INGRID

Ah, the lovely Ingrid! She is my most recent OC, but already one of my favorites. What is so funny is how people just don’t seem to recognize she is just me as a 22-year-old cis girl with bangs and a tongue and eyebrow ring lmaoooo. Also if I were cool. Hahaha.

I came up with her one morning while walking through Central Park before work; I had multiple people ask me if I could photograph them (a whole family and then a guy who was jogging), I think because they saw me taking pictures, too (I live here, but I probably look like a tourist half the time with regard to how many pictures I take - I just find it all so beautiful!). In my head, I pictured this happening to a different, super-blonde bobbed-girl, and she notices something nefarious as she is taking these photos.

If you have ever seen BLOW-UP, THE CONVERSATION, and/or BLOWOUT, you might know where I am going with this. Those three movies are all masterpieces about, respectively, taking pictures, recording sound, and the combination of both (making movies), and they all involve murder, or, in the first two cases, POSSIBLE murder. They also all end very destructively, tho I think Antonioni’s original ends with the most ennui. I liked that idea. I love ennui. So then this girl, this Swedish-American (I immediately realized she was Swedish based on her hair color hahaha), discovers something while taking photographs.

But as I thought more about it, I realized that can’t just be it; and so the narrative as I have it laid out in my head currently actually probably reads a lot more like a slice-of-life piece before it slowly morphs into something more sinister and nefarious. I made her a band photographer based on her look, and because, while I am not in the music scene, tons of people I know are, and so my knowledge of how it all works and stuff is pretty decent.

I am excited to tell her whole narrative. It ends… very, very depressingly. Like I think it is kind of the saddest, maybe least-hopeful thing I have ever concocted (maybe next to BODY. DOUBLE., I dunno [still, that comic is not narratively canon for Anaïs like this one is for Ingrid]). But I do hope I get to tell it!

IN THE MEANTIME, I am actually intending to work on a mini comics anthology that involves all four of my cool OCs: Ingrid, Gertrude, Divers, and Anaïs. Y’all are the first to hear about it, and so please hold me accountable if you don’t hear about it again. 😂😂😂

Let me know what you think of Ingrid, and whether you are excited to see more from her! Thanks for reading! ☺️