Jul04
Altermentality:
Victor wouldn’t let it be Floyd in his underwear, so I just made some generic dude. Come on, it’s not like we haven’t seen Floyd in his underwear.
Anywho, things like this are going to be up every Wednesday, and I’m excited! Soon we’re going to remove them from the actual flow of the comic and put them all somewhere else. We’ll figure it out.
Wow, when you said informative, you meant…. Informative. I am thoroughly impressed. I’ve had a great time following the comic since I found it a few months ago, but seeing this much world building behind it, I think I’m going to have to get obsessive. By which I mean start commenting I guess?
It’s interesting to hear that the Gods have a history of throwing down punishments of this scale. I’d figured the First did something pretty hardcore to get the Skärva lineage cursed, but it kind of puts things in perspective.
I really like the phrase “the Skärva force”. Calling something a force always makes it sound so hammy, now I want to see Derk slamming his hand on his desk and yelling “Skärva Force, move out!”
Anyways, yes, you guys are awesome and the comic is amazing and all of these details are really cool. I think I’m almost more excited for next Wednesday than the updates that are going to come between them now.
Thank you very much! I’m really looking forward to sharing this stuff with you guys, too.
The First WAS pretty hardcore, but the gods are also just kinda jerks sometimes! (And petty, apparently.)
Ha! Well, it’s not quite the “Skärva Army,” and “Team Skärva” doesn’t quite cover it, so…
Wow, this is really interesting! I’m super exited to learn more about the culture and history of Idenau–great job! I love the drawings, of course. :3
Also, “Ear People.” c:
Thanks! I love doing inky scribbly stuff.
YAY etymology!
Ooh, very interesting – I’m very much looking forward to seeing the Encyclopaedia of Idenau fill out. Thank you for this page! ^_^
I love the two desert scenes, by the way – especially the almanack-like suns-and-star(?) above the one of them – depictions of the standard (or perhaps ancient) symbols for the hours of the day, ideograms for the gods, or perhaps even accurate representations of the gods, perhaps? (Perhaps better than answering here, however, that you answer instead in a new encyclopaedia entry. ;))
If I might suggest, it might be a good idea to collect these pages in a separate section after posting in the main comic, allowing readers to browse the encyclopaedia at will without searching through the main archives.
One of those things is what they are. But yeah, we’ll explain that later, either in the comic or the encyclopedia. The symbols are quite important, and they’ve been in the comic before, but very subtly.
We do plan on doing that… I think what we’ll do is go ahead and put each one up as a comic for a while, so it’ll show up on the home page, but then remove them in a few days so people reading through the comic won’t bump into a wall of text every few pages. They’re already tagged as Encyclopedia, so you can find them in the archives, but we’ll make a more obvious link to it, as well.
Wow. I didn’t think filler would have this much content. Did Victor write this?
Oh, I would suggest putting the encyclopedia pages either in their own tab (along with ABOUT, ARCHIVE, CAST, etc…) or in a picture button like the title banner. You could have a little box with a book to click on.
Hey, is the Encyclopedia of Idenau the book the Second had on his desk? XP
I wrote the first part (about their anatomy), he wrote everything else.
I like the little clickable book, I just don’t know where we’d put it. We’ll figure something out though. It’ll probably be a new tab, although we may have to resize the font on the tabs we already have… it’s getting kinda crowded up there!
Heh, maybe, one of its many volumes.
Maybe you could put the book button to the left or right of the First, Prev., Next, Last arrows, unless that would be too hard to program/set up/whatever. Or maybe just above the first set of arrows just under the tabs.
OR! In the middle of them! (between prev. and next) Ooh, I like that, but I’d have to mess around and see how it looks.
We knew the gods (at least Light) were dicks from whatever happened to cause Skarva’s family to get cursed, but that was just the tip of the iceberg! Actually, it seems like Skarva’s family got off light. Instead of the whole city, it was just one family.
Sad thing is that gods in real world myths are often just as dickish, petty, or overly retributive. Athena turned a weaver into a spider because the woman was better at weaving (and boasted about it) but when challenged to a contest with the Goddess she beat the Goddess with a better tapestry. She also turned a woman and her sisters into Gorgons because Poseidon was “with” her in Athena’s temple (it was either consensual or definitely not, I can’t remember which). Then there were all the women Zeus slept with in human, animal, and non-creature forms, causing Hera to get pissed at all the women for her husband/brother’s infidelity. I could keep going on with just the Greek/Roman myths for *ages* before moving on to other cultures.
Yep, our gods are certainly nothing exceptional. I’m sure they’ve done some nice things too. Sometimes. Making Idenau was pretty nice, I like Idenau.
Are you implying you’re a god?
Me and Victor are not the Idenian gods. We are THE GODS OF THE GODS.
Oh sure, they’ve done nice things, just like many real world gods. It doesn’t stop them from handing out inappropriately excessive punishments. If that is how they treated a people whose only crime was being rightfully proud and didn’t thank the gods for their natural gifts, I’d hate to see how they’d treat an outright blasphemer.
Like, hmm, someone who wants to go find them and beat them up?
Skarva and his family have suffered from them and can legitimately claim a grievance and grudge. Also, it’s not like he’s denying they exist. He’s suffered too many losses and failures to remain logical. I mean, he’s going to face divine beings! I think any sane being – devout or not – would hesitate to offend or assault gods, especially if this is an example of their punishments. They expected the Lurkins slowly suffer and die just because of their families’ (understandable) pride without having to actively play a part in their extinction. And then there’s all the bystanders who suffered because of the sudden desert!
They did curse everyone who worked for the First into undeadness.
omigoshimsoexcitedimgoingtoprintthemoutandmakeaguidebooktoidenauandcarryitwhereverigoandwhenpeopleaskwhatitisillsayohjustthecoolestthingonthewholeinternetotherthanbaconbutthereisbaconinittoosothatmakesitalmostasawesome.
*Watches that comment go off the page, waves goodbye to it*
Seems like most religious systems punish non-believers the most out of all people – even fictional ones! So silly…
If you don’t believe in their being some kind of godly force in Idenau, you’re just kind of crazy, what with things like the Skärva curse happening in recent memory. But yeah, the gods demand not just belief, but respect…
That’s besides the point, though. Why are they the most punished? Even in things like D&D, (Dungeons & Dragons), the faithless are condemned to an eternity of suffering. Everyone is stuffed into a small where they’re eternally fighting for their individuality and consciousness among a sea of other poor souls. Eventually, they lose both, and become a part of the container itself, snuffing out all conscious thought and basically destroying their existence.
The same is relatively true with most real religions today. Why is it that supposed “good” gods really only want your faith, instead of, y’know, for you to actually be good? Being an actually good person should trump faith.
…maybe the problem is is that there isn’t enough good people. Bah.
Captcha: Speaking of religion, “adhnomy Brahman”…
I missed a word there, FYI. “Everyone is stuffed into a small container…” is what that should read.
…what it should read. Gosh, I’m bad at this, haha. Wish there was an edit button!
It’s called proofreading BEFORE you post, son
Because so many organized religions were developed as systems of fearmongering and population control? That’s why- but NO I will not go into an internet religion debate, not here, not on my comic!
To be fair, the Idenian gods are just… in their way. They just go overboard. The First really deserved some punishment, not even his descendants will tell you otherwise. But cursing the whole line, that was rather unnecessary. They DID want to prove a point…
And they do a darn good job of making Idenau a happy place; although they have slipped up in the past. But currently the most evil guy in the land is some shark man who hangs around with a little girl.
So it backfired then?
Pretty much. The gods are like “OH DARN IT.” But the gods aren’t quite so cruel as to kill the Lurkins off or anything, so they’ll just leave them alone.
Oooooh, fascinating. Now that was awesome. Love the history there. Much more to it than I would have expected.
So, to point out the obvious – seven gods, then, represented by the suns in that picture over the desert?
Six. The star represents the unity of the gods, and tends to appear in illustrations when the gods do something all together as opposed to acting individually. They’re not always represented by suns, but here they’re drying the land into a desert.
… Why can’t more comics be this awesome to give this sort of information?!
Because they don’t love you like we do. REMEMBER THAT
Wow judging by the comments this must have been awesomely informative too bad its to big for my 3ds ¦D
This direct link should work: https://www.thefourthcomic.com/lurkins.png
THANKS also the gods are messed up!
That god that is squiggly and/or cracked is my new avatar. <3
Squiggly, the god of jibblies.
No, that’s not right… I should brush up on my theology…
EDUCATION!!!!
Yay, I’ve been wanting to take ‘History of Idenian Creatures’ for so long now!! XD
And I’ve been wanting to teach it! :3
o.o woah. well, being a huge fan of anything commentary/behind the scenes/lore this is certainly up my alley. of course it also is making me want to create something of my own and it’s really quite late in the night for that (not to mention my track record of trying to do stuff is really awful…). that aside, really looking forward to future entries of the Idenau encyclopedia
I used to have a terrible track record too. I’d see people making up their own stories and worlds and be like “Wow! That would be so fun!” Then I’d give it a try, stop caring, and go back to doing fanart. It helps to have a partner in these things, at least for me. And if our comic can inspire anyone else, art-wise or imagination-wise, well, nothing could make me happier!
Maybe I’m a huge geek, but I really enjoy these! It’s pretty awesome to see someone put as much thought into their own pretend world as I put into mine!
Thanks!
It’s sort of impossible not to think deeper about everything, when we spend so much time making this comic. I also like showing that there’s a lot more to our world than “ZELDA JOKES!!” While the game parody element is a big part of the humor and will never stop being important, Idenau is its own world with its own rules and internal consistency. While the Zelda parallels are most obvious, it’s really been inspired by a lot of different things.