Dere dere~

Remember that smile, it doesn’t appear often! How do you like our two little lovebirds, covered in demon blood, resting under a tree? Those who don’t ship this pairing have to close their eyes for a moment ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

First news is that I have added this drawing as a poster to the shop, you can find it HERE. And I’ve noticed there is some kind of promotion running right now, maybe you guys are interested: 20% off stickers, cases, mugs, pouches and notebooks. Use code STOCKINGS. If you find something you like it seems to be a good time to make a purchase. Thanks in advance for your support!

Dere dere~

Second thing I need to mention – I have posted a cute sketch of Sofia in a corset on Facebook and Twitter, you might want to follow me on one of those if you don’t want to miss additional drawings. I am still getting used to them but you should see at least 3 other sketches posted sometime this week.

And finally – I have received a new story from Refugnic, Blades of Lore, I’m sure he is very eager to hear your opinion about it. It’s a story about Robert’s twin swords! Go and read it! (ノ・∀・)ノ  And of course big thank you! ♥

78 comments on “Dere dere~”

  1. Refugnic Reply

    And if time stopped at this very moment, that would be quite alright.

    Well, at least for those two. 😀

    No really, very cute picture. It makes one forget the gruesome things that happened just now, even just a little.
    Actually it reminds me of a clerical song we have in Germany, ‘Freunde, das der Mandelzweig’.

    Here’s a rough translation (it rhymes in German :P):


    Friends, oh see the almond tree,
    it blossoms oh so fine.
    Isn’t that a wondrous sign,
    that love will still prevail?

    That life has not gone away,
    no matter how much blood cries.
    Do not underestimate this,
    in these darkest times.

    Thousands are destroyed by war,
    a world, it ends today.
    But the almonds victory
    silently flutters in the wind.

    Friends oh see the almond tree
    it blossoms oh so fine.
    this shall be a hint for me,
    that life will still prevail.

    I sweat it sounds better in German! 😀

    The original verses (according to Google) were written by a certain Schalom Ben-Chorin in the year 1942.
    It’s kinda sad that these lines hold their meaning even now, so many years after the last great folly of mankind.

    …on second thought, can we just stop time now? Because I dread where it will all go from here. Both in the comic as well as in the world.

      • NotImportant Reply

        I forget about it all the time, but I was pretty sure it’s possible to edit comments if only you have a WordPress account or something? Otherwise everyone could edit yours.
        And to stop time right here would practically mean to stop drawing the comics. I can stop, but I’v already 5 more pages prepared, would be kind of a waste… ಠ_ಠ

        • Refugnic Reply

          We had a discussion about ‘perfection’ not very long ago. For them, these two, it’s not going to get any more perfect than that moment.
          Well, I guess the moment they hold their first child in arms for the first time could get close, but as things are now that moment is in the very distant future to say the least.

          Really, the only direction the comic can go is downhill from here on out. Not in terms of quality, mind you, but I foresee a LOT of suffering in the near future. ;P

          *Ahem*, back on track, yup that would be a shame and please don’t stop. After all, this is but a fleeting moment. And like every other moment, good or bad, it is not meant to last.

          Alright, sentimentalities out of the way, moving on, who wants to guess what happens next to break this idyllic picture into a million pieces, making the Robert x Ada shippers scream out in agony? 😉

          I see three options right here.
          1. They fall asleep from the exhaustion. Dreams are not pleasant.
          2. A rival appears (i.e. Sofia, who wants to thank Robert for saving him earlier)
          3. They get attacked by a straggler.

          Personally I’d aim for option number 1. Nightmares are always fun and also effective plot tools to get a budding relationship to shatter, because one of the two suddenly becomes afraid of being happy, fearing that it would mean their demise.

          On a side note, here in Germany they had ‘shippen’ (which is the germanized form of ‘to ship’) as a suggestion for the ‘youth word of the year 2015’.
          When I heard, I was like ‘the heck is that a ‘youth word’?! It’s been around for years and years! Funny how that works, eh?

          • SirTrojan

            I pray to NotImportant that the senario you discribed will actually happen someday. :3 But, well i see an awful lot of stones on the way there and don’t know if they will actually end another way. 🙁
            For your options, i’d go for the second one, not right now but at least in the near future, thats what i always thought since sofia appeard (Mind the title: “Prince in dirty socks” prince sounds pretty romantic).
            But falling asleep sounds pretty realistic aswell and would probably mean either nightmares or more flashbacks or both
            And as a fellow German i gotta say the “youth words” this year were for the most part underused and unknown to me exept “merkeln” and “shippen” (never heard that one in german thought or used it in that context)

          • Refugnic

            Hey, congrats NI. You’ve ascended from webcomic maker to deity. And so quickly at that! 😀

            There are a lot of stones in the way, but any good relationship has stones on the road.
            Imagine if you lived in a relationship, where nothing ever goes wrong for a very long time. Because you’re cautious, or lucky or both or whatever.
            But then something beyond your control happens.

            Which relationship breaks? The one where nothing ever went wrong, or the one with many little bumps in the road?

            But you are right, we don’t know if they’ll end up this way. For all it’s worth, a demon could jump them, gobbling up Robert, who then gets resurrected by Ada’s witchcraft. Everything’s possible.

            And you know what? It’s good that way. Because any other way would be predictable and boring.

            Wouldn’t you agree, that it’s still a little too early for any sort of happy ending? You know, with the villain, who has taken a liking to Ada no less, still being out there.

            And regarding Sofia…there was a reason why I chose her as potential rival. Unlike Nina, she has no partner as of yet and she got saved from a completely hopeless situation, whereas Nina was surrounded by Stefen and Filip at the time of rescue. Plus, she didn’t even really realize that she got saved by Ada and Robert. (Fainted like a real lady. :P)

            Yeah, probably. Still, to call them ‘youth words’ is a pretty weird concept…but then again, the entire world is weird, so I guess it’s a fit. 😀

          • Dæmon

            About the resurrection, you’re forgetting the property of Equivalent Exchange, a common property of matter and also a likely property for magic in most worlds. In the event that is NOT the case, it’s a dangerous game to do that, even if the cost is low. A true resurrection is often high level magic, which is likey something neither Ada nor Robert could cast, even if they had the prerequisites and materials to cast such a ritual. Even in that world, you’d be hard pressed to find a single man, woman or child who could even _try_ to cast it without the materials, since such magic is usually either a form of necromancy, or is a divine ritual only allowed by what ever God you believe in. And, yeah, that’s pretty much PC deaths in D&D in a nutshell, but you would still have a high level Mage casting it in that world, or so I’d guess. In a different comic I read called The Order of the Stick, or OotS for short, it was supposedly a 17th level spell, which was end game level, considering that all versions of D&D I know of except 4th edition ends the normal campaign at 20th level. Beyond that, nothing really poses a challenge any more, except MAYBE a Terrasque, which has been theorized to be taken down in one hit by the equivalent of a black hole to the face at high speed. Other than paying and wasting good money on a past time like that, you’re pretty much gods and can do what ever the heck you want, regardless of the law. Anyway, in most worlds, there are still laws of magic, and the Equivalent Exchange rule still applies to most of those very worlds which use magic. Either way, it’s either a long ritual, or it’s a painful cost, lime maybe an arm and a leg. For those of you who may say that magic has no physical cost, then why do games have such a thing as a “blood price” for magic, or it takes stamina of some kind, such as MP or Mana, as these types of stamina are usually called. Also, some games include a hit point cost, meaning you must give up a part of your physical life, and sometimes even a piece of, if not all of, your soul. That’s why, like when in one of Refugnic’s stories, Faust (or anyone, really) must give himself to the Demon he releases, as a sort of price for getting power. They say nothing is free, and magic is no exception. I mean, a black hole spell would cost a TON of Mana, which could kill even a high level Wizard, if he’s not careful. It’s also why magic in RPGs is usually reserved for the Mage classes, such as Wizard or Cleric, or even Paladin, if you want to get technical about it. Other than that, MP is usually used for killing techniques, which are usually things like Cloud’s Omnislash, which Iknow is a Limit Break in the FF universe, but it would be the closest thing to magic a Fighter could get just about anywhere else.

          • Refugnic

            Wow, someone put a lot of thought into this.

            But fine, allow me to humor you.

            I agree, the cost would be tremendous, though I think that depends on which kind of ‘resurrection’ you are going for.

            Yes, there’s multiple kinds.

            If Ada was to act quickly, Robert could still be ‘about to die’ by the time she performs the ritual.
            As such, the soul would still be in the body and the magic is ‘only’ required to fix the body back into a working condition.
            Okay, you can argue that this is just a healing spell and you’d be right with that, but he’d still be dead without it, as such he is ‘brought from the dead’ as well.

            Second type: Freshly deceased, meaning his body has only just ceased to function. Depending on the strength of Robert’s attachment to the mortal coil, his soul could still be lingering around and if the body was to resume function, it could return and as such Robert would ‘raise from the dead’.
            From Ada’s side, it’s, again, just a healing spell. Robert might be a wee bit traumatized though. 😛

            Third type is full blown necromancy, as in: Robert’s soul has already passed on and Ada, in a desperate attempt to get her friend back, tries to bargain with the demon (or by proxy: Faust) herself to return him to life, which he would do (isn’t he nice? ;)).
            However you know how it is…when you open the door to the beyond to call someone who has passed the threshold, you never quite know who you are actually getting back. At the very least, the damage to the mind would be severe.

            Finally, to deal with the energy requirement: The entire universe is brimming with energy (energy can neither be created nor destroyed, just transformed from one form into another), so the trick is not so much getting your hands on the required energy or even supplying it yourself.
            The trick is to tap the energies around you and, which is even more important, control it.

            Because if you lose the grip over the energy you’ve tapped, it’ll destroy you, much like when you open a dam too much and can’t control the flood that comes through.

            I know of the concept of Mana and Mana points and that it symbolizes the strength of mind, but really, if you think about it, these systems are just meant to keep wizards from spamming high-level magic left and right. Of course handling this kind of energy would be tiring and one often needs to rest and if they mess up they die, but that’s what they’re studying magic for. 🙂

            Any objections?

          • JW

            Another type of resurrection is where the caster has to share half his/her life-force with the recipient. So both loose a few years to look forward too.
            Romantic in it’s own way.

          • Refugnic

            Reminds me, ever so slightly, of the ‘shared time ritual’ I used in one of my earlier books (Terra et Celestia, to be precise).
            This ritual would take the remaining time of those who perform it and tie it to a common account. Meaning that they get the exact same amount of time to live. Of course, if one of the two got killed by unnatural causes (illness, poison, weapons…) it may be discussed if the remaining time is now for the other to keep (which would make for a terrific murder motive) or if the other would die as well.

            Back then I didn’t really think that far, I just had them die together after a long and good life.
            Though I think, standing where I am today, I’d opt for the ‘the other gets to keep all’ method.

            But yeah, romantic in it’s own way.

          • Dæmon

            The point I was trying to make was that magic has a cost, even if it’s just an energy cost. In the case of the time sharing thingy, you have to average your future with that of someone else’s future. In the case of games, he’s, low level mages shouldn’t be able to spam high level magic, but that’s what levels are usually for in games, and sometimes even for specific weapon skill levels or magic levels, depending on the magic. Dragon Quest IX had a stat system for these kinds of magic in addition to the normal level up to get magic system. Essentially, there were five slots, and you would have to find all the hidden classes to level up the skills, or perhaps traits is more accurate, in order to get magic. Ff7 had Materia, which was used and bought at low levels, but the materia leveled up as you used it. The materia was the magic, and it still cost MP, although all materia cost a stat percentage in one stat, and added the same percentage to a different stat. Then there’s the general skill learning systems, which requires you to either seek out books or individuals who know the magic and can teach it to you. Regarding resurrection, yes there are several kinds, but the kind I was thinking of would be like D&D, where it took something like 500gp of diamonds or diamond dust, or so I understand it was in older versions, and it could even regenerate flesh and bone, so long as there was a piece of him the priest could hold for the duration of the ritual. Healing his body in a way like that wasn’t _technically_ necromancy, as it was a high level spell used by priests of certain dieties, although you did have to pull his soul from the afterlife in order to bring them back, regardless of the condition OF the body it is put back into. I mean, the spell won’t put someone’s soul in the wrong body, unless someone rolled a nat 1 while a different priest did the exact same roll next to them for someone else, but even that was a stretch of a guess. And with the engery niehter being created nor destroyed, it would apply to both magic or mental, with the term depending on the world, as well as the physical cost it could have. All in all, only Gods could create and destroy matter, and as far as I know, only a few would do that willing ly in our world, and in D&D, well, pretty much all gods do that, or just pull matter from somewhere else so we can heal a fleshwound with starting level spells or revive the dead with a 17th level spell. It all amounts to the same result, meaning no dead Ada, or Robert, or Sophia, or anyone, since there would be no way they could die, as long as they were willing to come back as the age they died as, which in turn means you would need either immortality or age reversal to counter the problem of death after being revived, but that’s something to be covered later.
            Oh, and NI? You WILL be killing someone, I take it? I got that conclusion from the way you said, “yet” and the way you have been mentioning it a fair amount throughout the comic. It would make for some good tension, though, so maybe we should have a vote on who to kill off…. Protagonists, important characters, and non villans only, of course. Unless Faust can come back as a demon, then I might vote for him. Demons are pretty cool, and he’s a pretty powerful guy already, but demon status might make it more interesting for the readers, if a lot more interest and torture is the intent. Still Demons FTW! Sorry Ada, but demons rule, and I gots to get me a demon for a pet in that time. I just had a thought, are there Dragon like demons there? I’d totally force one into a contract and use it to get around. Go, Dæmon descendants! If only I were one…. Oh, but then Ada would kill me. Darn. Demons aren’t quite as powerful as I’d like here, are they? Well, I guess I’d still take one and use it as a way to kill demons, if it’s possible. If not, I guess I’ll just fight my way out of the suburban area I’m stuck in, or die trying. It ought to be fun if I can do it. If not, well, at least I tried. Anyway, I’m ranting when I am TIRED, so I should stop now. I tend to say things that people think are any time of day, but at night, it gets a little bit too far at times, so I should leave before I say something I regret. Hope someone get’s to die soon!

          • Dæmon

            Oh, and I forgot to say with he materia, there are some which are passive skills, but they still traded stat percents for most of them. It was like my Cover materia, which had a stat trade in it, but it also made it so there was a twenty percent chance that you would be hit instead of a teammate, meaning you risked extra.blows to yourself in order to save a teammate’s life, which was risky to use, but has saved Areith on multiple occasions for me. Then she visual had limit beak ready in two turns time, by which time I had usually healed most of the team to half health or more, so it was more than kind of wasted.

          • Refugnic

            I never claimed that using magic had no ‘cost’. It takes a crapload of focus to pull off any sort of higher level spell, the kind of absolute focus ‘low level mages’ cannot summon. It’s all about control, really. Regarding D&D and stuff…I never played that, but the game makers (for any RPG, really) had to introduce some sort of system, which prevents the mage classes from being absolutely unstoppable.

            There are limits to everything, also how much energy your body can handle flowing through it. If you attempt to channel more energy than you can handle, your mind might get destroyed or your heart might stop. In the best case, you’ll just fall unconscious, in the semi-worst case you die and in the worst case you rise again as a slave to the spell you tried to wield.

            But yeah, I think I know what you mean.

            Regarding demons…well sure, why not, try to tame them. But you’d better have a few very powerful binding spells to make them obey your commands. 😀

          • Dæmon

            When I said that magic has a cost, I was referring to the fact that you said, “Finally, to deal with the energy requirement: The entire universe is brimming with energy (energy can neither be created nor destroyed, just transformed from one form into another), so the trick is not so much getting your hands on the required energy or even supplying it yourself.
            The trick is to tap the energies around you and, which is even more important, control it.

            Because if you lose the grip over the energy you’ve tapped, it’ll destroy you, much like when you open a dam too much and can’t control the flood that comes through.” And that meant to me that, yes, as you stated in the most recent reply, it does take focus, but some mages are actually incapable of drawing on nature at an amplified rate, or possibly at all, if the energy has to come from within. The point is that, while the focus is important the energy cost would mean you need either higher stamina, or you need higher Mana, which is sometimes derived of physical energy, and other times, it is based off of mental energy. It has a cost, and the mental energy would normally be a person’s magical potential, or potential Mana storage. For some, or even some worlds, this could have a limit. Other individuals may have now limit, but could grow rather slowly, while their companions gain a rather large amount of Mana relatively fast. Of course, as far as I know for fiction, the slow growers sometimes grow exponentially, which means up until the start of the story, they grew quite slowly. However, they now gather Mana and energy rather fast, through whatever means the mages of that world gather or store Mana. For some worlds, it is not gathered from nature, but stored in the body, like Ki, also known as Chi. But as I also understand, Ki is gathered from outside as well, isn’t it? Anyway, there may be some place, like _maybe_ a barren desert, where there may be nothing to draw Ki from, meaning that the Ki in your body and what you recover from rest is all you possess. Then there are mental forms of Mana, which often can leave someone ragged, meaning there may still be a chemical, biological, or some other physical cost. This also raises the question of, “where does the energy come from?” Which has as many answers as there are worlds. We don’t see psychic powers now because of any number of reasons, but it _could_ be a form of this mental energy, since from what little I know of psychic abilities like Telekinesis, Pyrokinesis, or Clairvoyance (something I have exhibited in dreams, but have no way to prove it, since the powers that would let me do so probably don’t exist in me, if they exist at all. Regardless, I have had premonitions, and it’s quite strange getting a sense of dèja vu and not knowing what it is until I leave the party or are in bed, or just can’t call up the memory well enough years later and say, “why did this come true, if there are no such things as psychic powers?” It can be irritating not rendering the actual event, but knowing you dreamt it up, and sometimes even the day before it happened.) Anyway, back to the cost issue. I agree that focus is a problem, but when you have had this potential and you’ve been training most, if not all of your walking life, focus is less of an issue at level 1 than energy in my opinion. It’s like how in Fairy Tail (the best example I know of, since I don’t have a lot if variance in anime. Luckily, I found the romcoms while bored, and now I can’t help but laugh at the poor schmuck who ends up with half a dozen minimum girls who all are fighting for his attention. I don’t know if that’s my worst nightmare, or my happiest dream, but I don’t think I want to find out, even if it’s NOTHING like in anime. Anyway, back to Fairy Tail) you could have enough magic energy that your body literally starts to fail, or you could have almost none. And in the case of Fairy Tail specifically, there was a power called Second Origin, which is like a portion that never gets accessed, and can normally only be brought out through a spell which causes extreme agony and torturous pain. It’s not pretty, and it can’t be fun, but the relation here is that, while they do absorb energy through nature, there are other worlds, like the Inheritance Cycle books by Christopher Paolini, where do something like drawing off of nature can kill others, and the greater the distance between you and your target, the higher the cost of energy. Where does this energy come from though? In the Inheritance Cycle, drawing off of nature kills the things you draw from, and you also need a specific language and if you draw energy off is someone or something, you must have their mind connect with yours, meaning you feel them die, and you know their every thought, their every move, their every particle of ever fiber of their being dying all at once. It’s traumatic, and a single word of power, while it has a low energy cost, has a different cost of needing an intimate understanding of the language, enough so, that you must be fluent and can speak it as if it were your first language or at least close enough to such a thing that you can speak one of those twelve words of death without having any real chance if mispeaking. Furthermore, in Eragon and the subsequent books, none of which I know a translation for, so I guess I’ll just use the American name, the protagonist is told very early on that raisng the dead is impossible, since it takes so much energy, no one has been able to do it, even in groups of what I would imagine to be at least a dozen highest class mages working together, with no mistakes made on their part. Also, there are no ways to engage in a wizard duel besides literally overpowering another mage’s mind, which means, if that story’s laws of magic were to apply here, drawing from nature kills the target you draw from, and raising the dead is impossible, which we will throw out for now, since we have already established we’re assuming it’s possible by one female Swordmage, and if you are far away from your target, it takes I’d guess exponentially more power to maintain it, unless you specifically made the power souce come from the target or some other source which can supply magic power long enough to serve the purpose. And, let’s see… Oh, there is the fact that in some worlds, magic can’t be absorbed from a target without a special magic that let you, which could be either long or short range, depending on the magic, or both I guess, and then there’s the fact that if energy is purely from outsidenforces, like a priest’s magic, or your body is essentially a conduit for the energy, that means that the magic isn’t necessarily Mana like what we’re taking about, but is in fact a balance of nature, a flow and ebb, or any number of things, but not a storage of Mana, which means that mental exhaustion bexome s more the concern you mentioned… Then there’s just the problem of where it comes from in the first place, like if it’s intangible, or has a physical form, like atoms for magic in a way, that is unless the energy comes from the molecular energy of atoms and is the energy you see here in yourself typing, or doing whatever it is you do, but either way it brings a whole slew of other issues to the mix, some of which are mentioned above. Oh, and we can’t forget that the magic may not ever fully drain, so that means that a portion may always be there to regenerate the rest, whic H to me makes it like a troll’s flesh. Not to mention, the fact that if the energy is from inside, and can’t be drawn from others, even with magic where and how does it form? How is it recovered, and how long should I expect to wait? And then there’s always the question of whether or not there is a limit to your energy if not the entire world’s magic potential. And there is SOOOO much more we could ask, bit I REALLY should stop before I get a ridiculously long comment, like last week. Anyway I don’t know what else to say right now, and this took me an hour and a half to write. Wow, that’s pretty long for me.

          • Dæmon

            Oh, God… I did it again. Someone should really put a character limit here, because the amount of characters there has GOT to be rediculous for a single comment. *hint, hint*

          • NotImportant

            I am not going to limit the comments, I don’t mind them being long. Plus I want to see if you can learn how to manage the length yourself ;D

          • Dæmon

            Oh, God… I did it again. Someone should really put a character limit here, because the amount of characters there has GOT to be rediculous for a single comment. Or if you don’t, well, I guess you could always just send me an email saying they’re getting too long. Either way works.

          • Dæmon

            All right, I have to say it because it’s bugging me: Bleach, how do the characters ever survive a fight, given that their lungs are cut in half, their arms are all but severed, and you’re telling me they STILL can’t die?!? The characters spill a good three times the good needed to kil them in every fight, they heal in two hours, and they can’t even have the sense to die when enough blood is spilled to kill Hulk Hogan three times over, at minimum. I must ask, A) how do you survive those fights, B) how does your arm still work, C) How do you even breathe, D) what would be the cost of such magic, and E) what would it take to get a LITTLE bit of reasonable fighting here? Man, thinking of magic got me on one hell of a tangent. I can’t even remember how the heck I ended up here.

          • Refugnic

            I’ll start with Bleach if you don’t mind (and yes, reading through such walls of text is tedious and hard to follow.)

            The way I understood the logic of Bleach, the characters aren’t ‘alive’ per definition, but much rather spirits once they fight. As such, the rules of mortals don’t apply, seeing how they already are ‘dead’ while fighting. I understand your concerns and actually I agree, the fighting is beyond unrealistic, but that’s typical for long-running series like that. The problem is: Each enemy needs to be stronger than the one before to force the protagonist into becoming stronger as well and after a while, both parties are so ridiculously strong it’s just not funny any more. That was also part of the reason why I stopped watching Naruto, Bleach or Inuyasha (though I hear that Inuyasha at least HAS an end :D)

            *Ahem*, regarding the regeneration of the spirit form, that’s actually simple and correlates with what I was saying: The world is brimming with energy and all you need to do is ‘patch up’ the holes the fight has inflicted with this abundant spirit energy. That’s how they can heal so damn fast.

            With an organic body this doesn’t work, because we can’t simply convert energy to matter in a large enough scale (yet). Instead we need to wait patiently until our bodies grow the tissue we lost. The process of healing or growth in general is among the miracles of life, after all it is nothing short but the conversion of energy to matter after all.

            Regarding that wall of text…I’m not going to argue with your references, just like with Bleach every writer can set his own ground rules for magic and simply say ‘That’s the way it is’. There are a few ‘common rules’ most adhere to (i.e. Mana), but they aren’t absolute.
            So, if I say in a story that the mage pulls it out of his ass, because that’s a gateway to the dimension of magic, then it is that way and there’s nothing you can say or do to change that. 😛

            Regarding the clairvoyance…I believe in a specific theory, where every single possibility is a reality of its own. We pass through this almost infinite number of momentary realities as what we perceive as ‘time’. I also believe that we are able to peer into other dimensions. We perceive these peeks, where we leave our physical bodies behind and basically live the life of someone else as ‘Dreams’. Now if we assume both of these things to be ‘true’ (I have no proof for any of that, but do you have any against it?), it is well possible that we ‘latch’ onto a reality that is yet ahead of us in terms of ‘time’. There is a nigh infinite number of realities ahead of us, which has the exact same ‘future’ you would perceive and differs from each other in areas you (or possibly any human) cannot perceive.

            I like to look at the dimensional cluster as binary matrix of unimaginable complexity in this regard.
            Meaning, if you look at the Nano-Resolution, even something as insignificant as two atoms colliding or missing each other would result in two different dimensions, one where the atoms collided and one where they didn’t. Whether there is a finite room for all of these dimensions which will eventually grow full and end in a singularity, which eradicates every reality at point X (the end of time) or if it can, in fact, go on forever, I don’t know and probably never will know.

            Regarding the ‘cost of magic’…just like with everything, you cannot take something without sacrificing something, seeing how the amount of energy and matter in the universe is (supposed to) be finite. However, as I was saying, this ‘sacrifice’ doesn’t necessarily need to come from the mage doing the magic. All he does is take energy and give it a different form. The greater the conversion or the longer the effect needs to be, the more personal effort (which is as tiring as running for an extended amount of time) he needs to invest, so ‘stamina’ is actually a good word to use. However, and I’ll say it again: The magic cost, the energy that is used for doing something does rarely come from the mage himself (he’d be dry after a lightning bolt), but much rather the energy he requires to control the spell.

            I hope I made myself a little clearer this time around.

          • JW

            (I have no proof for any of that, but do you have any against it?),

            The a priori probability is nigh zero? Does that count?
            The things for which there is neither proof in favour nor against is limited only by people’s imagination. And very little of it deserves any consideration other than as part of fiction. Otherwise it’s just invisible pink unicorns all the way down the rabbit hole.

            Besides, there is a lot of proof that people are, for lack of a better word, delusional.
            How many people do you think recall the times they thought of someone but didn’t a minute later get a phone-call from them? But if they think of someone and then get a phone-call right afterwards even just once, they think they’re clairvoyant. It’s a notable coincidence, but nothing more than a coincidence and only notable because human intuition is bad at statistics.

            @Dæmon
            Regarding the wall of text, try using paragraphs. That helps readability immensely.
            I haven’t the time now to read through it.

          • NotImportant

            JW to be completely frank with you here I can agree with human mind being bad with statistics but you saying that guessing a caller correctly is only a coincidence is just what you wish to believe. There is no proof for either side until we actually try put the supposedly clairvoyant person in a closed box experiment and try to check. And maybe among thousands of people who just want to believe they are special there will be one about whom we will never hear again as the US government will take him/her away to assist during negotiations with the greys~ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

          • Refugnic

            And we’re back to how spells came to be, eh?

            Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s the same with the common saying that someone’s thinking of you when you get a hiccup, while in reality it is just your midriff cramping, pressing the air out of your lungs explosively, leading to the characteristic ‘hiccup’-noise. Why it does that in the first place escapes me right now, but I’m sure there’s a perfectly fine, non-supernatural explanation for this annoying phenomenon.

            Either way, the probability of ‘getting a latch’ on a ‘future’ which will actually come true (at least in the sense of the word that it concerns us) may be next to zero because of the about infinite number of realities out there if our dreams were ‘random’ about it, but they aren’t. It is an established fact, that in our dreams we process the things we have seen and experienced during the day, especially those impressions we took in but never actually noticed (not important/prominent enough to make it into our conscious, like for example the buzzing of a fly that’s caught in a spider web).

            Now, if our brain is processing all that, one could argue that all our dreams stem from that (for example the desperate buzzing of a fly could technically lead to a dream, where it’s us being trapped in a giant spider web, struggling for our lives), but at the same time it could be, that this processing is actually generating a ‘frequency’ our mind tunes in to. And then we get to see the reality, which ‘hums’ with the same frequency, must like we hear music from different senders when turning the little knob on the radio.

            Of course this is all highly theoretical and probably complete bullshit, but being a fiction writer, I do wonder about stuff like that and try to gauge, just how much of what I theorize for my stories may actually be applicable to the world we live in.

            Regarding the invisible pink unicorns down the rabbit hole…well, whereas there is a contradiction in someone knowing that it is pink even though it invisible (and is most definitely meant as a mockery of religions all around the world, much like the FSM ;P), but if an animal like the Platypus can exist…then just why can’t invisible pink unicorns which live in rabbit holes not exist?

            It may sound far-fetched and ‘impossible’, but I can actually imagine a world, where this could be a reality. Of course the ‘rabbits’ would either need to be horse sized (or the unicorns rabbit sized, or it’s the rabbit that is the unicorn (just means that he has ‘one horn’ after all :P)), but other than that, no problem.

            It could have a defense mechanism which emits a special gas from its glands which either bends the light around it or has a delusional effect on those breathing it in, making it ‘vanish’ from sight. If not threatened, it would not emit this gas and regarding the pink…well, signal color, great for attracting mates! 😀

            Just because it doesn’t exist on our world, doesn’t mean that it can’t exist at all.

            And yes, humans are delusional and superstitious. We want to believe in things, so we don’t have to deal with the crap that is our reality all by ourselves.
            That’s what the concept of ‘God’ was invented for in the first place, to give the forces that govern our lives a name (and, at least in polytheism, a face). If we accepted them as raw forces of nature, we would also have to accept that they can’t show mercy and spare us. We would also have to accept that we are nothing but a collection of chemical processes, which simply ‘end’ after their time is up. And quite honestly, I’d rather be delusional and ‘just maybe right’ than having no hope at all.

          • JW

            JW to be completely frank with you here I can agree with human mind being bad with statistics but you saying that guessing a caller correctly is only a coincidence is just what you wish to believe.

            I’m not sure that’s true on either count. That I wish to believe that, nor that I just wish that.

            Besides it’s an argument you can make for anything, even things for which there is “proof”. You can’t prove “reality” is real, or existed even five minutes ago. If our world is a simulation, any form of magic may exist as bug or exploit.
            But it’s not bloody likely, and as long as there are better and likelier explanations, I’m forced to accept those, whether I wish to or not.

            There is no proof for either side until we actually try put the supposedly clairvoyant person in a closed box experiment and try to check.

            Well, there’s the fact that no “clairvoyant” has ever succeeded to win the JREF’s One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge. Nor have many attempted it.
            And there is a lot of research about how funky the human brain works. Confabulation, false memories, sensory illusions, invoking religious experience via TMS, etc.

          • NotImportant

            That’s very true! And since we established that nothing can really be verified… why believe in the boring version of the world…?

          • Refugnic

            Amen to that! 😀

            No really, I know that the world isn’t that exciting and colorful and interesting, JW.
            But that’s the point of ‘believing’. To bring some flavor, some sense of deepness into this bland world, which would otherwise be nothing short of outright depressing.
            Sure, there are a few good moments, however, regarding the ‘funkies’ of the brain, I have a question for you: Why is it, that we remember the bad things for years and years and forget about the good things only about 5 minutes later? (Exceptions exist, naturally).

            The answer is fairly obvious if you think about it for a second…although disappointing.

          • JW

            Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s the same with the common saying that someone’s thinking of you when you get a hiccup,

            Huh, never heard of that one. In anime it’s sneezing.
            I wonder what other cultures have.

            It is an established fact, that in our dreams we process the things we have seen and experienced during the day, especially those impressions we took in but never actually noticed (not important/prominent enough to make it into our conscious, like for example the buzzing of a fly that’s caught in a spider web).

            That’s actually a good explanation for how the brain might create a dream that extrapolates from the past, and with a decent chance of happening in the future.
            And any difference between the dream and reality can be more than made up by false memory formation (i.e. in light of reality remembering the dream differently).

            well, whereas there is a contradiction in someone knowing that it is pink even though it invisible [..] It may sound far-fetched and ‘impossible’, but I can actually imagine a world, where this could be a reality.

            Oh, definitely. There are few limits on the imagination.
            In a computer-simulated world, where color is defined in RGBA, an animal could be invible and pink. And collision detection might be turned off for it, so it could pass through anything and everything (while at the same time still able to perceive, like the invisible camera that provides you a viewport into games).

            (and is most definitely meant as a mockery of religions all around the world, much like the FSM ;P)

            I consider myself more of a Discordian, to be honest.

            Now I’m wondering if that’s because Eris is the most tsundere goddess I know.

            Anyway. Mocking is an important part of interoperability testing.

            That’s what the concept of ‘God’ was invented for in the first place, to give the forces that govern our lives a name (and, at least in polytheism, a face). If we accepted them as raw forces of nature, we would also have to accept that they can’t show mercy and spare us.

            That’s actually quite liberating in it’s own way. Because it means that bad things may just happen through no fault of your own, as opposed to because you didn’t worship your god enough/correctly.

            It’s also interesting to note in this context the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which shook people’s believes as well as the earth.
            http://lifeafter40.net/2014/12/25/the-1755-lisbon-earthquake-the-start-of-atheism/
            Religious authorities did proclaim that the earthquake was the wrath of God against the sins of the people. Many philosophers rejected those notions, in part, because Lisbon’s red-light district suffered only minor damage while nearly all of the churches were destroyed in this very devout Christian city.

          • JW

            why believe in the boring version of the world…?

            Unfortunately, for some, that falls in the same category as “Why believe you’re hungry?”
            It’s not a choice. Sure I can distract myself from reality and dive into a book, or webcomic, movie, game. But in the end, like hunger, reality gnaws.
            It’s not that i don’t want to escape, but I can’t cut through the bungee-cord.

          • NotImportant

            I can’t agree with you here. I recall small street in Japan. And damn, that’s just a street, right? People live here, birds try to eat the garbage, there are small flower pots, old bicycle, lots of cables, old lady hanging the laundry. But at the same time I can force myself to embrace that simple scenery as something extraordinary, a moment, single one, which I will never be able to repeat. I can focus on the beauty of it and instantly it become something more.
            You say that reality forces you to see it like this? Well, clearly you live somewhere else, since mine doesn’t. Even theoretical physics gives plenty of room for magic~

          • JW

            But that’s the point of ‘believing’. To bring some flavor, some sense of deepness into this bland world, which would otherwise be nothing short of outright depressing.

            Bitterness is a flavour 😉
            But really, the world is not so bad. I find the actual working of the world (and brain) fascinating. Sure, I could be depressed about how irrational people are, but it’s not a bad thing. It’s just how it is, and it’s interesting at that.

            Sure, there are a few good moments, however, regarding the ‘funkies’ of the brain, I have a question for you: Why is it, that we remember the bad things for years and years and forget about the good things only about 5 minutes later? (Exceptions exist, naturally).

            Because it makes us avoid bad things?
            Loss aversion is probably built into the brain because you can only lose some things (like your life) once, whereas you can gain most things (like food) again and again.
            And on a neurological level stronger memories are formed when there’s a strong emotion involved (e.g. fear).
            And on the other side of the equation, we probably get used to good things more easily. Now that I’m old enough to buy my own chocolate, getting it isn’t nearly as good or memorable a thing as it used to be. The goalposts are probably moved every time something good happens.

            But now that you mention it, I’m not even sure if I do proportionally remember more of the bad things that happened in my life than the good things. And since I never kept a diary I can’t check either.
            I definitely do remember a few things that didn’t happen though, or that happened differently according to multiple of my siblings.

          • Dæmon

            Having gotten as far as NI’s reply to JW, I don’t think I said I was clairvoyant. If I did, I guess it would be more accurate to say that I have had moments, many of which occurred between the ages of 3 to 10, where K would see the next day, and it would happen, or I’d see a day far off, and it would happen. Quite frankly myself, I don’t know if Clairvoyance is a thing, but the fact that I was able to see something and it comes true, when I am not only different in looks, but in manner as well, is strange to me. Even though I am the person who did those fears, it still amazes me that a four year old could see him self going from a brat to an actual functioning person. (which I was always made fun being who I was, like my Autism spectrum, and various other things.)

            Somehow I changed, like a light switches between on and off. And just like in an anime, I had just the right nerve hit, and it brought me something very profound, and I practically changed over night. And, yes it was over some time, but it was a couple.of months at best before I was actually able to function in society, which from my understanding, even though I had been getting help for years, was quite fast, as I suddenly accepted the help only after I realized I may never come back from this path if I don’t stop what I was doing.

            Anyway, back to Clairvoyance. I was a trouble maker back then, and when I was about five and a half, (how I remember escapes me, but retrieving the memory itself was like getting memories back after getting amnesia) I went to sleep one night, and dreamt. In it, I was maybe sixteen, as far as my six year old senses could tell. It started from getting out of the car, at least as far as I can remember, but regardless, the events of that exact party, were repeated several times, some accurate to our world, some not. Either way, the most vivid thing I remember about the day itself, and not the draem was that I was always somewhat… perhaps distant is a good word. Anyway, I remember exploring both floors ina somewhat curios manner, like an amnesiac wandering the halls of his own home, knowing that he knows the place, but he doesn’t know where from. I was in a sort of daze the whole party, rarely in a full state of reality, even to the point that pain couldn’t anchore, as it normally does. I touched several door knobs, besides the front, and I gained something like a memory fragment of my childhood, bit it wasn’t me there. Or, I guess, since it wasn’t me as I knew myself in this life, but at about the height of an eight year old child, I knew I was a child, bit I didn’t know if it was me or not. I gained there memories, and I could hear the voices in them, plus I could remember the vision’s memories at the same time, which was a combination of the two individual sets of memories.

            Strangely, as I write this, more and more comes back ko me, and I may have to figure out any inconsistencies of minor details like wall colors, furniture, etc., however, I can’t help but note the children from the teenager’s point of view were almost exactly, if not exactly like the ones at the party. Furthermore, I also noted the same of the stranger’s memories, but in both cases, I can’t remember the faces of the adults and only those belonging to the children. I don’t think I can say much more, since I’ve had about four or five hours away from writing this now, and I literally started typing again with this sentence, so I think, if anything, I would need to ponder the memory some more to be sure I have all the details I wanted here, and I didn’t leave anything out.

            Regardless, I think that’s it for now on Clairvoyance. In short, I don’t _know_ if I am a Clairvoyant, but I have shown the ability before, which for some reason, those days I tend to be able to tell if it was a previous prediction by the dazed state I am in, and what little control I can exert, as if someone else is controlling me. Also, it should be noted, that those days tend to leave the memory of the dream with me, and it is in several different versions, ranging from blatantly false to completely true, with the only variance ranging from colors of walls, to lamp shades or colors of toys, and generally being minor details with little or no effect I can remember on the day. There have been, however, days like these where the dreams not only become reality, but it seems like everything I do is a lie, or is controlled, or is essentially not under my jurisdiction or direct control, no matter how hard I try. Sometimes these can even be a fleeting moment, or an hour, or any amount of time, but it’s strange not feeling any attachment to your own body. It’s all hazy at those times, and there is a distinct sence that you have tunnel vision, but you can’t ever black out. You can’t focus, you can’t control yourself, and only extreme pain or sensation can bring you out of it, with some exceptions, like the party I mentioned. The sensation left about half way through the party, but came again from time to time in short bursts.of memory. In all, it was mentally painful, but physical pain did nothing to anchor me in reality, like I was floating in my own mind, unable to DI anything but watch. I guess that’s how I can imagine those situations so vividly in stories, is because I have felt it or something like it before. Anyway, I need to be done and repair the page, finish reading responses to the Clairvoyance and magic stuff, and then be done, because it is very late, and I will probably need to think about the things I read today. Anyway, signing out now.

          • Dæmon

            You know what, the Clairvoyance thing is still bugging me, so here’s something to drive the point home. Be as Ned, I may swear in this, but it shouldn’t be too often, and I may say some things that people wouldn’t agree with, or may find offensive if they have fought or k is someone who fought in the Middle East, but this was a dream that was realistic to the point I could feel death, so don’t write off just yet.

            To start, I guess I should with the point I woke up from. I was a black man, and I was being gently shaken awake by a low ranking officer. A corporal, I’d guess by the way he seemed new to the.position of officer. And after I said I was alright, I looked down, and saw I had been writing a letter, to my six year old daughter, who couldn’t read yet, but was smart enough to know that I was away to defend her. I was writing on a scrap of paper which had survived the blast of the bomb we had just barely escaped, and I was writing on a hard backed bible, as if it were the only thing I could ever take with me into the place. After I got up and had grabbed my weapon, a mean looking thing I had seen pictures of, yet I didn’t think I would ever touch, nor did I want to, but we got up, and the officer, the same one who woke me, said that head up and ship out, so to speak.

            As we ran, I shot people down, and I could feel the grit in my mouth, the wound on my leg, the sound of gunfire deafening me for every life I took, where I could feel them.leave this world, and I could feel a part of me leave as well, like a piece of my soul tearing off and being sent as an apology for their death, even though I had always been told I was doing the right thing.
            We eventually reached a place to rest, and we did so, or would have done so, if the officer and I hadn’t been grabbed from behind and our throats slit. I could hear it slice thought that muscle, like a knife on a honing stick. It was as O lay there dying, I regretted that I couldn’t send one last letter, thinking, “this is it. This is how it ends for me.” I sat there wondering as I died, what would wait for me, dreading it even, and when I finally lost sight of everything, I woke up in bed, wide awake, pitch black all around me, as if I was still that man, but then I realized, I could feel where my throat was slit, but there was no wound.

            No blood, no slit, no death. I was alive, and I realized, I couldn’t fall back asleep, and I didn’t fall asleep from around one in the morning until fivez.a half hour before I had to get up. It was excruciating not being able to sleep, and I must say that the dream wasn’t like a normal dream, even for me. I normally have dreams like a TV show or movie, and this was all first person, with the same kind of clarity as the vision’s, and the accuracy of it was just as high if not higher than the vision’s as well. It was strange, but I was used to it by then.

          • NotImportant

            I’ve got many different types of dreams but they mostly look like the one you have explained – first person, firmly planted in the dream universe, waking up slightly confused.
            The funniest thing abut dreams is that people dream very differently and there is no one to tell them how it should look like. When I was a kid I thought that being lucid in your dream is normal, my friend from school thought that dreaming about complete darkness most of the time is normal, my other classmate thought that dreams are all in black and white and couldn’t believe we see colors in them and so on.

          • JW

            I can’t agree with you here. I recall small street in Japan. And damn, that’s just a street, right? People live here, birds try to eat the garbage, there are small flower pots, old bicycle, lots of cables, old lady hanging the laundry. But at the same time I can force myself to embrace that simple scenery as something extraordinary, a moment, single one, which I will never be able to repeat. I can focus on the beauty of it and instantly it become something more.

            I’m not really sure what you’re disagreeing with. Reality forces its reality on me. That does not mean that I don’t see the actual beauty that exists in the actual reality. I’m just saying I can’t hold on to a fantasy of things that aren’t there.

            You say that reality forces you to see it like this? Well, clearly you live somewhere else, since mine doesn’t.

            Or, y’know, we’re different people.
            Wouldn’t it be a boring world if everyone’s brain reacted to the world in the same way?

            Perhaps I should have emphasized the “I”‘s in my reply a bit more. I’m well aware that other people experience the world differently. Most (still) experience it with gods and angels and spirits and whatnot.

            Even theoretical physics gives plenty of room for magic~

            “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
            BUT, it does have something to say on the likelihood of “magic”, as well as on the alternative explanations.

            Which is why, for example, I don’t put much stock in people’s claims of alien abduction. Because even though warp-technology and some other forms of FTL-travel are theoretically possible (maybe), the energy costs are improbably high (to the extent we’ve probed these options). So even putting alien psychology to the side (why would they abduct people?), it’s just more likely people are imagining it.

            Michael Shermer has a funny anecdote in (at least) one of his books, where he’s participating in a race across America, and some ways in, heavily sleep-deprived, he gets forced into a UFO by a bunch of aliens. After a bit of sleep it turns out to just have been his support crew pulling him off his bike and forcing him to get some damn sleep before he gets into an accident.

          • NotImportant

            Then I probably should apologize. I was under the impression that you are bored with this world we happened to live in, maybe even disappointed. But if you can see the beauty and days aren’t dull for you I can’t really say you have your eyes shut because you wish for that yourself.
            About living in two different worlds and being two different people – the difference is that, theoretically, laws of physics shouldn’t be subjective. You can’t say that gravity works different for us because we are two different people. And that’s what I meant in the first paragraph as well, I was forcing a claim that world is objectively interesting. I know how it sounds but with this level of complication it counts as objective for me, after all there is no human being who understands it fully. And if we don’t understand something it should still be interesting to investigate.
            And with your third paragraph we are back to the same point we started (which would imply that you did not understand what I meant or decided to ignore it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) that the simpler explanation wins – which basically means explanation that you are more likely to accept, explanation that fits your current understanding of the world and your current beliefs. Well maybe you are just this very unlucky person who never came across anything that didn’t have a simple explanation. I am very far from forcing you to believe in anything strange, I suppose I just got worried that you don’t like this world simply because you are missing something.
            On the side note: I really hope there are no aliens visiting Earth, I have terrible nightmares about them sometimes ಠ_ಠ

          • JW

            I was under the impression that you are bored with this world we happened to live in, maybe even disappointed.

            Far from it; that’s probably one of the reasons I see no need for magic.
            I wasn’t the one that called mine the boring version of the world 😉

            You can’t say that gravity works different for us because we are two different people. And that’s what I meant in the first paragraph as well, I was forcing a claim that world is objectively interesting.

            I agree. There is of course a subjective component to what people find interesting and what not, but there is so much to the world, on so many levels.
            Scientists are sometimes accused of analyzing things to destruction, as if understanding how a rainbow work makes it less beautiful instead of more. But the better one understands the world the better one can appreciate it. It’s like art that way. A trained musician will get a lot more out of listening to a performance than I do, because they know what to look for. And you can probably find a lot more to appreciate than me in paintings I could call nothing but ugly.

            And with your third paragraph we are back to the same point we started (which would imply that you did not understand what I meant or decided to ignore it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) that the simpler explanation wins

            Well, I guess I don’t understand, because the way you put it I’d agree, the simpler explanation should win. But magic/god/etc is anything but simple; it just sounds simple.
            The way I see it there is an objective world out there with objective laws that make some explanations for events objectively more probable than others. And I also think those explanations are a lot more interesting, but that’s subjective.

            On the side note: I really hope there are no aliens visiting Earth, I have terrible nightmares about them sometimes ಠ_ಠ

            I’m optimistic/pessimistic enough to think that if they did come to visit us, they wouldn’t be hostile. If they have the technology to traverse the stars, they can probably get anything they want from elsewhere far easier than by taking it from us.

            Anyway, they always attack America first, which gives us time to find a hole to hide in 😉

          • Refugnic

            Regarding the aliens, there is one rather plausible possibility that would pit them against us and that is our nature.

            After observing us for a while, they would quickly realize, that not only we are destroying our planet, but are also on the best way to become an intergalactic threat.
            And threats are best dealt with before they become too powerful to be dealt with quickly and quietly.

            It’s not about the resources. It’s about us being the assholes we are.

          • Refugnic

            And potentially risk us actually catching the corner after all, escaping from our dying planet to the stars, where we might become a force to be reckoned with?

            Maybe it’s my human point of view and an alien species evolved and sophisticated enough might simply be smiling over our feeble attempts to leave our home behind in time, but the instance we develop FTL travel and therefor become able to visit really distant places in relatively short time, we already are a potential threat.

            However yeah, speaking of probabilities…it’s more likely that we’ll destroy ourselves first, I’ll give you that.

          • Dæmon

            JW, you said no _need_ for magic? I was under the impression at first that you hated that people worship dieties, and magic is a real thing for some people. I understood what you want about two or three comments before this though, so it’s all sorted out. Good thing too, because an impression like that could be hurtful for a lot of people. I mean, it sounded like you were saying that you didn’t like how magic wasn’t just a fictional thing for some people, and thought the world had no need of anything that science couldn’t prove, since it had no place in logical and rational thought. It scared me there until I read that last phrase before commenting. Whew, I was legitimately worried for a second. I mean, that would have been offensive to most of the world, I think. Sorry for thinking that, but it came acboss as almost blunt and emotionless to the point of not being ABLE to feel any emoton in the first place.

          • Dæmon

            Refugnic, I see what you did there… You used that picture, didn’t you, you sneaky little varmint? Good job, sneaking in a thumbnail from one of your fanfics.

          • Dæmon

            So, I thought about what one of you guys said witu there being a point in most long running fiction series, where the protagonist is so OPd it’s not funny anymore. For me, I’ve found that, with Bleach, and with Naruto, yes, it’s not a good series story anymore. However, with One Piece and Fairy Tail, it’s because they’re OPd to begin with, and I know that Luffy gained the power in the first couple episodes, but an eight year old child who is willing to stab himself to prove his devotion to his life goal IS powerful to me. Anyway, it’s that they’re a powerhouse to begin with, and the fact that the story, while it does seem to fail at moments due to some easing of tensions, has a quality of never disappearing, despite the fact that it’s the gut after fight. There’s always a goal, and it’s not revenge, it’s not rediculously dark,like Tsubasa reaches by volume twenty, it’s balanced. It still has a coherent story, it has tension, both for the story and the characters, and it manages to keep the feeling it had before they were so completely OPd. I just don’t feel that with Bleach and Naruto, and Tsubasa makes me think, “Where the fun times go? Where did the feeling of, ‘wow, this is amazing’ go?” It makes me feel like I’ve stepped into the den of Devils, all waiting for me to die, and it’s not a good feeling. It’s… Maybe a little _too_ intense.

            And JW sorry if I offended you with thinking that you hated worshipping gods, and magic and thinking it should stay fictional and not come into our lives. The thing was, I’m pretty bad with emotion, and it’s kind of a detriment, not being able to tell if someone is joking or not, and not being able to read social ques, but there’s also the fact that it’s all text here, so I think the misunderstanding is reasonable given all of this. Again, sorry if I offended you, JW. I just couldn’t get your meaning in this format of speech.

  2. Rateus Camp dweller Reply

    A tranquil moment amidst the chaos. Make the most of it guys! I like the way the light is drawn coming through the foliage.

  3. 1stormbringer77 Reply

    The Twin Swords? No! The Black Blade with consume souls! And it’s twin can only do so much when those who wield it are weak and won’t perform certain sacrifices that they are not willing to perform! Elric learned the hard way,I hope Robert doesn’t follow his path 🙁

    • Refugnic Reply

      I think we may be talking about different kinds of twin swords here.

      These here were made by the good guys…sort of 😉

      • 1stormbringer77 Reply

        I know,I was just joking. You do know where I got that from though,don’t you? Michael Moorcock is one of my favorite authors (and he’s a Texan like me!) and have read every one of his books,including his 3 separate series that are interconnected because all 3 of those characters are the one and same soul.They’re just at different frames of times in the Prime Material Plane of existence.

        • Refugnic Reply

          No, I must admit I am not familiar with this particular one. (I read far less than I should :P)

          However soul consuming swords are a fairly common occurrence in fantasy and literature. Most of these are likely at least remotely related to the myth of Excalibur, where a blade is an object of power.

          So yeah, I can see where you might have gotten it from, even though I’m not familiar with that particular interpretation.

          • 1stormbringer77

            I chose the name “Stormbringer” because that is the sword Prince Elric of Melnibone has.Once that sword is pulled out of its sheath it cannot be put back in until it has killed someone,regardless of the race.Even a cow will do,but it prefers a mammal with higher intelligence.If/when you get the chance start reading the Elric series.You will like it.

      • Refugnic Reply

        Sunday, bloody Sunday…there was a song like that, wasn’t there?

        Besides Drak…leave them their respite. They’ve more than deserved it.
        I know it’s not the pairing you want to see, but for the time being it’s just fine.

        But don’t worry, I’m sure Ada will be back to her abrasive self in no time at all. 🙂

  4. Dæmon Reply

    You know, maybe it’s just me, but Refugnic, JW, and NI, you guys all had some pretty good ideas for the philosophical struggle of Matrix like worlds versus reality. I didn’t understand it all, so do you guys think that a simple summary of the points you all made could help me rejoin the conversation, and make it so we’re not constantly flipping between pages of the comic because that was a good topic, and I’d like to continue the conversation here, so we don’t need multiple pages open at once. Thanks!

    • Refugnic Reply

      Hmm. Well, we don’t know what happened between the scene in the cabin and today.
      The thing is, that, so far, Ada seems to be far less than impressed with Adam.
      Instead, it would appear that they are convinced, that Adam is the reason why the world has gone to hell.

      So yeah, unless Ada’s ‘soft spot for evil’ is a full blown personality disorder, I don’t quite see that ‘falling into his arms’…unless of course mind-control magic is added into the mix, which I’m definitely not ruling out.
      There is also another reason why Ada would ‘fall into Adam’s arms’…that one includes a hidden blade. ;P

      In one of my fanfics (In another life), I played with an actual relationship between Ada and Adam.
      So yeah, I think the chemistry between the two could be real…given the right circumstances, that is.

  5. Lukkai Reply

    I just noticed how “Office Ada” (Shop -> Prints) would make for an awesome figurine! If only there wasn’t the cost of making those available in decent quality…

    • NotImportant Reply

      Yes I am waiting until materials get cheaper. I definitely need to make some figurines at one point :3

        • Refugnic Reply

          Why not have a Yu-Gi-Oh-style TCG for computers? I sure could get behind that. (Spending money on getting cards is just not my kinda game. ;))

          The rules could actually be the same, every card has a different attack and defense value, then you can equip various cards to make them stronger, etc.

          For example ‘Ada, the demon slaying witch’ would be a very powerful card, which can be summoned by sacrificing ‘Ada, the apprentice witch’ (with toothpaste in hand :P) while she is equipped with the ‘Spellbook of Time’.

          Okay, I’ll…better stop right here. 😀

  6. piromano80 Reply

    Well I’m back. Yes, I used to read this comic once, don’t remember why lost track of this one but I ready to start reading again. I’ve just catch up to where I was last time and ready to see where this has been going.

  7. SotiCoto Reply

    Right… okay…
    So where is the real star of the comic? The medic lady with the glasses?

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