I've been thinking about this AU literally all day, it's so fucking creative and out there and I just really am so intrigued...is there anything in particular that inspired it?
Thanks for sharing with us <3
Thank you so much! We know it's very out there and takes a lot of artistic liberty, so we're always so appreciative when people like the burnout AU.
Our main inspirations come from the individual artists' lives, we're all from different rural and suburban areas in the United States. Inspiration gets snatched from parking lots and cell towers and distant relatives.
Music is also very important! We all like 90s grunge-y music. Green Day is a big inspiration for the kind of aloof, loser characters we see so often in the AU.. so is System of a Down. Ethel Cain is even on our little playlist for her stuff about the dismal in-betweenness of Americans with little options and bad relationships. Nowhere to go and too tired to try!
Unsure if you are familiar, but the artist Lucia @/ carnalhaus's story "American Tradition" is a big inspiration for one of the artists for Paradise County. While her work has more horror elements than ours does (and is an actually written story, ours is more of a concept) , both projects deal with doomed characters trudging to death in the bowels of America. Both her art and writing is phenomenal and the dimensions to her characters are sometimes in the background of some of the artists' minds when working on Paradise County. Cannot recommend her works enough. They are beautiful and brimming with raw humanity. If you like what we make, look at what she's done.