Big tl;dr: Wow I’ve been “DarkOverord” for 20 years, this will not stop. This post is giant under the read-more, and mostly just me rambling about myself, my art, and various things about my life online/IRL in the furry fandom. There’s also a lot of images, this may take a while to fully load.
I’ll start this by leaving this here
It’s an image I keep around to post yearly because it’s neat, clearly shows when I joined deviantART and so on. It’s the screenshot that says “This is when I, DarkOverord, made a typo when registering to deviantART and instead of being ‘DarkOverlord’ as my edgy teenage self wanted, instead I became DarkOverord, and I just stuck with it”
But, I think maybe it’s worth digging out a much older screenshot that is more “consistent” for the time.
Internet users have been reskinning sites forever! Also look at all that Modern Ancient Computer Things everywhere
Because that first screenshot doesn’t just show what it was like for a 2005 era DarkOverord using a family computer (though I was the one who used it 90% of the time), it gives the exact time I hit “submit” on the registration form and the database registering me as a user. 2:59PM, BST (so 01:59PM UTC+0, there’s a reason I decided to publish this at that specific time). I wouldn’t normally bust that out because GOD look how tiny the screen is, the UI I went with and so on, instead of the smaller thing I post yearly instead.
Twenty years is a long time for an internet handle, most people drift off from their “cringe” teenage names, or the name becomes a brand, so on and so on. There’s a smaller number of names that have remained unchanged over the years. I’m not really a reflective type but, twenty years of an identity would do that so this is going to get kind of long winded and rambly, I’ve actually been poking at it multiple times over the past few months.
At the time in November 2004, Tony Blair had not won his third term as UK Prime Minister from his Labour party retaining a majority in the 2005 UK general election, the big worry to me at the time as I was starting to understand the wider world was the Iraq War which obviously like many I was opposed to no matter how racist some of my school peers were (I’m not a minority in that way, but I was always incredibly uncomfortable with how normalised it was via media, such as South Park, because of The War on Terror) and I didn’t even have a clue that while I was in uni that “The Great Recession” would hit in 2008.
I was barely 15 (I’m a late July kid) so I was still in high school, though in the final year at the time as compulsory education in England was until you were 16 with the change to 18 happening in 2015 (well technically the bill became law in 2008 but it came in to effect later). I was BROODY and EDGY and incapable of spelling or typing correctly (actually, this matter never changed, just everything has a spell check now) and I wanted to prove I was when… uploading Sonic fan art to deviantART. Well, you know how teens are.
Speaking of which, I didn’t even know what a furry was! We didn’t have a computer until around 2002 in my house and my limited dial up internet (we only got broadband in our home in November 2004 whoa how coincidental huh?) time meant I was mostly looking things up for Sonic Adventure 2: Battle/Adventure DX’s chao garden, lurking around Sonic HQ (to read comic scans, especially of Archie given it wasn’t in the UK :V) and Shadow of a Hedgehog. Though I never lurked the forums, that never even occurred to me as a thing I could do, but it did introduce me to fan content in general (mostly Darkspeeds’ comics) and generally introduce me to actually having fan character stuff, which is how this little hedgehog came to be:
No this is full size, sorry :V
Which, fun fact, was not how I initially used to show as “me” despite the fact that red hedgehog is clearly what I looped back to using as my fursona, albeit less of a Sonic OC. I was just using random art I’ve done or a screenshot of Perfect Chaos for a while as my avatars.
Other “fun” differences about 2004 DarkOverord and me now is that I didn’t really accept I was gay because that’s how the UK was, and how UK schools were even after Section 28 was repealed in England. Granted, I finished High School only two years after it was repealed in 2003, but it did kind of mean that you didn’t have those “oh I’m gay?” moments, it was “oh I’m just fucked up and broken?” moments before exploring the internet more and making friends with queer peeps online. Though I’m fairly sure if you ask anyone from a less well off family with limited internet who was a bit of a shut in teen during the time of Section 28 being in force they’d have similar stories of the rapid “OH” moments. Don’t even ask about gender identity, that’s even more of a “???” back then. And asexuality??? I was just as clueless about that too.
To anyone significantly younger than me somehow reading this, I cannot overstate the “normal” a lot of you have now that you grew up with in the UK, even when it is being shit, was significantly worse before. In the UK Civil Partnerships, which is basically Marriage with less rights, were only allowed in 2005, and equal marriage rights only came in in 2013. The Equality Act’s protections for LGBTQ+ didn’t properly exist when I became “DarkOverord” as it passed in 2006 (with more specific rights in 2007). While I was young and foolish and didn’t fully understand how much people fought for these rights I really do have to say to you enjoying these changes to law and societal acceptances, even if it seems otherwise from a very loud minority of conservative or otherwise voices, that you can’t relax on this. You need to openly oppose attempts to step backwards or you’ll soon find that the gun has gone from being pointed at the currently “acceptable” people to harass back to you as it was for us in the 00s and before. They want you to be apathetic, so don’t be.
ANYWAY all that aside… Dragons were not a theme I developed from the internet, I thought they ruled before then and on a yearly family trip to the New Forest near Burley would spend my money on tat like this
I realise now that I’m older, and the fact you can just find these anywhere and they weren’t specifically from that area because they’re literally just resin statues that can be mass produced. I was young, they looked cool, what can I say? But this is an important point, because these types of things and various dragon art on dA made me type in “how to draw dragons” as well as just general dragon searches and then I stumbled on a specific artist, Weremagnus. Understandably a lot of art from that era is down now, which in some ways is a little “aw” but I know that artists in the more professional fields they are would want to take at least some of their older art down so it doesn’t get put side-by-side with current work (that and also I know I’m kind of weird in that I kind of preserved everything online that I can, though dA will eventually destroy my account I’m sure with how they’re going) but all of this is just to share their fursona at the time and you can see the gears in my brain turning and suddenly this red dragon existed in early 2005.
I love that I was COMBING colours to get exactly what I wanted apparently???
Obviously I took my own twists, and was significantly worse at art than Magnus was then, and I am now, but there they are, the start of why I’m still here 20 years later (if you’re paying decent attention you may recognise that this design never truly left). The design didn’t last though, by July 2005 I’d already redesigned them to a much more familiar design which never really left.
Its different now, but DarkOverord’s still got those core elements, red body, orange hair, black/grey wing membranes, cream/tan horns and blue eyes. Other things changed sure, the nose spikes disappeared, the tail decoration went, the underbelly unified colour with the wing membranes and claws took on the colour of the horns, but you can clearly see this 2005 design is still what roots 2023 DarkOverord’s design.
Regardless this absolutely opened me up for exploring furry, sorry I mean ANTHROS (lol past me nice try), that kept me tied to my username, from being too lazy to re-register an edge lord name to making that typo the name of my fursona before I called it as such. It’s what let me stumble on FurAffinity after various bans or rule changes over on sites like SheezyArt happened.
Mid-Edit note: At time of writing this, slowly, Dragoneer, the owner of FA passed away on the 7th of August 2024. While he wasn’t the owner at the time in 2006, I do thank both the original founders and him for building a site that helped me get in touch more with an interest that would become a core part of my life. Rest in Peace, Dragoneer, regardless of what people thought of you, the way you went out was a systematic failing of insurance healthcare.
I’d also argue it’s how I stumbled in to who would become my significant other a few years later (and still going 14 years later, loves you bun 💖) around then, because I was suddenly in the overlap of “Sonic” and “Furry”, and still on deviantART.
I cleared my GCSEs up in good fashion other than the D in French (I’m bad at words in English let alone French) and then started college/Sixth Form to try to further peruse a future in science. Also by then I was “bi” and very soon “gay” but I know I was trying to be “the good gay” but still, years later a friend admitted that me being open about nevertheless that helped them, wild, it really shows how important it is for queer peeps to be visible to help other queers to realise they’re not alone. My only regret back then was that I wasn’t more gay, y’know?
I was still mostly in the Sonic fandom, my oldest stomping grounds are long gone now but Middle Ground Comics still exists (somehow? Hats off to them for that honestly regardless of complicated feelings I may have) and is kind of indicative of the circles I was in at the time (it was Sonic sprite comics, I made a lot, 223 apparently :V). To be honest, this is a significant note, regardless of what I think of those comics (and the small bit in the back of my mind that goes, you should remake them, ha ha 🙂 ), in the end my formative internet days did mean I was at least creating things.
It’s also the source of what became my logo, though that’s a little bit of other internet history to talk about. Back then as the internet was a lot more fragmented it meant that there was a lot of personal sites, or collaborative sites, or sites dedicated to something. MGComics there is an example, dedicated to (mostly Sonic) sprite comics, later getting a couple non-sprite comics, or for example Chao Island (also still exists) which is dedicated to all things chao in Sonic Adventure games, and so on. But this fragmentation also meant there was a lot of other smaller sites and many, many, many more forums that were either self hosted (Such as MGComics) or were hosting via a free provider, typically InvisionFree (later Zetaboards). What does all this mean? Well everyone wanted to be the next Sonic HQ, MG Comics, or Fireball20XL, and so on, and they all had their own tiny forums to go with it.
Eventually this meant I ended up joining Dyneamite as he set up “MOSH” (Ministry of Suspect Humour, look I didn’t come up with the name), originally DM Comix as that was his site before. The important part of this though is the logo, and it’s the actual reason I use the red gem.
I could lie (not unreasonably) that it’s the red Chaos Emerald and a reference to my roots as someone who stumbled in to the world via Sonic, but no it is me nodding at my past and MOSH.
I think though in some ways that because I was in smaller, kinda friendly(?), environments I kind of avoided picking up some more negative habits that I could’ve elsewhere (looking at you 4chan and SA), though it did kind of mean I was possibly a little too sheltered online? Who knows. ANYWAY.
It was around here that DarkOverord’s present design came from, as in the dark grey trousers, light grey t-shirt and navy shirt. The shirt was briefly black but I forget why it became blue? I think it was the better choice from me though as the extra colour is good. My skill at actually drawing then was still shit, I was on an old Trust tablet at this point.
No scutes yet (that I kept calling “scrutes”), I can’t seem to track a specific date down for them, but by 2009? Safe to say though, this is the key design to trace back.
By late 2007 I went to the University of Salford to take Physics BSc (with a foundation year ‘cus I fucked up my A-Levels badly) and very much drifting to “furry” as my default, I’d started popping up on furnet IRC as well as posting on the UKFur forums, and then in November 2007 I took a big dive and attended the NorthernFurs Manchester furmeet. To say this was literally life changing was an understatement. I was lost, incredibly shy, oh god so shy, but I met friendly furs who both welcomed me and also metaphorically held my hand. Actually it was mostly TsubakiWolf at the time, but I did meet others such as Hexi, Baloki and Entei-rah, and honestly if they hadn’t I’d have never come back. There’s plenty more names that I could bring up
2008 rolled round not long after (funny how calendars work like that) and I started to regularly attend the Manchester Mini-meets. It’s here I met other furries at my uni, and then later future housemate, Stuart Otterson (who ran the minimeets for a bit) as well as other furs which is a list too big, but there’s a reason I bring up Stuart that I’ll loop back to. In the interim I’d say until 2010 though things were mostly uneventful, kind of. I absolutely got gayer given I could be around queer animals and be myself around them, and 2009 is when I moved in Stuart and LittleTiger.
This was great because it meant I now lived with somewhat like-minded housemates. Sure we all didn’t see the same way on everything but it was immensely better, and also meant I got to be extremely furry, e.g. regularly wearing my collar (something I fell out of after uni haha). It also meant, unlike 2008, I wasn’t sharing with random university students, which was my experience between late 2007 and mid 2009, and was especially fantastic ‘cus my 08/09 flatmates didn’t just like to keep the front door unlocked, but also there was another flat that liked to take advantage of this and just piss around with our stuff. Like our plates and pans, randomly arranging them on the floor while giggling a storm. No, I am not kidding.
I’ve not posted much art from this period, but I was not doing as much because I was focusing on studies, or sprites :B
But also I don’t think there were any pieces from the range 2007 to 2011 that really, stood out? I’m not sure but I did like this Tails pic.
2010 I finally went to Confuzzled, not just my first con but my first furcon. I don’t remember most of it, not because it was boring or anything but it was when I got together with my parter, Nuggette. So a lot of the con was that and being focused on them over well… the con.
Also in 2010 Stuart was finishing uni and would be moving back to their home town, so passed the torch over to me and I started running the Manchester Minimeets, which I would hold until August 2012.
Granted back then MancFurs was different, hell furry in general was different, this isn’t me saying this disparagingly but more of an indication of how times changed as I’d argue it has changed for the better. But this does mean I get to pretend to be an old man and segway in to furry history that I observed. I’d joke about “greymuzzle” but I am now at the age that some greymuzzles were when I was fresh to the fandom, as well as the fact that my involvement in furry is 18 years.
Of course these days “NorthernFurs” doesn’t mean much to younger furs who know of MancFurs, LeedsFurs, ScouseFurs, SheffieldFurs and YorkFurs, but it used to be a loose knit group of meets that rotated once a month between six cities in North England, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield and York being obvious (well, international readers likely won’t know Scouse = Liverpool) as well as Chester.
Because of this distinction of having these main NorthernFurs meets the monthly ones that ran were considered “mini”, thus we had a main/mini distinction, that even towards the end of my time running the minimeets, even though we had attendance that would fill entire bars (and I distinctly remember doing a headcount one time and hitting at least 70 attendees), it was still the “minor” meet.
Generally these “main” meets would draw crowd from the other cities alongside locals which would boost the numbers comparatively to the minimeets other places had, but generally Manchester and Leeds were the largest. There was also general grumbling that a lot of Mancunian furs never went to other meets, yes I remember the complaints on IRC don’t say it didn’t happen, even though I know the same was true in other large university city meets.
This distinction now though is long gone with the natural break-up of NorthernFurs and every region now just calling them “meets”, and for the most part the furs running MancFurs aren’t who ran it back then. Which honestly? Good. We need a rest do you know how stressful these are to run? Even when I ran them back then when it was just “We’re gonna show up at {PLACE}, people can sort their lunch around 1PM then do the fursuit walk at 3PM” you’ve gotta stress about “are the suiters safe? Are there tripping hazard with leashes everywhere despite telling people ‘stop that’? Are people mooching off the bar’s power for laptops despite us being told not to do that? Are the whiners on IRC who never attend the meets complaining again?” and so on. I don’t miss this one bit but that isn’t to say I regret taking the mantle of “Minimeet organiser” between June 2010 and August 2012, as well as providing a little support to the main meets during that time.
The structure was also different, back then I was only a volunteer to the meets because I was taking over from Stuart. We didn’t have others filling roles around, though informally some stepped up to help lead walks and so on, but it was all communal. No chairperson, no secretary, hell it was pretty late I’d started asking for donations for venue upkeep so no treasurer, and no welfare. I was effectively, for the minimeets, filling all those roles, and likewise for Hexi and Kiffy with the main meets, my “support” was mostly as minimeet organiser to coordinate with them if someone was banned but also to keep an eye on things and use my vague sense of authority to say “hey cut that out” now and then.
Now MancFurs has an organisational structure, which only started roughly before I stepped down, as well as volunteers. We also had a charter but I think that was more of a loose set of rules for the staff to Not Be Dicks Without Recourse, I think that disappeared over time to just the general rules/code of conduct, I couldn’t say because I’ve been incredibly hands off from the meets since I stopped running them.
I do have a chunk of that early stuff when the transition happened, so here’s a snippet of when I was running it and we took minutes (well, Stuart did)
I obviously won’t be sharing the full thing but it’s neat seeing I still had this haha.
I wouldn’t normally go this far in to detail about these things but a part of me realised that now with a new generation of furs taking the reins that I should probably put to written thought some of these aspects of furry history. Especially the smaller things like this, it’s easy to lose and be forgotten compared to the history of our first cons and FurAffinity coming to be, the meets are effectively a standard part of local furry history that it’s easy to just forget and lose to time that it did used to be different, for better or worse.
2011 was fairly uneventful, mostly Confuzzled, uni and the Manchester meets. One big event for me is I bought Minecraft here too and boy did I put so many hours in to it, maybe a tad too many but I don’t think I truly expected back then, when we didn’t even have beds, for it to get as big as it did. I bring this up mostly because I won’t lie that it did start eating in to time I should have been putting in to university, but I also admit that I did have other issues going on at the time that didn’t help.
CFz2011 I did a lot more than be attached to Nuggette, I did pop by a few panels and actually went to the dealers den that year! Actually socialised with others more and attended a few panels too. I managed to dig out my Live Journal entry of the event so I’ve added it here, for better or worse 😛
Also wow what a different time huh? Badge 206, a contrast to 2023 where I was badge 2106, Confuzzled was a lot smaller back then. Certainly a different experience to how it is now too, which mostly I’d say is for the better as it’s grown up. Though the growing pains are showing now we’re at a point where there’s not exactly many places in the UK that aren’t exhibition halls for a furcon its size haha
Artistically though I was struggling a lot because of all this, surprising what stress does huh? Though a certain Blue and Orange bat, based on a certain drink’s packaging appeared at this point, though only called “Bru-Bat”, their uninspired name of “Ferris” came later, but yes. “Irn-Bru Bat”.
2011 also was the year I went to Summer of Sonic! It was also my first time alone in London, and kind of cemented how much I dislike being in the UK capital, like visiting is one hell of An Event I respect anyone who lives there. Anyway, the event meant I actually got to meet Jun Senoue, Mike Pollock, Takashi Iizuka and Yuji Naka, got to try out the Sonic Generations demo before it released, heard the Sonic Team staff talk about their experiences in Q&A such as Jun admitting he loves all his music, Iizuka apologising for Big’s gameplay and Naka talking about being responsible for The Barrel. It was a great time overall, and I got to meet a lot of people in the Sonic fandom (and some furs too :P). Like the CFz2011 post I apparently also put this on my Live Journal so I’ve also brought it over here too.
2012 was due to be my repeat year of uni, and I had stepped down from “organising” the Manchester Minimeets at this point. Organising is in quotes because really at this point I was just nodding along while everyone else did things, and eventually I finally went “yeah this is it” and stepped down in August. Upon returning to uni I very, very, quickly realised my heart wasn’t in it any-more, I was with peers I didn’t know as they were students from the year under me and just felt utterly lost, so I ended up crashing and burning out of uni with a Diploma of High Education (DipHE, which still makes me giggle ‘cus it sounds silly to go “Dip-he”) in Physics.
And boy did my art suffer. I’d done so little at this point, sure I doodled and things but I just put out barely anything. That said, the inflatable DarkOverord did show up at this point, though it’s painful looking back at art from then. For some reason it’s easy to look at stuff I did in 2004 but I suppose given it’s more recent and you can see what I was going for I can directly compare to now and go “oh god”
I was very insistent at this time that I didn’t like inflation. To be fair, it’s still not a “kink” for me over I think it’s cute so… Nothing changed there really.
2012 was also the first appearance of my tanuki, who would later become one of the fursonae, Marcus Fukuyama. He’s certainly changed a lot since, though more or less the same character, just the design’s since been refined.
God he looks so scrawny back then.
I believe looking around in this 2012 art folder, Simon and Malrak (then Speedy and Mystery) got their first non-Sonic redesign away from being just Sonic OCs too, but honestly it was still very “Sonic”, more than they are now.
Speaking of 2013, alongside crushing job seeking and fighting my way though the Tory DWP system for JSA (and boy howdy did they make it worse since) as well as two house moves (well technically one, we’d moved once in late 2012), I genuinely started to try and progress with my art and was genuinely trying to work more on it, which I’d say I was mostly successful in, there was absolutely more variety, and just more in general, to what I did. I also finally told my self-righteous sense of pride to fuck off and let me actually do adult art, it was dumb. I’m an adult, I can draw a dick if I want to and I finally went “yeah I can”. Was it good? Well not really but it was a start :B
2013 also brought in the robot DarkOverord, DK-0VD-D4M-C4000, whose name isn’t really that hard to piece apart. “DarK”-“0VerorD-“D4Mn”-(DO’s hex colour code, #C4000). Why “Damn”? I had a nickname on a forum of “that Damn Red Dragon” (affectionate, it was with friends who I still am friends with haha), so “DarkOverord, Damn Red Dragonbot”
The design is very different to what it is now, but that’s a matter to talk about in a couple years further down the post. I would note that chest gem though, for reasons.
2014 honestly doesn’t stand out as much as other years. In a tiny apartment, struggling to do commission work before finally landing a job. That’s all. Though it is the year I decided to Fuck Up An OC, specifically my actual oldest character, JOS, in to a half rock elemental. He was already a hybrid (Fox-Bat) and now he’s More.
Good luck reading my notes though, my handwriting was terrible. Still is.
2014 was also the origin of DO’s chest gem, though then it was a “scale” that was tinted blue.
This is important to keep in mind because it became a very significant “This is a DarkOverord” note, as in all “DarkOverord”s that aren’t the toy form have some form of chest “gem”.
2015, sick of barely doing any art, was the year I went “Okay, sketch a day” and I did manage to do it! You can check out 2015’s posts here, but a lot of the links in the posts will link back to Tumblr because it was imported back at the original porn-exodus, though my recap thoughts at the end of 2015’s posts is here (I also made sure all date links in post link back correctly to my site not tumblr). I don’t think there’s any point me actually recapping what I said then, here, as really that’s more reflective of how I felt then not now. I will agree with one point I made though, I did improve, and it did help install a “hey, do art instead of whining you’re not doing art”. Otherwise in 2015, I don’t think there’s any specific Big Events, I was pottering on with work and doing my art challenge. Well actually there was Big Events but I’m not going to discuss them because I was both under NDA at the time and also don’t want potential former employees at my former employer’s somehow piecing together who the hell I am :B
If we’re giving significant art points though, this is when a certain goo-greninja showed up, and yes, it always was goo.
The raichu appeared in 2015 as well, but not much. However 2015 is where the purple gem showed up first and became the de facto “This is a DarkOverord, all DOs have a purple gem embedded in their chest” with a couple exceptions, including the base organic DarkOverord itself until 2018.
Another big happening though, while not my art, was I commissioned a fantastic robot/mecha/cyborg artist, Kiryu, and that changed DK-0VD’s design forever. I fucking adore this piece
2016 is a lot of second verse same as the first, more work that I was now actually genuinely enjoying, and more work on the now renamed “Art a Day” as I wanted to move forward with the intent of if I wanted to do larger pieces I wouldn’t lose creative time to enforcing a new sketch per day, which you can really see within the first few days where I was working on (a now rather outdated) ref for inflatable DO.
There was a lot more drone stuff this year though. For reasons. I did my first attempt at using Clip Studio, it didn’t go well, which was a pity ‘cus it’s really good software.
2016 also when I swapped over to using Marcus (my tanuki) as my main fursona. I didn’t feel as strong a connection to DarkOverord anymore, mostly because I felt my personal build didn’t reflect them well and started trying him out before I eventually went “yeah, I like this”, this of course is before I went “ah, all of these fursonas 🙂 but mostly this one” like I do now. Which is why I opened up 2017 with a reference for him.
2017 was a start of a big shift, more NDA’d projects happened at work, with me pulling long overtime (sometimes upto 6 hours extra, was really fucking good pay though), which uh, it was a good decision that I chose not to do a third year of Art a Day in a row. Sadly I now know that this fucking project was the end of what was an enjoyable job for me, as it cost the company so much that they’re now no-longer an independent company and had to get bought out, OOPS. I think this is also where burnout started for me, between that project, and then “oh shit we have to cut costs” and they fucking destroyed the office with redundancies it weighed horribly on me.
I partly can tell this from looking back today from my art folders as there was less and less art. Which I had noticed at the time and I chose to do a couple art challenge that year. I did a generic Sketchtember challenge (one sketch a day in September) and Inktober (an inked piece a day). Which by the way, the “official” Inktober? Ran by a shitlord, do not do their prompts these days, look up community or fandom ones that interest you instead
The Inktober challenge was mostly to force myself to allow imperfect inks. I used to be very picky and so I’d never get anything inked. While shitlords insisted that Inktober can only be on physical media, I did it digitally with the following stipulations
- No use of undo/redo
- No erasing lines
I think it helped me get a lot less precious about inking, which meant a lot for me. I still hate inking but I think if I didn’t sit down and do this I’d have still been struggling to do inks.
Here’s my two key pics from Sketchtember and Inktober so you don’t have to go through ’em all if you don’t want!
2018 was… Well it was 2018. I started off with a new reference for DO at least?
I winded up “Art a Day” again, no recap post but you can find my the post with the months attached here. I think the most important piece from that challenge was 107, the day I quit my job at the time.
I had been completely ground down by this point. Due to the horrendous project in 2017, the company started doing cost saving as a result which ended up not just trying to change my job but also transitioned me from having a 30 minute walking commute to an hour to an hour and a half long one one public transport in 2017. Subsequently I was getting significantly less sleep, and as someone who lives near Manchester not in it, it meant I was now struggling with physical issues that meant I was in significant pain.
This obviously meant I needed to do a monumental shift. I eventually started picking up the pieces and turned to art, and commissions. Maybe a little too many but old habits died hard, but I was enjoying myself again. I was enjoying art, I was glad for the chance. Friends commissioned me and so did others. It genuinely felt like a turning point for me, and it was.
Also? This site came to exist. Specifically in February, so I was planning ahead to have “my own site” and “look a little professional for when I take commissions with my own site and my own domain for emails”
I’m not going to pick and choose out of commissions what I felt was my best piece in 2018, I hate doing that, you don’t know how much I struggle with my commissions sheet when I add new art to it that I’m worried I would be slighting clients if I didn’t pick their piece. But honestly it’s this background from “The Unlikely Hero of Planet Popstar“, based on the arena for the final boss of Kirby: Star Allies.
That said, Simon did get its refsheet updated at the time given I was using them more as a non-Sonic OC now! I don’t like looking at it now though as it’s really not aged well lol.
You can also check out my thoughts at the time about my art in the 2018 Summary of Art post!
2019 for the most part was actually pretty stable. Funny how not having a job and commute crushing your day does. Most the year was working on commissions though tail end of the year I picked up a part time job in retail just to have a bit of cash in the back pocket… more on that in 2020…
I worked on con badges for Confuzzled and I can say I’ve learned since at least! The problem I have is that I do art in SAI2, an RGB program with no CYMK exporting, and printers to the standard consumer work in CYMK, so it ended up washing some colours out, though I do kind of like the badges I did as I think I fit the spy theme well.
Obviously spoofed off the intro graphics you get for James Bond, but I wet for more of a shutter than a gun barrel.
It was a fun little thing to do, though I think I barely made even on the table. It was a learning experience, mostly the learning experience of “this isn’t for me”. It’s surprising how sitting on your ass and smiling at people for hours is exhausting. Rewarding sure, but god I was so tired but absolutely something I needed to experience once. I already respected dealers as it was, I already knew it was long hours and socially draining but STILL. MAN. And then I see some of them still have the energy to socialise afterwards and I’m like “how???”, I just retreated to my room all the time”.
Later in 2019 I got round to updating Marcus’ reference sheet, which is kind of funny because, well Marcus wasn’t even on my conbadges that year. I might’ve subconsciously known why and didn’t realise it at the time.
That said his sheet did need updating, and in 2024 it needs updating more tbh. He’s absolutely more chunky in ways that aren’t just fat and I think I could better draw that now, it’s on my eternal pile of “things I need to do”. But, I wouldn’t realise it to later in the year but I was getting similar feelings to when I transitioned from DO as my primary fursona that I wasn’t resonating with Marcus as much, don’t get me wrong the mood still strikes and he absolutely is a representation of “me” but I’d started using Simon more and more, and well, we know how that went given now I go round as a hedgehog 90% of the time. Though I never realised until 2020 rolled round how much that was the case, I just knew I had the feeling :V
As 2019 was also the end of a decade, I also did one of those “decade in review” images, you can check that out here as it’s quite big and long and also I’ve already talked about it at length. You can also check out my thoughts at the time about my art in the 2019 Summary of Art post!
Remember that Seasonal Retail job? Man what a time to pick up a seasonal role that kept me on for a while huh? Why? Well, we all know what 2020 brought to us. Mismanagement of a disease, meaningless clapping for the NHS, meaningless clapping for carers, meaningless for “essential” workers (which as a sales assistant or whatever my role was officially called) at a super market I was… And that’s just over in England let alone elsewhere. I’m not going to dwell much on The Pandemic That is Now Normalised but I finally got to see the very ugly face of people who are more than happy to scream at people doing their job. I already respected retail workers a lot, but honestly I do think all retail workers should be allowed to stab abuse customers, as a treat 🙂
This… started dragging me back to that dark place in 2017/18… thankfully Nuggette caught it earlier than with the prior job and I was once again given permission to quit because my brain wouldn’t just let me quit for my own safety because it is dumb and bad. God did it burn me out again! Along with everyone else really! Especially at the end of the year when unfortunately I had a family member pass away.
Artistically though I eventually got back on my feet and I’m still quite proud of some of the art I did that year, which you can check out mostly in my 2020 Summary of Art post but the key pieces of art IMO were the autumnal Simon pic and Annai’s reference. (Toy DO got a new reference too but that wasn’t really a change in character/new work but just “it needed updating ‘cus my style has progressed)
Other fun things was identity wise 100% Simon became the fursonie, in full circle from my Sonic fandom days. They just resonated with me the most, and still do!
2021 was. A year that existed. Days kind of became meaningless really. Like the events are “vaccines kicked my butt” and that’s about it really! Here’s some art and here’s the 2021 Summary of Art that basically other than talking about my art goes “sure was a year”. I am particularly proud of the Marcus piece though, so much so it was the sole site banner here for a long time until I realised “I can literally have multiple site banners of my art, dummy”. Simon also got a much better reference too, I like the paws now.
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2021 may not have meant much to me, but 2022 did… A lot. I say it wasn’t particularly good year, but it certainly wasn’t a Nothing Year. First UK 40C+ summer wiped me out for a bit but artistically I actually felt like I did stuff, like, not be stagnant stuff. I’m starting with art on purpose here, so lets get that and the 2022 Summary of Art posted now. I do think my favourite piece was the commission I did for Aether mind, it was really fun to do the nebula effects.
What 2022 did represent for me was identity, and a large realisation of “huh I kept doing that huh?”, I did talk about it in detail later on Coming Out Day but this year was when I realised I was agender. The realisation that I didn’t need gender dysphoria, euphoria is also an indicator and stripping masculine references to me did that a LOT, so here I am, enjoying being it/its.
A lot of it was also realisation that… I kept making characters that weren’t inherently masculine, and even the ones that were more masc I still called ’em it/its. It was… very good realising all of that, it’s a good job no more funny identity feelings happen 🙂
🙂
…So anyway in 2023 after talking to friends and others I realised I was getting species euphoria every time someone referred to any of my fursona’s features so haha I’m the funny θΔ too. OOPS. I talk about this a lot in my about page, so I’m just gonna lift it directly as I talk about it in decent detail there honestly:
 
I’m Agender, though sometimes I also file some things under Neutrois and while they overlap the two aren’t identical, it does suit me sometimes with how I present at least online. I do like to use ∅ to represent my gender (as in, null), and while I did ramble about it back in October 2022 since then I’ve detached further from “he/him” to the point where it’s extremely uncomfortable to be used in reference to me, I don’t want to be male as I was assigned at birth, and I’ve slightly detached from “they/them” too but I’ll always keep that as relevant to me because I want to keep it normalised. I feel completely detached to not just the gender binary but also non-binary, “it/its” is right for me and my lack of gender, I’m technically non-binary but I also don’t feel attached to that as an identity either. I’m also obviously technically transgender as well, like even if I personally don’t use that label for myself I ain’t cis, duh. Under an ideal universe I’d actually be neither male or female IRL too, but that leads in to a later part of my identity…
 
 
I’m gosh darn gay and pretty ace! But not completely asexual, sometimes I am in the mood to do more in that regard, or find others sexually attractive, but not in a way that could really be explained by demisexual (though I do have overlap). Regarding my sexual/romantic attraction it is admittedly a little awkward admittedly to go “I’m gay, here’s the MAN flag” immediately going “I’m not gender at all” but my preference is in masculine individuals, and I admit that does come across in my art. But like all things queer that’s not a 100% thing, my partner is trans and does not identify as masculine, I have other friends I’m in to who aren’t either.
This is possibly the most complicated part of me is the fact that I came to realise that my identity never really revolved around being human. I always felt a little odd and every time others complimented my fursona features that I would blush and such from it as if they were my actual features. Eventually enough therian friends were like “you can use θΔ we give you permission if you need it for some reason?” that I settled on it, that’s why my profiles on sites will say θΔ, and this is what I alluded to earlier, my ideal me would be neither male or female, likely null and and one of of my fursonas.
AND THIS IS WHERE IT GETS COMPLICATED
I identify as all of these and more, hell did you know of these 8 images 6 are called “DarkOverord”? I mostly these days identify as the red vampire hedgehog, it resonates with me is the most.
But being a dragon with huge wings is me. Being an hollow inflatable toy is me. Being some gooey pokémon is me. Being some rubber dragon is me. Being a robot dragon is me. And being a tanuki is also me. So honestly it’s just gonna be easier for you just to go “yup, that’s DarkOverord” and watch as you compliment any of my fursona features I just squirm and blush happily.
But you know what none of this is? Human. It’s not my identity, I only wish to be The Creature.
Seen as I am talking about identity and pride. This is still an aspect of my identity, while I don’t exactly run around in rubber “on main” as it were, it’s still something that is a part of me. I enjoy rubber and gear, and that is an inseparable part of me, as if that wasn’t obvious from a decent chunk of my art which very shiny.
Like, it’s extremely weird to look on but, that’s what we do. I’ve been DarkOverord for 19 years at that point (obviously 20 as of this post) and identity still is ever evolving, I’m still learning things about myself even now, though I don’t think I’m gonna have much bigger revelations than that… right? Anyway. I realised actually I did have gender dysphoria I just kept it buried deep deep inside of me me 🙂
Of course one reason I was frustrated with art all year was… I was trying to do an updated reference for DarkOverord, I was trying all year. At one point I even doubted my own skill and just did a reference for a completely different character. Eventually I got there in November but god it was so frustrating, but I’m happy with DarkOverord’s new ref. Anyway here’s those two references.
Ferris’ reference was fun to do but DarkOverord’s reference was a lot of those funny θΔ feelings again. I am incredibly happy with how it turned out and blushed constantly at the wing compliments. But talking about art, here’s that 2023 Summary of Art to fill things in and here’s my personal favourite piece that year.
I made a promise to myself not to work on personal references or big projects in 2024 at this point. Lets see how that turned out.
Other fun events of 2023 are I started journaling, kind of. I downloaded Obsidian and made an effort at least to fill something out each day, even if it’s not much, does mean big events such as Sonic Fan Fest I detailed out quite a lot which let me do the big post about recapping it. I detailed out most of it in that post but man it was a great time, especially just, socialising with the fellow SonicFurs haha. I’d also started making the effort of doing little reviews after beating games, something I fell behind of late 2024, technically the category is vaguely just “reviews” but lets be real, it’ll be game reviews. It kind of pairs well with the journaling aspect and lets me compose my thoughts on them.
But really I am glad I did start working on the Obsidian vault though, peeking ahead but I’m likely gonna mention it in 2024, but I’ve certainly been using it a lot. Most of my entries barely have everything, some have a lot, but most of all I say again that it let me actually start putting more thoughts and FEELINGS on paper, something I’ve always bounced off with physical journals.
I had a hard drive failure so here is 2023 DO for you:
Do your back ups now. Yes you. Reading this.
Yes even you DarkOverord, proofreading this before you make it live. Do it.
Anyway somehow I managed not to lose any data but I was so fucking lucky, I almost lost six month’s worth of stuff >_>;
And then we get to 2024… wait what’s that, one thing happened right at the end of 2023? Oh right.
Fangs.
A series of not initially serious posts ended up with a lot more and I cannot overstate how good I feel about the change with the fangs and being a vampire gives me the funny θΔ feelings like more than ever before. Genuinely, I’ve never felt this energised and connected and asdafsgsafsdafdsf YEAH. THANKS! Is this what everyone else felt????? I don’t know but god it’s powerful.
Anyway now we hit 2024. The year I type this post. I kind of felt like as I progressed through all this that I was writing less and less but I think the reality is that a lot of my time wasn’t spent with identity like it was in my teens, or the past three years. A lot of my life post-uni was “I worked, and I did art”, and for a good chunk of that time “I worked” was, and currently is, “I did art”. But still I got to talk about me, my journey, my art. It’s very weird to me. I made a fateful typo that changed my life forever, literally. Had I never made that typo, would I have made this journey still? Maybe, but I wouldn’t have clung to “DarkOverlord” like I did “DarkOverord”, I’d have dropped that fast to get out of teenage cringe, but the typo becoming me? Yeah, that was a path that could never have been taken and I’m glad I did.
I’ve made so many friends, some I’ve lost contact with, some I still am in contact with. My partner and I have been together for almost 14 and a half years as of November (wow, now!). I’ve experienced communities, I saw technology change, social dynamics morph, websites grow and topple. It’s hard not to be sentimental when the majority of your life is that identity and that it’s been 20 years.
But… I suppose I should talk some of this year. It’d be weird not to include 2024 when I’ve detailed 2004 to 2023 so lets get to it.
2024 has been a year of, change. Not just me being more and more fangly, but seeing social dynamics change, how I approached the year and more. My art changed less though, I’ve felt a little stagnant this year because of energy honestly. It’s something I’m working on because that “don’t do big projects or character references” because…
People genuinely think I like doing refs with how many I’ve done ahahaha, I really don’t but I felt I needed to with the vampiric changes aha. It’s been very fun to explore all year though. Seen as I’m still talking about art I may as well pick out the piece(s) this year I’m happy with.
Oh look, it’s two big pictures, what about that “don’t do big projects” ha haaaaaaa, well I guess I didn’t do any big themed projects this year though. I do really like them though as it let me draw DO being space derg and just a fun Bowser Day turned Halloween pic.
I admit after CFz, being ill and all that did drain me for a couple months so it took a while to get on my feet again, but I finally got to be an animal in VR! Oh no. I get it now.
Which uh, I grew attached to being a bat pretty hard to, a fangy bat at that. It’s become this powerful staple of my Friday, and sometimes Saturday, nights now to be this funny creature and get the θΔ feelings so much.
And yes of course it comes in shiny variety, you’re talking to me. Though I do need to do work on it.
I’ve met so many new friends and got to explore more things about myself in VR. I GET IT NOW AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. I get the need for wanting to be a funny 3D animal around other 3D animals.
But I mentioned it was a year of change for other reasons. Leaving Twitter in ’23 and now the internet fragmenting more and more, leading to more and more personal sites popping back up, it’s interesting, and felt good to work on my site properly again. I don’t relish losing contact with some people but… I don’t have much say on that.
Also I started streaming?????????? That’s a big change I guess. Like comment and subscribe, wait wrong site.
I don’t know what the future brings for me, my own identity, my friends, my life but, I felt good incoherently rambling this along. If you got this far, thanks! I don’t plan on not being DarkOverord but I prooooooooobably won’t do this again ehehe. My life is a lot more stable and therefore not as wild in changes, as evidenced with me writing less and less about each year as they went by haha. 
Vampire signing off, keep yourself full of blood!