#i'm been feeling a bit homesick so i wanted to draw some of my favourite malaysian things

[relaxtimestwo]

i feel like he's the type of person who complains alot when it's hot 𖤓

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I've opened up Star Rail character commissions on my new Ko-fi page! ☕The commissions will be halfbody and fully coloured, like Dr.Ratio up there!

Commission TOS

If you are interested, I would appreciate it if you checked it out!

[dark-horse76]

Enfield and Me

(in which I ramble on... and on... and on about Enfield... and me xd)

The Enfield Gang Massacre is my favourite comic, and it lives rent-free in my head. Last time I wrote about Enfield, I wrote that the reasons I love Enfield have to do with Enfield itself (the story/artwork), some of which I could talk about but many of which I can't because I don't yet have the knowledge or the words, and personal reasons that for the most part I couldn't sort out and were just a big, messy question. Both sides have started to become a bit clearer. (Although, I suppose I have to caveat that there's not necessarily a very clear distinction between the two sides - they are definitely intertwined in many places xd.)

So, in this, I'm going to attempt to sort out some of my messy thoughts and feelings around Enfield. Buckle up, kids xd

Firstly, I think I should reiterate that I got Enfield not expecting to like it. It has the words "gang" and "massacre" in the title, and I'm fairly sure some of the early press around it described it as "brutal". These are signs that something will not be my kind of thing (not that I really know what my kind of thing is anymore rofl)! Then why, you might ask, did I add it to my subscription list soon after it was announced and read it in the first place?

Two answers: Because I'd read issue 14 of That Texas Blood (made by the same people, Enfield is set in the same universe but much earlier) and loved it a lot and because I'd seen an image (below) from the first issue of Enfield and loved that.

The writing in Enfield and TTB is in the vernacular, and I guess it made me realise how out of place I sometimes feel. I may've lived in Britain nearly 15 years, but I'm not from here. I never will be. I'll always be an outsider.

I think it all made me kind of homesick and looking at that artwork was/is comforting. I don't even... like, I'm not from West Texas - I've never even been to West Texas 😂 but... I don't know. It's home, nonetheless, I guess.

TTB#14 - and it's always felt strange thinking this, considering what goes in TTB lol but - also made me remember the good sides of Texas. I know Texas is a shithole, and it's wearying. TTB and Enfield, despite everything that goes on in them, helped me remember things I love about Texas. Both Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips deserve to be honorary Texans (and I'm still a little surprised neither of them is Texan lol because it's normally only Texans who talk this way about Texas).

I think going into it not expecting to like it made it hit all the harder when I did. That's my excuse anyway lol Blindsided by Enfield like I was blindsided by comics generally lol

And, like comics generally, I think one of the reasons Enfield has come to mean so much to me is because it kinda finished, or accelerated, what comics generally had started. I would have caught on eventually, but Enfield hit me with it in a moment of clarity when I was reading the first issue. Just. I'm holding it in my hands, looking at it, and all of a sudden I know with a certain panicky dread - I need to make comics. I tried to talk my brain out of it, you know, with logic, especially around the rather important not being able to draw bit, but... well, my brain won xd.

I think I would have gotten to that realisation eventually, because comics is definitely the closest to how I envision stories. When I was younger, I used to use film scripts as a guide because that's the only frame of reference I had for what I wanted to do - it wasn't what I wanted to do, but that was comics but I didn't know about comics... 😭

Enfield is also responsible for getting me to be interested in and like art. It started with Jacob Phillips's colours, which I love. Of course, I don't know anything about art, so I don't really know why I love it so much or why I think it works so well, but it made me want to go try to find out, to pay attention to what artists do and the choices they make, to look at as much art as I can, to learn everything I can.

I went to an art museum (or gallery, not actually sure and actually no idea what the difference is lol...) for the first time a few months ago, and that was fantastic. It's all comics' fault (mostly Enfield) xd

Somewhat coupled (but not completely) with the whole "I need to write comics" thing that reading Enfield made realise, Enfield also helped re-ignite my desire to learn how to draw, because there's a few panels in there that I frequently try to draw. I just can't help it even though it goes not very well every time lol

I've always thought "I wish I could draw" but never had much motivation to actually try, because I suck at it xd. Doesn't help that I pretty much stopped drawing when I was <10 years old. But I have to. My brain is giving me no choice. It's literally the hardest thing I've ever tried to learn, and I don't think I've ever sucked so bad at something ROFL, but...

Would this have happened without Enfield? Like realising I need to turn my writing-focus to comics, probably. It's a little hard to escape when being sucked into the whirlpool of comics, but.

So, basically, it feels like Enfield re-forged me similar to how comics generally did. I sometimes (okay, a lot xd) think of comics as a tsunami that unexpectedly ripped me from my peaceful, non-comics beach and half-drowned me whilst dragging me out to sea. Then once I stopped struggling, it deposited me on an island paradise. Where Enfield proceeded to crash into me like a meteor 😂😂😂

Was Enfield just in the right place at the right time? Maybe, though I'm not sure it ultimately matters if that's the case or not. I think my gut is that it's more than that. I read relatively a lot of comics last year, and it's only Enfield that had this impact.

If I could do comics even remotely like Enfield, I would be very happy indeed. (Do I think I'll be able to? Absolutely not, but it's good to have aspirations lol)

The other thing that gets me about Enfield is it's a Western. Now, as far as I know, I don't like Westerns. However, this thought was formed by being forced to watch like every single John Wayne movie known to man - which, fortunately, due to my absolute crap memory, I don't actually remember haha.

Enfield, I think I would call a subversive Western, in that it takes what I think of as the expected tropes (lawmen = good, outlaws = bad, usually mixing in some racism and imperialism for good measure...) and...doesn't do that xd. It's not inverted, exactly, Enfield's not, like, a Good Guy (TM), but the 'good guys' are not Good Guys. And THAT is far more interesting. It's complicated, like real life.

It reminds me of the moment I knew I was going to love the story:

You wouldn't believe the number of scenarios I came up with trying to figure out how the end of the story (Enfield dying, it's not a spoiler, trust me xd) could be not the real end of the story because of this page 😂

Anyway. I've probably rambled on about Enfield (again) enough for one day (for now) xd

So, yeah. I love Enfield a lot, and if you haven't read it, you should read it (and also TTB) it's really good, I promise xd