The intimidating thing about finally posting your art collection to FA after telling yourself you'll get to it for years is that... well, you've done a lot. You being me, that is. You've changed a lot, you've increased your own backlog of to-uploads by dozens... where do you even start with it? Does art that goes back this far even still represent who I am? Sure, this IS my base form, and this is STILL me, but you usually won't see me in this form. I've done so many other things since, tried so hard to be a much bigger showoff than this... and yet, I feel like this pic captures the essence of how I like to see myself in the fandom pretty well. Maybe I'm usually a lot more overt in my grandstanding than this, but my roots matter a lot to me. It's a matter of pride for an insect kaiju -- the heights I've reached matter less to me than the distance I've gone to reach them. And sometimes I just wanna be smug and smile at myself, and smile at the thought of myself smiling at myself, because I know I love seeing bugs like myself exercise their smugness.

Maybe I'm overthinking this whole first-impressions thing, especially with how long I've fluttered around elsewhere on the internet. But eh, it's fun to be a tryhard!

This lovely commission was done by the Moth Monarch (  nyomi ) themself!