The Answer Post (Aug/Sep (and Oct/Nov/Dec) 2020)

Looks like I have juuuuuuuust enough time for me to squeeze these answers in to 2020, so let’s dive in!

1.) Patrik Linell: Was the importance of the quiddities a planned plot element far in advance? I'm asking because I didn't even notice the colors until Loki mentioned them in strip 998. I looked back through the archive and sure enough, the gods had their colors from the start. To have that set up so far back and not mention it until so late is very patient plotting!

Yes, the fact that the gods were different colors was an important part of that aspect of the story from the time I introduced the different pantheons during the first set of crayon strips. I didn’t have the word “quiddity” picked out yet, but the idea was there.

As far as any patience when plotting goes, it’s not really a thing that I find difficult. I think it’s because I enjoy writing the scenes where secrets are finally revealed in their proper time and place so very much. In fact, I’m pretty sure plotting some of these reveals as far in advance as I did improved the quality of the scenes when they finally did happen. I knew about the fact that Shojo was wrong about it being only the second world back then, but I didn’t know how I was going to convey that until years later—which was still years before I actually did so. All that time turning it over in the back of my mind helped me work out the best way to deliver the information.

2.) Alex is an Artist: You've mentioned you post the comic when you finish it, do you ever wait so that you can post it at a better time?

Sure. I prefer not to post on weekends unless it’s been over a week since the last update, and I usually (but not always) post in the morning here on the East Coast. I generally don’t wait longer than that unless I discover some problem with the comic at the last minute, or in the rare event that I’ve managed to work ahead.

3.) Fernando: When you make strips that happen in the past, you usually use crayon as to give them a distinctive visual identity, which I find awesome. You use real crayons? Or some digital brush with a crayon effect? If you do use real crayons, do you find it more or less difficult then making digital art? (as I assume it's how the rest of the comic is made).

Yes, I use actual crayons. Back when I started using the crayons, I would have said it’s about the same difficulty either way and they each have their benefits and drawbacks. Since hurting my hand in 2012, though, the crayon drawings have become much, much more difficult, largely because it’s a lot harder physically for me to use crayons now. I can only do a little bit of drawing each time before needing to stop and rest my thumb. I mean, don’t get me wrong, that’s also a problem with doing the digital art, but the crayon is designed for much smaller hands than mine and requires a level of pressure that is especially tough to maintain for the time it takes to finish a drawing. So if you add those difficulties to the existing drawbacks of working in crayon compared to vectors—not being able to undo mistakes, not being able to magnify the canvas, etc.—then the classic digital art comes out way ahead.

4.) Henri Mäntysaari: Was Miko a paladin of all the Twelve Gods equally, or did she worship one of them over everyone else?

The intent is that the vast majority of citizens of Azure City, Miko included, worship all twelve gods as a single pantheon. Individuals may have a slight preference for the animal sign they were born under, as Saangwan did with Rooster, but that’s about it. And to answer the obvious follow-up question: no, I don’t know what Miko’s sign was, I never decided.

5.) Kevin Block-Schwenk: Why does the Dark One count as evil? Same question about Redcloak, who presumably has been following the will of the Dark One? Based on strip #1208, what Redcloak wants seems extremely reasonable. So too were the demands of the Dark One, as we have been shown.

Well, hopefully some of the events since #1208 have shed light on this, but in case they haven’t: Alignment—in D&D and the comic—is not solely determined by goals, but also by actions and thoughts. Whatever Redcloak’s goals are, he goes about trying to achieve them by such acts as invading a nearby city, killing or enslaving the populace of that city, and attempting to implode someone peacefully negotiating with him. To say nothing of some of the things he did in Start of Darkness. The potential nobility of his goals does not really soften the brutality of the actions he regularly takes in support of them, and the fact that he believes it does is neither here nor there when determining his alignment. This is what people mean when they say that the ends do not justify the means. It is a common tenet of the Evil alignments that yes, they do, while Good alignments tend to believe that doing bad things is bad.

Further, I should point out that Redcloak says a lot of things, some of which are true and some are not. Some are things he believes to be true but definitely aren’t, and others are things he knows are false but that he desperately wants to be true. This includes things you might reasonably expect him to be an uncontested expert on, such as his own reasons for doing something, and of course it also applies to almost everything we know about the Dark One. If you’re reading Redcloak’s dialogue and uncritically accepting every word of it, you’re overlooking one of his defining character traits: that he cloaks his vile actions in lofty rhetoric to convince himself that he is morally and ethically superior to the likes of Xykon. His alignment, however, does not care whether or not he is a skilled enough orator to make feeding a young woman alive to a pack of wights sound like a reasonable course of action.

6.) Matt Lee: In the long process of writing all the stories so far, have you ever felt frustrated with the decisions you made choosing the composition of the core party members? Such as wishing you had someone else to make a story point, or having an arc where you felt uninspired writing one or more members of the party? My mental context for this question is wondering whether you ever feel restricted much later by plot decisions you made early on, before you even thought this story would have continuity. Thanks.

It’s difficult to talk about the composition of the core party because everything I’ve done with the comic is so firmly built on the foundation of who those characters ended up being. On one hand, sure, it certainly would have been better if I had included at least one more woman in the original cast for better balance, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t want to go back to change the gender of any of my existing characters. So I would have needed to add a seventh protagonist from the beginning, which feels like it would have been too much to juggle. (Six main characters is already a bit much sometimes, requiring me to shuffle some of them off to other tasks to keep a scene manageable.) I’m glad retroactively changing decisions I made at the beginning isn’t plausible so I don’t need to worry about whether or not I should do so now.

As far as the broader question of whether I ever feel constrained by my earlier choices: yep. Yes. Absolutely. I gaze in undisguised jealousy at novelists who get to write the beginning, middle, and end of their story before the entire world starts picking it apart. But that’s part of the deal, writing an ongoing story like this. If I had wanted to be sure that I wouldn’t ever be constrained by a prior decision, I would’ve had to have written the entire saga ahead of time, and that just was never an option. I only started posting these comics a few days after I first decided to do them! So I accept the downside of being locked into certain aspects that I decided early as the price I pay for the freedom of getting to invent everything else as I go.

7.) Gene Richardson: At what point do you come up with the names for the trade paperbacks? I understand that, at first, you likely didn't have anything in mind for the series since you didn't even know how far it would go. But as time has gone on and you've now completed 6 main line books and 4 extra books (if I'm counting right in my head without looking to check) do you have an idea what the name of the book will be when you're getting started with it? Or is it something you only really think about when it's come time to release the physical book?

There have actually been few enough books that I don’t have a set process for this. Sometimes, it just comes to me before I’m even done with the strips for that volume—War and XPs presented itself as a title as soon as I knew there was going to be a war. Sometimes, I sit and wrack my brain when the printer is waiting for my files to start production—Start of Darkness was like that, because I was originally going to call it Bad to the Bone but we suddenly got worried at the last minute that it might lead to legal issues. And frankly, the title we used ended up being much better. Most of the time, though, I have a vague idea that I need to hammer into shape. I spent almost the entire five years it took to publish Utterly Dwarfed coming up with different variations, but I knew from the start that I wanted to play on the idea of “to dwarf” as a verb rather than a noun. And for Blood Runs in the Family, I named the Empire of Blood what I named it primarily because I wanted to use it in the title, even though I didn’t know exactly how yet.

8.) David Poon: I've always found it takes longer to read Durkon's speech, and exponentially so when he has long mono-/dialogues. Ironically, I think during the last stretch of strips it's helped me to slow down my reading and increase my immersion in the strip. How much longer (if at all) does it typically take you to write Durkon's speech compared to others? Do you ever regret the decision to write his speech in the style you chose? Do you write it by hand, or use a spelling replacement algorithm, or take a "method" writing approach? Are there any particular frustrations or difficulties (or joys) regarding Durkon's speech?

After all these years, writing Durkon’s dialogue is second nature to me. I write his lines in his voice right off the bat most of the time. I do sometimes vary his accent depending on whether I think the meaning will be lost in a specific sentence if I don’t, especially if he’s explaining something really crucially important. Either that or I will change the words I use to avoid ones that are easily confused, such as the and that which he says both of as tha. It’s not unheard of for me to rearrange the geography of an entire scene so he refers to something as this instead of that.

As far as regrets…yeah, a little. It adds so much flavor but at the potential cost of clarity. Certainly, if I had known on Day One that I would tell an extended story where he literally talks to himself inside his own brain, I would’ve probably thought twice. Deciding that the vampire spirit didn’t share his accent was the easiest decision in the history of the comic, I think.

9.) Georgy Kolotov: (W)hen you actually post the last strip, will you announce it to be such, or will it be obvious from the title, or what?

I can’t possibly imagine that I won’t have already blathered on about how it’s the last strip until you’re all sick of hearing about it, but yes, I assume it will be clear to everyone that it’s the last strip. If nothing else, it will probably end with THE END on a black panel or something similarly blatant.

10.) Megabyte01: In some of the behind the scenes commentaries, you mentioned that you had major plans for each character when you started writing volume 0, including Durkon's touch with prophecy and vampirsm. Did you also plan for the conflict between Elan and Haley's fathers as the ruler and a prisoner of Tyriana respectively, or did that grow organically as more elements of the story fell into place?

Well, I had plans for it starting when I drew the strip where Haley is looking at the letter. Which might count as being planned in that it wasn’t paid off for like ten more years, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t know it was going to happen until I created that page. So it’s sort of both? But remember, On the Origin of PCs was written in the middle of No Cure for the Paladin Blues, so the scene where Haley first gets the letter in the prequel was conceived and published months after the one where she’s looking at it in the present day. By the time I started outlining OtOPCs, I certainly had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to happen with their respective fathers.

11.) Cara Bull: I realise this may edge into "stuff that hasn't happened yet" if the answer is yes but: do we ever find out what happened to Red Cloak's niece, Right Eye's daughter. I've wanted to know for years if she managed to grow up somewhere, hopefully happy.

I should probably let this one dangle out there forever, given how much attention and speculation has been paid to it in certain quarters. But the truth is that this has been dramatically blown out of proportion as an “obvious” plot thread that will someday be paid off when it’s…not that. What it is instead is this: I felt Right-Eye needed the motivation his family provided in order to do what he attempted at the very end of Start of Darkness. Revenge wasn’t enough, he needed to think he was protecting someone on some level. But it also wouldn’t make sense for him to take that risk if his children were going to be in Xykon’s line of sight if his plan failed. He needed the exact right mix of doing it to protect someone while not putting that same person in more danger in the process, and his daughter being out there alive somewhere—but in a way that he couldn’t just run away and be with her—felt like a good compromise. I had no idea everyone would jump on it and turn it into, in Belkar’s words, a whole thing. But to be 100% explicit and crystal clear: Redcloak’s niece will never be mentioned again or dealt with in any way, shape, or form, unless she is.

12.) Alexandre Lino: What is a regular "creation day" for you? I mean, what is your process for writing and drawing? Like, do you listen to music/podcast while working, do you always take at least half an hour to tweek the writing, do you alternate days of heavy writing or heavy drawing...?

There were a few different variations on this question, so I’ll take a shot at answering it in more depth even though I don’t really have “regular” creation days. That is, I don’t plan out what I’m going to work on ahead of time or schedule specific tasks for specific days. I usually decide what I’m going to do based on 1.) what is already the most hideously overdue, and 2.) what I am currently capable of achieving (whether because of state of mind, physical issues, other steps that need to be done first, etc.). The trick is getting those two criteria to align. But I think what people are most interested in is how I produce the regular comic that gets posted on the site rather than other projects, so I’ll try to see if I can’t shed more light on that.

When I start working on a new page, writing takes priority. I usually need to start out my work day knowing that’s my primary task and putting everything else aside. I can’t really begin with art and then switch to writing, but if the writing goes well then I can often begin the art the same day. And to be clear, when I use the word day, I mean the period of time between when I first go into my office and when I stop working for the day; as with the comic itself, I don’t really operate on any defined sleep schedule and it’s actually far more likely that I’m getting up in the afternoon and then working through the night than otherwise.

Really, the writing has two phases anyway: the idea phase and the actual pushing-words-around-the-page-until-they-make-sentences phase. The idea phase is when I come up with the comic’s punchline if I don’t already have one; I almost always know what happens next in the sequence of events, the problem is turning that into something entertaining. I’ll generally write out the parts that I know need to happen to advance the story, then I’ll step away from the desk to think about jokes or any thorny plot issues that came up. And it’s entirely out of my control in terms of how long this part takes. Sometimes it takes an hour, or all day, or several days. Sometimes it is indistinguishable to an outside observer from me sitting on my office couch with my cat, staring out the window. This is one of the reasons I can’t start working on a script late in the work day, incidentally—I’ll just fall asleep while I’m thinking. Sometimes, the writing doesn’t work at all and I need to switch to doing something else and try again the next day (which is one of the main appeals of the A Monster for Every Season miniatures; it’s work I can do when the ideas aren’t there.)

Eventually, my brain solves the idea problem and I can sit back down at the desk to finish writing the script. That’s when I finalize who is saying what line of dialogue and put it in their unique voice, and break events down by panel. It usually takes less time than getting the idea, but not always. If it turns out that I have the wrong amount of story to fit one page then I need to decide if I want to expand it to two pages or cut it down to one. And if it needs to expand but for some reason I don’t want to do a two-pager, I might also see if there’s a natural place for a second punchline in the middle so I can split the idea into two strips instead. But then I need to come up with that punchline so it’s back to the idea phase.

Once that’s all sorted, I tackle the art. Well, no, that’s not true. Then I do something I call Text-in-Frame, where I draw the divider lines for the panels in my comic template in Illustrator and retype each character’s speech as a vaguely oval-shaped blob. I do this before drawing any of the art to make sure I don’t have too much dialogue to actually fit in the literal panels, because have you read my comic? It has a lot of words in it. It would have even more if I didn’t do this. Anyway, this stage often involves editing the script on the fly to change sentence construction so it matches the shape of the balloons better. For example, I can’t end a sentence on the longest word or it won’t fit right. It’s also a chance to go over what I’ve written one more time as I block it out, especially since I frequently do this at the start of a new day after having finished a script late the day before.

Then comes the art. In terms of mental concentration, this is the easiest part of creating a comic. While I’m still making decisions as I draw, I can mostly check out for long stretches. It’s the only time during the process where I can put on a podcast or a baseball game or music with any lyrics whatsoever. For writing, it’s silence or instrumental music only. But in terms of time consumed, the art often takes the longest. Sometimes I’ll get lucky and the ideas will flow and the writing will be finished right away, but that never happens with drawing. It takes as long as it takes, and as I said in a previous answer, I often have to take breaks to let my hand rest. Back when I started the strip I could dash off all the panels in a few hours, but those days are long gone. I don’t want to nail down the exact time it takes to draw a page because it varies wildly based on what’s actually happening, but I can usually finish the visuals of a single-page comic in two days of working. Comics where it’s two people standing and talking will probably take less time, and battle scenes generally take more. Complete changes of scenery take the longest because I have to design the space beforehand, trying to predict everything that I think is going to need to happen during the scene before creating any of the objects or backgrounds. Complex splash panels like the opening shot of Tinkertown or the first look at the Godsmoot temple took two or three days on their own.

When I finish everything, I let my wife know so she can read it and check for any obvious errors, or situations where it’s clear to me what I mean but won’t be to anyone who can’t literally read my thoughts. If she’s not immediately available, I’ll switch to something else for a while (again, the AMFES minis are great here). After she’s read it and we’ve gone over her notes, I make any changes necessary and then it’s ready to post.

Once the comic is posted, I usually go to bed because I most likely pushed myself through the last few hours of working and as I’m typing this it’s increasingly clear that I probably have some sort of undiagnosed sleep disorder? But that also helps clear the deck mentally for the next day, when I need to switch gears and work on whatever projects I’m trying to get done in the background, whether it’s the next book or something else. Then it’s just a matter of how many days I get to work on that before I need to put it aside because it’s time to start thinking about the next regular comic, and the cycle begins anew.

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And sometimes, I spend a whole work day answering questions I should have answered three months ago. Today is that sort of day! Or it was, and now it’s over. I’ll post a new Question thread after the first of the month, and hopefully I won’t take so long to get to the answers this time. Stay safe, everyone, and have a happy New Year.