Pastel Defender Heliotrope

PASTEL NEWS ARCHIVE
For May 2004

May 6th, 2004

Ancient History

The connections between Pastel and Tryslmaistan are becoming clearer, and I can explore the wonderful backstory to the Unicorn Jelly saga in a form that should not be too utterly taxing upon me. To do the story of the First People would be a monumental task, and could easily be a comic series, or a novel unto itself, and I have often considered doing just that. What stops me? The problem of historical research. It would take a very great deal of historical research to do the job right, and the prospect of wading through such boring (to me) material blocks me utterly. I am willing to do a little, but not the amount I would need to do to tell the story with the detail it deserves. I am happier in more...imaginative realms.

But, I can get away with telling the backstory in a simpler method, through the filter of a teenage mind, 986 years from the events they are trying to tell. That provides a very comfortable limit on detail indeed. Also, it will give me leave to experiment greatly with art styles and techniques, as I create a history in documentary format.

My greatest fear in doing this is that readers unfamiliar with Unicorn Jelly will find this part either boring, or inappropriate to the story overall, my greatest hope is that it will please Unicorn Jelly fans utterly, and perhaps even encourage some folks to check out Unicorn Jelly who never have before.

But in any event, it needs to be done. I have known that from the start of Pastel Defender Heliotrope; because it is so very clear that Pastel and Tryslmaistan are related universes. I mean, just look at them! And I know exactly how they are related, so I am hoping that when that little detail is revealed, no mind will be left unblown. Not to mention the secret of the Multiversal HyperRain...heh!

Sadly, because doing history like this is even HARDER work than usual, it is taking even more time to do a single page...and that means more infrequent updates. It took two days of work just to do page 70, for instance. Whew!

But, I soldier on...

May 13th, 2004

Triskaidekaphobia

I don't have it... but after today, you'd think I would have. Eldenath and I were off to the mall today, and got rear-ended by some prick who wasn't paying attention to the process of driving. I say prick, not because the little asshole hit us, but rather because the sleasy weasle tried to squirm his way out of any insurance claims for damages...and he did it first by begging, then by deliberately writing down all of his driver's licence information with several letters swapped and one changed entirely...I caught that and corrected it...worse his insurance was 'pending' rather than active, and to top it all off, after he was contacted by our insurance company, he called our house to bitch at Eldenath for reporting the accident at all.

My friends, that is a prick. You see, an asshole just tries to make trouble for the joy of it, or because he does not care, but a prick does scummy things for deliberate, self-serving reasons. Ah, the joys of slang.

Eldenath and I are not overly damaged, but neither are we happy campers, and being rather sore and bruised, not to mention freaked out, I did not do a page today...but I did finally have the time to do something I always meant to do with the comic, and that was to add animated .gifs of the animated sequences from the original Pastel Defender Heliotrope Kamishibai.

These include the original text associated with them, and act as minature "film clips", a bonus to readers, so that they can compare the original Kamishibai version with the expanded 'graphic novelization' I am doing.

The pages that have had this treatment so far are the cover, page 5, and page 13. More will follow.

PASTEL DEFENDER HELIOTROPE
By Jennifer Diane Reitz

A Part Of Jenniverse.com

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