Exiern
Swords, Sorcery, And Then Some!
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The uncensored version of this page is NOT available in the paid member’s section.
Allow me to explain;
When I saw the completed art for today’s update, the first thing I thought was; Wow, that is a powerful image.
The second thing I thought was; Crap, what I am going to do with it?
I feel that up until now nudity in Exiern could be categorized as one or more of the following; a character has willing undressed; a character has been undressed but accepts, or is resigned to, their situation; a nude character understands, or would understand, the fan-service meta-joke going on.
For the sake of fundraising, and keeping Exiern.com all-ages viewable, I have always been comfortable charging for nudity under these three conditions.
But today’s page is different. Gillian is not willingly nude, is not in a good or safe situation, and it is a serious character-building moment for the plot. The moment I saw this page I knew I could not in good conscience hawk this poor woman’s situation as “pay to see boobs.” It would not only violate the spirit of the ESCarchive, but my own personal morals on such subject matter.
I didn’t want to post in the ESCarchive, I couldn’t post it on Exiern.com, but I 100% believed that this was a page I had to make available to those who feel an uncensored page better fulfills their reading experience. I couldn’t NOT make it available, as it would violate my own beliefs on censoring.
Compromise was in order.
To that end I have posted the uncensored comic on the freely accessible landing page at ESCarchive.com. If you are of legal age to view it, the page can be seen by going to ESCarchive.com, hovering over the menu tab marked Exiern.com, and then selecting the drop-down that appears marked The Limits.
This is the best compromise I can offer. Just like all the other debates on how Exiern’s nudity is handled I am sure there will be one here, and I will gladly read it. But this is my decision. And no, future nudity as we’ve seen it before will not be made available like that. This is a page which presented a unique, and powerful, situation.
And I can only hope I have done it justice.
dS
Dan, you’ve made the right call. Kudos to you.
And the art on this comic just keeps getting better..
As I have said before, I don’t feel any need to see the nudity. I actually didn’t even notice that this was a nude image until you said something. I thought “what? nudity?” and had to take a more careful look at the page.
*shrug*
I think you’ve handled it properly.
In-story, well, how terrible and sad for the tribe that a woman kidnapped and forced from her home would not “adapt”. Maybe if only they’d had a singing candlestick she’d have found love with her kidnapper. Well, it works for Disney.
Sure seems like slavery to me.
I’m not sure I want to know much more about Tiff’s father, except that hopefully he is buried in five separate graves.
@crypticmirror. In the story, “Beauty and the Beast,” Beauty went willingly, or so we were told. Furthermore, “Beast” never bound her or slapped her around the way we see Gillian being slapped around here, not even when “Beauty” went into the forbidden room and nearly destroyed the flower that was keeping “Beast” humanoid. “Beauty’s” primary suitor from her own village was far more like the Chief here than “Beast” was.
Ah it isn’t a legitimate kidnapping and brain-washing if it doesn’t involve active violence. I heard this view point a couple of months ago from someone.
It isn’t “willingly” when it is being traded as hostage for your father. It is just a different type of coercion. She was still isolated from her life and prevented for returning to it, and the Beast still used verbal abuse and denigration on her, with the castle’s “staff” actively manipulating her and her circumstances in order for her to “fall in love” with their master. She was still deprived of her agency and kept in conditions which forced her to bond with her captor. That Gaston was an unmitigated a!s is neither here nor there and is a separate issue.
Oh, and as a side note, the falls in love with an abusive guy through isolation was so popular with Disney (or at least their wholly owned subsidiary ABC) they did it again only without the singing cutlery in a live action form last year too. If Star Wars was owned by Disney when Jedi came out, then Leia would still be on Jabba’s sail barge.
The frailties of the human psyche, and how they integrate with the concept of free will, is an extremely delicate topic. Who can know how much they do is by ‘choice’, and how much has been programmed into them by upbringing and traumatic experience? How this integrates with sexuality is even thornier. No matter how civilized a man becomes, there will always be a part of him that finds the domination and control of women viscerally exciting.
This has always lain at the core of Exiern’s appeal. No matter whether a monster rips the bodice off of a woman, or a man does it, she is being sexualized without her consent, and on some level, men find that enjoyable.
Dan, I understand your trepidation, but I’m not sure that you’re really accomplishing all that much with it. Most people that would be offended by such a powerful image would have stopped reading by this point, anyway.
On a different note, I have to agree with Cryptic – I find it more admirable that Gillian did not ‘adapt’ (aka break) to the life of being a slave. It makes me wonder what the old woman’s perspective on that is – is she a slave, or was she born into this camp?
Come to think of it, what is the old woman’s name? Gillian, perhaps?
wow…people here are all philosophical and deep and Im just over here going: “typh got her looks from her mom’s side” ._.
Who is the one slapping Gillian in the penultimate panel?
I wonder if Gillian is the one taken from the armor guy.
Starting to really look like Neil is Tiffs Uncle, Again not really as unlikely as i sounds that the top most powerful Warriors would be related. But any one else hoping that Tiff dads still alive so we can see him gutted very slowly by Niel? Hey he might of been abandoned on the Ice or lost in battle.
@ Dan Standing: You, sir, have my respect for your decision.
Meanwhile, the plot thickens… For one thing, it is becoming apparent that women may have a culturally subservient role, but can still wield considerable authority provided they are strong enough to seize it. And wise enough to handle it, of course. Not to mention, they have to be willing to operate within the structures of the tribe, which Gillian apparently was not.
Interesting to see how much Tiffany resembles her mother, isn’t it? I wonder how those two would react if they were forced to spend time together now, after Typhan-Knee’s experiences in the lands of the Luminary Alliance – and a skirt.
Thanks for all the support, everyone! I also want to send out a big kudo to Chemiclord for; a) writing such a serious turn of events that fits and has weight in the story being built, and b) understanding my concern and pledging his support for whatever decision I came to when I first raised my philosphical quandaries on the matter. It was very appreciated.
And as I mentioned in the chat… the person slapping Gillian is actually Typhan-Knee himself.
Typhan-Knee was a little bit of an a!!!!!e.
That is a serious understatement, Chemiclord. o_o
Tiffany still has a lot to do to pay off Typhan-Knee’s karmic bills…
Oh… I haven’t EVEN begun to delve into Typhan-Knee’s a!s-hattery during his barbarian days. I sometimes think people have forgotten just how much of a dick Tiffany was in the early years of this comic.
They are going to start getting some reminders.
“I have not yet begun to a!s-hat!”
Just wait till you all learn what Typhan-Knee did to his brother.
Let’s just say, there’s a REASON why Tiffany readily accepted the idea that Wyll-Line would hire an assassin to kill her.
You mean normal families don’t try to kill each other in inventive and bloody ways? You’ve not seen my family’s Christmas get-together! In an unrelated note, I hope my flame-throwing chainsaw arrives in time for xmas.
I look forward to seeing more TIff’s transgressions, and karmic payback. And hopefully some of that hilarious payback involve Urtica (but in a way that is far less rape-y than that sounds) because I still ship them.
I now feel like using the term “a!s-hat” more often…
@Crypticmirror, you think a flame-throwing chainsaw will work? I had to use plutonium, and I had to rip off some terrorists to do it.
Hey… Why is there a van pulling into the other side of the parking lot?
Hikaro — if you have access to 1.21 gigawatts, no need to worry.
Reading some of the comments, I guess I forget what little hints of Male Tiff we got. A lot of time, she does for her self, I never really consider her a bad person. Though some back stories we are learning, makes me re thing it, then again, it does have a lot to do with the parents. Seeing how her father met her mother, and such.
I do wonder what we learn next.
Tiffany is really young. At the most she’s 20/21. Wouldn’t think that really.
diet and environment effect your maturation and aging, someone of peasant or wildling stock or some one who has lead a harder life because they have bean off soldiering or such can look five or ten or even more years older than someone from a more refined background and lifestyle.
point of fact till my brother hit 30 he was a generational xerox of my father at around 25 and one of our grate uncles at around 20.
That can’t be Typhan. It looks more like Mela—–look at the style of clothing. Typhan wore wristwrappings and no shirt.
I just looked at the first strips, and Typhan-Knee was blonde even as a man.
True.
Also his mother looks FAR too young for Tiff to be that (even if her genetics were truly superior, 15-18 years in that climate AND 2 sons AND eternally fighting the establishment would mark her more, even considering Exierns Art stiyle ^^).
Tiff`s been an a!!!!!e, no surprise there. he has always been extremely selfcentered (and did only slowly become elss so with more time as a woman).
On the Topic of displaying the nude version: I do not need it either, but your solution seems the best possible.
Well done.
@cryptic, before you fall off your “Disney makes girl = hostage/slave” stories high horse, you might want to read the ORIGINAL work of Beauty and the Beast. Not only were there no singing candelabras, the story is far darker, and the ending is nowhere near as nice, for anyone. Further, if “Beauty” was taken as a hostage for her father’s sake, why did “Beast” allow her to return to him? Even in the original story, this is true.
As for the verbal abuse. Let me remind you, Beast was under a freaking CURSE, and wasn’t in full control of his faculties. “Beauty” knew that going to him, in the first place.
I seriously doubt Disney would keep Leia with Jabba the Hut. Not only was Jabba in full control of his faculties, he was violent, and had a tendency to throw his slave girls into Bantha pits to be eaten alive.
Gascon, wasn’t just an a!s, sir. He bribed a psychiatrist to declare “Beauty’s” father insane so he could force her to marry him. Now tell me THAT is not kidnapping.
Nudity? Meh, I honestly don’t care about it one way or another.
I’m strongly against cencorship, but I’m also strongly against pointless violence and nudity for their own sake.
If it works for the situation it works, if not it doesn’t. Aynway, up to the creator.
> I sometimes think people have forgotten just how much of a dick Tiffany was in the early years of this comic.
I never saw it that way. Tiff was portrayed as having an extremely short fuse and zero tolerance but I cannot recall any instance of her “being a dick”. Tormenting Peonie and the wizard was (to me) justifiable even if somewhat excessive.
I always thought of Typhan as a confused and troubled young man, and being thrust into a body of a young woman certainly did not help.
> They are going to start getting some reminders.
Well, it’s your tale to tell, but I would be disappointed if it turned into yet another “the protagonist’s tribulations are karmic payback for his past transgressions” kind of story. They tend to get boring and annoying.
Leaving the situation morally ambiguous and letting the reader draw their own conclusions makes for a more engaging read. And, judging by the readers’ comments, it has worked marvelously until now.
An adolescent male lashing out against his parents is a universal phenomenon. A Northern Barbarian doing it physically is understandable, especially if he blames his mother for him being a social outcast (hell, our daughter gets upset with us when, in her opinion, we do not conform to societal norms). No need to make him “a dick” to explain it.
@Azure, not to mention that Gaston had clear indicators of being a Narcissist who only loved Belle of her looks and not her personality. Who seem the kind of guy that only wanted a wife to procure sons, to make dinner, and to be a good f!!k. I also wouldn’t pass physical abuse if she talked backed, and probably cheated her with one of the blonde triplets. Or every other girl in the village thus making her feel more miserable. Emotional abuse to his sons and daughters, if we don’t include physical.
I thought the last panel looked a bit more like Melan-knee the Typhan-knee
And last I checked, unless it was moved somewhere completely different, ESCarchive doesn’t exist any more.