emmengard

J the Shadow sitting by a fire with a book

Hello all,

We have been branching out a bit with our art lately. Weasel and Phillis started the rather bizarre "Gerbils and Donk" strip, which is not very popular, but it has some fans, particularly in the creepy pasta community on Reddit. We also started a comic about plurality and the DID experience, called "The Blobbies" that also a has a small but loyal fan base it seems, and we still have old J the Shadow (pictured above)

Then, behind the scenes Z is still working on her buddy comedy novel, Jax has her more serious Sci-fi novel, Elowen paints, and everyone makes up random songs on the uke, which are not great .. but they make us smile... we have been thinking about starting a Youtube channel or a twitch so if people wanted to watch us do art and play the ukelele, they could.

Anyway, all these new art avenues have gotten us thinking about what makes art good.

The conclusion we have come to is that the most important thing is it makes people feel something, be that wonder, awe, nostalgia, pain, discomfort, whatever. Whatever it is, art is there to highlight some aspect of the human experience, to sort of wake people up in themselves.

Art doesn't always need to be pretty, or polished or refined. Gerbils and Donk is a very weird comic, and the style is a little creepy. There is just something off there. Every time we post a Gerbils and Donk drawing to instagram, people unfollow us XD

BUT that tells us that it is DOING something. People have such a strong reaction to it that we know there is something there.We love the comments we get about Gerbils and Donk, because the comments are always some rendition of "this is soooooo weird and creepy and almost disturbing, but I love it and I have no idea why!"

We also get a lot of comments on the Blobbies, but those comments are different. They tend to be comments about how much they identify with what the Blobbies are going through, and there is often a plea for us to make more. There is an almost desperate quality to the comments, which makes sense to us.

I think as humans we are always looking for something out in the world that resonates with us, we are seeking that which in someway reflects our own experiences. We are craving self understanding. Art gives people that.

But when you are plural, that is really hard to find that experience in art. Maybe individual systemmates will find stories about people that resonate with them and how they see themselves, but to find a story that resonates with how it is to share a life and a body with other people the way that plurals do, that is an incredibly rare find.

We feel like the Blobbies is important, in part, for that reason, because we just need more plural stories.

Then, by our measuring stick of "does it make you feel something," I would say that the Blobbies is also simply good art. It is silly and cute, but I think people feel something when they read it.

The difficult trade off is that to make art that other people can feel, that truly resonates, as the artist, you have to feel it when you are making it. The Blobbies is a very emotional project for us. Every strip is a real emotional journey, sometimes just individual frames are brutal. It is silly and cute, the style is just adorable.. but it is a very heavy subject, and the plural journey is an incredibly difficult one.

We love being plural. We love being who we are, but the journey to get to here, to where we are today, it was pure hell.

The Blobbies of the Blob system are going to get here, they are going to get to that place where they love and accept each other, but the next ten to fifteen strips are going to be heartbreaking. We are dreading them in a way. And because we are dreading them, we know that it is important that we follow through and do them.

Sometimes it doesn't even feel like a choice, these are just the stories that we have in us to tell, and these stories feel important and right in a way that they never did before, when we were trying to be one person. Before, we only found part of a story, a small snapshot of a larger dream. We couldn't tell a really emotionally honest and real story, because we were living within a lie, and we couldn't even see it.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for caring. If you have a stories within you to tell, you should go out and tell them. It doesn't need to be pretty or polished or perfect. It just has to be honest and real. If you do that, your audience will feel it.

Maybe that is what we are all really looking for...just something real.

Much love,

Ariadne, Talia and Z