[The Stars In Your Eyes] #JIMIN #JUNGKOOK

[The Stars In Your Eyes] ⭐ #JIMIN 🐥 #JUNGKOOK 🐰

Home and away

@the-wip-project Day 4

What’s a worldbuilding detail in your WIP that you really like?

It's not that the question is tough indeed, it's just that I don't really know what to answer, since it is all set in the contemporary era. So, nothing is exactly invented, or imagined. Or not really.

BUT

my characters travel a lot. And although, they travel to countries I've never been to 😅, I thoroughly enjoy doing the research on the places, trying to comprehend the landscapes, the distances, the geography, the names, the special features that make that place unique and use it as a realistic backdrop. I had a really fun time with @stankris going through the UBC campus last year 😄

Even more so now, as we can't really travel anymore ...

So I come to think of it as my future holiday planning 😁 (some day *sigh*)

Of loss and love

@the-wip-project Day 3:

What’s your character’s motivation? What motivates them to act like they do?

Since my current wip is structured along with two timelines, the plot revolves around two protagonists, namely a 2020-young man, and his lost-and-found grandpa when himself was young, in 1950.

Let's start in chronological order:

Grandpa is young and is about to come of age in a changing world, when his own country is literally birthing itself, in the most violent manner: invaders taking advantage of a vulnerable people, setting them against one another in a ruthless clash. Changing times, changing norms. Almost everything this character knows is questioned: his upbringing, his family dynamics, his feelings, even the relative peace he enjoyed when a child. But he soon learns that the future is out of the question however; only the present counts. Needless to say, it is hard for this character to find his way in the middle of chaos, and to learn who he is, where his place is. As he figures out as he goes how to deal with survival, loss and love, with little guidance, some decisions are going to be drastic, and their consequences dramatic.

His grandson goes through the same process actually (I play a lot on coincidences and parallels) but in the modern world. Changes are not as dramatic, nor violent, but it doesn't mean there aren't any. They're here, undercover still, subdued, internal. And when he discovers a whole part of his origins has been kept hidden from him, the same questioning occurs, and with it the same themes, with the same potential rifts with his family. But rather than risking major upheavals in his life because losing the ones he loves scares him, he tries to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds (looove that phrase) and it works... for some time. But he can't avoid decisions to be taken too at some point; reconciliation is a decision, which parties have to agree on.

*rolls sleeves up to get to work* Right...

Thoughts On Having a Writing Partner

The first time I was published in the New Yorker was the most amazing thrill. A career highlight. Nothing will beat that feeling of seeing my drawing and idea printed in the pages of a magazine I’d been reading since I stole copies from my Dentist’s office in Perth. (Sorry, Dr Farrugia).

But there is an aspect to our trade with which every cartoonist or stand-up comic is intimately familiar:  and that is the solitude of being a ‘one-man-band’. For the highest of highs (rare) and the lowest of lows (frequent), there is nobody to share it with, outside of an on-looking spouse or a flatulent dog at your feet.

This week’s issue of the New Yorker prompted me to write this post about teaming-up with a fellow comedy writer for writing cartoons, since it may well be the record for the most publicly acknowledged* cartoonist duos in an issue of the New Yorker. *(Gag writers never used to be credited. I’ll explain below**.)

In 2018, after 15 years of freelancing as a cartoonist and having been published many times flying solo, I started collaborating with my friend and fellow comic, Scott Dooley to share the frequent anxiety (and sporadic joy) of submitting New Yorker cartoons.

I hadn’t done this before and immediately found it so enlightening. Watching one of my own ideas go through the filter of somebody else’s comedy brain-wiring and come out the other end with a lateral tag or alt. punch  I’d never have considered myself was addictive, and it suddenly clicked as to why there were such things as ‘writers rooms’. (I’m slow on the uptake.)

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A good partner is an editor, audience, fan and favorite author rolled into one. This goes for all business partners - not just writing partners. ~ eP