TerraDraca

You all know I'm not one for begging or anything like that. I'm not in any dire financial situation right now but I will say, this is likely to be a difficult year for me as a Canadian. So I'll make it brief, if you've all been enjoying the comic, I would ask you to consider taking a look at my patreon and donating if you can. Anything helps, especially right now. I don't want to cancel the comic and believe me, I am taking every measure I can to ensure it doesn't come to that but if things continue to get worse, I just don't know. My thanks for the understanding and especially thank you to all of you who continue to donate to make this comic possible. https://www.patreon.com/dollysplaytime

SPOILER WARNING Okay, if it the title wasn't obvious enough, this is going to contain spoilers for Endwalker, Final Fantasy 14's latest expansion so if you haven't played it yet but intend to, turn back now. I finished Endwalker a while back and was utterly blown away by it. What really struck me about it is how it was ultimately a battle between two ideas. The first being "To live is to suffer, so why live at all?" The second was "To live is to suffer and from that suffering find strength and purpose." Obviously the protagonist is of the latter and the antagonist is of the former. What was truly brilliant is how this story is a perfect deconstruction of utopianism. Utopianism is the pursuit of a perfect society that is free of suffering. Throughout the plot of Endwalker, you learn of many worlds who tried to create such societies only to bring about their own downfalls. The protagonists and the powers that guide them instead fight for the idea that suffering will always be part of life and that it is neither possible, nor ultimately desirable to cast it out entirely. To the untrained eye, this looks like a very cynical and pessimistic view but in truth, it is quite the contrary. The idea that we should pursue a perfect society free of suffering sounds like a very noble goal but there is a hidden dark side to it. The flipside of this idea is if it's not possible to live without suffering, then there is no point to living at all. The reason the warrior of light and their world as a whole won where others had failed is because it recognized that overcoming suffering and pressing on IS the whole point to living. It's not unjust. It's not a cruel joke. It's just one of the many tragic, but necessary side effects of life being possible at all. Negative emotions like fear, pain and sadness aren't inherently evil. Chances are, they've probably saved your life a few times. Never forget that. Just some thoughts I wanted to share. If you haven't played FF14, do try it. It's truly one of a kind.

As many of you know, I do weekly streams including Terra's Gaming Den on saturdays where I host board games. Viewable live on twitch at: https://www.twitch.tv/terradraca And later posted on rumble at: https://rumble.com/user/LadyMaou For January 29th's game, we're having a giveaway. I have come into possession of an extra copy of the board game Chai which I don't need so I will be hosting a Chai game and the winner will win that copy. If you haven't checked out my board gaming server, what are you waiting for? Contact me on discord at Terra#6986 for an invite and your chance to win. ^^

My previous attempt was plagued by scheduling problems but I do believe I've so far managed to deal with them and now that I have a new fursona, let us put her to use. Do you like board games? Do you have Tabletop Simulator? Are you free early on saturdays? Then come to Terra's den and pull up a seat! We'll be livestreaming and recording board gaming every week on saturdays. For our pilot, we're going to play Armello but don't worry if you don't have it. Most of our games will be on tabletop simulator which you can get on Steam for cheap. Lord Hawkeye#7107 Contact me for an invite if you wish to join. (Apologies but we cannot move to another day so if Saturday isn't good for you, I'm afraid nothing can be done."

You've all seen it and you all hate to see it, when writers and artists obsessively cram their politics and ideologies into all their work and when you voice your objections, you're met with the usual cop outs like "Lol, everything is political." You know intuitively that's utter nonsense but maybe you can't quite put into words why. Well, next time you encounter one of these, don't give yourself headaches, just send them this. .....................

Okay, let me explain something to you that you should have figured out in high school. Actions speak louder than words. The words you say don't matter as much as how you say them and the manner in which you conduct yourself while saying them. What does this have to do with making one's work political? When you're dealing and trading with others, there's a thing called being professional. If someone payed me to write a story that isn't really to my personal tastes, I don't change it to suit me because they're the customer. They're the ones paying and pleasing them is the goal here. In short, being professional is having the emotional maturity to understand that when you're in the market place, it's not all about you. You need to put your personal preferences aside and think about how to serve the needs of others. That's how it works.

When you force politics into your work, you're making your work all about you. THAT is why it turns people off. Not because they happen to disagree with it. I'd wager many of them do agree with the message. They just don't want to see it plastered over their entertainment.

When you do that, you are telling the world that you're not professional, you lack emotional maturity and that tells everyone that you don't make smart business decisions. Most importantly, it tells your customers that you intend to take their money and use it to create something you want instead of something they want. Is it really that surprising that getting political is such a red flag? Sorry but nobody's interested in paying you to indulge yourself. So there's your words to remember and live by: It's not all about you.