Tag: fancomics

The Potentate of Jarburg

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

About halfway through Elden Ring, I realized that the player’s character is the villain of the story.

At some point before the story begins, a manifest symbol of divine order called the “Elden Ring” was shattered by nefarious means, and the rulers of the land fought over its shards. Whether because of the battles or because of the nature of the shattering itself, everything is now in ruins.

As an outcast “Tarnished” warrior who has returned to the magical Lands Between, your job is to retrieve the shards of the Elden Ring from the fallen rulers and thereby restore the Golden Order of the once-great civilization. At least, that’s what you’re led to believe.

If you pay attention, you’ll notice that the society enabled by the Golden Order wasn’t so great. The ruling class built its civilization by subjugating other cultures in fantastically horrific ways. This isn’t subtext, exactly, but neither is it surtext – it’s simply the story told by the environment of the game.

You may think that perhaps, if you repair the Elden Ring and become the new Elden Lord, you’ll do better. You’ll burn the ruined vestiges of the old order and create a more just and fair society. The game defies this hope at every turn, however. For every kindness you attempt, you cause only more suffering.     

In more prosaic terms, almost every sidequest in Elden Ring ends badly.

The kind and modest Sorcerer Thops, who has developed a brilliant form of defensive magic, asks you to spare a key to the Academy of Raya Lucaria if you happen to find one. Should you do so, he is unprepared to face the dangers of the battleground the school has become, and he is slaughtered at his desk.

The gentle and noble Irina has fled from the besieged Castle Morne, and she asks you to deliver a letter to her father, beseeching him to join her instead of perishing in a hopeless battle. When you find Irina’s father, you learn that the castle was overtaken by the slaves he abused. Irina is slaughtered in your absence. This drives her father mad, and you are forced to kill him.

Meanwhile, Preceptor Seluvis, a member of the only group of good guys you encounter in Elden Ring, asks you to deliver a healing potion to one of your former companions. What this potion does is to turn her into a mindless “puppet.” This is an act of revenge against the woman’s adoptive father, with whom Seluvis has a feud that he never bothers to explain. It’s strongly implied that Seluvis uses his puppets as sex dolls, but this unsavory magic is necessary is help another female character. In order to save her from endless torture, you must agree to collude with Seluvis.

The only pure and wholesome place in Elden Ring is Jarburg, an isolated village filled with flowers and animate Living Jars. Living Jars are magical war machines that were abandoned because they happen to be extraordinarily bad at fighting. Should you visit Jarburg, you will be greeted by Jar Bairn, a young Living Jar who asks if you will become the Potentate of Jarburg. Jar Bairn will happily chat with you, and he has more lines than almost anyone else in the game. Aside from enjoying a few rounds of idle conversation, there’s nothing to do in Jarburg. There are no battles or treasures or quests, just Living Jars lazing about in the grass and tending to the flowers.

So the player will leave Jarburg – if they ever bother to find the village at all – and probably never return.

Instead, you’ll continue through the game, murdering and pillaging and destroying everything you encounter. Elden Ring doesn’t give you much of a choice. If you don’t kill something, it’s only because it succeeded in killing you first. You have to survive by any means necessary, even if that means leaving a trail of blood in your wake. In order to become the new Elden Lord, you must be utterly ruthless.

Along the way, you’ll bear witness to the atrocities committed by the former rulers of the Lands Between. You’ll gradually understand why this violence was necessary, and you’ll begin to realize that your own choices are limited. There is no happy end to this story, not for you or for anyone else.

So why finish the game, then? The former rulers are no longer in any position to subjugate anyone, and the formerly enslaved peoples are now free. Castles will crumble, and ancient cities will be forgotten, but the dead will finally be allowed to rest. Why not simply lay down your sword and allow the Lands Between to heal?

I am very bad at Elden Ring, which is an extremely difficult and punishing game. To make matters worse, no one in the game offers you real or meaningful guidance. On top of that, all of the guides available online are fragmentary, disconnected, and clearly written in haste. The artist Frankiesbugs is a veteran of the Soulsborne games, and she’s been patiently helping me find my way forward as we slowly navigate the Lands Between. Mostly we’ve been making silly jokes about the game’s shitty wizards and their appalling sense of fashion, but we wanted to try to create something a bit more serious that reflects the deeper themes of Elden Ring.

This collaborative comic is a tribute to a masterpiece of the medium that forces you to ask difficult questions with no easy answers. I have to admit that I may not ever finish Elden Ring, but maybe that’s okay. It wouldn’t be so bad to be the Potentate of Jarburg.

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You can follow Frankiesbugs on Twitter (here), on Tumblr (here), and on Instagram (here). If you like this comic, you can leave Frankiesbugs a tip on Ko-fi (here) and browse her creepy-cute Plague Doctor merch on Redbubble (here). If you’re interested in stylish gothic horror with a heart, please check out Frankiesbugs’s ongoing comic Necrobirth, which you can read on Tapas (here), on Webtoon (here), or on Tumblr (here).  

Wanderers

~ Kathryn

This comic was written by me and drawn by LunaArtGallery, whose work can be found on Tumblr, on Instagram, and on Twitter. You can read their commentary on the piece on their Tumblr post (here).

Given that the universe of the Legend of Zelda games is characterized by its disparate timelines, I’d like to think that there’s at least one timeline in which Zelda and Ganondorf work out their differences peacefully instead of enacting the cycle of destruction brought about by a war between two ancient gods. Every game in the series is filled with abandoned ruins that Link explores but never questions, so it might be interesting for Zelda and Ganondorf to seek out the truth underlying the legends that have shaped their lives. This idea was inspired by the game Journey, which is about bearing witness to the mistakes of the past in a quest for atonement and enlightenment. If we ever get to play as Zelda, it would be lovely for her adventure to take her in a similarly compelling direction.

Only Power Remains

~ Kathryn

Only Power Remains is an Ocarina of Time fancomic that explores the backstory of Ganondorf, the iconic villain of the Legend of Zelda games. According to the series lore, Ganondorf was the only male child born to the Gerudo, and otherwise all-female society living in the desert at the border of the kingdom of Hyrule. Through a series of connected scenes, Only Power Remains investigates how Ganondorf grew from a strong-willed boy to a power-hungry warlord.

This comic is a fascinating and insightful exploration of Ganondorf’s backstory that rings true to the Legend of Zelda canon while still being accessible to casual fans of the series. It also stands on its own as a cohesive story, and I would happily recommend it to curious readers who may not be familiar with the details of the Zelda games. Louisa Roy’s writing is sharp and original, and her vibrant and expressive art does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of introducing and developing established characters.

In her extensive “Author Notes” at the end of the zine, Roy explains that she especially enjoyed drawing Ganondorf’s childhood interactions with a merchant in Hyrule Castle Town. The merchant is disrespectful during their first meeting, as he sees Ganondorf as nothing more than a bratty kid. Ganondorf therefore learns the Hylian language spoken by the merchant in order to come back a year later and verbally cut him down before taking what he wants from his stock of musical instruments. Without becoming too political, Roy conveys the tensions of cultural differences, and there’s a certain charm in watching Ganondorf slice through the Gordian knot of xenophobic stereotypes.

The supporting cast receives a similar level of nuance and sympathy, especially Nabooru, a Gerudo leader who eventually rebels against Ganondorf. With Nabooru, as with Ganondorf, the reader is given a sense that the tragic story of the Gerudo could have gone a different way had circumstances been even slightly different. The comic ventures into many unexplored corners of Hyrule during its journey, but the artist’s design work is brilliant and remains faithful both to the world of the games and to their real-life cultural influences.

Only Power Remains is far from the first Legend of Zelda fancomic created by Louisa Roy, who has published a number of zines featuring side stories that allow the minor characters in the games to shine in their own heroic (or antiheroic) light. The publication quality of these comic zines is consistently excellent, from the layout to the lettering to the cover design. You can follow the artist as @om_nom_berries on Twitter and @om-nom-berries on Tumblr, and you can find her comics on her website (here) and browse through her zines on Etsy (here). If you’re interested in Only Power Remains, you can check out the listing is (here).