Exiern

[2Comic2Furious]

Anyone read this one?

What does everyone (who does) think?

http://www.exiern.com

[halfeye]

It's quite well drawn, though they seem to go through artists quite quickly.

I'm not sure that the story is good, but there does seem to be one at least sometimes.

[Vinyadan]

I tried reading it, but it felt really off. Way too meta, the dialogues felt disjointed, and I couldn't feel any of the characters. Maybe it gets better later on?

[halfeye]

I tried reading it, but it felt really off. Way too meta, the dialogues felt disjointed, and I couldn't feel any of the characters. Maybe it gets better later on?

They've changed authors twice (or is it three times?) so far, so there probably isn't that much continuity overall, but I think the initial thing was a genderswap joke with fanservice, then it sort of lost it's way a bit, then found it again, then wandered about a bit...

However, along the way it came here:



http://www.exiern.com/2013/12/17/lets-get-it-started/

That seems to me to be the right sort of question, if maybe not exactly the perfect question.

So I'm sticking with it for now.

[2Comic2Furious]

Well, I did some detective work a while back and from what I can tell ...

Drowemos created Exiern and tried illustrating it himself from about June to September of 2005 before hiring Studio Boom to do so (you can see a couple of images from the original version on John Solomon's Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad).

Then Studio Boom was the artist when Drowemos rebooted Exiern in September 2005 to about 2010.
Shipeng Li was the artist from 2010-2016

and the current artist Antipus is 2016-

I guess that's not bad for a 13 year old webcomic.

As for the writers:

Drowemos (2005-2012)
Chemiclord (2012-2014)
Scott Hicken (2014- )

Ditto in the writing department in terms of turnover, at least.

Also, Scott took over running Exiern from Drowemos in 2012 but wasn't quite ready to start writing it himself yet, so he opened the floor to the audience for pitches and Chemiclord was the winning one. Which I thought was quite fantastic and still my favourite part of the whole thing so far.

[2Comic2Furious]

They've changed authors twice (or is it three times?) so far, so there probably isn't that much continuity overall, but I think the initial thing was a genderswap joke with fanservice, then it sort of lost it's way a bit, then found it again, then wandered about a bit...

However, along the way it came here:



http://www.exiern.com/2013/12/17/lets-get-it-started/

That seems to me to be the right sort of question, if maybe not exactly the perfect question.

So I'm sticking with it for now.

As for this, going a bit further with a bit of background to the lead-in to this page:

I found this in your very own forum, which was referring another forum elsewhere.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...marks-the-spot

"Looks kind of like Exiern? I'm not a fan of it. Male barbarian is in a fight, gets turned into a woman, does not identify as one, and the rest seems to be excuses to get the main character to have his clothes shred off for random reasons, and males turning into women here and there with what seems to be sexual connotations. The main character's personality also seems to change once turned female (as well as his sexual orientation), which is weird, and the disphoria seems to come and go. The art is really good (the author pays an artist to draw the comic) and there are some interesting stuff going on in the story, but it seems to be mostly fanservice [goto's note: for example, the balloon breasts which seem to plague every female character in the comic], which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but doesn't seem to me to be a very helpful representation of trans people."

It didn't come up as possible that the lead character may not have been actually straight ... and that was from the LGBTAI thread too. Strangely enough, the place I found that might have gotten closest was The Bad Webcomics Wiki of all places with "When it would surely make more sense for Tiffany to be a lesbian since she’s a straight man trapped in the body of a woman. Unless of course Tiffany was once a big gay barbarian."

It seems like a realistic and believable way (well, as much as you can in this sort of fantastical context) to deal with/subvert the trope of man magically transplanted into female body now being attracted to men - seems fairly obvious in retrospect to dodge that well-worn path and in fact a lot more believable too (once again, relatively speaking).

Having said that (and where the page you quoted really steps it up a notch IMO) is that it's not presented as a solution for the character's problems. Maybe it might make things more acceptable to at least some others but it clearly doesn't seem like the answer for the character.

Which, I guess is ... more like real life?

I think there's a lot of pitfalls with this kind of story but I suppose to it's credit, it's dodged at least some of the big ones?

[halfeye]

As for this, going a bit further with a bit of background to the lead-in to this page:

I found this in your very own forum, which was referring another forum elsewhere.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...marks-the-spot

"Looks kind of like Exiern? I'm not a fan of it. Male barbarian is in a fight, gets turned into a woman, does not identify as one, and the rest seems to be excuses to get the main character to have his clothes shred off for random reasons, and males turning into women here and there with what seems to be sexual connotations. The main character's personality also seems to change once turned female (as well as his sexual orientation), which is weird, and the disphoria seems to come and go. The art is really good (the author pays an artist to draw the comic) and there are some interesting stuff going on in the story, but it seems to be mostly fanservice [goto's note: for example, the balloon breasts which seem to plague every female character in the comic], which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but doesn't seem to me to be a very helpful representation of trans people."

It didn't come up as possible that the lead character may not have been actually straight ... and that was from the LGBTAI thread too. Strangely enough, the place I found that might have gotten closest was The Bad Webcomics Wiki of all places with "When it would surely make more sense for Tiffany to be a lesbian since she’s a straight man trapped in the body of a woman. Unless of course Tiffany was once a big gay barbarian."

It seems like a realistic and believable way (well, as much as you can in this sort of fantastical context) to deal with/subvert the trope of man magically transplanted into female body now being attracted to men - seems fairly obvious in retrospect to dodge that well-worn path and in fact a lot more believable too (once again, relatively speaking).

Having said that (and where the page you quoted really steps it up a notch IMO) is that it's not presented as a solution for the character's problems. Maybe it might make things more acceptable to at least some others but it clearly doesn't seem like the answer for the character.

Which, I guess is ... more like real life?

I think there's a lot of pitfalls with this kind of story but I suppose to it's credit, it's dodged at least some of the big ones?

There does tend to be a lot of fanservice, which I do like, but there is actual comic porn, this isn't the most extreme in that regard by a long way. It is apparently a commercial product with a series of different writers, I'm not sure whether that's working well or not, and if the plot is driven by reader demand that's liable not to work out I think, because different readers will demand different outcomes.

Oh, I almost missed the detective work on the authorship, that was well done, I wasn't that bothered about it so I didn't know.

[Olinser]

The short version is that it was decent until the original author quit writing it and turned it over and then suddenly all the plots that were in progress got completely tossed aside and 'resolved' quickly, and the quality just never recovered. I quit reading it like 6 months after the other guy took over.

[GrayDeath]

God, I remember reading it some time from 2006ish to 009ish or so.....didnt think of it for years!

Gotta restart it, me thinks, as at times it was hilarious (those were mostly the not so palyed for laugh parts, interestingly^^).

[2Comic2Furious]

Well, now that I think about it, the fact that Exiern is in its 13th year and averaging more than 1 page/week over that time (though now at 1/week) is quite an achievement among webcomics, isn't it? I also realised that I've been writing 'it's' when I meant 'its' in earlier posts (less of an achievement, that). Interesting how there was a shift from more upfront comic farce to more drama but with comic elements which might be at least partly what you're describing there, I'm guessing. Though the major switch to being more like that was post-2010, I think.

The short version is that it was decent until the original author quit writing it and turned it over and then suddenly all the plots that were in progress got completely tossed aside and 'resolved' quickly, and the quality just never recovered. I quit reading it like 6 months after the other guy took over.

I imagine my experience was different to yours. When I discovered Exiern, I had about 10 years of archives to read in one hit. I quite liked the trip up north which was definitely primarily more serious drama and it definitely had a whole Rashomon feel. Then when we discovered why the lead character went into exile, things got very serious. Though it's not to say there weren't still funny moments in there. Like I said before, it's still my favourite part of the whole thing (as always, YMMV).

"... and then suddenly all the plots that were in progress got completely tossed aside and 'resolved' quickly ..."

What parts did you mean specifically just out of interest? Maybe the story came back to some of those after you left, perhaps?

[2Comic2Furious]

There does tend to be a lot of fanservice, which I do like, but there is actual comic porn, this isn't the most extreme in that regard by a long way. It is apparently a commercial product with a series of different writers, I'm not sure whether that's working well or not, and if the plot is driven by reader demand that's liable not to work out I think, because different readers will demand different outcomes.

Oh, I almost missed the detective work on the authorship, that was well done, I wasn't that bothered about it so I didn't know.

From what I've been able to dig up, back in the pre-Patreon days, apparently it was a necessity to keep things funded with what you could call the adult fanservice and beyond. I get the impression it's moved quite some distance away from that these days (I've stopped reading it since the main plot went into as close as you're going to get to a literal cliffhanger last year because I like to bank pages and read them in blocks - probably a futile attempt by me to replicate my original experience of reading 10 years worth of pages in one hit) - like I described above more serious drama (perhaps too serious) with some comedy is my take on what it's like now.

As for the detective work, I can't take too much credit. The header of the main page does literally break it down as the story that started it all/changed everything/continues everything. So, it was all put up right in front of me from the get-go. After clicking the announcements around the links to these pages, that filled in most of the rest of it.

[2Comic2Furious]

Just for interest's sake, on the subject of long-running fantasy comics, though it didn't start with a web presence originally (though it has one now), today is the 81st Anniversary of the publication of the first page of Prince Valiant on February 13th, 1937.