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So! I said I was gonna talk about writing!
On our Tumblr, we reblog a lot of joke posts with tags about our WIPs and characters we were reminded of, or post the rare funny out-of-context art of non-canon interactions, but I don't think we ever really publicly showed just how much these stories consume us on a daily basis. To friends we've referred to them as like children; these three things that are so deeply important in our life because we've been building them up from nothing for the past three or so years, they continue to surprise and frustrate and delight us as if they had minds of their own, and the bigger they get, the more it seems like that's true. One day we'll be done with our part, and send them out into the world to make us proud. We joked to our partner that they have to be okay with having stepkids.
Our oldest is Skyglow. I'm actually not sure of the exact age of my stories, or at least how to label them, because they all start from something very unlike what they are now, and at what point in that process do I say the story as it exists now was originated? Almost every long-term passion project I write technically started years and years ago with a fleeting daydream about something completely different and snowballed into a real idea that doesn't at all resemble its progenitor. But at least I know that Skyglow is the most developed and fleshed-out of all of them. I will try to get into it without getting too excited and explaining too much of a story I still intend to publish. It's excruciating that a lot of the parts I'm most excited about would be considered spoilers for first-time readers and that I can't share them right away, but such is the way of writing.
Real quick before I get into it, some comp titles for a point of reference: Fahrenheit 451 (and Ray Bradbury's dystopian works in general), The Left Hand of Darkness, Planet of the Apes, Dungeon Meshi, Mickey 17, Them!, V for Vendetta, Stargate, Runaway to the Stars, Arrival, and Dougal Dixon's "After Man" and "Man After Man." Most of those are things I watched/read after coming up with the idea for Skyglow, went "whoa this reminds me of part of my own story" or "ooh this is inspiring me regarding a certain part" and rolled it up into my snowball.
Without future ado:
Skyglow is a webcomic. Or at least, it will be. It will be a bit of a shorter one, almost like a novella in narrative length, and comprised of only two chapters, albeit lengthy ones. The introductory protagonist is Aston Beckett, a member of a society from the distant future, about 200–300 years. (2283 CE, if you want to get specific; that's the frame of reference I have in my head right now, personally, but I'm not sure if I'll actually mention it directly or that it won't change slightly by the time I would.) The society in which Aston lives has been governed by a totalitarian capitalist surveillance state for a while now. Privacy is an expensive luxury, entertainment products have replaced art, and to support a universal lifestyle of consumption, pollution has decimated the ecosystem, and most people like Aston live in sprawling cities and have never seen things like grass, trees, wild animals, the ocean or the night sky.
The story starts with Aston being given a sentence for a crime. The audience is not shown what crime this was, but it's implied to be a severe sentence, and he is on death row. He's randomly selected from a lottery and "given" the "opportunity" to be a guinea pig for human trials of a new technology instead, in exchange for parole if he plays his part right. The technology in question is multi-dimensional travel; he's told he's going to be a pioneer, though the implication is very clearly that it's less of a big deal if he dies than anyone important.
The universe he lands in has an alternate history. Or more accurately, an alternate prehistory. This universe diverged at the end of the Permian when the Great Dying did not happen, and vertebrates like reptiles, birds and mammals never became dominant. As a result, vertebrates fill the ecosystem's niches we would associate more with bugs, and the larger, more intelligent animals on this Earth are arthropods, particularly one species of wasp-like hymenopterid, a species that stands bipedally, grows to human sizes, and built a civilization much like that of humans. Exactly alike, actually, as written history has played out almost exactly the same as humans' did—in fact, in as many English words, they refer to themselves as humans, Homo sapiens. The year is 202X.
Aston introduces himself to the first denizens of this universe he meets as a rebel leader, telling them that in the future he comes from, he was imprisoned and given this sentence for valiantly trying to fight his terrible government.
One of those first people he meets is Leon Talbot, a graduate student in entomology. Leon is undeniably very smart in his area, and even his professors would begrudgingly admit he's going places, but interpersonally, he is not exactly gifted. He has a love for all living things; living things just do not all have a love for him, so he prefers to spend more time with the ones that do (namely, animals) and away from the ones that don't (other people). But he can't ignore an opportunity like Aston, who, from his perspective, is a giant talking intelligent bug that claims to be from an alternate universe where it's practically a cyberpunk dystopian future, which is evidenced in his amazed reactions at things as simple as plantlife, or rain that isn't acidic. Especially when Aston mentions his heroic endeavors in this mysterious resistance. Of course he's infatuated. Aston, who has been shown up until now as very much a stone-faced, caustic personality, absolutely does not return Leon's enthusiasm. He has priorities.
Nevertheless, Aston is reluctantly reliant on Leon's two-way expertise to navigate this society while he tries to outwit the government of his own—and with Leon's surprisingly eager willingness to assist the cause, ends up unravelling a conspiracy from the outside. Literally.
Skyglow is a science fiction portal-hopping adventure, climate politics fiction, a high-stakes drama with ridiculous moments, a comedy with dark and violent ones, a slow-burn queer romance between two equally traumatized outcasts, and a zany but also earnest romp through a speculative biology alternate history where the question is asked "what if people were big wasps instead?" It's about autism and trauma and being othered, it's about dehumanization, it's about the nature of humanity, it's about what it even means to be human at all, it's about communication with people you don't understand, it's about the excess waste and slow creeping deteriorative violence of capitalism, it's about climate change, it's about perspective and the power of education and experience, it's about internalized homophobia, it's about radicalization to the left, it's about the commercialization of life itself, it's about exploitation and systemic oppression, it's about ableism and carceral labor, it's about trust, and it's about recognizing oneself through the alien other.
But mostly it's about bugs.
On our Tumblr, we reblog a lot of joke posts with tags about our WIPs and characters we were reminded of, or post the rare funny out-of-context art of non-canon interactions, but I don't think we ever really publicly showed just how much these stories consume us on a daily basis. To friends we've referred to them as like children; these three things that are so deeply important in our life because we've been building them up from nothing for the past three or so years, they continue to surprise and frustrate and delight us as if they had minds of their own, and the bigger they get, the more it seems like that's true. One day we'll be done with our part, and send them out into the world to make us proud. We joked to our partner that they have to be okay with having stepkids.
Our oldest is Skyglow. I'm actually not sure of the exact age of my stories, or at least how to label them, because they all start from something very unlike what they are now, and at what point in that process do I say the story as it exists now was originated? Almost every long-term passion project I write technically started years and years ago with a fleeting daydream about something completely different and snowballed into a real idea that doesn't at all resemble its progenitor. But at least I know that Skyglow is the most developed and fleshed-out of all of them. I will try to get into it without getting too excited and explaining too much of a story I still intend to publish. It's excruciating that a lot of the parts I'm most excited about would be considered spoilers for first-time readers and that I can't share them right away, but such is the way of writing.
Real quick before I get into it, some comp titles for a point of reference: Fahrenheit 451 (and Ray Bradbury's dystopian works in general), The Left Hand of Darkness, Planet of the Apes, Dungeon Meshi, Mickey 17, Them!, V for Vendetta, Stargate, Runaway to the Stars, Arrival, and Dougal Dixon's "After Man" and "Man After Man." Most of those are things I watched/read after coming up with the idea for Skyglow, went "whoa this reminds me of part of my own story" or "ooh this is inspiring me regarding a certain part" and rolled it up into my snowball.
Without future ado:
Skyglow is a webcomic. Or at least, it will be. It will be a bit of a shorter one, almost like a novella in narrative length, and comprised of only two chapters, albeit lengthy ones. The introductory protagonist is Aston Beckett, a member of a society from the distant future, about 200–300 years. (2283 CE, if you want to get specific; that's the frame of reference I have in my head right now, personally, but I'm not sure if I'll actually mention it directly or that it won't change slightly by the time I would.) The society in which Aston lives has been governed by a totalitarian capitalist surveillance state for a while now. Privacy is an expensive luxury, entertainment products have replaced art, and to support a universal lifestyle of consumption, pollution has decimated the ecosystem, and most people like Aston live in sprawling cities and have never seen things like grass, trees, wild animals, the ocean or the night sky.
The story starts with Aston being given a sentence for a crime. The audience is not shown what crime this was, but it's implied to be a severe sentence, and he is on death row. He's randomly selected from a lottery and "given" the "opportunity" to be a guinea pig for human trials of a new technology instead, in exchange for parole if he plays his part right. The technology in question is multi-dimensional travel; he's told he's going to be a pioneer, though the implication is very clearly that it's less of a big deal if he dies than anyone important.
The universe he lands in has an alternate history. Or more accurately, an alternate prehistory. This universe diverged at the end of the Permian when the Great Dying did not happen, and vertebrates like reptiles, birds and mammals never became dominant. As a result, vertebrates fill the ecosystem's niches we would associate more with bugs, and the larger, more intelligent animals on this Earth are arthropods, particularly one species of wasp-like hymenopterid, a species that stands bipedally, grows to human sizes, and built a civilization much like that of humans. Exactly alike, actually, as written history has played out almost exactly the same as humans' did—in fact, in as many English words, they refer to themselves as humans, Homo sapiens. The year is 202X.
Aston introduces himself to the first denizens of this universe he meets as a rebel leader, telling them that in the future he comes from, he was imprisoned and given this sentence for valiantly trying to fight his terrible government.
One of those first people he meets is Leon Talbot, a graduate student in entomology. Leon is undeniably very smart in his area, and even his professors would begrudgingly admit he's going places, but interpersonally, he is not exactly gifted. He has a love for all living things; living things just do not all have a love for him, so he prefers to spend more time with the ones that do (namely, animals) and away from the ones that don't (other people). But he can't ignore an opportunity like Aston, who, from his perspective, is a giant talking intelligent bug that claims to be from an alternate universe where it's practically a cyberpunk dystopian future, which is evidenced in his amazed reactions at things as simple as plantlife, or rain that isn't acidic. Especially when Aston mentions his heroic endeavors in this mysterious resistance. Of course he's infatuated. Aston, who has been shown up until now as very much a stone-faced, caustic personality, absolutely does not return Leon's enthusiasm. He has priorities.
Nevertheless, Aston is reluctantly reliant on Leon's two-way expertise to navigate this society while he tries to outwit the government of his own—and with Leon's surprisingly eager willingness to assist the cause, ends up unravelling a conspiracy from the outside. Literally.
Skyglow is a science fiction portal-hopping adventure, climate politics fiction, a high-stakes drama with ridiculous moments, a comedy with dark and violent ones, a slow-burn queer romance between two equally traumatized outcasts, and a zany but also earnest romp through a speculative biology alternate history where the question is asked "what if people were big wasps instead?" It's about autism and trauma and being othered, it's about dehumanization, it's about the nature of humanity, it's about what it even means to be human at all, it's about communication with people you don't understand, it's about the excess waste and slow creeping deteriorative violence of capitalism, it's about climate change, it's about perspective and the power of education and experience, it's about internalized homophobia, it's about radicalization to the left, it's about the commercialization of life itself, it's about exploitation and systemic oppression, it's about ableism and carceral labor, it's about trust, and it's about recognizing oneself through the alien other.
But mostly it's about bugs.
