Bubs Dubs & Babbles

Today's the 23rd (!!!?!?!?!?!!!) anniversary of when I first started Vargas which is an anniversary I constantly forget about, haha. This time Sunny did remind me though and since I was working on this anyway I figured pushing through today to finish it would work.

(old meme, for old characters from an old fic)

I know this post is for a very small audience here on Tumblr but some of my oldest friends I met on LiveJournal are still here, so I'm making it anyway just in case.

But there have been some changes at LJ recently that do not bode well at all. Rahaeli made a thread about it on bsky with some more worrying details. For a bit of background on this, LJ is surprisingly big in Russia. Like way more than on the western side, and it's been owned by a Russian company for a long time now (it wasn't always - there was a big controversy when LJ got sold to the Russians back in the day).

The Russian side of LJ dropped a very big change on Dec 29th without warning on their users, essentially making it so they'd have to register their ID or bank info with LJ to post or comment. Any posts from people outside of Russia, or without Cyrillic services turned on, are invisible and can't be interacted with by people inside Russia. It's nearly impossible to turn Cyrillic services on if you're not in Russia either, so there's a big wall now between both sets of users. Rahaeli speculates that this could mean the Russian company that owns LJ could be considering selling off or just shutting down the western side of LJ soon, thus why they're sectioning it off. There's been no mention of this on the western LJ news comms or anything which is also worrying.

Fandom's moved on from LJ now, but that doesn't mean that a large chunk of old fandom didn't take place there before, and if LJ does go down then tons of fic, fanart, meta, communities, kinkmemes, discussions, rp, goes down with it. Everything up in smoke! I think people underestimate sometimes just how much stuff went on there. LJ being dead is much different than LJ being gone... the thought of it really disappearing after all this time breaks my heart. I've spent so much of my life there, even after everyone else left. ;_;

Along with the Gaster keychain I've been considering, I'm thinking about making a Vargas pin... I did a whole page of loose sketches and even roughed out three of them, but I feel like I've been drawing like garbage lately and it's frustrating. ;_; And I don't know if this'll even make a good pin... well, this'll be a small test run, and I can always tweak it later. I don't know what the demand is for Vargas stuff is out there, haha. It's so niche...

Just a quick ask for some of your time and access to your brain:

This is a survey on slang and how people use language so it's accessible for and relates to everyone. Please consider sending it to any American friends you have, because I really need some of their feedback and it's hard to reach them from Europe!

Thank you for your time!

(Note: Tumblr does not allow me to link my survey provider, so you have to follow another link on Google Docs, apologies for the inconvenience!)

Inside a cramped, narrow hole, the two of us show each other our dreams. We can't be in that world; neither can we be in this world. We can't be in that world; neither can we be in this world. Dear God-the god of children, we are covered in scratches in the sandbox where you amused yourself. - [x]

Felt like doing something a bit intricate, haha. Nothing like the diaryfic (warning: very disturbing!) for bizarre imagery.

Personally I use AMS Computer Services for my site, I've used them for an incredibly long time and they've always been very steady and reliable. Cheap too at 4$ a month! AMS also does domain names for you for about 20$ a year. You can buy a domain name separately from your hosting if you want, although that always seemed kind of finicky to me...

There are also free options for site hosting too of course! Neocities is a big one, and for 5$ a month you can get a custom domain name for your Neocities site too if you want. Nekoweb is also an option if you're looking for a free hosting service! Hmm, Nekoweb doesn't have file type limitations... I should look into if it'd be a good place to host an Ukagaka's network updates.

I am selfish, I am broken, I am cruel I am all the things they might have said to you...

Ok, Me and @disposal-blueeee made this beautiful collaborative animatic with one of my favorite songs by The Crane Wives, Never Love an anchor, ahhhh, I could write paragraphs of how the lyrics of this song makes me remember vargas so much, but this is not the goal of this post.

Again, Thank you Sunny for participating with me in this, working with you and meeting you has been one of my best experiences as an artist, and I really admire you so much and adore your style, and seeing it combined with mine gives me a feeling that I can't even describe, waaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Of course, this animatic is inspired by scenes from Vargas, written by the talented @zarla-s, I can never thank you enough of how your story inspires me every day to create new pieces, waaaaaaaaaaaaaa, please update, jkjkjk, love you Here are the frames I worked on!