Weekly Update - 163 (Patreon)

I can't stop yawning when I'm working on this panel. I guess that means I succeeded at the thing I was trying to do. :P

Riley comic hopefully this week. It probably won't be done by Wednesday, again, but I'll post it whenever I get it finished.

And I wanna take a moment to thank you all for your continued support. Truth told, I expected to lose a lot more subscribers when I decided to take a hiatus to give this dang book a proper makeover. Thank you for continuing to believe in me! (especially when it's hard some days to continue believing in myself.)

Once I finish Riley #7, I'll do the last of the Character Sheets. Which currently is just one. For the three remaining people who haven't sent me character details yet, this will be the last time I'm going to mention it, ever. The offer will be good indefinitely, whether you remain subscribed or not, but I'm gonna stop talking about it and move on to finishing Volume #1 and then go back to regular Kiva comic posts after that.

Volume 1: 40/72

Drawing: Riley#7

Playing: Shardpunk: Verminfall?! (Why is this game so good?)

Ramble:

Years ago now, I decided I wanted to feature a character in my comics and stories that had a severe mental illness. Not just someone who was vaguely crazy, but someone who had severe and specific symptoms and had to deal with them, every day. Originally I was inspired by characters that fit neatly into the general "mad genius" archetype, and thought I was taking it a few steps further. Up until then, I'd only seen "crazy" done in movies and shows and in stories where the mental illness was treated as an ill-defined general lunacy, a madness of convenience that appeared only either for comedic or villainous purposes. A "crazy" character was either ridiculous, to be mocked and laughed at like a clown, or they were a dangerous, deadly, psychotic serial killer that tortured and ate their victims. There were very few examples (that I was aware of anyway) that didn't fall into those two categories, and nearly all were to be shunned and avoided (or killed and jailed).

Evidently, I wasn't the only one who had this idea and/or felt the area was lacking in representation, because in the past few years, we've seen more and more media approaching the topic with at least a little bit more care and understanding. Probably partly because we have access to TRUE stories of REAL people on places like Youtube and TikTok, where people with such conditions can share with the general public the realities of illnesses like schizophrenia and various forms of psychosis and other mental illnesses that are quite frankly, baffling to someone that's never experienced them. We're learning that people with severe mental illnesses are often harmless to others, (albeit commonly posing a threat to themselves, either intentionally or unintentionally) and with proper treatment can actually live relatively normal lives. It seems like more writers are finding that a character suffering from a mental illness can fit into a lot more archetypes than just the BBEG's hitman or the whacky comic relief and that a character's mental illness can often pose as a harrowing internal conflict with far more complexity and nuance than has traditionally been depicted.

The past few years have given us shows like Arcane, where the "crazy" character is, yes, probably ultimately a form of villain, but is also a protagonist of her own story with her own tragic tale. Jinx makes her choices not because of her hallucinations, but perhaps despite them, and Arcane does a MASTERFUL job of showing us how each of her choices make sense for her. Anyway I'll say no more about that, because if you haven't seen Arcane yet OMG YOU GUYS WHY THE NOT. GO WATCH IT. Pay for a month of Netflix and watch it, then unsubscribe. It's worth.

Then we've also had the Tick, where the protagonist of the story was schizophrenic-ish, though IIRC it was trauma-induced. Seeing as how that series came out in 2016, I'll admit I was probably at least a little inspired by it when coming up with Riley, because it was perhaps the first time I can remember seeing a hallucination from a protagonist's perspective. Then we've had Joker from 2019, a movie I still haven't seen, despite the fact it keeps coming up in various film and story analysis channels I follow. And then more recently there's Velma. But we won't talk about Velma. No one should ever talk about Velma.

I commonly compare my own writing to Arcane now though, which is, easily the most masterful story I've ever seen, and naturally, I find my stories falling tragically short of the standard it sets. This is both good and bad, because on the one hand I could maybe spot some ways I can improve my storytelling, but on the other hand, I hold Arcane in such high esteem nothing I do on my own will likely EVER measure up to it. In Chapter 5 of Kiva's story, almost a year before Arcane came out, (page 83 if you're curious) young Riley tells Kiva under her breath that she's never alone. That line genuinely hurt me to write, and I think back to it often. Kiva can't be around all the time for her, and most people avoid her entirely because she's "weird," so the opposite of what Riley says there probably couldn't be more true. This line made me quite sad to write. However, Arcane makes me cry, several times throughout the series, every single damn time I hear the music or watch specific scenes. I can only dream of one day eliciting that response from myself or from people who read my stories.

In Riley's minicomic, I'll admit I do worry that the ridiculousness of the sock gremlin might undermine the message I'm going for, but even though her comic will probably yet take me several years more to get through, my ultimate goal remains to just depict both sides of the reality that surrounds her. Because I think it's important to examine how her behavior, while outwardly bizarre to an observer, will usually be at least somewhat rational for the reality she is experiencing. It isn't important WHO or WHAT she hallucinates, because her gremlins aren't real, and even she knows that. What matters is the way her gremlins affect her ability to live a normal life, whether she ignores them or not. It is, perhaps, MOST correct to read her story from start to finish with her gremlins invisible, and it was a deliberate choice to make that easy to do on the main GodSlayers site.

It's a story about her trying to function in a bizarre world that often doesn't make any sense.

Personally, I feel like that is something we can all relate to.