Episode 25: There Are No Shortcuts

David Revoy Author, 17 may 2018, 18:26 - Reply

Every five episodes of Pepper&Carrot, I release a muted episode without texts: It's a tough artistic constrain. As if it wasn't constraining enough, it was necessary for me at this point in the story to rebuild the house of Pepper (destroyed in the previous episode), remotivate Pepper to finish her studies and finally showcase the power of the old witches Thym, Cayenne and Cumin (who never really made any demo of their power before this episode). That wasn't easy to pack all of this together, but it feels good to finally release this "firework episode".

Sorry to all the readers of Pepper&Carrot because this episode took me a very long time to produce. It took me time because I wanted to do research on my own painting technique and style. So, I did Freelance works here and there during this period to fund my life and the time streched exponentially. But it was necessary for me to take this time and to study my art again...For me too, "there are no shortcuts"!

I hope you'll like this episode! Thanks again to all my patrons and to all the contributors around the project who helped me to release this episode.

Luke R. 20 may 2018, 02:17 - Reply

I'm happy there's a new episode out! It's great to see Pepper again.

AlbinoCookie 21 may 2018, 06:05 - Reply

It is very rare that I see someone tell a great story such as this without words. I love it!

AlbinoCookie 21 may 2018, 06:06 - Reply

It is very rare that I see someone tell a great story such as this without words. I love it!

AlbinoCookie 21 may 2018, 08:34 - Reply

Woops, did not mean for that double up. Capcha glitches out on me saying it failed but it didn't. Hmmm

Nick 25 may 2018, 05:03 - Reply

Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

That was amazing, and totally worth the wait. Thank you!

Mark Munroe 23 june 2018, 03:11 - Reply

Glad to see another episode. The story tells the moral itself. There are no shortcuts in life if you wish to achieve something. Hard work (if one is willing) and dedication is the main key. Sadly, in today's world, we all want INSTANT RESULTS, and will not or unwilling, to earn what they wish to get.

By the way, I have finished writing a short story set in an Africa like continent featuring a character inspired Conan the Barbarian. However, I just cannot come up with any more stories. It's like I am in a rut, and any ideas I thought up I think is good, I realize is dumb. I just don't know what to do. I hope to have my short story published in a fantasy/science fiction magazine (I am also working on an Atlantis young adult book and a fantasy tale inspired by manga)

As for the African Conan character, I tried putting him in different time periods. One set in 90,000 B.C.E., one he is born in a Middle Easter region, and even tried to put him in a John Carter of Mars scenario, but NOTHING SEEMS TO WORK. I was thinking of dumping the character after, and IF, I send my tale for publication, and just concentrate on my two fantasy books. What do you think?

Hope to see another chapter of your comics. It is very inspiring. Before I go, I read the English translated copy of the French fable and philosophical graphic novel Pyrenee online. It was beautiful. Have you ever read it? If so, what did you think of it? I hope that the creators will make the sequel soon.

Have a good day.

Mark Munroe
Trinidad, West Indies.

Pavan Kumar 11 july 2018, 14:56 - Reply

Even without saying a word, I can still absorb everything. I actually didn't realized that there are no speech bubbles, until I read David's comment. Keep on experimenting with cool stuff like these.

Nartance Contributor, 17 may 2018, 19:09 - Reply

Congratz (again)! Nice episode, nice visual effects for magic, and funny ending with a great life lesson ^_^

Zveryok 17 may 2018, 19:12 - Reply

Yay! New long-awaited episode is released! I hope, folks from Ukraine will enjoy this as well ;)

BaffinSquid 18 november 2018, 22:05 - Reply

It is due to your comment I found out there is some text in this episode ;) Also, folks from Baku (Azerbaijan) read your translations as well! Thanks!

Craig Maloney Contributor, 17 may 2018, 19:20 - Reply

Awesome to see the new episode in its full glory! Thanks!

mike 17 may 2018, 19:21 - Reply

That's the first time I've seen the Lorenz attractor in a comic.

Glen Larsen 17 may 2018, 19:46 - Reply

Lots of motion and emotion in this episode! Nicely done. It was worth the wait.

Joonz 17 may 2018, 20:37 - Reply

Beautiful!! Congrats on finishing this episode at last. :)

bazza 17 may 2018, 20:38 - Reply

Very beautiful to do an animation

igor giuseppe 17 may 2018, 21:24 - Reply

This one will be quite easy to translate xD

how many special effects i can see why it took so long

pourc 17 may 2018, 21:37 - Reply

There are shortcuts, but only a very few find them and most of them don't recognize it when they do.
BTW, not much to translate :D Very nice and clean drawing David, I am enjoying the beautiful house repair. In reverse, the Pepper's hair on page 8 does not fit for me. Is there any reason it is so sharp?

Ted 17 may 2018, 21:50 - Reply

Another amazing comic by my favourite web-artist!

Skarfester 18 may 2018, 00:53 - Reply

Amazing FX...
Good job David, again.

Martin Owens 18 may 2018, 03:39 - Reply

It's great. Thank you for taking the time and for posting updates along the way.

MarkPajo 18 may 2018, 06:30 - Reply

Hmm seems like the butterfly is different compare to the live stream you did before

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIk8adM … PO&index=9

Arne Brix 18 may 2018, 07:57 - Reply

I love it! This is definitely one of the best Episodes!

Loman 18 may 2018, 13:13 - Reply

So many interpretations of Chaos in so short comic strip! You Sir are the best!

Quark Doe 18 may 2018, 17:43 - Reply

Well... No pain, no gain, Paper.

Aurélien 18 may 2018, 17:56 - Reply

Beautiful!

You clearly did not take any shortcut to create this one, each cell looks amazing!

Doudou 18 may 2018, 18:19 - Reply

Bravo !! Quel beau retour !

Andres Rademaker 18 may 2018, 19:41 - Reply

I really liked so much this episode. I'll be waiting for more, and I hope one day, you can make all the episodes animated! :D

Richard 19 may 2018, 13:33 - Reply

Their magic is destruction centred, so I think they ripped a hole in space time and tore a copy from an earlier (or future) version of the house. The butterfly was a butterfly effect cancelling spell for the disruption they did to the time stream.

Craig Maloney Contributor, 20 may 2018, 15:06 - Reply

That's one possibility, but the version I'm thinking of has the house reduced to it's individual particles and then re-assembled. Chaosah is well within their power to do that.

Chaos is not about destruction. Chaos is about unpredictability and Chaosah is closely linked to the forces of order, disorder, and chaos. It's perfectly within their realm to cause particles to become disordered and then reverse the flow of time in that space for the particles to become re-ordered.

Rather than think of Chaosah as agents of destruction think of them as agents of controlling physics. And then add a desire for disorder and destruction on top of that and you can see why the other magical schools don't usually hang out with them.

TappedOut 22 may 2018, 22:27 - Reply

I've had trouble trying to quantify things into a magical domain, especially with Hippiah. It's difficult not to want to classify things with a somatic component or an aura effect into Hippiah's domain. One of the things I enjoy about the magic system is the presence of constraints and trying to wrap my head around it.

Chat Anonyme 20 may 2018, 03:39 - Reply

Very relatable. Good luck, Pepper. You can do it!

Craig Maloney Contributor, 20 may 2018, 15:06 - Reply

That's one possibility, but the version I'm thinking of has the house reduced to it's individual particles and then re-assembled. Chaosah is well within their power to do that.

Chaos is not about destruction. Chaos is about unpredictability and Chaosah is closely linked to the forces of order, disorder, and chaos. It's perfectly within their realm to cause particles to become disordered and then reverse the flow of time in that space for the particles to become re-ordered.

Rather than think of Chaosah as agents of destruction think of them as agents of controlling physics. And then add a desire for disorder and destruction on top of that and you can see why the other magical schools don't usually hang out with them.

Craig Maloney Contributor, 20 may 2018, 15:08 - Reply

Sorry for the duplicate here. :)

tofei 21 may 2018, 03:38 - Reply

Serves you right being buried in books, besides it's your fault so that's your punishment for ruining the house and also reward for the interest in magic they've showed you.

Alexand(er|ra) Yst 21 may 2018, 23:18 - Reply

I love the twist ending on this! With the title "There Are No Shortcuts", after they entirely *obliterated* the house's remains with magic, I thought they were going to make Pepper rebuild. Probably by hand, with no magic, as punishment for having gone against orders and recklessly made that tree. No shortcuts in learning to harness the awesome forces of Chaosah magic though ... I didn't see that coming! Great job on this, David!

Astrokiwi 22 may 2018, 18:20 - Reply

Awesome as always! Great job David!

tashizuna 23 may 2018, 21:15 - Reply

wow so many FX! I really like the "silent" chapters this one is specially gorgeous, such an awesome research there too, nice work David!

Pranav Jerry 25 may 2018, 16:37 - Reply

This episode was, as usual, great. Now it's rare to see a comic strip that beautiful. Most comics are made as simple as possible to fit into Sunday columns. And the beginning comment in the html source is cool as well, though I had to feed it to cat to see properly.

Phuong 26 may 2018, 15:08 - Reply

This comic is amazingly beautiful and it just get better and better through each episode. You are sooooo talented! Thank you for bringing us readers so much joy’

Antony Ryakiotakis 29 may 2018, 10:43 - Reply

Guest starring, the quantum weather butterfly. Amazing as always!

quantum physicist 30 may 2018, 22:52 - Reply

No quantum in the butterfly effect. (A pure quantum version would actually make it simpler.) All the fun in the butterfly effect is in the nonlinearity of the non-quantum equations. And the Lorenz attractor is a very nice further nod in the direction of getting order from such disordered processes.

William mckee 16 june 2018, 18:14 - Reply

Great work. Reminds me of version control. Got. Reversing commits after messing up.

William mckee 16 june 2018, 18:18 - Reply

*Git. Would you publish your pencil sketches? They can be rough. Cheers.

foefoe 22 june 2018, 16:14 - Reply

λδ 19 july 2018, 00:04 - Reply

Just discovered your works and read all your comics at once.
You're doing an awesome job, I'm grateful for the good time I spent.
Your efforts will certainly be rewarded if you try hard enough, keep going and good luck ~

Enoshade 19 july 2018, 20:06 - Reply

Loving this series, this is a really awesome episode. Glad to see a new one after the long wait :D

Ale "Solstag" Abdo 29 july 2018, 19:11 - Reply

Ni!

For those wondering about the physics of the magic in this episode, no need to invoke manipulating time or anything beyond classical chaotic dynamics.

In a chaotic system, the vicinity of any state is reachable from every other state and contains an unstable periodic orbit. The other condition is that small perturbations have big effects. So it suffices to cunningly intervene with small perturbations that will bias the sytem towards the desired periodic orbit, effectively stabilizing it.

Translating into magic, Cayenne broke the house into bits, which Thym could shake into a chaotic system, so Cumin could introduce the right sort of tiny perturbations in order to stabilize it around the original form of the house.

There is an area of physics research called "chaos control" which explores this and similar techniques:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_chaos

It has applications in manipulating the role of turbulence in biochemical systems. Related ideas also have applications more widely known, for example, in space travel, instead of propelling an interplanetary satellite straight to its destination, you use small perturbations to jump in between the orbits of planets and use their gravitational force to carry the satellite most of the way.

I am quite curious about how much previous knowledge David had of this. Also because it was the subject of my undergrad monograph ;-)

Deevad Author, 30 july 2018, 02:05 - Reply

Hi Solstag!

That's really cool information and it gives for sure another depth in the reading of the episode. Thank you!

Here I'm really curious in general about all chaotic systems; that's why the magic 'Chaosah' of Pepper&Carrot or the title of my first DVD training 'Chaos&Evolution'. I read books, follow videos about this topic; but the one for the wide audience because I'm not skilled as a scientific to understand the scientific papers.

I'm glad I could encode this second reading in background, with the obvious elements like the Lorenz attractor :)