2025 Creative Review: Wins, lessons, and my future [Round-up]

I'll be honest 2025 was the best year I've had creatively in like.... ever. Just all around I did an immense amount of work and tried so many things, got so much done. This year was primarily a year of experiments. And yet when I went back and actually started looking through the things that I had done, I was pretty flabbergasted on all the things I'd managed to do this year.

View post on Bluesky

Tbh, after how bad the job market has been, I was just trying to do whatever to survive and with how bad my industry has completely destroyed the world for like, no reason, I also sort of came to the conclusion that I am not sure I'd like to be a part of this anymore. (tech)

And so I kind of was like.... what if I didn't try, I just did what I wanted, and did whatever dayjob for money, I'll have some stuff I'd like to do but I won't hard press myself. So I heard the idea of making a bingo card instead of a hard goals plan and did that. Nevermind this one is deepfried from constant copypasting lol

Confession: I'm a total recovering productivity bro

You would assume by my very anti-capitalist nature that I wouldn't be but truth is that I feel bad when I'm not working towards my goals, whatever they may be.

Look I am the eldest daughter from an immigrant family - the pressure is immense for me. I am in therapy.

So this year I instead tried to just use that energy to try whatever, anytime I felt that urge just ask myself what the 13 year old vampire anime girl in me wanted instead.

And y'know what? That shit worked!

Art: We made a lot of it.

From Artfight (this year was my first I didn't even know what it is was before!) to palette challenges, I had a lot of fun this year pushing myself out of my comfort zone. Here's a palette challenge and my favorite artfight piece I did this year.

Some things I tried to focus on this year were: Color theory & composition (I think I improved a lot with color, but composition I'm still working on.)

I also mixed things up by also trying out animation! Shout out to Toonsquid, a program that really helped me just get to doing it. Super intuitive

I embarrassingly tried out 3D modeling, but still haven't gotten the hang of it - though I think I'll get to it one of these days. But I have started incorporating 3D models more generally into my photobashing for references which has really leveled up my art especially for comics stuff and clip studio. Like this piece. I can do backgrounds now!!!! And even draw stuff like swords, big recommend: Here's some art where I incorporated these techniques heavily.

On top of all of this, I played around a lot with new ways to showcase my own work, like putting out this zine about my experience with BG3 and an introduction to my comic - like a real artbook I guess. You can read it on my website or at the link below [it's free lol]

Online Flipbook

My comic: I didn't make a lot of finished pages, but I did make a lot of progress

The thing that I learned about comics is that.... doing a comic completely by yourself is an insanely involved process with a lot of moving parts: There's promotion, backgrounds, sketching, inking, writing. Most comics teams have folks doing this stuff but indie artists don't! I am insane for doing this!

But I am still having fun and that's all that matters. :3 Which is why I'm having fun doing this as a hobby project. Overall I didn't get too far with the finished pages, but a lot of that is lack of discipline and routine. Although I have over 100 thumbnailed pages and even more stories done.....

Part of the problem is that thumbnails can be done on the go but lined pages have to be done on the big screen in clip studio. I'm also terrible at lettering, but I'm getting better by including dialogue in thumbnails. I have messy handwriting, but I think that writing dialogue into the thumbs actually makes it easier to see if it works naturally. Lots of dialogue actually gets re-worked when I go and actually do pages which can tilt entire page compositions!

Trying REALLY hard to avoid the Talking heads page issue - but sometimes failing. but I am pushing myself to try and push past that, but we're working through it.

The crazy thing is that I was able to do 50 thumbnails in a week where 2 years ago when I started thumbnailing my prologue it took me several months to reach that number.... so improvement is REALLL. Turn your procrastination into improvement - drawing a lot of other shit DIIIID help.

Web adventures: Websites are cool + the small web!

This year I finally got around to building my website - I originally just started with a few pages - but then eventually built things out to a place I'm really happy with. This was a super healing process for me because it gave me a way to engage with tech - something I'd been struggling with since my career woes, but on my own terms. I made my way through the hackathon scene when I was younger which made me really fall in love with it and this reminded me of it.

It's also a practice that encourages small changes, change a line here and there, add a page, experiment, ect. I also find that going through the small web is just generally a better experience for me than social media. Unfortunately not everyone has a website though, so I'd lose track of artists I like. This gallery for example, was made a couple weeks after I got the website up - and the comic subsite was made a little bit after.

The smallweb/indieweb/altweb, whatever y'all are calling it, is pretty dope. I've been getting more into smaller forums and I found that I really like it because it allows me to collect with other people in their full complexity - no 160 character limit - only full context!!!! It also amazed me how much the difference in not having an infinite pool of posts (no constantly refreshing posts) made a difference in my creativity and procrastination. Strongly recommend if you want a better alternative to regular social media. Shout out to Melonland in particular. (don't go in here and fuck up the vibes I will kill you, be a neighbor not a gentrifier)

I still don't fully understand JavaScript, but then I remembered something very important - that's what stack overflow is for.

Community building: A thing that should be done

This year I also started a server for art, this was structured a little differently - inspired by the Survival programs of the Black Panthers to hopefully get creatives to support each other through community run classes and accountability circles. I hoped to break away from servers that felt like showcases and instead tried to create a space for creatives where folks could learn and share.

We had a lot of success with classes in: Vtubing, OBS, 2D animation, productivity as a creative, ect.

What I've learned is that community building is exceptionally difficult to do, the energy needed to consistently recruit, facilitate, remind folks is hard, especially in this age and online. But it's incredibly rewarding. We also did fun things like gartic phone and creating a community zine!

View post on Bluesky

The intention behind CAS (creative accountability server) was to create a space where artists could hang out without having to be brand or pimp their work and learn from each other. I feel as though monetization ruins a lot of spaces and wanted to try something different. I have been reading a lot of history and it felt like education + non-monetized spaces are really key to this.

I've learned SO MUCH from the people that have come through, and while not everyone has stayed I'm so grateful for this tiny community we've created. It's nice to have a space to ask questions especially and I always learn things working on art with everyone.

While I haven't been able to keep up as well with it all and am partially shifting my focus to some other orgs, that I do think have strong potential to build up folks in spaces, I am thinking about the future of CAS as the new year starts and what can be done with the space.

One of the best things that's happened - and I wasn't sure where to put this was joining the gigantic BG3 mod Path to Menzobarranzan team as a UX designer, between the tools for the modding they've made so far and how talented everyone on the team is, I'm learning a lot about what makes organizations grow and tick, and using it as a model of what can come next.

Writing: I do it now, I guess lmao.

I just wanted to write some guides because I can't stand people just struggling. Thanks to Trueref for giving me my first professional opportunity! It was amazing to see my work help people. It didn't come out until after I published my blogs, but I actually wrote it before then! It gave me a bit of confidence to keep putting out work.

Understanding AI: Facts, Myths & Protecting your Work

I'm going to be honest, I had no idea what to expect when I wrote my first blog essay here. I just wanted to talk about Sex Work and the hypocrisy of the modern internet as someone who could speak on it as a creative, a former sex worker, and a UX designer. It was experimental and honestly I was pretty afraid to put it out.

Camgirls for Kids - Multi-hyphenate

But I kind of felt bad constantly annoying people with my long threads and a blog is kind of the ultimate long thread so I figured that maybe I could try this. I had partially written this as a journal scrap when I did the Artist's Way earlier this year and then decided to expand it. It had a pretty good response and then I decided to continue a little bit.

I really didn't expect the response that I got, like at all to my next serious piece. I had written it as a sort of spiritual successor to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth but for... artists. See his whole thing was as a working psychiatrist, it's about the psychology of colonialism and sociology of oppressed peoples and it just..... reminded me of the internet. So many of the dynamics and the archetypes reminded me of the internet I had to talk about it.

I found it a little funny earlier this year when someone said to me, "tech companies hire psychologists to make the features to get you addicted to your apps! That's how evil they are." Not realizing that they referring to my position in tech as a User Experience designer. It made me think a lot about Fanon must've felt treating the Algerians as they lived through colonization from France.

View post on Bluesky

Contrary to popular belief, I'm not interested in being an influencer, or working towards being a true blue content creator. I write because I can't stop, just like I draw because I can't stop, so it was weird to see people responding to my work so strongly like... actual journalists, and big artists that I really admire. I actually chose leaflet to publish my writing because I found substack too crowded and the notes feature too algorithmic and prone to context collapse. I kind of was just... trying to hide and vent to people who were familiar with me, if that makes sense.

The fact that my work was so widely shared throughout Bluesky and even other communities (I got a few discord @s who had spotted my work floating in communities well past me), seen people translating parts of my work into Portuguese and Japanese was so humbling on Bluesky, the place with no mandatory algorithm from a tiny service no one had heard of with no algorithm. It meant that people.... resonated with my work and with my thoughts.

It's hard for me to express how much this meant to me because all I ever wanted in my career in tech is to make a living wage and build the internet and technological future that I knew was possible. I had experienced such a crisis in tech because of how dismissed I was, I thought that maybe it was all worthless, I wasn't listened to. I was told to my face that no organization would want someone like me, that my way of thinking was wrong. I was told that my hobbies and interests were shameful even though I tried to hide them and never bought them up at work.

I went into 2025 thinking that, that was all true, and decided to sort of stop trying. Not with my life, but with trying to live up to the expectations of an industry that didn't want me - that I had given up my 20s to - didn't want people like me. I was just going to use the skills I had gotten to help whatever people I could in my communities and try to be.... myself. Nothing more, nothing less. I was going to just be myself, and people either liked it, or they didn't. I was going to talk my shit, about tech, about catholicism, about politics, about my favorite vampire man.

I didn't know what I wanted to do and I struggled to articulate that to anyone who would ask me, when something I did creatively succeeded. It was only after I really sat with everything that it started coming to me.

About what's next: The Rose that Grew from Concrete

Around the time that my essay started succeeded was a weird time for me, I had recently passed some milestones that I had never thought I would pass.

A person who was well connected to the higher echelons of tech and the circles I had previously hung around in academia and I connected and I asked them about a very close friend that I had had a falling out with but was very worried about. This friend was had been showing worrying symptoms and I'd gotten some news about funding that I was worried about for them. They're a very successful person.

Me and this person traded stories about the circuit and tech, and they confirmed that I was right to be worried, about how the space chews out the brightest and kindest, destroys people's projects, and spits them out into nothingness. How it frequently destroyed the lives of young smart people who wanted to make the world better, and that my friend was likely a victim of that - his success had actually made him a target and I should reach out regardless of what had happened between us.

After, they did something curious. They offered to connect me with the same people in that circuit, who could help me implement my ideas about how to build better platforms, and get me a job.

I politely declined. Repeatedly. And assured them that I was fine on my own, they had assured me that I didn't know what I was talking about, and couldn't accomplish anything with my mannerisms and mindset. They then proceeded to have a fit in our private DMs and insult me, called me unable to understand a good opportunity, told me I didn't understand reality, even dug into my personal life and tried to scare me about the political realities of the united states. I simply told them I wasn't interested in dancing like a monkey for an industry and system that tried to oppress nearly every identity group I belong to and my allegiances were with my people.

They used Jay-Z as an example and I thought about how functionally destroyed the neighborhood my mother had grown up in Brooklyn, in part with Jay's explicit facilitation. I had been there just the week before, and realized me and my boyfriend were the only people of color walking down the crowded street. I recalled something I had thought and written about literally just the week before, about how if I could have any legacy, it would in like MF DOOM. They didn't like that and told me it was impossible - I told them I didn't care, truthfully.

I want a legacy like MF DOOM - Multi-hyphenate

I found the entire thing super odd and chalked it up to them having personal problems. After, they tried warming up to me in the shared space we had before lapsing into thinly veiled insults about my intelligence.

In private they'd made the joke that we were just Fanon and Camus debating. (For those who don't get the joke, Camus and Fanon were contemporaries in Algeria with differing stances on the Revolution and decolonization.)

For what it's worth, I think Camus is a fucking idiot and moralism is a trojan horse to far worst things. Morals aren't material, you can make your morals anything you want, really.

I decided to never interact with them again. After using the argument they'd made against me in our private DMs against them though, because I am a petty bitch. Turns out I do understand what a shibboleth is after all.

The next day, I received an email letting me know that I had gotten an interview to do professional development with a prestigious organization and one of my dream companies. I had applied as a sort of experiment, a shot in the dark. It was a weird opportunity but I felt compelled to try. I didn't even know what I wanted. They asked for multiple samples of creative work, but said it could be anything, literally anything. So I submitted my most popular piece of art, a scantly clad Vampirella, and my most popular writing - the DA essay. I had used my skills in UX to polish up an interactive desktop and website prototype in Figma, and chose to omit my website. But I left enough of myself that I wasn't hiding anything much, yeah I put Astarion in there, I let parts of it look like GeoCities page in an ironic nod to my seeding on the internet.

I was sure it would scare them off, and I'd shrug it off.

I went to the group interview and eventually the individual one, I was shocked to learn that they'd loved my work, but especially had gone through my entire blog (where I had identified myself as a sex worker) and loved my very silly post comparing the CIA's Communist extermination program in South East Asia to Roblox and Bethesda's community development practices. It was probably the most opposite of corporate I could be. They told me that my strategy skills had shown through that post in particular and despite my unorthodox and eclectic influences, actually communicated a real understanding of strategy that especially made them want to pick me. I didn't even know how to react.

Okay I'll talk about the Gabecube (the Skyrim method is what I'm calling it) - Multi-hyphenate

To be honest, I kind of freaked out. I was scared, and I felt bad for even wanting an opportunity. This was the big leagues and I felt completely lost. I was sure they'd figure out they'd made a mistake and was pretty fucked up with anxiety as I waited for their decision. I'd come so close so many times and there was usually some sort of excuse.

After a week I had sort of resigned myself to the existential anxiety with another week left before they had made a decision. I don't really watch TV much anymore but decided to throw on an episode of my favorite comfort show, The Boondocks - made by another Fanon and Black Panthers lover - Aaron McGruder who's work I deeply admire despite the fact they've basically disappeared from the public.

In that episode Huey, fails in all of his attempts to help break his friend in prison out of jail - an incarcerated Black Panther who had been sentenced to death. You should watch the entire thing, there's totally not a version of it on youtube.

Without spoiling it completely, Huey ends the episode by saying something that stood with me.

"Maybe there are forces in this universe we don't understand. But I still believe we make our own miracles."

When the episode ended, I picked up my phone to scroll and noticed I'd gotten an email - the decision had been made. Somehow,

miraculously.

I had made it in.

Afterwards though, I was in such shock I couldn't stop sobbing, for hours and hours. This kind is a problem when you're at your day job but I thank god for cubicles.

I had recently received a planner for the year, one I get for free for being a mod in a discord. I was struggling so much with who and what I wanted to be, my type-A personality basically neutered by the last year of chaotic experimentation. I was afraid to even set into stone what I wanted the year to be. I left my vision board undone, until the last week.

I did pick a theme though, Bloom, after the Rose that Grew From Concrete by Tupac Shakur.

Did you hear about the rose that grew

from a crack in the concrete?

Proving nature's law is wrong it

learned to walk with out having feet.

Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,

it learned to breathe fresh air.

Long live the rose that grew from concrete

when no one else ever cared.

I worked studiously through the exercises in the journal, specifically one about various fears and what you'd do if it happened. As a sort of exposure therapy. Amazingly enough, the next day the first two I had written came true.

I practiced what I had said and I'm alright. After a rough Christmas, I am ready to bloom.

One of my favorite songs, like ever, is called Snakeskin by Rina Sawayama - it's one of the oddest pop songs I've ever heard, sampling the Final Fantasy Fanfare and mixing it with Beethoven. It's about taking all of the pain you've experienced and making art out of it, shedding your snakeskin and making it into fashion to be consumed. It's contradictory, it's complex, it's layered. 2025 was the year of the snake and almost all of the songs and imagery I've been attracted seriously to has featured snakes this year.

Princess Nokia - Brujas

Megan thee Stallion - Cobra

But I do think Snakeskin best captures it best.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Dc2KW63YXsg?rel=0

Excelsior, or whatever.