I feel like my 'milestones' for watchers are just completely arbitrary at this point. I figured 600 was a good spot to drop in, but I'm late so 606 it is cause it looks nice and it's nearly been a full year since the last one. Now onto the major life updates since the last one:

1. The oldest notable event was me going through a break-up tail-end of September. I want to keep it brief since nobody wants relationship drama in a celebration post! Ultimately, the relationship was not going to work out long-term, but I'll never regret having had the chance to have someone special to talk to and love each and every day for 2 years. While the watermelon's rind was bitter, the flesh tasted sweet.

2. In the last year I've made some really good friends, both from meeting them for the first time, and turning an old one into a furry (@Muffler.). While I would be here all day if I listed them all by name, I'm especially thankful for  Ryukiri who introduced herself to me by calling me 'mommy' in my shouts, and ended with being my very real, very legitimate wife.

I've had to deal with an online bully in this fandom since the literal day I joined, although they've seemed to vanish in the last year as they lost social power. Sometimes I still don't know how I didn't quit when my name preceded me everywhere I went. Hell, I was at my wits end the day I crumbled into Ryu's DMs, and yet it was the first time I felt like I was truly heard. There was no "your bully has a point" or "your bully is justified in feeling that way", it was just pure compassion. She made a lot of hard decisions that day, while still finding time to rebuild me, and I'm forever grateful.

At the same time, I met my other friend  Moonski who I started talking to shortly after my break-up. Her art has been and continues to be a massive inspiration to me, but I'm just forever thankful to have another friend who knows exactly the shit that I've been through on a personal level. Since then, she's given me a ton of free advice and red-lining (oop spoilers!), and she's been one of the few people I feel comfortable confiding in, yet she's always kept it real since day 1.

3. In June, I got my first annual review at my job. My first week working the position, I was handed a project I felt extremely under-qualified for since it was using programming languages I slipped into my resume despite my lack of confidence. I was stressed out to the max with imposter syndrome trying to make the project work all on my own when my boss handed me a Bud Light and asked "Can you work with this?". I thought it was some kinda hazing or test, but really it was just one of many moments where my boss showed that there is time for work, and there is time for play. It feels amazing to have a good work culture, and I've never felt that as much as getting a large promotion after my first year in recognition of my hard work.

4. In July, I got a wee bit older. Like the year before, I wanted to do a slightly bigger project in which I got all my friends and artists I've commissioned in the past to add their take on "a frog in a cool hat". It was a really sentimental project to me, so if you haven't already, you can see it here.

It's all I really expected for my birthday since the years prior I had only gotten a gift from my now-ex (and a moss-pile shitpost from Aky but shh, it ruins the narrative) which I was perfectly content with. What I wasn't expecting was the sheer wall of love I received from my friends. Drawing after drawing after card after message, there was no time to breathe in the best way possible. I will never be able to express just how amazing it felt, and how thankful I am to have a group of friends that care so damn much.

5. ~2 weeks ago I started to learn how to draw. For the last 3 years now I've been surrounded by amazingly creative people, most of whom are my friends. I've owned a drawing tablet for nearly a decade and yet I could never find the key to start because quite frankly, it requires a lot of humility to suck at something while showing that part of you to the world. I was fully ready to buckle down and do what needed to be done to get better, but I didn't expect just how many artists I revere would spend time explaining, providing resources, red-lining, and just generally giving their support. I'm 9 days in and I've gotten direct help from Ryu, Moonski, Liluay, Jackolen, Aky, Miza, and FellFallow. I'm already better at drawing than I could have ever thought myself capable of, but I still have a long way to go. I'm proud of what I've made so far, but it's nowhere near the quality of art I commission and post normally. I don't know if I should post the 'finished' pieces here as imperfect as they are, or if I should make a new Venus-art-only account specifically to have my growth as an artist be isolated into its own thing.

To wrap everything up in a nice and tidy bow, while the first 2 years of being in this fandom has been a trial-by-fire of resilience and growth, I cannot get over how much happier I've been in the last year. It's still gonna take a long time to heal from everything and grow out of my pricklier habits, but the overwhelming support from everyone around me from my lowest point to my highest peak is worth its weight in gold.

If you've read my endless blabbering, I really appreciate it. I never really know who I'm putting out this journal for, but at the very least it's really nice to leave a timestamped capsule of my life somewhere for future me to look back on. I want to be good enough at art where I can say "I'd commission me" by the end of 2025, with the eventual goal of making something only I can make, and I suppose the tail-end of this journal is to solidify that promise.

Thank you again, and until next time,
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Hey guys, since FA disabled images for a week, can y'all just imagine I uploaded a really cool piece of artwork here, thanks

Oh boy, it's the funny weed number, and a great excuse to yap about some recent stuff.

1. Thank you for the watches. I don't think I'll ever really be able to fully process just how many people 420 is. I always appreciate the number going up whether it be views, watchers, or favourites as it's just kinda neat to watch, but I want to give an extra special thanks to those who leave respectful comments. Nothing makes my day quite like posting something I commissioned, or something I helped work on, and seeing people take time out of their day to comment on it. Whether it be on the character, the scene, or the artist's technique, it makes me smile every time. So thank you :]

2. Angels with Scaly Wings. You're watching me (presumably), you like dragons, I like dragons, you know what AWSW is. On August 14th, patch 1.17 was released on Steam which introduced French as a language option into the game. I helped do that! -- I joined late into the translation project, but still, the culmination of over a year of translation efforts by volunteers was transitioned from being a workshop mod, into being a part of the base game. Below is my memoir of the project, if you care to read it:

I joined after the majority of the translations were done, so my job was to translate a few things, review my assigned translation files for errors, and just generally make sure things were in order. It didn't take long to finish all the translations & reviewing, but we needed a way to take the translation files and implement them into the game. I had some experience with modding at the time, so I picked up the mantle.

The code part was shockingly simple. The real bump-in-the-road was when the translations simply didn't work. Fortunately for me, I had a secret weapon called: Someone who knew way more shit than me (4onen). The easy fixes were thing like some translations being labelled "french_tl" and others "french_translation". The hard fix was finding snippets of text that were untranslated, or broken because they were updated after the translation file was made. Onen, with his immense expertise bending Ren'Py to his will, created a tool for me that programatically looked for all such cases and it worked beautifully. I took the info it spat out to fix some hashes here, add some translations there, and everything was working.

After that was done, I contacted Saunders about adding it to the base game. He wanted the mod to be on the workshop for a bit to iron out the kinks, so I jumped through the hoops to put it on the workshop. It laid there (mostly) dormant for 2 and a half years, only receiving a couple updates, but accumulating 86 unique subscribers. As of August 17th 2024, it's a permanent part of the game, and something I can point to as an "Oh I helped make that!". It's hard to describe the weird mix of being proud of it, but also knowing that I could do so much better, almost 5 years later. Oh well.

3. I wanna wrap up this journal talking about "The future of my channel". Aspen was never meant to be 'me' as much as she is associated with me today. Aspen was meant to be a character in a story that was never written. Although I'll never escape the moss allegations, I have been building up a lot more lore behind the scenes for her and other characters that have yet to be drawn. I've commissioned  Lin_FluffyDragon to draw the 2nd lore-accurate Aspen piece, which will come paired with a short story in the description. It's something I've seen  HeatSeekerDiin do a lot for the pieces they've commissioned, and it's something I've always wanted to do because of how much more it makes me appreciate the art. I'm still humming and hawing over making a visual novel at some point, but for now, I'll commit to this short story.

If you read this entire journal, I really appreciate it. I didn't think I'd have so much to say when I first thought about making a post with all the lil happenings in my life, but here we are. Thank you again for 420 watchers, and [TODO: end this journal in a really cool way]

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Do you guys think fuzzy dragons have scales underneath that fur or is it like a faux-lizard kinda thing

I don't really have anything special to say, I just think it's neat that a byte's worth of people wanna get a notification every time I post a dragon 😎


See y'all at the next Big Number™

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I never really got into social media, so the thought of having 100 people in a room who are all interested in me or my characters is just absolutely mind-blowing to me.

Thank you for being around, I really appreciate it.

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