Music will save your life, but may leave you with a life not worth saving. The characters Phonogram tends to follow are extreme cases.

Self-publishing in comics is core to the whole artform. There is no scarlet letter in comics as there still is, to some degree, in prose. As no publisher for a long time would publish serious work in comics, the only way a lot of it came out was because of self-publishing. Many of the greatest works of the medium are self-published.

Don't be ashamed of the creative urges which drive you. And certainly don't be ashamed of your ego. Hubris is only hubris when it fails. When Hubris pays off, we call these people geniuses.

When you have characters talking about music in any way, especially about music someone doesn't know, some people presume it's about showing social capital and sneering at those who don't have it.

I've never had much attraction to writing fanfiction. I don't spend much time thinking about properties I don't own, as it's 'wasted' brain-cycles.

Late night chaining of videos and basically obsessing are rare for me, and often I've never even seen the videos of my favourite songs. That said, in terms of my own personal magic, video has probably rated lower than most music fans.

Phonogram is the memory of a long period in my life through a surprisingly small filter. Those characters are basically the golem who accompanied me on that decade and a half.