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This continues to be a year in which I binge webcomics, and today I arrive to tell you about the only thing I've been reading for the past week, the entire back archive of The Hazards of Love.
The Hazards of Love begins with charming delinquent teen Amparo Uribe pulling the fire alarm at school, asking their charmed but dubious straight-A-student crush Iolanthe out on a first date, getting chewed out by their grandmother, and making a very bad deal with a talking cat. This results in the cat claiming Amparo's name and human life, while Amparo is exiled to Bright World, a (heavily Mexican-folklore-influenced) magical land filled with magical creatures who think that human flesh is a delicacy perhaps only surpassed by the savor of human memories.
In the A-plot, [Amparo-that-was] struggles their way at GREAT personal cost into a temporary name and position as the servant of a cruel and malicious shadow in the shape of a deer. They are not the first to have this name or position and their predecessors didn't end well, but [no-longer-Amparo] is pugnaciously determined to hold onto their humanity, forge alliances with the few other humans who've managed to survive in Bright World, and find their way home no matter what!
In the B-plot, charming delinquent teen Amparo Uribe turns their life around and really begins to appreciate the people around them, to everyone's surprise and especially Iolanthe's ....
I love [no-longer-Amparo] enormously, which is not a surprise; I was walking to work on Friday and I stopped in the middle of the street and said out loud, "Jamie Hamilton from Homeward Bounders again?!" Yes, it's another mouthy little shit with jokes and a chip on their shoulder who through carelessness and minor bad luck lost everything they ever loved and are powering themselves exclusively on the objectively baseless conviction that they're going to be the first one in history who manages to get it all back. Jamie Hamilton from Homeward Bounders AGAIN. Have a couple of my favorite [might-someday-again-be-Amparo]s:
However I ALSO love the B-plot, which engages with one of my favorite too-rare fictional scenarios, in which a person who has a close relationship with a possessed/replacement version of another person has to reckon with their relationship and responsibility towards the original version. By the end of the first arc of the story, Iolanthe has been in an on-again off-again relationship with "Amparo Uribe" for TEN YEARS (for [the-once-and-possibly-future-Amparo], it's been one; time moves differently in Bright World!) and knows the following facts:
a.) at SOME POINT over the past ten years, the original Amparo's life was stolen by the person she loved, and who loved her
b.) the person she loved, and who loved her, seems to be gone for unknown reasons
c.) the original Amparo needs help and nobody else seems to be providing it
Iolanthe does NOT know that the person she loved, and who loved her, has run through their natural lifespan [because they were a cat] and is now on the next of their nine lives [as a cat] and hanging out on her couch [as a cat] having realized, through experiencing love and grief as a human and the love and grief of the humans around them, that perhaps stealing a human's life and name was, broadly speaking, an error in judgment ....
So the actual B-plot of the comic is Iolanthe grimly attempting to save a person that she is fully aware she doesn't really know, with occasional assistance from the cat, Amparo's dead grandma, another traumatized Bright World survivor, and a completely unrelated butch lesbian medium who got dragged into this by Amparo's dead grandma and has now been grudgingly convinced to provide assistance against all her normal policies because Iolanthe is very pretty and looks very sad.
Strong recommend! Sad to be caught up on my binge because now I'm back on agonizingly slow webcomic update schedule but glad to be caught up so I can have any attention to read other things! Am I prioritizing this write-up right now because I nominated it for Yuletide and I want to try to pitch it on people before sign-ups? MAYBE. (Happy to provide warnings if desired; this story does not pull its punches and abuse and trauma are big ongoing themes.)
The Hazards of Love begins with charming delinquent teen Amparo Uribe pulling the fire alarm at school, asking their charmed but dubious straight-A-student crush Iolanthe out on a first date, getting chewed out by their grandmother, and making a very bad deal with a talking cat. This results in the cat claiming Amparo's name and human life, while Amparo is exiled to Bright World, a (heavily Mexican-folklore-influenced) magical land filled with magical creatures who think that human flesh is a delicacy perhaps only surpassed by the savor of human memories.
In the A-plot, [Amparo-that-was] struggles their way at GREAT personal cost into a temporary name and position as the servant of a cruel and malicious shadow in the shape of a deer. They are not the first to have this name or position and their predecessors didn't end well, but [no-longer-Amparo] is pugnaciously determined to hold onto their humanity, forge alliances with the few other humans who've managed to survive in Bright World, and find their way home no matter what!
In the B-plot, charming delinquent teen Amparo Uribe turns their life around and really begins to appreciate the people around them, to everyone's surprise and especially Iolanthe's ....
I love [no-longer-Amparo] enormously, which is not a surprise; I was walking to work on Friday and I stopped in the middle of the street and said out loud, "Jamie Hamilton from Homeward Bounders again?!" Yes, it's another mouthy little shit with jokes and a chip on their shoulder who through carelessness and minor bad luck lost everything they ever loved and are powering themselves exclusively on the objectively baseless conviction that they're going to be the first one in history who manages to get it all back. Jamie Hamilton from Homeward Bounders AGAIN. Have a couple of my favorite [might-someday-again-be-Amparo]s:
However I ALSO love the B-plot, which engages with one of my favorite too-rare fictional scenarios, in which a person who has a close relationship with a possessed/replacement version of another person has to reckon with their relationship and responsibility towards the original version. By the end of the first arc of the story, Iolanthe has been in an on-again off-again relationship with "Amparo Uribe" for TEN YEARS (for [the-once-and-possibly-future-Amparo], it's been one; time moves differently in Bright World!) and knows the following facts:
a.) at SOME POINT over the past ten years, the original Amparo's life was stolen by the person she loved, and who loved her
b.) the person she loved, and who loved her, seems to be gone for unknown reasons
c.) the original Amparo needs help and nobody else seems to be providing it
Iolanthe does NOT know that the person she loved, and who loved her, has run through their natural lifespan [because they were a cat] and is now on the next of their nine lives [as a cat] and hanging out on her couch [as a cat] having realized, through experiencing love and grief as a human and the love and grief of the humans around them, that perhaps stealing a human's life and name was, broadly speaking, an error in judgment ....
So the actual B-plot of the comic is Iolanthe grimly attempting to save a person that she is fully aware she doesn't really know, with occasional assistance from the cat, Amparo's dead grandma, another traumatized Bright World survivor, and a completely unrelated butch lesbian medium who got dragged into this by Amparo's dead grandma and has now been grudgingly convinced to provide assistance against all her normal policies because Iolanthe is very pretty and looks very sad.
Strong recommend! Sad to be caught up on my binge because now I'm back on agonizingly slow webcomic update schedule but glad to be caught up so I can have any attention to read other things! Am I prioritizing this write-up right now because I nominated it for Yuletide and I want to try to pitch it on people before sign-ups? MAYBE. (Happy to provide warnings if desired; this story does not pull its punches and abuse and trauma are big ongoing themes.)
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If you like, you can all think of this as my gift to you. I never had much else to give.
I am so bad at reading webcomics but I will recite multiple jamie hamilton monologues at the drop of a hat, so I should probably give this a try.
Re: If you like, you can all think of this as my gift to you. I never had much else to give.
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This sounds great!
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UNRELATEDLY except that both of these are Books By People I Know, I finally finished The Iron Children and I LOVE IT yay. Gosh I have so many feelings! I love your worldbuilding and how the bodysharing/telepathy works out and the Jewishness and all the minor Dedicates (but also the mains, I just mean they're all so clearly sketched and I love them).
...but also it made me wonder if you've watched Simoun? Have we talked about this?
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spoilers
possible el ciervo redemption arc???(no subject)
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