Comic for Monday, August 29th, 2021
Comic! Sorry folks; been a bit swamped with things recently. Tis that time of year that housing things need to be dealt with, getting the book worked on and coordinating stuff there is in full swing, and just generally got a little behind the ball. There’s a few sketches and things I also owe, but not quite able to get caught up on that yet.
It turns out making a book is hard. But I see a light at the end of the tunnel – the last draft I sent out for the D&D book thing I’ve been working on was 306 pages, which is basically it’s final length, so now it’s just a bit of filling this and that and getting things polished up (as you folks can imagine there’s a nontrivial amount editing to do).
Anyway… I know things on this side of the fence have been a little slow, and I expect them to keep limping along for a bit until the book stuff wrapped up; unfortunately as demands on my time go, there’s a lot more people staring at me over there waiting for things, haha. But at least I’ll try to get keep the updates somewhat regular. I would like to tackle getting the wiki working at some point as well, but it’s proved resistant to working. I don’t know. I have some thoughts and things I’m giving for consideration with updates, but nothing definitive to report yet. Either way, I remain confident that story is going to keep marching on, just thinking of some alternate ways to get more content to you folks. I enjoy drawing, but my drawing time is pretty severely crunched at the moment, and I suspect it’s obvious I’m drawing a lot less. I would like to get back to a more regular schedule of drawing, but… there’s a lot of things I would like to do, haha.
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Panel six: Did you really mean “They are all are” instead of simply “They all are” ?
no comic today?
The day is still early. At least on Palindra.
According to some guy named Dali, whenever he got close to getting time to grow on trees, this fellow would show up and melt it!
I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t more an issue of couple too many doses of psychedelics over the years as opposed to gardening skill issues?
Either way, I can see a lot of value in a tree that grew time, rather than a tree that merely grows over time.
Page will be up Monday. What I was supposed to do Saturday got pushed Sunday, and now we have an inevitable cascade of delays as despite my hopes additional time did not in fact grow on trees.
The biggest problem I’ve had with getting time to grow on trees is it takes a really long time for time to grow on trees, even if you don’t
1. Plant it in the wrong soil.
2. Forget to water it if it’s indoors or there’s a drought.
3. Fail to ensure it gets enough light.
4. Plant it somewhere it’ll be too confined.
5. Allow weeds to grow and smother it.
6. Fail to keep it safe from lightning.
7. Let someone else make off with the fruit.
So far, I have managed to successfully harvest time from trees I’ve planted a grand total of 0 times. It’s not for the lack of trying. Each of those possible ways of failing? That’s an ordered list, from most frequent issue to least frequent issue that I’ve had. The last one was a single incident. I’ve mostly planted them indoors, so lightning and weeds haven’t been too common. That said, it can be surprising just how much space you need to grow a tree that doesn’t flower until it’s over 12,000 years old.
Ultimately, it feels like it’s a lot more time wasted than one could gain from it.
Nice to see a callback to the Tyler prequels too. Been a fair while since those were posted though, are there any plans to continue them?
I mean… I would like to. I have any amount of various other stories I could tell, and Tyler’s is near the top of the list as I’ve already started it. But am currently behind on the main comic, so… I don’t think there’s a case where it would take priority over that.
It is possible I’d do a written only filler arc or some point, but I’m reluctant to do written only updates, as I feel like that’s a path that once started is going to be hard to recover from.
While I would like to finish this current story as a webcomic (just to not alienate the folks that prefer that format) it’s possible that future sequels/side stories will adopt a more… web-novel-with-art approach. Still drawing the characters, but not drawing ever panel. This might be something that goes to a vote at some point, but still figuring things out. It is possible that I will feel compelled to finish this story that way too – I’d rather do that than leave the story unfinished, though I don’t think there’s a major danger of it ending early, just it’s progress has gotten very slow.
The problem is partially that story/webnovel writing is not necessarily a skill I have either. Like art, it’s something I could learn to get better at, but not sure those would be able to stand on their own without the comic.
A bit of a long rambling answer.
tl;dr. Probably, not sure when.
Put it to a vote???
I vote **HUGS**!!
That’s fine – wasn’t expecting you to commit to a deadline for it, was just wondering if you were planning to continue it 😀
“It is possible I’d do a written only filler arc or some point, but I’m reluctant to do written only updates, as I feel like that’s a path that once started is going to be hard to recover from.”
Kathy Garrison wrote a short, text-only side story:
“My Diary, by Frederick Usiku Kruger” [https://www.crosstimecafe.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=12085]
that was separate but canon to her great webcomic:
“Carry On” [http://www.hirezfox.com/km/co/index.html],
It somewhat followed the the webcomic story but added wonderful backstory and extrastory to the characters and plot.
It also won an Ursa Major first place award!
A text only side story instead of a “filler arc” would not initiate an unwanted path but could add tremendously to the main webcomic. I suspect your story telling skills might be even better in text than in graphic format – and might be even faster. In any case, I (and many others), would certainly look forward to reading such an opus.
For the plan to work they need a pair of handcuffs that can effectively restrain a mage so that Amy can keep him subdued after Tyler initially subdues him. Perhaps we saw a inferred paired in the February 23 2021 where the green haired mage is restrained with hands behind back. Perhaps a specialized autocaster that emits a snake construct to bind hands an inject sleep venom on key activation’s.
Considering that Amy is only there for the optics, I doubt that Tyler has any intention of leaving her while she’s still dealing with Elmon. More likely, he’ll be there to assist all the way through booking. But he’ll leave the official talking to Amy.
Sure, he’s taking point until Elmon properly surrenders, but none of this is the official record. When they get to the equivalent of police headquarters, it’ll be Amy doing the talking and taking credit for the arrest. Tyler’s just there because they were hanging out when this Elmon business just happened to fall into her lap, and he’s looking forward to hanging out with Amy some more after her official business is done and she’s ready to once again be off the clock.
Probably just normal handcuffs… And of course the reminder that blacking out as every inch of your skin screams in pain from a personalized early-onset ice-age is always an alternate option if you don’t like the “go quietly” one.
A knight’s gambit??
Tyler and Amy are in the stronghold of the other families. Plenty to gain (arrest Elmon!). But a loss (Tyler is tough as, so he’s not a risk right? That makes Amy the knight!) only condemns the other families, so they’ll play along… right? My guess is Elmon will back down if the other families don’t come to his aid; and will back down quicker if they offer to support the arrest (because politics!).
Tee hee. Tyler doesn’t sell it as well as Peter. Don’t worry Amy: Tyler knows what he’s doing because Peter probably orchestrated it… so there is probably a high probability you survive (please survive!!).
Elmon is going to discover that his “business” has been delayed.
But will he resist arrest?!
And yes, the number of items to be done seems to increase exponentially as our (previously) available time expands!
I would say not so much delayed as reframed.
Elmon would appear to believe he is in a position of power and can negotiate a return to the status quo as an equal. That’s clearly not how this is going to go.
I think the default mindset for these folks involves “I simply don’t get arrested”. That’s not going to help simplify things here.
Needs to consider himself lucky he isn’t on the “remove from the board” list instead 😀