I absolutely loved hopping in to the @cp77nyexchange again this year, and I got to draw these cuties for @myfoggedreality. Hope you had a great and relaxing holiday! 💜
I took part again in this year's @cp77nyexchange, which I look forward to every time! I drew @Lhugbereth this time around, and adored the possibilities in the wish list.
Lhugy, I hope you enjoy this one. I wrote up a Jackie/V fixit ending with lots of humor and fluff. I had a lot of fun writing this one. Not as much angst for a change, which is a gigantic departure from my usual writing, so I hope you enjoy it! ❤️
A four page comic about drawing, drawn for the Portland Public Library's newest exhibit, "Why We Make Comics: Reflections on Storytelling".
If you live in Portland ME, you can see this comic, as well as three others drawn by Isabella Rotman, Caroline Hu, and Liz Prince, on display from October 6th to December 31 at the library!
You are working the gate in the afterlife and for the first time ever, something the humans built has shown up to be processed. You’re not sure what to do, this… entity shouldn’t have a soul, but here it is in front of you, freshly dead and awaiting the next life.
It’s not as exciting as it sounds, working at the pearly gates.
Sure, it’s satisfying to send the hypocrites and the assholes to hell. And it’s nice to see the ones who thought they were beyond redemption walk through into paradise.
So yeah, it has its perks. But not exciting. I mean, after the first million souls or so they all blur together, you know?
You never get anything new. Animals all get sent right on through automatically and there’s nothing other then humans in our jurisdiction. Oh sure, there’s life other then humans. But that’s no my department.
I keep tads on humans on my lunch breaks. You’re a damn fascinating species, better then anything your “television” puts out. Although The Good Place was a little too relatable, I’ll give you guys that.
Anyway, one of my favorite things you guys came up with was the Space Race. I mean, what a nail biter! And it was so tense up until the end. Pity about those Apollo one guys, though. But I heard they got a kick out of watching the moon landing when it did happen.
Course, that sorta died down after a decade or so. Don’t know why you guys quit going to the moon.
And then you decided Mars was the place to be and started sending out all those rovers of yours. Not nearly as exiting as going yourselves, but as you all like to say, baby steps.
The rovers were surprisingly fun to watch. For mindless robots, they’ve got a lot of spunk. So I’d check in every once in while, but mostly I watched Earth. You guys had figured out how to work memes and it was a very amusing thing.
I was half way through a shift when it go here. I have no idea why none of the others I processed mentioned the thing, but death is confusing enough I guess.
It shouldn’t have been there. I want to make that clear, by no law of the universe should that thing have had a soul. You humans are where closer to making actual AI then you are sprouting wings. And you never even tried with this! Its job was to collect rocks!
And yet there is was, beeping up at me.
It didn’t look like a human soul. Or any other form of life that I had ever seen. It wasn’t damaged at all, or even afraid. That was the weirdest thing. You humans are always scared shitless by the time I see you. But this thing wasn’t. Even a little. It was just… curious. Like that’s all I could feel from it. Pure wonder.
I blinked a bit before flipping through my files, seeing if it was a new species or something. I found nothing, of course. Those idiots over in records never give us anything useful.
So I did the only thing I could do. I asked its name.
Now, you humans have come up with so many ways to say the same thing that I’ve had to learn a lot of languages to keep up. The newest was binary, which I never expected to actually need.
It came in handy, since that’s what the thing answered back in.
I remembered that name. It had popped up in new reports regarding a Mars rover that went out of commission, sending the final message “my battery is low and its getting dark.” before dying.
Humanity had cried over it for a solid couple of days. You guys really like personifying objects.
But I had dismissed it as just that. But here it was. Waiting patiently for me to send it On.
I could just opened the gates and sent it through and put from my mind. Make the thing some else’s problem.
I didn’t.
I stood, crossed in front of my desk, and put out my hand to touch the strange soul.
Opportunity didn’t feel human. Nor animal. It felt…. simple. Calm.
I could feel an awearness of the love its chief engineer had felt for it. The pang of missing the workshop back on Earth where it had been built, during long nights on Mars.
It had dreamed. Dreamed of humans making it to Mars and finding it. Of it’s engineer taking it home and repairing it. Dreamed of exploring Earth as it had Mars.
I could purpose, and curiosity in its mission. Lonely as it was, it never doubted its purpose or resented its lot in life. It got to learn, and to see what had never been seen. What more could it ask for?
I could feel one tiny spec of fear. Near the end of its life, it realized it would never go home. Never see Earth or its engineer again. That it would die alone on Mars.
And like all things with a soul it did not want to die. It cried and mourned and begged to live. It was alive! It had a home and it wanted to go home! So badly did it want to go home.
But there was nothing to do, of course. Even its engineer, whom it loved so dearly, couldn’t reach Mars and bring Opportunity home.
It had watched one last sunset, and sent one last message.
A goodbye. And a plea to be mourned, if it could not be saved.
I withdrew my hand and looked over the soul. It looked up at me.
For the ones that I send upstairs, I take the form of whoever loved them most in life. I guess in that moment, I was in the form of an engineer at NASA. Opportunity seemed delighted to see me.
“Welcome home,” I gestured to the gates that swung slowly open behind me. “I missed you.”
It beeped out a single phase, 01001001 00100000 01101101 01101001 01110011 01110011 01100101 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101111
V wants flowers, but not during a stickup and not when Kerry is in the middle of it. Or, not your typical flower shop story. @cp77nyexchange
For @jasakime, featuring their V (Vance) and Kerry Eurodyne. Contains flower shops, blood and violence, and, believe it or not, a little fluff. Hope you enjoy!
Warnings: Violence, blood and injury (but a happy ending)
Also read on Ao3.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Vance nearly passed by the little flower shop.
He’d passed it by a thousand times, acting as if he never gave it a second thought, but he always gave it a wistful side-glance. If he didn’t stop, he wouldn’t be tempted. RealFlowers were expensive, and he had better things to spend his money on than something that was going to die in a week. Or that’s what he always told himself. It came from a tough start in the biz, scraping, scrimping, saving. He had money now, but it still felt like a frivolous expense whether he could afford it or not.
It wasn’t as if he never spent money at all. He had cars, guns, clothes… things that would last. It didn’t mean he couldn’t look, though, even though Kerry always pestered him endlessly afterward for not just buying something he wanted.
But today, it was a commotion inside that caught his attention. Shouting, guns pointed at the owner who stood behind the counter with their hands raised in the air. The few patrons had their hands on their heads, some in fear, some openly glaring at the robbers. One bandit was outside acting as a lookout, but V had simply passed them by, far more interested in the goings on inside than who was on the street nearby.
Leave it to the fucking scavs to hold up a flower shop… although maybe it wasn’t such a gonk idea. Even with a couple of small sales, the shop would be holding a lucrative amount of eddies. It was too dangerous and stupid to rob banks, liquor stores, or CHOO2 stations, so would-be thieves had taken to raiding clothing stores and other luxury specialty shops. NCPD simply couldn’t keep up with the sudden spree of smash-and-grabs and old-fashioned holdups.
It was still risky for the criminals who tried it, because it usually meant crossing over into some other gang’s territory. If they caught wind of it—and hadn’t pre-approved the robbery—there was going to be hell to pay, and gangs were much more efficient than the cops. No trial, no jury, just an execution.
But what really caught Vance’s attention was a silver-haired patron inside that looked an awful lot like one Kerry Eurodyne, rockerboy, chaos incarnate, and, most importantly, his input. V stopped walking while his brain caught up with what his eyes had seen and he backed up slowly, peering in through the edge of the window without catching the attention of the lookout. Yep, it was definitely Kerry, glaring holes into the scav who was holding a gun on him. They were having some kind of conversation… no, scratch that. They were shouting at each other, which was only serving to make a tense situation even tenser. He could only hear muffled words, but he could guess fairly easily the dressing-down they were getting from the famously foul-mouthed rocker, with his “do you know who I fucking am” and “you will be hunted down to the edges of the earth if you fucking dare.”
The scav reversed the direction of his rifle, striking Kerry across the temple and the rockerboy went down in a heap. Whatever plan Vance might have been formulating short-circuited at the sight of Kerry hitting the floor, vision going red with rage. He drew his gun and, barely aiming, fired a shot through the shop window. He half expected it to shatter at this close range, but the glass held, the bullet punching a neat hole before finding its target. The front of the scav’s head exploded in a spray of blood and bone and brains, splattering the patron who had been standing next to Kerry. She hit the floor as well, but in self-defense rather than any kind of injury, and her sense of self-preservation saved her life as one of the robbers pulled the trigger in her direction rather than aiming where the shot had actually come from. Ceramic vases shattered, sending a deluge of flowers and water showering across the shelves and the downed customers. The thieves were waving their guns and shouting vague threats in all directions, trying to figure out who had murdered one of their own. The shopkeeper hunched behind the meager cover of the counter and register, empty hands still raised as if in a silent plea and to prove to the robbers that he was not the one with the weapons.
Vance used their panic to his advantage.
While they were still spinning in useless circles, trying to find their attacker, Vance darted over and kicked the lookout through the front window, which cracked and then gave way, opening fire as the next nearest thief ducked to avoid a face full of broken glass and his flying buddy. He was the next to go, dropping his gun and grabbing his throat as blood erupted from between his fingers. It was an ugly way to die, and the third robber stared in disbelief as his partner’s life gurgled away, making the floor slick with blood and the water from the broken vases which had decorated the previously beautiful window scene.
These guys were not professionals. But that same lack of skill made them unpredictable.
One of the last two standing fired in the direction of the window, but the shotgun spread caught one of the owner’s hands, and he went down behind the counter, screaming in shock, holding his shredded hand in front of him like he couldn’t believe it was still attached to his arm. One of the patrons tried to make a run for it while chaos ensued, and caught another shotgun blast to the back. She didn’t make a sound as she dropped to the floor just in front of the door. Vance shot the gunner through the eye, ensuring he never hurt anyone else again.
“Vance!”
He’d been distracted for only a second by the fleeing patron, and in that time, two more had come out of the back. They were either lookouts at the back door or trying to find the shop’s safe. One of them had dragged Kerry up from the floor and had him in a chokehold, barrel of a revolver resting against the side of his head that wasn’t already bleeding. Kerry, to his credit, didn’t look scared, but did look pissed. Vance narrowed his eyes, trying to mentally will Kerry not to say something that would end up with his brains all over the floor. Kerry wasn’t stupid by any means, but he had a tendency to let his emotions control his mouth.
“Stay where you are! Drop your weapon or the old man gets it!”
“Old man??” Kerry huffed, even though it was entirely true.
Vance raised his hands, but didn’t drop the gun. “You don’t want to do that. You know who you have, don’t you?”
Both of the scavs glanced at Kerry, but only one of them seemed to recognize him. “Holy shit!”
“Yeah. Kerry Eurodyne. Which means you two gonks are in a whole shitload of trouble, especially if anything happens to him.”
“Fuck you,” spat the scav who was using Kerry as a shield. “Your music sucks anyway.”
To his credit, Kerry only flared his nostrils in another huff of irritation. He met Vance’s gaze, then closed his eyes and dropped. Just let himself go completely limp, pitching both himself and his captor forward with the a sudden dead weight. As soon as Kerry’s head was away from the revolver’s barrel, Vance aimed and fired at the one who had been holding his input hostage. The bullet punched a neat hole directly between the scav’s eyes, who stood swaying on his feet for several long seconds while his body caught up with his death.
Another bullet whizzed past Vance’s head, close enough to nick his ear as it passed by. He barely felt it as he let loose another volley, punching three bullets in quick succession into center mass and a final one into the scav’s head.
Kerry sat up slowly, making sure that really was the last of them, holding the side of his head where blood ran freely down the side of his face from the earlier strike with the rifle butt. V tried not to panic at the sight of it, reminding himself that head wounds bled worse than almost anything else even when they weren’t that bad. Nonetheless, he could hear the distant sirens that meant Trauma Team was on the way. Of course Kerry had a subscription, Platinum if V had to guess. Kerry’s record label probably made it mandatory as part of his contract, if they didn’t foot the bill themselves. Had to protect their biggest investment, after all.
“Ow,” Kerry deadpanned, his hand pressed against his head. “I can’t believe he actually hit me.”
“That last guy was about to do more than that. You nearly gave me a heart attack. What the hell were you even doing here?”
“Me? What the hell were you doing here?”
“You know I used to live around here. And good thing I happened to be walking by today. Now answer my question.”
“I answered!”
“You did not, you gonk. You… this isn’t even your side of town.”
“Fine.” Kerry gave him a pained smile, reached over and picked up a handful of flowers that lay on the floor, shaking the glass shards out of the petals and handed the crumpled, crushed buds to V. “Happy birthday?”
He’d completely forgotten…not that it was his birthday, but that Kerry told him to come over later on pain of never being spoken to again because he had an epic gift to give him. Kerry had been planning something special, and apparently flowers had been a part of it… before he’d been so rudely interrupted by a bunch of gun-toting thieves. Now V felt like the gonk.
“Kerry…” He was touched, taking the flowers from him. It would have been so much more romantic if they hadn’t both been splattered in blood and weren’t sitting in the middle of what looked like a very brightly decorated war zone.
“No, that’s not all. I… might have bought the shop for you.”
“What??”
“You said you wanted something else to do, and I know how you try so hard not to stare at this place every time we drive by, so… I bought it for you.”
“I don’t actually know anything about flowers.”
“So? That’s what your partner is for.” Kerry gestured to the former owner who had stopped screaming and had gone to whimpering, peering cautiously from behind the counter as if he couldn’t quite believe that things had gone from bad to worse to done. In V’s estimation, the shopkeeper had gotten off light. He wondered if the guy would even want to stick around to help run the shop after today.
“You really did that for me?”
“Of course I did. Happy birthday, Vance.”
“Thank you? Just…”
“What? Do you not like it?”
“I do! Just no more getting caught in the middle of a hold-up!”
It's finally done ;__; I've been working on this on and off for the better part of half a year now I think. It was one of the first bigger ideas I sketched out one afternoon shortly after finishing my first Cyberpunk playthrough in February '23 xD
The little background story tha inspired it, that I've definitely told before, goes as follows:
During "Gimme Danger", when talking with Takemura about their childhood, Corpo!V will talk about their childhood growing up in Charter Hill. And me, a sucker for details like that, in the middle of building a background story for my V at the time, immediately drove to Charter Hill then to figure out where a good place to live might be.
I chose a random apartment building on Grant Avenue, cause it had metro access, lots of shops, and all the bright neon lights and ads everyhwere that V mentions. Good enough, I thought, it's settled. He grew up there.
Flashforward about 20 hours of gameplay, I finally meet Kerry, and he invites V to Dark Matter. And I don't think I even initially realized it (bc, you know, I was slightly... preoccupied otherwise during that convo) but then it dawned on me... You can actually see the building I chose as V's childhood home quite well from up there. And he would obviously realize it, too. Since Vince doesn't have good memories of the place though he never brings it up, until Kerry eventually, during one of their many dates they end up having up there, notices he's been staring off into the distance a little more than usual.
And yeah... this is that scene and I really wanted to do it as a little comic ;__;
All backgrounds are ingame screenshots, the map of Charter Hill is a heavily edited screenshot of the interactive Cyberpunk Map (https://maps.piggyback.com/cyberpunk-2077/maps/night-city) and the street names I referenced from this map someone on Reddit put together by hand from going around and reading all the ingame street signs (https://www.reddit.com/r/LowSodiumCyberpunk/comments/msyg79/i_couldnt_find_a_map_of_night_city_with_street/). Both super duper useful resources for writing, can highly recommend, I use them all the time XD
Anyway, I hope you like my sappy, self-indulgent lil' comic, I sure as hell had a lot of fun working on it and I'm so proud to finally have it finsihed x3
A character being physically attractive is not enough for me to like them. If all that is appealing about them is their looks, that is not enough for me to even remember their name.
For me to remember or even care about a fictional character, they need to have depth to them & be something more than just a pretty face to smooch. I want to see them at their worst, their best & to know all of the messy bits in between.
An attractive character without any level of emotional depth, is nothing more than just a pretty decoration to flounce around the screen and that is frankly just boring.
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