Rzepki

The morning came, everyone’s still alive and well, time to continue our little adventure. Is everything going to stay the same? Can it?…

I bet those two (and maybe you guys too) have already forgotten where they’re even going, ha! Anyhow, we’ve reached a village, so sensitive people please be warned, there are some dead cartoon people on the next page.

What can I say… Hanami is almost over. At least the first batch of sakura trees has already started to loose petals. But fret now, there are many kinds and varieties and after the white ones we’ll have pink ones and then late ones and then you can always go somewhere north or to the mountains. As for me, I feel like I’m starting to dislike the whole hanami thing due to the crowds. They’re very tiring. Hopefully, they’ll all calm down a little from now on, since everyone probably already took their hanami photos for 2018.

What else, work’s good, but it’s still hard to work on Replay, the secret project I’m making with the 4LS (involves both writing and drawing) and my personal project (writing, no time left for drawing, sadly). Aaah I regret not having maybe two additional hands.

And guys, I’ve updated the vote incentive! Seems you’ve already noticed, lol. Thanks for the votes! I also received an awesome demon fanart, special thanks to Onceller!
Plus if you’re interested I think we have some Corporal positions left so grab those if you want me to draw you an avatar! The one below was made for Navic Panther, thank you for your support!

59 comments on “Rzepki”

  1. NiWo21k Reply

    I thought this was just a story about two people and their problems in the midst an apocalypse 😛
    Joke aside – they are still on their way to fetch the book – or have you changed the script XD

    Still crossing my fingers for your projects – hope you can juggle them all without problems and if you have to pause Replay (i know this will never happen) – i think all of your followers are on one page with that 😉

    And its normal to start hating crowded places – even if its something beautiful, the more people there are the more you will lose focus on the part you wanted to see – sometimes it only helps to find a place where the crowds are not so strong – and most of the times this brings you to places , that are even more interesting 😉

  2. JW Reply

    Yeah, Robert, if you weren’t throwing away sandwiches, you wouldn’t have to worry about running out of food, you oaf.

    • NotImportant Reply

      I’m sure his stomach would hurt if he ate that one. Especially after this whole conversation.

      • JW Reply

        Hmm, I suppose you’re right.

        Well, they can always eat that field of rapeseed in the background if they get hungry. At least I assume that’s most likely what it is; and the flowers and leaves (and seeds) are edible.
        Of course I don’t know how good Robert’s and Ada’s botanical knowledge is; so for all I know they might be perfectly capable of starving while surrounded by acres of edible crops.

        • Speedy Reply

          Wait… did she stop dead in her tracks because she’s not planning on going back, or because she sees the huge fields of crops that they should harvest as much as they can carry of, to take to the camp? Or does she sense a demon?

  3. DKpsyhog Reply

    Why does Rob look so smug in the last panel? Does he think this is funny?
    Anyway, that last scene was neat (and crucial for character development) but I’m glad to be back to the action, haha!

    • antrik Reply

      I don’t think that’s meant to be a smug expression… I guess he’s rather just making light of the situation?

      Not sure though why Ada seems so taken aback…

  4. Doom Reply

    Current vote incentive: Happy Ada in a cute dress, yay! …what do you mean there’s other characters there? I don’t see other characters, I see beautiful Ada! 😛

    • Refugnic Reply

      I think those ‘other characters’ are rather important, if you ask me…especially the smaller ones.

      But I agree, it is a very cute picture…albeit it may only be a false hope NI is feeding us here. 🙂

      • JW Reply

        I’m pretty sure false hope is calorie free, so she can feed me as much of it as she likes.

      • Refugnic Reply

        If only it didn’t always leave such this bitter aftertaste called ‘disappointment’. 🙂

        • JW Reply

          I had the same thought. But then I noticed her ears have Ada’s shape, and Robert’s color. Julia seems to be a few shades lighter as well.

      • DKpsyhog Reply

        smaller characters? I beg your pardon, no character is smaller than ada! (Badum-tss)

      • Dragon Master Reply

        I can tell just by looking that the girl that Rob’s carrying is a mischief maker who should not be trusted with matches or sharp objects.

      • JW Reply

        Huh, there’s actually two more Rzepki’s on wikipedia (both from Poland), but not much information.

      • Refugnic Reply

        Considering NI’s country of origin, choosing a Polish town name seems rather logical.

        Though I think this is one of the first actual hints regarding the actual geographical location of this story, isn’t it?

        • NotImportant Reply

          “Rzepki” felt like a super common random village name. It’s not a hint regarding the actual geographical location. But I was curious if you can figure out what the name means (because all village names have a meaning, right?).

          • NotImportant

            In Polish, rzepa = turnip! So bingo! And rzepka is a small turnip. Rzepki is a lot of small turnips!
            Additionally, lol, rzepak means rapeseed, hence the yellow flowers!

            And I might not expect men to read my mind (or maybe – I’d rather they didn’t) but I do have high expectations when it comes to Google ;D

          • JW

            It must be a bit confusing though; when a gangster threatens to break your rzepki, you first have to ask for clarification whether he means your kneecaps or your little turnips. 😛

          • antrik

            Have to disappoint you there: as far as I’m aware, in Polish you’d just talk about breaking knees, rather than specifying the kneecaps…

            (Also, the Polish word for “breaking” doesn’t have the broader meaning of “destroying”; so using it in conjunction with turnips — diminutive or otherwise — would be oddly specific 😉 )

          • JW

            Ah, well, that’s good to know. It’s not a situation where you’d want there to be confusion. Of course I don’t know the polish word for “knees”, so I wouldn’t know what he’s threatening to break.
            Or the word for “break”, come to think of it.
            Maybe I should just try to stay away from polish-speaking gangsters.

          • antrik

            I’m gonna say, it’s probably a good plan to stay away from gangsters, period 🙂

          • antrik

            @NotImportant you have high expectations when it comes to Google reading your mind? That’s a scary thought. (Though not an unfounded one…)

          • antrik

            Surprisingly, it’s not actually that common: openstreetmap.org knows only one village and five hamlets by this name. (Along with another village and three more hamlets where “Rzepki” forms only part of the name.)

            Funny thing is, some of these actually have fields and mountains nearby… Though I couldn’t spot any wind towers on a quick glance 😉

  7. Crestlinger Reply

    Have to wonder if they have working electricity anywhere nearby. The working turbines and wiring point to plausible.

    • antrik Reply

      Actually, no, not plausible at all. As far as I’m aware, the electricity grid would collapse within minutes without constant human input.

      Balancing the grid is an extremely complex task, that is only partially automated. (That’s why blackouts sometimes cover large areas: when any part of the grid goes down, if the neighbouring parts can’t react and isolate it quick enough, they become unbalanced and go down too in a sort of chain reaction…)

      The only things that are likely to still be up, are autonomous micro-grids — but these are very rare in the “industrialised” world, where it’s usually easy to get a grid connection. (And most of those that do exist today, are powered by diesel generators — so they only stay up until fuel runs out…)

      There are proposals for a more resilient grid, composed of autonomous cells, with their own storage etc., that can temporarily balance themselves much like micro-grids, and only reconnect with other well-balanced cells. But that’s not what we have today.

      Also, even if the grid could maintain itself, there is another problem: since most people likely didn’t turn off their appliances before being ripped up by demons 😉 , I suspect the load on the grid would be much larger than what renewable sources alone can supply today in most parts of the words — so any generator still connected, would be hopelessly overloaded and blow out immediately…

      Note that even if you have a traditional solar installation on your rooftop, regulations require it to turn off when the grid goes down, for safety reasons. (Though this is about to change, now that residential batteries are becoming commonplace — these can properly disconnect themselves from the grid, and work as an independent micro-grid when paired with a solar installation.)

      The way things stand today, pretty much the only electricity sources available, would be those that were never grid-connected in the first place, i.e. the sort of small diesel generators and solar panels used on-demand for camping or other events, or sometimes installed permanently in very remote places. (So Ada actually *might* have that sort of thing at the cottage, as it seems to be in the middle of nowhere…)

      The funny thing is that such stand-alone generators (especially solar ones) are much more common in parts of the world that don’t have complete grid coverage, including large parts of Africa, as well as parts of India and its neighbours… So during an apocalypse, they end up having more electricity than we do 🙂

      (Temporarily, you can of course use any car as a generator — but with pretty limited power; and extremely inefficient — so it would run out of fuel pretty soon… And for the record, the pumps at gas stations don’t work either when the electricity grid is down.)

  8. Alex Reply

    Of course we don’t find out whether Rob picked up that sandwich again. Man, that was the most important plot point and you even teased it on this page. 😛

    • NotImportant Reply

      Hahaha I need to draw Sofia asking him how he liked it~ ๏◡๏

      • Alex Reply

        So you’re going to resolve this important plot point? Thanks!

        @antrik @JW: Lol 😀

        • antrik Reply

          Resolution is simple: it was eaten by the birdie. It had followed them from camp, so Robert wanted to feed it again, like he did the day before. End of story 🙂

  9. Socratease Reply

    In which Robert either genuinely doesn’t care, or tries to pretend he doesn’t care that he just irreparably damaged his relationship with Ada. Goddamnit Robert.

    • Rateus Camp dweller Reply

      I think he’s putting a brave face on it and overdoing it. He clearly cares, he spent all night weeping.

      • Socratease Reply

        I highly doubt that those were tears of remorse over his behavior. The kindest potential reading of that that I can think of is he was crying over finally realizing that he’ll never have the relationship with Ada that he wants, and can start to move on.

        Most likely scenario, he was crying out of self-pity, and now he’s going to close up emotionally and pretend last night never happened and nothing’s changed between him and Ada, until that baits Ada into blowing up and trying to confront him about it, and he’ll be right back to trying to guilt her into boning him with some barb like “What, I thought you were used to pretending like my feelings for you don’t exist! I’m just playing along!”

    • antrik Reply

      What exactly did he damage, though?

      While some aspects of his behaviour were arguable questionable, I don’t really see how it made anything worse.

      • JW Reply

        Considering the position of Ada’s ears there was some damage; they’re stuck in depressed-mode.

        • antrik Reply

          That’s likely just a temporary state — I wouldn’t assume for now that it necessarily means a worsening of the situation on a grander scale… At least from Robert’s point of view. We’ll have to see how it plays out in the end…

      • Socratease Reply

        Sure, it’s entirely possible that this sort of thing has happened before, and I was simply giving Robert too much credit and he’s been a shit man from the start. But from an outsider’s perspective, a man who’s been amicable up until this point going “If you’re not romantically and physically attracted to me, then you’re an awful witch who’s leading me on, and I’m completely blameless in this situation.” is some pretty heavy fucking damage.

        Even worse, it’s a stance taken by so many gross awful dudes in the real world, so seeing it in Replay just has all of my hackles up. This is the first beat in so many truly, tremendously shitty “””romance””” stories, repeated so often and so predictably that if the story starts to look like it’s going to be all “Robert is right, and justified, and Ada is a cruel and awful person for not feeling and thinking and doing exactly what Robert wants her to” I am dropping this whole thing like it’s coated in contact poison.

        As for “some aspects of his behavior were arguably questionable”, I don’t even know where to start. Try treating any person in your life the way Robert just treated Ada. See if they’ll ever speak to you again.

        • antrik Reply

          @Socratease are you reading the same story I am?… 😛

          I’ll point out again — more explicitly this time — that Robert is *not* reproaching her for not wanting physical contact. He is only complaining about her supposedly sending mixed signals. The way he does this is certainly controversial, and it’s not clear whether it’s really justified. But there is nothing fundamentally shitty or gross about expressing that sentiment.

          On the flip side, if Robert is right about it, that doesn’t make Ada an awful person — just naive.

          Well, unless she did it on purpose, to gain favours… But there is no hint of that here. (Also, if he offered favours in the hope they would buy him booty, he’d be at least as much to blame… But there is no hint of *that* either.)

          As for the sort of story you describe, I can’t think of any examples from the top of my head — though I can well imagine a certain kind of people being inclined towards writing such stories… But I think it should be very clear that this one here is not that sort of story.

      • NotImportant Reply

        I don’t plan painting anyone black or white, they both made mistakes. There is a huge difference between a dude you knew for months demanding affection because you confused him for some reason and your best friend whom you knew for years and years being hurt by your behavior and is sick of the situation. Please don’t forget that those two know each other better than we all know them. It’s easy to judge but it will most likely be a bad judgement.

  10. Anonymous Weeb Reply

    ( ‘ ‘ ) / Allo’
    Haven’t read this in a while (regretting that) just caught up.
    OYE AUTHOR! Outta curiosity, have you considered posting Replay on Webtoons, alongside this site? Could attach links between the sites. Free, easy way to attract more readers, and bring in some extra $. Webtoons pays it’s most popular creator. Sad this comic isn’t known enough, it’s better than almost all the other things I’ve been reading recently.

    • NotImportant Reply

      Yeah! I plan to do that after I’m done fixing the prologue. I was wondering if posting it in a webtoon form would be very hard to do… well, I’ll do it eventually! And thank you, I’m super happy you like it!

      • Anonymous Weeb Reply

        Sweet! Looking forward to supporting you without paying $! <3 this!
        (broke highschooler entering undergrad, about to be broker. Probably gonna be on welfare
        after getting a masters, lol… WHY CAN'T THE U.S.A HAVE GERMAN EDUCATION POLICIES WHYYYY)
        Just thought I'd mention it after seeing Shilin do it, http://carciphona.com/
        I got 0% experience with digital media / digital stuffs like this, could try asking her, have a feeling she'd be willing to give advice if you need it. Haven't really contrasted / read the webtoons version of Caciphona much, (have a little) but I have a feeling it wouldn't take much effort to repost everything you've done. Pretty certain you don't need to reformat anything at all, pages would just be vertically stacked, user would scroll down, etc. Just throwing this idea out there, ultimately tho –
        ~ ( ' v ')~ Your comic, your life, your choice.

    • antrik Reply

      Well, the various given names were a strong hint already… But now it’s official I guess 🙂

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