Interesting work 3. Gadgetslandering

You might not be aware of it, my dear foreign friends, but here in Russia and in some of the former Soviet republics exists such a thing as a religious cult devoted to Gadget Hackwrench. That very same mouse from Disney’s "Rescue Rangers." This religious movement, known as "gaykoslavie" (“Gadget hailing”) or "the Cult of the Radiant Gadget", is a cross between the Spaghetti Monster cult and the actual worship of ancient gods of bloody abyss from the primordial cosmic chaos, where the cute cartoon mouse embodies the Goddess, accumulating in her image all that is good and pure in this cold, cold world.
* http://unrealitymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/gadget_fan_club_from_russia_17.jpg

Followers of this religion are a mixed bunch. Among them there are ironic and clever people (besides, most of them are leftists, just like me), and also some seriously fucked up in the head real cultists. The latter react to all sorts of obscene pictures of their "Goddess" with outright hostility. However, since decrying Internet pornography for its obscenity equals public humiliation for exposing oneself as a hypocrite, they justify their criticism by saying that Gadget porn is drawn badly and the characters are not faithfully depicted. Well, they aren’t completely wrong in that regard. You all know that, more than often, instead of drawing Pron based on the cartoon characters, artists prefer just to slap the heroine’s head onto a set of bare boobs.

But I hate hypocrites devoid of self-irony, and I always wondered what those people would say if I knock the ground from under their feet by drawing Gadget Pron, all the while strictly following the character designs and staying faithful to all the characters.

And so I borrowed the idea from a writer friend of mine, developed it in the space of a few days and with a helping of few bottles of wine, and then scribbled down a porno comic about Gadget being captured by another cartoon mouse, the megalomaniacal Brain.

*http://blog.dahr.ru/?p=2022

* http://blog.dahr.ru/?p=2024

The comic consisted of three unfinished parts, which, however, was just enough to whip up a shit storm within the ranks of the hardcore "Gadget worshipers".

Deprived of their usual arguments, and without the opportunity to talk about the "bad quality of the art" and "characters, unfaithful to the original", all they could do was curse me as a degenerate and a sicko freak, and all I had to do was laugh while taking in their suffering. I drank their tears, and oh were they sweet!

But the lulz, brought to me by this project of mine, did not end there, oh no!

Despite the fact that the comic was posted in my purely Russian-language blog, after a while it somehow got leaked into the English-language internet. Just like that, in Russian.

And then the fun began all over again.

At that time I hadn’t really been represented outside the Russian segment of the Internet, and no one knew who the heck was Dahr (that’s actually my name, Danya, a diminutive of Daniel, but written with Latin letters).

And since I typed the text in the balloons in Russian, and the sound effects were done in English, many have decided that they are dealing with a comic translated from English to Russian. They began to look for "the source" and the author. And even suspected some unfortunate dentist from India named Dahr (I hope that this has in no way hurt his reputation).

And then, after people have failed to find the English "original source", they began to translate my comic into English themselves. It turned out kind of rough, but very meticulous. Many of the pieces of the original text had completely lost or changed their meaning, but I am still grateful to those amateur translators. It must warm the heart of every author when his work gets translated into other languages.

There was yet another funny story related to that translation. Someone thanked one of the guys translating my comics for his hard work, and asked him how did he manage to do such a great job (to tell you the truth, he didn’t). He said he had help from a couple of Russian colleagues at work and from a large Russian-English dictionary. However, he did wonder why I did not use the letter "yat" (Ѣ) at all, nor did I put the "hard sign" (Ъ) at the end of each word that ends in a consonant. Hell, I have no idea whether he was joking or not, but that had made my day. You see, the use of "yat" and "hard sign" at the end of words in the Russian language was canceled after the Great October Revolution of 1917. If this guy had actually managed to translate me using a pre-revolutionary dictionary, then, damn it, he is a real hero!

However, the lack of accurate translations finally made me put up their English version on my page at HF.
* www.hentai-foundry.com/pictures/user/DAHR/page/2

Sometime later I found an online Spanish version of my comic. I am extremely happy with this, since I have quite a number of Spaniard friends (and they are all wonderful guys and girls!), and I think that you shouldn’t be limited to just an English translation. There are also other great languages of the world. Alas, I myself am not so fluent in Spanish, so I can’t comment on the accuracy of the translation. (

* http://www.dahr.ru/l_j/01_01.jpg

So that's the story. However, the comic itself still remains uncompleted.