Various drawings for The Golden Net.
Hello, reader! The story text for the Golden Net (as well as material related to it) has been moved to its own place on the web. You can check it out here.
The Golden Net is a story I've been writing that takes Peter, Andrey, and Farhad from Pathologic and rebuilds them in a world full of fishermen and shell-divers and sensations and excess and death. It started as a single drawing from 2023 and has since grown into this wild thing you can see here.
I'm not sure how to explain the importance of that link between the existing characters from Pathologic and this original project that can stand on its own, but I will put a pin on that and return to it someday. Hiroki Azuma does have an essay on this phenomenon of character-data moving around in stories and art and fandoms, though. I have enjoyed the essay greatly and referenced it in one of my own about Pathologic (Fragment Eaters from American* Fujo*)... So, that might be a good angle from which to start questioning this thing eventually.
Regardless, I think it's worth bringing up the connection so people can understand why I keep on drawing Andrey and Peter and Farhad very naked and trapped in nets along with fish. (It's them! But it's not them...)
This post has the first two parts of the story, since the way they set things up allows for the final part to be a sort of meandering adventure of debauchery... that I haven't written yet. I would like to self-impose a deadline for late October where I finish the third part in this writing style (so the completed short story can serve as the "core" of the project), and then after that I can do whatever I want, like freeform writing and images and comics and whatnot. Fingers crossed I meet that goal...
Also, since this is a short story and not something visual, I haven't written out the whole thing in Hharmari and made it impossible for anyone on earth to read it. Instead, the writing style is influence by Hharmari's use of compound words, which appear quite frequently in the second part. (Shout out to ultra-aquatic-teal-marine...)
I hope you like this little adventure by the sea. Big thanks to everyone who has heard me tell the story in person, and has helped out with suggestion and encouragement.