#like ultimate goal is a webcomic with my partner

[miodiodavinci]

seeing everyone's responses to that "describe your ocs in the worst way possible" post has led me to conclude you are all rad as hell and have only the finest of tastes

[respheal]

Two years of Galebound

Hey guys, Res here! Long spiel ahead because I’m getting personal and long-winded here. Full text after the cut to spare your dash.

tl;dr: A brief history of Galebound’s development and my experiences with telling a story, joining a community, depression, and living inside my characters’ heads for two solid years.

[cut]

So I was working on page 103 early last month (yeah, the week page 103 was due to go up aaaahhahahaha -cries-) when I realized what was coming up: the second anniversary of Galebound’s start as a webcomic. The exact date of the anniversary is a little nebulous. The decision to make it a webcomic was made on 4/20/16 when I completed drawing the concept art for all the main characters (which I had set as a prerequisite for going on the hare-brained adventure) and drew what would become the title page. The first page was published on Smack Jeeves (where galebound.com is hosted) on 5/14/16. So the birthday of the webcomic is somewhere between those dates but I’m going to consider it to be 5/14, which is why I’m rambling about it today. I want to talk a bit about Galebound’s history and what it means to me.

Galebound was originally a short story called Noblesse Oblige. It was written in first person POV from Conan’s perspective and published on DeviantArt back in 2007 or so. I really wish I could find that original draft because I bet it’s wonderfully terrible. I didn’t really know what I was doing with the story at the time--Conan was an untrusting jerk, Din was an arrogant troll, and Pascal was downright unhinged. The basic mechanics of the Obligation were there (simply that Noblemen could command Magicians), but that was about it.

I pants’d the story until it got to--well, just after this point actually. The conclusion of the battle on the bridge, and then I stopped. I don’t entirely remember why. But the story stuck around in the back of my mind while I met new friends (Hi, Skypernauts!), went to college, moved across the country, met my first boyfriend, got my first job, met my future husband, and casually worked on developing an RPGMaker game in my spare time (That RPG is called Memory and that story will likely get turned into a comic eventually as well).

While I was working on Memory’s battle system, I had the thought: how would I convert Noblesse Oblige into an RPG? The magic system would probably have to be something like the field generator from the original .hack games: string together words for a certain field or, in this case, magic. That way the command side of the Obligation would be integrated into the gameplay.

I played around with that idea for a bit longer, but ultimately decided it wouldn’t work; there was a major design flaw with the game. I can’t say what that flaw was because figuring out the solution to the design flaw led to the realization of a huge twist in NO’s story. I had to get this story out. Now.

Around this time I had abandoned RPG-making (because making nice maps is a PITA), so I took Noblesse Oblige through a JulyNoWriMo (NaNoWriMo, just in July). This time I took the story through Norin, Evenheim, the bridge, and on to Cymaria and beyond, compelled as if by Obligation. I accomplished my goal of 50k words, but the story still wasn’t complete. I slowed down the writing process and kept at it, but I also wanted to share the story so badly.

And uh...well. No one was interested in beta reading it except one friend, when time allowed. My fiance made an attempt, but didn’t get very far (He tried though, bless him, and said that although the beginning was rough--lord was it ever--it picked up eventually). In his eternal patience, my fiance at least let me spill the whole story at him. He didn’t like parts of it, mainly some things that happen around the midpoint and Din as a character in general (Din was a bit more actually evil back then). But he listened to the story as a whole, which was a lot more support than I felt anyone else had given the project at the time (Thanks, Mike <3). He also made a hell of a lot of puns about the ending of it, but in fairness the ending does lend itself to a lot of puns. It’ll blow you away (ba-dum-tsh).

I started getting really frustrated. There was this story that I just had to tell, but seemingly no one who would listen. I’d put a couple chapters up on Wattpad or Tablo, but got no feedback there (and didn’t learn until much later that those sites are miserable for anything that isn’t romance). An excuse would be that I wanted to know if this project had any sort of worth and if I should continue with it, but real talk: I wanted validation. I know better now what was happening then, but...well, hindsight.

While this was going on, I posted this illustration in the NaNoWriMo forums, the first drawing I had done in about two years or so.

No comments for a bit, but one day I was browsing through the thread and noticed someone quoted me and responded, asking if I was doing a webcomic. Um...No? I had tried making a webcomic before, but it was a LOT of work and I figured it wouldn’t be something I would have time for now.

Buuuuuuuuut the seed was planted. At this point I had determined the reason no one was interested in reading my rough novel was because A) the writing must be terrible (it kind of was) and B) nobody ain’t got time for reading books. So maybe this story could be told and find its audience as a webcomic. But only if I could draw ALL of the main and secondary characters. I would have to draw them hundreds of times, so no point in trying if I couldn’t even draw them all once.

Suffice to say, I succeeded. And the comic began under the new name Galebound.

Even as the comic went up, however, the need for validation persisted. I meticulously tracked subscription counts and likes and faves and everything, craving proof that people were reading this story. It got better as the story went on and some events did provide temporary boosts (Like Galebound getting featured on a “Top Five New Comics” list from Top Web Comics -excited screaming- and I met a new friend who I could talk to about the story and she actually read the monstrosity that was the first draft), but, well...

So, long story short: I was suffering from clinical depression with all that entails, and did for quite a while. Still am, technically. Just well managed now (yaaaaaay therapy and medication). It’s funny because I can pick out the pages it was hitting me the hardest because Conan was super bummed in those pages too.

I guess what I’m saying here is that this story was a big part of my life during some of the hardest and darkest times of my life.

I’m doing better now (see: aforementioned medication and therapy). Really I’m lucky because I see and talk to other webcomic artists who have similar struggles and similar feelings and the same reactions when sad or disappointing things happen and I want to suggest they get professional help when I recognize the signs of depression in them, but I realize I’m extremely fortunate in that I even had the opportunity to get the medical attention I needed. (I will recommend up and down all day long that if you’re suffering from depression and have the opportunity to see a doc about it, do so. For years I had tricked myself into thinking it wasn’t that bad even when...it was.)

There were good things, too. I met new friends and joined a community of other webcomic creators. I contributed to some drama in the community in an attempt to hold our publishing platforms accountable. I created a website to help webcomic readers and creators. I attended my first convention as an artist (and actually sold a sticker and a booklet! Woo!) and by the time this gets published I’ll have attended my second. Galebound has gained a small fanbase and I’m so proud of how clever the readers are. Seriously, you all keep me on my toes.

Regarding the story itself, Galebound is, by my estimates, about a fifth of the way through the full story, which means it will likely run for about ten years total if things don’t speed up (and I really want to speed things up). If you consult the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet, we’re somewhere in “The Debate”, that debate being “Who is Din and can he be trusted?”

Spoiler alert (warning: song with explicit language)

The whole concept of the Obligation stems from the dichotomy of what one wants to do versus what one feels compelled to do. That could be taking over the family business, going to college, going to church, even choosing a life partner based on expectations as opposed to one’s true feelings--as a character will say in the future, “not all Obligations are magic.” This sort of Obligation is something I think a lot of people face, and something Conan, too, will face throughout the course of the story.

Galebound is also about redemption and forgiveness. There are characters who have made terrible mistakes and decisions in the name of hatred and prejudice, and those who have brought harm to others out of sheer ignorance. It’s about self-worth and purpose. It’s about friendship and reconciliation. It’s about platonic and familial love. It’s about duty...and obligations.

It’s complicated, but “simple stories are inherently false. Life is complicated, and perspective matters.”

To sort of go into Conan and Din’s headspace a bit as they are now, they’re not in a good place emotionally, and it’s soon to get worse (because a certain someone Can’t Follow Instructions). They will hit rock bottom, but after that...well, there’s no place left to go but up? After this chapter, both of them will be reeling from mistakes made in the recent and distant past, but these events--as well as what will happen with the next few days--will put them in a place to rethink everything.

Long story short, I’m excited for what’s to come, but when am I not?

Anyway, that’s my spiel. Thanks for reading and for reading Galebound! My goals for it this year are to finish the first volume, start editing some of the earlier pages in preparation for printing, get a few chapters of the novel written (again), and get to the turn into act two. I’m actually so hyped for the turn I’ve edited this paragraph a millions times to keep myself from dropping even hints of spoilers because wow I want to talk about it.

So I better stop.

Thanks again for reading and Galespeed! <3

Links

Read Galebound here: galebound.com Prints and Stickers: store.synestories.com Social Media: Twitter | Facebook Support: Ko-Fi | Patreon

[readingsweetblueflowers]

Takarazuka time

Hey, it’s time for the cultural festival! You can't have a manga or anime set in high school without a cultural festival, but the point of this festival isn’t the festival per se, but the plays within it, put on by the Fujigaya drama club.

One frequent element in Takako Shimura’s work is the school play, portrayed as a source of, well, drama, but more specifically as a way for the characters to imagine themselves as something other than what they are, or for others to imagine them so. Recall for example the gender-switched version of Romeo and Juliet in Wandering Son, in which Shiuchi is envisioned for (but ultimately does not get) the part of Juliet.

Unlike Matsuoka (where the drama club seems to consist only of Fumi’s three friends), at Fujigaya the drama club is a long-standing institution (”They take it very seriously”, Akira tells Fumi) that seems to include at least a couple of dozen students. The three divisions of Fujigaya each put on a production: The Little Prince, Little Women, and (for the high school) Wuthering Heights. The first two are interesting if only for their titles (“princes” and “women” being a theme here, as we’ll see), but the main focus is on Wuthering Heights.

The play, and the casting of Yasuko Sugimoto in the male role of Heathcliff, are clearly intended to evoke the Takarazuka Revue, a all-women musical theater group formed in the early 20th century (the same period that saw the creation and popularization of the class S genre). Just in case we don’t get the connection Shimura explicitly mentions it twice, on pages 55 and 241 of omnibus volume 1.

(Shimura also created a webcomic Awajima Hyakkei (淡島百景, translated within the comic as A Hundred Scenes of Awajima), set in a girl’s school resembling the school in which young Takarazuka performers are trained. Unfortunately it has not had an official release in English, so I can’t tell you much more about it.)

The place of the Takarazuka Revue in Japanese popular culture is multi-faceted and shot through with ambiguity; see for example the discussion in Jennifer Robertson’s “The Politics of Androgyny in Japan: Sexuality and Subversion in the Theatre and Beyond”. However it’s clear that the Revue embodies a tension between the idea of women performing a male role purely for purposes of popular entertainment and the idea of women actually behaving in stereotypically masculine ways (including having women as romantic and sexual partners) as part of their core identity.

The Takarazuka Revue was founded as a corporate venture (to promote tourism and sell railroad tickets) and remains such today. As such it was and is motivated to conform to both popular ideals and government policy dictating the proper roles of men and women in society. (This was especially true during the pre-war years.)

However at the same time it’s clear that a large part of the attraction of Takarazuka productions to their mainly female audience is the frisson of seeing women act in masculine ways both socially and sexually. That often manifests itself outside the theater as well as inside: Audience members have sent love letters to the Takarazuka otokoyaku (the women playing male roles), and there have been a number of scandals involving otokoyaku discovered to have been having lesbian affairs or otherwise behaving contrary to societal dictates.

This history of tension and conflicting visions of women’s place replays itself in Sweet Blue Flowers: As a traditional institution Fujigaya’s goal is to prepare women for their “proper” place in Japanese society, with the Wuthering Heights production and other plays intended purely as socially-approved entertainment and instruction, and designed to avoid as much as possible anything that hints of transgression.

(That strategy is implemented in large part through productions that are isolated in time and place from modern Japan, and thus avoid direct commentary on contemporary Japanese society: Wuthering Heights in late 18th and early 19th century England, Little Women in mid 19th century America, and The Little Prince in a French-inflected science fictional setting. See also the ubiquity of Takarazuka productions in foreign historical settings, most notably The Rose of Versailles, set in late 18th century France.)

But despite Fujigaya’s “official” intent regarding these all-girl plays, unofficially they evoke similar responses to Takarazuka productions: the students ooh and aah over the poster depicting Yasuko in a glamorous pose as Heathcliff, take and exchange photographs of “Heathcliff” and “Catherine” in romantic poses, and speculate whether they’ll kiss.

Like the class S relationships discussed in my previous posts, this aspect of Fujigaya productions remains universally known and discussed but never officially acknowledged, let alone accepted or endorsed. Given Shimura’s love of plays as devices to drive the plot and highlight themes, presumably we’ll see more of them in future volumes of Sweet Blue Flowers. It will be interesting to see whether and how these productions depart from the standard Takarazuka template.