TPoH: just a PSA!

Unrelated to everything else, can I just whisper a few words in those shell-pink ears of yours, Tellyheads? Because I love you and you know that, but I have had rather disappointing news lately about less-than lovely behaviour. So far as I know you’ve been wonderful as a fandom so far, and I really, really want it to stay as a chill and friendly club and not a… well, let’s just say I want it to stay that way as much as possible.

The thing I need to say is RGB is not, will never be, has never been, the only character with television for a head to exist. I didn’t even know object heads, as a category of character design, existed! Until I fell down the rabbit hole of drawing this guy on a whim, and now look where we are. The thing is, there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of other people who have characters with television sets for heads out there; some who designed them before me, some after, but like, 99% of the time they will never ever have heard of or read TPoH or be basing it off RGB, so going out to them and accusing them of it is… not nice. Please, don’t do that.

It’s very hurtful to have someone say to you that your original, personal, deeply-thought-out design is a copy of someone else’s, and worse still if you’re told that you’re bad and should stop drawing them. It happens to all of us at some point! Heck, when I started TPoH I was asked so often if I’d read Saga that I’ve effectively been put off from doing so (but I hope I’ll get over that because I’m sure it’s awesome, really), but nobody told me to stop drawing. Even if a character was inspired by RGB, it has inspired a person to make something, another new character! And I’m all about that; if you’ve been reading the comic, you’ll know that! Unless the character is very obviously a trace-job of him (and even then people learn by copying so like, whatever) or recolouring entire pages and I saying ‘I did this’, I’m happy for them to be doing their own thing! Yes, their are copycats out there, but there is such a thing as coincidence, and zeitgeist, and luck.

Most of you folks likely know that Charles Darwin got his celeb on by publishing a paper called ‘On the Origin of Species’; well, some of you clever cookies might also know that another dude submitted a paper with almost exactly the same theory at exactly the same time. The only reason we know about Darwin’s theory of Evolution, and not the other guy, is because Darwin’s name appeared first alphabetically. Same goes for this trope- dude with TV head takes a protagonist to another world on a zany adventure. There can be ten thousand differences in the two stories from this point. Story structures like this overlap and coincide all the time, and the two writers making these stories can have absolutely no connection to each other. I kind of side with the idea that some stories just, exist outside of us- outside of people, and wander down from their hammock in the sky and sit on a person one day saying “hey, write me.” How that person goes about it, however, it up to the person. If someone else had started their version of this story before me, I’d be the one being slandered for pinching their idea.

So, TL:DR- I know the people that this addresses acted with good intentions, but don’t be hasty, and don’t be mean? Please. I want this story and its following to be a not mean place for people. That would be really nice.

02/10/17