Weekly Update - 176 (Patreon)

Let's start off by welcoming a new subscriber, Javier, to Kuserra! Thank you so much!

So you know I like to share with you guys the random crap that goes into my sketchbook whenever we travel, so here's some sketches I did while travelling this past week! Yeah, I'm one of those artists that writes their thoughts all over their sketchbook. I've always done that. It's... probably why I draw comics.

These sketches should help prove to you all that I'm still not a robot. I dread the day that a robot could perfectly replicate the random things in my sketchbook, complete with my shitty handwriting. It's probably closer than I fear.

Comic this Wednesday? YES!!! FINALLY. I'm excited for it too. We'll be resuming on the 19th first with Riley #8 (that dark one I said I was scared to share with you all) and I have a follow-up for it next week that's probably really only slightly less dark but will hopefully make us all feel at least a little better about what's going on.

Volume #1 Status: As of today I've sent all my pages and the cover art over to the guys at Fenris Publishing for a content review. I've also signed my life and soul over to them via diabolical contract. The guys are Fenris Publishing are good people though, I know they will take good care of my soul. :P

Drawing: Character sheet for BorderlineAxo (happy B-Day btw!), and Riley #9

Playing: Anything. I only just got home and I haven't decided yet what I want to play! THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS.

Ramble:

You know, while I was remastering Volume #1 for the book, I realized that I still really like my story. And that feels weird to me, as a creator. Normally when I go back and review the things I've written or drawn, I'm less enamored with them than I was before I created them. It makes me think that maybe, just maybe, I'm doing something right this time. I hope I figure out what that is soon so I can keep doing it! :P

You might notice that I've doodled a couple of backgrounds in my sketchbook up there. I've always felt that I kind of suck at drawing backgrounds. And my attention has been drawn lately more and more to that weakness. The setting of Kuserra should evoke emotions and it should fit my theme. But what IS my theme? It's been there from the beginning. But until recently I'm not sure I could tell anyone what it is. It was always a vague and difficult to grasp feeling for me, rather than a solid list of words.

So here it is. This is what I feel the setting of Kuserra should be, and what it should mean to people, (and maybe even what I imagine DMs should be thinking about when they are imagining stories in it >.>) That said, I may be the creator of this setting, but that doesn't mean my interpretation of it overrides anyone else's. If you imagine Kuserra differently than me, you are well within your rights to do so. Your imagination is no more or less valid than mine. Honestly, I'd love to hear about your interpretations and the things in your imaginations, maybe yours are even more accurate than mine!

Minor spoilers kinda ahead, I guess? Not really, unless you would rather keep wondering about Ancestor society in general.

To me, this is what I feel the setting of Kuserra should evoke, for both theming and just general consistency. Maybe you might agree with me? But you are also free to not!

Loss - The setting of Kuserra should evoke a strong sense of loss. It should be sorrowful as we are all given a strong sense that there was something before that has been lost. The wreckage of a vehicle, inside of which can be seen a child's skeleton clinging to a dirty plush toy. This sort of imagery can be really powerful, so long as it's not overused. It reminds us that something terrible happened sometime in the story's past. In Kuserra, however, I try to make this loss feel kind of bittersweet. There is a loss of both good AND bad. I view the Ancestor society through a very cynical lens. Yes, they were advanced. They had access to amazing technological marvels the likes of which current-day denizens couldn't even imagine. They had good people and loving families and there are many things we can imagine they had that were good about them, now gone forever. But I also imagine their late-stage society struggled with many terrible things as well. Corporate and government overreach, overdevelopment, overbloated bureaucracy, an overabundance of crime and corruption, organizational failures, moral breakdown and greed. These things were also lost.

Scale - Towering skyscrapers reach the skies. Even still, long after the Catastrophe. The city of Kuserra stretches for miles in all directions, including below your feet. We find ourselves in the middle of a vast jungle of wreckage, a labyrinthine city with seemingly no end. I feel like the scale of the setting is meant to make us feel small. The accomplishments of what stood before us are such that we may never again achieve such heights... but who cares? Nobody. We may be small, we may be insignificant, we may never leave a lasting mark on this world, but we try anyway. We don't need to compare ourselves to what came before us in order to be valid. We stand here today, and they are gone. Our accomplishments now are our own, no matter how small they may be. Modern society might build new structures, but they are tiny little shacks at the base of towering, monumental concrete structures. A Kuserran might scratch their name into the base of a broken statue. That single, solitary mark took perhaps minutes to make, and it may seem insignificant compared to the giant statue. Yet it is there. And someone might come by some day to dust it off so they can read that name. No one is ever coming back to repair the statue.

Discovery - To me, there's always more to discover inside of Kuserra. Any given view of the city gives us a sense of buildings unexplored, treasures yet uncovered, caves and dark tunnels unknown. There's impossibly deep chasms, towering buildings, endless fields of structures with their original purposes long forgotten and awaiting fresh eyes to gaze upon them and wonder about what they might have once been for. It's the sort of place where you could get lost easily, and discover no end of new and fascinating things before the city's mysteries claim you like so many others before you.

Hope - This is an important one for me in particular. This is the point of everything, of why I do this. The setting, to me, invokes a sense of hope. A hope for the future. Everywhere you look in Kuserra, you feel a sense of that scale, of loss, and of discovery, but there also must be hope. Society is rebuilding, reclaiming the ruins, improving upon what's there, and fixing what's no longer working. Returning some semblance of order to the chaos. We don't dwell on the past as much, because the future is far more interesting. The future is what we have power over. And that's where I feel that hope is, (hopefully,) the most important feeling I can impart upon everyone with this setting. Life continues because we have the ability to hope for something better than what we have.

Anyway, Thanks for reading, I'll see you all on Wednesday.