Dear Readers! I have news, and unfortunately, it's not good news. While I was working on the current comic scene, which was supposed to come out next week, I became increasingly aware that it is completely useless to the plot of the comic and hurts the pacing of the story. It introduces a character who will never appear again and stretches another conversation for several pages that will essentially be on the same topic as the one that just finished. Not to mention that it might have appeared... problematic, from some points of view. So I made the decision to remove this scene. I've dropped scenes from a comic before, but they usually didn't take up more than a page or two of screen time, so the buffer could take it. Unfortunately, I made the decision too late this time, which means I'll have to throw out everything that's already been done and start from scratch, which means the next update will be delayed for about a month - month and a half. My apologies. As compensation, please take this frame from the deleted scene in its original resolution.
Maybe someone could use it as a new desktop background. ^^"
Comments (19)
Had high hopes for this story. Disappointed that binge-reading led only to an 11-month cliffhanger. I hope the author/artist is safe and well.
Maybe I really should post some new blog post... The last page was released 6 days ago, not 11 months. =D
My mistake, then. I did binge-read what you have posted so far, and I am much impressed with the 'hardness' of your science-fiction story. Looking forward to the next installment. I apologize for my error.
Any progress reports for us?
Yeah, sorry about that, but so far there's still a hiatus.
But hey, at least I'm not in prison or dead, so that's still something, eh?I'm gonna believe that last part is in strikethrough form for some dark humor and not because the lack of prison or death situation has changed.
Seriously though, I hope you're reasonably safe given the situation.
Actually, that image could work as a page by itself, even without dialog, to give readers a hint of the Matriarch's rank in their society. Give it a title like "Chez Matriarch" or something.
No need to throw away the effort that went into it.
I suspect that the place's grandezza might have more to do with the Ktak's general streak of claustrophobia ...
(It's still on the Dawn, isn't it? That means that an outright show of dominance wouldn't go entirely unanswered ...)
I think you could probably develop it as a side comic sometime down the road, just so you don't have to trash all that gorgeous work you've already done....
No worries, it's worth waiting for! Thanks for the art, too, it's beautiful!
So it was going to be the conversation between Zane (who seemed overjoyed at the prospect on page 154 :p ) and the Ktak matriarch. And she too would have discussed about whether or not to breach the Prime Directive.
Pretty much, though from her angle the intention was more about "allow us to teach them our religion".
While I agree that it isn't really useful plot-wise, I think it would've been interesting to see how a member of a different species is viewing the situation. And a presumably influential one at that.
She sounds like exactly the kind of problem the Directives were meant to solve.
No worries, take your time! Thank you for the great comic! Out of curiosity, what was the character that would never appear again going to be?
Also, as a side note, have you considered posting a link to your comic on r/HFY? I think the theme would fit pretty well!
It was going to be a Ktak Matriarch.
I don't know why people offer me to post this into HFY circles from time to time. I very consciously try to steer clear of "humans are superior!" stuff appearing in my works.
From my understanding HFY isn't about the "humas are superior" thing (though I admit some stories do gravitate towards it). My impression is that it is more of a counter to the "humans are the average generic race" trope, where in sci-fi alien races often tend to be good at something unique whereas humans are just bland. I think it's more about answering the "why are humans special" question. (In the case of your story, from my point of view at least, one of the answers could be "because first contact was made at a unique period in their history (i.e. before colonizing their first world, but after achieving spaceflight).)
A short story I'd really like to recommend you that I think fits the themes of HFY perfectly (though it is from before HFY was a thing) is is "The Road Not Taken" by Harry Turtledove. You can read it here: https://eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Turtledove_RoadNotTaken.pdf
TBH, a good chunk of the stories on /r/HFY do tend to make humanity Mary Sues, for the lack of a better word. The Jenkinsverse stuff is a prime example of that with "Earth is a death world to beat all death worlds and humanity is better than the aliens at pretty much everything to the point where a goddamn hockey team is able to beat back a surprise alien invasion with almost no problem."
Not my cup of tea.
If you're after some better HFYs try Harry Turtledove's "World War" Series, which basically follows the idea of an alien race visiting and attacking Earth at the height of WW2.
Another good, opensource one is Stuart Slade's "The Salvation War". It was supposed to be a 3 book series but he unfortunately passed away after beginning to write the 3rd book after some years. He had an unfortunate incident where an editor didn't like the books due to some religious beliefs and posted the first two to the world on a torrent which made publisher's avoid the work. But it has some internet notoriety as an excellent HFY despite being relatively unpolished.
NOTE: old link gone but put a website against this link which is still active with the content of the entire first book
Both these works are heavy on military knowledge and go out of their way to use just about every weird, wonderful and frankly terrifying weapon mankind had or has in those respective ages.