Comic for February 16th, 2019: Outside World Lesson One: Emotional Support

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aitaituo
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Re: Comic for February 16th, 2019: Outside World Lesson One: Emotional Support

#16 Post by aitaituo »

AndreRhineDavis wrote: Sun Feb 17, 2019 11:22 am "Cousin" in English can be a general word to refer to *any* sort of distant relation, though usually a blood relation. Thus the sentences "Raine and Rose are cousins" and "Rose is Raine's aunt" both sound completely valid and normal to my ears.
Shirt tail relative is also used to describe distant relatives whose blood-relation is unclear or unknown.

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Re: Comic for February 16th, 2019: Outside World Lesson One: Emotional Support

#17 Post by Warrl »

AndreRhineDavis wrote: Sun Feb 17, 2019 11:22 am "Cousin" in English can be a general word to refer to *any* sort of distant relation, though usually a blood relation. Thus the sentences "Raine and Rose are cousins" and "Rose is Raine's aunt" both sound completely valid and normal to my ears.
I would agree that they both sound valid, but to me they describe very different relationships.

I'm trying to remember if Rose is Euchre's sister, or cousin... if sister, in my experience it would be unusual for Raine to refer to her as "cousin" - it would sometimes happen, but be unusual, if Raine and Rose were about the same age, or if Rose were younger.

If Euchre and Rose are cousins... ah, yes, confirmed... it would be unusual for Raine to refer to her as "aunt".

However, my experience is not in keidran society.

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Re: Comic for February 16th, 2019: Outside World Lesson One: Emotional Support

#18 Post by bmoore99 »

I so love this page. So cute and emotional. Karen so read my mind. I wanted to give them both a hug. :heart: :karen: :Maddie:

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Re: Comic for February 16th, 2019: Outside World Lesson One: Emotional Support

#19 Post by Technic[Bot] »

Just adding my two bits on the subject:
Down here in Mexico your cousin's children are your nephews and yes they call you uncle.
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Re: Comic for February 16th, 2019: Outside World Lesson One: Emotional Support

#20 Post by Tyger42 »

Looks almost like a smile on Mads in the last panel. One of those "grateful but still sad" smiles, though. But it's something.

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Re: Comic for February 16th, 2019: Outside World Lesson One: Emotional Support

#21 Post by Envy661 »

Unpopular Opinion: I've been following this comic for years, but I really really do not care about Maddie as a character. At all. I've found her obnoxious the entire time, and this just triggers that frustration I have when she's involved even more. Her motives are shallow at best, and that's not something to bet a world-changing decision on. Guess that fits her teenager motif though.

I've spent years getting emotionally invested in Trace, Keith, Natani, and Flora. I feel this way about all the side characters. I feel like a lot of what involves them is essentially just filler as Tom tries to figure out what direction he actually wants to take this comic, as though that's still massively up in the air. Tom has put in a lot of effort to make them memorable characters. They're barely more than generic at best, in spite of the multiple attempts to make them more, and this has effectively just made the story at this juncture drag on. Unnecessary development for characters that don't really need to be developed to still serve a purpose in the story. Raine's story was the only interesting side character story, and even that could have just been thrown into the main plot eventually. It didn't have to be filler like it basically was. It could have come up later, and Raine could have been far more interesting, or served a nefarious purpose, rather than yet another good guy in a sea of good guys with no real merit.

I'm interested in the overarching plot of this arc, but not what's going on outside the main party. People can argue the story is much more fleshed out now, but I legitimately miss the days when Twokinds finished a chapter in less than 20 pages. It was to the point and still remained interesting. What's wrong with that?
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Re: Comic for February 16th, 2019: Outside World Lesson One: Emotional Support

#22 Post by Tyger42 »

Envy661 wrote: Tue Feb 19, 2019 10:00 am Unpopular Opinion: I've been following this comic for years, but I really really do not care about Maddie as a character. At all. I've found her obnoxious the entire time, and this just triggers that frustration I have when she's involved even more. Her motives are shallow at best, and that's not something to bet a world-changing decision on. Guess that fits her teenager motif though.
Wanting to live up to the high bar set by her highly respected mother and the expectations others have piled onto her since birth and feeling she's falling short ( Ha! ) at every turn is "shallow"?! In what universe?!

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Re: Comic for February 16th, 2019: Outside World Lesson One: Emotional Support

#23 Post by BadJoke »

First Keith, now Maddie... damn, the whole basitin race is in a dire need of hugs!

Also take note Maddie: we humans can do nice things too. We aren't all aggressive wolf hunters and racist medics.
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Re: Comic for February 16th, 2019: Outside World Lesson One: Emotional Support

#24 Post by Technic[Bot] »

Envy661 wrote: Tue Feb 19, 2019 10:00 am Unpopular Opinion: I've been following this comic for years, but I really really do not care about Maddie as a character. At all. I've found her obnoxious the entire time, and this just triggers that frustration I have when she's involved even more. Her motives are shallow at best, and that's not something to bet a world-changing decision on. Guess that fits her teenager motif though.
Personally i like the idea of Tom fleshing out all his characters, if only because of Chekov gun: Why to add a character to astory if you never really intended to do anything with it? Besides i find the angle he is taking Msddie sub-plot to be interesting.
But you do point out an interesting point. I think Tom is indeed overextending his resources. If you look at the banner on the comic site, you can see around 15 characters and creating interesting and compelling character arcs for all of them is a tall order. The comic is already very long and for what i gather it is no close to being finished, if I were the gambling type i would give it another 15 years at least. And that is just for the main story.
So I am not sure there is enough time to devote to evey single character the comic has spawned, do not get me wrong I love Tom's characterization and I would love to see where he takes every single one of them but I am not sure that is feasible, maybe focusing on the main story and doing the rest on side-comics would be a more efficient way to divide the work. Specially considering Tom already has ideas for future comics once he finishes Twokinds.

Now that i am talking about this there is also another interesting thing: Authors' drift A term i just coined myself! *
When a piece of media has been in the making for a long period of time
it change simply because the author has been writing it for so long and he inevitable changes, his belief, worldviews, style and whatnot.
You can see similar stuff in sequels: The first harry potter books feel different from the last. But it is rarely seen in a single piece of media a a single book/series/comic rarely are over 10 years in the making.
What i am trying to say is that the story Tom wanted to tell when he started the comic 15 years ago is not the story we migth end up getting in a couple years when he finishes it.
And i find that idea migthy interesting!

*So do not take it too seriously...
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Re: Comic for February 16th, 2019: Outside World Lesson One: Emotional Support

#25 Post by Warrl »

Tom probably is stretching himself rather far just in terms of the number of apparently-central characters. His characters list contains 20 "major" characters, of which three are dead and one's taking a very long nap - but that leaves sixteen. All of whom are at the estate, along with Rose and Reni who aren't included in the 16.

In contrast, EGS has "the main 8" and most individual story arcs heavily involve only about half of them - or less if other characters are brought into the forefront for a while. RainLGBT lists only five "main" characters on its cast page but frankly I think it's now really 8 also. From what I hear, MLP has either "the mane 7" or "the mane 8"... Quite a few comics center on just two or three characters...

In my writing I like showing that a lot of minor characters have their own story arcs... that aren't part of THIS story, but a little tidbit shows up. Because real people do. You're at the restaurant to get lunch, and your waiter has to leave work early because something has happened with his kid at school... there's a real world out there, these minor characters (that is, minor in YOUR story) aren't just props for your life to happen in front of. And their story arcs affect you, although in this specific instance the effect is rather small (you get a different waiter filling in).

But I don't try to drag 16 major characters around.

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Re: Comic for February 16th, 2019: Outside World Lesson One: Emotional Support

#26 Post by Technic[Bot] »

There is also the fact that a comic is not a very efficient way to tell a story.
Had the comic ended as a novel or book I am sure Toms would have finished it a few years ago with all the side-character development he could possibly want. Simply because text is much more information dense than a drawing.
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Re: Comic for February 16th, 2019: Outside World Lesson One: Emotional Support

#27 Post by DragnMastralex »

Technic[Bot] wrote: Sat Feb 23, 2019 3:03 am There is also the fact that a comic is not a very efficient way to tell a story.
Had the comic ended as a novel or book I am sure Toms would have finished it a few years ago with all the side-character development he could possibly want. Simply because text is much more information dense than a drawing.
a picture is worth a 1000 words. it can take 10 pages of text to convey the action and emotion that 1 picture can give you by instantly looking at it. its not the fact that the medium isn't efficient its time constraints of the person telling the story. imagine how long it would have taken Tom to tell this story if he put out just 1 page of text every week instead of 1 page of pictures. the main stream professionals put out 28 or more page comic books every month. Tom is lucky to do 4 pages a month. If he could do 28 pages a month the story would have been a lot further a long than it is now we would have gotten this comic page about 5 years ago.

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Re: Comic for February 16th, 2019: Outside World Lesson One: Emotional Support

#28 Post by chickenhawk66 »

I really don't care if anything comes up in the long term between Karen and Maddie. The turn in the story here is priceless.

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Re: Comic for February 16th, 2019: Outside World Lesson One: Emotional Support

#29 Post by Tyger42 »

Technic[Bot] wrote: Sat Feb 23, 2019 3:03 am There is also the fact that a comic is not a very efficient way to tell a story.
Since when?

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Re: Comic for February 16th, 2019: Outside World Lesson One: Emotional Support

#30 Post by aitaituo »

As others have said, professional studios average one page per day. A thousand words can be comfortably written in under an hour. A number of famous books were written over a weekend and many excellent books have been written with only a minimum of editing, which is usually the longest part of writing. The drawing process is a lot more involved. Usually when a book takes years to finish it's because the author is working on it part time, as a hobby, rewritten it multiple times, or has gone full JRR Tolkien. Tom's publication pace is pretty respectable considering the high quality of the art, especially now that he's doing sketches for patreon 5 or more days per week.

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