cumuluscrow's Bulletins
was compelled to make this out of fucking nowhere yesterday, sharing here for the toyhouse bitches x
i just realised how absolutely absent i've been from online spaces & creatively lacking recently :( miss the old days where we all hung out on discord and drew and talked about blorbos and shit, that was great
what am i doing nowadays? literally don't even know, i guess i'm just working a lot? i never seem to have spare time for anything but it's not like i even work full-time or something, puzzles me how other people can manage their time like fucking magicians i miss art so damn much, i want to draw, i want to make stupid comics with my ocs and talk about them and not worry about it sounding like a load of crap, i used to write entire stories and they're still in my head just as much but
aaaa need to create need to make thing
so i wasn't sure where would be best to ask about this but i've had an idea in my mind for years about a tattoo with three flowers, each based on my main 3 characters! i thought it was a nice and subtle way to kind of represent something that has meant so much to me :-)
but here's where I'm stuck - martha and addison are very very obvious, sunflower and rose, that's very much something i strongly associate with them, easy but matthew, i just have no clue. i'm not bothered about meanings especially, i'm more looking for a strong vibe more than anything? but i've spent a while looking and i just cannot find something that fits him!
if anyone knows their flowers and has some ideas then please let me know! & i do not expect anyone to read more than a few lines of his hugeass profile omg so if you have any specific questions or owt either that's fine too! love you all
as always, i will be partaking in artfight this year!!!! https://artfight.net/~cirrocumulus i'm team steampunk!
i wasn't honestly sure whether i would be able to take part this year as my mental health has been such a cunt and art is really difficult but now it's coming to it i'm counting down the days and i feel really excited :) i love artfight maybe this could even be the thing to pull me out of my art slump! :^)
me yesterday morning: hey this is going okay really :) it's a little tough but im kinda getting on okay with this drawing and it doesn't look too bad, maybe it's not hopeless after all and i can start doing art again!
me now: looking at this drawing is literally actually offending my senses i'm wasting all my time i'm wasting my life im a horrible irredeemable cretin who doesn't deserve love
on a more serious note i have changed the specific shading on a specific part of this drawing about 17 times over the last hour and nothing makes it look better and i feel like i'm starting to lose my mind
i just keep working on drawings for weeks and weeks only to abandon them because it looks so bad that i literally start crying whenever i look at it
i dont know how to stop feeling like this
i literally genuinely feel like i have forgotten everything i knew, i have completely forgotten how to do art and that makes me feel worthless
hello all! kinda wanna... acknowledge my absence from the online sphere over the last couple months and explain why that is a bit maybe
i hate being away from mutuals and online acquaintances, and the longer it is the worse I feel because I can't help but imagine that people are slowly forgetting I exist. i hate that because on the internet is pretty much the only place I can be myself around others. i can surround myself with other people who are autistic or trans or have similar passions, with ocs, with stories, with art, I really do absolutely cherish that, just the ability to be myself without feeling (too much) shame about it. that's not something i really have the privilege of having in real life.
so now that i've nearly disappeared i can't help but feel like nobody... actually knows me anymore. the list of people who know me, my truth, and my passions is getting smaller and that's a pretty shit feeling
i've been in a really weird place recently. i'm finally coming to terms with and accepting my autism, and i'm kind of slowly working on the gender thing, too, though that's going to take a lot more work. having a break from the internet is actually helping with the latter - being able to explore my identity in a way that's personal to me, without the pressure of acting a certain way or fitting into a certain box, that's really freeing. it's freeing to know myself and to understand that in a way that isn't defined by anybody else. it's enlightening to know why i do the things i do in relation to my ASD, and it's freeing to just accept that i'm inherently different to most people and therefore i cannot expect myself to fully act like other people do. both of these two topics have been on my mind a lot recently, as well as other things. i'm thinking about them and how connected they are to my anxiety - everything's connected. i used to feel a certain way about something and ask myself whether it was anxiety, depression, or autism, but now, i'm able to see that those things come together so much. they're all connected, and putting my mood down to all three of them is a perfectly valid answer.
my mental health has not been great. i struggle to do anything that gives me even the tiniest hint of anxiety - that includes drawing, looking for holidays, reorganising my phone, reorganising my wardrobe, messaging people who i've ignored for months (if you fall under this category i am deeply sorry i'm a fuck). it also includes using sites and apps like discord and tumblr, though in all honestly, i can't say why doing most of those things gives me such a intense feeling of dread, i can just say that it does. i want to be present. i want to be known, i want to fuckin DRAW, i want to do art trades and chat to people and do fun oc stuff online with other people, i want it so much and i feel like the longer i leave it the harder it's gonna be to reinsert myself into other peoples online spheres. starting from square one is a scary thought because i wanted mutuals and online acquaintances for like, most of my teenage years and i could never get them because i find it even harder to make friends online than i do in real life. but now i actually have/had people i interacted with! people would know me and chat to me and do art trades with me and people would even sometimes gift me birthday art and stuff like that which was AMAZING, i wanted that for so long! online friends who knew me fully and who i had so much in common with, that was amazing to me. sure it was never like we were close really, but it was still so special to me
but i guess... lockdown took more of a toll than i thought it did at the time. i'm only now really understanding the full effects of it. i don't really understand why i feel so trapped, anxious, scared all the time. i miss my discord server and i miss interacting with you guys. but things don't feel the same now and i feel very uncertain as to where i'm going next. i know that i want to be more open. i want to talk about my feelings, i want to post selfies, i want to feel less ashamed about who i am and about how i choose to interact with the world around me. i just wanna do what feels right, but i think i've got a bit more healing to do first.
i'll be back for artfight though. i will. if it fuckin kills me.
there's a lot more i could talk about, i could talk about art more and my job and why exactly i chose to distance myself in the first place, i could talk about other stuff happening in my life. but i think i'll leave it there for now. if you consider me an online acquaintance, or ever have, THANK YOU.
TLDR: i am figuring out a whole bunch of stuff right now and struggling with the old mental health and that is why i've vanished for the last several months, but please don't forget i exist i am terrified of being forgotten by people i love you and thank you peace out
⚫ stories need updating for charlie, dakota, iona, scoot, samuel, clover, dominic, and indira, (tenses need changing and plot point updates for a few, read through, make sure everything's nice, update relationships)
⚫ profiles need finishing for
jude lisa jodie lena krystian clara g ananke
⚫ other, misc characters need a rethink
⚫ 'npc' characters need finishing. add origin country and fill stuff in, etc, add links
⚫ mashup character profiles need doing, maybe give a rethink
⚫ profile pictures for mashup ocs and for npc characters? artbreeder pictures for npcs!
⚫ stories and worlds literature needs finishing
⚫ timelines! i've done londons and navarros but i think that's it (even those ones need sprucing)
⚫ likes/dislikes for all the mains (matthew's are done but everyone elses)
https://artfight.net/~goodbye-caroline
as always, i'll be doing artfight this year! lemmie draw ur beans
just thought i might as well post this here! i'm doing some research into which sort of characters are the most popular, check it out -