For most Secret Knots comics, I make a post with sources, references and bits of world building. This is the dossier for the comic Cursive.
Inspiration
The interest on cursives came from messages I saw on social media, Twitter perhaps? Back in “twitter” times, that is. They were talking about how cursive teaching is being abandoned, and some people even added that they couldn’t read it, or properly understand it.
It sounded odd, and it made me think about some cryptic, occult type of writing… so I wrote this raw script about a group of friends where one of them shows them their ability to produce magical effects by scribbling in this arcane, lost language of cursives. An exaggeration for the sake of parody, I guess, but that seemed to go nowhere in terms of short story shape. So I let it rest until recently, and it’s very likely that it was the news cycle what prompted me to turn into a story that’s partly about discrimination and fear of the “other”.
In the first sketches, I doodled the new neighbor with a kind of scarf wrapped around her hairstyle, something that pointed vaguely at “foreign” cultures, in some contexts. It may have been a clearer hint at xenophobia, but I found that it anchored the story in a close ended metaphor, where cursive could be read as foreign or exotic. I decided instead that if the neighbors didn’t have anything particularly distinctive in their look, the distrust of the main character could be understood as a broader and more abstract form of rejection. Regardless of that, the punchline is more or less the same: before she knows it, she is also speaking their extraneous speech. It is one of the classic fears in the mentality of prejudice, that the otherness is contagious.
Was it a better solution? I don’t know. Maybe the result is more vague. Maybe it’s because of the influence of Latin American fiction that I tend to avoid direct metaphors. The detail that adds some further ambiguity to the story is that the cursive speaking is somewhat magical, and it’s rather nice and lovely. I like this detail. At the same time, this ending, if one looks at it in a slightly skewed way, could reinforce the very prejudice I’m criticizing, I guess. (of being somewhat invaded, or “infected”) And perhaps I shouldn’t dig too deep in it. Ultimately, as I’ve said other times, readers will always come up with much more interesting explanations.
I just want to point out that in writing this, I’ve become very aware of the use of cursive in this very post. And also, I realize I’m leaving aside the elephant in the room: how could one speak in cursive? How does that sound? Slightly dramatic, I guess. Conspirational. Like hinting that this is not the first time these words are spoken. Or, with the urgency of those characters that are about to meet their fate in Pulp horror tales, scribbling madly on their diaries: “The creature is here! The door! The door!”
References
References for the title design
I didn’t use many photo references for this comic. Here’s one I painted over, for the garden.
In this case, I went for a photo reference to get a good close-up.
This one wasn’t based on a picture, but took several attempts at the pose.
Head canon
Things that were considered, could be happening, or are definitely happening, in the background of the story
Cursive speak is magical, as it was mentioned. After all, cursive comes from the Latin word Cursus. Is it so different from Middle English Cors, or Kurs, which is the root of “Curse”?
That’s right. I connected two dots.
Cursive calligraphy is making a comeback, and it’s unlocking dormant thinking processes, which will make a decisive turn in culture. The brain and memory functions put in motion by ligatures in writing will connect us to lost notions, principles of a richer life. The neighbors in the comic are pioneers of a utopia.
Discord members mentioned that they thought Linda, the main character’s friend, would turn up to be a cursive speaker in the end of the comic. That’s not what happened, but it would have been fun, certainly. Yet even more “body snatchers” vibe.
*****
I hope you liked this post! Many thanks for your patronage and feedback during the making of this comic, and I’ll see you soon with more stories and art. Next week we’ll have a quick round of drawing prompts with a theme, more on that soon.
Juan.
