Decrypting Rita by Margaret Trauth (Egypt Urnash) - Comic - 2015
Decrypting Rita by Margaret Trauth (Egypt Urnash) - Comic - 2015
When the fastest woman ever built is dragged outside of reality by her ex-boyfriend, she's got to pull herself together across four parallel worlds before a hive-mind can take over the planet.
“That rarest and most refreshing of things: a science–fiction story that feels like it comes from the future. It's marvelous, in the true sense of the word!”
-Phil Foglio
"A robot lady is dragged outside of reality by her ex-boyfriend. Deliriously confusing and addictive… it’s kind of wonderful."
– Peter Watts"Seriously folks, if you haven’t looked at Decrypting Rita yet you really ought to. Very post-singularity, much upload, wow."
– Charlie Stross
First off, a big thank you to the author @anthracite, for giving me permission to post her work. Marked as OC as it's her original content.
This is one of those works that breaks the traditional boundaries of the medium its presented in. The art style is vivid, and integral to the interweaving narrative as the protagonist moves through multiple realities. For such an ambitious work, it's remarkably tightly written, with a subtly and depth lacking in traditional comic work. Trauth's styling is unique - combining art-deco, surrealism, and pop-art with intensely strong linework and dynamic framing with the compositional skill of Lichenstein. This is not your average comic - this is a unique piece of art and an excellent story.
I should really add the Stross and Watts quotes to the front page of the site one of these days. Thanks for the kind words!
(and fwiw my style on that is firmly grounded in 1950s post-cubist cartooning - animation design like Maurice Noble and Mary Blair, album covers by Jim Flora, etc. "Mid-century Modern" is what this vibe has been named in recent decades; you'll find a lot of it in the work of pretty much any GenX animator, especially once digital tools made it super easy to work without outlines.)
My pleasure - and I really mean that. On personal note, your work is inspiring me on both a creative and intellectual level. It brings validation to personal experiences between separate consensual realities, and the struggle to unite them into a coherent narrative of the individual that encompasses all facets of the multiple realities they experience. Your work immediately grabbed me as this is a concept I've been turning over in my mind for years.
In fact, I even struggle to find the language to describe the phenomena, even though all of us move through "real" reality, dreams, the semi-reality of the internet and video games, imagination, novels, movies, and all of the places in-between - becoming a different role, a different character in each space, and often a different person to each new mind we meet.
Which one is the real person? Or are they all real and just too big to fit into our concept of what we consider a person?
Oh, and Mid-Century Modern - of course! I totally blanked on the term when posting - thanks!
Mysticism gives us concepts to answer these questions with such as "higher self" or "HGA" or "oversoul" or even "god", and which one you use can raise all kinds of questions.
More mundanely the language of furry is useful for the day-to-day role shifting. My adminsona on dragon.style is deliberately not my usual dragonsona, Gracious Anthracite is designed as someone more patient and serene than my usual dragonsona, and having her icon there next to whatever I'm typing here reminds me of that. My significant other and I have "hatesonas", who are a grumpy married couple along the lines of The Lockhorns; performing them to each other is a good way to say "I am moderately annoyed with something you are doing but I would much rather turn it into a joke and have a play-fight about it, at worst".
And then there are the people who use the language of multiple personalities and describe themselves as "systems". Personally I tend to see that as a warning flag after a few too many experiences with people excusing bad behavior as something done by an "alter", if you have the villain from a popular video game living in your head as a "fictkin soulbond" then it's your responsibility to keep them under control.
Magically, shit also gets interesting when you invite things distinctly outside of anything you would normally think of as part of yourself to *be* *you*. Calling up Osoronnophiris, The Bornless One and requesting something of them is a very different vibe from vehemently *declaring* yourself to be Heart Girt With A Serpent, the one whose Mouth is Aflame, the one who Begets and Destroys, the Bornless One who exists outside of and shapes all time and space, and then *proclaiming* that a thing is so. I dabble in this. I should do it more seriously sometime.