I’m working on a new and improved comic for this year’s VanCAF, but here’s a sample of the Rat Chronicles (Vol. 1) about a ratty girl and a patient boyfriend who tries to domesticate her.
Work in Progress – Hundred Demon March (Tour)
When I was a kid, I grew up with legends and stories from Japanese folklore. My childhood was imbued with it: my mother told me about how people’s souls turned into beautiful blue-green flame when they died, and that she saw these herself when she was a child on her way to the outdoors toilet (homes in Okinawa didn’t have toilets back then if you weren’t wealthy).
“Everyone around me said the hino tama (flame of people’s souls) was scary, that it was frightening to come across, but when I saw them I wasn’t freaked out at all. I thought they were so pretty,” my mom told me.
This is a work in progress of some of the demons who enter my story, Rika and the Hundred Demon Tour (still debating if it should be “March” instead, as per 百鬼夜行。The Japanese version of my text would be 百鬼旅行、or Hundred Demon Tour)..
Nezumi Bancho
Monkey lately keeps calling me “Nezumi (Rat) Bancho (thuggish boss of ruffians)” because of my way of talking in Japanese, which is pretty boorish and full of swear words used by ordinary street thugs.
Apparently, when people imagine him having a Japanese wife, they picture someone who fits one of these 4 stereotypes (from left to right, the Virgin-Maid Cafe type, the Sadist cool queen type, the healing calm maiden type, and the active, sporty “gal” type)…
And they’re kind of…surprised? dismayed? when they learn my general way of speaking in Japanese is more like this
Kuze Daisaku, the manly-man from Yakuza 0, one of my favourite video games.
In light of that moniker, I decided to draw that “Nezumi Bancho” on my tablet….
And wear it as a T-shirt. So there’s no confusion about what to expect.
Rat cage dance
I have two beautiful rats now: Mana and Lucy. They’re gorgeous, but every now and then they do this “cage dance” of hopping on the cage and trying to grab our attention to be let out and played with.
It looks something like this…
But you can imagine how it makes me think of this.
So I made a little comic about Mana and Lucy cage-dancing and gyrating to be let out.
Papoose
I sometimes do off-the-cuff mini comics during travel. This is the latest one, of a conversation I had with Monkey and his ad lib nickname for me.
Welcome…and a new comic
Welcome.
My partner (Monkey) revealed to me that my attempts at…caressing? fondling? him when he comes to bed at night is not quite romantic, but actually rather creepy. All this time I’d been trying to be affectionate, and it turns out I’d been making him feel like a groping victim of the Sloth from Hell.
Rat Chronicles exhibit A:
Dungeons and Dragons – three anti-heroes
We were missing a few players last night at Dungeons and Dragons, namely the two people playing archetypal hero characters. As a result, all three of our characters were slightly scummy, morally questionable heroes who would think of all kinds of dirty tricks to a) not fight b) trick the enemy c) inflict cruel and unusual punishment on the enemy. Worse, all three characters were unsympathetic to children.
We got into a lot of dumb conversations around dirty tactics to get the upper hand. One of them was about charming a monster so we don’t have to fight it head-on.
New story – “Tea”
I’ve been quiet about the Rat Chronicles for awhile and that’s because I’m working on 2 new stories, set in the Apocalypse. The first one, a short, is called “Tea.” Characters are Dru, a former slave with a missing leg, and Virgil, a blind kid whose father worked for “N” water corporation (also known as the “Three Birds”).
Details coming in upcoming week.
The perks of being a dungeon master (DM)
Monkey is a giant, lifelong Dungeons & Dragons player and DM (dungeon master). He’s a gifted storyteller, and never misses an episode of Critical Role with Matt Mercer. I never got into it until he showed me how to play. There’s an awful lot of planning that goes into DM-ing: reading the story, creating the world, playing the characters.
I asked him what he and other DMs get out of it. Is it the feeling of calling the shots? Is it the friendship? This was our convo.
Feeding the footslugs
“Foot slugs” are what Monkey calls my socks, left haphazardly around the house. They look something like slugs, randomly crawling on the ground. When I go about my morning, I feel like I’m just eating and relaxing normally, but I often walk around dropping crumbs onto his carpet. This is what it looks like from his perspective.
