Mini Matt for Pride since he's played so many queer characters. Here's him playing Mapplethorpe, which has been a huge motivator for me to get back into my art.
Mojave has been living with a secret. He is a Doppelgänger. His entire life has revolved around Robert, his other self. He knows everything Robert does and feels, and its always interrupted his life. His solution was to mimic everything Robert does.
He worked for years to get the same kind of career, a wife, all the little life achievements as Robert. But recently it hasn't been good enough. When Mojave is given the chance to go to Edinburgh on a business trip he jumps at the chance to be closer to Robert who lives in Paris.
His plan is to Haunt Robert. Or meet Robert. Or kill him and take his place. He's unsure himself of what he might do. All of those plans are interrupted when he meets a strange local named Finlay who agrees to show him around Edinburgh. Finlay may be able to show him that there's more out there than his singular obsession with Robert. Then again, he might not.
I'm hoping to post more regular updates here and on kofi so I can share my progress while I'm making comics.
Right now I'm in the process of scripting out my story about a queer doppelgänger in an urban fantasy/ horror.
Jupiter is Drowning' is about a Doppelgänger named Mojave who has been trying (and failing) to navigate his life. No one was around to tell him what he is and his mind is constantly preoccupied with his 'other self' Robert, a successful economist who lives a world away. His dissatisfaction becomes too much to ignore and he decides to seek Robert out, though he's not sure if its to romance him or kill him. His plans are interrupted by a happy-go-lucky bartender Finlay, who realizes Mojave is out of touch with himself and the world he belongs to, so he offers to show him what he really is.
But there's more to Finlay than Mojave knows, and the path they follow together sweeps them up through magic, the Fae, and through time itself.
If this sounds interesting please help boost my kofi or consider following me on kofi for more in depth comic content!
Tsukishima just wants to get through the war and return to his fiancé, but he finds himself tangled up in a web of coded messages and executions. The only way to traverse the situation safely is by trusting his new second lieutenant Tsurumi, but their relationship behind closed doors only sinks Tsukishima further into the cult known as the 7th division.
A familiar sense of dread was there, but it didn't engulf Tsukishima. It stood at his side, lacing its cold fingers in his own. Despite the warning, Tsukishima stood firm. “Then you would be contributing to the environment I just described. He would be incentivized to discipline me for my kind gesture and you would seem even more like a coward for reporting me to your superior. You'd make a martyr out of me and bitterness would fester in your unit. They're all aware I'm here so it wouldn't be difficult to assume my punishment was directly caused by this conversation."
“Interesting. So you're not afraid of consequences,” Tsurumi mused, tilting himself to one side a bit.
Mojave has been living with a secret. He is a Doppelgänger. His entire life has revolved around Robert, his other self. He knows everything Robert does and feels, and its always interrupted his life. His solution was to mimic everything Robert does.
He worked for years to get the same kind of career, a wife, all the little life achievements as Robert. But recently it hasn't been good enough. When Mojave is given the chance to go to Edinburgh on a business trip he jumps at the chance to be closer to Robert who lives in Paris.
His plan is to Haunt Robert. Or meet Robert. Or kill him and take his place. He's unsure himself of what he might do. All of those plans are interrupted when he meets a strange local named Finlay who agrees to show him around Edinburgh. Finlay may be able to show him that there's more out there than his singular obsession with Robert. Then again, he might not.
(Embedding the link still isn't working, but you can find it here)
With wonderful editing once again by @kamikazequail!
I've been really looking forward to this one, hope you enjoy. There's babble under the cut
A few thoughts on the dreams:
I like to think that in Ogata's subconscious, winter never stopped after the war. The cold and snow is embedded in the ptsd and feels like an inextricable part of who he is just as much as all his other unresolved issues. Sugimoto, on the other hand, has started healing since meeting Asirpa, and there are living things in his dreams including the plants. He's more connected to the world and society than Ogata ever was, and that understanding of things outside of himself reflects in his dreams. However, they were both deeply affected by the same battlefield, so that's where their nightmares overlap and they're both seen as they perceive themselves.
I imagine they were both very isolated by their places in the battles, in kinda opposite ways. Sugimoto was often the sole survivor in the thick of it, and earned this legendary status that othered him from his comrades, not to mention the survivor's guilt of going through the same shit as everyone around him but not dying like they did. Meanwhile, Ogata specialized in sniping at a point in Japanese history where sniping wasn't an established tactic yet, so he was the only one doing it, which meant he was always in the background doing his own thing while everyone around him fought and died or came back scarred by combat that never touched him. Combined with the way everyone couldn't stand him as a person anyway, it was like he was in a completely different battle from everyone else and never acknowledged as part of the group (who probably developed pretty strong trauma bonds with each other). The result being that both felt alone in that battle and never had the community support to come back from it, so some part of their subconscious is still stuck there in isolation, as something not quite human the way everyone else is. I like the idea of those dreams creating a kind of shared isolation where they can pull each other out of nightmares. Maybe it's not comfort, but it's change, and it's company, and even if they're not the same they at least aren't alone in their differences. Right?
I dunno how well it came through, but I've been kinda thinking of Yuusaku's happy disconnect from the surroundings that Ogata is in as a representation in Ogata's subconscious of the feeling that his brother always seemed to be operating in a different world than what he was able to participate in, where the rules were different and things were kinder. Now it's like his spirit is dwelling in a paradise that Ogata is locked out of.
I really wasn't expecting to enjoy writing the Yuusaku dreams this much, but they've turned out to be some of my favorite so far. I haven't actually gotten to the point in the story where he starts haunting Ogata full force, so I don't know what the vibe is supposed to be like beyond fan art I've stumbled upon, so I've just been having fun playing with the sense of eeriness and dread. Hopefully it's working.
Anyway, that bear in Sugimoto's dream (I pictured him having a much more significant moment there from his own perspective before Ogata crashed it). It was kind of inspired by this period of a really fucked sleep situation I went through as a kid and the weird dreams I had during the time. It was a recurring dreamscape where I'd get trapped progressively deeper in the ocean, and if I swam too far out I'd encounter this massive black sperm whale resting upsidedown with its nose touching the seafloor and the rest of its body floating up at an angle. For some reason it was the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen. In my dream I knew for a fact that it was wrong for me to be in its presence, and that it was both dead and ready to awaken at any moment if I got too close. I developed a bit of a phobia of whales after that which never completely went away tbh.
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