...and it waved casually at me as it sauntered by.

Well folks, the roster was recently announced. As usual I tripped at the finish line. I'd like to take a moment to reflect on my ever-swelling track record of failure with this particular community:

Note: most of this ramble I am usually being sarcastic or light-hearted. Some of it may come off otherwise, and maybe it is, but you can safely assume I tried keeping this in as positive a lightas I could.

There seems to a predictable pattern engraved in my behavior in regards to these OCTs. While not as prominent in the earlier days such as The Cure and IDD, it began showing prevalence from the end of my Nevara audition, boiling to an insurmountable head upon Ebon Spire's audition conclusion, as was the much more downplayed reaction to Civil War I'm delivering to you now.

This "it" I've been referring to, ladies and dust mites, is the potential story ideas that spring forth in my mind after finally scraping the last pages together in my auditions.

They have consistently proven far more interesting than my auditions would lead people to believe. As I've continuously demonstrated, my auditions are dry, flat, bland, and overall unenjoyable in my retrospective viewpoint. Sure, Zorka being in a very liable position to rip the enhanced left arm off of a major NPC - with his BAD arm, I might add - is a nice idea on paper, but it's these thinly-developed emotional buildups always wind up taking precedence in my auditions rather than good writing. Shit, I'm starting to feel like Michael Bay, which is something I desire among all other things to avoid!

It always seems to occur during this time period. All the good stuff comes after the crap, and well after I've lost all interest in attempting to restart the comic, which leads to me spending the remaining weeks mulling over the much more developed storylines in my mind should I get in with the junk I initially slapped together.

I dunno what it is, folks. There must be something about this shit I don't get! This pattern has repeated itself without end, and then I think about a much more compelling opening story in retrospect. Maybe I'm going about this all wrong, maybe I shouldn't start on the comic so soon, maybe I should wait until these elaborate whiteheads burst, so I can use that pus as a springboard for the comic itself (your thanks for that crude metaphors aren't necessary).

But it just takes so damn long for me to do this; to comfortably meld into a universe with dozens of other characters, already heavily-established, and that belong to people mockingly far beyond my level of talent in both writing and artistic prowess. Dammit, I envy the people out there who got in, I always do, for how they can somehow come up with an engaging, interesting character that miraculously melds with the convoluted bastard that is any particular OCT universe, all the while gaining a disturbingly large cult following.


YOU GODDAMNED GLUTTONS! GIVE ME A PIECE OF YOUR FRIGGIN' PAH!!!

I just can't muster how baffling this is, how seamlessly they tie in everything, how even if they have no plan whatsoever going in, something about their entry stuns the audience, sometimes the judges (let's be realistic, the crowd-pleasers are far more likely to get in than entries that please the judges bizarre standards).

Is it my characters? Is it my designs? Is it the fact that I need more color? More backgrounds? MORE COWBELL, WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT WOULD IMPLY?! Please, stop me if I get it!

And, of course, I have legions of fans here, so lack of popularity clearly isn't the issue!

Or maybe, just maybe, stories don't come from the store. Maybe stories perhaps....mean so much more!

....


Fuck it, let's just go bowling...

Maybe I'm just not cut out for this shit...