Soup the Comic Strip by Alun Clewe
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Comic strip for November 3 2023.
PANEL ONE: Close on Nezhoni the giant rat. NEZHONI: All right, look, Bub, here's the deal. I may look like a rat, but I'm actually a haneal, a powerful servant of the gods themselves, and I demand accommodation! PANEL TWO: The stablekeeper staggers back. The champion is still holding his injured leg. STABLEKEEPER: Y—you can talk? A haneal? But— NEZHONI: You gonna let me stay or am I gonna have to call down some divine wrath? PANEL THREE: Worm's eye view on the stablekeeper, with Nezhoni in the foreground. STABLEKEEPER: Wait—wait—I'll get a stall ready immediately. I'll be back in a moment. NEZHONI: Well, I suppose I'll forgive you this once, then. But be quick about it! PANEL FOUR: The champion and Nezhoni watch as the stablekeeper runs off. PANEL FIVE: The champion is still holding his leg. CHAMPION: I can't believe that worked. NEZHONI: I really am a haneal, you know, so you'd better do what I say from now on. CHAMPION: No you're not. NEZHONI: You wanna risk finding out the hard way? CHAMPION: I'll take that chance.
November 3 2023

In the commentary to the October 31 strip, I quoted the last paragraph of the commentary (or, as I then called it, the news post, and I'm going to stop qualifying it like that and from now on if I refer to a commentary from a prior run of the strip just take it as given that I then called it a news post and I'll stop pointing it out, although I don't know if I'm going to have occasion to refer to another commentary from a prior run of the strip anyway) from this strip, and said that the rest was kind of still relevant and that I'd quote it when we got to the corresponding strip. Which we now have, so here it is:

I got so busy going on about linguistics blogs yesterday that I didn't mention two things about the strip that ran that day that I perhaps should have.

First, I, again, don't think I made it as clear as it could have been just what happened there, and why the champion yells out in pain. The idea is that in the third panel, Nezhoni bites him on the leg. What I perhaps should have done there is have in that panel a close-up on the bite. (A "chomp" sound effect wouldn't have hurt, either.) As it is, though, it's taking place in the bottom right of the panel (and with no sound effect to call attention to it) and is easy to miss, and is at an angle at which even if you do look there it's not entirely obvious what Nezhoni is doing.

Second, the last panel demonstrates that I really can't draw horses. So I guess it's a good thing the champion rides a rat.

Okay, now that I've covered the previous strip, a few words about the last three strips, collectively:

I have an overall plot in mind for Soup. Well, an overarching plot, and a number of subplots. Many of the strips that seem like one-shot gag strips, or like unconnected storylines, actually are doing double duty to set things up that will pay off later on.

Thing is, sometimes I worry that too many of the strips have to do with the plot. I'd like to do more stand-alone gags. But I don't, partly because I want to get all the important plot elements introduced and in play (I remarked about the October 15 strip that it served to introduce a character who would play an important part in later storylines; there's at least one other character who's also involved in a vital storyline who still hasn't shown up yet (well, not since the relaunch, although she did appear previously before the site went down)), and partly because, well, stand-alone strips are harder to come up with. Or... actually, come to think of it, maybe it's mostly the first thing; maybe stand-alone gags seem harder to come up with because I don't try as hard to come up with them. Hm. Well, be that as it may, so far most of the strips do in fact have direct bearing on storylines, though of course there are exceptions—like the strip the day before Halloween.

These last three strips, though... well, they weren't really story strips or just stand-alone gag strips. They were... kind of in a third category. Establishing strips, not supplying background vital to the story, but maybe filling in a potential plot hole, namely, if the champion stays in town for the night, what does he do with Nezhoni?

There's at least one other potential plot hole that I've been thinking of acknowledging in the strip at one point. Where does the champion get his money? I do, in fact, have a ready answer for that. He gets his money going on various adventures, being rewarded for rescuing people and ending threats to villages and so forth, and maybe finding lost treasures in out-of-the-way places. Why don't we see any of that? Well... because I think it's more interesting to focus on the times the would-be adventure goes wrong (like the rescue-the-princess story). Problem is, that may leave the impression that it always goes wrong, so maybe I should at least have one storyline where things do go as planned (or at least where he gets some reward out of it), just to establish that it does happen. Well... I guess I already kind of did, once, in that he presumably was rewarded for retrieving the Amulet of Ygraine, even if it didn't happen "on camera" (and if things subsequently did go wrong with that, it wasn't his fault). But maybe I should do more to get across the concept that yes, he does succeed enough on his adventures to make an income from it, and that the times that it goes wrong and he ends up nearly sacrificed to the god of evil or trapped in a pit by a mysterious villain are the exceptions to the rule.

[Wait, what's that about being trapped in the pit by a mysterious villain? Well, I guess when I originally wrote this commentary I'd forgotten that that hadn't happened yet since the relaunch. So, uh, spoiler. Sorry.]

(Actually, I said this strip doesn't really supply background vital to the story, but... in a way, it does, in that today's strip defines a "haneal", a type of servant to the gods which, yes, will eventually come up in a major storyline. It's not the first time it's come up (and, incidentally, aside from introducing the concept of the "haneal", the strip just linked to also gives previews of several characters who are going to show up later (as well as showing one who has showed up previously but is due to turn up again) [Er... whoops, I think I kind of confused two strips here. Yes, the linked strip does preview some characters who are going to show up later, but it doesn't mention a haneal; that was the previous Sunday strip]; like I said, there's actually a lot of setup in these early strips), but it's a novel concept that might be worth mentioning multiple times before it becomes important to reinforce the idea. (Though, on reflection, for all the care I'm taking to introduce the concept... the roles that haneals will eventually play in the main storyline are actually very minor. Oh, well. Then again, there's always the possibility I may decide to introduce a new subplot where they'll play a bigger part... though that's not necessarily likely.) So... I guess this strip sequence sort of was pulling double duty after all.)