Hawk-eyed fans might not be surprised to discover that this piece was created by Carey Pietsch, cartoonist behind The Adventure Zone graphic novels, one half of my favorite Animorphs podcast, and prolific Zelda fanartist. Please enjoy our wide-ranging conversation about all sorts of hard-hitting fandom topics, below:
Hi, Carey! Please, feel free to pull up one of the many comfy chairs available in this space. We also have light refreshments.
Gale! Hi! I’m incredibly grateful for the chance to do this! I’ve been selfishly dreaming about it since you first started floating the idea ages and ages ago and I’m VERY glad to be here. I was gonna say lemme just defrost one of my several frozen tupperwares of stew I’ve been stress-cooking and flop onto the spot I’ve worn into my couch, but for maximum era-appropriate translation, maybe a better way to frame it would be:
*waves* *sits* *snacks*
So, for our readers at home who might not be familiar, would you mind explaining this fanart?
GREAT question. SO glad you asked. I need to give you a little bit of background information, which is: I drew this in the throes of two simultaneous obsessions with Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which had just come out the previous year, and Bleach, which was around chapter… 300? at the time. One of the many reasons I was deep in the weeds with these two stories in particular is that they both feature some really excellent giant monster-adjacent women. You can maybe see where this is going.
So the character on our left– Neliel– is from Bleach, and the one on our right– Midna– is from Zelda. And it was around Halloween, and I wanted an excuse to draw them, so the obvious solution was to dress them up as each other. So there you have it: my magnum opus!!
You mentioned to me that you made this with a Wacom Intuos when you were eighteen. I know you tend to work digitally today; was this around the time when you started making it a habit? How’d you get into Photoshop?
Yes! The little tablet that could! I don’t remember which actual early model of Wacom it was, but I think I had that thing for almost 10 years before it finally died. I was really privileged and lucky to have access to a digital drawing tablet as a teen, and clearly I… was making… really important work with it. I didn’t go to art school for undergrad, but I was keeping a tiny daily sketch blog just for myself and like 10 other people on LiveJournal while studying other things, so I was using the hell out of that thing. It actually came bundled with a free version of Photoshop– I think it was called Essentials? God, I miss the days of just buying software once and owning it outright. Adobe, none of us are supported by a giant design department, please get your act together and come up with some other options.
Please!!!!! I held on to CS3 for literally as long as I could!!!!!!
What were you most proud of about this when you made it, and how do you feel looking at it now? Does it bring back any memories?
I was really shocked by how strongly I was able to recall a lot of what I was proud of about this piece! I can barely remember any of what I was actually studying at the time, but this? I definitely remember being VERY excited about curling the hair over Midna’s shoulder, and that sliced-up lighting on her little scraggly cape, and the one single hand I was brave enough to actually draw. And I remember having the biggest brain blast of OH I CAN USE HER HAIR TO HOLD THE SKULL ON, THAT’S GOOD.
Looking at it now, oh my god, the queer longing energy of this is SO powerful. The OTHER thing I remember is desperately hunting for an excuse to just draw hot monster-adjacent women, and I just want to give my past self a big hug and be like, honey, it’s okay, it might take another couple years of sublimating everything you’ve got going on but you’ll get there in the end. As our dear, wise mutual friend Aatmaja once said, everyone has to walk their own gay road!! In the meantime I spent a lot of time coming up with ever-flimsier unnecessary excuses to draw fictional women in ever-increasing states of undress.
In Connection Lost, you describe your experience drifting away from a writing forum you were part of as a teen, and the sense of loss in not being able to find out how those people are doing today. As someone whose teen years might or might not have been spent very deeply embedded in a few wild roleplaying groups, this really resonated with me. Did you share your art online as well? Would you say that your online experiences growing up affected your creative direction?
Gale. Gale. Gale. Which were your RP groups???? Do I have to make a blog where I interview people about their teen RPs??? Can we make a very specific webring.
(All I’ll say is, there was a “crossover high school” scenario in which I was a teen billionaire who liked card games a lot and did NOT care for the short alchemist ONE BIT.)
Gale?? You can’t just casually deploy a gem like that and then expect me to think about anything else?? I’m going to do my best but I would LOVE to come back to this thought after class, please, you have to tell me how it all went down.
(WINK.)
I was in a couple RPs on LiveJournal, where I was only sharing art as custom character icons to supplement my obsessive hoard of face screencaps from the manga, but I was also in a few on Tegaki E, which was interesting because the main format was these quick little drawing comments. Lemme go see what I can dig up.
I have a much larger hoard than I thought, ohhh my god.
They’re all like this. I have always been like this.
As for online experiences growing up in general, yeah, absolutely! The forum I talk about in Connection Lost was this tiny Matrix RP group on Neopets that was run by a couple people who essentially made a big sandbox for teens to figure out like, good community etiquette. I feel deeply lucky to have had a space to mostly just learn how to be a better Internet citizen in a small silo of my peers, but in hindsight, I’m also SO glad to have had a few older and much wiser people leave me really thoughtful comments that helped me start to sort my own shit out. Like, when I was maybe…13? 14? I wrote a really mean-spirited joke fanfic quiz on ff.net about how to tell if you’d written a Mary Sue into your Matrix fanfic, which in hindsight is such a terribly, painfully clear example of how internalized misogyny makes folks think they can break out of this societal trap if they’re just “”””better””” than all the other women. And some really kind adult wrote this long comment that was basically like: hey, I can see where you’re coming from, and I know this is all online, but have you considered how it might feel to be a kid on the other end of another computer screen somewhere who’s written one of these fics and is very proud of it, and then stumble onto this quiz? And it didn’t click at the time, because like all young teens, I was a little bit of a little psychopath; at that age your brain just isn’t fully clocked onto the idea that everyone else matters just as much as you do, yet. But eventually that thoughtful comment filtered through into my brain, and I think about that basic level of empathy all the time, and the kindness of that stranger who wrote such a patient note to me. Thanks, whoever you are.
On a note slightly less about the infinite struggle of being a teenager, I definitely credit RPs for making me appreciate collaborative storytelling in general! I think it’s why I really like tabletop RPGs now. And obviously I’m still making fanwork! And fanfiction. And a lot of the stories I write are about longing of one kind or another, of looking for connection, of like, trying to understand other poeple whether you’re separated by literal or metaphorical distance. I would say it’s a little embarrassing to look at everything I’ve ever written and be like, oh my god, I’m telling the same kind of story over and over again, but as I’ve gotten to read more short story collections by authors I really admire, it’s been kind of freeing to recognize, oh right, on one level or another, so is everyone else.
You’ve drawn a number of Zelda fanworks since this one! Do you feel like your relationship with the franchise has changed as you’ve gotten older? What keeps you coming back?
In one sense, yes, it definitely has, but in another sense, oh my god, I have apparently ALWAYS been this obsessed with Midna, it’s nice to know that some things never change. Do you have an hour for me to walk you through my tinfoil hat conspiracy theory dreams about BOTW 2.
I do think my approach to Zelda fandom–and fandom in general– used to lean a lot more heavily towards obsessively collecting intel on details, hanging out on Zelda Dungeon and Melora’s World, reading a ton of fan theories dissecting possible timelines, that sort of thing. I ran an ill-fated blog for a hot second that had maybe one reader and was just rehashing every single screenshot from the Twilight Princess trailers in the months leading up to it. Now my approach to fandom is a lot more transformative! I mostly… make comics about how Zelda and Midna are in love and deserve each other, which is a stance I stand by. In terms of what I love about the source material itself, I used to be really drawn to the puzzle-solving, challenging boss-fighting, completionist aspects of gameplay, and now I’m here much more for the story and the sense of discovery and awe and a beautifully-designed world.
To some extent, though, just as the things I loved as a teen are always going to have a fond place in my heart, so too will the way that I loved them, if that makes sense? Like, I feel very tenderly towards the version of me who used ancient dialup internet to obsessively frame-by-frame watch the GameCube tech demo where Link fights Ganondorf to see if he had his earring on and if it was therefore the OOT adult Link timeline or not, even as I simultaneously want to take her gently by the shoulders and shove her to go talk to some actual other kids in person at lunchtime.
From Always On My Mind, Volume 1. 2019. LOOK AT EM
Speaking of coming back, I hear the Bleach anime is —
GALE. PLEASE. Have mercy on me. I am so, so fond of Bleach, but the parts of it that I would genuinely recommend/ that resonate the most strongly with me now are the early interpersonal relationships and school drama, narratively! The end of the manga (which, if you aren’t closely following Bleach news, is what the next chunk of anime adapts) leans a lot more heavily into giant, overblown, sprawling fight scenes and a bunch of shonen power upgrades. Which, to be fair, I’m not NOT here for! And I always love a story about having to become a monster to fight monsters. But I don’t know, I don’t want to hold out hope that this adaptation will magically wrap up the dangling threads that I specifically latched onto and cared about (justice for Tatsuki, she deserves the world!). I don’t know, though, gimme 6 months, we’ll see how the holes in my brain are looking and whether I can plug them up with fond nostalgia.
I originally started listening to The Adventure Zone because you kept posting really good fanart of it, and now you are the cartoonist responsible for adapting said podcast into a series of New York Times bestselling graphic novels (now available in your favorite indie bookstores and local comic shops). Have you found that there’s a balance you have to strike between fandom brain and adaptation brain? How does one inform the other? Has this role shift affected the way you engage in fandom generally?
GALE I WILL CRY, that means the world to me coming from someone whose work I love so much!! What greater pleasure is there than to drag your friends into hell alongside you!!
It’s been EXTREMELY cool to work with this team on adapting the podcast into GNs, and that always starts from a place of: what worked on the show? What could be stronger? Which parts of that are gonna translate best to comics? But it’s definitely the case that the minor things I latched onto as a fan aren’t always going to work in this particular iteration, so I’ve had to draw pretty strict lines around that personal connection– like you said, fandom brain vs adapation brain; they have different needs. That said, I think there are definitely ways of trying to maintain the feeling/ tone of the thing that you originally appreciated in the original format! You can keep the same flavor profile even if the ingredients differ. But this must be a subject pretty close to your heart, too, right? How do you manage that kind of internal tension?
Oh no, TURNABOUT!! I’m definitely picking your brain because I’ve been deep into the adaptation zone for a few years, haha. I’m with you on this – I definitely feel like there’s a difference between canon details and canon flavor, where maybe a specific exchange of dialogue isn’t as important as what that exchange brings across. So I do have to believe that when I move stuff around, it’s in a way that serves the goals of the original story and hopefully brings them across in a way that works better for the new format. I do try to give myself, like, tiny shoutout treats to balance things out, though. Canon outfits and stuff.
Yes!! I feel you, it’s such a difficult and interesting puzzle, but FWIW reading your BSC GNs definitely gives me the same like, gossip and glee feeling that’s what I like best about the prose books! And I mean, I drew a thinly-disguised ~fantasy~ version of the Animorphs teen crew into Rockport, I’m definitely not above giving myself little treat-bribes, comics are hard.
The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited, feat. some familiar faces.
And yes, oh my god, definitely, the way I’ve engaged in fandom has shifted in the past several years. I think working on the TAZ GNS has made me really appreciate the need to draw strong boundaries not only around yourself, but around the ways you engage with the internet, which is something I really admire the way Ngozi handles! It’s also made me desperately, desperately miss LiveJournal, and specifically the way it automatically silo’d conversations and topics into an opt-in community/ forum format, instead of impossible-to-opt-out, the way Twitter and Tumblr are organized today. Would dogpiling creators because of their ship opinions happen nearly as often if things were opt-in?? probably not!! But then would Tumblr and Twitter make as much advertising money off of people angrily coming back to their websites to add to the “””conversation””” if it were opt-in to see that stuff????? Also probably not!! Check out Pillowfort, is what I’m saying.
Anyway. I’ve become something of a fic and fandom hermit, but I definitely do miss fandom as a way to find community and connect with people. There was something special about being able to share delight with a bunch of other people who had similar positive feelings about the thing you’re enjoying. If the internet were organized differently I would probably still be doing that. I really hope there’s an LJ- or forum- equivalent out there that I’m just too un-teen to know about!
In the meantime, though, I’m still making fanart and fancomics and fanfic, I’m just… mostly doing it for me! It’s a really important kind of play for me– sometimes that play is trying out new acting and expressions, sometimes it’s a lot like talking to myself, occasionally it’s a good way to work through something I’m thinking about. I like paying attention to the kind of fanart and fanfic I’m making as a tool to tell me the kinds of stories I’m drawn to when I’m too dense to figure it out on my own.
Okay, I have to stop talking about fandom (for now), but find me in person and I’d love to talk more about it.
What are you into now, and why is it The Witcher?
Okay, I was wrong, I’m gonna talk a LITTLE bit more about fandom.
Lemme give the Cliff Notes version instead of my dissertation-level PowerPoint, which friends can ask me about in person, if I haven’t already affectionately forced you to sit through it. I think for me The Witcher books (and game, and show) hit this magic space of– they’ve got SUCH good and interesting and really fun bones, but there are also enough blank spaces that my brain can latch onto to obsessively think and write and draw about “but what if–?” and transformative fandom thrives in those spaces, you know? You have to write the fic about two grandpas in love that you want to see in the world. Anyway. It’s about a horrible old man who swears he’s this stoic uncaring mercenary figure, but everyone else around him is like, you idiot, I just saw you save two children and help a grandma queen you’ve never met before hold a river against an army, and teach your adopted daughter to take care of herself, what are you TALKING about, come eat some soup with us and calm the hell down. And you get to read along with this slow process of watching him recognize how inherently absurd and unfair the stance of theoretical neutrality is in a cruel and unbalanced world. I just think that’s neat. The flavor is great. And I love Yen and Ciri!! And the Lodge of Sorceresses!! I love the books, and I really love what the director and writers did to make the recent TV adaptation this like, fun, campy thing that I genuinely had a lot more fun watching than I do with the vast, vast majority of fantasy directed by men.
That’s the only fandom I’m really engaged in in the sense of making work about it right now! But I’m ALSO on a mission to get everyone in the world to read Delicious in Dungeon, possibly my all-time favorite comic, with the best balance of humor and drama and sweetness I’ve seen in a long, long time. Also there’s a necromancer elf lady and a giant horrible monster woman who are definitely absolutely made for each other, so, you know. Something for everyone (me)!
Any words of wisdom you’d like to impart on my legion of loyal readers, some of whom might be starry-eyed young cartoonists with strong backs and hands unravaged by time?
GOD, WHAT WAS THAT EVEN LIKE, how can I bottle some of that energy. Take all this with a healthy heaping of salt, because you know your own situation best, and when I’m giving general advice without hearing someone’s specific context first, all I’m really doing is talking to my past self, but here goes:
- Be on your bullshit!!! Figure out what gives you energy, what you’re excited to do, what you’re stealing time away from other projects to work on, and try to carve out time deliberately to do that. The things I do ‘for fun’ often end up being the most important for my long-term development.
- I’m very lucky to be in general good health, but I did give myself tendinitis in my early 20s from overwork and had to take several months off from working entirely! In some ways I’m glad I got such a big wake-up call relatively early, because I’ve done a much better job of taking care of my physical health since then. Mostly, though, please take breaks, stretch, move your body in a way that works for you. Kriota Willberg’s books have been great for me and I definitely recommend them.
- Day jobs are GREAT. I worked in a totally unrelated field for years after undergrad, and I don’t know whether I’ll want to (or be able to!) work full-time in comics forever; I miss the stability, structure, and team aspects of my old office job a lot. Especially right now! There are so many ways to incorporate making comics into your life, and it definitely doesn’t have to be the only thing you do; that’s not true for the vast majority of comics artists I know.
- The thing I always try to end on when I get to talk with younger cartoonists and students is that you have to be a person first and a [cartoonist/animator/illustrator/ whatever kind of work you want to make] second. Or somewhere much further down the line than that, even! So sometimes I mean that in a practical sense, in that we live in a capitalist hellstate and you have to do what you gotta do to survive, but in a wider sense than that, I mean that you (I mean, me, past-Carey) can’t make work unless you’re also making time to be curious about the world, look at what other people are doing in different fields, be a better citizen and live your own life in general.
Anything else you’d like to mention? Upcoming projects, people you’d like to shout out, things I really should have asked but didn’t think to…?
Can I shout out the BSC GNs, and also Jon, and also your Patreon, and also the future of this blog, all of which are things I’m really excited about??
(AW HEY.)
On my end of things, Petals to the Metal comes out this July, and I just got to look over the proofs for it and I’m in that temporary and wonderful place where it’s been long enough since I finished coloring it that I’m REALLY excited about it, but not so long that other things have driven it out of my mind, so: we made a really good book! I can’t wait for it to be out in the world!! And some friends and I made a little Tales of Symphonia fancomic anthology last summer that I’m very, very proud of; it was such a pleasure to get to make something fun with them. Otherwise, stay tuned for another volume of misc. collected fanart and comics from me sometime this fall, because lord knows I’ve already drawn enough delightful mess to fill one.
Thanks again for stopping by!!
THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME, WHAT A DELIGHT!!
Go preorder/buy Petals to the Metal (and the two previous GNs if you haven’t already)! It’s going to be an absolute treat!!