![]() Alan is trans and has a friend who makes avatars who’s nonbinary, but I also get a trans vibe from Cass, the sysadmin at Alan’s university – plus far-to-the-side characters like Ala5, who uses neutral pronouns. ![]() I’m sick of stories about “countercultures” where everyone is a cishet – it destroys my suspension of disbelief! It’s just not realistic. I think this is the moment that Theresa decides to take Alan under her wing.Īnd thank god, but basically all the hackers seem to be queer and/or trans, which is as it should be, imo. I know this is basic show-don’t-tell stuff, but Jay is really good at it, okay? The only expository speeches come from Alan himself, in the form of arrogant and melodramatic monologues of dubious veracity, which are honestly kind of a treat. Jay has so far been excellent at revealing bits of the setting at a slow and even pace, as the events of the story bring them up. It’s still not super clear just how different the world of Crossed Wires is from our own world, though it seems to be set at a roughly equivalent time to the real-life present. As someone who knows about protocol history, this is actually kind of cool to me. But we’re clearly supposed to relate more to the exasperation of all the other characters who ever have to deal with him, and the fact that he thinks he’s cool is the comic’s biggest joke. He’s got no social graces, no taste, no tact, no ability to think ahead, and absolutely no self-awareness about any of these things. He’s worse than Paranatural’s Spender.Īlan is one of the most insufferable protagonists I’ve ever enjoyed reading. But when he meets the mysterious hacktivist Theresa – aka Vrrmn – in his college creative writing class, there’s finally someone to put him in his place. He can’t finish a job to save his life, but that doesn’t stop him from bragging to basically anyone who will listen about how he’s a cool dangerous hacker who lives on the edge. He’s got a cool alias, based on a cool cyberpunk novel, and a cool dragon guy avatar with a cool sword and a cool leather kimono. We’ve all been on Theresa’s side of an interaction like this.Īlan Winters – aka Ultra Drakken – fancies himself a hacker. ![]() Remember Hackers? Johnny Mnemonic? Snow Crash? What if the internet had actually turned out to be like that, a cross between the Matrix and Second Life ruled by godlike hackers who could own your life with a keystroke?Ĭrossed Wires is a love letter to those ideas, visions of a digital world accessed only with a VR headset and those gloves with like, all the wires on them. No one was familiar with the internet, and people had all sorts of outlandish ideas of what it was like, or what it would be like in the not-so-distant future. There was a time when everyone was like you, granny. ![]() In which case, welcome to the internet! You should probably ask a librarian for help. You’re familiar with the internet, right? You’re here, so you must be, unless you’re some 90 year old granny at the public library who sat down at a computer looking for that new-fangled digital library card system and happened to find the browser open to yeshomo dot net. And if you love to hate annoying protagonists, Alan Winters is definitely your man. If you like stories about young homos fighting evil corporations, this comic is up your alley. B The Verdict If you miss the heyday of unrealistic cyberpunk, this will take you back there.
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