Exiern
Swords, Sorcery, And Then Some!
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Swords, Sorcery, And Then Some!
Howdy, New Readers! Thanks for reading Exiern!
Written by Scott T. Hicken with art by Antipus, the comic updates Mondays.
Please check out the Archive to enjoy the earlier adventures of Typh and Peonie!
Exiern contains mature themes and is best for readers 18+.
Recent Posts
- Dark Days Ahead January 12, 2020
- Top Webcomics Voting Incentives for January 2020 January 1, 2020
- Bloomin’ Faeries vs Exiern Final! December 6, 2019
- Today’s Page Will Post This Afternoon December 2, 2019
- Top Webcomics Voting Incentives for December December 1, 2019
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Well, that was short-lived.
And creepy.
And Tiff… crying? There’s no crying in Exiern!
But imagine the frustration levels! Though the crying is quickly superseded by barbarian rage. So it seems legit.
Really not fair, she willing to live with it, but the curse wont let her, live with it, the way she wants.
Also yea, it depressing, poor TIff.
The dreamer is not amused with her trying to look like a man. Pro-tip the Dreamer is a pervy wanker.
Okay, next page is when Tiff wakes up, isn’t it?
No way is this not a dream
By the way, totally loving the first panel 😀
I protest to the author that I wanted to have male disguised itff shenanigans and this is heavily disappointing
Is it just me or does the curse started to effect her clothes as well? And if i remember correctly the curse changes her into what she feels like or something like that so she feels like Xena? 😛
Wow – a genuine Brass Bikini!
Pro-Tip Tiff you can’t fight what you are. Because you are in fact fighting your self or your nature.
Peace comes though acceptance and personal growth. Not dwelling on what was or who you used to be. You did not choose this road. But you are on it, so you best make a new you that is inline with who you are now.
I am starting to think that maybe Tiff just needs to stay away from this castle. Seems her curse always goes the most haywire here.
@bad Taiming: That’s the problem. Tiff accepted that she liked men. The problem is that Tiff still considers herself a he and he is right. He has accepted himself and knows where he wants to go. What the curse is actually feeding on isn’t so much what he wants to be as it is his vision of women which is still fairly (excuse the pun) barbaric even if it has matured a bit. This scene seems even more problematic as the curse not just rebelling against his wishes to appear male by making it worse but may even be an active attempt by the dreamer to mess with Tiff.
I KNEW IT.
As someone that normally likes the brass bikini pinup, the conversion of her clothes into one was way too much.
Tiffany has been a pragmatic female in world where every woman is buxom and displaying it. It is her strength and her personal allure.
That was some specific hair growth. It’s gotta be magic messing with her. But is it just the curse or is it the dreamer? Hard to say.
I believe the technical terms amongst those in the know in such matters is: “The Universe is Screwing With You”. Curse is not amused, Curse shall smite you now. Smite smite smite…
Dream sequence I’m guessing, the spell has never f!!!!d with her that thoroughly before…
YES! fight on little errant lock of hair- the barbarian shall not best you!
If the curse won’t let her cut her hair hopefully it’ll at least let her brush it out of her face every now and again. It’s the only thing that really really irks me about this strip. It’s unreasonable I admit, but that stupid strand of hair bugs the crap out of me. Maybe if it was shorter or something it wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s just terrible as is and I don’t get why he doesn’t just push it back behind his ear or something.
Tiff has contracted Peonie’s clothing curse!
Watch out Niels & Bohr!
I am stunned. This total rejection of who Tiff wants to be, who she thinks of as herself, is a brilliant stroke.
A brass bikini with brass nipples. Ornate brass nipples.
No, this is not a brass bikini. This is a brazen bikini, as in “brazen hussy”.
And that forelock–constantly IN HER FACE with the fact of her physical femininity.
She’s getting set down hard. She can act as tough as she wants, but she is a girl, and the harder she tries to cover that up, that harder the spell fights back.
Which says to me that possibly, just possibly, she needs to listen to the spell. She has not yet learned what the Dreamer is trying to teach her.
Brilliant, brilliant storytelling. Thank you.
Love the underwear, very Star Warsy.
About that forelock: she was quite muscular in the last strip, much less so now. That’s something that she was, apparently, able to control. She’s worn martial garb before as well, IIRC.
Cutting the forelock seems to have been a trigger. Just that one little bit too far.
Right up to the point that she cut the forelock.
I am massively disappointed here. There’s nothing I like about this page. She did look a little too androgynous in the previous page, but it was nice to see her finally get rid of that stupid lock of hair and start accepting herself in recent pages.
From a writing standpoint this is terrible. It’s far too late in the story to hit her with an event like this with no setup. I could see this page happening, but not right now, following immediately after that last page. Let her keep her new look for a while, and then have some big magical event / disaster happen that refreshes and supercharges the curse, making it more powerful than ever. Then a scene like this would be awesome.
But for today, I don’t… ugh… I like this comic considerably less right now.
@JMV. I completely agree with you. Furthermore, the curse is specifically tuned to how Tiff views women, and (s)he has NEVER viewed women like this, not even on Typh’s worst day would he think of a woman with a metal bikini, especially in WINTER. The “prince valiant” look, while unappealing was actually eminently practical, for the season at least, and perfectly describes Tiff AS SHE IS. This “oh no we can’t have that, MOAR FANTASY SEXY WITH A DOSE OF SHAME AND FUTILITY” really has no place here. So many ways this scene could have gone, and we get this. (Sigh)
@JMV, Uhi:
I rarely disagree with others in matters of taste, but I’m going to nudge a bit here.
Tiff is facing a setback. Good storytellers do that to their characters.
You’ve seen it in every cop show. The detective turns to leave, defeated by the perp’s alibi and seamless story.
Then the perp, full of himself, will make one last cutting remark. On go the cuffs.
That’s exactly what happened here. She cut her forelock–with a sword no less–and pissed off the spell.
The evil magician’s spell, no less.
I am dismayed on Tiff’s behalf. But I think it’s too early by far to call this bad storytelling. It’s like seeing Indy and Marion getting sealed into the snake pit and thinking, “Well, this sucks! Indy hates snakes! What was Lucas thinking!”
I really want to know the ontological status of this page. I suspect that, one way or another, this is not actually happening. I do not see a good transition for it, though.
Ok.. perhaps this is just me, but from my understanding the curse is pushing tiff into the form she accepts as female. From that if she views woman to be weak and fragile dolls then she will be weak and fragile. Yes, yes I know recapping, but as tiff has already conquered her view point that females are weak and fragile, she now is struggling with the element of how she feels females should present themselves.
Soo from that perspective, maybe exposure to Princess Pcups and the “Queen” who ether are naked regularly or present themselves in the most girly possible ways isn’t the best idea for her if she wants to develop her imagine into a more masculine one. Her choice in feminine rolemodels IMO play a great deal into her image. She still views women as something that should be or act slutty, soo
I’m starting to think that she may be dreaming at this point… just because it’s seguing into nightmare territory. Literally, “Body Horror.” Just because it’s a sexy female body doesn’t make it less horrific to her. What we’re seeing here is a classic transgender terror – a desperate attempt to escape being in the wrong gendered body, while external forces conspire to stifle any attempts to escape it. This is literally one “corrective rape” away from hitting every single terror of an FTM’s psyche.
…Of course, it could very well simply be the curse screwing with her. In which case, I hope Tiff will continue to get mad. SOMETHING needs punching, at this point…
@Drachefly : “I suspect that, one way or another, this is not actually happening.”
Do not want. If this is not actually happening, then the scene loses a great deal of its power.
Goddamn it
I’m with JMV here, this is terrible
blech.
This is a double first: the first time we’ve seen her cry, and the first time we’ve seen her clothes affected.
I too suspect that what we are seeing is not real. I doubt this is a dream, more like a memory-wander.
I feel that this does help advance the theme of the curse and does put it more at the forefront. By showing it bouncing back (with a vengeance), we find that it still very much has life to it.
I agree that Tiffany’s outlook on women hasn’t really been altered all that much. Between Peonie always ending up naked and Teresa’s very girly ministrations, they don’t provide the completely positive image of womanhood that would break Tiffany’s world view. The trip up North had a strong female character, but she had limited interaction with Tiffany if I remember correctly, so there wasn’t much chance to alter her view.
Also note the pink nail polish, then the lack of tears streaming in the final panel. This does seem to be some sort of mind shenanigans underway.
i think when tiff cut her hair the curse bounced back regrew her hair and changed her clothes.
The curl is invincible!
“The curl is invincible!”
Speaking of curls, where did that lock in the last frame come from? Why is it just floating in the air?
Dang it, that makes this all look like some kind of dream. If it’s a vision, something about Tiff’s fate, I guess I can live with it. If this is merely an expression of her anxiety or angst, I’ll be very disappointed.
Either way, though, I’d much rather this be the actual workings of the spell, a jerk on Tiff’s magical leash or something. Out of the blue dreams and visions feel like a cheat to me.
I feel really sorry for Tiff…
But a story needs conflict. She’ll beat this curse eventually, or maybe just beat her misogyny, and then she can be the lovely badass in the last page.
It returns! \(‘-‘ )/
I feel bad for Tiff. I was glad to see that she was taking control of her image and decide what type of woman that she wants to be.
My guess is that the spell sets boundaries of what it considers to be acceptable. The spell will alter her to conform to her self-image as long as she stays within those borders. When she tried to go beyond those borders, the spell pushed back hard.
It seems a little too surreal. When has the curse affected clothes before (apart from shredding them?) And where did her abs go?
Can’t she just comb it backwards?
@Mogster: And where did her sword go? The more I look at this, and go back through the whole sequence, the more this looks like some kind of vision, as several have said.
I don’t mind seeing a character thwarted, as Rolan7 says, “a story needs conflict”. But I hate dreams and visions, when they are not clearly marked as such. I hate being tricked into thinking that something’s happening when it’s not.
If that’s what’s going, on fine, I guess; I’ll take it as a warning of some kind. If so, how will Tiff respond.
But I really hope not. OK, I’m repeating myself, I’ll shut up now.
If you look closely, in the foreground of the last strip that’s her severed hair piece right over her arm. All the changes we observed were in the mirror. This could well have been some sort of mirror-illusion, hallucination or other self-image-battle-in-her-mind, to which Tiff reacted by smashing the mirror. We won’t know whether this is real or not until we see her NOT through the mirror.
My current thought is that actually changing her clothes like that is a bit much for her curse as it’s been shown in the past; and it’s not based on her idea of what a woman is, since she has gone further down the road of her own acceptance.
Of course it could always be the “Something Else” option… We’ll have to wait to see what’s actually going on.
@guest I think its simpler than that. Tiff’s self image might be OK but her view of other women is what affects the spell. And she still thinks of girls as toys for boys, she might not see her self that way but the spell’s rules are she looks and is what she believe women to be.so she still got some growing to do.and her will still fighting it.
0_0 … Trolled by a curse.
hmmm…So if she dresses butch, the spell will make her dress all girly. She should try putting on a tiny little see-through harem girl outfit- maybe that unlocks her strong warrior-like nature? 😀
Urgh, I feel for Tiff. She’s a pragmatist, and she has aceppted a lot on this body. From her past errors, to her actual body. She has accepted she likes men, but she is not willing to submit to her past image of women, an image she has left in the bin long ago. My impression is that the spell/curse isn’t adaptative to Tiff’s psyche, but set in “stone”, in a reactive way. Also, that in the same way, it acts agressively upon Tiff’s mind, twarting any attempt to change. It’s like a trojan virus. In a way, at this point, it’s conditioning Tiff, conforming her. It is an horrible curse, very similar to what we could call gender dysphoria, only I think that in this case twisted and enforced into the character. Tiff may have wanted subsconciously to approach his feminine side, or even accept it, but this curse now is binding his/her self-growth, which could end very well being an androginous self image, with an ambigous approach to sexual and sentimental partners. But well, it’s the writter’s choice. We will see.
That hair is evil.
Wow, I haven’t seen hair that contrary since Girl Genius!
What I don’t get is the reversion to bondage/slave girl/barbarian stripper look. Since when did his clothes start changing?! Is this the Narrator’s fault? (glares)
Where did that underwear come from?
I’m now 10:1 sure it’s a damn vision, as proposed by others upthread.
We see these transforms in a mirror, not in reality, and the lock of hair is the key marker.
The next to last frame of the previous strip shows Tiff holding the newly cut lock.
The vision begins in the next frame, and continues to the last frame of the current comic, where Tiff lets go of the lock as she shatters the mirror. The lock is really there, and does not appear in the mirror vision.
(The only problem with this is that it still doesn’t explain the loss of the sword. She had the lock in her left hand, the sword in her right, and she hit the mirror with her right hand. This might be an art glitch.)
This will be portrayed as Typhan-Knee’s great victory over the curse.
I don’t like it, not just because I don’t like the “and the little girl woke up, and it was all a dream” trope, but because the message here is that Typh still has not come to understand that women have their own strength, and are more than weak pleasure toys for men. Only the male virtues are worthwhile.
Normally I prefer to let the discussion evolve on its own, but I feel people deserve to know that this is not a dream sequence, and will be proven to be real in the pages to come.
I hate dream/daydream/illusion/fantasy scenes, especially ones that are only intended to fool the audience and waste time. Tiff and Peonie have been out of the loop long enough over the past pages and while there’s one more “what the?” moment to come we’ll be getting explanations and missions soon!
Thank you Scott! Thank you so very much!
Allow me then to congratulate you on an extraordinarily powerful scene.
I have rarely been so happy to be proved wrong.
Scott, I apologize for jumping the gun and maligning you. But I am happy to have helped provoked your clarification.
No apologies needed! One thing I love about Exiern, and have loved writing Exiern for, are these great comment discussions! Even the ones which don’t like how they think the story is going – it’s discussion, exploration of ideas, and everything an art form should be about. I read every one of these with eager glee.
I only spoke up because it never occurred to me that the scene could be seen as a dream or illusion and I could tell it was dominating the course of the discussion and pushing aside some other great points that had been made (both for and against what Exiern’s course appears to be)!
While I am glad you cleared it up sorta, I find, almost no mater what, till something is proven, different people will view scene differently. I started wondering about the illusion or dream, since it was all scene from the mirror pov, but I did not feel it took away from what was shown, if it was fake. More so Panel 5, I found to be very powerful, with the tear from Tiff.
I agree, everyone sees things differently and interprets pages based on varying viewpoints, and those opinions are all valid and good and encouraged (which is why I don’t use narration and generally try to stay quiet in the comments). And I thought the “it’s an illusion!” idea was a great and surprising way to interpret the scene. But I also knew the “illusion or not?” question would be answered without question over the next two pages and it felt cruel of me to let people be strung along on it.
And now I’ll try to shut up! 😉 🙂
Scott, no need to respond, and I feel like I have to shut up too, that I’ve been monopolizing the conversation with my totally wrongheaded insights, but I have to say this one last thing.
Over in the forums for another webcomic, I have ranted about the author abandoning the premise of his story, and allowing the protagonist to hide from the consequences of what’s been done to her, while whining endlessly about it.
This is a powerful counter example. You are taking the Exiern premise very seriously indeed, cruelly punishing the protagonist for trying to evade it.
Tiff has been actively working against the curse all along, as you highlighted in these last couple of strips. She has not been at all passive. And still, the curse will have its way with her. No matter how she sees HERSELF, the curse makes her into what she perceives WOMEN to be.
Hence the brazen bikini. That’s not pandering to us, the audience; that’s pandering to Typhan-Knee, and his contempt for women as weak playthings.
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: brilliant, brilliant work here.
Also, cross-eyed Tiff is so cute I can’t stand it. 😛
Wow, I guess I was right when I said that the curse would not be happy about all this clothing changing and hair cutting…
Good stuff Scott.
Hmmm, since this isn’t a dream then it certainly appears the “Dreamer” is messing more directly with Tiffany (can’t remember a direct alteration of her clothes previously)… Possibly due to influence from the latest Doomsayer?
You know… I think this is only about the third or fourth page which has stirred up so much response that its seen a second page of comments.
Took me a while to realize the clothes actually transformed as opposed to shred. At any rate, that is a powerful image invoked here. Just when Tiff thought she had it figured out, the curse ruins it, and does it more thoroughly this time. It is sad in a good way.
This reminds me of a change spell from “River of the Dancing Gods” the more you fight the spell, the more it fights back. I’d like to see what would happen if she tried wearing more feminine clothing. Even if the curse isn’t broken, perhaps she can find a balancing point.
SGT, you are not the only one to think Tiff needs to find a balance.
And that balance might be more androgynous than she might think. I suspect that cutting that lock of hair, WITH A SWORD, one of the strongest male symbols extant, is what triggered the spell’s revenge. The male Typhan-Knee had shaggy bangs, but no one of them stood out. This one was generated specifically by the spell itself.
I don’t think this is a reflection of tiff’s viewpoint. She’s gone through to much character development for that. since it isn’t a dream sequence^ that would seem to indicate the curse is either changing or… it never has.
Now it has me wondering if the ‘now angry curse’ will change any clothing that Tiff puts on into the metal beachwear ‘distraction armor’. Can’t say I would disapprove of the cheesecake, but that would certainly be hard to explain in social situations.
I also find it interesting that after the clothing change, Tiff’s abs of steel from the previous page are not present…I wonder if that is artist’s choice, or if the curse did that at the same time as her bangs were growing. Hmmm…
Another “I hurt my hand.” moment for Tiff?
@Bob-AW 7:55
That much of a change, from one comic to the next? Same artist? Not enough time for a style shift? It’s got to be deliberate, just like everything else we see, including the forelock and the color of her nails.
Even her arms lost muscle mass.
===
And Joe? Yeah, my understanding is that you shatter glass with your fist, you can expect to bleed at least a little.
I suspect what is happening is that what Tiffany is seeing in her mind’s eye isn’t exactly what is really in front of her.
chemiclord, all due respect to a previous writer, but Scott’s put the kibosh on “dream/daydream/illusion/fantasy scenes, especially ones that are only intended to fool the audience”. Unless you have insider info, I hope the mirror is showing Tiff (and us) exactly what’s happening to her.
You guys seem to forget that Typhan-Knee is a barbarian full of machismo and sexism. The curse changes him to his opinion of women.
He does not have a good opinion of women. When he started crying, he lost muscles, as he sees women as weak.
Don’t know about anyone else, but having this be a dream sequence would be more palatable than being ‘For Real’ and magic gave her brass underwear
I am guessing that a big part of the problem is the difference between Tiff’s conscious and unconscious minds. On a conscious level s/he realizes s/he was wrong about women, but subconsciously s/he still thinks the same way she did before. After all just because you realize you have a problem doesn’t mean it goes away.
Guesticus: “a dream sequence would be more palatable than being ‘For Real’ and magic gave her brass underwear”
Is it Tiff’s being in a bikini that bothers you, or is it the alchemy of turning fabric into brass?
That’s it, Missy. Kill the messenger.
Hers is no ordinary dark sorcerer’s spell. It was unicorn-supercharged. To break it, a unicorn may have to die. 🙁
Right now is about the time a clueless palace guard would burst in and say, “What was that crash? Woah! You look hawt!” (Ker-punch!)
@50srefugee, that’s not exactly what I’m talking about.
Unless you think that her current clothes completely unraveled and that she was wearing a tarted up brass halter top with sculpted nipples, I think that you could interpret this page as her mind kinda playing tricks on her, like there’s a part of her saying, “No matter how you cut your hair or the clothes you put on, this is how you feel underneath.”
I think the guard uniform transformed into the brazen bikini. You can see at least one of the shreds merging into the bottom of her right cup.
I understand you are instead interpreting this as a kind of metaphor, which is possible, although Scott’s illusion disclaimer argues against that. We shall see in a couple of days.
*sigh*
“…merging into the bottom of her right cup” should be “left cup”. You know, the only one that has a shred merging into it from the bottom.
NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
I liked the tomboy look.
Now she’s gone into the slave Leia outfit. …Give her a few whip chains and I might change my mind.
I have been thinking about this idea that the changes to Typhan-Knee are due to his image of females. I cannot see that as true. His first impressions of a female would have been his mother, she was not weak. The women of the tribe had to be strong too. He was not shocked about a woman being the best hunter in the tribe. He was not shocked at his brother’s girlfriend. To my memory the only derogatory remarks he has made about women have been directed at Peonie. Those were usually about her be weak almost as if he considered her embarrassing to females. I might be wrong but if right, that blows the theory it is his image of females that is changing him into Tiffany.
Oh, good. I know some others do not, but not only do I find that lock of hair adorable, it is one of the most distinctive features of the way her character is drawn. Lose the lock, and she will look like almost any other anonymous blonde female character who might enter the story – that lock is the thread that connects her variously illustrated iterations through the story…
As for the clothes, I’m not sure whether to laugh or feel sorry for her. So I did both.