WIPs and Zenith Lore Drop (Patreon)

Here's some WIPs from recent pages, plus some of my notes/thoughts on the Zenith down below. The next comic page will be coming out next week on April 13th!

These are from page 371 (and I didn't take a screen shot of the final right-hand panel, ah well.) I drew the thumbnail sketch with my mouse, which is why it's so awesome:

From page 374:

Depending on the panel, I either draw some bison and flip/tweak/reuse the same group (like on page 350) or I will surrender and draw every individual. The why/when I do it one way or the other usually comes down to what will show up best in print.

From Page 379:

From Page 380:

This is a bit scattered but here’s my overall thought process when it came to the Zenith:

“Bison Behavior+Lore”

Based on bison behavior in the wild, I decided to put the emphasis on matriarchal lineage. In general, the anthro bison view the “basal unit” of a herd to be mother + calf. If you don’t have that, you don’t have a herd. The continuity of “the herd” is paramount to bison because it represents everything that has happened and everything that could be.

Real bison herds separate outside of the rut into smaller groups of cows and calves, and the bulls either into join bachelor groups or go solo. I opted that their (anthro) society would still function around gendered groups but with more mixing (sapience + social animals lends itself to more social stratification, I think). A basic "group" within the herd is made up of mothers sharing a lineage, their calves and adult children who have decided to stay in the group.

Some bulls forgo ever finding a mate/having their own calves and just stay in their mother’s family group, and then never have to enter the draw. It’s probably a great time to be a gay bison (and I suspect there are a lot of same sex couples among the males.) These bulls can never become the Sun since they don't have the right to challenge the current Sun. (I know Hap says 'any' bull can challenge but I had her paraphrase because it didn't warrant a wall-of-text to hammer out a narratively inconsequential detail of which bulls get to challenge, etc.)

If/when the matriarchal linage of a family group ends (all the calf-bearing females of the blood line age out or die), it isn’t so much the remaining males are “cast out,” rather there’s just nothing left to hold their mini-herd/family group together. Those Motherless bulls can no longer maintain “the herd” and thus become 'orphans'. (That's what happens to the remaining bulls left behind in RUN-- their only female calf died and there are no more mothers young enough to carry calves. Matrilineal line ended.)

If they weren’t part of the Zenith herd, they’d find themselves in small bachelor groups or solo. That’s the logic behind “who” may end up as wolf chow-- basically, bulls that would already be more prone to predation and who have (comparably) nothing to lose.

“Literary Inspirations”

I, like most children in the American public school system in the 90s, read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” That was definitely on my mind here, both in the lottery itself and the idea of community sacrifice.

Cowslip’s Warren from Watership Down is also always on my mind, though it’s more of an overall inspiration for “how would a novel food source change the social order” trains of thought.

“Why the Ritual”

The Zenith is a more ritualized society (than for example, the Stone Hollow) because their origin story is fundamental to their structure and stability. The ritual aspects of their lives serve as a way to relive that story and reaffirm the bonds they share with one another, in the present tense. They need that more than, say, “a typical wolf pack” like Swift’s pack, who share a bond through direct kinship.

The ritual also allows space for intimacy and respect. Trust is a vital part of their lives; they are symbiotic.

“Why a Random Draw”

Male bison in real life do a lot of dominance displaying, even outside of the rut. I wanted to preserve that part of their nature. Fighting for a chance to draw early adds the pastiche of “the strong survive,” and stands as a ritualized way to impress upon others (potential mates, rivals, friends) that they are a brave team-player, willing to sacrifice for the herd (even if they try to give themselves the best odds to avoid it.)

I’m sure there are bison who strategically try to “play the back game” to borrow backgammon parlance, and line up late, betting others will draw the marked stones before they do. Those guys don’t earn the laurels of the front runners but also have better odds of living, overall.

With the element of randomness, it helps to bind them to the social role. It doesn’t matter how well or how sincerely they play the game since they’re all in it and that breeds its own kind of solidarity.

I think it’s a system that would select for Players (those who buy in 100%) and Survivors (those who try to game the system and don't mind forfeiting the potential rewards if it means they live.)

In a world where everyone is literally eating one another, I don’t necessarily think it’s a crazy grim-dark way to survive when the alternative is having mothers, calves AND bulls picked off at random from every corner. I definitely don’t think it’s the greatest system of animal society they could ever achieve, either— but I think it’s a reasonably attainable place they have arrived at, one that mitigates some major risks of survival alone.

And that’s all society is, right? Collectively finding ways to mitigate risks.

(And if it still feels implausible anyone would live like that, most countries today employ either a draft or require mandatory military service. Here in the US, men aged 18 - 25 are required by law to register for selective services or risk jail time. We’ve had two periods of compulsory drafts within living memory, both the Korean War and Vietnam War [and I sincerely hope we never see a third]. Granted, the risk of death or injury is definitely diluted by the size of the state, but it’s still present.)

“The Bison’s PoV”

The bison definitely have subtle ideological differences from the wolves. I’m sure the story they tell one another has more emphasis on some things, less on others, etc. The building has the same architectural design but the scaffolding around it looks a little different.

There is a poem by Chidiock Tichborne called “My prime of youth is but a frost of cares” and I feel like it sums up part of bison mentality really well. (If you want some context, Tichborne wrote it in a letter to his wife while he was awaiting execution.)

Particularly this stanza:

The spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung,The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves are green,My youth is gone, and yet I am but young,I saw the world, and yet I was not seen,My thread is cut, and yet it was not spun,And now I live, and now my life is done.

I imagine as the wolves feed, the surviving bulls gather in the dark and bellow a similar sort of dirge in memory of those chosen. The Mothers pull their families close and sing or share their own stories. For the bison, the night of the Zenith is a solemn affair, the time to remember those lost in a harsh world that doesn’t give second chances.

I have a formative memory as a kid of being in a barn just after the calves had been separated from their mothers. Outside all I could hear was the lowing of the cows crying out for their missing calves, long desperate bellows that went on and on and on. I imagine that’s how the night of the Zenith sounds, undercut with the howling of wolves.