#creamthing

Always been enamored with Sam's poetry and little creations, especially Creamthing, Little Like Yourself, Little Softness, Birthday Sprinkles, and recently Baby Airplane. "Where Does Puppy Go at Night" lives rent-free in my head.

I've always found a kind of comfort in the soft surreal of Sam's work matched with the sort of pastel gore that's going on in a lot of stuff. In a lot of their work, but Creamthing especially, there's this pervasiveness of... like... visible suffering but also of resilience and gentleness in the face of that suffering? Creamthing is functionally unable to die, and most of the art regarding them is just... Creamthing running around gored, impaled, bisected, various states of incredible pain. But they keep moving forward and finding reprieve and beauty and there's just a gentleness there. A gentleness of Creamthing enduring and licking their wounds and moving forward in spite of it all. You rarely, if ever, see Creamthing fight back or face down the things hurting them (Labubu jousting art notwithstanding). Creamthing just... literally suffers the slings and arrows of this world and keeps on going.

The Little Softness poem has always just... spoken to me in that same way. "I MET THE WORLDS SHARP EDGES BREAD-SOFT, EXPECTING TO BE TORN FOR THE GREATER GOOD, BUT INSTEAD THE MEANNESS AND HARDNESS BECAME GENTLE UPON MEETING MY SURFACE. I STILL HURT, BUT I DID NOT DIE OR KILL OR DIE OR KILL OR DIE."

The concept of facing down the pain of the world and thinking it will break you and facing it anyway and instead you're just... stronger than it. Stronger than it all. And you are gentle in that moment. Gentle but unkillable. I think there's a deep yearning in humanity for that sort of duality. Undertale was successful for a reason. The whole determination thing. Not just literally holding conviction to keep moving ahead. Literally. Determination. The inability to be stopped. To face things greater than yourself with gentleness and mercy and simply not die.

I did an omurice piece in 2023. The yammering under that piece was mostly about Minecraft, but I think I was expressing something similar with it. I want to exist, unapologetic and weird with all my rough edges, and I want to face the word and its knives and simply be gentle enough, soft enough, to let them pass through me and continue. Not to live without suffering, as if that would even be possible, but to move ahead knowing I am strong enough to survive the suffering. And in many ways, I think I'm achieving that. I survived the worst possible year last year. I've done things this year I didn't think I was strong enough to do. The world is full of things that suck. But also full of things worth living for. So I may be kicking and screaming. Sometimes because change sucks and I'm a miserable creature that barely functions, yes. But sometimes it's because I won't go gentle into that good night. I refuse to face the life ahead of me as a bystander. My life. I'll participate in it whether everyone else likes it or not. Gentleness doesn't have to be passivity. In spite of everything, Creamthing continues onward. Creamthing doesn't just lie down and rot. So me neither. I want to refine my gentleness, and my strength. I don't want to be the sharpest. I want to be mashed potato. I want to endure being battered and remain soft and gentle and comforting for others. I hope that makes sense. Anyway, speedpaint time!