i no longer enjoy emotia
have you ever loved something dearly as a child, only for you to revisit it years later to realize.. "hey, this thing is kind of boring, actually."
i feel like that happens to the best of us, a universal experience.
this exact thing happens in my favorite web visual novel, homestuck, where in the later part of the comic, john egbert re-watches one of his favorite movies--one he dedicated many a pun and many of his earlier personality to--and absolutely finds it horrendous, not understanding how he ever enjoyed such a thing.
it's a little heartbreaking, right? a natural symbol of growing up, changing your preferences, yada yada. except.. i guess this is the first time this has ever really happned to me.
my interests stick to me like glue. they stick, and even when others might pop out of place, they are sturdy and build up over time. i never really grow out of my stronger interests. club penguin? been strong since 2023, cookie run? still tuning in since 2021. hello neighbor? even after the fandom kurfuffle, i still enjoy it every now and then. god, even VENTURIANTALE from way back when, i still carry the same enjoyment. what i mean to say is, i've never "experienced" getting out of touch with an interest, smaller interests SURE, but BIG interests? ones that i dedicate TIME and LOVE to? basically impossible. well, until now, at least.
you'd imagine how conflicted i feel, when.. it's something i've been loving for about a year now.
emotia is a small series made by the titular slop channel GHS, and i was really hooked on it--having watched it since basically the first day it dropped with less than 100k views. i really, really loved it. and i loved the two main characters, glee and pepper. i dedicated many many artworks for them, ocs, i even have an entire board masterlist of every notes app and story i made. emotia was how i met my girlfriend, i'm followed by GHS, i got dmed by a GHS artist-- i commissioned a GHS artist.
just from reading this, you could probably already tell, i got burnt out. i think i should've stopped, a long, long time ago. but when i first met my girlfriend, it was like a new spark was born within me and my love for emotia. but it's been soooo ridiculously long since july, it eventually became upsetting too. especially considering my want to always churn out content after content for my girlfriend. i don't know my limits--but that's another debacle for another day.
let me tell you what led up to this point... it's all just a mere coincidence, actually. one of my friends, the coolest, kindest person i know. she went to the cafeteria with me to buy some fries, and while waiting and eating, she was bored--i was talking non-stop about emotia since i first sat down with her, she's even memorized how to draw glee! so she eventually became interested, opening her phone to watch the pilot episode. i was really happy, and watched it her.
but it was.. different, different from what i remember. i felt different. i felt.. wrong, about it. the whimsy and excitement i would have shown months ago had fully, fully vanished into thin air.
when we finished watching the epilogue too, i didnt really feel excited. my brain didnt really produce any dopamine from it, either. neither seeing pepper nor glee made me feel.. really "happy". and that's when i realized it.
i don't really enjoy this anymore.
when she looked with a neutral face, and i asked her what her thoughts were, she said it was "okay". it hurt, it hurt, not because of her neutral opinion. it hurt because i agreed with her.
it was just "okay" to me. nothing like the episodes and episodes i made up in my head. a thousand thoughts raced into my head; "was this really what i had been miserable about for weeks? this simple series?", "why have i been so caught up and obsessed with a series with such a mediocre plot?". these are all things i probably would have eagerly responded with my own imagination, but i doubt even my brain wants anything to do with this series anymore.
emotia has became more and more upsetting for me, from unneccessary series to other things, there was a time where i kept gritting my teeth and trying to love it. and that was what i genuinely felt now until this moment.
my friend told me something, well, he was kind of talking about his own experience. but i found it oddly synonymous with my current predicament. we were watching rabbids invasion, a cartoon network show, and he proceeded to go on a tangent about "teen titans go", i don't recall his exact words, but i remember him saying that he absolutely despised how cartoon network preferred teen titans go over every other show it had in its network. how everytime he wanted to watch something else, teen titans go would take double the amount of watch time. so whenever he would see it, he would just be filled with resentment.
resentment. that was the feeling i had. resentment, not enjoyment. i resented emotia, i resented the studio. i resented everything about it.
it took me weeks to get back to loving glepper like i used to without feeling uncomfortable or anxious, and it took learning FUNCTIONS, of all things. maybe that was sign one, and i thought; "hey, im sure things will just return to usual now, right?"
but i think it's more of a sign. like with my girlfriend, and with my friends. to stop. full-stop. it's not healthy at all. and i think, finally realizing this, it makes me acknowledge that i can't keep doing this. it feels like a breath of fresh air to realize this series makes me feel this way. this studio makes me feel this way. and you know what... it isn't really worth my time.
my emotia-artstyle gimmick is the last emotia artpiece i make. until episode 2 comes out, i don't really want to think about this series anymore.
and i'm really glad... i think this has become a milestone-esque moment for me! so yeah, that's kinda it. <:)