Codename: Little Starling AU INFO (also new playlist)

Codename: Little Starling‘ may have begun as a fun little thought experiment but by now it has, for me atleast, evolved into a full blown brainworm. While working on the first artwork I couldn’t stop listening to the album ‚The Dream’ by Alt-j, specifically the song ‚The Actor‘ and it entirely started to dictate the AU’s attitude. The Noir style felt like I could just throw it effortlessly out of my wrist and even thinking of (potential NSFW) scenarios between Vince and Zazu became so easy.

Even more: it feels like it‘s necessary. Putting Zazu and Vince into a semi-contemporary AU where they would fight demons and mysterious, eerie stuff would happen feels like I can vent so many aspects if the story, of their characters that is hardly possible in the powdery world of ‚Little Starling‘… or at least not yet.





I have always had a knack for spooky stuff, I mainly like reading horror, crime and thrillers and all previous stories I have started creating also went into that direction, so ‚Little Starling‘ is an outlier in it‘s own right.

Even more: CLS now feels like the other side of one coin. Both worlds have to exist for the sake of each other. Or how this amazing meme put it:





If Little Starling is Horny Season, CLS is Spooky Season.

So, to figure out if it is a brainworm worth spending grey cells on I started writing down the first draft of a script from Vince‘s POV involving ridiculous substance abuse:








I just want this story to be pure fun, have obscene amounts of blood, gore, spooks and macho dialogue and have it *still be queer.* Sin City but Tom Of Finland style gay. At least that‘s what it looks like in my head haha.

The next step was thinking about what the purpose of the story would be other than let out the edge I can‘t in Little Starling and have it be fun. What do I want to provide, what is the goal? And at the same time I was thinking: what will happen in the story? Good, ending? Bad ending? Open or closed? What is the main struggle? Any struggle at all or just vibes? And then I took a good look at the state of the world: how even though I for my part live in a very safe environment, it feels like *something* is gradually chipping away at things I never though I would have to fight for and that we only have about 1,5 years of freedom left in the public discourse. Now more than ever does it feels like something horrible is brewing up. And at the same time (maybe this has to do with me being 25 yo right now and slowly getting a hang on adulthood) it feels like the age of trauma has passed. Like as if we know now what we are up against and can gear up to fight it properly and simultaneously have enough authority to stand firm on our feet.

So at this point I decided to make CLS play in a ‚contemporary‘ but highly stylized (almost Gotham-esque) North America and just spill out all the americana nostalgia from the memories I have when visiting my family in Canada and cruising around the continent:








And of course with that comes a completely new set of monsters and horror aesthetic. This was the point where making a Pinterest board really helped. And after I struggled to find the right words to put into the search bar I finally stumbled over this particular picture that opened up the right path and at this point I knew, it was meant to be:





You can find the entire board to browse over here:


https://pin.it/5mPK0va


Naturally, I also HAD to create a small but neat playlist. Just as a warning: If you don‘t like Alt-j, you‘re not going to like it. I wanted it to drip of american coolness, songs that make you fear the dark corners in you room, make you smell the damp rainy forrests, make you feel the rush of some good old cinema-substance-abuse but also feel uplifted and secure.

But also… that beneath the surface of white America there is more. Something that threatens the post-modernist belief that we are at the end of history, that there is no meta-narrative anymore and no truth. Listen to it here:


https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLXtGtjmpP9vOmWQj_bloRZtw5HsJUAte


Now I could info dump everything about Vince and Zazu in this AU onto you guys, but…

Maybe it‘s just best when I actually finish writing the script for this short noir comic (or maybe it turns out to be a full graphic novel lmao idk) and then surprize you with something tasty.


Thank you so much for your support and interest in what I am doing!

Xoxo Pearl