[ c y n t h i a ]

for Blair: "Pokemon League Champions of Instagram: Cynthia." inspired by insane photos of dudes in Qatar and the UAE hanging out with pet lions and such.

ridiculous semester has wound down and is mortally-wounded-ducking to the finish. i want to paint more. happy holidays.

/.n [while watching "Bad Santa"]

[ t h e _ b o n e _ g a r d e n ] - 2014

Halloween. hello, love.

going back to the June 5 entry below, you will see mention of the new Halloween project... for the first time a collaboration, and with my beautiful new bride at that. tremendous progress was made in May and early June! and then. then. conference in Albuquerque, complete with Breaking Bad location hunting and incredible hustling to finish a manuscript, more science, the rather substantial matter of planning our wedding and completing requisite art/design!, and a new semester in which i assumed entirely too many responsibilities and began as an 80h/week kind of debacle.

the good news:
 • the conference was rad, we did all the things, the talk went well and led to a guest blog post that got just shy of 2,500 unique views in the first week (see here or at my own This reView of Life).
 • the wedding was the most splendid engagement possible, with a reunion of my world-scattered crew for Only The Best shenanigans. we treated my boys and girls to a tour of Fermilab on the morning of the wedding. quoth Dr Cognac, "Neil knows how to groom a wedding right." J surprised me with a whiskey-infused, bacon-topped groom's cake crowned with a legitimate 1993 Kenner JP Velociraptor. yes. next semester should see a ramping-down of this fall's ridiculous workload (before it begins anew next fall).
 • and lastly, i've been hit up for artwork for a new band. no deets yet.

"The Bone Garden" is coming. it will just be a while yet. i may end up redoing a good amount of the art that's already cooked... we shall see.

as always, i wish you every dark satisfaction on this night. to that end, i would point you at my new favorite comic artist Abby Howard's ongoing magnum opus that i Kickstarted the s out of. it is called "The Last Halloween" and you need it in your life.

honor the season.

/.n [while watching "Tales from the Hood"]

[ d e e p _ o f _ t h e _ w e l l _ I N _ D E P T H ]

in case you missed it, we shall below discuss the 2012 Halloween epic "Deep of the Well." here are some spoiler-laden bits of art to entice you, should you have been a stubborn jerkface last time 'round.

it was well received and i think it pretty clearly features some of my best art, but the highly divergent interpretations of the story are perhaps most interesting.

the core of the tale is one that i'd wanted to write for years: an overwhelming force annihilated through its underestimation of an apparently fragile but incredibly, even perversely dangerous nymph/mermaid/whatever. the "Hubristic Stroll Into Utter Ruin" trope is one of my favorite, and one that is tremendously difficult to pull off properly. having written this thing i can't adequately judge how close i got, but despite my best efforts through narrative misdirection, the dream appeal, and the nubile appearance of the nymph, i'd wager that i fell short. the two examples that come first to mind are from:

1) the end of Matheson's "Hell House," in which the intellectual protagonist appears to save the day Through Science! before being brutally ghostmurdered in one of the most well-written evocations of nightmare logic of all time.

2) choice scenes in King's "It," in which the protagonists return as bold adults to confront a childhood bogeyman before discovering that it is in fact a nearly omnipotent, transdimensional, malevolent god and they are three feet from it. the end cops out big-time, but there are a few bits along the road that... *shudder*

i've spent a long time in reflection on why this potent device resonates with me so. it seems to hinge on the simple fact that the times i have gotten into the most nauseating, existence-threatening trouble in my life, i not two minutes earlier thought that i was an unimpeachable Force For Good. the sudden and horrifying subversion of one's position in such a way is at the core of nightmare.

i love it when it doesn't happen to me.

anyway, this one was a long time slow-cookin' after i decided to use a mermaid as the core, having reevaluated their potential through, no joke, things like Dethklok, strange Japanese novels, and my usual old investigations of comparative myth. i knew that i wanted her to be a siren, to sing with an unearthly bass (one of my favorite phrases from the story is "Three notes, so deep as to maul bedrock."), and to wield power sufficient to murder every trifling fool within miles.

"Deep of the Well" began as a straight-forward (well, as far as these things can be) story along the lines above. the dream appeal and its ambiguity given the final scene were always critical: what exactly did she want from Agenor? to call off the dogs, as he thought? to join her in nuptial bliss? to consume him? one of my greatest satisfactions in publishing this story has been receiving messages from readers who have come to profoundly different conclusions on its outcome and fundamental message.

early drafts of the script implied that the cynical interpretation was most likely correct, but as i painted this thing, i softened the text. i added hooks (e.g. the farmer's unreliable testimony) to cast doubt on deliberate malice by the nymph... even if the old man may have been completely right in the end. much like Agenor, i was mollified by her call.

my brother, who knows me better than do all humans save perhaps J, had one of the most interesting interpretations of the tale that fits with these adjustments to the narrative. he saw it as allegorical for my relationship with J (we moved in together a month after i started the project), in which i chose her over my wilder days in grad school and the influence of my Sigma brothers. beyond the general arc of the story, he noted the resemblance of some of the mages to my crew, and the likeness of the moon and partner to an engagement ring.

sharp kid, that one. i think he knows my subconscious well. a frightening thought. apologies for the things you've seen in there, bro.

there is lots more one could touch on, of course: the witch-hunt to distract the republic from its long decay, further symbolism, the art itself. it grows late - maybe another day.

"The Bone Garden" is coming, hopefully in October.

/.n [while listening to Dethklok]

[ r e b o o t ] / [ n o s t a l g i a _ L I V E ]

iceandshadows.com mk ii be live.

nearly a decade is sufficient; it was time to reboot this bad boy. the previous layout's legacy code went all the way back to the inception of i&s.com in 2004. clearly this reincarnation is shiny and clean and new[ly reverse engineered], and went with a long-needed rebranding of this blog.

while i am appallingly truant on every substantial obligation this summer, the new Halloween project is well underway. this one is a first: a collaboration(!), and with my one and only J. when i told my brother about this joint venture he was extremely surprised, having seen how jealously i guard these things from any and all other eyes.

so! good things coming. get money.

these showed up this week, lending credence to the suggestion that they do in fact exist. they printed well; i am pleased.

bro and bride are moving to Virginia at summer's end, so i should have an opportunity at some point to see DBK perform live again. that i am unable to recall exactly how many years it's been since i last witnessed their stylings in person is sufficient reason to get on this.

/.n [while listening to Macklemore & Ryan Lewis]