Not as planned

Smooth Sofia, very smooth. Next time try to think about the other person as well haha~

Hope you enjoy her awkward adventures! I am still mostly learning for the exam, no time for additional drawings, I store ideas and motivation for later. Not sure how much time for drawing I will have while in Japan but maybe it won’t be so bad. Time will tell.

35 comments on “Not as planned”

  1. Refugnic Reply

    Well, at least she did work up the courage to talk to him, so that’s a start. I mean, if we were to follow the tropes of failed romances, she wouldn’t even have had the guts to even just walk up to him. Or got cold field as soon as she stood before him. Or something the likes.

    But she actually talked to him. Okay, it didn’t turn into a smoochfest like she probably hoped in the back of her mind, but at the very least now he knows she exists, which is a big step forward in the right direction.

    Go, Sofia, next time try to make some actual conversation! 😀 (I love rooting for the underdog, sue me. :P)

    And take you time with your stuff. We’re all not the youngest any more. Look at me for example, one of my books was done in 6 months, because I dished out a new chapter every single day. Doing that today is unthinkable because of these nasty real-life obligations, which just keep interfering with my artistic venues. 😉

    So yeah, I understand how you feel quite fine. 🙂

    • NotImportant Reply

      Hah, thanks! To be honest I still hope that time, when I’ll have more free time to work on my project, will still come. After all work doesn’t eat up 100% of my day so once I pass (hopefully) that exam for the master degree it should be better. I am just constantly scaring you guys for no reason haha, since I still have 4 pages in the buffer and still manage to find time for drawing.

      And I like Sofia a lot so you rooting for her only makes me happy haha!

  2. JW Reply

    Oh, come on Sofia, unless you’ve been stalking him and leaving dead animals* and creepy poetry on his doorstep, just tell him where you know him from. It’s only natural to want to connect with people you’ve known before the apocalypse.

    *) Come to think of it, I guess that would be a natural downside to dating catgirls. Like hairballs.
    Damn it mind, stop going place I don’t want you to go..

    • Refugnic Reply

      Well, on the upside, NI has (repeatedly) stated, that the animal features are purely for cosmetic purposes, as such Sofia will not cough up hairballs since she is not an actual cat. (Not too sure about the dead animals though, that just might be a fetish of hers :P)

        • JW Reply

          Yeah, he really beat you to the punch telling me something I’ve probably know as long as him 😛

          It was just a side-note on a detour that my train of thought took. That Sofia happens to look like a catgirl is actually entirely coincidental. The thought went something like: “creepy stalker” -> “dead animals on doorstep” -> “oh, cats do that” -> “wait, then do catgirls?”

          • NotImportant

            It’s still worth it! Otherwise people wouldn’t want to keep cats either~! And you just need to give them a right snack and they vomit fur anymore – I’m sure every catgirl has one of those in her purse.

          • Refugnic

            Haha, I didn’t mean to beat anyone ‘to the punch’. After all I know very well that you know.
            I was just playing along, trying to be funny, really.

            I wonder why I keep doing that though, after all it has been established multiple times that I am, in fact, not a very funny person. 😛

            Ah well, gotta keep trying, one day I’ll figure it out I’m sure. 🙂

    • Dæmon Reply

      I may be wrong but I believe NI has stated that the ears were only for the purpose of the comic and the emotions the characters show. They don’t actually exist, or so I believe it was said once, however I believe either my hyperactive imagination or NI may have changed that opinion when the audience appeared to either not notice or disregard the aforementioned ear statement. I would need to go and look at all of the comments, but it makes sense that either NI or my imagination, which it should added that my imagination can be hard to tell from memory, would change their choice of opinion (mind seems appropriate, but since my imagination isn’t its own consciousness as far as I can tell, I didn’t use it) when all of the comments seem to either ignore that the ears are not real, or maybe I somewhat crazier than I thought.

      I’m never sure if I’m at least partially insane or just highly imaginative, nor can I tell how people look at me. I’m socially awkward, not to mention my imagination is abnormally active, even for ADHD standards. Of course, this, combined with my memory for words, makes me a fairly good person for ideas and writing short stories. Of course, poetry and stories are a fair bit different so it can be rather hard to write one or the other eependign on recent activities. I just hope I can write a decent story for one of Replay’s fanfic section for once.

  4. Alex Reply

    Hope you won all your Latex battles you told us about a few pages back! 🙂 I know what you mean, I wrote my Master’s Thesis in Latex, too, but in my case the advantages over Microsoft Word weighed out the small disadvantage of not having complete formatting freedom.
    I mean: Imagine having more than 100 images in your thesis (not exaggerating, most of them were small though) and near the end you realize you made a mistake in your algorithms and you have to create ALL of them all over again and insert the new ones into the thesis. In Word that would have been a nightmare, in Latex I only needed to replace the files on my hard-drive and recompile everything.

    Latex is quite difficult to learn in the beginning and getting used to it takes some time, but near the end of the thesis it’s almost guaranteed that you will be very thankful to yourself for having chosen it over Microsoft Word whose weaknesses won’t show until your document is really big.

    Btw: I’ve been wondering how you were able to make it well into the top 10 in TWC so fast even though the comic is still in its early stages and you even created such an elaborate shop already. Did you gain a lot of internet fame from your painting tutorials (or from playing the Violin 😉 ) and they all followed you here?

    • Refugnic Reply

      I for one came across her, as Ada’s picture showed up at the voting gateway on TWC.
      Others may have joined because of the stellar rise to the top (a top 10 webcomic does help visibility when looking for something new to read).

      As for why they stuck around, let’s see: Stunning visuals, interesting plotline, believable characters…take your pick. 😉

      Though I do wonder why the comment section is so very empty on this page.
      I wonder if everyone else has gone on some holiday or another.

      • Alex Reply

        Yes, I figured this comic would attract fans after reaching the Top 10 and that they would stay because the art and the plot are indeed very well done. I was just wondering how this comic was able to rise up so quickly, because I wouldn’t expect many people to check for newcomers somewhere below rank 1000.

        What’s a tcw voting gateway?

        • NotImportant Reply

          That place where you have to pick what character you see on the picture to confirm you are a real person. Ada props up on those sometimes.
          And thank you! Glad you like it!

      • NotImportant Reply

        I was wondering about that too, but there was no drop in readers count, so I suppose people just don’t feel like talking this week. First time in the history of Replay there was a moment when it got more comments on Tapstic than it had here, hah!
        And thank you for your kind words, Refugnic!

        • Lukkai Reply

          Well, it’s been Easter. That’s why I’m so late. I was away and had to catch up on all my webcomics first.

          • Lukkai

            Oh, I had. Went to a small convention in Germany, the Anime-Marathon.

            And no, there is no running involved. Usually. It’s three video rooms running 24 hours (or until no one is left in the room to watch) from Friday late afternoon to Sunday same time, a manga library, a bigger hall with events, quizzes, show groups and the like, a few workshops, a tea room (and since this year: Maid Cafe), two games rooms (one for video games, one for card and board) and a small dealers room with a bring-and-buy section.

    • NotImportant Reply

      Haha yeah, I won with Latex no problem. I’ve learnt how to battle it during my studies so I didn’t even think about writing my master thesis in Word, Latex was an obvious choice.
      How did I get to top 10 so quickly – if I only knew! But if I were to guess I would say that many small things played a role here. I had followers on deviantart and some on facebook, who obviously became interested in that new project of mine. I am investing in Replay, buying ads on Project Wonderful, actively trying to get more and more readers. Many people who read Replay vote daily, or at least they claim so and I have no reason to doubt them. There was that one time on the very beginning when someone ‘broke’ Topwebcomics and gave hundreds of votes for the comic during one night (probably someone from my university, since I’ve studied computer science, but I don’t know who haha) – it didn’t happen again but at that time Replay got a lot of attention and people who saw it on the top stayed and became regular readers. So it was probably a mix of luck, money and hard work!

      • Alex Reply

        Haha, yeah, when you’re at a university with it’s hundreds of computers and TWC explicitly allows voting once per machine, then maybe he made a script or something. ^^

        Anyway, thanks for the detailed explanation, I think your guess has got to be accurate, because you’ve been doing quite a lot to get there.

        • NotImportant Reply

          My pleasure, lots of people get interested haha and I don’t blame them. When I started drawing this I hoped that Replay would have a decent number of readers after maybe 5 years? So I am both surprised and very happy as well.
          And shop was established because some people asked for prints, it’s not even paying the server bills since I don’t get much from the sales and they are sporadic.

          • Alex

            Again, thanks for all the explanations! 🙂

            Since you specifically mentioned prints I almost proposed the new twc shop to you but I just saw that you’re there already. You’re fast!

          • NotImportant

            Yes, they contacted me just few days ago 😀 And no problem! My pleasure!

  7. Zenanii Reply

    Okay, so I’m going back on my earlier theory of a teacher-student relationship between them. If he had been her teacher he should have remembered her face at the very least, but Sofia even mentions that he has never even heard her name (at least that’s what I’m reading out of it). I’m still going with the school theory though, partly because of previously stated reasons, but mostly because that’s where Ada’s flashback was from (and those white shirts they both had seems like a hint as well).

    Okay, so time for some theory-crafting around Robert.
    First of, I’m convinced he’s familiar with violence. He’s been acting way too calm overall through everything he’s been through so far, seeing not one, but two demon massacres (that we know of), nearly getting killed twice so far as well as getting shot, yet he appears mostly unfazed through it all (no trauma/shock/breakdown etc).
    Secondly, he has experienced intense pain before. Well, either that or he has an inhuman level of pain tolerance.When he got shot his initial reaction was fairly. . . livid, but after that he kinda just shrugged it off.What’s more, he ended up using his injured arm and killing several demons with it in the same day, once again without showing much discomfort. Part of it could be explained by adrenaline, but this seems to go beyond that.
    My initial hypothesis was that Rob had been part of some kind of military organisation (be it a police force, navy, swat, whatever), but if that had been the case I feel like he would have taken charge and tried helping out organizing the survivor and even volunteered for guard duty. More importantly, we’re told in the prologue that he has never been shot before (which break with my earlier observation, if he had experienced intense pain while working for the military the most reasonable explanation would be him getting shot).
    So to sum up: He can shrug of bullet wounds and he’s not too bothered by either death or gore, yet has never been shot before in his life.
    Which brings me to my main theory: Robert used to be a criminal. I’m not sure what kind of crimes he would have committed, but the theory here is that he was either in a gang, or living in constant contact with them. As such, he was exposed to a great deal of violence, pain as well as the occasional death, which has made him less sensitive to such things. It is possible that he was known in his school for being a delinquent which would explain why Sophie knows him, yet he doesn’t remember her (although her initial reaction from seeing Robert seemed a little bit too positive… hm). This could also explain Roberts and Adas connection, that they were both social outcasts at the school, that nobody else wanted anything to do with (her as the freaky occult girl, and him as the dangerous troublemaker) and as such they found each other.

    Okay, now that I read that through it seems way more far-fetched then when this train of thought first started in my head but eh, maybe I’ll get one of the points right at least? 😛

    • Lukkai Reply

      Gotta say that the thing about ignoring pain and mental hardship is something you can acquire as someone who survived a grand scale monster invasion. Especially if you realise you’re one of the few people able to actually fight them. He might have seen so much already that it was either break or learn to deal with it for him.

      • Zenanii Reply

        Okay, so he might have seen a lot of death and people getting slaughtered since the demon invasion began, I can relent on that point. However, before the truck incident Robert has never engaged in direct combat with demons (he didn’t even know they could be killed prior). To go from “never fought outside of sparring matches” into “unstoppable demon killing machine” after that one incident seems like a bit too much of a leap.
        I stand by my theory: Robert has engaged in melee combat before, and even killed people.

        • JW Reply

          I very much doubt Robert has killed anyone. He’s probably practiced kendo or some other sword-fighting sport. That’s certainly more common than sword combat out in the real world.

          • Zenanii

            But that would never teach you the kind of nerves to not only fights demons, but seek out and actively confront them (remember, Ada wanted to ditch the camp and escape during the invasion, yet Robert insisted they should clean house).

          • Lukkai

            Yet some people are simply born with those kind of nerves. He might be someone like that.

            Or Ada’s spell played into it.

            Or if we remember the prologue, the two simply are starting to be enhanced.

            There’s a number of possible theories here that are plausible. I can’t and won’t rule out Zenanii’s ideas here. But I don’t think he’s on the right track, personally.

  9. Blob_Cake Reply

    aww sofia its okay i think there are plenty of us on here with equally awkward situations under our belts!

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