The Story of the Beast With Those Four Dirty Paws

Shipping prints yesterday: Flawless! Everything is fine! All done in 15 minutes!
Shipping prints one (1) day later: Printer believes ghosts are trying to print to it and gives them priority, eventually refuses to acknowledge my existence altogether, backup printer devotes 20 minutes to self-care before paying attention to me, finally condescends to print my postage, but with the edges cut off, won't do it any other way. An hourlong ORDEAL. Why this.

But they are at last all in the mail and on their way now, woohoo.

Since auronlu's Love Her and Despair is getting a remaster, I definitely had to give this illustration one, too!

I've considered doing one of those "draw this again" things before except that I'm always really embarrassed by my old art. I was kind of surprised to realize that it's only been seven years since the original version, buuut pretty much the entirety of Guardian happened in that time so I've had a lot of practice!




(Click for fullview)

A few weeks ago I had a very involved dream that I was a college student moving into a house on-campus (which I never did irl) and my roommates let me have the entire attic bedroom to myself because it was rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a student who had died there. In daylight I decided that having a ghost roommate was better than having a human one, but once night came I remember the paralyzing terror of waiting to see if she would appear, and if it was going to be horrifying when she did. For the first few days she only made herself known by moving my things around and messing with my electronics, and finally I couldn't stand the anxiety of that any more and invited her to show herself.

I was expecting she would bear the evidence of her death like the ghosts in The Sixth Sense or something and it would be really creepy but she just looked like she did when she was alive. Early 2000's punk/goth girl, rocking a Hot Topic corset top, kind of witchy silver jewelry, dyed black hair with blue streaks, heavy black eyeliner, etc. (I found out later that she had been dressed up for a date when she died.)  Kind of Too Cool For Me in both appearance and temperament, but once I expressed a desire to help her she started to become more friendly. All the previous occupants of the room tended to leave screaming as soon as they knew the place was haunted, so she had given up on trying to communicate some years ago and just amused herself doing ghosty things. Her name was Morgan, and I feel like I knew her last name too because I ended up having to look her up in the school database but I don't remember what it was now.

She revealed that she had not, as was officially believed, committed suicide, but that she had been most treacherously murdered by a professor she had been illicitly dating. The relationship had been taking a downward turn, they got in an argument, and she threatened to reveal their affair, so he killed her. She was disgusted to find out that the same professor was still teaching there, and probably still taking advantage of students. So we devised a plan to get revenge on him by tanking his career and exposing his misdeeds to everyone. I don't remember all the details now, but it went on for several weeks of dream time, during which our friendship evolved into casual flirting, and with a vague sense of both joy and despair I realized I was falling in love with a ghost.

I miss her now that I'm awake. I have dreams like this every so often. It's always a different setting and scenario with its own story, and we're always meeting for the first time. She tends to look a little different every time and have a different name, but after meeting her I always have this spark of soul-deep recognition. Oh, it's you! Maybe somewhere in some world there's someone else, dreaming of meeting me?

At any rate I have this accumulated stockpile of dreamed meet-cute (or meet-weird) scenarios that would make good story/comic leads if I ever had time to write them. ;)

So I recently started playing Slime Rancher, because (mainly owing to the inexplicable reputation of Sassy Flan and my association with it) it seemed like the thing for me to do and I'd been looking forward to it graduating from early access, which it did this month. Now I can finally achieve my destiny as master of the Sass Ranch.

But honestly this game is the goshdarn cutest thing I've seen in a long time. Everything is so bright and squishy and friendly-looking and the slime designs are really, really endearing. The basic gameplay premise is that you - the heroine, Beatrix LeBeau - have traveled to an alien planet populated by slimes, and you make a living by exploring and collecting them and raising them on your ranch. (On a side note I really appreciate that the protagonist is a woman of color! Especially since the developers didn't have to make her look like anything at all; the game is almost entirely in first-person and they could have easily avoided some whiny backlash - which they are unfortunately getting from what I've seen, although hearteningly most players seem to really like her design!  - by going the faceless protagonist route and leaving unimaginative dudebros to picture themselves as yet another white, male, grizzled space marine or something. I like the deliberate push for diversity.)



These are my prized Tabby/Phosphor Slime hybrids. They eat fruit and bounce around and meow and are adorable.

((Edit I don't know why DW made two cut links here!! I can't get rid of them! Sorry about that.))
( More Slimy Cuteness Under Here )( More Slimy Cuteness Under Here )

Wooo Part 16 is here at last.

We rejoin Yuna spending her honeymoon alone in the Bevelle dungeons, which is probably still preferable to anything that Seymour was planning.


So to continue this I of course picked up the game again for the first time in kind of a while, and was just roaming around the Calm Lands collecting fiends for the batty old monster hunter guy and thinking of what to write for the next installment, and after a while I was like "Why does my face feel weird?" I realized it was because I had been sitting here with a big smile on my face for like the past hour, that's why, like ~ wow, what an amazing concept.~

I play a lot of games, and obviously this one is my favorite, but I don't think I get that kind of sustained happiness from any other game, (or much of anything else, really) even Skyrim, which I can play almost indefinitely. Of course, I'll probably feel differently when I get to Mt. Gagazet and have to fight Seymour again, but I have to say it's pretty nice feeling uncomplicatedly happy about something for once. :)

My FFX Let's Play resumes!

I had a really long tangent written about the Phantom of the Opera parallels and then realized that I had gone into wayyyyy too much detail and probably nobody would care so I ended up cutting the entire thing. But deep in my heart, I am still thinking musical theater thoughts about this game.

Hair Pets by DippyWerewolf on deviantART

This was really silly but it ended up being one of my favorite things I've ever drawn. There was some giggling on tumblr the other day about the tendency of Lulu's hair to move around like it's alive/some kind of eldritch horror and someone was like "LIL BABY SNAKES," which was the best possible explanation. I was entirely too entertained by this idea.

I like to imagine that everyone is so used to this that they forgot to warn Tidus in advance and he didn't know about them until they all reared over her shoulder and hissed at him for barging into the temple. And that they are very affectionate with Yuna, who pets and brushes them, even though snakes really don't need to be brushed.

Even if she didn't have Medusa hair I think this turned out really nicely too.

In which Seymour's bachelor party goes awry in the worst possible way and I continue to be the most negligent crossposter ever.



I've been kind of neglecting my DW journal recently but everything that happens seems to happen on tumblr these days, and I don't really have anything interesting to share about my life. I've been trying to train myself to draw using on my bamboo tablet instead of a physical paper sketch first because I think that will make Guardian a lot easier. It's tricky but less difficult than I thought it would be. Having a blank computer image open is a lot more intimidating than a blank sheet of paper, but I'm starting to get the hang of it I think.

I did this a few days ago and I really like the way it came out:


Night Owl by DippyWerewolf on deviantART

(I'm still super lazy about backgrounds. There was going to be a bookshelf behind her and then I didn't want to draw it. So now there is just a wall.)

I also attempted a completely digital speedpainting for the first time too:


Out There by DippyWerewolf on deviantART

It ended up taking about five hours, which isn't exactly speedy, but that's a lot faster than it usually takes me to finish a piece. The no-lines approach was new for me too and kind of fun.

Anyway! There's a whole crowd of relatives here for Memorial Day and I really should go socialize but I've been stalling. :/

(I am super bad at remembering to crosspost, sorry anyone who's following this from here.)

So I decided out of the blue to start playing Final Fantasy VI tonight.

Almost immediately got overexcited, knocked over a glass of water.  Fortunately it wasn't entirely full so the only casualties this time were two stacks of post-its rather than my computer. I should probably start drinking out of a sippy cup when I'm at the computer good grief.

At any rate I'm looking forward to this game! (And being able to read AuronLu's Let's Play of it.) From what I've heard it's one of the best in the series.