Meeting of the Minds

Well, here's a blast from the past for me at least. I was drawing in this journal tonight and I decided I should post this one that was already in here before I posted the drawing I'm working on. This drawing is of two comic characters very close to my heart, with one of them aged up to some degree. I won't say which two characters because I want to see if you can guess or if the dialogue that goes with it surprises you. I drew it at a time when I was really missing the character on the right- because the author had stopped making the graphic novels containing her- and I wanted to feel like there was a future for her and that she wouldn't just end. That's the thing I've felt about characters. They don't go to heaven. They don't have lives that happen afterward unless someone keeps writing them. For that matter, we don't really have a future unless God wills it. I guess I needed some help from my first favorite existential character.


I'm really pleased with how well I drew each of these characters for what my drawing skills were when I drew this. The right character is about perfect and the left character is awesome. You may be surprised that I gave this character glasses, but his family has a history of it. Also it was kind of a tribute to my cousin, who just got glasses about when I drew this and he mentioned in passing that he wished more characters he liked had glasses too. I was so surprised it affected him so deeply. The shadows on the tree and bus stop sign are a little weird in this image. This is also one of my favorite in a long trend of crossover fiction of mine that has existed since I could imagine Harry Potter as a Star Wars story. I see no signs of it stopping either, but I'd like to learn how to write better first.


Life is... busy. It's hard, and it seems impossible. But it's good because God gives it a point. It's not just filler space till the end. Anyway let's set the scene: these two teens are waiting at the same bus stop, and for some reason the character on the right (I'll just call her "Right" for now) feels like the character on the left ("Left") is a kindred enough spirit to talk about something on her mind:

Right: Hey, I don't mean to bother you, but do you ever wonder if maybe we don't have a real purpose in life? It always seems like people are telling you who to be and how to be it, and they never consider that it might not be the way to do things. It's always "do this" or you wont get what you need, "get this" or you'll be sorry, "be this" or no one will like you.
Left: I think the problem isn't that humanity has no set purpose, just that we tend to generalize about that purpose. It isn't that people are misinformed about communal aspiration, but self fulfillment. My best friend says the world isn't so scary if you know what you're doing, but people rarely do.
Right: Yeah, and I guess that if people ever thought someone else could be doing things better they might have to deal with the idea that they could be doing things better too... I'm Amelia by the way.
Left: My name's Calvin.


Yeah. So for those of you that don't know Amelia is from the graphic novel series Amelia Rules! by Jimmy Gownley. And Calvin is obviously from the classic comic strip Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. I think I kind of nailed Amelia and Calvin's voices- and even Hobbes'. But part of why I like writing dialogue for older versions of my favorite characters (*cough* DipperandMabel *cough*) is that there's a margin of error for how they may have changed. God is my fulfillment. He is my aspiration and my purpose. He's the only thing that really works, and He's just so great anyways. Oh and if you scrolled down prematurely to see the reveal, that was a bad thing to do. You're only hurting yourself.