The April doodle raffle now is over, and the next raffle will likely take place sometime in June or July.
Thank you to all for your nice comments and even nicer characters <3
I wish I could have drawn them all, but alas, I'm just a human with daily stamina refills.

. : New Posting Schedule : .

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For the past two month I've been drawing Doodles on a daily basis (one doodle a day keeps doctors away =) and now I'm sitting on backlog of almost 50 of these things Щ_Щ
I still don't want to flood your watch lists with them, and from what I can see trough stats, FA doesn't seem to favor the daily uploads like the modern algo-socials are. So I'll be changing the "single-doodle spam" for either weekly or monthly collages (will test weekly for now), reserving the one-offs for special occasions.

 Full arts are going to be posted weekly here, on Fridays.

I'll keep posting doodles three-a-week on the other platforms (TG, BlueSky and Mastodon) so feel free to give me a follow there, if you're into the art-flood. I should keep the consistent publication/post schedule until June, because every single post from April to June has already been prepared and scheduled in advance, for the reason that's going to be the subject of the rest of this Journal.

The tone of this Journal will now switch to a bit more real than my usual, feel free to close the page and continue with your day.

. : Going Offline? : .

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Right ... so I live in a rather censorship-heavy place. We're used to having an excessive amount of websites being blacklisted (and we're also used to having a great deal of ways to bypass said black-lists), what might change in the future however, is that the internet black-lists may at any point be changed to internet [ white ]-lists instead, meaning no connectivity to anything, besides the government-approved destinations.

You may guess how many furry websites going to end up government-approved x_x

I'm saying "might" and "at any point" because I am currently located in a rural and somewhat remote part of the country where nothing really happens, while for these who live in central metro regions the white-lists and full-on internet lockdowns have been a harsh reality for about a month now (and a daily reminder of our government’s animosity towards anything and anyone that may rock the political elite's boat). It's only the matter of time when my place gets affected as well.

There is a straight-forward way to avoid said censorship, which is emigration (and I have considered it, just like every person of my age that I know) however as of this moment I don't have the proper connections/ties or sufficient enough resources to make it painless, and I'm not a survive-at-all-costs type of person to willingly put myself trough it the hard way. My hart goes out to everyone who was forced trough exactly that by the actions of my country, I strongly disapprove any armed conflicts, and especially such a needles one, and wish that history would have taken a different turn instead. When it comes to me though, I'm staying, unfortunately, at least for now. Which means I may get disconnected from the global internet at any moment, either when the lockdowns hit or when my means of bypassing them are disassembled and bricked.

Besides making my evenings brighter by drawing commissions for you, instead of feeling powerless about the future I did (and was assisted with) all I can for the past few months to hedge against the worst-case:

 - I've configured a PostyBirb instance someplace oversea to keep the scheduled uploads going.
 - Made a backdoor to Himmis.com so I may(?) retain the ability to update the Current Queue & Wait-List page through the white-lists.
 - Downloaded the entirety of Wikipedia. Twice, in fact: the English one and one for our language.
 - Briefed the current commissioners on the situation and got everyone on board (thank you again for understanding and the words of support, I absolutely did not expect such unanimous response <3).
 - Downloaded all the commission correspondence and grabbed all your references to have everything at hand offline.

Todo:
 - Fill up Doodle and Speedpaint slots to last for a few more months.
 - Add a cloud storage solution to himmis.com to upload the finished commissions to, for when the Google drive gets bricked.

. : Plans for the Future : .

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First and foremost, I won't quit drawing. I enjoy the freedom freelancing provides, and you guys are such a lovely crowd <3 I have no plans to retire this account just because of some politics got in the way. I shall draw and publish everything currently commissioned, and when I get close to end of the queue I'll look for a way to deliver the finished ones and grab new comms for the autumn.
Meanwhile you may use the commission forms below if you want a piece from me. I'll answer these when there is an opportunity for me to do so.

To avoid any possible scams while I am offline, all commissions going forward are going to be done exclusively trough the following forms:
 - https://himmis.com/commission_form
 - https://himmis.com/request-a-doodle
If the forms are closed - commissions are closed. If the website is down - I am offline. Please don't let yourself get scammed.

As for the lockdowns:
Judging by the last year, there surely are going to be nation-wide internet lockdowns during the holidays of May. Will these be temporary or left in place only time will tell. After the lockdowns hit, I hope to retain at least a limited internet access, as there currently are working tools to bypass the white-lists.

During the summer I usually take road trips to fill up the inspiration tank. If the lockdowns were to stay for long, I'll use that opportunity to travel abroad, send out finished commissions and take more work for the autumn months.

. : In Conclusion : .

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The crackdown on the internet freedom are a nation-wide thing here, so a lot more FA artists than just me are being affected. I am fortunate enough to be able to make proactive preparations to the possible white-lists (with the help from my tcp-ip-savy friends, ofc) and hope to power trough the bad times with very little interruptions to my work besides the obvious inconvenience, fingers crossed. On the other hand, there are folks who would face the abrupt internet outage with a huge pikachu face on their face, so if you were to lose contact with some Russian artists in the near future who owe you a commission, please cut them some slack. I'm sure they are good people and will find a way to contact you eventually.

And that's about it for now. I've gone through three or four drafts of this journal until I landed on something that I'd be okay to publish. I don't think that rants about current regime's faults or a timeline of internet crackdown rolling trough (that would illustrated how mind-blowingly fast the situation is evolving) would have really added anything here besides emotions.

If you have any questions or comments after reading this, feel free to ask them in the comments. I'll be happy to answer, while I'm around.