Apologies for the Email spam earlier. I wasn't sure whether it would be wise to send another by making this post, but I started getting reports and questions from several people so I figured it best to get the word out and explain what happened.

TL;DR version: wasn't a big deal; nothing I could've avoided; it's fixed now.

My site runs on WordPress with a boatload of plugins cobbled together for the functionality I want to offer. One of those plugins handles my email notifications which, as I'm sure you've seen many times now, sometimes goes a little on the fritz. I've tried a few times to find a fix or a way to stop it from sending multiple copies of a single post update, and should have found one that works for now.

Unfortunately, today's situation was a lot more fraught. An addon for the plugin, which would normally handle deciding which email notification to send for each post, got mysteriously disabled without my knowledge. Therefore; rather than picking which one of the 5 corresponding notifications to send - it sent them all.

To make matters worse, when I then went to re-enable them, something had gotten broken in a recent update (possibly related). Because of this, for a couple of hours today it was impossible for you to disable your email subscriptions. This was obviously the worst possible time for it, since several people signed in specifically to turn off email notifications due to the sudden barrage.

I sent a support ticket and the response was instantaneous - turned out that the dev who maintains the plugin had pushed a fix for the update earlier today so it's all fine now, with zero input on my behalf.
In other words, I quite literally landed on the worst possible time to post that piece, and I might've been none the wiser had I done so a mere hour or two later.

In other, wholly unrelated news; you can now delete your account from your user profile page if you ever choose to do so.

Sorry for the trouble, and thank you for your patience and understanding.

So I'm smaller than I thought - or perhaps more accurately - than I've allowed myself to be. There. I said it.

A series of realisations, including and certainly not limited to how aggressively I still mask on a daily basis, and the possibility that I might be the "little" in my system, led me to explore the idea a little more thoroughly, especially given the effect it can - and has - had on my relationships since then.

While talking to my Mommy Garnet about it, I considered the idea that Rayna and Antoinette might be here at least partly to take on more responsibility from me, which led me to make this on stream a while back. It felt quite cathartic to do, but was only the first step in coming to terms with and accepting this about myself.

A while before any of this happened, my sister Rain and I talked about her own similar realizations, and very quickly turned the discussion around onto me. While I knew there was something there, I was still very much in denial, and tried my best not to think too much about it.

Needless to say, acknowledging it again took me back to that conversation with her, and I made her this as a token of gratitude... If perhaps a tad begrudging in tone.

This vent art started to feel extremely ham-fisted halfway through but I'd gotten too far into it to abandon it by that point so here it is and I hope you'll find some value in it too.

Been struggling with this feeling, and wishing I was a little less needful and demanding, as it would paradoxically mean that I'd get and have more as a result.

I don't think I've ever felt hatred like I did yesterday. Least of all directed at myself. I hope I never do again.

This is a retake of the second oldest surviving upload I ever posted. If you're wondering; yes, this is also coincidentally a Deltarune reference. Yes, it is relevant.

The past many months, things have very much Not Let Up for ya girl, and I've been feeling it big time.

For most of this year I've been gearing up to tackle bigger, more exciting projects and finally, properly kickstart this whole endeavour of mine that's kinda been puttering along at a leisurely pace. Unfortunately, what this has mostly achieved was getting me to draw less, while making me more anxious about it because I was falling behind.

I can't and won't get into specifics, but it's genuinely felt like there's been A Crisis or An Event of some form for me to be worrying about, anticipating, or planning ahead of in my life for the past year or so. Were it not for the people close to me, and the amount of support I benefit from every single day, I would not be here writing this post right now.

I don't mean to engage in hyperbole; this is simply the best way to make the point that I have a lot going for me, and yet I still feel like I'm constantly treading water.

I'm genuinely so fucking scared.

There's a lot of reasons why, but I'll speak about just one in the interests of openness and brevity; I want to share a story with you all that I know has permanently damaged me and my ability to commit to long term projects. Yes, I have talked to my therapist about this. No, I haven't seen her in a while, and I can't afford to.

Back in 2018, I went on hiatus. This was because of a job I secured as part of a massive cultural programme where I live, for which I got to produce an art exhibition as a collaboration between artists from here and from Japan. I got the job by recommendation through my then-girlfriend's sister, who later became a manager within the company, and its production was admittedly somewhat fraught. I had to put my personal work entirely on hold, following which I spent a good 4-5 months catching up on a backlog of rewards I owed my patrons. Even then, I wasn't confident that I'd get it done at all, never mind completed to the level of quality that I was hoping for.

That said; it was a huge success at the end of it all, and I even heard that the project was a lot less problematic than others that were being worked on at the same time.

One of the exhibits was a live painting performance by one of the Japanese artists. It was a beautiful show, that resulted in an even more beautiful painting. My dad and I collaborated with her to have it set up just to her liking, and she was grateful enough to gift the canvases to us, as they would be too expensive to ship back.

The day before, I was stood in front of them even as the ink was still drying, talking to my girlfriend's sister - and manager - about it. She said "if she leaves this behind, I have first dibs," which I nervously laughed off. In that moment, sat across the table to this wonderful artist, I was torn in half: immeasurable gratitude on one side, and inconceivable anxiety on the other.

The year of stress and six months of blood, sweat and tears I poured into what still remains my life's greatest creative achievement all came to fruition for that weekend, and left me with an amazing sense of pride and relief.

That lasted less than a week.

My girlfriend's sister came to know about the canvases, and she got so upset that she wouldn't talk to me for months afterwards, causing a rift in the family that made me feel afraid to spend time with them; something they did extremely regularly. She felt unappreciated for the damage control she'd apparently done behind the scenes with upper management, while the exhibition was still in production - especially since I neglected to mention her or her team when I gave the opening speech.

Most anything I've invested more than a couple of hours, across a week or two at most, has been hard to do, and then never been a victory that's lasted long for me. Something has always come up right afterwards that completely takes the wind out of my sails, and prematurely ends my revelry in what I'd achieved. My RSD and negativity bias makes it hard for me to see past that initial shock and disappointment, and by the time I've gotten past that hurt, the afterglow from my achievement has long since faded. This happened again quite recently.

This is a chronic issue I've dealt with for longer than I'd care to admit - the Final Boss of delayed gratification, as it were - and it's genuinely, immeasurably stunted my career path and progress with taking on more ambitious, and frankly, lucrative projects that have lived, gathering dust, in my notebooks and WIP folders for years and years and years.

I appreciate you all for your unending patience and belief in me, but I have to confess that the faith I have in myself that has carried me this far has started to slip rather drastically, in ways that I'm struggling to reconcile with, and work through on a daily basis. I worry about the sheer excess of support from people and connections I've sought out in order to feel like I can stay afloat enough to do my part and follow through; never mind keeping up with what people may expect of me in return.

I'm going to keep fighting as best I can. For right this moment, though, I'm very much at a low point that I'm desperate to look back on someday, hopefully soon, and feel grateful for having overcome.

Even if I genuinely can't yet see the path I'm going to take to get myself there.

Not a lot in this Doodle Pack, because they'll mostly feature in another couple of upcoming posts up!

This one features a bunny and a sylveon doodle with some new brushes that I've been using for a while now, a puppy called Deakia, and a cushy padded Niko (from OneShot), in both slight and extra baby modes.

But I know there's always a way forward.

I just have to figure out how to convince myself to take it.

I keep finding myself mired in this way. It hurts more acutely the harder I want to create.

Every time I learn and grow, it feels as if I meet myself with the stubbornness and apprehension to match.

Still, I'm determined to see this through. I'm not yet sure how, but I don't see this working out any other way.

I'm aware of the irony of making art to express an inability to make art, but this is a form of therapy that's free and available to me; so I'm going to continue using it.

My little baby treasure, Fae, had a surprising experience at BFC 2024.

If you know much of anything about her (and if you've been here a while, you should), you'll know that she's an especially small, precious little darling. However, she somehow discovered that she could - and did - get even littler while having the space to explore those feelings more intently at the con.

She asked me to illustrate this a little while after then, which we've already seen some of the effects of in another similarly themed piece for my friend Malachyte.

So I did the logical thing and made her even littler.

Hi friends and supporters.

First of all, I'd like to put out feelers to test a new idea: Yearly Subscriptions! Quick and easy rundown: pay upfront for a year's subscription at the tier you'd like, and get a discount off of it. I've not put any time into sussing out exact numbers, but if you're at all interested, either leave a comment below or contact me via my socials.

At the same time, I wanted to get a quick word out that I have and will be readjusting the tier rewards on my site to better reflect what I can - and have been able to - actually offer in return for your patronage.

The biggest changes to note are that I've dialled back commission discount rates (from 0%, 5%, 12%, 20% to 0%, 3%, 7%, 15%), effective from when I next reopen my queue, and will be giving early access to finished commission work to Tier 2+ patrons, rather than all patrons.

Another rework that'll be made in due time will be to the "YCH slot" reward since my commission queue has already been a struggle to maintain (and which I am working on fixing), but I'm hoping to shift focus off of art made to order, and onto ongoing work that more people can enjoy.

As I gear up towards doing regular, long-form story oriented and comic work again, I similarly intend to offer early access of some kind to it to Tier 2+ patrons. This may change, but the lists of rewards should already reflect this for the sake of clarity.

I know the exclusion of the base tier may disappoint people, but I've had to look very seriously at how sustainable my workflow is, and being entirely blunt, it isn't. As much as I'd love to share my work without such caveats, I need to work within the system and make it worthwhile for me if it's ever going to happen.

Thank you for understanding.

This is a journal; This is a confession; This is exasperation; This is desperation; This is a cry for help; This is catharsis; This is therapy; This is praxis.

Is this melodramatic? It probably is, but I don't care.

Whatever it is, I'm simply fed up with the state of things surrounding my art: the world around me, the community it's a part of, my work ethic, headspace, disabilities, and mental illness. I decided to make something about it on the off chance that saying the things inside my head out loud might help to dislodge something that's been severely jamming up the works.

I'm sorry that I'm like this, and I'd prefer it if I wasn't; but I likewise wish things could have been better for me and my art in a thousand little ways that have all added up over the years of me doing this.

Consider this a plea for anyone who can help in any way, to do so - while acknowledging at the same time that I am part of "anyone," and that I've been trying my hardest to do so, too. I need reliable, consistent work, I need patrons, and I need reassurance that people will care about the things I truly want to make so that I'll be okay.

I obviously understand very well that I am ultimately the one most responsible for myself, and while acknowledging my own limits, I want to do better. Ideally, the best that I can.

I just need more help, because ultimately; I'm still only one bun.

Here's the whole parade!

In no particular order, grouped by flag, we have; Tiff, DC, Chase, Bliss, Indigo, Joe, Winter, Kaycee, Spid, Kenny, Sophie, Halley, Juniper, Artyc, and Musa.

A couple of extras for me and mine; including my adorable, blushy baby Fae flying the flag I picked for her.