Hello World! Let's hang out <3

Howdy, everyone! My name is Hope. I'm a longtime Reddit user who just heard about this platform and wanted to give it a shot. I'm a writer and an artist (although hopefully not the starving kind!).

Hello, that's me!

I primarily write fantasy fiction and poetry. Most of the things I write are gay, a bit fucked up, or both. You could say I have an interest in villains and sussing out the beauty lurking in the strange places of the world. I wrote a book once, and I'm working on writing another.

I write poetry like a car crash, with the littlest bit of sweetness and hope limning it. Here's one called "To the Girls Who Hang Out in the Mean Corners of the Internet." You can even hear my voice if you click it.

In art, I gravitate toward surrealism. I love the process of painting portraits. I want to bring a glimpse of fantasy into the world via art. I'm never satisfied but always striving. Favorite media: oils, watercolors, gouache. Trying to learn digital painting with limited success.

Here's a little sketch of mine that I'm fond of. I call her the littlest warrior. I have a story in the works about her and her three sisters.

I make a living off my art and writing. It's hard but so worth it. I think that people who have gifts need to share them with the world. The arts are devalued as silly and superfluous most of the time, and I think we should work to change that. The human soul craves art. It's how we bring beauty and hope into the world, how we understand the sometimes-terrible things that happen to us.

Let's be friends! I'm here to make friends and chew bubblegum, and I'm all out of bubblegum.