Mountain Leopards: An Adventuring Story

[Ierne]

Oh that fake spell trick was funny nice episode!

[Jubal]

A short update: I'm intending that this isn't dead as a project, but there are some good reasons why it hasn't gotten further in the last half year.

Reason one is my health - as some of you guys know, my joints have not been kind, and digital art is not a kind activity for them.

Reason two is where the story goes next, which among other things involves developing the characters' backgrounds. Given recent events globally I've felt less able to take a decent go at Faay in particular, given her background as a slave and pseudo-Somali cultural signifiers. I think hers is still a story I want to try telling, but I don't think I feel ready and up to telling it just yet - possibly when some other things are out of the way I'll feel better able to think about this story properly.

As such, Mountain Leopards is on hiatus, probably for a while to come, though I hope to return to it before 2020 ends. Thanks for your patience.

[dubsartur]

That is OK Jubal!  I agree that beyond avoiding the obvious "Shadows in Zamboula" awfulness, doing multi-cultural casts well is a lot of work (especially if you don't meet a lot of different nations in everyday life: L. Sprague de Camp just enjoyed the human comedy and learning languages, most writers are and have to be closeted sorts to pump out enough words). 

[Ierne]

Take all the time you need I'm really enjoying this and happy to wait for more

[Jubal]

27. In Darkness

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I decided it was too long since we'd heard from these guys, though I can't promise the next few pages will be any quicker, or much fun for that matter...

[Ierne]

Exciting to have these guys back! I've missed the story, and them - all these characters are excellent, I especially appreciate how they're not perhaps as steryotypically 'heroic' as your average fantasy adventure crew 

[Jubal]

28. Some Comics Don't Have A Punchline

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Author's note: Since this comic hints some more about slavery in the world of Mountain Leopards, I thought I should mention some aspects of this here as side text: it's rightly a very sensitive topic, and I figured it'd be good to explain where I'm coming from with it, and with Faay's character. The Gulansharenes as depicted in Mountain Leopards are - like their medieval literary namesakes - a slave-owning culture. Indeed this is one of the two points on which Faay is based: the character of a slave, unnamed, in Rustaveli's The Knight in Panther Skin, who is explicitly able to walk through walls as part of the narrative of that text (which directly inspired Faay's escape depicted on page 16). Faay's background combines this with a number of tropes and ideas loosely indebted to, but which should not be seen as necessarily authentic to, Somali traditions and folklore.

Given the tone of Mountain Leopards, that there are a number of specific forms of violence common to real systems of slavery that will not be depicted herein: I recognise that those exist, but this is not the medium for sensitive discussion of them. I also want to stress that slavery as it exists in this setting should not be treated as a close direct allegory or analogue for the dominant paradigm through which we see slavery today, that of the colonial era slave trade. Nor should Faay, though I have placed on her character the articulation of certain experiences, be seen as representative: as one of the heroines of the story and a character with significantly more inherent agency than most people, she is definitionally not experiencing many of these things in the way that most people exposed to them would do. The experience of slavery as portrayed here will therefore be both self-consciously limited, and meaningfully different to any specific real counterpart. Those differences, however, do not lessen in any sense the central evil of one human being treated as the property of another, an evil that I hope I manage to portray with the consideration that it deserves.

[Ierne]

this is such a good chapter! it hits really hard. I'm not an expert on Mediaeval slavery, but I think you're handling this brilliantly.

[medievalfantasyqueen]

Oh no he got shot!!! :') Anyway so far, I'm liking the fourth wall breaking aspect of this. Will continue reading! 

[Jubal]

I guess from "he got shot" you're still fairly early on in the comic