D: Dragon's dare

Did you ever have one of those nights where you just didn't feel like doing anything, anything at all?

Of course you did. I'm in the habit of phrasing things as questions when I'm really just trying to relate my own experience. I've got projects. I've got a lot of little things buzzing around in my head all day when I am supposed to be thinking about school, or other theoretically important things. I get home at the end of a long day and I do not feel like addressing them because I'm tired now and there will be time tomorrow. But I'll be tired tomorrow too. Conundrumz.

I'm a huge procrastinator and my various projects are just more things to procrastinate with, then I accumulate more projects to procrastinate with and it's a self-repeating cycle. Occasionally I actually accomplish something. Every so often I finish off a comic strip, although the fact that it takes about a year for a 30-odd page chapter of Regular Guy to get done shows you exactly how dedicated I've been lately. Used to be I could crank out a few Sewerman comics a year. By the end I tapered off into the current trend, but as I recall way back at the beginning -- which would be 2001, when I started drawing RN Comics -- I think I did three and a half comics between spring, when I started the first Sensational 7, and the end of the year, when I was probably still working on Sewerman #3. The last one was published in 2005 so I think we did about two per year after that. The math is hazy.

I was thinking earlier. Did I keep projects because I had no social life, or did I have no social life because I was working on the projects? It's kind of a chicken-and-egg thing, and neither option is especially appealing. I'll never be able to satisfactorily answer the question myself although I remember the exact moment my life started down that solitary path of scribbling badly-proportioned superheroes on 8.5x11" printer paper in my basement; when I was in grade 6 or so, as my friendship with my best friend was deteriorating (he was becoming more of a jock and I was, well, not,) he came by my house to see if I wanted to hang out, and I turned him down because I was doing something-or-other in my basement. It was probably porn.

Anyway. I'm not saying that my entire life was defined by this moment. I probably could've gone and hung out with him and then it would've happened all over again at some later point. Maybe I don't believe in destiny, but I do believe in things taking their inevitable conclusions. It's too complicated for me to be able to bother trying to explain or even understand for myself, other than that I just said it.

So I got home today after my one hour of class (never having enough change to actually take the bus, I walk home from the GO station) and I thought "Hey, nothing on TV tonight, maybe I'll do some writing." Then I realized I had to go to dad's and do groceries and by the time I got back from that, despite technically having plenty of time, I was sapped of motivation.

Motivation's a funny thing. So intangible. I want to do these things, and yet I want not to be doing them and so I'm not. I have no reason to believe doing them would be unenjoyable, it's just... not in the cards. I did a bit of drawing earlier, finished up a page that had lingered half-done for weeks but I want to get the next one done before I post it, maybe the one after it too. Buffering is a webcomic art.

My dream is for stuff I write to get a page on TV Tropes where people can deconstruct all the conventions I adhere to or subvert or avoid. I think for the most part the entries on things like Sewerman and Regular Guy would be relatively uninteresting, although sometimes (often) people see things you (the creator) do not.

That's the funny thing about putting something out in the world. when it's a script or an idea, it's yours. But by the time it reaches people, it's theirs to do with and interpret as they please, no matter how much the creator hates that (and oftentimes they do.) That's the entire point of art and entertainment. It's for the people. Eric and I once had a weirdly impassioned argument (well, discussion, or debate) because I was putting these little spiels under my comic pages and he argued that it detracted from the purity of the art (the thing speaks for itself, as it were.) For the most part I wrote things like "I don't think I did a good job writing this page" or "I like jokes about this subject." This is fairly common practice amongst webcomics to the point where it is actually dreadful in some cases.

The author of one webcomic I read has a chronic need to overexplain things that are going on in his comic because of his love of fantastical science and magic (which operates with strict scientific rules in his universe) so he goes over everything he already struggles to really capture in his exposition. And yet I read it.

It's weird. I'm not happy with myself for continuing to read it, although at this point I've put in a lot of time into reading it, and I don't hate it it's just a chore to read. The author has some peculiar proclivities but his characters are often endearing and sometimes he manages to write a joke properly... it's no QC.

This has been a peculiar rant. Interestingly unfocused. Sometimes it's very intriguing to see where your mind takes you when you unchain it. I didn't really sit down with the intention to write anything in particular tonight, although that business about my best friend in grade 6 did occur to me earlier when I was emptying the dishwasher, so six of one and whatnot.

Anyway, maybe tomorrow I'll have something to say about my actual life, or at the very least I'll get around to that stuff I've been putting off.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto