A Brief History of Exiern:Dark Reflections Part 1 (Patreon)

Well, it's going to be brief by necessity because I don't know all that much to be honest but I'll do my best.

Quick public service announcement before I start, more announcements about the future coming up over the next week.

If anyone's planning to downsize their Patreon pledge or even cancel it before the end of the month, I'm hoping you'll be able to hold off until those announcements at the very least. If you could drop me a line first before committing to going ahead, even better.

Of course we all understand that if there's a financial reason you have to leave, that understandably can supersede everything but if it's a content issue or something else that we might be able to help with; if you can please drop us a line here first if possible, that would be great, thank you. 

A lot will be coming up about the financial side of Exiern and how everyone can help one way or another, even if not financially.

Moving on to Dark Reflections now (that was a bit longer than expected!), I did talk to original creator Drowemos (back in 2016! - I really must get back in touch with him again) about what plans he had for Dark Reflections.

But some key things in the beginning about Exiern: Dark Reflections was that it was intended to be a small donation comic. Functionally, in pre-Patreon days (c.2007) that meant that there was a donation bar and once that hit its goal, it financed the next page and it got made. Rinse and repeat right up to Page 44 (plus some bonus pages, all now available over in the Gallery at: 

http://extra.exiern.com

In terms of being 'small', Drowemos had to think back to what he had in mind beyond where this version of the story had reach. He hadn't clearly decided but he did give me four different possibilities. The key thing was they didn't say anything much past whether Peonie escaped from Asylum or not and I got the impression there weren't plans for it to go much further than that.

It was also originally intended for the Dark Reflections universe (singular at the time) to be very similar to the original universe with a few minor changes that could have come about from some sort of Butterfly Effect. 

Let's say for now that it's like the immediate aftermath from how Zen and Chaos branched off from a common point in time, though it's going to turn out not to be like that at all. However, that's something for later - the analogy works fine for now.

But then something happened. I could go into more detail but this post is getting a bit on the longer side (so much for brief!) so I'll do some of that at least in the now necessary Part 2 but suffice to say, I think Sean Harrington summed it up best after I tried to explain it to him at great length: 

"That's interesting to know. I guess the moral of the story is that you shouldn't add ape men to things unless you're sure the writer really wants them."

On to Part 2!

(Very soon!)