Just a little artsy guy

but then I realised that same challenge would be infinitely more funny with folks who have atypical or horror OCs

You were lied to (by someone who knew that if we knew these things we'd feel very differently), and you found out the truth, and the truth sucks. It's rarely fun to be lied to. You have to let yourself grieve that disillusionment and the expectations you had for the future, but eventually all griefs get small enough that you can carry them more easily.

Every time something like this happened I found that my ability to create was just in the garbage for a while, because my brain was hitting all the buttons at the same time and would NOT focus, but eventually the need to create and imagine was strong enough to come back in some new way. I couldn't and still can't look at the work I made before in the same way, but eventually I could see it for the love I brought to it at the time, and I do believe that no love is wasted, even if you feel differently about things or people later. It absolutely sucks and you have to let it suck, but you do eventually find a new way to navigate finding joy and creativity in your media diet (or friend group, like I said, I kind of had this happen in my real life).

i dont know if you care for it, but as someone who has been on fandom for over 17 years, and who has been following creators for almost as long. i believe the first experience i had of feeling truly disappointed by a content creator was all the way back i think 7 years or so ago with ryan haywood, an ex-member of the now defunct channel of Achievement Hunter, and following that, probably little less than a year or so later, it was cryotic. i will not rehash what those two did, but anyone who wants to can find pretty much everything about their situations with a cursory google search

after that i somewhat subconsciously drifted away from content based on internet figures for a while. i still watched SOME of them from time to time, but i dont think i ever got invested on content creators until qsmp1, where i specifically latched on to philza and wilbur

and well. you can imagine how that went

i say all this not to try and imply my opinion is more important or better, or anything like that. just so that there's context for the next thing im going to say:

do not let horrible people make you lose hope that good people are out there. dont let them kill your sense of joy and care, and your belief that those who you are watching are honest and good -flawed, yes, because no human being is without fault; but GOOD

it's hard, and it fucking sucks, and people break your heart when they break your trust, and even though i had already felt negatively about avid for weeks it still fucking broke my heart to see all this because i wanted them so. badly. to just be a person with good intentions making poor choices. and that grace and trust, as parasocial as it sounds, was absolutely shattered whit all that has been shared

but i refuse to let shitty people make me hate or stop caring for things that i love. and i refuse to let shitty people make me stop believing that people are good on face value

but at the same time we learn to not be naive. and im not someone who will go "innocent until proven guilty" when there's dozens of people telling me that someone has done something horrible -ESPECIALLY when people who have defended and cared for them on the past join those voices. i have a very easy time immediately cutting off emotionally from people that i decide arent worth my time, and maybe that isnt the healthiest thing, but it works for me, and im always ready and willing to do so with people who i follow from afar as an audience; and i know not many can do so as quickly or easily as i can -i was very lucky with my type of neurodivergency on that front

but please give yourself grace. even if just as an audience member, your trust and love was broken, and it's ok to feel wronged and need time to process it

thank you for putting in words what i have been unable to articulate for the last years haha

women are usually denied these attributes. we are seen as lacking the necessary resolve or competence or inner strength. or seen as shallow damsels in distress too often so that the aid and assistance does not feel earned. so that it’s never reinforced that we deserve people going out of their way for us after an ordeal.

Took a while to do this, but Mae's response to the question of what the characters are doing post Bannerfall got me to draw Mae and Scott sailing.

We love happy Mae Maezes here :)

Timelapse under the cut <3