#blue contact

there are two massive works of inspiration that i owe so much of the creation of blue contact to! the first is the song 'UFOF' by big thief. words genuinely cannot describe how important this song is to me - if they could i would not have spent the past three years working on a three volume graphic novel. the first time i listened to it i genuinely sobbed like im talking aching in my chest/utterly inconsolable. i knew there was something special in the song, but i didn't know just quite what. i started listening to it on repeat in an attempt to figure out just what it was that caused me to have such an intense reaction to it. every time i listened i found a tiny new sliver of a story about two sisters and an alien, and that story ended up being blue contact! i always say that i didn't "write" the story of blue contact and this ^ is the reason why; sylvie and mags were always there and i just had to find them. it's kind of like that michelangelo quote about seeing the angel in the marble and setting it free (not comparing myself to michelangelo here obviously LOL, just the concept). at the risk of sounding like a total crazy person i will say that truly sylvie isn't a character to me but an independant being/idea who i just so happened to be lucky enough to connect with in some way, which is why i am so desperate to tell her story ^_^ if im being SO genuine blue contact is my burden to bear and it has kept me going through so much... like in my hardest times i think 'well i can't kill myself yet because i haven't had the chance to share sylvie's story and i owe it to her to set it free/i can't let it die with me'. which may sound dramatic but is true!!!! because of my obsession with blue contact i have listened to UFOF so many times that it has actually become my second most listened to song of all time, being just narrowly beaten out by 'say yes' by elliot smith. i would post lyrics but this is already getting too long and every single lyric is equally as important as the next so just go listen to UFOF

the second major source of inspiration behind blue contact is the webcomic [:x.X//<angel_chain.05>\\X.x:] by cate wurtz! angel chain really did two things for me: firstly, it helped me decide that a graphic novel would be the best medium for telling the story of blue contact. i never intended to write a graphic novel (too much work to do writing AND art), but angel chain proved to me that it was the right choice. sigh. anyways, the relationship between edie and rue in angel chain helped to cement the dynamic between sylvie and mags for blue contact. obv angel chain and blue contact are very different stories, but it really helps to see a model of something similar to what i'm trying to achieve. anyways ily cate wurtz you are my icon

onto the time travel stuff! lowkey i shouldn't have teased the time travel because actually getting into what happens would mean spoiling the largest and most important arc/volume 2 lollll. so please forgive me for how vague and unsatisfying this is 🙏 what i WILL say is that it is not "time travel" in the traditional sense. the perspective of vol. 2 shifts over to that of the lady of perpetual flames - who i'm now realizing i haven't actually addressed much in any of my posts, sorry - who is in a sense a timeless being. she doesn't experience time in a linear fashion, but in a fragmented one. kind of like how a spider web is made up of with different linear threads that attached to each other to form larger image, if that makes sense? since the narrative is kind of taken over by the blue lady here, the perspective of time shifts accordingly, and we get to see scenes from janet+mags' early life before sylvie joined them, as well as seeing what future-sylvie is up to! in all these scenes 2007-sylvie is still there, but not in a "physical" way - more in the sense that her connection to the blue lady carries her along throughout time and makes her into the throughline that allows the events of the plot to happen without the entire universe collapsing in on itself. sylvie isn't the spider: she's the two twigs that the spider weaves her web between.