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.

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.

While digging up old source files for designs on my Merch store, I stumbled upon some old silliness I made for me and Arwyn.

The first pair of images were from back when I first created Ruby, inspired by how Arwyn changed tone when behaving normally around me, or discussing my insecurities about being femme and transgender. She and a few other friends of mine at the time were intensely protective of the soft pink bunny.

The second is fairly self explanatory, but for added context, it's a drawover of a scene in Sailor Moon. I made it for a print as a gift for her back in CFz 2018, which still lives on the side of her PC case to this day.

I hope everyone had a wonderful day, and if not, that it was calm and peaceful at least.

I figured I'd treat myself to something for myself, given I'd spent most of the day mostly by myself.

Thank you for your continued generosity and support. Love you all.

During a particularly emotional vent/distraction stream, I decided to tackle an idea I had lingering in mind as part of my process of self-care and healing.

As I discussed in an earlier post, I've come to the realization that my realsona, Chocolate (who I refer to Chocolate "Pupbun" for clarity), has acted as my fursona that's true to life, to the extent of offering little in the way of aspirational goals. Put simply, she's so close to how I really am that she doesn't provide me with much to strive for.

This came about from noticing that I'd lost sight of what my other fursonas - Chocolate, Ruby, and Soul - stood for and represented to me. I wanted to remind myself that they're still there for me, waiting for when I'm ready to follow their lead again. It may look rather melancholy, but the intent is actually quite hopeful. Acknowledging that I've not been well, but that I've not lost those aspects of myself despite missing them for a while, was quite cathartic.

I intend to follow it up with more positive scenes once I'm in a better place, mentally and emotionally, and I've already made great strides towards that.

Feeling adventurous, are we? Don't worry, the s̶̒͜ḯ̴̦ď̶ͅe̶͖͆ ̷̩͋e̷̙͂f̶̬͝f̴͕͝e̷̥̕č̸̪t̷̹̂s̷̫̉ are mostly temporary.

I made this to participate in Artconomy's ongoing art contest, and I've been planning intensely for it for a while. It genuinely took a bit of a life of its own from the concept to the execution phase, and grew well beyond what I'd initially intended to make.

And wow, I'm so very happy with how this turned out. It all started with the simple idea that if it was a drink, Soul Chocolate would absolutely be a spirit, and the more I researched the idea the more it grew and grew.

Since Soul is a bonded pair with Chocolate, it makes sense that they'd be a pair of drinks too, with the main drink acting as the warmup, and the chaser being what gets you there. When I then found a perfectly fitting drink called "Cocoa à Trois" I absolutely had to involve all three of my chocolate bunnies as part of the whole piece.

I wanted to base them off of real cocktail recipes to make them feel a little more genuine, but I then renamed them to make them a little more "mine," and to better fit the theme of the piece and of the contest this is for.

Also, pay no mind to the strange ingredient in Soul's drink. It's perfectly h̸̟̋a̸͖̕r̴̮̐m̴͔͝l̴͎̕è̶̗s̵̼̅s̷̮̓ - after all, isn't that just the most trustworthy face? - but also serves a little narrative purpose given Soul's whole thing.

Make sure to let me know if you try these two drinks together, and how they taste!

I am so fucking thrilled about this piece, I couldn't overstate just how much if I tried. This'll make for an excellent candidate for my art appraisals, possibly sometime soon.

(Bar shelf background is edited from Jorge Franganillo's 'Berlin: AM to PM' - CC BY 2.0)

This really, really sucked to have to make, but here we are.

I'm crossposting this everywhere both for visibility, and because I'm especially pleased with the art itself despite the heavy feelings it conveys. Pupbun dissociating, Chocolate taking charge, Ruby looking scared.. All the things at once made this very hard to make. I thought to add Soul looking worried about us but in the end I just couldn't do it.

I won't tell you what to do, but FA doesn't deserve our attention. It hasn't for a long time, but with Dragoneer being gone, their sheer unmitigated incompetence knows no bounds.

I don't know how I'll handle migrating off of FA, but at the bare minimum I'll be posting on there a lot less. A huge chunk of my work will immediately get me banned off of it now so, given the insane fuckwits out there who'll report the entirety of my gallery again on a stupid whim with zero recourse, attracting as little attention as possible will be my safest option anyway.

I'm doing this wholly with the expectation that I'm going to lose the entirety of my 19 year archive on that site at a moment's notice, but I simply can't afford to let my now single largest audience go so completely to waste, at least not before encouraging them to find me elsewhere.

As of today, I've been running my own crowdfunding site for 5 years! The Yeariversary was yesterday, but I can still celebrate.

Thinking back to when I first launched the Candy Shop, I remember very vividly struggling hard with expressing myself in ways I wanted to. I was terrified of scaring folks away with the things I wanted to make - kinky or otherwise - and well, now look at me.

I sadly haven't had the time nor presence of mind to focus my efforts like I did this time last year for Kinktober, but I've been prioritizing some important life stuff and making bigger plans with my art for when hopefully won't be long from now. I'll be back to business as usual as soon as I can manage, cause I do miss making as much art as I can muster for y'all, and not of any one genre either.

Given recent events with my FA suspension and cohost's closure, I've definitely been thinking a lot about our collective online presence lately. I'm really grateful that I'd divested myself from relying on any one platform by having this site going for so long, even if the continued upsets and frustrations still affect me.

I know I say this often in these kinds of celebratory posts, but it'll always bear repeating; thank you for believing in this crazy pipe dream of mine. I've had to claw my way up to here slowly over these past 5 years, and the fact that I've gotten as far as I have is not something I take for granted. I know I do things a fair bit differently to my peers, in ways that might not be all that popular, and I often lament scaring people away and stifling my own growth. However, if that were true, then those of you here genuinely believe in what I have to offer.

And that means the world to me.

Here's to another exciting year.

So I do this thing where I keep one big file for my quick and simple, cheap and cheery doodles and sketches that might not warrant their own entire project file. Every now and again I refresh the file with a new copy, and post all the pictures at once for your enjoyment.

I took my time with this latest one, but since the file reached 450MB and was literally slowing down Clip Studio I figured it was high time I made the batch post and start afresh. Here they are in no particular order, just grouped in a way that made the most sense to me.

Here's a handful of one-off drawings I made for Plush, Feef, and James. The first two were warmups, while the other was inspired by James being his usual self - as depicted - during one of my Discord hangouts. What started out as a bit of a silly joke actually led to me digging up some preg art I'd done that I honestly still really like and am genuinely proud of.

Can you name those tummies?

Last weekend I stumbled upon this adorable tweet while I was having an especially bad day, and decided I'd make some silly vent art to get it out of my system. It turned out cute enough, but as a point of advice in future; don't make self deprecating jokes when you're already feeling bad. People might just agree with you.

Fortunately the art didn't go to waste, as I was later inspired by a silly TikTok that my friend Melody shared with me. I reprised the little doodle in a different context, and I think I like it a lot better that way.

I still think that I'm a little bit stupid, though.

Next we have some assorted silliness and/or one-offs I made for myself or in the context of other conversations.

First we have a transparent template of myself being shown something worrying, taken from my Easter comic;

A redo of an old display pic I'd been using for nigh on 20 years, as part of my broader transition process;

An illustration for my friend Shivers' silly tweet asking how C++ would wear pants if it could;

And a cutesy, perfectly innocent little Soul Choco and the post that it was inspired by.

Games! I like them. I made some fanart and self-insert designs based on the adorable game Vividlope, and a little drawover using the demo of the upcoming castle building toy Tiny Glade. I'm especially pleased with how cutesy Ruby turned out in Vividlope's style.

I'd been meaning to do some drawover art using one of these building toys, but I was always reluctant cause it feels like my default style doesn't fit well within the rendered spaces. I think it looks alright, but it could've been better somehow.

Next, lots of Melody bunnies.

The first is based on a conversation between her and Robin, where she threatened to drink the Coconut Nair soap and Monster she'd shown off to us. It's genuinely one of the most unassumingly conflicting thing I've drawn, cause every time I look at it I love how adorable they both look... But that little bunny is soon bound for the emergency ward.

We also have some cutesy doodles of the bun in less compromising positions.

Here's a couple of sketches I made for my friend Cashmere, who I got to know recently.

A hug to comfort them after a moment of worry, and some fanart of the little tinsel plushie red panda they've been taking on a trip with them, named after the nickname that I coined for them.

And as a treat for looking through this whole post, a bonus Ruby pleasuring herself.

So for Easter, I had this idea in mind.

Now that I've pretty much opened the door to - shall we call them - erotic shenanigans involving my realsona, I figured it'd be fun to double and triple down with magical shenanigans too. In for a penny, in for a pound, right?

Add to this the fact that Easter and TDoV coincide perfectly this year, and after some friends drew my attention to it, it gave me the best possible gimmick to throw into the mix and complete this year's obligatory Easter idea.

It's remarkable to me just how hard I went from handling my realsona as "she's me for real, so keep things grounded and realistic," to starting my transition and then later switching so hard, that my head's still spinning from finishing this extremely fucking hot, horny, and frankly excessively self-indulgent ((good)) project.

Taking just a moment to gush a bit here, it's still pretty unreal how goddamn good it felt to draw myself this way. Heavy, oversized breasts (by 4-month tgirl standards, that is); massively distended, round, laden belly; not to mention the excessively fluffy bedhead I'm sporting in the first two pages. As much as I love the second page (I think that's my favourite), I can't help but smile a little at my cute, groggy face in the first page as I lazily regain my senses from a restless night's sleep.

I hope you enjoy this even half as much as I did and do.

PS: Scroll down past the main pages to see the bonus exports I've included, exclusively in this post, for patrons to enjoy.

Given the effort that went into every panel, having worked on them as standalone illustrations first and foremost, I couldn't very well let them get crunched down to fit into a comic format without saving them in their full glory.

As a patron, you get to enjoy these larger, original versions too. Thank you for your continued support.

So a few nights ago my friend Fiona mentioned one of my favourite classic games, Rez, and at that very instant I was taken back to my memories of its rather unique peripheral called the Rez Trance Vibrator.

It did exactly what you'd expect it to (CW: IRL panty shots).

Moments after indulging in that little rabbit hole (cough), this idea came to me (cough cough). The next day, I spent the afternoon making it. If I'm not mistaken, this marks the very first time my girls have interacted with each other in sexual ways. It was only fair that Soul Choco got let in on the fun as well - it makes perfect sense that it'd be there to enjoy the vibes (and likely help with them too).

And honestly... I'd say this was a perfect fit for the lot of us. I adore just how pretty we all are.

Here's a version without the extra shading and inverted CRT effect, in case you want to enjoy the scene unfiltered.

I'll admit to feeling like there's some of the anatomy that I might've done better and could go back and fix, but to have completed a coloured three-character piece in a single afternoon is no small feat and it does the job perfectly well as it is.

I hope you like it too.

A select few of you looking at this post might have been a little surprised by the difference from the versions I showed you, but that was all part of the ruse; you just weren't looking at it with the right eyes.

Here's another version I shared with some friends that didn't show Soul's presence, but there was no way I could leave it out. There's also a subtle change I made to one of my girls that I included in this piece from a new development that happened just today, and it's a little easier to spot in these versions.