Okay, so first of all, @shinesurge's comic Kidd Commander fucking rules. I feel like I could talk about so many aspects of it at such extensive lengths. They usage of symbolism, the efficiency of the storytelling, how Mx. Bell does pay through on the "every page, every panel, ever line is important," promise, the constant thread of apathy-as-the-enemy.
But right now I feel like posting about Ulrich. Specifically, about Ulrich's character introduction, waaaay back in Chapter Four, because I realized something on a recent readthrough that made me cackle out loud.
Ulrich. An ego that defies description.
(KC Spoilers for everything!)
Which like. Go off king. We see him run smooth as glass, a lot, Ulrich's good at stuff, he's a professional...but to my eye...he's never really seemed.
Egotistical.
In the way that most people think about the word. Like. Phineas? Phin's egotistical, she's got enough greed to fuel a star (literally), her whole shtick is that she does have that all-consuming sense of self-importance that lets her walk up to gods of various descriptions and punch them in the face.
Ulrich's a team player, a chessmaster, he's pretty humble and subdued when he wants to be? He downplays his own successes unless he's trying to do something with him being brash and confident.
...so that got me thinking. Why did Aria describe Ulrich as having an ego defying description?
And then it hit me. The description isn't egotistical. It's an ego that defies description.
Now, like everything that comes from Freud originally, I'll look at the ego with a sense of skepticism, but that third description is fascinating: the organized conscious mediator between the person and reality, especially by functioning both in the perception of adaptation to reality.
One of Ulrich's...most consistent perspective tags is the fact that things get. Fucky. There are flower petals that aren't there, he hears voices, and there appears to be an extra person entire just sorta. Hanging out? A construction, maybe -- with one of Ulrich's eyes.
Bel shows up when Ulrich is working. She'll talk to him, walk him through things, but that's not all she can do.
Bel showed up when Ulrich was fighting off Decodenn's spores. This is, first of all, hilarious, iconic, the man turned anxiety into a superpower.
But also...what's he doing here? Ulrich is Silverspeaking himself, consciously maneuvering himself into a position, responding to the world, becoming the person who, well, isn't quite affected by the Spores. He needs his Grip, so he has his grip.
We see it everywhere else, too. People with insight can clock Ulrich as a smooth operator, as a liar and a conniver who has plans of his own. Ulrich's always playing towards a goal which we as readers don't know, always adapting, never really showing everyone how Ulrich is doing, almost always playing a role or a part on purpose.
I think this character card is another great little demonstration of Aria's craft in designing characters and arcs. We draw a conclusion about Ulrich from what it says...and the conclusion is just so subtly off, in a way that he would want us to think.
Happy birthday to @shinesurge! I'm going to give them the gift that every creative wants: FAN ENGAGEMENT.
This one's about PHINEAS KIDD, the sunchaser, the girl who is so pissed about how the universe is run that she is going to go take it up with management. Because she can do better.
...right?
Spoilers for all of KC below!
One of the core themes at the heart of KC, by my reckoning, is the evil of indifference. A lot of the major antagonists we've seen either directly or indirectly have been built around indifference to people and the world around them, either wrapped up in their own idea of what's right, what's righteous, or what's good.
This is, naturally, contrasted with Phineas Kidd. The girl* who cares, cares so so so fiercely that it is the core of her monstrous strength, to randomly pick fights with demigods and devils for no other reason than she kinda likes one of the people inconvenienced by them.
Phin cares, and she cares deeply. This care and connection is the core of who she is.
We see this throughout the book, where Phin comes up against all sorts of people, sometimes who frustrate her deeply, like Monterey and Raven and the Caravan -- but ultimately she seems very devoted to the idea that you care for people around you. She gives Raven Slight a kind ending, she stays for Agatha, and even offers to let her go if she wants, time and time again she picks people.
She gets angry, sure, but in my experience anger can be a very caring emotion -- you get angry on behalf, not because you don't care, but because you do, and Phineas exemplifies that wonderfully. Phin genuinely seems to care about the people around her, and tries to treat them kindly even if they're afraid or terrified of her.
She's not always good at it, but that's besides the point.
A fact which is also true is that Phineas is...distant. She notes it, people around her note it -- she gets all up in her own fury, sometimes, stuck in her head and her righteous certainty of what things should be. This is her strength...but it's also a very well written character flaw, IMAO, especially because distance and indifference are related.
There is one notable example where Phineas does not show mercy, and that is to the Tain in the starstone mines.
The Tain...fascinate me. I'm a sucker for a good entropic force, a good death god and dark mirror, and the Tain are a wonderfully done example. Every star has a shadow, and the shadow is the universe's cleanup crew, recycling, devouring, and generally janitoring it up.
Phineas chooses not to give mercy to the Tain.
Rather emphatically.
The Tain respond with the following:
Godhood and distance and indifference all seem interlocked in KC. Phineas is halfway between godhood and humanity, and self-professed has been wanting to make god human.
But we do see Phineas go distant and cold and indifferent, at times. We see that righteous certainty operating in her, that same righteous certainty that lets her challenge the Sun in the first place also causing no small amount of trouble.
Phineas, sometimes, will choose to not care.
This is very interesting, because nobody likes the Tain. Surely, surely, they're acceptable targets for her righteous indignation, yes?
Buuut.
This doesn't seem to be the case.
Agatha, for whatever reason, relatively easily accepts her shorn shadow, and develops a fuckin' adorable relationship to the wee bugger. It picks up a name.
So we have, as Phineas' first two crewmates, a character who is plagued by doubt and uncertainty of whether she can cut it, enough greed and ambition to drag the sun from its throne, and enough god in her soul to go drifting into indifference...
...are two people who have demonstrated their remarkable ability to connect, care, and ground Phineas.
Anyway, I just love how Phineas' character contains this contradiction, this thread of divine Surety that looks so so so so similar to the gods and demigods she's throwing hands with.
She's a microcosm of the narrative as a whole -- and only time will tell whether she's able to beat the odds and defy everyone's expectations, or whether she'll be another in an endless chain of would-be-saviors ruling with an iron fist.
What's your favorite thing about your character, what makes them Blorbo? Is it a personality thing, a design thing, something in their backstory or character arc? Please elaborate on the things you love!
Happy Blorbo Blursday!
The question of blorbos is an interesting one to me, because I like a lot of different medias and different characters for loads of different reasons! I would never define my tastes as having a singular blorbo I hold above every other, a character who I am constantly spinning, who means the world to me and I can talk about endlessly. I have characters who inspire me to write, I have characters who impart lessons to me that I take to heart and build into my stories and even my own sense of self, I have characters who've been with me for my whole life as far as I can remember, and have walked with me and grown with me and I can go back to like an old friend. None of these are my blorbo, because blorbo feels to me like it implies something else, something I've never really had.
It is also true that my blorbo is Taylor Hebert from Worm. Despite me not meaningfully touching Worm in at least three years and likely more than that. I don't think about her any more. But there's no other answer.
I like Taylor. I like female characters who have something deeply wrong with them, who are driven and calculating and clever and a little scrappy, but Taylor isn't just that. Taylor does have an earnest heart and she wants to do the right thing, she's just a little more willing to get her hands dirty every time than everyone around her, a little more willing to push a little farther to get what she wants. This gets you a character who genuinely tries her best to look out for the people around her, and also is the sort of person to fill someone's pants with black widows in self-defense.
I also really like where she ended the narrative at! Taylor Hebert after the events of Worm really sets my mind clicking in a way that no other character except my own really has. After her arc was done and after everything had happened, she ended in a very contemplative place and I personally think that's such an excellent point to leave a character, and is very ripe for subjecting her to more events. I have written bits of fanfic for post-canon Taylor, often in crossovers, for fun and relaxation, and I have only really fanficed for a handful of things.
But yeah, Taylor Hebert. Ain't nobody doing it like her.
I think one of the most interesting things to me about photography is how it's made me better appreciate photographs.
When I started teaching myself photography, and even now, I often will snap a picture on my phone and go, argh, terrible. This doesn't capture it at all, but at least I tried, yeah?
And when I go back to look at the picture, I can remember the rest. Because I was there.
But now, as a more mature artist, having been semiseriously taking pictures for two years and counting, I look at the Artemis II pictures.
And I can see what's in the pictures, yes. But I feel like I can see more. Because I've seen where photographs fail, and I've been in enough places, staring at enough things, struggling to stuff the wonder of the world into a little tiny lens,
That I can settle into the process in reverse. And see things in photographs I never could before, immerse myself and reconstruct all the things that the lens doesn't capture.
@shinesurge did a "get to know you better" post and tagged to whom it may concern, and I'm feeling concerning today.
Rules: answer and tag six people you want to know better
Favorite Color: Aurora bluegreen. Really any color from my icon. Other strong runner ups include indigo, deep purples, and ashen gray.
Last Song: Been listening to Aurora's A Different Kind of Human (Step II) on loop today. I guess from that album I'll name Dance on the Moon.
Currently Reading: I just read through a silly little book about life in Japan with watercolors, it was cute. Other than that, I'm slowly rotating through a bunch of nonfiction books, including Braiding Sweetgrass, and also in the mix is @shinesurge's novel, Grist to the Cannon, which you should absolutely go read. Not as much as I want, though, my job makes me look at a screen forever and I can't do audiobooks...
Currently Watching: I do not watch many things but my partner and I are watching through the new Ranma 1/2 right now and having fun with it. I also did get into Leverage a while back, and have been meaning to start again -- that show was way sillier and more fun than I anticipated it being, the character writing is snappy and funny and the schemes are delightful.
Currently Craving: A place my own, I think. I have been living in shared apartments for a couple years now, and am currently planning/saving for another pivot to somewhere else. Fuck if I know where, but I know that's gonna get me in an apartment I don't have to share with anyone, come hell or high water.
Coffee or Tea: I'm supposed to be a tea person, but have historically struggled to get into it. Not a coffee person, though. So. Tea I suppose.
And now I tag a few others...let's tag @nicknackpw (hi i keep seeing you in my notifications), and check in on @tc-doherty, @alynnl, @absinthemindedly and @sumiblue.
Hi, here's my question in response to you: what's the first story that you can remember coming up with/wanting to write? Is there anything about it that you would still want to use today or that you really like?
Hiya TC!
I know there were earlier stories, but I can't recall anything before the Legendarium, really. The Seven Gods Legendarium was an old sprawling fantasy epic in the style of the Martian Chronicles, a series of interconnected short stories across a world recovered from a devastating war and a world-shattering cataclysm. I still sort of keep it in the back of my mind to work on, but generally other projects take precedent.
I've grown and changed a lot as an artist and as a worldbuilder since the original conception, so if I go back I'd have to do some pretty significant changes to bring the world up to something I'm super proud of, but I still bleed stuff into the lore every now and again.
That said, a lot of my early work on gods and magic all ultimately bears its roots in the Legendarium. It was built on the anchor of: there are seven constitutive gods of reality, all of which are necessary to keep the world ticking along. A lot of metaphysical concepts and the stuff I explored in making those gods carry through and crop up in every other project I touch. I'd say it's almost like an ur-setting of mine!
The idea of Weight as a soft, but crucial component of magic systems, the Serpent, one of the gods, has slipped into other stories and novels unexpectedly, my personal link between peace, death, tranquility, cold, and darkness all have deep roots in the Legendarium.
