3037 News From Afar.

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I decided it was time to give Thomas and Patty a break. We jump to the Lincoln twins to advance their plot a little more, and to cleanse your palette a bit.
I actually had several punchlines for this page. I settled on this one because the first one would have made people angry because we’re at a point in history where humor can’t be tolerated by a large portion of the general audience if it is even a little bit confronting. I have lived through several rounds of this kind of thing and I have to say that this one is by far the worst version. I’m too old to deal with the nonsense that being puckish online brings to you. I’ve been enduring hate for my work for two decades already and it’s one of the least offensive works of the era it started in. Between Failures has run so long that I have been the target of every side of every argument as culture evolves around me.

In fact, I wasn’t going to mention this, but I got a dishonorable mention on 4chan the other day. I would never have known but a friend of mine was lurking and alerted me to the “thread”. It didn’t really amount to anything because 4chan is a shell of what it once was and it’s run by feds now. OP was mad that I wasn’t being bullied for drawing fat girls. I was laying on the floor like “Oh man, it’s 2007 again. How nostalgic”. People do stuff like that for a few reasons. A big one is that they want to be mean to someone, but they’re too gutless to go after Gays, Jews, Blacks, Muslims, Asians, Transes (what’s the plural for Trans?) or whatever, so they pick someone who looks like they can’t fight back. For a long time Furries were the acceptable group to hate but now there are too many of them to be effective. Everyone likes to punch down because it’s easy. Another big draw is getting attention for yourself if you’ve got guts enough to actually give up anonymity. It worked wonders for people like Maddox for a while. How may of you remember that guy? The Best Page In The Universe? Anyone? That’s ancient in internet years. I was reading that page for years before I started this comic. Most people like him have an arc where they get the attention from fucking with people who can’t really mount a defense, make some kind of ridiculous mistake that destroys the veneer of being better than everyone else in some way, and then they transition into a lolcow for the back end of their life. I mention Maddox specifically because there was a time when webcartoonists thought he was behind a wave of online mock criticism that was the scourge of webcomics for a couple of years. I can’t remember who all got targeted but I know for sure that David Willis did. I know this because he reacted to it, which is the biggest mistake you can make. The gnashing of teeth, wailing, and sobbing are what the mob wants. You have to resist every instinct you have to defend yourself and just endure it in silence. If you just say “fine. I suck.” there’s not a lot of fun to be had and they eventually get bored and look for a new target. Over the years I’ve had several people who took to trying to fuck with me and after a while it just gets boring. After two decades they never tell me anything I don’t already know. If I was capable of fixing things I would have done it already. If people find some kind of solace in my mediocrity just let us have our fun in peace. All that said I understand the desire to ruin something you don’t like. Bringing someone down to make yourself feel better feels super good. When you feel jealous and impotent in your rage being able to bully someone can give you that little hit of dopamine that gets you through the night. I’ve 100% been that guy many times and I’m sure I’ll be that guy many times more. My sense of humor is incredibly mean because I grew up in a family with a long tradition of knocking each other down for nothing more than the love of the game seemingly. So I get it.
Anyway, I remember the first time I got shit for drawing fat chicks in the comic. A few years later I was being praised for diverse body types. Now it’s trying to come back around to hating fatties again. If I live long enough I’ll probably get praised again at some point. My reasons for drawing different bodies isn’t altruistic. I just get bored drawing everyone the same way. As much as I hate trying to constantly figure out how big and small everyone is in relation to each other I get to change things up every few pages so it’s not just Ninas all the time. I’ve got my short kings too, and Mike and James wandering around fatly. It gives me some variety to keep me interested in the actual art side of things. I like drawing fat girls, but it’s not nearly as fun if you don’t have someone to contrast it with. When I draw Alex with Jo I’m like “Yeah, that’s nice.” Long time readers will already know that Alex and all her friends came from a completely separate comic idea originally. The whole point of it was so I would have a creative outlet for other stuff like furry art. Most of the plot, if you want to call it plot, is that Alex likes eating candy and Evrina has a crush on her that she is in denial about. So she chastises Alex about it even though she enables her constantly. I never had time to do much with it though, and I kept making the characters more and more compelling. Then one day I realized I could merge the idea into Between Failures seamlessly, so I did. I took a handful of characters meant for a furry fetish comic and turned them into characters that people love in spite of all the baggage. Because, in spite of my many failings, I can write characters you empathize with and grow to love. I took Evrina and Alex and gave them a complex, broken, believable, friendship. I did it with Maddison, and Bridgette, and I’m gonna keep right on doing it because it fills me with joy to breathe life into these puppets I created. In this act of subcreation I feel like I get a hint of what part of god resides in me. If you don’t like that, or hate me for daring to try, I don’t care. I’ve spent almost half of my life making this comic and if god sees fit to allow me to I will spend the remainder of my life continuing to do so. If I die with a stylus in my hand trying to tell a story that brings comfort to others I will have died well indeed.

If you’ve never created anything you’ll never truly understand how devastating it is to have it torn down in front of you. You have to learn how to endure it. Some people can just brush it off. I can’t. It took me years to get to a point where I could be brutally mocked and walk it off. I try to be careful with my criticism now much, much, more than when I was younger. Especially if it might end up in front of the person who made the art. I will not offer constructive criticism unless goaded into it. And there is a difference between constructive and destructive criticism. There is very little point in telling me that this thing I worked on for 20 years has many flaws and I should feel bad for making it. Even if I had the inclination I don’t have the time to go back and “fix” it to your liking. In that situation the person offering criticism is almost always doing so in bad faith, in hopes of making a name for themselves. Red Letter Media is probably the most successful group at offering criticism in bad faith. I very much enjoyed watching their videos about the star Wars prequel movies, but I still like them a lot. They are quite flawed, but I don’t care. I would gladly have watched George Lucas make sequel movies in spite of knowing he would make them in the same way, with mediocre dialogue and too many special effects, because it would have been unique to him. After a decade of scathing criticism, much of which was in bad faith, Lucas sold off his legacy to people with even less skill than he had for making movies, and now almost no one is happy. I’m glad RLM had their fun and made a name for themselves. I also don’t think they are solely responsible for what happened to Star Wars, but you can’t say they had zero effect. In my opinion that effect was a net negative. If I saw George Lucas taking a baseball bat to Mike Stoklasa I’d let him get in at least 2 solid hits before saving Mike. I think he earned at least 2. To the body though. Not the head.
An entire movement of bad faith criticism grew up around the same time as RLM was working through Star Wars. A lot of it came from people hoping to mimic their success. I’m not sure any of it was ultimately positive. All that said, you can’t cut criticism out of the equation. When someone writes an Atlas Shrugged, or communist manifesto, you need people to look at it and go “I’m not sure this is it, chief” My work is not above reproach any more that the work of anyone else. That said, some people want something other than a hapless cuck in gay robot land, or Everyone Is Gay In College. I’d like the chance to be that slop.
Once I present a page there is a limited amount of repair I can do because all of these pages build off one another. Every day I gamble that I’m making a choice that I won’t tank my life’s work. That’s a pressure you can only learn to endure with time and confidence. I’ve never been a very confident person. I can fake it in front of others, but that isn’t the true me. I’m not a brave man, but I’m brave enough to roll the dice three times a week and hope people are willing to support what I’m doing after the die is cast. My audience is quite small, but they hold my humble work very dear. When people come at me telling me to quit I draw strength from the readers who willingly pay me to keep doing what I’ve been doing. I hope that someday I’ll catch the luck to find more people who would love my work. I know that statistically there must be more, but finding them on the current version of the internet is very difficult. It does not honor those who enjoy the quiet and introspective nature of my work, or thoughtfulness in general. I try to live in hope that today, or tomorrow, or the day after that, I’ll be found by more of those who just like low stakes adventures of made up people.

Anyway, don’t take this off the cuff essay as some kind of final word about anything. It can sometimes be easy to forget that I write these off the top of my head, without revision, because I’m so good at writing straight from the dome. I am not the final arbiter of anything apart from my own work, so don’t get bent out of shape thinking that I feel that way about myself. I’ve been doing this a very long time and have endured a lot of bad faith criticism. In that way I at least have some meaningful perspective on it. In any case I have to take care of other matters, so I will leave you to your own adventures until we meet again. On Friday we can see which way the wind is blowing and renew our connection once more. Until then, enjoy your fetishes without shame. Just this once. As a treat.