#painted shading

[dizguzting]

I'm starting to think "FUCK the hard brush" but idfk.

A sun god. What is he curious about? The world may never know

[melon-arts]

When I am dead, I wont join their ranks/ Cause they are both Holy and Free/ And I’m in Ohio, Satanic and chained up/ And until the end, that’s how it’ll be.

Artist comments under the cut. Lyrics from Saint Bernard by Lincoln.

Another... bigger piece. This one has been kicking around in my head for the better part of half a year now, and its so nice to finally have it done. Uuuhh first time drawing both Alyx and Barney so, hope that turned out alright. I plan on doing more Half Life art with religious symbolism because I love for that sort of thing for no reason.

I think a lot about the fact that Barney went undercover in the Combine. I think a lot about the symbolism behind the One Free Man as the savior of humanity. I think about these things while listening to Saint Bernard by Lincoln, and I get a piece that was half a year in the making. So good to finally have this done. Up until this point I havent felt like I had the skill or the time to execute this to how I envisioned it, but it's finally here.

[kittycuntcellphone-kus]

Modern cards oft ferget th’traditions O’ th’joker; a man as silly and fun as he art biting and wicked, th’only whom trust is given t’speak ill O’ th’king, and make fun O’ ‘im shallt he do.

[confuzledartist]

Been obsessed with skulls lately,in my Clayworks class I’m working on a Ram’s skull with flower embellishments that is going to be sawdust fired. Might post the finished product in a few weeks when it’s done lol

[personaleaf]

owo whos this????

[melon-arts]

About that beer I owed ya...

What's sadder than a timeline where Gordon never came back after the resonance cascade? One where he did, but died before humanity was free.

[melon-arts]

I've been working on this angel pic for like TWO whole days here have it. Dont tag me/kin please!

[melon-arts]

Sleep heavily and know that I am here with you now. The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first and settles in as the gentle present. This now, this us? We can cope with that. We can do this together. You and I, drowsily, but comfortably

Re-Listening to and trying to catch up on WTNV now that I'm coming up on 25 has been an experience. Commentary under the cut, please read.

When I first started listening to WTNV, I was 15, just coming into my queer identity. I knew I wasn't straight, had been dating my now fiance for a few years, but I had been so intentionally disconnected from LGBT+ communities and only could exist in circles that were actively hostile to me. As I started coming into my gender identity, realizing that I couldn't lie to myself anymore and pretend not to be trans, I felt so incredibly, isolatedly othered.

Then I got into Welcome To Night Vale. Right out of the gate, Cecil fell in love with Carlos, and I felt for the first time in my life, like I wasn't alone. That somewhere out there, there was a friendly desert community, full of people just like me, who loved and supported each other.

This was in 2012, same sex marriage wasn't legal in the US yet and I had started counting my pennies to fly to another country to one day marry the love of my life, something that was "just the way things were" then. I stayed up so many nights listening to a world I was told that just didn't exist- not for the monsters and unreal happenings, but because a gay man not only was open about his love, but beloved by his community. I had been raised as a fundamentalist, isolated and told the world would hate me for what I was, I would suffer and die like a tragedy. But Welcome To Night Vale gave me a hope, a refuge from the hatred my grandparents (who raised me) tried to instill into me from the second I realized that I wasn't cishet.

Night Vale connected me with other people like me. Outcasts, "weirdos", people who didn't fit into the society I had been raised up to believe I would need to make myself smaller to find my place in. I learned that our stories don't need to end in tragedy, that we have hope and vibrance and life and history together. That we had a future together. And suddenly, I found myself having room to flourish, to grow and breathe. I found my home, and I found that in a way, Night Vale was real in our hearts. Not universally, but it was my in- the way baby Melons conceptualized a world that, despite its horrors natural and unnatural, didn't see me and my love, my identity, as one of those horrors.

It's been nine years since then. Cycling through labels and identities, until I've settled comfortably here. I'm bi, I'm a trans man, I'm GNC, polyamorous, queer. I've moved states away from the people who would rather see me in the ground than proud of who I am. I live with my partners, our cats who do not float, in our little slice of the world. The world is full of horrors, and wonder, and most of all, love. And listening to Welcome To Night Vale the other night, washing dishes and taking in the last few weeks before my 25th birthday (a personal, extremely significant milestone), I felt like I was coming home.

I'm a different person than I was when I first listened to Welcome To Night Vale. I'm not a child anymore. But that child only grew up into the man I am now because of Night Vale, because of its safe and strange community, and its connection to the community I found myself in.

This is a long ramble mostly to say, it's good to be home. Despite everything, I'm glad I can still come home.