A lot of webcomic creators think about maintaining a place for our readers to connect with each other, and enjoy our comics and other art. This might be the comment section already built into your host, a Patreon or YouTube comment area where folks can look at your side content and chat, or a real-time chat space like Discord or Twitch. They’re all a little different and can attract all kinds of attention, good and bad, so we’re going to dive into what that looks like.

In this Episode:




• What is your experience with community spaces and interactions around your comic work? Tell us what kinds of spaces you’ve experimented with making and how it went!
• What are the potential areas that can make a community successful or less successful?
• What is your advice to someone who is looking to create more community interaction around their art and comics?

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Episode Release Date: April 29, 2026

Episode Credits:

Kristen Lee (Krispy) - she/they, https://ghostjunksickness.com https://www.lunarblight.com

Star Prichard - she/her, https://thestarfishface.com/ https://castoff-comic.com/

Claire Niebergall (Clam) - she/her, https://intothesmokecomic.com https://www.demonoftheunderground.com

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The Intro "DO IT (feat. Shia LaBeouf)", and the Outro "It's Good To See You Again!!", both by Adrianwave, have been used and modified in good faith under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Licensed. Edits include: Fade IN/OUT, and a repeat added to the beginning of "It's Good To See You Again!!". For more information on this creative commons use, please reference https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.

Transcription

This transcript is auto generated by our recording software.

00:00:00.09

Krispy

A little fat, delicious bonito. Okay.

00:00:15.06

Krispy

Hello and welcome to Screen Tones, where we talk anything and everything webcomics. Today, we're go to be talking about creating and managing communities around your webcomic. I'm Krispy, my pronouns are she, they, and I make the webcomics Ghost Junk Sickness and Lunar Blight.

00:00:31.14

Star

I'm Star, my pronouns are she/her, and I make the webcomic Cast Off.

00:00:36.01

Claire

I'm Claire, also known as Clam. My pronouns are she/her. I make the webcomic Phantommarine.

00:00:41.91

Bob

And I'm Bob, my pronouns are anything and everything, and I make the webcomics Into the Smoke and Demon of the Underground.

00:00:50.23

Krispy

So a lot of webcomic creators think about maintaining a place for our readers to connect with each other and enjoy our comics and other art.

00:01:03.35

Krispy

This might be the comment section already built into your host, a Patreon, a YouTube comment area where folks can look at your side content and chat. or a real-time chat space like discord or twitch they're all a little different and can attract all kinds of attention good or bad so we're going to be diving into what that looks like which i'm quite excited about this is going to be good so thank you for joining me today i need to start with a little jaunt you know how it is a little fancy

00:01:33.38

Claire

I like this vibe, it's good.

00:01:33.83

Star

A little fancy. Welcome to a community episode. Sips my tea and strokes my mustache.

00:01:41.85

Krispy

Exactly. exactly we are all, you know, who oh so cheerio. I'm going I'm going in intense.

00:01:52.93

Krispy

This one's actually going be thrown at you, Star, immediately. So please get your glove to catch.

00:01:56.54

Star

Oh!

00:01:58.17

Krispy

what is you You're ready.

00:01:58.43

Star

Oh, my catcher's mitt. have it.

00:02:02.78

Krispy

ah What is your experience with community spaces and interactions around your comic work?

00:02:03.43

Star

I'm ready.

00:02:07.90

Krispy

And tell us what the kinds of spaces you've experimented with and how it went. So just get into the nitty gritties.

00:02:14.92

Star

Oh, man. Yeah. So I over the 10 plus years that Cast Off has been running, I think by the time this episode goes up, we will have hit the 11th anniversary.

00:02:25.03

Krispy

Yay!

00:02:25.16

Star

And Cast Off wasn't even my first webcomic. So I've been doing webcomics since 2010. Do that math. And in that time, I've experimented with many different ways of community hosting. I mean, of course, obviously, like the first and most basic one is the comment section on your website. Right.

00:02:43.86

Star

And so I've used that. I started a Cast Off Discord, I think like three, like two or three years into the comic, just because I had started using Discord around that time and was like, I could make one of these.

00:02:59.29

Star

And there were like... 50 people in it for like the first couple years. There's not very much activity happening on that.

00:03:10.33

Star

I have done Twitch. There were a couple years there where I was trying to make streaming my thing like web comics were always my thing. But I streamed working on the comic. I streamed a lot of art stuff. I was really, really into Twitch. Twitch and I are like bitter exes now. I don't use Twitch anymore.

00:03:30.45

Star

That's an entirely unrelated conversation, but basically I have beef with any.. (louder) I have beef with any platform that does not respect its users, and therefore I don't enjoy Twitch very much. But overall...

00:03:43.90

Star

I would say that like your comment section is a good way to get people to like directly engage with the pages that they are looking at. And I find that people are generally a lot more willing to just leave a single comment on a page than they are to join in an entire Discord server. Because it's like a little intimidating, right? There's like a border of entry there of... You have to join the community. You've got to like actually walk in the door.

00:04:10.04

Star

Whereas the comment section is kind of like walking past a yard sale and they can be like, oh, that's a neat couch and keep walking. and But, you know, the Discord servers lend to more, like, intimate conversations, like, back and forth with other people because it is an instant messenger app. I would say overall that I have had a largely positive experience with it, with a big old asterisk of sometimes people don't have the best etiquette and...

00:04:42.15

Star

haunted look in my eyes ah so many people he's like if people have lurked on my live streams they probably know this story

00:04:44.76

Krispy

Oh?

00:04:51.42

Star

the gun the infamous cast-off gun guy. I'll tell you guys this story. This is pretty this is pretty well-known cast-off lore.

00:05:01.61

Star

So in the end of the first chapter of cast-off in the beginning of the second, we have our two main characters and the female main character, Ariana, she's in her heel era at the beginning of the comic. ah She eventually does a face turn, but it takes a few more chapters. And a lot of people took that...

00:05:19.45

Star

really personally. One in particular I've nicknamed Gun Guy, and he is a guy who basically just kind of went in my comment section to do a role play on how he would kill my deuteragonist.

00:05:37.62

Star

Yes, I did a dramatic reading of these comments on a live stream a while back, and I can find the clip and send it to y'all later.

00:05:45.86

Krispy

Oh my gosh.

00:05:45.94

Star

And I remember getting those comments as a baby comment, er as a baby webcomic artist, because again, Kastoff had been running for like six months at this point. It was very early on.

00:05:56.02

Star

And I remember ranting to my roommate about these comments. I'm like, who is this weirdo? Why is he being so weird? I did not delete the comments, though, because I didn't feel like I should.

00:06:06.53

Star

And I'm like, if I delete this comment, that means that he wins. Star from the future. No, it don't.

00:06:15.22

Star

No, it doesn't. I have learned over my life that you have to be able to moderate your communities if you want to have a good time and if you want other people to have a good time.

00:06:29.98

Star

And I don't know, maybe this is bleeding a little bit more into what our next question is going to be. But I will just say it's like you kind of have to be willing to put the people pleaser aside and be willing to delete comments that make you uncomfortable.

00:06:43.48

Star

um If there is anything I have to say, it is that. But we can elaborate on that more. I don't want to take up too much time. And a lot of this we'll go into in future questions, I'm sure. But just mostly positive. Some horror stories, though, definitely.

00:06:57.53

Krispy

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that you're just, we're going to, again, we're going to talking about it a little bit ah later, but this is definitely the mixed bag of what happens when you have, you know, the open doors to everybody kind of thing.

00:07:14.68

Krispy

So, I'm excited to learn more.

00:07:19.42

Star

There is more. I have thoughts. Well, I'll save it for later.

00:07:23.77

Krispy

So I'm going to throw this ball at ah Claire. So please get your catching mitt ready. Um, you know, tell us, I'm ready.

00:07:30.54

Claire

Oh boy. Oh boy.

00:07:33.29

Krispy

Put me in.

00:07:35.06

Claire

I'm just a dog.

00:07:35.90

Claire

You're going throw me the ball and I'm going to go get it. I'm going to go get it.

00:07:39.73

Star

Ball? Ball? Ball?

00:07:43.32

Krispy

I want to know your experience with community spaces and interactions around your comic. You know, tell us all about, you know, the ups and downs or what you've experimented with getting where you are.

00:07:54.39

Claire

Sure. So yeah, I, a lot of mine has basically been fan directed or reader directed, I guess. Because I came into web comics, basically just like, I don't know what's going on. I don't know what sites there are apart from , main social media stuff. I didn't know, I i had heard of Discord, but I i had no experience with it.

00:08:16.96

Claire

um So my my very first time going on Discord was having a fan actually make a Discord for my webcomic. And it's still the Discord that is there to this day. They eventually transferred it over to me. But yeah, basically, yeah, they set up a ah Discord that had...

00:08:34.65

Claire

lots of good channels for, you know artwork and fan fiction. And eventually there was a theory crafting channel because my comic has a lot of like, Ooh, what's going to happen? What does this puzzle piece mean? B asically just a lot of, a lot of it was not directed by me.

00:08:52.95

Claire

And I think I came into it being just like, I just want to make a story. I want to make something for people to read and interact with, however they interact with it, is up to them. And me being like grandma in terms of like, what's the Discord? I don't know what that is. Basically, I was just like, y'all do whatever you want. A lot of it was entirely out of my hands initially, but I joined in because I'm like, I love hearing people you know talk about this stuff. I'm glad to hear people interacting with it. And it grew slowly. I think that's something that I'm very grateful for is that like it it grew quickly in that as soon as I got it on Twitter and other social media, people started being like, oh, what's this comic? What's this comic? And then when it got into Hiveworks, like that, that exploded it as well.

00:09:47.13

Claire

But it never, it never was like an astronomical growth. And in that sense, I'm very happy because that made it so that when there when there were any sort of problems, there was usually, it was very quiet. There was no like massive fighting or anything like that. Because like, as soon as you get, I think more than 10 people in any space, the chances for some sort of disagreement go up.

00:10:12.60

Claire

Unless they're all, even honestly, if even if they're all pretty good friends, like all it takes was for one day, one person just to be, okay, I'm going to make this everybody's problem. So I think for me, having a space that's more on the small side or medium. You can look and see what everybody is doing. You can hire a couple of people, you know, friends who are also like-minded to be mods if you really need to. And to just kind of, you know, check yourself if you're like, is this person being kind of, and they're like, yeah.

00:10:49.44

Claire

Essentially just, yeah, I mainly do things on discord. i I tried a little bit with streaming both in discord and I think I was on Twitch or something like that.

00:11:00.60

Claire

I didn't like it so, so much. I think I don't have that kind of like entertainer gene in me to like constantly be on and answering questions while also drawing. Like I want to just draw and have other people talk. So in that sense, I'm like, yeah, I i tried it. Didn't work for me. Totally fine..

00:11:23.00

Claire

A vast majority on Discord. And yeah, i ah kind of like Star, like I i haven't had any, like, I haven't had a ton of blowups, but I've had a few, especially like going back to the idea of a comment section.

00:11:38.30

Claire

Like I was a big proponent of, oh, I want free speech and I want everybody to be able to talk and, you know, be friendly. And this is an intellectual comic, right?

00:11:49.12

Claire

Like people are going to be very mature in the comment section and I, boy, howdy.

00:11:56.13

Claire

Sometimes that's not true. And I did eventually, I made a big switch a couple years ago where, yeah, I turned on comment moderation where now I have to approve every comment that does come in.

00:12:11.13

Claire

And part of me feels weird about it because I'm like, I don't want to have to dictate what's right for somebody to say. But I'm also like, I don't want this person to start fighting with people. And this is a comment that is just trying to get people's goat. So into the garbage you go. Very much like, sir, this is a Wendy's. Like, this is not the place to be arguing about this sort of thing. And like...

00:12:34.55

Claire

Sometimes I do have to step back and be like, okay, it's 99% good, but that 1% bad is what you have to be prepared for. Honestly, at the start of all of this, I was not prepared for that 1% bad. guess my main conceit for all of this is like,

00:12:53.82

Claire

sort of conceit for all of this is like assume that people are going to be mostly good but like you have to be at least mentally prepared for some sort of weird drama or weird behavior to suddenly make you be like do I have do I have the barriers in place to keep this from being weird or parasocial or uncomfortable and if you don't do that now before it gets out of control

00:13:23.35

Krispy

Yeah, it's interesting both you and Star kind of mentioning, you know, starry-eyed , you know, oh we're going to start with this and it's going to be great. People are going to be like, yeah, it's a comic. I like it. And then unfortunately you get that one, the one guy and or the just the example of just like, okay, this is why we have certain kind of rules or or things in place to keep you know your work safe you safe your sanity in check kind of thing

00:13:55.43

Star

It's very much one person can ruin the stew for everybody. And the key is that you have to be willing to remove that person if it comes down to it.

00:14:06.77

Star

And a lot of times, like I was guilty of this too, when you're first starting out, you want everyone to have a nice time. You want everybody to be welcome. But sometimes people do not make themselves welcoming.

00:14:19.57

Star

And that's not on you. That's on them.

00:14:22.06

Krispy

Again, we're going talking about it in the next question. ah But I will put a little dog ear in this and that, you know, these decisions will not come kind of lightly. It's not going to be black and white. I don't think anything is going to be black and white when making these decisions either. B ut you know there's going to be vibes. There's going to be, you know, just things that they're kind of going after other, uh, commenters for and just being like, Hmm, is this fun to hang around? Or we all kind of anxious when I start seeing them typing? So we'll get into that later. but Bob, you're up. I'm, we're throwing the ball to you now. Y ou know, I want to hear about your experience with community spaces and interactions around your comic.

00:15:07.99

Bob

Okay, well, I did not catch the ball the way Claire so expertly did. I can't catch anything. but But...

00:15:13.96

Claire

I believe in you. You can do it.

00:15:15.67

Bob

But... I will try my best. I can pick it up from the ground. Okay. So I love... Webcomic communities or communities. My community has been wonderful, but i t is I just completely agree with that mixed bag description, even when everyone has good intentions.

00:15:40.09

Bob

it it can still be a little sticky sometimes but in terms of how things went you know my general ah background you know i started out just like everyone else all my activity was in the comments section and this is when i first launched uh Demon of the Underground which was my first web comic and it you know back at the time you know it was ah updating publicly for like several years now, it has been patrons only and is only just back to releasing public pages. And part of that decision was actually because I needed a little bit of a tone down in the community area. But back to the days when it was fully free and public and out there, my comments section just, you know, had this very slow, organic ah upward growth to the point where, you know, when I was a few years in, there were pages where I'd be getting like...

00:16:39.29

Bob

three figures worth of comments on a page. And it's like, oh, wow, these are like some really insightful conversations that people are having. It was very cool because Demon of the Underground is very, very heavy on world building. And that's something that people got really into. And I was surprised by that because in my experience, it always seemed like people only really engaged in fandoms that were very like romantically driven. And Demon of the Underground was interesting because it had some kind of romantic subplots and background stuff, but people were really into the world. And you know, I had like the four spheres of the underground and people could take little quizzes to see which sphere they went into and like, you know, give themselves a name in. Oh, I'm skipping ahead. And in Discord, people could give themselves names because the comments section then led into a Discord server.

00:17:33.78

Bob

I was an early adopter on Discord, so I benefited from that. My dear old friend ah Theron always gets me in on ah new platforms that are interesting, most recently being Blue Sky. And so it was like a cool new thing that most webcomic creators weren't doing. So ah that was a place where my people could hang out and chat with each other. I t was, you know, not a very large community, like at at its most active, i mean,

00:18:07.96

Bob

You know, it's probably something like 300 people, so not very huge, but, you know, a lot of them are active and there were a lot of very in-depth conversations, even around my Patreon extras and stuff like that. What kind of led to a little bit of burnout is that when you have a very...

00:18:27.32

Bob

you know, a smaller and kind of intimate community that welcomes people kind of bearing their souls. That was very heavy for me to moderate because, you know, like I feel, you know, I care about my readers. I care about my patrons. If something bad happens to one of them, I want to be there to console them. And then like, then you are this creator who is like consoling all of these people or, you know, just trying to get into, you know, get in the middle of disagreements as well as we talked about. But,

00:18:58.46

Bob

it was just a little too much of a good thing, I guess is how I would describe it. And these days, you know, my new webcomic Into the Smoke is, it's newer. So the community is still growing and there isn't,

00:19:14.61

Bob

like it's not like a one-to-one overlap with Demon of the Underground. So there is ah an element of building from scratch, but so far, you know, it seems to be a healthy group and still insightful and interesting comments that are growing more interesting as the story evolves. So we'll see where that goes.

00:19:34.00

Krispy

I like that. I like the fact that you have the two webcomics to kind of compare and contrast to and see what kind of bleeds over to. But, you know, for all three of the responses, there's been that kind of experience having it being a lot when you have that.

00:19:51.13

Krispy

And you make a really good point about someone being very open emotionally when connecting to your work, because that's the one thing that like a lot of people in the indie spheres have.

00:20:03.26

Krispy

an advantage and a disadvantage too with just how instant the reactions are to your work and some of them can be really raw like you know if you're having a character experience some things that you know a reader is like wow I relate really heavily to this and I'm now going to either project or just hardcore dump whatever on like it is a lot as a creator to read so it's just it is interesting interesting reflecting on that and it's not like it's not a bad thing it's not saying that you know you're not allowed to you know, ah engage in these sort of ways. But, you know, talking about this hopefully makes folks realize what spaces you're kind of in and where you're talking to. Because like a lot of bigger IPs don't usually reach the creator when you're talking about it. And there's also a good, you know, sense of separation that should exist there too, for your own sake. But

00:21:01.94

Krispy

We’ll get into that later

00:21:13.29

Claire

You need to talk about yourself.

00:21:21.51

Star

Chris, they catch this ball.

00:21:25.42

Claire

We're going to beam you at this ball.

00:21:27.27

Star

I'm throwing it at you.

00:21:30.20

Krispy

for reals I don't have a community so I'm just like

00:21:33.72

Star

you have a comment section.

00:21:33.85

Krispy

it I get like one comment it's nothing it's I do there's I we don't have a lot of people talking I not really

00:21:42.23

Star

You've never had any weirdos?

00:21:45.37

Claire

You've had weirdos. I know you have.

00:21:46.78

Krispy

i

00:21:46.84

Bob

Your one commenter is weirdo.

00:21:48.75

Krispy

I mean, have, but okay. I guess for my answer,

00:21:56.28

Krispy

As far as, you know, my experience goes, I focus a lot more on the ah general webcomic community as opposed to my own community. I help run the ScreenTones Discord community and I put all of my effort into that.

00:22:15.54

Krispy

And I'm not really great at talking about my own stuff or building a community around my own work. We do have a Discord for our comics, specifically for the studio cartridge one. It's kind of more of a read only. There are some channels that people can chat if they want, but we mostly just drop art and archive like Tumblr asks and stuff like that.

00:22:39.51

Krispy

A lot of our community was much bigger. like years ago when uh tumblr was more active i i want to say literally before the boob purge. It was just a much more active space for our comic and readers and whatnot and yeah kind of ever since that it's uh we've never recovered from that so i don't really know don't really know uh where to go from there but that's okay I just kind of decided that it's like I think it's okay that i it's not big… yes

00:23:19.91

Star

I think it's still worth talking about because I mean, ah a lot of when we were preparing for this episode, we were talking about it's like, oh, well, I've done this, but I haven't done this or I've done this, but I've i've never tried this.

00:23:30.49

Star

I still think that like the value of community and knowing how to moderate a community is like you still have that experience of moderating a community, even if it's not specifically around your work, those skills that you've acquired would

00:23:45.43

Star

transfer over to your own work. And I think it's still good advice to talk about when people are, you know, considering making a community, the do's and don'ts, that sort of thing.

00:23:54.14

Krispy

Yeah, and absolutely. I've starting out on a lot of discords because I think I joined discord in a lot around 2019. And so, you know, made a lot of connections to webcomics in that because I was, you know, really not into it.

00:24:10.59

Krispy

But I think the Screen Tones discord opened in 2020 or something like that 2021 maybe. And yeah, there's been trials and tribulations about that. It's, you know, opened quite small as they kind of do. And then, you know, when we got a little bit more traction and did a lot more community outreach, that's when it kind of, you know, grows because it benefits other people.

00:24:36.57

Krispy

I'll talk a little bit about what makes it successful and unsuccessful in our next question. But yeah, it's been interesting seeing the growth there. And I just...

00:24:47.74

Krispy

Me personally, I enjoy the the general aspect. I think I'm just way much better at engaging with a lot of people that way and knowing how to, you know, keep up a conversation and talk craft because I think that it's also important to really state what the community space is for. And I'm excited that, you know, we're really going to be embracing the YouTube side of things and seeing comments from that.

00:25:18.30

Krispy

And, you know, I just, I'm excited to talk about more comics. So, you know, this is good. i'm going to actually segue into the next kind of round of questions since we're you know going in that direction anyway. So Star, I'm going after you with a ray gun.

00:25:52.25

Krispy

Um, what are...

00:25:53.97

Star

This is quite an escalation from the baseballs that you threw at me earlier. It's like, oh, we're having a fun little game of catch and Krispy whips out a gun. Okay. i guess this is how our fun little just like fancy people polo excursion is going.

00:26:11.45

Krispy

So I have a ray gun. And what are your potential areas that can make a community successful and less successful? Let's open up that bag of worms. Bag worms?

00:26:22.55

Krispy

Can of worms.

00:26:23.50

Star

I think that kind of like we said earlier, you know, wanting everyone to have a good time is a noble cause.

00:26:35.26

Star

And, you know, i understand it's like, oh, you read this comic? It's like, you thank you so much for enjoying my work. We want you here. The problem is that a lot of people are all very different.

00:26:47.49

Star

They all communicate very differently. And sometimes they're not all going to fit into that same box.

00:26:52.09

Star

If you put a whole bunch of people into the same room. They're going to start fighting. And I think what can make or break a community is how you handle it when that happens. Not if, when, because it will. If you get X number of people, the more people you get into a room, the higher likelihood it is that someone's going to have something to say to somebody.

00:27:16.31

Star

And you need to be prepared for that to happen because it is an inevitability. I have kind of lived by the mantra over the last like couple of years.

00:27:31.32

Star

And this is something I've gotten more and more passionate about with time, especially like after I started YouTube and, you know, YouTube comments are a whole other beast. I didn't mention that earlier, but that is another thing. My general rule is if I would not let you come into my home and say it to my face, I'm not going to let you say it to me on the internet.

00:27:53.27

Star

And so it's like if someone leaves a comment that says, oh this video [dolphin sound] sucks or whatever, I'm just going to delete that. It's like, OK, well, you've lost your privileges to be able to comment on my stuff. Be gone. It's like if you're just going to walk in here and be a douchebag, then I do not have to host you. See, that's the thing is, you know, a lot of people will get really worked up about how it's like, oh, you're tamping down free speech, first of all.

00:28:17.50

Star

Like we say, free speech is saying the government can't tell you what you can and can't say. I'm not the government. And if you're being a bastard in my house, I'm not going to let you stay in my house because it's my house. It's my space. And I curate it to be a nice place. And if you're not adding to the nice place, then you can leave.

00:28:38.68

Star

And that sounds harsh until you realize what a negative effect it will have on your mental health if you just let these people just come in and say terrible things and just let them get away with it.

00:28:53.62

Star

Because if you give them an inch, they will take a mile. And it's something that I have seen happen over and over and over and over again. And, you know, sometimes it's not like you don't have to hit the kill switch right away. A lot of times it's just like, okay, well, this is like, I've never seen this person before and they're just leaving a bad comment. It's like, okay, I've had exactly one interaction with you and it was a negative one.

00:29:17.82

Star

Maybe we don't have any more interactions anymore and you just ban them. But, you know, if someone has been in my Discord community for like a year and they're generally pretty good, but they've gotten into a squabble with another person or they're breaking the rules, maybe it's just like,

00:29:32.02

Star

One of my common phrases in my discord is guys don't make me use the ban hammer. I don't want to use it. Don't make me use it. And that's usually enough to just be like, okay, they'll settle down a little bit.

00:29:44.92

Star

But also, you know, the internet connects so many people and so many people will have their own baggage and their own like set of weird communication quirks and it doesn't always mesh up with everybody.

00:29:56.63

Star

The general thing is, and this is something I actually learned from being on Twitch. I saw this, I see this advice thrown around a lot for streaming is that if there is one person in your chat that's making you uncomfortable,

00:30:12.59

Star

Chances are they're probably also making everybody else in the room uncomfortable.

00:30:17.43

Star

Like all your other viewers, all the other people in the comment section.

00:30:18.23

Krispy

Yes.

00:30:21.11

Star

If you let them keep getting away with it, you're going to drive away the good ones.

00:30:25.21

Star

And if you drive away the good ones, then all that's left are the bad ones. And so it's like you kind of have to be willing to prune the garden a little bit. And it sucks sometimes because you don't want to be that person you want. It's like, fit but this person reads my comic and that's amazing. There will be more.

00:30:45.24

Star

And you do not need to host people who actively exist to make you feel bad and make the space awkward.

00:30:53.27

Krispy

Stamp of approval.

00:30:54.62

Star

Yes. Yes. ah I just, I, and ah time has worn on When I was in my early 20s, first starting cast off, I was a lot more of just like,

00:31:06.36

Star

Oh, but like, this is, I only have like 10 readers. And like, so what if one of them is a little off-putting? It's like i'm's like, I'm getting a comment and that's amazing. It's like, okay, yeah, I've gotten five comments and one of them is weird. ah But if I get rid of that person, then I only have four comments and then that's way less proportionally. And now I'm just like,

00:31:29.37

Star

No, just it's not worth it to keep those people around. I did go just kind of lik e as an epilogue on the story I told earlier. I did eventually go back and delete the gun guy comments, but it wasn't until like two years later. I just realized this is knowing that these are there and that other people can see them makes me feel bad.

00:31:48.82

Star

And I don't like what it's doing to my brain. And I don't like how anxious it makes me. And I don't like that this person could like every time I update could potentially leave another stupid comment.

00:31:59.40

Krispy

Yep.

00:32:00.18

Star

And so I'm just like, there comes a tipping point. I would recommend maybe trying to get to that tipping point a little bit earlier to save yourself some of the heartache and the mental anguish.

00:32:10.76

Krispy

Yep. Again, stamp of approval. Yeah. yet

00:32:15.02

Star

Yay! Did you stamp me with your gun, your ray gun, while we're playing polo?

00:32:17.05

Krispy

Yeah, it's actually a stamp gun.

00:32:19.58

Star

Oh, I'm not dead.

00:32:22.30

Krispy

no you just have a stamp on your forehead now.

00:32:25.70

Star

Oh, is it going to come off? If I wash it off later, will it come off or is this permanent? Krispy, you have to tell me. Krispy?

00:32:32.09

Krispy

it won't come off.

00:32:32.25

Star

Krispy, did you put permanent ink in the ray gun Krispy?

00:32:36.33

Star

Krispy? Krispy, My skincare routine is ruined!

00:32:42.23

Krispy

yeah Bam!

00:32:46.97

Krispy

I think this is going to be something that we're going to be echoing a lot in this episode with just taking those precautions and taking that kind of action with people that make the vibe weird.

00:33:00.77

Krispy

It's something that like a lot of, you know, as far as I'm with moderating the the communities that I do, it's a lot of the vibe killers. And I know that that sounds so like, but really you would remove someone because they made the vibes weird?

00:33:14.74

Krispy

No, trust me.

00:33:15.03

Star

Yes.

00:33:15.86

Krispy

You have to. You do have to, because I think that's a really excellent point that Star makes. about like if you are uncomfortable with these comments that someone specifically is making chances are yeah it's it's it's going throughout like the community itself and there's been a a handful of times that it's just like you know what i know that what this person is doing feels innocuous and feels kind of like okay i mean you know is it really that harmful but it's just It's the way that they're kind of coming into a space and not making it comfortable for the rest of people making weird comments, cutting into other people. And it's just, you know, you want it to be a space that's enjoyable. And when someone's kind of coming in to make it their mission to be a little uncomfortable and, you know, not respecting other people around them. Yeah, they can go.

00:34:09.85

Star

Yeah, and I really do want to stress, if you give people an inch, they will take 10 miles

00:34:19.67

Star

I've had people in my community who started off relatively normal and then just over time... They kind of started testing boundaries. And I fully do not think that they were doing this intentionally. I don't think they were just trying to see what they were getting. It was like, well, let's see what I can get away with. I fully do not believe that was the case. I just, you know, sometimes people get a little too comfortable letting the inside thoughts outside.

00:34:46.20

Star

And if you don't nip that in the bud, then the next thing you know is that They are, i don't want to say like a specific instance, but I've had pretty major fights where people almost left the server because they felt so bad about something this one person said to them as a reply to a fairly innocuous comment. It was very much just like the, oh here's a picture of my dog. And then the person would comment is like, I hate dogs. How dare you post this? It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:35:19.86

Star

And so it's like, okay, well, in that instance, maybe we should have had to talk to you about this little sooner, bud. I acknowledge that, but you need to either like shape up or step out.

00:35:32.25

Star

And we did end up banning that person.

00:35:34.57

Star

One of many things, just daily occurrence in the cast-off Discord. But, you know, it like the cast-off Discord has like over 3,000 people in it.

00:35:45.69

Star

you have to be willing to moderate your space or it will not be your space anymore.

00:35:52.87

Krispy

I think that's just a really good way to kind of protect yourself, too, from a lot of that heartache that you will be receiving. You can be receiving. I'm not going to say like it's going to happen, but, you know, I think it's good to be prepared with that.

00:36:09.69

Krispy

I have the stamp ray gun also at Claire's forehead. And I want to hear about, you know, the potential areas that make your community successful and then, you know, a little less so. Let's talk.

00:36:22.39

Claire

I have put on my football helmet to deflect the laser. I'm so ready.

00:36:27.65

Krispy

safety

00:36:29.88

Claire

you cannot hit me. I am protected.

00:36:32.02

Krispy

first see me first

00:36:36.06

Claire

I think for me, my biggest thing is kind of this barrier between like being friendly and being someone's friend. Because when your community is very small, you're starting out, like you're you're making closer connections than you would with, again, like a 500 to 1000, like, sort of level community. It's just natural that like, your interactions are going to be a little bit more, you know, on like a friendship level. But I think that's what tripped me up initially, because like,

00:37:47.42

Claire

I always thought, like oh I'm here, I'm making the comic, like I'm being friendly to people. I am technically like people's friend in that sort of internet sense where like you know we're not like crazy close, but we're close enough, we're we're amicable. But then realizing like sometimes people want more than that, or they want to be closer, or or they want more, I guess, I don't know, like,

00:38:16.73

Claire

more more praise for being a bigger fan sometimes and that's where I started kind of being like oh I didn't I didn't think about this like I get it but also like I don't know what to do in a case like that and I i still, I didn't and I still struggle with that because like my comic is not like Bob was saying like I don't have kind of a comment section that like spills their feelings or, you know, talks about their personal lives too much. But there are moments where that does come up or like, I don't know, it it it feels it feels like it does speak to people or it does ah attract people that either like want to think about stories in a certain way, want to think about like the depth of characters in a certain way in relation to themselves.

00:39:04.25

Claire

So i yeah, i I've had... it's it's strange, like more than one occasion where someone has gotten like surprisingly close to me and I didn't even really realize it. And there comes a moment where they're like, oh, you're not, you're not paying attention to me enough. And I'm like, oh gosh, I like, i I didn't think that's what I was doing. And also like, I, I don't know, I have a day job and I have a partner and I have this comic. I,

00:39:35.48

Claire

What you want out of me as a creator is different than what I can offer. And that actually that's caused like, I can count on one hand how many times it's happened, but like, again, two nickels, It’s interesting to see how like you, you can have like this general sense of like, you have to moderate a community and you have to make sure that nobody is making anybody feel uncomfortable, but you as a creator, like you're part of that too. And it can come in yeah really interesting, surprising ways where like you might be blindsided by somebody just deciding like, yeah, I don't like you anymore and I'm not going to talk to you anymore and I'm going to tell everybody that you're like not not a kind person and you're just kind of like, uh, I was just sitting here drawing. Like what what is it? What did you want? And I think...

00:40:26.36

Claire

it' it's going to be different for every webcomic, but I think for me, it was very much like you're finding that middle ground where you are accessible as a creator. Like I love talking to people. I love connecting with people and hearing their thoughts about my work, other people's work, comics in general, storytelling, all of it. I love it. But you also, I think I read something even just yesterday where somebody was talking about like,

00:40:53.46

Claire

accessibility to creators is at an all-time high and like I'm no I'm no like massive creator but I'm still like I have a comic and I have this l ittle tiny world that I'm responsible for and to have ultimate accessibility to me is great in a way, but it also is not like a perfect two-way street either.

00:41:16.60

Claire

And i think finding finding that balance for me where like, I will be welcoming to everyone. Like if you're a good, you know normal person and you're coming into my group and you're behaving and you're kind and you're contributing,

00:41:30.01

Claire

No problem. There's some people that I'm closer to just for various reasons, but like I'm, I'm not going to be a friend. And I hate that. I actually really, really hate that. I don't want to even think like that.

00:41:45.82

Claire

But you have to. And there have been times where like I've had to moderate somebody who was not being great. And then like several people that were friends with them were like, OK, suddenly they turn on me and then they all leave. like i've had I've had a handful of like very specific interactions that all kind of boil down to like you got too close.

00:42:07.67

Claire

And you didn't even realize it. So I guess anything for me that's kind of been a more healthy relationship with community has been having that barrier. Like it's still made of glass and you can see people and talk through it, but you have to have a barrier just in case because you don't know what the person on the other side wants or hopes for. And if you can't give it to them, the problems might happen.

00:42:37.60

Krispy

I think, you know, it's very important to just understand that barrier specifically, especially, you know, you talking about how accessible creators are to readers these days. I'm kind of thinking back to, like, you know, when they would do fan letters and whatnot to creators if they had access to where they were. But, like, you know, this is still a relatively new thing, technically. and And it's just...

00:43:06.07

Krispy

it's cool and also scary with what can happen and what people's expectations are in those spaces. And, you know, i'm also going to just put a little note here.

00:43:18.62

Krispy

I know that it sounds like there's a lot of scary things in communities when we're talking about these things. But, you know, all of us obviously agree that communities are incredible spaces that

00:43:31.32

Krispy

Everybody in this call, in this ah episode are really enjoying and absolutely grateful for their fans and everybody that enjoys their work. But I think it's also important to hear from my little birdies here about, you know, what it also feels like as the creator engaging with this stuff and kind of having an expectation as a reader too, to kind of go in and be like, all right,

00:43:58.71

Krispy

How am I going to act? What do I want to bring to this space and what do I want out of it is something, ah you know, to ask yourself.

00:44:07.06

Claire

Yeah, like we, I think we said this earlier, like 99% of people perfectly fine, but it's that 1% that can really like rock the foundations of things.

00:44:15.90

Claire

And that's, that's really what we're focusing on, at least in this part.

00:44:21.62

Star

Yeah, I do think that talking about the parasocial aspect is very much important as well, because I have also had people get a little too close for comfort, and it has led to a difference in how I handle my own community.

00:44:26.27

Krispy

Mm-hmm.

00:44:37.14

Star

like I've found myself kind of taking a step back from my own Discord. Like I have my mod team and honestly, the people I made my moderators were largely just, they were very active on the server anyway.

00:44:50.68

Star

And so I'm just like, Hey, you're here in every, you're here every single day. Do you want watchdog privileges? And they were like, yeah. Um, yeah. And now I kind of like, you know, back when the server was like 200 people or smaller, I was able to read every message pretty reliably and it was fine.

00:45:06.66

Star

But now there's 3000 people in my Discord server and there's hundreds, if not thousands of messages left every single day. And I'm like, this is actively degrading my health, seeing one, just this many messages in general, but also seeing this many opinions on my work on a constant basis.

00:45:16.64

Krispy

Yes.

00:45:26.71

Krispy

yes

00:45:27.22

Star

That also took kind of a toll on me. And this is something pretty recent. This has happened in the last year where I've just kind of muted a lot of the channels, like all the channels on the cast off server that are dedicated to talking about the comic. I have them muted. So I don't like see notifications whenever there's a new message. It's like I go in there and i check it like once or twice a day.

00:45:46.91

Krispy

Mm-hmm.

00:45:47.42

Star

But beforehand, I was checking it , you know, new message, look at it, new message, look at it. And again, those are getting like anywhere from double to triple digit numbers of messages every single day. And there were people in there theorizing and it's like, I would read their theories and know that this thing they're getting really excited about isn't going to happen, or at least it's not going to happen very soon. And there's also things where

00:46:08.44

Star

It's just people are saying, he's like, oh, man, I really hope this thing doesn't happen. And knowing that that thing is going to eventually happen and you're just like, ah ah it can have a negative effect on you.

00:46:19.76

Star

And so I think, you know, this is going to be more of an issue if your audience gets bigger. But I do think that, like, you have to take your own mental sanity into account when it comes to things like this.

00:46:31.99

Star

And I was just, you know, kind of open with my mod team. I'm like, hey, I can't be looking at this quite as frequently as I am. Would you guys mind kind of like stepping up and being a little bit more active on like just watching messages and stuff?

00:46:43.54

Krispy

Yeah.

00:46:45.42

Star

And they were all okay with it. Again, because they were there anyway. But it's, it can be weird. It can be difficult. Again, like we said earlier, I love my fans. I love the fact that there are so many people who like,

00:47:01.53

Star

care so much about the story, but it can, you know, get difficult at times when you are that close to it. It's like, you know, the fireplace is warm, but if you're sitting too close, you might burn yourself.

Krispy

It's it's very well said. And, you know, it's just things to be aware of when creating a community and to make it successful and unsuccessful. And I think it's just important to also reflect, you know, being a reader. It's just when you're going into a community, you know, what do you want? You know, when you're engaging with the work that you really enjoy, like.

00:47:36.60

Krispy

It does take a lot of work to make that space enjoyable. And there is pruning that usually happens for it to get there. I don't think a community has ever started out perfect. And it's taken a lot of trials and tribulations to get where it is. But, you know, I think, you know,

00:47:54.97

Krispy

making sure that you're safe as a creator. You know, you have moderators that understand what you want to go for and it can make the decisions that you feel like reflect who you are as a creator, but also a community leader is really important.

00:48:11.99

Krispy

But yeah, those things help the community have that longevity and that, you know, excitement and just a general good place to be for other people.

00:48:23.38

Krispy

But my ray gun has been stamped on Claire's football helmet as an approval. Wa-bam!

00:48:30.20

Krispy

And now it's it's going over to Bob.

00:48:31.17

Claire

Pew. pew

00:48:34.88

Krispy

I'm going to have to draw this ray gun stamp thing that I'm talking about, but... Yes, Bob, i want to hear all about the potential areas that make it a community successful and less successful in your experience, too.

00:48:49.60

Bob

Well, I feel like my experience is very analogous to Claire's actually, because it is that, you know, a lot of my issues I think have stemmed from the idea that it is this kind of more intimate community. For me, if I'm going to be involved in something, it can't be too big because I really, you know, I have a cap for how much I can process. And I think, you know, one of the most surprisingly,

00:49:17.42

Bob

hurtful things a reader once said was that, you know, they didn't want to share my comic because they didn't want me to get too big because they liked smaller communities.

00:49:29.06

Bob

And I was like, wow, like, ouch.

00:49:31.61

Claire

Oh, gosh.

00:49:33.24

Bob

And I realized, yeah, that was like, ah and I realized something, you know, because my, you know my community, I would say at the time was like midsize.

00:49:34.33

Star

Hipsters.

00:49:43.07

Bob

It wasn't, you know, it's very active, active every day, not in the thousands, but, um, But, you know, enough to have drama, enough to have like regular drama, enough to have regular disagreements. And one of the things that was kind of catching my eye was that certain people felt like they were kind of guarding the space and not being terribly welcoming to new people. And I am someone who is just kind of intensely welcoming to new people. Anytime I see someone who looks like they haven't found a spot yet, I'm like, come in. I want you to feel comfortable. I want you to feel welcome. And I think that some people have the instinct of like, we want to protect the space we already have. And that means that sometimes you are working against what some of the people in your community might want. Like they might want your community to stay small and intimate and you might be trying to get your community to grow.

00:50:36.34

Bob

And that means, you know, doing more things actively to try to, you know, build up interaction and and try to make sure that people who come into the community, are greeted, like anytime someone new showed up, you know, back in the day, it's like I would always, you know, someone would welcome them. And if someone didn't welcome them, then I would welcome them. And I, you know, I would try to just, you know,

00:51:00.73

Bob

be visible and say hi to people and, you know, make it known that their presence was appreciated. I mean, like, I think we've talked a lot about the perils of what happens when your community gets too big, but before you can get to a point where your community gets too big, you have to grow it. And it's the growing element that I think can sometimes, yeah i mean, not to, not to jump ahead, but, but setting up that space so that it feels welcoming to people. Like one of the things I consider, you know, when we're going back to the comments section of your web page, because that is kind of where it starts for most of us.

00:51:36.76

Bob

The first comment really sets the tone. And, you know, when you don't have a lot of comments, then every comment carries more weight and is more influential in setting the tone. And it's one of those things like we talked about, it's the vibes thing. Even if someone isn't overtly breaking rules or overtly being rude, are they setting the right tone? Like I'm thinking of for Into the Smoke, the last update, of chapter one, it was like this big triumphant moment. I had worked my head off for this, you know, finally finished chapter one, last update. And the very first comment was like a jokey thing about like a thing in the artwork that they misread, presumably because I didn't draw it terribly well.

00:52:27.48

Bob

And it was like, Back in the day when I was more of like a free speech absolutist in like 2010, would have been like, well, they deserve to be heard. This time I was just like, dude, I'm pressing delete right now because that is not going to be the first comment that sets the tone and ruins the reading experience for everyone else who comes across it because it's not like everyone else was going to misinterpret the art the same way.

00:52:50.65

Bob

So I felt it was important. I so strongly agree with people are, be liberal and and you have the power to delete what you want to delete. People don't have an inherent right to be heard. The way I like to think about it is your website, it is your home. It's also like, if you were publishing a book, it's like the publisher's website as opposed to Goodreads. Like Goodreads is where readers can go and say whatever they want and the author has no part in it. But when it's your home,

00:53:26.49

Bob

then you have a say. The other thing is my work does tend to appeal more to a slightly older audience. So, you know, the types of drama that I deal with are slightly different. It's not so much people being, you know, overtly snotty or anything like that. Usually it is like you have a lot of international people and people who are speaking English as a second language and people who just come from different walks of life or people who just, you know, process social interactions differently.

00:54:04.38

Bob

And you would just I mean, you guys, not you guys, but you general you would be surprised at how easily people can just misunderstand each other and end up in a very, very silly, but very intense argument over something where no one was actually wrong and no one was actually rude. It's just that there was a simple misinterpretation. And my struggle was, you know, my discord was integrated with Patreon.

00:54:31.58

Bob

And It's like, OK, two twenty dollar patrons are arguing with each other. If I get in the middle of this in the wrong way, it could cost me five hundred dollars a year. And it's like that's really sticky. And that's where, like, you know, when your community gets to a certain size, volunteer moderators are a godsend. I appreciate them so much. Having someone who can take that impartial role and, you know, absolve you of the responsibility of being the bad guy, because I do think it's good for the creator to, you know, be able to have a position where they don't look like they're taking sides among readers in like their own private spats. That's just very sticky. And ah the the last thing I would say is that you can't

00:55:24.89

Bob

There is sometimes an element like Clam mentioned where you can kind of end up being deified by some people or like people kind of look to you to try to make that close connection or to look to you for approval. I kind of like to just show everyone every now and then, hey, just remind them that I'm an idiot, that I'm a dork and that they don't have to like be weird around me.

00:55:48.28

Bob

So that's another thing that I like to do to just kind of keep things light.

00:55:54.68

Star

Yeah, I think we talked about this on just on the Screen Tones Discord once where it's like, I haven't done this, but I have considered it. And if I did not have as many moderators, I absolutely would have done this already.

00:56:06.68

Star

You can just go on the Internet and tell lies, by which I mean, you can just make a sock puppet account and have that be your moderator and just be like, hey, cut it out without it reflecting on you.

00:56:19.06

Star

If that is something that folks are nervous about.

00:56:22.94

Bob

Yeah, I think that that is definitely an option if you still have the stomach for actually still getting in the middle of it, even even when I am kind of conflict averse person like I can be stern when I need to be.

00:56:34.55

Star

Yeah, I mean...

00:56:35.84

Bob

But like, if it's an option, getting another person to do it is just so nice.

00:56:42.17

Star

Yeah, I mean, I would say it's like, I don't even know if... Like, one thing, something that that we tell people a lot, it's just like, hey, y'all are allowed to have this discussion, take it to DMs.

00:56:54.71

Bob

Yeah.

00:56:54.99

Star

It's like, y'all don't need to fight in here, go take it to your private DMs and hash it out there.

00:57:00.60

Bob

The last time I said that to someone, then, then they each got in my DMs and I was like, okay, there needs to be some boundaries set here.

00:57:11.00

Star

Yeah, that's when you set your Discord settings so that people on that common Discord cannot DM you without being on your friends list, a setting that I have had enabled for a long time.

00:57:19.13

Bob

That is, yeah. Yep.

00:57:21.66

Star

Just in general, I think, you know, just like setting rules and boundaries in a community is also very good and is needed. We add new rules all the time on my server of just like, okay, if this is a repeated problem, we're going to make it a rule.

00:57:29.72

Bob

Exactly.

00:57:37.70

Star

And we literally have an emote on my server that just says, read the rules. And so if someone goes in there and breaks the rules, it doesn't necessarily have to be a thing where it's like someone says, hey, this is not allowed and has to be like the bad guy. But a lot of people will just like...

00:57:53.57

Star

pile on like the, hey, go read the rules. This is not allowed, like little reaction on the discord. And then they can be like, oh, that's not allowed. Okay. And if they continue to do the thing that breaks the rules, then we have a discussion about it.

00:58:07.06

Krispy

I think the really interesting part about hearing about all of this and especially our move to Discord in the recent years, because the Internet's not actually that old. But with the phases that we used to have forums with, and you used to have moderators in those forums and people were blah, blah, blah, talking about whatever thing really passionately. And then, you know, ah Sonic is my lover, XXX gets in a fight with, you know, beagles are the best. And it's just this whole war zone that's going to happen. And then the moderators of the thread are like, okay, we're going to have to give them a response to make them stop. But it's not instant.

00:58:46.74

Krispy

That's the difference. And so I'm finding this transition when you're dealing with someone who is being unsavory and fighting with Sonic Lover and Beagles Are The Best. And, you know, you're crafting up this huge response to be like really kind of neutral or reiterate what's going on and stuff like that, like stuff that was usually crafted for forums. And I found as someone who is in the moderator role in communities that I'm finding that less and less useful to kind of give them if it's like an overall, okay, this is why you were banned, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I'm finding that because things are being so instant and someone comes in with like, you know, looking for a fight or whatever, you know, this is where you have to prepare yourself to just be like, oh, you said what? Okay, guy, we're not going to talk about this. And that was one of the biggest things that I kind of had to

00:59:42.23

Krispy

just experience running a lot of the community things is that a lot of things are just not going to be a discussion. You are not here to teach people how to be better or to teach them what they said was wrong. And, you know, we're going to have a big old learning moment together. It's just there comes a point when it's like you're going to have to learn that what you said sucked and the doors are just going to close. And that's just going to have to happen with how you moderate, especially when places just get bigger. You can't expect to have all these like big crafted messages that you're going to be sending like, okay, this is the first strike. This is the second strike because I'm finding, especially when I'm in like more discords and looking at how other people kind of handle it.

01:00:27.73

Krispy

i'm I'm seeing, especially when they become big discords, they're just like, nah, and nuked, like completely just nuked because people don't have time for someone who is like, okay, I'm getting the first kind of strike and I'm going to be sneaky about it or or something like that.

01:00:43.99

Krispy

I won't get too much in the weeds with it because, man, we are passionate about this episode. But, you know, ban-evading and ah just making a game out of it is something that we've been kind of struggling with the last...

01:00:58.30

Krispy

six or seven months now while this was recorded and it's just it's yeah it's frustrating i don't want to play these games anymore we all have lives i have a day job we have day jobs we're just like okay this is fun to have a community this way but when people start to you know act like this and they're taking up so much of your space that you could be drawing instead you know that's when you're gonna have to be like you know what

01:01:24.54

Krispy

You just gave me the wrong vibes. Bye. And that's going to have to be acceptable ah at one point. There actually is that rule that we have in specifically in the Screen Tone server. And I think that's been adopted. Yeah, I think we adopted it from the ah Phantom Marines server, too, was that, you know,

01:01:44.89

Krispy

there may be a time that you just get the boot and it's not even listed in the rules. And that's by the moderator's discretion. And a lot of that comes from just being like, man, this person is just like, not today, Satan.

01:01:58.92

Krispy

Goodbye. Not today. And I think it's perfectly valid to do these kind of things because I've been in the the position to have these perfectly crafted, big old, like, okay, you said this and that, and this is against the rules because of this, and... blah blah blah blah blah and then it just blows up in the face it becomes bigger and I'm all here for giving people the benefit of the doubt you know that's great but also at the end of the day especially when things get bigger it's just like what kind of energy are you bringing into the room are you purposely doing this to to fight with other people are you you know upset about something and it's just going to cause this and that the other thing or you're just kind of expecting to be super close friends with the creator

01:02:45.46

Krispy

Or are you here to read the comic and just have fun kind of thing? And yeah, just think about what you want from communities too, as ah someone who enters them.

01:02:55.49

Krispy

And again, if it doesn't suit you, you could leave, you could hit the bricks. There's always that option.

01:03:04.57

Star

If it sucks, hit the bricks!

01:03:08.86

Claire

I do want to say that that rule comes from the person that originally made my server and I think it's fantastic. It's called the Air Bud. I think it's called the Air Bud double blind rule where like in Air Bud there's the whole thing about like, ain't no rule says a dog can't play basketball. It's like...

01:03:27.10

Claire

Yes, but are we going to let the dog play basketball?

01:03:34.07

Claire

And in that movie, yes, but it doesn't have to be that way in your server. If there's no rule against being a general jerk, then you still shouldn't have the ability to be a jerk. So there you go.

01:03:47.26

Krispy

Absolutely. With that, I'm going to go to our last question because, oh boy, we are quite posthous about this episode.

01:03:56.32

Star

We're quite verbose on the subject, twiddles my mustache.

01:03:56.55

Krispy

Oh, oh Quite verbose indeed. i would like to know what is star star machine uh what is your advice beep boop uh to someone who is looking to create more community interactions so just like what's what's your little seed of advice you'd like to give listeners to this episode

01:04:12.89

01:04:37.62

Star

So that's a tough one. I feel like it can't be too inorganic because people see right through that. But if you are trying to say, spark conversation, I feel like the best way to do that is to ask questions of your community.

01:04:57.82

Star

This is something that I've kind of like I've experimented with on YouTube. People love to talk about themselves and their thoughts. You give them the avenue with which to do that and you will not be able to get them to stop talking.

01:05:10.55

Star

So ah similar so similar to Claire, we actually, yeah we do have an entire channel on the Cast Off discord that's just for like, it's called the spoilers and theories channel where it's like we have the general discussion channel, which we try to keep spoilers out of there for people who are maybe still catching up. But then we have spoilers and theories, which is just like, what if this character is from space?

01:05:33.98

Star

And just people are going, people go nuts in there, especially after you, like you leave them on a cliffhanger and they will be chewing on the drywall in there for like three days until the next update. It is wild and very fun for me to watch. My absolute favorite thing to do. This is like crack cocaine to me is...

01:05:53.85

Star

Right after an update goes live with some sort of big thing that's happening. And right now when we're recording this chapter 13 is almost finished. Anyone who is up to date on the comic knows chapter 13, the

01:06:11.89

Star

glass-eyed thousand-yard stare of I survived cast off chapter13 but god at what cost. I love, i love to go into the Discord right after an update gets posted and just post a little colon three, just little cat face emoji.

01:06:31.22

Star

Just be like, hi guys, you like the update? And they will just scream at me. They will get so upset at me. And I'm just like, this is crack cocaine to me.

01:06:41.24

Star

I love to watch people squirm. It's very fun. It’s like, I love to tease my readers. They hate it. I love it. I'm just like, ooh, what do you guys think is going to happen on the next page? And then they go crazy. It's like putting little chunks of meat in the piranha bowl. I love it. I love it. But yeah, I mean, just in general, you know, like if you want people to have discussions, give them an avenue to have a discussion. Even if you only have just like a comment page, you can ask like in the description underneath an update, what do you guys think is going to happen? And sometimes that will get one person talking and then another person will reply to them. And you just kind of start, you start rolling the marbles and the marbles will start bouncing off of each other. And it's you, sometimes you have to be the person to invite the conversation

01:07:25.91

Star

But then eventually the conversations will fuel themselves. And I say eventually, it took years for people to just like be independently active on the server and just like in my comment section. But generally, if you've got it's… again, this is something that goes back to Twitch chat. If you walk into a live stream and there's nobody talking, no one wants to be the person to break the silence.

01:07:49.27

Star

But if you've got one person in there, like leaving some comments, people are going to be like, oh, well, I could reply to that because I have thoughts on what that person just said. If you've got a bestie, if you've got a hype man to like leave comments on every update,

01:08:06.07

Star

That is a great way to invite conversation is just have somebody in there already talking so people feel more welcome to talk. Just, you know, be a good host. Invite the conversations. Don't just expect them to happen inorganically.

01:08:21.30

Krispy

Absolutely. I think, you know, that's always a discussion that comes up a lot in webcomic spaces of like, how do I get more commenters? But it's like, are you inviting that space to talk? And that's how they comment is just wanting to, you know, discuss with others and, you know, know that they'll be answered back and just replying to them to, you know, keeping that conversation alive, because That's what it is. It's a conversation. And sometimes, you know, you'll have this gorgeous piece of paper and awesome updateness and it'll be nice.

01:08:52.06

Krispy

And people just don't want to comment nice. So, you know, I think that's a really great idea for leaving a nice little question because you know what? People love talking about themselves. Ain't no shame in that, but that's great.

01:09:05.94

Star

100%. This is this is not for webcomics specifically, but I will tell you guys from my personal experience, you want to get, like, a bajillion comments on an Instagram post or a YouTube short or something, ask a question in the video or the post or whatever,

01:09:23.19

Star

And you will get so many comments of people.

01:09:25.71

Star

So I just posted recently a short that's just like, here's how to find your birthday in the cast off calendar. That short has 400 comments on it of people just like saying what their birthday would be in the cast off calendar.

01:09:38.35

Star

I'm like, yes, boost me in the algorithm, you fools. My evil laugh. I'm twirling my mustache. The stamp is still on my forehead. I'm on a horse.

01:09:49.40

Krispy

You are so going to be drawn with that. Don't worry.

01:09:54.71

Star

can you draw horses well Krispy

01:09:57.08

Krispy

ah Unfortunately.

Star

i sense lore in your words

01:10:03.75

Krispy

I'm not going to be the guy that hates dogs in this episode, but anyway.

01:10:11.03

Star

i'm like how are you gonna end that sentence bud you hate horses Krispy

01:10:13.59

Krispy

but yeah

01:10:18.83

Krispy

I hate horses. Okay, Claire!

01:10:20.34

Star

Oh!

01:10:23.32

Krispy

I would love to know your advice to someone looking to create more community interaction around their comics.

01:10:36.56

Claire

I think for me, it's patience. I think just being able to wait and foster things slowly. But also like I see a lot of people that I think they want to get into a webcomic really, really quickly. And they want instant interaction. And they want like... people to be theorizing when they have like 10 pages of the webcomic done, which is almost impossible. I think if you're thinking about your webcomic community, like a spring of water, first you have to, you know go try and find it You have to make sure that, you know, people, other people can find it and can drink from it and see, see if it, you know

01:11:23.06

Claire

turns from a trickle to like a waterfall. You just don't know. And ultimately, like your job is to make something that you really like. You want that to be consistent all the way through. You don't want to be making something just for the sake of like having a particular size or kind of community because that's going to be out of your control past a certain point like you you can hope for something and you can imagine like you know kind of what you want but ultimately like you you cannot make people come in and interact with it in a certain way like the way that i expected people to interact with my stuff is different than what i originally expected like they're there are shifts and there are twists and turns that come from having other people interact with your work, interact with you.

01:12:16.38

Claire

And they're bringing their own experiences, their own brain, their own comments to that kind of, to your front yard where you're like, Hey, do you want a web comic? And they're like, cool, let's talk about it. U ltimately, like, I think tempering your expectations, but also like,

01:12:37.53

Claire

if you start getting that community, like being able to temper your expectations actively, like watching it as things change, as people come in, as people kind of mold it into what they want it to be, which hopefully is on the same level as what you want it to be.

01:12:55.29

Claire

And if it gets kind of outside of that boundary, nudge it back towards something that you're comfortable managing. Yeah, I think like there's a lot of things that can be said about marketing and, you know, encouraging comments and encouraging discussion. But a lot of it really just does come down to like you are putting it out there and whatever happens to it is someone else's, I guess, business. Like you don't know what's going to happen. And that's okay Like, yeah.

01:13:28.41

Claire

it's just kind of a crapshoot at the end of the day and whatever comes of it like you have to be happy with your work even if nobody really interacts with it in the same way that you want them to you have to be like that's fine i am happy with this the way it is and if you're not then change something so yeah. Realizing that community is as much in other people's hands as it is in your hands i think is very important

01:13:55.28

Krispy

I 100% agree. I'm going to take the ray gun and stamp your head again, because I think that's just a really good idea.

01:14:01.10

Claire

This is a good stamp. Yay.

01:14:03.77

Krispy

It's good to also put that responsibility in your own hands as much as it is like, you know, what energy you're putting out into the world. Because, you know, I've definitely seen, you know, creators say that, why aren't people commenting on my stuff?

01:14:20.26

Krispy

You know, you guys are poopers. And that's not fair. What kind of, you know, message are you saying or what are you inviting for people to engage with that is just really important to keep in mind.

01:14:32.79

Krispy

Bob, I'm coming for you. I'm going to get you.

01:14:35.69

Bob

Oh no, I'm hiding.

01:14:39.96

Krispy

Talk to me about your advice.

01:14:40.31

Bob

My advice. So I would say like, first and foremost, you as the creator set the tone for your community.

01:14:50.17

Bob

And I always feel like a person's community is kind of a reflection of them in many ways. Like I, when you see the type of creator who kind of mobilizes their community to like legitimately harass other people.

01:15:04.00

Bob

It's like, that's a reflection of the creator. Like, you know, creators who tend to be a little toxic tend to have kind of toxic communities. And so the best way to have a community that's not toxic is to not be toxic and to like, you know,

01:15:16.84

Krispy

Mm-hmm.

01:15:18.55

Bob

Whatever you want your community to behave like, try to set that example. Obviously, you don't have full control over every individual and you shouldn't put that on any creator to assume that they have that level of control. But it's the first thing we can do from the beginning when we have small communities.

01:15:36.68

Bob

Just set that tone and also make it clear that you are receptive to conversation, both in terms of, you know, the technique of asking a question, but also making it clear that you are actually receptive to answers, that you aren't going to like jump on anyone or get mad at anyone for

01:15:55.06

Bob

An answer that's maybe not as eloquent, because, you know, sometimes people will rub you the wrong way. And being able to respond to those in ways that doesn't scare off other readers is important, too.

01:16:07.67

Bob

One little trick that I like to do, you know, this is kind of the opposite of the the ask a question technique is if a reader asks a question in the comments section or anywhere, my little trick is that I don't answer, at least not right away, because that gives other readers the opportunity to answer.

01:16:29.41

Bob

And then you're setting up the situation where they get comfortable interacting with each other and you don't

01:16:29.88

Krispy

Mm-hmm.

01:16:36.18

Bob

always have to be the one to set it up for them. In the beginning, like Star said, it's like you're going to have to be there a little bit more to set up the interactions. But once you set it in motion, it's like a snowball effect. The more people get comfortable doing it and the more...

01:16:52.22

Bob

The more activity there is, the more comfortable most people are in jumping in and not feeling like they're going to have a weird spotlight on them. Another thing I'd say is just show that you appreciate the comments you get, whether that's, you know, highlighting some of the fun ones on social media in a way that respects people's privacy, obviously. But just show that it's something that you enjoy, that that that you value. I have found that that makes people more willing to engage. Like when they see you interacting with other comments, a lot of times they want to get in on it too. And just be consistent. And this is something that I'm kind of telling myself because I am just such a hardcore introvert. I sometimes just need long breaks to fall off the face of the earth for like three months. I'm kind of in the middle of that now. It is January. No, it's not. It is May.

01:17:48.70

Bob

When is this episode going live? We are recording. We are recording in January.

01:17:53.90

Star

It's gonna be may.

01:17:58.73

Bob

In winter, sometimes I need to hibernate. And sometimes when, you know, when the interaction is a little intense, sometimes I need a break from it, but just check in, just, you know, be as visible as you need to be to just maintain a baseline. And, I think the, uh,

01:18:16.50

Bob

The last thing I would say is, especially when you're starting out or if your community is on the smaller side, ah don't divide them up into too many different baskets.

01:18:26.63

Bob

So like, you know, if you have...

01:18:29.21

Bob

It's good to try to concentrate that activity on maybe one or two sites where you're the most active and try to kind of corral people in the spaces where there's activity. And that's a good way so that people get a little confused if you're just directing them to 800 different places and they don't really know which is the best place to get involved or or to actually get some interaction.

01:18:54.87

Bob

So, you know, find the spaces that you are comfortable being in if you want to be an active part of that community. If it's the type of self-sustaining community where you don't have to be on it all the time, that's not as much of a factor. But I would say, especially in the beginning, as you're building up, find a space where you know it's not too much of a chore for you to show up every time and build up a few spaces. they like You could even just build up one space, start with your comment section and take on more as you're comfortable with it. And yeah, that about covers it.

01:19:31.10

Krispy

I love that. I think these are such solid pieces of advice. And I'm glad, I'm so glad that I got to hear from all three of your different experiences too, especially with how varied it is with the sizes and just the stories. It's just, it's, it's been really interesting to hear about that.

01:19:51.77

Krispy

I think the one thing that I will say is if you're creating a community around your comic is know your limits. I think a lot of people like to start absolutely massive and they start these like spaces, usually discord. Cause that's where, that's just where it seems to be heading right now. Forums are unfortunately a time of the past and it depends on comment sections I again that's still a place of community but a lot of it is shifting towards discords but I see when people start discords for their web comics like it's just this massive sprawling kind of thing with a lot of expectations and that could be a place to kind of give yourself a little bit of burnout if it doesn't you know fill up all of the spaces right away and also it could be pretty and intimidating and

01:20:38.46

Krispy

for people coming into the space I know that that was something that we wanted to pay attention to when making the Screen Tones discord was that like less channels the kind of better for us and for people entering the chat so that's a little bit more focused on craft because that's just what the discord is for there is a million discords about sharing art and talking about other things and talking about your pets and food and all that stuff. So they're out there. Screen Tones, not usually a place, for that.

01:21:10.84

Krispy

And, you know, it's all about curating those kinds of experiences and what you really want from a community. With that, Grace Gatsby, what a long episode.

01:21:25.90

Claire

I do say. Quite long in the tooth,

01:21:29.34

Krispy

Yeah, quite long as a tooth.

01:21:32.03

Star

We've got quite a few thoughts about the subject.

01:21:36.16

Krispy

Quite a few indeed so verbose I think that that has been an absolute chicken salad Caesar wrap and thank you so much for this absolute journey

01:21:49.70

Star

Indubitably.

Krispy

I am indubitably Krispy and you can find my work perchance at ghostjunksickness.com and lunarblight.com

[some seconds later]

Star

I've been Star the whole time and you can find my comics at castoff-comic.com.

01:23:13.11

Claire

And I've been Claire/Clam. You can find my comic at phantomarine.com.

01:23:20.28

Bob

And I've been Bob, and you can find my comics at intothesmokecomic.com and demonoftheunderground.com.

01:23:27.57

Krispy

Quite. Quite, I say. Quite.

01:23:29.64

Claire

I'm very excited to see the art for this. This is going to be a an interesting one.

01:23:31.83

Krispy

Oh.

01:23:32.73

Star

Yes.

01:23:32.79

Krispy

you

01:23:34.42

Star

This is the second episode in a row that I've been on that has artwork that involves horses.

01:23:39.03

Krispy

yeah oh oh yeah. There's going to Haunt one. Yeah. Yeah.

01:23:42.89

Star

Hans! Hans! Hans!

01:23:44.22

Krispy

I have a secret hate for horses. I'm sorry. It's just, I'm sorry, horse lovers.

01:23:48.40

Star

Oh my god, how dare you say...

01:23:49.10

Krispy

And there's horses in my family. that We have lore. Like, you know, they're fine. But I don't know. i don't know. i used to be a horse girl, too.