Almanac – People
January 31st, 2011I added two new entries to the Almanac today – Alays Maccard and Claudine Nareau. Alays is the server at the Harp and Trumpet who appeared on page 10. Claudine is the spitfire silversmith giving Jassart an earful on page 13. Both entries may be found under the Merchant heading of the People section in the Almanac. Since the characters have appeared in the comic, these entries also appear on the Cast page.
Also, I’ve uploaded a new incentive panel for those who vote on Top Web Comics. Please vote for us! We greatly appreciate your support.
This is set in 1680s French Canada… and you put a female character with short hair, a headband, rimless rectangular 2000s glasses, trouser slacks and a vest? She looks like she bought her entire outfit at J. Crew. I sincerely hope she’s supposed to be a time traveler, because otherwise… YOU FAIL COMICS FOREVER.
Thank you for reading Snow by Night. As you point out, the comic is not historically accurate. It is not intended to be so. We have billed ourselves as a tale of colonial fantasy, and we’ll be taking many artistic liberties as we weave the story. While the setting is based off of Quebec, it is not actual 1680s French Canada. Sherbourg is as akin to colonial New France as The Lord of the Rings is to medieval Europe. Thank you so much for joining us, and we hope you enjoy the tale.
You’re writing a historical fantasy, which means that there should be historic fact mixed in with the fantasy (like in Madame Xanadu). Amy Reeder’s art is very well researched, which adds to the depth and nuance of the comic. She doesn’t have any random unexplained contemporary people walking around Druidic Britain or Medieval China. And you didn’t see that in Lord of the Rings either.
I don’t really have any interest in reading your webcomic further if you can’t even arse yourself to do a modicum of research. Wikipedia, people! It’s there for a reason. Use it!
I’m writing a story to entertain, and I’m picking the elements that suit my needs. The clothing is the least of it. Guilds had pretty much ceased to exist in the real world by 1680s. And when there were guilds, an unmarried woman like Claudine Nareau would never have been allowed to become a master. Mathilde’s song isn’t representative of colonial era. The architecture of the Harp and Trumpet would not support its own weight and would have collapsed. I haven’t even touched on the alchemy, the statuary, or the religions of Sherbourg which are also fantastical. While I’m using French Canada as my jumping off point, we’re not a historical comic. Much like Wikipedia is a good jumping off point for research but is not considered actual research by academics.
A Q&A from an interview with Amy Reeder by Anime News Network:
Speaking of acceptance, how do you feel about Internet “haters”?
Bah. Meh. [Laughs] I don’t know—I’ve heard it so many times that I guess it doesn’t really faze me too much, because people have the choice to make the judgments that they want. I think that eventually it’ll break its own barriers. At first it really bothered me, and for some reason I felt tempted (regardless of the fact that it bothered me) to go to all these different forums and read all the mean things that people had to say…
You know what I mean? I was kind of bigheaded about it. But after a while, I stopped doing that, and I realized that I really didn’t care. I definitely do think that all of it is wrong—and some of it can be very close-minded—but the thing that bothers me, that does still bother me, is when people question our motives about “cashing in.” That’s the one thing that bothers me. They can say that we’re wannabes, and they can say that we’re not talented, but to say that we’re doing this just because we see that it’s popular and we want to jump in and get some of that, is just … that’s where it is kind of offensive. This is something that, first of all, doesn’t give us much money, and secondly, is something that we’re so passionate about, that it really hurts to hear that.
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This is a brand-new comic. No one starts out flawless. Amy Reeder seems to get that people who do this are doing it for the love of it. Since you idolize her so much, maybe you could start to emulate her too.
Wouldn’t that be failing history, not comics?
[If this comic was even meant to be historically accurate, which, as Eric points out, it isn’t.]
Good point…troll fails at trolling forever :)
Awesome! I have been waiting for the silversmith to get a almanac entry. Do I smell a plot hook in the making? My spidey senses are tingling :P