Greetings! If you like g/t (of a sfw variety) I have a story you can check out on Ao3 titled "Mad Magic"
CLICK HERE to read it!
Synopsis
Three centuries ago The Fairy King won The Monarch War and murdered his queen, sealing the Veilgate between the otherworld and mortal realm. The fairies left behind in the mortal realm were exterminated by humans loyal to The King's philosophy, their souls unable to return home. Wistguard, the capital city of magic, industrialized and a majority of the public accepted the loss of magic.
Except, in the dead of night, amateur wizard Ben Sutton manages to resurrect a fairy, bringing back The Queen's General, Lark Elmrose. The two now must forge an uneasy alliance to open up the Veilgate and bring back the fairies in order to restore what once was.
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If you liked Mad Magic and want to read bonus content.
CLICK HERE to read Menace Nutmeg
CLICK HERE to read Mad Magic AU: Impossibly small
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If you want to learn more about Mad Magic's worldbuilding and characters, check these out!
All about Wistguard!
Mad Magic Character References
Mad Magic Lore: Monarchs
Mad Magic Lore: Lark's Family
Mad Magic Lore: The Otherworld's Military
Mad Magic's Magic System
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If you still have questions Mad Magic feel free to ponder the orb on my page and send me an ask!
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Today I remembered Mad Magic, and I made a LONG post about it.
MM ran from November 2017 to May 2020 for a total of nearly 200 pages, my longest comic yet, not only in terms of actual continuous posting, but in development, as I have sketches and art dating back from 2011. Almost ten years of planning and drawing resulted in me having a big burnout that lasted a year and a half. It wasnât MM fault that happened, and this post is sort of me coming to terms with what went wrong.
While the details and the higher concept shifted and changed multiple times, the heart of this comic always remained the same: thereâre two girls, theyâre roommates, and they live through a series of comedic horror adventures.Â
Around early 2017, I combined this first draft with many newer ideas about high concept parody/deconstructions of Harry Potter: âWhat if a teenage Chosen one enters their adulthood and realizes they canât top all the stuff they did as a kid?â and âWhat if one of those wallpaper background bullies that work as henchman for the main rival was the center of the narrative?â To be honest I was never a huge fan of Harry Potter, but still, I was in the right age group to see the movies as a kid, and read a few of the early books, so these concepts intrigued me.
Enter Mad Magic, the story of Joy Kaplan, former Demon Goat (thatâs your house Slytherin), who after getting kicked out of school, ends up living a life of expedients, together with sassy Alix Peck, a punk girl that appears normal but has actually a mysterious past.
You know how they tell you âdonât make your first comic your big end all epic magnum opusâ? Well, Mad Magic wasnât technically my first attempt at a webcomic, but it nailed the too big for its own good part. When I finished planning it, it was going to be 17 chapters long (40 to 80 pgs each), with dozens of characters, twists, turns, action scenes, magic, time travel, vampires, elves, doppelgangers, lovecraftian gods, crossovers with other stories of mine, long haul plans a la Once Piece where that one character introduced in one panel in page 4 of chapter 1 was supposed to become the main villain of the story arc of chapter 12âŚ
Considering the series ended after 4 chapters and a quarter, we know something broke down along the way. But what?
Well first off MM was a ton of work. I structured the pages in a large euro-comic style, with four rows of panels, that fluctuated between 10 to 20 each, all full color. With a day job, completing a full page could take a couple of days or even a full weekend. So that was tiring, maintaining the schedule ate up a lot of free time, and whenever I missed an update or decided to take a brief hiatus I always regretted it and felt like crap about it.
But the biggest problem was a lack of general fulfillment and this absence was caused by my perceived inability to âfind an audienceâ. Thereâre plenty of articles online explaining the causes of burnout, and one of the big ones is the problem with ârewardâ, when you donât feel like the effort you put into something is worth what youâre getting in return.
There were people reading Mad Magic, there were people that seemed to love Mad Magic, but in my eyes, they were never enough⌠but what wouldâve been âenoughâ anyway? What magic number would've made it worth it??? Ultimately, this junction between my inability to gather a larger interest, and the presence of this foggy, undescribed ânumberâ of people that wouldâve satisfied me caused the wheels to break down. I was letting things like subscriber counts, likes per page, pageviews and reblogs dictate how I perceived my own creation. If a page got fewer likes than average, I started wondering, obsessing what was wrong with it.Â
The point is, after nearly three years of working on Mad Magic, doing my damnest to put out pages weekly, I was seeing absolutely no growth in reach or audience and I didnât really know what I was doing wrong or if I was doing anything right in the first place. This stagnation led to stress, which led to losing pleasure in doing the comic in the first place, so that I was forcing myself to make pages, eventually leading to burnout and the complete loss in my desire to draw again. It took me a year and a half to get back into things, a period so nasty and bleak that even the idea of reading a comic made me queasy. The fact that this coincided with the global covid pandemic exacerbated the problems, but I think that even without that, it wouldâve simply taken a bit longer to reach the same point of no return.
I realize now this mentality was unfair towards the few readers I had, and to myself too. I try not to worry about the idea of âfinding an audienceâ anymore. I make the stuff I make because I want to, if I catch myself thinking âpeople wonât care about thisâ I nip it in the bud. Iâm lucky enough that I donât need to draw for a living, and considering artistâs spaces on the web seem to be constantly shrinking, the whole endeavor of finding a following online seems just a headache.
I also try not to be bothered by the concept of schedules and updates. Â I only draw when I want, when I feel like it, and it works. I look at stuff like Toxic Park, one of my current projects: in 2022, I produced around 80 pgs of story in two blocks, when the will and inspiration to do so hit me. Thatâs roughly the same amount of pages of Mad Magic I made in a similar period 2017/2018, by forcing myself to have at least one page ready every single week. So, the change in schedule or lack thereof, didnât result in a change in output. Not to mention, that in both cases, I tried to develop other ideas simultaneously, and while with MM coming out that felt like crunching, at my leisure carefree pace I also made a 20 pages historical comic, Theo the Lucky, and nine more shorter comics, which are all around two to three pages worth of story (and youâve seen posted on this blog). Simply put, I feel like I draw so much more now that I donât cage myself in a mentality where âI must get this done before this completely imaginary deadline hitsâ.
I still hold the Mad Magicâs cast dear to my heart, theyâre part of a ten year journey. I often try to think of ways of bringing it back, but continuing from the point where I left it off, where things were just starting to get interesting, doesnât feel right. I may follow Osamu Tezukaâs Star System, where the same characters in personality and design are recontextualized in completely different stories. Weâll see.
Mad Magic is still up on tumblr where it was originally posted! And looking back at it, I think it still holds up relatively well. I lost all passwords and emails relative to that account so I canât access it, but the entirety of the comic in its uncompleted state (I think some pages mightâve been weirdly flagged during the tumblr porn ban?) can still be read here:
We begin anew! Chapter 005!
Mad Magic comes back with a few changes: to ensure myself I no longer run out of steam, and then end up having hiatuses going from "brief" to "nearly two months +", I will work on producing just one page a week. That way, I believe I'll mantain a continous, steady stream, until we reach the end, with no pauses in between! Thank you for following me so far, and I hope you'll continue to support my efforts!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Qualityâ Free Actions
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
The first six chapters of my sfw g/t story has been posted to Ao3!
The first few chapters are kinda short but I promise there is much more beefier chapters to come...
Mad Magic (7929 words) by Passionate_Passerby
Chapters: 6/?
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Original Fiction, Original Character(s), Giant/Tiny, G/T, sfw g/t, Macro/Micro, Fantasy, Fae & Fairies, Historical Dress, Steampunk, Victorian, Historical Inaccuracy, Hurt/Comfort, Uneasy Allies, Mental Instability, References to Drugs, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Non-Sexual Nudity, My First AO3 Post, There will be jazz at some point, aesthetically victorian/steampunk but not really, Work In Progress
Summary:
Three centuries ago The Fairy King won The Monarch War and murdered his queen, sealing the Veilgate between the otherworld and mortal realm. The fairies left behind in the mortal realm were exterminated by humans loyal to The King's philosophy, their souls unable to return home. Wistguard, the capital city of magic, industrialized and a majority of the public accepted the loss of magic.
Except, in the dead of night, amateur wizard Ben Sutton manages to resurrect a fairy, bringing back The Queen's General, Lark Elmrose. The two now must forge an uneasy alliance to open up the Veilgate and bring back the fairies in order to restore what once was.
The rest of the first 15 chapters will roll out in the coming days so stay tuned!
I will have chapter 15 up in at least a few days. After that I will probably update 1-2 times a month going forward. (These future updates will hopefully be more than one chapter at a time.)
In the meantime I'll post art and odd ball writings that may or may not relate to Mad Magic.
If you want to know more about Mad Magic, check out my masterlist post. If you can't find an answer there, send me an ask by pondering the orb.
Wistguard is inspired by a mix of Victorian England and 1920's Chicago/New York with some steampunk aesthetics.
These few images kinda sum up what I have in mind.
The city sprawls outward in a semicircle from the Veilgate. Wistguard is the capitol of the west province of The United Country of Veiland.
Below is a rough layout map of Wistguard.
A trolley system connects the eight districts of the city. The districts themselves have no hard cutoffs, instead smoothly transitioning into one another.
Veilgate
The Veilgate is a one of a kind work of art created by the collaborative efforts of The Queen, A few of the Archfeys, and some of the most powerful wizards. The Veilgate is a solid white stone archway that stands a 150 feet tall. Powerful and intricate sigils are carved into its sides, amongst depictions of fairies and humans living in harmony.
The sigils and the materials of the Veilgate give it the ability to keep a rift between the Mortal Realm and Otherworld constantly open. It also the only rift humans can safely pass through.
Although only the fae monarchs have been known to open and close the Veilgate theoretically lesser fae and wizards could operate it.
Historic District
Built from the remains of the kingdom that proceeded it the historic district is home to...
The West Province Capitol Building
This is where West Province representatives meet
Is home to Wistguard's city council (16 members, 2 for each city district)
The College of Magic
The College of Magic is a specialty school for anyone looking to join the Magic Historic Society. (Graduates get a gold pocketwatch as a sign of their membership into the society)
The Magic Historic Society Headquarters
Squeezed between The College of Magic and The Capitol Building
Despite being based in the West Province the society has reach all across Veiland (Though this has waned quite a lot in recent decades)
The Historic district is also speckled with museums, monuments, society workshops and of course the one and only Veilgate.
Upper VS. Lower Districts (Business and Suburbs)
The only differences between upper and lower is tax brackets.
Upper=Wealthy income
Lower=Comfortable to Poor incomes
Residential District
Mostly made up of apartments, small businesses, parks and schools. Is by far the largest District.
Agricultural District
Where most of Wistguard's food is produced. At the outer edge of the agricultural district is a train station, giving the district an extra boost of tourism from travelers.
Industrial District
The youngest of all the districts and are providers of the city's power. Often gets a bad rap for being an eyesore on the city's skyline for the smog it produces and streets as it has the highest homeless population out of all the districts.
Despite falling drastically from its former glory in the past 300 years, Wistguard still holds strong as the last bastion of magic in the mortal realm.
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If you have any questions about Mad Magic's world and characters go ahead and ponder the orb on my profile.
