The Questions, the Answers, and Some Fun Facts

It's been a year since I first saw a tumblr post on my “For You” tab that convinced me to give Neocities and the ability to make a space for myself from the ground up a chance, and I wasn't really sure what to do to celebrate. Or if I even should do anything special. When I started out, I had no idea if this would even be a thing that I kept up with. I've never taken any of my projects or art endeavors all that seriously in an online space (and it honestly showed), so I have been pleasantly surprised at the amount of traction that I've gotten here. It’s such a much welcomed change that I’m kind of upset I didn’t come here sooner.

It took a year of messing around on Neocities to get the same amount of views I slowly gained from my ten years of trying to take Deviant Art seriously. Coming from somebody who never cared about the views or being popular, the reality of what I’ve accomplished here is so wild to me.

So, with the anniversary coming up I’ve had a weird idea. A little narcissistic in a few places maybe. Could easily be seen as an inflating of the ego at a distance. But I thought it would be fun to put up a Q and A page and fill it with questions that I've gotten over the years? Along with one or two that haven't been uploaded anywhere else. IDK, it's a thought that I'm still kinda iffy on because I don’t want to come off like I’m hot shit and I think I'm going to be the next best thing to grace the internet.

It’s not like that, I swear!

If there's one thing I like doing- and you guys probably know me best for- it's never shutting up about my blorbos. I have people who can attest to this. If I could lock somebody in a room and tell them every bit of information about all of my projects, I’d be considered a menace to society. So get comfortable as I fumble some questions and struggle to give them decently satisfactory answers, we’re gonna be a here a while. And hey, there's a chance that I'll be updating this thing as time goes on- if my niche little following is interested in it- so if you've got questions that didn’t show up here then I'll do what I can to answer them.

Q and A

Why is your main character your main?

• Cosmo is my main because I love characters with huge personalities in the limelight. He’s a goofball with stars in his eyes who means well and can’t seem to shake off the past, and I love putting him in situations to sing and dance his way out of. And also because I wanted to show a somewhat tragic character grow and become more confident/comfortable with themselves. Their story comes from a personal place, especially when it comes to living with anxiety and trying to distance themselves from the cycle of abuse they grew up in. There's a lot of myself in Cosmo and in their story. Writing WoOO is kind of a healing journey for me; it’s silly and therapeutic and a little bit of a power fantasy at times, but I hope it becomes something that resonates with others in some way.


• Elliot is a little more complicated given her past. She used to be my main because she was literally me at one point and since I started writing her story around the time Twilight was relevant, I wanted to make a character who was nothing like Bella Swan (which was me apparently).

After toning her down, she became my main because- in retrospect- it’s kind of funny how well most protagonists tend to deal with being “the chosen one”, so I wanted to make a character who fights it every step of the way. And because you don’t usually see a protagonist dealing with any kind of a mental illness get slapped with the “prophetic hero” title. Especially not one who talks about killing herself, is very open about her depression, and can’t handle the stress from being put on a pedestal.

Being a big depression haver myself I’ve seen a lot of stigma towards people just trying to get by in a world that’s constantly changing the rules. I wanted to show a character dealing with depression and wanting to die but still finding ways to challenge these rules long enough to get through another day. And there’s nothing wrong with that.



• Jill’s reason for being my main is far less poetic and symbolic. I just thought it would be funny if a skittish nerd lived in a town populated by monsters while trying to avoid looking suspicious. Her life is just a series of silly, sitcom, shenanigans and her neighbors are completely oblivious to her torment. In a way, I guess her putting up this act that she’s “totally normal” and has “absolutely no issues whatsoever” mirrors how a lot of queer/nerodivergent/chronically ill people are forced to go through life, which is a revelation I was suddenly hit with while thinking of a response to this.

Do your characters represent you or what you want to be?

I wouldn’t say that I have characters who I’d like grow into and become, but I do have a little piece of myself in most of my characters.

Cosmo and Reuben are probably the two characters who most represent me since they both have aspects of my anxiety, self-discovery with sexuality and gender identity, and nerdy awkward ramblings. Not to mention their relationship took inspiration from the one me and my boyfriend share. Jill is a close second since she deals with my current feelings and deep rooted fear of believing she’s a failure in life after seeing how far behind she is compared to peers- who all seem to have their shit together while she’s just stuck where she is.

Were you influenced by something you like or something you watch?

Back in the early days I tended to pull a lot of inspiration from video games, anime, and other books I read at the time. One of my earliest writing endeavors was a re-telling of the Sonic Adventure 2 story but with Neopets. And the first draft of Falling Stars lifted a lot of elements from Darren Shan books, Eternal Sonata, Nancy Drew, and Pokemon: Coliseum (Seth’s earliest design is just Wes. It’s just himbo Wes who was also a demon for reasons I thought were cool).

Some of my current influences as of late have been games like HIKEBACK*, OFF, Omari, and Diminish**, and shows like Soul Eater, Ouran High School Host Club, BNA, Avatar the Last Air Bender, and Bojack Horseman. The Avatar, BNA, OFF, Omari, and HIKEBACK influence is probably most obvious in Falling Stars (and there’s a little FMA in there too). While everything else can pretty much be lumped in with World of Our Own.

Soul Eater and Ouran are my biggest offenders as influences. I am an absolute sucker for the dynamics/ride-or-die friendships in Soul Eater and you can see those personalities and bonds in my stories, and the found family vibes and overall chillness regarding gender identity in Ouran is one of my guilty pleasures. Yeah, there’s parts that didn’t age well but I still find myself looking at Haruhi and wishing that were me.

*HIKEBACK is a game/visual novel you can play for free on itch.io. I highly recommend checking it out and donating money to the studio. Or you could watch ManlyBadassHero play it.

**Diminish is an unfiction game/series by SeireaSong on Youtube that you need to watch. If an 18 part video series about loss, suicide, overcoming grief, and one instance of Nazi imagery is too daunting then I recommend watching the Segan Hawks analysis video on it.

Will you ever upload some of your stories?

I plan to, I’m just not sure how I’d like to have it all look. I’ve been clicking around on a few other Neocities pages to get some kind of an idea on how to format things, because at the end of the day I want everything to look neat and legible and not be a complete eyesore (it’s part of the reason I make so many updates where I play around with the colors and formatting of my pages).

Do I put all of the text in scroll boxes (and spend a few hours trying to figure that shit out)?

Do I just paste all the chapters/short stories on a page and break it all up with icons or dividers? Or do I make each chapter its own page? Maybe throw some story related art on there?

Do I post it somewhere else and just put up a link?

I don’t know. I’m still figuring that out, but I’m hoping I’ll settle on something soon. After that I just have to build up the courage to show more than a few sentences lol.

What would you say your biggest strengths and weakness are?

I’ve never given any thought to what my strengths are, honestly.

I guess- when it comes to drawing at least- I’m really good at drawing silly little guys with cute faces. I’m better at drawing creatures than I am with people, my little animal guys don’t look nearly as awkward as my human designs. And with writing I’d say my biggest strength is doing dialog for hangout scenes. I love getting a chance to explore my characters and their bonds, so I have a lot of scenes of them just hanging out, joking around, and talking about shit.

I try to capture the vibe that I always felt when I’d stay up all night with my friends and we’d just talk about whatever. Sometimes we’d be on Skype cracking jokes, and other times we’d be huddled around in someone’s bedroom or a dimly lit living room while we try not to laugh loud enough to wake up everyone else in the house. Or those first moments with my boyfriend when we were just two random strangers chatting about Game Grumps and our favorite Pokemon.

My biggest weaknesses are definitely clothes, hands, and anatomy when it comes to drawing. I’d love it if I could draw dynamic poses, more diverse body types, and accurate clothes for my characters. Or if I could draw mobility aids. I’m sure it gets a little stale seeing my 20th able bodied skinny character in jeans and a hoodie. There’s so much I don’t know how to draw and I really need to find time to change that. When it comes to writing my biggest weakness is sitting down and actually writing, lol. A large majority of World of Our Own and Falling Stars are just a bunch of incomplete chapters or story ideas that don’t flow into each other.

Who is your favorite character?

It’s so hard for me to pick a favorite.

Cosmo and Reuben are easily at the top of my list because they’re huge dorks, but I also love Hyde and Dave. They’re such snarky assholes and I always have fun writing their dialogue. Just visualize me lying on my stomach, giggling, and kicking my feet in the air while I type and that’s how it is when I write for them.

Which characters are your most/least favorite to draw?

There’s a lot of characters in the WoOO universe I love drawing, I love doing research on 90s fashion and playing around with their designs so I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with drawing all of them. Dave is also really fun for me to draw, it think it’s his smug grin and curly hair.

Seth is probably my least favorite due to the fact that they have so many little details in their design that I forget to include. Every character I draw ends up having a bit of inconsistency compared to their initial ref art every time I slap them down on paper, but Seth tends to get it the worst. Elliot is a close second but that’s only because I’m having a hard time deciding on what her style is.

Who would you say your most neglected character is?

Pretty much everyone in Pleasantville, lol. I only have three story relevant characters drawn out and a few concepts when it comes to the world building and some of the other residents in the village, but that’s pretty much it. I don’t even know how I want to tell this story. Do I write? Do I draw? Do I make it a visual novel? Do I info dump and try to connect the threads along the way?

I’d love to focus on Pleasantville more but unfortunately I’m a little more interested in my other two projects at the moment.

So…how bad is the first draft of Falling Stars?

So bad. Oh my god it’s awful. I try not to be too hard on myself because I was just a kid who didn’t know better when I first drafted that story and I shouldn’t be looking at my old stuff and burning it at the cross, but oh lord.

Some of the main things that made up Falling Stars version 1.0 (or “Never Ending Summer” as it was called once upon a time) were the main character having a “not like other girls” mentality, demons for the sake of having demons in the narrative, a magic system that made no sense, bad romance (not in a Lady Gaga way, it’s more like a “I’m 12 and never dated anyone but I’ve seen enough media to know how it works” kind of way), anime levels of main character syndrome dialogue, plot holes, absurd ways to get the plot moving, many moments of teen me trying to sound like an intellectual, some edgy humor that was a product of its time, and thinly veiled abuse that came from a place of love- which made it okay and totally not abuse.

I’ve got this thing saved on a separate USB stick because I’m that embarrassed by it and I doubt it will ever see the light of day, but who knows. There might come a day in my life where me and my man get drunk and I do a dramatic reading on Twitch or something.

Is there a first draft for WoOO? Is it just as bad?

There is but it isn’t as embarrassing since I wrote it in my 20s when I had more experience as a writer and I wasn’t as cringe, lol.

Okay, so I was still a little cringe, but I did a better job at hiding it.

Most of the time.

It’s also incomplete, unlike Falling Stars v.01 which was a full novel. The goals and personalities of my characters are outdated, it’s a little problematic here and there, I still had moments of my first semester psych class intellectualism scattered about, and it doesn’t meet my current quality standards, but it’s not as painful of a read.

Would there have been any huge changes to World of Our Own if you kept it in the 2010s?

Not really? I don’t think there would be any major changes to the plot since plenty of people still had a bug up their ass about mental health and the LGBTQIA+ ten years ago, there would just be more mentions of culturally relevant things, people, and memes going on.

If anything the only notable changes would be Lee becoming an influencer instead of a dancer, having Youtube and other online spaces have more of a focus like I had previously planned (Cosmo would be a silly little guy uploading even sillier songs on the internet; like Bo Burnham or Tom Cardy), and changing the kind of music Cosmo would get into (less ska and grunge and way more emo and indie rock).

Why the 90s?

I’m a 90s kid. And maybe it’s just my rose colored nostalgia talking but the 90s kicked ass. The whole decade was a massive time capsule for radical attitude, technological innovation, sleeper hit trends that changed the landscape of the world as we know it, and the rise and fall of bands, movies, and shows that are still remembered fondly.

I’m well aware that the 90’s were far from perfect, but I can’t pass up the chance to throw some silly little guys in the age of grunge fashion, alternative rock music, and teenage rebellion.

You mentioned a few retcons you made to WoOO, were there any you made to Falling Stars?

After the reboot, I tried to find ways to keep some of the past elements from version 1.0 in the story like Elliot and Seth’s original personalities- before I cranked up Elliot’s depression to 11 and did a complete 180 with poor Seth. There was a brief era where I also tried to salvage their romance but over the years I distanced from that and really got into the idea of them just being friends. I also tried to keep the magic system and had the very –not- well- thought out- idea of having the magic give Elliot something similar to Dissociative Identity Disorder. Every element would have given her a different alter and whoever was around at the moment would have been shown with the color change in her eyes (ex. fire magic alter = red eyes).

I quickly scrapped this for obvious reasons. I have a rule where I don’t write about things I know nothing about unless I either have personal experience with it or do a massive amount of research first- it’s part of the reason a lot of my stories revolve around dealing with mental health and shitty people. And since I’m completely inexperienced when it comes to dealing with/writing about DID, I’m probably not the best person to tastelessly weave it into a story.

I’ll leave the DID representation in the hands of people who know it better than I do.

There was also a time where Falling Stars took place in real world locations like Chicago and Reno, but I decided to change everything to a more fantasy-like setting.

Were there any other retcons you made to WoOO?

A couple but they’re small so I didn’t think they were worth mentioning/doing art for.

• Originally, Cosmo was more of a chaotic/random character- kind of a trickster and a general nuisance to everyone in the area. They started off as a girl who often got mistaken for a boy and wouldn’t really do anything to correct anyone; the switch to have them be gender queer/trans only happened a couple years ago (it’s no secret- to my man at least- that Cosmo’s gender identity has always mirrored my own, so it changed as I did).
• Before settling with music, I had them be a slight of hand illusionist who used their magic skills to pickpocket unsuspecting people. There was another draft where I had Cosmo aspire to work in Psychology and become and author, the start of each chapter used to have a little blurb that came from the book they were working on.
• There was a brief moment where I had Cosmo kinda pseudo adopt a kid, or at the very least, became something of an older sibling figure. But that idea never went very far.
• Cosmo started off with a name that was rather similar to my own. I just liked the way it sounded, had some alliteration going on and it rolled right off the tongue. But I was afraid people would look at it and think Cosmo was a self-insert character, so I changed it. Elaine Allred still has a nice ring to it but damn, I do miss that alliteration.
• Reuben used to have a comically abusive single dad. Like, this dude checked off all the boxes of being a scumbag and it got to a point where he just didn’t sound like a believable character anymore. So I changed it to Reuben being in foster care and having two equally shitty parents who weren’t evil but were still bad people.
• There were also…ten or so characters that got cut? Maybe more. The WoOO cast used to be much larger but a good majority of those characters didn’t really do anything to move the plot along or warrant having a place in the story. Or they were Neopet expies or based on real people I used to date and they got the axe when things got complicated in the romance department. I purposely gave Cosmo a lot of romance options back in the day like it was a damn dating sim but have since lowered it to one confirmed love interest and two implied crushes.

Are there any projects you’re working on that haven’t been mentioned anywhere else?

Two actually!

One is a super massive Pokemon nuzloke comic that I’ll probably never get around to doing due to the sheer size of it, lol. It would have covered all the main line games in the series (starting with Gen 5) and we’d follow one trainer’s growth as they traveled around the world taking on the league, stopping evil, and making new allies. I even had ideas of loosely doubling back to previous regions (in the form of those re-released games; FRLG, SSHG, ORAS) but having them be set in the future with a different protagonist. It’s way more ambitious than anything I’ve ever done and I doubt I’d ever have the patience to give it a try, but it has led to me making a 50 page Word doc on Pokemon lore and personal headcanons that takes bits and pieces from all the games, and the anime, and the movies.

The other is my take on the Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles story that would have featured some characters I made during my last play through of the game. It’s still in creative limbo, mainly because I don’t know how I’d want to tell the story (comics are more appealing to me but damn do I not have the time to set down and draft one), but it’s- once again –led to the creation of a large Word doc filled with lore and personal headcanons that take bits of continuity from a few games in the Final Fantasy series.

I have had thoughts of shining a little light on the Crystal Chronicles thing other than dropping some characters on a page somewhere, but so many of the elements in that story are way too similar to the themes in Falling Stars that I wasn’t even aware of at first (dueling tribes, odd one out adopted kid, people with animal-like traits, group of assholes learning to get along). It’s hard to say if I’ll ever do anything with it long term, I feel like I would just be telling the same story but with a more classical fantasy vibe instead of a modern one.

^Welsh, Alkaia, and Fang. The main trio

I also have one honorable mention. I once had an idea for a little antro animal comic series called “Sit, Stay, Play” that centered on a dog named Yoshi and her gaming nerd friends. It very much operated on 2010s Pound Puppies show or that Cats and Dogs movie logic, this was all done in secret and her human owner had no idea his dog was a menace in the COD lobby. There would have been a lot of nerd and gaming related humor and a lot of references to the games I grew up with. Eventually I came to the realization that this was just “GaMER CaT”, but with a dog as the main character instead. So I shelved it, lol.

^Very old picture of Yoshi

Have you ever thought about doing commissions?

A little?

I mean, I’ve had thoughts here and there but I was never serious about actually going through with it. Anxiety and no confidence and all that. Plus, I wouldn’t know what to set my prices as. But if people were interested…I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to test the waters.

Do you have any socials we can follow you at?

No, lol.

I’m notoriously awful at being engaged with any kind of social media- I end up getting very bored with it very quickly. That Cara account I made over the summer? Hasn’t been touched in months. And while the social media aspect of it might be the main contributor to that…I also just get kinda nervous about how annoying the rants about my OCs might look to others. Being bothered by bots doesn’t make the experience any better for me either, which is one of the reasons I purged my Deviant Art account. Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s important to get yourself out there if you have a brand or an idea so you can build up a fanbase and gain some traction but, man, I don’t got time for that.

Neocities will probably be the closest thing I ever get to social media. I’m still somewhat active on Deviant Art and tumblr though, even if I never post anything there anymore it’s a quick way to get in touch should there ever be a situation where that’s necessary. Recently though, I did make a Blue Sky and a Space Hey account. I don’t really have any grand plans for them, they’re just collecting dust at the moment.