Hello, and welcome! Some rambling about me and YQ’s history
Posted: 07 May 2024, 08:48
This is a fun board category and I figure it would be good to introduce myself, even if a lot of you already know me! Especially since forums have a better lifespan than social media.
I’m the one person team who works on Yokoka’s Quest! I do everything from concept, writing, drawing the comic, managing and designing the website— if anything wasn’t done by me I’ve probably credited who’s done it.
Both creating stories and website making are stuff I started being passionate about when I was 14-16 years old. I’ve had a pretty rocky life which made the former a lot easier to keep up with than the latter (though I’ve somehow managed to keep the hosting service paid every year, even when I didn’t have a fixed home address which is something I see as an achievement), but I had a bad case of “can’t stick to a single project” disease so I would constantly start things up, burn out, stop. Start a new project. Yokoka’s Quest is the exception, but mostly because it was the first story I wrote and it set a standard. Once I completed it, something that took me exactly one year, I felt pressure to surpass it and fell into the trap of wanting a perfect beginning and never getting too far into the project.
I didn’t have the skills or patience to do the webcomic it was always meant to be at the time, it was a written story that I wrote chapter by chapter. I made most of it up as I went, and took many long breaks, so I would sometimes write many chapters a day or none for months, alternating between writing it and drawing the characters. I would never go back to rewrite an older chapter once it was done and I think for me that was part of the fun and why my other projects failed. It was a simple enough story I could do that, but also open up a lot of possibilities that I could address whenever it felt relevant or save for later. Near the end, it really came together neatly as I closed all the doors I had opened. This is how this version is going as well. I have the original story as a skeleton, know my start and end, floating open threads and questions, and I’m just having fun filling it all a bit more in each chapter.
As you can probably tell by the comic now having over one thousand pages over its 8.5 years run, I’ve managed to fix this flaw of mine and taught myself to fully commit to something until it’s done! I properly figured out the way my brain works, what I like doing, and made an actual solid plan and work ethic this time, learned to structure things more solidly. This seems a good time and place to reminisce about it all, I hope this is interesting in some way.
I do go back to change things because I don’t want the pressure to not be allowed to edit any of it which often paralyzes me into needing to strike perfection at my first attempt, but it’s mostly to add some extra worldbuilding I’ve come up with, or things that slipped my mind. The writing stays the same, and many things I instead address later on if that makes more sense. For example, I had a dyslexia moment when I designed Azha, I wanted him to be left handed but I got mixed up at some point and his character design was right handed. This bothered me but it felt like too much work to go back and edit it all, plus I could see getting confused. In the planned next generation sequel, the protagonist (well, I’m sure it’s not really a spoiler by now) is going to be Yokoka and Azha’s daughter and she’s a dual sword wielder. I thought I could make some interesting foreshadowing related to this, and a bonding moment. I’m very happy with the solution I came up with.
The comic is full of small things like this, because one of the things I enjoy the most is problem solving. It makes me feel really good and happy and satisfied. It’s sometimes hard to see all of this as a job because I’m just having fun playing with my toys, and sharing and rambling at people about them. It’s honestly shocking it took so long for me to realize I was autistic, this seems extremely autistic of me. I really enjoy making people feel things, and this playground is fully in my control. Come on in, enter the rollercoaster, I’ll take you places! I’m glad it’s enjoyed and interesting. I hope you like where we go next.
As for website making, it started with oekakies. Not just drawing but hosting my own board and playing around with that. There was also a time in secondary school where we finished our robotics program a few weeks early so our teacher taught us html and i ate that shit up and built the whole project website at the speed of light. I never put it down. So many of my more ambitious projects involve them, and I’m finally starting to properly work on those and I’m feeling so happy and satisfied about it. These forums are very basic at the moment and mostly the first step— I hope to make them more interesting looking. It’ll be a great place to set down and organize a bunch of lore notes and I am excited to share that. This host migration has been a good learning experience already.
If you have any other open source types of websites you like, feel free to poke me and I’ll look into setting things up! I really want to grow on the website and self hosting community part of things this year and the next. Thank you for joining me. I think we’re all tired of social media and corporates controlling everything, right?
I should stop soon for now but feel free to ask me anything and I’ll answer :3 it was fun to let loose and ramble about me and my comic in a text post. Though I guess I’ve left out some important basic information… better late than never— I’m Chris, you can use they/them or he/him for me both are good. I’m a disabled trans artist, and a lot of the driving force behind my writing is from autism, grief and ptsd, and also wanting to make people laugh and feel some kind of brainworms obsession if possible. The type that chases away depression, there’s no time for that when you think of all the trouble my girl is getting into by being dumb. I first wrote Yokoka’s Quest while I was in a difficult home situation with far too much responsibility to handle for my age, and it broke me. Writing this story saved my life, and it continues to be the way I cope with hardships. Though my life is much better these days, which is a big relief. I care a lot and want to make people smile and feel loved and understood, especially through difficult moments. And I in turn want to be heard and understood through my stories too. I want this story to be a dear friend.
Love you all <3
I’m the one person team who works on Yokoka’s Quest! I do everything from concept, writing, drawing the comic, managing and designing the website— if anything wasn’t done by me I’ve probably credited who’s done it.
Both creating stories and website making are stuff I started being passionate about when I was 14-16 years old. I’ve had a pretty rocky life which made the former a lot easier to keep up with than the latter (though I’ve somehow managed to keep the hosting service paid every year, even when I didn’t have a fixed home address which is something I see as an achievement), but I had a bad case of “can’t stick to a single project” disease so I would constantly start things up, burn out, stop. Start a new project. Yokoka’s Quest is the exception, but mostly because it was the first story I wrote and it set a standard. Once I completed it, something that took me exactly one year, I felt pressure to surpass it and fell into the trap of wanting a perfect beginning and never getting too far into the project.
I didn’t have the skills or patience to do the webcomic it was always meant to be at the time, it was a written story that I wrote chapter by chapter. I made most of it up as I went, and took many long breaks, so I would sometimes write many chapters a day or none for months, alternating between writing it and drawing the characters. I would never go back to rewrite an older chapter once it was done and I think for me that was part of the fun and why my other projects failed. It was a simple enough story I could do that, but also open up a lot of possibilities that I could address whenever it felt relevant or save for later. Near the end, it really came together neatly as I closed all the doors I had opened. This is how this version is going as well. I have the original story as a skeleton, know my start and end, floating open threads and questions, and I’m just having fun filling it all a bit more in each chapter.
As you can probably tell by the comic now having over one thousand pages over its 8.5 years run, I’ve managed to fix this flaw of mine and taught myself to fully commit to something until it’s done! I properly figured out the way my brain works, what I like doing, and made an actual solid plan and work ethic this time, learned to structure things more solidly. This seems a good time and place to reminisce about it all, I hope this is interesting in some way.
I do go back to change things because I don’t want the pressure to not be allowed to edit any of it which often paralyzes me into needing to strike perfection at my first attempt, but it’s mostly to add some extra worldbuilding I’ve come up with, or things that slipped my mind. The writing stays the same, and many things I instead address later on if that makes more sense. For example, I had a dyslexia moment when I designed Azha, I wanted him to be left handed but I got mixed up at some point and his character design was right handed. This bothered me but it felt like too much work to go back and edit it all, plus I could see getting confused. In the planned next generation sequel, the protagonist (well, I’m sure it’s not really a spoiler by now) is going to be Yokoka and Azha’s daughter and she’s a dual sword wielder. I thought I could make some interesting foreshadowing related to this, and a bonding moment. I’m very happy with the solution I came up with.
The comic is full of small things like this, because one of the things I enjoy the most is problem solving. It makes me feel really good and happy and satisfied. It’s sometimes hard to see all of this as a job because I’m just having fun playing with my toys, and sharing and rambling at people about them. It’s honestly shocking it took so long for me to realize I was autistic, this seems extremely autistic of me. I really enjoy making people feel things, and this playground is fully in my control. Come on in, enter the rollercoaster, I’ll take you places! I’m glad it’s enjoyed and interesting. I hope you like where we go next.
As for website making, it started with oekakies. Not just drawing but hosting my own board and playing around with that. There was also a time in secondary school where we finished our robotics program a few weeks early so our teacher taught us html and i ate that shit up and built the whole project website at the speed of light. I never put it down. So many of my more ambitious projects involve them, and I’m finally starting to properly work on those and I’m feeling so happy and satisfied about it. These forums are very basic at the moment and mostly the first step— I hope to make them more interesting looking. It’ll be a great place to set down and organize a bunch of lore notes and I am excited to share that. This host migration has been a good learning experience already.
If you have any other open source types of websites you like, feel free to poke me and I’ll look into setting things up! I really want to grow on the website and self hosting community part of things this year and the next. Thank you for joining me. I think we’re all tired of social media and corporates controlling everything, right?
I should stop soon for now but feel free to ask me anything and I’ll answer :3 it was fun to let loose and ramble about me and my comic in a text post. Though I guess I’ve left out some important basic information… better late than never— I’m Chris, you can use they/them or he/him for me both are good. I’m a disabled trans artist, and a lot of the driving force behind my writing is from autism, grief and ptsd, and also wanting to make people laugh and feel some kind of brainworms obsession if possible. The type that chases away depression, there’s no time for that when you think of all the trouble my girl is getting into by being dumb. I first wrote Yokoka’s Quest while I was in a difficult home situation with far too much responsibility to handle for my age, and it broke me. Writing this story saved my life, and it continues to be the way I cope with hardships. Though my life is much better these days, which is a big relief. I care a lot and want to make people smile and feel loved and understood, especially through difficult moments. And I in turn want to be heard and understood through my stories too. I want this story to be a dear friend.
Love you all <3
