Weekly Update - 124

First I'd like to welcome Sarren Vanguard to Kuserra with our newest annual subscription!  Thank you so much!

Just one more patron and I get to let you guys vote on the next character to be added to the Character page!

Yeah, I kinda already jumped the gun on it before when I added Riley, but it's been awhile so whatevs!

And while we're on the topic, for anyone that doesn't know, Patreon rolled out an annual subscription model a while back to allow for long-term donators.  I've set my page up to give you a 15% discount for a yearly subscription!  So, like, seriously, if you're currently subscribed at a monthly rate and you're with us for the long-haul, switch over to an annual subscription and save yourself some cash!

And, sorry for not posting a sketch or anything on Friday, I was busy working all day on Page 146.  It's one of the more involved pages I've drawn recently and I was worried about not being able to finish it in time.

Comic This Week?  Yes!  I think so... proooobably.

Drawing: Page 146... which is possibly all I'll have time for up until Wednesday... so many characters.  Beyond that, I still need to catch up on Kuserran Heroes AND the Volume 1 book, AND work on Page 147, which... will also probably be pretty involved.  Now I'm beginning to understand why I was dreading this part of the story, but it must be drawn!

Playing:  WoW.  Animal Crossing... Keeper RL?  Whatever else I can squeeze in.

YE OLDE RAMBLESAUCE:

Now as for the oh-so-coveted Weekly Ramble.  A long-winded, overly wordy stream of consciousness that I spend hours on each week so that my jerkbrain can tell me that nobody reads it... except I know that people read it because I sometimes hear from people who read it and I don't appreciate all this unwelcome negativity, BRAIN.

Stupid brain.  Seriously.

And please do let me know if you like these rambles, or if you like me highlighting the top line of each paragraph in a low-effort attempt to give you a TLDR version...  I don't know what I'm doing!

Anyway... it's been awhile since I've talked about the death of the author, huh?  And while previous rambles have covered the topic exhaustively, today I come at it from another perspective.  One that, for no real reason, I've started thinking about as the Death of the Artist. (patent pending)

The point is, authorial or artistic intent matters... except it doesn't... except when it does. (And it's at this point I realize this ramble has the potential to be yet longer than any others, because I have a lot more to say still on this topic... nothing is so simple words can describe and all that... yet we must try anyway.) There's certain things I'm trying to accomplish in my storytelling.  Aside from just wanting to tell a good story, which is my primary goal, there's certain themes and messages that are on my mind all the time while I'm creating that help to drive the story forward, for me, and keep it all nicely tied together.  I keep these things pretty close to my chest, because I fear that revealing my themes will somehow taint the story, or introduce bias where I would prefer there is none.  Some of these things are conscious, but I'm sure the bulk of it is not, at least not entirely.  Some of it comes in the post-analysis of the thing already created, where I begin to notice a theme or a symbol I didn't notice before, and then decide to emphasize it consciously in the future.  Like my usage of snakes and references to them, for example.  Or Riley's hair.  Or how Gilly is always holding a wine glass with a broken stem.  It wasn't initially in the plan, but I noticed it as it started to materialize and I kinda like it, which leads me to want to emphasize it further.

I do want to mention, however, I actually hate symbolism.  I developed an extreme dislike of it in many a literary analysis class way back in college, because more often than not, it felt... wrong to me.  Here we were, listening to a teacher explaining the authoritative words of some alleged "experts" that were explaining in absolute certainty exactly what the author was trying to say... by starting with that author's words and then imagining what the author might have meant if we replaced those words with different words.  In some cases, certain works, like Animal Farm, it did make a lot of sense, because the author's intent was pretty clear.  But in others, like, I found it really hard to make the jump between something like a broken table leg and how it related to the author's opinions about the decline of values in modern society.  Sure, you could make that leap, pour over every single written word and seek all possible hidden meaning, or you could consider perhaps that maybe the author was simply trying to establish a part of their setting that was intended to perhaps be relevant later in the story but then the author forgot about it.  Consider that the so-called "masters" of literature might not have been as masterful as we think, because they were only human, and entirely capable of making the occasional mistake. 

Perhaps that's just because literary analysis isn't for me.  Or perhaps it is because, as a writer/artist, I empathize far more with the authors than with the analysts. Humans are excellent at pattern recognition.  We are so great at it that we excel at seeing patterns even where none existed to begin with.  If we could necromance Shakespeare back to life and ask him to confirm or deny the countless literary analysis papers and books that have been written in response to his works, I almost expect he'd crawl back into his grave, sobbing, because we've all completely missed the point of whatever he was trying to do.  I know that's what I'd do, if I was a zombie version of him.  (Perhaps after first eating a few brains for good measure.)  Creative minds are far more often misunderstood, and our widespread speculation going unchecked for hundreds of years has, almost certainly, gone completely off the rails.

This is where we circle back to Death of the Artist.  Because no matter what the artist thinks, or what they were trying to do, their works should always be free to be interpreted.  That's what makes art so great.  The freedom of expression coupled with the freedom of interpretation.  While I don't necessarily agree with all the literary analysis I was taught, I did appreciate learning about HOW literary works are analyzed. An insight gained, perhaps, into how my own creative works might be misinterpreted by someone some day, should I ever reach a point where someone wants to try.  In a way, it sort of prepared me to expect that while I may have been trying to accomplish one thing, I may accidentally accomplish something else, (if indeed I accomplish anything at all.)  And it has enabled me to embrace a philosophy that when my art is complete, I should present it, and then step away from it.  Detach myself from it and let it stand up or fall down on its own.  It really isn't up to me to decide if any given analysis of my art is correct or incorrect.  There may be something about my art that I never actually thought of, that people really like.  That's sort of where I symbolically die, and leave my work as it is to simply be.  I am an author, not an authority.  I don't get to dictate what my art means to others.

Regardless if my intent or my thoughts or themes are carrying forward or coming through clearly, if you are enjoying my creative work because it speaks to you on some level, if you find it inspiring or if it makes you feel something, then I am happy.  At the end of the day, that's all it takes to tell a good story, and that's all I really want to accomplish.