The Worth of a Life- A Smokefilled Wasteland Short (3/3)
Prequel to the full comic (read here). Summary: A short 32 panel comic regarding Hyacinth, the new Head Librarian the morning after her mentor has passed. Her best friend and confidant comes to visit and check after Hyacinth and to see how she's grappling with her lack of emotions regarding the event.
Author's Thoughts below cut:
Overview:
This comic was a fun one to work on! I made it over the course of two days and shared it exclusively to Discord, if you were curious to why all the images were links. I drew all the panels on my last computer that I no longer have, so I didn't have the original ms paint files. I've never really written a short story before, and I think I want to do more in the future.
Honestly, the idea of the comic came up when me and my best friend were discussing background characters in "A Smokefilled Wasteland" that had a huge impact on the plot, but were never actually seen in the main comic itself. I mentioned my favorite was Hyacinth, the very last librarian in the tunnels where Enoki lives. Once I actually got the story solid in my mind I decided to write a short snippet of what I felt showed her character the most.
Overall Comic Thoughts:
I wanted to explore a couple ideas with the short comic, marriage and grief. I knew that how Hyacinth and Uro Hyacinth (her 'husband'- his nickname is Mouse) became mates under unusual circumstances, and I know how the two characters behaved, so coming up with the details was surprisingly easy.
When it comes to marriage, the advice I hear the most is "make sure you love the person you want to marry". While that is good advice, what are other reasons someone might want to marry? The term 'loveless marriage' typically is used derogatorily, but in the case of lavender marriages or 'friend-marriages' I've seen they also have happy lives. For those who are asexual or aromantic, but still choose to marry, why? Or- you don't even need to be ace or aro, you just don't feel it for the person you're going to marry. If Hyacinth is ace or aro doesn't necessarily matter (nor do I care to confirm anything, head cannon how you want) but she is married, and isn't in love and will never be in love with her mate. The marriage does bring her and her mate safety, and she gets to be with the person she trusts most every day. What more does a marriage need but mutual communication and respect?
Grief itself is not so different from love, hence the saying "grief the the price you pay for loving so deep". Hyacinth, as well, feels no grief from the death of her mentor despite that being the expected response. Does wanting to feel grief mean anything in its absence? I could write a lot on this topic and how I feel about it, but I'll simply sum up in one sentence: Grief is not what you measure your love by, and its absence only means as much as you want it to.
I thought it was kinda of funny calling it "The Worth of a Life" and the subject is how much her mentor's death doesn't really affect the main character. Double meaning I suppose- What is the worth of a life to Hyacinth, and how much is a life where you don't feel much worth?
Character thoughts:
Hyacinth- If you couldn't tell, Hyacinth is written to have a very low level of emotion about everything. She lacks empathy or remorse, and is typically very anti-social. She is also bold, and when she was younger was impulsive which caused some trouble. I think what really makes her interesting to me is that she was raised very well by her parents, and for the most part, her life was quite good. It's not her fault she feels this way, it's just something that simply is. Seeing how she could handle that by being given that extra help she needed and to eventually do very well in life is something I don't do often for my characters, but I'm really glad I did for her.
Uro Hyacinth- His name according to the law of the tunnels is legally Uro Hyacinth, though he eventually asks his mate to call him Mouse. He's also very interesting to me, and I don't want to say too much because I do have a few other things for him I want to do. He's a tunnel-walker who somehow got all the way to being mates with the head librarian (a very high title). Not only that, but he became soft and sweet to those around him. Interesting guy.
That's all I really had to say about the comic. If you have any questions about it I would love to answer them! Thank you for reading!
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