This is an archive of work made by @tryskits from 2000 to 2020.
It's an art and writing archive, but it's also a record of how I grew up online, blemishes and all, and of who I was before I transitioned.
Before I was TrysKits, I was Refkins, and before I was Refkins, I was Rhawen. Getting from one me to the next was nonlinear and involved a lot of cringe-inducing moments, but I think acknowledging how growth is uncomfortable and messy is important, especially when so much of our lives are made public. I also, personally, like being able to look back at who I used to be. Reflecting on where we came from helps contextualize where we are, and I find I need that kind of perspective a lot of the time.
Below the cut, you'll find a timeline of my personal history for context, as well as guidance on navigating the archive's tags.
If you'd like to see what I'm making in the present day, you can follow @tryskits (or @tryskits-art if you want just the art w/o the reblogs), or you can find me at any of the links here.
History
The following is intended to give you a reference point for the works contained in this archive.
[Rhawen] Neopets was my entry point to the World Wide Web, and I joined it when I was still in elementary school. The 2000 - 2003 period of this archive covers this span.
[Rhawen > Refkins] I moved to deviantArt in 2004, when I was 13, and I proceeded to hang out there until I went to college in 2009, whereupon I disappeared from online creative spaces for nearly a decade.
[Refkins] During high school (2005 - 2009), I was one of the art kids and misfits, and I took some summer art classes. I also was drawn to writing and webcomics, but I never managed to get any of the latter off the ground.
[Refkins] In college, I studied Writing, Literature and Publishing and I had a minor in Photography. I was still making lots of stuff during this period of time, but most of it didn't make its way online until much later, and I was doing very little drawing.
In 2014, I began working QA in the game industry. I keep my game dev and creative identities separate on purpose, so that's all I'll say about it here, but it's worth knowing that my career and experience in game dev impacted how I made and thought about my own projects going forward.
[Refkins] In 2017 (age 26) and 2018 (age 27), I got hit with the drawing bug in a big way and made some overtures at returning to deviantArt. I uploaded the things I'd made over the previous 8-9 years. Unfortunately, it didn't stick.
[Refkins] From 2018 to 2020 I spent a lot of time writing, having finally moved past the burnout college induced.
[Refkins > TrysKits] In 2019, I got struck with the idea for Tarot Town, which you can learn more about via my main. TT proved to be the means through which I figured out that I am a trans man.
[TrysKits] In 2021, I socially transitioned, becoming Trystan (or Tryst for short). It was also the year I turned 30.
This archive ends with the conclusion of 2020 and the end of a major phase of my life--the pre-transition years and everything they contained.
Tag Guide
Content Type
The media type is pretty much always tagged, e.g., #sketch #illustration #prose , etc.
All visual works are tagged with #art archive
All written works are tagged with #writing archive
Anything that documents my years on deviantArt is tagged #deviantArt archive
While I've rarely done fanart, you can differentiate between that and original works with #fanart #fanfic #oc art #oc writing
#NSFW is used to denote works that explicitly depict sex, even when said depictions are censored.
#suggestive is used to denote works that imply sexual content but which don't outright depict it.
Furry works are tagged with both #furry and #anthro
Works depicting other peoples' IP are tagged with "others' OCs" and any other salient information about the character/creature/etc.
#mild nudity indicates that a character is in the buff but no detail is shown (e.g., no nips, genitalia, butt)
#nudity indicates that a character is naked and there's some amount of detail.
TrysKits IP
You can find work related to the stories set in Khra under #Khra-nicles
Work related to the roleplay my best friend and I used to do as teens is under #The RP
Work relating to my (defunct) first attempt to develop a webcomic is under #Redux/Project SE
Work relating to my (defunct) second attempt to develop a webcomic is under #A Practical Guide to Good vs Evil
Work relating to my (possibly zombified) third and fourth attempts to develop a webcomic are under #EC/WC
[I'll add more as they come up.]
Characters are tagged with their first and last name (assuming they have one of the latter). Middle names are left out if a character has one.
^ With exceptions: #Unge S. Chickt #Rhawen Evergreen Fox
Regardless of what they were called at the time of a work's creation, depictions of my primary fursona are tagged with #Refs
Not every OC is tagged. I focused on ones I felt were significant.
Temporal Organization
Each piece is tagged with my age at the time of its creation. Ex: #Age 14
Each piece is tagged with the decade it was created in. Ex: 00s
Each piece is tagged with the specific year it was created in. Ex: 2005
I graduated college in May 2013 and started working fulltime for the company I'd worked part-time for during college, but at a different college (they contracted w/ colleges in the area to do their mailrooms and print shops). If I remember correctly, I also tried to get back into the things I'd been doing before college (e.g., writing the Khra-nicles and drawing) as I felt both kind of burned out on making stuff and out-of-touch with my creative self after four years of creative writing assignments. (Which might seem backwards, if you didn't go to art school, but trust me: it happens to everyone.)
It didn't last, but my friends and I had been doing a D&D campaign that I used Craie and Leaf (both modified) for, and that gave me some mental/creative runway for a bit.
Part of the deal was we finished the campaign Leaf & Craie were in, and because of how that concluded, the new campaign was in a setting where the characters from the prior campaign had ascended to a godlike/mythical status.
I also seem to remember that I was deliberately trying to take the developments in Craie and Leaf (both design and character-wise) from the D&D campaign and integrate those changes w/ their Khra-nicles versions. I'd technically been trying to do that while in college still as well, but if memory serves, it was more focused this time around.
More of the Appalachain Trail walk that ended my life (I am not a fit person).
And now... LITTER FOUND ON THE APPALACHAIN TRAIL!
^ Do u see it?
^ There it is
^ How about that one?
^ Trees: Nature's clotheshook
We also kept finding smoldering, unattended campfires. Pug seen here determining how best to put this one (which I think was the second or third?) out:
The smoke from the others is visible in other photos, adding atmospheric effects.
In conclusion: do not leave your garbage and campfires on the gotdang Appalachain Trail. Warden Joyal and I will be very upset w/ you.
I believe this is the day that we walked significantly farther down the Appalachain Trail than I both expected and was necessarily capable of, now that I'm looking at these.
Some shots I took of some taxidermied masks a friend of mine made.
Unfortunately, some subset of these I did not take, and other than the ones that I'm in, I'm not sure which those are, but I'm reasonably certain I took these ones:
Under the cut are ones I know I didn't take because I'm in them and/or they're clearly from the same set that I was in a dress for (which means I wasn't shooting).
Hilarious sequence in which I try to put on a dress in a field:
