#especially with my 26th birthday coming A LOT faster than I’d like

[rosicheeks]

i am a little worried about you Princess. are you ok?

[geejaysmith]

A (Late) Birthday Message from your TLC Artist

It's been one year since [S] Play the Rain. Or, more accurately, it’s been a year and a week because I forgot to post this on the 25th/26th, lmao. 

While I'm not 100% happy with everything about this flash - what artist ever is? - the praise and the kind words that have come our way for it mean more than I can meaningfully articulate. I can never grow tired of the expressions of amazement over the rain our wonderful programmer Lt. Parsons brought to life. The day it went online, the notifications for your wonderful feedback scrolled across my phone almost non-stop. I screenshotted them all and I still have the caps from that day.

You see, like a lot of creators, I have pretty high standards for myself. You only have to look at Caliborn: Be Calliope (and know that, until that point, I had never attempted to animate anything on that level) to know I'm kind of an ambitious sonnuvabitch. This is a double-edged sword: I can slog through animating and cleaning up a 90-second fight scene. On the other hand, when my vision doesn't turn out perfect, exactly as I envisioned it - and how often does that happen? - it's an incredible source of stress.

This was the case with Play the Rain. One year ago Kat and I were juggling deadlines and midterms and trying to get that beast finished when we had maybe 3/4ths an idea what we were doing, Flash was lagging like frozen molasses, and we were tired and frustrated and our 10/25-ish deadline was looming. I was having my low-key perfectionist freakout. And then the Credits went live, unexpectedly, and it was all anyone in the Homestuck fandom could talk about. It seemed like Play the Rain, which I had been putting together for months, drawing assets around weekly updates and a hellish full-time summer job, would get drowned out by this unexpected addition from Hussie.

Oh, and fun fact, that October 25th was my 21st birthday.

I flipped. I finally got my anxieties out in a frenzied rant to patient, long-suffering Kat. Moods like this pass pretty quickly for me, but they come on strong. I remember the gist of it, mostly. The general sentiment was "what if I'm never good enough". But one thing I said that I remember clearly was "I'll never be as good as Andrew Hussie."

And I'm not Hussie. I know that. I'll never be him and I can't be him because we're two different people with very different lives. But it still felt like he'd just come from behind and robbed us of our thunder with no fanfare and little apparent effort, with a song I fucking had plans to use in TLCstuck no less. It felt like anything I could do, he could do better, faster, neater, and get an exponentially greater response. That comparison isn't particularly fair to anyone involved: the Credits went up on MSPA and we're a comparatively small fanventure. Hussie is a professional with a team of professionals who have made Homestuck as a full-time job for the better part of a decade. Meanwhile, I'm a full-time student and this is my first serious attempt at comics, yet alone animation, since middle school. But at the time, I was a wreck. It felt like I'd failed to measure up.

Then we finished it and put up Play the Rain and the response was greater than I could've hoped. Your messages and comments and likes and reblogs brought me to the brink of tears, truly.

Now it's one year later and I'm again juggling classwork and stress in the semester from hell and trying to give attention to personal things while I have the passion to do them, in addition to finding time to multitask on upcoming flashes. HINT: it's fucking hard, especially for me (I hyperfocus and often have a one track mind; I do not switch subjects easily). I had similar breakdowns earlier this month which resulted in me taking a week off regular TLC updates - which promptly went towards working on aforementioned flash work. We haven't ever really stopped working on TLCstuck since February of 2015 when we first started the project. Part of said flashwork involved going through old panels and it make me think to myself, "you know what? I've done good. I've managed to do all this on top of swinging a full class load for two degree programs and a part time job. I'm kind of fucking awesome."

So one year out from Play the Rain, three and a half months after Caliborn: Be Calliope, a few weeks after Mental Health Day and on this, (a week after) my 22nd birthday, I just wanted to write this up to say to my readers "thank you" from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for reminding me that it's ok if my work isn't perfect. Thank you for every uplifting message you've sent our way. Thank you for every ounce of support you've given us over these two years of TLCstuck. Thank you. Thank you so, so much.

And for the artists out there who recognize themselves in this post, please remember that while it's ok to push yourself, know when you're hitting your limit and know it's ok to ease up. Please remember that others don't see the platonic ideal of your work you have in your mind and they will not be disappointed if it doesn't live up to that. Please take a moment every so often to look back on what you've done and how far you've come. It often doesn't look like you've climbed a mountain until you look down on where you started.

Thanks for reading. Remember to be proud of yourself, and above all be kind to yourself. Have a nice day.