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idletry december update
🕑 Added 2024-12-13 03:42:19 +0000 UTChi again everyone. this scene took a while, but my momentum has been good. like the last scene, it's about twice as long as expected. i have one scene marked for drawing later after the page count is clearer, even though i really think it should be included... the scene where jessie makes herself immortal and invincible.
so we will be skipping that for now, and going straight to the next time jessie's therapy group meets. but keep in mind that there is supposed to be a scene in between this and that where jessie makes herself unable to be physically harmed in any way.
this scene was supposed to be the one where the audience is told in no uncertain terms that jessie having these powers is probably not a good thing. although, now that it's drawn out, i've chosen a lot of shots that make that pretty obvious before this point...
but, in addition to that, it's also really the only scene where we see this bleeding inner core the rest of her psyche is built around out in the open. loneliness is a load-bearing theme for this story and perhaps the most understated one.
to jessie, everyone is an accomplice in this grand scheme to torment her, to make her feel like less than nothing, everyone contributed to the social rejection, everyone helped build the society where it could happen. loneliness desperately wants to be relieved by connection, but the larger it grows, the more it festers, and the more it hates the cure. attempting to connect with the people who rejected you feels unfair, patronizing, pathetic, and ironically inauthentic, and the fact that it's the only way to relieve the loneliness feels like being held at gunpoint while being told to make friends with the person holding the gun.
the story doesn't really address whether it's jessie's fault or everyone else's because i don't feel that it matters. to assume that someone did something wrong in order to slip through the cracks implies that the people who do deserved to be left behind. instead, it focuses on the aftermath of loneliness, and the self-reinforcing loneliness that can persist even after feeling connections with other people again.
jessie could have rewritten the last 10 years of her life. she could have made cam her own wife, she could have made randall want to be her friend again, any number of conceptually horrifying things that would have attacked the desire directly -- but the desire is too painful to even look at, and she has another outlet that gives her relief from the pain without having to look at it: revenge.
because it is such a painful part of her psyche, she doesn't mention it much throughout the rest of the story. the reader either picks up on its significance, or they don't.
unrelated to that, the bible is a famous fictional franchise in their universe, which i've compared to pokemon in terms of notoriety. i needed a reason for people to be able to say "jesus christ" as an expletive, because god knows i wasn't giving up "jessie christ" as a joke. i imagine there are diehard genwunners out there who only think the old testament is a true part of the bible series, but the franchise didn't truly reach its peak in popularity until the male protagonist Jesus was introduced in a sequel show akin to boruto. i imagine jessie is a biblehead who likes both the original and the other less popular spin-offs and adaptations representing more granular sects of christianity.
the protagonist shown as the LORD here is the beta protagonist of idletry's original idea, before it was about writing.
the drawing at the end is what that character looked like in my head. it was going to take place in a universe i had made for my part in an anthology, but i ultimately decided that i didn't want anyone to have magic except for jessie. still, they would have probably had a species, eventually. i like jessie much more, though.
the translation used was just ESV. I decided to keep it simple and stick to one translation, with a few adjustments to make it work more as a comic.
i imagine the comics are kind of like poetry comics a lot of the time, and the actual content of them can seem esoteric and unenjoyable to the general population.
with that said, i'm also almost at page 100 of the story, which is supposed to be 1/8th of the way there...
Comments
gray Folie
i'd like to think they do call the ones loonies because it's very fun. initially, i wanted their entire currency system to be coins that got increasingly large until they were comically huge for large sums of money (to avoid carrying around large piles of coins). but that would require me to design unique wallets not made for paper bills, and i am not super interested in the intricacies of economy in the world. it might still happen, but... there is actually a sketch comic where evelyn shows a picture of a newborn jessie next to a quarter-curo (25-cent coin) and there is no fancy illustration on the coin. i wanted their currency to be very simple and to-the-point, standardized across the world, much like their measurement systems, so it probably wouldn't have any animals on it! just a clearly stated fiat value on both sides, probably with a circular etching on one side and a square on the other side just to differentiate.
Oleander Oxenfree
I love that it's still called a toonie. Is the one dollar coin also called a Loonie then? Are the animals on the coins still baseline animals or are they swapped out for the Stood Up variants in this universe? Either way, I like the decentralization of America as a setting by varying things up, it makes for a fun read in a sort of meta way!
galaxygale
god the 'gay little run away' at the end killed me LOL. the balance of comedy and horror in this scene is just incredible! it transitions incredibly smoothly from being uncomfortable to a funny release of that tension, almost as a 'reward' for getting through the 'hard' part. It really helps the reader enter a similar feedback loop that I assume Jessie's revenge gets her. I also love how truly petty the wrongs that Jessie throws at Randall are, before revealing her pain as so, so much deeper. It feels like she accidentally showed her hand here, and makes a mental note not to do it again throughout the rest of the story. I like her soooo much.
