#yes I do use xD basically like punctuation - sue me

[blastedking]

Hi! I hope you are doing alright.

When I first entered the Gloryhammer fandom a year ago, I genuiely thought all your art and comics were canon and made for the band, and honestly I'm still flabbergasted it's all fanmade content. So I wanted to know how you feel about all the stories you made, what place they had for you in your life and just in general what they represent for you. I hope this isn't too much of a personal question, all the efforts you put in this is fascinating to me, so I'm just curious about that.

Oh hey there! 

First of all, a bit thank you of course. Even though that notion of “thinking it is canon" would probably terrify some particular people xD But I think most do realise it isn't so eventually. I’m indeed just doing it for fun, as a hobby, trying to squeeze it into the free time I have between an actual job :’D

It’s an interesting question though, because the whole thing is naturally important to me, especially given the way I got into it. 

I got into Gloryhammer by chance in March 2020 I think, and by May that year I started the first comic. All art from that time is pretty rough since I genuinely had stopped drawing for a year at that point, because I had started a new job and was still very bitter about having to stop doing art full time due to health reasons at the time. But I made room for this. I had the idea for this story line very early on - which I always called my “5 Year ULF plan” (which I’m still almost on-track on. Going to be 6 years now because stuff got added. Like the Powerwolf comic wasn't planned X))

So, getting into Gloryhammer, kind of revitalised my love for doing this stuff. Worldbuilding, making comics, art and stories.

It’s not been a smooth ride all the way, it is unfortunate to know that some people just don’t get that this is genuinely fun. But there are enough people who follow along and appreciate it. We may not be many, Gloryhammer itself is already niche, so ULF only takes another fraction from that, but it’s never been about clout.  (Like, there was this surreal moment when I posted (1) TF2 fan art in between the ULF stuff in late 2022 and it got like 2000 notes - which was like “ah right, it’s really about fandom size xD”) 

It IS an enormous amount of work though for sure. But it’s sufficiently varied. I finished the next comic a few weeks back (starting on the 22nd this month!!) And I am right now still in the “I never ever want to draw a comic ever again” phase xD but that will fade over the next months again. In the meanwhile I can focus on writing and other art. 

On a more theme related note concerning ULF and what it means to me,

The ULF worldbuilding carries forward a lot of themes and ideas and concepts I had been conceptualising for a long time already. Like ideas about immortality, magic, even the werewolves of Hatir are very closely based on Original content I’ve written before. It also focuses a lot on the idea of characters just not fitting in, or struggling to comply with the status quo in many variations. Which is also a theme that has been running through my stories since forever. There is definitely a lot in ULF that is either important or interesting/fascinating to me personally. (One would assume so I think xD) But at the end of the day, I do it because it's fun to me and I greatly enjoy the result this far.

It’s often very grim and dark - but in the end I always hope to get it to a brighter place. I still plan for a happy end for ULF. So there is hope in that :)

Thank you so much for the question! Answer got a bit rambly x) ❤️