pengosolvent

text within images:
eternity of the self, buried
buried forever young...
Unto you I promise the truths:

We are each one, one are we each...
and the three here, too, is us.

You didn't understand this, and that's okay
because learning is the key to changing.

So as you learn,
So too do you grow,
and the past becomes a tool to ring.
or maybe not.

Wishes can wish for more wishes, it's true.

I've seen it happen,
and you'll know it, too, in time.

Float in the ocean and wish for an island...

Rest and dream,
Work and cry, but hold on.

When the day comes, be ready for the right time.
It's there for you, if you are willing to recognize it.

"lyrics"
(3:49) "Do you know who that is?"
(4:02) "Um... am I supposed to?"
(4:52) "Oh wow... That's really funny."
(7:46) El ser no puede morir,
se esconde al ver al sufrir.
(ENG translation: "The self cannot die, it hides upon seeing suffering")

so... been sitting on this one for a while? I think I started the song December ‎21, ‎2019 (according to right clicking and selecting properties on the FL studio file)... the art assets have been done some months ago i believe, though the idea to make a bunch of images of the mathematician overlaid into the backgrounds of King Deer track images apparently has been around since at least "June ‎22, ‎2021" which is when the SAI2 file I made for editing the images has existed

... oh yeah, i should be clear about that: each image here is based on the video images for the respective songs within the King Deer album

here is a quick image to show them side by side (the little symbol youtube put by each video of the playlist looks like an equal sign which is kind of fun)

"Last Time in a Long Time" and "A Mountain Changes, an Ocean Empties" are both kind of hard to see since the title is in front, but you hopefully get the picture

...So... Who is the mathematician?

...

sorry i just tried to find information on this character and COMPLETELY forgot i had given him a name lol
so King Deer made a comic in the past and the main character was Mainor who is the mathematician
he's actually pictured in the king deer album cover

i've done little things with him here and there, such as this test of an animation concept using 223 (song from the king deer album) as a backdrop

also worth noting is that this is before i had king deer's design finalized... many of the images of KD ultimately don't have his final design because i only finalized his design upon working on the album cover haha

also as a reminder, bravocat and king deer are humans that wear headpieces, so while this animation shows KD's expressions changing, it's more metaphorical than anything

anyway, the thing about Mainor is that he was a mathematician character who tried to focus on why meaning gives a feeling of mattering... why things can seem interesting or special to others, what is the quality of "specialness" as a feeling, etc
the comic was esoteric and KD didn't really receive a lot of positive engagement over it (or at least, wasn't able to feel it as positive)

worth noting is that Mainor's headshape is sort of based on asymptotes

the other character within the video, that was also within KD's comics is... well, i never really named them

there are multiple characters that look like this, and the headshape is based on the negative space formed when placing Mainor's head into a square
there are characters as well that are just one half of the shape formed, that can combine (and do so)

the comic held a lot of feelings KD had about trying to understand the nature of meaning as mentioned, but also feeling "othered", where these negative-shape characters often times seemed to work well together but would not understand Mainor, would not want to understand Mainor, and would treat Mainor as laughable or worrying
this wasn't always the case, sometimes they could be kind or neutral, but often times these characters held feelings from KD of when he would be treated poorly by others in real life

as a result, the worse KD felt, the more negative or even cynical the comic became... eventually KD was tired of it, and tired that writing this comic seemed to get similar uncaring responses (or lack of response)

he gave up on the comic and this is, to me, a turning point for KD wherein he became much less authentic to himself in an attempt to receive care and validation from others
hence him working on furry things (KD made the bravocat outfit that bravocat wears... it was an unfinished costume that bravo(person) ended up wearing) since "furry" can hold a level of variant self-expression that is out of certain "norms" ... it's kind of like KD ended up "Settling" in ways where he could still express himself in some ways, even if he gave up expressing in others

bravocat is very authentic to himself to the point that it can be disconcerting to others and bravocat struggles with considering others sometimes
KD struggles with being authentic to himself, to the point that he is very much a people pleaser and struggles to care about himself and his own needs

so this video and song is... a feeling of...
well, the title is
"a mathematician, unable to see that to proceed he must return to his origin point, risks drowning "

the feeling here is that Mainor is still part of KD, and KD is struggling with being able to see that he... does need to be able to see past aspects of himself and connect to his own feelings to be happy, or he will suffer

the original title was "a mathematician, unable to see that to proceed he must return to his origin point, continues to drown" but i felt like... i didn't like the feeling of inevitability in "continues to drown"
it feels like i concluded the result and i don't want that

I would like KD/Mainor to be able to grow and not drown

that's kind of reflected in the lyrics at 7:46
El ser no puede morir,
se esconde al ver al sufrir.
(ENG translation: "The self cannot die, it hides upon seeing suffering")

it's a sentiment i have where i don't feel like the parts of me that feel "dead" are actually dead, they're just fragmented and hidden/tangled due to pain i've encountered

when i first conceptualized KD as a character, he was kind of this perfect-type, a very kind soul, seemed to have all the answers

but the more i developed him, the more i registered he was not this, but he wishes he was and that in actuality he struggles a lot, he just doesn't show it

KD, as a character, holds a lot of myself and how i would try to be there a lot for others in ways that were detrimental to myself (and others too! even if i didnt see it at the time)

bravocat and KD are kind of opposites in how they handle expression and attention... how they engage with the self vs the world

bravocat tends to care more about his own self-expression and doesn't react much if at all to expressions given by others (so "the world" in this context is anyone external to bravocat), while KD tends to avoid self-expression most of the time, delegating it to very small portions of his life, while trying to maximize external/worldly approval

as a result... well... KD is really disconnected from himself, and bravocat is really disconnected from the world

within the video here, pretty much all visuals of bravocat and KD have been scrubbed out, including the deer in the Last Time in a Long Time image

in the video, just before the image changes to the one of Mainor, the deer are present in an overlay, but then are gone

to me, this entire video holds a feeling of... Mainor having been abandoned in this way where despite still being in the same place as KD (as he is part of KD), he is not seen by others and he cannot see others

there is, in essence, a part of KD that is frozen in time and is not actually receiving care or validation even from KD himself

i have been struggling often to understand and validate the parts of myself that are in pain or even parts of myself i wish were not part of me

it is hard, when i have both simultaneously been extremely a people-pleaser without a sense of self, and someone extremely aggressively hateful eroding the selves of others

i think these are honestly two sides of the same coin, especially when people relinquish caring about their own feelings... they will hurt others who care about them

as in, if i don't care about myself, people who care about me will get hurt more and more because my actions and words will treat care for me as non-existant

i could talk a lot about this further, but i'm getting tired thinking about this

the text for the images were originally written as a big note within the FL studio file of the song... i refound it and didn't really remember writing it at all

the original included an ending chunk that i did not keep
-slowly opening the file to go look at the original text............. it's such a huge file... it has approx 255 patterns, not counting the automation clips, and also not all the patterns are used? so i'm not actually sure how many actual patterns are present-

it felt like such whiplash to reach the last line... i could tell i had probably written the original text in a time of pain and duress and trying to support myself, so that last line felt ...

well, it felt cruel
knowing more on OCD now, i feel like that last line is a wriggling worm of doubt... some contempt towards myself

so i removed it

"just make sure you don't fuck it all up" implies an ending in mistakes, which is something i've been working to try to unlearn

i don't want to reinforce the feeling of "the end of the world" through doing something that's a mistake or harmful or something

because then it means all i focus on is the pressure of not messing up and trying to reframe my actions so that i could never admit to messing up

idk it just becomes a big weird tangle

which... well, the end of the song is a bunch of patterns from earlier in the song overlaid onto each other in a cacophony

...

there's probably more i could say on this song and king deer and bravocat, so on, but it's not coming to mind

thanks for reading!