Topic 1- The Devil Is Me
It's been a month since I put this comic down and stopped working on it. I set way too many expectations for myself and I skidded out and crashed into the creator's ravine when I finally woke up. The truth had been yelling at me from the backseat for quite some time, but I kept trying to force things anyway.
Seeing the voice was right all along was a bit upsetting. The voice is an asshole.
In that time I have moped, did a bit of shameful whaling on Star Trek Online (the Grissom ship is pretty cool), and wrote a totally new story. It's MUCH shorter and on point. Far better too little than letting my ideas take over and creating a five year project. Here's hoping I can kick it off.
To clear my brain a bit, I started on a new illustration. I intended it to be black and white but I feel the piece to be a bit elaborate for that, so I'm testing color palettes right now. I might be able to get it done within the next few days but I have some medical traveling to do this coming week so...?
Topic 2- The Devil is You
During mope time I had a conversation with someone who is younger and far more into their fandoms than I am and... hm.
This "The life of my OC" thing where people treat their characters like living people. Creating these elaborate lives they go through, discussing them as if they're real people they just had a conversation with.
Back in the day if you talked about your D&D character as if they were your domestic partner and you joyously tell folks about them discovering ice cream for the first time? That shit would get you the side-eye real hard. But (online at least) people seem happy to play along with this and actually prefer it over any story the character might be in.
I don't get it, but... HOT TAKE: This makes sense if we accept the fact that all social media is just people presenting an elaborate fantasy life they made up. I figure if you've grown up in that culture the practice of "The life of my OC" isn't odd. It's the norm.
I find it an interesting offshoot of the parasocial reality we've created. It should be studied.
