#afic

i’m not really known on here for anything beyond my writing, but i actually do various different creative stuff. i make music, i draw, i paint, i know a few instruments, i sew and make props, i’m a chef (like. professionally. that’s my job in real life. like, i’m my boss and i just answer to the owner of the restaurant. i made my menu. we’re actually expanding it at the moment). my fanwork is definitely a passion of mine, i love doing character analysis and riffing with other people and collaborative work, that kind of thing, but i also do like. a lot of original work.

“I KNOW WHERE THIS IS GOING DONT CANCEL TAKING SHOTS—“ i’m not. i’m fully not. taking shots is just gonna be well over 150k words by the end of it and i’m running the marathon, not the sprint. that’s gonna continue to publish slowly over time. that’s not where i’m going with this. i have an outline, i know the plot, i just have to write the scenes and paint the spaces between the bigger arc of it and figure out the points between A and Z, and that’s going to take a while. if that means that fic is done in fuckin 2030, so be it.

my problem here is twofold. first of all, i have what the doctors call “a chronic depressive disorder” and “the good old neurodivergence that means you’re a perfectionist and also incapable of starting things”. there’s a part of me that really wants to ‘just’ hammer out Taking Shots and wrap it all up and do the damn thing and wipe off my hands and take a bow or ten before i move on, but i’m aware that my internal motivation issues are going to make that task take an incredibly long time. the second part of the problem is that i’m going to feel intense guilt pretty much all of the time if i split my attention between an original work and the fanwork i’ve already started, because in my mind, i’d be doing a half-measure of both of them rather than a sufficiently good job of either.

i know that doesn’t make sense, probably because it doesn’t. but honestly, for a longass time, me wanting so bad to start making my original work A Thing I Do, yet feeling bad for not instead doing more of my fanwork (which i know people really enjoy), has just been putting the pole through the spokes of the wheels on both of those projects.

so i’m biting the bullet. fuckin’ whatever.

Taking Shots is going to continue to keep its irregular infrequent schedule - i generally write more Taking Shots whenever i get really really annoyed with myself that i haven’t written more Taking Shots. in the meantime, i’m also going to start making and posting more about my original work.

i’m making a comic.

it has a title, i’ve scripted a ton of it, i have the plot and characters and worldbuilding and development, i know how it begins and what happens and how it ends. i started working on the story and the world around 2016, and i’m pretty happy with it. it’s going to take years to make the entire thing, as it’s going to be hundreds of pages per arc and a number of arcs in totality, and i plan to post pages as i go, maybe individually, maybe in small batches. it’s a fantasy setting, what with the elfs ‘n legally distinct hobbitses ‘n shit, adventure comedy, character driven narrative. i’ve made a separate blog to house it, and here soon the plan is to start showing off what i’ve already got, whatever isn’t spoilers, break out the title and some of the pages. my plan, eventually (and i mean EVENTUALLY) is to open a patreon or whatever the thing is by the time i get there. i’d fuckin’ love to just, like, make art and stuff full time, but realistically, i do need to hold down a real job for a while, even assuming i can make a living on art. i don’t have anyone to support me financially, so that does need to come first.

my artfight victims and opponents (my beloved) have already met a bunch of the characters, and some of you who have been around for a while probably also know about them. it’s not a secret or anything. i just don’t want to lean on the crutch of like, building a brand and hype for characters before i make the media. i don’t like stuff like that. you’ll see it as you see it. i love talking about my process and thoughts while making things and about character writing, and i’m open to questions or conversations about the comic and the characters, but like, i’m probably not gonna open with “and here’s the plot outline”. that’s a lot.

i want to be transparent now rather than later that no matter what i do, including making a patreon (or whatever), fanwork of any kind won’t be housed there. this doesn’t mean i’m giving up my fan stuff or that it’s dropping down the list as a priority. that hat is being hung up someday, maybe, but Taking Shots ends either when i’ve written all of it or when i’m dead in the fucking ground. this is partially because of, y’know, legality, because you really aren’t allowed to profit off of fan writing in the same way you might on fanart or whatever, but even if i was legally allowed to i wouldn’t necessarily want to. i don’t like the idea of making any significant amount of money on fan content, i don’t ever want enjoying media to have monetary incentive for me. that sucks. fan stuff is an outlet for me and i don’t like the thought of profiting off of enthusiasm. that seems like it would get a little parasocial.

this is my main blog, i’m probably going to keep using it for fan stuff a lot, and most of my comic stuff is gonna go on the same blog as the actual pages, and i’ll probably make some kind of dedicated webpage for the comic as well, and at some point i’m gonna make an executive decision on where i want to host any q&a for the comic - probably here. i’m hoping that getting vocal about my original work stuff will help me, like… commit a little harder? i work on it way more frequently than my fan stuff, like it’s not even close, but there’s kind of this sense of “and it’ll happen someday”. maybe that someday could be, like, before the heat death of the universe. because it doesn’t need to take that long. i have so much done.