ITT I will talk a bunch of shit on whatever you direct my attentions to

hiveworks

Someone roll up an empty cask cuz I'm forecasting a bumper harvest of SOUR GRAPES

So the other day I was doing the perimeter patrol of my Face Book, in the ratty-yet-comforting-by-social-conditioning throes of a metaphor-sweater made of some kind of fiber I'm allergic to for the duration of this zag. The sweater is Seasonal Affective Disorder. There's a pattern knitted in that says "GOOD GOLLY HOW I WISH THIS COUNTRY I'M LIVING IN WAS BETTER ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH SHIT" and I'm finally making my way, downtown, out of winterntia hibernation and my self-imposed exilindolence from the community of ALTs scattered about this beautiful administrative region

Anyway so I'm on Facebook, and I see the group of people who I would dare to say I enjoy the company of most, of the less-limited-than-I-make-myself-believe-group-of people who speak my first language and live within a couple hours' drive from my town. These folks are doing a DnD campaign together and they posted a recording of their session and BOY FUCKING HOWDY WAS I JEALOUS.

My train of thought went a little something like this:

• Awareness this group was doing DnD >upgraded to> actual audio proof that this was a thing people were doing and they were having fun
  
• Why don't I get to spend time with a group like this IRL
  
• Why wasn't I invited to this (select all that apply)
  • It's cuz DnD gets pretty unwieldy in large groups
    
  • It's cuz you live an hour's drive away so organising regular gatherings is harder
    
  • It's cuz you're much less of a factor, emotionally speaking, in these folks' lives than they are in yours
    
  • It's cuz your introversion kills any momentum on relationship-building
    
  • It's cuz you're indifferent on the existence of people until they're needed to serve your need of "avoiding loneliness"
    
  • It's cuz you avoid people because "using" people like that classifies you as a "bad" person and thus someone who should not be interacting with "decent" people like them
    
  • It's media
    
  • It's cuz your anxiety makes you overthink everything, especially social shit
    
• Wow, you know what, fuck these guys, I'm perfectly happy without participating in a scheduled social activity
  
• Wow that's hilarious, cuz last I checked my brain is incapable of happiness???
  
• You're Envious. Denying you want the thing or devaluing the thing is like Envy 101
  
• Oh man I'm so in tune with my emotions. I mean My emotional range is to normal people's what a bass guitar's is' with the top three strings missing but life's all about playing the strings you were dealt amirite?
  
• Alone and envious of other people's fun on a Friday night? God you're pathetic. Go back to step three of this list and add "toxic person these guys have no obligation to be friends with" to the sublist if you haven't already
  
• Go try organise your own shit. Cry angrily when it doesn't work out and blame your friends

And then you wait with all the impatience your apathetic ass can muster for a change in seasons and your eventual moving-out to a country where getting help with the Depression isn't entirely contingent on getting hithero-unattainable help with the Overwhelming Anxiety At The Mere Prospect of Failure/Rejection.


(What, did you think this thread was a Personal Bugbear Grooming service? Well yeah maybe it kind of is but you gotta take a fuckening spin on the Timewastrel Roulette to find out how much of a tangent I go on before actually getting to shittalking you shit of talkchoice)

Anyway I had exactly zero powerfully negative feelings toward Hiveworks so I had to go and do research? It's basically a group of friends repping each other's stuff and using a facade of professionalism to avoid acknowledging the fact they've got personal biases and taste and a dose of nepotism. To which I can totally fuckin relate.

They went done got themselves enough momentum and social capital within the webcomics community that now they're the kind of gig every young webcomic artist is aspiring to. And if they struggle to admit getting accepted is going to involve catering to a site owner's subjective tastes and/or the approval of a shadowy onanistic cabal, well, I'm not exactly in a hypocrisy-free place to blame 'em from y'dig?

tl;dr envy is gross and I say that as a deeply envious and petty person