I never realized the original comic could have been taken as “well mashing up popular stuff gets more views, guess I’ll ditch my original ideas and do that instead.” I just took it as “yeah it’s a pain in the ass that that’s how it goes.” So I like this response a lot. I have nothing against parodies. I just have no desire to make them myself. So I keep at doing my own characters and ideas even though it’s just a small handful of people who care. And any young artist with original, unique ideas should do the same! Even if it feels like no one’s looking, it’s far more respectable than ditching it entirely to make an entire YouTube channel dedicated to “whoa hey what if five nights at Freddy’s met Pokemon!?” I mean, hey, you wanna do some stuff like that, cool, but don’t entirely ditch your original creations in favor of something with a built-in audience. We need more people to create new and interesting characters and stories so the internet stops getting overrun by that in the first place!