so i’ve noticed a pretty big uptick in new people around here lately and i wanted to cover a few bases since i’m realizing it’s been a pretty long time since i had a fireside chat with the room. this is for a few reasons - first of all, i don’tttttt like talking about myself! i feel like sometimes notes on what’s up with me and how i’m doing can come across as invitations to talk a lot about my personal life, and i’m not really here to get into it. i really do prefer the anonymity of the stuff i do here. not a ton of people i know in real life have any idea at all what i do creatively, and inversely not many people who know me for my writing or whatever know anything about my real life. love that separation! big fan of it! that’s why i go by the alias Trigger, don’t have very many mentions of any facet of my identity, my location, don’t even really have my general age listed (i’m an adult, that’s all i’m comfortable sharing). i’m not, uh. a very confident person i guess? but with that said, i’m fine with talking about broad strokes stuff, and with talking about the stuff i make. so let’s go over it!
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.
that’s the synopsis. if you’re interested in my music, that’s over here. i’m probably going to reblog some of the comic-related art onto here every once in a while, but i don’t plan on reblogging individual pages onto here or anything like that. thanks for the read! let me know what you guys think!
actually just for the sake of arguing about tautology, at what point does a character cease to be an OC? because i think we can all agree that there’s a line in the sand. at some point between the character and story existing in your mind, and the story or character existing as viewable or interactable or in the context of the created media, that is not longer an ‘OC’. it is now ‘character’ from ‘thing’. an OC is, by merit of existing pre-established or currently-being-established-through-discussion, malleable and transient and incomplete, a work in progress. but once they’re in the world and *interpretable*, they are no longer an OC (described by the creator with ownership and authority on how the character exists) and are now a Character, to be viewed and considered and concluded upon by outside observers. there is a canon. there are objective truths. now the character is only malleable in circumstances surrounding events that have already been defined.
an OC is a perpetually shifting thing that lives inside the mind of whoever created it. but how long into being created before that stops being an OC?
take fandom OCs, for example. if a fan character is included in a show because of an opportunity through some charity foundation, that character is now canonized. they are real within the context of the show. but what about fan content? if someone writes 5k words of fanfiction of their OC in the show, sure it’s not *canon*, but it’s still existing in a work. what about fanart? that OC next to the main character?
what about non-fandom OCs? you sit down and write three short stories, totaling about 1k words apiece, about the same character with a rotating cast of friends or coworkers going through non-linear circumstances that aren’t connected in any format except the primary character. is that an OC, or a character from a story? what about another three short stories? you’ve broken 6k words. you’ve maybe even established a genre, or a lack of genre, or consistent character archetypes. what about five chapters? a short novel, but a novel. it’s unpublished in a proper format, but you’ve made something of a cohesive story. is that still an OC? you publish an e-book that sells three copies exactly, compilations of the work you have so far.
what is the difference? viewership? ‘amount of work put in’ (unquantifiable)? cohesion? basis of fact within the setting? establishment of setting?
how many pages into my comic before it would be a faux pas to participate in artfight? before it’s strange to reblog an “OC Ask” list? what if i make the comic but show nobody? what if i don’t ever sell or make money on it?
when DC comics retcon entire plotlines, they lock down a past version of a character as now unmalleable in any reasonable way and create a new character experiencing progressing events and change. often this is accompanied by a change in writer, in artist, in publication. are these OCs until they’re published? in any number of Sherlock Holmes adaptations, they put a spin on Arthur Conan Doyle’s initial work. these aren’t considered Sherlock OCs, although the deliberately misrepresented argument could be made that they *are*, but what is the fundamental difference between a side character in one of those mysteries and a side character in a fanfiction based on BBC Sherlock’s initial three-episode run? is it percieved worth?
people by and large (at least from my experience) hate Miraculous Ladybug. but several fan-made comics have received so much acclaim that i would consider them more widely beloved in fan spaces than the actual show, featuring versions of the characters sometimes quite different from the original work. are these OCs? “this was so good this is the new canon to me.” “this should’ve been an actual episode.” “you should write for this show.” “they’re so much better written here than they were in season three.” these are phrased either as compliments or denouncements, indistinguishable from either.
i’m not sure what the answer is, but seriously, will it be considered in bad taste if i roll up on artfight with characters from a comic i’m releasing? because if so i need to shuffle some things around.
i JUST wanna make the damn comic with my damn characters in my damn fully fleshed out setting with damn lore and history and timeline by continent and rules of magic
i want so so badly to talk about my characters but i don’t want to subject people to the experience of me talking about my characters while also avoiding spoiling things since i’m not doing a bit or kidding in any way, i’m actively working towards making and regularly releasing a comic about them.
working title for my original comic is “and furthermore, in conclusion” which is nice because that means technically speaking i’ve started the comic. if i’ve decided a title for it
