A 180 pivot – yesterday morning was quite magical actually, despite the bumpy start. It has been zero cloud days for about a week since the microburst, and I was starting to miss my gorgeous cloud sky paintings. As I was unplugging the car to go on my daily drive, I saw a bright flash that looked like lightning. It was about 5:30am and still dark, but the sky was a solid color. “Fuck no, brain, I told you visual hallucinations are where I draw the line.” I stepped out from the garage and I saw, oh. No, that’s solid cloud cover.
I had not realized till that point that the mini-hurricane had given me some PTSD lite™. I beelined to weather.com’s rain map. It looked…tame. And isolated. The sky did not. I realized the spontaneous nature of the micro burst would limit the reassurance forecasts could give me. Still, I wasn’t going to miss my first cloudy sunrise in days, and I wasn’t going to validate my paranoia.
After grabbing a London fog from my favorite pretentious coffee shop, I decided to forgo my usual trip to the arboretum and go west. I was out later than usual, and I don’t love driving sunblind. It ended up being a beautifully serendipitous choice – my jaw dropped when I saw a fully complete semicircle rainbow, looking like a fucking st. Patrick’s day greeting card. As I took a slight curve, a second little arc emerged on the right side. “It’s a freakin’ double. RAINBOW. Ho ho!” As if that weren’t enough, the custom license plate spotting was very fruitful: we got two with 222, one that said “IMTWINK”, and also “BL3SS3D”. Danny is missing out on these synchronicities, man. I think a little delulu is the price of admission, unfortunently.
One last fun thing that happened was – because I use YouTube music instead of Spotify, sometimes if I watch a video that YouTube has tagged as a music video, it will come up in their personalized generated playlists. I had rewatched “‘Bet On It’ from HSM2 but with real sounds”, 1) because it just is very funny, but also I like to imagine it’s me after a late stage capitalism induced psychotic break, where I storm onto one of the objectively evil golf courses in north Scottsdale and just start wiling out. Unfortuently, or fortunently I guess, that popped up in my replay mix – I almost fucking crashed. When I laugh I have no eyes because of my stupid chipmunk cheeks, so I try to minimize comedy while freeway driving.
Anyway. There was a very apropo video that came up on instagram yesterday – I almost don’t notice when things are frighteningly coincidental anymore, it’s just my life at this point. But it was from an artist I have followed for a few years, who in many ways embodies the “I’m you but stronger” meme. “I’m you but with more sanity and less shame.” The video was them counting how many drawings of Jerma they have done since the end of 2022. And my dumbass brain said, “Oh yeah? OH YEAH? WELL LET’S JUST SEE WHO THE BIGGER MEGA FAN IS, HMM?” As if I wasn’t literally crashing out the day before about the guilt my attachment has caused me.
…They miiiiight have me beat with 184, I’d have to recount though because the video I did about a year ago was 140 and that was somewhat cut down. Also they were including some pretty unfinished stuff…I started in 2021 though….mm, I’ll call it a draw. And I’ll cede the stan crown because they were able to grow their IG to 16,000 followers and sell prints and even a stuffed animal cat Jerma. All I managed was unnecessary angst and a painful spiritual awakening.
My friend Morgue actually also just completed one of their insane projects, which was Jerma related. They are working on a tarot deck, and they had a real life exhibition in a gallery to mark the halfway point, as part of their residency. I am always so damn blown away by their attention to detail and work ethic. Everything they do is so considered and professional. Equal parts inspiring and enviable. But this is another mirror moment – I had always held to the idea that my fan art of Danny could never be work I would formally show. It felt like roping him into something he never signed up for. Reflecting on it now, I don’t know that that’s exactly the case. To be fair to myself, I had a number of people in my life re-inforcing the shame I had about the situation, so I understand where that perception came from.
One thing Laura has mentioned is that the fandom context is also pretty different, and it does influence the optics. Jerma, for whatever reason, has attracted a sizable community of what I would affectionately refer to as “artsy freaks.” Valkyrie is a bit of an outlier in terms of how literal and tame their depictions are. There’s a lot of surrealist/analogue horror artists, and some are just batshit insane in a way I can’t label. And – they are ttaaaallllented like dang dang dang. Case and point, he sourced only artists from his community to make the feature complete commercial card game, Grotto Beasts.
It’s actually quite fascinating the fanbase he attracts. Jerma himself is a 40 year old white ex gym bro and TF2 streamer from Boston. I have also heard him called a Kpop boy for zoomer trans men who take too much aderral. Equally accurate descriptions. The video of a pride march where you see a pride flag with an image of Jerma neutral T-posing just full size over the whole thing…is nuts. He really is like the favorite adopted internet uncle for the subgenre of gen z who hyperfixate on some combination of homestuck, undertale, and sonic. The way he interacts with his chat is very reminiscent of a substitute teacher who is trying to maintain his role as an authority figure, but the kids know he’s really one of them, and know how to tease out his inner class clown.
how have I drawn this much fanart for someone I’m such a casual fan of T_T. I really… just draw a fuckton, in general, I’m realizing.
I’m resisting drawing comparisons to Danny….no, fuck it, who am I kidding. I have dreamed and prayed for them to collab for so so long, despite the chance seeming virtually non existent. The thing is, they are actually quite similar in both temperament and comedic style, imo. They both give 110% to their acting, and lose all inhibition when they can embody a dramatic arrogant asshole guilt free. They both have a roster of different creative and eccentric characters, though Jerma has really built his out. But, at social events, they can be very shy and polite, even a bit anxious. I’m afraid if they ever met in that context, it would be like two magnets facing the same poles toward each other and pushing apart. You’d need some sort of parallel play improv situation to get them to jive, I think. Oooo man I can just imagine like, two oversized egos butting heads and Drew is there as some sort of mediator, straight man….or Jerma as Bugleberry giving Danny and Drew some weird quest…
I gotta stop. This is getting into the territory of imagining a yugioh movie where Timothee Chalamette plays Bakura. But circling back to the MILFs…I mean fandom fanart situation…(I don’t know why I’m making a reference to a stand up show almost no one reading this will have seen), there aren’t as many people consistently making art of Danny. When I lean in and post all the art I make as I make it, I stick out like a sore thumb. At least, that’s how it feels.
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A final point that somewhat ties in – I made a post on Kurtis’ subreddit about his most recent video. I thought there was more to chew on then a lot of his recent stuff, even though I am still requesting boomer edits that take out all the sound effect stingers. They are just overstimulating “badum- chhhhhh”s. I know it was a joke, Kurtis. You don’t need to Markiplier key jingle at me.
I made a text post, where I said that it would have been cool for him to interview some of his female peers, like Chad Chad, or Nikki Caron, or Gabi Belle, to give him a better understanding of how and why women use that label. I think I made the mistake of letting it be too long, by including a paragraph on what I liked, but I thought there might be some fellow geriatric lurkers who wouldn’t fully TLDR. Well……2k views. 14 upvotes. 80% upvote rating. And the thing is, the 2 comments I got were overall positive. My post was literally just too boring, I guess.
Oo. I hate people who get annoyed and entitled about post engagement. Am I gonna be that person?….maybe a little. Maybe a little. I don’t know man, it felt like bringing notes for a book club meeting to a park ramada where a group of high school kids are just chillin after school, already a little high and showing each other videos on their phones. I guess they would rightly give me confused, dirty looks. I’ve long since accepted that Danny’s subreddit is a kids’ space (which I…..have some reservations about given how young a lot of them seem), but I guess I hadn’t been on Kurt’s subreddit enough to clock the current vibe.
I just wonder….what am I doing here? Did I miss the memo? Are they very obviously making content for kids and I’m just too juvenile to see it? I see the pandering Kurtis does, but Danny…. Ultimately it doesn’t matter. I like what I like and I draw what I draw. I was always (appropriately) on the periphery of the fan community, but I feel incredibly isolated now. Most days I’ve made peace with it, but it does make finding connection with the art I want to make more of a puzzle.
Part of me feels like things will resolve themselves and become clear the more I just just truck forward with self healing. After that week of rain, which had me spiraling about the climate crisis and all the horrific ways I could die sooner rather than later, I took a drive to the arboretum to recenter. Damn, it has never looked more stunning. The mountains were actually green, and the roadside was framed with sunny yellow wildflowers. I was in full Snow White mode with all the animals that came out to say hi – bunnies, birds of all kinds, butterflies, dragonflies, lizards..I even caught a glimpse of a grey fox giving me a Look. It’s hard for me not to think the universe is asking me to see the innate duality of things. No storm last forever, and there’s no double rainbow without the rain.
>>robyns_ramblings 