Learning to scream again 😱
Most of us bottle up a slew of emotions, but for a 'demon' across the planar divide, it's just the way things always were.
Hi furious whisper ,
I forgot how to scream since I was a teenager.
You know when you go on a rollercoaster, or when most people see spiders, or when you get hurt falling off a bike, there’s that high-pitched, shrill, full-voice screech?
Rollercoasters (if I dare go on one) receives a drawn-out-yowl from me, spiders get a ‘hello’, and pain, at most, a holler.
Maybe that’s not so big of a deal. You should hope that adults have fewer things to scream about, save for the Halloween house trip or a serious injury. But even when I try to scream, I don’t know where to look for it. Upper throat? Lower throat? Wait no, that puts pressure on my voice box. Hmmm.
Imagine my conundrum when the first thing I was told to do by my therapist was to scream into a pillow.
It made me wonder: how much are we holding in on a daily basis? Where’s our alternative to the kid’s tantrum, which, while very unappealing to the ears, serves such an important purpose to letting an emotion exist and express itself?
Some turn to the gym, others to a retreat, but most resort to daily quips and complaints.
Or, like Korumn, they bottle it up.
Korumn arrived along with his species in the Mars colony not too long ago. As soon as they did, a brutal battle ensued. He was one of the hundreds of ‘demons’ sent across their interplanar bridge to wage war against the humans who dared to demand more than was their right.
But now, neither he nor those left over from the fight have any way of returning to their world and need to work together to survive on a barely terraformed quadrant of Martian land. People of both kinds are under duress, but Korumn seems to find humans an inspiration. When he teams up with Flores on a scouting mission, it’s even doubly so true: she encourages him to loosen up.
Something which he was strongly discouraged from doing his whole existence.
So, will Korumn get the chance to scream, like I did? And safely into a pillow?
That’s all up to Flores. It’ll all be a test if they can face both the joys and the darker things, or turn away like we might from the screeches of a toddler.
If you could have a sound-proof room, what would you scream at the top of your lungs about?
Early days
It would be remiss of me not to consider DOOM - that notorious computer game from the 90s, and its recent revival, all about slaughtering demons on Mars - the core starting point for this comic. It even began as a fanfic 16 years ago, and I was half-tempted to keep it that way.
Remember how I mentioned last newsletter there was a different monster I thought was cool before Reflux? Yep. Here we are.
Unlike Flores, who underwent a name and major appearance change, Korumn has remained largely unaltered in essence.
He was a jaded warrior, tired of the chaos.... although in previous versions he used to be more grouchy. I have more than enough characters filling that quadrant now so I think I can switch it up a bit.
2008 art, 2 years after the above drawing.
And from 2011. I think that forehead symbol design idea boiled down to ‘he needed to be recognisable among all his duplicates lol’.
You know, it seems obvious that I can draw muscles comfortably now, but it didn’t occur to me how long I worked to get the hang of it! Kudos, younger me. For never giving up on six-packs made of boxes.
The more I worked on this new rendition of the old fanfic, though, the more I realised I wanted to make the setting my own. DOOM’s designs are iconic, but ‘demons’ aren’t incarnations from fiery dirt-and-rocks hell to me, but entities from beyond.
So… turns out Korumn will get a bit of a glow-up after all. Since releasing this illustration in late last year:
Here’s a peek at what you have to look forward to:
At this point I’m pretty sure I’ll be free from IP troubles. :P
I’d love to give you an ETA on this project… but I made a very intelligent, off the cuff decision in December of ‘22: I started working on a short self-indulgent visual novel which you’ll hear about very soon in a few weeks~
Don’t worry, it’s still in line with monster romances. You’re really just getting more cake.
I like to spoil you with pictures so here’s another teaser.
I hope, with this short game demo, to make you scream in delight… or terror.
catch you soon,
Jennifer
Web Platforms
You may notice that this email looks a little more spiffy!
My eventual goal is to run the newsletter through my own self-hosted system (it’s called Ghost but it’s not nearly as spooky as it sounds). Since it requires considerable set up, though, I I’ve moved over to Buttondown in the meantime, which is a little more robust than Tinyletter.
While we’re at it, you know you can access past emails in the archives, right?
One thing you will learn about me is I love streamlining systems almost as much as I love monsters, so be prepared for the occasional nerd-out.
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