God what a miserable year.

The Frontloaded Rant

Holy shit is everything awful and quite frankly I spent an uncomfortable amount of time in 2025 wishing I wasn't alive. What an incredibly wonderful time to be alive. To think it couldn't get any worse than 2022 or 2024 and yet here we are.

Like where do I even start when talking about shit in 2025. My home country elected the second coming of Harper to jubilation and pretended everything was great. I moved back in with family and that's...been sort of okay but at the same time it really hasn't. I don't miss being alone but I do miss having some degree of autonomy because I now live in car-dependent hell again.

Also my second laptop died, RIP ASUS of 8 years, I miss having you as my dedicated art PC. Hopefully I'll be able to resuscitate you and run a Linux OS on your or smth. I'm also upset my external HDD died as well, now I'm down to just my main PC's 2nd Drive for backing up all my art for the time being. Please don't die on me.

I also miss not having an income, and I certainly miss not being in university. I knew I was in trouble the moment I started my admission process last year and every day I have spent doing this degree has given me a new reason to hate myself and everything around me. I hate the program, I've clashed with so many professors, and I thoroughly despise most of my classmates, especially those that have outsourced all of their thoughts to GenAI slop machines and somehow look at me like I'm the stupid one. God I love being reminded that I'm an outsider. I hate this arrangement, and I hate that I don't have any better options.

And everything sucks doesn't it? AI Slop everywhere all the time. Everyone is more antisocial than ever. The internet is getting censored at a rapid rate. Everything is more expensive than ever. A new domino falls in place for the impending climate catastrophe every day. MULTIPLE genocides are happening around the world with hardly a finger lifted, and the people that can actually enact meaningful change are too busy distracted or worried about ensuring they can make it to their next treat.

I swear I'm going fucking insane. I love living in the periphery again and realizing how bleak everything is. My current 5-year plan is hoping a disease or accident kills me by 2030 so I don't have to live in the fascist apocalypse that we're all sleepwalking into. Given EVEYRTHING happening, I really don't feel like centering myself in this journal, but this rant is just a preface to a completely different topic, so let's shift into that.

Numbers and Stuff


By my count I uploaded something close to 280 pieces of art to FA this year, including alts and random nonsense. I've had very little going for me in life over the last year so art became very much the only thing I COULD do, and just went at it even harder than ever. I don't feel like I've improved much, but at the very least I've gotten to a point where I can make things constantly. Quality is more hit-and-miss, in general I don't hate what I create, but making so much art has paradoxically made it harder for me to say there's a ton of standouts or highlights. Strange, isn't it?

Best Performing Submissions of 2025
1. [Trade] Warm Welcome (by Atherol) : 27 Faves
2= Livshorn Page (original sketches by Atherol) : 24 Faves
2= Mean Baddie : 24 faves
4= Mega Mammary Mishaps : 23 faves
4= Swimsuit Eclair : 23 faves
4= Beach Cats (Nude) (by GalaxiMonkey) : 23 faves
4= Bunny Ricka Redraw : 23 faves
8= Swimsuit Eclair (but no swimsuit) : 22 faves
8= Samira Pinup : 22 faves
10= Mille Facesitting : 21 faves
10= Back Alley Backdooring : 21 faves
10= Desiree (original sketch by Atherol) : 21 faves

Numbers kinda don't mean much to me anymore but it's nice to have a consistent category with every yearly entry so why not keep at it.

The top favourited submission for this year is the lowest scorer in the six years I've been doing these, oddly enough. Though the average across the top performers is actually close quite high, almost 2023 levels but without the (absurd and aberrative) peaks of that year. But what's more interesting to me is that much of it was my own art this year, due to my inability to get anywhere near the amount of commissions I had gotten in previous years. I do miss having a job.

I do wonder what this year would look like, given that I'm not really following Atherol nearly as close anymore. Don't have the means to support them and much of the sketches they did for me were either the rare openings of stream requests or because they saw me post characters in their server. But given that I'm not a member of either anymore (this is very much a me thing and not anyone else's fault, but I cannot stand a good majority of their mutuals and server members), I doubt there will be any further art from them in the near future.

There will always be art from Gala though. They are my OG and I will be dead in the ground before they stop receiving money and orders from me. Year 8 of being their strongest solider baybee.

Also on the note of numbers, it's pretty interesting to gauge them here because it's so much more contained. Posts on Bluesky tend to achieve greater numbers, but data is harder to track because sometime a post gets retweeted by a bigger artist and the next thing you know the numbers are absurd. That's not really what I look for with number reviews, but I am appreciative of the surprises when they happen, and in general I'm pretty grateful I've established a small and reliable audience on a second platform.

I still much prefer FA, I hate browsing through art on a social media timeline. I do detest what the medium for posting art has become, I miss dedicated galleries and that's why I'll always keep a foothold here.

OCs made this year

This is pretty relevant to me, why not make it a new category, huh.

Everything may suck around me and even my ability to commission art has scaled back significantly, but in addition to making art at a steady chip, I have once again been making tons of characters, for various character creation projects (two more countries chalked up this year) and just general satiation of my endless desire for more hotties. God has cursed me for my hubris and my work is never enough.

So what cool characters have I made this year? Surprisingly it was a very mild start to the year, I only made 7 in total during the first half of the year (Makoto, Saglam, Emek, Roksana, Kare, Akhzol and Jeanine). And then I just kinda lost control and the plot again and before you know it: Boom, another 50 made and now it's at 256 characters in total. Oops.

My power for creating characters is both a blessing, and a curse. Especially since I can't just make a design for sale. They gotta be a full character for my use. Maybe I'll change that this year. That's a New Year's Resolution worth making, maybe.

Anyway, cool characters in no order:

Saglam: Finally an Aggron with a more balanced body shape (as if the exaggerated hourglass shape is "balanced"). Still, she's a hella good looking baddie and I'm pretty delighted with her, especially as Asmin's self-appointed friend. Did you know Aggron is my favourite Pokemon, she's my 5th Aggron now lmao.
Emek & Roksana: Oh these two troublemakers brutalized by the lives they had to lead. Incredible duo of characters, very happy I made them and proved that I still love making felines. Emek I need you to lead the communist revolution soon, bro.
Jeanine: It's still hilarious that everyone in a friend group started talking about needing Milotic OCs and I'm still the only one that's made one. She's become a bit of a favourite among a few followers on bsky, and I can't blame them, she's a beaut and her being a good girl into baddies is very fun to play around with.
Marliepard: Technically a species alt but boy did I make a lot of lore to justify it too, and boy has she proven popular with people that have seen her. Marleine continues to ascend her way into becoming a main character, she might be my mascot at this point. Thank you, spunky older woman.
Livshorn: Don't expect much of her in the future because antlers are a pain to draw and people are weird about her. But it was very fun to feel the urge for a big character and for her to turn out so splendidly. Really did not expect that initial burst of popularity she got, but now I'm just kinda happy to have her recede into the background for a while.
Tanja: F I S H ! ! ! Look she's just very pretty and a very cool unorthodox choice of species, the Norway character project was really fun for how it made me focus on Water and Ice type Pokemon.
Niloufar: This year was really the year Liepard became a top 5 Pokemon for me, thank you Marliepard. Niloufar was the newest addition to the Liepard love, and I just love having a more intense nerd character that actually believes in her crafts, herself and in putting effort into things in these fucked times. Yeah she might be a reflection of my jaded outlook at this point, just way more talented than I am.
Mille: Oh boy, the standout from that Norwegian project, Mille dominated my art for around a whole month, all from a very spontaneous decision to make a Frosmoth with some inspiration from Melony. I knew I was onto something special when I drew their ref sheet and absolutely loved how they came out. Everything just fell into place after that. Character of the year for me.
Angela: So June has a hot mom now. And her siblings are also full-on characters. June quietly had a big year in 2025, because her stupid and unbridled joy is something I really needed. Also did you know her mom is hot? I feel like June is rapidly approaching my location with a loaded gun every time I say that. But yeah, Angela is hot. I dunno what more needs to be said.
Ehre: So at some point I started phasing out some old characters from the first character creation project (Switzlerand from last year) and Ehre was one of the replacements, and I honestly could not ask for a better one. Honestly they were meant to go in a different direction but once I irrevocably tied them to the Sonic CD soundtrack the creative choices going forward all became defined by it. In my defense, that album has quite possibly shot up to being my second favourite video game soundtrack ever, and I need Ehre's unbridled hope for reaching the other side of the rainbow. Tut-tut, Ehrenkrieger.
Samira: Goddamn I did not expect this woman to become as much of a favourite as she has, especially with others. The masses yearned for a baddie, as the two pieces that exist of her right now were two of my best received works of 2025 on both platforms. Mean Baddie has a favourite to view ratio of 1:3, which is incredibly high compared to the average. Blows my mind, but there will definitely be more of her going forward.
Minerva: Huge ass huge-assed Rayquaza lady I need say no more.
Oh there is one more character made at the very end of the year that has become a big deal and you'll see her soon enough (at the time of writing this, she might already be up when you find this journal. It'll be very obvious who she is.

Established characters that had a big year

Asmin started off pretty strong and definitely cemented their position as a main character. They even had three stories written about them, something I really don't do anymore. I can just get inside their boots and their lack of speech represents a fun writing challenge. I love this strange, lonely and repressed tattoo artist. They may not be for everyone but they are for me and that is more than enough.
Fiona has become a go-to character for mighty needs. Cow women really do hit differently, because when I start thinking about her, she really does stick around for a while.
Nadifa gained some prominence too, as it's fun to have a cute and cheerful chubby gal, plus her antics and tendency to sparkle are just a ton of fun.
Marleine and Nicolas continued to be favourites to draw and favourites among friends. Spunky older woman and pretty pink prick, the true two genders.
June had a breakout year and Galina got a resurgence too. Both were mostly down to one dedicated friend of mine, so thank you for that, homie. I will continue to make them as unhinged as possible for ya.
The two Gengar gals, Ursula and Ofelia, also continue to get some love. Ursula has stayed a favourite of mine and a friend's love for Ofelia has helped me warm up to her too, there's something very delightful and fun about her swept bangs.


Some other personal favourite pieces, with raw link dumps:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/62847458/ EHRE CD RAAAAAAHHHH I still love how this one came out for the simple idea and how it all came together conceptually. I dither about making Metall Ehre an established character as it doesn't fit in with my setting, but I might just bite the bullet and make it a thing at some point.
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/62300383/ : Iris is such a cute character and I love Leah Dou's music, it fits her perfectly.
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/61933647/ : Nicolas I hate you so fucking much
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/61933591/ : I will continue to make fun of you for your taste in music but you can have this one, June.
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/61933566/ I'm still sad I had to tap out of Artfight early but man did this recieved piece save my summer semester and that isn't an exaggeration. It's still absolutely incredible to look at too.
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/61933571/ nerdiereindeer has got to be one my biggest inspirations as an artist as of lately, getting the chance to commission them this year was an honour, and they delivered a brilliant piece of my beloved Galina

I dunno if you want to find other art my gallery is still there and there's a lot to look at. Moving on.

Some other more personal/abstract accomplishments that can't be easily measured but mean a lot to me

I made a cool friend this year in the form of @@prefirescatter, who has become Galina and June's aforementioned #1 fan, and is just genuinely one of the nicest and most talkative friends I've had in my time on the internet. Appreciate his antics, his characters and his many ideas. Godspeed you goofy-ass gay. o7
So one goal I set out with at the start of the year was to make more art with other people's characters, because my friends have amazing OCs too and I want to give some love to them. And given that I made 40 pieces with other people's characters, or close to 1 every 1.2 weeks, I'd say I did a decent job on that. Getting art gifts always means a lot to me, so being able to pass it on to others has been hugely rewarding.
It's also been really fun this year to make characters and have people get really excited about it, not just for the characters but for my design choices and sensibilities. There's a warm and fuzzy feeling from being told how it's wild that I can create such great characters (or how I seem to be able to pull old ones out of a hat). And given that I'm already way too hard on myself on everything, this is one thing I'll exempt myself from and just hype myself up. I'm so good at character design.
It's also really interesting to hear that I'm an inspiration to others in certain ways, especially with worldbuilding that I mostly share with friends, but it's really reassuring to be told that I'm an inspiration for creating characters or for inspiring certain developments. One friend even said they had started thinking more about character origins because I play around a lot with origin countries for my own characters. That meant a lot to me as a geography geek who was really unsure about introducing that element to my roster.



Plans for 2026
I don't expect things to get any easier this year. Things will likely continue to suck super hard. But I'm going to keep drawing because what else can I really do amidst it all. I'm not in a position where I can make a difference from where I am in the world.
But I'm still gonna draw and I'm certainly still going to make a ton of new characters. Before I do that, I'm gonna do some data analysis of my cast because I love being a stats geek. I'm also hoping to create a character survey so I can see which OCs of mine are fan favourites or well liked amongst my friends and followers? Will the data dictate who and what I draw? Not really, I just really want to know and my stuff is so scattered that it's hard to gauge people's opinions properly.
Speaking of organizing, I plan on doing a little bit of that here as well. I've already done a bit of folder reordering in my gallery, and I plan on adjusting my upload intervals to weekly instead of every two weeks, just to keep batch sizes down a bit.
What I really want to do is to get to know some other artists, and maybe find some servers where I don't turn into a silent misanthrope about other server members. Having some artist friends would be quite useful for pointers and help whenever I get stuck on a piece or just want to draw with someone. I don't really enjoy gaming anymore so being able to draw with others would be one way to socialize online.
I also want to get into physical crafts this year. Specifically, I want to learn how to make plushes. I don't expect to magically become good at it in the span of a year while having other obligations, but if I do create anything of interest, I will be sure to share it with everyone. And who knows, maybe down the line I'll be able to create plushes of other people's OCs as fun little gifts. That's the real dream.
I still don't have any really desire to monetize my art (I HATE MONETIZING HOBBIES I HATE IT SO MUCH) but I would really like to get into doing custom designs for others. Maybe I'll do themed adopts as well, but that's a different story.
Frankly my goal is to just make it through another year, so we'll see how this all goes.

As always, here's to another goddamn new year.

Hi y'all, been a while since I posted one of these.


So long story short, lent about $900CDN to my dad when he went on vacation a few months ago, since I had it in cash at the time and Canadian money works better in international exchange than the local currency.

This was under the agreement that he'd pay me back, and he definitely hasn't. Waited until after the vacay to ask about it and his general response is "why do you need the money". Bro, it's MY money.

I love being a dependent again.

So I'm basically not getting that money back. If you'd like to help me recuperate some of the lost money, why not buy some characters off of me? I ain't using these ones for much.

https://drive.google.com/drive/fold.....m4?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/drive/fold.....m4?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/drive/fold.....m4?usp=sharing

-prices are in USD
-willing to haggle
-spreading the word helps
-comment or DM me if interested in any characters

I really need to reiterate that this is NOT urgent. While I bemoan being a dependent, my living costs are covered as long as I'm still living with family. This is mostly just to recuperate money for online purchasing, such as for commissions and music purchases.

this is like the 5th year of year-in-review journals. That's a fun milestone, I think. Does anyone even read these

I don't exactly have a huge amount of enthusiasm for this installment but that's mostly because I'm not excited for current year and a lot of what happened outside of this account in 2024 has led to what will happen this year. Which is a crying shame, because 2024 in the narrow focus of my own art and OCs was actually a really good year. But I'll get to that.

I also finally crossed the threshold into 500 followers this year, but that hardly feels like an accomplishment after 10 years with a number of years of posting stuff. If anything it just means that the numbers are unreliable to the percentage of follower activity.

Anyway, I don't want to drown in my own negativity (yet), so time to do the fun part that is looking at numbers


Top 10 Submissions by Favourites:

1. Beachside Brat (by GalacticGoodie) = 29 faves
2. Pixen Posteriors (by GalaxiMonkey) = 24 faves
3= Licorice Cake (by Atherol) = 23 faves
3= Soft Lady (by Atherol) = 23 faves
5. Quynh Butt (by Atherol, Gift) = 22 faves
6. Twerking On The Nerd (by GalacticGoodie) = 20 faves
7= Airing It Out (by GalaxiMonkey = 17 faves
7= Sundress Heidi (by me) = 17 faves
9= Pixen Posteriors (Plugged) (by GalaxiMonkey) = 16 faves
9= Infatuated with Penis (by Atherol) = 16 faves
9= Licorice Cake (Creamed) (by Atherol) = 16 faves

Usually I round it to a factor of 5 but with the distrubution of faves this year, there was no way I'd get it rounded down without including way too many submissions.

This is also the lowest score for a top submission of the year since I started these reviews, but the outlier factor versus the second favourite has shrunk back to 2020/21 levels. Additionally, it was also the lowest score for top 10 overall.

Also immensely funny to me that the most favourited submission features Irina, since she has really split opinions amongst friends. Controversy wins, despite not actually be affected by it.

I didn't expect anything to top the Isabela piece from last year, that will probably be crown jewel of this account and deservedly so.

Also I'll be darned, the only art of mine that made the cut was of Heidi. Weirdly enough, it was the first art posted of her. She peaked at the very start. o7

Artist's Choice

Giving some art of 2024 one more time in the spotlight:

- All Inclusive : One of my more interesting pieces in terms of style deviation and a cohesive piece, despite it being a parody of a different piece of it. I still very much adore it as one of my favourite pieces of 2024. Someone save Marleine from the goose.
- Skipping Along The Seas (by GalaxiMonkey) Gala's art has gotten so very vibrant in its choice of colours over the last year and it really makes the art pop out more. Finally getting some art of Natalie's favourite sport was also just really nice on a personal level.
- Get Down Make Love I kinda realize the title doesn't really work from the POV if the first person perspective has already gotten down? I have kind of squandered these two this year because too much of the attention they got when they popped up left me uncomfortable and I just haven't been able to shake it off. Having characters is hard.
- Laugh Tracks ARF ARF. As far as album redraws and music themed pieces go, this was probably the best one of the year. Certainly it was to me, I might have to drag it back out as a profile picture or something.
- Sassy /url] : One of my favourite pieces received in my first ever ArtFight. Hopefully I'll have the time to partake in it again this summer, forces permitting. What a smug fuck of a boy, destroy him.
- [url=https://www.furaffinity.net/view/57627280/] Verdammt Fluffige : Heidi talking people's ears off during sex is such a funny bit of characterization, and her and Tor make such a good pair.
- Around The World : Look it's scuffed but I still love it. Can't believe Marleine only debuted this year, it really has been a long year.
- I'm looking forward to joining you finally : every day i get a little closer to being comfortable with the idea of-
- Quynh's Valentine Proposal : Yeah 2024 was technically the year of Quynh's debut as well (holy fuck it's been a long year), and he has such a way with words. Super fun character, only reason he's been neglected is I just haven't drawn much of my boys over the year compared to the ladies.
- Give Em The Strap There's been a lot of FxF stuff over the last while and I'm still not sure how I feel about it (I just have a lot of women in my roster). This was the first one of the year and it was still one of the best imo, those three Serps are great and Isabela remains Queen.
- Daylilly This piece is just a little more important to me this year because I got to actually see Movements in concert before leaving the city in 2024 and I'm really grateful for the experience. For a brief moment, I was happy. And then I went home and saw cops beat up a homeless guy and it was right back to hating life.

Actually let me just talk about that last part a bit because it's going to unfortunately detail why I'm not looking forward to 2025.

The Rant portion

I don't talk much about my life on here because FA is, first and foremost, my repository for posting art and OC material. It's one of the few sites I have some kind of presence on, and is pretty much the only one that has a functional gallery system. (though shoutout to Toyhouse for also giving me a good archive).

But 2024 was a fucking terrible year for me. I basically stopped getting work in May and spent a good portion of my summer back on the job market trying to find stuff, only to conclude what I've known for years that Canada is a miserable place to find work in the 2020s and that much of what I've done in the last 7 years has been a colossal waste of time and resources. It's impossible to find work, and I'm approaching the end of my 20s with a paltry 2 years of working experience, both in dead-end minimum wage jobs, in a country where late-stage capitalism is cranking up the costs of housing and living essentials to unaffordable levels.

And this country is just going to vote in a couple of fascists because that's all Canada is at its core. May this country rot and be abolished, it's what it and its people deserve. Miserable failure of a country, miserably hostile people and a miserably violent settler-colony. There's no future for me here.

So much so that having to go back in the closet and return home to a deeply queerphobic country and family household is the preferable option, and everything that has happened in the last few months with my uni admissions and the overall state of the family that I've heard has made me dread this decision all the more. Out of the fire, into the fire.

Plans For 2025

Basically what I'm saying is please don't expect much from me in the upcoming year, as I'll likely be miserable through most of it, halfway across the world from where most of my friends and acquaintances are, back in a household shared with one horrible family figure and four other members that I do not want to expose my NSFW art to, and in a country where the exchange rate is going to effectively lock me out of commissioning art. (4.5 MYR to 1 USD are you fucking kidding me)

Also, I'll probably switch up my uploading habits. I don't know nor particularly care how the batch system affects how my art gets viewed, but what I do know is that if I post too much at a time, my browser extension often forgets to upload descriptions and I particularly hate having to rewrite those in a haste.

As for art, I don't know. I won't really have the time or environment to pursue any real projects, so it'll probably be more of the same but with less NSFW. The focus of my cast has been in a state of flux for over a year now because I've slowly been moving away from Zahara for a multitude of reasons), so 2025 might be more of the same as I don't see a character filling her shoes as the de facto central character.

Hopefully I won't feel compelled to make any new characters this year. I hit 225 by the end of 2025, including two separate batches themed after world regions that I really liked and accounted for 36 of the newcomers, and that's more than enough, at least until my brain says otherwise. This is my curse that I will have to carry, insatiable desire for more characters because I will never ever get what I want.

I'm tired. I'm jaded. I'm really not looking forward to what's to come.

Here's to another goddamn new year.

Actually been using it a fair bit since I opened one in January. Been a nice platform, and seeing it slowly grow is nice, even if its main avenue of growth has been "gee, how is Twitter's corpse being stabbed to death today"

I don't mind people finding it "bargain bin Twitter", i don't care. Least I don't have to worry about an algorithm feeding me rage bait or drowning people's art for using a tag.

I don't post all my stuff there, and this will always be my primary platform for art. But if you'd like to see my stuff on another platform and maybe the occasional meme or thought on OCs, I'd appreciate the follows. My own stuff doesn't have a lot of traction, so I'd appreciate it.

Anyway

https://bsky.app/profile/threesecon.....ck.bsky.social
https://bsky.app/profile/threesecon.....ck.bsky.social
https://bsky.app/profile/threesecon.....ck.bsky.social

Didn't realize I had hit 500 watchers recently.

It's something, I suppose. Followers aren't a great metric for a lot of things but hey, big number that took a few years to reach. Woo?

I don't have any plans or events to commemorate this.

But hey, we're back and the site's still alive and kicking. Only vaguely familiar with the shit that's happened and quite frankly I don't care to learn more, the jackass behind the attack fucked around and found out.

I'm just glad all my stuff is still here, this site is slowly becoming my last bastion of an internet presence. I've mentioned before that I have no real plans on going anywhere and that remains the case. I hate much of the internet and no other site fills the niche that FA does. Other art sites are sketchy about adult art or allow AI slop, and social media platforms are horrific for uploading art from a user experience perspective (and you will never get me to use Twitter again, the platform makes me angry just thinking about it).

This is the only platform where I've been able to get any semblance of a following and if this place goes down, I'm just going to become an internet recluse. Which sucks, because I'll lose out on access to a lot of cool characters and art and I already don't have a lot of circles to make friends or share art in.

So yeah, I'm not gonna bother linking alternatives, but if you've been wanting to add me on discord, no time like now I suppose. Better now than if the site goes down again.

Anyway, take care, and if the site stays up, more art coming soon.

So I've been vaguely aware of ArtFight for a while, but with a downturn at work giving me zero hours of actual project work (and no pay, but that's besides the point here), I've had more time on my hands than I would have over the summer, and figured I'd make an effort to get involved in ArtFight this year, especially after seeing other folks post their cards here and on Bluesky throughout the end of June.

I didn't really know what to expect from it, but I had a blast with it. Definitely motivated me to draw a lot, and it being my first year and not having anyone following me there, I was pretty happy to attack users and occasionally getting a counter-attack, often times what other people did just absolutely blew me away. I made it a goal early on that I'd try to get to either 25 attacks or 500 points, and ended up getting to both before the end of the month, after which I got motivated to draw a ton of Heidi and that spelt the end of my ArtFight for 2024.

It was also just very fun to encounter so many cool characters that I never would have found without using the platform, since pretty much everyone I drew for doesn't have an FA. Who are all you people with cool OCs and why the FUCK are you all on Twitter (hate how social media has replaced pretty much all art platforms, especially when they're so hostile to art and artists.

Anyway, I won't be posting all the stuff I did or received here, but I will post some favourites in a bit and also do a quick little breakdown of numbers, because I like doing that.

Total pieces drawn: 25
Busts: 3
Halfbodies: 17
Fullbodies: 5
Friendly Fire attacks: 7

Total Pieces received: 15
Busts/Chibis: 2
Halfbodies:10
Fullbodies: 3

Character distribution:
-4: Heidi
-3: Asmin
-2: Marleine, Florence
-1: Ricka, Isabela, Ueli, Suzette

It was pretty interesting to who picked which characters, though I put a fairly small selection up simply because I wanted to ensure the characters I posted had enough SFW reference material, with ArtFight being an SFW-focused event and having plenty of artists who are also minors.

My takeaway is that a lot more people like Asmin than I realized, and Heidi beating them out is no surprise, but I might be biased given my recent bout of Heidi brainrot.

Marleine only got art on the last week of the artfight, which was a relief because she was the first character I posted and yet stayed unloved for a good chunk of time. My love for spunky older women takes time to win over people.


In the end, I had a ton of fun and hopefully I get to partake next year, my soon-to-be studies permitting.

https://drive.google.com/drive/fold.....usp=drive_link
https://drive.google.com/drive/fold.....usp=drive_link
https://drive.google.com/drive/fold.....usp=drive_link



So full disclosure right away: This is NOT urgent. I'm in a financially decent condition in spite of everything the last 18 months has thrown at me, this is just me doing a bit of clearance and maybe hoping to get a little extra money for my upcoming FWA trip (or my insatiable appetite for records shopping). As you can tell by the prices these characters are going for, this is far from critical, it's more just me realizing I'm not gonna use any of these characters and seeing if anyone else would like them.


Anyway, some general conditions or what have you:

-Prices are in USD

-Paypal Only

-Not really looking for trades

-Yes you can claim multiple characters

-Once you've gotten the character you can do as you please with them. Name them, redesign them, all is good. Have at it

originally I wasn't going to go back to shortform media after quitting twitter and detoxifying from the medium.

But I guess I made one recently.

Hasn't won me over yet but I do appreciate that it's not force-feeding me ragebait or things that make me envious/inadequate. Probably because there's not that many on the platform but hey, just another place I'll post to every now and again.

Anyway

https://bsky.app/profile/threesecon.....ck.bsky.social / threesecondsback.bsky.social

Go wild.

2023 was a year of small accomplishments in my life that I don't care enough to mention hear. Once again begging for some form of collective action before humanity hurtles into the abyss, kinda makes the small things like cool art and employment seem small.

ANYWAY, before I get lost in cynicism: ART. It was a cool year for it as far as my contributions, drawn or commissioned, are concerned. Legitimately proud of my art this year, got some excellent commissions, and once more positively COOKED with some OC designs.

But before I go into personal opinions of arts, time to review what people really seemed to like this year.

Top 10 Submissions by Favourites:
1. Shiny Serperior, Glistening Gal (by Atherol) = 78 faves
2. Overdue Penalties (by LavenderPandy, split with Roflfox) = 41 faves
3. Doubly Hot Ice (by ItsAorora, gifted by J187R = 38 faves
4. Idle Ilya (by GalaxiMonkey and Bubbiehubbie) = 28 faves
5= Putting the Ass in Cassandra (by Atherol) = 27 faves
5= Night Out In Town (by GalaxiMonkey) = 27 faves
7*. Double Flash (by Atherol) = 24 faves
8= You're On Clean-Up Duty (by Atherol) = 23 faves
8= Spotted In Arrears (by GalaxiMonkey) = 23 faves
8= Immodest Sunbathing (by GalacticGoodie) = 23 faves

*Techincally, Double Flash was from last year, but it just kept getting favourited so much that it still made the top ten this year. People just really liked Macy.
Though people REALLY liked Isabela holy moly. I watched that piece take over as my most favourited submission within like two months because every day seemed to add another person to the fave count for a few weeks. And then it kept going.
Shiny oiled butt on a strong snake lady really got people acting up, I understand everything now.
Also shoutout to (Not Having) Self-Esteem is Sexy for being the most favourited submission amongst all the art of mine that I've posted this year, and overall in fact. Which is a little odd because it seems kinda scuffed looking back at it and is also not even close to some of my personal favourite works of the year. But I'll get to that, in the next segment.

Artist's Choice (and other thoughts and trivia):

-I did mention in my end of year submission that this was the year I was most proud of my art, and I stand by that. Every month had at least one highlight, even though my monthly output varied wildly depending on what I was up to irl at that point in time. Depression and physical wrist pain does a number on artist productivity, I really need a better job.
-Kind of a weird year in that some months were bereft of furry art, especially towards the start of the year where Splatoon was a more involved brainrot of mine. Kinda funny how there's almost a correlation between months I wasn't playing the game and my art output increasing. Wasn't always causal though. Just sometimes.
-There was also just a ton of music-themed art and you're DAMN RIGHT that's gonna continue being a thing into 2024. You all will be forced to see what my musical brainrot will be.

Speaking of which, here's where I go in reverse order talking a bit more about some of my favourite pieces in retrospect and reverse chronology:

- Esmerelda's Seated Posterior - Probably one of my favourite pinups of the year, gotta love big girls in small chairs, and honestly, Esmerelda is a hell of a looker and one of my favourite designs of the year, begging Pokemon fans to realize there are more cats than just Sprigatito and Incineroar.
- Ripped Pants - Quynh is another design of mine that I'm legitmately proud of. The idea of a Hisuian Zorua with Purah TOTK design cues had been bubbling in my head for so long so to see it come out so well was wonderful. Absolute fucking scamp at that too.
- Play The Goddamned Part, Bad Witch Y'all we're not getting through this without a few NIN pieces, this one was probably the most fun to make, recreating the album art to the most out there album in their discography with a fun and fitting character and making me realize how much of a pain saxophones are to draw.
- Sin - It still surprises me how much Mila and Duca have taken off as a duo, the reception those two in particular have gotten is quite something. And here I am merely drawing 80s nostalgia into their characters despite the fact that they are both not near old enough to be 80s kids LMAO.
- Wish - FIST FUCK. 'nuff said.
- Boo-ty or something... I've had Ursula for over a year but I think this year is when I started realizing how good she is. We love slightly pudgy girls that serve as time capsules for the 2000s nostalgia.
- Another strapping feat. Raylene - Man, Raylene really fits with just about anyone, it's wild how good she looks in any situation. Plus more pictures of Linea being a lazy bottom are always nice.
- Masturbating in an Indecent Place - out of all the NSFW pieces I've done, this one might be my favourite for attempting a scene and doing a decent job at it. Also just enjoying the fact that I have a Crobat Girl by making her enjoy herself
- Love A Woman Who- - haha memes. Also accurate Linea lore.
- The Slip - The fact that I did this in under half an hour tickles me more now that I know the album itself was done in two weeks. Rapid turnarounds! Also The Slip has some great deep cuts in the NIN discography fight me-
- Three Hours Back - a fitting birthday gift to myself, having turned 26 on the 26th and deciding to use the one song line that has stuck with me more than any for almost a decade now.
- Froslass butts = Once again I am reminded that I have way too many attractive OCs and these two look great regardless of what lower genitals they have. Still a great idea to have a hybrid duo based on my favourite Ghost-type
- What A Time To Be Alive - The last couple of years in a nutshell, send help.
- A Life Of Possibilities - We'll always stan Emergency and I and it's silly album cover.

More of a mix amongst my favourites here, but one of the big reasons why NSFW shows up here and not in my month-by-month faves is because the NSFW stuff was always overshadowed by at least one SFW banger. But I think even more so than any year, there's just a whole variety of different OCs featured, because as my count has now gone over 180 OCs I'm just like "fuck it" and draw whichever ones come to mind, though I do try and get at least one piece that isn't a ref sheet for most of them.

Some honorable mentions that didn't make the cut in either categories, the raw-link edition:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/54907350/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/54907343/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/54907170/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/53780456/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/53780429/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/52232654/

And that about wraps up 2023. A big improvement in a lot of art fields, hopefully I can finally see some improvements irl to help improve my art even more (and for my own wellbeing and health, let's be completely honest)
Not sure what 2024 will bring in terms of art, but I'm already making stuff so it'll be great. Plus if 2023 was anything to go by I look forward to whatever 2024 brings up art-wise.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by this page last year, and found all this stuff interesting, whether you're an old viewer and/or friend or a brand new one. Here's to another goddamned New Year!

So I've shared my album showcasing the ref sheets of my massive OC catalog multiple times, since I don't really like posting ref sheets en masse directly to FA.

Evidently, with a cast that large one can glean that I enjoy making them. And that is very true, designing OCs is hella fun.

So I figured after making about 200 of them at this point, I may as well open myself up to being commissioned to do ref sheets. I tend to be fairly decent at knocking them out in a timely manner, and I've done a few trial runs in the past with friends who've been happy with the finished product.

I don't have a good segue into talking about prices so I may as well just lay it out below:

Prices (US Dollar):
Base Price - Between $30 - $40
Complexity Fees - +$5 - +$10, if it's complex enough to surpass the surcharge, I'll probably just not take the commission, apologies.
Clothed Alt - +$10 - +$20, again, depends on complexity
Small extras like colour palettes, bios and the likes are free, that stuff takes 2 minutes.

And here's my catalog of OCs, for ref sheet examples:
https://imgchest.com/p/o24a6zggylj

I'm also gonna be pretty transparent into the reasoning behind the prices being as is:
-this is not my main source of income, I'm fully employed
-as such, I'm not exactly hurting for money, but bro these living costs suck
-these prices are set under the estimation that I can make these ref sheets in 2 hours, allowing myself a base hourly rate of $15/Hr (which is more than I make in my current job LMFAO 💀 )

I don't really have much a TOS for this, so here's a rough outline"
-feel free to make changes
-feel free to sell the characters at whatever price
-you can kinda just do whatever with the design, I'm just here to put them in a ref sheet
-I tend to do most of my communication and sharing of WIPs through Discord, so Note me if you're interested
-Please don't rush me, especially if there's a queue.


Speaking of which, here's a Queue Placeholder. I'll start with a maximum of 3, and we'll see where things go from there.
1.
2.
3.


Anyway that should be it. Do note if interested, and if you know someone looking for refs, maybe share this journal with them if it's not too much trouble.

Been a bit since I talked about the status of this profile.

I've also been thinking about a few things related to art, posting, comms and socials, so I may as well list it all out.

So first and foremost, nothing's changed too much on the art front. Periodically chipping away with art, be it ref sheets, pieces or commissions, but sometimes it takes a little longer to chip away at things. Full-time employment do be like that, sometimes you're just too tired to draw and need more time before those creative juices get pumping. That said, I am pretty content with what I'm able to create, so I see no reason to stop for motivational reasons, just practical ones.

And while I am employed full-time, unfortunately I am close to minimum-wage in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. Love being alive in the late-stage capitalism of 2023 tell ya hwat. So while I'm still able to tread water and get a few pieces every now and again, don't expect too much else out of me for a while. Zack's gotta buy food and unfortunately, I cannot yet subsist off of people's art of my OCs.

Speaking of OCs, I know I made another album for refsheets some time ago after imgur pulled a stupid, but I kept running into issues with sorting and organizing so friendship ended with Lensdump, Imagechest is now my new best friend, and you can find that new album and the stuff I add to it here: https://imgchest.com/p/o24a6zggylj
(hopefully I don't need to make another one, image hosting sites PLEASE stop trying to get rid of NSFW stuff I beg of you)

As for making OCs, I'm sure some people have noticed that my cast of colourful characters keeps getting larger and larger and there is a reason for that. That reason is that life's too short and I keep thinking about new stuff. And after trying many times to practice restraint and keep stuff balanced for the sake of giving stuff more depth and making it more digestible, I've come to realize that I do not have the time or energy to maintain a thorough world with a ton of moving parts, so I'm just gonna say to heck with it and do whatever comes to mind. Maybe if I ever get over being burnt out I'll start organizing stuff again, but until then I'm just gonna have fun.

And speaking of fun, I got rid of the antithesis to that and closed my Twitter. This is mostly irrelevant to my furry self, as my Twitter was always SFW and had very little crossover with this site, but goddamn has that dumpster fire lost all value since fuckwad-in-chief got his greasy hands on the controls. Like Twitter was bad before, but it just became more and more unusable and keeping up with friends on the site just became untenable and not worth the risk of seeing the dumbest fascists spew verbal diarrhea everywhere.

No, I'm not moving onto any alternatives, at least not for a while. I'm gonna go detox and be an internet hermit, except for keeping consistent lines here and on Discord. So do come yell at me if any of my 180-ish characters at this point catch your eye.

So yeah, that's about it. Thanks for coming to my rambling journal, and thanks for reading.

Okay, I'm not gonna keep people for too long because I'm sure you've read the new policies, or seen other artists, friends and uploaders tear into the policy and bring up their alternative platforms for art and contact.

This is me more or less giving my own two cents on the matter.

So I've made it no secret that I really do not like his platform. It's archaic, backasswards and held together with spaghetti code and crusty lube. It still somehow doesn't have a blacklist, the upload system is so bad I need an extension just to post stuff (keep up the good work, FABUI, you're the real MVP) and the word of mouth that details staff conduct is revolting to say the least.

I really do not blame people for jumping ship if this current issue turns out to be the last straw. That being said, I myself don't have any plans to bail out, at least not yet. There's a couple of reasons.

-the type of stuff I draw and post doesn't seem to be actively targeted (not that I trust the judgement of the staff but I do make it very obvious that my characters are depicted as adults)
-this is kind of the only platform I have any real audience on, and I don't have any interest in trying art Twitter again (which is actively bad for my wellbeing) or using a different art platform that has like 3 concurrent users at peak hours. Building my relatively small following here took a long time, I don have any real interest in doing that again.
-related to that last point, I don't really see any other viable platform. Ideally, it would be nice if a new alternative could generate a bit of hype without shooting itself in the foot, hands and nutsack, and also platform ubiquity is still a real thing. Even if there was a viable alternative, I'd need enough friends and artists to jump ship first so that I can keep up with them.

Basically, the internet sucks ass and more suckassery isn't really enough to get me to budge without a new place to land. So I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing here for a while.

And as ever, if you want to find me elsewhere, my discord in on my profile page, I don't really have anywhere else that I'm organized on, aside from my Toyhouse that I update like...once every two months or so.

Anyway, y'all take it easy and idk, don't fall victim to stupid policy changes that aren't well thought out or properly enforced.

The RIPBozo but is more about 2022. So glad that piece of shit year is finally behind me and that I at, the very least, ended the year in a better place than I started it. Giving 2022 a 2/10, get better writers and stop rehashing 2020.
Unlike my overwhelming cynicism in my 2021 edition of this installment, this will overall be a more positive review, as things aren't so bad now. Though I'm not sure exactly how much there will be to go over this time, I felt like there was less going on the commission side due to spending most of the year unemployed and broke. But I'll see as I keep writing this.
So time for the numbers.

Top Submissions by Faves:
1. Double Smothered by Riendonut : 47 faves
2. Bottoms Up, Bottoms Down! by Riendonut: 39 faves
3. Double Flash by Atherol: 32 faves
4= Pounding That OliviAss by...me!: 21 faves
4= Snake Cake by...also me!: 21 faves
4= Summer Days (nude) by Hainequem: 21 faves
7. Live Fast, You Know The Rest by box-s: 20 faves
8= Undressed for SuccSex (Part 2) by ounxh: 19 faves
8= Abundant Braixen by kiss_the_carrot: 19 faves
8= Undressed for SuccSex (Part 1) by ounxh: 19 faves

Gonna nix the views ranking because I've got pieces as old as 5 years now and I have to sort through a ton of pages just to catalog everything and views aren't that important a metric. That said, it is very funny to see what keeps getting viewed, especially the old stuff.


So instead I'll introduce a new segment, the Artist's Choice (it's me, I'm the artist).

So this was an interesting year for my own art, mainly because I just started leaning hard into music-inspired album cover-esque art, which is something I've wanted to do based on how big of an influence music has had on my creativity, especially character -related material.
I also tried animating this year and while I don't have plans to do it again going further (animation is HARD HOW DO Y'ALL ANIMATORS DO IT??), it was an interesting experiment and I have an even greater appreciation for a medium I've always had a ton of respect for.
And I think lastly it was just an interesting year for just changing the way I view my own art, what with finding my niche and what I enjoy drawing without worrying about the cynical/self-deprecating voices in my head. Acceptance is good, strongly recommend it.

So here's a list of stuff I made in 2022 that I was proud of, in reverse chronological order!:

- Back and Forth - Drawing hugs is hard and drawing invisible hugs is even harder. Plus, it comes from a personal place and has big character implications, which is one of the things ever!
- Hum Hallelujah - [strike] JUST OFF THE KEY OF REASON- [ahem] I maintain the song is still a banger and despite the dark themes it was definitely one of my most...complete? pieces of the year.
- La Sanadora - This is one of my favourite pieces of the year just for committing to such a silly premise. Memes are great and putting your characters into one is also great. Just a ton of fun to draw and to look back at.
- Let's Jam - At some point this year I went on a Cowboy Bebop kick and basically used it to push along Linea's character. But the thing I like most about this piece is actually the text and knowing almost no one will ever figure out where it comes from. Artist secrets!
- Half Past Dead -Ricka's lore is wild, I'm telling y'all. Anyway I really like limited colour palette stuff, hopefully I get more ideas for it later down the road.
- What Do You Want Me To Say? - "Should never have smoked that shit, now I'm on the Emergency & I album cover field" is how I now describe this piece to a friend who introduced this song to me. Not the piece that kickstarted the whole music-inspired art thing, but it was definitely the first that I really felt great about.

So oddly enough, all of my favourite stuff was not adult-themed, at least among the stuff I made. While I do enjoy drawing the occasional smut, that's usually more spur-of-the-moment type of satisfaction, whereas my music stuff has more put into it and thus gives me more to look back upon.

Finally, I'd also like to lend some honourable mentions for pieces that I felt didn't get enough love in this entry, but I'm also running out of energy writing this so have the raw links and enjoy the lottery
- https://www.furaffinity.net/view/48297782/
- https://www.furaffinity.net/view/47475536/
- https://www.furaffinity.net/view/47475509/
- https://www.furaffinity.net/view/46187466/
- https://www.furaffinity.net/view/46028067/
- https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45706053/

And that about wraps up my art stuff for 2022, one of the bright spots in a pretty mid year. Here's to another god damn new year, and to hopefully keep this current positive momentum up.

I don't really have much plans for 2023, but the vague outline looks like this:
-more music-themed stuff
-more multiple character stuff, group pictures were some of my favourite pieces and I'd love to see more of it.
-idk, more art of characters that could use a bit more art. I also gotta keep writing more profiles on my ToyHouse. I added something like 30+ profiles in 2022, which was cool.

Anyway, thanks for reading and for sticking around through this wild ride. Roll on 2023.

So this is mostly for the crowds that are unfamiliar with my characters, whether you come from FA, Twitter, e6 or other sites/boards on the net, and especially if you've come from finding art about my characters that are not standard male or female ones.

The gender tag in my FA submissions are their official genders. Please don't refer to them by other genders or tags, I'm very tired and don't really enjoy seeing that.

To give a short explanation as to why, well...I'm agender, and exploring gender in my characters really helped me discover that over the years, so it is rather personal to me that even characters that don't express their gender in typical ways be seen as who they (and by extension, I) declare them to be.

This is gonna mostly be targeted towards people who come from e6 and other sites that enforce some abysmal standards regarding tag-what-you-see, which lends itself towards reinforcing some reductive terminology both in the fictional and in the non-fictional, and like, with the escalating and often violent rhetoric against trans people in the real world (which I have to fight against a lot in my daily life), I'm reminded enough of how bad things are, please just let me have a space where gender identities are believed.

So just, please be respectful. Zahara's a trans girl. Felix is a trans guy. Luna's non-binary. Hikari's agender (makes me sad there's no tag for agender but that's just a side note). So on, so forth. I'm pretty transparent about character genders, even in SFW pieces that don't show overt signs. Because after all, gender isn't about genitals or even expressions, it's just about how one perceives themself.

So all this is really just to say like, don't use derogatory or incorrect terms for my characters, please. So like, no use of trap, futa, [genital]boy/girl or whatever garbage is thrown up by image boards to justify tag-what-you-see (Gynomorph? Really, e6? Really?).

Much appreciated. Thank you for your time.

(reposting because I disabled comments in the last one by accident. Woops!)

Haven't done one of these in a while, so let's cover some ground.

So this year's been a lot quieter on the FA front, so it goes when one's feeling the pinch financially. When I do find employment, I'll likely increase my posting again, but for time being I've not commissioned much and don't have much to share. It's been a struggle to find work, but I've come close a fair few times so y'know, eventually one good turn will get the ball rolling.

As for my own work, that's on an indefinite hiatus. Not because of any self-loathing or lack of inspiration, but because over the last month I've been developed some rather frequent wrist pain, and that makes holding a stylus pretty painful for more than like, 5 minutes at a time. Not conducive to art.

Ironically, it's actually been a welcome change of pace, since now me not drawing is to care for myself rather than to fight against various mental blocks and fatigue. It's been an interesting readjustment.

I'll still be working on my characters, of course. Anyone who's reached out about my OCs knows I kinda never stop with that stuff, and I'll be chipping away in my own little corners, so I'll once again plug my Discord ID (Zack Spades #6107) and ToyHouse (https://toyhou.se/ZackSpades/characters) for anyone who wants to check on that side.

The cast is also always fluctuating, which means eventually more characters will go on sale, so keep an eye out for that. Not in desperate need of money so I've mostly held off, but yeah, look out for that if it tickles your fancy.

It's been a very strange couple of months and my head's been going places, but the last couple of weeks have been good-spirited, so I'm cautiously optimistic that I've at least turned a corner in that regard. One good turn deserves another, so hopefully that passes on into the irl, would be nice to get some decently-paying work and a nicer place to call home.

Don't have anything concrete and time's of the essence, but all I need is one good turn so fuck it we ball.

So uh, about a month ago I got a month of ToyHouse Premium to get a signup code for a friend, and now I have a handful of extra codes that are just kinda sitting around.

So I figured I'd offer some for anyone who'd be interested in making an account. I'm not really gonna shill for another site, but it's a useful platform for building character profiles, and I use it for a lot of my own characters. (I don't have a good chunk of them on the site because writing stuff is hard, but hey, that's a different matter)

So if anyone here wants a code, leave a comment or shoot me a note and I'll generate one for you, while stocks last at least.

TMI dump? Nah, just getting a few quick thoughts out.

So like, I'm not really good with groups and long-term projects. Socializing has often bitten me in the butt and anxiety makes it really difficult to not get tunnel vision or drop stuff really quickly.

That said, the sort of insularity I have in furry spaces is a pretty lonely affair and is something I wanna change. Kinda want to get out there and get art and writing done, find people to mull OC-oriented stuff with. Heck, I'd like to get back into roleplaying in some capacity, that was fun in some ways.

I could do some of these things myself, and I have been for a while. But honestly, I don't like lonely endeavours and I'm not a self-motivating person, so I think what I need is to make more connections to inspire me and keep me on track.

Of course, me being anxious and socially awkward doesn't help, nor do my experiences. Spend time in enough RP groups and your fuse shortens by a lot, with how ignorant/entitled people can be, and I've had a tendency to just leave general communities if people start rubbing me the wrong way, and that's a deeper problem I'm still not sure how to fix.

But hey, guess I won't really change much unless I try, huh

Fairly simple premise for this journal, I'm looking to get some feedback from followers about specific things they've enjoyed from my uploads.

Which characters are your favourites and would like to see more of? What type of themes in the uploads have been your favourites? What would you like to see more of that I haven't done much of? So on and so forth.

Not looking for general appreciation or "keep doing what you're doing" kind of compliments. I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm looking for specifics that would give me something to work on or towards.

Do let me know!

2021, yet another piece of shit year that's over and yet spills completely into this year because time doesn't matter.
Anyway, 2021 wasn't a good year for me personally. I may have completed some big things (like university), but overall it was a net negative year so let's not dwell on that.
Despite my overall feelings of inadequacy towards my creative goals and reception, 2021 was a pretty good year for commissions all things considered.
So same drill as the last two art reviews, gonna sum up the best performing pieces uploaded this year in terms of favourites and, new for this year, I'm gonna highlight some of my personal favourites. The other breakdowns (content type, character feature count and such) didn't really add much so I decided to nix them this year (translation: I didn't feel like it)
So without further ado, let's get into it.

Top Submissions (by Favourites)

1. Beach Queen (Nude) (by deesamane) : 34 favourites
2. Smitten For MILFs (by mrlynxiee) : 30 favourites
3. Beach Queen (by deesamane) : 27 favourites
4. Mooned on the Snapchat (by 6MY) : 25 favourites
5. Beach Queen (alternate) (by deesamane) : 25 favourites
6. A Slippery Request (by 6MY) : 21 favourites
7. Squishy Smooch (by 6MY) : 20 favourites
8. Squishy Smooch ('stick Smear) (by 6MY) : 20 favourites
9. OliviAss (byAquasSirenixPower) : 19 favourites
10= Mooned In The Sunlight (by 6MY) : 18 favourites
10= Snowbutt (Alt) (by...me, apparently) : 18 favourites
12= Doubling Down (by GalaxiMonkey): 17 favourites
12= [url=https://www.furaffinity.net/view/41050746/] Feeling Up Those Maws (by boxskull) : 17 favourites
12= Highly Hung (by GalaxiMonkey) : 17 favourites
15. The Rear View - May Edition (by 6MY/text by myself) : 16 favourites

Top Submissions (by views)
1. Smitten for MILFs (by mrlynxiee) : 278 views
2. Feeling Up Those Maws (by boxskull) : 172 views
3. Beach Queen (by deesamane) : 165 views
4. Beach Queen (Nude) (by deesamane) : 157 views
5. Squishy Smooch ('stick Smear) (by 6MY) : 155 views
6. The Grumblings Of Girth (by 6MY) : 150 views
7. Beach Queen (alternate) (by deesamane) : 145 views
8. Squishy Smooch (by 6MY) : 137 views
9. Highly Hung (by GalaxiMonkey) : 135 views
10. Zahara Ref Sheet (by...me!) : 134 views

So I guess the takeaways from this year were that stats in general dipped pretty noticeably. Which sucks but hey, I can't have my cake and eat it too.
(by this I mean wanting my OCs to be seen so that people will talk to me about them and get my creative juices going because I am unfortunately hardwired to be feeback oriented, but at the same time despising the idea of promoting myself and turning stuff into some kind of personal brand because I already feel overburdened by that irl. It's not ideal, but oh well, numbers aren't everything)
Kinda surprised two of my own pieces got up there in the end, especially the Ricka one. Like, I wasn't even proud of that piece. //shrug
I also got some pretty gift arts, which is always more valuable than any numbers because I like having nice friends and any gifts are a bonus. I really don't deserve any of y'all do I.

So now the last remains, what were my favourite pieces of 2021?

Well, in no particular order
-FLASHYN!!! was perhaps the best thing I drew all year. It was a really silly gift to a friend and I'm particularly happy I got so much mileage out of one expression and one recurring joke. Also Nuclear Throne is still fun I've put 250 hours into it last year send help but also buy the game yourself-
-Squishy Smooch was a very good commission because the more time I spend with my characters, the more sapphic they all get, and it's nice to imagine Olivia and Garlyn as girlfriends. They just go well together, those two.
-CITRUS is a piece I've sat on commissioning for a while, but it is a great depiction of the chemistry Aries and Pallas share. It's also just really impressive how I developed their entire relationship off a few Orangestar songs. Inspiration comes from many places, and music will never stop being an endless well for me.
-Beach Queen was a fantastic YCH. The auction format appeals to me less and less as time goes on but the pose, the scene and the attention to detail was just phenomenal. Really a perfect piece to show what Gemma is about.
-Natalie Finger Guns and Where The Gender Went are silly little meme things and I love them both. I kinda wish I kept up with drawing but well, it just stopped being fun and when you're not enjoying yourself, the ends don't justify the means. Still, I will get as much mileage out of the "Natalie but Cooler" line as I possibly can.
-Mooned On The Snapchat and A Slippery Request were amazing back-to-back commissions, even if the long-term ramifications of those pieces kinda soured my relation with the artist behind them. The latter completely kickstarted my re-acquaintance with Linea and singlehandedly elevated her from a relatively minor character to a main one. (if you know, you know of my Linea brainrot. And it ain't going anywhere)
-Oh yeah, Vio Lence was another good meme. I love Nike's chaotic energy. It was also a good joke, I'm sad it didn't perform well.
-Of course Smitten for MILFs is a favourite. Sketch pages are the best way to convey smut ideas because you can cover so much ground with them.
-I don't like picking favourite gifts because every gift means so much to me, but I'd be remissed if I didn't say the best one was My Neighbourhood Squiddo, just simply for the atmosphere the piece has and how well it pays homage to the anime it's referencing.
I could maybe talk about a few more but this list has gone on for long enough so let's wrap this up.

So what does 2022 hold in store? Well truth be told it all hinges on how well my search for work goes and how much I end up earning, because that will dictate my commission budget.
One thing I can say is that I will probably not be pursuing another project like The Rear View. Unfortunately, it is just not the time and not my place to be going for something like that.
Ideally, this year will see a lot more of certain characters, and among them all I think Linea may take over as lead character, so if you like snake cake I guess you're in for a good 2022.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and well....no, I'm not gonna say have a good year, I don't think the world around us is gonna allow it. But hopefully you'll stay safe and healthy and find some enjoyment amidst the horrors.

TL;DR: You won't have to worry about my art clogging up my gallery after the next batch

Okay, that's a bit harsh on myself, but will all likelihood, the only art I'll be making going forward will be ref sheets for personal/commission use, and I don't enjoy posting ref sheets to FA.

I did hit my goal of 100 ref sheets, which was really cool and all. But in general I've been enjoying art less and less in the time off I've had since finishing university, and the balance between me wanting to draw and wanting to do anything but have moved quite quickly in the latter direction. I'm not enjoying it, I'm not pleased with the outcomes, and I'm not happy when I share what I've done. It's all kind of compounded and I'm just not happy.

I don't really need any comfort on the matter. Like yeah, i can go on about how I'm not happy with progress and people will rightfully remind me that progress and improvement isn't a linear thing, but that doesn't change the fact that I don't enjoy what I'm doing and what I'm making, so I don't need people wasting emotional energy on something they can't fix.

And frankly, I just don't think I have very good ideas, but that's another can of worms.

So yeah, next batch of uploads will have the last of my own art, and I'll continue to upload commissioned art every now and again, probably move away from the once-a-month upload cycle I've been using for the last year and a bit. I don't really know what else to do with this page, so //shrug.

Mind you, it hasn't been all that bad. After a year and a bit of looking, I finally found a good Roleplay partner that I click with, and being able to slowly use my characters in scenarios has genuinely been a weight off my shoulders, I've enjoyed it immensely. While I wouldn't be against finding more in the future, I definitely can't complain about what I've currently got, it's been great.

And of course, I'll always be open about talking characters, if you choose to reach out to me. I'm constantly working on my Toyhouse and have made a lot more character profiles since getting out of university, even if the writing mood also comes and goes. If there's anything you'd like to learn more about or want to see more of, well I certainly am all ears.

With that all said, that's all for now. Thanks for reading.

Preface: No ill will to the artist who helped me get this far with the project, he did his best and I respect his struggles.

But the subject of the journal is true, I may have to leave the project behind. 6MY has done some fantastic work on these covers and I greatly appreciate his help with bringing the project to light, but I think my demands have burnt him out. The last two covers were a hassle for him and I do take some of the blame for that. And while working on the 7th entry, we communicated and we had to abort it and future plans. As an amateur artist, I get it. Art is hard and things like burnout and life stuff can impact one's ability to art.

But this brings up a new problem; namely that I do not have any other artists lined up. And that is on me for not having a backup, but it is also very difficult to pick up this project with another artist, given budget and turnaround constraints. While 6 entries done and 6 to go is a good halfway point in the project, unfortunately it will probably stay that way...unless you have any recommendations for artists that can help out.

So for those who were looking forward to future entries, I apologize, this is on me. But thank you for enjoying the project, as far as it went. I'll likely upload the covers as standalone art pieces next month if I don't find a new artist to work with. And I probably won't, because finding a new artist is hard, let alone one you have a good working relationship with.

And so ends this update. Have a good night, everyone.

I've been finding this quite hard as of late.

Disclaimer: This isn't really about general creativity as much as it is about mentalities for creating stuff like art, stories and lore.

Alright, let's give some background to this. I'm an introvert by nature, and socializing has been anxiety-inducing at times, though over the years this has become a lot less of an issue, especially on the internet. I've made wonderful, life-changing friends and have made great strides in communicating with others, and generally feel pretty good about my social circles now, and much more content and happy with myself in relation to that as well. I've actually felt pretty good in social fronts for the past few months, more so than I've felt in years, if ever.

And that's all well and good, really it is. But one thing's been missing and I've been feeling it a lot more in the past few months, it's that I don't really have any friends to consistently just share character stuff with, be it ideas, plans or just general character ramblings about anything from the mundane and the trivial to the serious and intricate. And well, I miss that.

I used to have a friend to do that with, even though I became progressively more estranged from him in that regards until we eventually had a falling out, which admittedly that was instigated by myself. I won't go into detail about it here, for I don't like call outs or publicizing issues I've had with friends. That stuff should be resolved between the people involved, not in a public sphere.

But the split from said friend has definitely not been ideal in that regard, and if anything I've sort of reverted into my old habits of working on design creation rather than fleshing out characters, which is a short-term pleasure but is rather vexing in the long-term, because I want to expand on my existing characters rather than just expanding the headcount. But I'm also a person that is super hard-wired for engagement and feedback, which is why I need a sounding board that can keep up with me, and also inspire me as well, otherwise I stagnate and take the mentality of a kid in a toy store, where my attention span moves from one shiny new thing to another.

I've gotten bursts of inspiration and feedback from various friends, and I am extremely grateful for it, but it's just really not been enough for me and I'm just not quite sure if there's any way to get my fix, since I need it fairly frequently. And that really falls entirely on me, since my brain is constantly running at its own wavelength that rarely crosses over with other people, and I also have some really niche interests and a fair few requirements that most people probably wouldn't be interested in matching.

Who knows, maybe in a year or so I'll have a job and won't have much time to dwell on this stuff and it won't be a big deal. But that's in the future and not the present, so since it nags at me now I may as well try and do something about it.

Thing is, I don't really know where to look when it comes to talking characters with people like me, if there are other people with similarly wired brains. Most social circles aren't really into that, and roleplaying groups are definitely not what I'm looking for, if my past experiences are anything to go by. Oh boy, do I not want to subject myself to dealing with public furry servers and just all sorts of casual shitassery, dealing with transphobes, reactionaries and people with zero concept of personal boundaries or responding with more than a simple sentence at best.

So it's a weird no man's land for my creative process right now. It's hard to stay on track without someone to bounce stuff off, of or to keep me in check, with how my brain is wired, and I wouldn't really know where to look to find someone like that.

(Also, I really don't want this to read as me being ungrateful to all my wonderful friends, because really, y'all are amazing and I love you, and really no one's at fault here, not me and especially not you, but I just need to find an outlet that I don't have and it's hard.)

But if you've read this far (and thank you for doing so) and you have some leads, do let me know!

So I know I have a lot of characters and I'm not exactly motivated to keep posting refs with the rest of my gallery, not even in the scraps.

So uh, here's a gallery of characters I've done reference sheets for: https://imgur.com/a/Ibu7bs9

At the time of writing, I'm at 44 completed reference sheets, but that number should increase over time. But if you want to keep track of who is who and what they look like, there's your go to link.

Now to finish the ones who don't have a reference sheet lmao.

Update March 8th: Wow, 52 now.

Character, not me. I should clarify this right away. Let me explain the thought process.

As Zack becomes increasingly more feminine in my mind, I feel like it's started to bleed into his gender as well, far beyond simple expression and more into identity. He's fairly comfortable in his physical body but the more I imagine him the less masculine he is, and that again goes beyond mannerisms. Simple things like being called a good girl aren't so much arousing to him as they feel somewhat liberating, and I would like it to be a sincere form of self-identification.

But I have to stress again that this about him and NOT about me. My current gender identity is basically "I'm cis but if I realize I'm trans I won't be surprised" (maybe this is a stage of denial? I have no idea lol), and I don't really feel dissatisfied with my gender identity as much as I do with my physical body, blame genetics for that one (I'm not even 25 and I'm balding, I fucking hate it).

But Zack has always been in an odd place versus myself. He's never really been a persona even though me and him share many traits in common, though as time has gone by he's moved even further away from me and is really no more relatable than most of my other characters. And who knows, maybe having him become feminine in identity will help me discover more about myself. At the very least, it will make it easy to distinguish me from him.

Guess this is just some food for thought, I'm not committed to the idea as of yet, but it does have a lot of appeal. Spending a lot of time learning about gender and watching friends come out and transition has given me a lot to think about, and what are my characters by applications of my thoughts, interests and curiosities.