#hermit permit

Hmmmm. I'm really proud of it! Not sure yet if it's something I want to do a run of keychains of, though (does anyone want one?) or whether it'd be in bad taste to do that. Etsy examples were wildly not useful in helping determine what people think is okay, since some things there actively break the no-character-designs tenet or are just existing textures.

At any rate, whether I go ahead with this as keychain or no, I'm really excited about how it turned out. It's hilarious how many ways you can draw a sheet connecting two cylinders; this worked surprisingly well. And then, I've had to re-curate brushes and such for coloring in Krita since I'm consciously moving away from Clip Studio. (I avoid subscription models like the plague, and I don't trust that the next version of csPaint won't stop updating or prevent me from using brushes.) This turned out all right for being painted with new tools.

Writing fake-scribble is an interesting challenge. I tried two or three times to get what I have here. The diamond filigree is a reuse of the vectors I made for another piece, reshaped for the paper surface. (You'll notice that, while I'm very proud of it, it's probably not good filigree in the classical sense-- it lacks some of the form it should have. Still, super proud.) I actually got really good mileage out of a cloud texture for the parchment look. May try to drag out line-contrast on the 'permit' text, if I use it.

He’s here to help.

and this has viscerally displeased me for a few years now, but strongly so this past year – it feels like I woke up and god was like ‘you love eating bugs now. You’ll have to eat bugs every once in a while or you’ll start getting really sad and craving bugs.’ and i go, ‘but god, i HATE bugs,’ (confusedly salivating) and god sadly shakes its head, ‘everyone needs bugs to live, eti, go deal with this fact of life gracefully’, and I didn’t.

So much of my energies go into trying to present myself pleasingly to people and I hate it! I wish I cared about other stuff! I wish I weren’t a person – I wish I could have all my faculties (more, preferably) without the baggage of a self, I want to read books and go to classes and paint and program without ever thinking that there is a me doing it, a me that may be perceived and interacted with, and must be self-aware enough to guide itself through being perceived and interacted with. I don’t want to be self-aware. I want to be aware of everything but the self. I think I could sort of get to that point if I was a hermit for a long enough time and had the ability not to go crazy. If there are no people around me to remind me that there is a me, maybe the concept of the me would become vestigial. and I will be free

(This is only about ~30% of the reason I keep having the cabin fantasy, the rest is just ‘people increasingly feel like a scratchy shirt I don’t like wearing’ plus ‘I’m terrified of interpersonal conflict, and when it happens it feels so bad the good stuff that came with it doesn’t seem worth it’.)

I HAVE DONE IT