Chronorin

Oh, damn... so in addition to The Acolyte, I have this to look forward to?

Ha, they finally did it... they're finally going to explain what happened to Barriss Offee! Which is awesome! ......although it will certainly go against what happened in my silly little droid comic, of course.... but then again, I *do* have a possibly retcon in mind. Star Wars is best when being retconned.

^__^

In case you're wondering, I've already started work on the next Droid Ahsoka comic. It was delayed because I've been working on that Anomaly/Atron comic for Patreon, which is NEARLY done, except for a few bonus images.

But I am telling you this, and I want you to hold me to it. In a week or so, when it's done, I will restart work on Droid Ahsoka, and apart from Slimer Janine and a cool Moth-woman sequence for one of my patrons, I WILL WORK ON NOTHING ELSE.

I am putting this is concrete. I will spend the rest of 2024 and all of 2025 working primarily on Droid Ahsoka. I will NOT be doing any commissions. You have to understand, I CAN'T. I'm always honored when someone asks me to draw their character, but I can't do it anymore.

I can't do it because to make it worth my while, I'd have to charge far more than I do. I'd have to be charging $150 or something stupid like that. And I'd never do that.

Look, AI is changing everything. It's already changed everything in the last year -- what do you think it's going to be like a year from now, two years from now? When it comes to producing single images of a symbiote or a cybergirl, I can't compete. The only thing of value I can make at this point are comics, with humor and storylines. That's all my sad human brain can do that the AI can't (yet.)

Okay, didn't mean for this to go so hopeless.

Things have been rough lately.

But there's always Star Wars.

Now that I've gotten into audiobooks, I'm even listening to the High Republic novels on my long commutes. The Light of the Jedi, The Rising Storm, all of that stuff.

I love it.

BARRISS OFFEE.

Ooh...

...the longer Star Wars goes on, the clearer the bigger picture becomes.

Like most people, when I first saw The Force Awakens in 2015, it felt weird and off to me that the galaxy was being plunged back into a state of war. I assumed that the Sequels would start with a peaceful, happy New Republic where Palpatine and the Empire had been swept under the rug, but then... some new villain would emerge, a phantom menace if you will, working in the shadows to make the Dark Side great again.

But I was thinking too small. I had my face two inches from the screen. I wanted all the answers NOW.

As years went by, we learned the war paused, but never fully stopped. Star Wars has been all about a long, continuous period of war -- the Clone Wars, the Empire, the Rebellion, the struggling New Republic vs. Thrawn, and then the First Order/Final Order.

Is it dark? Sure. But certainly reflective of real life.

I think back to the best times in America -- 1989, 1996, 2000, 2009, 2022 -- when people sat back and said, okay, we won, the evil is gone, only good times lie ahead for us now. And it's never true, because shit just starts up again.

But this Acolyte show? It reminds me of what I thought the start of The Force Awakens was going to be. The galaxy is orderly, things are good, but there's our phantom menace lurking in the shadows, the first tiny hint of the Dark Side emerging after a thousand years.

It's a much bigger picture than I thought in 2015. A much larger story.

And what about the post-TROS era that we'll see in the Rey movie in 2026?

THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO SEE MORE THAN ANYTHING.

^__^

Phew... I know a lot of you don't like AI art in principle, but I gotta say, I'm a huge fan of Watermute and his Stable Diffusion-generated slimes. I mean, look at these...

....check out his whole gallery.

Watermute, you are doing great work.

^__^

Arrrrrrrrgh.

Man, I feel like I'm going crazy here. Dune Part II is finally out, everyone is going to see it, and also raving about how great it is. My best friend up in DC just saw it, and texted me for an hour about it.

I WANT TO SEE IT.

But I can't. Not just yet. For one thing, my brother might actually go with me to see it, but we'll have to wait a little while because he hates crowds. On top of that, I apparently have to take some bullshit "refresher course" for my job... which means that I'll have to spend several hours in Nashville during the afternoon when I'm normally asleep. Ugh, that's going to wreck me. But I have to get that scheduled soon, and that takes precedence.

>__<

Sigh... as I write this, I'm stuck at my least favorite work site. The dirty and nasty one that's very far away from where I live. This feels just like the holidays in 2022, when I was stuck alone here and reading the reactions of people who were seeing Wakanda Forever and Avatar: The Way of Water, and screaming oh god, you pathetic loser, why do you have to be a drawing-addicted night shift weirdo who can't even have a normal life where you're off on weekends and can just go see a movie like a normal person? Why???

Crap. I always feel that way. I always feel like I'm missing out.

Oh, well. At least Dune Part II is the rare blockbuster that is actually making more money than projected, which means of course that we'll eventually get the third film, Dune Messiah. Denis Villeneuvre said that he'll probably be done after that, but if the whole trilogy makes a ton of money? Then surely the greedy studio heads will hire someone else to make Children of Dune, and maybe even... God Emperor of Dune?

That's the goal right there, that's what we're working towards, people, we're working towards seeing the God Emperor!

^__^

Casuals don't even know. They have no idea how weird Dune becomes after the more conventional first chapter.

The gholas. The space Jews. The Butlerian Jihad. The Oracle of Time. Omnius and Erasmus.

...plus, it would be really funny to see people online get all butthurt when women take over the galaxy and Dune "goes woke."

If you haven't read the books, it's important to keep in mind that while Paul Atreides might be the protagonist, he's not a super good guy who does everything right. The whole point of his life is that he does everything that he thinks he has to do, he has to stand up and be a real man -- he avenges his father, kills his enemies, becomes incredibly powerful, gets married and has kids...

...but the more he is able to see the future, the more he realizes that he's trapped by fate. Every decision he makes is preordained by what happened before, and he's just perpetuating the same cycle of violence and death. It's like if Luke Skywalker took the Emperor's place at the end of Return of the Jedi and vowed to make the galaxy better, but ended up becoming just another Emperor.

He does eventually break free of this trap, but he doesn't get a happy ending. Not at all. At least not for a long time.

Heh... come on, imagine seeing the God Emperor explain that his massive army is made up of genetically-modified super women, because women are better at forming cohesive units while armies of men inevitably turn to domination and depravity. Imagine Jason Momoa waking up in this future and being shocked when he sees two female soldiers making out, and being told, oh, how hilariously old-fashioned you are, Duncan, the universe has changed so much since the time of Paul Atreides, you really are from the caveman times, my boy. And then he meets Siona Atreides, who doesn't like him very much, and they squabble a lot, and he's told that even though Siona is a slender young woman, because of the genetic modifications that people have gotten over the years, she could snap his neck easily if she felt like it.

Imagine if that happened in Star Wars. Imagine if Kylo Ren was smarting off to Rey Skywalker, but then General Pryde said, bro, watch what you say, she could punch you in the chest and make your heart explode with minimal effort.

^___^

Nooo!! Dune went woke!!!

Ahhh haa haa, goddamn, I want to see that on the screen so badly. The discourse would be truly magnificent. Look, Frank Herbert was unquestionably a chad, but he was also a simp and a white knight when it came to women.

.

.

[ time skip ]

....oh god.

All of a sudden, all thoughts of seeing Dune have evaporated.

Family crisis. My brother is just in bad shape. He can't sleep. He has a ton of health problems. My sister-in-law is sick. One of our dogs is... very old, and getting near the end. And now I feel like shit because the stress and pain in this house is rubbing off on me. I've seen so many coworkers over the years decline, and get sicker and sicker, and now I see it happening to my only family members and it's poisoning me.

This is a bad time. I came home in a good mood, but then things fell apart.

My brother... I don't know, he needs to take time off work and get help. He needs serious medical help for a range of issues. He's spent so much time in the last year or so focusing on buying guns, buying motorcycles, stuff like that, when he should have been ignoring all of that and trying to get healthy. But this is America where people just keep staggering forward one day at a time until they drop. But I feel like we're reaching a breaking point here.

>__<

I need to straighten up my act, too. I've been getting blazed and vanishing into movies too much. I've been doing that for three years now and I need a break. I need to just... start over, right now, today, and take things one step at a time. A clean reset. Wake up. Drink water. Shower. Take dogs out. Drive to work. Schedule that damn class. One foot in front of the other.

This is one of those days when everything is hard and we're just barely surviving.

Do you have days like that?

If there's one drawing I wish I could go back in time and un-create, it's this entry I did in 2015 for DeviantART's Rick and Morty contest (it didn't win.)

When I drew this, Donald Trump had only recently announced that he was running for President, and almost no one thought that the dumb psychopath could actually win, so the idea of "Trumpworld" seemed ludicrous and funny...

.

... but it's not so funny anymore. And when I look at this today, I realize... wait, 2015? That was nine years ago. It was the Obama era. I worked on this mostly at a workplace called "Old Hickory" that no longer exists. I was still living in Murfreesboro. The Force Awakens hadn't been released yet, and the two most recent Marvel movies were Avengers: The Age of Ultron and Ant-Man.

That disgusting orange piece of shit has been invading our lives since Ultron, dude. That's insane.

I feel bad for the zoomers who barely remember a world before Trump and the terrible, destructive effects he's had on our country. My best friend has a young nephew who has never known the world before. That's tragic. But his nephew is a very smart and sensitive kid, and despises Trump and everything he stands for. So that's a hopeful sign.

2015.

>__<