So I’ve been editing some scanned photos of my old artworks as I’m decluttering and I realised one of the sketches was Irene.

damn, I’ve always loved her character since, haha.

I was feeling sad seeing those more than a decade old sketchbook images of mine. Thinking about it, my mind during those years must have been so cluttered. The drawing from 2010/11 above has heads on top of heads. Unfinished heads at that, lol.

Gods, was I so disorganised.

I didn’t even put dates on most of my sketches back then, haha. (Hence me being unsure if it was drawn in 2010 or 2011..either of those years) That’s how unserious I was with art.

And yet I compare myself with those artists I see who suddenly had such a big improvement in 1-2 years which led me to feeling more sad than the usual nostalgia sadness because I end up regretting about the years I wasted by not taking art seriously up until I joined the ygo fandom.

But of course, it would be terribly unfair for me to compare myself to those kinds of artists. I don’t know their circumstances.

I assume easily; thinking it must’ve taken those artists the same amount of time as me with the same situation, when they probably had more tools, more free time, and more money. (Most if not all. Maybe some are just really fast idk)

Those stuff..which unfortunately I didn’t have back then. I had very controlling parents, for once. They would tell me art wasn’t educational, those art books were too expensive and they could be buying more worthy “educational” books rather than those.

(To be fair to them, art books and graphic novels are pricey, haha. And my dad was like Mister Krabs with his frugality/penny pinching attitude so you can imagine what a 30 usd art book would be to him.)

Sadly, I internalised it and all I could do was draw on some dollar sketchbook because I was a broke kid who couldn’t afford many art tools. There were cheaper variants but the ones sin the store I frequented to was like, preschool paint, lol.

Art wasn’t exactly my focus back then tbh. I liked to draw randomly, even posted on DA for two years (irregularly, I was more of a follower back then ) but it wasn’t something I dedicated my time to. I preferred blogging, writing fanfics that never got to be posted online, and consuming history content online. I also had to study for school a lot, gah.

I had a shitty self esteem too. Lower than the usual, haha. You know the feeling when you’ve resigned yourself to being mediocre on a skill because you know you can never be a good, highly-skilled person anyway?

Well, I also was struggling with that. Part of why I didn’t take art seriously aside from lack of money and time, was also because I gave up too easily. I thought I could never be like those great artists I followed on DA because I felt like it was only something given to a lucky, blessed few and obviously, at that time I felt like I always had the worst luck. So..what was the point in taking it seriously when I’m never going to be as good as them?

It was only when I joined the ygo fandom that I felt motivated to draw and take art seriously because of my followers and strangers praising my art. I know they say not to rely on external validation all the time and yeah you shouldn’t depend on it but they still helped a lot in motivating me to improve and draw more.

—

Got carried away with my dumb sob story haha but writing and reflecting on it a bit made me feel less sad because my journey is just different. Maybe I’m slow, but I’m getting there bit by bit. And everyone’s circumstances are different so yeah, totally unfair to compare and mope.

ANYWAY,

BACK TO IRENE.

below is the sketch of the 2022 version:

She is just sooo adorable. <333

I first watched Blood+ a year after it aired (2006) and it had reruns for the next five years I think?

The bad thing about watching television was that you cannot access certain episodes whenever and wherever you wanted to unlike now. You had to wait for the anime’s official rerun schedule in the channel and it would be a total bummer if the timeslot was inconvenient. That, and unexpected tasks would contribute to missing an episode. Like, you might have had some extracurricular activity in school or your sibling had gotten dibs on the tv remote. (the latter which always happens to me)

The first time I watched it I missed a lot of episodes so from the Vietnam arc because I kinda’ lost interest at one episode. Animax had many nice shows so I may have gotten distracted with the other ones lol. I can’t remember much after that but a few weeks later I suddenly went into the last arc in B+ . You can imagine my confused self wondering who these new characters (The Schiff) are and wtf had happened. So I had to wait for re-runs to understand the plot, lol.

I finally managed to watch the episodes properly and the first ever schiff I got so attached to and I still am attached to is Irene. Like, it was love at first sight, haha.

So obviously, I was extremely furious when Fujisaku killed her off brutally in the anime. >.<

But she was my ultra favourite. my first cinnamon roll blorbo baby in the series. I only started liking the name, Irene because of her, haha.

And she has such good chemistry with Kai!

bleh.

I won’t acknowledge the “canonicity” of that series especially since the writing was inconsistent and all over the place. >__>

…

The only thing that’s canon in my eyes is me and Rin’s AU storyof it, lol.

Aaand it’s late and I’m feeling sleepy.

Goodnight.