Inktober 52 - 2021 40

Ah, Wired. Wired Magazine comes to mind, but I admit I don't actively keep up with the publication. I'm mostly prone to using at as a source when I'm citing something. Otherwise, I only really think about wires whenever I change my computer setup, which is a terrible, terrible mess. None of these seem like an interesting subject for a picture. I also happened to have a Shadowrun session coming up, so cyberpunk is on the peripheries of my mind.

I could attempt to explain Shadowrun, but for the sake of everybody's time and sanity, I won't suffice to say, the Shadowrun setting includes the dystopian cyberpunk stuff. Most of the internet-adjacent people in that settings access the internet via a datajack in the back of their head. It's not dissimilar to the wires in the Matrix. So a decker it is.

I used an NPC as a basis for this. The matrix-persona they use is a nine-tailed fox, with foxfire as marks and two fox-themed agents running as programs. If none of that made sense, then that's okay, this is just to explain the imagery I'll be using here.

I have often tried to give a graphical design to characters I write, but interestingly, I don't usually think about how they look in detail when I conceptualize them. It'll come up, when it's relevant, but it's locked in from that point on. As such, something like eye-colour and hairstyle tends to remain ambiguous for the entire duration. Is this arguably bad? Probably. Will I change that? Not unless somebody tells me how that will benefit me.

I'm quite partial to the foxes on this one. They're supposed to be something akin to digital pets that happen to be able to do things on command. Shadowrun illustrations tend to be kinda cluttered, but I don't think I'm competent enough to recreate that. This is just going to be a freebie, I think.

No comment on my part on the shading. It adds marginal depth where I would honestly need to add more detail. If I could get myself to add a detailed background, it might have done more of a difference, but I can't, mainly because the thought of illustrating shopfronts makes me yawn.

How fast can we go, how much can we say?

How large of a mark in our limited stay,

can we leave on the semi-eternal collective

consciousness saved on the blinking and pensive

rows of the server-racks, spinning components,

to data reduced to its simplest form

shooting through wires and to the proponents

circling the world in a silent storm.