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Surenity

Suren
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4th Wall-Breaking Commentary! Today’s episode:

Alcatraz High School ~ Episode 4: Page 50 - Britney’s Fear

*opening theme: the intro to the song “Lord of Eternity” by Kotipelto*

With your host: Anubis

Anubis: Well it’s the 50th page of this overly-long story arc, a little while ago we finally finished September 12th, 2000 after something like two years, but we’re very close to wrapping things up and having one or two shorts to highlight some different Alcatraz High students. In the meantime, here to provide commentary today is myself, Anubis, Egyptian God of the Dead, and my good friend Phobos, Greek God of Fear and Panic.

Phobos: Greetings all, hope you had some sweet nightmares last night.

Anubis: So to explain why I chose Phobos, I knew I had to really terrify these kids, and I mean maybe I could have done that myself by showing up all fire and brimstone, maybe resurrect a few dead corpses from around the cemetery and do the whole Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” thing, but you know, Harry’s a good kid and I really wanted to hold up my end of the contract and go the extra mile. Egypt has some very scary Gods, don’t get me wrong, but you know, not really a God dedicated to just the concept of fear.

Phobos: You sure about that? Really? Because some smartass is probably going to find one now and be like “why didn’t you use so-and-so, Gods are supposed to be all-knowing!”

*both chuckle*

Anubis: Or, okay there’s thousands of Egyptian Gods and our civilization lasted more than 4,000 years, maybe they slipped my mind, but if there is a lesser-known Egyptian God of Fear out there somewhere, who’s going to be really angry at me for forgetting about them, Wepwawet wasn’t able to get me their phone number. But I’m good friends with a lot of Greek Gods, so I decided to give Phobos a call.

Phobos: Well I was more than happy to help. It’s been a while since I made any personal appearances. I mean besides having a potato-shaped moon orbiting the planet Mars named after me and being the root for the English word “phobia” I’m not exactly a household name anymore. Maybe this could be the start of a comeback for me.

Anubis: Well you have those two claims to fame. Just make a few more cameos in people’s webcomics and you’ll be the subject of Marvel movies in no time.

*both laugh; in the background, Sia and Hu sigh because of how much reality warping they’re going to need to do to make up for this commentary existing*

Anubis: So, would you like to explain your choices here with…Britney I think her name was?

Phobos: Ah, yes. Well you see showing up as the angel on the grave was my idea. I don’t traditionally appear like that, I’m a God so I could appear however I want to look. When you see me I’m usually a tall, muscular guy in a Greek battle helmet, but I thought it would freak them out a bit more if the angel on the grave came to life suddenly.

Anubis: Good choice, I liked it. It didn’t give off overly-Christian vibes, it still looked Greek.

Phobos: I bet a lot of you thought these fears were going to be common phobias like spiders, snakes or clowns, but no, I really meant that I was going to dig up their deepest, darkest fears. I thought to myself, what would it do to these shallow kids who’ve never had a single existential thought in their lives to suddenly be faced with things like mortality? And as you’re going to see in the next few pages, these little bullies are going to face fears many of them didn’t even know they had. And maybe, if they’re lucky, it’ll change them for the better. Give them something deeper to think about than sports and pop music.

Anubis: Right. You’re doing them a favor, really.

Phobos: Britney’s fear happened to be aging and death, a pretty common fear as you well know from your line of work, but most kids her age push it to the back of their minds and pretend it’s never going to happen to them. She must have seen a grandparent age and die and it affected her. The mirror thing was your idea though.

Anubis: Yes, I had that levitating magic mirror that shows you yourself in the future just lying around in my garage. Nice to finally get some use out of it.

Phobos: The eye falling out in her reflection may have been a little over the top I guess.

Anubis: No, I liked it. I thought it added to the fear that her body was going to decompose one day.

Phobos: Yeah, that’s what I was going for. Anyway, stay tuned. That Billy kid is next. He is absolutely ruled by his fears; it’s quite delicious, really.

Anubis: Ah yes. His is a heavy heart. My dear pet Ammit has been eyeing it and asking if I’ll be having Harry feed it to her one day. I told her no spoilers.

*both laugh*

Anubis: Anyway, that’s about it for this page, stay tuned this Friday, and Phobos will have more to say about his next bit coming up.

*theme song repeats*

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Welp, my tablet that I used for drawing as well as writing was left on top of the car and fell off and got run over. Funny story. I'd take a picture but, well, I would need my tablet to take a picture and it's in itty bitty little pieces right now. So the next page of the webcomic might be just a wee bit late, suffice it to say. Too bad about all the model sheets and backgrounds and updated novel drafts and stuff that was on there too. I was smart enough to save some of it in case something like this ever happened, but I hadn't backed up my info in a little while.

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I now have a blog! Follow Tales from the Masked Bard at https://surenity2.blogspot.com/. I'll be posting reviews, essays, opinion pieces, and whatever else comes to mind.


There's still more art to come from me here on Deviant Art too, so stay tuned.

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A lot's happened since my last journal entry, that is for sure. I fell out of checking DeviantArt for almost a year, partly due to taking a full time job at a call center that drove me to depression and drained my creativity, but a job I had to keep for the health insurance. Ten months of getting yelled at by rich people with petty problems put me in a pretty dark place for a while. But a couple months ago I got really sick, used up all my attendance credits and got fired. I'm actually thankful for that. I have a part time call center job instead now, which is a lot better on my psyche, until I move again this summer, at which time I'll be job hunting again. 

That isn't to say I haven't done anything creative since I've been gone though. Firstly, I finally completed a final draft of my historical fantasy novel The Epic of Ararat, getting it at least to a point where I was ready to start submitting it to literary agents. I have two agents considering it! I don't want to celebrate too soon of course, but I am grateful and the fact that an agent would consider it at all is encouraging.

On another front, while I was stuck in my full time call center job I read public domain books off Gutenberg.org between calls to pass the time, reading through Sherlock Holmes, Alice in Wonderland and Mark Twain before finally deciding to go through L. Frank Baum's Oz books, which I had previously only read the first of (there are forty official books, over half of which are public domain, and lots of unofficial books). And I started getting hooked on Oz, honestly because at that depressing point in my life I really needed an escape. After reading all the Oz books I could on Gutenberg I started reading more modern Oz works, and finding that it is quite easy to legally publish Oz fanfiction thanks to it being public domain, I decided why not? So I wrote up a short story to submit to the International Wizard Of Oz Club's annual fiction contest. We'll see how I do. I plan on expanding the short story into a novel as well, and then perhaps publishing it.

I also have a webcomic in the works and have for a long time; trouble is I need a good drawing tablet and those are expensive, so for now I'm just drawing it in a sketchbook with a pencil, working on a rough draft. As for my other fan fics...I really need to finish The Great Mouse Reporter already, sigh. But what little inspiration I've had I've been devoting to projects that I could potentially make money off eventually. Sure would be nice to stop doing jobs I hate and focus on my art.

Anyway, I'm back on DeviantArt. It's my oldest account anywhere at this point, the last link I have to the "old days" of the mid-2000's when I was a MySpace roleplayer. Should get pretty interesting around here if any of my projects turn out successful, what with the potential old shame like my old Sonic fan fic from 12+ years ago just lying around for anyone to see. Ah, but the internet never forgets. I might upload some art from my webcomic or other stuff I've been working on, if there's interest.
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I'm Back!

3 min read
I feel bad for not updating my fan-fics for so long. Combinations of job hunting, working to get my book published and writer's block, with some bouts of depression here and there are the culprits. But hey, I'm better now! And I finally have something to show for all those years of saying I'm going to publish a book one day. For you see, I've finally done it!

www.lulu.com/shop/http://www.l…

www.lulu.com/shop/suren-oganes…

The link above is where you can purchase my first original historical fiction novel, Odinochka: Armenian Tales from the Gulag. The first link is for the paperback edition and the second is for the cheaper eBook edition. It's the tragic tale of a prisoner at one of Stalin's Siberian gulag camps, who after starting a fight in the cafeteria is thrown into a freezing solitary confinement cell where he reflects on his childhood as a survivor of the 1915 siege of Van in the crumbling Ottoman Empire during World War I. 

I worked on this novel all through Grad school and it was my Master's thesis; and actually, the very reason I started writing fan fiction again during this period after years of dormancy was because it gave me a nice break from writing this. Readers of my fan fiction might even find the name of Odinochka's main character, Vartan Manukyan, to be suspiciously familiar to them for some reason or another (no he doesn't travel to America and fall in love with a human version of Tanya Mousekewitz sadly). But yes, while this book is very much grounded in harsh reality, my fan fiction gave me a chance to have an escape, and to write something under very little pressure. So if you want to see what else I was working on when I was writing Basil's American Tail, Olivia Goes West and Abigail and the Rats of NIMH, this is it. I think fans of my writing style in those stories should still like the writing in this one.

My next published works will be a more original re-writing of Abigail and the Rats of NIMH (I'm still leaving the fan fic version up), and then a historical fantasy series that I've wanted to do for years now. The former should be released later this year, under a pen name.

So there you go, I suppose I should finally get to work on the next chapter of The Great Mouse Reporter, eh? I'd be ever so happy if you had a look at my novel though. 
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