The (un)Amusing Adventures of Margaret and Friends

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Finally we are at comic 70, the last sprite comic I created for The (un)Amusing Adventures of Margaret and Friends on July 2, 2007.  It contains a bombshell that, of course, is dropped out of nowhere because I’m a terrible writer. The bombshell being that the army is anti-gay.

There are two reasons for this revelation.  One is fairly obvious, as you can see, Angel would seduce the ingenue, Anne, in three seconds so this does provide an actual, if minor, barrier for them being pairing up.  Since Angel and Princess were planned to be in the army for a little while, I couldn’t rely on self-control alone to enforce the rule.

The second is that it allows for long term repercussions for joining this army.  Up until now this army had been something Margaret was a part of because she wanted something to do.  Now the organization is revealed to have a value system that Margaret was unaware of.

Finally, I have no idea where I got this background from, and I don’t even know if I still have it.

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June 13, 2007 was when comic 69 was posted. I had to think of a reason why Margaret picked an “evil” card, aside from the fact that Margaret so far has been shown to be a bully.  She’s not as bad as the comic makes her out to be, or rather, she’ll grow into a better person if I let her.

The Golden Nugget is exactly what the fortuneteller says it is...an item given to the player for no particular purpose other than to be sold. Ogre Battle has a lot of items like this, even though one can easily earn enough money while playing normally without having to worry about running out. Also, since one’s inventory is fairly limited, keeping the Golden Nugget can be a liability in the long term, since there are about 20 unique items one has to have in one’s possession to secure the best ending.

As for the sprite of the Golden Nugget itself, it comes from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, courtesy of Renagadez.

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June 8, 2007 was when I uploaded Comic 68.  The star icon from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was captured by the user known as “Cloud Strife” and submitted to the Spriters Resource years ago. This comic also contains a big mistake from an accuracy perspective.

You see, I had intended the (un)Amusing Adventures of Margaret and Friends to not only be a retelling of my Ogre Battle fanfic and a parody of the game in general, but I also wanted it to serve somewhat as an abridged guide to the actual game itself.  For those who aren’t willing to either watch videos or read FAQs, one easily follow along with the pictures.  Already I’ve shown the location of one of the hidden towns in this stage.

The problem is the Star of Heroes (a.k.a. “Herostar”) is an item that can only be retrieved from this temple while one is liberating a stage, not after….and it is a key item.  If you’re looking for a good ending and don’t have it, you might as well reset your game. There’s no way Michelle shouldn’t already have it.  Part of me wants to redo the comic entirely to reflect this – especially since I established she loses things very easily – but the other part of me realizes as big of a mistake is, it’s funnier this way.

Also, as you can see, I tried to resize sprites from Tactics Ogre: the Knight of Lodis again.  It didn’t work, so I’d have to make proper Ogre Battle-sized sprites of these classes if I were to continue making comics.

I'm still working on it.

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Comic 67 was posted June 1, 2007.  Background provided by Renegadez.

In Ogre Battle, after you complete a stage, you can revisit the stage to talk to the people you liberated. However, when you return to the stage, you no longer collect money from the towns you liberate. Since deploying a unit costs money, this means that revisiting a stage can end up breaking the bank.

The official strategy guide had one great piece of advice, which is to get a Gryphon, put your Opinion Leader (in this case Michelle) into the unit with the Gryphon --since your opinion leader’s unit automatically “deploys” when a stage begins -- then use that sole unit to visit all the towns. Since the unit has a High Sky movement, it will move very quickly, allowing one to go from one town to the next.  Also, since Gryphons are among the cheapest beasts you can get, the cost to revisit stages is very, very low using this method.

The only downside to this is in later stages, if you don’t level up the Gryphon, then in a Neutral Encounter the enemy you encounter will likely kill the Gryphon.  If you happen to be in “High Sky“ terrain, that is an instant Game Over, but I don’t think there are any Neutral encounters in the sky.  There’s also the risk of forgetting to remove the Gryphon and reinsert the old members of the unit before going to the next stage.

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May 25, 2007 was when I finally got around to posting Comic 66. Don’t ask me what the delay was, this time, although it was likely due to me not being able to find a background.  This Final Fantasy Tactics Advance background is courtesy of Renagadez.

Anyway, when I shoehorned Princess and Angel into the storyline, I actually did forget to have Michelle make her rounds.  However, since the Opinion Leader can’t do this until after the stage has completed, and one always re-enters a stage at noon, this forgetfulness was rectified in time...mostly.

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May 11, 2007 is when I posted Comic 65.  This comic is pure filler, and one of the visually static comics I put together in a while.  However, I needed to update and this comic was the third comic that week.

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May 9, 2007 was when Comic 64 was posted.  I realized that if I ever wanted to finish this comic in my natural lifetime where I intended to end it, I would have to update it at the bare minimum of three times a week.  I assumed that if I worked on this comic day and night, I would get faster and better at it.  Since I had the screenshots for the next section, I would be able to update on a regular basis.

I was a fool, but at least I was a hopeful fool.  I don’t have hope now.

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Comic 63 came on May 7, 2007.  You may wonder why it took so long for this comic to be made, and I have no real answer other than my heart wasn’t in it.  To  be fair I did have to gather more materials, and I did want to build a buffer, but given that making videos was easier at the time than making a comic, my Internet life started to go in that direction, so this comic sat idle.

I had made a Heroes April Fool’s Joke, so the comic bug wasn’t out of me entirely.  Just work, YouTube, etc.

As you can see, the girls would have come to on their own, rendering Anne and Princess’s plan not only dangerous for the victims but entirely pointless.  As for how they got there, maybe Angel opened up another portal  It’s best not to think about it

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Comic 62 was posted on October 12, 2006.

I actually made a proto-comic version of this one and posted it on July 2 of the same year.  Then I left the comic sitting idle for over three months.

Why? Well, it’s because I got another job, a job that was much, much more complicated than my previous job.  Then after I got trained, I was moved to the evening shift and had to work weekends, too.

It wasn’t just that, though. Another factor was that I had started to despair again.  Hey, I may be in a constant state of despair, but this one was a little deeper than most..

Finally, I had to make the new sprites and portraits for Angel and Princess.  Princess’s is actually just the Amazon sprite with my edits and a slightly edited portrait, while Angel’s portrait was harder to make.

The main reason for this plot twist is the need to Angel and Princess integrated for a little while longer without making full sprite sheets for them.  The secondary reason is while it’s funny that Angel and Princess are also members of their respective eponymous classes by default, both would be completely too powerful to remain as they were (at this point in the game, no one except possibly the Opinion Leader would have access to damaging White magic attacks), and it would stretch credibility for both to be on the sidelines.

However, this twist opens up new storytelling opportunities. It’s funny how Princess can’t control her own power and yet is able to fashion Amazonian armor for her and Angel.  Maybe she borrowed a disguise pen from a certain magical girl.  More likely, though, she utilized the game mechanics to downgrade her own class.

Of course, Princess didn’t have join in with the donning of the armor.  She could have remained a Princess and joined the unit, but then it would mean that she’d have been instantly promoted to leader and thus interfered with the development of this world.

By the way, Angel’s explanation may be suspect, but it does contain several elements of truth.  In Ogre Battle, Ogre Battle 64, and even the first Tactics Ogre, Angels and Angel Knights were a female-only class.  It was only in the prequel, Tactics Ogre: the Knight of Lodis that we saw male angelic classes and given that the story featured a fallen male angel as the ultimate antagonist, I can see the gods being jerks and saying “no guy angels allowed.”  Then the remake of Tactics Ogre for the PSP allowed for male Divine Knights and ruined this plotline.  Still Angel will be the only male angel I have in this comic.

Finally, if you notice, the background is completely off.  In the months between comics I had forgotten how I had changed the color of the previous background and I wanted to give the impression of daybreak so I started from scratch.

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June 18, 2006 was when Comic 61 was posted.  It was a week late, mainly because of personal issues.  I had applied to a place I wanted to work.  I interviewed and I got the job...but I didn’t get a start date.  I had also foolishly put in my notice at the old job.  Despite this, both the old job and the new job were fairly cool about the transition, the old one allowing me to work at it a week longer than anticipated.  They even gave me a mini-goodbye party after only  a few months of work.

All of this, of course, messed with the stability of my schedule and what suffered was this comic that I made as a hobby.

First, I have to give credit to the creator of CVRPG, as he didn’t just let me use his characters.  He is the one who suggested the “prophecy” (read: “pregnancy”) line in the third panel, since I couldn’t figure out a reason why these characters wouldn’t hang around.  Technically, he should earn a writing credit here.  However, I decided to not let these two leave without making an impact.

Also, the way it’s supposed to seem is that the Amazons come out of nowhere and Princess blasts them. Looking back on it now, it does look like she blasts them out of jealousy (either way).  That’s not what I meant at all.  It was a genuine reflex that resulted in a burst of energy.

Of course, that the Amazons and Princess share the same base portrait doesn’t hurt. Familiarity breeds contempt.

Note that the background is slightly different in color.  That’s because the sun is rising.  Yes, they’ve been out there for a long time, and it was late at night when this whole arc began.

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I reached the 60th comic on June 4, 2006.  I actually had to not only capture the Princess sprites, but the Starlite animation as well, which was a pain in the neck as I had to approximate the transparency.  Since it would be unlikely I would use either of those sprites any time soon, I decided to work them into this specific comic “page.”

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May 28, 2006 was when Comic #59 was posted. Yes, Princess did change her clothes.

The fourth and fifth panels feature a recolored Princess class sprite, which would be appropriate for the Princess character herself if she weren’t more of a physical fighter. In that respect, she’s more like a Princess from another game in the Ogre Battle series.

I find it funny how accepting Anne is of all this, but as a pious person, she would be inclined to stay out of the way of the goddess.

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The 58th comic was posted on May 21, 2006. Despite having to struggle to edit the portraits, this came out better than I intended.  Yes, it’s focusing on the CVRPG people, but there’s actual character building here.

I intended the thought bubble in the fourth panel to move like the Nitemare balloon, but I got lazy and left it static.

I did have to establish for the readers that Princess likes girls (and girly men, but that’s not revealed until later).  Angel likes girls.  Right now my two main female characters are girls, their leader is a girl, and the woman leading the army is a girl. Eventually, somebody is going to be somebody’s type.

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May 14, 2006 was when I posted Comic 57.  Note I actually got back on my once-a-week schedule, even making up for the day I was late from the previous week.

This is hands-down the worst joke of the series, not just because it was a bad joke, but because it was centered on two characters who aren’t even my own, but from CVRPG.

Princess, IIRC, was only known as Princess and she only knew her father as the King.  I presumed that her royal mother would also be only known to as Queen, the same name shared by the band.  However, since Princess learned she was adopted, then she wouldn’t know who her biological mother is.

It has nothing to do with the characters in my comic and it adds nothing to the story, so it’s just a mountain of failure.

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May 8, 2006 was when Comic 56 was posted. Margaret is right on one account; the class Ogre Battle has for Princess would be the Ninja class and she does resemble the Tactics Ogre: the Knight of Lodis female Ninja class.

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Comic #55 was ready on April 30, 2006.  It took me a little while to make because I had to make a kneeling sprite but other than that, it was good.  I was slowly getting a routine down.

Credit goes to Renagadez for the Final Fantasy Tactics Advance background in the first panel.

As for what Anne is doing, the next strip makes it abundantly clear.

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April 23, 2006 was when Comic 54 was posted.  Yes, this next comic took over three months to make from the last one. The excuses for my delay are as follows:

I actually did get a job after graduation, finally, a five-day a week job, no less. Aside from summer breaks I never held a five-day-a-week job.  I hadn’t done any sort of task five days a week for months at a time since I graduated high school.  Between learning the job and having to get up early on an every-day basis, I was pooped.

The Steelers won the Super Bowl, which indirectly made my job even harder.

I had also been going through a few personal problems, where people I argued with online took down my websites.

I had to cobble together a Princess front sprite, back sprite, and portrait, as well as as second Angel sprite.

I really wasn’t sure how to introduce Princess, since I messed up by not having her appear with Angel when he opened the portal.  I was also nervous because I wanted to get her character right.

I also needed more backgrounds, and they were hard to find.  While the Spriters’ Resource was around, I needed Tactics Ogre backgrounds.

I had to take the time to play Ogre Battle to get the screenshots necessary for the next series of comics.

I got addicted to Mario Kart DS.

All of that meant that this comic sat idle until then, but after I got used to working, things should have been looking up.