Comic Book / Soliloquy Down to 3

It starts with a push.

Soliloquy Down to 3 is a Dark Fantasy Anthology Comic by Australian artist Lucy "Stillindigo" Wang, centring on sapphic love and female empowerment, all framed through cryptic encounters and Fractured Fairy Tales.

There are six stories featured in the book:

• Fishing Twine: A fisherwoman in a secret tryst with a sea monster begins to have second thoughts about their relationship, and is left with a heavy choice.
  • Hook, Line and Sinker: As her romance with the monster becomes more intense and passionate, the fisherwoman's worries only intensify, but a shock discovery gives her the chance she needed to finally make up her mind.
• RED: A bland woman in an unhappy marriage falls in love with a red-haired beauty. But when the woman's husband starts to show interest in her as well, tensions bubble to the surface, and the woman takes drastic measures.
  • The Epilogue: After the events of RED, the woman and her lover now wander the woods, leaving blood in their wake.
• Patchwork Canary: A poor woman sings on the street in order to get by, while a seamstress admires her from afar. After the singer is maimed by a prince, the seamstress comes out of the shadows and offers to help her regain what he stole from her...
• Craters: Two girls in a bizarre cult find comfort in each other, and attempt to make their lives their own.

The comic is available to purchase digitally on Gumroad. There was also a run of physical copies funded through Kickstarter, with RED - The Epilogue and a secret ending to Craters included as bonuses.

This book was followed up by two more anthologies: 10PM (released in mid-2023) and Heart-Eaters (released in February 2024).

Due to the shortform nature of these stories, all spoilers will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

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Soliloquy Down to 3 contains examples of:

• All in the Manual: With the exception of Nary and Nea in Patchwork Canary, none of the characters have their names stated in the comics themselves, instead being named by Lindi in the analysis that goes along with each comic.
• Ambiguously Human:
  • Painter and Muse in Craters were born from human mothers but have skin that cracks like stone, calling their humanity into question.
  • Red is explicitly not human, but what exactly she is has not been specified.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Red is implied to be a personification of lust (both bloodlust and sexual lust).
• Animal Motifs: Nearly every story features at least one character themed after an animal of some sort (The bland woman and her husband in RED have wolf motifs, Nary and Nea in Patchwork Canary are have bird and spider motifs respectively, and the sea monstress in Fishing Twine and Hook, Line and Sinker is modelled after deep-sea predators). It's averted in Craters, where Painter and Muse are mainly compared to inanimate objects or abstract forces (symbolising how the cult dehumanises them and treats them as tools).
• Asshole Victim: The Prince in Patchwork Canary, who slices out Nary's vocal cords with his sword and has them made into strings for a lyre because he liked her voice but not the rest of her. It's safe to say that you won't be shedding any tears when Nea maims him with her threads and takes Nary's voice back.
• Bittersweet Ending: Patchwork Canary ends this way: Nary finally has the riches and love she yearned for thanks to Nea, but only after going through unspeakable pain at the hands of the Prince and having her voice irreversibly altered.
• Closet Key: Red is heavily implied to have been this for the bland woman.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Patchwork Canary is basically a more fable-like take on a Rape and Revenge story, with a beautiful young woman being defiled by an entitled man and setting out to ruin his life and get what she lost back, even though she knows things will never be the same again and it'll take a long time to heal.
• Forced Transformation: Hook, Line and Sinker revolves around the fisherwoman from Fishing Twine discovering that she is turning into the same type of creature as her secret lover. While her reaction is left deliberately ambiguous, Lindi has said that she thinks there's "only one way the story ends", implying that she ultimately fled into the sea to complete her transformation and be with her lover.
• Meaningful Name: Nary means "next to nothing", and the character of Nary is a singer living in immense poverty, something the story itself mentions.
  There once was a girl who sang sweetly
  Known as Nary for there was nothing to her name.
• Mouth Stitched Shut: Nea does this to the Prince before tearing him apart with her strings.
• Narrative Poem: The book is made up of these, presented in a graphic novel format.