Hieron Zine Comic: The Violence of Its Maintenance
[Read the left side as one storyline, the right side as another]
"For every inside, an outside." / "Every border implies the violence of its maintenance."
For me and @wellnoe's piece for the Hieron Zine, we were excited to tell a story about Hella’s semi-involuntary status as a mascot of Ordennan empire and borders as a literal technology of death that played with comic borders and formatting! The title is, of course, from the Ayesha A. Siddiqi quote.
Script for the comic below the cut, which also serves as a rough image description:
Layout note: Panels are small relative to the page and “float” in the gutter space. Adelaide swims freely between them and speaks to Hella inside the panels’ borders. The comic is laid out vertically, mostly in two columns. Panels on the left are labeled L, the center labeled M, and right labeled R. Panel numbers denote which row of the overall page they’re on.
Page 1: 3 Rows
Panel M.1.A: Adaire hunched over a map of Hieron in a dimming twilight room.
Panel M.1.B: Close up of the map having Nacre added to it near the shore, and an outline sketched of its border, the pencil in Adaire’s hand.
Panel M.1.C: Adaire’s hand in close-up, partially erasing the border around Nacre.
Panel L.2: Hella outside the Ordennan border, at a tall gate. A guard looks at her suspiciously from the other side.
Adelaide to Panel L.2: Adelaide looks at Hella condescendingly.
Adelaide: Do you imagine that walls will keep Nacre’s gift out?
Panel R.2: Hella and Hadrian ride in a halfling-driven cart through the refugee camp towards the Ordennan military camp. Hadrian watches Hella for her reaction to seeing the refugees.
Panel L.3: Hella displays the emblem of the Tristes to a crowd of cheering soldiers, brandishing her sword in a stabbing gesture.
Soldiers: Is that– From the cleansing of Nacre– She killed the queen!
Adelaide to panel L.3: For every inside…
Panel R.3: Stornras Glasseye shows Hella and Hadrian a map of Ordenna’s planned invasion of Velas.
Adelaide to panel R.3: …an outside.
Page 2: 4 Rows
Panel L.1: Hella reads the book about her family being a line of traitors, inside the undersea cave. She is hunched over awkwardly, wet from swimming in, and visibly perturbed.
Adelaide to Panel L.1: Adelaide reads over Hella’s shoulder. She’s draped over the panel like a cat, one hand dangling inside and the other holding an apple to her mouth.
Adelaide: Our dear father did like that ancestor of yours, only for her to betray Nacre and then Ordenna. Varals love to hang people out to dry.
Panel R.1: Hadrian and Hella interrogating Iduna Fel. Hella holds a torch up. Iduna, seated and hands bound, looks up at them and snarls at the torch, speaking of how Quintrona should burn Rosemerrow to stop the undead.
Iduna Fel: We should be burning every place–every person–the curse has touched.
Adelaide to Panel R.1: A family of traitors fits right in with the Tristes.
Panel L.2.A: Hella is on tour of Ordenna. She looks out distantly at the countryside. A clothesline with clothing hanging from them forming figures like people separates Hella in the panel from a mine like the ones her father worked.
Panel L.3.B: Hella on tour in an urban center, looking lost. Train tracks separate Hella from a guard station.
Ordennan soldiers: Queenkiller! It’s the Queenkiller!
Adelaide to panels L.2: Adelaide’s teeth are bared, her lazy demeanor dropping for one vicious moment.
Adelaide:At least I remember that you should be called Kingkiller as well.
Panel R.2: Hella and Hadrian walking back through the refugee camp. Refugees do laundry, multiple clotheslines crossing the panel, the clothes partially obscuring Hella and Hadrian.
Adelaide to panel R.2: Do you believe your people to be better than me? They decide who dies to expand the borders of Ordenna.
Panel L.3: Hella marching in front of a company of Anchor in a square formation, Ordennan soldiers crowding around them. Hella is smiling stiffly, uncomfortable. She is wearing a shiny new uniform.
Panel R.3: Hella standing equally stiffly in front of a line of Pala-din that guard the Ordennan camp from the refugees. She watches a circle of refugees cooking and crafting, going about the business of their survival. Some are visibly undead. Two of the refugees are a Nacreite young Black sibling pair with an older boy and younger girl, invoking Calhoun and Adelaide. Hadrian in the background examines a pala-din, his stance mirroring theirs.
Adelaide to panel R.3: Adelaide looks at the siblings in panel R.3 but speaks over her shoulder to Hella on the left.
Adelaide: Is it so monstrous that Nacre grows so that more may live after death?
Panel L.4: Hella alone in a lavish Ordennan bedroom, looking out of place and small. Maybe in plain underclothes and curled up on a chair, looking angry.
Hella: Yes!
Her dialogue fills up the panel, crowding her.
Panel R.4: The refugees notice Hella and Hadrian and look at them warily. The boy steps in front of his sister. Hella looks small in the crowd of people. She holds a hand out to the boy.
Page 3: 3 Rows
Panel L.1: Hella in a lavish Ordennan ceremonial chamber, on a stage. She is dressed in fine clothing given to her. A pearl-studded brooch with an Ordennan motif is being pinned on her by some military-uniformed functionary.
Military functionary: For you, the spoils of our first battle.
Gathered soldiers and civilians: Queenkiller! Queenkiller! Queenkiller!
Panel R.1: Hella makes an awkward ‘open your hand’ gesture to the boy, who warily opens his hand.
Refugees: Isn’t she….That’s the Queenkiller. The Queenkiller?
Panel L2: Hella, with her head bowed, has her arms and shoulders draped with garlands of gems and pearls looted from Nacre. The ends of the strands run down out of the bottom and side of the panel.
Military functionary: May you always bear the fruits of our holy empire.
Panel R.2: The boy has a handful of apple candies poured into his palm. He looks up, defiantly. A few candies fall down outside the panel.
Adelaide, to both panels L.2 and R.2: She holds the end of a pearl garland in one hand and an apple candy in another
Adelaide: Then tell me…What are you going to do about it, Hella Varal?
Panel M.3.A: Adaire’s hand drawing the refugee camp in Knoll Hollow into a map of Rosemerrow.
Panel M.3.B: The Ordennan military camp being drawn outside the refugee camp.
Panel M.3.C: The wall around Rosemerrow being drawn between the refugee and Ordennan camps as a border.
Title Text: The Violence of Its Maintenance
Subtitle: Story and words by Will Xia (boo-cool-robot)
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I don't have fully-formed thoughts on this, but it is interesting to me that the JJK stage plays cast a Wasian actor (Miura Ryosuke) as Gojo, when the actors who play Nanami, a canonically Wasian character, do not seem to be Wasian
Concept: Trans girl Saori. She's miserable moving to this small village. News travels fast, and most of the village clearly hates her and her family. Except for these two little girls who are determined to be her friends. It makes her anxious. It would be safer for all of them if Nobara wasn't constantly dragging Fumi over to knock on her door. But, well, Saori also knows from village gossip that Nobara's grandma is having trouble keeping up with a young kid, and Nobara's mom isn't home very much (and drinks too much when she is). Someone has to look out for this kid, and she guesses it's her, a teenager who doesn't know what she's doing either. She sees Nobara copying how she walks and sips her tea and pins back her hair and she is filled with a feeling she doesn't know how to name.
As for Nobara, she won't understand for a long time what being trans even means and why the village hates Saori. Being a stylish older girl from Tokyo is the best thing anyone could possibly be! If the village is going to hate Saori for who she is and who Nobara wants to be, then she is going to leave behind their shitty small-mindedness forever!
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[Image ID: Text reading: “Socialists ignore the side of man that is of the spirit,” Reagan said back in 1975. “They can provide shelter, fill your belly with bacon and beans, treat you when you’re ill—all the things that are guaranteed to a prisoner or a slave. But they don’t understand we also dream, yes, even of owning a yacht. /End ID]
Funniest reaction to I Saw the TV Glow that I've encountered was when I watched it with my very cis friend and she came out of the theater going "what was that movie even about? was this a metaphor for neurodivergence?" Everyone else simultaneously yelled "owen is trans!" She goes "ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. [long pause] I liked it!"
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i like a trans headcanon as much as the next guy but sometimes it really boils down to “that character has not had enough agency and/or introspective freedom in their life to have transitioned by the time we meet them in their story”
How JJK Characters Would Do as Hannibal Lecter's Patients
Courtesy of me and @wellnoe resuming our NBC Hannibal watch, here's how we think the JJK characters would react to Hannibal the guy attempting to therapize them:
YujI: Is a combination of too kind-hearted and too dense for Hannibal to successfully manipulate him. He goes once and is like "that guy sure said a bunch of weird stuff."
Megumi: Unfortunately susceptible to Hannibal's murder thing due to a personality that combines a guilt complex, a yet-unfulfilled desire to self-actualize, a tendency to judge others, and withdrawal as a default. (I write this out and realize that this all also applies to Will Graham. Whee!)
Nobara: She's already very self-actualized, thank you very much, and she doesn't need any of Hannibal's advice. She's just here to look at his furniture and interior design. She knocks one of his weird sculptures over, breaks it, and says it's actually his fault for putting it in a place it could be bumped into. Hannibal calls Megumi and is like, "Hey, do you want to kill Nobara?"
Yuta: While extremely susceptible to emotional manipulation and cannibalism motifs, he does not respond as desired to Hannibal because he actually doesn't want to self-actualize; he wants to subsume himself entirely into his loved ones. Hannibal's isolation just makes him depressed and he ghosts Hannibal because he's embarrassed about quitting therapy. Rika is asking to tear Hannibal's head off and eat him the whole time.
Maki: Already predisposed to hating Hannibal for being a rich arrogant man, she also doesn't understand the weird shit he's saying. He thinks her wanting to kill her family is really fun and tries to nudge her towards a very elaborate murder, until she pisses him off by calling him "Hanni-dude." It's a tossup whether Hannibal throws Maki out of therapy or she kills him three sessions in.
Mai: Combination of Nobara and Maki's reaction: Thinks this guy sucks shit and also wants to look at his interior design. Tries to piss Hannibal off on purpose with no real goal. He's disappointed that Mai is so petty and she doesn't even think she can kill her family! What are we doing here!
Junpei: Perhaps the single most susceptible JJK character. He basically got Hannibal'd in canon by Mahito. He's doomed.
Geto: Actually, maybe he's the most susceptible JJK character. Tsukumo kind of accidentally Hannibal'd him. AND he has eating motifs. Super doomed.
Gojo: Okay the thing is he already self-actualized via murder at age 16 so he's good on receiving any actual therapy! He goes and raids Hannibal's lunchbox for a snack instead and Hannibal is baffled by accidentally feeding someone human flesh without any manipulation at all. Gojo takes a second look at him with the Six Eyes and then vaporizes him. The average curse density of the DC-Baltimore area is halved over the next week.
Sukuna: Dismantles Hannibal instantly for speaking to him. When he raids Hannibal's lunchbox he almost regrets doing so since Hannibal's human flesh preparation is so tasty.
Higuruma: Canonically, also would be very easy to push into righteous murder. Afterwards, he realizes he's been manipulated and opens his domain against Hannibal to make him pay for his crimes. Deadly Sentencing randomly selects Hannibal's HIPPA violations to try him for.
Todo: Is thriving. Glowing. Finally, someone on his level philosophically! Who can really wade into the complexities of life, humanity, and reality with him. He's experiencing a meeting of the minds. He's projecting Takada in a three-piece plaid suit sitting there in the office with them. Nothing Hannibal says to him has any effect whatsoever. This is the maddest Hannibal has ever been.
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what I'm learning from putting together a book of photos for my grandparents is that there are a surprising number of photos of me preparing/eating hot pot from the past 3 years
