Me: i really don't think i have the confidence to draw canon characters from anything
Brain: Will you do it in the name of giving korra a childhood friends to lovers girlfriend?
Me: you crazy son of a bitch. i'm in.
---
And that's how Sakari was born. And how I ended up drawing Korra for the first time; in a messy sketch of her and her girlfriend in a contextless doodle.
I already love 'em
Korra: I know over 200 ways to kill a man.
Sakari: You could glue an open jar of rats to his face, then firebend the other side of the jar, so the rats have to eat their way out through his face :>
So i was dozing off in my chair earlier today and i kinda half fell asleep and had this weird hallucination dream about the avatar movie - no actual spoilers cause this isn't related to anything that actually happened in it, this was basically just a dream animated in the movie's artstyle - and
okay i want to preface this by saying this was mostly a dream and i didn't invent the context.
So The Gaang was reconnecting again for plot related reasons I think, I don't know what, and they were basically catching up. Sokka and Suki had gotten married and had kids, and he had twins and they were super cute. Zuko was asked about Mei and he awkwardly asked to change the subject (implying they broke up). Toph was just kind of there being her awesome self, and Aang and Katara
were arguably the more interesting to me.
The air between them while the scene played out seemed to imply they either never got together at the end of the series and were still in the pining phase, or had broken up some time ago, but they didn't want to be bitter exes and still cared about each other, and were awkwardly trying to get back into that normal state of friendship. Aang was in talks with some weird arranged political marriage he was getting 'strongly nudged' into because he's kinda being treated more as a celebrity and a political figure than a spiritual leader like he wants to be, and Katara, presumably still single, was just kinda
smiling and nodding uncomfortably, either cause that's her crush or that's her ex and he clearly wasn't wild about it himself either and it was just
weird for both of them.
And I woke up finding the whole ordeal very fascinating. I don't like looking at it from the pining angle; I find the idea of them being exes trying hard to return to normalcy and be close friends again more interesting.
Y'know in all the team composition suggestions i get online or in-game, for some reason, no one told me that if you build anaxa particularly well, he stacks Acheron's ultimate SO DAMN FAST
WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS? I just happened to figure it out on a whim when I went to test my recently pulled Hyacine and dude
Idk what i'm feeding this guy but his energy regeneration is so damn high and his relics make his speed stupid and his action speed gets advanced by 25% after his ult, which builds up so damn fast from his skill
and his skill, follow-up attack, and ultimate all give acheron stacks cause i guess his weakness application counts as a debuff??
I found this out by accident on a whim; why did no one tELL ME BEFOREHAND? I would have paired them together AGES AGO
It's so strange to me seeing Harry Potter be rebooted. I went in and out of Harry Potter phases over the years from my young teen years to my adulthood but I only really feel anything nostalgic for it in hindsight because my mom was a huge fan back before she got sick and lost interest in everything due to her depression.
(Plus JK being a transphobe talking trash about a group her trans nephew and enby daughter were a part of kinda soured her opinion of HP.)
But when she was actually well, my mom loved Harry Potter. She loved the fantastical world and she loved the loyalty of friendship between the characters. She read all the books, saw all the movies in theaters, bought replicas of the characters' wands, even had signed copies of the first/second drafts of the movie scripts. She loved this franchise.
And now she's gone. Which... in a weird way, complicates my feelings about HP in a way i can't fully articulate.
JK is a trash person and her books are badly written; we all know this. Still, considering how much my mom loved this series before everything went sideways, it's hard not to feel at least something about it.
I'm not watching the Amazon series and giving that thing any kind of numbers. But at the same time... I kinda wish there was a version of it that was actually good and not associated with a transphobe. If only cause of my mom.
Ya'll don't get a colored pic today, ya'll just get violence and a messy sketch that I cried through making.
Our first Valentine's Day after my mom died. A bunch of yapping under the fold, but it talks a lot about death, fair warning. Kinda somber for Vday, I know, but my mom died a little over a month ago and the pain is still fresh, idk what to tell ya.
Imma tell ya a very sad, very personal story with a dash of wholesome, and it's a long one, so buckle up if you're willing. There's a LOT of yapping about death and chronic illness and chronic pain in this, so if you're not prepared to read about that kind of thing, please just take my Happy Valentine's Day and go about your day. Take care of your mental health.
Context for those who clicked 'keep reading': People are Weird is highly inspired off of my life, Cedar and Sasha are especially inspired by my parents, and life decided to be thematically appropriate by having my mom die young. 55 is young in the grand scheme of things, especially since my grandparents and great-grandma got to see their 70's-80's.
She'd been chronically ill and suffered chronic pain for the last 15 years, had several different health conditions and was on dozens of medications to keep her alive. Ya'll, she was so fucking tired when she got to the end; it just became a cycle of near death crisises, ending up in the hospital for a week, suffering in bed for days before exhaustion from pain finally helped her crash for a bit.
But give her some credit: She lived through so much shit that would have killed most people just through sheer willpower. Anyone else would have died 12 years ago from the shit she had to deal with.
We tried to take care of her ourselves as best we could, but it wasn't enough. Eventually, we switched to palliative care to help her manage her pain and her conditions better.
After she went on palliative care, she finally slept full nights because the pain was gone. She was sleepy a lot, but she was comfortable, she was getting some energy back, and because she was only middle aged, we thought she was getting better. We had no way of knowing it was actually a brief ralley before the end.
Five days after New Year's, she ate some blackberries for a snack (her favorite), went to take a nap like she always did, and she just... didn't wake up. Heart failure finally took her out in her sleep, according to the paramedics.
I always had a feeling if anyone was gonna walk in to find her dead, it was gonna be either my dad or me. Turns out it was me. Yeah that's a mental image that still hasn't left me.
We all tried to revive her - CPR, chest compressions, ambulance, all that, but she was already gone when I found her. Not like it would have mattered; in all the scrambling to try to revive her, I forgot she had a DNR. My bad.
Everyone was either sobbing or in shock, of course. My dad kept it together long enough while he was in front of us, but once he had a private moment, well. He handled it as well as someone who lost his wife of 30+ years would.
Once everything was said and done, we set up a few shrines for her around the house. It's... still weird trying to find a new normal after all this; after being a caretaker for 15 years, not being one anymore is... weird. Strangely, though, I don't get sad very often over 'lost my mom'. Occasionally, but not often. I mostly just feel sad for my dad losing his wife, and some mild regret over my mom never getting the chance to recover and doing the things she wanted to.
My family and I are grateful for a few things though: My mom died the way she wanted to. Comfortable, in bed, by herself, not surrounded by people crying, but in the privacy of her own room, her last conversations with her family were positive ones. I was terrified she'd suffer a long slow death from dementia like my grandma and great-grandma did, and my dad was terrified she'd end up hospitalized and die in a cold, sterile hospital bed hooked up to machines to keep her alive.
But she didn't. She died in a warm, comfortable bed with dignity. It's a weird thing to be grateful for, but it's... something. Probably a better death than most people could hope for.
She drilled into our heads from birth: "No matter how pissed off you are, always finish a conversation with 'i love you'. I lost my stepdad after an argument and I never got to make up with him and tell him I loved him. I never want you guys to have that feeling, so please, for the love of God, always say 'I love you' before you leave a conversation. You have no way of knowing if that's going to be your last conversation with them, so always let those be your last words with that person."
Paid off, I guess, cause those WERE the last words we exchanged with each other.
...
SO ANYWAY. How does this all circle back to People are Weird? WELL I'LL TELL YA.
Cedar is Venusian and Venusians have very long lifespans, especially royal Venusians, which Cedar is. He'll likely live to be thousands of years old, still physically a young man when his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandkids are born. By comparison, Sasha is only human. Even with Venusian medicine, she'll probably only live 150-200 years max.
Death is very rare for Venusians. When death does finally find them, it's not uncommon for their spouses - who love very dearly and strongly - to die of a broken heart not long after. Culturally, it's one of the reasons they started taking multiple lovers. Cedar chose monogamy with Sasha, though, so he's aware he doesn't have that safety net anymore. Could he just marry again after she dies? Sure... but somehow he gets the feeling he'll never love someone the way he loved her again.
He's aware that there's a very high risk that he'll die shortly after she dies. But he loves her. So instead of dwelling on it, he opts to just make the most of the time they do have, and do right by her once she does go to meet Jesus.
I'm honestly not sure what would do Sasha in other than just 'old age', but she WOULD die eventually.
When she does die, Sasha wants to be cremated and have her ashes scattered around her favorite places, but also used to plant a tree. She'd wanted that since before she even met Cedar, but since Venusians turn into trees when they die, she figured it was as close to a Venusian funeral as Cedar was gonna get for her.
...
I'll give my parents one thing: Their marriage was never easy, but man. They loved each other. They stuck through so many things after other couples got divorced over less, and my mom died happily married after suffering being a child of divorce. That's more than can be said about a lot of married couples. They would have been married 33 years come April.
And my happy ass is still single at 30 while my best friend is getting married and my other friends are either dating or married. But hey, I'm talking to someone from a dating app and we're going on an aquarium date next week, so fingers crossed I won't be single next year lol
So. Yeah. Hopefully next year will be easier.
Happy Valentine's Day, Imma go cry again and hopefully draw something a little happier.
I got DHIL on one of my star rail alts where i hadn't done the Xianzhou yet, so I'm gonna do an Only-Dan-Heng challenge run for the entire Xianzhou Trailblaze mission. Only Dan Heng, Dan Heng IL and Dan Heng PT, and Jing Yuan on that one boss that demands it of me. MAYBE I'll use Bailu if i pull her mid-mission.
it's gonna be so stupid and frustrating and of my own doing lol
so far, as long as i don't use Vanilla Dan Heng's skill, i seem to be doing okay. i could probably have better relics/light cones for everyone tho
Edit: I pulled sparkle, so i'll include sparkle on the team just to make dhil a bit more usable. that's not cheating right?
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