Weekly Update - 66 (Patreon)

Max go *YAAAAAAWWWWWW*

So yeah, officially the upper tier rewards are going to be called Kuserran Heroes from now on.  I'm doing this mostly for my own sanity, so that I can talk about them without having to describe wtf that is every time I bring it up.  Applying a label with associated definition.  Because language, yay.  In any case, I'm sticking with it.  Everyone who subscribes at the higher tiers gets a hero, that I will draw, and make a canonical part of the city.

Comic This Week? Yes!  I mean, most likely.  I think I can get it done.  I'll let you know if I do not for some reason.

Max Poster?  Max Poster. :/

Drawing: Page 104, 2 Character Page Arts left to do, Max Poster

Playing: Cyberpunk 2077 and Going Medieval (more fun than I expected!)

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Weekly Ramble:

I was thinking this morning about how writing is similar to designing a puzzle game. When you design a puzzle game, you design it knowing the answer to the puzzle already, but you have no idea how "smart" your players might be, so you want to leave little hints and clues so that they get the correct answer, and so that they feel good about figuring it out on their own. There will always be people at the extreme ends of the spectrum: people who figure out the puzzle right away and people who might never figure it out. Leave too many clues, though, and the bulk of your players might shift into the former category, leave too few clues, and the bulk of your players could shift into the latter one. Being in either of those two extremes is a lot less fun than falling anywhere in the middle.

When I'm writing and drawing, I actively think about the clues I'm leaving in places for people to find and pick up on. It takes me a long time to draw a page, after all, and I have plenty of time to think about such things. I usually start by leaving vague clues that I don't expect most people to pick up on. As time goes on and as I want more and more people to spot the Thing, I'll increase their frequency or visibility, whatever form it may take. I try to assume that, even if no one says anything, people have spotted the Thing, but just in case no one did, I don't ever want to make it a requirement for understanding the context of the story.

I've talked a bit before about how I try to make it so that topics come up in the story at certain times to get readers thinking about them as they become relevant. To guide the reader into asking a question as I'm about to deliver an answer to it. But that doesn't mean I can't hint at topics that could be currently irrelevant, but are intended to be relevant later. Part of the fun for someone at some point could be having that revelation, then flipping back through the earlier pages to find the Thing in all its places. It's all a part of one big puzzle game, really. I show you the individual pieces, teach you how to rotate them, set up the empty column so you can drop in the line piece and get that coveted Tetris. That's the goal, anyway. The ideal. Though I freely admit I could totally fuck it up before too long, though I expect I may not be smart enough to pull it off the way I imagine, I still sometimes sit here chuckling to myself about the things no one has mentioned to me yet, wondering what people will think when a revelation occurs.

Anyway, at this point I've deleted about three times more paragraphs of this than I've decided to actually keep, so I'm gonna just call it here. A phrase that keeps circling inside my head is "nothing is so simple that words can describe." Yet here I am, blabbing endlessly and cyclically with words when I should be drawing.  And... as this roller coaster of a train of thought comes into its station, it makes me wonder... is language itself the cause behind our overreliance on oversimplification? More and more often I draw a panel and think it might be better served without words to accompany it. More and more often I wonder if the best things I've ever written are the parts I've left unsaid.

Anyway, thanks for reading.