I’m so much more productive after the sun goes down. While the sun is up I feel the weight of having to do things and it just overwhelms me.
But when the sun has gone to bed suddenly my time is my own. I can do with it what I will and oftentimes that means the cleaning I’ve been meaning to do, the projects I’ve been putting off. They suddenly don’t seem overwhelming to me.
I like it when the sun goes down.
Ah, your ancestors were the ones who kept the night watch around the campfire
I’m sorry but this is genuinely the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.
mary oliver leaves and blossoms along the way | dash snow untitled|@ponyoisms|@jovialtorchlight | mary doria russell the sparrow | contornohand in unlovable hand| andrew wyeth up in the studio | avery robert dulles reason, philosophy, and the grounding of faith: a reflection on fides et ratio
I’ll tell you what’s problematic about being over 40 and being friends with someone under 25: if you say “but I am le tired” they do not understand that they are supposed to say “well have a nap AND ZEN FIRE ZE MISSILES”
memes that did irreparable damage to my vocabulary
sometimes i really want to just give up on posting things to tumblr dot com but then i remember that screaming things into the void is actually sometimes fine even if no one sees them or acknowledges them
Just remember: If all writing fiction ever does is keep you from losing your goddamn mind during this pandemic, it has served you well and needs no other justification for consuming hours upon hours of your time. It does not need to be good. It does not need to be finished. It does not need to get published or praised. It only needs to soothe you, to hold you, to occupy your mind, to amuse you, to tether you to this world, to keep you from going mad, to keep you company, to keep you alive.
Nothing feels more free than the realization that canon, fanon, and headcanon are all 1000% fake and made up and therefore all equally true and equally false. None are better or worse than the other. They just either appeal to you or they don’t.
This post isn’t about the relative legitimacy or importance of canon versus fanon versus headcanon. This is just about the fact that all of them are fiction. Fiction is fake and made up. Fiction is true, in that it feels true, emotionally. Fiction is false, in that it doesn’t actually occur in the real world. It’s a fantasy.
If I ask someone, “Does the sun rise in the east?” there is a right answer and a wrong answer to that question. There is a true and a false.
If I ask someone, “Is this character gay?” there isn’t a right answer or a wrong answer. There is a canon answer, a fanon answer, and a headcanon answer. There isn’t an actual real, living, breathing human being being discussed. It’s a question about an idea, and the answer will depend on each person’s interpretation of that idea. Broadly accepted or not. Supported by the text or not. Explained by the original creator or not. Each person gets to decide for themselves.
This is even true in RPF fandoms to a certain degree. The living, breathing person has a true way of being, but the public persona they use might not match up to their real self. And it’s the persona that the fandom is writing about, not the actual person.
The idea of canon gets a lot more complicated when there’s both a book and a movie. Or when there’s an original and a reboot. Or when it’s a comic book series that has been running since the 1930s. Or when it’s a fictional story based on real life events.
What you value is up to you. What you enjoy is up to you. But it’s also important to remember that what other people value and enjoy is up to them. You don’t have to spend time and energy trying to make people agree with you. You really don’t. You can just realize that some people love canon best. Some people love fanon best. Some people love their headcanons best. And most people enjoy different aspects of each and pick and choose as they go.
I spent ten years building up a following on Tumblr. I had 30k+ followers, great engagement, it helped my career thrive like nothing else. I could quit my day job and live off the fan base I’d accrued.
Then, their policies changed. Half my work was no longer allowed. People left the site in droves. I left too, for awhile. I came back to a ghost town. I still have 25k followers, but I don’t think more than 10% are active anymore. I’m followed by ghosts. Same with DeviantArt, although I was never quite as big there, and I’ve been gone so much longer.
This disallowed half of my work was never allowed on Facebook in the first place, or Instagram, but their algorithms are such that my stuff rarely makes it to anyone’s feeds, and if I post a link to where people could actually pay me for my content, it’s hidden unless I pay for it. Patreon swept my work away to a dark corner where no one could see it unless I personally guided them there. Twitch is so strict you can’t even show bare feet. The death of Google Reader means nobody follows RSS feeds anymore, so I can’t direct people to my own site.
So there’s Twitter I guess, where I can post whatever I want, but again, algorithms. But more than that, I don’t have the energy to build up a following once again on a site I don’t own that can delete my career on a whim. The thought of spending time jumping around through hoops for attention just to have it taken away again has stripped any motivation I had to try.
The internet has been gentrified. All the small cute houses and mom & pop shops have been shut down and replaced by big corporations that control everything. I’ve been making webcomics for twenty years, and at the start, the internet was a beautiful wild place. Everyone had a home page. It was like having a house and people came to visit you and you would visit other people in their houses. Now, we don’t visit each other in personal spaces anymore. It’s like we have to visit each other in the aisles of a megamart. Everything is clean and sanitized and the weirdos who made the internet what it was are no longer welcome. No space for freaks anymore.
People still ask me for advice on how to break into comics, and I don’t have any wisdom because I don’t recognize the internet anymore. I don’t feel comfortable working within its boundaries which seems to be getting smaller and smaller and smaller. None of the tools I used when I started exist anymore. They’ve been replaced by things I don’t know how to use. I don’t think I could break into comics today. 2002 had so few barriers compared to now. You might have started on Keenspace, but you could reach a point where you could break away to your own site and people would go to it. Now, you start on Webtoon or Patreon and I guess you just stay there? It feels so much like owning a hardware store for years and then having to go work as a cashier at the Home Depot that put you out of business. I’m looking at my career trajectory and it all points to being a Wal-Mart greeter with uncontrolled arthritis.
I don’t want to make “content,” I want to make comics, I want to make art, and I want to do it in a space that is mine. I’m not sure there’s a place for that anymore.
