#the day after my last exam

[the-music-keeper]

Your girl deposited her thesis tonight, y'all!

[cryingatships]

The moment ao3 comes back I'm gonna smooch its forehead and download every single one of my 1800+ bookmarks

[fairydrowning]

"I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams."

– Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

[bylrndgm]

hellfire t-shirt mike, you'll always be famous (the campaign)

to the death.

[spaghett-onaplate]

depression is really weird actually wdym i spent 2.5 years of my life in bed

[faaun]

procrastination is starting to have its consequences finally

[dreadnotau]

Happy three years everybody! As always, there’s a lot to say on the occasion, so pop in at the end of the post for the tl;dr if you don’t have time for my detailed diatribes, haha

Boy, time flies, huh? Feels like the second anniversary was just yesterday, but maybe that’s just the several long hiatuses getting to me. I’ve been scarce on uploading anything anywhere for a while now, even though I promised I’d actually pick up the slack this time around. What gives? Well…

For one, college hell, and for two, a lot of unfounded anxiety about putting my art out there. Allow me some theatrics for a moment and I’ll actually get back to the comic at hand… I’ve never had an exceptionally supportive environment for making art. It wasn’t suppressive, not in the slightest, but it also wasn’t… encouraging. It was always treated as a hobby or a distraction rather than something I was allowed to be fully proud of, especially because a lot of my art focused on more cartoon-y and fantasy ideas, rather than still life studies and painting (which people generally outside of the art sphere tend to value more, arbitrarily). Couple that with a childhood full of being bullied over minute shit you hadn’t even considered could be an issue before, and you get a teenager hellbent on never sharing his interests or ideas with anyone, mostly due to the fear of rejection.

I’ve grown, thankfully, but that paranoia and fear doesn’t go away overnight. As I’m sure you all know, Meowchela was the one who originally encouraged me to post this comic, and the only reason she succeeded was because she was the first person in a long time who listened and engaged with my interests and my art in a meaningful way. It’s kind of obvious her friendship had a profound impact on me, and I’d cite her as one of the reasons I was even hopeful enough to apply to an art college in the first place! This comic, and that bond with another person, proved that maybe these things I’m so passionate about weren’t duds, and weren’t something I had to keep to myself.

So, fast forward a few years. About three years, in fact.

During one of my classes, right before this hellish two weeks of exams started, one of the class assistants talked me into showing my comic pages to one of my professors. He’s generally a pretty open guy when it comes to new mediums, but I’m always… apprehensive about showing my less “traditional art”-y things to professors, but, he ended up being genuinely proud of it. Specifically, I showed him pages 85-87 (because they’re my favourites) and, he didn’t read the text, just the visuals were enough for him to say “good job, keep it up” (which is HIGH praise from that guy). When I mentioned I’ve been meaning to simplify the visuals because I didn’t have time to work on the comic very often because of college and classes, he dismissed it on principle. I was honestly caught off guard. Heavily paraphrasing, he suggested that worsening the visuals for an arbitrary deadline was counterproductive to making something that’s Good™.

That’s kinda stuck with me. For a good few years now I was more focused on optimisation rather than visual improvement for the comic, and though it HAS contributed to better visuals in some ways (cutting corners sometimes makes for a less pointy and jagged end result), it’s kind of weird I’m treating an art project that way, isn’t it? I set a lot of… arbitrary deadlines and standards for myself, in the form of expectations and what I “should” or “shouldn’t” be doing at certain stages in my life. I’ve thought of Dread Not as a passion project second and a stepping stone first, if I’m being honest. As if it was too… fandom-y and derivative to be treated with more gravity than that, like it’s an immature project because I was still a child when I came up with it. As if it was something I’m making to Build Up to Something Else, something Bigger and Cooler and More Important, and… the more I think about the future of Dread Not, and even my future career options, the more I realised that’s, ironically, a really immature way to think about it.

If there’s one thing going to this art college has taught me, is that there’s no “right” way to make art, and there’s no “right” way to success as an artist. There’s no clear-cut paths, just more commonly treaded roads, but even those are heavily overgrown. Why should I try to box myself into thinking I have to make things from complete scratch to be taken seriously? What’s so bad about Dread Not as a story and as a comic that’s caused me to vaguely keep it under wraps when conversing with people in my day-to-day life? Why wouldn’t I put all these skills I’ve acquired to improve and expand this project that’s Right There, WAITING for me to finally get off my ass and get pages out there again?

I wish I could say I’ve used all this time away in a particularly clever way, but I really haven’t - at least, it feels like I haven’t. My art has undoubtedly improved over time (though admittedly the art for this post was Very rushed, fuckin exams), and while I’ve been working on projects in the background, chipping away at them in a VERY disorganised way, I haven’t been posting that progress anywhere, and I haven’t made any good progress on my biggest project, Dread Not, because of the other ones. And, honestly? Admitting that kinda stings. This comic means a lot to me, and I wish I actually gave it the time and attention it deserves instead of letting it sit out hiatus after hiatus because I keep failing at structuring my time.

So, my new plan is a little more abstract: find a way to work Dread Not into my school schedule, and slowly build a habit of working on it more often. No clue how long that’ll take, but I think it’ll be worth it to consider it as an option, and hopefully finally end these long, drawn out hiatuses with short bursts of uploads in-between. HOPEFULLY. Building habits was never my strong suit, so please bear with me while I figure this out in what will probably be the most hectic upload schedule in this comics history, which is: no schedule at all.

From now on (until the end of Act 1), I’ll upload pages when they’re ready, and depending on how the weeks go and how complex the page is, they could be weeks or days apart from one another. Hell, some might even take a month to finish if school stuff gets REALLY hectic (god knows Hellish Exam Week number 1 and number 2 won’t be giving me much time to work on the comic), but I’m determined to do this. I want to be able to put my all into this project again!!

(And hopefully finish Act 1 by the end of this semester…)

TL;DR: College is giving me life lessons I didn’t expect, and because of them I’ve decided to give myself a non-existent upload schedule for Dread Not: Pages will be posted when they’re ready, and the spacing between pages could wildly vary depending on circumstances and the actual complexity of the page itself.

As always, thank you for being here, thank you for reading, and thank you for being patient!

If all goes well, there will be new content very, very soon.

[buttercupshands]

god I missed him so much in this manga

[the-golden-dragoness]

Does anyone know how to maneuver a relationship where they are interested in dating you but you were fine being old school acquaintances who don’t speak to each other

[astrobei]

(writing this later as a treat for being so brave and camping out in the library until midnight every day this week)

[adimouze]

.

[kiawren]

So uhm instead of doing my 8 essays due Tuesday morning I went down a rabbit hole learning about the romance farming sim Fields of mistria. And I adore Ryis so much....I've spent hours finding out about what I can of him becuz I can't play the game before the end of November...

My s/i and him would be perfect for each other... First of all he loves birds like HELLO.! When I learnt that fact I had multiple exclamation marks on top of my head I think. And it's not even a one-off thing he mentioned, I'm pretty sure it's established as one part of his personality. He also builds bird houses. And he has a feather collection. He is just like me for real.

Ok continued with lots of words down here Woops

He's so kind and creative... He does woodworking, and some of the gifts he loves can be carved on as mentioned in the item's description. It's crazy becuz I have an oc (ik I don't post about my oc's but they're always brewing in my head) who also likes to carve intricate patterns on wood (he has a wooden arm he carves on, and likes Batik patterns and the artfulness of Wayang Kulit which is Malay shadow puppetry.) like bro. Okay. And it means he's also an artist of sorts...Um yeah I'm projecting traits of that OC into the art we'd like to do together. I think my s/i would like to carve cool patterns with him... Like what if we carve birds... And they would love to sit outside and watch birds and try to sketch them together. Not to mention that one of the events you can do with him as part of a romance stage is. Planting a tree together. I'm normal. Like hello. Planting a TREE as a symbol of your love I think that's so crazy to me it's having me so whipped. And he's so down to earth I think he moved from the city to the more village setting of the game and also he was important in helping the village recover from the earthquake becuz of his skills and also he's very lovable for his kindness I think. I'm so invested now but my essays 😊 my esssayyss.... Oh yeah he also reminds me of Kiawe becuz he dresses like he works on a farm and it was my first impression... Also I think red is his color (one of his outfits is blue though. My s/i's color but it's whatever it's nothingggg that doesn't mean anything to me) and his personality is similar to kiawe's. They both have creative interests, work with wood in some way (kiawe's staff is wood okay it's more of a stretch but. Yeah haha) they're both hardworking, relatively quiet people but very kind. Help me

[sasukerevolution]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SASUKE!!!!!!!

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

it's like the thoughts saw me all worn out by being sick and decided this is the time to move in. so many possibilities. so many ways i could kill myself. not going to though

[dreamertrilogys]

I MISS KNOWING THAT NO MATTER WHAT I’D HAVE TO WAKE UP IN THE MORNING AND SPEND 6 HRS A DAY W/ PPL MY AGE FOR 5 DAYS A WEEK. I MISS KNOWING I’D HAVE GUARANTEED TIME W MY FRIENDS ON THE DAILY. I MISS THE FAMILIARITY & COMFORT OF THE ROUTINE I’VE KNOWN FOR 14 YRS

[faaun]

man the perpetual all nighters have been doing wonders for my skin