J.M. Sonder

JoJo Drawing Challenge (2025)

Once a year, ever since turned sixteen, I've tested how far I've come as an artist by drawing Jotaro Kujo to the best of my current ability.

As I'm drawing this year's, I've decided to post the previous one in 2025. I am the type of person to do everything in a single session. Either it's finished within a few hours or it won't be finished at all! After this one in particular, however, I will be taking my time! I still remember the mental and physical exhaustion I felt after finishing.

DELTARUNE - Chapter 1 Replay: Thoughts & Discussion

Nowadays, Chapter 1 often gets thrown aside as "the least good" chapter. I think there's merit to that objectively, but nothing can ever top how special it felt to me when I played Deltarune back when it was released as a "Survey Program" seven years ago. I was the exact age I needed to be when this chapter released, and that will always be special to me. Every new chapter that comes, I will return to that headspace I was in.

In retrospect, while narratively every archetype and trope in Chapter 1 serves as the basis for what would be played with in later chapters, I like to use this framework to really think about what that basis is. With every new chapter centering around a medium of art and entertainment, I think it's really interesting that they begin with board games as the first chapter. Not only that, but I like to consider the idea that TTRPGs like Dungeons & Dragons as part of the inspiration for this world. It sets up the party as classes and puts them in scenarios fitting of a campaign, all with a cool board game aesthetic that really makes it its own. I think its very smart to start with this instead of video games. The meta narrative of this game as a commentary of entertainment and media as a way to connect with others really should start with one of the longest standing versions of those in human history: chess, cards, checkers, and just board games in general. Before you can start to break down the narrative into a commentary on video games or media as we know it, it was smart to frame it with what has been around for as long as we have. DnD is the most modern parallel that would later become the RPG in increasingly elaborate computer games, and that serves as the more palatable anchor that ties Deltarune into a commentary on its genre. But then Chapter 5 goes even further back with stories and the written literature that would inspire DnD and then Wizardry and then Dragon Quest and then Mother and then Deltarune. I think it's worth mentioning how old as dirt a game like chess is, and how playing cards historically were also used equally as a basis for stories through the major and minor suits like in the tarot. That, in tandem with the games being played, they had made stories out of the cards to give them the role that they play in whatever game they chose to play. Sometimes the joker card is a throwaway card. Other times it's the most powerful card in the game. And I like to think that is what we should be getting at in terms of the larger discussion of Deltarune in relation to its commentary on the role games play in our lives. Because it really does dig deep.