nothing really kills my desire to work on a project like actually working on it. i made sprites and everything... then, i sat down to work on the game... and it was so boring. maybe i'll make little comics from time to time. likely it will become nothing. at least i still have [insert title] to work on :3 i obviously haven't put anything out yet and probably won't for a while, although i might do little minicomics from time to time. not 4koma, just shorter ones, 3-6 pages, you know. minor problems :D

an old, old story. i guess i write about isolation a lot because i, in my real person life outside of the internet, feel pretty isolated. when i was younger it was worse. i think i had some kind of psychotic break at some point or another, back then. i wish i could say I've moved past that, but to be honest, the person that i was during that time was a really fascinating person to be. maybe to compensate for my loneliness i made my mind a more interesting place.
i still don't have any close friends today. that is to say, only, people you can talk to about things, or people you see outside of school, or people you can tell honest things about yourself. however, my life is much better. i talk to people from time to time, and even if i know we won't see each other frequently, or think of each other often, i really enjoy the company of other people. it's something i say often to myself: "I love people", because i really love people. i think people are a beautiful thing, and i like knowing more about them and trying to understand them in the way that i think everyone wants to be understood.
of course maybe it's obnoxious to talk about such personal things here. I'm hoping that whoever is reading this will empathize a little; that i don't really have another way to export these feelings, so it's done here, in a place that's personal enough that i feel i have the right.
i guess , despite the fact that i feel content with my life most of the time, I'm still a bit jealous. i like to draw, and it makes me so profusely happy that i can't imagine life without it. if i lost my hands, I'd learn to draw with my teeth, or my feet. if i lost my eyes, I'd endure for a while, but eventually i think i might kill myself. it's not that I'm particularly good at it. it's just something important to me. despite this, and my feelings of happiness, I'm a little jealous of other people from time to time. "why can they access that connection that I can't? what am i doing that's different?" but, actually, i think there might be a lot more people like myself. i just don't notice them because, like myself, they blend relatively into the background at the end of the day. at least i have fun with the people i do know. i think that, in the past, i was wrong. i have connected with other people. today, and yesterday. in that way, i have been understood. that makes me happy.

i've been thinking about a fun game. "fun ♥ cute purgatoryland". the player character would be Representative Joe Chip(girl with pink hair). the others are just ideas for side characters..

i've been rewatching the danganronpa playthrough i first saw when i was 12. it's so much better than any other gameplay experience.... johne is like a character of his own. there's a sprite of nagito staring intensely at his hand that is extrememly comedic
i have finals next week. once they're over, maybe i'll work on the comic a little. i have a really neat idea for a certain character, but i'm hesitant to introduce anyone new so soon. regardless, i know that i'll just end up doing whatever i want.

thinking so much about everything I've ever seen and felt
when i was nine or ten i held my pet rabbit in my arms as she died for no reason. there was no explanation. she was young. maybe she poisoned herself on something outside. she just up and died. i looked into her eyes when it happened. it's true what they say about the light going out. i read books about it before then, but I didn't know what it really looked like. well, in that moment, i guess i realized. i get sad thinking about it because she really didn't live a good life. i won't go into it.
I've been scared, too. not just casual fear. real adrenaline. it felt so incredible. i tried weed once, and i know it's a totally different kind of drug, but it didn't compare in the least bit. nothing I've felt since then does. i went into an abandoned house up the road where some homeless guy was squatting. there was broken glass all over the floor and it was pitch dark. i felt like i was really alive, but not just that, like a tightness in my stomach and an insane beating in my heart. if i die while I'm living, maybe I'll get a chance to feel like that again. of course, few can choose how they go out

I've been practicing more realistic, rapid sketches. i feel like maybe I've gotten too in my head with cartoons lately. I'm nowhere near the skill level of famous old master Fransisco de Goya. It's really shocking.
in an attempt to curb my feelings of inadequacy, I've been practicing. here are some of the sketches i did today.

these aren't very good, and that's honesty, not self-deprecation. to becomd truly great, one must be completely honest in judging themself. you can clearly tell looking at these that I'm not going places, at least not at this stage. however, some of these drawings are better than the ones i did yesterday, and i also feel I've learned something valuable about facial form.

finished a pretty important test today. if i did well, i might be able to get an A in this class...if not, i guess there's nothing wrong with a B. i've been playing pony town lately. here are some of my ponies.

this one i made nearly a year ago... it's caliborns yaoi self insert from 2 panels of homestuck. love

there are others but they're older so i won't share

blind hands on different parts of the elephant... a machine which sends out a signal. distortions to reveal a larger form

got a fountain pen for drawing. it's very nice and cost me a lot of money. of course, i also bought ink. ten... cartridges of ink.....
to test it out, i did some drawings, and was very pleased.

i might work on comics using the pen in the future.

Thinking again. i know this is shocking for all parties involved.
i guess my main problem is that i have a hard time with the idea that anyone really acts maliciously. the way i see the world, everyone just wants to do what they like to do, without interference.
well, i guess the thing they like to do could be hurting other people, but that feels wrong, even if it makes sense, so i don't think it's true. everyone wants to live their life a certain way. it's easy to get attached to that way of life, and if you're attached enough, you'll do pretty much anything to maintain your own status quo.
for other people it might not be about life for themself; it might be about their own ideas of right and wrong. if you saw terrible things happening around you, all the time, wouldn't you feel terrible doing nothing? mightn't that guilty feeling push you to act, or hate? so that's what i've been thinking, as things develop.

This Monday, I had to go to an inservice at my workplace. I have a pool job, although I'm not a lifeguard. One of my friends from childhood, who I hadn't seen in a while, was there, which was pleasant. However the particular experience I want to share is what happened during the inservice.
We had to go over these strategies, on how to teach various swimming tecniques, which is part of my job. In order to do this, we formed pairs and practiced together. A fact about me is that I am actually not that good at swimming, and kind of just wanted the job so I could recieve money. Another fact about me is that my hair actually grows somewhat long, and I will never ever tie it up, except in cute braids which are fun (• ω •) this is actually relevant to the story and not good
So we are practing teaching armstroke sidebreathing. in order to do this, one of us does armstroke. every other stroke, the other person will say "Breathe"(this is the cue to putyour head up) and then after your head is up they will push it back down. Perhaps upon hearing this you can detect a number of difficulties that can arise.
So it's my turn to do the armstroke or whatever. My hair isn't tied, so what happens is, when I go to breathe, my hair coats my face sort of like a cold fabric, and gets on my mouth and nose and I am essentially waterboarded by my own hair. Then, before I can breathe at all, the other person shoves my head underwater. I drew this picture as a helpful aid.

I felt like I was drowning the whole time, but had to pretend that wasn't the case, because my boss was watching and I was afraid he would see me as unfit for my post and then fire me. it was a miserable experience. also, afterward, they put a float in the pool for everyone to play on(since all of us are mostly the same age, and teenagers, it isn't strange) but a guy fell off the top and landed on me, so i didn't really participate in that. some lady brought cookies, though, and those were pretty good.

each image drawn on a separate occasion. probably if i'm being honest sara is my favorite character, but when i was younger obviously i liked sou



what a lame, terrible guy...

I just thought of this after I made the other post, but here's a list of all the books I remember reading this year and what i thought about them
- Fight Club
poor grammar and sentence structure, excellent read. i admit i watched the movie first, but it's still a great book. i hate when people say something is good just because it's kind of homoerotic but i do have to say for the record that fight club was good and also kind of homoerotic
- The Andromeda Strain
terrible book. boring and awful.what a miserable read
- The Sphere
you'd think I'd have learned my lesson about Crichton books after the andromeda strain, but apparently not. Why did i read this? It had an intriguing premise, but overall was terrible.
- Lord of the Flies(english class)
i don't like thinking about this book much. I've never been a really good student, but in the last semester of last year the only class i had a B in was English, and it was because of this book. for personal reasons i cannot recommend it and just thinking about it makes me feel sick.
- 1984
i liked this book a lot. thematically it was perturbing but more than that i think psychologically it was appealing to me for reasons i won't address.
- Does the Center Hold?
handy book on modern philosophy.easy to understand. unfortunately this did not save me. would recommend
- Wizardy Herbert
andrew hussies unfinished masterpiece. if you like Homestuck it's good but otherwise skip it
- Crime and Punishment (did not finish at around pg.438)
pleasant, but at some point i just got tired of reading. will probably pick it up again soon
- Fahrenheit 451
not my favorite. i read it because i couldn't think of anything to read
- Darkness at Noon
i wrote an article about how much i like this book, but it's not on this site. might transfer it someday. in the meantime just know that i liked it
- Ubik
i read this book today start to finish. it was excellent. I've been wanting actually good scifi ever since the Crichton incidents, and this was perfect

It's hard to maintain a project for a long time, for me, especially if i take long breaks like I'm doing right now. I decided with complete finality that I wouldn't draw any comics during schooltime, especially so close to finals, and because I was able to decide that, and be so committed in my mind, it hasn't been difficult at all preventing myself from doing that. I'm very good at holding myself to a tight, strict regimen of things not to do. One of the challenges this mindset presents, however, is the rather precarious nature of the possibility that winter break will arrive and I will simply not want to keep working on the comic.

One of the main reasons that I believe most comics fail to get off the ground is this; a person starts with either no story or too much story. No story, and you have built your characters around an empty plot. The whole thing collapses instantly. But equally, if your story is fully fleshed, why would you want to create a comic when you could very well enjoy the story within the confines of your own head? And, over a three-week period, there's much time to ruminate the plot to death, resulting in a lack of drive when i finally have time to work on the damn thing.

I circumvent this using two methods. First, I keep myself interested in the plot by thinking about the characters occasionally, and drawing them only when i have a particularly strong vision. I don't let myself ruin their novelty; for instance, if I catch myself ruminating about a character for too long, and realize that I've started to plan something in the midst of my rumination, then the rumination must come to an end. An example of this (intrepid fans will be sad to hear) is the infamous concept of "character dynamics". I like to think that each character is unique enough that their dynamics will flow naturally when I write, so if i catch myself saying, "so-and-so feels this way toward the actions of so-and-so", that must be stopped immediately. If ever I create any sort of relationship, working or otherwise, between characters, it must occur naturally with in the confines of the story. This is both so I do not work the narrative to death AND so that readers can experience the story as I do, and aren't lacking context by way of not having created the damn thing.

I guess by now I'm just talking about making comics. While I'm at it, I might as well complain. I notice it's a habit, even of professionals, to spend a lot of the page on plain, repetitive facial shots, letting dialogue do most of the talking. To confess bluntly, I have never planned any of the dialogue in any of my comics. I draw the pictures and think about what's going to be conveyed, but the words themselves aren't important. Mostly what I think everyone should focus on is creating interesting pictures. I fail to do this on many occasions, but what I'm trying to say is that the goal for me is to tell a story with pictures, and thus I think the pictures should tell the story. Dialogue should be on the side, instead of little pictures of the characters' faces being on the side of dialogue. A prime example of this fatal flaw is Garfield, as well as (arguably) Prince Valiant. Calvin & Hobbes, which in my opinion is the best comic of all time, is an example of the opposite. Artistically it is pleasant, and though often it does tend toward the "talking heads" format of a lot of newspaper comics, when there is a real story, the scenery and drawings bring everything together. Of course, witty dialogue doesn't hurt the case, I guess.

i like talking about myself a lot, so i'm going to do that. when i was a kid i had to go to the hospital for a while, for a surgery. a lot of people who've never had that experience like to make hospitals out to be scary and sterile and cold, but really it wasn't like that at all. i didn't have fun, i think that would be a bit far. mostly i just felt ashamed of myself, for personal reasons. but overall the experience was positive. the doctors were kind, and i was just paranoid. i think the scariest point was right before surgery. i thought that i was going to overdose on the anesthesia medications and die. i was so certain of this up until the moment i went under. there was no falling asleep experience, at least for me. i didn't feel tired at all, and then i woke up and it was done. one of the doctors gave me this stuffed unicorn plush.

i always secretly thought that the eyes were a little ugly, because they were embroidered and not beads, but it was really cuddly and i did hold it dear for the rest of my stay there.

school is becoming increasingly more stressful...i have a painting due this friday, another due next tuesday, a calc test on the same day, another tournament on saturday, and then i have to work on sunday! oh, if only i could just have winter break...but even that won't provide release, because i'll be studying for finals. at least i'll get to work on the comic. i can't wait to join the workforce someday. maybe then i will just press buttons all day and then sleep.

obviously i'm talking about stuff that happened today, but man, i hate being so incompetent. i don't think things are going to work out great for me, so i'll probably have to get a normal job and a normal apartment. i'm the sort of person that probably won't have any kids, or buy any fancy clothes or jewelery, so i guess i could be okay with it if i worked minimum wage and lived in a bad apartment. maybe i could get a roomate, and then i'd get to work only eight hours or so a day, and then i could spend the rest of my time drawing. i could live like that, i think.

To know a story is, in a way, to know its writer. Likewise, it's impossible to understand any work in any age without first understanding the circumstances under which it was created, and this includes its creator, their mind and their mindset.

if 2025 goes through i am going to make a 1984 au of the trump administration and female joe biden is going to playact as winston smith and it will be a fourteen-part yuri manga that will become widely acclaimed all over the world

moving some of the art from the gallery to here in order to conserve space. idk i'm just not feeling excellent about the format of that page. might move it back, but for the time being i'm putting some of the pictures here .
(caption: fun drawing in a classical style)

(caption: watched lain today. it was pretty interesting, i liked it)

i went up against this guy and he was all, "yeah and those are the rules for LD, by the way," because he'd looked at my history and knew i'd lost 2/3 at a novice tournament, so he felt like he could explain it to me, as an intimidation tactic. and then he ate my shit and it wasn't even a valid contest. i'll probably cherish that memory till the day I die. the match ended and he was like "uhm judge! judge judge!" because he knew. and it was so pathetic, and he still freaking lost oh God it brings a smile to my face

I think a lot of it is intimidation, actually, which is why I love it so much. I like people and I get along with them. but when the opportunity arises to be a horrible person it flips a switch within me and i am made of hate and spite. there's a thing people seem to do where they try to start a very, very trite conversation ahead of the match. it's like a sort of psycological domination thing. if my opponent can humanize themself to me before my mind secures them as my enemy, i'll be less harsh during rebuttals. if you can scare your opponent, you can get an edge on them by knocking them off their game, and being off your game is basically the only way to lose.

i'm only thinking about any of this because i have two tournaments in about 2 weeks. i'm doing SPAR for fun, but also a normal LD tournament. i do believe it's going to be excellent. i may lose terribly because i haven't done a tournament(or even reviewed the resolution, which is something to do with a wealth tax, by the way) in about a month.