#and come to love yourself and your life which TLP Donnie will eventually learn to do

[beannary]

I feel like TLP Donnie is very relatable! At least, I know I've seen parts of myself in him when reading. Do you draw inspiration from things or people in your own life when writing/drawing TLP?

I draw partially on my own life experiences! Although I do like amp them up a whole lot for TLP Donnie.

When I was a kid I never had much control over my life especially regarding things I liked to do. Every time I expressed an interest in something my parents would see that as an opportunity to make me get really really good at it so that I could get scholarships one day.

Like I used to love playing volleyball I got really into it but then my parents made me continuously play club volleyball to the point where I was so miserable and I ended up sinking into a very bad depression 🤪. Same happened with swimming and also basketball and tennis and well mostly sports related activities lol

I’m sure you can see the connection between those experiences and what TLP Donnie is going through lol

There’s more like parts of my life that I want to explore through TLP Donnie like my eating disorder, depression, and anxiety but I won’t get into those too much because I don’t know how much I’m going to incorporate them into the comic and the narrative

I also don’t want to like only exclusively use the bad parts of my life as inspiration for TLP Donnie because I am an adult now and having freedom from my parents has helped me like figure out myself a whole lot more.

Like because of how exercise and sports were treated when I was a kid I stopped doing them even though I do like them! I started swimming again a few weeks ago and I’ve been really having fun! And I’ve always had fun swimming but now I’m actually able to control how much I swim and how often and it’s been so much better for me than having to stick with the schedule my parents set out for me. And I do want TLP Donnie to have that experience too of falling in love with something again if that makes sense so eventually he will start to love dancing and ballet again because he can do them on his own terms but that won’t be for a while :)