this is a big question but i'm curious what inspires your more heavier stories (like ponyjar; really harrowing. i loved the highlighted text choice) and how you approach writing them? do you have a specific feeling or theme you want to leave the reader with? or is the reader a lesser influence on it..
First off, THANK YOU FOR ASKING!!! I'm honored to receive such a question... it is a dream for any creative! And thank you for reading Ponyjar of course.
Let's see... I think that I generally gravitate towards stressful and dark themes, especially in storytelling, because I personally get little to no gratification from fluff devoid of some sort of strife or stake. In fact, watching super lighthearted stuff kind of freaks me out! I love the horror genre, as well as films and games people tend to classify as Very Stressful, so that ends up influencing a lot of my stories. Ponyjar in particular I considered making into a visual novel for a while; it was heavily influenced by VNs I found on itch.io. Many of my works are very internetty, very digital, because I spend much of my time on here whether I like it or not.
I have very particular brainworms which I largely attribute, other than growing up in our very strange and stressful world, to the internet and Tumblr specifically. Sometimes, I feel thought patterns of paranoia and irrationality very strongly, and a lot of this is channeled into the things I write. I have always liked writing but never considered myself that kind of creative. In hindsight, though, it makes sense-- even in illustration, I've always been concerned with storytelling first and foremost! As life has gone on and time for drawing has shrunk, writing has become a quicker, less effort-intensive way to channel said feelings. In a way, it is much more effective at exorcising them.
Ponyjar is not the first heavy story I've ever written-- I'd say the floodgate began with "I Was Taught To Love It", an attempt at actualizing an OC backstory that I've had floating around since high school. That was written after I read Mouth to Mouth to Mouth by wiltking, which is excellent. I don't usually have a deliberate agenda when I start out a story. I usually just have a strong feeling and initial idea. For instance, Ponyjar came about partially because I had just finished "Men, Women, and Chain Saws" by Carol J. Clover and was really ruminating on the concept of gender roles, the rape-revenge genre, and how little such depictions bleed over into our modern experience (the most recent entry on the Wikipedia page is fucking Promising Young Woman!!! wow!!!) I wanted to write a story that touches on some of those tropes and ideas through a post-internet lens; in our dreary times where folks are socially isolated and carry out very ephemeral digital existences, how does one respond to a visceral, awful human experience that has been a touchstone in artistic depiction since the dawn of film? (Also, MW&C really glosses over the trans experience re: horror and assault, and I feel that is a missed opportunity.)
I think there is a modern fear of depicting subjects like sexual assault that disguises itself as progressiveness-- marking certain avenues of depiction as unacceptable, sanitizing narratives of untoward implications as if even broaching the subject is unspeakable. We see it a lot in how the internet shapes its language. A self-censoring machine! And none of it actually helps anyone understand what they've gone through or how to move past it. Rape is misogynistic and abhorrent, therefore depictions of it are misogynistic and abhorrent-- see public groups and critics' outcry to I Spit On your Grave. I used to be apprehensive about writing such things but by now have stopped, because I feel this self-censorship does more harm than good. I could choose to strip out everything upsetting out of my writing and end up hurting no one, but then I wouldn't be saying anything. I have a limited time on this earth and only so many words! I would like to at write stories that make people feel something, even if what they feel is upset. Sometimes you dwell on really hard things and it helps you understand life and the world better even if it is difficult in the moment.
Themes and feelings will always be up to the reader, not me, to identify. I definitely pack a lot of personal stuff into my writing but it's not autobio either, right? I write around my own feelings, and then whatever the reader picks up is a reflection of their own as much as mine. I do think the inherent voyeurism of the reader's role is fascinating, and that naturally bleeds in and out of the internet trappings. Happy panopticon!! But I wouldn't be making it if not for the reader, so doesn't it all work out?
[Other misc influences in no particular order]: I Spit On Your Grave, Fluids by May Leitz, The GMOD Stream, Remy Boydell, Catboy Church, Deltarune, ufoshock, Lesley the Pony Has an A+ Day! (volume warning), Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk, Newfag Runs The Gauntlet, E.M. Carroll, Pokemon Explorerz, Sunshine Backwards, The Space Between, Snuff Puppy Carnage Society.
