(I know the title is scary I promise I'm not going anywhere, I promise. Just bear with me.)
Toyhouse bulletins are just dA journals to me and that's how I'm going to use them.

Something that I had a hard time admitting to myself (until today or last night, really) is that I have a specific project that I really just want to start over completely on.
For about four years I have been trying to workshop an (I guess proprietary?) sewing pattern for kobolds, and it has caused so much heartache. I've edited and chopped up my pattern so much it's in a million pieces and hardly recognizable anymore, and I don't think it's really any better for it. As hard as it is to admit, I think I really just want a fresh start with it and I think I'm going to vault everything I currently have and just start the whole thing from scratch.
My technique has improved so vastly over the years I've been working on it, I think it's really obvious which parts are old and which are new. I had my pattern influenced by the input of other people and I think it's just worse for it. I didn't do things I wanted to do because someone told me not to, and I just hated the result and correcting it was so much more complicated and looked WORSE than it would've been to just not have to in the first place. I want to make the pattern really personal to me, but also very modular. Lots of the Old Gods kobolds are super varied (especially, ESPECIALLY in the face), and I want to have a pattern that is easy to edit and adjust to accommodate them all, or at least most of them. With my current work it's just not possible, and that feels kind of bad. It feels bad to throw away four years of work and go "this was bad, I am not using this" but I think it'll just be better if I do. Of course, four years is a long time and I didn't work on it for most of that time for various reasons. I was severely depressed, burned out beyond belief from school, dealing with having to fight my sibling to even keep my small crafting area and having it be in a room that I despise AND have to share with two other people, and just generally feeling deeply demotivated to work on it. As much as it sucks, I think this is going to be a really good way for me to just leave behind all the parts of the project I hate, which is frankly just most of it, if not all of it.

I graduated college today! The amount of Bs that I got that are actually 89s is painful! (please curve my grade less than a point please!!!!! I want that A so badly.)
Expect to see more art now. I've been going through a lot of incredibly rough depressive periods (including some of the worst in my life) due to school, so I'm glad to be done. I feel so guiltless now. I stopped drawing almost completely for the past several months/half a year or longer due to school. I actually have only drawn with a mouse or traditionally recently. I'm hoping to find a way to upload the traditional drawings since I'm really happy with them.

I'll do more later I have had this tab open forever I don't want to lose it.

Une

• Une was made for a political intrigue game that never happened. Even though I never got to use him, I still love him a lot. He lives and rules beneath Earl Taicho in Blienia. I don't think his province that he rules was ever determined, but there's one that begins with a 'T' (If I remember correctly) and I like to imagine that one is his province.
• I don't know what his intended noble status is. Likely a duke, viscount, or count if I had to take a guess.
• Une loves his wife SO MUCH. She genuinely is one of the reasons he was able to make it through a very difficult patch in his life, and likely would've given up if not for her.
  • She's currently helping him as he struggles through his live rat addiction. She doesn't exactly know what it is that he has been struggling with, but she knows that he is extremely depressed and distressed about something. She thinks that he's had to make a political decision that's screwed with his morals and is too ashamed to talk about it.
• He is another victim of my addiction to making betrothed nobles who adore and are deeply in love with their betrothed spouse. (See: Einris and Heraim, Onic and Kirgalyn) WHAT IF.... love could transcend obligation. Did you even consider that. 
  • Une was given a bit of a "trash" marriage arrangement. As he's a tiefling, he's lost some social standing with his peers who are almost exclusively humans. Though it was never outright said, he suspects (and OOC it is true that) he was betrothed only to his wife because they were both tieflings, and the humans of Comadia wanted to push the two devils together so they wouldn't taint human bloodlines. They were scared of him and his wife and the corruption they represented.
• He was not born a tiefling. At some point early in his life he was cursed and transmogrified into a tiefling. I don't really know if he actually remembers being a human/how young he was when it happened. 
  • Even though most of his noble peers assume it probably should, being a tiefling doesn't really bother him. It's just a part of who he is as far as he's concerned. He's considered seeking out the means to be uncursed, but especially as his life continued on and he grew into his independence and ruling on his own outside of his parents (who never truly got over him becoming cursed) he realized that's not really what he wanted.
• He really wants to have a child/children with his wife. He is afraid of being targeted and assassinated (especially as a tiefling) in the incredibly tumultuous political landscape of Blienia and leaving them alone, or them being targeted as a means of getting to him.
• Okay so I feel like the addicted to live rats thing needs an explanation because it's not necessarily a lie, so here goes: Tieflings, as a species/race, can taste suffering as a flavor in the same way that you as a human can taste sweet or sour. The more something suffers, the richer and more full that suffering flavor is. Une finds this flavor particularly attractive. He really likes it. He's by no means evil, though, so the fact he likes it so much causes him a bit of cognitive dissonance. He would never torture or have anything he was going to eat be tortured just to make that suffering come out, so he just deals with it. Except I just lied to you because he wouldn't. To curb his appetite he raises (or rather, has someone do it for him so he doesn't have to do it himself) rats in absolutely horrific conditions in his dungeon. They are suffering a lot and are so tasty. He has his little project hidden from absolutely anyone except him and the person who is paid to take care of it for him. It causes him immense distress and he wants to find a way to curb himself off it as he is deeply disgusted with himself and the actions he's taken at the expense of completely helpless animals to indulge his own desire. He doesn't usually eat the rats while they're alive, but they do taste the best when they are so he has done it. He tries not to, but sometimes it can't be helped.

• I think there's a very decent chance that Johanne is probably not really his name, at least not the one he was born with. (I am of the opinion that any name you regularly go by is a real name, even if it's a nickname) I haven't put much thought into whether or not this is really the case, but I do really like the idea of it. It's mysterious and I think that's very fitting for him.
• Once Johanne figures out what his gun is and how to use it he's going to go crazy with it.
• Johanne uses elf sleep to relive the night his brother died as a form of self punishment/self-flagellation.
  
• He's been a weird little goth since he was a child. He learned it from his mother.
• He used to know Undercommon but has since forgotten it. He would absolutely never admit that he forgot it, though. If pressed he'd excuse it by refusing to translate it.
• I'm definitely adding slit eyes to his design, but I've been contemplating more bat-like ears as well. I like his long, slender ears so it probably wouldn't be a huge dramatic change (Like Einris' ears ended up being) but I did want to emphasize his heritage a bit. Every ounce of my strength is going into not giving him fangs. I am so strong.
• Not really a character musing, but I've always loved how his design has essentially not changed. From the beginning I knew exactly what I wanted him to look like, and he's hardly changed since then.
• Johanne only picked up smoking after the death of his brother.