Stray Cat anatomy guide.
CAT PLANT!
Kakyoin is like the funniest and weirdest JJBA character omg.
He mentions how he’d like to “love a woman like JoJo’s mom” in front of her son and her father and after they learned she had a mortal dicease.
He’s a gamer.
He has no friends.
He makes that fucking weird sound…
Modern-Warmare’s custom pony commissions are over. Thank you all for your support.
When I made my first-ever batch of custom ponies for my friends in spring ‘11, I was suffering anxiety and depression in school for multiple reasons, and having a little craft project like that was a form of comfort. I had the thought to post them to my dA “pony dump account”, where I stored the very few drawings I did as a drawfriend for /co/ in the early days, and was surprised at the positive reception. I got into the scene and networked with fellow custom pony makers on the /merch/ board (then called “/toy/”) of a fledgling FiM board called ponychan. My struggles at school had been entirely forgotten.
That fall, when I began offering custom ponies for commission, my demons came back in full-force. Having been unchecked through the summer, I struggled through school for another 3 months, until I decided to just pull myself out for a year to straighten out and get back on track. I had an encouraging response when I posted my proposed guidelines for commissions, and custom ponies turned out to be a fun (and lucrative!) way to pass my now-tons of free time during my leave of absence. I had no idea how far it was going to take off.
It’s still unreal to me how things went from there. Custom merch had always been the most niche area of the fandom, yet within that niche I became Known. It still amazes me the following I had, the number of people who praised my customs or sought my crafting advice or even paid actual money for pieces of their own. And such a chill, enjoyable crowd too; the main highways of the brony fandom were too intense for an old mare like myself, and I’m amazed and grateful that the crowd that I attracted was so much more courteous and understanding than those in other pockets of the fandom. Commissions were quite a bit of work and I took hiatuses at times, but I kept a good clip until my last batch in summer 2012. I sincerely apologize to every interested customer for whom I did not have a chance to make your custom.
After a year of “rehabilitation”, I returned to my university in fall 2012. I had left the future of my custom-making on uncertain terms, and gave ambiguous answers when asked if I’d be reopening. I spent a year hemming and hawwing over whether or not I would be willing and able to resume making custom ponies; first I said I might be able to knock out a couple over thanksgiving break, then thought about christmas vacation, and then maybe second semester if I had done well enough in the first. None of these came to be. It was clear that once I plunged back into “real life” again, my academic, social and personal obligations precluded me from continuing the custom business.
But it’s not enough to say I just didn’t have the time. I didn’t have the drive either. I wanted to commit myself to my life and my future again, a desire that I had consciously thrown out when I started making ponies in the first place. With less free time, I wanted to reward and enrich myself and spend time with projects and friends, not stay inside and rehair my 4th Doctor Whooves. As sad as it is, custom pony-making became mutually exclusive to personal satisfaction. And the brony scene changed too. All my compatriots of the olden days had left the fandom. The fan-plush market came into its own and became the main mode of profit for crafters of custom pony goods. Blind bags became the preferred official merchandise over the standard, brushable-haired figures, and Hasbro began offering merch of long-sought-after characters from the show, rendering a lot of my services obsolete. The already modestly-sized market for custom figure commissions became a sliver of what it was a year ago when I started.
I told myself since last fall that this summer was my last chance, now or never. If I didn’t feel like I could sustain the custom pony-making business this summer, then I was done forever. But thanks to this last catastrophic spring semester, the decision became easy. Pony-making was a stasis and I couldn’t afford to lose any more momentum. I signed up for a summer term and prepared to give my customs business a final farewell. And here we are today, on the Thursday night before finals, as I type out my final farewell to the custom-making community.
Thank you all so much for your support. Thank you for your praise and your critiques. Thank you everybody who ever asked me for custom-making advice, anyone who plugged my work or showed me your own. Thank you to each and every customer for putting your faith in me and for being the most courteous and grateful group of commissioners I have ever seen. Thank you to the old guard of /toy/ and /merch/, the pony people who have long left, and those who have remained in my life as precious friends. It has been a weird but mostly wonderful experience. I’m as sad to see it end as I am convinced that this is the time to end it.
I will still be puttering around doing the touhorse thing at the time being; as I depart from Equestria I remain stuck in Gensokyo, and I don’t see that changing at least in the nearest future. I’m grateful for my little niche there and the people who have stuck around in it. But to all of you fine people who gathered around my custom pony creations over the past 2 years, a fond, final farewell. -MW
Ya did good beefy.
