Ayarane Project: the Tumblr Edition

It always ends like this.

I cultivate and invest in one of those “best friend”-type bonds and it just... falls apart.

It always ends like this.

I let someone in, thinking this time will be different. We hit it off. Things look super up. And then they just... go. And I am alone.

It always ends like this.

Robert always warned me against letting anyone in. That I should keep everyone at arm’s length, always. Even family. I wanted to think he was wrong, that he was just being overly pessimistic like usual. Except he wasn’t.

It always ends like this.

I’m so dumb. Why am I crying over losing a leveling partner? It’s just an MMO. But it still hurts. I just helped them deal with a breakup, of the ending of their first relationship, and I was getting myself hyped up for leveling my crafters so I could make ‘em a full level 70 tank set because we were going to get her to Dark Knight level 70 for her birthday next month, and possibly even getting her transferred into my Free Company and then I wake up from a nap to them telling me they’re unsubbing and selling their monitor.

I just... I can’t...

All of my motivation to do anything is gone now. I know she’s doing this to save up money so she can get her own place next year. That this is all just super bad timing... but that doesn’t make it less painful.

As a disabled person, it’s even harder to make friends. I already have the whole “being fat” thing going against me, so of course I’m more dependent on the bonds I form online. I get jealous of those who have those super-tight, best friend experiences, and I can’t even maintain those for longer than a couple months, I can’t even convert my own brother into one since he keeps everyone, even me, at arm’s length.

I’m always, always alone. I hate this. I was just thinking about this yesterday, that I wonder if I’m an introvert because I had been burned so many times that I just told myself I should be alone because it’s less painful that way. It’s certainly why I shut off any desire for romantic relationships, and perhaps it just bled over to even friendships too. I don’t want to be alone, but it’s how everything seems to end for me, and I forced myself into being okay with it.

Mother’s still here, doing laundry. I have to stop crying before she notices or she’ll start that finger-waggling again. She always does that. She tricks you into thinking she’s sympathetic towards your pain, but does a nasty bait-and-switch into victim blame mode, making you feel like you did something bad and you deserved what you got. She even did this when I had hernia surgery. This is why I had to hide all my failed relationships from her, because she’d just rub them in my face like everything else.

Alright doods. It's time to open (or really, trawl for) commissions!

Because disability assistance is nice but doesn't cover everything. I normally contribute about 80% to help with bills and food, but recently my stepfather has been dealing with complications from his diabetes (on top of just being old and in declining health). Unlike me, who has Medi-Cal and doesn't have to deal with copays or pay for medication, he still does (he has Kaiser + basic Medicare) and with him having to go to more doctor appointments than normal, I am more and more asked to either pick up his copays or pay for other things that said copay monies would have gone towards. It leaves me with less leftover monies for myself-- enough to still pay for my phone/Netflix/MMO subs but not much else. It would be something I can deal with but I have some upcoming expenses coming up that need to be taken care of (specifically renewing my State ID card and the layer-infinity domain name) and I would sleep easier knowing I have some backup funds in case I have even more unexpected stuff fall on my lap.

While I am always up for doing commissions, recent circumstances demand I pass the commission hat (or ramen bowl, since this is Gourmet Ramen, after all) around more fervently. To that end, I have put together a Google Form to make it easier for potential new clients!

https://goo.gl/forms/1NqLbsiEVA4t0smF3

(If you've commissioned from me before, you don't have to use the form, you can poke me on Twitter/Facebook/whatever as you've done before and we'll Do The Thing.)

If you are able to and interested, please consider commissioning me! If you can't, that's okay, though I would appreciate retweets and passing this along to interested parties.

finished getting the Shire Custodian (tank) armor in FFXIV, so new Hikaru painting!

You get a cookie it you fullview and look at all the detail work. It was the equivalent of grinding 47-50 in Northern Thanalan. Ow my right hand. XD

Holy crap new post in this here tumblr thing!!

/cough

Once in a blue (super)moon I actually do fan art. Super-derpy crossover fan art, even. All these dudes are voiced by the same actor (Yuri Lowenthal) and on top of that, their stories involve the moon as either the setting or as a major plot point. I won't rehash specifics because spoilers... but if you’re familiar with any of these games, you’ll know. :D

I’m really happy with how this came out. It was a piece I’d wanted to do for years, and evolved from some derpy headcanon musings about Alex and Cecil being total Moon Bros(tm) and what would happen if they hung out. It kinda ballooned to hilarious proportions from there, as you can see. 

Yes, I did spend an unusual amount of time painting in all that food, including chasing down the logo for Wild-duck Burger for the Persona 3 Protagonist/Minato/Makoto’s takeout. I could probably pull some narrative for all the food out of my butt, but then we’d be here all night.

So, uh, yeah. It’s a thing. I thought it was just a cute, albeit mildly creepy (in a uniquely Nintendo way, think of the left-field creeper moments in most Zelda games) fluff social app-thing.

Then I hit upon my biggest annoyance about it:

Miitomo has this disturbing obsession with flinging questions about crushes, dating and romance. More than your teenage girl magazine from the 90′s. Maybe it’s RNG being a jerk but they account for at least 1/4, if not 1/3 of the questions.

It’s bad enough Miitomo often forces me to revisit uncomfortable past events or makes me aware of how truly capital-D depressed I am, but goddamn it’s bent on weaseling anything about romantic attraction out of me. It’s like it assumes asexual/aromantic/celibate people do not exist. (Or people who have serious reservations about talking openly about these topics.) You would think for an app that originated in Japan, where asexuality and disinterest in relationships are not uncommon, it would not have so many questions of this nature.

I skipped them with a loud grumble at first but they would resurface, more prying and insistent than the last. Almost like nagware. Then I decided to start breaking them in protest, giving snarky non-answers and scolding the game for being annoying.

TFW you’re so fed up with whiny people, chronic complainers and people wearing their hearts on their sleeve that you want to buy a “Troll for a day” pass and tell them all to quit their whining, nobody fucking cares and calm their damn boobs. That you just want to disregard that you’re known as the “nice girl” and just stomp your frustrations away, because you’ve depleted your care-o-meter and you gotta vent somehow.

But... you don’t do it. You sit there and seethe and remember you really aren’t an asshole, you’re truly incapable of being mean, but you wish people would just get their shit together because being that way is fucking exhausting and not just for them, but for those who have to listen to it. You also resent how bitter and cold you’ve become because of years of having your own emotional needs glossed over, minimized and outright disregarded. You are acutely aware that this is easily attributed to being saddled with a narcissistic parent who gaslights the fuck out of you when you get slammed with the Sads, who tells you that kids are dealing with cancer and that your pain is not important enough to matter, so just deal with it in a way that doesn’t make others uncomfortable.

You long for the days when it was the easiest, best thing in the world to be nice, and hate that right now you’re hurting pretty badly, enough to entertain the idea of trolling other people in pain just to take the edge off your own. And you see no choice but to continue stuffing all your anger and irritable feels in a tiny box, never to see the light of day, so the rest of the world isn’t disturbed by your emotions.

That up there was my entry for the Wowhead Legion Art event. Muh human mage (Yoshial) with Ebonchill, the Frost Mage Artifact Weapon!

...it coulda been a lot better, really. And it’s not just the usual Noisy Inner Critic at work, it really could have gone better. For one thing, my bro’s warrior (Kiros) and my kitty were supposed to be in this too, and the composition was a lot different, but I was feeling pretty bad (which resulted in an open hernia repair surgery last month) so I had to, uh, expedite this. Still, it’s not TERRIBLE, the water effects in particular are pretty rad. :)

Slightly-related: my MacBook is dead as a result of derp, I was moving my table (foolishly without closing my lid first) and hit a bump and in trying to catch my really-full ice water cup I fumbled it further, causing some large glops of water to get on my exposed keyboard. I shut down my MacBook in a hurry and turned her upside down to let whatever got inside drain out, but it was too late. Now she will never boot up again.

It’s not a COMPLETE cluster because I dropbox everything (especially my art PSDs and such) and my Firefox cookies are in cloud synch, but... yeah. My cute white MacBook. :(

The current models are way too expensive to look at from a person on a disability budget, but I think I can just barely manage to get the iPad Pro that’s coming out later this month as a replacement machine, and just as well since that will have actual pressure levels which in turn will facilitate more art. And it looks like the drawing apps on iOS are better than the ones on my Galaxy Note 10.1 (Android), so that’s also a plus.

Among the many friends I have, there’s always a handful that are just... so high-strung and judgmental and thinking that the world’s made of douches that are out to oppress them for whatever reason.

And I just want to gently take them by the shoulders, almost as if to hug them, and talk them down off that half-ledge half-soapbox of theirs. “Shh. It’s okay. Not everyone is like that. Try to relax, okay?”

Admittedly I have somewhat selfish intentions. Yes, a large part of it is so they don’t get jacked up to the point of requiring blood pressure medications just to get through the day (because of overthinking everything), but... their noisemaking stresses ME out a lot, too! Because I live with the perpetually-unhappy narcissistic parental management, my compassion is already nearing deficit levels (also I have hypertension, which no doubt they had a hand in, and am on blood pressure pills as a result), so I can’t really afford to bog myself down with people on the internets who make it their Life Goal to be as miserable and victimized all the time.

“That’s not selfish, it’s self-care to not want to be stressed out,” you say. Which is true, but the anxiety-ridden part of me thinks it’s douchey to not want to deal with said Permanently-Unhappy People because they too have Real Problems and, like me, aren’t really in a place in their lives where they can afford/logistically obtain therapy. I feel like stepping away would be abandoning them to their fate and make me a bigger douche than the ones they complain about.

Probably this is a byproduct of my upbringing and current living situation. When you’re the de facto, makeshift “therapist” for your mom who dumps all her problems on you after fighting with her husband and said for the billionth time she’s going to divorce him... yeah, it kinda bleeds into how you handle people in general. And now it’s starting to blur the line between “I legitimately care about your problems and want to help” and “If I don’t help you, you’ll probably hate me and things will get worse.”

And it leads to ventposts like this where I started out all “man I wish some of my friends would climb down from their soapboxes-on-a-tightrope, they wear me out” and it spirals into “oh right, I only feel this terrible about it because of my mom screwing me up.”

Sometimes I remember I have a Tumblr.

My blood elf (Koyoshial) carrying Deeum’s goblin (Sarahtonim). Because being named Yoshi and having blue hair might give the impression that I’m a flying mount. :P