This is an emergency blog post. I have been either physically, emotionally, or technically incapable of accessing this blog for the past week or so. This is a status update for all none of you interested parties: Unbearably neutral things are happening to me. New school? It's fine. Getting dragged between two houses? I'm alright with it. Mental-emotional state? It's spiraling, baby. Spiraling like a mind-controlled pervert's hand down a garbage disposal. Every now and then, I've glimpsed death; People kill themselves. People are on the internet. It follows, then, that people on the internet kill themselves. A lot. That's depressing, especially since most of them were good, kindly, interesting people who always seemed to have a lot of life to take in one fell swoop. I've had to talk people out of bad situations before, thankfully nothing so extreme as imminent suicide, but I have come to accept that some day, some how, someone I know or love or look up to will crack, and I won't be able to stop them. I think it's healthy to conceptualize these people as just beyond your capabilities. If you couldn't help them, you couldn't. They were "too far gone." I'm very scared of this concept, as of now. I feel like I might be too far gone. I have a good life, a very above average life compared to most of the global populace, but it's never enough. I'm nearly always too tired, too depressed, too fucked in the head to feel good about anything. It shouldn't be hard to see the bright side of life. It is, after all, mostly bright sides at this point. I want very badly to intellectualize this. I want to make some genius argument to myself that will utterly convince me that my life is going to get more bearable and everything is going to okay if I just wait. I've been waiting too long. More and more as of late I've wondered if I was born to die, if maybe I am simply engineered by some thoughtless cascade of conceptual dice-rolls to be completely incapable of making it out of this alive. I feel like a tortured artist without being tortured or an artist. I think suicide is a stupid, awful decision, one of the worst a person can make, the decision that excludes all others. I so constantly relate to the kind of person who does it, though, I recognize how much I have, how much I have to lose, how many would mourn me and be completely lost as to how I could be so delusional, so ignorant, so fucking stupid as to leave everything behind. They were too far gone. I want to believe I'm not too far gone.
This isn't a "talking myself off the edge" post, or at least I hope not. I hope this is just more desperate, angst-y wankery. Honestly, I'm terrified. I want to tell myself to stick with it, but I'm just so fatigued. I only hope I'm strong enough to make it through this. People like me need real problems.
rat quest: history of the worlds great est web comic
"What's the use of looking if you don't see 'em?"
- Rudimentary Peni (1988)
In 2024, I made a webcomic. It sucked.
A brief history of homestuck
In 2009-2016, Homestuck was a webcomic. It sucked.
Why this matters (it doesnt)
In 2010-present, Microsoft Paint Fan Adventures (mspfa) is an online webcomics hosting website that allows users to freely host and publish their own webcomics, usually fan-fiction or at least derivative of Homestuck or other, better "MS Paint Adventures." It's totally free to use and runs off donations. Sweet deal for a guy like me!
Cheesed to meat you
When I first discovered MSP(F)A, my first thought was (obviously): "How do I make this about me?" The answer? Make a webcomic, obviously. My first ideas were simple Homestuck derivatives: A story about a kid stuck in an interdimensional SBURBan TaRDiS gone haywire1, and a story about a clique of scrappy low-blood anarchists embroiled in a murder show-trial in a who-dunnit turned political thriller turned feel-good slice-of-life with a depressing ending.2 Both ideas are obviously not executable at even my current level of competency, but I think that second one is still a good idea to return to at least thirty years after everyone has hopefully forgotten what Homestuck is.
I'm an alright writer (don't correct me), so there are two barriers to entry: I have no idea how to draw, and I have no idea how to manage a webcomic. MSPFA makes the latter dead simple, but the former is a pain in my ass to this day. What's the solution? Ignore it!
You are currently witnessing the first page of "rat quest" [sic], a 2024 interactive drama series by someone I want very much to forget exists. I made a single recognizable character, later disambiguated and officially canonized as Wall Rat. She's a lesbian. The next step to getting this ball rolling was pressuring someone else to push it for me. This is where the "adventure" part comes in; In traditional MSPA fashion, a significant quantity of webcomics on MSPFA are specifically driven by user comments, exactly like a forum game. Accordingly, I spammed both Homestuck-adjacent Discord servers I inhabited at the time and got a healthy couple of starting commands, including from the great Rosie Ghostopal (commemorated in this horrendous panel), who is still one of my only remaining tenuous social links to the Homestuck fandom. Obviously, it immediately became Half-Life 2.
After dying for the first time, a monumental achievement, players began to progress naturally into the wider house, subtly named for a level in Enter the Gungeon.
In keeping with my primary inspiration of Problem Sleuth, it's here that I introduced some unique, trailblazing, fucking stupid "game" "mechanics," much to the pleasure of everyone involved.
I still think this inventory system is funny. First of all, it's a thesaurus'd hammerspace. Despite being called a hyperworm, whatever that is, it is clearly a snake. To upgrade the snake, you must add segments of inventory space to it by feeding it apples. I don't remember if I was intentionally evoking that old "JOIN OR DIE" cartoon us Americans love to forget about. In any case, there are layers to my genius.
Next we introduce the other half (originally quarter) of our colorful cast of rodent bastards.
There were gonna be four of them originally! It looked intuitive in the design docs.
Jumping ahead a little bit, party members would give each other mutual equalizing stat boosts through the poorly-thought-out "empathy" mechanic. It's never used again.
Here we have the first animated panel of the series, made up of two entire frames and jury-rigged in GIMP, my software of choice at the time. You don't get the text because I can't be assed to do more work than just copy-pasting the GIF itself. Read rat quest. Fuck you.
I still like this gag.
This is my favorite panel. It's funnier without the text. And the stolen valor.
After this panel released, I put together a "trailer" for the comic in Clipchamp, Microsoft's proprietary video editor for Windows 11 which somehow manages to be worse than Windows Movie Maker.
There was going to be a running gag where rats would have an innate supernatural culinary talent. It's delivered much less subtly in the panel preceding, but I think this one is funnier. Yes, it is a reference to that one movie about the rat that cooks. You know, Ratatoing (2007)?
I was going to introduce the owners of the house at some point. All the items on the shelf tell a story of some kind. I have no idea what it was. Every book is a total non-sequitur from the last. Shout-out to "Dictionary." I'm going to try to remember what that skewed text is. My refusal to anti-alias my transforms properly was really dick-headed for one of the only intentional style choices. I'm pretty sure it's "Go Fuck Yourself: The Only Self-Fucking Book You'll Ever Need." Classy. Maybe the aliasing was for the best. No, I didn't know that was a thing people actually do3 in 2024.
Try to guess what happens in the next panel.
After violently exploding, players decide to check out the other side of this brilliantly designed binary decision and are greeted with this absolutely inspired scene. This is my second-favorite panel. The upcoming commands imply that it takes very little conditioning for players to immediately recognize any symbolic representation of a rodent as a new playable character. I'd love to employ this for more sinister purposes in the future.
That's right, fuck your Konami code. This isn't fucking Contra, it's the final evolution of role-playing games. Achievements are disabled by default. This was intended from the beginning. It's actually quite ingenious if you think about it.
It would have been really funny if the first time players encountered a spider it was an enormous, formless mass completely unrecognizable as a spider unless you turn off arachnophobia. The only way to deal with the enemy would be to know it was a spider. By funny I mean cruel. And by cruel I mean hilarious.
I have no idea what the fuck is going on here. Developer console is implied to be on by default until you use it for the first time, at which point it is permanently un-unlocked (re-locked). What does Negativland do other than reference Neu! for no reason? Seriously, I'm asking you. I don't know.
Oh God, this bullshit. I kept track of this in a .txt file, along with pretty much everything else. Jesus.
Here are all of the txt files in my dedicated rat quest archive folder I keep forgetting to delete forever.
I also like this gag. That thing flying behind her is a monocle, by the way. I skipped past the cosmetics panel.
This panel marks the point where I started using an old (LEGALLY-OBTAINED) version of Photoshop over GIMP, thevery same version Homestuck used, in fact. This is the only way I know how to do anything right.
I made a tongue-in-cheek "art tutorial" soon before the comic's end explaining how to recreate the incredibly intricate design of our beloved protagonist after this, foreshadowing my completely running out of motivation or ideas.Notice how the entire video is completely seamless; This is because it is filmed in one long take, without cuts, just like acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick's famous one-take in horror classic "The Shining."
Nothing important or funny happens after this. It ends abruptly... and childishly. Don't cut me any slack, this was barely one and a half years ago. I was just completely burnt-out (HOLD LAUGHTER). Still am!
Thats right its chrimas mother fucker
It was only a few months later that something magical happened. Okay, something entirely predictable happened. Before the original "series" had time for all the flesh to slough off, I decided to make a rat quest christmas special. Best idea I've ever had, I know. Even better than becoming a misanthrope at age twelve.
Behold the inciting panel of "a cheesemas story." That's right, we're animated now! CS3's animation is surprisingly easy to parse, especially for someone like me (derogatory). I still like this one. The way everything lags is very lifelike, I think. Don't quote me on that. Quote someone else on it. Also, DOOM reference, haha, LOL, thanks for the gold kind stranger
Notice how the cursor only clicks a single time! My immersion is fucking shattered and I'm putting this in my suicide note.
"a cheesemas story" was widely criticized for its awful load times, usually upwards of literally forever. That's right, this is the last panel. I spent the following week trying to make an animation in an old version of Adobe Flash. No update, no notice, nothing. Just labelled it as inactive and slinked (slunk?) away like a little coward. Over a year later, here we are.
Here's the current draft of the animation. It's kind of pathetic. I really didn't learn my lesson the first go round: Don't start something before you can finish it. Or at least fully fucking start it. Dickweed.
I used music by Lacheque for this. She's very good, but unfortunately not all that active these days. She'll probably come up again if I ever write a blog post about *shudders* my Soundcloud days.
Who fucking cares man. oh my god
Hey, you're the one reading this. Although, I'm the one writing this, which is arguably worse. Anyway, that's the story so far. I may revisit rat quest in some form in the future. It is, admittedly, a key point in my development as an """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""artist."""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" I know how embarrassing that is. I know how embarrassing THIS is. I don't care. I'm showing my full, entire ass(please imagine I actually linked to goatse) here, and it's your job to lap it up like a starving Great Dane.
Ultimately, I don't know what to think of rat quest. Was it funny? Kind of, sometimes. Was it anything else? I don't know. But, perhaps most importantly, was it IMPORTANT to ME? Not really.
I appreciate any and all support for my creative ambitions. Barring restaurant napkins I really don't want to go to the trouble of recovering, here's the last piece of rat quest content ever produced.
1 ...creatively titled "TaRDiStuck,"
which sounds more like what the machine in question was doing in series 6,
episode 4, or perhaps my answer to "describe your current general living
situation in three words or less"↩
2 ...uncreatively titled "Leave the Lantern Lit," which is entirely unrelated to the story in any way.↩ 3 You just got Kranged.↩
drallaronmoth.blogspot.com: an introducxhjtgjkhoij
"Hell is ahead Hell is ahead Hell is ahead" - Business Lady, 2007
The fucking point of a blog
Of the many things I am not at all confident about, one of the few exceptions is my ability to ejaculate words onto a page like an ape in captivity whose typewriter has been stolen by his manager, who is himself a slightly smaller ape. However, there are in fact many ways to vomit solipsistic scribbles onto a page, many of which I am personally practiced in (besides literally employing my own bodily excretions). With that in mind, why am I starting this blog? People on the internet said it was a great idea, mom. Besides that, I've thought of hosting a website or some sort of online bulletin to publicly masturbate into for a good while now, and if someone cooler than me tells me to do something, well, by golly I guess I will, ma'am.
Drallar on who?
Moth is not a person, it is a planet. Specifically, it's a planet in Alan Dean Foster's Commonwealth, and it holds host to a booming financial district and (excuse me whilst I pick my nose) a diverse global community of people-sized bugs and people-sized people (we tried looking for the bug-sized people, but we just can't see clearly). Let me be clear: The Thranx are hot. I would bang a Thranx. The Tar-Aiym Krang is yaoi. I named this blog after a location of this book because it just jumped out from the dark caverns of my mindcage, partly because I'm partial to a vivid description of the shopping district as being so full of scents you could get a full-course meal by sitting down and breathing deeply. It's a cute book, not much deeper than that, but I like it, fuck you. I've only read the first of Mr. Foster's many supposedly good-to-mediocre pulp scy-fy novellas, but it's close to my heart for Complicated Reasons. You see, well, ahah, there's this band...
Obsession is healthy to me, dammit
Some time in 2023, when I wasn't as different from now as I'd comfortably prefer to imagine, I discovered this band called Osees which blew my fuckin mind and simply forced me to abandon the dogshit stoner band known as K*ng G****rd a*d t** L***** ****** to binge Ol' John Dwyer's entire discography. This led me to learning about Fort Thunder, an art collective/diy living space/drug den/chicken coop that formed the beating heart of the late 90s' rock and noise scene in Providence, Rhode Island. I'm still learning new things about that whole shebang to this day, and it's thoroughly invaded my thoughts and feelings. What I'm trying to tell you is that I'm a weeaboo. Anyway, one of these bands, which happened to be John Dwyer's first, was Tar-Aiym Krang!, also known simply as Krang, which is unique in that nobody seems to know or care about it besides a few select individuals close to its history, a couple internet randos (including a mysterious unnamed editor of the book's wikipedia page??), and me, who is not an internet rando because I know him very well. Too well, I'd say. Anyway, I love this fucking band. There's nothing else quite like it, maybe Polvo or other noise-rock pioneers, but God, I feel insane for liking what little there is with how much the few people in the know seem to downplay it. It's kind of kraut-y, kind of prog-y, but describing it completely just eludes my tiny sober mind. Thankfully, you can listen to their entire discography on Bandcamp kindly archived by "probably Jeff" or on YouTube, kindly archived byme and one of the aforementioned internet randos. Also, brief shout-out to the Osees Archive. I love you, Artie. This is all your fault. If I had any money, I'd give you every penny.
Thank God. Now I don't have to mention Tar-Aiym Krang! ever again
Feels good to get a load off, doesn't it? Sorry, I was talking to my metaphorical dick, not yours. Ghost-dicks aside, I think I've pretty clearly established the things most important to me other than blacking out in front of my keyboard. I love music (but I hate doing it), and art (but I hate doing it), and reading (but FUCK what am I doing), and being so very very confident in the sanctity of my mind and body. I often tell myself that nothing ever changes--usually in a very whiny sing-song voice for some reason--but that is rationally and obviously as false as any concept can be. Hell, I just moved out from the rural Ohio woodland panopticon I called my home for the last thirteen years into a suburban Ohio apartment panopticon with my now-slightly-less-fuck-off-enormous-but-still-regrettably-nuclear family. That's change, right? Whatever. Friends will be made (for once), love will be shared (maybe), and we're all gonna live forever (for sure).
Everything will be okay
I have a handful of personal mantras--such as the preceding two--I like to repeat privately to myself. This is very healthy behavior, as you know. I couldn't tell you if I believe them or not--I don't believe most of the things I think. You shouldn't either. Maybe there's something profound to be unearthed in this ridiculous rambling screed, or maybe you're just looking through the bars. Either way, I hope you enjoy watching this dumb little monkey jerk off. I'll be editing the theme of my blog to be as shit as possible.
After assaulting your eyes, here's something for your ears. It's brought me comfort in the past.
