A Universe built upon Parody can not stand for very long!

I remember when old Rathbone first said this all those many eons ago before this Universe came into being & I find myself thinking about this more everyday. I look out to the stars from my perch beyond your concept of time & space. I see more & more of them go dark to never be seen again. But given the nature of these lights: Their origin point had already gone dark long before I saw the light. But I digress...

I look down upon this Universes' worlds to see more & more people, places, nouns of all kinds disappearing. I guess they are gone to vast expanse known to many as Comic Book Limbo but I dare not to go search for them for fear I'd be forgotten myself. I miss the adventures of such people as the stalwart Amazing Guy & his compatriots The JBH, the heroic acts of Nitz the Bloody, the boisterous nature of Donar, the works of spiffy, the amusing adventures of characters such as Nats, ManMan & his talkative kitchen utensil Knifey, De Brown Streak, Goldeneyed & others.

I sense & as others have that the Eyes that watch over this Universe on the edge of the probability curve have left. Others wonder if any of those Eyes are still watching. I as well as many other have always known that the Universe has always been in a constant state of decomposition. Life would begin, flourish, reach it's prime, it's high point & then die away to be replaced by something else. But it seems that the replenishment has started to be more infrequent. I've been noticing that some things never make it to the point it should have. It's is born & on the way to it's high point, it's prime the life dies along on the way. Which is sad since all life is precious no matter how many crappy.

I've seen many a time where life is started to be created. New Life! New Ideas! A Continuation of the species but along the way to full creation, it dies for whatever reason & disappears like it never existed. But it did for I & maybe a set of Eyes or two remember it. But that half life of memory is very short lived for other things alway become more pressing & bump this memory of special life from our minds. I like to think that this creations end up somewhere nice, a happy place, but mostly they end up as a meal for the Hero Feeders or something much worse. My heart breaks even time I think of it. I may not remember who they were but I know they existed so I guess they still exist as long as I do.

But I fear that my time is also is also coming to an end. Back when I came to view this wonderful corner of life I & it was so full of life. I came to care to for what I saw. Care so much that I too started to create life myself, at time it may have been inferior life but life none the less.

But as I've noticed the death/rebirth process slow down, some of the Eyes depart & I become distracted by other things my perchance for creating new life has always wained. I've attempted to create new life but along the way it just dies or never gets as far as being formed. Even in the life I've created in the past I'm finding less & less reason to meddle in their affairs. I dare say they may have become boring to me. I could erase them & restart them a new but why bother?

At times in the past, I've thought about leaving my perch here & flying off to other places to see what they may have for me but my ties to this perch still hold sway over my heart. What can I say? I'm nostalgic ol' bird. I fear the light are going out & am not sure how to to take it.

- Charles "Chuck",
Mischievous Pigeon of Happenstance with access to Knowledge, Magics & Magiks he really shouldn't have.

I've agonized a few times about what it means and what to do about it.

The first question I ask myself is, where are people going?

I know there's a recent trend for people to want to set up blogs or facebook pages or something similar that allows them to control both the content and the audience, and also puts everything in a place they *want* to visit every day. But I too have a Livejournal, and there's a whopping 3 people who read it...maybe - not exactly a way to have a story well read. I also have a web site I used to post stories too, but that had a readership of zero (which is why I started posting stuff here).

So that brings up the question: Are people *successful* with these self-generated sites and there's something I don't know? Or do they just believe in it enough that they'll stick with it even with a tiny audience?

...or, the saddest possibility, are we slowly abandoning our creativity for the sake of fitting into the mold of facebook, twitter, blogspot, etc, and posting the same ol' "what I'm doing right now" as everyone else?

In short, are they writing and posting somewhere else, or have they given up writing entirely to change genres? And if they are writing and posting elsewhere, are they successful? Am I missing out? Or is it a simple matter of trying to "grow up" and stick to more serious things like work and family?


The next question I ask myself, inevitably, is what to do about it.

Every time I ask that question at least one or two people (not just here either, at Comicboards too) tell me the demise of message boards as a genre is inevitable and I should stop whining and deal with it. That's probably partly true - but as the designer of the board software, I have to wonder if that demise is *premature* because of some particular reason.

Whether it's usability features, accessibility of the board, missing collaboration features that other boards have and people have decided they can't live without. If it's a hopeless endeavor because I'm being beaten by "official" company sponsored boards with an automatic drawn audience, etc.

I know that those who have left or are lurking because they don't want to give away their presence don't owe me or anyone else at the board anything, and maybe they don't want to explain why they either left or are on the verge of leaving. I would like to know, though, even if it's insulting. Even if the reason is my software, or even my own attitude or my writing style or my handling of certain characters that's been scaring people away. Or even if it's simply that you were reading one person's work or characters primarily and you left because they did.

I guess it's less that everyone's disappearing, and more that I wish I knew why that's killing me. I can't really stop the progress of time, or drag people back here (hell, I don't even really know how to *attract* people back here) but it would be nice to know.

...reading and writing for the Parodyverse was a profoundly valuable experience, and I would not want to see this community go. At the same time, my active participation in it was during the time when it was my primary creative outlet. My energies have shifted to different projects now, and it's hard to participate without that focus ( even if just as a reader of others' BZL stories ). I apologize if I haven't stayed in touch as well as I could, but iI don't have the time or energy necessary for writing BZL material these days.

Of course, it *is* Halloween, so a little talk of death is warranted. I wouldn't say that the Parodyverse cannot stand for long... it has stood for 11 years, which is an amazing accomplishment (even if this last year was quite sparse.)

As for where people are going, I imagine that they're going in every direction. Regardless of whether "message boards" are dying (and the popularity of talk-back features would indicate that they're not, at least in the broad sense), the challenge of the Parodyverse has always been that it's fueled entirely by internal content. "The Avengers Message Board" will always be pulling in new posters as long as there's an Avengers comic being read by thousands of people. Traffic is driven to find it, and the community is driven to react by each issue that comes out... the production of which requires no effort from the posters.

Here, not only do the posters need to know of the existence of the Parodyverse to even show up, they need to generate the content that drives the discussion. Obviously, that's a big burden to carry, and it would be hard to replenish the pool of posters willing to do that even in the best of times.

So really, the Parodyverse just became a bit of a clubhouse on the internet... not a terribly exclusive one, as people were certainly invited to attend, but still one without much of a draw outside a circle of friends.

I do think this place has been valuable, and could remain valuable to the posters that frequent it. I know I learned a lot about the creative process here, and I had a blast doing it. I hope to yet learn more and have more fun.

As for where I've been personally, it's been dealing with the various issues in my life. I'm still looking for full time work (but doing freelance work in the meantime, something that has screwed with my ability to collect unemployment, but that's another topic...) I have another interview for a senior artist position today, so job hunting is still a priority as well.

I'm not quite as fat and lazy as I was back in the day when I would churn out some regular (or even semi-regular) PV content, but I haven't forgotten the gang here and the characters still romp on adventures through my head. I just need to get to a place where I can share them again.