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Post by Twillie on Jun 29, 2019 12:57:46 GMT -5
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Post by Twillie on Jun 29, 2019 13:25:20 GMT -5
Welp, with Neopets continually going down, it's making it difficult to actually read everything to review, so for now I'll just go with the one comic I managed to have open before this latest blackout. Huntress Oooohhh, so your pets have moved to Terror Mountain, have they? ',:3 This may have already been established before (I at least remember them having a seasonal TM house, but I just assumed they lived on Mystery Island the rest of the year xD), so apologies if this is actually old news x3 I admire your effort to actually show the consequences of daily life living in the arctic haha (probably from your own experience in the land of saunas). And since this is a multi-parter, I can only imagine the "adventures" their may just neighbors get into as the group discovers their sauna. Or at least, that's my guess right now on what may happen x3 Smart of Thor to discover that about the water on their first day, though. He actually employed the skill of talking to other people and asking for their help secretly envious ;w; |
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Post by Twillie on Jul 1, 2019 17:44:21 GMT -5
Blueysicle Ha, I wonder now if something more will come of Lampryi's dated armor. I've noticed with your writing that the great detail you give to the setting is not just for world building, but also that any detail dwelled upon has purpose to the immediate story at hand. I remember back when Jacenty first brewed that special tea for everyone and a whole scene was dedicated to it, at first I was slightly tempted to skim, but I figured that anything with this much attention much have a higher purpose later on. And wouldn't you know, that tea turned out to be crucial to the story! Since then, I've found myself keeping a close eye on any other subtle details like that, so I'm curious to see if this is something that'll be revisited as well >w>
This crossed my mind before, but I failed to ask then: what time in Neopia does this all take place? I got the impression before that this was before "modern Neopia," or basically the current Neopets canon, but I don't want to run with that assumption in case it's actually wrong xD What made me wonder that again was Frazer mentioning the war-torn state of Neopia, so now I'm curious again where on the Neopets timeline this all falls!
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Post by Blueysicle on Jul 2, 2019 0:56:13 GMT -5
Twillie Ah, the funny thing is that I originally had more planned with the armor that Lampyri borrowed. I was going to have a long action sequence involving Lampyri where the armor would negatively affect her mobility. However, that scene was the big one that caused me to hit the roadblock I mentioned in the past. It seemed like nothing I thought of or wrote down at the time worked for me in my eyes, and that ended up snowballing into the whole story being left unfinished for over five years. (That wasn't the only part that contributed to the delay, though. I ended up rewriting large swaths of Part One, Two, Six, and Seven because I just wasn't satisfied with their original versions) Eventually, I ended up drastically shortening down that scene enough that I didn't follow through with my original plans with the armor. (In hindsight, I probably still could have made use of that plot device anyways...) At the same time, I felt that I needed to explain how Lampyri got a hold of Buzz armor, as it wouldn't make any sense for the armor to appear out of thin air or for her to go charging into battle in her casual clothes, so I kept that scene in. (She's not like Flicker; she actually takes proper precautions and preparations before jumping into a fight!  ) Well, I suppose I should use that as a lesson for me to be more careful to not write myself into corners. :V ...really got sidetracked there. Anyways... I love foreshadowing. I am absolutely the type of writer to put little bread crumbs hinting at future plot developments. So I'm delighted to hear that you're keeping a keen eye out for those kinds of details. There are more to come, some of which hint at events and revelations in future stories. So if something stands out to you that ends up not bearing fruit in this series, it may end up being revisited later down the line.  So the current point in the saga (In other words, this series) takes place in 145 B.N; or the real-world equivalent of 1854, though I don't consider the two worlds to be 1:1 in terms of history or technology. I more or less try to stick to Neopets canon when relevant, though I do just plain make stuff up take artistic liberties here and there. I haven't seen much information concerning this period of Neopia's history as far as official canon is concerned, so I decided to go with the idea that most of the lands are either in conflict with each other, themselves, or totally isolated. In particular, I imagine that most of Neopia's front side are at each others throats at this point in time. By the time that “modern Neopia” rolls around in Year 1 / 1999, things have more or less calmed down. (I will say though that I've always been a little skeptical of the idea that the majority of an entire planet just “suddenly” got discovered in the span of two decades, so I like to think that Neopians have been at least vaguely aware of most of the lands for a long time, even if travel to all of them weren't necessarily feasible for the average Neopet until later. XD) One thing I do want to mention is that -though I haven't stated this outright yet in the saga- Frazer's perspective is informed by being from Brightvale. I messed up a bit when writing the Pillar Grove arc as I assumed that the original Meridell-Darigan war happened much more recently in history than it did (Looking at JN's Book of Ages, in 300 B.N., to be precise) and I didn't think anything of having characters from Brightvale that escaped that war appear, even though site canon dictates that it should have been destroyed with the other two kingdoms long before this saga. (I tried to allude to such through Frazer's “You know as well as I do,” line to Jacenty, as both of them are from Brightvale and thus would have known much about the war next door) So I guess I'll instead go with the theory that Brightvale survived the war, but existed in a state of severe decline due to it and eventually collapsed until Lisha and friends brought the whole area back to the modern day. And I totally didn't just pull that idea out of thin air just now.(Wow, this reply turned out to be much more long-winded than I intended... XD) EDIT: And thank you for the reviews! 
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Post by Twillie on Jul 2, 2019 15:08:19 GMT -5
BlueysicleHaha, I knew I was onto something at least! xD That's understandable though, for scenes that give us a lot of grief when trying to write them, letting go can be better in the long run. Sounds like you came up with a good compromise between keeping sense in the story and ensuring it actually gets finished. But yesss, foreshadowing is so much fun! I'll be sure to stay on my toes then, especially for the seeds planted for upcoming stories. I've definitely been noticing a lot of the strange behavior from Lampyri and Lumin, all the secrets of the past they've been keeping from Flicker, and it's got me wanting to check out past series to see if their behavior is referencing past or future stories >w> Ahh, gotcha about timeline! I think I might've seen those timestamps on your stories before, but I never really knew what BN was until... just now actually xD That makes sense though to explain how Neopia is more than 20 years old, though now it also has me wondering what may have happened in Year 1 to start a new means of timekeeping  this is just me making excuses to browse Book of Ages, isn't itAnd loooool, no worries about pulling things out of thin air, you're in good company with that xD Which, to be fair, I feel you kind of have to do that with Neo lore at some point, since they leave a lot of stuff open-ended. I cannot tell you the amount of stuff I made up or site-canon I stretched when coming up with Jonathon's backstory- Altador is such a confusing land in terms of timeline xD
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Post by Huntress on Jul 7, 2019 6:40:00 GMT -5
Huntress Oooohhh, so your pets have moved to Terror Mountain, have they? ',:3 This may have already been established before (I at least remember them having a seasonal TM house, but I just assumed they lived on Mystery Island the rest of the year xD), so apologies if this is actually old news x3 Yeah, I'm not even sure any more :'D The general idea is that they live in Mystery Island for most of the year and move to Terror Mountain for the proper Christmas/winter period, so I tried to stack all my winter-related comics into the appropriate time period and wanted to get this sauna series going sometime in January-February (aka the nice post-Christmas lull). Except then it took me a literal three years to finish and by the time I was pushing to get it done, NT issues kept getting cancelled and there's doomcroaking on the boards regarding the overall future of the NT, so I was all "you know, I'm just going to submit this right now and hang all time-appropriateness, because it'd be worse to wait to submit it in winter only for the NT to fizzle out beforehand". ...and thanks to my recent piles of stuff-to-do in real life, I only just got around to looking at the NT proper, and it looks like the second part wasn't published in the most recent issue. Aughaghagh shouldn't be surprised >.< At this rate it'll go until October, what with skipped issues and skipped entries. Either way, thank you for the review ^^ The neighbors won't get involved (this was already a character-heavy series to draw) but I really should see if I can get some recurring neighbor characters in there, for all the comedy potential. Turns out I like Terror Mountain more as a setting so I might just throw the seasons out the window entirely and see what else I can do with it. |
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Post by Twillie on Jul 9, 2019 16:49:09 GMT -5
Huntress Ah, gotcha xD Aw man I know that feel, keeping comic updates timely with when they get posted has never been a strength of mine *stares at Halloween comic I finished in January* But hey, at least it's still winter somewhere in the world x3 And yeah, it baffles me how comic series are getting skipped over every other issue sometimes. The only thing I can think of on why that'd be happening is people just not checking their work or putting in the time needed. It's a shame watching the NT get neglected like this. Even now, I'm still waiting on the next issue to be updated >> (I also really felt this when my mind wandered to milestone issues one day, and I wondered if Issue 900 was coming out soon. Well, uh, still got 30+ weeks to go I realized, so there's just not gonna be a milestone issue this year ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) Ah haha, the neighbors catch a break this time! And ooh, exciting =o Terror Mountain is indeed a lot of fun, I'm curious to see anymore you might do with it ;3
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Post by Huntress on Jul 10, 2019 14:13:18 GMT -5
And yeah, it baffles me how comic series are getting skipped over every other issue sometimes. That seems to be a fairly recent thing? At least I scrolled through your and June's recent comic series (on account of you two being the only ones I can think of with recent comic series :'D) and both seem to have run pretty consistently up until a few issues ago. On principle I'd be okay with it, if I could be sure that the rest of the series will still get published after a skip instead of being lost to the ether >> Should try and neomail the editor about it regardless, only the last few days I tried, their inbox was full. |
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Post by Twillie on Jul 10, 2019 14:30:17 GMT -5
Yeah, it's been happening fairly recently, although I'm worried it'll become a new recurring thing alongside stuff like inconsistent issue releases and images that break the entire page. I remember it at least happening to June's latest series as well, I think mine lucked out and didn't skip any issues.
And oh nooo, full inbox D:
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