Comic for Monday, March 8th, 2021
Mar08
Comic!
This is a lot of talky comic, and the kind that I did give some consideration to dropping, but I think Arron’s state of mind is a somewhat important to show, as well as the insight that it gives into the state of politics in Central that is enabling the problems we see in Palindra.
Anyway, on time comic, which was a challenge I’ve been pretty busy recently. Hopefully I’ll still get a buffer up eventually, but for now I’m just happy if we have a few on time comics in a row.
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This may be too fine a point, but I’m saying it anyway.
“Begs the question” does not mean “begs you to ask the questions”. It come from “beggers the question”, an old usage meaning to make worthless or irrelevant.
I do understand that common usage has almost inverted the meaning, but I still resist.
Correct would be “calls the question” or “raises the question”.
Panel 6 “And how you are any different?” should be “And how are you any different?”
Of all the typos folks found, I’m surprised that one wasn’t caught first.
Fixed, thanks 🙂
I would argue: Minerva would say, “And how you are any different?” It is almost a statement, but not quite.
Grammatically correct, either way… Minerva is anticipating a response negating her “question,” because she is a good listener. If, however, she really was expecting a list explaining differences between Kyle and Arron, she would ask, “And how are you any different?” because she is spoiling for a fight.
You DO realize of course that most of us are here for the story. I would be reading this in paperback form even if there was no artwork save a cover and a few black and white headers. The story and characters are what’s important here. The art is here to make telling some aspects of the story easier, and to entertain us with cool and fancy things while this incredibly intricate and engaging story with colorful, deep, and well thought out characters happens all around it.
So don’t you dare apologize for giving us ‘more talky’. Me likey!
+1
+2.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a novelization at all. Perhaps when PastUtopia finally retires.
I was vaguely under the impression the PastUtopia left his job last year? Not sure what happened there, just thought I remember something about it.
Nature abhors of a vacuum when it comes to PastUtopia’s job.
Most of his time goes into his D&D stuff now I think (for a good reason, it raised like 200k on Kickstarter and we pay him like a nickel per comic in comparison).
Basically. I try not to play favorites with my hobbies, but I do also need to pay rent 😀
I would read the heck out of that. The art does enhance it, but I love wall of texts.
I think all of us are on that same page. However if he ever switches to print, he’s going to really, really need an editor.
No insult intended, Past. I’ve just read too many self published books that were AMAZING! Except every few minutes when you had to stop and scratch your head, broken out of the flow, and you KNOW no one proof read that paragraph before it shipped.
Funny, the expert at D&D can tell a story. Who would imagine?? Dude really only has one hobby. It just manifests in different forms.
And also my recollection is that we were all yelling ‘JUMP!’ So if you love the guy, support him like mad!
I may. My initial idea was that I would keep releasing this and release more written stuff on the side, like Tyler’s story. But I never really dedicated enough time to actually doing that.
I like drawing, I just haven’t really had the time or focus to put enough time into to consistently do, catch up on the comic, or get better at it, which is a little frustrating sometimes.
I sometimes feel I’d rather do more sketches and drawings and less comic pages – the vast majority of my drawing these days is just the comic, which I don’t think is great for getting better at drawing, and often not as fun to draw as various sketches. It’s a little backwards as one of the reasons I started the comic was to learn to draw, but now I sort of feel that due to just working the comic pages I’ve sort of stagnated on that front a bit – like the pages aren’t bad, but they aren’t really getting better either.
I used to draw as I’d listen to things like audio books, pod casts, or never ending work meetings, but those have all sort of dropped out of my schedule over time, and I just don’t draw a ton a right now.
As for editors, I’m familiar with the concept of actual editors. Actual editors cost actual money though, so I’m not going to make any promises there for the time being. If I make a book book like a book, well, then I’d probably pay an editor, but if I do a webnovel-like-thing, I dunno if I could promise much on that front.
Part of my problems would be solved if I did more of my scripting properly in the word processor like I’m supposed to. A fair bit of the things that make it into the comic was because I kept fiddling with it after it left the word processor. Of course, those are far from perfect.
I dunno, just some rambling thoughts. While I’m pretty confident I’m going to finish this story arc as I planned it, I suspect that I’ll keep going after that, and the current form of the webcomic is a bit imperfect in terms of how I schedule and produce it, and while I still enjoy doing it, I do think the process will need to change at some point.
I have considered hiring an artist, but hiring an artist makes hiring an editor look cheap, and I’m not sure is really worth it, as I suspect that just going the web novel route may make more sense… and, as noted, I do sort of like drawing.
…late night rambling. It’s things i will give thought to. What I can say is nothing dramatic will probably change between now and like July as my main focus will be on the D&D Kickstarter stuff, but I’ll keep the pages limping along here – we may miss some depending on how crunchy the crunch schedule gets.
Well, I *would* love to see more of the Tyler backstory. When you have time, of course 😀
I thought we were here for the violence!!! You DO realize of course that the top 3 votes for Santa hat are 3 of the most violent characters in this strip, don’t you? First there is Kally with her always hungry dragon. Not sure exactly which of those two turned some green haired goons into bloody splotches. Next is Naomi who likes punching people and things. Third but not the least is Ila, the small homicidal maniac who likes sniper rifles and hypersonic projectiles. LOL!!!
Naomi is punchy and violent, yes. I’m pretty certain she had help in the Santa hat poll as well.
Kally? Nope. Her extreme non violent ways are the only thing keeping that dragon in check!
Ila? Hey, sure, she likes to shoot. Who doesn’t? And yes, occasionally she has trouble understanding compassion towards those who would do her and her friends harm. That’s simply youth there. The world seems a lot more black and white when we’re young.
In case you missed the intent of the LOL at the end, this was meant as a joke.
Nope, I got it. I just missed adding my own LOL.
Sorry Jim!
Panel six, bubble 4. (reverse word order)
And how are you any different
Somehow I understand real world politics a little bit better now.
Question for the author: How do you manage to keep it all straight with so many, many factions and pivotal characters? Impressive in any case, the timeline is advancing steadily on all fronts.
Easy, I just discarded everything from my brain beside fictional plotlines, characters, D&D mechanics, and a little bit of programming knowledge I keep around in case I ever go broke and need to get an actual job again.
I do have a pretty extensive outline (if you can call it that) that roughly plots out what is happening where, and lot of the characters are very easy for me to sort of “think as”, just generally get a sense of “what would this character do” so the small interactions inside the larger events are usually pretty easy to determine; in some ways I view writing this story as tending to and updating a simulation of events unfolding as much as anything (though that’s the part where I sound a bit crazy, that’s just sort of how I think of it 😀 )
I have a ridiculous amount of fantasy world nonsense in my brain though. I have at least 3-5 other plot lines in this setting I could do a comic on, several other entire fictional settings, and my D&D setting I run games in, which is probably even more fleshed out with moving parts than this one after years of players running around it and just an truly absurd number of characters I have stored somewhere in the brain; if I ever set out to write down every NPC from that setting I could think of, it’d be in the many hundreds.
It’s interesting exactly how much of that I find I can remember; I’ve always had a pretty good memory for plots and characters, but a fairly mediocre one for dates and formulas – to this day I have a habit of Googling various code structures I used essentially weekly for most of my life. I always claimed programming was more about where to find what you needed to know rather than just remembering everything, but that might just because I’ve chosen to use my onboard storage for decidedly less useful things.
I don’t really think there’s a trick to it, beside time. They all started as small ideas that build over time. Sometimes they will go in leaps and bounds, and sometimes I won’t add anything to them for years until for some reason I circle back to it.
Panel 2:
_____I wanted a solution that [kept] the IDS and Malsa at a negotiating table.”
__alternatively
_____I [want] a solution that [keeps] the IDS and Malsa at a negotiating table.”
__alternatively (2)
_____I wanted a solution that [would] keep the IDS and Malsa at a negotiating table.”
__If you go with one of the first two options, you’ll have to carry that fix all through the bubble.
To briefly change foci, I disagree with the philosophy presented by Aaron in that last panel. To keep the peace, one must be willing to be violent toward the breakers of the peace…
Having a past where one showed one was very good at killing people is very helpful for being a peace keeper.
Having a present where one is showing one is very good at killing people is very counter-productive for a “peace keeper”. This is, incidentally, an issue that many police organizations are having these days.
Arron doesn’t have a present where he’s showing he’s very good at killing people. But he does have a present where he feels like he doesn’t have many options available to him, and that skill set he has hanging in the closet keeps saying that it could be helpful. He knows it wouldn’t be, but it’s a struggle.
He also constantly feels like a hypocrite, because he’s telling people to not fight when he did. He’d probably feel less like a hypocrite if he vented more about the horrors of war that he experienced, so he’s not saying, “Don’t do this thing I did because I’m saying so,” but rather “This thing I did because I had to – it’s ghastly. Don’t go there.” But that would require him to come to terms with the things he did, and he may not be to the point where he can do that. It’s been years if not decades, but some people take a while to do that. But it could be that it’s time he needs to do that.
On a different note, I find it interesting that someone has actually all but voiced the idea of, “We don’t need new homes for 40,000 people. We need 40,000 people to die, and it might as well be in a war.” Of course, a war would need to be worse than that, because if someone has surviving relatives they had lived with, then those surviving relatives still need to live somewhere, so a home hasn’t been made.
Suddenly, Peter’s seeming even more on top of things than he was before. Or maybe just living up to the legend status.
Fixed, thanks 🙂
Really sorry, but you might also considering switching the other “keep”s in that bubble to “kept”
[Kept] the status quo
… [kept] the IDS…
More fixered.
I think it’s kinda interesting to think about the situation, and if a “normal” or slow situation has even been possible for some time now. Between the mismanagement by Central and the IDS and the pre-existing tensions from the Rogue Families, most of the even vaguely diplomatic options seem to have become nothing more than stalling the inevitable. Only deep and thorough changes might have had any hope of avoiding these problems, and at least one side doesn’t seem like it would have been happy with the results.
Not that the “quick” solutions are any more ideal either, as we’ve seen from the amount of bloodshed. Every option presented has had some form of chaotic factor or wild card that could quickly swing things in one thing or another. Even Peter, who seems the most likely to actually pull any form of peace off (after some conflict obviously), is having trouble making things go according to his plan, and it’s debatable how much of his plan is left at this point. On at least one occasion he’s noted that “the plan” is now several months ahead of where it was meant to be, and that events are proceeding far too quickly for his liking; while he’s somewhat managed to keep on top of it, it’s been pretty precarious at times, and even he might not know how it’ll ultimately end.
Panel 1, bubble 4.
“What would have had gone differently?”
Perhaps: “What would you have had gone differently?”
“What would you have had go differently,”
Panel 2, bubble 2. I feel like there is “the” proverbial negotiating table.
Fixed, thanks 🙂
Panel 2: my niece recently told me me that to have a cowardly compulsion is to keep the world from changing.
I think it’s supposed to be “that I have a cowardly compulsion”
Fixed, thanks.