Weekly Update - 71 (Patreon)

Unplugged for a bit last week.  But it's time to get back to work.  *cracks knuckles*

Comic This Week?  Yes!

Character Page - It's still on the long list of the things the code wolf has to do.

Max Poster - It's still on the long list of the things I have to do.

Drawing: Page 108-109, Max Poster

Playing: Cyberpunk and Binding of Isaac and Rimworld.

Rambling:

I mentioned last week I wanted to do a longer rant about censorship... well... not feeling it today.  It's just one of those topics that's sort of borderline political, which is something I really prefer to avoid here.  If I do end up posting about it, it'll be from the perspective of a creator and how it applies to the creation and consumption of content, nothing more.

Today I want to talk about... kinda... how scared I am of success. Because there's a fear there, a very real fear, and I think it might result in me undermining myself from time to time in various ways if I don't stay conscious of it. My friends over at Fenris Publishing kept bugging me to create an ad and put myself out there and get my comic seen by the wider furry audience and I resisted that for a long time, not because I disagreed with them from any angle, but because I knew that by putting myself out there and being seen by more people I'd be opening myself to greater and greater scrutiny from a wider audience and the thought of that terrifies me.

It's just that... I don't think my comic is very good. I don't think it's bad, but I also think that I could do a lot better if I keep at it. When I compare myself to other creators online, I naturally look to the most popular and most successful comic creators, (the ones with the highest visibility,) and I see their amazing creations and part of my brain tells myself I'll never be that good. Except when I think about the fact I've been working at this for about three years and they've been working at it for 15-20 years, suddenly what they do seems... possible... only so long as I stick with it for the next 15 to 20 years. I've said before, I think, in a lot of different ways that's a big part of what keeps me going. Every comic page I draw is okay... but I tell myself I will do better on the next one, and that, for the most part, continues to hold true. It will hopefully hold true until I am finished telling Kiva's story, and it'll hopefully continue to hold true as I move on to the next comic project, whatever comes after Kiva's story (you know, in 10 years or more).

So I'm probably not in danger of being surrounded with fans and popularity any time soon, and it's arguable whether or not the most successful furry creators are ever all that popular from the wider perspective of internet fame. When I think of "success," to me, that means a few hundred dedicated fans. Anything beyond that seems... well... let's not gaze long into that abyss, lest it gaze into us.

What's so scary about success, though, is that fans often look up to their favorite creators as people who can just do no wrong, who are so smart and brilliant and amazing. Fans often impose an impossible standard on those who create something they admire or feel inspired by. Popular creators (any popular figures, honestly) often serve as examples to live by. I'm just a person living amidst my own lifetime of mistakes. I can hardly stand the thought of people ever looking up to me. Gods, my nephew looks up to me for some strange reason, and whenever he's around I'm scared as shit I'm going to fuck up somehow and make him hate me. It puts a lot of stress and pressure on me to consider that I might have any impact at all on his life. I want to leave a positive impression.  On my nephew, on everyone, really... but I have no clue what I'm doing. Does anyone?

Honestly, I think there's this general expectation that the people we look up to have mastered their craft... but I'm just not convinced that's true. The wisest and smartest and brightest among us always seem to understand just how little they know, and every time I see a video about someone doing something incredible that explodes in popularity all of a sudden, most of them have been just doing that thing for years, and this time when they tried something new or slightly differently that they've never done before, it worked in a way they didn't expect.

I think what sets truly great creators apart from the rest of them is that they just keep trying. Fail a thousand times perhaps, but succeed even once and it's a net positive. Creatives are presented with the difficult task of inventing something that's never existed before, we don't know if it'll be good or not (sometimes we don't even know what it will be) until it's finished. I said I don't think my comic is good, but I'm not in a position where I can fairly judge whether or not my comic is good. When it's done, when I've told Kiva's story in its entirety, it'll be up for other people to judge. Until then, I'll just be trying to make it the best story I can.  If it's successful, great.  If not, there's always the next one.

...

You know, it's kind of funny... sometimes I spend hours on these rambles, writing and rewriting and editing them... but I am regularly plagued by a crisis of motivation and I feel like these rambles are sometimes a way of talking myself into it. Like I'm trying to quell my fears and convince myself to shut up and get to work. Maybe it's working?