when i was barely 10, i had this comic (or 'graphic novel' as i would have called it back then because i didn't know any better) that i was legitimately committed to making called "Seas of Ackar". it started as a school assignment, it was some english project. it started as just a short story but i quickly got more into drawing than writing. it was about this cruise ship that got torn in half by this giant octupus. one half of the ship sank i think, but i know that the other half somehow kept floating and eventually wound up on an island called "Ackar", which was once a part of a larger lost continent in the Pacific Ocean. the two protagonists were Emily and Eric Richards, two goofy wacky-waffle middle schoolers: Emily, the straightwoman, and Eric, the Billy to their Mandy (they were essentially rip-offs of the protagonists of the Amulet books). somehow, they're the only ones of note to survive on the floating half of the cruise ship that makes it to Ackar. i don't know why. i vaguely remember intending to have most of the passengers of the ship survive. the first person they encounter on the island is Karlen Moore, the lone caucasian mainlander on this strange alien latin island - their Grim. i can't find any writings i made on his background, but i vaguely remember wanting him to be this American navyman who got washed up on the island, spending the rest of his years stuck on it at its mercy. i wrote that he was born in 1931 and is 79, making the year it takes place in to be 2010, giving him a lot of time to learn the lay of the land (somehow he's also fucking jacked by any measure, let alone that of a senior citizen). with the wisdom and guidance of Karlen, Emily and Eric venture into this strange mysterious and ethnic island, in search of ... stuff. i never really planned out what it was supposed to be. the reason i keep alluding to the island being 'ethnic' and 'latin' is because Ackar was supposed to house this semi-lost, semi-still going, very Aztec-like advanced civilization. i don't think i planned on them still being around in large numbers, but their technology and the creatures that they coexisted with were still around, namely the "Convox": the ancient aliens which funded the whole operation (do i hear white man's burden). i have drawings of their cities and geography, i spent more time setting everything up than actually getting the story going. i remember having more of a story for a prequel story about the Richards siblings lives in the 'burbs, which would have been basically autobiographical as Eric was a stand-in for me, but i don't remember what it would have been about. i wrote nothing for it. my writing and drawing for the project is pretty lacking on the whole. i was 10, so i guess i gave up pretty quickly. i had a million other ideas i wanted to burn out.
i wonder what it what have been like if i made it. i wonder what Ackar - the island itself - would have been like. looking back now, i kind of like the idea of it being perhaps forever lost, so intangibly mysterious and complex that the findings of Emily, Eric, and Karlen could never be truly reported back on as some things were never meant for mere mortal men. i kind of like to think of all my thousand unmade stories are like that, just repeating infinitely but frozen in time.
if i actually made Seas of Ackar, and somehow put the foot down at age 10 and decided that my vocation would be that of a serious 'graphic novelist' as i guess i was actually gunning for, i like to imagine what my stuff would have been like. i like to imagine that somehow, i would have gotten serious, and Seas of Ackar would be a published book, and so would the other stories i was thinking of. i would be that kid who gets crazy fucking good at painting who grinds away at their craft all throughout adolescence. my favourite bit of this fantasy is that i imagine it getting real fucking dark real quick, like going from Studio Ghibli to Nick Drnaso overnight. i start writing Bataillean stories about sex and death, to the dismay and intrigue of my friends and family. but at the same time, i don't think i'd be ready to tell a story like Sabrina or any story at all at age 16, let alone at age 10.
i definitely think it was a good thing none of this ever happened, but i do wonder what those stories would have been about. i could never do Seas of Ackar today, but i think i'll finish them one day.
i may have been feeling shitty recently, but i think it's getting me to think about what really matters to me, which is what all this stuff about childhood is from.
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i looked at myself naked in the mirror and for the first time in a while, i could accept myself as not being straight.
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the comments on Bo Burnham - Art is Dead are kind of gay.
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Rory in Gilmore Girls was fucking annoying. i'm glad i am not alone in thinking that, my mom agrees with me. i never watched the show from cover to cover, it was one of the legion of shows my parents have watched that i would occasionally sit down with them for (which i will probably dedicate a whole post to eventually), so i guess i'm not an authority, but who gives a fuck about integrity on the internet. this is the bravest frontier for boldly running your mouth. anyway, her character was supposed to be stuck between the world of her bourgeois socialite grandparents and her single mothered upbringing, but she was still so god damn entitled and un-self-aware. there was this one scene that especially rubbed me the wrong way, somewhere in the part of the show where Rory is about to graduate college or something. i think this was the season finale, and she was crying over how this was the first time in her life where she doesn't know what's coming next. saying that out loud, it doesn't seem that bad, but in my head, it's egregiously fucking bratty. when i saw it at age 15, i was like "buddy, do you even live a real life?" i wonder if Rory's shittiness was intentional, or i just completely missed the point because i'm an asshole. the writing isn't known for being all that spectacular, some people think it can occasionally be pretty bad, but Amy Sherman-Palladino (the show's creator) doesn't seem to be Darren Star (the creator of Emily in Paris and Sex and the City, who is very shitty writer). Netflix did a reboot/true series finale, and in it, Rory is a journalist for the New York Times, or like the Washington Post. it's probably the New York Times, i don't remember. it's been a few years. looking back, that makes me laugh. she would totally be the type of journo to write stinkpieces about how war makes America safer and richer and that Biden should finish the wall before the next Trump will. i wonder if that is explicitly coded into her character. in the OG series, her college dorm room has a Noam Chomsky poster, you know, author of Manufacturing Consent. it belongs to her roommate though, but that's besides the point. coincidence? i think not. i bet these liberals got a little red in them.
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it's probably going to snow today. snowfall in May is a surefire way to piss Canadians off and give them something to talk about. it made smalltalk at the optometrist appointment today easier. i, for one, welcome it this week. my shitty attitude has made me reject this summer, when people come outside. i feel better that it's coming in spurts because that means i have to face less. there's not a ton to see indoors.
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i don't have a lot to say tonight. i have been actively shooting down things to say recently. i'm convincing myself i never had anything to say to begin with like a dicator who assassinates his political opponents only to wipe them from the books afterwards. everything is stupid, art is pointless, why do anything at all; haven't i said this all before?
i feel slightly better than i have for the last couple of days, but not 100%. i still have a slight sentiment that most things are pointless, but i'm at least willing to question whether they are or not. i'll get over it. i always do. i'll be ship-shape by May long weekend.
