{"id":3606,"date":"2016-07-12T20:51:35","date_gmt":"2016-07-13T02:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/?p=3606"},"modified":"2016-07-12T20:51:35","modified_gmt":"2016-07-13T02:51:35","slug":"profanity-vs-originality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/?p=3606","title":{"rendered":"Profanity vs Originality"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_3145\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Before “By the unknowable breasts of Marduk. What is that?!” came “Holy fucking shit what the fuuuuck?!” and a bunch of other attempts that got erased on the final page until I had to paint over the faded colored pencil lines, which had formed into a mush of red and blue. <\/p>\n

For how often I use profanities in my comics, there is a huge imaginary trash bin filled with discarded fucks and shits. I don’t find cursing inherently funny – what’s funny I guess is the heightened level of expression coming from the character who is cursing. Sometimes there’s nothing else to say but “Holy fuck.” Holy Fuck, though is super broad and its overuse can be fatiguing. It doesn’t lead us anywhere in terms of understanding a character, except that they have a toilet mouth, so its use depends on how quickly I want to breeze through that panel. <\/p>\n

In the case of this page, I wasn’t satisfied with the original dialog, because as the final panel, I wanted there to be more to dwell on than just surprise and awe combined with jokey profanity. I almost settled on “The unknowable balls of Marduk” at first but even then, the reference to balls felt too stock\/easy as a go to silly visual. Using breasts as the image is less immediately funny, more reverent and evocative to me. It has an ambient humor that resonates after reading. It also recalls a character referenced in the first volume of Forming (if you remember): Marduk, the legendary fighter who Serapis fears and who trained Atys in a higher dimension. <\/p>\n

I don’t know how interesting this is, but I actually censor myself a lot, even though it might seem like I don’t at all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before “By the unknowable breasts of Marduk. What is that?!” came “Holy fucking shit what the fuuuuck?!” and a bunch of other attempts that got erased on the final page until I had to paint over the faded colored pencil lines, which had formed into a mush of red and blue. For how often I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3606"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3608,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3606\/revisions\/3608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}