#Narbonic

[obseletrix]

so just to add to the recent revalations, I was playing spot-the-reference with old Narbonic extras, and guess who I found:

so this has been narbonic background canon for a while, apparently. i choose to believe that Narbonic Europe has the exact same amount of bullshit going on as Europa does, give or take some gerbils.

[shaenongarrity]

These two. Still love drawing them.

[haveyoureadthiscomic-poll]

[appendingfic]

Love when a writer is like "here is a man with a substantial attachment to his car, we are going to destroy it SO MANY TIMES"

[thewebcomicsreview]

What are the main influences that you drew upon for your comics?

So the biggest influence would have to be ASequentialArt. The guy who makes it is the artist of Saffron and Sage and thus his influence is rather more direct; any kind of meta-fuckery in Legend of the Hare or Saffron and Sage is either Carlos' idea or something I thought he'd like. The big parallax finale of Legend of the Hare was his idea, and one of the low-key reasons I'm dragging my feat uploading that comic is that I don't want to have to figure out how to set it up again!

Kill 6 Billion Demons inspired the idea of having "Lore" under the Legend of the Hare pages, though that idea crashed because no one cares about my lore.

Gunnerkrigg Court inspired the idea of making Saffron and Sage episodic, an idea I actually regret a little, which is an essay I've been meaning to write.

It's a small thing, but Homestuck inspired my character writing just a little by making me think of "rules", like how every sentence out of Liri's mouth ought to deserve an exclamation mark or how Saffron often talks in sentence fragments because she's a busy woman and doesn't have time for superfluous words.

Prequel Adventure, Narbonic, and Latchkey Kingdom are all comics I like that have similar vibes to mine in one way or another, but the comic whose writing feels closest to my own might actually be Cassiopeia Quinn. If you take Cassiopeia Quinn and you mix in a bit of Katia Managan you get something not entirely dissimilar to Liri Bloom.

Final Fantasy XIV (specifically Shadowbringers and Endwalker) isn't really an influence, but it is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. Those expansions are very thematically dense in a way that both inspires me to try better and makes me want to give up and quit. That's sort of tied in to why I regret the way I wrote Saffron and Sage episodically, and perhaps one day I'll write that essay. I'm pretty consistently on the precipice of quitting Saffron to try to start a new comic; I'm a notorious dilletante.

But if you look at how horny the characters in my comics tend to be when the comic itself dares never show a boob, you can probably see the deepest influence of all, the one I dare not speak even to myself, which is all the trashy quasihorny shounen manga I read in high school, and the early webcomics like The Wotch or Misfile that had a bit of that energy that stuck to me indelibly no matter how much I try to pretend otherwise.

[halloweencatsart]

It is frankly a crime that I haven't seen this crossover yet. They'd get along so well!

[artataliaf]

@girlgeniusevents day three- crossovers! narbonic and girl genius are so close together it feels like this barely counts, but...

[mellkellyismyhero]

Okay I literally allude to Mell in a She Ra post. That is kind of amazing. It's so nice to meet another Shaenon Garrity fan!

You did? That's awesome!! I agree, it's great to meet another Shaenon K Garrity fan!!

[obseletrix]

every single day i think about the world trigger/narbonic crossover fic that i have 500 words of in my drafts that i really want to write and i sigh and write down a few more plot ideas. I can't figure out how to get from point a to point b but by god the version of it that exists in my head is massively entertaining.

[shaenongarrity]

This month's Patreon wallpaper is inspired by Leonora Carrington, one of my favorite Surrealists. I got to see some of her work this month in Mexico and I plotzed.

https://skin-horse.com/extras/

[mad-scientist-showdown]

I can't believe I only just now learned about this poll :(

I totally would have submitted my favorite mad scientist, Helen Narbon (even though she definitely wouldn't get far, or probably even make it into the poll in the first place)

well at least you learned about it in time for round 1! better late than later :)

[jewishdragon]

The fuck school even hired professor lupin madblood

These are question I have

[thewebcomicsreview]

So, Skin Horse is over. What are your thoughts?

I really enjoyed the comic as a whole, but I have to admit that I feel like the final arc... um, wasn’t the end of Narbonic as far as feeling like the perfect inevitable conclusion of the story is concerned. I kinda kept waiting to see the other shoe drop?

Narbonic is a very simple story

Dave meets Helen. They slowly hit it off and start dating. It gets out that Helen was keeping a Horrible Secret from Dave, they break up and have a huge fight but ultimately Dave forgives her and they get back together. Spoilers. That's the "steak" of the story. All the cyber gods and moon bases and the like are "sizzle". They heighten the emotional stakes of the story and add some spectacle, but they ultimately don't "matter". The story could have dropped all of that and been a realistic indie movie where the big secret was Helen cheating on Dave or investing all their money in crypto or something, and everything would still work.

What's the steak of Skin Horse. What's the emotional core?

The comic opens with a quote from The Velveteen Rabbit from the character of the Skin Horse, whom the comic is named after. The quote says that a toy can be brought to life and become Real if a child loves it enough.

The plot of this final arc is that nonhumans are no longer visible to humans, they're not Real to humans anymore. So there's some connective tissue there, and the finale does end with everyone getting paired off (Unity/Sweetheat, Nick/Victoria, Tip/Tigerlily, Annie/Lovelace), and much like the Velveteen Rabbit they leave the human world behind, even if (unlike the rabbit) they come back later to try to fix it. So the comic is sort of resolving its theme here: The velveteen rabbits aren't Real to humans, who will never accept them, but they are saved by their love in each other.

And then, after learning that Lovetron destroyed its version of humanity, they all decide to work out their own shit and come back to try to make the earth a better place instead of just fleeing to Space Canada. This is Tigerlily's idea and in part motivated by her love for Tip so love saves the human race as well.

And I think the reason Skin Horse's ending feels a little flat to a lot of people is that the thematic elements take a back seat to a big infinity war fight that's sort of at odds with it, such that the nonhumans win the big war and then flee the planet. The themes of "The world may never accept us, but we can accept each other and try to change the world" doesn't really jive with the "We defeated the bad guys easily hooray! But also not really!" battle. There was a lot going on in Skin Horse and it made the core message messy and confusing at times.

But thematically, it makes sense that Mr. Green is revealed to still be out there, working his way back up. They didn't solve discrimination. They likely never will. There's no satisfying solution to the problem of society hating you, no satisfying ending. You just find people who love you and do what you can for them and try to make things better, one day at a time.

[halloweencatsart]

I just remembered how much I love Narbonic.

[madscienceliveblog]

Intro

I’m Doc, and my sister Pyro and I decided that we we’re gonna live-blog some stuff. I’ll be live-blogging girl genius, and she’ll be live-blogging Narbonic. We kinda decided to do this on a whim, so don’t be too surprised if things go down in flames. We are starting with girl genius, which I have not read, and is my siblings favorite webcomic, in return, they will read Narbonic, my favorite webcomic for the first time. Planning to post around two pages every tuesday.