It’s been awhile since I was able to draw big outdoor nature scenes! I missed it!
Young Ophelia is a total cutie, if you don’t think so you are wrong!
edit: I retconned the boat, now it is a proper fishing boat and not like a leisure ship or whatever.
94 Comments
Oh wow she IS a total cutie!! Look at that expression in that second-to-last panel. How can you resist that?
That’s a cool sea serpent right there.
I think Ophelia is becoming my favorite character~
De oudere of de jongere versie?
I think he/she meant Ophelia in general.
Ik denk dat betekende dat hij / zij Ophelia in het algemeen.
Lets try the non google translate version.
Hij/zij bedoelt hoogswaarschijnlijk Ophelia in het algemeen.
Why a Dutch question though XD
(^^”)>
Lol
It’s a tropical paradise.
With monsters!
You make monsters sound like a bad thing. Personally I have found humans far more monstrous than the so called worst monsters.
Nope. The impression you got from Lurker’s post is exactly correct, even if that’s not what Lurker intended.
Monster races are merely races for which there have never been medallions.
In most Avalons, monster races are not well regarded.
It would not, at all, surprise me to learn of people from the monster races who reciprocate the treatment given to their races, to those who do poorly treat the monster races.
No, it wasn’t what I meant.
I meant “monsters” in a good way.
Perhaps a smiley would’ve made it more apparent?
A tropical paradise island, eh?
A Paradise Island in the tropics?
Ophelia, wait! Before you leave, get Wonder Woman’s autograph!
“Greece has many Islands, some unknown to humans.”
Somebody must be paying off the people at Google Maps big time.
“We all knew the dangers of being discovered by humans.”
You get swamped by a tourist season that never ends.
I get the feeling that Ophelia and a certain pub owner are going to be good friends.
Ophelia’s tale merely makes more clear the extent of her lies to Anthony.
Learning this, on top of his ongoing anger and frustration from his transformation, does not look to bode well.
Yeah this will not end well.
Possibly with a huge shouting match if Tony’s mind does not completely shatter from this Big Revelation. D:
Especially considering he more or less just found out Blanche was hiding the truth from him all this time too. They’re, like, the two people Tony seems to trust the most. That *can’t* be good for the boy’s mental health.
How was Blanche involved?
It did seem like he knew that Tony’s mom was coming over, but it hasn’t been explicitly stated.
I wouldn’t expect him to know anything more than the “surprise” visit.
Not only that but what if Ophelia knew Adelle was a peryton and Blanche a stag all along and allowed the friendship to flourish in the hope that if such a thing as this occurred Anthony had someone on hand to help him.
The stuff involving Blanche started on page 2 of Exchanges, Handshakes.
https://www.skindeepcomic.com/archive/exchanges-2-anthony-and-blanche/
The events over the course of that day, chronicled in Exchanges, is when Anthony’s life and entire future were changed, seemingly irrevocably, for the massively worse.
What started as a day where Blanche merely showed Anthony what was simply being hidden, turned into the day when Anthony was affected by a very thorough spellbreak.
The early part of Reunion shows how Anthony is still not coping with his transformation, and in the scenes which happen at Stereophonic, in Anthony’s mind Blanche is intimately tied up in the mess Anthony sees himself in.
edit: Stereophonic, show how in Anthony’s mind Blanche is
I still don’t see how any of that would lead you to the conclusion that Blanche knew everything from the start. At worse, I think he may have knew about Anthony’s mom coming over that day. It’s plausible that Ophelia and Adelle may have known each other’s histories, as someone stated above. But I don’t think there’s any good evidence to point to any more than that.
It may happen, yes, I just don’t think the evidence is there to say “HOW DARE YOU Blance” yet.
It’s not so much that Blanche knew what Anthony was, before Exchanges. If he did, at the start of Exchanges, Heartaches, he would not have needed to take Anthony back to Prestor John’s to try to get Vadona to help Anthony, and then to The Underground to try to get Tim to help Anthony. Blanche would have known what was going on. Blanche was as much in the dark over what was happening as Anthony was. Which is made clear by what Blanche said to Anthony in Exchanges, Handshakes, page 18, as they left Prestor John’s:
“You’re the most human guy I know”.
It’s that because of what happened in Exchanges, and what we learned in the first 2 scenes of Reunion, that as far as Anthony was concerned, Blanche was and still is intimately involved in how Anthony’s life has been screwed over. At Sterophonic, when Blanche made the offer of more charity to Anthony, it bought all the bile and resentment over that, boiling back to the surface.
Now, on top of that, Anthony has just learned that he has been lied to up and down the line by his mother.
What Anthony’s opinion of Blanche will be like after these latest 2 pages, I don’t know.
There is a difference between lies and simply omitting the truth. With the former you have the intention to mislead, and in the latter the intention to withhold information. I doubt any parent tells their kids the full details of their lives, so one cant blame her for her actions.
Especially in Anthony’s case as being a male should have spared him any transformation. It was simply unlikely that he would ever need to know that she is actually a paranormal being.I mean, how do you tell your son that you are not human in a world that does not know that they exist at all.
Ik denk dat ik al weet waar dit naar toe gaat.
Yes, that is a nice bit of scenery. And terra incognita is so difficult to maintain in this day and age…
“The Island of Xenicos was known for its jagged pebble beaches, treacherous currents, near-invisible deadly reefs, rough, spiky vegetation, and unusually high population of stinging jellyfish and biting insects. Rumours that it is inhabited by an insane hermit with a heavy sniper rifle are unconfirmed, although travellers and seafarers are advised to stay well clear.” -From Tripadvisor, quoting guidebook now out of print.
But…
A monstrous sea serpent rears up out of the sea by the boat, its jaws agape. It fixes its gaze on the lone figure on the deck.
Sea serpent: Hey, Ophilia! Get off there so I can sink this intruder.
Ophilia: No. Shan’t!
Sea serpent: Look, don’t test me, Ophilia! You know the rules. If you don’t get airborne right now, I’ll sink the boat anyway, whether you’re on it or not!
Ophilia: Oh yeah?! Go on then!
Sea serpent: I’m warning you!!
Ophilia: *laughs*
Sea serpent: ….RIGHT, WE’LL SEE WHAT THE ELDERS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THIS! YOU’LL BE IN BIG TROUBLE, GIRL!!! *dives angrily, swims off*
>:=)>
where did she get her shirt ? if the island is hidden to human and only contain no-medallion race?
Well, Nokks and Nixies have medallions. They could swim to the mainland and buy some clothes.
Getting them back means investing in clothes lines and clothes pins, as I can’t imagine they’d stay completely dry throughout the trip back. o3o
Or they could have made them on the island, there’s probably one of the seamstress/spider creatures there, and the rest of them are magic. Even more realistically, clothes were just added so immature people wouldn’t make such a big deal about nudity. I mean, the nixies/nokks have no problem with it, and it is a deserted island after all.
Or they made the clothes. You’d be surprised what people can make by hand.
yellow and red, with a modern design and seemingly a modern material (chemie help a lot in clophing, giving more resistant and thinner material)
it shouldn’t be possible to make it by hand
What she’s wearing is very simple. People make far more elaborate clothing by hand all the time. What do you think people did before the industrial revolution?
True, it would take longer, and there are things you can’t do without modern machinery and industrial materials, but I’m talking about simple clothes, like what she’s wearing. Trust me– that’s totally doable.
And when I say “by hand”, that includes the use of looms and other simple, pre-idustrial machines. My point being that they could be self-sufficient without depending on human interaction for things like clothing. Or maybe they do have contact with the outside. I’m just saying it’s possible to do by themselves.
As for how they got the camera to take the picture shown on the previous page… well, that they probably did get from people.
Or they have friends on the mainland that can fly, like griffins or peryton, who buy them clothes and stuff.
The problem of flying is being seen and its stated that leaving is forbidden. So any clothes would need to be made on the island, from locally sourced threads. However shipping containers could potentially have washed ashore with clothing in them, you never know. Look at that stuff from the Japanese tsunami, stuff like motorbikes where washed as far as American/Canadian shores.
I do think she is such a cutie and I know I certainly wouldn’t be able to resist. I can also see the excitement she has in her expression, perhaps for seeing a human for the first time.
Tony’s mind is just going to explode at this revelation though, hard to deal with as it is, but it certainly explains alot to him as to why he is what he is.
What type of bird is Ophilia? And yes I DO know which type of Harpy she is!
EX: Is she a swallow type Harpy?
As was pointed out to me when I asked the same thing about Tony: Kory based Anthony’s harpy design off a frigate bird (a large black sea-bird common along Pacific ocean coastlines around the equator). It stands to reason that his mother would be the same. :)
thanks!
There are actually several species of frigate bird. They’re not all in the Pacific, but they are all in the equatorial zone.
I was just wondering the same thing! Tony’s tail is very differently-shaped from his mother’s tail. She DOES look more like a swallow.
Ooh, this makes me wonder how many uncharted places are all over the world hiding magical creatures…
It sure does, but no doubt google maps have got satellite of them and street view lol
Google Maps may have satellite but it’s damn hard to figure out what shit is if you aren’t familiar with it already. And if they don’t have streetview for rural Georgia, I seriously doubt they have streetview for tropical-theoretically-uninhabited-island-in-the-middle-of-nowhere. XD
Hmmm and I thought living in Oswestry was bad enough, which is in Shropshire’s case the middle of nowhere.
As for Streetview the story in this comic, predates both Google and the internet (of sorts) Tony was born in ’88 iirc, and so the picture of his mum on the previous page as a Harpy pre dates that by at least 9 months. Heck that picture could have been taken by Tony’s dad for all we know, but it is pre 1988 at least. But hopefully captured on an Olympus OM20 camera ^^
I doubt anyone in that region at the time would have had an expensive consumer grade SLR camera such as an Olympus OM 20.
At the time, the common consumer cameras were the 110 instamatic pocket cameras, 35mm roll film compacts such as the Konica Pop, and the disc cameras like the Kodak Disc 4000.
You are most likely right in that, and having done plenty of research too. I have an OM10 from around 1981, which was my grandfathers and thought that since olympus was pretty popular then, such a camera may have been used. Though we do not know who took the photo, it could have been Tony’s dad, we dont yet know, be nice to find out a little bit more about him though.
Back in the 1980s, the cheap consumer 35mm SLRs were the Zenit TTL, 12, and 12XP cameras by KMZ in the USSR, the Praktica MTL series by Pentacon in East Germany, and the Pentax K-1000
Damn your good!
The Zenit camera’s i’ve heard of, and i believe the Pentax K-1000 was pretty bullet proof, so much so they where used alot in school’s, colleges and university’s for that reason, well at least according to Amateur Photographer magazine anyway.
I’m sure you’d be good at pub quizzes
I got bit by the cameras bug back in 1977, Turboshed. :) A second hand Kodak Brownie Starlet 120 roll film, which I bought for a school excursion to Canberra.
I got my first 35mm SLR in 1984, a Zenit 12XP. It was while I was learning how to use the Zenit, that I learned of what were the then current comparable cheap 35mm SLRs.
Oh wow, and there I was thinking I was an older reader of this comic.
Seems you have been into photography a while. I myself started only about 8 years ago with a Nikon D50, then D90 DSLR, but got given my grandfathers OM10. I have a Flickr page as well, but dont have a specific subject type, though its predominately motorsports. http://www.flickr.com/photos/turboshed
edit: 127 roll film.
Back then, I had a 110 pocket camera and a cheap “rangefinder” type 35mm. My dad’s main camera was a Minolta 104.
Back in the 1980s, I had my local newsagent reserve copies of that and What Camera, for me.
They are a good read, I’ve still got a few in storage, taught me a few things, though much of what I know is self taught. Wish I could still afford them though, just seem to be always skint at the moment.
This flashback is sometime before Anthony was born in 1988.
The World Wide Web was not yet conceived by Tim Berners-Lee. So quite obviously, Google didn’t exist then, to use satellite imagery in Google Maps.
All there was, publicly available in the 1980s, were the low res Landsat pics. And Landsat back then being able to see a flyspeck island which was part of Greece… I doubt it.
It does, though, make me wonder why the island was not identified and mapped at some point in WW II during the Greece occupations.
Jeniskunk, I did also put that in a later reply to the same post, but I do agree with you, however the internet did exist in the 1980’s but not as we know it now, in fact an even earlier version of the internet was in existence even as far back as the 1960’s but the technology was not in place to accommodate high resolution images.
You rightly add though the potential for the islands to have been mapped during WW2, and may have had an influx of possibly crashed or washed up soldiers, maybe plus as you say aerial mapping and photography. though the island may have been too small to be considered a significant one to take over and so overlooked.
There is also the possibility that the island was hidden from aerial view using something akin to the L.A.’s fake ceiling.
Ophelia still is a cutie
…Seeing young Ophilia’s adorable-curious lip bite has caused “Part of Your World” to be stuck in my head now.
SHE COLLECTED HUMAN TRINKETS, DIDN’T SHE. C’MON. LOOK AT THAT CURIOUS FACE AND TELL ME SHE DIDN’T.
Now you say that, so have I, Damn you!
Why do I have the feeling she is no longer a harpy?
Probably from the was, meaning passed tense. That and the magic that made her human is probably irreversible. Tim said something to that effect in an earlier page. I’m sure now that Tony is a Harpy she would like to go back to that form.
She’s beautiful! Whoever said harpies were ugly was a total liar pants on fire human.
In mundane depictions, harpies are often described as being rather less attractive (in personality, if not form). Of course, Kory has felt free to vary her details from established folklore. Even so, you’re forgetting the fourth subspecies of harpy shown in that Q&A sketch. Celean harpies look much more monstrous, and have big bat/demon/dragon-style wings (apparently behind a smaller pair of feathered wings).
The facial expression of the one in the picture doesn’t look like it, but there could be a celean harpy who would inspire someone to say, “She has a nice personality . . .”
The RQ you’re talking about is the August 2011 RQ number 9
https://www.skindeepcomic.com/archive/rq-9-harpies/
Man, it’s really hard to believe that this story arc started 5 freakin years ago.
It is, but in order to keep things fresh Kory goes back and forth between different stories.
I like that Nokk’s hair, too. Pretty cute. :)
It’s a crying shame how nokks turn into mindless sea monster in their 60s. Makes me wonder if some choose to take their lives instead of that.
I’ve wondered the same thing. I wouldn’t want to take the risk of hurting anyone.
http://www.dolldivine.com/harpy-maker.php
Ooo that looks like fun!
Now I really hope Ophilia can find a way to change back. I’m dying to have scene with her teaching Tony to fly. (Maybe he’ll try it if his mother helps.)
That I would like to see, since some have hinted that tony can’t fly because he is too heavy andccertainly at the moment because of his lack of feathers. But its clear that he should be able to from his mother being able to.
I never said that Anthony would be too heavy to fly.
What I did say was that we don’t yet know if Anthony has the lighter hollow bone structures of birds.
Fair point, I presume he would have inherited that from his mother, but we dont know for sure like you say.
But the chances that Anthony has stood on some bif he throom scales to find out are more than likely slim to non. The only other person who might know is Blanche, if he has picked Anthony up at some point. Curious though with the spell on him, would he be the same weight as a regular human, or weigh the samw as a harpy?
No Turboshed.
When I said that about Anthony, we had yet to learn what his mother was.
So we could not then reasonably presume what, if anything, he had inherited from her.
However, given what we now know, it’s now a higher probability that he would have the lighter hollow bone structures of birds.
A higher probability at least.
But what I said about Blanche possibly knowing may still stand, especially if he has picked Tony up at some point or tried to help him walk, which we have not seen.
For Anthony its a whole new ball game re learning to walk on those bird feet and legs.
Hopefully though Tony has inherrited the lighter bones, because it might be fun to see someone teach Anthony flight.
She wouldn’t have to regain her wing-arms in order to help him learn how to fly. There’s still the tried-and-true Finn method!
There is that, but that wont be for a while, possibly up to 6 months before the feathers grow back sufficiently. Though in reality the only places that could happen are inside the avalon. Yes there are tall buildings in Liverpool, but if he where to fly he would be seen. Idealy North Wales would be a good place as there are plenty of mountains there and its super pretty. A place that I call my back garden as well. Hmm dunno why but I got this idea I could see anthony and blanch at Castell dinas bran for some reason.
To be fair, there’s no place inside the L.A. that’s high enough. He’d be high enough to get seriously hurt (especially with all those HARD surfaces), but not high enough to be able to react in time. Like skydiving from below the height the parachute needs, in order to open. Bad idea.
That is why I suggested north Wales, its really pretty there, its also my back garden and in places remote, so even if they did get seen, it wouldn’t matter as they might get confused for Red Kite or a common buzzard.
I like how the sea serpent appears to have an amusing overbite. <3 I feel a kindship with Ophelia. XD
Oh noes, I’ve caught up with the web comic :(
Your lucky, there is a new page today/tomorrow morning depending where you are in the world.
Panel two is ambiguous. Is she saying “I always told you I’m not from the mainland”, or “I lied about being from the mainland.”?
She is saying that what she told Anthony all his life was a lie. She had told him that she WAS from the Greek mainland, when in fact she was not, she was from this small island avalon.
And more tellingly the only piece of truth she ever told Anthony about family history was what trade his father had, that he was a sailor.
“I told you that your father was a sailor. That is true.”
On another note Jeniskunk, I notice that the boat Anthony’s father is on looks rsther like a pleasure yacht rather than a fishing boat/trading vessel but thats not to say his father didnt do that as a main profession.
Is it possible maybe the elders for her Avalon took away her form for breaking the rules here? Is that even possible?
I seriously doubt it, since harpy is her true form, it cannot be taken away. However it might be possible if one or more of the elders allowed her to become human in order to leave. That however might be unlikely.
It didn’t occur to me that the Nokk was on a cliff I just thought it was really really big
So… I just read this whole webcomic. And all these extras. What is the update schedule? Weekly? I tried to find a character with my birthday but I could not. I did find that Colin has my birth year and that is funny. It is sad to be all caught up.
This webcomic is like a furry Percy Jackson novel.
I don’t know… what to think of that.
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