Anniversary Week Q&A
Hi all!
Crasherfly here, write of Alice and the Pale Horse. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re having a bit of an Anniversary Week here at Alice and the Pale Horse. I haven’t done as much as I’d like due to my real job being so busy, but I thought I’d still fit in a quick Q&A for those interested.
Now, uh, I don’t have any ACTUAL reader submitted questions. Not quite big enough for that yet. But I do have some prompts I can write to that folks might find interesting. And if not, well, this is easy enough to skip.
So lets get to it.
How did you come up with the idea for Alice and the Pale Horse?
I’ve adored Alice in Wonderland pretty much since page one of my first read. Since then I’ve always wanted to do a story that was adjacent to that world. I never wanted to go back to Wonderland, however, so I struggled to find an original world. That’s a challenge when it seems like everyone has taken their own crack at Alice. Eventually I sorta stumbled into the idea of Arcana- I was learning to read Tarot at an amateur level, and scrying was really in vogue with people my age at the time. Tarot, at its core, is about storytelling, so it seemed natural to try my hand at a story that somehow incorporated that. Arcana and its characters were the result. But as the story developed, Alice drifted further and further from her original inspiration and became someone that I think is her own unique being- less the little girl wandering through the looking glass, more akin to an anime protagonist or a character we’d see in a more modern show. I think that’s for the best- we have enough true adaptations of Wonderland as it is.
Why the title?
I honestly don’t remember how I came up with the title for Alice and the Pale Horse except that I’ve never once been tempted to change it. I know the Death tarot card has always stood out to me as a visually powerful card. And the Pale Horse itself has a lot of cultural meaning. I grew up in the church and have strong memories of the Pale Horse of Death being used in religious text as a symbol of judgment and change. I think Death is a very challenging concept to personify- but Death’s horse? There’s a lot of room to maneuver in that. The name just seems natural to me- this is a story that primarily surrounds Alice and Death’s horse. I think the premise will make folks want to lean in a bit, don’t you?
How did you pick the cards you wanted to focus on?
I just chose the cards that stood out to me from my amateur tarot studies. I picked the Devil because as a Capricorn I’m partial to that card. I chose Death for reasons I specified above. The Hanged Woman is a twist on The Hanged Man, which I find fascinating as its intended meaning isn’t clear on its face. The Knight of Cups is a very famous Tarot card that I felt could be a strong callback to the White Knight in the original Alice stories. And the Queen of Swords felt like an opportunity for me to fashion a lady swordsman after the tradition of some of my favorite characters in anime, such as Fairy Tail’s Erza Scarlet. As for the rest of the cast, I just filled things out as it made sense. For their powers and elemental domains I consulted textbooks that incorporated astrology, numerology and other forms of mysticism to flesh out the purposes of the cards. I also consulted an oracle deck to help brainstorm a bit for power ideas. Keep an eye out- I may just share some photos of my initial card layouts ;)
Did any of your characters change from the planning phase?
Originally, Alice was slated to be The Star before I settled on her becoming The Fool. The Moon was also slated to be a member of the Party of the Discarded before taking on the role of a mentor and storyteller. The Queen of Swords was originally a more regal, motherly character before she morphed into something a bit harder and vicious. Beyond that, most of my character concepts have held true over the iterations of the story. How the characters look, however, has changed often. And many of the character “secrets” are things I’ve come up with on the fly as continue to write.
What are some of your biggest inspirations for this story?
Well, for the Tarot side, I leaned pretty hard on The Pictorial Key to Tarot by Waite and The Ultimate Guide to Tarot by Dean. That was pretty much the extent to my research there.
As far as reading goes, I’d say I’m heavily influenced by Hiro Mashima’s Fairy Tail manga and anime, Hiroaki Samura’s Blade of the Immortal, Kentaro Miura’s Berserk, Todd MacFarlane’s Spawn, Tappei Nagatsuki’s Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World, Hideaki Sorachi’s Gintama, Howard Pyle’s King Arthur and his Knights and The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Alexander Pope’s translation of The Iliad, J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Philip K. Dick’s Ubiq and the works of Ray Bradbury.
Formatting-wise, I’ve always tried to model Alice and the Pale Horse after the radio plays I grew up listening to. I specifically enjoyed The Adventures of Superman, The Lone Ranger, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, Tales of Suspense and X Minus One and I still listen to them regularly. A lot of friends have suggested I turn this story into a modern podcast- surprisingly, I have very little experience with modern podcasts, so my experience largely comes from radio that was popular between the 30s and 60s.
For film, I’d say my “vibe”, visually and tonally, is best captured by films like Jabberwocky, Battle Beyond the Stars, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Krull, The Warrior and the Sorceress, Ice Pirates, Alice and Wonderland (the Disney film), The Seventh Seal, Sonantine and likely much more that I’m completely forgetting at this exact moment. I’m not sure if this is good or bad, but I also carry a lot of professional wrestling in my writing DNA, and that can’t help but bleed through, occasionally.
I also am pretty deeply influenced by video games- Fire Emblem, Dragon Age, Triangle Strategy, Sunless Seas/Skies, Disco Elysium, Bioshock all come as easy examples of the types of games that easily leak into my own writing. In all, I’ve been watching film or playing video games since my early youth so it’s pretty hard for me to sum up what all has leaked into my vibe.
How much of yourself is in the world of Alice and the Pale Horse? What themes are you hoping to visit?
Well, this story was born on one of my worst work days ever. I had just been humiliated in an off-the-record work meeting at a sales job I was holding down- I was a pretty bad salesman, being a natural introvert and all, and I was dealing with some pretty serious mental health issues besides that. I had mysteriously lost 40 pounds, my heart wasn’t working right, I couldn’t digest anything properly and most days I was so dizzy or tired I couldn’t be bothered to do much else beyond show up for work. Financially, I was pretty poor, and my healthcare was pretty awful too- doctors more or less left me to heal myself. I was very lucky to see myself out to the other side of it all.
Alice, especially in its opening scenes, is a reflection of how dark that time was in my own life- and how lonely I felt. The World Machine is a personification of that overwhelming pressure that accompanied the simple act of being alive, poor, and severely limited in my options. It’s no surprise that Alice’s stated objective- to bring about an “end to all things”, mirrored my own wish at the time. In that sense, Alice is a lot like I was- and sometimes still am- she’ll never just give up and quit this life- but she’s too practical to not see the wisdom in acknowledging the days where things simply dont feel “worth the trouble”.
As the story goes on, I do have an opportunity to expand further beyond myself and explore other identities, but I think that there’s pieces of me in each of the characters, specifically when exploring their flaws. The Queen’s brooding anger, the Devil’s refusal to acknowledge reality, the Hanged Woman’s extreme social anxiety, the Pale Horse’s inability to be vulnerable and the Knight’s constant self-beratement- not to mention every character’s subtle obsession with the past, with loss- with self-inflicted absence and their desire to change those outcomes- these are all pieces of myself that I’ve brought to the canvas to interrogate with varying amounts of success.
I didn’t start therapy until later in my life, and until I did, writing was my stand-in. As the story continues, I believe these characters will likely grow apart from me as my writing continues to trend away from the purpose of purging and runs more along the lines of entertainment. But the DNA of where I was when I started Alice- and who I’m continuing to become- will always be there. I hope the readers don’t mind too much.
And that’s all!
A more serious Q&A, yes, but hopefully not an unwelcome one. Look forward to a bit more along the lines of art in the coming days as we wrap up our Anniversary Week!
