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The Beginning of the And
Turns out, i have some good/bordering on irrelevant news. After years of trying to twist this puzzle of a plot from where it was going, to where i want it to go, i’ve finally been able to wrestle it down, and i have the whole story of Black and Blue worked out to it’s scenes and beats. Which honestly, is a great feeling. it’s a major stress off my brain.
And i’m not being cute with the puzzle metaphor, although i am adorable. It really did feel like some string puzzle where about a dozen cables are tethered at each end, and by carefully knotting them and unknotting them with other cables, i could create something stable. Where that metaphor breaks down, is that when you’re handed an actual puzzle, there’s a presumption that it can be solved, and when you’re done, you’ll know it.
So there it is. Not every line of dialogue has been written, though much of it has. But to you, my loyal audience, i present to you, the concept of a light at the end of the tunnel. Which is to say, this too shall end. And i’m happy with the end. it fits to me, it makes sense, and i think it we’ll leave the reader with the feeling i’ve been working at these years to produce. But, it will be several more years till we get there. I encourage you to stick with it, and if you do, so will i.
And with that, i would like to shout out to my benefactors on OnlyFans, i mean Patreon….. which is like OnlyFans, cept i don’t get my naughty bits out, though we can make that a pledge goal once it gets to a level where i have no shame left. spoiler, no one wants that. And if you have an abundance of wealth, and a complete deficiency of common sense, i encourage you to join up and help me out. Or, for a one time outpour of support, check me out at my KoFi account and by me a beer. All proceeds will go directly to paying off my webhosting, photoshop subscription and sloppy sanity.
On to the ‘news’. Yesterday, i saw a weird article that seems relevant to this comic, where the ‘real doll’ company (which as you might know makes sex dolls with the creepy life like skin) released a new product that speaks. Recently, there was a video of one, with it’s jarring and whirring jaw muscles moving along to a speech decrying the value of humanity in it’s current form. Beyond being amusing, this was supposed to be taken more seriously, or be given more attention, because it was coming from a robot. BUT, it wasn’t a ‘robot’, was it? Thinking about it for even more than 2 seconds you realize, someone programmed it to say those things, before, or probably after, having relations with it. And the whole thing makes me wonder if this was just some weird projection of shame. Forcing yourself on something without animus to then apologize for you and your species IS, in it’s own way a new low for humanity. So, kudos for that, i suppose.
I don’t really have much to say on that, other than it feels like a hollow showing. But i deal with a lot of fictional AI/robot type stuff in this comic, so i thought i’d bring it up. But hope i don’t do anything this soulless with any of my robot characters. comment below with any thoughts i guess. let the debate begin?
I wrote you some weeks ago that I’m using characters from the comic in my Star Wars DnD Campain. Just to have some gang leaders with strong personalities on Corouscant. I thought I’d give you an update, if you are interested.
My players got into a fight with Sandrene and her gang, “The Eyeless” (I mixed it with Dishonored). They killed the gang, along with half a dozen of Virgils men at Sandrenes hideout. Sandrene survived, but they broke her jaw. (She used force screams as her attack).
They found out the gang got hired by Gretchen, who works for the Czerka Cooperation and wants to assassinate a coworker, one of the parties allies. They will face her either tomorrow or the session after that, inside a theater.
Virgil is an IG88 Droid who sells spice in the underworld. The addicts go insane and start praying to him.
hahaha, well, i mean, it’s not exactly all that far off. less jedi powers, but aside from that, virgil is a dealer, of sorts. but i might have made him a protocol droid programmed to lie.
but that’s awesome! glad to hear you found the character compelling enough to work into a campaign. very cool!
In regards to today’s comic (felt I needed to clarify that due to the long blog post and nature of my cheeky remark):
“Friendship IS the Theme of This Comic” and Other Bald-Faced Lies By Jason Clarke – A brilliant tell-all book by Some Rando in the Comments. Forward (and recipes!) by Unger.
p.s. – You forgot to mention your Patreon has exclusive art and the occasional preview like Angel’s land vehicle when it was a W.I.P.!
hahah! that reminds me of your gibson grin! i should think it’s a gimlet, for alliteration. but that does work an interesting idea, i mean, aside from just drink recipes, unger’s hunger corner! could be a whole thing. recipes from the future! black and blue, food for nursing a gunshot wound! ungers combat arena rabbit… 1 part mutant scorpion… wait….
but that’s a different book than the one you’re proposing. i’ll say this, and everyone i know personally agrees. jason clarke is the most disingenuously honest person they know. and you just wait, the theme of this comic IS friendship. and… oh, i don’t know…. veganism. whatever. i’ll make it fit.
as for the patreon extras, yeah, you’re right. i should be a better salesman. and a better updater! i don’t want to let my patreon peeps down! more WIP updates, if people like that kinda thing, i’ll keep that in mind!
Never trust the author. Sinclair Lewis thought The Jungle was about Socialism (not the real life lived kind, the planned kind still perfect in his head, without real people), but it was also about veganism … except for all the mushroom catsup and such. OK, OK, food safety.
Many of my fellow US citizens are quite well aware of “a new low for humanity”. We just went through a year where there was a new one almost every day.
yeah, 2020 was a rough one world wide. but 2021 is looking up. still, when you emerge from the sewers, you still need a shower.
On the subject of Patreon: I moved out of the wasteland of Louisiana and am now lurking in an attic in Ohio. For you Canadians, that was like moving from Regina to Churchill. Actually a little farther than that, but pretty close. Anyway, they gave me a job, they gave me a loan, and now if they give me a house I’ll be back to stable and can resume my regular contributions to the beer fund! Woot!
As for humans never making it beyond the stars: pretty sure that’s where we came from. Mars seems pretty human-ravaged to me. I think that’s what will become of Earth once we are done with it, and then at the last minute scientists will develop an emergency escape plan that scatters the survivors to the winds to continue our locust-like progression across the universe.
Hopefully by that time Black and Blue will have wowed me with its spectacular ending. I’m so glad that you got the plot knot untangled. Nothing feels better than finally working out the whole story except possibly seeing the entire creation laid out in all its detailed and gory glory.
HEY! you settle down, you. get your finances in order, and build up a nest egg. i don’t need anyone who’s just getting on their feet trying to rush to patron my little project. this is strictly a surplus request, at best. seriously, appreciate all the well wishes and patronage i can get, but not from anyone who’s not doing at least as well as i am.
glad you could comment though! keep the comments coming, share, like and subscribe. and since there’s no functionality for liking and subscribing, just share it. haha! but that’s great to hear about the job! i mean, wherever you’re at, it’s going to be better with employment. ohio seems nice, in places. i don’t really know. the only things i ever see these days about any US city is on the news, and that’s never good. but what are they going to report? today in portland, everone had a great day? it’s not newsworthy.
yeah, mars does look like we had a go at it. but who knows. i do hope that if we ever take this show on the road, we get our crap in order before hand. i hate to think we launch human expeditions to live in other colonies that still have a nationality from a country millions of miles away. it would be like exporting racism. children would be born in alpha centauri, never knowing…. germany, or wherever, but still being patriotic? so dumb. at least a locust like progression would imply all the locusts were the same.
There are VERY strong evolutionary conditions for such loyalties … BUT if you look up “the God gene” you’ll see that humans, unlike many cooperative mammals, have a countervailing impulse that seems to have been needed to found every city not created by Mongols or Vikings … Of course, some were fairly horrific and designed around ritual human sacrifice, or as some of Ashley Cope’s characters call it, “snackrifice”.
yes, humans, awesome at cooperation and munificent achievement…. until your city crosses mine, and we send all our fighting age males to raze your structures, and pillage your coffers. but until then, glorious accomplishment. peace teeters on the edge of a blade. i made that up, but i’m sure someone said it. it’s just too obvious.
From Vice: “I have to admit, I don’t know how you have survived as a species. What the fuck happened?”
Uh, sex? That’s pretty much all that needs to happen. Just ask any virus, all you need is propagation. Will Covid-19 ever be wiped out? Eh, probably not.
It always amuses me that someone puts stuff like that together, and has never bothered to notice how simians behave. Chimps are awful, baboons are awful, etc. And yet we all reproduce, and thus everything keeps on keeping on. Yeah, I don’t expect us to get humans outside of the solar system, or even beyond Mars. The earth has a thermal inertia of 40 years, so if we shut down all industry right now, there would be no effect for 40 long years. Four decades of continued rising temperatures with the remaining 0.5% of population living in huts.
Nuclear war may be the best thing for the planet. The electrical grid will be fried, the “survivors” will come out of their deep government bunkers after three months, starving, to find no food above ground, and the ones outside still alive will view them as meat. And all that we have planned are filling out cards at the post office. Nobody really thinks this through. Yeah, we’re gonna be a blip in the carbon record.
Anyways, great to read that you’ve got your plot outlines ready and waiting. To spring on us. Your poor, unsuspecting readers.
well, like agent smith said, humanity is a virus.
but, like i say, i like persons. it’s people i don’t care for. i don’t think however, that we’ll ever trash this planet so hard that we’ll go extinct. i think we’ll shrink, we’ll pummel our population into a fraction of it’s size, but we’ll adapt. the sad thing is, we won’t learn anything from it. and since so much of what will endure is our art that perpetuates the myth of the indomitable human spirit, no matter what we do, we assure ourselves the whole time that we are destined for great things.
That’s so much better than “I love humanity. It’s people I can’t stand.” Rennaissance snobs trying to stamp out crop rotation and vulgar forms of Latin, French Revolutionaries trying to impose ten hour clocks through the widespread application of capital punishment, Creators of “new men” trying to weed out bad but badly misunderstood genetics or upbringing through the slaughter of at least one of three of each vision’s subjects depending on which side of the Molotov-Ribbentrop alliance one was on …
At least humanity is getting ever less murderous and cleaner, even as the false prophets of demography convinced everyone overpopulation would ruin everything even as the world’s population of people has begun to collapse, especially in productive areas.
you think we’re getting less murderous? i wouldn’t say that. i think we’re getting casually better at it, or, better at getting other people to do it for us.