“Radamsa” is a reference to the Moomin book Moominland Midwinter. After Moomin wakes up from hibernation, he finds an indeterminable little creature under the sink who just keeps saying “radamsa” angrily …
A two page update, as promised! (Go back one page to read all of today’s update!)
The update is one day late, though … I was lending my apartment, with my scanner inside it, to some friends, and one of them stayed one day longer than expected. While they were here, I stayed at my “weekend place”, a construction trailer on a little plot of land outside the city. With a solar cell that’s too small to power my computer, there is nothing to do but work in the garden and on the trailer and draw comics in sunlight and candlelight. I wish I could live there permanently, if I’d just install some kind of shower.
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Tinet the Great Relationship Expert, almost 30 years old, ‘not bitter, only disappointed’, says: “Actually, in my experience it hardly fazes women to learn that a guy they are interested in has a girlfriend. Men, on the other hand, will indeed leave a woman alone if they find out she has someone already. Maybe because women on average respect other women – and themselves – much less than men respect other men – and themselves. But maybe the ladies of the Sha-Guo Marine Workers’ Solidarity Committee have a greater sense for honour than the average 21st century hipster slut …?”
[Addendum, August 29th, after I broke up with my boyfriend: “… Or maybe women just know whether a man is a slut or not.” :op]
The idea for this little sequence was born from a comment by Ainur about how at least Samona’s specialty is cooking lobscouse and not a supposedly stereotypical Roma dish like hedgehogs baked in clay … Because actually it would really be just like Samona to bake hedgehogs in clay. Not because she is (trying to be?) Roma, but because her cooking is rather unorthodox in general.
The notion that hedgehogs baked in clay would be a Roma stereotype comes from a short story that probably our entire generation read in school in Germany in the 1990’s, about a German boy who makes friends with a (as I remember it) rather stereotypical Roma boy. I don’t remember who wrote it, but in any case, in one scene they ate hedgehogs baked in clay.
* UPDATE NOTICE, August 15th*
No new page this Monday, because I am staying at a place with dodgy computer, Internet and scanner access. But to compensate (for once), there will be two pages next Monday (August 23rd)!
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Shannon’s type is short, bald guys with snub noses. V^(oo)^V
Whee, it’s hardly past Monday … getting better every week.
My brain keeps receiving gushes of future storylines while I’m trying to concentrate on drawing. If the ideas are any good, I need to write them down immediately, or I will end up remembering only the punchlines … (really!)
I suppose that’s one reason why more professional comic artists finish writing the script before they start drawing. T_T
Whee, this is the closest I have gotten to the proper update schedule in weeks … T_T
I would perhaps have finished it on time yesterday if I had not totally lost track of time while researching the possible cargo capacity of the Eagle Ray. I couldn’t find any reliable numbers for actual xebecs, so I looked at trading schooners and brigantines of similar size, and rounded down to be safe. After all, the Eagle Ray has very generous accomodations for the crew … :3 (though it’s weighed up a bit by the fact that the crew is very small).
The Eagle Ray used to have oars like a proper xebec, but it has been refitted to sail-only. With oars, it would need a ginormous crew – in one of my earliest drafts for the story it actually had oars, and the rowers were the restless ghosts of galley slaves.
Also, it doesn’t carry any guns. Unless Shannon has hidden away one or two for emergencies …
Since Major Suthidamrongsawadi’s intervention in chapter 2, they are officially under the flag of URSA (though I wonder what URSA authorities would say about that).
Speaking of URSA, check out the “Places” page I just made, with brief overviews of the places where this story is set!
If I started drawing this comic today, I would give them a much smaller ship, and it would be a schooner, since a gaff rig is easier to handle with just a 4–6 man crew than a lateen rig. (Perhaps something like the topsail schooner La Recouvrance, which you can visit virtually on its official website – which makes me really really excited!!!)
But maybe a smaller ship wouldn’t be as much fun. :3
Some ship websites with virtual tours and/or nice galleries (most of them are passenger ships):
La Recouvrance
Argo and Ocean Star
Isaac H. Evans
Lynx
Pacific Swift, Pacific Grace, St. Roch and Bluenose II
The Spirit of South Carolina
I could only dream of reference material like this when I first started drawing this comic. Though I did once randomly visit Lady Ellen with my mum back then. Her home port used to be across the quay from a hotel where mum used to work. We went on board on a whim. The crew was hung over and said we could clean if we wanted to. :o)
