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doing more comics lately has been making me think about how i'd revisit Iron Crown.
a lot of this got started b/c post eye surgeries i've been finding out so many ways to practically and efficiently cut time with comics-making. even with my wrist kinda acting up in the last two weeks i can do more in 10 minutes now vs 2 hours before.
i was honestly far too young and inexperienced to be making that comic. i love that i did, i still want to give a giant hug for my younger self for somehow powering through all laws of physics and total terror. but i was also too inexperienced with just. life? to handle a topic with the nuance that it needed/that i knew it needed. right out of college, i was still learning corporate politics 101 (which is a great small-scale version of global politics 101). you grow a lot from early-mid twenties to mid thirties.
part of it is that most of IC was made right around the trump years, and the original (still cool) emotional plot plan of "dictator's daughter slowly grows out of blind extremism" kind of got. warped? with everything we were bombarded with in those years. i was "reacting" subconciously to too much shit. in a similar way - i'm kind of smiling in fond indulgence but i also definitely let the horny braincell for diane/hardin drive a little. too much. it was the moment i was discovering the fun that kink art is (and figuring out a few things about myself) and also navigating around the peak genuine fear that is of posting fashkink art online when there was a very real chance of being doxxed. i was reacting a lot to that fear too, pulling punches when it didn't do any favors for the story. i was barely comfortable with the idea of dead dove stuff much less knowing how to write heavy, heavy messy kinks and... yeah.
it was also way too broad. like i was being way too ambitious with a load of crazy end-of-evangelion type of shit in the end.
these days...
I think i'd very narrowly focus on diane's arc of emotional growth from a stunted girl that parroted a lot of what her dad said blindly and actively learning how to shed that view. less the wider implications of dictatorship and focus on her, specifically.
i think i would also double down on the cool messy fucked-up ero horror that was going to be diane/possessed!hardin(/shard). shard was a demon that possessed diane's lover's (fashy captain/bodyguard dude) dead body. and shard was going to need to use the body as a disguise in order to walk around the human world when there were other people around. i really love the inherent horror of possession/necro stuff (hi half the reason i love gunter fire emblem lmao). and honestly a lot of my favorite kind of creative work these days sits right there on that line of "not outright erotic but heavy kink undertones that pokes at what's uncomfortable".
i think i would also focus on how Jehane (milf-y villain) would try to groom diane in the latter half of trying to curry favor with her (weakness of diane always starved for genuine affection that's not simpering), and *that's* when you see diane's emotional growth and gets the tools on how to handle her. shard's no saint but he'd have a lot to do with that growth, having gone through a lot of eerily similar shit.
i think if i stuck to those three things it'd be a lot more solid story.
a lot of this got started b/c post eye surgeries i've been finding out so many ways to practically and efficiently cut time with comics-making. even with my wrist kinda acting up in the last two weeks i can do more in 10 minutes now vs 2 hours before.
i was honestly far too young and inexperienced to be making that comic. i love that i did, i still want to give a giant hug for my younger self for somehow powering through all laws of physics and total terror. but i was also too inexperienced with just. life? to handle a topic with the nuance that it needed/that i knew it needed. right out of college, i was still learning corporate politics 101 (which is a great small-scale version of global politics 101). you grow a lot from early-mid twenties to mid thirties.
part of it is that most of IC was made right around the trump years, and the original (still cool) emotional plot plan of "dictator's daughter slowly grows out of blind extremism" kind of got. warped? with everything we were bombarded with in those years. i was "reacting" subconciously to too much shit. in a similar way - i'm kind of smiling in fond indulgence but i also definitely let the horny braincell for diane/hardin drive a little. too much. it was the moment i was discovering the fun that kink art is (and figuring out a few things about myself) and also navigating around the peak genuine fear that is of posting fashkink art online when there was a very real chance of being doxxed. i was reacting a lot to that fear too, pulling punches when it didn't do any favors for the story. i was barely comfortable with the idea of dead dove stuff much less knowing how to write heavy, heavy messy kinks and... yeah.
it was also way too broad. like i was being way too ambitious with a load of crazy end-of-evangelion type of shit in the end.
these days...
I think i'd very narrowly focus on diane's arc of emotional growth from a stunted girl that parroted a lot of what her dad said blindly and actively learning how to shed that view. less the wider implications of dictatorship and focus on her, specifically.
i think i would also double down on the cool messy fucked-up ero horror that was going to be diane/possessed!hardin(/shard). shard was a demon that possessed diane's lover's (fashy captain/bodyguard dude) dead body. and shard was going to need to use the body as a disguise in order to walk around the human world when there were other people around. i really love the inherent horror of possession/necro stuff (hi half the reason i love gunter fire emblem lmao). and honestly a lot of my favorite kind of creative work these days sits right there on that line of "not outright erotic but heavy kink undertones that pokes at what's uncomfortable".
i think i would also focus on how Jehane (milf-y villain) would try to groom diane in the latter half of trying to curry favor with her (weakness of diane always starved for genuine affection that's not simpering), and *that's* when you see diane's emotional growth and gets the tools on how to handle her. shard's no saint but he'd have a lot to do with that growth, having gone through a lot of eerily similar shit.
i think if i stuck to those three things it'd be a lot more solid story.
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Thank you for some closure about that Webcomic.
(Anonymous) 2024-01-29 11:51 pm (UTC)(link)knowing that you kind of have better ideas about what you want to maybe do in the future with that web comic when you try again makes me feel happy for you maybe thinking about that webcomic after all this time, even if it is going into areas that are not interesting to me at all.
Re: Thank you for some closure about that Webcomic.
say, i might have something even better than IC for you. strictly speaking 'working away from extremisim' isn't its singular theme, though it's a very big theme for one of the main characters, and there's likewise emphasis on dignity and nuance given to characters that you wouldn't expect to have-- you might enjoy reading Unsounded. (https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic+index/) there are some heavy chapters/topics but i think if you're still following me, you should be all right content wise.
I hope you find that media that touches your heart in the way it's seeking.