#nekodu

So I know I'd promised the 600 follower celebration would be the Eidolon open collab. I haven't forgotten. I did draw it and I had it ready to post, but I ended up being really dissatisfied with the drawing, and I just couldn't bring myself to post something I wasn't proud of, especially for my first open collab. I ended up drawing this on a whim, and it's absolutely one of my favourite drawings I've made this year, and I'm also in the middle of my exams right now, so I didn't have much time anyway to completely redraw the open collab from scratch. But it will be coming, let me make that clear! It will probably just take a bit longer. I'm really sorry I couldn't fully keep my promise, I need to work on being less ambitious with my art 😭

Woah! I finally got off my ass and drew the 500 celebration art. Fyi I hit 500 around New Year's- at the time of writing this, I'm at 535, so this has been way overdue. The reason why it took me so long to draw something is because I just couldn't come up with a good idea. I think I'm still way too attached to the Café AU I drew for 400 (evidenced by me drawing it for Valentine's lmao), and also I just didn't have any other ideas. I've since come up with a few, but, for some reason, I couldn't get myself to draw any of them. Until I randomly came up with the idea of my OCs floating in the sky holding balloons, which then turned into Nekodu floating in the sky holding OC shaped balloons lmao.

I don't know. It is extremely goofy and stupid but I kinda like it. We're flying high and going to new places, or something.

It sort of fits because I've been thinking for a while about what I want to do next on this blog. I promised semi-regular updates for the Masterpost, which I haven't done in a while, for a few different reasons. The first is that I don't enjoy posting the update announcements and tagging people... I know they technically asked to be tagged but that was a loooong time ago and most of them probably feel different now. Either way, the biggest reason is that I think a better way of posting new lore is to make it its own new post instead of attaching it to a several months old incredibly long encyclopedia. I have been coming up with some new lore, slowly because I want to give it a lot of thought, I've also been trying to work on the antagonists (the cult), which is definitely what's going to take me the longest. All of this to say, most new lore is going to be presented in its own post, and while the Masterpost will definitely still be getting updates (heck I've already updated it a handful of times to replace ref sheets), I probably won't do the update logs anymore unless it's something really big. And if I do, I'll be removing the tag list since it only really causes me anxiety and probably bothers others. Blog notifications do exist, and they do the trick well.

I also want to keep developing Legends of the Shore, a.k.a. my Pokémon story. Have you ever heard that piece of advice about how, if you've never made a comic before, you shouldn't start with your main passion project and should instead try making a smaller comic first to practice? Yeah, I decided a while ago that Legends of the Shore might just become that practice comic. I still need to create a lot of characters, fakemon and region worldbuilding, but that's to be expected as LOTS is much newer than my main story. I do expect it will be a bit easier to work on, since it doesn't have a fully original setting and is attached to an already established and well-developed universe (Pokémon). Unlike [I haven't shared the title yet fuck] where everything needs to be built up from scratch.

Anyway, that's enough yapping. Let me talk a bit about how extremely insane it is that I have made it to 500 followers. I know I say this every time I hit a new milestone but I don't know, it still feels wild that this little Tumblr blog I created on pretty much a whim is actually growing and becoming something special and tangible. You know, a while ago I posted my reply to an ask talking about how the anon's friend had misspelled my username when talking to them. I didn't mention it in my reply but I wish I did, because when I got that ask, the first thought that crossed my mind was "wow, people talk about me without me being involved in the conversation? I'm a real entity to people and someone has mentioned me in conversation?" I don't really mind if they got my username wrong (I know it's kinda weird lol). What stuck with me is that they mentioned me in the first place. To a friend! How wild and amazing is that? It made me really happy.

Also, it's the fact that I'm now technically halfway there to 1k that gets me... but I don't dare dream of that number yet.

Anyway, if you're one of these 500 wonderful people, I am offering you one of these balloons. Pick your favourite. I was going to add Bee and Camilo balloons too, but I liked the sillhouette better without them. Too many balloons... my bad. But hey, you can still get a Bee or Camilo balloon if you want.