These redraws have been sitting around in my files for a while bc I keep telling myself I’d color em and make em all fancy but…yeah I rarely have that kind of energy so here u go. Maybe I’ll revisit it and color these one day🤷🏻♀️
Back on my Azem bullshit. Reincarnation. Existentialism. Haunting the narrative. The way the only information we have of them is second-hand. The way we've never actually seen their face and likely never will but their magic continues to save us over and over again. The way we are them but not really. The way they knew what was coming and still refused to be a part of the summonings. I am rotating them in my brain at 3500RPM.
(Apologies in advance for this lmao)
So. It's been a bit since the first keychains went out, and I was planning to hop on the bandwagon of people who posted pictures of Poptart dangling out windows and tucked into beds, but life happened and I missed that train haha
Instead, I'd like to let you know something.
The past month or so, I've taken a good hard look at my health and tried to change it. I'm disabled, mentally and physically, and it takes a lot of work just to accept that, much less to improve my quality of life by dealing with it.
And I didn't expect it when I first started reading your comic, because it was just hugs and fun and pretty colors, but I think...I think 2al has made it easier to come to terms with my body, my limits, and the ever-expanding list of opportunities that I'm realizing I can still take advantage of as a physically disabled person.
Sprout got to be uncomfortable with his missing arm, use a prosthetic as an emotional crutch of sorts, and learn how to deal with it with help from Big Leo. Big Leo and Sprout got to experience and show the fact that an aid is an aid and not a permanent requirement. Poptart gets to explore life without a prosthetic by choice, and the challenges, and rewards, that come with that.
But most importantly, they all exist. You didn't shy away from the fact that they ARE disabled characters now, with trauma and healing and options for aid and different reactions and ways of dealing with it. The positives, the negatives, the little things that no one really thinks about (Sprout's cold robot arm and how it's not as comfortable to hug), you took it all into account as an integral part of their character and story.
And I didn't know I needed to see that, but here we are.
So I wanted you to know that, even though I don't have cool or funny pictures to share of it, my Poptart keychain goes with me to physical therapy, regular therapy, and everywhere I go with my cane. On bike rides and to check the mail. To doctor's appointments and visits to the store.
He lives with me while I learn to live with myself - a reminder that I'm not the only one going through this, that I can be disabled and still happy and silly and loved.