Chapter Five Pencilling In Progress

HELLO ALL! Just as a quick reminder, the first half of Chapter Four is up publicly right here, right after the public Patron Acknowledgement pages. Just in case you enjoy the comic that way, or in case you have friends who need to know!

THIS WEEK: a recommendation, a secret, and, of course, new drawings!

The image carousel above and the post below include select panels from the upcoming Chapter Five. You might consider it spoilery to see them now. Do as you wish!

Here's a brief recommendation to separate you from all the spoilery images below.

BLACK SAILS

I watched the first episode of BLACK SAILS a long time ago, noticed it was awful, and wrote off the series. Then I saw Chris Schweizer recommending it. I said to him, "really?" And he explained that It Gets Better.

Since I trust Chris' taste, I put holds on DVDs of the first two seasons from the library. Sure, they wouldn't be High Definition, which disappointed me, but I'd get to see What's Up.

The whole first season is bad. It gets better later in the season, when there's some actual nautical adventure, but the cast is too soap-opera pretty and the plotting is too prestige TV — you can feel the story line hauling you along to One More Episode. In general, though, it's just boring. I watched a lot of it at 1.5x speed (on the Playstation, the audio is still plain to hear this way, so you don't miss out on any of the highly questionable dialogue).

I made it through each disc of that season and then, buoyed by the assurance that things would improve, I started Season Two.

In short order, what had previously been a chore (I would groan to my wife, "I have to watch my pirate show," just like you would say "ugh, I have homework"), became something I would look forward to. Turns out, Season Two is as good as Season One is bad. I started liking it so much that even though I already had the DVDs out from the library, when I coincidentally stumbled across the Blu Rays for Season Two at a junk sale, I bought them just so I could watch the last half of the season in 1080p.

The cast is still too pretty and the story lines are still too serial. I would shake my fists at the screen, begging them to wrap up just one plot line in a conventional way, instead of corkscrewing it into a new plot line, like screaming "are we there yet?" from the back seat of a car. Maybe it's because I was binge-watching the show, but when every plot line concludes in a shocking twist, the rhythm becomes exhausting.

But the good outweighs the bad. They introduce a genuinely hate-able "villain." The story becomes genuinely intriguing (though I wonder if my feeling on this isn't just stockholm syndrome; I'd have to re-watch to figure it out). There's more actual maritime adventure, i.e., they spend more time at sea. There's some lovely catharsis. Like, deeply satisfying. And they seem to have more of a budget for special effects, meaning the time period feels more fully-represented and the ship stuff looks better.

I enjoyed Season Two so much I hesitate to continue with Three and Four for fear that they'll ruin it.

If you're considering dipping into BLACK SAILS, I heartily recommend skipping the first season. You can read a recap if you like — maybe watch the last two or three episodes — but I suspect that you could just go straight to Season Two if you wanted to.

SECRET EDITS

I've been doing a lot of writing for the last half of the book recently, and discovered that I needed to go back and change some of The Flagbearer's dialogue. Previously, he revealed information that — upon further writing — I realized I didn't want the characters or audience to know yet. The edited page is below, as well as on the public website, though the original is still posted here on Patreon, if you wanted to be sleuthy about it and make some predictions about the final chapters. :)

This, I suppose, is the downside to doing so much of this on-the-fly, finishing chapters as I go. Oh well. The whole thing will undergo more revisions and edits like this at a later date, I am sure.

PENCIL DRAWINGS!

I think I found a way to process photographs of my pencils so that they're more legible. For new readers, I "pencil" my pages using blue Col-Erase pencils. By design, they don't photograph well (as is perhaps in evidence, it's hard to focus on them), so I have to process the images heavily to make them legible. That's why they look like this. In real life, I think they look much nicer. This has been my disclaimer.

Chapter Five is going to be an intense one. Let's see what's in store.

There will be loose rocks…

 … chickens …

 … more wagons — there are always more wagons…

… Young Alexandra makes a revelatory return…

… Dad will try to be funny again, despite the warnings he's received …

… there will be more tall cypresses and moon-cast shadows…

… and — as I'm sure you were expecting — war elephants.

I'll be over a third of the way through the pencilling at the end of the month. This is better than I was hoping! Do I dare to think that pencilling will be complete before the end of September? I DO DARE! I DARE INDEED!

I should note that I only very begrudgingly accept that it will be September in a few days. If one of you has the secret to pausing time, would you please let me know? I wouldn't take too much advantage of it, on the grounds that I'm sure there's some monkey's-paw aspect to the whole thing, or simply because I'm sure every tale about messing with time is a cautionary tale, but I bet it would be fun for some quick pranks, or some light bank robbery.

Okay, back to the drawing board. Everyone continue to be very lovely.

Until next week,
I remain,
soap-opera pretty,

TC