If It Doesn’t Spark Joy… ✨🖤
Then it might belong in one of my stories.
Hi there!
Before Sacrimony was my main creative project, I had a completely different plan.
I was trying to start a jewelry business.
Does that sound strange? You’d be surprised how many skills I’ve acquired over the course of my years. Aside from writing and drawing, I learned video editing, html, css, other random bits of web coding, wax carving, silversmithing, stone setting, sewing, crocheting and probably some other stuff I forgot I know.
Oh yeah, thanks to my dad, I can also tile a kitchen or bathroom. 😂
Anyway, back in the day, I was signing up for every marketplace and craft fair I could find, hauling my little displays around and hoping one market would be the one where things finally clicked. (Spoiler alert: they never did.)
Most of the markets were pretty dead. Booth fees were unnecessarily expensive (thanks NYC!), and the few customers who wandered through were usually looking for mass produced things they could buy for five dollars. Not exactly the ideal situation for handmade work where the cheapest thing was probably $65. Oof.
So there I was at one particularly quiet market, sitting behind my table with nothing to do. I started doodling in my sketchbook to kill time, as I am wont to do. The market owner came by, noticed I was drawing and asked if she could take a look. I’m not particularly secretive or precious with my sketchbooks, so I handed it over.
She flipped through the pages for a while, studying all the characters and little scenes I had drawn. When she handed the sketchbook back to me, she asked a question I had never really thought about before.
“Why aren’t any of these characters smiling?”
I looked at the drawings again and the answer came out immediately.
“They don’t have anything to smile about.”
At the time it felt like such an obvious answer, but it was also something I had never consciously thought about before.
My characters weren’t happy. They were sad, defeated, hopeless, spiteful, scared, angry and sometimes all of those things at once.
Over the years people have jokingly, and sometimes very seriously, called me a sadist for the things I put my characters through. But that’s never really how I think about the story. I’m not sitting at my desk thinking, “Heeheehee, what other horrible thing can I do to this poor unsuspecting character?”
It’s more like asking, “What other bullshit does life have to offer?”
Because art imitates life.
And life, at least in my experience, is a lot of bullshit. It’s often a long series of things we don’t particularly want to deal with. Responsibilities, disappointments, unexpected setbacks and difficult choices. Every once in a while we might get a treat, a good moment or justtttt a little bit of peace.
That rhythm feels familiar to me, and I think it naturally works its way into the stories I tell.
But the reason I keep telling those stories isn’t because I enjoy watching characters suffer. It’s because even in the middle of all that mess, people keep going. They question things, they change, their circumstances change and yet, they cling to the few things that make life feel meaningful. They find small pieces of connection in places they never expected.
I know it doesn’t seem like it yet, but Sacrimony is about all these characters looking for meaning. They’re looking for what makes them happy, what matters and what will keep them going at the end of the day.
That’s the part that matters to me.
So if my characters don’t smile very often, maybe it’s because the moment they finally do, it will be deeply rewarding.
Before I wrap up, I also want to mention two ways you can help support Sacrimony right now.
First, Sacrimony has been nominated for three Zelda Awards categories:
• Best Fantasy Webcomic
• Best Series
• Best Writer
The Zelda Awards spotlight female and nonbinary creators whose work is often overlooked by the mainstream comics world, and it would mean a lot to me if you took a moment to vote.
And if you’d like to follow along with the next chapter of the story, you can also follow the upcoming Sacrimony #9 Kickstarter so you’ll be notified when the campaign launches.
We’re just three followers away from 100! C’mon!
Thank you, as always, for being here and for continuing to read these strange, emotional stories alongside me.
Even if my characters don’t smile very often, it means a lot that you’re still here with them.
Talk soon. 🖤
-M
PS: Jewelry kickstarter, anyone?? Thoughts? I would love to maybe make some sort of limited-edition Sacrimony related things…
Silversmithing, - that's pretty neat.