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The Other Side #354: Foolish Impulses

So a couple of weeks into April 2018, just shortly after I uploaded the previous comic, I injured my right shoulder. It made spriting impossible for seven or eight months. Then I got caught up in a whirlwind of chaos called "moving to Canada," and only recently has that settled down enough that my life feels somewhat normal again. Meanwhile this comic has been clawing at the back of my mind the entire time.

I've been wanting to do this scene for so long I can't even remember. There will be more to the conversation in the next comic.

Working on an entire page of updates with no other posts.  I'll break my old track record yet.

The Other Side #353: Wander

Odd coincidence I finished this update on April Fools Day. Oh well. Obviously it's not a joke; it's right there.

So at some point I got to thinking about how the aidenians' language works, and realized they have no "Z" or "X" sound. So "Sharia" and "Sheira" are how their names would actually be pronounced, and if I'd started making TOS even five years later I probably would've spelled them that way as well.

On the other hand, "Shenos" would be a really weird fuckin' name. Fortunately he's a pile of scrap and we don't have to take that into consideration.

One or two people thought the animation went by too quickly for its own good.  While that was partially the point, I've uploaded a big-ass comic made of all the individual frames.  Yes, partly because I want people to be able to actually take a good, long look at the enormous amount of freaking work I put into the dang thing.  It's linked underneath the comic on the website, as well, and shall remain archived that way.

The Other Side #352: No Third Chance

This comic was a nightmare to make. I want that stated for the record. I started on it immediately after 351 went up.

If you're using a modern browser besides Microsoft Edge, you should be able to see the APNG animation just fine. If you're using Microsoft Edge, stop using Microsoft Edge and go back to Chrome or Firefox. There's no way in hell this comic would work as an animated GIF; the dithering would ruin it.

The montage of X's memories in this comic are bastardizations of scenes from olde-time Bob and George fancomics. In order, they are Randomness by iX; Misadventures by Plague; Something! by Mr. Death; History's End and Reality's End by Arylon.

Still haven't given up yet!

The Other Side #351: You're The Mind Reader...

Been kind of a rough few months. Work has a tendency to kick my ass, among other things.

I kind of wrote myself into a corner in the last comic. I had an additional scene planned between that one and this, but in the interest of expediting the end of this storyline, I decided to cut it for time. Everything relevant to the story has been reworked into the dialogue here. In the end I think I made the right choice; this has been dragged out long enough.

As an aside, Arbiter Nerish was made by my wife, quite some time before I actually made her my wife. You could say this has been the most long and convoluted cameo call ever.

ITT: baww Sonic is good again

But not good enough bawwwww

Well, you could wait until it actually releases to declare it a total write-off.  Personally, I want to see how it plays.

Update again.

The Other Side #350: Don't Make Your Father Cry

This comic is coming to you from the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, where I am currently spending my honeymoon with my lovely wife, Usagi, a longtime fan who has become obsessed with me, and uh, I couldn't quite say no and I was afraid she--anyway I am very happy with my new wife!

Kidding. That's her joke at her request. She is a fantastic gal and we're having a blast up here. I'm so thrilled I could hug you all. But I'm not gonna. What does this mean for the comic? [tornado fang]-all. She'll ride my ass regardless, don't worry. She's not gonna be the reason I don't update. She's the reason I'm still going.

New comic.

The Other Side #349: Cut It Out

One month is certainly better than eighteen, so I don't feel too broken up about the wait between this comic and the last.

A lot of the aidenians talking to each other may look like gibberish, but believe it or not they are actually speaking a complete, functional language with two dialects. It was drafted by Monarch on the Bob and George forums about six years ago, and I've been slowly expanding on the vocabulary as needed. The grammar is [tornado fang]ing weird compared to English, but I'm told it might make more sense to someone who's fluent in Japanese. Let's have a lesson!

First the basics: Sentence structure is always "subject, object, verb." In a basic English sentence--say, "she throws the ball"--it's usually subject (she), verb (throws), object (the ball). This isn't TOO different on the surface, but it gets really twisted when you go into compound sentences. For instance, Panel 4 of this comic has one soldier telling X and Teiros to stop, which would simply be "zakrenzrrr, nrmnri." But she also says "and don't challenge us," which means this sentence has two subjects (X and Teiros, and the soldiers), two verbs (stop, and don't), and an object (challenge). How does that break down?

First off, compound sentences like this always have a complete subject/object/verb grouping paired together by a conjunction, so the sentence in that panel would literally translate to "outsiders stop and us challenge do not." In addition to this though, their vocabulary uses a lot of suffixes for context, tenses, and stuff like that. The word for "stop" is "nrmnri," which is actually just the word for "go" ("nrm") with the suffix "-nri," which is used to modify a verb to mean "DO NOT (verb)." Another example is the word for "outsiders;" the singular form of "outsider" would be "zakrense," and the plural would normally add the suffix "-zrn" to make it "zakrenzrn," but aidenians differentiate inanimate objects, animals, and people when they pluralize something--and the soldier uses the suffix "-zrrr," which specifically refers to inanimate objects to make the word "zakrenzrrr," or "outsider-things."

Trying to translate English into aidenian can be a real brain bender, but while there is an informal dialect that flows more like English (and must sound like speaking in the linguistic equivalent of shorthand slang), I have a lot of fun puzzling out the grammar when I need to string longer sentences together.

The Other Side #348: Righteous Bastard

Well, a lot happened after I uploaded the previous comic. I got laid off three weeks later; got a promotion the month after that, and the new position utterly destroyed my free time; I had to reformat my computer twice; I got engaged to be married; some of my sprite sheets got corrupted and I had to spend months restoring them pixel by pixel; and my old ass version of Photoshop was giving me so much trouble I finally had to hunt down a workable replacement for it. With all that and other niggling things, it took me a very long time to actually work up the motivation to get back on the horse, and I've been piecing this newest comic together a little at a time for a couple of months now.

I don't know who is actually reading this at this point, but I am ready to finish this storyline and get us the hell off Cat-Namek.

The ice was created by Aslanna who froze the kingdom to keep the Chaos Flame sealed away, notice if you try to use a torch the curse puts it out right away.

I kind of thought that was the 60 mile per hour wind howling around the area.  Torches work indoors, and outdoors after the blizzard dies down (once Aava is defeated, in other words).

The Other Side #347: Seven Billion and One

Calling it now:  Best page of the comic's entire run.

The Other Side #346: Endurance

Took too long, but I like how it came out.

What skirts?  All I see are frilly belts.

The Other Side #345: I Got Better

Okay, I'm back.  Finally.

Ugh, speaking of strips that took too long...

The Other Side #344: The Death of Us

This comic was physically painful to make, took about twice as long as any other I've ever done, and rendering the lighting effects in the first row of panels actually crashed Photoshop because of all the layers it was trying to handle.  Twice.  I'll be very glad when this scene is finally over.

Next update will be as soon as I'm able.  Should be some point in September.

"Unknown reasons" essentially being "there's no way the PS3 and 360 can handle these lighting effects, so let's go back to DX9 and dumb everything down so the game will actually run on consoles."

And I don't know how high you people crank your brightness settings, but there were plenty of places in the vanilla PC version where I needed to use a torch to see what the hell I was doing.

Which particular mechanic was that?

This one took a bit longer.  I wasn't happy with the panel layout and I spent a while trying to fix it to my satisfaction.

The Other Side #343: Dakka^m

I should have another strip up before the end of the month, but don't expect one for the first couple of weeks in September, as I'm going to be moving cross-country and it'll take me a bit to get things sorted out.

The Other Side #342: Calling A Truce

Oh, we are just about finished here.  Just a few more to go and the space cats will be behind us.

Another!  I'm kind of on a roll.  I really just want to get this storyline over with.  I've been stalled on it for years.

The Other Side #341: Inexperience

I shall continue posting out of spite at this point.

The Other Side 340: Done Playing Around

Enjoy, all two of you who maybe clicked on the thread.

Is Capcom borrowing breast physics from Team Ninja now?

Alright, we are in updatesville, population: Me.

The Other Side #339: Go In Peace

Allllllllright, I'm surprised this isn't buried somewhere in oblivion by now.  But here, have a comic.  There's a link to a recap comic posted along with it on the site.

The Other Side #338: Overconfidence