#devil asks

Life has kind of thrown me a curve ball recently, so I haven’t been responding to many asks, but we get this one a lot, so I thought I’d put it out there.

“Strazio” is Italian, so for the correct pronunciation, put it into one of those online dictionaries. I don’t mean that in a rude way like “Google it!” just that having an Italian computer voice say it would be much more effective/accurate than me typing it out phonetically. 

The most important thing is to keep the reader in mind at all times. This includes giving them what they want and denying them what they want for a bigger payoff later. How often you update and what kind of content you include in those updates is key as well. I think it’s very important to consider your delivery method when you make a story, even if you have to make changes to your original idea.

For some examples of “character management” from Devil’s Candy… we were at our limit on how long we could wait to introduce Clarence and Yahgie into the story. We wanted to wait a bit, but another chapter would’ve been too long. Hitomi isn’t in chapter 5, so it was really important to give her a cool part in chapter 4. Taking the narrative away from Kazu was valuable, but we had a “time limit” on how long we could carry the story on without him. If Gyro had been featured in 2 and 3, his return in 4 wouldn’t have been as fun.

If you have a webcomic with fairly slow updates like ours, you can’t divide it between too many characters, so you have to decide which ones are the most important. Since every character is someone’s favorite and I love all of them myself, I want to do what I can for them within the framework of the story that needs to be told. Some I can’t work in, but usually I try to think of cool ways to bring supporting characters back into the story.

When I say “keep the reader in mind,” that doesn’t mean that you should bow to every request. It’s still your story. You’re going to get completely insane and contradictory things that fans want, anyway. You can’t make everyone happy, but you can think of an “ideal” reader and try to work from their perspective. That way, your story is still yours, but it isn’t self-absorbed. You’re still making it for other people to read.

It’s hard to talk about this in detail, since we’ll get a bit more on this stuff later. I’ll give you some quick and sloppy notes so that you aren’t left empty-handed, though.

There are laws in the city that make a “traditional” blood-sucking lifestyle impossible, or at least illegal. Nosferatu are historically wealthy and powerful devils, so drinking non-devil blood or getting blood from donors can be seen as “beneath them.” Like many devils, nosferatu must make some “lifestyle concessions” to live in a city like this.

Clarence’s tattoo indicates a commitment to a straight edge lifestyle. He and his parents are both into exploring the concept of “modern” nosferatu. There are different levels of commitment within that lifestyle, though…as some straight edge bloodsuckers will not drink from another devil, even if offered blood.

Hmmm…It’s hard to say how close to completion we are, because the scope of some of the stories has increased. The planned arcs haven’t changed, but their length might have increased a bit.

As for Horatio, as much as I like working in every character, he doesn’t have a lot of plot significance right now. I really wanted Helios on an actual page so that he was established as a real character, not just “some picture we posted online.” He was actually easier to fit than his brother, ironically.