To Make Sure It Doesn't Get To Much Of The Same Things, Name The Next Thing I Should Draw From. You Could

She woke up in the middle of the night. Heart was beating fast and violently.

It was just a dream… Everything was okay… She looked around at her room, lit up by the moonlight. A broken branch barely hanging on to the tree was knocking onto the glass of her open window, that must have been the sound that woke her up.

She got up from her bed to close it, wondering why she can’t remember opening it before she went to bed… or what could have broken the branch… has there been a storm? But the window got closed and the noise was cancelled so she went back to her bed, the comfort of her oversized pillow and fluffy quilt.

The open window had let in some cold air so it was a priority to get her feet off the freezing wooden floor. Who knew summer nights could get this cold?

Once again buried in her bed, she closed her eyes to get some sleep but in her direct sight was the mirror on her desk, right on the other side of the room. It had almost looked for a second like something had moved past in the reflection. A hand maybe. Going up.

Was her mind playing her a prank or was it simply her own shadow she had seen? No. She was already in bed, her shadow couldn’t have moved. A fly maybe? Just passing by?

Turning around to turn her back to the mirror and to face the wall instead, she stopped halfway. Freezed from fear. Every muscle tensing, catching her breath and ceasing her to keep moving. She didn’t dare to look away.

Its body was grey, matching that off the roof with a hint of white-ish pink, like that of a corpse. The body was slender, the legs shaped in a way impossible for legs to move, like inverted knees leading to oversized worn out feet. The nails on the hands and feet were all broken. The body was slender, the spine was clear and dominant, leading to a neck that was off a worm. As it was fat and waving and never quite led to a head. It was simply leading to an end where a skull was hinted at through the stretching of the skin. With two eye-pockets, deep enough for pitch darkness with two eyes in the end, like glass trying to reflect off light from the bottom of a lake. And it lacked a mouth, or at least an opening in the skin as the skull had clearly an open jaw with teeth.

But it wasn’t how it looked that stopped her. It was the eerie sound it made. The mix of a being reaching for air combined with the loud sound of an alarm.

It was getting louder and louder, less natural for each second…

The sun rose and her mother had prepared breakfast and was heading up to her room to wake her up, assuming by the empty bed that she must have woken up early and already headed out.

So! Finished Double Exposure!

Well, I liked it. I really enjoyed it! It was super fun to play as Max again and I plan to play again and hunt for all achievements.

But damn, I don’t want to sit and complain and make it out that I hate this and “they ruined Max” “they ruined Life is Strange” but it felt like too little, too late.

I had such an emotional journey playing the first game and well, I was heartbroken afterwards. Cause well, the first game is about Max reconnecting with her childhood friend as they investigate together. And you get to learn Chloe alongside Max as they spend time together. Stuff like, hanging out in her room, break into the school and mess around in the junkyard. So when the final decision arrives, it becomes more personal and feels emotional and intentional that you have to choose between two awful options for this town you have come to know or the girl you come to know.

And after that, I needed closure, which I found throughout the comics. Double Exposure could have been that… if it came out sooner.

Double Exposure feels smaller. You spend all the time at any of the buildings around Campus and you get to know Safi in the same chapter that she dies. The rest of the game is more of a detective story on how she will actually die but when that moment comes, I know more about her and the context, but I don’t actually feel that much closer to her cause an amount of that time between, you never get to meet her and when you do, she’s pissed at you.

I wasn’t as invested in Max’s, Safi’s and Maya’s story. I didn’t get to spend time with Safi until they worked together to expose Lucas which wasn’t satisfying as it was for… a handful of students. "No, my career is over!" Is it tho...?

The stories felt similar in yeah, you help Safi get revenge for Maya the same way as Chloe and Rachel but it felt that Rachel’s disappearance had more of an effect. You learned what she meant to Chloe an you saw her reaction to finding the body as well as Max going through the same torture. Here it felt more like, you’re told what happened to Maya, you kind of saw how people felt but it was so long before Max arrived so they have calmed down about it and I never got dragged into the emotional pull of it.

Well, you understand it was wrong, Lucas stole her work and got famous and she ended herself which is really dark, mature and grounded but when the story wraps up, the end-result ends up being of something that happened without you around so it just felt like Max was an outsider all the time solving other people’s problems.

Max was an outsider in the first one as well but she was closer in the sense as Rachel became this replacement for her and she learns how her appsense hurt Chloe and she works to make up for that lost time during the game. She’s an outsider to everyone except Chloe, where she instead got pushed out of her life and slowly tries to get back in and I was curious on how the relationship would change once they found Rachel.

It didn’t feel Max had anything to lose in this story. She was at the right place at the right time and the right skills to fix it. She also had the maturity of a 28-year old instead of an 18-year old so the climax wasn’t the same emotional rollercoaster. She met her friends, she discovered how to help and crossed them off her to-do-list.

It was fun, I will play it again, I will draw it alot and curious on Max’s next adventure but my opinion in the end can, once again, get summarised in “too little, too late”

I just got a new fun idea and zero free time :D

God, it feels wrong to upload stuff like this, being vulnerable and things. But, kind of a thing I only can acknowledge once in a lifetime.

It’s not like I kept a diary or anything so can’t say with 100% certainty but quite positive 2024 has been my tenth bonus-year.

And, damn. It’s been hard. The demons have gone up and down and there was this 2-year period where I thought they would be gone for good before the pandemic just NOPE.

But, a major thank you to all my friends, family, colleagues for always being there and supporting me and lended me a hand whenever needed and yeah, bullies and obstacles that have challenged me and forced me to grow. And a major thanks to my nephews and nieces for bringing a new light in the end of the tunnel.

Every second with you is more heartwarming than I could ever have imagined 10 years ago.

This might need explaining.

This was a school project from (year on screen) that I wanted to remake. The premise was to design a restaurant focused on bug-based meals and I had this clear image from the start how I wanted it to look. But not the skills. Now I might have better skills but also free space to just explore my bad humour.

Another friend-request

The official sequel to that one post. It got very popular and I thought I would share the "answer" I found to my original "question".

The original comic is about growing up aneurotypical (specifically I have autism and ADHD among other things, e.g. being LGBT) in a world not made for that, and my profound feelings of alienation as a result.

Whether you share those specific problems or not, I am sincerely happy if it resonated with you and humbled that it meant something to so many people.

A popular addition to the post was "you will find your people". I think it is absolutely true that you can and will find people willing to support you and love you for who you are - I have, and their support made much of my growth possible (as well as therapy). I am grateful to the artist that made that addition and think it is important.

But I wanted to make this because to me, it was important to learn the message that you are allowed to exist as yourself, even if you were to never find a single other person who accepts you. You do not need the validation of others. Even if you feel like you were somehow made wrong, or will never fit in with anyone else, you have the right to exist.

Live authentically for yourself, and not for others. Pursue your passions.

It is intentional that the person in the comic never fully regains their color. I will never be the untraumatized child I once was. But that doesn't mean life is not worth living.

I love you, and I hope you try to live as you are.

Yesterday, it’s officially made 7 years ago since I bought Overwatch.

So here’s my most played hero Lucio with my childhood friend’s most played hero, Ana.

That’s it. That’s the post. Have a good day and be nice to your healers.

Also, finished the last planned post of 2023 today, that’s crazy.

The God of Thunder