The Blueybacle

It’s me, so everything is at mimimim a *little* cursed at all times.

Short summary before the massive spiraling: Waiting until things re-synced, I shut down and just watched Bluey on repeat for a week or so. I couldn’t process anything else, so that’s infected my first post-Botox finished drawing! That Twitter thread of madness only represents a fraction of my Bluey obsession posting - all of which is AWESOME CONTENT! Woo, Bluey lore!

(There is another sketch at the bottom of this blog, btw. I shared it on Twitter, but maybe not here?)

Here’s Autumn in Bluey colors, because both are protagonists who had to go to private schooling after being too much of a terror for public schools – and Tiffany as Bluey’s friend, Indy, because the hippie/kooky style is a good fit and, more importantly, Indy speaks with the little girl rasp I’ve always imagined Tiffany using. (Without the Aussie accent, of course.) Took me about four Bluey series rewatches before I figured out the Tiff connection was why Indy was triggering something in my brain!

Eh, back to the overall health debacle update before the full descent into Bluey madness is discussed…

Now you know I’ve been in medical/insurance hell since November. Even when I finally got my Botox injections, not only was the malpractice and gaslighting deal not fixed, but the timing was, naturally, unlucky. So the first day I had my treatment plan and medication back at the bare minimum for survival since before Thanksgiving was… today.

(Btw, Medicaid did finally admit they should’ve been covering me all this time, and starting this nightmare by ripping away coverage without telling me, causing delays in vital procedures. “Whoopsie doodle! No hard feelings, right?” Yeah, they won’t retroactively pay me back the $2000 in bills their antics cost me. Weird! Also, I’m not recovered enough to fully understand what my situation is yet. I’ve got a lot more frustrating phone calls ahead of me before any resolution.)

There’s an analogy I use about when you lock down your brain during a long road trip to cope with the drive time. You can block out a lot and focus only on driving. The problem is when you reach the end of your long drive. You see the sign for the hotel and make the mistake of turning off the brain’s siege mode too early… resulting in you suddenly realize how badly you gotta pee, while still having to park and check in before you get your chance! Oh, it’s AGONY! The guard was let down, and suffering got it!

Yeah, that’s me every Botox injection time. It’s already me at my worst, by definition, cuz Botox has worn off. But I so desperately want to finally get out of defense mode and get to work… I forget there are two weeks of bruising to recover from first. In this case, not only were the injections two months late, but my docs didn’t do the helper bridge plan they knew worked. It was the worst recovery period I’ve had, and it was poorly timed with doc appointments. They didn’t help anyway, and I was trapped in that end of trip limbo until with two parts of my treatment plan at once!

I was not a person. Every morning I believed I would wake up and be able to will myself into all my overdue tasks and obligations. Most of those mornings I didn’t even leave bed until after noon despite all ambitions. We keep coming back to all the evidence showing, oh hey, I’m not a lazy faker! All of this is real! And when I get treatment, I start working again! Weird!

But until stability happened, I couldn’t do anything! An angry ambitious brain trapped in a worthless unmoving body - which also triggers a horrific pain condition when it DOES move! So I went to my inner little kid brain and did what they do: I watched something comforting on repeat for an entire week!

I’m an all-ages content zealot, and it was a revelation to discover this show I knew little about was NOT a kindergartner show. It’s all-ages, with great heart, surprising depth, awesome music, and has set up a treasure trove of accidental lore! There are clues to greater stories behind the characters that adults would pick up on (and obsess over) and… many are just animators being practical and knowing they can’t fit in too many supporting characters in a scene, or reusing background characters cuz they’re not gonna make a Blueysona for every citizen of Brisbane.

But it’s dang fun to take it too seriously when you’re a creative who can’t create! I had two brain cells left active, desperate to do something - ANYTHING - and so they began to map out details the show gave us, trying to stitch together meaning! Did I follow through with my threat to map out the adult relationships in Bluey? I did! (Want an example: Honey’s mom and Indy’s mom don’t seem to recognize each other in Markets, despite having daughters in the same small class at a private school, so they’re not close. Bluey’s family is close to Honey’s - the dads are coworkers - and Bluey’s dad has visited Indy’s family for at least one meal/playdate, aside from obvious trust with Indy’s mom instantly letting Indy run off to hang with Bluey’s family, but clearly Indy’s mom isn’t invited to the barbecues many of the school parents attend! The hippie vegan is shunned!) I also put in the work trying to list all of Bluey’s friends in order from best friend to “Eh, I’ll play with any kid nearby who’ll go with it.”

Maybe I will share those notes more one day - if I can use the Bluey deep dive again as a vehicle to start me back to drawing again. (I know there are MANY chores and overdue tasks still, but please give me some breathing room to doodle again. I’ve missed art, and having to celebrate a stupid shitpost like the ones here is really sad! I need to work my way up a few steps, ok?!?) Maybe I’ll try Precocizing the kids as I make Bluey’s friend chart. I already tried Precocizing a few of Bluey’s adult characters - for the joke below, and similar gag attempts - with a brief moment of horror when I realized that focusing on where spots on fur go means you’re halfway to drawing them naked in a more anthro form. Letting them be more than just dogs is a mistake! WHOOPS.

Sorry, Calypso. As if teachers don’t get enough stress already. I caught it before dignity loss! (I think it was actually a Trixie try that fell into the trap, not Calypso, but this was the only sketch that I finished, so I fudge the lore!)

FOR SOME REASON, all I’ve accomplished was the one joke sketch above, during the initial Botox pre-bruise afterglow, and then a handful of failed attempts until today, when, WEIRDLY, things being more in sync allowed me to take a dumb idea all the way to a finished sketch. What a COINCIDENCE!

Just… please know posting about Bluey as much as I have on Twitter (and I HELD BACK on Twitter, due to both character limits and me tiring out so quickly) is obviously a mental health crisis - yes, brought on by physical crisis - so I beg a bit more leeway and forgiveness. None of this is healthy yet! The only way I can even post this is doing my fugue state just type type type mindlessly deal! (Apologies for all typos from autopiloting, cuz I will NOT go back to proofread and find them.) Also, I am liable to have another crash in a couple weeks due to the part of the treatment plan that’s still not resolved. Let’s hope I can do something interesting to post on Patreon before that happens.