happy nurse’s week to me! it’s my first and reflecting back on everything i’ve been through to secure this degree and my first 6 months as a psychiatric nurse all i can say is THANK YOU JESUS! it’s so hard to see the other side when you’re buried so deep but I FUCKING MADE IT! my 35th birthday draws near and im so excited to get finer and finer, sharpen my craft and possibly nurse practitioner school?!? AHHH! who knows? to the universe i ask: show me how good it can get 💛✨🌻 oh and GO SEAWOLVES! 🤍❤️🐺
2025 was definitely a year, and I hope that 2026 will be better for us all.
I made a lot of art this year, I have at least 145 things documented in my phone, but there’s no doubt in my mind that there’s more than that undocumented.
But anyways, I want to thank you all for being so kind to me over the past couple of months. To start the year I had about 50 followers, and now I have 215! That's like...a lot of people. But I'm very thankful to have all of you guys following my silly little art blog. Whenever people on here talk with me about my OCs or just like my posts n stuff it makes my heart happy. I never expected to have people interested in the universes in my head.
I also made my OC webpage for the Ghost Council this year! It took me a couple months but I think it's pretty comprehensible for the most part. I hope it helps people understand my story better and possibly interact with it.
I also met many amazing mutuals this year! I have a lot of internet paranoia but interacting with my kind mutuals alleviates some of that anxiety. Honestly I didn’t really expect to have moots when I joined tumblr, but it’s been a nice surprise to interact with so many cool people with cool ocs and art!!!
but yeah, in summary I’m very grateful for you all and I hope we can have a good 2026 as we make and share awesome stuff!
I aged another year. I’ve lost friends but strengthened my bonds with my current ones. I’ve failed some subjects and passed others with flying colours. I read around 70 books - some old, some new. I came out as aroace to my friends and fam. I published 5 different fics, which have all gotten more love and attention then I thought they would. I stopped self-harming in March and started going to therapy in June. I listened to nearly 40k minutes worth of music. I went through surgery on my shoulder. I’ve laughed, cried, complained, cheered and shuffled my way through the blazing fire that is 2025, coming out only slightly burnt.
Thank you to everyone who has made my year that bit better:
The ultimate cheerleaders and super talented people known as @ghostedmercury and @thalium9thmuse - you both are so supportive and wonderful, and I wouldn’t trade you two for anything <33
My beloved Tumblr moots @thestoryteller-thedreamer @jaiofskyandstorm @linlovesnoodles @iobsesswaytoomuch for being such kind, wonderful people and being such a great part of my Tumblr experience
And shoutout to the rest of my lovely moots: @stxrrstruckk @i-am-a-living-god @kaistrosity @mintleafkitty72 @oddpossumcreature @your-local-book-hoarder @the-l0ser-st4rr for being such cool peeps :D
Thanks for a great ‘25 yall. Here’s to a greater 2026
It’s definitely been a bumpy year, but it wasn’t all bad. I started this blog late this year with the intent of being apart of the proship community for the first time— and I think I’ve been successful! I’ve met some amazing people in this community, and I’ve found the community as a whole to be a delight. Some of my posts have really resonated with people, and the amount of attention some of them are still getting is crazy to me. I never imagined I’d be here by the end of 2025, but here we are.
I personally have went through some pretty large bumps, my mental health taking a few dives, and I’ve gotten more than one stressful situation under my belt. My home country has been in a rough state as well. A mix of those factors have made me less active on this blog, which I’m sorry about. I promise to try and be more active in the community in 2026!
Overall, this year has been a very mixed bag. From the start of the year, straight to the end, it’s felt like everyday has been a new adventure (whether that was a good or bad thing depended on the day lmao). But I’m glad I got to spent a little of it with you. I love you, and thank for everything!
I come across certain images and feel a kind of unease that's hard to explain. Perhaps it's because behind the face of a someone I deeply respect both as an actor and as a man—a true, lived-in face, full of silence and subtlety—I see something that no longer belongs to him. I understand the nostalgia, the tenderness, even the desire to bring someone back to life through art or imagination. But there are boundaries that are sacred to me. A person's image isn't something to be reshaped at will. It's the trace of a life that has already given so much. When I see those montages or those videos that feign intimacy, something breaks: not the memory, but the respect. Truly loving an artist, for me, also means leaving them intact, not forcing them into stories they never chose.
What’s more upsetting is that, for the majority of those creating these videos, it’s not even admiration — they are often against his widow Rima Horton Rickman, projecting narratives they themselves support rather than honoring the people involved. Maybe it's just a sense of modesty, or another way to preserve what remains. But I still believe that respect is the highest form of affection towards a great man like Alan Rickman.
(It's just my opinion, everyone is free to do as they wish obviously!)
_eve-rickmaniac1979
[picture from https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/die-hard-actor-alan-rickman-dies-aged-69/ ]
I'm turning 25 this year, and likewise, my OC Yamaha is turning 15. I thought it would be fun to take a long walk down memory lane and make a comprehensive post showcasing her development across the decade I've been drawing her.
Yamaha has ultimately become my muse. When I'm unsure of what to draw, she comes to the forefront of my mind. She's been with me longer than any idea I've ever had, and is symbolic of my development not just as an artist, but as a person. Her growth shows off my most vulnerable pre-teen years to my maturation as an adult to be able to flesh her out into a character who can stand on her own two-dimensional feet.
And you know what? Cringe culture is dead and I am free.
In 2011, Yamaha was born. Her original full name was "Yamaha Suzuki Kawasaki," and she was originally a Soul Eater OC made to be the estranged twin sister of Death the Kid. Her name actually stemmed from the fixation I had on dirt bikes at the time, and how fascinated I was by the Yamaha company logo, showcasing three tuning forks interlocked to form a circle. Later on, her name was definitely more fitted to the music side of the Yamaha corporation.
She kept her full name. While she became an OC in her own universe, so to speak, she kept the Mary Sue-ness to a painfully maximal level. An android born from a defunct laboratory, she somehow gained elemental powers from an accident in her development. This also left her with a ghost living in her left shoulder blade. Despite her strange origins, her personality as a calm, caring, and loving individual who always has a simple smile on her face stayed consistent. Perhaps I was trying to create someone who would support me when no one else would...
This ghost living in her left shoulder was, at the time, named "Aiden". Swapped colors and a dubious relationship, "Aiden" didn't have a "human" form until much, much later. While Yamaha remained the character I would draw during my most passive moments, "Aiden" became the symbol I relied on in times of distress. Which, as a severely mentally ill child, was quite frequent. I began to project onto both of them depending on my mood at any given time, which is probably why I grew to be so attached to them even in my adulthood. Something, something, human psychology.
I used every opportunity I could squander to draw Yamaha and her rapidly growing crew of equally wacky OCs. She even had green hair, and then short hair, for two equally brief periods of time. Somehow though, and I'm still kind of proud of young me for this, she kept that little cowlick throughout 90% of my drawings of her. Props to 12yo me for being consistent. Sometimes I still forget to add the cowlick, and it feels cursed when that happens. Yamaha is not herself without that little tuft of hair sticking out of her scalp.
Upon entering high school, my life was rapidly changing. And thus, my projection onto Yamaha started to falter, and I ended up completely scrapping the old crew of 14 OCs that I had created throughout middle school in exchange for coming up with new ideas that, as of now, have also been completely scrapped. Yamaha's character design, however, survived in the form of a different (trust me) character named "Kyo," who had absolutely zero development whatsoever. She was also much more brooding, which looking back on, was also another reflection of my mind at the time. The idea of Kyo in my head aligns much more with who "Aiden" ended up becoming.
Flash forward to 2020. We're in the middle of the pandemic, and I have the bright idea to start a TikTok account. I end up making a post that goes sort of viral, showing off my old sketchbook drawings of my original crew of 14 OCs with a silly audio. I had a decent amount of people say that I should redraw some of them, and I chose Yamaha without a second of thought. How could I not? This drawing was supposed to just be a one off.
But when I drew this later that same year, my entire mentality shifted. Suddenly, the other hundreds of juvenile OCs I had created throughout four years of high school and one semester of undergraduate college were gone, and Yamaha was back at the center of my mind. She felt reborn.
My girl was back and better than ever, and once again became my muse. I would draw her whenever I could. She would appear on the tiniest post-it notes or the margins of notebooks. I would sketch her in books or on my iPad (which I got in 2020 after saving up all of my part-time paychecks from that winter) at any opportunity. And with her redesign, her other friends followed. (It's not that they're not important, but this ain't about them.)
It was also around this time that I, thankfully, got rid of the "Kawasaki" surname. I was thinking of completely changing her name altogether, but after a decade of calling a character you've become so emotionally attached to the same name, it's kind of difficult to go back on that. Will I probably get blacklisted from any Yamaha corporate accounts? Probably, but it'll have been worth it.
Her girlfriend Zephyr got a redraw, though! In the old drawing of Yamaha having green hair, her and Zephyr were supposed to be holding hands. But back when I was a child and didn't know that gay people existed (or that I myself was one of them), I just chalked them up to being "really good friends." I really gave them the "and they were roommates" treatment before that ever became a meme.
And who else got a re-design? "Aiden"!!! She was finally beginning to become her own fleshed out character, the younger twin sister of Yamaha. For the sake of stuff I have planned for the future, though, I'm not going to share any more than that <3
Thankfully, though, as of 2024 or so, "Aiden's" name was officially changed to Akane. Akane's name was easier for me to change. "Aiden" had no meaning behind it whatsoever and was probably just a name I had heard on the playground at one point. Naming her Akane was me welcoming her into this new era along with her sister.
Yamaha was once again coming with me everywhere, nestled in the back of my mind at all times. She became my little dress-up doll, my character to experiment styles and compositions with, the forefront of all my ideas. She might not have entered college with me, but she sure as hell helped me finish it. It was in 2024 that I was finally able to give her a voice, in the form of a (still in progress) UTAU voicebank that I'm hoping to finally release this summer after years of putting it off. That was always my dream from the day she became her own character, to give her and her friends UTAU voicebanks. (So far, there's four that have been recorded and are being edited- Yamaha, Zephyr, Mimi, and Nora. My own sibling with voice Akane, but he doesn't know it yet. He'll be repaid with a lunch and a Monster Energy.)
So that, roughly, brings us to now. 2026. My birthday is in July, and her's is on the 20th of June. 25 years of life and 15 years of Yamaha existing in the back of my head. She's been with me through schooling, therapy, outings with friends, and every moment I spend awake. Perhaps my profound attachment to her is something I should speak to a professional about, but I like to think that her existence is simply a manifestation of my deepest feelings. She was created as a beacon of normalcy for a pre-teen girl caught in the crosshairs of despair, and remained unchanging as that girl grew up.
I sometimes joke that Yamaha is my daughter, but I feel like she's more than that to me. She deserves to be more than that. She was born to be a vessel for my thoughts and feelings, and has since turned into her own person... so to speak.
Closing out the year finding I wasn’t very creative at all. Life got so busy and scary that my one of my biggest outlets and, honestly, identifiers was pushed to the side out of frustration, burnout, and fear. 2025 felt like a year of borrowed time and endless transition. I hope going into the new year, I learn to find myself again and reignite this passion.
This past year put me in front of some big players as an advocate and ambassador, started a new masters program, lost my childhood home, restarted my seizure free streak, and pushed so many people away in pursuit of numbness and escapism. Perfectionism is a hell of a drug and it rears its ugly head when you’re perceived more than ever. I dedicate 2026 to good health, fulfilling art, and internal love.
I am writing this just after having closed the cover of my slightly beaten copy of the Scorpio Races, having completed reading the book for the second time. This time, I was astonished by how much I had completely forgotten about -- it had only been two years since I first read it - and enjoyed it even more. The details were more clear, and some parts that I had missed became my favorites this time around (The Scorpio Festival, St. Columba’s, Malvern’s tea, among others).
Where to even begin?
I think that my favorite part of the book is those chapters in the middle, with the festival and the rider’s parade. Maggie Stiefvater spent her time their slowly and fascinatingly revealing the old traditions of a group of people. Practices that have been in place for years are vividly described and the writing makes it easy to come up with a whole picture of the scene. I love those chapters.
Another aspect that I definitely appreciated more this time was the dynamic between Puck and those in charge of the races. Repeatedly, she is told that she cannot ride, but she does not listen. Instead, she takes Dove and she wins. That plot is very encouraging, but also I was struck by another part of it. In my mind, Puck was the leader of a new Thisby, but was being held back by the old, traditional Thisby.
Despite the obstacles, she overcomes everything and is able to prove herself and take her place among the riders.
Something else became more clear to me was the extreme character development. This was much more evident to me this time because I had already “met” the characters once. In the beginning of the book, Puck is very nervous and does not know what she is doing, but finds that the stables are where she belongs and ends up gaining confidence on the way. Sean is initially very aloof, standoffish, and brusque, but he softens a bit and starts to be more of himself, and allow himself to have friends and to care about things other than racing.
Whenever I have recommended the Scorpio Races to someone, I have been at loss about what to say in order to describe it. Yes, it’s about carnivorous horses, but it’s far more complex than that, which I struggle to convey. Even after reading it again, I don’t know how I would describe it to someone. It’s just a special book, that doesn’t really fit any categories and I think that it should just stay that way.
