Hey everyone.

This isn’t an update like the type in which you’re used to seeing. More of a post where I’m dumping my thoughts out on a page. I think I’m feeling a little lost and confused at the moment, but that’s alright too – it’s what it is. 

The reason why I’m writing this post is frankly, a bit of a soul-searching moment. I don’t think I know what I’m doing at this point, and I’m not too sure if we (the English side of the circle) quite know either. 

We first started out creating artbooks featuring shipgirls – in the earliest days, ’14-’16, this was indeed the plan. At the time, we were interested in creating characters – with the secondary aim of having this generate something we can hold in our hands. I think in some ways, we still are – but motivation is admittedly lacking for many reasons. I can’t really speak for the others, but for me? More often than not, I felt like I would rather prefer to see if we can tell stories or build something with what we’ve got on hand. After all, we do have an awfully lot of shipgirls already.

Now, this is where the issue compounded. The “team” or “circle” – really now more of a band of friends – are huge fans of history, and so working on a world-building extension seemed to be the natural choice. However, as we dug and researched and attempted to craft the Pacific world, it was natural that this was going to be an endless project – there is always a new thing to look into, a new idea to be entertained, and a new concept to be tested. We were having fun – and still are!

But, when matters of real life – health, relationships, graduation, job-search, and more starts to hit – hobbies become hard to manage. It’s doubly difficult in cases like this where it feels like that I’m staring into an infinite kaleidoscope of possibilities. Triply hard, when even I’m feeling the burn-out from uncertainty.

So, what do we do now? 

I’m not too sure. Though we have plenty of ideas, I do think some sort of project that has a definite start and end is probably a good place to start (laughs). 

I expect this post to remain pinned until we figure out things. The site, too, is going to stay up. Exactly what we come up with next is going to require some thinking.

The nature of a “doujin” circle, as you know, is to do things that motivates us. Commercialization has plenty of perks, and even answering to an audience’s demands informally creates reinforcement that could be positive for the creators. Unfortunately, neither of those currently applies to us – we were, and are happy, with what we have so far.

So, is this a natural progression, given the finite lifespans of fandoms and interests? Is this a simple wintery hibernation, as we ponder and reflect? Is this going to be the start of something new altogether?

I honestly don’t know! 

But I think I’m excited to find out – whatever it might be.