Author notes

unplanned filler just because

usedbooks

on Sept. 24, 2019

I hurt my back last week and was in bed for four days. I couldn't even draw, which was kinda awful. Anyway, I didn't get a page done, but I am feeling 80% better, and I'll have a page next week (I am at the coloring step).

My lack of productivity, movement, and human interaction has built into frustrated energy and I had to sketch this. The concept behind this is basically a story of my character creation process. Protagonists are easy. I find it really super hard to dislike someone, so writing likable characters is a piece of cake. But writing antagonists is HARD. My early attempts sucked. They lacked dimension, and, tbh, I might have been a touch standoffish and scared to "get into their heads."

Then I started researching the Civil War for work and was reading first person accounts and diaries of slave owners. That plus listening to the lyrics of lovely songs that turn out to be entirely about STALKING someone, get me to really writing Raidon's character in a much deeper way.

It led me to realize that (my) antagonists require inspiration from real life, especially primary sources. Researching the thoughts of scary people, manipulators, murderers, etc. is really bone-chilling but it's necessary. Anyway, here are three of my antagonists in "costumes" of the real life types that inspired their creation.

(I was going to draw Dirk, but tbh, his inspiration is a combination me-first narcissistic sociopaths from literally every economic class and region. His costume would just be the comment section from any clickbait newssite.)