I enjoy watching my fellow artists and hearing about their personal situations. Two in particular have caught my interest in a major way, mostly from sympathy or worry. I wonder what it's like to be inside their minds, to be in their situations and I really wish I could advise them on what to do. Unfortunately I'm not close enough to offer what little wisdom I do have.

One battles a form of autism, and in spite of his difficulties he's a fantastic artist, self-taught and every new picture he uploads takes my breath away. Due to the strange and somewhat irregular, but still sexual, nature of his style, he's been under constant fire from those who cannot understand why he fails to conform to traditional style normality. It's gotten so bad he has decided to stop posting to one of his favorite sites. He feels he cannot communicate in face-to-face dealings with others, but he is okay in a textual context.  It's like he's a robot who can only understand binary code (an excellent analogy which he had depicted several ways himself) and cannot communicate with human beings, only other robots. I can only imagine what depression this realization has caused him.  

The other is a rather gothic character who likes dark subject matter. He calls himself a satanist and an emo, His own little world contains a myriad of characters which he ritualistically threatens to kill if they are not paired up with someone else's female character. I know this is his nonverbal way of communicating his sexual frustration, and even though I know people his age are highly emotional and less sensible about this kind of thing, it pains me to watch him like a beast in a barren cage. You can only hear about so much depression and "murder" before you wonder if a person needs to get professional help. Still, I don't think he's completely crazy; plenty of us have put on the black mantle and gone to the dark side for a while. I do it sometimes myself just for the hell of it. Even so, you never can tell how much of it is a grab for attention and how much of it is really a cry for help. That's what has me on edge.