If you want, could you tell us about your project a little? I remember seeing some of your ideas - that may or may not be not connected to this one, but! - they were really fun!
🥺 ;_; Thank youuu for showing interest aw ;_; I am kicking my feet and happy ;_;
It is so scary to share things like this, because this is a story very important and near and dear to my heart... and what if it's cringe!! what if it's bad!!! But I'll never make it if I stay afraid, so thank you for asking and I will be brave in return and share some info!!!! Thank you!!!
Let's see here... My project is a webcomic that is tentatively named "World's Nail". The story is set during 1990s Alaska and is inspired by the magical girl genre with reincarnating stars called Celestials. The protagonist is 26-year-old Nicoe Dijkstra, the Celestial Polaris!
Polaris is one of the most important northern stars but Nicoe herself is a very weak Celestial, giving her many problems with defending her territory and often sending her into a deep depression. Her Celestial peers don't respect her and her constellation is at risk with the upcoming celestial civil war-- and that's not to mention the creepy Dead Moon cult trying to fuck shit up in the background. All Nicoe wants to do is help people and change into her ideal self but she's terrified she'll instead just stay the same as she is right now... forever.
The story is an exploration of my experiences with depression and suicide and will probably be rated 'M'. Ideally this will be a story about finding hope in despair, but I do want to take a peek into that despair very thoroughly. It will probably be edgy bullshit, but it will be MY edgy bullshit.
I've been stuck in the research phase for about two-to-three years now, haha. I'm reading not only about star mythology but also about emergency response, surviving in the wilds, medical bullshit, Alaska stuff, and cult stuff. I still feel like I don't know very much at all... I don't want my magical girl series to feel like "space cops" and am trying to base them off of firefighters instead. They don't fight people, they fight monsters. Nicoe is actually a former EMT so some of her medical knowledge comes in handy. But she can only be as smart as I am so I want to make sure my girl doesn't come across as a dumb fuck, you know? She deserves better.
Oh yeah, there's also a disease going around called "lunacy" that is basically fucked-up-weird-symptoms-disease that gives me an excuse to inflict body horror on people. Even so, lunatics aren't fought so much as they are cured. I've been looking into different histories on diseases and addictions to try and ground some of lunacy in reality at least when it comes to how people react to it. I really can't stress enough how much I want this to feel like magical girl space firefighters and not magical girl space cops.
Also Nicoe is super gay. I mean, how can you not be when you have a name like Dijkstra (sorry Nicoe). She has a girlfriend roommate who works as an artificer, and the duo are working together to try and reduce the number of monsters in the area with lunar technology instead of only relying on poor struggling Nicoe's Celestial powers. (The lunar tech sort of functions like a disability aid).
I'm not going to say that their relationship is toxic, but I will say that it's not very healthy and the two are just as likely to hurt each other as they are to help each other. A lot of the story is them learning how to communicate and be in love properly. Neither of them know what they're doing, just that they love each other and also that connection is scary.
The comic will be in black/white/gray and I'm thinking that instead of doing a standard two/three-pages-per-week, I'll try instead to do one chapter every two/three months. Chapters will be between 30-90 pages long. I'm not sure how doable this schedule is, so I'd like to get chapters 1-5 made before I start uploading things online? I dunno.
But yeah, I'm starting to transition out of the research phase (SCARY) and into actual planning stage. I've remade the rough draft a billion times but I feel confident this time around that I'm not only in the right direction, but heading towards endgame. Everything is mostly planned out for the arcs and chapters, it's just the details and inner filler and trimmings that need to be worked on-- aka the important parts haha. I recently fixed a huge plot problem so things are falling into place very nicely for myself. It is super exciting right now!! I've still got my depressive episodes but I wake up every day wanting to get to work. It feels amazing!
Originally I wanted to only finish the rough outline before my trip to Alaska at the end of August, but I'm going to finish that waaay ahead of schedule so I think now I'd like to try and get the first two arcs finished in rough draft stage before that point. A comic is a long project to work on when compared to prose, and if I am in top peak performance for posting then I'll realistically be at this for about 20 years. I'd like to plan as much as I can while still leaving room for change in the future. It's scary!
I have a side blog called malicemuffin where I post progress and stuff, buuuut I wouldn't encourage folks to follow it if you aren't interested. I mostly just talk about what research I'm doing and post shitty sketches and what I'm up to. It is straight up terrifying still to put the things that are in my head down into a place where people can read and judge them, and I'm slowly becoming more and more comfortable sharing things ;_;
Thank you for asking!! I hope this was interesting and not boring. This lil project is what I'm devoting all my time to right now. It feels really good to work on my dream, despite how scary it is. Every day this feels more and more like something that can actually exist. I think in comic panels and I see the comic pages when I close my eyes, but it was always some sort of vague thing-- now it feels real. Something a person could actually hold in their hands. How terrifying! How exciting!
