Weekly Update - 101 (Patreon)

Comic This Week?  Sure.

Drawing: The Next Page

Playing: anything to kill time while I wait for TW: Warhammer 3.

Ramble:

It doesn't seem like it was very long ago I started thinking of you all as fans. It was a weird realization. I had these people who seemed to be enjoying my comic and reading along, and then some of them started to send me money for it. It was humbling and to this day I remain humbled that there exists people who are willing to pay actual money for the ideas inside of my crazy brain. Ideas which are, effectively, free for me to produce, if you don't count time spent (or food eaten or doctor bills or myriad other costly things that are essential to the continuance of one's life.)

But it's a weird dynamic between fans and creator. I spill my every thought onto these pages for fans like you to read, and over time you wind up learning quite a bit about me, my philosophies, my hopes and struggles, the kind of person I am or who I strive to be, but I still don't know anything about YOU. I put up a discord server because I wanted to meet some of you, to chat with you, forcing myself to interact with people despite my own social ineptitude... But... after all these years, I still have no idea what I'm doing. What makes fans into a community? I have no idea. Is that even something we want? Do you like meeting me or each other? Or would you rather read the comic in isolation? I know that if I wasn't the creator, I'd definitely be in the latter camp. I generally avoid most people because I don't know how to talk to people. People are scary and strange to me, and I much prefer interacting with the characters living inside of my head.  They make sense to me. Their thoughts I can read and to a certain extent, shape. As a creator of stories, however, I crave outside input. I am not in a position to fairly judge my own stories. Since they are mine, I am immensely biased. I tend to think they are either really good (or sometimes really terrible, depending on mood) but because my brain is so wrapped in the details and minutia of everything I have yet to share, I cannot fairly judge the big picture.  Is my story even good? Is the story or its characters being held back by my shortcomings as a writer or artist? I have no way to get that input.

I think that's initially what the Discord server was supposed to be. A place to meet the people reading my comic and get feedback and hear reader speculation... to better equip myself for telling the best story I possibly could. But the Discord server has abruptly died, and I have no idea why. It was fun for a time when people were regularly chatting on there. I don't know what happened. It seemed to kind of peak in popularity when I put up an NSFW channel, because of course it would, but I had to take it down because of the presence of minors on the server. Maybe that's what killed it. Maybe it was all a huge mistake right from the start.

When I started this whole thing, I knew going into it that I would have to commit to it for at least four years of my life before I would see hardly any reaction at all. In my excitement for starting the comic, I created all kinds of community-facing things in the hopes of one day having people who might join them and chat with me.  For three years, they sat still and silent while I drew by myself, alone, trying to create something from nothing.  Today, enough of the comic has been posted that it's no longer nothing. There is a thing that exists that people can read and that I'm continuing to expand and add to. Last year it was beginning to feel like we were ahead of schedule. This year, everything just seems to have fallen back into silence. I'd hate to attribute it completely to the ad on FA, which was brought down to make room for other Fenris Publishing promos, but what little marketing that ad might have afforded me clearly had a huge impact. 

Creating something, really, the creative process in general, is a lot of ups and downs.  There are times of euphoria where everything feels like it's going great, and there are times where everything sucks and is terrible and I wonder why I still do it.  Finding the balance between those two extremes is a big part of what keeps me going.  A little bit of down makes me feel like I need to try harder, to study more about what I draw and to put more effort into getting it right, while a little bit of up makes me feel validated, like all the effort and time and misery is worth it. It's hard though to not get too wrapped up one or the other.

I keep telling myself I'm committed to drawing Kiva's story for at least ten more years. The most successful webcomics seem to have been around for closer to fifteen years or more.  As far as I know, I have no plans that would currently interrupt a commitment of that length, even if I have to keep facing it alone.  I have to keep trying because it's all I can do.

Anyway, thanks for reading.