#do you not enjoy creating anything else

[monsterroonio]

If I see one more white twink human sans I am going to die

[deoidesign]

Wait wait wait, I saw in your tags that's Time and Time Again is ending soon? But I've only just found it! (through the animation you did, it and your comic are so well done)

Ah, yeah.

So by "soon" I really mean "sooner than I think I would like" and it feels much sooner to me as the writer than I think it will to you all as the readers.

But, Time and Time Again is pretty much exactly 2/3 of the way through right now. Webtoon gave me the end date before I even finished my first season, and I've been trying to fit in all the things I wanted to get into the story before it ends...

It's why my hiatus has been taking so long, I'm trying to write to get as many moments and as much development as I possibly can, with really limited time! And... also admittedly to prolong how much longer it's sort of "around" in my life.

Because I know once it is over, I'll move on to the next comic! and 3 years just doesn't feel long enough to have Adam and Steve in my life haha

But, yeah. it's getting "close" in a way that it's starting to make me sad. like this time next year it'll probably be over.

It's okay of course, it's the nature of stories that they will end. I'm working really hard to make it satisfying despite Everything, and I'm really proud of everything I've done so far.

And my next comic will be even better for what I've learned here!

So, sorry to everyone, but I promise I'm gonna make it worth it.

[july-19th-club]

favorite type of villanous characters are the ones whose motivations boil down to

like they dont even have to have any stakes in the broader situation. they just have take pleasure in destruction

[campingwiththecharmings]

me: *is a writer*

also me: *can only ever seem to think of one way to say 'thank you' to the people who are kind enough to comment on my fics 🥲*

[eggmeralda]

do you ever feel casually suicidal? like you're not depressed or anything you're doing fine but also it feels like a convenient option

[triglycercule]

who made the mtt. and no i dont mean like who made the CONCEPT of the murder time trio (because i know who that is. touken kamui i thank you for the fangame every day :3) but like,,,, who decided to just randomly pair these 3 together?? like whaaaat.......

part of me wants to believe it was rahafwabas with the whole bad sanses group thingy being made with those 3 in there and then like. the fangame just gave them specifically a seperate group name. but STILL,,,,, where did this trio come from

[softgrungeprophet]

1. Does The Process Work For You?

Yes: Then do it. Ignore people who tell you it's the wrong way. If it works, it works.

No: Find a different process. Figure out what is stalling you, and change what you're doing as needed. This is where you look for the advice posts to see if they address similar issues with workable solutions. eg "stop trying to become a perfect draftsman, and just draw your comic" or whatever.

2. Are You Just Trying To Have Fun?

Do literally whatever you want, it doesn't matter how productive or skilled you are if you aren't enjoying the process. You do not need to prove your capability at everything you do, especially not hobbies that you do to entertain yourself. You are trying to have fun, not paint the next Mona Lisa.

If world building is stopping you from doing your goal, and you actually want to write a book or something, then yes, shift gears toward writing or drawing or whatever instead of sinking time into figuring out municipal plumbing for elves. You don't need a conlang at all to write a story. Or the ins and outs of bureaucracy, unless that's the main subject of your story I guess.

But if you just like to build worlds, you can still do that. You don't need to justify it with "I'm writing a novel." You can do it for fun, just because you like it, without producing (or "failing" to produce) an end product.

Same for conlangs. I have been conlanging since I was 12. It is/was often alongside various half finished stories (or complete, but bad, because i was 12), but my end goal was still ultimately "fun" for both of these things and i have plenty of standalone conlangs without any stories. Sometimes it's just nice to tinker around, you know?

What about art? Do you just want to draw some damn pictures without any plan of becoming a professional artist? You can in fact just draw some damn pictures. There is no moral or ethical imperative that you must also learn perspective and backgrounds and lighting, or create an epic graphic novel, or whatever.

You can just draw, or write, or do anything creative for fun.

Same goes for anything else you can think of. Music, sewing, knitting, embroidery, ceramics, playing with air dry clay, whatever. It's fine (good, even) to have hobbies.

You don't have to make a final, completed product or a professional finished piece if your main goal is just to have fun or enjoy the process itself.

You can just have fun.

[tiercel]

Ai art thing really has opened my eyes to people who love art because it was created by someone else with their time and effort and love and people who love art because pretty picture cool

[corrodedcoughin]

You!!! Make this community a better place!!! Thank you for grazing in the Steddie nation!!

[rabid-dog-steve-horn]

Remy: Trigger (Michael Jackson Thriller Parody)

[kidfoundonstreets]

yeahwhat it all really comes down to is that i hate myself isnt it.

[llycaons]

okie dokie the vampire fic is in the reclist, the modern au depression one is in the reclist, OG is in the reclist, the heartstring one is in the reclist but wasn't in my notion backup list which is odd...but I think I'm all caught up. NCSNVE will go in the reclist as soon as I finish it but I think I have to be in a certain mood and I have to go to work soon. also I need to decide whether it'll be in the 'healing and recovery' section or the 'jiang cheng' section. first chapter was such classic healing/recovery but I feel like it'll overall be more about the boys

[galaxythedragonshifter]

I'm slowly realizing that browser pet games just aren't for me-

[buckbutch]

how to make friends when you aren't in fandom anymore for trauma reasons tutorial top ten tricks anything please please please I'm dying

[soracities]

Just because someone doesn't like rap or any other type of music does not make them racist or this or that.

no one is telling you that you need to love every genre of music ever made on planet earth but its naive to assume music happens in a social vacuum because it doesn't. there is a reason we value some genres and dismiss others and often that has nothing to do w "artistry" and everything to do with social & cultural hierarchies & its not radical to ask people to question why they hate some music off the bat or assume its all the same without learning anything about it to begin with.

also I need to make this clear -- rap, specifically, is not the same as pop or techno because there has rarely been any mainstream criticisms of it over the past 40 years that hasn't been tinged by some kind of antiblackness from the start. you don't have to personally enjoy it but you can also recognize that a genre of music created by a historically (and still) marginalised community is derided and dismissed BECAUSE of that marginalisation more than anything else, even when it's not your thing. that's all I'm saying.

[inkskinned]

no, actually, where is the whimsy?

my ex had a best friend named larry who asked me once: what do you think comes after irony?

we were at the bar where larry worked. it was a quiet night, and he'd hopped over to sit with us on the patron side. i swirled the lemon around my limoncello martini.

earnest positivity, i said, while my ex said, art self-destructs.

i stared at my ex. he stared at me.

his argument was the cinemasins argument: look how bad media is becoming! look at the loopholes and the dumb shit!

it was roughly 2011. galaxy print was still in. at the time, i had a favorite shirt that was a wolf howling at the moon. it got ripped in half in the wash and i honestly still mourn it. i dressed like effie stonem, because everyone did. and irony was the name of the thing. men liked MLP "ironically." the internet liked the kind of crass, "anti-mainstream" vibes of things like fuck romance, touch my butt and buy me pizza. we put cats in sunglasses everywhere, which was because we only liked things in irony.

and media had the same vibe in it: anti-hero white men would be "hard to love" and then storm off the scene. nobody was just earnestly trying to save the world: they were jaded, angry, unoriginal. mad you even asked them to try to help.

my ex ends up not being wrong. cinemasins becomes super popular. a lot of people start viewing media with this lens that is the cruelest, most jaded depiction. it's wrong for your character to have unexplained powers, even if the entire movie is about how strange it is she has unexplained powers - that is still considered a "loophole." characters make thoughtless, panicked choices? loophole. characters are actually kind people, despite hardship? loophole. features a woman doing literally anything without assistance? loophole. movies become hyper-aware of scrutiny, and now irony rules the media.

which means you go to a movie, and the character has to turn to the screen and say "beats me!!" or one of the side characters has to have some kind of quip like "are you seriously telling me that you think this is normal?" because nothing can happen in earnest. like a sitcom laugh track, we now anticipate the fourth-wall break: the moment that the media acknowledges it is telling a story. the media has to apologize for itself, or else someone like my ex rolls their eyes.

but here's the thing: i wasn't wrong either.

the difference might be that i am (and always have been) so soft-hearted that any crack in the light of this world will spear me into the ground. and i was the poet in the relationship. (he thought that was the same thing as being naïve and stupid). i was making things daily. i knew how all of us artists are driven by some strange desire to evolve. he notably liked to critique art, not to create it.

so yes, i've made things that are bitter and angry and even ironic. i've made long, sharp poems with all capital letters, and i've made poems about how the silence stretches out like a song. someone wrote once that we will spend our whole lives just circling the place we grew up. i think it's more that we spend our whole lives trying to remake a home. i think it's that as we age, it becomes less exciting to build the castle on the beach - we become aware of erosion, of windforce. we realize what we really want is to come home to our dog, castle or not.

and while art in the foreground is mired in white male violence and irony, and aggression, and not taking anything seriously - i don't think that's true of all art. i think more and more artists are leaning in to the things we love. the world has changed so much. they have taken so many things from us. the only thing we have left is love. at the bottom of the moving box - all we get is the faint sense that we have to appreciate what little we've got. i can't enjoy this stuff ironically anymore: what room do i have for irony? if it makes me happy, that is an amazing thing. there are so few happy places left for me. i want to be happy because of how leaves shiver beside each other like nestling birds. i want to be happy because of the color pink, and how magenta doesn't exist. i have spent so much of this life suffering, i have earned my right to a gentle ending. if nothing matters, i get to assign meaning to the nothing. i get to create meaning. i am an artist first and foremost, which means creation is my thing.

where is the whimsy? wherever i fucking put it. because if this is my last fucking chance to do any good in this world - i want to do it earnestly. i want to write things that make you happy. that make people feel heard and seen. what comes after irony has to be positivity.

it was close to my 21st birthday. in 7 years, i would end up writing a book about this relationship, which is hopefully coming out somewhere around May 2024. i come back to this bar scene in my memories a lot. i keep thinking of how pale my ex was. the look that crossed his face. how i looked back at him. how for a moment, both of us couldn't recognize the other person. like the gulf between us was a suddenly wide and cavernous thing. like we were alien to each other. he never took my opinion seriously, and he always seemed surprised whenever his manic-pixie-dream-girl ever broke free of the plot. like in the whole time we were together, i wasn't human enough.

this knowledge: where he said nothing comes after, my only instinct was what comes after is love.