Janus Sanders should be grateful that I am possessed of any restraint to speak of. Because I am also a total nerd survival crafter enthusiast and every time I find a new game I feel the urge to put that man in Situations. Which is all well and good when I'm playing Conan Exiles and imagining him as a Priest of Set with a tower for his blasphemous sorcery and a slutty little loincloth, but I've been playing The Long Dark and it's been so hard not to make that poor bastard suffer through the frozen hell of the post-apocalyptic Canadian wilderness...
I've put out a few warning posts in the past about the various waves of hate bots leaving comments on AO3. And it's good to remind people they exist every now and then because once you can recognize them and know them for what they are they really do become very toothless. But this morning I actually got my first hate bot comment on one of my own fics.
So I want to talk about it.
(I've tagged it with the fandom, but this is mostly a journal post. And I meander a bit and don't necessarily wind up going anywhere, so, quick heads up.)
Here's the comment. I've blacked out the username because they've stolen real usernames but post as a guest. That's always a huge bot red-flag:
There's a tremendous irony that I would get this comment on this specific fic. Because the theme of that story is entirely about hope. About finding the things that make it worthwhile to keep going. About the importance of continuing even when things are bleak and improving them seems impossible. That even if you can't change the world or fix the things about it that are broken, you can make smaller differences, and putting effort into doing so can be worth it.
It's also very ironic, with the other language the comment chose to employ, that I got it on the morning that I did. I'm currently engaged in a pre-Christmas tradition my family has called Gingergeddon where I bake dozens of gingerbread men for my niece and nephew to decorate in a flurry of sugar fueled madness. So, very much feeling the holiday spirit, and by no means lonely.
And, while I might be a little bummed that like...no one has left so much as a kudos on that fic so far (it's been up for less than a day and it's part of a series, so not a surprise, but let's be real, to the inner giddy part of me that writes the stories and knows they're awesome, that's still a disappointment), I'm otherwise in pretty high spirits right now.
And a third irony comes in the fact that, as so many folks are waking up and returning to their Sanders Sides eras, I've been returning to D&D and, specifically, my Matt Colville era.
Now, Matt Colville, for those who don't know, is a D&D youtuber. He's also a writer, a game designer, and occasionally an hobbyist music producer. And his channel largely focuses on the art of running tabletop games, but I've found several of his videos broadly applicable to writing and other creative pursuits in general.
(You don't have to watch either of these videos to continue reading this post, but I wanted to share them anyway.)
There are two videos of his that I like to revisit in particular, especially when I am feeling demotivated or discouraged. One of those I was already planning on sharing with the fandom, both because "Leading a Creative Life" is just a very good, very encouraging video for artists of any kind, and because it's extremely interesting when viewed in the context of Roman as a character, because it specifically covers the (positive) role of Ego in the choice to lead a creative life. And it does tie in to the topic of these hate bots, because it deals with what people are actually trying to accomplish when they try to stop you from making the art you want to make.
I might still make another separate post for this video later, with a little more focus on how I feel it relates to Roman. I have a draft of that post already, in fact, it's just not finished yet.
The other video, is called "Art vs Existential Dread". I believe it was recorded during quarantine, so the tone is a lot more dour than Matt's videos tend to be. But it provides an important look at why we make art: both what art is, why we create, and the value of art, not monetarily, not even the finished result of our efforts, but why making it is important.
(It also talks a bit about modular synthesis, which really isn't relevant to the topic...)
But, going back to the comment, I've said it before and I'll say it again:
Imagine deciding to put this kind of energy into the world. Imagine doing that thinking you're doing the world a favor. Imagine plugging a bunch of pre-written comments into a bot and unleashing it with the only intention of crushing artists, snuffing out their motivation, bringing them down. Imagine having one goal, and that goal being to prevent art from being made. Imagine being that small of a person. Imagine taking the limited number of hours that life gives us and using it to do that. Imagine being given the chance to find meaning in your existence and deciding your meaning is being cruel to strangers you've never even met. That your purpose in life is being petty and small minded on purpose.
Imagine, rather than taking the opportunity to make art of your own, you do this. A lot of people think of life as a game where they're out to win or score points, but I think anyone who has reached the point of the people running these bots has to have given up on winning in any meaningful sense if all they want to get out of it is make others not want to play.
I guess I didn't really have a point besides just... Make your art. Even the worst story ever written, the lamest joke ever told, the most amateurish stick figure, the hastiest tiktok, the most half-assed shitpost, has more value than what these people are doing.
Hell. Sitting on a xerox machine and copying your ass has more value than this. At least that might make somebody laugh.
If you're wondering whether you should make something, then unless you have a non-trivial, concrete reason why the answer should be "no" (like if you can't afford it, or if it might put you or someone else in danger) then the answer is almost definitely "yes". Just do it. The worst you might do is fail to finish or to realize your vision. The best you might do is succeed flawlessly—which is statistically unlikely, but that's still no reason not to try. You're likely to wind up somewhere in the middle, but there will still be one more piece of art in the world, almost certainly an imperfect one, maybe even an unfinished one, but that's still a net positive for the world the way I see things.
Don't let assholes discourage you. They're adding nothing of worth to our ecosystem. Make your art. Write it, draw it, sing it, sew it, whatever. Make your art. Because making the art is worth it.
Meant to do a post like this in January, but January is such a Month, and I wound up putting it off. Anyway, time isn't real and the calendar is arbitrary, so here's kind of an update on what I have going on...
(Vague ramblings and loose updates about writing plans and progress under the cut...)
I did not get as much work done on Bleeding Hearts (the Among Us AU) during November as I hoped I would. I mean, I got from ~50k to ~75k on the draft, which isn't nothing, but I also I ran into a minor speedbump in the plot that hasn't been easy to recover momentum on. So that's stalled just a bit. Hope I can get back into it soon.
I have, however, wound up making progress on other stories instead. I got a very decent amount of progress on the third fic in the Party Games werewolf AU. I've made some progress in the Logan-centric soft gothic/dark fluff fic that I've had sitting collecting dust for a bit. I have a couple of loose one-shots that I don't want to spoil that might be showing up some time.
I'm very close to finishing the full version of the Space Orcs fic What They Say About Humans.
I'm of two minds how to do that one, because on the one hand, a lot of people read and enjoyed (and probably subscribed to) the original one-shot, and would probably love to see that continued directly. However, I also came up with a lot of interesting ideas that would probably require a rewrite of that first chapter in order to really work in properly. So I might leave the one-shot as-is and post the whole thing as a separate fic, or I might post the version I have as new chapters and then rewrite it later (though knowing me, if I leave it for later I probably...won't).
For the Fallout AU I've made a lot of headway with both follow-ups to But Someday the Sun Will Shine (the Black Lake/kid!Janus fic and the fic about Patton and Logan in Darkside). I have a few more characters to introduce to the AU and then I might actually be able to lead into the longer fic I originally had in mind when I started writing the unconnected ficlets. Which is wild to think about.
I've also suddenly picked up the first fic I ever started writing for this fandom (about five years ago), which would be a (big surprise) Janus-centric Weird West AU. So that might be a thing that shows up sooner or later.
Still Working On...
Part three of the Sea's Kiss trilogy. Lost momentum, but I still have plans to carry it to the end of the story I originally wanted to write...
I haven't abandoned Wire Fathers, but I haven't felt pulled to work on it actively. Maybe if I get a few more things tied up properly I'll be able to put some of my focus on it.
The Tea and Dragons sequel is going to exist...someday.
Things I'm Still Planning...
The Salt for Salt sequel. Needs planning and ironing out. I have a lot of scene ideas, and a lot of beats I want to hit, but not really enough to hang a full story on, I don't think.
I've got a decent shape for the third (and possibly final) Coffin Nails story. There were a few things that I wasn't sure I could be comfortable writing, but I found a work-around that should work. I still need to figure out what I want for an ending though.
Things I Might Work On...
Last year had a lot of personal stuff going on, which forced me to drop out of TSS Storytime as a writer. I've signed on as an artist again because I have no regrets there. I'm on the fence whether to give writing for the event a second chance, because I'd hate to have to default again. If I did, I think I know what story I would want to do, because there's a fic I outlined years back for another fandom that I've thought about adapting as a Sanders Sides AU. There are still a few details I'd need to figure out, but it's a. already outlined and b. would make for a compelling story. So... I'm weighing that, at present. We'll see how I feel when the deadline for sign-ups comes around.
I tell myself all the time that I don't identify with Janus that strongly, and then I wind up having to pull hard on the breaks when my urge to have Strong Opinions and Argue Them to strangers rears its ugly, bloodthirsty head...
