TangledPenman
A reminder of my future direction
This journal is more of a refresher for the inevitable future. Don't expect something new here.
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Originally posted: April 2021
When I get back to continuing writing for the first arc of May's Travelling Circus, I want to make something very clear about it. I want this fanfic series to be my most approachable one to date. What do I mean by this though? Think of why most of you watch my DA page. Is it for telling good stories, or is it only because of particular tropes that you enjoy very much? I'm not calling anybody out here because you have the right to enjoy what you want and i'm glad you do. But I want to make May's Travelling Circus a fanfic where most people can read it without feeling... put off by it.
Let me be honest with you. I do not do what I do because of certain... "desires," shall we say. Some of you probably know what I'm talking about. I've never been about that believe it or not. While the majority of my content may speak otherwise, I never wrote the stories I wrote because of certain "desires." I personally see the many tropes I've used as fascinating ideas for plots. I figured they would attract some particular groups here on DA and I went into this knowing that could be the outcome. There's many "desires" I've seen on here that flat out make me feel really uncomfortable and I've wanted to try and avoid them as much as one possibly can here on this site. The block certain words feature can only do so much.
I've changed since the early days and the future of my content is possibly going to change too. I want to make more stories that most people outside of these tropes can feel comfortable with. I've never been about meeting certain "desires" and just want to tell stories. Sadly some of the tropes I've used can be considered, no more hiding the fact, fetishy to people because of sites like this, which I find pretty sad sometimes. It feels as if you can't tell certain stories anymore without people crying out "cringy fetish" or something.
I've never been a fetish kind of person and it's taken me too long to mention this in fear of upsetting my audience. But I feel I need to make this known before I aim to take some of my future content in a new direction. Now some of you might say, "but isn't May's Travelling Circus all about clowns?" While clowns are a thing in the series and only a small fraction of it, does it really have to be labeled as a fetish? I honestly don't believe that. Before places like this very website, it was considered perfectly normal and I still believe it can be ok to write stories about stuff that people like to consider something only certain people would be into.
Again, while I may sound like I'm fed up and angry here, I'm really not. If you have your personal reasons that make you happy, then continue to enjoy them the way you do. I'm not here to make you look bad and stop you. Because what you do with your lives is your own business. But I have to be honest with myself now. I've changed and want to branch out more.
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I've been giving some thought about where I post new content. While DA will always be here to do that for certain things, I have been thinking about branching out to new sites where I can post the kind of stories I'd be more comfortable with posting. The first thing on my mind is May's Travelling Circus.
While the prequel stories will always still be here, I may be giving the series treatment on other sites elsewhere first before chapters of it come to DeviantArt. It will be my experiment in branching out and finding a place for it where more people can get a chance to read it when it releases. This project is one I really want to be as good as it can be, so I feel I need to take the next step in where it will be available. As for what places it will show up at first, that will be announced at a later date when I'm ready to upload the first chunk of Arc one.
April 2021 Entry: Changes on the horizon
Hello there to all my watchers who read these journals. Hope all has been well since I last spoke on here and that you are getting through the continuing pandemic ok. As you are probably here to find out what's going on with my projects, i'll cut straight to it rather than be my casual self. There's some things I really need to get off my chest with this entry.
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First of all, i've now created a Twitter for myself. Throughout last year I've felt that it's pointless for me to make regular posts of just talking casually about stuff. Most of you do not care for that and would rather I just post content and that's it. I'm not offended if you are one of those people.
So now with my Twitter, I now feel I have a place where I feel I can be me without alienating those who only care about my content. So if you are one who doesn't care for me just being myself, then I do not recommended my Twitter to you and ask to just stick to what you prefer. For others though, you are more than welcome to check it out if you like. All I ask though is that you don't follow me to only ask about content and that's it. My DeviantArt page can be the place for that, so I probably won't be answering you if all you ask for is where is my content. I'll sometimes talk about some upcoming content on Twitter, but it'll only be for the things I actually want to advertise. Not everything I've made here is something I wish to show off for my own personal reasons which i'll get into further down this entry.
I'll also be more active on Twitter than I am DeviantArt for the future, so if things feel quiet here, it's because I'll probably be elsewhere.
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Having given a lot of thought into the matter, i've pretty much come to the decision that I won't be bringing back written commissions. While it was kinda neat to give it a try a few years ago, if i'm being perfectly honest, I was enjoying it less and less with some of the work I was asked to write. Given the majority of my followers have certain tastes, there's so much of them I do not feel comfortable with, and I honestly don't feel up to going through it again. I'm ok to write some stories using certain tropes depending on the context, but if said stories were only about getting to a particular taste and nothing else, then I simply don't want to do it. I care about writing stories that feel somewhat satisfying to read and not so much when it's only about satisfying a taste.
I'm not angry at anyone, so don't worry. It's just that I've changed a bit and want to focus on stories I can feel satisfied with.
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Continuing somewhat on my future content, there is a possibility of some of my older projects facing cancelation. One of my biggest issues which I'm sure you are no doubt aware of is that I've started many stories and tend to leave them for years. Now I want to try and organize myself better and consider cutting some of the fat. So while nothing is confirmed just yet, the few projects I am considering cancelling are,
The SOS Clown Brigade
The Tentacool Conduit
The Wrath of Madame Y
I haven't had the motivation to touch these stories in a long time and am feeling that there's nothing more I can do with them. While I'm not cancelling these for the meantime, that doesn't mean I want people going and writing them themselves as there could be potential in the future to revive them. It's just hat I have bigger plans currently with wanting to get May's Travelling Circus: The Series off the ground. That will probably be the biggest project yet so I would rather put the majority of my focus into that.
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This next segment will probably be considered a turnoff for a lot of you.
As i'm slowly getting back to continuing writing for the first arc of May's Travelling Circus, I want to make something very clear about it. I want this fanfic series to be my most approachable one to date. What do I mean by this though? Think of why most of you watch my DA page. Is it for telling good stories, or is it only because of particular tropes that you enjoy very much? I'm not calling anybody out here because you have the right to enjoy what you want and i'm glad you do. But I want to make May's Travelling Circus a fanfic where most people can read it without feeling... put off by it.
Let me be honest with you. I do not do what I do because of certain... "desires," shall we say. Some of you probably know what I'm talking about. I've never been about that believe it or not. While the majority of my content may speak otherwise, I never wrote the stories I wrote because of certain "desires." I personally see the many tropes I've used as fascinating ideas for plots. I figured they would attract some particular groups here on DA and I went into this knowing that could be the outcome. There's many "desires" I've seen on here that flat out make me feel really uncomfortable and I've wanted to try and avoid them as much as one possibly can here on this site. The block certain words feature can only do so much.
I've changed since the early days and the future of my content is possibly going to change too. I want to make more stories that most people outside of these tropes can feel comfortable with. I've never been about meeting certain "desires" and just want to tell stories. Sadly some of the tropes I've used can be considered, no more hiding the fact, fetishy to people because of sites like this, which I find pretty sad sometimes. It feels as if you can't tell certain stories anymore without people crying out "cringy fetish" or something.
I've never been a fetish kind of person and it's taken me too long to mention this in fear of making my audience leave. But I feel I need to make this known before I aim to take some of my future content in a new direction. Now some of you might say, "but isn't May's Travelling Circus all about clowns?" While clowns are a thing in the series and only a small fraction of it, does it really have to be labeled as a fetish? I really don't believe that. Before places like this site it was considered perfectly normal and I still believe it can be ok to write stories about stuff that people like to consider something only certain people would be into.
Again, while I may sound like I'm fed up and angry here, I'm really not. If you have certain "desires" that make you happy then continue to enjoy them the way you do. I'm not here to make you look bad and stop you. Because what you do with your lives is your own business. But I have to be honest with myself now. I've changed.
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In relation to new directions, I've been giving some thought about where I post new content. While DA will always be here to do that for certain things, I have been thinking about branching out to new sites where I can post the kind of stories I'd be more comfortable with posting. The first thing on my mind is May's Travelling Circus.
While the prequel stories will always still be here, I may be giving the series treatment on other sites elsewhere first before chapters of it come to DeviantArt. It will be my experiment in branching out and finding a place for it where more people can get a chance to read it when it releases. This project is one I really want to be as good as it can be, so I feel I need to take the next step in where it will be available. As for what places it will show up at first, that will be announced at a later date when I'm ready to upload the first chunk of Arc one.
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That's it for this entry. It's taken me a long time to want to post what's been on my mind for a long time now, so I perfectly understand if many of you are upset by what's been announced and said here. Change can be upsetting for many longtime followers, but I feel it needs to happen if I want to continue doing what I do and still enjoy it. If some of you end up taking me off your watch list, then I apologize and perfectly understand why you'd want to. This was not an easy journal post to make.
Take care of yourself and i'll catch you on Twitter or back on here when more content is on the way.
No new content until 2021
Hi again to all my watchers. I hope things have all been well with you in this crazy year of 2020. It's been a nightmare to live in and with hopes of a vaccine on the way, lets hope it won't be too much longer until it can get greenlit and end this hell.
So the title of this journal speaks for itself. There isn't going to be any content from me for the rest of 2020, making this the first year I won't have uploaded anything. I sincerely apologize to all you for letting you down this year. I've tried to get my motivation back for a really long time but it just hasn't worked out for me at all. I can't get in the mood to write or practice art no matter how hard I tell myself to spend a day doing either. Covid messing up the planet and things in RL getting busier has killed my creative mood harder than I would have expected. Being stuck indoors most of the year with two lockdowns, I thought that would be plenty of time to get into the creative mood, but it didn't work out. I have at least written 2 and a half chapters of May's Travelling Circus, so the year wasn't completely wasted I suppose.
I'll still be around logging into DA for what's left of 2020 to check out art by some amazing people, but i'll probably be chatting a lot less as I believe many of you don't really care for my rambling of anything I feel like talking about. If I have anything to say, it'll just be about content from now on rather than me being myself. That is what most people want from me so I shall provide only that.
That's about it for this short entry. I'm sorry this year has sucked and if you are disappointed in me. I'd totally understand if you have had enough of waiting and choose to unfollow me for it.
Hope you all have a good Christmas and here's to 2021 being a year that won't be awful. Take care.
May's new design
For one, Dawn will also be joining May in this series and will get a costume of her own, which I have displayed before.
But when comparing their designs, they both sport the colour pink as the base of their clown costumes, so immediately I realised that I want to make their outfits stand apart from each other, rather than be too similar. May and Dawn won't be the only characters in this series, so each one needs a look that makes you go, "that's this character." Something easily identifiable. So someone's look had to change, and it had to be May, as Dawn's outfit I think suits her perfectly. So behold May's new clown costume.
What do you think? This design was planned by both TF-Circus and myself and commissioned to the fantastic artist, KurumiErika who did an amazing job. Rather than simply change the colour-scheme for May's outfit, TF-Circus and I went for a complete redesign instead. With this one, we wanted May to go with a look that looks far more like an actual clown rather than the blend of clown and jester she had before. I love the old look, but audiences would probably end up confusing it for something else so we wanted this new design to be more straightforward and still attempt to make it both fun and cute. Though we made sure to keep aspects of the previous one like the bows for buttons and hearts on her cheeks. I'm personally a lot more satisfied with this new look going forward for when the series begins, and worry not. May still keeps her first look in the prequel stories and this new look will be acknowledged for when the series starts.
So what do you all think of May's new clown costume? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments and on Erika's post of the art. Give her a watch as well if you haven't she's a brilliant artist that deserves it.
The Logo
So I am on the search for some artists who offer commissions for logos and can emulate the Pokemon style. I still don't have the courage to try it myself as I'm still a novice to art, so if there are any artists out there, I'd love to ask if something like this can be possible.
When will the series be released?
I hope 2019 was a good year for you all, and if not, here's hoping that 2020 will be a better one for you. 2019 for myself felt like more of the same, but I did discover an old passion again that I'm planning to act upon in 2020, which I'll talk about in a sec.
It was a good year for games, such as getting a new racer from Sumo Digital in the form of Team Sonic Racing, the No More Heroes series returned with Travis Strikes Again and announced No More Heroes 3, Kingdom Hearts 3, Shenmue 3 and the Resident Evil 2 remake finally came out, Devil May Cry 5 became my favourite entry in the series, Microsoft and Nintendo are buddies now, Koji Igarashi gave Konami the middle finger with Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Platinum Games released another hit with Astral Chain, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair was a wonderful surprise and Kojima released Death Stranding, his first game after leaving Konami.
As for movies, The Infinity Saga of the MCU came to a satisfying close with the incredible Avengers Endgame and the really fun Spider-Man: Far from Home, we got an actually good video game movie in the form of Detective Pikachu, the Sonic movie got delayed to next year and gave us a brilliant redesign by Tyson Hesse after the questionable first design and Joker was DC's first really good film since The Dark Knight Rises. Yeah, I don't see much films
My normal life was pretty much uneventful for the most part, but it's something I'm used to and just carry on as is. But this year I hope to be something a little more interesting if I can make it happen. But enough boring stuff most of you probably don't care for, let's talk about what I plan for in terms of content for the beginning of this new decade.
Digital Art
2019 was the year I was hit with the art bug and grew to truly feel inspired to draw once again, only this time take things to the next level. Seeing so much fan art online of characters I love, getting back into comics again where art is front and centre and wanting to express my ideas through more than just stories have been my biggest inspirations. I'm so incredibly inspired that I went out of my way to purchase something that would assist in my journey to finally learning art properly, and if you know Apple products, it didn't come cheap. You could say that I should just practise via a pencil and paper, yes, but I'm personally not keen on that method. I just prefer digital art thanks to the handy tools you are given and not having to throw away a ton of paper when making errors. That's just my tastes whether they make sense or not.
While yes, I have done art on here in the past, I never felt like I truly learned anything due to relying on just looking at references of exact poses I needed without trying to understand how to pull them off yourself. I worked with the option I had and it was really limiting. My past work is something I'm probably gonna look back on and hate it should I ever get decent at drawing with actual practise and learn from it, but they shall remain uploaded for those who liked them. More power to you if you do.
So once I acquire an Apple Pencil in the next week or two, I'm going all in and making a start on what I hope to be a journey worth taking. Frustrations will no doubt be on the way, but I'll take it head-on and try to have fun with it. As much as I really enjoy writing stories for you all, I wish I could express my ideas with more than just that.
Stories
As for what I'll possibly be working on for 2020, May's Travelling Circus: The Series is still planning to be the main focus. Production still hasn't begun yet due to other projects and having to do other RL things, but it's a project I still really want to get off the ground once I find the time as well as who I'm working on it with, being TF-Circus who has recently opened up commissions on his channel for those who are fans of him. There's still no planned release window for this series, so it'll be out when it's ready.
Most of the other stories that might come out are continuations of unfinished stories if I can find the time for them. I know I've not been the best at staying true to my word on getting them done and I apologise for it, but I need to have a solid window of ideas and the motivation to sit down and get them done. If my mind isn't in the game, then I don't want to force out a story for the sake of getting it done. If I'm gonna work on something, I won't do it unless I am ready for it.
I'm also going to continue with the new method of how I write my stories I made for myself in 2019, which is work on a story until it is finished and then release it. The wait may end up being a little longer, but I'm tired of releasing only a few chapters at a time and leaving them alone for ages without a conclusion. So I'd now prefer to give you guys something completed and not make you wonder when stories will ever get finished. If you like or dislike this approach, let me know in the comment section.
That about covers it for stories. There may not be as much of them in 2020 and releases of new or unfinished ones may take longer, but as long as you guys still enjoy what I do, then it makes it all worth it.
Future content
Does this mean I'm going to move away from these tropes completely in my future content? Why would I when it makes my followers happy? Why throw away everything I've done? So no, I won't give up on making stories and art with the tropes you like my work for. I'll still try and keep you guys happy.
Now I don't know how many of you are open to the idea of me trying new things, so depending on your feedback, there might be the idea in mind that I could end up making a new account which would be for art and stories that do not feature any of the tropes you see from my work here. That way I can do what I want to do there without alienating some of my fans on here with work that doesn't match up with why they follow me. This isn't an idea completely set in stone yet, but it's a possibility should I find that I progress in art decent enough to warrant it. That's a wait and see for now.
So I hope you guys would be ok with me wanting to try new things now and again. I'm not going away anytime soon, but I've reached the point that I want to experiment in other areas.