#thank you for you're understanding

[digimon-fr]

Cancelling DMFR: Reasons and What Now...

TLDR: I’m extremely burnt out with this story due to my own hubris, and would like to close this chapter of my life. Read below for more details. Hello everyone...

I apologize for leaving you all in the dark for so long. This was a bandage I was extremely reluctant to rip off because of the love people had for this little fan project. But it’s something I must address all the same. You’ve probably noticed that updates to DMFR have gradually petered out over time and have basically come to a complete stop. This is because as time went on, I started to fall out of love with Digimon, the fandom, and consequentially, this big-little story I’ve had knocking around in my brain since 2008 (ie. Since I was a young teenager). While my relationship with the Digimon franchise is starting to gradually be repaired with the love being put into the new Ghost Game anime, the beautifully nostalgic art in the new card game, and the immense fun that is the Vital Bracelet series, I do find my self struggling to come back to the fandom, and more importantly this story.

I have changed so much since I first started posting this story in 2014, and even more so since thinking about it in 2008. There is still plenty to love about it, but also a lot I’d probably would have done very differently. My ability to pace myself and plan out a story of multiple character arcs has improved so much, and my past self did not do a very good job of laying down the tracks for my future self. I should have made chapter outlines, I should have given myself a schedule instead of posting when ever, I should have given myself breaks when I needed them. But I didn’t and the immense pressure from the standards I set for myself began to weigh so much that any spark I had left was entirely snuffed out. All this is to say that I am very burnt out with this story. I’m no longer excited to work on it, I’m kicking myself for making it so difficult to work on in the first place, and my drive to finish it is gone because of how poorly I handled it for myself.

I hope that writing this out, anyone else who is hoping to make a grand epic series can learn from my mistakes. Inspiration is POWERFUL in making art, but a massive piece of art like this can not live off of inspiration alone. You need to pace yourself and take care of yourself so you don’t come to dislike what you are making in time. Because it’s never fun to fall out of love with something that used to bring you so much joy, and I would never wish that on anyone.

So now what?

I am going to try and take better care of myself, and continue to pursue passion projects that still bring me joy. You are welcome to join me, but I also completely understand if you do not want to. Regardless, thank you for all your support in the past, please take care of yourself, and may your spirit stay strong.

Sincerely, AK-Illustrate

[technically-human]

Comfort and safety and such things

This one was actually a commission! I had a lot of fun working with such a cute concept

[bacchuschucklefuck]

while teen while goblin while aroace while injured while doing your best

[leupagus]

On Voting in America

So one of the most profound comments on routine chores that I've ever encountered was, hilariously, the Pickle Rick episode of "Rick & Morty," where (after a lot of shenanigans have already ensued) this therapist absolutely lays Rick out:

"I have no doubt that you would be bored senseless by therapy, the same way I'm bored when I brush my teeth and wipe my ass. Because the thing about repairing, maintaining, and cleaning is: it's not an adventure. There's no way to do it so wrong you might die. It's just work. And the bottom line is some people are okay going to work and some people, well, some people would rather die. Each of us gets to choose."

I think about this at least once a week — usually while I'm doing my laundry or sweeping or some other task that needs doing and won't get me anything more than clean clothing or a dog-hair-free floor. There's no Pulitzer for wiping down your microwave or scrubbing your toilet; no one's awarding you for getting all the dishes out of the sink. At best you have the satisfaction of crossing it off your list.

Voting is very much the same (and I'm talking about the US here, as an American). Sure, you sometimes get a sticker; but nobody's going to cheer for you. There's no adventure here, no potential for anything more than crossing something off of a list. It's a chore, something that needs doing in order to repair, maintain, and yes even clean. So I get why people don't like doing it.

And I've decided I don't give a shit.

Do it anyway. Your country takes astonishingly little from you — taxes, the once-in-a-blue-moon jury duty, and a theoretical draft that hasn't been used in over half a century and likely will never be again — but it asks you (asks! not requires! not demands!) to vote once a year. It's not always easy; especially in conservative states, the impediments to vote can be ridiculous. But it is once a year and unlike in our nation's all-too-recent past, you will not die if you do it.

In fact, the worst outcome from voting these days is that the person or issue that you vote for loses — but you won't know if they lose until after the election. Polls are less accurate now, for a whole host of reasons; you cannot know until after the election who or what will win. This makes your vote more valuable than possibly ever before.

Use that power. Not because it's exciting or even rewarding, but because your vote is what keeps our country's metaphorical teeth from falling out and our metaphorical ass from stinking.

Brush, wipe, vote.

[karkatbug]

I need you to know how much I appreciate your art & content, I have been OBSESSED with homestuck grubs ever since I first saw those fuckers. They're so shaped and it activates my paternal instincts and every single time you post karkat grub I spend like a solid five minutes looking at it before going into a new tab and starting up wigglersim

he is saying thank you

[sskk-manifesto]

Bungou Stray Dogs: Dead Apple and how “ability users” (opposite to “normal people”) learning to accept themselves through the acceptance of their own abilities is a queer metaphor of acceptance of own's sexual orientation and gender: an essay by me

[siryyeet]

Oh you have complicated feelings towards Germany? Let me make 91836373 assumptions about it with my piss poor understanding of history, not listen to germans at all and then come to a horrendously bad and false conclusion on why that is! Also I think you germans should stop feeling guilty and be proud of your country again!

[write-it-motherfuckers]

[heymrspatel]

bartender ian seeing mickey walk in through the doors of The Rosewood Brewhouse

🍺🌷more florist mickey and bartender ian!🌷🍺 more flowers and brews drabbles here! @deedala's companion florist mickey art here! 💙✨

[bonefall]

while i do agree with the sentiment that bloodclan should be more nuanced as an entity i still believe it is wrong to portray them as the necessary "response" to clan injustice (haven't read the books in years but i am pretty sure that bloodclan started with no connection to the clans) / an opposition to the clan's flaws. some of the thing scourge did was out of selfishness and bloodclan isn't the other colour of the black and white debacle with the clans. the clans are heavily flawed yes, but it isn't realistic to completely say that their structure had no redeeming qualities altogether and that all outsider groups is fundamentally better than the clans.

all clans and groups are flawed in their own way and i believe we shouldnt brush past the things that other groups (the sisters and what they do with their toms *cough cough*) did solely to be able to degrade the clans and their culture.

Buddy, you're setting up a strawman. I promise you that if you look into the reduxes I've made of BloodClan, Guardians, The Sisters, and the Tribe, you will see that I don't make any of them a "flawless" alternative to Clan life.

Nor do I say that the Clans have no redeeming qualities. In fact, you can browse the "Clan Culture" tag to see the various expansions I've made to show how these traditions, values, and technological advances make Clan life so alluring.

The overarching theme of BB is that the nature of culture is change. For better AND for worse.

With respect, I think there's something insidious in the wording of "the things the other groups did." We're talking about fan responses to a work that consistently demonizes and degrades foreigners to make the Clans look like the "best way to live," justifying xenophobia. These are not real groups, they are writing choices.

In the franchise with some pretty extreme examples of misogyny, the authors said "What if bizarro world where women rule and have no men... woag..." and only includes a single Clan-alligned member of this culture, with a BAD opinion of them, who can't even do his diplomatic job because he HATES them so much.

In the same franchise that shows Fireheart getting bullied, facing prejudice, and fighting a murderous tyrant who publically executes a mixed-race character, their endgame villain is an outsider, like him, but this one IS a godless heathen who HATES love and friendship and banned families.

In the VERY same franchise which made its first non-malicious group barely able to get through an arc without needing to be saved by Clan cats, totally unable to defend themselves, framed as "whiny" for not wanting their clearly 'inferior' culture to be forcefully changed.

And I'm re-stating all this because, again, no offense to you in particular Anon, but I've been seeing a few people with a sentiment like yours lately. Complaints into a vacuum that don't make targeted critique of anyone's fanworks, gesturing at this broad "woobification" which is apparently out there somewhere over the rainbow, saying things like "well Scourge is selfish" or "well Moonlight abandoned her 13 year old" as if we haven't BEEN knew.

As if we're not all directly responding to these choices. As if I haven't written ESSAYS on this topic.

Since this was about BloodClan in particular though, and you admit you haven't read the books in years, please go back and actually read Rise of Scourge before trying to make critique of the ways fanon rewrites its origin. It's EXPLICITLY a response to the Clans, in the text, that the Erins wrote, it is canon that fanon is working with.

And you want people to take that out and approach it a different way... why? Because it's so incredulous to you that a nation forms in response to a threatening neighbor? That a common enemy through invasions is a way that people might choose to unite, and encourage their new culture to value brutality? Because you don't like the idea of Clan Culture's XENOPHOBIC BATTLE CULTURE affecting surrounding communities??

Could YOU, maybe, be doing this "woobification" thing I keep hearing about? Can I play this stupid game too? What's our stupid prize? Can it be a lollipop? Do we get stickers

TL;DR, ok.

[sealpup9]

Ok Inertia came in swinging with a beat that slaps so hard I forgot to duck and was knocked on my ass by the force that is the last two verses.

[sergle]

there is something so crazy about the cognitive dissonance between 50% of my online art presence coming from self portraits of my own body in a resting position, where it's received specifically as fat art, people refer to it as body positive / plus sized (or sometimes bbw content. it's whatever), the notes are like yeeesss this made me feel so good abt my body, stretch marks rolls etc fat women are beautiful 🙌🙌 and then I take a picture Standing Upright, and then some of Same people who have literally Seen My Body Before go ummm... what tha hell. you are LITERALLY thin ?! you are literally doing this.

[wellfine]

Hey I found ur art uncredited on tik Tok

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMreQSnaw/

They said they "found it on Reddit" so they just decided to steal it and post it ig?? Ugh!!

Wow, that's a whole other repost to the one I thought it was going to be, lol. It's been reposted to TikTok once before, and I'm also not surprised this person got it from Reddit, where I doubt I was credited either.

At the end of the day I appreciate the heads up but there's nothing I can really do about it. The most helpful thing anyone can do is to leave comments on the reposts to provide credit,* because if artists ever try and comment then we pretty invariably get attacked. Don't be mean or aggressive, that just builds their animosity towards the artists, but I do think people respond positively to outside pressure to do the right thing 🤷

*Remember to make sure there's enough context - eg. something like "art by @ landegart on Twitter" is more searchable/useful than "artist is Landeg" to someone on TikTok who has no idea who I am haha

[hadesoftheladies]

let me be so fr y'all. i will NEVER shame a woman for having a man that treats her right. okay? that's always going to be a win, why would i complain about that? i just think that most of y'all that say you found him are fckn lying.

like i've watched women in dv situations lie through their teeth. they'll lie to their besties who know them freckle to freckle about their bruises. it doesn't even have to be abuse. i know how much women lie to keep up appearances with other women and i'm just saying i'm not buying it with most of y'all. that's my truth. and i start having issues when you start lying about that reality to younger women who will most likely just end up in the same shitty relationship bc of the false hope women in mid-to-shitty relationships with men espouse. and i can tell they're lying even MORE when they start trying to talk about how "women aren't necessarily better" whether that's about celibate or same-sex-partnered women. they'll drag their own female friends in order to convince everyone else that their man is truly the real deal as a status symbol. they'll shit on what their friends do for them in order to justify their veneration of this mid-ass moid. i've just seen it happen too many times, and that's why i think it's justified that radfems draw parallels between het-partnered feminists and liberal women who cling to femininity. y'all talk the exact same most of the time and even have the same arguments.

anyways.

[dinosaurwithablog]

I am broken. I will always be broken, but I will not let that be what defines me. I've lived through hell. There were days that I didn't think that I'd make it, but you know what? I made it out. I am stronger and wiser for having done so. I remember sitting there one day thinking that this couldn't continue. So, I set a goal for myself that day. I would brush my teeth by noon. Sounds easy, right? At 11:55 a.m., I was freaking out thinking it's almost noon. What am I going to do. That is when it hit me. What would I do if this was someone other than me in this situation. I'd grab them and pull them up and lead them to the bathroom, and put their toothbrush in their hand. So that's what I did, except to myself. It sounds goofy, but I did it, and I was sooooooo proud of myself. It was a very small step, but I moved forward that day for the first time in years, and it fell incredible!! And I've been setting goals for myself ever since. Things that I know I can do. I set myself up for success. I'm telling you all this because I've found a lot of posts where people are overwhelmed and feel like they can't go on. I'm telling you that you can. It's up to you. Don't let the bastards win. Ever. Do this for you because you deserve it. I lived through reprehensible atrocities that no one should ever have to live through. But I made a choice. I would not let that define me. I would change my narrative. And I did. In doing so, I found beauty in Hell. I found that I am more understanding for it. I found that I'm more compassionate for it. And the greatest gift of all was that I could help others who felt the way I did. There is beauty in everything. That is a great gift. Sometimes you have to look really hard to find it, but it's there. Take a little step forward today. And the next and the next. If you stumble, get up and take another step. Let setbacks motivate you to do better. I believe that all the people out there can achieve greatness in their own way. Take a breath and move forward. I'm still doing that, and I get better every day. I won. The bastards lost. Yippee cayay motherfucker!! Happiness is a choice. Please, choose wisely. 🙏🏼 I will always choose happiness. I'm worth it and so are you 😍🫂💜💜💜 if you notice I use three purple hearts a lot in my posts. Like a war hero, I have earned them. They represent the wounds and scars that have made me stronger and wiser. I'm proud of those scars because they made me who I am today. Be your own hero and save yourself. You're worth it. ✨️

Wow!! That was hard to post, but I hit the button. I feel like I just stood naked in front of the Tumblr community, but if this post helps even one person feel better, then it was worth it. I'm gonna put my clothes back on now. It's getting chilly 😉😊😍

[cak31ssuperi04]

fun fact: Them