Y'all need grow up. This is embarrassing and painful to look at.

Anyways, in regards to how this site has been recently, I know I've taken a massively reduced role in the community since P7 caved, I've mostly been trying to figure things out for myself, which basically has boiled down to job searching and sitting idly on XBL and playing a game of brain's choice while it's on autopilot and I'm basically at a congressional meeting in my cerebral cortex lobbying various new roads of action. That's hardly getting into the behind the scenes drama with my family. Some of them are trying, but the rest of them... let's just say I wouldn't lose any sleep over any misfortune that befell them. I am beyond "done" with those elements.
If you wanna talk projects that can potentially breathe life into this wounded creature, Red Springs' on a slow simmer; not out of any creative block, just... unsure of how to proceed with the format I want to tell it through. As for small side "fun" projects, I'm writing a framework for an RP we can play on Minecraft, titled The Eyes of Madness. Or we can continue beating around the Halo bush: I have an idea for a potential new screenshot comic shot in Halo 4 titled S.N.D. (short for Spartans Never Die), which is deliberately conceptualized to be a much more feasible effort than P7 was.
The people within this community are a very talented bunch. Most of the spriters have moved on, but our storytellers are here. Cass with his unusual and narcissistic self-fufillment fantasy, Mik with his slightly less unusual and narcissistic self-fufillment fantasy, and last but not least, Spark's
extremelynarcissistic self-fufillment fantasies, though the former two used up all the unusual that was available from the manatee-story writing pool.
My modest proposal is that we refocus on building and encouraging our writing talent. That's probably way off the mark from whatever's been argued about here, because I'll be honest, I skipped most of Mik and Uxernome's Big Bad Bitchy Bitchfest 2014. But it's a proposal nonetheless, and I don't see anyone else besides Cass trying to do anything meaningful other than defending our archives that are probably already out there in their entirety anyway.
Before things went to shit, everyone remembers the rich flow of startup content that we saw throughout the years. Mooface's crumpets was legitimately some of the funniest stuff I've ever read. Yes, it's a damn shame him and some of our former friends wanted to make life miserable for Cass over offering anything more to this community, but celebrate the work, not the worker in this case. T-Rex's comics. I loved that stuff. I may not have always replied to any of it, but I loved it. These people plus plenty others than need not be mentioned to prove my point and supports my overall point to this spiel. We have great writers, great comedians....just great great
UNTAPPED talent. Shouldn't we focus any and all efforts to cultivate and encourage those skills other than quarreling over our past work? Let's face it, the sprites, while amazing and fun to work on and with, are not a good indicator of any talent aside from only the absolute best of the artists that we nurtured within the community for almost a decade. None of us are gonna easily compare to the likes of Appo, A51, and Rayg. What we DID with said sprites, however, is.
Now pick yourselves up, on your feet, before I drag your collective asses there. There's work to be done. I want feedback, discussion, ANYTHING to keep this line of thought going.
This is Andrew Howton, signing on....or you know, you can ignore my cool speech; a labor of love that was painstakingly crafted with only the finest semi-passive-aggressive undertones, with massive doses and narcissism and self-depreciation to alleviate the air of seriousness in the potential conversation. If you do, I promise, I will get
very choked up. Honestly, there could be tears. Would you do that to me, jerkasses? : D
EDIT: Oh, while I'm at it, just to go ahead and haphazardly ninja a possible counterpoint that might pop up. Yes, I understand job/school/etc. gets in the way of this pretty constantly and consistently, and yes, not everyone has an equal amount of free time between their various responsibilities (believe me, I know. I understand. Even though Someone here that will remain unnamed I'm dead-set convinced still doesn't think I do.) but if you're good at something, why not try to work on developing it in a community of people just like that? Yes it's a weak-ass argument, and a bit wishful, but that doesn't stop it from being true.