Literary thoughts

 You'll have to pardon the lack of new (old?) content. I've been dealing with a lot, my creative well seems to have run dry in this summer heat, and I've been taking some time off to take care of myself because I am very bad at resting. As much as I'd love to just be able to go nonstop and be ultra-productive all the time and write fifty novels a year... humans don't work like that.

One of the things I've been doing while resting is reading (not research papers, surprisingly). There's something emotionally, mentally, and spiritually healing about the power of a story to temporarily take you to a different world, to dredge up fond feelings and nostalgic memories, to allow you to be right there looking over the characters' shoulders, sympathizing with their struggles and celebrating their successes. I've been reading a series of books set in the 1940's that I remember from when I was a kid, and it's been giving me those warm cozy nostalgia vibes. Okay, I'm not quite that old, but it reminds me of my grandparents' neighborhood, of simpler and quieter times, much like the effect of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Anyhow, I guess the whole business has got me thinking about some questionable literary advice I've heard over the years, which then of course makes me want to vent about it on my blog where I'm not actually directly debating with anyone. (I hate arguing. It's so pointless and never gets either party what they want and all you end up with is hurt feelings. I think it's much more sensible to just present your opinion and leave it for people to think about.)

One last old Neopian Times comic. I'm pretty proud of that background actually. (Although, yikes with the composition. Rule of thirds, anyone?)

 If only stat training worked this way. On the website, raising a Neopet's stats is an arduous, expensive, time-walled process, which makes me wonder how the people on the Battledome high score list ever got there. Sometimes, upon completion of training, a pet gets a random super bonus and gets extra points added to the stat they were training. But only sometimes. Much to Hyren's chagrin.

You might also notice that I hand-drew and lettered the speech bubbles in this comic, as opposed to previous comics where I used the text tool and Manga Studio's speech bubble generation tool. The latter, while handy, was also a bit limiting. These days, I prefer to hand-draw speech bubbles because it gives me much greater flexibility, and I feel that it's more aesthetically cohesive than canned ellipses* and dry computer-generated text.

*Man, "Canned Ellipses" would be such an awesome band name. I feel like that's what Johannes Kepler would have named a rock band.

This is the last "Hyren goes unhinged during the Altador Cup" comic, I promise.

 I don't know what more to say about this comic than that I just really enjoy Hyren taking himself very seriously when no one else does. And his face in the last panel just gets me every time.

Looking at this comic now, I realize I spelled "favourite" wrong! For shame! (As Neopets was founded by two Brits, the franchise uses British English and all Neopian Times submissions are required to do the same. Not sure how this one slipped past the radar. Whoops.)

(And yes, that is why all of my Neopets fanfiction uses British English, if you were confused about that.)

 So on the website, when you "read" a book to one of your Neopets (i.e. basically use a book item on them), they say something cute like "Wow, this is one of my favourites!" The lines are randomly pulled from a prewritten list, which was a fun programming trick back in the 90's, but it also results in Neopets sometimes saying things not really in line with their personalities*. 

*On-site, Neopets don't really have personalities; they're essentially just a graphic and some stats, and a large part of the appeal of the website for creative types such as myself is the fun of coming up with personalities and backstories and psychological issues for each of one's pets.

In this old Neopian Times comic, I feel like I kind of like the art more than the joke, but eh. So in the Yooyuball game you can play on the site, there's an ice debuff that temporarily freezes the opposing team, and I guess I just got to thinking about how that would work in-universe. Except this only works for teams with Bori players.

(For those not in the know about Neopets lore, the Bori anciently magically froze themselves as a defensive measure against the Bringer of Night, an ambiguously malevolent demigod.)

I'm not really sure why I ended up drawing so many Altador Cup-related comics. Either the event just sparked a lot of ideas for me, or maybe I just didn't have much else going on at the time.

 

Another old Neopian Times comic. This isn't really franchise-based humor as much as it is an example of my pets' odd family dynamic. Hyren's usually a pretty chill guy, but there are two things that can instantly make him go aggro: his family being in trouble, and someone badmouthing his favorite sports team. Including members of his family.

There is a bit of an inside joke here; Kreludor has historically not been the highest-ranking team in the Altador Cup (although they did win the Cup at least once, as far as I can tell), but Hyren consistently roots for them every year. He doesn't care whether they win or lose--he's just happy to support a space-based team that's not Virtupets-affiliated. And what Team Kreludor lacks in talent and payroll, they more than make up for in heart and not having cheaters or Elon Hughlis on the team.

 I just love Hyren's expressions in this one. Drawing unhinged Hyren brings joy to my soul. He's fun to write as pretty much the cantankerous middle-aged dad of the household.

(Granted, after the events of a fic that I never submitted to the Times but will post here eventually, Hyren would no longer have ethical qualms about Team Virtupets, but he would still object to them on the grounds that they just win too often and that's boring.)

Another old Neopian Times comic. I'm not sure this one scores many points in the humor department, but I just loved drawing manic Hyren in the first panel. There's always got to be one insane sports fanatic in every household. And yes, I am aware that the background Usul's eyes change between panels. I was trying to not make the background characters look static but actually it just turned out distracting. Ugh, I had so much to learn about illustration. I still do.

 Also, Hyren is a big fat liar. His rivalry with fellow Virtupets commanders Garoo and Gormos was practically legendary in the corps. I suspect that with his military days behind him, sports is the only outlet he can find for his competitive streak.

Another old Neopets comic. This one was written by another user and I drew the artwork. I rather like how this one turned out. Maybe don't put Dr. Frank Sloth in charge of anything ever.

 For some odd reason, I find Dr. Sloth really fun to draw/write. I think in large part it's because of the fun of putting my own unique spin on his personality. Canonically, despite being portrayed as the biggest and baddest of all Neopian villains, he's never really been given much in the way of background or character development--pretty much all we know about him is that he's a genius who specializes in genetic engineering and wants to take over Neopia for unspecified reasons.

As he was a major player in Worth Fighting For, however, I took the opportunity to really delve deep into his personality. My vision for Sloth is that of a hyperintelligent being who's always at least ten steps ahead of everyone else mentally, and has no qualms about using that to his advantage. He's calculating and ruthless, but usually not so much malicious as just really dedicated to expanding his galactic empire and ensuring it runs smoothly and efficiently. If you do get on his bad side, though, he's quite adept at psychological manipulation (as Hyren finds out the hard way in Worth Fighting For). Still, being a Virtupets citizen isn't all that bad as long as you know your place in the system.

I actually wrote a long-form Neopets fic that I never bothered to submit to the Neopian Times that's all about Hyren, his family, a rogue Virtupets officer, and Sophix II traversing the galaxy in an attempt to free Sloth from the Space Faerie Token so he can resume leadership of Virtupets, because after he was trapped inside the token, Commander Garoo took over and became an unbearable despot, and at the end of the day, nobody can run Virtupets better than Sloth.

In this fic, we learn that Sloth created Virtupets and conquered most of the galaxy out of a twisted drive to ensure his own survival, after he was left the last living member of his species when they were eradicated by a freak illness (which he had been working to develop the cure for). He's especially interested in conquering Neopia because it's implied that Neopia is the only world in the galaxy that has magic, a novel energy source that Sloth is keenly interested in.

As for how it all turns out, well, you'll have to wait until I get to posting that fic here.

Okay yes Sloth experiences a change of heart and becomes a good guy. I know that will irritate a lot of Virtupets fans. But I really wanted Sloth and Hyren to get some closure after the events of Worth Fighting For, and I personally prefer the idea of Sloth using all that brainpower for good.

Another old Neopian Times comic. Looking at these now, I feel like at times the composition could have been better; in this comic, there's a lot of empty space and relatively tiny characters (and those hands in the second panel could have been positioned way better). To be fair, though, it can be difficult to find composition that works when you've got a main cast consisting of a 170cm-tall human and roughly meter-tall creatures. (It's also slightly implied in my Neopian Times writing that unmutated!Hyren is on the short side even for a Grundo. Wait, I'm not sure if I ever actually implied that anywhere in writing, or if it's just my headcanon.)

(Actually, another reason why the composition was on the strugglebus was because for these comics, I used art software called Manga Studio that had a lot of handy features, but I often never bothered to customize the panel size. So these panels were much wider than they could have been.)

 Oh, right, about the actual comic. On the site there's a game called Pick Your Own where you go into a Meridellian berry field, click random bushes, and hope you get something good. (Most of the time you don't.) Half-Eaten Berries, despite their appearance, are perfectly acceptable food items that your pets can eat without any ill effects. However, Hyren (due to a quirk in the site's programming) won't eat them. He also won't eat Spiced Apple Pie, but that's another story. :)