This comic is probably the most personal, based-in-reality story I've ever written.
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This comic is themed around ideas of death and reincarnation, and my personal theories and ruminations of what might realistically come after death.
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The comic follows the ghost of a stray cat, exploring Baltimore City on it's last night on Earth.
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I made this for the Naver Webtoon short story contest of Summer 2020. While it ultimately didn't win anything, I was still extremely proud of the story I was able to tell.
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The story is themed around lessons I've learned from being in a close relationship to someone regularly dealing with the aftermath of severe childhood trauma. The characters and events of the story are based on two of my most memorable nightmares.
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At the time of writing this, I was spending a lot of time thinking about what kind of world I would build if attempting to create a feasible system for a moddable MMO. It was a theory I had a lot of fun with, and I particularly fell in love with the world-building concepts I came up with.
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These few pages serve as a fun and light-hearted introduction to that world.
"The bangs and scrapes of musical equipment being set up mingled with the busy din of the compact market square. Gavin the Headbanger leaned back in his drummer’s seat, staring up into the endless electric blue sky, scratching at his feathered jaw as he pondered. Something was bothering him. Something had in fact been bothering him for quite awhile. Something important, something that had been a solid foundation of his life for many years, suddenly seemed off to him, though it had not actually changed."
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In my pursuits of writing urban fantasy, I came to realize that I needed a location based in the real world, but not tied down to real world geography, politics, society, etc. The Valley of Knowhere is that location; a valley in the far north of the planet, walled in by cold mountains, filled with dark and haunted forests, and with a large city at it's center. This short story is one of my more elaborate explorations into that setting.
"A car horn blared outside, at the same time that her mentor’s voice called from downstairs. “Saadia! we need a book from the library! Haaaakkkough-cough-cough...”
The silence shattered, the demon on her desk jerked awake, knocking over a pile of haggardly stacked books. It’s form bristled with black spines, and it’s empty white eyes widened in alarm. Saadia quickly picked it up from underneath, pulled it close to her chest and stroked it soothingly from its head down to its back. A few more moments of comforting and its amorphous body smoothed out. It reached up to place an icy-cold lick on her cheek before crawling up her shoulder, curling around her neck, stretching out its body and hanging about her like an ink-black scarf."
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