This
current blogging segment should cover all of my creative endeavors over the
next couple of weeks, and I am starting with the monthly comics.
If you are
just catching up, while in Italy I decided that I should draw one
comic monthly, because there is more to comics than drawing well; there is also
effectively telling a story. Tomorrow I will go over all of them, but I feel
like I need to focus the December one first. There is a feeling of having come
full circle.
In spring
of 2012, I couldn't shake a music video ("Sing" by My Chemical
Romance) where every member of the band died. It stuck with me until I started
writing, and didn't let me go until over 400 pages later. It led to reading
other comic books, and where the music led me was not necessarily related to
that video, but a lot happened.
In October
of 2013, I watched a video ("Love Like Winter" by AFI) where every member
of the band died, and it stuck with me and eventually I drew this:
(If I
apologize every time that I feel like my drawing is inadequate and stupid, we
will never make any progress, so that should just be assumed.)
On the plus
side, "Love Like Winter" did not take over my life nearly as much as
"Sing" did. I guess the negative side is that nagging feeling that I
haven't learned very much. Do I really need to take music videos so seriously?
Does my solution always have to be the insertion of a female character who
fixes things? Apparently yes, this is my thing. I guess now the question is how
I feel about that being my thing, or my collection of things.
Always
wanting to fix things for people: I don't mind this part terribly. I do understand that I
have limitations, I don't usually panic, and I think that the things I end up
doing in real life are generally appropriate. Caring isn't torturing me.
For the
literary part, having women fix things seems pretty realistic, but the men do
heroic things too. I think my gender balance and character development is
pretty good, actually.
Making
everything into stories: That is just what I do. I need to be okay with it, and I am.
Being
traumatized by music videos: That part is a little embarrassing. I know it's not real,
and then anything that I do starting with someone else's work then feels
derivative. That does bug me.
At the same
time, what else am I going to do? Let the characters and ideas knock around in
my head and possibly get in the way of other thoughts? Not figure out what
lessons there were in the story?
It's not
like I am going to apologize for caring about musicians. Maybe that doesn't
mean that I have to care about their fake deaths, but I do. And it's not like
the musicians are going to apologize that their videos lead to people writing
or drawing; Gerard might die more on purpose just to see if he could get
someone to do an interpretive dance from it.
So I
apparently am stuck, and the only thing to really do is write semi-humorously
about it while continuing to be me. Therefore, it is interesting to note that
you have to kill off the entire band for it to work. Killing off just one
member, like Mikey in "The Ghost of You", does nothing. Killing off
all but one member, which AFI does in "Silver and Cold", (and
possibly in "Medicate", but that one has a different feel, and if the
others are dead then Davey is probably following them there at the end). Also,
I guess if the band kills everyone not in the band, like in "Beautiful
Thieves", I appear to be okay with it, though that sounds bad.
Our other
parallel is that I got really into the weapons again. That dark line running
down the dagger? It is mineral salt, and the dagger is silver, so it is
designed specifically for the supernatural. I know if I fled a convent before
taking the veil because it seemed like that would be living death, and then was
surviving as a ranger in a landscape where sorcery and apparitions were a real
possibility, this is the dagger I would want to have.
Less
parallel, this ending stayed pretty happy. I think the world of the Killjoys
was created so bleakly that any gains could only be temporary.
As it is,
there is a part of me that watches the video and feels like there is a
difference between the entity above the ice and the one under the ice, like
maybe the surface woman is evil and a copy, but he shares the fate of the real
woman and there is some comfort in that. It's an interesting idea, and it
reminds me of La Belle Dame Sans Merci, where I do find her to be
sympathetic. However, then I think of those hands frozen to the branch and
other hands falling, and yeah, basically she came out evil and spiteful. Quit
killing bands!
Really, it
all begs the question, why have I never written anything based on Asia's "Don't Cry"? Is it
because it is so long ago? Because the video is cheesy? Is it that I don't like
Asia as much as MCR and AFI? Asia is okay.
It could be
that the last frame jumps back in time before the deaths, so your last visual
has all of them alive, even though chronologically that was the beginning of
the events. Or maybe it was because they all sought out their quest and died
separately, instead of working together and perishing as a band. The
disintegration of the girl at the end of "Go" always bothered me more
as far as that goes. That and the perfunctory objectification:
We may go
over some of these issues more as we get start exploring music videos. It is
taking us long enough to get there that The Youngblood Chronicles may give me a
new take on what happens when band members are killed off separately.
Before we
get there, we will talk about comics, music blogging, bass playing,
screenplays, and moving out onto the internet. Over-functioning will come back,
but not for a while.
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