Without getting into too much details, the past few years have been mixed to say the least - some things are better than they have ever been personally but I lost a sense of purpose.

As mentioned in my previous post, I only really returned to art after nearly a decade of absence to a radically different online landscape. I watched from a distance as the platforms I used to enjoy faded into irrelevance and came back to what was once a vibrant community turned into a sterile infinite market where every artist now felt like they were nervously manning a sales table while whispering to each other that they hate doing this.

I don't have anything to hawk besides attention I guess. I wouldn't say no to someone sending me money for the things I do but it immediately sucks the fun out of everything. I do like talking with everyone, but I do not enjoy being perceived as a guide and resource before a normal person. Which is a dynamic that I notice more and more as I connect with people and am percieved to have influence.

I'm often approached to make a podcast or YouTube channel and the thought completely horrifies me. I've had the chance to befriend a few very talented and connected people in their fields - the kinds of people who perform at Coachella or have a million followers. I've also seen their lives behind the scenes and the grass is certainly not greener on the otherside. It rotted them quietly from the inside out. The idea of being at the behest of an audience and become a vessel for their beliefs, morality, and at their mercy financially at the expense of my own personhood is terrifying.

"Only in America could you find a way to make a healthy buck and keep your attitude on self-destruct."

-"Rhymes like Dimes" MF DOOM

When I started working on my webcomic it started off as a bunch of silly fanfiction stories that I had worked on, I read a lot about D&D lore to support it, make it canonically correct (to the best of my abilities) and still thought through my characters, designs. I went to the physical library to get physical books on comic theory and sequential art.

As I spoke excitedly to people in my life, even other fans, they suggested -in good and bad faith - that I turn my story into an "original" work so I could monetize it.

In one particularly cruel encounter with a former professional mentor and friend who felt dejected after I turned down a romantic advance, he told me I would never succeed in tech due to my disabilities and that I should focus on my "book" (I corrected him that it was a webcomic). I explained to him that it wasn't monetizable as a fan product and that wasn't the point. He told me to change it so it was. He never spoke to me again after that.

It was an incredibly gutting incident that cut very deep on multiple insecurities, though I realize was purely reactionary.

In the time since I've started putting my work out there again I've made so many artist friends, many who are working artists. For a bit after the complete downfall of the tech industry I wondered if I had made a mistake not going to art school. Every time I speak to my working artist friends those fears are resoundingly put to rest. Because their self-imposed fear of poverty to pursue art as a full-time career was as limiting as the morality hollowing golden handcuffs that my friends in tech often unknowingly doing shit like working with defense contractors and top institutions like MIT (funded by Epstein) for all the money our collective tax dollars could buy. Self-annihilation for independence vs societal annihilation for security.

"I get no kick from champagne

Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all

So tell me why should it be true

That I get a kick out of you"

-"One Beer" MF DOOM

I often drill down into my influences, I can't help it, I have a deeply de-constructive bent. It's something I often have to ground in reality. But I do believe when certain media comes into our lives and makes an effect on us it's usually for a reason. Could be spiritual, could just be our minds grasping for something to relate and ground itself.

Lately, I've been listening a lot to MF DOOM. If you're not familiar, MF DOOM is probably one of the most influential figures in hip as Q-tip described him once, "Your favorite rapper's favorite rapper" (as always, a white woman stole their whole tagline from another black performer years before lol)

A legendary lyricist and producer, DOOM's entire body of work is a bit of an anomaly from the past few epochs of hip hop and rap. It's incredibly nerdy, with a litany of personas he donned inspired by Godzilla and comic books. He often opted to sample Hannah-Barbera cartoons and 70s R&B records with long skits and even minute long uncut audio clips of older cartoons at end of songs. While not overtly political to be moralizing, his work was deeply tinged with references to racism and the five percenter socio-religious movement that raised him - never shying away from it or artificially neutering it.

Despite that and perhaps because of those idiosyncratic tenancies - his work is nearly universally beloved by those who are interested in hip hop as an art form. It didn't ever give him mainstream purchase, but in part that was the point. His work often called out and criticized tendencies in the genre but never signaled any particular person out, mostly because he wasn't interested in self-elevating for the sake of drama.

Instead, he wore a mask when he came out for shows, sometimes sending other people as him. Not even an original mask, a literal Dr. Doom mask. A fan character of a bigger property. He made countless personas and collaborations with different geeky names - references to comics and horror B-movies.

He never took that mask off, even when his identity was revealed. He rejoiced when he was deported to the UK and felt that nobody knew him.

He remained elusive but he remained himself, unabashedly reveling in his references and geekery and not too much was known about his private life before death - in terms of personal dramas.

When I think about the entirety of my creative output, I can't help but think, I wanna be like DOOM.

Anyways, here's some very loosely related Hades fanart of Doom