Goodnight Moon

This is a quick and rambly one, and really just for my FF friends. Or strangers, I guess. Hi.

God, where do I start? I guess I'll just say I hadn't considered Moon Magic would be going anywhere... but I'm not emotionally attached? I've always been hesistant of it. I was introduced to it by a stupid friend of mine who I told I'd uninstall this stupid thing they were bugging me about if they had their boobs out. They were just plain stupid naked. So I kept my word. But a few weeks later a friend of mine wanted me to take a pic of them, and they wanted me to connect moons. So I reinstalled because I can't say no, and they were actually... pretty cute. And simple! It made me want to start working on my character. I thought a lot of the outfits were dumb, but the assets gave me ideas..

I think back fondly on the age where someone would create a dote that exploded and everyone would run around to show their friends. Or we'd T pose in space on our break in raid listening to overlapping Wii Shop themes. I got all my friends to get the Minecraft torch one and we spammed it one night during Ultimate Weapon Prog -

I had a bunch of random PMPs by the time Dawntrail came out and broke them. I'm a bit of a hoarder... no more of an organizer. I have 19,453 references images all organized and tagged in my Hydrus network as of writing. I just get scared that stuff will go away. And they do!! I have a terrabyte of Liked Youtube Videos downloaded and the links get removed all the time. """CREATORS""" would frequently take down their stuff. They'd get in stupid feuds, or whatever. So I had a lot, but I didn't really ever use it. OK I'm a fucking hoarder whatever man shut up.

Point being... I didn't really care. I didn't even fix most of them, just the ones I recognized. My relationship had changed by last year - it just became people watching, really. Mostly just at one or two venues I liked. Nice to show once every few weeks to observe what people thought was cool. Which apparently is making everything glow no matter what.

Before everyone looked like a radiant fire hydrant, people considered Mare a social status thing. They'd legitimately buy animations and pieces from """"creators""" and run around showing them off. I'd like to make the case this stopped when people realized they could just pirate it. Which is good; getting $25 because you ported an asset from another game (And I think is why Mare is going down, because of Copyright? Right now the story's pretty shaky.) But now that all of these assets that were made to be flashy and show off were public... we got people who just clicked every single option. If a single part of them was vanilla, it had to go. I don't say that negatively; I'm not happy Mare is gone. I personally wore mostly vanilla outfits and had my moth antennae and wings, and poofy hair... and no horns... LOOK IT'S NOT AS BAD AS THE GODDAM CATS. Idk, I just. I just stopped fucking with it after the Mood one came out. I just never got it, I mean I barely got Honorific, and I actually don't like it. I used to farm specifically for titles because I'd set it with an in-game macro to match outfits; I farmed every gwib just so my pizza outfit could be labelled "SPEED DEMON". Point being; they can do whatever they want, but it's not me. Never has been.

I'm someone who historically has had trouble with letting something become the past. But writing it all out... I'm not the same person I was 3 years ago. FF was a place to escape before. That's not to diminish what came before, but even if I could have it all again, I wouldn't want it. Most of my friendships are IRL - FF friends are moving to where I live! I don't do a lot ingame - I haven't even done the new normal raids. Honestly what keeps me logging in is PVP. I'd do more vanilla glams but the inventory and plate system annoys me so much... as an.... optimizer...

OK ok enough nostalgia. I actually wanted to talk about the art commission scene of FF. Or rather, speculate on it! I haven't done FF comms in one... maybe two years, but I was thinking if I had hitched my ride to these commissions, would I be crying right now?

I don't really think so! I don't really stop associating myself with my Au'ra just because others can't see her the same way I do. In Endwalker I really didn't like her eyes and if TexTools was broken I'd wear a blindfold, but now I love her Vanilla look ~

I was unemployed and was unsubbed to save costs and still drew her! I don't know if I'll ever look at this green hair freak and not think I'm them. Even for the people who have created or commissioned 3D assets to be used for Mare, they'll still get to see their character the way they want. Not that I can speak for them, but I don't think as many people are going to leave as the freak outs on Twitter suggest. Mare might just come back tomorrow and nothing will be different. I really doubt this is the end of FF, but who knows. I just choose to believe I'm not special.

I just wanted to give my quick thoughts because my knee jerk reaction was the artists must be panicking. And maybe they should. Or maybe people will feel a deeper need to show their real character and want more art! Some people use Mare to be affirmed for who they want to be whether that's gender or just personality. I'm sure forks of the repo will exist for those with that need. For me, I'm just curious about the state of FF art. I missed the pieces focusing on in-game activites like fishing, or specific raids. I'm hopeful. Again, I'm just glad I get to not worry about this from a fiscal POV.

In fact, I have a ton of post it notes above my desk for art I'll be working on. Most of them are Twilight related! Some planned pixel art streams. Stuff I want to make for friends.

These doodles help me clarify the direction I'll be going with. Not that I'm uh, doing more FF that's not what I'm saying. I'm really happy that I forced myself to ramble about mood boards in the last one because I surprised myself. Legitimately, I would randomly ramble about shitty mood boards to friends but hadn't found the clarity of thought for what I wanted from others. That clear throughline got me to finish the Angel design that's filled dozens of notebook pages. Even just on paper I'd flop between ideas - they had started as just Drakengard 3 Atoners. I couldn't land on a design; I love writing don't get me wrong but visual design really helps to finalize the aesthetic in ways words can't. That I'm struggling to convey right now, but hey that's why I include a doodle with my thoughts right?

Thanks for reading! This was very long. You should expect that by now.