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Starting February 1st ALL new Exiern pages will post ONLY to Exiern.com and Our Patreon. Please read and support us there!
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+.
So… we’ve got a story to establish the plot of someone trying to kill Typh. I get that. Cool beans.
They’re a character from a long time ago, who was hinted at future stories, but due to a few changes in writer and format, kind of got forgotten, so they needed to be reintroduced. Peachy.
So, in order to be reminded of who this person is (I only know it’s Ce and that scholar because EVERYONE has told me so, and not from any specific reveal in the story) and then, maybe, a few more pages telling why Ce has a change of heart and intends to kill Typh, who did so much good for her (that is, the story of the last few pages). Good idea.
But wait. That isn’t what you did. Instead, you started by inserting us into an early character of the story, the seamstress and her ennui. Next, you introduce a friend who’s giving her a gift, only to tell the story of a seamstress spellsinger who changed all women to be the same size/shape. O… K?
But that wasn’t enough, so you also introduce a man who wants to bed the Seamstress’ friend, and as such, decides to pay for her services to make himself look nice. He is revealed to be on good terms with the seamstress (or, at the very least, she knows he’s good for money and she’s willing to make clothes for him) and he goes into the back room… And THEN you introduce all that stuff about Ce and the Scholar that I mentioned before!
Why all the buildup? Why all the plot. Like, I get it: you wanted to tell a story in the world. Makes sense and all that, but we were MID-FIGHT when this thread started! If it was just the few pages relating directly to Ce, it would have been fine and no one would have complained, but this is… this is fokken ridiculous.
Not to mention the fact that that guy you introduced was almost set up like he’d be, idk, actually important, but really, it was just so that you’d have someone to kill that wasn’t a previously established Exiern character, nor any of her friends. It was a customer. Some peon she probably only did work for once or twice before.
Yeah im normally a reader rather than a commenter but I had to go to the effort to ask you to PLEASE move on with the plot.Seriously the important details of this couldve been covered in a paragraph or less-eg: “Hi tiff!I for reasons of my own wanted to contact a shoggoth with a wierd fetish for fashion and magical girl cosplay but apparently you killed it when it tried to attack you with its junk.Prepare to die!!!!” Tiff: W-what?!?!?How does this remotely help you with your shoggoth fetish!?!?Oh hell with this idiocy…*Fight continues*
I know people love Exiern and I know that is why you tell me when there is a story arc you are not enjoying, and boy do I want to know when something is not working. And boy have I been told this one is not!
There’s lots of good news about it. This story line ended up posted like this as an exception to the way things usually work, not to be seen as an example of how things will be in Exiern moving forward. We needed this to give general production a break to get back on track. We have plenty of pages of Typh and Alicia and Peonie now waiting in the wings for when this wraps up, and we are only pages away from doing that.
I like people telling me how the focused parts are or are not working because I have the curse of overall plot vision. I know how important it was to get the Seamstress lore introduced. I know how important it is to show that rogue spellsingers would have made it very easy for the Church of Rem to convince the general populace that an organization needed to set some harsh rules. I know that it is important to show that living in a world with individuals with otherworldly powers is a terrifying thing for the common people.
I don’t chime in much because I like letting people discover and discuss ideas and theories on their own without the “Dreamer” coming in and squashing some and confirming others – I don’t think that is really fun for everyone. I love seeing what you all come up with. Unfortunately, it seems that for the majority of readers this story hasn’t had the fun to it to encourage that. I know people come to read Typh and Peonie’s story, something that in general I do try to keep the comic focused on. I think this has certainly shown that I was correct in that assumption, and I can promise we have a lot more fun Typh and Peonie story coming shortly.
I say all of this gladly and with a happy heart. As someone who did improv and stand-up for a few years, I know well the phrase, “If they’re booing at least you know they are listening.” I know this feedback is from people who love Exiern and Typh and Peonie and I love that you love them. I appreciate that. I embrace how that gets expressed.
And you can rest easy, if you can rest just a little longer, knowing that what you love is coming back soon. I promise. And these pages WILL make what is to come all the richer.
I’ll try to keep repetition (this includes previous posts on earlier pages) to a minimum but like Scott said, the production situation was such that had this story arc been skipped and we’d gone to straight after the cliffhanger, pages couldn’t have gone up at a rate of 1 page a week for various reasons.
The good news is, once the main story resumes (not too much longer now by my estimations), it can stay at at least 1/week (there was a risk of it not being able to, thanks to this flashback arc that’s no longer the case for the immediate future).
The eventual aim is to make it to 2/week at least. I can’t say when – or even if – that is going to be but keeping things at its current rate as a minimum makes that potential future more likely than if it dropped to an even slower rate of publication.
Anyway, it wasn’t the original intention for things to be like this but it was unavoidable at the time. Hopefully, though thanks to this, it’s going to lead to 2018 being an even greater year for the main plot than it otherwise would have been without it (the break from the main story has really helped production in the long run, believe it or not).
Now, I know what I’m about to say is definitely repeating myself B McB (good one by the way IMO) but as much as it’s true that it’s Scott’s story and he can tell it any way he wants but even if the audience isn’t paying in money (though of course some are via Patreon), they still have every right to choose how to spend their time.
Scott’s already shown many times he’s aware that as much as he can tell it any way he likes, he’s also aware that if the audience doesn’t like the story he’s telling, he could lose it. So there’s always that balancing act between telling the story you most want to tell and what your audience wants.
Of course, the audience isn’t one giant monolithic bloc all wanting the same thing, so you have to reach a balance where you maximise the amount of audience you keep on board with as much of the story told the way you most prefer to tell it.
So, anyway I guess there’s a learning experience from all of this and things will be done at least a bit differently in future. Part of that will be doing our best to avoid ending up in the circumstances that led to us being in the position that things couldn’t have been done any other way than how it has been with this arc in the first place due to production and financial issues and the like.
I’m curious to know how the visits to the site have changed since this story started six months ago?
Regular readers understand I think that you needed to build a buffer up but if I were a new reader come to the site, I wouldn’t be sticking round if the last six months of stories were this one.
It’s not just how you’d had to stretch the story out over six months but even if you read it all in a block, it’s just dull and uninteresting . Relying far too heavily on people knowing what has come before and taking no effort at all to fill in new readers.
Comments here (and, well, plenty of other webics) reminds me of an Aesop’s Fable, fairly sure most would know which one (but for those who don’t even know who Aesop was, a clue: it involves an old man, a young boy, and his a!s)
This strip began in 2005 and is still going. I think we readers can afford to wait a few more weeks for the mainline plot to resume.
Especially since we have the author’s assurance that this arc is relevant.
I’m rather shocked at how rude people are regarding the story. It seems if there is even the slightest hint of depth to the world that people fall apart. Personally, I have little to no issues with the way the story is unfolding. Its a clear break from where we were before and leading into something else. I feel bad for people who go antsy when there isn’t action and their favorite characters 100% of the time. The world is bigger than just those two and this has done a good job of digging deeper into both the lore of the world (with all people having the same shape, which I thought was very interesting and could lead to some fun event down the road) and other characters.
Thanks for taking the time to share your vision of your world in spite of the extremely aggressive abuse and unfair demands of those commenting. Please continue to tell your story in your way and don’t let your artistic voice be changed by anyone’s negativity. I’m here because of your story and how you tell it, so please don’t give in to the comment section peanut gallery.
For what it’s worth Scott, as you well know, I got a lot of “get on with it”s myself.
Sometimes, a story simply cannot be properly judged until it is at its completion, and especially when you’re limited for various reasons to one strip a week, that means longer arcs are going to have some long payoffs.
Do what you need to do. For my fellow readers, what I’ve been doing is set a little note to check in once a month and catch up. This stuff is hard, yo, and it’s not like there isn’t plenty of things for all of us to do in the meantime.
Be a Producer!Your name/title with an optional SFW hyperlink will be posted prominently HERE following the close of the month! You’ll also receive monthly mailings from Exiern’s author, Scott T. Hicken!
You should tell her, it will be the sure way to get rid of her in more than one way. And she may just not kill you if you do.
*sigh* You’re losing me, comic. When will this nonsense end?
So… we’ve got a story to establish the plot of someone trying to kill Typh. I get that. Cool beans.
They’re a character from a long time ago, who was hinted at future stories, but due to a few changes in writer and format, kind of got forgotten, so they needed to be reintroduced. Peachy.
So, in order to be reminded of who this person is (I only know it’s Ce and that scholar because EVERYONE has told me so, and not from any specific reveal in the story) and then, maybe, a few more pages telling why Ce has a change of heart and intends to kill Typh, who did so much good for her (that is, the story of the last few pages). Good idea.
But wait. That isn’t what you did. Instead, you started by inserting us into an early character of the story, the seamstress and her ennui. Next, you introduce a friend who’s giving her a gift, only to tell the story of a seamstress spellsinger who changed all women to be the same size/shape. O… K?
But that wasn’t enough, so you also introduce a man who wants to bed the Seamstress’ friend, and as such, decides to pay for her services to make himself look nice. He is revealed to be on good terms with the seamstress (or, at the very least, she knows he’s good for money and she’s willing to make clothes for him) and he goes into the back room… And THEN you introduce all that stuff about Ce and the Scholar that I mentioned before!
Why all the buildup? Why all the plot. Like, I get it: you wanted to tell a story in the world. Makes sense and all that, but we were MID-FIGHT when this thread started! If it was just the few pages relating directly to Ce, it would have been fine and no one would have complained, but this is… this is fokken ridiculous.
Not to mention the fact that that guy you introduced was almost set up like he’d be, idk, actually important, but really, it was just so that you’d have someone to kill that wasn’t a previously established Exiern character, nor any of her friends. It was a customer. Some peon she probably only did work for once or twice before.
Yeah im normally a reader rather than a commenter but I had to go to the effort to ask you to PLEASE move on with the plot.Seriously the important details of this couldve been covered in a paragraph or less-eg: “Hi tiff!I for reasons of my own wanted to contact a shoggoth with a wierd fetish for fashion and magical girl cosplay but apparently you killed it when it tried to attack you with its junk.Prepare to die!!!!” Tiff: W-what?!?!?How does this remotely help you with your shoggoth fetish!?!?Oh hell with this idiocy…*Fight continues*
I know people love Exiern and I know that is why you tell me when there is a story arc you are not enjoying, and boy do I want to know when something is not working. And boy have I been told this one is not!
There’s lots of good news about it. This story line ended up posted like this as an exception to the way things usually work, not to be seen as an example of how things will be in Exiern moving forward. We needed this to give general production a break to get back on track. We have plenty of pages of Typh and Alicia and Peonie now waiting in the wings for when this wraps up, and we are only pages away from doing that.
I like people telling me how the focused parts are or are not working because I have the curse of overall plot vision. I know how important it was to get the Seamstress lore introduced. I know how important it is to show that rogue spellsingers would have made it very easy for the Church of Rem to convince the general populace that an organization needed to set some harsh rules. I know that it is important to show that living in a world with individuals with otherworldly powers is a terrifying thing for the common people.
I don’t chime in much because I like letting people discover and discuss ideas and theories on their own without the “Dreamer” coming in and squashing some and confirming others – I don’t think that is really fun for everyone. I love seeing what you all come up with. Unfortunately, it seems that for the majority of readers this story hasn’t had the fun to it to encourage that. I know people come to read Typh and Peonie’s story, something that in general I do try to keep the comic focused on. I think this has certainly shown that I was correct in that assumption, and I can promise we have a lot more fun Typh and Peonie story coming shortly.
I say all of this gladly and with a happy heart. As someone who did improv and stand-up for a few years, I know well the phrase, “If they’re booing at least you know they are listening.” I know this feedback is from people who love Exiern and Typh and Peonie and I love that you love them. I appreciate that. I embrace how that gets expressed.
And you can rest easy, if you can rest just a little longer, knowing that what you love is coming back soon. I promise. And these pages WILL make what is to come all the richer.
What he said, basically.
I’ll try to keep repetition (this includes previous posts on earlier pages) to a minimum but like Scott said, the production situation was such that had this story arc been skipped and we’d gone to straight after the cliffhanger, pages couldn’t have gone up at a rate of 1 page a week for various reasons.
The good news is, once the main story resumes (not too much longer now by my estimations), it can stay at at least 1/week (there was a risk of it not being able to, thanks to this flashback arc that’s no longer the case for the immediate future).
The eventual aim is to make it to 2/week at least. I can’t say when – or even if – that is going to be but keeping things at its current rate as a minimum makes that potential future more likely than if it dropped to an even slower rate of publication.
Anyway, it wasn’t the original intention for things to be like this but it was unavoidable at the time. Hopefully, though thanks to this, it’s going to lead to 2018 being an even greater year for the main plot than it otherwise would have been without it (the break from the main story has really helped production in the long run, believe it or not).
Time to listen to my favorite song: ‘Stop dragging my plot around’ by Tom Ploty and the plotbreakers.
Now, I know what I’m about to say is definitely repeating myself B McB (good one by the way IMO) but as much as it’s true that it’s Scott’s story and he can tell it any way he wants but even if the audience isn’t paying in money (though of course some are via Patreon), they still have every right to choose how to spend their time.
Scott’s already shown many times he’s aware that as much as he can tell it any way he likes, he’s also aware that if the audience doesn’t like the story he’s telling, he could lose it. So there’s always that balancing act between telling the story you most want to tell and what your audience wants.
Of course, the audience isn’t one giant monolithic bloc all wanting the same thing, so you have to reach a balance where you maximise the amount of audience you keep on board with as much of the story told the way you most prefer to tell it.
So, anyway I guess there’s a learning experience from all of this and things will be done at least a bit differently in future. Part of that will be doing our best to avoid ending up in the circumstances that led to us being in the position that things couldn’t have been done any other way than how it has been with this arc in the first place due to production and financial issues and the like.
I’m curious to know how the visits to the site have changed since this story started six months ago?
Regular readers understand I think that you needed to build a buffer up but if I were a new reader come to the site, I wouldn’t be sticking round if the last six months of stories were this one.
It’s not just how you’d had to stretch the story out over six months but even if you read it all in a block, it’s just dull and uninteresting . Relying far too heavily on people knowing what has come before and taking no effort at all to fill in new readers.
Comments here (and, well, plenty of other webics) reminds me of an Aesop’s Fable, fairly sure most would know which one (but for those who don’t even know who Aesop was, a clue: it involves an old man, a young boy, and his a!s)
This strip began in 2005 and is still going. I think we readers can afford to wait a few more weeks for the mainline plot to resume.
Especially since we have the author’s assurance that this arc is relevant.
I’m rather shocked at how rude people are regarding the story. It seems if there is even the slightest hint of depth to the world that people fall apart. Personally, I have little to no issues with the way the story is unfolding. Its a clear break from where we were before and leading into something else. I feel bad for people who go antsy when there isn’t action and their favorite characters 100% of the time. The world is bigger than just those two and this has done a good job of digging deeper into both the lore of the world (with all people having the same shape, which I thought was very interesting and could lead to some fun event down the road) and other characters.
Thanks for taking the time to share your vision of your world in spite of the extremely aggressive abuse and unfair demands of those commenting. Please continue to tell your story in your way and don’t let your artistic voice be changed by anyone’s negativity. I’m here because of your story and how you tell it, so please don’t give in to the comment section peanut gallery.
abibliboop
Aggressive abuse?! Lol, what are you, his mother?
Almost missed what the third comment was saying: complaining about plot-building? Cereally? o_O
For what it’s worth Scott, as you well know, I got a lot of “get on with it”s myself.
Sometimes, a story simply cannot be properly judged until it is at its completion, and especially when you’re limited for various reasons to one strip a week, that means longer arcs are going to have some long payoffs.
Do what you need to do. For my fellow readers, what I’ve been doing is set a little note to check in once a month and catch up. This stuff is hard, yo, and it’s not like there isn’t plenty of things for all of us to do in the meantime.
It’s okay. It really is.
chemiclord
No! We hate you! Never write again (sarcasm….because internet)! ;D