My favourite thing about the latest Twitter meltdown is all the artists reanimating their dead Tumblr accounts today and immediately being greeted with hundreds of notes because even a Tumblr account they literally have not posted to in 3–5 years has more active and engaged followers than the Twitter account that they’ve been updating daily.
Review by Oasis Nadrama, 05/07/2023 (up to page 722)
Moderate spoilers for the beginning of the comic
[Drawing by Lupa]
Wake Up starts with a resounding failure. A SGRUB session fails. But how does it fail exactly? Through the memories of the survivors, we are about to discover the truth…
The fundamental gimmick of the story is its greatest strength: it plays like an extended version of archetypal P.O.V. episodes or movies, embracing each character’s perspective, one after another. This allows us to better understand their struggles, their hopes, their flaws, and to develop significant empathy for their ordeal.
The SBURB Lands also benefit from the point-of-view approach, the prolonged focus envelops us in a thick and legendary atmosphere, a potential the original Homestuck webcomic had but never developed adequately. The planets are wild and lush, teeming with life and myths, and the local consort population is more adorable, brave and in need of saviors than it ever was. Considerable groundwork is spent on the lore of the Lands, with appreciable results.
The P.O.V. approach, in the end, also provides good pacing, with unpredictable pauses, interruptions, timeskips and development of the past events, as well as the usual amount of troll bickering.
Alternian culture wouldn’t be Alternian culture without the daily amount of mauling, passive-agressivity, direct agressivity and detestation. [Drawing by Lupa]
About the trolls, well, what a dynamic cast! They sure are… interesting. Involving. Lovable. And hatable. Some extreme personalities are at work, some of them incredibly detestable (Blaiek…), and they all resonate with each other in all kinds of fun way. A success of an ensemble cast, made only better by the fact that Wake Up is the one work which does explore in-depth the social implications of the hemospectrum ideology.
The bloodism-related dynamics EXPLODE here, with an incredible amount of struggles, hidden or semi-hidden blackmailing, fetishization of lowbloods by highbloods and the reverse… 50 shades of interpersonal abuse, ultraviolent group mechanics, shattering of entire groups, invisible barriers, all of the stereotypes and dead angles in the world, complete brainwashing for some, the works.
This ultra-realistic, if extremely bleak, picture of prejudice is part of the soul of Wake Up, and we can only pray that it inspires other fanworks to follow in this promising path. The ethical, philosophical and political relevance of the approach is surpassed only by the intensity it provides to the interpersonal relationships and to the workings of the group.
Blaiek, the most disgusting being ever known to trollind. [Drawing by Lupa]
The drawings are excellent. The author and artist of Wake Up, Lupa, works in the animation industry and one can quickly see he’s a professional. The color palettes are on-point, the lineart impeccable, the poses energetic, the character designs well characterized, and there’s a lot of expressivity to every face, to every body. The style fits well with the conflictual and often hostile nature of the relationships here, and is also well attuned to atmospheric moments as well as to action sequences. Altogether the visual facet is beyond criticism.
So are there any flaws in this webcomic? Well, regrettably, the beginning is kinda weak. There’s some classical setup and erratic introductions. The author is aware of the problems and revised the first act in order to sharpen it. It is, at least, serviceable, and contains some funny and interesting aspects.
It is worth it to advance through the first pages and to reach the big story twist.
“Welcome to my Youtube channel! Today we’ll learn how to use alchemy!” [Drawing by Lupa]
Because, yeah, there is this twist.
And this gimmick.
This raw approach.
Once again, the P.O.V. gimmick is Wake Up’s greatest strength. From the moment the trick truly appears, from the moment the characters start uttering their tales, the narration will grab you by the collar, carry you screaming and throw you in the well of neverending twists and tragedies.
Jesus Christ, when was the last time a swede did anything useful?
What the fuck those streets were before cars, fucking playgrounds and parks with waterslides?
Or did people commute on them, on the level of whatever technology they were on, the vere purpose they were built for since the first city?
I’m trying my best not to automatically dislike artists, I really do, but sometimes I just wish I could send them milking cows or shoveling gravel.
@santaclausdeadindian “What the fuck were those streets before cars, fucking playgrounds?”
Yes, actually.
[description: a black-and-white photo from the 1900s of a group of girls in pinafores standing in the middle of the street; according to the website I found it on, this is a ‘street dance’. The girls are talking to each other in small groups. end description.]
Children used to play in the street all the time. And for most of recorded history, that was relatively safe. Running into someone on foot is not going to kill a child, and horses - let alone carriages- were relatively rare.
Streets used to be public spaces. People would hang out and talk in the middle of the road, or set up shop with a little cart at the side of the road. “Right of way” used to mean “your right to take up space on the street, because you are a free citizen and free citizens get to use the road.”
[description: a black-and-white historical photo of two children in the middle of a mostly empty street. One child is sitting in a wagon, and the other child is standing, ready to pull it. End description.]
It wasn’t until the 19th century that it became common enough for your average joe to own horses that it was unsafe for kids to play in the street (and they still did anyway!). And it wasn’t until the early 20th century that people got cleared off of the street in favour of cars- before then, people and horses and carriages had to share the road, and carriages had to go at the same pace as whatever was around them.
We laugh at the insanely low speed limits of the 1910s and 1920s - really, cars can only go at 3 mph?- but they were there for a reason, and that reason was “to keep the roads safe for horses and pedestrians”. If cars could go at top speeds on city roads, they’d only be safe for cars, and people couldn’t use their public spaces anymore. But thanks to lobbying by the auto industry and a whoooole lot of PR spin, that’s exactly what happened.
I’m going to leave you with two pictures. The first is Mulberry Street in NYC, according to wikipedia, in 1900. The second is Mulberry Street today.
[Description: two photos of city streets. The first photo is sepia-toned, from the 1900s. It shows a city street full of people and carriages. The foreground of the photo is taken up by a group of vegetable sellers, and a group of men and young children standing beside them looking at the camera. The second photo is a modern photo of the same street. It is a heavily decorated tourist district, but most of the street is taken up by cars. The sidewalks are crowded with pedestrians, but they’re shoved off to the side. End description.]
Little Italy is a tourist district. It is meant to be walkable so that tourists can browse and look at all the little restaurants and window-shop. And yet 75% of this picture is taken up by a fucking car canal, and people- the people this street was built for - are shoved off to the side, so as not to get in the way.
People got forced off the road in favour of cars. People got forced out of public space in favour of cars.
As a bisexual person I’m keenly aware of how such stereotypes are inevitably harmful to us, but unfortunately when I see bisexuals in fiction who are Evil and stylish and fuck like champions I can’t help but go “oh work” for a sec. It’s a difficult conundrum
A bizarre number of references to CATS (dir. Hooper, 2019).
Plot twists so massive you’ll be dropping your damn jaw to the floor.
…And more!
It faces long odds to success, so it needs all the support it can get. If you want to make sure that LGBTQ+ indie fantasy can still triumph in 2023, then please read and fall in love with Systemless Vol. 1 today!
Hey, check out this amazing post-modernist queer novel! It has so many ideas! :) I can’t believe the cool things thedude3445/B.A Baker is doing these days!
Also check their other works! A lot of mature, positive and powerful queer science fiction!
An important part of making art is just not doing anything. Just letting weird stuff percolate. Absorbing more or less useless information and then pinning it onto a cork board like a terrible alcoholic detective but with no thread, just things pinned to other things and most of the things are just two word phrases like ANCIENT CRAB and DIRT LABYRINTH and MEAT CASTLE that don’t mean anything. Just moving through the world, making nothing, eating bread, having prophetic dreams and letting insane thoughts build up and up and up until they can finally crystallize into something that exists outside of your body and you can enter a blissfully thought free phase of your life where you just get to glue small objects to other small objects for 18 hours straight
Unfortunately the other part of making art is actually making it
