Comic for Monday, July 27th, 2020
So we are getting back ahead as predicted. The next page will be up on patreon tomorrow!
…though I suspect page density is creeping upward. As some have noted there’s not all that much point in doing half a page if I just divide it into twice as many panels.
I will likely be moving soon, unfortunately, so there’s some hassle to deal with, though on the grand scheme of things that’s not nearly the disruption work was. Starting to get a lot of good progress on things without my old day job around… we’ll see how they go 🙂
As for the comic… it’s been mentioned before, I believe by the Warmage that the bands that some people wear typically are an indication of engagement for members of the Families – Arkady is engaged to Camilla for example. These are often somewhat arranged marriages, and combines elements of politics, the nature of the Families, etc. Naomi wouldn’t really be familiar with who Eliana would be engaged to, because she generally views these things as Family Politics, and does not really care… something likely sparked her idly curiosity. She would know who Arkady is engaged to though, as she knows Arkady’s family fairly well… Arkady actually finds it very weird that Ashvalt doesn’t seem to dislike Naomi, considering Ashvalt’s rather strict and serious attitude.
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I know that a lot of action happens off screen but i do not recall Naomi actually encountering Atter in his human form with the irid(braid), maybe she has been shown security footage so she could recognize him.
… “missing for quite a while” … “mysterious” …
Okay. I can see that. Interesting connection, if so, for Atter to abandon the battered shell of her fiance for something she summoned.
… say, was there anything left of that battered shell? Anything recovered?
http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-thursday-february-7th-2019/
Could the ‘battered shell’ still be alive!?!?
http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-saturday-may-25th-2019/
He complains in this link that the body is dead. I totally didn’t catch that the complaint could be a hint that the previous body could still be alive.
Oh! Random read through the archive and stumbled on this:
http://pastutopia.com/comic/qa-for-thursday-june-20th-2019/
Nevermind on the battered shell being alive. Past says he’s definitely dead. Bummer.
At best, nothing alive was recovered. Past told us earlier that the ‘battered shell’ is dead. Possibly even before the epic battle.
Also, my previous attempt to comment vanished. Did I break a rule?
> Also, my previous attempt to comment vanished. Did I break a rule?
No, it just got caught in the moderation queue. Comments from commentators that have approved comments aren’t supposed to (even with links) but the auto-mod is very zealous when it comes to links (since it’s set to be as we get literally dozens of spam comments a day).
I’ve been a little slow approving them through as I don’t always see them get caught.
Not sure why it sometimes doesn’t recognize commentators and sometimes does – probably has something to do with VPNs, IPs, and cookies since people aren’t actually logging in to make comments or anything.
Probably not. Sometimes the board just eats comments, and I think mostly the only rule is the golden rule.
Thanks for the links!
If he hasn’t already begun, Arkady should start re-evaluating his life choices concerning having Naomi for a friend. ^^
I mean… He’s still alive, isn’t he? I’d say Naomi’s been a great friend to him.
lol
Arkady values Naomi’s friendship greatly, but he’s beginning to think maybe it’s a friendship best valued from a safer distance.
I think Arkady is only really beginning to recognize how scary and dangerous the world is – while from his station and position, he knows a fair bit of the world, but most of it was through the lens of people like Naomi and Camilla who simply do not have a normal reaction to being in danger.
I think in these troubled times, Being where Naomi or Ila are is likely to be where chaos and danger is… but conversely, that chaos and danger probably has much better problems to deal with than Arkady, by virtue of that fact Naomi and/or Ila is there…. so provided he doesn’t draw undue attention, he is probably fine 🙂
Mmmm. Not sure I’m liking the logic on this one. Some of the more potent mages we’ve seen are area affect casters.
If it’s not presumptuous, I would like to offer a suggestion. The third and fourth panels should be four panels, not two. After the question about the blood, you could have Naomi respond, followed by the rest of the dialogue in panel three. Nothing of note would change, but you would lose a very awkward transition of topics in panel three by letting Naomi respond to the blood question before moving onto the rest of the page.
I’m not trying to be a jerk and I’m not trying to tell you how to write. It’s just that panel three is really jarring to me.
I’m always happy to hear suggestions or feedback.
I think that’s fair; this sort of ended up being one of those pages where I think I rather obviously tried to combine what was once two pages into one page, because not enough really happened to justify it being two pages, but too much information and character was present to want to cut it.
Many of Arkady’s interactions speak to that he is sort of the sane person in the room, and it makes him seem a little insane. To him, there’s a ton of important things that need to be followed up on – Naomi was shot, people are exploding the building, and this is all very scary… he’s not entirely sure why he came back into the building, and he’s sort in a state of panic.
After encounter Naomi and Eliana, he calms down on the surface at least because they are both just so obviously not concerned (being entertaining and annoyed by the building be blown up respectively) that he falls back into the “I guess this is okay” state of mind, before sort of rationally kicking back into… but wait not this is still crazy what is going on.
I guess all that is to say that the panel where he sort of blathers at them somewhat incoherently is intentionally like that – Naomi and Eliana find that he is concerned about them and the building blowing up – as obviously rational and normal that is – to be sort of bemusing rather than the obviously rational and normal response 🙂
But, I think it’s fair to say the page is too compressed to be easy to follow or communicate everything it tries to communicate – it’s a bad habit of mine because I work from an outline that’s obviously much longer and comprehensive than the comic can be, and I’m not necessarily good at cutting things. In the early days of the comic I tended to cut too much leaving parts jumpy or incoherent, while these days I think I often just try to put too much onto a page, leaving it as somewhat too dense and difficult to parse the what and the why, with too much of a sharp shift between panels.
Hopefully any of that made sense… it’s fairly late as I type, but I didn’t want to follow up 🙂
Personally, I love the density. It helps make every page very enjoyable to read for me. However, I know I’m not normal, and tend to be unphased by stories that leave others very confused. Honestly, with how this story is told, and how the characters talk, I suspect we have very similar methods of thinking, because it all feels like it makes perfect sense to me in a way most stories don’t.
It sounds like you have a large, complex story with a lot of moving pieces and are in a rush to tell it… There are people that can tell very intricate stories in a very condensed manner while still retaining legibility and enjoyment.
Personally, I would suggest not worrying about the pace too much. Just tell your story the way it needs to be told.
So maybe I’m thinking too far ahead, but I wonder how much Eliana was an experiment, and how much of that experiment may be linked to others…
Love the comic and looking forward to seeing how it progresses with more time.
First panel: Arkday -> Arkady
Second: house my own -> house on my own
Fixed, thanks 🙂