2002-11-06: Prologue- I Used to Believe

[The Comment Golem]

Discussion thread for Prologue- I Used to Believe.

New posts about this page or the commentary track version of this page should happen in this thread, but if you're curious the original discussion thread for this comic happened over on the Kyhm Forums. You can read it here.

[The Comment Golem]

Discussion thread for [CT] Prologue: I used to believe...

[Graybeard]

I might not have put this in the same place if I had it to do over again.

Taking the long view, I think it was exactly right where it was. It's the perfect opposite bookend for the Epilogue (compare to Sarine in that glorious epilogue cover), it gets the message out that this isn't going to be just about a spoiled teenager with issues, and it starts immediately to establish the strip's defining character, even if we're not going to see her again for a while after the prologue.

I think I see your point, though. I can imagine new readers (and on page one, they're all new readers, even if they'd seen Exploitation Now) anticipating a more "linear" presentation and getting confused at the scene changes, with a resulting loss of interest. Thing is, however: a lot of good speculative fiction (I use "speculative" rather than "fantasy" to open the topical area to include straight science fiction too), whether paper or webcomic, has that linear way of doing things. The great speculative fiction stories, by contrast, are the ones that succeed in weaving diverse plot elements into one whole, and they are intrinsically non-linear. The only problem was that we readers didn't know at the time that this story wasn't going to be good, it was going to be great. Some may not have stuck around after the first couple of chapters as a result. Their loss.

Interesting trivium: "Dune," which remains to this day the greatest of all speculative-fiction novels in my opinion, and took this non-linear way of storytelling up to eleven, had a hard time getting sold to publishers at the outset. According to Wikipedia, it was rejected by more than twenty publishers before one (that mainly was known for publishing automobile-repair manuals) took a chance on it. It sure didn't have that problem in the long run.

[Ori Klein]

War. War never changes.

[requiem18th]

Yes, for a long while I thought that Meji was Sarine's child, it whould have helped a lot if Meji's mother was on scene erlier, but after many hints it was clear this wasn't the case.

And while Sarine is, as Graybeard comments, a defining character, Meji was always *the* protagonist for me...she and Jon.

[Graybeard]

Yes, for a long while I thought that Meji was Sarine's child, it whould have helped a lot if Meji's mother was on scene erlier, but after many hints it was clear this wasn't the case.

A lot of people had that impression early, and that was probably not a bad thing. Good storytelling doesn't let all of the facts out at once. At the same time, the very first chapter had pretty clear indications that Meji's mom was someone else, and she appeared quite early in some art that Poe posted to the old Kyhm forum, the art that's now used to illustrate the article on Miyo Hinadori at the HKV. (Note that that depiction of Miyo is kinda ... leggy. Poe's sense of proportion in drawing the human/elven figure improved as the story went on.)

And while Sarine is, as Graybeard comments, a defining character, Meji was always *the* protagonist for me...she and Jon.

I'd claim that there's a difference between "protagonist" and "defining character." Yes, if there was a single "protagonist," it was probably Meji, in the sense that more of the plot revolved around her than around any other single character. That's the role a protagonist plays. The "defining character," I would assert, is one that shows what the story is going to be like -- in this case, the defining tension between elven immortality, human dominance of the Poe-verse, and the half elves trapped between them. Sarine rolls all of the issues associated with that theme, and several others, into one tidy package. And that is the thing that makes Errant Story unique. Without it, Errant Story would just be largely (although not completely) a re-telling of the basic story of "The Dark Crystal." With it, it's a thing to build a world around.

Meji is the protagonist, because she's the one things happen to. Sarine is the defining character, because she's the happening.

[Elessar]

Seriously? People got confused by character switching? I can understand that it loses people's interest with certain main characters (I hated Game of Thrones Sansa so much that her chapters almost blocked me from finishing the novel), but confusion seems odd. If that loses you, wait till the rest of Errant Story...

On the other hand, I suppose many people never get the nuances.

[sysape]

Wow, some proper nonsense appearing here. But first.

Register to post a comment about your comic? wtf? why do you need that? grrr, well at least you didn't demand any personal details, like knob size.

I can imagine new readers (and on page one, they're all new readers, even if they'd seen Exploitation Now) anticipating a more "linear" presentation and getting confused at the scene changes, with a resulting loss of interest. Thing is, however: a lot of good speculative fiction (I use "speculative" rather than "fantasy" to open the topical area to include straight science fiction too), whether paper or webcomic, has that linear way of doing things. The great speculative fiction stories, by contrast, are the ones that succeed in weaving diverse plot elements into one whole, and they are intrinsically non-linear. The only problem was that we readers didn't know at the time that this story wasn't going to be good, it was going to be great. Some may not have stuck around after the first couple of chapters as a result. Their loss.

Oh my word, where to begin. I for one was made up that the start was a bit confusing, it's a sign of decent story if there's a bit more going on, and as this is a webcomic we're being fed it in nibble sized morsels so we expect the start to be a bit all over the place, or we're reading a gag-a-week comic which This clearly wasn't/isn't.

Secondly I'd rather cleave to the definition that Science Fiction is opposed to Mundane Fiction in that Mundane Fiction is set in/on this world and Sci-Fi isn't. Or more clearly that Mun-Fi is a subset of Sci-Fi, Mun-Fi being set here and Sci-Fi being set anywhere. This definition is taught by the English department of some university in California. All fiction is, by definiton, fantasy. If you'd like a term to refer to the swords & socery genre, or the half-elf becomes demi-god genre, then well there's those. Speculative fiction, to me is a bit like new wave. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQtiwwRi_v8&NR=1

Interesting trivium: "Dune," which remains to this day the greatest of all speculative-fiction novels in my opinion, and took this non-linear way of storytelling up to eleven, had a hard time getting sold to publishers at the outset. According to Wikipedia, it was rejected by more than twenty publishers before one (that mainly was known for publishing automobile-repair manuals) took a chance on it. It sure didn't have that problem in the long run.

Oh ghod no, just no. dune was reasonably inventive, had some great ideas, characters, places, a large amount of which was lifted from real beduin society. But it was in no way great. It's over wordy, and doesn't really provide any great novelty, the ideas of family and empire and resource control etc. are all rehashed. He doesn't really look at the science of living in an interstella community like say Asimov, or explore any projections of where technology might take us like Asimov, Clarke, Banks, McLeod or Lem. Neither does he explore what it means to be human like Dick, Shelley or even Wilson nor is his story a romp of the likes of Moorcock or Bester. Really, if Frank Herbert wrote your favorite novel then you need to read more, I'm not saying it's bad, I enjoyed the series as far as God Emporer, but it's hardly great. Well at least you weren't singing the praises of that hack Rowling.

Er did I have a point. Probably not.

[Graybeard]

Interesting trivium: "Dune," which remains to this day the greatest of all speculative-fiction novels in my opinion, and took this non-linear way of storytelling up to eleven, had a hard time getting sold to publishers at the outset. According to Wikipedia, it was rejected by more than twenty publishers before one (that mainly was known for publishing automobile-repair manuals) took a chance on it. It sure didn't have that problem in the long run.

Oh ghod no, just no. dune was reasonably inventive, had some great ideas, characters, places, a large amount of which was lifted from real beduin society. But it was in no way great. It's over wordy, and doesn't really provide any great novelty, the ideas of family and empire and resource control etc. are all rehashed. He doesn't really look at the science of living in an interstella community like say Asimov, or explore any projections of where technology might take us like Asimov, Clarke, Banks, McLeod or Lem. Neither does he explore what it means to be human like Dick, Shelley or even Wilson nor is his story a romp of the likes of Moorcock or Bester.

There's another board here that's probably better for continuing this part of the discussion, but I take the liberty of asserting that if you think that's what "Dune" was all about, and that it failed to address those other things, you should probably go back ten years from now and read the novel again. It is worth re-reading every five to ten years, as a great piece of music is worth listening to: the first time through, there is so much to be missed.

There is a point related to Errant Story in this. It was apparent more or less from the get-go that Errant Story was going to be enjoyable to read and follow. However, it took considerably longer for it to become clear that it was going to be really, really good fiction. For me that point was reached in the camp scene right before Jon and Sarine had sex, specifically in the episode when Sarine tucked Meji into her sleeping bag as a mother would her daughter. I'd been reading for a long time by then (started in chapter 2 or 3) and had found it "entertaining" from the beginning. That was the point at which it went from entertaining to "absorbing" or "riveting" or something like that. And there's that same sense of stuff to be missed from there on, not just technical details of the art but the way the characters are.

Interestingly, one could see that coming in the prologue, which is why I wrote earlier of disagreeing with Poe's retrospective view that he should have put the cover with a pregnant Sarine elsewhere. Already at this point, we could anticipate the conflicts over the state of Errantcy, as played out in the mind and personality of Sarine, that would become the whole thing's dominant theme. The thing that puzzles me is: with that already teed up so early, how and why did it revert to "entertainment" for the next several chapters? Because it did take a while for the depth to return, IMO.