Hey, hope you're all doing well. Thank you all for the kind words and comments on my art, I'm still very much learning with every new piece, and hope to continue!

I had the thought while stocking shelves yesterday (did you know I work overnight as a cashier/stocker at a grocery store? Now you do!) that I am not very 'talented' at art. I don't say this as a way of fishing for comments or sympathy, to be clear, I'm extremely proud of the progress I've made. But I also know that if I'm any good, it's because I've spent a lot of time looking very closely at the artwork of some of my favorite artists (DJ-Rodney, Dogoro03, Takemoto Arashi, WFA, Bakemonoy, Smlieichii, Adios -- I could go on) and trying to take pointers on what I think makes their art look so appealing. I've just practiced a lot, but I can tell I don't have any particular 'innate' aptitude for it -- I'm just stubborn, and was willing to give up a lot of my video game playing time to practice.

All this is to say that I would say that RP is something that comes 'naturally' to me by this point. I've been doing it since I was 12 (which is 27 years ago, if you can believe it), it's just such a strong part of who I am. It's a neat twist of fate that instead of my art interfering with my RP, the two actually work in synergy. Most of the time, I draw either my OCs or characters that I RP with, so I get inspired by the scenes I do. What's doubly neat is that I can usually draw between RP poses, so I generally spend most evenings before work just doing both at once.

We're coming up on a year since Pokemorph Paradise was opened, and honestly, I'm having a good time with all the roleplay. Keeps me busy for sure! It's altogether going well (AHHH SAM HAS A BOYFRIEND AAAH), our Discord is active, I'd say there's probably about 8-10 RP scenes going on a week (yes okay MAYBE half of them are mine), and since MUSHing is both niche and a bit archaic, I'm altogether pleased.

We'll be looking to do advertising on FurAffinity starting next month, so hey, you might see some banners around!

I've really considered the idea of offering free art for people who apply. A ton of the stuff I draw is of other people's characters anyway (Barson, Dacre, Abigail, Zerzan, Max, Tyson, Tsubaze, Ethan, Fergus -- these are all other played and owned by people other than me), so I mean, it wouldn't even be out of character for me. But that feels like giving people an incentive outside of just like... the desire to RP with anthro Pokemon, so I've decided against making something official. (Plus that gives me an out for if somebody rolls a creepy Aipom-Pokemorph just to antagonize me. >.> )

That said, I do try to make an effort to draw characters who I see being active and RPing regularly, just because I really do feel like gift art can really increase a person's attachment to their character (and also usually because I become attached to interesting characters!), so there you go. Maybe incentive to join? Maybe, maybe.

Info's all here, and I am more than happy to talk about this via FA note, Discord, Telegram, whatever ya like!

Other than that, life is fine, work is going well, I recently went viral on Twitter (almost 250 K likes on a meme post I didn't even create LOL -- I'm really glad I gave credit right when I posted), and um yeah like I said earlier SAM HAS A BIG HUNKY BOYFRIEND. People who've been watching my journal for years know I've been worried about this for years now, so I'm really happy for my little butterball. They're at like six months together and going strong!

Keep it real lovelies.