The History Of Besonasiga
Written on August 27th, 2021 by S.R. Weaver
The Fraponic Language And Esiome
This essay is about Esfiomi as a form of revolutionary literature, distributed in newspapers among anarchists factions. In this case, the newspapers were distributed between groups of activists using coded language: a creole of the languages that were the prestige languages of whoever controlled the United States at the time.
These underground newspapers would distribute propaganda for the war effort in the form of comic strips. These would either be distributed in Japanese, or in the French language.
Eventually these were collected and formed into Esfiomi volumes, that are taller, wider, thicker, and bound in hard copy rather than physical form. And distributed primarily through anarchist presses, to preserve the literary tradition of resistance against the French and Japanese colonial forces in the United States.
Interaction between French-Creole and Japanese-Creole formed, introducing permanent changes into the French language in Bande Dessinee that wasn’t like the French you would find in Quebec or Paris.
My graphic novel distribution seeks to tell stories about the original writers of these fictional form of Graphic Novel and comic strip, and how they managed to evade capture from French and Japanese fascist paramilitary organizations formed in the wake of the Franco-Japanese wars.
In general the language is a French creole language, following French grammar. But has twenty eight percent Japanese vocabulary. This means that the reader order is often adapted to account for the Japanese order, but keep French conjuration. It can be thought of as a proto-language that eventually formed into the Hafestran ( Lah Sway Seh Teh Day ) language in later years.
France, Japan, and French-America are still strong economic allies after their relationship had chilled, and that began forming negotiations again. France has a similar status to the United Kingdom, and Japan has a similar status to Australia.
Esiome In Later Years
Esiomi later morphed into the term Emirotamo, and from that came Besonasige. Why I chose Besonasige is its own essay.
On the last episode, I went over the historical origins of Esfiomi, and how Esfiomi gradually drifted away into its own medium distinct from manga and bande dessinee.
One of the defining traits of Esfiomi is that it has a verticle reading order of top to bottom, and left to right, similarly to 4-koma. However the syllabic differences from Japanese means that it has its own challenges when producing comics poetry. Also while the symbol for Shi is considered cursed in Japan, it developed an ironic appreciation in the old colonies in the US.
This means that the form is told in 4-panels, but has more of a dark humor connatation, and at times bordering on horror. This is where an American variation of Ero Guro finally manifested into its own genre.
These comic strips generally revolve around LGBT persons, usually Yuri but sometimes Yaoi, and how society has not yet come to accept them in a genuine way. This often crosses over with gothic romance, and certain subcultures like Vampire.
These would be distributed in underground newspapers, until a decade after the wars, when it became common place to read them going from class to class.
This society accepts considerably more blood and gore than newspapers in the past, leading to culture shock when those of my generation read them in the prestige language of proto-hafestra.
It still maintains a close friendship with manga, where manga creators often collaborate with Esfiomi in niche magazines. Though proportionally Esfiomi is overall darker than manga, so to qualify as horror means a different standard.
Do to gore become common place, awards are given more for character development and world building than scares.
In the next essay, I will go into the different age groups and genres.
The Birth Of Emanige
The original name for Emirotamo was Emanigos when I was still fleshing out Fraponic.
Emanigos ( conjucated as Emanigu, Emaniga, or Emanigos ) has a few different characteristics as a form of alternative American comics that were partially inspired by Manga and BDs, or Bande Dessine. Emanigos is split between Emanigos Eneros and Emanigos Behansos. The former is defined by considerably darker content than is standard in American comics, but with a specific effort to be less gaudy and goofy in terms of how such darkness is being conveyed on the page.
In general American comics, having come a long way sense the era of the comics code authority, had periods of overcompensation, partially do the influence of manga, that saw the rise of increasingly gory sequential art by route of horror media. After a couple of decades have went by after the collapse of the code, eventually things were balanced out between protecting young minds, and wanting to go completely whole hog with violent and exploitative content. This era can be thought of as America’s second graphic novel period, influenced as well by Alternative Manga introduced by route of Manga.
These days graphic novels of the Emanigos tradition, are published in landscape digest format, rather than the more traditional floppy format of American comics, and the standard digest format. So are also published in larger volumes of 9 inch width and 12 inch height format, although these are generally reserved for the founding fathers of the medium, and most books tend to be smaller so they can more easily fit in bookshelves.
While there are definitely still horror comics, most horror in Emanigos follows the manga, manwha, and manhua traditions that focus on dread and tension rather than specifically gory details. Aspects of Japanese mythology, specifically their ghost stories, were handed down from immigrants to American from Japan, and this made its way into the culture of the larger America comics scene, where J-Horror morphed into any horror book that used elements of Japanese horror, regardless of whether it actually originated in Japan. A similar phenominon happened with other genres, where Emanigos developed into a seperate branch of sequential art distinct from Manga, Manwha, Manhua, and other forms.
Because French and American culture were largely similar, there was less of a pronounced change in the BD aspect, except for the fact that most books were published in Proto-Hafestra: a French and Japanese fusion language. The main difference is that Emanigos tends to be produced and distributed more like books you would find in Fantagraphics and Drawn And Quarterly.
This was how a seperate branch of graphic novels formed, that used the 4-frame manga format to tell a larger limited series narratives about death and love.
Next essay is in why I chose the term Emirotamo and Besonasige, which makes up the current day of the medium.