Joan said it more post-modernist-ly than I would have, but the principle is the same: it's not the
who that's important, it what that who
does, and what that
represents. Grade-school literature was always about "who did what, when and where", whereas in university it was all about "
why". It wasn't until a first-year course that I finally
got poetry, in the sense that rhyme and rhythm and metre actually have a
meaning beyond "It has a meaning, test tomorrow"; we did a lot of works I'd previously done in school, and I came away with a
completely different understanding of what they meant.
I've been mainly operating on this principle: "Ultimately, I really make these comics to please myself. The rest of you are just along for the ride. If you try to please other people, then you'll never be happy with what you've done."
I feel you're misreading what Danger Mouse meant. He's not saying "screw the haters", because like chox said, if you're just working to spite people then in a sense you're still beholden to them while not actually
enjoying what you do. Yes, in the end, we all want to write what
we like, and if that appeals to other people then all the better—but don't turn that into an excuse to shut out criticism or refuse to improve. There's a reason Andrew Dobson is a living meme.
This is what makes me feel like I'm largely going through the motions
well I mean one of the reasons I ghostwrite your scripts is to sneak my own idea through in lieu of an actual comic
But then the question comes, is she doing it for the LOLZ or in a metalevel as karma for the string of broken hearts Civ Valentine has made in his wacky adventures? Originally the "She's a succubus and tries to sleep anything that moves, especially CivGeneral" has been built up between Thor and I as a form of Trolling that Morri is doing, even adding a bit of airheadness here and there (e.g. irritating Civ Valentine). I'm not 100% sure on how to improve upon her since she has evolved into a sort of foil for Civ Valentine.
See, I felt you used that scene too early, 'cuz I'd intended it to be a sort of Signal Flip, and from there on out you realize she's actually unnervingly cunning, but
que sera, sera.
Writing a long arc is like piloting a steam locomotive. You can't just hop in and go like with a car: an engine like the
Flying Scotsman takes several
hours to warm up before it's even physically mobile, and then bringing it up to speed takes another stretch of time. But once you've
got that momentum, keeping going is easy. What drives me insane about this see-sawing is you make maybe one or two comics, and then decide since you haven't hit 80KPH you're Doin It Rong and dash back to a point of zero inertia—the irony is, it's
your own impatience that's slowing you down.
All characters, and
all plots, start at zero inertia. The ones we
like, the ones we consider the Main Characters, are those that have been afforded the
time to build up momentum. To cite the guy you love to hate, Toyoda was introduced early on in X with neither name nor a face, only
really began to hit stride toward the thread's end, and is now essentially the fulcrum of the Gem arc after the Gem itself. And it's not because he's omnipresent—his actual screen time is, once I think about it, surprisingly small—it's because he acts as the link between multiple characters and storylines, and
that came about
because he's been in the running for so long.
I think I've mentioned
Gregory Bateson to you before; his whole philosophy is that 'things'
in of themselves have no meaning, and it's the relationships
between things that define our understanding of the world. The best DYOS stories have always come from cross-pollination between contributors, and there's a reason I'm always trying to stitch all the subplots together—Huayna Capac made literally one comic and yet his character is now linking back to TB's story, which in turn has as-yet-unrevealed consequences for POPA–SIPPA; chox actually becomes the main character in the hunt for Toyoda; and tailless used the Gem arc (itself the Mother of All Collabs) as Sebastian's Origin Story through [REDACTED]. Indeed, if I had actually managed Toyoda's introduction as originally intended,
without the Gem Arc,
before he got tied up in the politics of Part II, he would be a
less interesting character. The reason your possessiveness is so problematic to DYOS is that by walling off your setting, your plot, your characters, you've basically created a roadblock—a bright and colourful one, but a roadblock nonetheless. If people don't think they can meaningfully interact with you besides tightly-scripted Crossover Episodes and magical weed cameos, they will ignore you—which I
do think is a tragedy because as our private correspondences should prove, Coruscant has a
wealth of untapped potential...
if you're willing to let other people realize it.
Then who is going to critique my plots?
ask Styles lol
