B-day Post and Avatar Character Rants

It's that month, and the day in that month, of the year, to cling to the past. Much more openly than any other days of the weeks, of the months, of the year. Contrary to last year, choosing a past story to try (and give up) on reimagining and posting about it.

This time it's gonna be a chill-y chill post celebrating my Birthday - On the actual date, through proxies of my past and current avatars. Which also gives me to chance to rant about them and their respective stories and origin! So as to keep with the Nostalgia theme of the Nostalgia month.

With some art made for my pleasure and perhaps, your enjoyment.

Let's get to it!

Mandatory Poster Art

Starting off with an obligatory poster as is tradition during special days or holidays in general. Featuring my past avatar, Laurel, my darling axolotl girl, which is what she is all along. And my current stuffed-animal inspired avatar, Rabbit. Who are also mascots for my site as a whole, if the holiday posts are proof of such.

 Making use of downloadable brushes and stamps from CSP's asset library for this piece. Finally able to comfortably draw on a laptop setting. Though I still have troubles killing some bad habits that transferred between mediums. I am glad to be able to finish it to an agreeable result in times of my most perfectistic moods.

 I would like to highlight the candles on the cake. Referencing the time passed between when I adopted the characters as my avatars. Rabbit's more melted candle indicative of my older, current self, compared to Laurel's still prestine wax pillar of my younger years.

My sentimental mind having a representation of my past self sharing space with a proxy of my current self is nothing short of a cope, as it's because I just love to draw her. Doesn't help when some of their personalities traits are lifted from my own, if not what I hoped to be like at the time of their conception. Not as my avatar, but as characters in their own stories.

Which I will talk about by segwaying into the next art piece.

Crossover Celebration!

Let's start our way from the past with Laurel's story, Found Home. The name of the story, a recent addition after a couple of brainstorming session for titles.

The story itself began its roots in a furry community at a time when my understanding of Furries were of people assuming roles of cartoon/anthro characters. And boy did I took it to make many a waking nights out of hindsighted embarassment.

Long after I lost the login and access to the community and passively forgot many details from that time, to the point many of the current character's information are created recently with some changes to their original selves.

Including their designs as anthropomorphic animals to human with some animal traits, and for the purpose of this post, humans with animal features.

What isn't changed is the slice of life element for their story as a bunch of young adults and one child, living in a government provided residence, proving themselves able to take on responsibilities and tackling life together as a found family. Hence the Name, Found Home.

Very much inspired by sitcoms and slice of life/coming of age shows I'd watch bored or on public mounted TVs. This is emphasized more in my current revision of the story, even while the characters remain the same personality-wise.

As, starting from the end of the table;

- Henry, a loner, was a black cat who hangs around and is accepted by the group as family. Keeping to himself most of time when he crashed at their home, only slowly integrating himself into the general mayhem of the home.

- Yorksie is a chipper gal who is also the only breadwinner of the friends through her job as a chef. Originally conceived as a yandere character, thou gh some of those traits do remain. Similarly, her species as a rabbit was changed to a hare later on.

- Winnie is an excitable kid depicted as either a husky, a wolf, then finally a wolf dog pup, and is the driving force of the story's main plot. The group needing to prove themselves able to take on adult responsibilities so Winnie won't return to the foster system. This is initiated by,

- Howie. A mellow and agreeable fellow who Winnie had imprinted on and looked up to as an older brother and role model, which is helped that Howie's species is a Husky.

And finally,

- Laurel, a homebody and self-appointed caretaker for the group's residence, is an axolotl. Very much influenced by my love/obsession with the animal. Her personality as someone eager to take on responsibilities without assessing their capability to do so, is the best light of how I want to see myself grow into.

The story focuses plenty of sitcom/slice of life plotlines, with its start as whatever scenarios I can think of to draw the characters in, and narrate it in third person.

Since I had lost access to them, I chose to build the story from scratch. Adding any details I'd manage to recall to work in the story, which has the story formatted like a sitcom.

Like Laurel needing to keep the group home maintained, in case of surprise inspections, from a social worker and their collective supervisor. While Howie and Henry are helping Winnie prepare with his first day of school, with all the shinanigans it leads to.

It's a simple premise with simple plotlines done plenty before. And I love it.

And someday, not now or soon, but someday if I can and am able to figure out a way to execute the story. I'd like to have two versions of the same story, with the difference laying in the characters drawn as humans and the other version retaining their original furry designs. That would be fun.

And funnily enough, it's the same creative process with Rabbit's story, Youth! Or as it was originally, Hey! I exist!

But instead of humanoid animals, they are different variations of a purple amalgamated creature of a fennec fox, rabbit (Wow!), dog and cat. And somehow they are also animated plushies. Before finally ending up as humans with animal-like traits, if its only one made-up animal. And it's part of the story's worldbuilding!

Similarily a slice of life / coming of age story, with the story leaning more towards coming of age by the story's setting of a group of kids facing high school. But all the ordinary frustrations of high school is amplified by the addition of superpowers that everyone but the main characters managed to develop and manifest first. Facing issues out of their depths on an uneven playing field... although that might not be for long.

Following a rag-tag group of four friends, or classmates, or convenient aquaintances. Teaming up out of existing friendships or connections.

Starting introductions from the other end,

- August 'Gutsy', is a big talker and his own personal hype man. His ego and pride often getting the group into conflict with other students/classmates, yet somehow skirting by unscathed in a stroke of fortune.

So much so, Gutsy's powers to manipulate probability or 'luck' is hinged on his confidence.

Gutsy's association with the group came from his classmate,

- Kenny. A sweet, optimistic guy with a love of music, but whose inattentiveness keeps him from reading the room unless explicitly told. To the point he has multiple playlists dedicated to what kind of mood and emotions is necessary for the moment.

It's a given that his powers are to perfectly replicate another person's emotions, but it leaves doubts whether it is what Kenny needed.Aside from Kenny,

- Hughie is a transfer student from another sector. Able to do so after acing all three tests set in the mental, academic and athletic field. Allowing him to choose his desired sector out of the three without exclusion from the other two, if heavily penalized should Hughie act out of order in the slightest.

Even assigned a student chaperone to find any reason to scutinize him. The heavy restrictions only makes Hughie want to gain freedom more by working within the school's systems and rules. The desire mainfesting in his ability to remove gravity, or 'fly'.

And Hughie' supervisor and chaperone is none other than his classmate, and childhood friend of Kenny, and whose original design act as my current avatar,

- Rabbit. An unenthusiastic teen who earned good behavior points by simply not doing anything. Instead sleeping and daydreaming his days away. Only when he reached high school did Rabbit realized how much time he is wasting.

Now roping in his childhood friend, a clingy student from said friend's homeroom, and his classmate, down a list of things 'they' need to do for the full high school experience.

A list that seems to increase by the minute when Rabbit dozes into a sleepy daze and the world around him dictates itself to his own imagination and time, waking up from a century spanning life to a daydream lasting a couple minutes...

This is very much an experimental story of mine in worldbuilding fantastical elements in a modern-ish time, rather than the o'reliable of fantasy or rural setting while keeping it grounded. An example would be how the superpowers in the story are not explicitly magic or science driven.

It's a force that just exists without much explanation. Restraining itself to a person's personality and their mental stability, an importance is placed on how the powers affect the person using it and the people around them in a not so subtle allegory to mental health and mental illness.

Reflecting a conflicting time in my life when I had to grapple with confronting and acknowledging my mental health rather than repress it or ignore it. It's as much self indulgence to have a teen coming-of-age superpower story as it is a cope for that period of time. And I hold a soft spot for this story, not in terms of importance, but categorized on its own in my pile of unfinished/unexecuted story ideas.

It's a fuzzy feeling to look back on that period of my life, and have reminders of those times. A feeling that spikes during the month of a day I'd have to acknowledge myself growing older while not actually feeling as if I had, and learning to be okay with it.

And it is nice to share this sentiment in a place where others who might feel the same, even a little bit, or a different flavor of the same feelings, could stumble upon. And I do hope in some way, after wafting thorugh all the ramblings, you would agree.

So... Thanks. For reaching the end of this post. And finding your way here to do so.