#press_start

[kittygirlpaw]

thorns/bramble

a thicket of petals and flowers, coiling and golden and leaking ichor.

everyone loves Rose Nippen. (xe/xer/it/its)

[tanglecolors]

hey yall I finally finished this animation, check it out!!

[press-startcomic-blog]

do you ever just LOVE AN OC A LOT

[kittygirlpaw]

gold

An experiment with brushes and paintbrushes we don't normally use, with very few hard lines/colors. This time of Marie Kipp, from press_start.

[kittygirlpaw]

Visit Original Link

oh right i made two sound things. this one's more of an experiment on making a loop, closer to something you hear in a shop menu or smth, and playing with fx. ^ w^

This one also happens to be an attempt at capturing the Vibe of Maine Rian from Press_Start and Press_Continue, which are two long-form stories that are out Right Now on AO3.

[kittygirlpaw]

Well, that's it! press_start, one of my first real attempts to make a full-fledged story, point-to-point, is over.

I wrote a little retrospective, here, because I felt it was prudent to Say Something rather than just. Shrug, and move on, because it did end up becoming a big part of my life in a lot of ways I didn't expect. If you'd like to read, feel free to hit the read more.

TL;DR is - the story ended up meaning a lot to me, both as something to work on consistently and a part of my life that was always there, waiting to be touched up. I spent over two years on it, and even if I think I could've done things better, I'm glad I made it.

It feels weird. Especially after having well over a year of time where I looked at it as The Project. Y'know, that Thing, where you always start working on it when you're not doing anything else. It became one of the central pillars of work to do when I'm not doing anything else, it was basically on my mind 24/7.

It became how I got closer with a few people, it became how I gained a lot more confidence in my ability to dress a story and characters. I got a lot of practice with it, I managed to feel like I could actually make something. Set a goal, a long-term goal, and meet it.

I'd always dreaded actually setting pen to paper, and press_start was basically my first dart-throw at trying to make something bigger than vignettes, or quick one-shots. Something with a thread, with stories to tell, with lives lived.

There's a lot of things I think I could've done better, or differently. I think there's a lot of stuff that don't think I did great at, and a lot of the story was me riding by the seat of my pants and throwing things in the air faster than I could really tone everything perfectly. There's a number of unanswered questions, vague hooks, theoretical openings for another story to be told.

I'm not sure if I want to tell another story, there, though, for a lot of reasons that are both personal and informed by...I dunno. The story was, at the end, one about exploring very specific questions, and those questions got answered.

When it feels like there's no reason to go on, you go on not only for yourself but the people you love. It's easy to hurt yourself, but you will hurt others because of it, even if you only ever try to direct it inwards. Fixing yourself isn't trying to hurt yourself the "right way". Acceptance is the only real path forward. Things might be different, but they can still be good. Connection and community, trust and love, are things that you can find.

I went through a lot of changes during the brainstorming, making-of, actual writing, and finalizing of the story. Moved something like three, almost four times, further into my transition, left my bio family behind, entered a poly relationship, got married...

Weird as it is, press_start became a cornerstone for us. A marker by which we addressed change and time.

If I return to it, it'll probably be with little things to say, rather than another narrative. Stories of people, in the aftermath.

Maybe it was time to say goodbye, but that doesn't necessarily mean I was ready, in a funny way. I'll still do it, because it just means I can move on to another story to tell.

[kittygirlpaw]

a sketch of nheo again oopsies

[kittygirlpaw]

sketchies

some sketchin' of Nheo that I've done. wanna draw them more, but they're such a specific kind of Flavor of character that I don't know what to draw them doin besides just Vibing...