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About

WARNING: I wrote this all in one sitting, in about an hour, after a full day of work. I'll edit it later. For now, take my unfiltered rambling for what it is.

Here's the thing. You pick up a story. You enjoy the story, but there's things you'd change about it. Maybe some of those things are in regards to the quality of the piece (subjective, but stay with me here.) Maybe some of them are a matter of personal preference. Maybe some of them are a result of the fact that there are pieces of the existing story that you so strongly identify and appreciate - pieces that truly just speak to you on a base level - but those pieces are unfortunately made to coexist with some chunks of absolute godawful dumpster-fire-vomit.

I have my opinions on the different iterations of Devilman. I have my ranked list, and I have my lengthy list of justifications for that list. I have my varying opinions on how the different versions of Devilman stack against each other in different qualities - themes, art, pacing, payoff, etc. That's all on another page of this site.

What I don't have is a single canon Devilman story that truly satisfies me.

How We Got Here

Let me paint you a picture. You're in your mid-20s, living alone in a godawful apartment that low-key digs its claws into your passive suicidal ideation and pokes at it every hour. You work a high-burn-out job in a low-paying field that you're incredible passionate about and have worked your ass off to make it in. You 9 to 5 your way through the week, managing crises and completing paperwork all day, only to come home to your empty, lonely, dingy apartment. You're also dealing with some health issues that you don't even know you're dealing with because you've been ignoring your symptoms and putting off making a doctor's appointment for a good 6 months now. You don't really have friends in the area yet despite living there a good year and a half, because you were too desperate to get out of your hometown and put some distance between yourself and a childhood that was suffocating and painful in a way you really struggle to put into words or make sense of, because it also could have been so, SO much worse.

Point is, you're incredibly avoidant and you have a LOT to avoid.

So you pull up Netflix. You see a title you've seen a thousand times, but know basically nothing about. You've heard it's won awards or something. And it's anime, which is usually a pretty safe bet of being just mentally stimulating enough to keep you invested, but just easy enough to stay far, far away from the real life feelings you are actively choosing not to deal with on the daily.

It's a work night. You figure you'll watch a couple episodes (it's already late) and pace yourself through the series over the course of the week (if it's interesting enough to finish.)

You stay up until 4am. You do not know what emotions you're feeling, but there's plenty of them.

You cannot, for the life of you, figure out what your opinion of that show was. You let yourself stew on it for several days before saying "fuck it" and digging deeper for the sake of figuring it out.

Point is, Crybaby left me reeling enough that I then picked up a manga from the 70s that, in all honestly, looked like hot garbage.

And I even kept reading after this:

(laced with drugs)

And then I kept going. Because I still was so torn on how I felt. My knee-jerk reaction was that it was bad, obviously. But also, there was something to it. I had kept reading, and it wasn't just the goofy ass misplaced humor or the horny-on-main devil designs that kept me going. I knew there was something it was trying to say and I was sat the fuck down, ready to hear it. But it made no god damn sense.

Devilman's themes, messaging, and presentation are all repeatedly at odds with one another. It always felt to me like it was trying to say something really loud for the sole purpose of being heard, but it didn't want to cross a line and piss the wrong person off in the process.

Or maybe that's just me transferring a piece of media from a specific place and time and trying to apply it to the psychology of where I am, here and now. But where else am I supposed to apply it to? I'm not studying a historical recounting of an ancient civilization-ending battle, here. I'm reading a graphic novel. About a dude who turns into a devil. Because he has a beer at a dance party.

I'm gonna do what I want, is what I'm saying. I'm in a better place now, and I need a creative project. I feel like I'm emotionally stable enough that I can actually let myself feel things and think about things without worrying about completely breaking down.

So here's my version of Devilman. Sometimes I call it a rewrite, sometimes I call it a fic, sometimes I don't really call it anything. Sometimes it's a vent piece. Sometimes it's an exploration of sexuality and gender presentation. Sometimes it's a moral, political, or philosophical statement. Sometimes it's shallow fanservice.

It's personal, and all of the good and bad that comes with that. It's just my Devilman.

Goals

At the end, this project will be:

  1. Actually finished (that's the big one);
  2. Satisfying to me, personally;
  3. Thought-provoking (sometimes);
  4. Fan-servicy (sometimes);
  5. Queerer than canon;
  6. A vent piece about my personal issues with Christianity;
  7. Maybe even a little tired in it's takes about Christianity (see the second bullet);
  8. A little angry (especially at Christianity. Seriously, this story's perspective of Christianity will not be generous);
  9. Possibly, a little worse in quality because it's so angry (the absence of something is still the presence of it, etc.);
  10. A full look at what Devilman means to me, what it does for me, and what I really think it's about at its core, sprinkled all over with a heavy dose of my own emotions, morals, experiences, and uncertainties;
  11. Sick as fuck, aesthetically (crucial);

I'm not here pretending this story is going to be some sort of superior art piece. I'm not even really going to pretend it's good. It's going to be heavy-handed and uncharitable and maybe even a bit hypocritical. And I'm not saying it'll do those things in any revolutionary way.

I'm aiming to make a story I'm satisfied with. Naturally, that means I'll be wanting there to be a certain level of quality. But, really, if I'm in the mood to analyze and pull from a truly good story, let's be honest I'm not going for Devilman.

But really? The energy I'm bringing to this project is what I think Devilman was all about in the first place.

Devilman is loud and garish and goofy and daring you to tell it it's too much. It's rebellious for the sake of being so, and then it tries to nail down a message to send in the process. It varies between wildly beautiful and laughably hideous, and sometimes does both at the same time.

This is a project for when I want to yell, and I don't care too much about whether what I'm screaming makes sense. I'm not yelling for the sake of you understanding me. I'm yelling because we all need to, sometimes.

And if I actually say something worth saying in the process, that's pretty cool, too.

So here's some good stuff to know

You can call me Ghost. Honestly, you can probably gather everything else worth knowing about me from what you find on this website.

I'm still learning html, so if this site looks crappy, that's why. And I don't write as much as I'd like to, so the quality of my drafts may also be sub-par. This whole thing (the website, I mean, not the story) is an exercise in doing-it-anyway. I'd love to work on this long enough and consistent enough that my writing and coding skills both improve, and I can then take time to go back and re-do things as I find better ways to do them.

There are 3 general sections of this website:

  1. Meta
  2. Inspiration
  3. Writing

The meta is split between the character pages (there are a lot) and individual meta pages for each piece of canon (ie, there's a page for Crybaby, a page for the 80s OVAs, etc.) Some of these are longer than others, and there are some pages that just don't exist yet. I get to them as I get to them.

I've always loved the idea of crafting and analyzing a story more than actually writing it out, so you'll probably notice that the corners of this site dedicated to things I pull inspiration from have the most effort put into them. I have more fun making a playlist than anything else. If you're wondering why I don't link directly to ways to listen to the playlists, that's because I recently started using Deezer, and made the mistake of making my username my full name outright so. Not linking to that, sorry.

Disclaimer: The playlists may be also not so good. Doing it anyway.

On that note, the inspiration tab is going to (eventually) display (along with credit and links) various art pieces that I take inspiration from in one way or another. This site is sort of meant to be an evolution of my blog which was a place for me to collect inspiration more than anything. Transferring all of that over and coding it myself is going to be a bit of an undertaking, so it'll probably be a while before that part is all done.

If you are an artist who happens to see your work on this site and doesn't approve of it being here, I will to respect your wishes. Or on the off-chance anyone finds this site, takes some sort of interest, and wants to talk to me about it, I would love for you to! For eitehr of those reasons (or any others), you can reach me here, for now. I'll figure something else out once Tumblr finally keels over.

I also have an Archive of Our Own account, where I'll probably post the final version of this project. But my ao3 is 99% bad Naruto porn right now, so. Feel free to check it out. If you're into that. It's not all porn, though, in case you're not into it but still want to get a sense of my writing style or something.

Finally, I used a generator made by petrapixel to make the layout of this site. Also, her tutorials/faqs/etc. have been really solid as I learn what the hell I'm doing over here.