Self: What do you want to write today? In your journal? RP tags? One of the fifteen various fanfics in various stages of development? Brain: How about 11 pages of a fanfic for a niche webcomic no one has ever heard of, read, or will understand when you post it on AO3? Self: ..............Yeah, I guess we can do that.
This webcomic has been going on for almost 20 years on a consistent schedule. It's got an amazingly tight story despite have characters here there and everywhere, has a HUGE pool of characters and worldbuilding to pull from, so that's like catnip for making fanfic, and the art is pretty good to boot!
I'm forever mad it's not as big as, say, Gunnerkrigg Court but even GC is very niche these days despite Neil Gaiman giving it a seal of approval back in the day.
I feel like the heyday of webcomics is just completely over at this point. I used to be obsessed with them. I binged them like no one's business. I tuned in for every update of like ten of them every week. But there was and still are a LOT of problems with the format.
For one, twenty years ago the average age of the person making webcomics was about 18, which meant there was a LOT of cool ideas, neat characters, and usually good art to go along with it but most of the time following through on it to make it an actual coherent story wasn't a top priority.
A lot of people thought it would just "come together eventually" but can to the realization five years down the line it would take fifteen years of consistent updates to tie together all the stuff they'd set down. The problem also came when a number of people went to college, got jobs, or both, meaning suddenly all that free time to draw went kaput.
Which really, REALLY was devastating as a reader, to get invested in a story for years only to be given a Kanye shrug and "Too bad, so sad, I'm not even gonna summarize how it was supposed to end" from the creator. To never know precisely what the ending was going to be because the creator THEMSELF didn't know what the ending was.
For every one that lasted 20 years and ended on its own terms like Zebra Girl (fantastic read by the way and amazing art), I can name a dozen that faded from the internet with a whimper rather than a bang.
And the most aggravating thing is many of them disappeared when the webhost was no longer being paid money by the creator to host it, were taken down because the creator "felt ashamed of it" or other B.S. like that, as if their audience didn't matter anymore.
I figured out the ending lines which is always a good goal when I'm writing. When I've got the last scene planned out, I work my way backwards to see how I'm gonna get there.
Brain: How about 11 pages of a fanfic for a niche webcomic no one has ever heard of, read, or will understand when you post it on AO3?
Self: ..............Yeah, I guess we can do that.