Account Migration in Progress!
Posted a year agoFor those who aren't in the know, I am in the process of migrating my account over to ManibrandrStudios . I will be re-uploading artwork that I consider to be the best of, as well as works that are pertaining to my current projects. I will also be scrubbing this gallery of any traces of works pertaining to my past involvement with the Furry Raiders, Raiders who got art from me while masquerading as non-Raiders, my past abusers and my manipulators. More info on this can be found in this journal. Thanks for everything, but given everything that had happened over the last year, especially including the fact that the headmate, Aluxes, that this account is a namesake of passed away, along with Eleara and Lucina, just using this account had become a big source of dysphoria.
Again, this is the account I am migrating to.
ManibrandrStudios
Hope to catch you all on the flipside.
Again, this is the account I am migrating to.
ManibrandrStudios Hope to catch you all on the flipside.
All Caught Up! Ko-Fi page now active!
Posted a year agoSo this past week, I have been posting my backlog of artwork to galleries. It's been a pretty big backlog, considering that I have never been great in being on top of submissions to other websites. It also doesn't help that in last May, I had almost died to a gallstone flareup causing an acute bout of necrotizing pancreatitis. Thankfully, the organ death was only partial, and after a few months I had been able to recover, and is waiting for an impending operation to remove my gallbladder.
In addition, I also took the time to post a lot of my artwork to my Ko-Fi page. (https://ko-fi.com/midnighthyperion) And hopefully I'll be more active on there too, giving out updates on the projects I am working on regularly. I am also trying to save up for a new PC, considering that I am starting to reach the limits of what my current PC, which I had for 11 years, could do. Any small donations would be greatly appreciated. I will also be supplementing as much of my commission income as I can to help my own funding too.
Posted using PostyBirb
In addition, I also took the time to post a lot of my artwork to my Ko-Fi page. (https://ko-fi.com/midnighthyperion) And hopefully I'll be more active on there too, giving out updates on the projects I am working on regularly. I am also trying to save up for a new PC, considering that I am starting to reach the limits of what my current PC, which I had for 11 years, could do. Any small donations would be greatly appreciated. I will also be supplementing as much of my commission income as I can to help my own funding too.
Posted using PostyBirb
Mortis Chronicles Kickstarter
Posted 3 years agoSo, me and my sister 
have been roped into doing music for this RPG Maker project called Mortis Chronicles, and we are trying to raise money to fund the project so we can release Chapter 1 at the scheduled date of mid-2022. We're around 40% of the way there, so any help within the next 13 days will be much appreciated. Thank you.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mortischronicles/mortis-chronicles-tale-of-cowardice
(I am listed as Mánibranðr Soundworks, with Alice listed as Headache Central)
Posted using PostyBirb
have been roped into doing music for this RPG Maker project called Mortis Chronicles, and we are trying to raise money to fund the project so we can release Chapter 1 at the scheduled date of mid-2022. We're around 40% of the way there, so any help within the next 13 days will be much appreciated. Thank you. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mortischronicles/mortis-chronicles-tale-of-cowardice
(I am listed as Mánibranðr Soundworks, with Alice listed as Headache Central)
Posted using PostyBirb
So it's been a while isn't it?
Posted 3 years agoValerie/Valfreyja/Brynhilðr: So yeah, I've disappeared for a while.
It's a pretty unfortunate thing, but I've been dealing with a lot of things one after another from the beginning of 2019 till the end of 2021, and coupled with burnout, it's been hard to to be more social outside of my own close friend and family circles. One of the biggest factor was in one of my former friends who have treated me pretty poorly, exploited me as an artist and twisted my arm several times to undercharge myself, while constantly negging my personal growth as "overly political." After a while, he and I argued over the mask and lockdown mandates, and have decided that he's a toxic influence in my life, and cut him out as a result. Considering that he had wished that I lost my job that I got a couple of years ago, and got laid off after a week from, so he could have me all to himself as a personal supply of emotional labour, it is one of the better decisions I've made. I am still recovering from the burnout effects from his abusive tendencies.
The rest of 2019 had been rough too, there has been quite a few connections I have lost as a result of having escaped the alt-right furry cults back in 2018. These were former friends that I had tried and failed (mostly) to shepherd out of those toxic places, and it had been a source of a lot of recent trauma that I am still dealing with. On the plus side, that was when I discovered that I am non-binary, and also plural.
I didn't remember much of 2020. That year didn't have much happening for us uniquely considering that everything have been obscured by the trauma of the rise of COVID-19. I did move with my bio-family to a new apartment where we are staying currently. I also released a new mini-album on March that year. On July, I discovered a new alter within me who apparently split following the trauma that happened in 2018 that got us to escape from those alt-right furry cults. Her name is Julayla, you may notice that my profile page has been updated to reflect their identity, more on that later. Speaking of which...
Julayla: Hi there, my name is Ismene Julayla Tovah Grimaude, and I am the current host of this plural system. I was created a decade ago as a traumagenic split due to dysphoric distress, but later merged back into Val when we started to transition back in 2015, and up until mid-2018, I stayed dormant. Mid-2018 I split from Val due to internal conflict and trauma, and was sealed away until July 2020. When I emerged again, I started to heal from the brainwashing and trauma I suffered during 2015-2018, and started to figure out who I am. Unfortunately, I ended up disappearing for a few months following a betrayal from someone who we once saw as an adoptive brother to our found family and only really emerged at the end of the year.
2021 has been.....a hectic year. At the beginning, of the year me and Val grew close and we started becoming intimate partners. Yes, a relationship with a headmate, it happens. I also got roped into creating a track for the Year 3 Furry Music Anthology album (Track 14) by the friends I've made at the beginning of that year. That album was meant to raise funds for the Trevor Project, so that was a pretty big accomplishment. I've also participated in a GameJam on July that lead to the creation of a rough build of an RPG Maker game I'd like to polish later on. As a result of all of this, I've ended up exploring my own non-humanity, our spirituality as an animist, and our gender as also non-binary. I've also ended up being a part and closer member of a friend group for nonhumanity, a plural support group, and a handful of RPG Maker/Indie game dev communities. Another thing that happened is in May where a new alter, Alyssa 'Illteny' Ephraim had appeared and asserted themself in our headspace, and I ended up becoming the new system host.
It's been a long time coming as Val had been in dire need of a break from life for the longest time, and felt that I was a good fit. Another reason was that we also suffered from two more very traumatic events where we lost people we thought we could trust to their abusive tendencies, one of which had caused val to fracture and separate into 3 alters. Val's gotten better eventually, but like, they decided to stay separate but integrated, instead of merging like last time. They also ended up discovering that they are more specifically a femmeflux bigenderfluid fae, and have come to terms with their masculine side. Then at the end of the year, we discovered that we most likely are manic-depressive and have been for the longest time.
I think all in all, this year has been the year where the most changes, trauma, and growth had happened to us. Let 2022 be the year of healing. I think I'll be uploading backlogged artwork shortly after posting this, so stay tuned.
Posted using PostyBirb
It's a pretty unfortunate thing, but I've been dealing with a lot of things one after another from the beginning of 2019 till the end of 2021, and coupled with burnout, it's been hard to to be more social outside of my own close friend and family circles. One of the biggest factor was in one of my former friends who have treated me pretty poorly, exploited me as an artist and twisted my arm several times to undercharge myself, while constantly negging my personal growth as "overly political." After a while, he and I argued over the mask and lockdown mandates, and have decided that he's a toxic influence in my life, and cut him out as a result. Considering that he had wished that I lost my job that I got a couple of years ago, and got laid off after a week from, so he could have me all to himself as a personal supply of emotional labour, it is one of the better decisions I've made. I am still recovering from the burnout effects from his abusive tendencies.
The rest of 2019 had been rough too, there has been quite a few connections I have lost as a result of having escaped the alt-right furry cults back in 2018. These were former friends that I had tried and failed (mostly) to shepherd out of those toxic places, and it had been a source of a lot of recent trauma that I am still dealing with. On the plus side, that was when I discovered that I am non-binary, and also plural.
I didn't remember much of 2020. That year didn't have much happening for us uniquely considering that everything have been obscured by the trauma of the rise of COVID-19. I did move with my bio-family to a new apartment where we are staying currently. I also released a new mini-album on March that year. On July, I discovered a new alter within me who apparently split following the trauma that happened in 2018 that got us to escape from those alt-right furry cults. Her name is Julayla, you may notice that my profile page has been updated to reflect their identity, more on that later. Speaking of which...
Julayla: Hi there, my name is Ismene Julayla Tovah Grimaude, and I am the current host of this plural system. I was created a decade ago as a traumagenic split due to dysphoric distress, but later merged back into Val when we started to transition back in 2015, and up until mid-2018, I stayed dormant. Mid-2018 I split from Val due to internal conflict and trauma, and was sealed away until July 2020. When I emerged again, I started to heal from the brainwashing and trauma I suffered during 2015-2018, and started to figure out who I am. Unfortunately, I ended up disappearing for a few months following a betrayal from someone who we once saw as an adoptive brother to our found family and only really emerged at the end of the year.
2021 has been.....a hectic year. At the beginning, of the year me and Val grew close and we started becoming intimate partners. Yes, a relationship with a headmate, it happens. I also got roped into creating a track for the Year 3 Furry Music Anthology album (Track 14) by the friends I've made at the beginning of that year. That album was meant to raise funds for the Trevor Project, so that was a pretty big accomplishment. I've also participated in a GameJam on July that lead to the creation of a rough build of an RPG Maker game I'd like to polish later on. As a result of all of this, I've ended up exploring my own non-humanity, our spirituality as an animist, and our gender as also non-binary. I've also ended up being a part and closer member of a friend group for nonhumanity, a plural support group, and a handful of RPG Maker/Indie game dev communities. Another thing that happened is in May where a new alter, Alyssa 'Illteny' Ephraim had appeared and asserted themself in our headspace, and I ended up becoming the new system host.
It's been a long time coming as Val had been in dire need of a break from life for the longest time, and felt that I was a good fit. Another reason was that we also suffered from two more very traumatic events where we lost people we thought we could trust to their abusive tendencies, one of which had caused val to fracture and separate into 3 alters. Val's gotten better eventually, but like, they decided to stay separate but integrated, instead of merging like last time. They also ended up discovering that they are more specifically a femmeflux bigenderfluid fae, and have come to terms with their masculine side. Then at the end of the year, we discovered that we most likely are manic-depressive and have been for the longest time.
I think all in all, this year has been the year where the most changes, trauma, and growth had happened to us. Let 2022 be the year of healing. I think I'll be uploading backlogged artwork shortly after posting this, so stay tuned.
Posted using PostyBirb
Just to clarify
Posted 3 years agoFascists and 2020 Trump voters don't deserve to enjoy my works. If you dump your garbage on my spaces as a MAGAt, I don't care how much you like my art, I am removing you from my spaces, and you will be blocked. You've caused too much hurt to the world for us to want anything to do with you.
You don't like it? Well, the option to stop being a fascist is always there, take the hint.
You don't like it? Well, the option to stop being a fascist is always there, take the hint.
Prosecutor: Capitol rioter aimed 'to take hostages'
Posted 3 years agohttps://apnews.com/article/capitol-.....6c3f34a02f444b
Just in case you need any more proof that Trump's coven of psychopaths are lying when they claimed there was no ill-intent. They are gaslighting you, don't let them.
Just in case you need any more proof that Trump's coven of psychopaths are lying when they claimed there was no ill-intent. They are gaslighting you, don't let them.
Cult of 45's Extinction Burst
Posted 3 years agoWhen you deny someone, who never fully developed empathy, compassion or rationality, from what they want, especially on grounds that what they want goes against all reason, they will throw a tantrum. This tantrum will last a while, and towards the end, their tantrum will reach a fever pitch in intensity before tapering off into nothing.
This is exactly what you're seeing from Trump and his supporters once it became clear that Biden won not only via electoral votes, but also by a lead of over 6 million of the popular vote. This caused Trump to unleash a nuclear-burst of hilariously malformed frivolous lawsuits, his supporters to unleash a tidal wave of social media tantrums that is both glorious and amazing. Then on January 6th this year, MAGAts and the AltRight, under the call of Donald Trump, and supported by the bussing service of Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA stormed the capital in an attempt to subvert democracy and halt the certification of electoral votes. They also wanted to lynch state senators, including republicans who refused to deny or subvert the results. They also wanted to lynch Mike Pence for the same reason, who, as a result of the events that night, decided to distance himself from Trump. The cult of Trump was eventually stopped when the national guard was called in by Pence going behind Donald's back, to diffuse the situation.
This didn't stop the certification from happening. At 4 am the next day, the certification was completed, and Biden was confirmed the winner. The cult of 45 tantrum accomplished nothing but to create a schism within the Republican party, making it far less likely for them to regain power, (Thankfully) and to make antagonists of themselves in the eyes of the state. The republicans are reaping what they had sown 4 years ago. Following the events, Trump got permanently suspended from a number of social media platforms, prompting an exodus of reactionaries towards platforms like Parler and Gab, who have either been kneecapped by being removed from the Google and Apple app stores, or have been languishing in the financial red for a while. I have a feeling the cult of 45 will soon be finding themselves without an effective audience soon.
However, our work isn't done yet, Trump supporters aren't quiet about how they feel and what they want to do, and a lot of what they want to do is of great interest to law enforcement. Do what you can to identify those who invaded the Capitol Hill building, and get them prosecuted. Also compile a list of receipts of bad actors in the fandom, and get them deplatformed everywhere you can, especially on places where they get their money from. The more you can lessen their impact, the more air you can take out of their sails. This is important, because a lot of them are planning to violently disrupt the inauguration ceremony. Taking away their platforms and funding will work to kneecap their efforts to do so. I have a feeling that their extinction burst of a tantrum will not end for a while, and the human cost of waiting it out is too large. Brush up on your emergency first aid training, and report any strange activity you see.
That is all. Stay safe, and keep Trump cultists out of your spaces.
Much love XXX
This is exactly what you're seeing from Trump and his supporters once it became clear that Biden won not only via electoral votes, but also by a lead of over 6 million of the popular vote. This caused Trump to unleash a nuclear-burst of hilariously malformed frivolous lawsuits, his supporters to unleash a tidal wave of social media tantrums that is both glorious and amazing. Then on January 6th this year, MAGAts and the AltRight, under the call of Donald Trump, and supported by the bussing service of Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA stormed the capital in an attempt to subvert democracy and halt the certification of electoral votes. They also wanted to lynch state senators, including republicans who refused to deny or subvert the results. They also wanted to lynch Mike Pence for the same reason, who, as a result of the events that night, decided to distance himself from Trump. The cult of Trump was eventually stopped when the national guard was called in by Pence going behind Donald's back, to diffuse the situation.
This didn't stop the certification from happening. At 4 am the next day, the certification was completed, and Biden was confirmed the winner. The cult of 45 tantrum accomplished nothing but to create a schism within the Republican party, making it far less likely for them to regain power, (Thankfully) and to make antagonists of themselves in the eyes of the state. The republicans are reaping what they had sown 4 years ago. Following the events, Trump got permanently suspended from a number of social media platforms, prompting an exodus of reactionaries towards platforms like Parler and Gab, who have either been kneecapped by being removed from the Google and Apple app stores, or have been languishing in the financial red for a while. I have a feeling the cult of 45 will soon be finding themselves without an effective audience soon.
However, our work isn't done yet, Trump supporters aren't quiet about how they feel and what they want to do, and a lot of what they want to do is of great interest to law enforcement. Do what you can to identify those who invaded the Capitol Hill building, and get them prosecuted. Also compile a list of receipts of bad actors in the fandom, and get them deplatformed everywhere you can, especially on places where they get their money from. The more you can lessen their impact, the more air you can take out of their sails. This is important, because a lot of them are planning to violently disrupt the inauguration ceremony. Taking away their platforms and funding will work to kneecap their efforts to do so. I have a feeling that their extinction burst of a tantrum will not end for a while, and the human cost of waiting it out is too large. Brush up on your emergency first aid training, and report any strange activity you see.
That is all. Stay safe, and keep Trump cultists out of your spaces.
Much love XXX
Listen to Reason...
Posted 4 years ago...it's a fun program for making music, and the lite version is being offered for free with a purchase in PluginBoutique. In fact, considering that there are a few synths that are on sale for $15 or less this month, including Iris 2, it's a great way to get started making music. And if it isn't enough, you can run Reason 11 as a plugin in another DAW like Cakewalk and Reaper, and expand your toolset there.
As for why when you can use Cakewalk for free or Reaper for just $60? Simple, the rack interface providing a unique and intuitive way to visualize your musical arrangements, and the ability to wire up different modules up in creative ways to produce your own bespoke sounds, and even the Lite version can run a lot of Rack Extensions available exclusively for Reason, which you can also use with Reason as a rack plugin.
There are a couple of limitations to keep in mind when considering an upgrade to Intro, Full or Suite though. For one, support for multi-timbral synths is lacking, requiring that you use LoopMIDI and JACK, among a few other extra software to get around it. Secondly, VST3 support is ostensibly lacking so far, though hopefully that will change soon.
As for why when you can use Cakewalk for free or Reaper for just $60? Simple, the rack interface providing a unique and intuitive way to visualize your musical arrangements, and the ability to wire up different modules up in creative ways to produce your own bespoke sounds, and even the Lite version can run a lot of Rack Extensions available exclusively for Reason, which you can also use with Reason as a rack plugin.
There are a couple of limitations to keep in mind when considering an upgrade to Intro, Full or Suite though. For one, support for multi-timbral synths is lacking, requiring that you use LoopMIDI and JACK, among a few other extra software to get around it. Secondly, VST3 support is ostensibly lacking so far, though hopefully that will change soon.
Do bear with me
Posted 4 years agoI tend to check out of most things when I am firing on all cylinders to get art done. And let me tell you, the old beat up tablet I had been using since my main one broke down did not do me any favours regarding speed and accuracy. Which is why it felt so good that I finally got a screen tablet, and am doing things at around 3x the speed I normally do them in. If you're in the market for a screen tablet, I highly recommend that you look at XP-Pen's line of Artist Pro tablets, the build and picture quality is great and the accuracy is quite good.
Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Free 30-Day Pass
Posted 4 years agohttps://www.digitalconcerthall.com
So this is something I have been enjoying in the past few days, and I want to share this with you all. The Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall is offering free 30-day passes to viewings of their concerts, recorded and live, all you have to do is redeem the voucher code "BERLINPHIL" when you have an account registered. As someone who loves music, listening to, composing and producing, this is a great resource, and I am pretty sure some of you would very much enjoy this during this trying time.
Stay safe! Your health is important!
So this is something I have been enjoying in the past few days, and I want to share this with you all. The Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall is offering free 30-day passes to viewings of their concerts, recorded and live, all you have to do is redeem the voucher code "BERLINPHIL" when you have an account registered. As someone who loves music, listening to, composing and producing, this is a great resource, and I am pretty sure some of you would very much enjoy this during this trying time.
Stay safe! Your health is important!
Toxic Group Watch : MFF NSFW Telegram (Racism, Ableism)
Posted 4 years agoUnfortunately, I got removed from the chat in question, so I am unable to provide logs of it as it happened, only the aftermath.
So it started when a couple of trolls entered the chatroom with the racist hazmat suit meme avatars. For those who don't know, it is a racist meme started by 8chan trolls to spread anti-Chinese racism. I pointed this out, and I got the typical responses:
"Oh it's just a joke!"
"I am asian and this doesn't bother me!"
"Stop being so offended!"
It's a textbook example of how irony poisoning works, and how it works to normalize racism, and undermine any objections to racist memes, because it's "just a joke, stop being so offended!" when the reailty is that there is a lot more at stake. So I pushed the matter further, and they started attacking me and my character, and they turned the chatroom against me, scapegoating me as the problem. This went on for a couple of hours, of which a "skunk puppy" decided to come and take things to an uglier level and hit me with ableist condescension, and started to misgender me. When I pointed it out, the chat erupted in anger...towards me, for daring to have a problem with being misgendered and how can they possibly know from the name "Freyja" and from checking my Telegram profile that I go by "she/they"? Anyways, the admins decided that the racist meme isn't actually racist and threw me under the bus, deciding to remove me instead of the toxic individuals. I questioned the head admin as to why and this is what happened :
Me : Hello May i ask as to why i was removed?
Admin : Multiple people pointed you out of the cause of the drama going on in the group. It has stopped since you've stopped talking, and after you were removed, so I have to trust the people that I know that you were indeed the problem.
Oh boy, this is one hell of a bad sign if someone managing a chatroom with 1700+ people is gonna act in a populist way and side with the status quo when the status quo is the problem. So I pressed on...
Me : *sigh* Okay, so it started when I saw a couple of people use the hazmat suit avatars which is a racist meme used to spread hate and paranoia towards asian people specifically chinese people
Admin : It isn't and I'm done here.
At this point, they deleted the link I shared that talks about the hazmat suit meme being a racist dogwhistle, and they blocked me, not wanting to hear my explanation. That tells me all I need to know about what kind of ship is being run there, and where it's heading. They insist in validating and normalizing toxic behaviours because it causes them the least problems, and don't have a backbone to stand for anything but their numbers staying up. Now this is a big problem for a chat of this nature, especially considering that it was a space where a lot of people share intimate photos of themselves, and the idea that cryptofascists could be coming in and collecting them for blackmail material later on is incredibly gross, and it seems dangerous enough for me to drop a warning here about it. Please stay safe and be warned.
If you want a better space to talk about and hang out with convention goes in the midwest area, there is the SFW chat by the same name that is run by far more trustworthy people who will not tolerate any of that kind of toxicity. Here : MidWest Furfest 2020 I hope to see you on the other side.
So it started when a couple of trolls entered the chatroom with the racist hazmat suit meme avatars. For those who don't know, it is a racist meme started by 8chan trolls to spread anti-Chinese racism. I pointed this out, and I got the typical responses:
"Oh it's just a joke!"
"I am asian and this doesn't bother me!"
"Stop being so offended!"
It's a textbook example of how irony poisoning works, and how it works to normalize racism, and undermine any objections to racist memes, because it's "just a joke, stop being so offended!" when the reailty is that there is a lot more at stake. So I pushed the matter further, and they started attacking me and my character, and they turned the chatroom against me, scapegoating me as the problem. This went on for a couple of hours, of which a "skunk puppy" decided to come and take things to an uglier level and hit me with ableist condescension, and started to misgender me. When I pointed it out, the chat erupted in anger...towards me, for daring to have a problem with being misgendered and how can they possibly know from the name "Freyja" and from checking my Telegram profile that I go by "she/they"? Anyways, the admins decided that the racist meme isn't actually racist and threw me under the bus, deciding to remove me instead of the toxic individuals. I questioned the head admin as to why and this is what happened :
Me : Hello May i ask as to why i was removed?
Admin : Multiple people pointed you out of the cause of the drama going on in the group. It has stopped since you've stopped talking, and after you were removed, so I have to trust the people that I know that you were indeed the problem.
Oh boy, this is one hell of a bad sign if someone managing a chatroom with 1700+ people is gonna act in a populist way and side with the status quo when the status quo is the problem. So I pressed on...
Me : *sigh* Okay, so it started when I saw a couple of people use the hazmat suit avatars which is a racist meme used to spread hate and paranoia towards asian people specifically chinese people
Admin : It isn't and I'm done here.
At this point, they deleted the link I shared that talks about the hazmat suit meme being a racist dogwhistle, and they blocked me, not wanting to hear my explanation. That tells me all I need to know about what kind of ship is being run there, and where it's heading. They insist in validating and normalizing toxic behaviours because it causes them the least problems, and don't have a backbone to stand for anything but their numbers staying up. Now this is a big problem for a chat of this nature, especially considering that it was a space where a lot of people share intimate photos of themselves, and the idea that cryptofascists could be coming in and collecting them for blackmail material later on is incredibly gross, and it seems dangerous enough for me to drop a warning here about it. Please stay safe and be warned.
If you want a better space to talk about and hang out with convention goes in the midwest area, there is the SFW chat by the same name that is run by far more trustworthy people who will not tolerate any of that kind of toxicity. Here : MidWest Furfest 2020 I hope to see you on the other side.
A new start, cleaning up, bear with me.
Posted 4 years agoSo, umm...it's been a few years hasn't it? I am gonna be spending some time organizing my gallery, and removing any problematic content I can find. Almost all of my older journals are gone, they are either irrelevant or reflect sentiments I no longer identify with. If you find anything that slipped through the cracks, do let me know. With that out of the way I am sure that there are a lot of questions to be answered. I can get the more obvious ones out of the way first.
So the first question, what made me leave first? It's a lot of frustration, actually. I was frustrated with the way the site was managed, there was a lot of things here and there that just bothered me back then. But one thing that stood out was how loose the site security was that lead to a massive leak of private notes. With those leaks, a lot of uncomfortable truths got revealed, including the one situation where a very popular artist has been revealed to be extremely greasy, and bordering on hebephilia with how he targeted certain folks to emotionally blackmail into sex. Now, I am not gonna hold the admin to how they handled this revelation, because I don't expect them to be prepared for such a bombshell, just that I hope that they learned from this, and would be more concerned with the well-being of the victim than protecting the popular members from judgement. However, there is one thing that happened that made it feel like a real sharp slap to the face of sexual abuse victims in this community, and it's how said greasy sex fiend got promoted to site admin for a while. To say that I was disgusted was an understatement. Yeah, this bothers me still. Quite honestly, that sex pest should have been banned long ago.
So with that in mind, why did I choose to return? This is gonna leave out a lot of back story, but the summary of it is that I let go of my ego and a lot of my pride, thanks to those close to me who insist I return because of the benefits it would bring me. I ended up deciding that I shouldn't be trying to fight one woman wars against every injustice I find, even if some of those causes are worth fighting for, because I would only end up harming myself, and with me growing the way I have and learning to love myself again, I feel like deplatforming myself when a lot of people are already pointing those guns at me is counter-productive. There's also the fact that some of my now-closest friends are in here exclusively, and being there for them is far more important than my pride. Does that mean that I will let the people I had been seeking to make accountable off the hook? Nope, but I am not letting myself suffer over their injustices anymore.
There were a lot of things that happened in between that I also do need to talk about. The first of which is how I fell into groups that contributed towards my general sense of bitterness that I once held onto. So, when I left FA, I took my grievances to other platforms, and a lot of leftist communities, particularly feminists took notice. I ended up falling into Social Justice groups, and befriending a lot of them.
Unfortunately, there were a couple of factors that would eventually made that arrangement unsustainable. The first being that I never bothered to study and discuss the dialectics that lead to the leftist social theories that I once held and now hold, so that made me vulnerable to a lot of the rhetorics that would eventually be known to be associated with Gamergate and the AltRight, since I once thought that all you needed was the desire to be and do good, and the tactics of the alt-right exploit and manipulate that desire in order to gain followers.
The second factor is due to bad luck, a lot of the people who I befriended in that era turned out to be abusive people, either of the communal narcissist type, or just plain sexually abusive. With only those folk as a reference point, plus the goading of the early era GamerGaters, I was gaslit into believing that this was what ALL of leftism was like. With that, as well as how a lot of my former friends on the left abused me for even talking to those people, my bitterness grew to sickening levels, and it pushed me deep into the Gamergate community.
The final factor was that I was extremely emotionally vulnerable back then, having just been freed from the spell of my abusive late mother when she got an aneurysm and then died after 2 years of her being bedridden, and also dealing with extreme dysphoria, to the point where I had a mental breakdown and my soul split into 3 over it. I dove into a lot of toxic behaviours that I no longer condone or support, in order to cope. Those tendencies carried on for years and persisted until only recently.
At around the same time Gamergate got started, I started to transition. For several years, I started to take contraceptive pills each day in order to get the effects of the hormones, while going through therapy, and seeing doctors to start getting on HRT. Admittedly, that also played a part in what drove me further into Gamergate too. See, I had this reasoning back then that if they really were as bad as my peers warned them to be, they would be pushing me away. But that didn't happen, what instead happened was far worse, and a move that I never anticipated, they made me their golden trans child and slowly, through daily exposure to transmed/truscum rhetoric and propaganda, weaponized me against other trans folk.
This went on for years, I got to witness the birth of AltFurry, which by the way, was indeed an offshoot of GamerGate and also driven by the resurgence of the AltRight. This brought everything that was wrong with GamerGate into the furry community, and poisoned it. Over time, they got worse, I got worse. We teamed up with the Furry Raiders, some of us, myself included, even going so far as establishing dual membership with Xanadu/The Furry Mead Hall. A lot of us didn't know what we were getting into, a lot of us were lost souls looking for a place to belong. I did, but by then, I was too embittered to care. At the time, the face of leftism looked like the people who entrap people into no-win situations, the face of leftism looked a lot like the propaganda I was fed everyday, and the face of leftism looked like people like the ex of my girlfriend, who almost pushed her to suicide through whisper campaigns and rumor-mongering.
Eventually, I ended up becoming a fully-fledged fascist for a while, as impossible as it seemed back then. If there is any example of how insidious and terrifying the tactics of fascists can be, it's this. They took my pain, my vulnerabilities and my insecurities, and used them to keep my wounds opened and fresh, so I would keep lashing out at my former peers for their benefit and amusement. So those hylic trash can get to hide behind me and my identity like the miserable cowards that they are. They hide behind the culture and language of respectability, and leverage the anger of the oppressed against them.
So what changed? Well, my girlfriend found out, and staged an intervention that lasted 9 hours. It was the most emotionally nerve wracking thing I've ever had to go through. Being shown your own reflection after you've spent years going down a bad path, and how harmful it was to you and those around you was a hard pill to swallow. I had to admit a lot of things to myself that i was afraid of thinking about, and by the end of it, I decided to make one of the hardest decisions of my life....
...I decided to have a break up. To end a 3-year long relationship with AltFurry and the Raiders, who by then, had become my entire world. And place the trust in my future, despite my fear of the impending uncertainty, into the hands of my girlfriend. Slowly, I disconnected from groups controlled and owned by them, I started consuming leftist media, and detoxifying myself, I started thinking for myself and developing a robust set of dialectics to support my new perspectives. Eventually Alice ( matthewwolfbane ) and Deo ( Yes, that Deo. ) got involved and helped pull me out of a lot of the toxic ideas and habits that I had accumulated. It was a process that lasted for at least a year. Eventually, I reconnected with a lot of the people I had estranged myself from, mostly folks from the LGBT+ crowd.
Thanks to all the wonderful people I now consider my friends, I ended up discovering a lot of things about myself, including the fact that I am nonbinary, and I was encouraged to explore more of myself, being autistic, plural and otherkin. I feel a lot more content and at peace with myself, and that a lot of the bitterness that had kept me shackled is completely gone. I am now a lot older and wiser, and a lot more hardened against being gaslit by fascist propaganda once again, and I am thankful for it. I look forward to reconnecting with you all once again. Much love! <3
So the first question, what made me leave first? It's a lot of frustration, actually. I was frustrated with the way the site was managed, there was a lot of things here and there that just bothered me back then. But one thing that stood out was how loose the site security was that lead to a massive leak of private notes. With those leaks, a lot of uncomfortable truths got revealed, including the one situation where a very popular artist has been revealed to be extremely greasy, and bordering on hebephilia with how he targeted certain folks to emotionally blackmail into sex. Now, I am not gonna hold the admin to how they handled this revelation, because I don't expect them to be prepared for such a bombshell, just that I hope that they learned from this, and would be more concerned with the well-being of the victim than protecting the popular members from judgement. However, there is one thing that happened that made it feel like a real sharp slap to the face of sexual abuse victims in this community, and it's how said greasy sex fiend got promoted to site admin for a while. To say that I was disgusted was an understatement. Yeah, this bothers me still. Quite honestly, that sex pest should have been banned long ago.
So with that in mind, why did I choose to return? This is gonna leave out a lot of back story, but the summary of it is that I let go of my ego and a lot of my pride, thanks to those close to me who insist I return because of the benefits it would bring me. I ended up deciding that I shouldn't be trying to fight one woman wars against every injustice I find, even if some of those causes are worth fighting for, because I would only end up harming myself, and with me growing the way I have and learning to love myself again, I feel like deplatforming myself when a lot of people are already pointing those guns at me is counter-productive. There's also the fact that some of my now-closest friends are in here exclusively, and being there for them is far more important than my pride. Does that mean that I will let the people I had been seeking to make accountable off the hook? Nope, but I am not letting myself suffer over their injustices anymore.
There were a lot of things that happened in between that I also do need to talk about. The first of which is how I fell into groups that contributed towards my general sense of bitterness that I once held onto. So, when I left FA, I took my grievances to other platforms, and a lot of leftist communities, particularly feminists took notice. I ended up falling into Social Justice groups, and befriending a lot of them.
Unfortunately, there were a couple of factors that would eventually made that arrangement unsustainable. The first being that I never bothered to study and discuss the dialectics that lead to the leftist social theories that I once held and now hold, so that made me vulnerable to a lot of the rhetorics that would eventually be known to be associated with Gamergate and the AltRight, since I once thought that all you needed was the desire to be and do good, and the tactics of the alt-right exploit and manipulate that desire in order to gain followers.
The second factor is due to bad luck, a lot of the people who I befriended in that era turned out to be abusive people, either of the communal narcissist type, or just plain sexually abusive. With only those folk as a reference point, plus the goading of the early era GamerGaters, I was gaslit into believing that this was what ALL of leftism was like. With that, as well as how a lot of my former friends on the left abused me for even talking to those people, my bitterness grew to sickening levels, and it pushed me deep into the Gamergate community.
The final factor was that I was extremely emotionally vulnerable back then, having just been freed from the spell of my abusive late mother when she got an aneurysm and then died after 2 years of her being bedridden, and also dealing with extreme dysphoria, to the point where I had a mental breakdown and my soul split into 3 over it. I dove into a lot of toxic behaviours that I no longer condone or support, in order to cope. Those tendencies carried on for years and persisted until only recently.
At around the same time Gamergate got started, I started to transition. For several years, I started to take contraceptive pills each day in order to get the effects of the hormones, while going through therapy, and seeing doctors to start getting on HRT. Admittedly, that also played a part in what drove me further into Gamergate too. See, I had this reasoning back then that if they really were as bad as my peers warned them to be, they would be pushing me away. But that didn't happen, what instead happened was far worse, and a move that I never anticipated, they made me their golden trans child and slowly, through daily exposure to transmed/truscum rhetoric and propaganda, weaponized me against other trans folk.
This went on for years, I got to witness the birth of AltFurry, which by the way, was indeed an offshoot of GamerGate and also driven by the resurgence of the AltRight. This brought everything that was wrong with GamerGate into the furry community, and poisoned it. Over time, they got worse, I got worse. We teamed up with the Furry Raiders, some of us, myself included, even going so far as establishing dual membership with Xanadu/The Furry Mead Hall. A lot of us didn't know what we were getting into, a lot of us were lost souls looking for a place to belong. I did, but by then, I was too embittered to care. At the time, the face of leftism looked like the people who entrap people into no-win situations, the face of leftism looked a lot like the propaganda I was fed everyday, and the face of leftism looked like people like the ex of my girlfriend, who almost pushed her to suicide through whisper campaigns and rumor-mongering.
Eventually, I ended up becoming a fully-fledged fascist for a while, as impossible as it seemed back then. If there is any example of how insidious and terrifying the tactics of fascists can be, it's this. They took my pain, my vulnerabilities and my insecurities, and used them to keep my wounds opened and fresh, so I would keep lashing out at my former peers for their benefit and amusement. So those hylic trash can get to hide behind me and my identity like the miserable cowards that they are. They hide behind the culture and language of respectability, and leverage the anger of the oppressed against them.
So what changed? Well, my girlfriend found out, and staged an intervention that lasted 9 hours. It was the most emotionally nerve wracking thing I've ever had to go through. Being shown your own reflection after you've spent years going down a bad path, and how harmful it was to you and those around you was a hard pill to swallow. I had to admit a lot of things to myself that i was afraid of thinking about, and by the end of it, I decided to make one of the hardest decisions of my life....
...I decided to have a break up. To end a 3-year long relationship with AltFurry and the Raiders, who by then, had become my entire world. And place the trust in my future, despite my fear of the impending uncertainty, into the hands of my girlfriend. Slowly, I disconnected from groups controlled and owned by them, I started consuming leftist media, and detoxifying myself, I started thinking for myself and developing a robust set of dialectics to support my new perspectives. Eventually Alice (
matthewwolfbane ) and Deo ( Yes, that Deo. ) got involved and helped pull me out of a lot of the toxic ideas and habits that I had accumulated. It was a process that lasted for at least a year. Eventually, I reconnected with a lot of the people I had estranged myself from, mostly folks from the LGBT+ crowd.Thanks to all the wonderful people I now consider my friends, I ended up discovering a lot of things about myself, including the fact that I am nonbinary, and I was encouraged to explore more of myself, being autistic, plural and otherkin. I feel a lot more content and at peace with myself, and that a lot of the bitterness that had kept me shackled is completely gone. I am now a lot older and wiser, and a lot more hardened against being gaslit by fascist propaganda once again, and I am thankful for it. I look forward to reconnecting with you all once again. Much love! <3
[Legacy] Artist Resources
Posted 14 years agoI have decided to compile a set of links to resources, materials and tutorials aimed at helping you improve at art. If there is anything you'd like to add, please comment.
Software :
Open Canvas 1.1b72 [Raster/Sketch/Paint]
GIMP [General]
Inkscape [Vector]
Alchemy [Abstraction/Sketch/Inspiration Engine]
Cherry Brush [Raster/Sketch/Paint]
Sculptris [3D Sculpting]
Materials :
David Gurrea's Site [Textures]
CGTextures [Texture Library/15 MB DL Limit per Day]
Lost and Taken [Free Hi-Res Textures[/url]
PsychoBob's Screentones [Photoshop Screentones/Brush Packs]
Resources :
The Great Buildings Collection [Architectural Reference]
Digital Karnak [Architectural Reference]
Omniglot [Writing Systems]
Will's Skull Page [Animal Skull Reference]
Mjukhet [NSFW - BBW Figure Reference]
PoseSpace [NSFW - Hi Res Figure Reference/Commercial/1 Free Set with Sign Up]
Fineart.sk [NSFW - Figure & Anatomy Reference]
Posemaniacs - Random Pose Viewer [NSFW - Pose Library/Generator]
Colour Scheme Designer [Colour Scheme Generator]
Guides :
Provided by Daiki - A Collection of Artists' Guides [Collection]
Burne Hogarth - Drawing the Human Head [Anatomy Guide]
Burne Hogarth - Drawing Dynamic Hands [Anatomy Guide]
Burne Hogarth - Dynamic Anatomy [Anatomy Guide]
Andrew Loomis - Fun with a pencil [Penciling/Basic Caricature/Cartooning]
Andrew Loomis - Eye of the Painter [Painting Guide]
Andrew Loomis - Drawing the Head and Hands [Anatomy Guide]
Andrew Loomis - Successful Drawing [Perspective & Anatomy Guide]
Andrew Loomis - Figure Drawing for all its Worth [Figure Drawing Guide]
Andrew Loomis - Creative Illustrations [General]
George Bridgeman - Constructive Anatomy [Anatomy]
The Dimensions of Colour [Colour Theory]
PSG Art Tutorial [Digital Painting]
InconnuCrit Resources [General]
DrawFurry [Anthro-Specific]
Software :
Open Canvas 1.1b72 [Raster/Sketch/Paint]
GIMP [General]
Inkscape [Vector]
Alchemy [Abstraction/Sketch/Inspiration Engine]
Cherry Brush [Raster/Sketch/Paint]
Sculptris [3D Sculpting]
Materials :
David Gurrea's Site [Textures]
CGTextures [Texture Library/15 MB DL Limit per Day]
Lost and Taken [Free Hi-Res Textures[/url]
PsychoBob's Screentones [Photoshop Screentones/Brush Packs]
Resources :
The Great Buildings Collection [Architectural Reference]
Digital Karnak [Architectural Reference]
Omniglot [Writing Systems]
Will's Skull Page [Animal Skull Reference]
Mjukhet [NSFW - BBW Figure Reference]
PoseSpace [NSFW - Hi Res Figure Reference/Commercial/1 Free Set with Sign Up]
Fineart.sk [NSFW - Figure & Anatomy Reference]
Posemaniacs - Random Pose Viewer [NSFW - Pose Library/Generator]
Colour Scheme Designer [Colour Scheme Generator]
Guides :
Provided by Daiki - A Collection of Artists' Guides [Collection]
Burne Hogarth - Drawing the Human Head [Anatomy Guide]
Burne Hogarth - Drawing Dynamic Hands [Anatomy Guide]
Burne Hogarth - Dynamic Anatomy [Anatomy Guide]
Andrew Loomis - Fun with a pencil [Penciling/Basic Caricature/Cartooning]
Andrew Loomis - Eye of the Painter [Painting Guide]
Andrew Loomis - Drawing the Head and Hands [Anatomy Guide]
Andrew Loomis - Successful Drawing [Perspective & Anatomy Guide]
Andrew Loomis - Figure Drawing for all its Worth [Figure Drawing Guide]
Andrew Loomis - Creative Illustrations [General]
George Bridgeman - Constructive Anatomy [Anatomy]
The Dimensions of Colour [Colour Theory]
PSG Art Tutorial [Digital Painting]
InconnuCrit Resources [General]
DrawFurry [Anthro-Specific]
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