#tl;dr i can see how much i've improved in just a few years despite my hiatuses

[zerofoursix]

<- Jan? Feb? 2019 ---- Dec 2022 ->

FOR REAL my last post of the year aha, I just want to say that comparing these two pics is wild to me, and very interesting (and kinda emotional). Kinda stream of consciousness below, wanna post before midnight, no beta we die like men.

The one on the left was the second...? thing I drew on my new iPad after straight up not drawing for 5 years. Art school both kicked me down with an unfair critique by a revered professor, prompting me to completely change to an art style I couldn't wrap my head around just to appeal to art school professor sensibilities more, only to be told by the same prof senior year that his fav students were the ones who use the style he said he hated in my freshman year.

Between that breaking my spirit, being soul-deep burned out, and experiencing the start of serious physical and mental illness, the second I graduated I stopped drawing. I doodled small things while talking on the phone, but I can probably count the number of sketchbook sketches I did over the next 5 years on one hand.

So when I got the iPad and pencil and realized I could draw in a way that came most natural to me instead of feeling pressure to appeal to someone.... you can see it's still kinda rough, not where I was at the start of college style-wise, stiff from being out of practice, colors don't Vibe, it took me several days to do what I used to do in a single sitting, etc.... but it's still one of my favorite things I've drawn during this personal drawing era of mine.

And then, four years later, I didn't set out to do a redraw but there are a lot of similarities in the framing and effects and expressions... and it's made me realize that, even as I've dipped in and out of hiatus these four years, I've continued to unlearn the worst bits from art school, remember the best bits and tricks, and take in / learn from more inspirational media. Despite the hurdles, I've improved in so many ways and to a huge degree.

I've kept feeling like my art was stagnant, and that contributed to the hiatuses, but in reality I've been passively improving in ways I couldn't see. And that makes me so hopeful.

I really look forward to trying lots of new things in the coming year. One of my resolutions is to learn the painting brushes in procreate so I can do portraits and landscapes again without the risk of chalk pastel dust ruining my week. ;; I want to do so much, and I think with these art parties and study / work / task streams I'm attending, I'll have a lot of opportunities to continue to improve!

Thank you to everyone for their patience over these four years and the several years prior, I look forward to being more open, posting more, and maybe showing progress videos...? That's something I plan to look into soon :))))

Happy new yuri y'all! <3

[fountainpenguin]

tl;dr For 'Fic Followers:

In the upcoming weeks / months, I'm going to be posting for maybe 3 to 4 fandoms at a time.

If you are subscribed to me on AO3 and would like to avoid emails for fandoms you don't care about, I have a post HERE that tells you exactly which series you can follow to get all the updates for the fandom of your choice :)

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Updates

I recently discovered you're allowed to put essays/meta on AO3, so I think I'm going to copy the five big species overviews from @riddledeep over to an AO3 document sometime soon.

iirc, they're like 20k words apiece, which isn't allowed with the current Tumblr editor, and I've had those posts flagged a couple times for having my body reference images in them (even though they're blobby bodies that don't depict anything), so I do get nervous about losing them and in the past, I wasn't able to edit without them getting flagged, so it would be nice to have a back-up place for them in case they ever get shut down.

I'll probably make another piece for "7 Billion Years in 15,000 words" just because I feel that also qualifies as essay form and it's a piece I really like, and I could probably add Fae Magic as an essay as well.

I think everything else will stay on the sideblog - The sideblog is mostly character profiles, family trees, maps, and the episode timeline and would not qualify as AO3 legality in my mind - but I think these things would be okay and now you know 👍

These posts will still be on the sideblog, just copied

Right now I'm wrapping up One and a Half Birds- 12 of 15 chapters up, draft complete and they post every Friday. My plan is to post the last 2 chapters of Criminal Experience on Fridays after this (They're fully outlined but not finished yet) since Friday was always its update day.

After that, I think I'll post these FOP essays as a cue to my AO3 followers that Friday is being phased out as an MCYT 'fic day in favor of FOP stuff (with Sunday as the new secondary MCYT 'fic day).

For years, I've balanced on that razor edge of knowing my writing has improved a lot lately and that I'd love to tidy up Origin and Knots so they present the lore better and fit my current writing style (which I think is cleaner), but that's a dangerous road to go down, so I've kept moving forward instead.

That's also why I've tried not to get sucked back into the sideblog, as I just really want to wrap Origin and Knots up. Bit of a wake-up call for me when I realized I think when Dog's Life goes on hiatus in a few weeks, it will have outpaced the wordcount of Knots which I started in 2017, wheeze...

I look at Origin and Knots and see them as things we're only 3/5 or halfway done with and it's scary to me considering how much very important stuff I'm balancing (i.e. upcoming Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda relationship pay-off after a very long slow burn; I wrote their first romantic scenes back in 2016) and I hope I do a good job conveying everything right.

Definitely have to grit my teeth and remind myself that "done is better than perfect," though, as I just am never satisfied with it- I had to scrap a lot of things I was excited for because of new story directions, but I think I've pulled everything back together, and I'll be excited to share what I have coming up.

tl;dr - I do love this lore, and as far as I can tell, these long posts would qualify as meta essays and be legal, and that definitely makes me feel safer considering how many times my 20k-word Anti-Fairy culture post got flagged despite the bodies being blue and green, wheeze...

And I've always wanted to write an essay about Lexiconian vs. Hexagonian culture, so I might do that as well, and I'm almost done with my 60k+-word piece about the lore in my MCYT 'fics, so I'm very excited to share :)

Lastly, while this is not lore or an essay, I'd like to copy some or all of my Total Drama 'fics from FFN to AO3, as I discussed in the beginning of the year. I'm thinking I might start moving them in June for Life of a Loser's 11th anniversary.

This 'fic had shorter chapters than what I have now and will probably be updated every few days (Maybe a Mon-Wed-Fri schedule?), which can lead to many emails. So, if you want to limit emails, check THIS post to find out which series to follow for the content you want :)

Closing Note - I have maybe 2 'fics that already have "Here are the series you can follow if you only want updates for this fandom's content" notes in the end notes.

I think I'm going to do a big sweep of all my stuff and make consistent end notes for all pieces. We shall see!

Anyway, thank you!