I don't have any art to discuss this time around, but I just wanted to talk about my thoughts on what I want to accomplish with this project. I said in the beginning I wanted to make a webcomic with this and I still sort of do, if because having a set medium in mind helps me figure out the scope of the story and how to structure the plot; but, I'm also sort of okay with never actually making a webcomic with them and them only existing in my head. I think I'm just not interested in writing something that can be consumed and critiqued normally anymore, even though for my whole life, I always had the aspriation to be a popular writer/creator. but my mental health has been so poor lately that the idea to be that really scares me. I don't know how to handle attention, not even positive attention. all of it just sets me off. I'm also just so tired of media analysis that emphasizes and enables holding the audience's hand through it, over the "implications" or "message" of a story (that I have a lot of thoughts on in general, but I won't get into that now.)

but I feel what I would want to write about would alienate a lot of people anyways. the themes I want to write about and the political commentary I'd like to tackle... especially regarding mental illness through more of an anti-psych approach, I can imagine there would be a lot about my story that would be considered "problematic" or "romanticization" when I would see it as depicting living with mental illness and the right to be mentally ill, essentially. isa particulary is my muse for that, depicting almost every thought I've had in my life and depicting most of the ways I've treated myself and want to treat myself. he is violent and self-destructive because I fantasize about being violent and self-destructive every day. this is wish fulfillment for me, and when I wanted isa to die at the end originally, that was also wish fulfillment. and I still think there's value in the concept of a character committing suicide outside of it being a tragedy because I believe in the right to die, but this isn't the story to implement this concept in because isa's character arc calls for something different. but ideally, I could depict his suicidality and psychosis in a way that is brutal and honest, and that's also in regards to his reactions towards his family, authority, and the system with how they infantilize and dehumanize him for his behavior growing up. I am almost disgusted by blind faith towards therapy and psychiatry, and it would be my intention to make some kind of statement about that.

I also would want to make a statement about being an mexican immigrant, specifically an immigrant youth after the 2000s. it's not original or unique, but I know my approach to it would be more cynical and angrier. because I am. I changed tona's character from being a DACA recipient to just entirely undocumented as it took his character in a direction that I appreciated more with how his anger and anxiety over his life manifests. and I relate to it more as well. to have a character who lives in the united states without papers, facing that limit in opportunities and lack of security, while also being openly bitter and resentful and refusing to simply be grateful, to deconstruct the "good immigrant" stereotype and way of thinking that exists purely out of fear of being incarcerated or deported, is also wish fulfillment for me. it is a kind of validation in how hard being an immigrant is, especially emotionally, in today's cultural context. I'm not even inclined towards writing his relationship with his mexican identity to be completely positive either, I would rather him to be very disillusioned in general with identity politics. to not be mexican enough and to not be american enough either. tona is an outsider through and through. I need him to be.

I have a lot to say that I don't really know how to because I just don't know what I really want right now in my life. I want to hide away all the time and delete my accounts so no one can look at my work, but that's not the right move either. I don't know.

well, I redesigned them somewhat, but I also needed to draw out how I envision them during high school.

I've always planned for the story to jump from the present to the past during the second arc to give more context to isa's behavior from his arson at 16 to his suicide attempt at 18, and I think jumping to the past would also serve as a good transition into introducing tona as I want tona to show up later on. to first focus on isa and his desperation to repent for everything and delve into his backstory bit and bit, until the story jumps four years earlier and introduce tonatiuh as his more reserved, but clingy best friend. then, we get tona in the present and see how much isa abandoning him has affected him (his undiagnosed bpd). at least, that's what it's like in my head.

in this drawing alone, I wanted to show how differently they present themselves as teenagers vs adults. tona particulary as a teenager tries to stand out through his fashion sense because it's the safest way for him to express himself. he feels like he's just as much of a reject as isa does, that he's just as pessimistic and alone, but he can't actually show it outwardly at all because he has to be the responsible one, he has to always be focused on his grades, his future, his lack of legal status, his mom, and it makes him repress a lot of his feelings. therefore he's a wannabe emo kid. isa on the other hand doesn't need to rely on his appearence much to stand out as a teenager, he does through his behavior alone. he doesn't take care of himself, he doesn't hide his scars, and he gets progressively more irriated and aloof as he has to deal with his developing psychosis and paranoia, up until his suicide attempt.

as adults, isa is trying his best to suppress the parts of himself that he hates, trying to become a better person through his own delusional means. he's really dissociative still to his point, and hasn't felt like himself in a long time (but he probably doesn't want to). he's basically in his average church outfit in the art above, lol. tona himself chilled out on needing to be the quirkiest person in the room, but rather moved on to expressing himself through something more personal like his stick n' pokes and letting himself be more bitter and sarcastic. also more feminine (I just need to draw that more).

I think I've gotten a better sense of their characters through this and also I'm more satsified with their designs overall, even if it's just little things like isa's hair being longer as an adult. but I need to draw them as teenagers together more because I always think about how scary it would be for tona to witness isa changing so much and so drastically in a few years. that isa becomes more and more distant, more violent and explosive, and tona can only chalk it up to stress over his parents and nothing else. he has no idea just how awful isa's mental state is becoming and doesn't know for a long time.

I would really like to even make a visual novel of them during high school, just a short one, maybe about tona asking isa to hang out because he knows something's up but isa won't tell him, and whatever ensues after. the comic itself takes place from isa's perspective mostly, so having the visual novel from tona's could be neat, and overall it would be a good creative excerise for me. so maybe I'll work on that eventually...

I said bdsm could save them in my last post so let's discuss this.

I keep drawing art where isa is just tona's dog and tona is torturing him, which is really funny for the impression it could possibly give off about my comic because nothing like it remotely happens in the actual story (EDIT: it does, but like a dream sequence or whatever. I do want this story to increasingly become more and more fantasical as representative of isa's mental state.) my comic is more like a telenovela than anything. but I got attached to this symbolism in my mind of mixing isa's guilt complex and desire to change for his past behavior with tona's grudge against isa for abandoning him while still being so insanely in love with him. so from that, I got a psychward patient in a dog collar and a mad scientist who's going to rewire his brain somehow. I just really like lobotomy imagery for isaias in general because he loathes himself, but tona is also obsessive and looks at old photos of isa every day while also fantasizing about seeing him in public and telling him to kick rocks as petty revenge.

either way, one of the most basic shipping tropes on this planet that I always liked is when two characters may present themselves in two particular, opposing manners day-to-day, and then those roles are reversed within their relationship. e.g, one character is more dominant and in charge of things while the other character is submissive and fumbles a lot, and in their relationship, they switch as an escape. there's something similar in isa and tona's dynamic, but they both are trying to attain some sembalance of control, whether it's over themselves or their circumstances. on the surface, isaias has his reputation being violent and intimidating, and tonatiuh presents himself to be more passive and civil of a person, but there's also other layers to it; isa's massive guilt complex that I mentioned above, this deep-rooted sense of worthlessness because he's a miserable and selfish piece of shit and wishing for change through some miracle or force. tona on the other hand, feels like he's never in control over his life and has so much trauma over being abandoned and thinking he always eventually will be in all the relationships he tries to pursue.

so that's basically what this image means.

I've decided I don't want isa to die at the end. this does give me more room to explore not only his character growth, but also his regression into bad habits during the climax of the story because I always wanted a scene where he has another mental breakdown over his remorse and his paranoia and begins to fall back into suicidal thinking. but at this point, isa is trying so hard to become a better person that just the idea of throwing away all the progress he's made would overwhelm and terrify him. so rather than actually going through with another attempt, he may seek tonatiuh out. from this, it might be the start of their relationship development with isa putting tona on a pedestal and wanting tona to be the one to put him in his place. except tona hates how meek and pathetic isa has become as a person, so the disappointment and lack of respect he feels for isa at this moment because of it is really, really fun to me.

I'm still trying to figure out a timeline for this because I have more fun drawing yaoi. shoot me.

I've been meaning to write more since my last post, but I forgot how bad I am at keeping up blog spaces like these. and I've been way more focused on drawing art (and by that, I mean a lot of gay shit, lol) rather than actually writing anything. but I figured I'd actually talk about my thought process behind isa and tona's dynamic more in-depth. I can move on to other characters eventually...

I absolutely intend for isa and tona's relationship to be a major focus and that they explicitly have romantic feelings for each other, but I'm not sure if they should officially get together in the actual comic itself. it depends entirely on what I want as the conclusion to isa's arc and how to balance tona's wishes into that conclusion. when I first was figuring out isa's character, I really wanted him to die at the end in the most ironic way possible, but now, I'm not sure if I want him to actually die. I would prefer it if his fate was left on an ambiguous note, but I also think about him deciding to live after all. maybe it's because I started focusing on them right in the aftermath of my own suicide attempt that I wanted isa to die as an excerise of his agency. that it's all he's ever wanted for years, but he was always stopped by something or someone, and finally he could just be free, give up, both a giant "fuck you" and apology to everyone and everything. that he could just go is what I really wanted to see at the time.

but, then I think about tona who's number one wish is to not be left alone, and especially by isa who already abandoned him before and then came back into his life. I don't want to be redundant, I want my characters to progress and regress, go back and forth, but for a conclusion to the narrative, I'm not sure yet. I want the conflict between them of isa being so blinded by his lack of self-worth and his need to repent, and tona wanting to be loved and to feel secure and stable for once in his life and seeking that out from someone so emotionally unavailable. they both want to be saved in a way, which I think is the most important thing for me to keep in mind for an ending. I just don't want to push tona to the side and have his wishes unmet because otherwise there's no point to his character aside from having best friend angst with no real payoff. technically, isa is the main character, but tona is just as important too.

anyways, I also don't want them to get together because of the fact isa is so emotionally unavailable and I don't want to force it. even if isa decides to live on for tona's sake, I may still not have them get officially together as much as I like to imagine them kissing because I also love the hesitation. I can imagine someone would consider this queerbaiting and I don't give a shit. relationships once they become official/canon are so boring to me unless they really are so mentally ill, they just can't do it normally. I do want to write commentary on the whole idea of marrying someone for a green card, which tona has as an expectation and it could be interesting to think about them trying to adjust to all that, but that goes beyond what I want to focus on right now. but bdsm COULD save them 🤔.

and thus my journey begins... as my first post on this page, I want to discuss a little about the purpose and goals of this project.

I want to make this into a webcomic! I didn't really know what I wanted to know to do with these characters at first; I was vaguely considering writing a book, and even fantasized about it being an animated movie, but I was just being very ambitious there. I wouldn't say writing a novel or a script (as different as they are from each other) is beyond my abilities, but both options are processes that take a very long time and require a lot more effort than simply creating. I think a webcomic is a fine medium to present this story, it's a medium that would be lot more contained to my own vision which right now, I really need for myself. I want to make something very personal to me and just leave it in a corner of the internet where people could just happen to stumble upon it, rather than think of the long-term and any external incentives for working on this.

I bought a big sketchbook to draft the comic in. it's a little early in the process to start drawing out the first few pages, I'm still writing an outline of the plot, but I bought it now to really commit myself to this project. I refuse to keep this as just jumbled ideas and scenarios in my head, or even as just random doodles to post on toyhouse. I want to write a story, a real, overarching narrative. and I'm excited, anxious, to start something like this. I've never actually dedicated myself to something original before, even though it's always been my dream to.

I wonder how much this page will change by the end of the year and what I accomplish as long as I discipline myself to. it's not about hoping, but willing myself to work on this.