NOVEL NEXT Interlude – A proper gander.
The New Inkwell Printworks: A place of culture and literature.
In practice…
"Watanabe, this is the third time today where you have drawn vague Imperial miasma!" It was Rabanowicz, scribbling slogans on a paper while Watanabe was sketching on another.
"Come on, it's a good visual metaphor! You have the black miasma, going whoosh and swoosh over the Republic, it's supposed to be scary!"
"Yes, but you're going to bore people if you draw the same thing over and over again." Rabanowicz let out a sigh "Did you not have such posters back where you came from?"
"Well, yeah, but those were mostly advertisement." Even then, Watanabe didn't remember seeing much posters. Advertisement and propaganda had moved on to the big screen, then the small screen, a reflection of how 21st century men had become like slop-guzzling swine.
"Make it like an advertisement then. Just take inspiration from what you know." Rabanowicz returned to the desk, while Watanabe had gears turning in his mind. What he knew… he knew of one effective way of propaganda, a method so powerful it had won elections and caused humanity to be set back decades on Earth.
First, he drew a very side-profile. A very simple one that could be replicated by even a child. A very prominent chin, a magnificent mustache, and luscious locks of hair. In contrast to him, he drew another figure. A very simple portrait of a man, crying with a grotesque impression. He wrote a caption under the crying guy: "noo you cant barge into my mansion just to burn it down and free my slave harem!" Under the good-looking chap, a different caption: "Face the justice of the Republic slaver.' He added a gun to the Republic soldier, misshapen for comedic effect.
"Look, look." Watanabe poked Rabanowicz by the shoulder, giggling at his stupid little image.
Rabanowicz looked at him like he was insane, but as she looked closer… "Pfft." She couldn't help but giggle either. The intentional misspelling. The crude, childish, cartoonish depictions of the two figures. The misshapen rifle. It was all so ridiculous, so stupid, that it wrapped back around to being funny somehow. "Did you live with a primitive tribe? What sort of style is that?" She couldn't deny it was effective though.
"The style of the Internet people."
"The Internetim…"
Watanabe set aside what he drew, and got to work on another equally dumb idea. He started with a very crude drawing of John Brown from memory. It looked really, really crappy, but it was recognizably Brown, and he was pointing towards the viewer. In a very bold style, reminiscent of Impact font on Earth, Watanabe wrote "SLAVERY TIME" at the top, and "IS OVER" at the bottom.
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"SLAVERY TIME." Rabanowicz's eyes travelled down "IS OVER." It was nonsensical. It was absurd. It didn't have a deep message, eloquent prose, or a striking image. It was propaganda at its highest, or lowest, form.
Another idea. Another crude sketch, that of a farmer, in a paddy. Watanabe realized that there was no rice grown in Gemeinplatz, but whatever. A paddy was close enough to a field of crops to be recognizable. He left white space at the top, and wrote down his caption "me and the boys when my application for homesteading land is accepted" Then, he added a subtitle to the image, with the farmer shouting "WELCOME TO THE WHEATFIELDS MOTHERF-" Watanabe realized that a swearword would never fly with the captain. He erased it and wrote "WELCOME TO THE WHEATFIELDS, KIDS" as a subtitle. It was significantly less funny without the swearing, but he had to make do.
"This is so stupid…" said Rabanowicz, stifling her laughter.
"This is the part where it gets better." Watanabe took the image from before, of Brown pointing towards the screen. Then he added an alternate caption to it. "Friend, what's missing from our _nit? U!" with a small little "Apply to join the Army of the Republic today!" to do its business. "You see, you can just use the same image and print it with different captions. The more widespread an image is, the more varied captions it gets, the funnier and memorable it will become."
"Adohe… this is so, so imbecilic. An insult to art and literature both." However, Rabanowicz took the first image. Pondering, thinking, she found another caption. "nooooo you cant just give free education to the commoners" replied with "Literacy is the right of all freemen." She then added a little blurb at the bottom encouraging citizens to join the elementary schools. Rabanowicz proudly presented her sick meme to Watanabe, who nodded in approval. He had just taught a pre-industrial woman in her mid-30s how to make a meme, and he was dang proud of it.
"How are things going?" Azra Inkwell entered the room, to check up on how her helpers were progressing. She picked up a paper with the crappy little doodle of John Brown on it. Clearly, she found it humorous, considering she immediately began laughing, almost dropping the paper. "Oh, by the Divine, this looks… so stupid."
"It is stupid, isn't it? Stupid…" Rabanowicz giggled however upon reminiscing of the caricature of Brown on that paper. Seeing the old man, always so serious and well-kept, be drawn so lackadaisically… She was afraid that he might be offended by it, but knowing the captain he'd either be indifferent or he'd find it funny.
Watanabe gave a little explanation to Azra "The thing with these simple images is that they can be captioned with anything. You'll only need to make one copy of that image, and then you can use whatever is in your typecase to caption it differently." He pointed out the alternative captions for the Brown image on the paper.
"Oh goodness… I will get someone to carve this onto a woodblock as soon as possible." Azra herself had already found ideas on what to caption this one image with. Some propagandistic, some purely absurd and humorous. She left the room, leaving Watanabe and Rabanowicz to spawn more stupid little ideas.
A little while later, Watanabe would present the image of Brown to the man itself. He'd agree with a "this looks stupid", laugh, and then give permission for his crudely drawn visage to be printed.