A Brief History of Exiern:Dark Reflections Part 2 (Patreon)

So where were we? Right, got it. Drowemos had a particular idea originally about Dark Reflections but it did end up drifting just a bit due to the artistic interpretation of the characters and the environs leading to things looked just a bit more modern. 

Not originally intended but Drowemos rolled with it (I have to admit, I actually liked the artistic deviations from the original version of Exiern). So what we ended up with was more parallel tracking (or even quantum entanglement) than Butterfly Effect.

What I mean by parallel tracking is those alternate world stories where even though the history of the alternate worlds have been different in many ways for some time, many of the same individuals (at least on the surface) somehow still turn up.

(Think the Star Trek Mirror Universe, Fringe and so many others.)

Obviously, with a common timeline until the split, you'd think that the further back the split was, it was increasingly unlikely the same people would exist in each world the more the changes propagate (the aforementioned Butterfly Effect stories - though maybe not the movie with the same name).

So, that's why we have seem to have a Tiffany, Peonie, Faden and so on even though the history of the Dark Reflections world seems to have been different for a while now (even if that was an unintended consequence of the artist's choices).

From what I can tell, Dark Reflections did get to Page 44 in its original run before stopping for reasons unknown - to me at least (I still have to ask Drowemos whether that date approximates when he handed Exiern over to Scott).

At about the time I discovered Exiern even was a thing back in late 2015, that was when Scott got Dark Reflections back up and running again. Of course, given the time that had passed and the change in writer, it likely ended up being quite different to what was intended.

Even though I'd just discovered Exiern, I was soon after paying for the second page each month because I've always been a fan of alternate universe stories and that's the thing, they can springboard off the original without completely reinventing the wheel and having to repeat every individual plot beat. 

They can often be cooler in many ways (if not all ways!) as a result, even if they are building on (and leaping off) the work of the original. Scott has a strong preference for the original Exiern (and I do find Chemiclord's arcs set in the North some of my favourite fiction ever - sorry Drowemos and Scott!) but I also am a big proponent of the potential for Dark Reflections to take the original story and run with it in entirely new directions.

Anyway, as you all may know, Dark Reflections made it as far as Page 90 largely without interruption before stalling a few years ago. Ten more pages sat around for a long time which needed assembly that we did complete recently and now pages beyond 100 are back in production.

But then of course, as you all also likely know - Dark Reflections split into Zen and Chaos. Now there's going to be an in universe explanation of how this happened but basically behind the scenes, we needed a version of Exiern we could run regularly on the one site that has brought us the most patrons recently.

Namely the boosts in Sepember 2019 and February 2021 through the TGC site (short for TG Comics). Certain conditions (rules they have to meet for publication) had to be met for their content and that's basically how Chaos came about. 

Zen was the author of the other earlier version, so that's where the name came for this new version called Chaos - as in you could say the state of zen and the state of chaos are opposites (it will be woven thematically into the story over time but I'm not going to claim the origin of it was particularly deep).

There's one other major part of this story which was finding an artist. It took me over a year to find an artist (any artist) to make even a page and not just Dark Reflections but the whole of Exiern got lucky there. 

More on that later but you can read about a lot of it here and how we accidentally all but tripped over Exiern's original professional artist after we'd given up looking for them. Very fortuitous as it turned out.

So Chaos actually updates over there with the past few pages that were up on the website on the 25th of each month now (for the second time this month) and occasionally even a future page (also this month).

However, at the end of the day I guess Chaos exists so I can have a version of Exiern I can wreck while the other versions carry on in peace. So, I also guess in that sense, the name is also apt. 

It does help that it is basically writing itself for now, I'm more just imagining how the original story would play out if a different version of our main character (as based on the first 44 pages) was plugged into the same scenario. It seems to be working out for me so far, I hope (fingers crossed!). 

Also, I did also feel that Zen (which I've much enjoyed) did unavoidably close the door on some story avenues (if you do one thing, well you can't do that other thing). Which is why alternate universes are such fun, why just stop at just one?

I suppose we'll see how it plays out going ahead!

Those links again:

http://zen.darkreflections.live

http://chaos.darkreflections.live

Hints of future events in the Gallery part of the archive:

http://extra.exiern.com/archive/

Same things here but please remember this would be classed as an adult site to some degree (so sharing space with a lot of NSFW content), so think about browser histories and the like.

https://tgcomics.com/tgc/comics/dark-reflections-chaos/

Plus also some other things we've done as well to help introduce people to the various worlds of Exiern:

https://tgcomics.com/tgc/comics/exiern/

Added bonus, their interface also produces this cool flickbook effect if you click fast enough too! They also have downloadable .pdfs which are very well done too!

And on that note, until the next update about about other mechanics and logistics of behind the scenes at Exiern, we'll leave it at that for now! Later, everyone!