing him to change depending on his situation.

- God boyo, or originally Aristide, is obsessed with the idea of perfection. A god should be perfect, if a god is out of line, he is no god. 

- Same goes for him, which means whenever something is wrong with him, it affects him, extremely

However, leaving the land of gods to live among humans aren’t all perks

- Aris isn’t immune to diseases or injuries. In fact, he actually fell down and died on impact when he came to earth, being reborn into another child immediately.

- He doesn’t gain his memories back automatically tho!! He has to have a major shock to the brain in order for him to remember his previous lives

- Sometimes the shock isn’t enough either, when you have a thousand over lives, you won’t remember every single one of them. So forgotten lovers coming back to haunt because your brain hates you? That’s everyday for him!

i just,, i like playing with the concepts of god,,

Up next we got Ayeka Himura! A japanese student going to a neighborhood, but still a pretty good, school living close to poverty due to her father’s constant spending habits and obsession with art supplies. With the household lacking a mother due to wacky shenanigans, Ayeka takes care of her two younger siblings and the house, all while maintaining a very well-paid job and slowly loosing interest in actually studying for a good, honest job.

also she likes birds!!

Yes her design is heavily “based” off Toga but I love her current design too much to change it, h e l p

So like,, I suck at chinese and I made ocs that exclusively spoke in chinese to help with that but I’m still stuck at 40~marks

I forgot his scar but remembered his earring i hate myself

my og chinese kiddo! he was was first to come and I love his design ever since

he radiates fuck you energy except the girl below. He’s neighbors with her and they acknowledge each other existence ever since. he has a dumb cliche crush on her and is a bit protective of her because nothing says having issues than latching onto someone that makes you happy

Only this girl got named!! even tho she was the second character.

Li Shen, yes she doesnt have a surname, is apparently main ho now, according to my old oc chart of my “main” ocs

She’s the group’s resident sweetheart and really does not want you to do stupid shit, stop doing stupid shit. She tutors my son up there ^^ even though he’s actually smart and just refuses to do his work properly. But she still deeply cares for him.

As well as the girl below shdifhd

the last girl of the ching chong trio and the reason I had to switch up my son’s design is this girly over here! Her design was too business-y and formal so I enrolled all of them into college. A rich girl who doesn’t know how to deal with her g a y thoughts. Tried sending Li Shen some flowers once. She didn’t realize attaching her name would be a good idea and son got a good laugh.

i like paranormal stuff so they apparently look into that shit in their spare time. They’re all actually really fun characters to do prompts with I swear!! send some in and I’ll write them

I had a previous concept for son and Li Shen before last girl came and if yall want me to talk about it,,, i found my sketchbook with the old ideas,,

NEXT UP IS MY OLD GIRL ELORA!!

Elora herself used to be a fan character but I pulled her out and wow\

cant fucking believe she used to be straight for Vylad

shes the outgoing, fun adventure type! bit of mommy issues here and there tho,, I don’t want to say too much since I have an entire for her +

her now upgraded bro, Vincent

i really like the name vincent,,

also now he has mommy issues

Ead, the knight who used to have armor

I hate drawing armor 

he also have issues

AND IRIS MY SWEET GIRL IM SO SORRY

she doesnt have that much issues tho

basically I made elora and her bro have mommy issues, I’m sorry in advance if that spoils anything

I, sometimes, post about these 4 over on @eloradiesismydocsname​ and its a gay ol’ time

not that gay tho because uhh,, medieval times,, but I need prompts for a modern au of them and I am happy to talk about their personalities and even go semi in-depth for any of them!!

here we have ghoster.png,, which is her file name cause I didn’t name her,,

A horror enthusiast + film student that goes to a supposedly haunted shack to film her upcoming project with the boys. wacky shenanigans occur and the boys left leaving ghoster here to starve and eventually fall to her death. But because it’s my oc i get to bring her back from the dead, now hungry as ever and will fucking eat you, its not a kink thing, shes just that hungry and angry

tax fraud.png

a robo girl that i created during social studies cause they were talking about taxes and i just went, “what if,, a robo runs on taxes,,, and like,, she haunts you down for not paying your taxes,,” thus she was born! I don’t know what to name her but she is set in the future so-

Time to go future-apocalypse style because I love that setting too and was upset that I didn’t have any ocs in that style. So I created Alex A. ! A cybrog filled with memories of the previous generations as a sad attempt to preserve human life.

He’s accompanied by his sister/cousin idr i didn’t draw an icon for her, didnt like her design. they go on a hunt for food and to return with nothing. She gets to meet this other dude who has a plant arm im pretty sure i based him off someone’s elses oc but i cant remember. The 3 are forgotten. Kinda want to bring them back tho.

Neon! A character set in the future utopia of lazy people, where gamers rise up. its the best I can describe her story without getting too deep. She the new hacker on the block, joining the underground gang of elite hackers. She’s another one of those wacky characters that just has fun. I mean, when you know your way around codes and the world you live in is full of it, would you not take advantage of that?

as for fan characters,, uhh,, i have em

STARTING WITH MY WIFE!

Alexzandra Zara oh my god i forgot to draw her necklace and shirt

anyways,, Alexzandra is one of the more older ocs I have that didnt get a big revamp. Only an au I develop to the point I forgot the actual shows and the original cast are a little different from the source haha what? She’s the emotionally unstable german war veteran, yes the wife thing isn’t mutual, and haha shes only 27~. I cling onto her so much?? She’s hits a lot of “edgy” points but I still love her cause idk,, the story I made for her is something I hold dear cause Alexzandra was one of my first ACTUALLY DEVELOPED CHARACTER. Is it wrong to say I hold her really close to my heart? Is that weird? probably a little cringy sorry haha. I probably project a little into her which might have strengthened my love for her ack. Her story delves more into the depression very unstable needs to talk to someone side and i get scared talking about my wife’s story online so uhh, idk ask me specific questions about her, I’ll be more inclined to talk.

Dr Watts! The spoiled ass dick that stole dst Wilson’s house and yes this is a dst oc, yes im slightly sorry.

He’s just fun?? almost ran a blog with him and a friend’s oc. He’s your typical uptight old science gramps that took advantage of the fact that no one knows his real name that he calls himself a doc. He’s not. I put everything about him up to a 9-10? He’s one of those wacky characters and I love him for it! His story is really wonky tho so might need help solidifying that part 

and from the angry old man to my sweet man that will adopt you even if you’re noisy or call him ginger. Pilot here is a TF2 OC I made to interact with other tf2 OCs cause some of them are fun and i wanna join in :((

He’s the Canadian stereotype, and yes, he adopted scout, that was one of my character notes. 

Like the actual cast of tf2, there’s barely any real story to him. I only gave him a vague I don’t know my past but hey, i fly really really well. He participated in war unlike certain men but he’s still really nice and will only kill you if you hurt his family. Which he doesn’t know so he just considers the cast his family. He keeps mentioning a wife though, pretty sure he doesn’t have one but you do what makes you happy son.

Ai! an oc I HEAVILY revamped oh my god i hate her old vers. So if yall remember my random shouting of missing my og son, Aru. Here’s his bff. cause he barely has any actual friends that give a shit. And I just cant have that. but here’s your yandere revamped into a last minute addition. I actually feel like I did Ai a lot of justice. I don’t want to delve too deep cause I will start making charts. I’ll do that in a separate post if yall are keen

Isamu Aena! a mp100 oc I made by accident cause idk,, I was thinking about lolita fashion and all of a sudden, the actual oc I was going to make turned into a mob psycho oc. She’s one of my few ocs where her sexuality matters (she’s gay yeah) cause it plays a role in her storyline. She went from being “manipulated”/used to Mob’s wingwomen. She spots out things that can help him in the romantic department cause she’s into romance. A student of the school Mob infiltrated and a fantastic tailor, not to mention a pretty decent pyschic. wait where do models get their lolita stuff from,,

im gonna ignore that and move onto Lillian Yi! Who, i swear i did not meant for it, is very close to lloyd. I mean,, none of the ninjas were with him after s3, who you think he’d meet. Lillian is a survivor from the Great Devourour and yes I’m still pissed LEGO stole my backstory for Lillian to use for Harumi. FUCK YOU LEGO, i still love both of em tho,, The event did leave a big scar and it made Lillian job jumping for a bit, ending at Chen’s Noodles in S6~, where ya know,, stuff got better. She was a medalist for gymnastics and continue the activity, even after her parents’ death, to please others. She was already lost at the time so staying in the sport would help, right? Needless to say, after being rejected at a cop academy for youths, or something similar, she gave up for a while but got back into the idea of saving people by using her skills she already had. It helped with the weight and feelings and meeting the green ninja was a very big bonus. Also Lloyd dubbed her the “mysterious stranger” when she refused to speak in fear of her identity, slight shame, and maybe a bit of being star struck. It helped Lloyd too in a sense where he had something to distract him from Zane’s passing.

 Their relationship was eventually formed, strong and almost unbreakable, except for harumi but uhh thats a different story. Throughout the seasons, they stayed close and lloyd was always comforted by Lillian went times get ruff.

Also Lillian is my most light-hearted characters and I think that says a lot

Then there’s Nite “I don’t want to be your dad”. A character that is supposed to be in the ninjago world but barely interacts with the main story and only stays in his self contained plot. He was supposed to get a bf but uhhh idk. He’s the master of shifting and streams that online, taking out small crimes, and is actually really shy and doesn’t like interacting with people.

also haha fortnite

Nora Akino, the sin of despair! its an ad thing, I think. She speaks only in a foreign language that only Odin understands and is either big gay for Ava or Maggi, she can’t pick. And yes she did drink the vial, when TITAN attacks your planet and you accidentally die, how else can you meet your family again? also my grandpa walked in and said she looks like royalty. cool-

she wouldn’t leave my hand for like,, 3 days or something

Petri, a fellow troublemaker at camp campbell’s music camp. She managed to pick the camp because apparently a parent who doesn’t acknowledge your hard work don’t read the fine print! Please let David adopt her,,

LASTLY! Yukimaru Atsuko, hero name; Gummie. She goes by Yuki and is a big dick. She’s a studious student but gets more thrills on the actual battlefield. Living with her uptight grandma and her big bottom energy bro, she has the dom energy thing going. and apparently folks on G+, or the people who comment about her, thinks she’s really pretty, which was oddly a thing back before UA. She’s the dick you can like, not like Bakugou but she will definitely want to fight Bakugou. 

A gum-related quirk is not full of perks when its only your hands. I’d dive more into her like her insecurities and stuff but I’ve been here for probably 3hrs. Sorry anon.

Also I’m so sorry to anyone who reads this all the way through.

[perdizzion]

I just happen to stumbled upon ur account and saw that you'll be quitting med school. I have a dilemma that I want to share with someone. Im a newly enrolled first yr med student and classes just started a week before. But I'm starting to form some doubts whether I really want to be a doctor or not. Its not that I cant handle the academics its just that do i really see myself being a doctor in the future and actually feel happy about it.

I dont even know if being a doctor is my dream anymore or just my parent’s.

Hiya! Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me, anon! I don’t know if my answer will help you or not, but I will try to do my ABSOLUTE BEST to reply!!

Ok so. Med school. Tricky stuff. I’ll tell you a little bit about my background and what I’m up to right now to give you a Good Feel about how things are going after the decision I’ve taken and whatnot.

I got into med school about 4 and a half years ago, and like any student who worked their asses off for their desired universities’ entrance exams, I was beyond ecstatic when I found out that I had gotten in. I started attending lectures, group discussions, student projects, and for the first few years, I felt like hey, I think I can actually do this! The exams were pretty tough, I can’t say I liked pharmacology and neurology, but I passed just fine and so I thought that things were going to be fine.

[Narrator voice] things were, in fact, not fine.

I started having doubts around..3rd year, I think? Everything just started to become so dull no matter how much free time I was using to do my hobbies (drawing and doing art in general) and I think that was when my depression started to really rear its ugly head. I started to miss classes, isolate myself from my friends, stay in bed all day, and the only people that had kept me sane were my family and a few close friends of mine telling me to take care of myself when I was too depressed to do so. I tried thinking about whether I’ll be happy being a doctor in the future, and then I noticed that I couldn’t even imagine myself in a white coat, working in a clinic and talking to a patient.

This is when I finally realized that all this time, my wanting to go to med school wasn’t even because it was my dream. It was my parents’.

I struggled a lot to get through some of the days, but I managed to keep up the facade in front of my uni friends until I finished 4th year and received a “degree”. (In Indonesia, finishing 4th year of med school grants you a “bachelor of medicine” though you can’t really use it for anything yet until you’ve finished 2 more years of clerkship and get a “dr” in front of your name).

Clerkship happened after 4th year. If I had to use one word to describe clerkship, it would be hellish. I don’t know if this is how it works in every country, but in Indonesia, clerkship demands med students to attend hospital shifts with inhuman amount of working hours. We had to do 36 hour shifts every twice a week, and 9 hour shifts every other day. This might sound pretty light to some people, but it was super tough for me what with the amount of additional assignments and exams that we still had to do during our rotations. 

After 2 months of clerkship, my depression grew so much worse to the point where my best friend (bless her heart) had to call me almost everyday to help me sleep at night because the thoughts in my head wouldn’t leave me alone. Finally, I called my sister who lives in a different city to fly to where I was living in to take me to see a psychiatrist. It didn’t help because my doctor was super shitty about my condition (“all med students experience depression at one point because med school is just that hard, don’t worry, I’ve been there”) but I did take the meds. And I was planning to carry on with clerkship, until one day the meds gave me orthostatic hypotension (it was one of the side effects of the drug that I was taking) and I fainted in the middle of a surgery. When my mom (who lives in another city) found out about this, she was livid. She flew to my place right on that exact same day to take care of me, though she hadn’t known about my depression yet at the time.

The next day, I told her everything. Like, everything. About how med school had truly been stressing me out, about how I didn’t feel like med school was the right place for me anymore, about how clerkship had been making me feel like I was a worthless piece of shit because the doctors kept yelling at me, about how clerkship had also been making me realize that I wasn’t good with patients and that their lives are literally in my hands and that a single mistake could lead to their death and how I could never live with that much guilt in my life, about how I was so tired of being too sleep-deprived to properly function everyday, let alone to stitch a patient’s cut-up hand back together.

I told her that I wanted to quit. And so I did.

And you know what? It feels amazing.

I’ve been sleeping regularly for the past few months. I get to draw everyday now, and still make money out of doing commissions. I interact with my family a lot more and I don’t check up on them only when I need them to transfer me some money to buy food. I eat three meals a day like a normal human being and it feels so, so good. I applied for a scholarship so I could earn a Master’s degree in biomedicine abroad (it’s not art school, which is where I actually want to go to, but it’s not med school either so I’ll take it), I passed the first stage and now I’m just trying to do my best to pass the next two stages so I could get a full-ride. 

Things are okay. Things are good.

Things haven’t always been good, of course. People tell me that I was “so close to reaching my dreams!”, that my parents “must be so shattered to hear that you wanted to quit!”, that I am just “wasting away my potential.” My grandparents called me a disappointment a few weeks ago while telling me that I should just give up on my scholarship application and go back to med school. My dad told me that he wished I could “go back to the way I was and be happy again.” My mom cried multiple times. It hasn’t been easy on my mental health, but honestly? Fuck it. Fuck every single guilt-trip that my parents have had to put me through. Fuck everyone at uni who’s been spreading false rumors about how I quit med school because “I got cancer” or “I got knocked up.”

I absolutely hated how the doctors did anything back in the hospital. The rich patients got immediate treatment, and the poor got dismissed. The mentally ill were mocked behind closed doors, and med students were treated like trash. Rooted seniority where the senior doctors hazed junior doctors were still a thing (in Indonesia, at least). Literally everyone in the hospital had a superiority complex and I fucking hated it. Neither my parents nor my grandparents will have to be the ones to experience this on a daily basis for years though, so fuck outta here with your negative comments about my decision.

I quit med school because I did it for me, and only me.

This is by no means supposed to scare you away from med school just so you could jump into my bandwagon, heck no. I’m telling you this because nobody told me that this could be a possibility. Everybody I knew kept telling me that the only thing you’ll need to succeed med school is firm determination and hard work, and while that may be true for some people, I required a lot more than that, like a stable mental health, a good support system, etc. I failed to meet these requirements, and so everything turned into a shipwreck for me. My other friends, however, who were well-prepared with all of these, are managing to continue med school just fine.

That being said, this answer is definitely supposed to make you think about your decision more thoroughly. One of the most often things that people tell me post-med school is that “you should’ve quit earlier if you hadn’t liked it; it would’ve saved you a lot of time.” I hate the fact that I agree with this. If I had quit years ago, I would’ve still had time to search for a school that was more relevant to my interests and start over from a blank slate. If I had quit years ago, I would’ve been able to graduate from a new school and earn an actual proper job by now so I could help my parents out with our finance. Of course, my parents would’ve been way more harsh on me if I had told them that I wanted to quit so early on, but if you own the privilege of having parents that would genuinely and willingly listen to you, please talk about it with them. I had a friend who quit med school around a few months before 1st year ended; he’s in business school now and from what I’ve heard, he’s pretty happy with where he is right now.

Whew, that was long. I swear I didn’t mean for it to be this long!! Let me know if any of that helped or if you just want to talk off anon with me in general! I know firsthand how this kind of dilemma can eat you up whole, and it’s not a fun experience, so just hmu if you want to chat

Have a nice day!!