2017 Weekly Writing Log, Part 35

[rynling]

- I posted the thirteenth chapter of The Legend of the Princess, woot woot.

- I posted it along with the previous two chapters on Tumblr. These three posts got a total of five notes, and I lost three followers. Meanwhile, no kudos were given on AO3. I may have cried, like, a lot.

- I posted my first pure smutfic. I'm not gonna link to that here, though. It got a modest number of kudos, and the hit count is high enough to keep me in business.

- I finished the ninth and tenth stories for my Ghost Stories zine, and then I wrote three more to round things out at a nice even thirteen. I've made the decision to "publish" the zine under my real name, so the next thing I need to worry about is the cover.

- I commissioned Grace Allison to draw me an illustration of Princess Peach, and it has filled me with hope and courage, not to mention appreciation for the incredible quality of the work she does.

- I drew a four-panel comic about how Ganondorf's name is very difficult to pronounce in Japanese. I always try something new in each piece I post, and for this one I took a huge step forward and made the line art transparent so that I could color it with a stylus instead of the paintbucket tool. This was a lot of work; I'm talking hours and hours and hours. I'm not the best artist, but I think the comic turned out okay for my first serious attempt to use Photoshop.

- This comic got twelve notes and lost me five followers. I cried my stupid eyes out.

- I then bought myself some Copic markers and ice cream, because I am having a tough time and I deserve nice things okay.

Comments

[renegadefolkhero]

When I scrolled past that comic on my dash I thought it was a 4-koma you'd scanned from a Zelda dojinshi. You may have already said this--are you using a tablet? To me the line art looks more confident now. "Confident" might seem like a funny word to use but early on the hand hesitates, no?

[rynling]

THANK YOU, you will make me cry even more, oh no...

I am using a tablet! I still literally can't draw a straight line, but I'm getting there. I'm hoping I'll get better as I continue to put in more hours.

I had considered the possibility of people thinking that I had reposted something from Pixiv, but I ultimately decided that the quality of the art was too mediocre. It seems almost delusional to think that people didn't like the piece because the art was too good (instead of the usual Zelda fandom shenanigans), but I am okay with being delusional. From here on out I'm going to use the tag "my art" instead of "lol art."

Scanning and posting dōjinshi covers is a morally gray area, but I have my reasons. Right after the big earthquake in 2011, I flew to Japan to help with disaster relief, and it was a mess. I mean, I know people are still talking about how bad it was, but words and pictures can't really convey how huge the mess actually was. Everything was totally destroyed, and there was water and mud everywhere. Mostly what I did was to help translate for doctors and relief workers, but in the evening I would sit with these old people and, like, help them try to scrape the mud off of their books and diaries and photos. Meanwhile, all of the earthquakes in Tokyo made it seem like maybe something awful was going to happen there too, and the reason I got on Tumblr back in 2011 was because I thought that someone should make a digital library of Final Fantasy dōjinshi just in case.

And also, Japanese artists didn't post the covers of their dōjinshi on their own websites. And also, at the time Japanese artists would create websites and then take them down a few months later. And also, people were posting poor quality scans with no attribution on image hosting sites like Zerochan. And also, people on LiveJournal were posting scanlations of entire dōjinshi with no attribution. I thought that, if I could create a small but properly labeled and indexed resource that would be searchable and freely available to anyone, maybe that might do some good in the world. Again, this is a morally gray area, and I've been gradually moving away from that sort of thing, but I still remember how the tsunami mud smelled, you know?

Uhhhhhhh you probably didn't want to know all that... sorry for rambling.

Anyway, thank you so much for liking and reblogging my fic posts! But you really don't have to, I'm totally sincere about that. I'm just dispirited because of the continuing dysfunction of the fandom and the prevailing culture on Tumblr in general. But what can you do? Situations like this are why the good lord invented vodka and ice cream.

[raisedbymoogles]

This probably falls into the category of Not Helping, but... dude, before I gave up on Tumblr I would've killed for twelve notes on something I'd drawn.

[rynling]

I hear you! Every note is a treasure. That being said, losing that many followers was harsh.

Sometimes I think that people find their way onto my blog because of all the stuff I used to post about shojo manga, and then suddenly there is sexy Ganondorf on their dash, like, SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKERS.

[raisedbymoogles]

I feel like the Venn diagram of shojo manga enthusiasts and people who enjoy a sexy Ganondorf ought to have more overlap, but what do I know. XD

[rynling]

No, you are absolutely 100% correct. If I were only allowed to pass down one piece of wisdom to future generations before I die, it would be be this.


.............I'm not even joking

[raisedbymoogles]

...it's the heart jewels on the pauldrons that make it XDDDDD