Volume 20 Page 75
Reviewing my initial draft of Water Phoenix King, it’s amazing how much has changed from conception (in 2008 or so) to the present. I wrote out a complete beat-by-beat summary for the whole comic, and then proceeded to deviate wildly from it starting around chapter 7. Corva was supposed to be a fairly minor character, a training-montage-mentor-figure for Anthem, but when Okidesha’s metaphysical role in the story expanded, I wanted a mouthpiece for the lava goddess, and turning Corva into her priestess made sense. Then she basically ate up a bunch of plots. Only Din Maia Hin (the dragon-woman in chapter 16) and the Kepteriad survived Corva’s voracious rampage across the subplots.
By contrast, several of the other characters got “out-leveled” by events in the story. Reshma and Arduna are just big guys with military training–they’re helplessly outclassed by god-eating alchemical blasphemies and the other stuff Maresh brewed up toward the end.
Would be nice to have that summary published after the comic isfinished. I always finit very interesting to have insight into the creative process of storytelling. As for the visual art, you have commented about influences, decisions and difficulties a lot*, wich always find very enlightened. It is a bit like going to opera with commented libretto in hand. The amusement is the same, but the understanding gives a new dimension of appreciation.
*Although I think you underestimate your own talents and skill in these comments, as often stated.
Hrrrm. Out-leveled…An interesting carry-over from your D&D days I think.
I can understand where that comes from, but I feel like these things weren’t necessarily done in increasing order of danger, nor did they need to.
Plus…It strikes me as kind of awkward to have that sort of thing in a story when it’s not obvious, because characters are kind of forcibly ‘phased out’, when really they don’t have to be.
Arduna could have been simply occupied/no longer motivated once it stopped being about defending the Inn from various bad things, for example.
I don’t think he meant that he thought of the characters as literally having class levels, just that the priestess/sorcerer/god characters eventually became far more powerful than everyone else. In a story where magic-type phenomena are as powerful as they are in WPK, that sort of thing is more-or-less inevitable.
So, will Ismene say “I object!” when they get to the “Speak now or forever hold your peace” bit?
Also, what sort of mess can we expect the next generation to deal with?
Also, did you ever see that comment left on one of your hexcrawl posts? On your blog no one reads?
Also also: Where is Maresh’s scepter-thingy now?