17

Apr 2014

Chapter 4: Page 5 - What Now?

Posted by / in Comic / 34 comments

Happy Thursday!

In case you didn’t see it, I started a new blog section this week: the Wednesday Spotlight. This week’s entry featured our very own fan Charlie Wise! So give it a read, eh?

I’m also happy to announce a new collaborative Lore piece, The Undying Voice of Julius Gordon, by Josh Conner of the webcomic Steel Salvation. It’s pretty awesome. Josh really knows how to write beautiful prose. I highly recommend you check it out (and the rest of the Lore section!) if you haven’t already.

In other news, we got another review, this one from the Webcomic Police. They’re always a little tough on the comics they review, but we did get some good feedback, even if mostly on things we already know we need to work on :)

Standard Vote Request link, but you can see our ad is back up again if you vote today :)

Anyways, enjoy the page. Tenzin’s parents are pretty cool, IMO.

EDIT: I keep forgetting to credit awesome guest artist Matias Basla for his pages. Thanks again, man :)

  • Delta-v

    I like the way the fire is reflected in Tenzin’s eyes. It really magnifies the horror of it all.

  • Matias did an amazing job capturing the dark and gritty of this. Especially since it was so long into Tenzin’s past that it would have been tarnished by age and memory.

  • Are Gege and Meimei pet names, or do they mean something like “brother” and “sister”?

    • Standard practice is to add a Minerva Credit (MC) reward to whomever guesses correctly… but I think you’d be closer if you searched for which language assuming the latter meaning :D

      PS - I’m totally adding MC credits as discount points in the next launch of the site for purchasing things :)

      • Oh, I didn’t see your post about the language stuff, was just curious. I didn’t know what language they were speaking.

        • Nah, your post came first, and then Nick offered MCs. You’re really really close though. You basically just have to figure out which language it is ;)

        • Delta-v

          Don’t forget how we do things around here. :)

          • I have no idea! The comments section here has been completely bugged out for me until recently!

          • I’m glad that it’s finally working again! Sounds like Nick fixed it. Maybe I should also let him know I’m the official MCs giver-outer guy ;)

          • Delta-v

            Yeah, that would complicate things, so I’m glad you can access it now. Yay, Nick!

            Let’s just say that some of us search a little farther afield than our own resources. :)

          • Sorry, I just really wasn’t expecting for my ignorance to be turned into some sort of point game here. I’ll be on my way.

          • @Emily - no no no… :( its a game we’ve had running in previous pages… pretty much anytime we use another language.

            Sorry if it came off mean… Honestly nobody “should” be able to know this without some serious googling in my opinion. Giving you half for guessing the meaning in the first go :D I’ll save half the MC for whomever wants to take a guess at the language.

          • Not mean, I’m just surprised that my question got dragged front-and-center as it did when I didn’t think it deserved more than a quick reply.
            Sorry, didn’t mean to make this a big deal. Never mind.

          • Sorry! Nick got a little excited ;)

          • You’ve suffered from our nasty symptoms of “holy [email protected]#$, must engage audience at all costs” we’re very much still getting used to commenters and actually having insight into how people are liking/reading the comic. Sorry if we/I were over eager, and we’re very glad you took the time not only to read, but to engage and ask. Thanks also for the feedback on how it came off versus what you were expecting, it helps :D

    • 500 MCs for guessing the meaning just from context, before Nick even extended the challenge :)

  • 1000 MC credits to those who guess the meaning and language of “Gege” and “Meimei” :D

    • Hint… the characters page might help… but now you have to split the reward with me!

    • Amberlight

      Daniel mentioned that Tenzin is ethnically Chinese, so I’m guessing that the words mean “brother” and “sister” in one of chinese dialects.

      • Can you figure out which one?

        • Amberlight

          Googling provided hints that it is mandarin.

          • For your GoogleFu I award you 500 MCs. What’s that bring you up to, now?

          • Amberlight

            I was wondering the same thing but I’m too lazy to count now.:D
            Ill check the comments on previous pages to sum it up later.

  • mcmasters

    Love the creepy “bad guy” reverse black-white font. Don’t love the rapey-guys. Maybe young Tenzin will spring into action…?

    • Delta-v

      Yeah, I like it too. The red-on-black font may look more evil, but I can’t read it. This I can read. :)

    • Demetri Ermak

      There’s a Russian book by Maria Semenova, called Wolfhound. It’s about a young boy, whose village was slaughtered by new Earl’s men, and he stabbed one of them with a spear. They called him “a pup” and threw him in a (translate calls that) “penal servitude” - basically a slave prison in a faraway Lone Mountain. And, well, he survived, grew up and earned the nickname Wolfhound. Actually a great fantasy. The twist is that he was raised by aikido-inspired monks after the prison, so the burning hatred is mixed with, you know, zen spirits. He tries to avoid fight for as long as possible, but many people don’t get the message.

      • Man I wish I spoke Russian to read that! It sounds really good! Do you know of any good translations into English?

        • Demetri Ermak

          I wish I knew English so good that I could translate her! The language is fluid and every word just connects with the others, as they said in a review, “like the links in a chainmail”.

          For some reason, she is not translated at all or I can’t find anything.

          If we’re talking about books, though, I know one fantastic Russian author whose books are translated, at least the first in the series - it’s the “Chronicles of Echo” by Max Frei. It’s about an everyday guy who has vivid dreams of a beautiful city by the name of Echo and he has lots of them, where he even starts to recognise people and one day one of them invites him over, as in, move to Echo permanently. And he says that there will be a tram waiting for him on one of the squares where tram lines never existed. And he’s all like “why the hell not, I don’t have anything to do anyway” and he comes there and well - I found a link, you can download the translated version here.

          http://www.rulit.net/author/fraj-maks/the-stranger-download-free-195844.html

  • Making the bad guy’s speech “photo-negative”- huh! I had not considered that before. I like the effect. It is like they have a wicked reverberation tot heir voice that you can… see. Cool.

  • Uh oh!

  • Citrus Reaper

    Time for some gunfights.

  • smurfton

    “Oh, is that all? Ok, well this is Tenzin’s mom. Raiders, Mom. Mom, Raiders. So, TM, why don’t you tell these gentlemen about yourself?”

    “Well, I think I’m a tertiary character, but I’ve been getting loads of action lately. There was this cool bit where I hugged my children just before you burned my house down, and then we did that running thing? Yeah, I’m not super characterized YET, but who is after five pages?”

    “Right, nice meeting you, we’ll just be off then. We’ll give you guys a good review in the Raider’s Digest for sure. Nice bit of fun we had here, you can count on us coming back for some more.”

    • NickDA

      loved the middle paragraph… like it was a behind the scenes on the filming of.