Fantasy comedy about a magic knight trying to have a romance in his second language
…so, okay, technically we are launching “an AI storyline.”
Been a hot minute since we’ve seen these characters in the main comic. We learned that a certain magical girl was punching tsunamis all the way back in 2019 (!!) — let’s circle back and see those powers in action.
For a fun time, I decided to ask the new “Bing Search” chatbot what it knows about Leif & Thorn.
It started off by almost directly quoting the “About” page on the site here…then it suggested follow-up questions. I didn’t make up any of the rest of them, just picked from the suggestions.
By the second answer, the bot had made up a whole nonexistent storyline. The rest of the chat was a mix of accurate details and elaborate headcanons. It decides Pascentia and Leif both have ice magic! (I’m 90% sure it thinks Pascentia is Elsa.) It calls Kale a vampire expert who is Leif’s boyfriend and also roommate! It writes multiple paragraphs about the benefits of Thorn and Leif’s psychic soulbond!
Many sentences in these answers have a link to a “citation.” Some of the links back up the text of the sentence. Others are about the right character or theme, but don’t back up the specific detail at all. Still others are wildly off-base.
Y’all, one of the bot’s “sources” for explaining Leif and Thorn’s “magic soulbond” is a financial article about fixed-income bond investing.
The whole thing was extremely funny — so I’m just going to copy-and-paste the full unedited text here.
Content notes:
It’s close enough to springtime that I’m doing my seasonal switch of the Leif & Thorn site theme, from the polar Northern Lights to the floral Rose Garden! (If you prefer reading in Dark Mode, the buttons in the site menu will switch you back.)
We had a poll about favorite themes a while ago, in which Rose Garden was the winner by a mile:
And on that note, let’s do a roundup of other site-related (and merch-related) research polls with closed results…
Continue reading Closed Leif & Thorn polls: website usability and/or market research
The surveys are in, the Volume 5: Snow Drops ebook is out, and it’s time to appreciate all the backers who helped bring the comic to print once more!
In spite of a delayed campaign start, and a much lighter advertising blitz than I usually go on, your preorders set a new Leif & Thorn funding record this year. Thank you all for joining the party.
It’s been a while since I’ve run any Leif & Thorn guest strips, so I’m opening up submissions once again!
Safest way to get the strips to me is by email (sailorptah at gmail dot com). You can also PM me on Deviantart, or submit them via Tumblr.
You can use any characters, visit any AU, explore any era, include any headcanons. When you send them in, include whatever name you want to be credited by. And, if you like, a link to your gallery/blog/fanfiction account/webcomic/Etsy store.
Guidelines:
Format: PNG, GIF, or JPG
Size: up to 825×825 pixels
Rating: up to PG-13 (basically, match the tone of the strip)
Submissions deadline: January 31, 2023
Happy stripping!
Turning young readers loose on the whole unfiltered internet is…not always the greatest idea. If there’s a kid in your life that you want to indoctrinate into webcomics, here are a couple family-friendly options to start them with.
If you buy the paperback versions, even better! You get all the fun content of the comics, with no danger of clicking a dodgy banner ad.
The Tea Dragon Society: Soft picture-book-style fantasy about two retired-adventurer husbands, their shop full of cuddly pet-sized dragons, and two girls who make friends there.
The art is enchanting, the friendships are adorable, and the tea dragons will make you want plushies. Multi-Eisner winner, and well-deserved.
Check, Please!: A video-blogging, stress-baking, figure-skating champion finds himself a little out-of-place on…the college hockey team. Lots of wholesome sitcom humor, and cute m/m romance.
In spite of its intense fandom with plenty of adult-content fic, the actual comic here is downright chaste. Which earned it some criticism, perhaps not unfairly (you get a sense the author intended to make it steamier at one point, then pulled back). But it does make the series a good fit for this list.
Cucumber Quest: Two adorable bunny children, living in a fantasy world where every setting has an adorable theme, get sent on a quest to save the world. Using the power of magic, friendship, swordfighting, and catchphrases from their favorite magical-girl shows.
…This series got through several books’ worth of subquests before going on indefinite hiatus, so it’s also a way to introduce young readers to the downsides of webcomics.
Softies: The Earth gets blown up, and young survivor Kay gets swept up by a space-junk collector just in time — she couldn’t hold her breath for much longer.
Charming sci-fi comedy. It’s not clear if we’ll ever find out why the planet exploded. Co-starring some alien pets that will, again, make you want plushies.
Breaking Cat News: Intrepid cat reporters bring you the latest headlines, from all the news that matters to cats!
…Seriously, that’s it, that’s the whole strip. The artist has a perfect eye for capturing Cat Shenanigans, the watercolors give it a classy handcrafted touch, and a good time is had by all.
A cut of Bookshop’s profits goes to local bookstores — you can even pick a specific favorite store to support. If you buy through one of these links, I get a cut as the referrer, so it supports this comic too.
Have a favorite kid-friendly webcomic that isn’t on this list? Got a request for a future rec theme? Drop a comment and share!
Time to do the poll for the Leif & Thorn Volume 5 campaign: Which art should I use for the exclusive mini-print that goes in every book?
As usual, don’t worry about the exact sizes — they’re all high-res enough for these prints, and I’ll adjust them to look good at the right dimensions. Just focus on picking your favorite(s).
Continue reading Voting for the exclusive Volume 5 mini-print
Leif & Thorn Volume 5: Snow Drops is finally available for preorder!
It’s been a chaotic month over here. I hadn’t even finished the project video when I went ahead and launched the campaign. (The video’s up now! If you watch it, turn on the English-language captions — you’ll probably need them.)
The “print a single short run of a new book” cost keeps going up…but we’re still 59% funded in the first 24 hours, so I’m not worried.
ETA: and, 48 hours in, we landed Kickstarter’s Project We Love badge!
Go back the campaign, if you haven’t already — if you missed Volumes 1-4, you can get the whole backlist in a single order — and let’s add some cyan-blue to this lovely palette on your shelves.
(Hat tip to regular backer Strontium for taking this lovely photo!)
The next Leif & Thorn crowdfunding campaign is coming!
We’re launching in October, a little later than usual.
(…It’s a winter-themed book, so I guess we could push it to December, but I’m not waiting that long.)
Doing a short-and-sweet post this month!
No long-running plots to keep track of. No deep character struggles to worry about. Just some fun comics where you can order them on Bookshop, pick them up, read a few strips at a time, then put them down and go to the beach.
A Man And His Cat: Sweet old widower is the only person who wants to adopt the ugliest kitten at the pet shop.
Originally published as a webcomic, before getting so wildly popular that it got licensed by a manga publisher. And it was a good deal.
Hark! A Vagrant: Snappy jokes on whatever topics the artist is into this week, from historical weirdos to Victorian literature.
Even if you’ve never read the comic iself, you’ve almost definitely seen it memed somewhere. Do the phrases “I had fun once. It was awful” or “Ooh, Mr. Darcy” ring a bell? Yeah, that’s this.
Sarah’s Scribbles: Pure unfiltered essence of #relatable.
Cute one-off gags about little everyday moments, like playing with your pets, being on the internet too much, and lying awake thinking about a dumb thing you said in middle school.
Hyperbole and a Half: Another book about relatable slice-of-life millennial struggles. Part of this is personal essays (the funny kind), but it has enough comics that I’m including it anyway.
It’s also another series that you’ve probably seen in memes, even if you’ve never read the original. “Clean ALL THE THINGS” is from this one.
Oglaf: A sequence of mostly-unrelated absurdist gags in an over-the-top fantasy world.
…they are mostly sex gags. Don’t buy this as a gift for a small child. But as long as “a lot of cartoon nudity” doesn’t put you off, you’ll have fun with it.
(And I’ll do “appropriate comics to buy as gifts for a small child” next month.)
A cut of Bookshop’s profits goes to local bookstores — you can even pick a specific favorite store to support. If you buy through one of these links, I get a cut as the referrer, so it supports this comic too.
Have a favorite gag-a-day webcomic that isn’t on this list? Drop a comment and share!
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