Bright Hot Red Jealous Boys
wands and moons and hearts and a long, long episode
What I like about comics is their flexibility. They can be short, a single panel even, or they can be long epics with thousands of pages. The panels are the story; the gaps in the guttering are the story. The multiple panels of a single moment, slowing down the pace, are the emotive kick, as well as montages that can take you on an awe-inspiring trip between hours, days, seasons, centuries, eons. All that you need to know as a writer and artist is how much you want to show.
That is to say, episode 93 was such a big episode it didn’t fit the 20mb allowance that webtoon gives you, so I had to split it in two.
You can read part one here, and part two here.
This episode was longer because there was a lot I wanted to fit in. This episode was longer because I wanted to slow time down. This episode was longer because I needed you to know what these dark haired lads were feeling. I enjoy the colliding of similar emotions that arise from different origins, especially when its a juicy dark emotion like jealousy. Nobody ever wants to admit something like jealousy, but it can teach you a lot about yourself if your willing to hear it out.
The other surprise for episode 93 that I enjoyed was the bright intense red throughout it from the start. If something feels good and looks okay I try not to fight it.
~~ In this case the feels were anxiety, tension, dread, heartache, and the looks were antagonistic, bloody, high caution, and violent. ~~
One thing I like to do when writing is pull some tarot cards to see if there’s any emotional points I’m not hitting, or any aspects I’m missing in an episode. I know some people like to use tarot for iteration, but I find that doesn’t work well for me. I like to use tarot as a second opinion, another voice towards the end of the writing process to help keep me on track. (On a related note, my sister Leigh wrote briefly about my similar opinions to Oblique Strategies in their article on the “gnomic” cards). If you are more visually inclined, tarot or any other picture-based deck may be more helpful in conjuring up an emotion or atmosphere then writing it out.
Here’s an exampe of how I did that from episode 93:
I was at a point where I had written most of the script, decided on my themes, but there is still a little nagging voice in the back of my head telling me that something is still not right. Usually, this is the emotive crux of the episode.
I’ve been using a “one card + one card = another card” spread recently that I’ve found really useful. Essentially, you are combining two cards together and the third card tells you the result of those two cards.
I asked the cards “What do I need to know about episode 93?” and I got this:
Seven of Wands - fighting the good fight, standing up for your beliefs + The Moon - illusion, inner mysteries, obfuscation = Three of Swords - shattered illusions, heartbreak
Summing it up into something I can work with, my interpretation was “You can’t stand up for what you believe in while also under the illusion of something you don’t - doing so will break you”. Happy with this interpretation, I could then go forward and adjust anything I needed to emphasise this reading. This reading was particularly helpful in confirming the ideas I had for our dark-haired knight Patrick, who becomes disillusioned with the people he is tasked to protect.
~~ Okay, let me elaborate here. If you’ve never used tarot before you may be wondering how a deck of cards can confirm something. A lot of people use tarot for divination, but I am not a fan of using it to tell hypothetical futures. It is, perhaps like a Rorschach test, an illustration to help you understand the present moment, and the cards can be used as stand-ins for different people, situations, things, in so many combinations. But the cards can become imbued with a personality if you use them enough; maybe this is because you learn their prescribed meanings and imbue them with your personality, creating more individualised meanings. A connection, even. And sometimes the results are just uncanny. When I say these cards “confirmed” the tone I wanted to go for, it’s because the cards I pulled sprung up evocative images I had grown to know, and this particular combination spoke more accurately than any sentence I could of written, uncannily so, like it was illustrating my intentions back at me before I’d had a full grasp of them. The tarot can be read like a comic, the images speaking to one another, creating something greater then the sum of their parts. If you’d prefer, the spread above is a three panel comic version of my very, very long episode. ~~
If you are reading this newsletter on the day of it’s release, Sunday 13th, then a new episode of ill fame will be out tomorrow, Monday 14th, at 7pm BST. We delve a little bit more into the themes of jealousy. Here’s a sneak peak:
Other Stuff:
Very slow reading month. The only one I have finished is Tabitha Stanmore’s Cunning Folk, and I was very much amused by the story of a con artist called Clerk who was selling healing scrolls inscribed with Latin prayers only to discover that the scrolls were blank. (I love finding historical parallels with ill fame, as in episode 19 where we discover that our con man Thomas Reid’s letter to the Land King was nothing but a bunch of salacious drawings.)
TV has been a mix of the kinda bad (My ID is Gangnam Beauty) to the pretty good (Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung, Delicious in Dungeon). Also watched the film Lady Macbeth and yeah, I just love the way the plot flips in that film, from diminutive beaten-down wife to horrible murdering wife. Also rewatched The Boy and The Heron and Over the Garden Wall and they make a really good double bit; lots of overlap in theme and atmosphere.
Musically, I’ve been really enjoying the new BBC 6 Music show Dream Time, where the theme is dreams in all their guises (romantic and swoony to scary and nightmarish). This led to me to free jazz saxophonist John Tchicai and his album with Rent Romus’ Lords of Outland Adapt…or Die! It’s not something I’d normally listen to but I loved it and it got me through a whole day of colouring. Also just listening to so much of the Twin Peaks soundtrack, including this Twin Peaks Archive on youtube and this ambient playlist on spotify.
