Ok but this is confirming Diane/Hardin as having ever been a canon thing and not just a crackship? I am here for this.
yep! started as a crackship in my notes, quickly and retroactively became ‘yeah they were a thing’ the more I got a handle on their mindsets - not publicized, mind you, but an affair behind closed doors and such due to their positions. partly because it makes a certain upcoming scene even more poetically horrifying/satisfying (more on the satisfying tbh), and partly because I like my morally fucked up squicky horny messes of ships.
So what I’m seeing is that Jehane could chirp Diane about having slept with her dead boyfriend, her current boyfriend and her mom. Jeeeesus.
hey, in defense of Jehane, Shard slept with her great-grandad, that’s hardly any better :’P
then again they could all commiserate about having the worst taste in men, bahah.
Yay morally questionable ships that make for ultra horrifying scenes! Hardin doesn’t seem long for this world so I’m curious to see how that goes down.
Also lol so Shard’s slept with pretty much everyone in that family.
Hopefully Shard gets a say in it… but I get the sneaking suspicion that his input was probably not especially sought after.
Though I suppose that does say a great deal about the Chanderan ruling family…
“Here’s the eldritch abomination WMD you stole from your unfriendly local superpower. What are you gonna do with it?”
[ WIP, IC] god, I hate how much i’m into their chemistry
See, but there’s so much there to enjoy —
Like okay.
For one: she’s straddling him. Now, I’ve been able to flip a grown man while doing MMA, but that was after five years of training three times a week, and even so, in a spar — it was a challenge I’m not inclined to repeat.
Hardin’s bigger, tougher, and it’s his day job to throw his weight around. So if Diane’s on top, unless she’s rocking the Xena Queen of Amazons thing, she’s there because he decided she ought to be.
Which then begs the question: why?
His hands are free, so he could conceivably do a gun block or defence and flip them over — either for some slapslapkiss style ravishing if he heels friendly, or just to cut to the chase and bounce her head off the concrete a few times if he doesn’t.
He’s even smirking/smiling, the lunatic fuck, which implies he’s not really too upset about the situation he finds himself in.
Which, curiously: Diane seems to be.
So the metas and the writers each have areas of interest —
Namely:
Why is Hardin okay with this? Why is Diane not okay with it? Why does he look so smug — which is to ask: just what sort of shitshow Kobayashi Maru has he backed her in to?
(Meanwhile the rest of us are here like, “pull the trigger piglet”)
(Firstly: your comments and tags always give me such life. <3) With a disclaimer that I mightly enjoy whatever interpretation all y'all walk away with, my thoughts in return:
put simply, it’s a mindfuck move.
Control doesn’t always mean physical control; sometimes - in the most base of ways - there’s nothing more gratifying to have someone on their knees and surrendered out of their own volition without even lifting so much a finger. Playing with deeply fucked power dynamics (what makes one profane or sacred?) (can you ever un-twist one if you were forced into enjoying it?) is a large part of IC, and for the first third, theirs does take center stage by dint of their stations.
He tends to use and discard people (women, especially), however, she by her status can’t be ignored as easily, and so that boredom shifts quickly into obsession. What would she do, if nudged in a corner of his making? (like a cat playing with a chipmunk in a remarkably high stakes game)? How much of his spell is she under? What would break it, (or her?) interrogation is a mind-game writ in the language of violence (ahah, mm, did I ever learn that perhaps a little too well writing Vau) - and he applies it to this field as surely and surgically as he does with dirty work elsewhere.
He has his own educated guesses on her - that she’s too emotionally attached, the poor girl - too weak - to ever actually pull the trigger or finish the job - and he lives for her realization that she’ll never be the master bluffer as he is.
i have a whole weird essay rattling around in the head about finally getting the ‘why’ I started writing IC (-and also consistently project out the wazoo on very Specific™ character archetypes)
and it boils down to ‘stories where said character literally isn’t supposed to exist - whether their very existence defy a social or moral taboo or some other shit’
(or you know, a whole cast of them)
it’s not necessarily… ~*needing moar representation of [XXXX]*~ (lol good luck of that ever happening) - but it’s almost the more extreme, visceral, violent stage of that.
with the taboo bit, especially - because there’s still those grey areas where ethics and representation mesh that suddenly get weirdly complicated fast. and you have not-isolated instances of, you know, existing and shit and yet being told pretty literally ‘you don’t belong here because your augmented/”fixed” existence is in direct odds with our goals despite [literally living with same (and more) traumas as the group]“.
tangentially: (‘what are you?’ ah yes being asked that by a kiddo was fun. i don’t blame the kiddo, i don’t even blame the parent who was understandably mortified, kids say weird shit. that’s just society talking in an odd moment of clarity.)
another version: “Medically this isn’t (/you aren’t).. supposed to be possible.”
death by a thousand cuts where you’ve been burned so many times by group dynamics (it’s always groups, oddly. and yeah, progressive ones too) that hold their hand out for ~everyone~ but disclaimer it with [*on our terms] and [*edges sanded down]. Moral codes that don’t leave room for choices made in the name of survival that taint things all the way down. That don’t leave room for understanding legacies or why running from those is a good idea sometimes. moral codes that don’t leave room for anything tainted, really. aberrations.
that’s the taboo part.
and the only answer to that, i’ve found - is to flip the table on humanity and walk away from that very silly game of justifying your existence.
telling IC’s 1-minute elevator pitch to relatives/coworkers/etc is always fascinating … the premise is enough of an ethical question in itself that - idk how to word this - people’s reactions tells me far more about themselves vs what’s being told?
like, I usually start with the ‘action/adventure comic following a dictator’s daughter, escorted by mercs…’ bit - which they usually perk up at the oddball premise, and ask a few questions about that - most of it is pretty dang sympathetic to Diane over the mercs, actually; which surprises me. (since i never explicitly said that she has any intention of resisting her father’s ideas; obviously in the comic proper, that (eventually) happens - but it’s the assumption here - we’re not dealing with miss snow white innocence over here.)
however
where the comments massively diverge on tone is when I sometimes drop in the second part: ‘-she’s also followed by a demon that’s been locked up in her father’s basement; he used to be a Bad Dude as well, but now he’s helping her as part of a deal.’
a slight minority of people (usually the nerdy dudes lol) light up and instantly get playing with the ‘born bad: permanent, or not?’ theme; whereas on the other hand there’s been definitely a few .. slightly recoiled, guarded comments along the lines of ‘….and he’s a good guy?’. (they kinda-sort of get it with a quick clarification; but - note the starkly different knee-jerk responses, here -)
like, -i- personally always found it … interesting that demons were in the ‘made and remain evil’ box, no questions asked, rather than ‘made terrible choices; were evil because of those and not where they started / twisted by someone else’s hands / literally didn’t have a choice in the thing / were soldiers just Following Orders / idek it depends on the worldbuilding let’s ask the creator!’ line of thinking - (i mean obviously most people don’t overthink villainous archetype like yours truly does, probably healthier that way lol) - but-
it’s just … darkly amusing to see that when presented with two beings with pretty much the exact same backstory of blood on their hands (morality-wise) - archetypes instantaneously tip it to one side.
_____
# i goddamn love villain archetypes you guys - playing with the horrific idea that there's visual cues to being evil #when that is *literally* the point blank definition of some Fucked Up shit in a bad way #evil is a verb not an adjective!!! and yet we accept *so* *many* stories where it's the reverse... #(there's also probably some lingering ridiculous ideas that girls are inherently Less Evil there too which i ain't even gettin into)
i think one of my unexpected favorite parts about writing IC (and the various strips as a whole) is showing all of the weird … ethical conundrums? …that can exist, and how the tiniest emotions can drastically change how people approach them?
for example - from who’s point of view is a dirty traitor, a traitor, if they’re militantly overthrowing a rotten leadership, but have to sacrifice their friends in there? What if they’ve too, committed heinous crimes? what happens if the audience is primed to like them beforehand? Another - what the hell does consent mean when one (or both!) of the parties are bound? bound permanently (and, in the ‘most ethical’ light, forced to live their lives without extending meaningful emotional connections)? temporarily-but-power-dynamics-are-too-large-to-ignore? when they want the same thing? Is survival worth it when you break yourself to make it happen? when you break others (and they do or don’t regret it)?
the hell is ‘right and wrong’ in any of those situations?
ngl, realizing that i frikkin love that shit in my media - 100k, Jin-Roh, Eastern Promises, NGE, Repcomm, Hellsing - even if the plot is in wtfuckery land, give me good characters and a really dicey wiggy ethical question and i’ll go to the end of the world for it. it’s probably the most pointed single reason that i’m even going through with this project at all, and nngh, frankly… i’m just. really tired of media that wants you to feel the fuzzy feels and steers clear of anything remotely controversial or hard-edged - it feels like there’s a lot more media (and media critique) handled with kid-gloves these days? (nothing inherently wrong with that either, mind!! please! just … i personally never ever could nor will ever be able to be emotionally attached to that, it’s strange).
and idek
there’s an art form to … simply placing the morbid elephant-in-the-room-question on a platter, and letting people sample and wrestle with said ethics of it, and … i like it. quite honestly i’d write stories just to experience that myself and it weirdly feels so good.
unclench your fists, my lover, the war is over now. (i’ve forgotten how to uncurl my fingers from the trigger.) be gentle, my lover, the war is over now. (i don’t remember what it’s like not to have gunsteel in my bones.) come home, my lover, the war is over now. (i’m back at the place i left but home is gone where i cannot find it.) sleep, my lover, the war is over now. (the war follows me into sleep. i’m afraid i’ll never leave it behind.) kiss me, my lover, the war is over now. (my fingers still drip red and i do not want to stain you with them.)
With this bullet lodged in my chest, covered with your name, I will turn myself into a gun, because it’s all I have, because I’m hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own. I’ll be your slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue and final resting, walking around with this bullet inside me ‘cause I couldn’t make you love me and I’m tired of pulling your teeth.
there isn’t one kind of monster story i love most; but all the monster stories i love probably have things in common
so a lot of monster stories are about making monsters human, subtracting what makes them strange and terrible: a broken thing mended, an ugly thing made beautiful, reversing the transformation to put back the status quo. but i’ve always liked stories that keep the monster’s teeth and claws and frightful face. good monster stories are capable of containing multitudes—they delight in the dread and sublimity and terror of monsters, in creatures that draw and repel you, in transgressing the ordinary and giving form and voice to things that are hidden and grotesque and aeons-old and carnivorous. but they’re also about cruelty and violence and persecution and fear and trauma and addiction and exile and loneliness, and the worst things humans have wrought. (monsters of myth are often how a community encodes its pain and conflict and memory in the world.)
languages of monstering can be used to dehumanise—usually women, people of colour, queer people, people with mental illnesses or physical disabilities, people who are visibly and invisibly ‘abnormal’, people not allowed to be human. and this is tough shaky territory but—using these languages can be a way of reclaiming them, of staring without blinking at the people who called you not-human and saying if that is a human i choose not to be human i choose to be something else
(a monster is about itself before it’s about anything else—it’s a kind of numinous presence, it doesn’t have to be anything but itself, it doesn’t need meaning or purpose because it’s already question and answer enough)
to me good monster stories are about honouring the ways we’re different and strange and broken and not-broken and half-mended, and undoing the tyranny of ‘normal’. they talk about the transformations that happen when a terrible thing is done to you, suddenly or for a long time. the things you have to become to survive. how wounds have quantum shapes, and how pain roars or beats or aches or shivers in silence. nightmares and day-terrors, the forgetting and remembering. your voice rotting with the unsayable. steeling your skin till it’s heavy armour. the loose teeth and bits of glass and black writhy things that surface from your skin years later. the things that get irrevocably lost; the grace that comes shambling in. they’re about staying alive, being alive, even in the darkest foulest places—being a rough grim strange brave unlovely animal hauling your hide and heart and guts through the sulphurous stink of deepest hell, even when there’s no promise of light or air
they’re about allowing things to be ugly and dirty and impure and loud and mute and hungry and awful and dark and clumsy and disquieting, sharp and brittle and misshapen and mangled and blistered and pestilent and fearful and poisoned and sin-steeped and profane and too-much and too-bright and broken, and strange, so strange. they’re about boundaries, which give meaning and order to everything—the boundaries that can be warped and razed and crossed over; the boundaries that are sacred, and have to be drawn with white chalk and salt and holy water, and drawn again
the monster stories i like best are about terror and hurt and survival and softness, and love that wears a terrible gentle face, and endures. they’re about naming and seeing and saving and keeping and choosing. they’re rooted in the shadows at the unmapped edges and hinterlands, where you become your own light or wear the dark near as skin, where you’re strange and awful and you choose—because in monster stories choosing is the most important thing—despite what was done to you, and all the nightmares after, to be tender and soft and foolish and gentle. it’s having a mouth of razor teeth that can rip out throats and deciding not to use them (but sometimes letting light shine on the sharpness of them, when you also need to be dangerous)
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