-Message to ″headless herald of hexadecimal hackery″- ″Sup. What are we gonna do about that webcomic idea?″ ″I would need you to write it, otherwise I don′t know what to draw. Also how do you intend to pay me?″ ″Just wanted to check in if you′re still interested. What do you mean, we′ll get money from selling merch and s... ″Don′t even try claiming that it will finance itself, I know comic artists, it′s never profitable″ I delete the message ″Don′t worry, I′ve still got a bit of cash, and I can write some articles for a quick buck″ ″Fair enough, but you′ll have to pay for each page in advance.″ ″And write comprehensive, comprehensible scene descriptions, from the explanation, it really wasn′t clear what tone you′re going for″ ″Okay, picture some insane posturban clusterpunk bullshit with metasensical absurdo abstractivist elements″ ″Hold it right there, that sound sick, and real aesthetic, but those descriptors don′t mean anything. Posturban doesn′t even sound like a word. Be concrete and this is gonna be dope.″ ″Yeah, I′ll send you some shit later″ In a strange state of inspired panic, I open Word. Last-edited turns out to not be anything related to the comic. Barely even three lines of text. ″My brain is broken, my mind is melting, and my psyche splattered across an uncountable number of unfinished documents but it′s thankless thinking with this corpse of a cortex, this cracked cranium full of incoherent ideas″ Sort of ironic for that to be the message of an obviously directionless, unpolished and unfinished piece of writing from a me that was either very tired or very drunk. Doesn′t matter. Delete. ″Hey brother, care for a good time?″ called the coarse voice of a man, whose lung had clearly come into contact with more THC than oxygen, from a dark alleyway, trying to sell either bitches or drugs. I didn′t look to check which, seeing how I couldn′t afford either. ″dark alleyway″ in these parts at least is only a contextually meaningful descriptor, since someone from pretty much anywhere else would consider the street I was running through at that very moment a particularly dark specimen. It had however not the slightest chance of comparing to the sheer amount of unfiltered lumodeficiency and delinquency that radiated from the offshoot the dealer/pimp called his own.″ What? No! This is a comic and not a fucking novel. Also wasn′t the protagonist supposed to be a hoodrat himself, why would he think/talk like this then? Fuck this, tabularaza the shit out of that and start from scratch. Jesus! ″ya′ll n****s...″ Can I say ″N****s″? It would be kind of immersion breaking if I didn′t, or rather the characters didn′t. Not me who′s talking after all. On the other hand I′m pretty sure that′s not something those who would get upset over it are likely to care about. I could just claim that I am black, which is arguably even more racist, but they leave me no choice. Sacrifices have to be made to preserve the believability of a story. Words flow onto digital paper the way it has always been. Opening a document and reemerging from the trance once a substantial amount of words has come to fill it. The text rarely even correlates to the thing that had been thought up, if there even was earlier consideration of what the white space might hold. It′s fascinating. Getting up is hard, speaking is hard, remembering is hard, but thinking? Thinking is passive. Not thinking is impossible and writing is just thinking while sitting at a keyboard. Paragraphs about a young man trading the keys to a run down apartment to some thugs in exchange for them pretending to pursue him through the neighborhood replace nothingness. The chase, accompanied by gunshots, leads down the complex′s stairwell, through busy streets, a woman′s kitchen window and some dimly lit alleyways, one of which contains a bar called ″Exisle″. Only the letters E-s-l of the neon sign are illuminated in a slightly on the nose reference to the cult classic ″Regilith- The king′s rubble″. The so far and henceforth unnamed main character, a morally light grey scam artist, upon bursting through the door, meets his contact. The journalist pulls on his cap twice as a signal, though this isn′t remotely necessary, as his nervous demeanor and pretend-poor style of clothing make him stick out like a sore thumb. He is dressed the way I would if I were to attempt to fit in in the huts, something I would imagine to be entirely unconvincing. As the outsider scrolls through a newsfeed, reporting on the commotion outside, he is approached by the main character, whereupon they engage in some banter about who blew their cover more. The scam artist′s chase outside was of course a farce to present the image of someone worth chasing. He trades a USB-drive of unknown content against a decent amount of cash before ordering two whiskeys, the joke being that the bar owner is a Cuban refugee who does not speak English, every order therefore resulting in a mystery drink, something the reporter did not expect. The main character′s scheme of unknown purpose proves successful as the two men part ways amicably. That′s a good start, keeping things unexplained, building mystery. Good shit. I should ask Jerald if the ″Exisle″ thing is too on the nose though. Explicitly mentioning that the owner is Cuban so quickly after establishing the establishment seems kinda cheap, as opposed to simply having him talk with an accent, or acknowledging his origin later in the comic, when the audience has gotten used to the bar′s name. Whatever. that stuff can be ironed out later, for now this is a pretty solid hook. A bit of Momchelo... ah shit, it′s empty... A swig of actual whisky to celebrate then! Just as I lift the bottle to my lips and tilt my head backwards in a ″strangely cartoonish″ manner which was once described as ″Clearly indicating that [I] value the aesthetic of excessive drinking almost as much as the act itself″, Lloyd enters the room, contorting his face in a combination of pity and disgust. ″You made it to the kitchen, I see″ ″Prepare to be even more impressed, as I tell you that I sleepwalked there from Lo′s room″ ″Apart from the fact that I somehow find that less impressive than you moving your waking ass self to the ground floor; why the fuck were you in Lo′s room? Is he actually here for a change?″ ″Nah, I just ate his stuff. Also talked to him for a bit but, like, in messages, wrote some scenes for a webcomic... Pretty productive day overall if you ask me. If that was all the same day.″ ″Man, I haven′t seen the guy in months now. I see how this house isn′t particularly welcoming to socially competent people, but still. Does he have a new girlfriend?″ ″Haven′t heard anything since the space girl broke up with him″ ″Catherine?″ ″Yes. Who else could I possibly mean by that?″ ″I don′t know? I just find it weird that she got a cool sounding nickname″ ″Just going with what fits, there are no personal feelings involved, freeloader.″ ″Good to know. Say hi to Lo if you talk to him again, he never responds to me.″ ″Will do. After I empty this bottle that is.″ ″You can′t be serious″ ″I wasn′t, but after that challenge: Watch me!″ A two thirds full bottle of hard liquor doesn′t go down as easily as a few cans of Momchelob, but it has the interesting effect of numbing my throat after the first few gulps, making the sensation of the liquid flowing down into my stomach almost surreal. Lloyd either hasn′t dropped his disgusted expression over the duration of our talk, or he has chosen to reuse it now. ″I′m going to bed, try not to throw up on the floor again.″ I enjoy a few more minutes of almost sobriety before my vison cuts out.