 Mythos
| "Hello,
Badgermein, thanks for the opportunity to do this." |
 Badgermein
| "Hello, Mythos,
thank you for taking the time to talk to me today. Would
you mind starting by introducing yourself and your
website?" |
Mythos
"I'm Mythos, or at
least that's the name I've gone by online for the
past two decades. I've been a part of the online
Half-Life community since September 2007, when I
joined the now-defunct PHWOnline community that was
dedicated to content created with Garry's Mod,
namely, webcomics and machinima. Since 2012 (with a
break between 2018 and 2022) I've run a small
website dedicated to hosting comics created with the
Source engine, Metrocop ( https://metrocop.net), which
was relaunched last year and now has over 750
comics. Since the relaunch, I've also started to
post long-form Half-Life-related articles as well,
which seem to have been quite well-received by the
community." |
Badgermein
|
"A lot of the content on your site
is SFM comic related, but you have a lot of articles
about the HL community in general. Do you write all of
the articles yourself?"
|
Mythos
"Yes, all
the articles on the site so far have been written by
me personally. When I made the decision to reboot
Metrocop, I wanted to split the focus between
archiving comics like before and creating other types
of Half-Life-related content that I enjoyed. The days
of fansites dedicated to producing content about a
particular niche are long gone but are something I
deeply miss, so I decided to make my own modern
website in that vein, a cross between the new and the
nostalgic."
|
Badgermein
| "You’ve done some
interviewing as well, how did the interview process go
for the PHWOnline article? Was it hard to find former
members? Personally, I’m impressed by the
comprehensiveness of this article." |
Mythos
| "Thanks! The
PHWOnline article was a passion project for me. You
might be surprised to hear I had quite a love-hate
relationship with the website, having been a part of it
right before it started to fall, and I actually
(rage)quit the website and vowed never to go back. Time
heals all wounds, however, and with time I just ended up
feeling a sense of longing for the old days, which
spurred me to try and document the lost history of the
website.
"For tracking former members, I first started with
those I already knew how to reach, like Jeff Eastman
and Mjolnir82991, and the big names I knew were
essential to telling the story, otherwise there
wouldn't be much of a point in pursuing it.
Surprisingly Twitter turned out to be a great means of
locating people, something that probably isn't true
anymore — I found PHW VIPs like Michael K.
Clements and Joseph "Slick" Shea through there, and
luckily they were more than happy to put up with my
incessant questioning. Otherwise it was a matter of
researching a lot and spending a lot of time on
Wayback Machine and Google (it's scary how easy it
actually is to find someone online if you put in the
effort, not a skill I'm too proud of!).
"The interviewing process itself was quite
amateurish, I have no formal background in journalism
whatsoever. I first started the project by doing a
spreadsheet of a timeline for PHW through a lot of
research on Wayback Machine, alongside some of my own
unreliable memories (that were quickly corrected by
facts). Once I had that, it was a matter of compiling
a series of tailored questions for each individual
based on the big events of the website. The interviews
themselves were simply conducted by e-mail — not
very "oral" for an "oral history", admittedly, but I
lacked the time and means to do them any other way —
with very little follow-up. Everyone was super nice
and willing to go through it, even Waxx who has little
memory of those days or interest in reminiscing. It's
honestly my proudest moment of the new website and I
couldn't have done it without their help."
|
Badgermein
| "Obviously, you
think that archiving is important. The Half Life
community produces so much content, from SFM animation
to live action movies, what made you choose SFM
comics?" |
Mythos
|
"Comics created with the Source
engine are personal to me. It's where I first joined
the Half-Life community and one of my first creative
outlets — I'm still pretty proud of The Adventures of Hercule Cubbage and
intend to go back to it at some point to finish the
story. That, plus nostalgia for stuff I did as a
teenager as I hit my 30s helped revive my interest in
this forgotten digital art form.
"There's certainly not a lack of high-quality
machinima or mods for Half-Life, but those are hardly
forgotten! Comics, on the other hand, had been spurned
towards the recesses of DeviantArt when there was so
much great stuff done circa 2006-2010, so I really
wanted to keep that alive somehow. I think I've
managed to do exactly that and I'm grateful for people
still checking these out, and even more so for the
people doing brand-new ones in this day and age.
Though I'm still waiting for those Source 2 comics!"
|
Badgermein
| "Metrocop.net was
relaunched relatively recently, what was the primary
reason for it’s shutdown?" |
Mythos
| "Metrocop shutting
down was a combination of factors. The first, simply
put, was burnout; I'd been working on the site since
2012 and I had gotten pretty exhausted and disillusioned
with it. At the same time, many changes were happening
in my life at the time and I needed to focus more on my
career and other real-life stuff, which served as the
main justification. As a result, I made the decision to
stop updating the site — although, focused on archiving
as I already was back then, I never really deleted it,
and you can still find the original site at https://metrocop.wordpress.com
completely intact. Obviously it didn't stick, and not a
year later I was already starting work on a brand new
version of the site built from scratch, thanks to a few
Web development skills I'd picked up in-between
versions." |
Badgermein
| "Do you have any
major changes to your website that you hope to implement
in the near future? Or do you feel that sticking with
your current formula is a recipe for success?" |
Mythos
|
"There's no shortage of
ideas I have for Metrocop, it's just a matter of
whether I'll get the time (and patience) to work on
them. Certainly a place for the community to share
comics more openly besides Discord would be a big one;
Discord is great for chatting and fostering a
close-knit community, but it is dreadful for
posting long-form comics, let alone finding them
amidst all the messaging. That said, that's a big
undertaking and I currently can't focus on something
that huge — for better or worse, Metrocop is and
always was a one-man project, so the scope is always
more limited compared to something like the excellent
LambdaGeneration community.
"There's also been talk of perhaps expanding
Metrocop to other areas, like modding or even
machinima, but the main focus will remain on archiving
comics and the occasional article. Any big changes to
Metrocop probably won't be coming soon due to (once
again) some turning points happening in my life that
are taking my focus away from this passion project.
But, much like before, it's really only a matter of
time until I refocus on Metrocop and push it forward
some more."
|
Badgermein
| "Thank you again
for your time, Mythos." |
|
