there was a time, back when the Scratch Saga was first released, back in 2019, that i thought i would be doing scratch forever. this was my safe haven, and i could've never seen myself leaving. so there i was, on the last episode, when it was revealed to me that the moral of the story was "you can't do scratch forever." and back then, that seemed like such an absurd prospect. how? how could i leave one of the best online communities i had ever found? the year is 2024. there have been fifteen early revolutions round the sun of which my existence has taken place. i am falling out of scratch's intended user demographic, a fate that (given time) we all will see. most have moved on. i haven't heard word from any of the "old" animators that i was so engrossed in half a decade ago. some of them have graduated college by now. some of them have actual jobs. lives. the adults that are still active on this site are few and far between, most of them computer programmers before coming to scratch. griffpatch is... i don't know. he's got his own thing going on with his youtube channel and his raid shadow legends sponsorships. point being, the adults on this site are surrounded by a sea of children. scratch was always meant to be a transitory thing. a stepping stone if you will. something to bridge the gap to a text-based coding language like python, something to open up the world of coding for kids. because impressive as some scratch games are, you can only do so much with the language, and only so much with the platform on which it is run. "scratch famous" is not comparable to "real famous", fame here is nothing but a meaningless dopamine joyride for some bright kid who created a good project. you cannot translate fame here into money, out there, on the internet of adults, you can (griffpatch is the exception here, not the rule). so, respectfully, what the heck does this all mean for me? not much, really. my withdrawal from scratch has been slow, and my project output is unhurried and losing steam. maybe ill drop a "full"-length animation here sometime, i'm scripting out a story that i may or may not make into an ARG hosted on scratch. we'll see. only time can really tell, but i'm in no rush to leave. i'll sit back and watch new animators pop up, new artists spring up out of nowhere, and fairly good games appear on the explore page. and of course, like every other time in the history of scratch, it will be young faces and fresh minds that do this work. and so be it. (wow i wrote this like i have more than 100 subs im actually not that important :') ) music credit: Demarco, Mac. "20180702 2." One Wayne G, 2023.
