Page 364

by Aria on September 23, 2016 at 6:54 PM

There wasn’t a lot of reading on this page! There do seem to be a bunch of new folks hanging out here recently though and it’s been a little while, so let’s put some reminders down here.

The best way to keep up with what’s going on with me and the comic is by following me on my personal twitter. If I talk too much there and you’d just like to get reminders about comic updates, there’s a twitter and a tumblr for exactly that! You can also get notified through Comic Rocket and Piperka, and if you want to read the comic on a mobile device you can do so with Comic Chameleon’s super excellent app, which generally updates at the same time as the website.

If you’re enjoying the comic and would like to help make sure I can keep making it, I’d gently encourage you to consider throwing a dollar at my Patreon! I don’t have a lot to give right now besides the comic itself but with enough support I’d like to change that in the future. If you can’t afford to support the comic financially, word of mouth is also extremely helpful for indie creators like me. Just sharing the comic with your friends or linking back here can make a lot of difference!

Thank you very much! See you next week.

Michael Kinyon

Major plot reveal: Phin is actually a Tardis.
- Aria
  
  i can’t believe it was a doctor who fancomic all along
- Amaaré
  
  Dammit, the one time the webcomics fanlord appears and it’s to beat me to that joke XD
- Sandman366
  
  She does have a star inside of her…
Amaaré

This page is an awful lot of the comic distilled out into one image.
It’s excellent.
- Aria
  
  Thank you! It’s been a little bit since we got some sparkle hehe.
Sandman366

Actually, this reminds me. The “who slit her throat” comment from a while back. I presume throat-slitting is a part of becoming a Commander, but is it an initial stage to kick it off? (In which case, how do you accidentally slit a throat….) Or is it just something to facilitate the transition? (It…what…kills the body to release the mind/soul so that it can become an entity in it’s own right, because the whole “I’m three parts kept in check to keep working together so I can stay being me” thing? Gotta be separated first? Or something else entirely?)

You toss out weird cryptic shit like this and I just wanna know “how the hell does that work…..“
Mike South

Since the author comments here are about keeping up, I want to point out that if you use an rss reader (I use feedly), you can find the rss feed for this page at the very bottom.

Also, another thing people can do to support is to vote on top web comics every time they come to the page (you can vote once per day). The more votes the comic gets the higher it moves on the ratings there and the more likely it is for people browsing to see it. I’ve personally discovered a lot of comics through TWC and I know that for some authors it’s a great source of traffic. But it absolutely depends on the fans/readers to vote so that other people get a chance to see it.

Disclaimer: these are just the suggestions of a random fan, about what I do to keep up and support the comic, in case that wasn’t obvious.
- Aria
  
  Ah I always forget to mention the RSS! I know lots of folks use it but I actually have no idea how it works so it kinda slips my mind. I should edit that in.
  
  And thanks, that’s kind of you. I haven’t been promoting the TWC portal as much lately because I haven’t been able to sketch as regularly (and the new reward scheduling system wasn’t working too great for me last time I checked) so I feel guilty asking for votes without incentives. But you guys keep bringing it up in the commengs and I do check in on the votes, I’m still getting a fair amount of traffic from there! Your support really does have such a huge impact on the comic’s well-being and I appreciate it to no end.
  - caribouchat
    
    Some comic artists make a nice vote incentive and never change it, or very seldom, and it’s still a pleasure to vote when you know you help people find a great comic. If it’s important for you to change it regularly, I think once or twice a month would be perfect.
    - Aria
      
      I do plan on getting back into the habit! I really should start sketching regularly again.
Alex Simpson

Wow, syncing up sure seems like a pain the neck.

I wonder just what the implications of a commander being ‘bigger on the inside’ are?… This gives me an idea…
- Aria
  
  If you do it right p much everything about commanding is a pain in the neck. It’s kind of a raw deal haha
- Sage
  
  right? Now Phineas, dont go loosing your head over this
Sandman366

So I got bored. Poked around. Found an “Extras” page.
Found pictures with text daring to be understood. (Cool font, by the way. Where’d you get it/what’s it called?)
Solved it in, like, 30, maybe 45 minutes. Surprisingly easy, except for the last few letters. (Like, you know, things that are only used once in all four phrases….)
You don’t mind if I post the translation here, by the way, do you? (In spoiler tags, obviously.)

Fun facts for those wanting to do the work themselves: all 26 letters of the alphabet are used. They don’t all make the most….coherent sayings (I’d leave out the first Y in the first set, but eh). But clearly very solvable. (In less than an hour! I’m sure someone good at this could’ve done it in at least half the time.) The first one rhymes, too! (Though since the two words are one letter apart I suppose that’s not exactly hard. :P)
- Aria
  
  Ah cool, it’s always really neat when people take the time to figure out the cipher! Longtime reader Sage actually put together a page on the wiki for the tainspeak, if you’d like to compare your notes.
  
  As far as it goes, I’m cool with anyone sharing anything they put together about the comic, but spoiler tags for this sort of thing might be generous since some folks get a lot out of solving puzzles themselves. A forum would probably be nice, but unfortunately my reader base is still a little too small. Growing pains, haha.
  
  The font is just one I made myself!
  - Sandman366
    
    Sage? As in the guy who writes a couple of other comics? Dang, wish he’d post comics he likes sometime. This one’s awesome. (Well, both of his I’ve seen are awesome too, but different kinds of awesome.)
    
    Dang, pretty sweet font for self-made. You should try releasing it somewhere or something. (Though I think half the fun is the glowiness, which is a little harder to put into the font itself I would think….heh.)
    
    (PS: You’ve got an extra ” in your url. :P)
    - Aria
      
      KC doesn’t have a TVTropes page yet! Maybe eventually heh.
      - Sandman366
        
        Oh, so anyway, I get who the four and the two are, but most of the rest of that seems too cryptic for me to figure out, at least right now. (Unless….wait. Is the second half of the first one supposed to mean Gideon’s not coming to help save anyone?)
        (That last one though is really confusing….)
      - Aria
        
        We’ll have to wait and seeee
        
        A few folks have expressed interest in a page and I think one would be super cool, but it does seem like a lot of work! It’s a lot of information to dig through haha
      - Sandman366
        
        A mountain of work, to be sure. But it doesn’t have to be quarried by one reader alone. The work of many makes a task easier on each worker. (Also makes it more complicated when it’s a bunch of people, but hey! One person adds one thing, someone else adds something they noticed the other guy didn’t, someone else puts in a whole lot more effort than the other two combined…some random person finds the page, thinks it looks small (or cool sounding), reads the comic to help out the page….)
        
        And doesn’t have to be done all at once, either.
      - caribouchat
        
        Same thing for the wiki, there’s a few letters missing there, if you found all 26, you could add the missing ones if you feel like it…
      - Sandman366
        
        All 26 are in the two pictures on the extras page. Might get around to editing it when I have time….but all those look so tiny….
      - caribouchat
        
        Never mind, I did it. Thanks to you I eventually deciphered that second sentence I had overlooked the first time, Hastur knows why.
      - Sage
        
        sorry, if i knew you were talking about this, i would have been glad to help out =) Im glad you guys figured it out though
      - Sandman366
        
        I will say sentence 3 really annoyed me, especially because those two letters are only used once. But keeping track of what you’ve already got then trying to fill in the blanks with the unknowns that are left helped.
      - Aria
        
        That’s true! It’ll probably get done eventually. The difficulties of a tiny fanbase, stuff takes a lot of time to happen