alias_sqbr

While at Swancon I was finally inspired to come up with a final image for ACOS. Our server is being flakey but if it's down you're not missing much, it's just Teo complaining that the comic is unfinished :)

This is pretty much the conversation I had with Cam after reading the discussion around the comic Good fourth walls make good neighbor (where a fanfic writers partner freaks out at the idea of Sam/Dean slash after seeing the slasher character on Supernatural)

Except during the pause in panel 2 I added "Aside from laughing" :)

nb I have no interest in writing Echo/Priya. I do think Faith/Ruby has potential though.

I don't mean to minimise the experience of women who are forced to keep this sort of thing secret from their partners (or families or whatever) When I was working with kids I had paranoid fears that the fact that I was in fanfic fandom and thus in the general vicinity of what counts as child porn by Australian law (despite being heavily squicked by it and avoiding it as much as possible) would make me lose my working with children check.

Transcript:
Me: Honey, how would you feel if you found out I write Sam and Dean porn?

Cam: *Looks shocked and thoughtful*

Cam: But you hate Sam and Dean

Me: I love you

Cam: Now Echo and Priya, that I can see you writing

DeviantArt: http://sqbr.deviantart.com/art/Kira-investigates-144088719
Hapless (currently down): http://comics.distantwisdom.net/blog/84

I think it turned out ok given that it was drawn in my teeny moleskin while waiting for a bus and coloured with a mouse.

(Server seems to be back up but for some reason email isn't :( )

New Hapless: skeletor_hordak: Youtube, for skeletor_hordak.

I've been feeling REALLY conflicted about ACOS, since I don't have the energy to keep up with even my previous once a month posting schedule, and I've also become increasingly unhappy with the plot holes and dodgy subtext. I've learnt a lot as a writer while writing it and one of the things I've learned is that it's kind of munted. But at the same time I really don't want to leave the story unfinished.

So I've decided to write it in prose, skimming/summarising anything I don't feel able to write properly (there's probbaly going to be some "And then a deux ex machina I never figured out happens, and...") I'm not going to get it betaed or anything, the plan is to just get it done.

Thus Chapter 4 page 7. I even have the next page mostly written!

That's right, I have created a new page of ACOS! After six months off!

I'll almost certainly fiddle with it some more in the morning but I really wanted to get it out there, it's been a niggling itch in the back of my brain since last October.

The main problem was trying to figure out how to make the interview with Jalani anything but repetitive and dull, one of those terrible "recap the plot with lots of exposition" scenes. You might say "After a 6 month gap, and with several years of plot since you started, mightn't that be useful?" to which I reply "Yes, but I just can't be bothered". So I cut it out. I also have to decide how much of the originally fifteen year long flashback sequence I was planning on I'll keep. Right now I'm thinking 2-3 days. I want to get this thing finished before I die of old age.

That's right, a political comic! Kind of :)

Chucked together quickly to stay topical.

Very quickly chucked together after Cam and I were discussing it. SPOILERS up to Episode 7, I guess, though inspired by events of episode 8: The last five minutes of Heroes season 3.

And now, the sequel to my last Hapless update. Ah, the joys of marriage...

This was fun to draw, and unlike the last one I had reference shots.

I have no idea if it's any good since I am Not Very With It right now, but here is the next page of ACOS. Still, it's nice that I've been doing it long enough that given a storyboard I can create a comic without too much trouble even when I'm this brain dead. Had to change pens, my brush pen is pretty much dead. How bad that is depends on whether you count it in pages drawn since I bought it (only 11!) or time (about seven months. Still kinda sucky)

That's the end of this little section, and I only have the first page of the next section written (and am quite vague on what happens after the next two or three pages, one of those "I'm at A and need to get to B, but am not sure how to get there in the most entertaining and efficient manner" things) so I have some plotting to do, which may have to wait until my brain comes back out of it's "Everything sucks and is too hard!" shell.

Chapter 4 Page 0 and Chapter 4 Page 1 of ACOS. Yay me!

Yes, ok, so this was all one page until I scanned it in and changed my mind. Shush.

Thanks again to nico_wolfwood for her feedback.