5 Years of Madness (Patreon)

 I was sitting up at 4 in the morning today, thinking.

This isn't a  strange scenario for me. It's been a very long time since I've gone to  sleep before the sun had risen. However this time I was thinking not of  just the work that needed to be done, but of the work I had done, and of  the work I will do.

No one knows what they'll be doing exactly 5  years from now, they can assume, and they can plan, but no one knows  what their future holds. 5 Years ago I never thought I would be where I  am now. I've slowly been improving my art, and I've even managed to  successfully make some cash on my artistic endeavors, something I'd  always dreamed of doing. I was interviewed as an up and coming horror  artist for a horror zine, and finally got up the proper feelings of self  worth to push forward and do commissions. While things haven't changed  too much for me really, in a way, things have changed a lot, for better  and for worse in some places, however overall this is change.

Now  change is something that I am absolutely, cripplingly terrified of. I  have a terrible habit of ignoring coming events until they're upon me  and then making a decision at the last second, a decision which  sometimes I regret fully and think for ages over how it could have gone  better. In Highschool I didn't even think of college until I was  applying for a little community college several weeks before it began.  In relationships I swiftly made decisions that I occasionally think back  on and wonder if I ever should have done them, wondering some days if I  would have stuck with it maybe I would still be in them, but also  wondering if I ever wanted to be in them in the first place. In college I  put off some things and ended up attending for 2 years longer than I  needed to because I didn't know where to go afterward. For four fucking  years I feared the day my Sister would graduate because then I knew that  she would go off to college, as she, unlike me, knows what she wants  and though sometimes hesitant, will rush forward with a beautiful grace  and intensity into her dreams, not letting anything get in her way, and  though some days I wish to hold her back just for my sake I know it  would be wrong. I've not had a legitimate job for years now, as the  horrible, crippling mundanity of the "Real" world that I dealt with  through 4 years of a factory job made me wish I were dead on more than  one occasion. There are some days when I go online and find that friends  are getting married or having children, moving away, or getting new  jobs, and even people I barely know telling me such news can  occasionally mentally destroy me for the better part of the day if not  longer depending on the situation and it's severity to the impact on my  life. In short, I am a man who is very set in my processes.

I'm  the kind of guy who could possibly lock up when you suddenly surprise me  with going out to eat or going to the store because I didn't have  enough time to prepare. However I do occasionally enjoy the thrill of  spontaneity in the same way I enjoy the fear and surprises of a horror  movie. In other words. I am always on edge, and I am always quietly,  scared. These things, as you'd expect, do not pair well at all with my  profession. Literally my job for the last few months had been random  messages people would send me, sometimes of huge numbers of works they  wanted me to do for monetary compensation, which would drastically alter  my very clockwork like work schedule I usually give myself. Needless to  say, I have been stressed out for a while, however it wasn't a terrible  thing really, New yes, terrifying yes, and oh so demanding. For years  now it has been, Sunday: Hang out with my sister until 12:00 midnight,  Check Facebook, Write session synopsis for yesterday's dungeons and  dragons session, Finish any storyboarding left over from last week if  needed, write new story details if needed, Begin drawing new pages or  begin doing digital work on those pages. Monday: Wake up, Go to donate  plasma, Come home, Continue previous night's work, go to sleep. Tuesday:  Same as Monday minus Bio Life. Wednesday: Same as Monday. If enough  work is done, hang out with my cousins. Thursday: Same as Tuesday, work  is usually completed by now (Roughly 4-6 pages of comic). Begin any  additional work for holidays, or personal art. Friday: Hang out with  friends, Hang out with sister, Complete work for Dungeons and Dragons  tomorrow. Saturday: Run dungeons and dragons with friends. If session  ends early, begin work for Sunday. Sunday: See previous. Now there have  been many changes in my schedules over the years and some I had to self  impose, and others were pushed on me and had to change myself.

However  as I thought about all of these things in the last few years, I  realized that this year... I had done it. In a way I had broken the  mold. I had shattered even a small part of that barrier and the thick,  black, viscous yolk of my heart has slowly but surely been oozing out  into the air, a creature that does not understand this world, nor does  it really want to in the slightest. One that has been watching in silent  observation for years, and yet now it can interact more. And this is...  for the most part, a good thing. I had been trying to force myself to  do new things, to push myself in new directions, and through taking  these smaller steps I think I've gotten even slightly more comfortable  with some the things in life that have made me as reclusive as you all  out there probably didn't even know I was. I mean, I know plenty of you  have realized that sometimes I don't answer your messages and notes for a  long time, or sometimes I never do. On occasion I'll disappear mid  conversation and never return. Or often times, I'll return after a few  weeks and resume like nothing ever happened. (There are a few people who  know this very well, and a few who I'm sure are about to experience  this soon XD).

I know I don't talk very much about myself on  here. You guys only know about the quirky, loud, odd, somewhat cryptic,  perverted, fetishistic, artist, gamer, nerd, who doesn't answer your  messages for three fucking years sometimes. But really some of you have  watched me for 5 years now, and some have watched for upwards of 11!  ELEVEN FUCKING YEARS! And I rarely ever say anything to any of you guys  about how things are actually going. I've never been the type to freely  express everything like this, but considering this is the 5th year in my  webcomic, something that has consumed my life in a good way, I thought  that maybe I should tell you all how I feel about it.

I am  incredibly proud of myself that I've come this far, that I've done this  much. And I only plan to go further. This whole thing initially started  as a short project because of some jokes friends were making, and I  didn't have anything planned out past the first 2 chapters originally,  however after that I quickly realized that I saw some parts of myself in  Keiko. She's stubborn, quirky, loud, and awkward, never knows what to  do in a situation and often acts rashly. She has an abundance of  emotions inside of herself that she can never fully control. And so I  fell for my own work. I fell HARD for it, and started to throw myself  into it fully, using it as a way to express myself in a way I hadn't  been able to do in a long time, and in some regards express myself in  ways I'd never been able to do before. Everyone has something going on  with them, even if we never know, even if they act really confident,  everyone has a story, and I want to portray that in this comic. People  you think you know will turn out to be completely different and even the  most chipper and exuberant of people could be harboring something  strange, sad, or even sinister in their hearts and vice versa.

This  year's picture isn't a collage or anything like previous years. It's  much more simple. This is a phrenology poster of our heroine Keiko.  Phrenology is an outdated form of science that believed that through  following this chart and applying it to the shape of people's heads, you  could tell what they were like. By applying some parts of these to the  human brain. For example, say your head was a bit squished in in the  front and maybe longer. They would say that your individuality and human  nature may be damaged and unnatural and therefore you were bound to be a  "Follower" and you may be "Less than human" because of it, and because  of your somewhat elongated head you may have exaggerated self esteem or  it may be impacted somehow. It was often used for "Scientifically  proven" (See, false information) Racism by saying that minorities heads  were shaped strangely and therefore it proved that they were inferior.  However it also had places in occult arts, pseudo science, and  supernatural studies as well, using things like this to try and gauge  psychic powers and the like. And that is why I used it as inspiration.  Just like in our society, where sometimes horrible or outdated beliefs  can impact the youth for years to come, age old things can be applied to  people that can discourage and destroy them. Tied with the  psychological situations portrayed often in the comic and the different  parts of the brain that may be "Exaggerated" for a lot of our  characters, I thought it to be fitting. It's sad, but I thought it to be  quite beautiful in the end.... Things might be bad for Keiko right now,  but I truly love her, and hope for her to stay strong in the coming  years.

Everyone in this comic has issues. But a lot of times  people don't want to say they have issues, a lot of time no one wants to  say they have some sort of mental problem or physical ailment, or even  just when they're sad. No one wants to admit when they fall outside of  the social norm in some occasions, when things they like or do might be  shunned by the rest of the world, and in those situations you want to be  more than that, and so you may just want to refer to yourself as  something that doesn't sound all that weird, abnormal, or strange.  Something that sounds statistically correct. In those regards, you may  prefer being called slightly above average.

This comic, this  project, is an extension of me, an extension of everything I am and a  way for me to push through this mundane, banal, reality that we live in.  And I wouldn't be able to do it without all of you supporting me.

Thank  you for 5 years. Thank you for everything. And hopefully in 5 more  years, something more will happen, maybe some more amazing things will  emerge.

I'm DarkmasterN, and I am sLightly abOVe avErage.