Cold Sweats Were Made To Be Broken - How Emily Carroll Creates Effective Horror By Bending The Rules
I believe that, with enough time and resources, someone with a good eye for horror would be able to create a good horror story with just about any medium. With prose, you have the advantage of vivid description and getting to intimately know the character’s inner thoughts and fears, like in the works of Stephen King. With film, you get the advantage of visuals and audio along with the dread that comes with being a helpless audience member, such as the in the works of John Carpenter. And while the poor video game is often given a bad rep among other, older art forms, video games actually are one of the most ideal ways to experience horror stories, since the audience must become an active participant in the story to move it forward, not even allowed the escape of being a passive viewer.
It’s actually for very similar reasons that I find comics to be one of the ideal mediums for the horror genre. You get some of the benefits of prose, some of the visuals of movies, and even a bit of the forced participation of video games, in the fact that readers must choose to advance to each next page- a happy medium, if you will. There’s also one of my favorite features of sequential art as a whole- the fact that the artist has a tight amount of control over the pacing of the story. You can enhance the drop a world-shaking reveal on the reader by devoting a splash page to it, or pull out a scene with agonizing slowness with multiple, decompressed panels- storytelling devices that become lethal weapons in the hands of a good horror writer.
Keeping this in mind, it’s no surprise that horror comics have always been a huge part of comic history. In modern times, American comics are almost always associated with superhero stories, but there’s actually a rich history of horror comics- the rise of gruesome true crime stories and horror anthologies like Tales from the Crypt are why we have the infamous Comics Code, after all. Today we have titles like 30 Days of Night and The Walking Dead (though their more cinematic adaptations are typically more well-known). The huge world of European comics have given birth to a huge number of horror titles, like Italy’s Dylan Dog or Britain’s semi-tongue-in-cheek Scream! And of course, Japan has been the birthplace of great horror comics from the days of Mizuki Shigeru to the advent of modern horror with figures like Junji Ito and Masaaki Nakayama.
But of course, those figures and titles only exist in the world of print comics. In the age of the Internet, it would be remiss to ignore the staggeringly massive world of webcomics in any discussion of comics, let alone horror comics. This is due to any one of the many, many, many webcomics that exist online, but for this essay, I want to focus on an artist who doesn’t just happen to focus on horror comics while publishing them on the internet, but uses and utilizes both the medium of sequential art and the Internet to bring out the best in her comics.
Originally an animation student, Emily Carroll had only just begun to venture into the field of comics when she went hurdling to the attention of the webcomic community in 2010. His Face All Red was only her third comic, and its runaway success (helped by the recommendation of another name in horror comics, Neil Gaiman) was something she admits to be caught off-guard by. But she clearly has seemed to have taken it in stride, considering that her website now hosts almost 20 webcomics, many of them some sort of horror story. She’s also done print comics, including the original anthology Through the Woods and the upcoming graphic novel adaption of Laurie Halse Anderson’s powerful YA story Speak. As grandiose as it may be to say this, I believe Carroll’s style and approach to storytelling was made for the medium of comics, and I believe she deserves a spot up there along with Gaiman and Ito when it comes to naming masters of the horror comic.
But how does she do horror comics so well? It’s not just good writing, or good art, though she’s certainly talented on both those fronts. After spending an amount of time looking through her comics, I think I’ve come up with a solid answer, an answer that can be used to teach anyone interested in comics and in storytelling in general.
Emily Carroll is a master of breaking rules.
When I say rules, I don’t mean that there’s actual rules some God Of Comics has written down somewhere. Rather, the “rule-breaking” Carroll does refers to how she subverts expectations and goes against the conventions of storytelling that have become familiar over time. In doing this, Carroll’s comics have an air of unpredictability to them, and the reader must not only advance through the comic at their own pace, they must do it with the knowledge that the comic will surprise them in some way. In short, when a story breaks “the rules,” it creates the illusion of the audience’s safety being lost.
But how does Carroll break the rules? This is a bit of a nebulous thing to analyze- I mean, I don’t even think “breaking rules” is something Carroll consciously sets out to do. But over time, I’ve noticed recurring themes and storytelling methods in Carroll’s comics, and I think it’s worth analyzing them to gain a better understanding of sequential art and how sequential art can continue to evolve.
Breaking “The Rules” of Each Comic
One thing I like about Carroll’s webcomics is that, since they’re all self-contained short stories, they each have their own unique visual “language.” This can apply to comic’s palette (like how The Hole The Fox Did Make is all grayscale), the format of panels (like how When The Darkness Presses is told through several 4-panel pages), or even the format of the writing (like how The Prince & The Sea is told as a poem). This gives all of Carroll’s comics a sense of cohesion, similar how to repetition is used in visual design to create a sense of rhythm and reason.
But, of course, what’s even more important than the “rules” Carroll establishes for each individual comic, is when Carroll chooses to break these rules.
The Hole The Fox Did Make is all grayscale- so when the colorless 4-panel strips are replaced with a mass of panels mostly rendered in an angry red, it comes as a shock. When The Darkness Presses is told through several 4 panel pages- so the reader knows that the long vertical segments that accompany each scene about the door are meant to be considered different than other scenes. And once the reader sees what is behind the door…
Suddenly changing the established visual language of a comic is easy shorthand to let the reader know that the scene is important in some way, but in a horror comic, it can also be a subtle way to catch the reader off-guard. Rebecca’s ghost story in All Along The Wall is told in a simple style and over-saturated colors to distinguish it from the “real” scenes, but the contrast in the story’s bright, colorful palette to the sketchy grayscale of the rest of the comic almost makes it feel more menacing in contrast. The fact that it’s explicitly a ghost story rendered in these almost cheerful hues make it even more uneasy- and ends up saying a lot about the kind of person Rebecca is. In short, it’s good, creative storytelling that also serves to scare.
These breaks in the established format work best when combined with one another. The Prince & The Sea takes part mostly on land- specifically, in single-panel illustrations that show only the meeting place of the prince and the mermaid- with a colorful palette that’s equal parts earthy and warm. When the story shifts under the sea, the palette shifts to eerie, cool colors that reflect both the dark atmosphere and the horrifying turn of the plot. But in addition to this, the story finally breaks the single-illustration format, going vertical to simulate the feeling of diving, and adding in “floaty” panels surrounded by black, giving a true feeling of being underwater. Carroll uses not only tone and format shifts but shifts in space- which, incidentally, brings us to one of the most notable and important features of Carroll’s work.
Breaking “The Rules” of Comics As A Whole
In 2000, the comic book artist Scott McCloud published the book Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form, in which he made several predictions about the necessary changes that would need to occur in the field of comics in order for the medium to survive, with a major focus on the Internet and webcomics. One interesting idea McCloud proposed was the concept of “the infinite canvas,” the idea that a comic could have limitless storytelling potential thanks to the almost limitless size and space offered by a webpage.
In the year of 2000, the art of the webcomic was in its infancy, consisting mainly of typical comic strips like you’d see in newspapers, leading to a lot of skeptical response to these ideas-- but as it turns out, McCloud was basically completely correct. We’ve seen this from the long vertical formats typical of many Korean webtoons like The Sensual M and Chinese manhua like Tamen de Gushi to the textlogs, flash games, and fully animated segments of the ambitious multimedia-mishmash Homestuck.
Of these examples, however, I think Carroll’s techniques are closest to what McCloud had in mind when he proposed the infinite canvas. His Face All Red famously had the wonderful, wordless sequence of the protagonist descending deep into a hole, depicted by the downward scroll of the reader. When The Darkness Presses switched deftly between standard “real world” pages, long vertical dream sequences, and the dramatic horizontal reveal of what lay behind the door.
To this day, I think Carroll’s most impressive use of the infinite canvas is still Margot’s Room. Initially presented as a month-long event during October 2011, Margot’s Room starts with a grim poem over a grim image, with every important word in the poem relating to a part of the picture, which the reader would click to go to a new part of the story. Each week, a new line of the poem would be revealed alongside a new link, with the last part being released, of course, on Halloween. This creative use of hyperlinks is interesting enough, but the final, shocking scene is almost breathtaking- the events are violent, chaotic, and wild, heightened only by the wide spread of panels over a massive, empty blackness, linked only by words and furious splashes of blood. It’s something that couldn’t really exist in print comics (unless on a much smaller scale) and seeing how effective it is here, it almost make one wonder why it’s not more widespread among webcomic artists.
Without the limits of the printed page, Carroll has a better opportunity to break the typical conventions of sequential art. But she actually goes beyond that, using the medium of the Internet in even more creative ways than McCloud imagined. Besides her use of hyperlinks in Margot’s Room, links are also used to tell the non-linear “story” of Grave of The Lizard Queen, or show two sides to a tragic tale in The Three Snake Leaves. Carroll even employs animation in her work, to an extent. An animated GIF in Out Of Skin conveys the horror of seeing something terrible just out of the corner of your eye, and a certain “trick” panel in All Along The Wall may make you jump out of your skin if you don’t know what exactly it’s going to do. And that’s how it’s brilliant- comic panels aren’t supposed to change, after all. Carroll knows that, and knows just how to use the reader’s unconscious knowledge of the rule of well of course comic panels are always static against them. You don’t think twice about it... until the rule is broken.
Breaking “The Rules” of Storytelling
One of my favorite examples of Carroll’s unique take on the infinite canvas is in When The Darkness Presses. Despite being a short comic released all in one go, it’s presented as a recently completed longform webcomic, complete with animated ad banners. I don’t want to spoil what becomes of these ads later, but it’s very interesting to point out that one of them is for “Alo-Glo,” the skin product that features heavily in Some Other Animal’s Meat. This is especially interesting once you realize that Some Other Animal’s Meat is technically a sequel to When The Darkness Presses.
I say “technically,” because it’s actually entirely possible to read both comics and not know this, the way I first did. They’re two different self-contained stories that just happen to involve two characters at two points at their life.
There’s no real meaning to it- and in a way, this is perhaps Carroll’s favorite rule to break: the all-encompassing question of what does it all mean?
Ever since His Face All Red, Carroll has faced this question, or at least variants of it. How did the man’s brother come back? What was that thing in the hole? In a 2014 interview with Hazlitt, Carroll admits to feeling self-doubt when readers began clamoring for concrete answers:
“People were saying, ‘What’s the meaning of this? What’s the meaning of this?’ and … I felt very much like, I need to justify this somehow, otherwise they will see that I am a faker that has faked my way into some kind of Internet buzz, so there has to be a one-to-one meaning for everything.”
Thankfully, Carroll has been able to move past this initial doubt- I believe, very much for the better. Leaving unanswered questions is almost a trademark of Carroll’s now- from the tree in Out of Skin to the “mystery man” in The Groom to the door in When The Darkness Presses. The thing that plagues the main character of Some Other Animal’s Meat. The voice that calls Regan to the river in The Hole The Fox Did Make. The list goes on.
And it’s not just monsters. From early on in my love of Carroll’s works, I began to notice connecting threads through many of her comics. What did it mean that His Face All Red draws attention to “a tree with leaves that looked like ladies’ hands” (similar to the tree in Out Of Skin) and “a stream that sounded like dogs growling” (a sentence almost identical to how the stream in Margot’s Room is described)? What did it mean that The Hole The Fox Did Make and The Groom featured Regan, or that All Along The Wall is technically a prequel to a comic from Through The Woods? What did it mean that events of When The Darkness Presses are brought up by the main characters years later in Some Other Animal’s Meat?
The answer, of course, is that there is no answer- other than the answers and ideas that begin to form in our heads when we’re presented with an unsolved mystery. Ever since early humans looked up at the stars and put together shapes in the gaps, the nature instinct of human beings drives us to pick patterns out of randomness. Our brains try to find meanings or answers where there is none, whether we want to or not, or even if we are aware of our minds doing so or not. And of course, this almost whimsical trait of ours is also one of our most massive burdens- the horror of imagination. The infinite possibility of the conclusions each person reaches on their own will always be far, far more frightening than any single answer a writer can give.
In a way, Carroll’s most mundane “broken rule” may be her most powerful tool. In the age of endless theories and fiction analysis, in the light of humanity’s eternal, inescapable desire for the solutions for every puzzle, Carroll’s works are unanswerable. And because of this, I think the unexplained monsters of Carroll’s works are some of the scariest in fiction.
Funnily enough, despite basing this essay around the concept of breaking rules, I stated early on that I don’t think Carroll herself sees her approaches to sequential art like that. While researching for this essay, I came across an interview by The Comics Journal with Carroll from 2011, not too far after the runaway success of His Face All Red. It’s a great interview, but what probably stuck with me most is Carroll’s description of how she approaches comics:
“It stems more from just what I think will be most fun, really. And since—when I started doing comics—I’d never done comics for print, I wasn’t in the mindset of doing pages anyway, which maybe led to me not really adhering to that standard when I started in on my own attempts. I like the idea of scrolling just because it’s fun to play around with revealing images that way, but you can play around with the same thing using page turns too really.”
I wanted this essay to be a tribute to one of my favorite artists, but I also initially intended it to be a way to encourage artists to shake up typical comic conventions and try to create unique art. Upon reading this quote, however, I realized that I had one more thing to learn from Carroll, one thing I want artists to know as well. Carroll has carved out her own, unique approach to sequential art, and in the process has happened to buck several storytelling conventions. You too can learn from this and know that you have the freedom to break these same rules- but perhaps the most important thing to take away from this is that Carroll does this because she has fun doing this. Carroll’s comics work not just because they break the rules, but also because she enjoys creating them.
Your own unique style should be what is most enjoyable for you. Creating new and unique artwork is all well and good, but what will make or break your art are the feelings you have while creating it.
And if you have fun in breaking rules, then more power to you.
All of Emily Carroll’s online works can be found on her personal site (general NSFW warning for nudity and disturbing content). You can buy Carroll’s anthology Through The Woods here.
What Is The Shape Of Your Monster? – Get Out and Thought-out Horror
Get out.
No, I’m dead serious. If you haven’t already seen Jordan Peele’s Get Out yet, I need you to do me a massive favor. I need you to bookmark this page, close this page, and absolutely do not read this page— or any other essay or article on Get Out— until you’ve finished watching it.
I’m not just saying this because this essay will contain major spoilers for a movie that is best enjoyed going in knowing as little as possible— I mean, yes, it will— but most of all I just want as many people to see this movie as possible. It is by far the most socially relevant American movie to come out this year, at time of writing, if not one of the most socially relevant pieces of American art of the past decade.
It’s also just a very good movie.
(SPOILERS START NOW)
If there was really any complaint I had about Get Out, it would be that the trailers gave a little too much away. If you’ve seen even one you’ve basically got a pretty decent Wikipedia summary of the first two-thirds of the story. Chris Washington, a young photographer, goes on a weekend get-away with Rose Armitage, his girlfriend of four months, to meet her parents for the first time. It’s a pretty big step in any relationship, but Chris has an extra level of anxiety: Rose is white, he’s black, and apparently she’s forgotten to mention that to her family. Despite Rose’s reassurances, her family is awkward, if well-meaning, whenever the topic of Chris’s race comes up— but as the weekend goes on, Chris begins to pick up traces of something more sinister about the Armitages and their entourage of cultured friends.
The trailers establish that, no, Chris is not just paranoid, something terribly wrong is going on here, and (perhaps unfortunately) a lot of the most terrifying scenes are featured prominently in the movie’s marketing— the lingering, uncomfortable shot of Georgina’s tight smile as she weeps uncontrollably, for example, and of course, the almost-sure-to-soon-be-iconic “sink into the floor” scene. During my first watch of the movie I was surprised to see that it’s established very early on that Rose’s mom, Missy, is a psychiatrist who uses hypnosis as a treatment, so I felt a little less irritated at the trailers seemingly spoiling the use of hypnosis as a part of the story.
But here’s the thing— it WASN’T a spoiler. Hypnosis is a part of the plot, but the way it’s presented made me (as well as Chris’s friend Rodney) initially assume that the Armitages were hypnotizing black people into becoming slaves— and amazingly enough, the truth is actually far more horrifying.
I don’t think this was an accident.
You see, what makes Get Out good (and different!) is that it flips several conventions of horror films. The horror genre as a whole is usually based around a fear of “the other,” be it monstrous or metaphorical, but Chris, as a black man among white people, is actually the true Other, and the movie examines how terrifying it truly is to be “Othered.” Rose, the likable, charming, seemingly pure and innocent (white) ingenue who might be the coveted Final Girl of another horror film turns out to be the coldest, most manipulative, and by far the most vicious member of the Armitage family. And Rod already would be an anomaly in most horror movies simply by virtue of actually going to authorities and loudly questioning (alongside the audience) the shady things happening around Chris. But Get Out takes his character a step further, because Rod— portly, goofy, a little on the uncouth side— would almost certainly be on the Killed-Off-Comedy-Relief block in most other movies. Instead, it was the sight of him stepping out of a car that signaled to viewers that Chris was finally saved. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a theater of moviegoers as happy as the one I sat in when Get Out turned the Funny Friend character into the hero of the movie.
This is why I believe the marketing of Get Out was intentionally leading the audience towards the “hypnotism” angle: because Get Out is a seriously well-thought out movie. I can’t describe it any other way— it’s smart. Not simply in the sense of the very relevant themes it covers, but in how it works as a horror movie. Here where I’m going to ask you to do a second thing— whenever you can, go see Get Out a second time (third and fourth and so on, that’s up to you), and see how many things either foreshadow later events or hold important double meanings. I was very surprised to learn this was Jordan Peele’s very first foray into the horror genre (his typical genre of choice is actually comedy) because he’s slipped into the role of “horror writer” like he was made for it. Apparently Peele is at least a little confident in himself as well, because he’s mentioned in at least one interview now that he would like to direct several other films fitting in the “social horror” genre of Get Out, and I know I for one will be eager to see more from him.
Speaking of the idea of “social horror,” you really can’t talk about Get Out without the politics behind it. All art is, by nature, political in some way, but Get Out really gets into it, pulling double shifts as psychological horror and biting social satire. Get Out is a movie about race, but specifically about being a black person in modern America (specifically-specifically, about being a black man in modern America).
As such, as much as I found myself nodding sympathetically at some of the awkward party scenes and finding some of the lines of Rose’s parents familiar (recognizing those words on notable ‘woke’ white lips), I rather not write about what Get Out says about how it’s like being black in this country. I’m not white, but I’m not black either (Venezuelan-Cuban, if you’re curious), and Get Out is a movie very specifically and firmly about black people. I much rather leave that part of the discussion to black writers— this piece by Robert Jones Jr and Law Ware is a good place to start— and I encourage other non-black writers to do the same.
Instead, I’d like to talk more about something Get Out does differently that can apply to all stories, regardless of politics, genre, or medium. Specifically, I want to discuss the way Peele writes his antagonists.
Lanre Bakare wrote a very good essay about his thoughts on Get Out, and I definitely recommend it alongside the Jones/Ware piece. In particular, this section jumped out to me:
“The villains here aren’t southern rednecks or neo-Nazi skinheads, or the so-called “alt-right”. They’re middle-class white liberals. The kind of people who read this website. The kind of people who shop at Trader Joe’s, donate to the ACLU and would have voted for Obama a third time if they could. Good people. Nice people. Your parents, probably. The thing Get Out does so well – and the thing that will rankle with some viewers – is to show how, however unintentionally, these same people can make life so hard and uncomfortable for black people. It exposes a liberal ignorance and hubris that has been allowed to fester. It’s an attitude, an arrogance which in the film leads to a horrific final solution, but in reality leads to a complacency that is just as dangerous.”
I’ve bolded the most relevant parts for emphasis. I can’t remember who said it (there’s probably several mis-attributed sources) but there’s a quote somewhere out there about how the best villains don’t realize they’re villains.
There’s a very small but telling detail in one scene, in which Rose’s brother, Jeremy, plucks at a small guitar while eyeing Chris. It’s a pretty clear nod to the famous banjo scene in Deliverance, which may seem odd at first. Rose’s family is as far as you can get from the crass, degenerate rednecks who terrorize that movie’s protagonists. But that’s it exactly. The Armitages and their friends are cultured, intelligent, even funny and charming at times—and yet they’re all still doing something that’s utterly, completely, uncompromisingly terrible, because they don’t see it as terrible at all. In fact, they most likely believe what they’re doing is actually good—what could be evil about extending the life of loved ones, or allowing friends to “trade up” physically? There’s actually a twisted implication that they believe they might be doing a favor for their victims, giving them a “superior mind” to control their “superior genes.”
This is where I would like to bring up one aspect of the movie that, as of time of writing, has had very little attention, despite the massive role it plays in the themes of Get Out. The video in which the above photo comes from seems to be the only Get Out interview specifically focusing on Stephen Root and his character, Jim Hudson. It makes sense—from what I can tell, Hudson doesn’t actually show up in any of the movie’s marketing, and he only appears in three scenes. Still, I think he might the best written character in the entire movie, as well as an example to hold up for any writers who want to create believable and terrifying antagonists.
After a series of uncomfortable, cringe-inducing scenes of the Armitages’ party guests, Chris meets Jim Hudson, a blind art dealer who surprises him by saying that he knows his work. Jim is the lone person at the party who doesn’t say something belittling, insensitive, or overly familiar to Chris. He openly scoffs at the ignorance of the other guests and connects to Chris with something personal and important to him. In short, he’s the only person who really treats Chris as an equal—really, as a human.
So of course, it’s all the more shocking when it’s revealed that he’s the winner of the auction.
Hudson’s final scene is when he speaks to Chris in the basement. He’s casually cheery as he explains everything, seemingly unperturbed by the horrible fate he’s about to sentence Chris to. It’s almost comical that the one thing that seems to really trouble him is Chris’s obvious question: “why black people?” Mind you, he’s not troubled because of guilt— he seems to be worried that Chris thinks he’s a racist.
“Honestly though, personally..? I couldn’t give two shits about race. I don’t care if you’re black, brown, green, purple... whatever. What I want is so much deeper: Your eye, man.”
Here’s the thing: out of all the guests bidding on Chris’s body, I believe that Hudson legitimately is the only one who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about race, as far as he thinks. As Chris finally pieces everything together, he flashes back to the party, and suddenly all the seemingly well-intended-if-insensitive interactions betray the true intentions of the guests— a chance to regain glory days for an aging former golf player, a life of better opportunities for a Japanese man, a revitalized young body for the old and sickly husband of a gold digger interested in “the rumors” about black men— all of them are interested in the “benefits” of being black. Jim’s biggest motivation for the procedure is being able to see again, and from what I know there’s no stereotype of one race having better eyesight than any other. I highly doubt he’d care about taking the body of a white person, or any other person. I truly do believe the movie is positing that he’s being honest.
The movie also posits, of course, that doesn’t absolve him at all. Jim treats Chris kindly and respectfully, he doesn’t make any of the gaffs his acquaintances do, he doesn’t believe any of those ludicrous misconceptions about the bodies of black men— and yet, he has no qualms about benefiting from their exploitation. Of course, he’s not racist, he’s just willing to look the other way of black people being violated and dehumanized if it means he can get ahead.
I stay away from most things that self-advertise as “satire,” mostly unintentionally but also because there’s few things that are as painful to watch as bad satire. Luckily, Get Out is extremely good satire, just painful in a different way. I don’t think I’ve ever really gotten what people meant by “biting satire” until watching this movie. It really burrows to the heart of this kind of thinking, and this type of person. It’s brilliant from a standpoint of social commentary, as well as serving as example of how to approach writing a believable, fleshed out antagonist.
And now, I’ll ask you do one final thing. Convince as many people as you can to see Get Out. Blog about it, tweet about it, talk about it— to friends, to family, and especially to people who don’t especially like horror movies or “political” movies. Get Out is a testament to how powerful and provoking horror can be when approached thoughtfully, and it’s bringing up discussions of topics that have never been more relevant to this country. This is the kind of movie I crave to see more of, and I can only hope Peele’s success will allow him to make more of the same while inspiring other creatives to explore what their art can comment on.
Hearts Of Gold – A Very Brief Look at the Character Design of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
If I were to describe Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure in a single word, I think it would have to be “audacious.”
I would be very surprised if there’s anyone out there that doesn’t have even an inkling of an idea of what Jojo is about, but to put it as briefly as possible: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is a long-running manga (that has since given birth to a multi-media franchise, including animation, video games, and an exhibit in the Louvre) that tells the story of the Joestar family, spanning years, generations, and various casts of characters. The foes that the Joestars face range from vampires to superhuman immortals to everyday human beings empowered by the ghostly avatars of their resolve and desire. The Joestars and their allies use their own ghostly avatars (most commonly known as Stands), along with other forces such as the manipulation of energy via proper breathing or the weaponization of the Golden Ratio. Oh, and later in the story alternate universes come into play.
I’ve joked in the past that the secret to Jojo’s success is that the mangaka, Araki Hirohiko, simply does whatever he wants. Emotions are rarely anything less than bombastic, characters pose like abstract art pieces, Stand abilities range a seemingly endless range of possibilities, and are named after popular Western musicians and songs, and can be found in infants, turtles, hawks, haunted cat-plant hybrids, intelligent colonies of plankton, and trees. Basically, Araki never seems to ask himself “is this TOO ridiculous?” Honestly, in my opinion, at times it can be— but most of Jojo’s appeal is in how fantastic and delightfully bonkers it can get. If there’s anything Araki does differently, it’s that he is unafraid to let loose, which has made Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure the pop culture sensation it is today.
And if there’s anything Araki is good at letting loose about, it’s character design. Araki (who has gone on the record confirming the importance of the fashion world as an influence for his work) has a knack for designing outfits that are absurd and iconic and outlandish and stunning all at the same time— and in the world of Jojo, a character’s wardrobe is always a key part of their design. Iconic hairstyles, accessories, and tattoos are plentiful. And I could write an entire essay about the otherworldly and delightfully bizarre Stands alone.
I’ve come to find I have a deep love for character design and the thought that artists put into them— so much so that I’m actually in the middle of writing another essay about the character design for another series, Yowamushi Pedal. But as a sort of “appetizer” for that essay (and a “warm-up” to get me back into proper writing form for this blog), I’ve decided to write a small essay on what’s probably my favorite example of character design from this series while also examining what makes it so good.
Higashikata Josuke is the protagonist of Diamond is Unbreakable, the fourth major part of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, and (at the time of writing) the part that has most recently been adapted into an animated series. Unlike previous Jojo installments, DIU has a specific and consistent setting: Morioh, an average and unassuming Japanese town whose only real oddity is the disturbingly high amount of missing person cases. This, of course, ends up being linked to the power of Stands, and Josuke and his companions take it upon themselves to solve the mysteries of their beloved hometown and bring the unknown killer to justice.
Despite a few vices typical of your average teenage boy and a shockingly explosive (and specific) temper, Josuke’s defining character trait is his kind and noble heart. His major goal of the series is to keep his hometown safe from malevolent Stand users, but he actually ends up befriending many of the enemies he and his companions defeat.
What does all of this have to do with character design? Simple: Josuke’s design effectively communicates almost all of this information.
We’ve already established Araki has an eye for fashion, and even working with a typical high school uniform he’s able to create a look that’s all at once stylish, grounded (at least, for Jojo) and instantly recognizable. But the main thing I want to talk about here is the repetition in Josuke’s design. Repetition is one of the principles of visual design, and the idea is simple: repeating a visual element in your design will create a sense of unity and cohesiveness. This is mostly applied to things like graphic design, but I find repetition is a great way to create excellent character design as well.
Have you guessed what the repeated element in Josuke’s design is? That’s right: he wears his heart on his sleeve.
Or, rather his collar. Josuke customizes his school uniform with pins, and three of those five pins are heart. Most notable is the larger one he wears on his open jacket flap, opposite a large peace sign. One could definitely say that “love and peace” is Josuke’s ultimate goal in bringing the killer of Morioh to justice.
Speaking of the flaps of his jacket, take a close look. While it’s not as obvious as the stylized pins, the shape of Josuke’s open jacket creates what’s unmistakably a heart shape. Even Josuke’s silhouette calls to mind a heart: compare the width of his shoulders and chest to his waist.
Of course, we can’t talk about Josuke without talking about his hair. Josuke’s hairstyle is great, not just because it’s snazzy (it is) but also because it’s a rare QUADRUPLE-hitter of character design. First, obviously, is the fact that it continues the heart motif (only at certain angles— it’s even more pronounced in the anime). More important than that though is the fact that it’s instantly distinctive and even iconic, setting him apart not only from his fellow “Jojos” but from other characters in Japanese pop culture as well. Even if you only saw him in silhouette, you could probably identify Josuke by the shape of his hair alone.
Perhaps most cleverly of all, though, is how it sets up a contrast that serves to communicate Josuke’s character depth. See, in Japan, particularly in Japanese media and pop culture, pompadours are typically shorthand for a delinquent. When the audience first meets Josuke, more likely than not they’d assume he’s a bit of a rough kid (especially since the previous “Jojo” was a delinquent himself), leading them to be surprised when his introduction scene sees him attempting to be friendly with a local turtle to get over his fear of reptiles.
It’s a classic set up and reversal: “the delinquent with a heart of gold.” Nowadays it’s starting to become a bit of a cliché, but at least it’s a starting point for character depth. But Araki gives this trope another twist: in Josuke’s introduction (and establishing character moment), Josuke encounters some of his upperclassmen. They talk down to him, harass him, and even hurt the poor turtle, but Josuke, being a freshman, is of course too polite to talk back to his senpai.
And then one insults his hairstyle.
Instantly Josuke’s entire demeanor changes. One broken nose later, the upperclassmen are running for their lives, the turtle’s shell is mysteriously fixed, and the audience is beginning to get it. Josuke is a nice guy, he has a set of morals he sticks to, but he’s not a pushover, and he’s definitely not opposed to violence. In short, he’s far more than just a high school punk.
As for why Josuke’s hairstyle is such a big deal to him, that’s the last important detail about it: it ties into Josuke’s history, and therefore, his motives. As it turns out, Josuke’s hairstyle is modeled after that of a mysterious stranger that helped him and his mother many years ago. Inspired by the man who saved his life, Josuke decided to live his life as he believed his savior would, which reflects in his compassionate nature at the time of DIU— wouldn’t you know it, linking neatly back to the heart shape, specifically as a symbol of love.
It’s things like this that make me wonder is Araki is a genius, or simply ridiculous.
Anyways, the short and long of it is that’s Josuke’s pompadour continues the heart theme. That theme also just so happens to continue in his Stand, Crazy Diamond. There’s hearts all over Crazy Diamond’s design, some blatant, some more subtle (hint: look at its shoulders). And of course, its helmet-like head is an obvious parallel to Josuke’s hair while also incorporating a heart-like shape. As an extension of Josuke, it’d only make sense for Crazy Diamond to also possess his motif.
But what does the motif mean? Well, I probably don’t have to tell you. Even if you somehow didn’t know that hearts are visual shorthand for love and affection, the round edges might clue you onto the fact that it’s a “soft” shape, similar to how a circle carries connotations of approachability. Hearts are love, kindness, compassion— all that warm and fuzzy stuff. Basically, Josuke’s “hearts” are all meant to clue the audience to the fact that he’s a good kid.
This is reflected in the main ability of Crazy Diamond. On paper, Crazy Diamond’s ability is “restoration,” allowing Josuke to return anything to a previous state. The most common application he uses this ability for, however, is healing the wounds of others. As Jotaro says early in the story, while humans are naturally drawn to violence and destruction, Josuke’s strength is rooted in his compassion. It’s his compassion that leads to him befriending his many allies over the course of DIU, even those who started as his enemies. And ultimately, it is the culmination of all these different bonds that lead to the defeat of Morioh’s killer.
Diamond is Unbreakable is often referred to by fans as something of a “slice-of-life” series. While there’s plenty of action and drama, this classification isn’t entirely inaccurate, what with the small town setting and the fact that most of the cast are high-schoolers and otherwise average people, despite all the punch ghosts. Even with all the fights and mysteries, DIU is more of a story of characters, of their strengths, weaknesses, inner conflicts and interactions. It’s a “softer” chapter in the story of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, and Josuke, with all his “softness,” is the perfect protagonist for it.
In talking about Josuke’s character design, I actually ended up talking a lot about a lot of other things, including Josuke as a character and the themes of Diamond is Unbreakable— and that’s precisely why Josuke’s character design is so fantastic. You see, aesthetics are great, but a character’s design should ultimately tell me about the character, and if it also happens to communicate some central themes of the story, well, the more the merrier. Josuke’s character design is one of my favorite Jojo designs, and stands as a testament to the power of a few repeated elements as well as what a good character design can communicate.
Araki Hirohiko, your manga is ridiculous, but it’s a damn good kind of ridiculous. Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Diamond Is Unbreakable can be watched with subtitles on Crunchyroll, along with all the previous seasons of David Production’s current adaption of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.
And Oh, How Beautiful It Is: The Internal & External Beauty of We Know The Devil
It’s a rare thing when it feels like every part of a work of art has come to fit together perfectly. It’s even rarer when that story has a creative team you can count on a single hand. Yet, We Know The Devil exists, and I’m still thinking about it exactly one year later.
What can I say about We Know The Devil? It’s hard to write about it knowing that the best possible experience of the game come from going in knowing as little as possible about it. It’s even harder knowing that there’s already been so many thoughtful, emotional responses to the game. Hell, the creators themselves have written some great pieces looking back on the game and responses to it (this, this, and this all come to mind— though be warned that all those links contain spoilers). But even though knowing all that is a little intimidating, the belief that my response wouldn’t be “worthy” would go against everything We Know The Devil stands for— because this is a game where the player’s personal response is almost as important as the game itself.
Let’s start simple: We Know The Devil is a surreal horror visual novel by Aevee Bee and Mia Schwartz that follows three “bad kids” (Jupiter, the nice tomboy, Neptune, the pretty bad girl, and Venus, the quiet doormat) at a Christian summer camp set somewhere in rural Midwest America. It’s a world that’s very similar to ours but with occasional glimpses of a stranger reality and casual throwaway mentions to radios, crystals, transformation sequences.
Despite the eccentricities, the nameless camp is just like every other sleep-away summer camp for teenagers. It’s muggy and rife with cheesy platitudes at best, isolated and full of cruel kids and counselors willing to look the other way at worst. And like most camps, this one has its own special tradition: a group of kids getting sent to spend a night alone in a ramshackle cabin in hopes of doing battle with the actual, literal Devil— and no prizes to who guesses which lucky trio gets selected this year.
I’ve actually already written a little about We Know The Devil, specifically in regards to its unique approach to the “dating sim” formula. To summarize it quickly, WKTD doesn’t have a central viewpoint character and gives the player choices not in regards to dialogue but in regards to which characters get to spend time together— making WKTD not a true “dating simulator,” but an “OTP simulator.” It’s a clever spin on the standard formats of most visual novels, and that alone would be enough to make We Know The Devil a notable game— but of course, that’s only scratching the surface.
We Know The Devil is a self-described “surreal summer camp dystopia,” a surprising mashup of genres that works so great because of the game’s immaculately constructed atmosphere. The sprites (drawn by Schwartz) are cute and appealing, but they’re rendered in scratchy, desaturated pixels, a stark contrast to the smooth linework and bright colors seen in most visual novels. The backgrounds are washed-out photographs of overgrown patches of woods and deserted cabins, and the contrast between real-world images and digitally rendered characters heightens the feeling of unease that only grows as you progress in the game. And of course, we can’t talk about unease without talking about WKTD’s soundtrack. Created by Alec Lambert, We Know The Devil’s spine-chilling score is rife with droning ambience and ominous synths. I know little about horror movies, even less about composing, but even I can recognize a love letter to John Carpenter and slasher flicks when I hear it.
Like I said before, it’s uncommon when it feels like every piece of a work of art has come to fit together perfectly, but that’s just what WKTD does. Both the look and sound of the game meet each other perfectly to create a very strong mood— and that mood is that you’re supposed to be unnerved out of your mind. We Know The Devil is heavily inspired by 80s horror movies, and it does a damn good job of making you feel like you’re smack in the middle of one.
We Know The Devil has a great concept and a great atmosphere, but the writing may be where it really shines. First and foremost, it’s also yet another part of the game that contributes to that atmosphere of unease, not just in its imagery, but in the things it keeps in the dark. Fitting in with the “surreal” part of “surreal summer camp dystopia,” there’s a lot left to the viewer’s imagination. What’s the deal with the radios they keep talking about? How do magical girl transformations and Christianity fit together in this universe? What landed Group West in this hellhole? A lot is kept vague simply because it isn’t important, but also because this is the nature of magical realism— elements of the fantastic and surreal coexisting with a realistic setting. It’s both intriguing and more than a little unnerving.
But between all the horror elements, WKTD finds plenty of time to be hilarious, thoughtful, and just plain good at character writing. Since there’s no “main character” to control, your only role as the player is to choose who gets paired during which scene, leaving you to sit and listen through most of the game. If that sounds boring, please be assured, it isn’t. Aevee Bee is great at writing character interactions, and these are great characters to observe interacting. Schwartz has to be given credit on this account as well, since, to quote the WKTD postmortem, she and Bee “literally developed the game by shitposting with their own characters.” Bouncing concepts and ideas between two people is an interesting way to approach character writing, and as silly as it may sound, I think this ‘shitposting’ method of writing contributed in a big way to making these characters feel so realistic.
I’m now approximately 1000 words into this essay. It’s funny, I’ve talked a lot about We Know The Devil, and yet I haven’t even begun digging into the real meat of it. The art, the mood, the concept, the writing— all of those things are great, and yet those aren’t really what made We Know The Devil ring so true to me. If I were to try to classify it, I guess I’d say it’d be the content of the game is the thing that truly made it so honest, so wonderful, and so, well, different.
As such, it’s finally time to return to what I said about the importance of personal response to the game.
SPOILERS START NOW
Let’s get right to it: We Know The Devil is a game about being queer. This isn’t some wild fan theory or Death of The Author or anything like that— it literally what it says on the Date Nighto page.
Don’t get me wrong, We Know The Devil is about a LOT of things, but this is the big one. What does it mean when a work of art is about “being queer?” I’d bet that the one thing everyone would immediately jump to is “well, it has LGBT characters and relationships, obviously.” Maybe “it features a character coming out of the closet.” I guess there’s a hundred ways you could answer that question, and none of those ways would really be “wrong.” Some may claim otherwise, but there’s no “wrong” queer experience.
Yet, there’s so much that WKTD seems to do “right.” One thing I’ve come across multiple times when reading articles and reactions to WKTD is something along the lines of this: “this wasn’t exactly my experience growing up, and yet something about it hit very close to home.” It feels kind of obvious that a short game like this with such a small cast and such a specific setting can only be so relatable, and yet it managed to touch so many people personally.
I think WKTD works so well in this regard for a very simple reason: the creators are actually queer themselves. Yeah, I know, “well, duh.” But sadly, it feels like nowadays many straight creators are getting lauded for clumsily trying to write queer characters— never a main character, mind you, but perhaps a side character the protagonist can save from bigots. “What’s wrong with liking guys?” says the straight all-American goodboy superhero comic protagonist. “There’s nothing wrong with you, [MINOR CHARACTER #27].” So brave. So woke.
It’s hard to imagine characters like Venus and Neptune existing in a Marvel comic. There’s no neat labels or archetypes for characters like them. They don’t even get the luxury of labels in-universe— because one thing the creators of WKTD understand about growing up queer, from experience, is that there’s often no tidy definitions, no sudden epiphany of “oh, I’m a lesbian,” not even the privilege of words. The word “gay” pops up a grand total of once, in a throwaway line about a Harry Potter character. Words like “transgender” don’t show up at all, but you’d probably have to be trying very, very hard to not have even a small idea of what Venus was going through. If you grew up in a rural setting before the age of the Internet, you most likely didn’t get to learn words like these until later in your life, and I’m sure even today most kids don’t get to learn these kinds of things unless they’re wrapped deep in ten layers of insults and bullying.
This is what Bee and Schwartz get about growing up queer— it’s messy. Hell, growing up anything is messy. That’s just the nature of teenagers. You do dumb shit, you hurt yourself and your friends, you drink dubious cocktails that have alarming percentages of nail polish remover. A notable feature of queer characters with straight writers is that they often don’t have this kind of dimension— you get the feel that these writers have no idea what to do with these characters apart from cloying scenes to make the (presumably) straight reader feel good about themselves for nothing being a bigot. Neptune refuses to be likeable in-universe, Venus ends up pissing off people in trying to be likeable, and even Notable Nicegirl Jupiter just ends up causing more problems by trying to be “good.”
The fact of the matter is, not even Jupiter is good enough. None of Group West are, no matter how badly they try (or try not) to be. They’re the Bad Kids in a camp full of bad kids, and as such they’re the ones inevitably sent to meet the devil. I talked a little bit in my essay on visual novel mechanics about how the insidious system of We Know The Devil (as in, “the system” in-universe and the choice system of the game) is meant to turn two of the characters against the “third wheel,” but I really didn’t get into what this meant from a writing point of view. In simplest terms, society loves a scapegoat. If you can be made into a problem that can be solved, you will be. It can happen to anyone, though, as is wont to happen, marginalized people are the victims more often than not— and the real tragedy is, if a marginalized person is made a scapegoat, that often spurs their peers to reject them in an attempt to escape the same fate. It’s a sad truth of every community— political ones, artistic ones, and, yes, queer ones. And if this problem can exist among educated adults, it can only be a hundred times worse among scared, confused teenagers. All of the Scouts are supposedly “problem children,” but with the help of the counselors, they still are able to find their own scapegoat in Group West, and in all but one of the endings, they find a scapegoat amongst themselves.
To quote Neptune “all that matters, all we need, is one of us to be just a little worse than the others.” Of course, none of them are “worse” than the others, because they’re all in the same boat. Each of the bad endings aren’t based on who’s the “baddest” kid, it’s based on which one breaks first. It’s horrible, but the real tragedy is that it forces the others to be complicit in it. That’s just what society forces queer kids to do. It’s raw and painful and not at all neat. But it’s real.
And nothing about We Know The Devil is as real as the pain is. All three of the main characters have their own pain they are forced to bottle up in order to survive in this world, pain that’s intrinsically tied to being queer, but individual based on how each of them attempt to cope with it. Sadly, that’s also a thing most queer writers know from experience. We Know The Devil posits that pain is inevitable for queer children growing up in society, and that’s why you can’t get the True Ending of the game until you get at least one of the other endings. It’s a notion that seems grim at first, but it’s actually quite hopeful when you think about it— even if you suffer a great pain, you can still survive. You can still get a Good End. Straight writers love writing about queer pain, of course, but it’s so much easier to write about tragic suicides and beautiful deaths that teach everyone else a lesson than it is to write about sad gay kids surviving a world that wants to hurt them so badly. We Know The Devil, under the roots of slasher flicks and gritty washed out art, is a story about hope—it’s about not only surviving, but surviving in the most beautiful, self-affirming way possible. It’s about taking the things that mark you as “the other” in society and turning them into your greatest strength. It’s about looking at a world that tells you you’re a monster and saying “damn right I am.” It’s hard to watch the kids suffer through their bad endings, and even in their golden ending you get the feeling that their troubles are far from over. But when you see the girls in each other’s arms, you know that this is truly a happy ending.
It’s— well, it’s beautiful.
I’ve mentioned personal responses a lot, so I guess it’s time for mine: the truth is, when I first played We Know The Devil, it didn’t hit me as hard as it seemed to hit other people. To put it simply, I didn’t have the “closeted queer kid” experience. As a kid I never really questioned that possibility outside off a few strange, unnerving, quickly-smoothed-over moments, and it wasn’t until I was nearly twenty that I began to truly question my sexuality for the first time. It’s left me in a weird sort of limbo, realizing I was a queer kid growing up but not actually recognizing it back then, and as such, it initially made me a little sad, almost embarrassed, that my reaction to WKTD seemed so detached compared to other people.
What changed? Well, time went by. I matured a little. I replayed the game some. But I think the biggest thing that helped me was reading what Aevee Bee and Mia Schwartz thought about WKTD and relatability. It’s something they’ve covered on both their Twitters, and while at this moment I probably couldn’t find the exact quotes, the sentiments have stuck to me— there is no such thing as a “one true queer experience,” it’s foolish and selfish to demand that a work of fiction try to emulate the “one true queer experience” or relate to your life on all accounts (I haven’t been unlucky enough to see people say this kind of thing about WKTD, but I don’t doubt it’s occurred), and most important of all, there’s nothing wrong with you if you can’t relate to something on the level other people do.
I hadn’t declared We Know The Devil to be “bad media” because I didn’t have the deep personal connection of other people, but I did something nearly as bad— I thought I was in the wrong for not having the “right” reaction. It was silly and short-sighted, but it was a remnant of years of internalized crap, and realizing that inspired me to do a lot of self-examination. And there was the ultimate irony: in believing I didn’t have enough of a personal reaction to We Know The Devil, I was able to find my own personal reaction. It wasn’t clean, it took a bit of pain, but I found it, and finding it set me free. Typical.
It feels like this essay was a little messier than I wanted it to be, but for a game that celebrates messiness, maybe that’s okay. Still, essays should at least have a tidy wrap-up, so here’s mine: We Know The Devil is a beautiful game. It’s well-crafted from a technical level and builds a fantastic atmosphere. Its tight foundation serve to support the myriad of nuanced and deep ideas the game manages to explore in only about an hour or so. These ideas combined with their significance to the game’s creators create an experience that elicits unique and personal reactions in the players.
Even after writing all that, it feels like there’s so much more I could say. I didn’t even touch on Venus and what it means for Aevee Bee to write a character like her, but that’s a topic people should really listen to trans women about. This essay and this essay are excellent ones with focus on Venus. I also recommend Aevee Bee’s WKTD dev blog, as well as her Twitter and Mia Schwartz’s twitter, not just due to their insights on WKTD but their discussions on a variety of topics that are relevant to the game.
Not to mention the two of them are just damn funny.
So, what did We Know The Devil do differently? It offers a unique twist on the dating sim formula. It uses mechanics to strengthen its themes. It build the setting and atmosphere of a horror movie not for shock value but to support a greater idea. It has metaphors. It has lots of metaphors. It lets its queer characters fuck up. It lets its girls be unpleasant and bitter and tired. It shows us the nuance and possibility queer characters can have when queer writers actually get to write them. It gives creators a way higher standard to reach for. It shows us tragedy and pain. It shows us triumph and hope. It gives queer kids a chance to see themselves in it, or lets them examine what it means to not see themselves in it.
Honestly? Just by existing, We Know The Devil is different. I can’t think of a single other game, or movie, or novel, or anything like it out there. But I believe there’s the potential for so many more stories like it— and I think We Know The Devil is going to end up coaxing a lot of them into being. Making them won't be easy. In fact, more than anything, it'll be hard, and tiring, and painful.
But The Devil isn’t lonely. And neither are you.
We Know The Devil is available on Date Nighto for $6.66 or on Steam for $7.99
