Artist Interviews: Woxie Horchata - Stories that talk back
2024-08-10
Hi again! Hope everyone's been doing alright :3! Recently me and my partner have been binge watching all sorts of magical girl anime, both together and apart. As I type this we're midway through Princess Precure, and I've already begun a few other classics too. Princess Tutu in particular was one I watched through a few years back and it had a massive effect on me. On rewatching it, it felt even more poignant in many ways and I knew it would make a good springboard for a blog post!
Princess Tutu's main concept is all about stories and the way that they exert a force on their authors just like howthe author does onto them. In the modern day there's no shortage of works exploring the same or similar themes to this. Anything from 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' to 'Homestuck' and most recently even the new 'Deadpool vs Wolverine' movie (which I will not be spoiling here, but anyone who is even vaguely aware of Deadpool will understand what I mean). We have been writing stories many ways the purpose of storytelling has always been communication. Folktales exist to relay complex information in understandable ways, and oral history has been passed down for millenium from generation to generation through it. While writing this post I couldn't help but think about my good friend Woxie (who you can find here on twitter!!) who has always had an interest in this subject, and that's when I realized that it would be super awesome to get her thoughts on it directly and she agreed to letting me interview her! So without further ado, I'm super excited to present the following interview:
Hi Woxie!! I was gonna write a blog post abt Princess Tutu and how the stories we write change us just like we change them. When I started writing about how many stories start off doing that (like how folktales are about real things and they affect how we act n' the knowledge we know), I thought about how you know a lot about folktales and write a lot of comics with self-aware stories. So I thought it'd be pretty cool to get your own words about your work and your inspirations!
'Oooooo!!!
First off for folklore, I grew up hearing stories of my family encountering monsters, like giant milk drinking snakes that steal babies and drink of mother's teats, and duck footed women who appear to people a year before they die (happened to my great grandpa and aunt's mother)
Though tbh I think a lot of them were made to scare me into behaving and not running away during the night in Mexico where probably even worse real things might be out there like coyotes and wolves.
All these types of stories were REAL to me and tbh still feel a little real, but I am kind of a skeptic here. But that feeling of a story being "real" and being "Alive" is a thing I love to do!
Like how in Breadstuck* pages would move on the page or little things would react to the story itself changing. [*NOTE: 'Breadstuck' Also known as 'Adventures in the Consumption of Breads' is Woxie's longform ongoing comic, read it here!]
And for comics my ancestors the mixtecs had comics too!!! Their codices still exist and even their heros are still remembered today!!
So even if they're guarded away in other countries were they don't belong, I can make my own mixtec art because I myself am mixtec!!
Maybe I can say I love stories that feel "haunted" like drosselmeyer and the prince with a broken soul.....'
That's super cool! I completely get it, I feel the same about stories of Djinn and other folklore, like even if I feel like 'there's no way that's real' I still feel compelled to believe it just in case yk? I really like how you describe your stories as being 'alive', I'm really curious: do you feel like your characters have more of a say in your stories than you do, or are you in control of everything that happens in them?
'Tbh sometimes it does feel like they have more agency than me since I forget sometimes how I wrote something and I come back and I'm like
"woah who wrote that" "....wait no.... I did"
So it's important to like go back and revisit you work because sometimes you might see something you didn't realize actually is really cool'
I know you often have recurring character types in your stories, is that on purpose or do those characters just feel 'right' in them?
'Oh I totally reuse character types!!! The current protagonist of my new comic is absolutely a kinda evolution of Elli, you can kinda see it in the name too!!
Elli ==> Lali [NOTE: Elli and Lali are the two protagonists from 'Breadstuck' and 'Lali Lopez and the Cosmic Fault']
Reusing character types is fun, you get to put new ideas back into different contexts and see them play out in [new] ways....'
I totally agree! I actually recently found out that the director for Princess Tutu did a bunch of other anime, and me and my partner noticed that he kind of reused the same archetypes from Tutu in other anime like Pretear, and A Whisker Away, which I thought was really wicked!! My personal favourite thing about Tutu is how the characters who aren't originally from the story kind of take on new archetypes in the second half of the story, like how Tutu goes from a mcguffin-ish character to the protagonist, and Fakir goes from the filler-knight to being a co-author.
I'm curious to hear if you've taken any archetypes from folklore or Mixtec stories and incorporated them into your work, and how you've gone about reimagining them for a modern audience
Ive taken the archetype of the witch!
They exist all over the place, and have many different motivations and backgrounds, in mixtec folklore they kinda show off, they like to frighten people.
To me it's like they're free from societal expectations, and them being feared sorta represents the fear of the storyteller too, "what could someone who couldn't do anything want to do with me?"'
Ohh that's super interesting!! Do you think you could elaborate on that :O?
'Yeah! My family has stories of duck footed witches following them, beautiful women in the Forest who try to tempt men into running away with them...
Or simply women who run away from an abusive man by literally teleporting thousands of miles away in a single day
That one is cool because it tells of a woman using her powers to escape something terrible, I used to wish I could teleport like that
My favorite one is of a witch causing a family to have their entire limb fall asleep, like when you sleep on your arm wrong and you can't move it for a bit? That but on your entire body.....
That was probably my favorite story because it's so unique, and what a fucked up power, definitely something really creative if it was made up.'
Everytime I hear about the stories you know about witches I'm blown away by how crazy they can get, but I love how it always kinda feels like I still wanna root for those witches because they usually have a reason for being like that? What are the witches like in your stories?
'They're described like spirits! Women who made pacts with the old forgotten deities of my ancestors, Or even women with these powers naturally already inside them.
A witch is a vague title because they're so varied.
But some misogyny definitely comes out because these stories get framed as the witches being the bad guy or something to be feared. Of women who have agency being scary or powerful as wrong
So when I write my stories I try to contend with that nature of that too, because instead of feeling fear I kinda gained respect for them....
Thank you so much for letting me interview you Woxie I hope it was fun for u cuz it was for me!!
It was awesome!!! Thank u so much!!! Maybe u can have a little doodle of me on have on the blog post!!
And there you have it! Thanks again Woxie for letting me interview you for my silly little blog, and for all the great insight you gave. There are so many ways to write stories, and there have been so many ways all throughout recorded and unrecorded history. One thing I think I will always find interesting and incredible is how two people can take inspiration from the same place, but interpret it completely differently. There's lots of people I've met in my short but fun life who have incredible perspectives on art and creation that I hope I can one day interview just like this :3!
I hope you, my lovely readers, enjoyed this post and look forward to the next! See you around :D
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