Annotations Every Day - Written by T Campbell & Flo Kahn - Illustrated by John & Jason Waltrip
Guilded Age
The Saga of the Working Class Adventurer – New comics every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday!
Aquapunk
Lo
In an underwater world of unknown coordinates, inhabited by aliens, ghosts, and robots, a young member of a warrior underclass is framed for a crime and goes on the run. Little does he know he is part of a grand design that only gods and ancestors could choreograph.
Nigh Heaven & Hell
Scotty
Heather Vodihn is on a simple mission: find her father. However she becomes entangled with two strangers with mysterious powers being stalked by a group with bizarre demands. Heather must learn to trust her new traveling companions, even if she is untrustworthy herself.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Trying Human
IntroducingEmy
Two women separated by over half a century are brought together by an alien-filled conspiracy involving murder, mystery and romance!
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Within
Verena Loisel
A young hitman meanders between a reality that seems to happen without him, and his dreams where he is lost in an endless house. When he makes an accidental friend, his world is shaken up and he realizes there are things he can't remember about himself.
Sakana
Mad Rupert
Our heroes must navigate a hazardous dating scene, overcome personal anxieties, and wrangle unruly seafood in order to find love, peace of mind, and a paycheck.
How to be a Werewolf
Shawn Lenore
Malaya Walters was bitten by a werewolf as a child. After being raised by her human family, she faces the chance to learn what being a werewolf is really like as an adult.
The Golden Boar
Magnolia Porter Siddell
A young woman joins a group of summoners who call forth Guardian Beasts to protect their isolated magical island. Unfortunately, her Guardian Beast is nothing like she'd imagined, and he's about to change her life, and everything she thought she knew about herself...
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Headless Bliss
Clover
A story about story-telling, and other metaphysical themes such as Nightmares! (Failed) Teamwork! Comedy! And more!
The Last Diplomat
Cat Farris
Samma and Tark didn't ask to be stuck together, but now they're partners on the adventure of a lifetime.
Ride or Die
Mars Heyward
Ride or Die is an LGBTQ webcomic about two street racers who team up with a demon-possessed muscle car in the search for a missing woman, while being hunted by a deadly religious cult.
Alexander, The Servant & The Water of Life
Reimena Yee
The 21st century retelling of the life and legends of Alexander the Great.
Lies Within
Lacey
Lysander's aimless and carefree life is turned upside down when he accidentally discovers that the cute boy next door, Simon, is a literal monster
Widdershins
Kate Ashwin
A series of light-hearted Victorian-era adventure stories featuring grumpy bounty hunters, accidental thiefkings, and more, in England's magical capital city Widdershins!
Stand Still, Stay Silent
Minna Sundberg
A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
Missing Monday
Elle Skinner
Two girls fall in love through a magic door connecting their worlds. When Monday suddenly goes missing, it's up to Foyle to find her. How she's going to navigate an entirely unfamiliar world is another matter.
Freakshow
Scotty
A festival of broken people, blood flows in the center ring. Come one and come all, to the greatest show in all of Paris.
Edison Rex
Chris Roberson
The adventures of the world’s greatest villain who, after defeating his superheroic nemesis, decides that he’s the only one left to defend the world.
Gzhel Guardian
Atla Hrafney, nushanchel
The Railway World is a complex, mysterious network of trains, towns and mechanical monsters. Leo is a Guardian of one of these towns, and although their burn-out and depression has taken hold of them, they have one last job to finish.
Cassiopeia Quinn
Gunwild, Psudonym
A cute, pantsless thief is pursued across the stars by a buttoned-up military officer in the spacey, laser-filled future.
Empowered
Adam Warren
A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Quick$ilver
Crypto
The flirtatious, directionless, and ever disastrous Luci searches for excitement in a life of crime, and finds himself caught in a web of messy romance and bad blood.
The Weave
Rennie Kingsley
A young woman pursued by bad luck is witness to the murder of the Fairy Queen of Summer. Can she get to the bottom of this mystery?
Alice and the Nightmare
Misha Krivanek
Alice finally attends University to learn to collect the dreams of humans, meet new friends, and deal with a pesky reflection along the way.
Not Drunk Enough
Tess Stone
Logan Ibarra is possibly the unluckiest repairman in the world. A late night job should not have landed him in the middle of a mad scientist's squabble, but he soon finds himself surrounded by monsters and further madness with little tools to get out.
The Forgotten Order
Christy
A young witch for whom every spell is a misfire finds solace and friendship in her new companion - a cursed doll.
Darkling Bright
Chris Hazelton
Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
At least, he was, and that was the idea...
Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
Augustine
Winter Jay Kiakas, Windy
August and her ragtag group are just like everyone else, simply surviving in the treacherous Crater... When they stumble into what may be an artifact of the ancient past, their lives are thrown into a much bigger loop as they trifle with bounty hunters, monsters and gods.
Star Impact
Jack McGee
A young, energetic woman fights her way up in the world of super-powered boxing after discovering the mighty gloves of her missing idol!
Little Tiny Things
Clover
What are the little things that move us? The simple joys that warm our bodies and hearts? The micro life of insects that influence our world more than we think? The tiny steps we make everyday to have a happier tomorrow?
Barbarous
Ananth Hirsh, Yuko Ota
A crummy wizard and an anxious monster have to get over themselves and bring order to an apartment building full of misfits.
This is Not Fiction
Nicole Mannino
What do you do when the person you're in-love with is an anonymous romance novelist? Get your best friend to hire your worst enemy for help!
The Substitutes
Myisha Haynes
What happens when three roommates accidentally acquire otherworldly and powerful magic weapons destined for someone else?
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
Beeserker
TJ Cordes
This comic is about a robot powered by bees, but it's also about the kind of people who think filling a robot with bees is a good idea, and why they're wrong.
Goodbye to Halos
Valerie Halla
Cuddles, gay flirting, weird feelings, and magic-fueled knife fights - it's an adventure across the queer multiverse!
The End
August Brown, Cory Brown
Two aliens crash a sci-fi convention and accidentally take seven nerds on an adventure that spans the galaxy!
Saint for Rent
Ru Xu
Saint Halliday runs an inn for Time Travelers. Unfortunately, he seems to attract other supernatural "guests," too.
Sleepless Domain
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
In a world where magical girls and their battles are commonplace, loss has become all too common as well.
Astral Aves
Moon Cabal
A fantasy coming-of-age following the adventures of Astra The Black and friends, as they navigate the mysterious world around them. It's politics, adventure, and the supernatural; oh, and crazy hair.
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
ARISE, YE SKELETON KING
Brian Clevinger, Escher Cattle, Lee Black
A troupe of wandering "adventurers" down to their last silver "acquire" a map only to find the real treasure was the fiend they dug up along the way.
Love Not Found
Gina Biggs
Abeille is on a quest to find someone who wants to do it the old-fashioned way in a time when touching has become outdated.
Monsterkind
Taylor C
Wallace Foster, a young, bright-eyed human social worker, has his entire world view rocked when he's suddenly relocated into a city primarily inhabited by monsters.
Kochab
Sarah Webb
A YA F/F fantasy comic about Sonya, a lost skier trying to survive a snowy wilderness and find her way back to her village; and Kyra - a fire spirit trying to fix the home that she let fall apart around her.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Scape
Lauren
Sula has always preferred to forge her own path, but before she knows it, she is pulled into the middle of a civil war between man and monster!
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Guilded Age is co-written by T Campbell & Flo Kahn, and illustrated by John Waltrip. Site design by Samantha Kyle. Fonts by Blambot.com.
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Privacy Policy
Guilded Age does not claim ownership of any of the corporate branding that appears in this comic, nor does it claim any affiliation, partnership, or endorsement of any kind.
They are used strictly as an artistic choice for the set dressing of the comic.
They are used strictly as an artistic choice for the set dressing of the comic.
You’re not alone, Alt Text, you’re not alone.
It is shadows, all the way down man.
You mean it is shadow all the way up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
The Allegory of the Cave is Plato’s way of thinking about objects versus ideals. In the same way that it’s impossible to draw a perfect circle but we understand mathematically what a perfect circle *is*, the shadows in the cave are imperfect approximations of the more perfect objects casting those shadows.
What HR is getting at is that, maybe, the objects are also imperfect, and that maybe there is a layer above both shadows and objects that is more perfect than either… and what would that be?
Amber.
Other fan of Roger Zelazny`s Amber,everyone should read it!
The primal Pattern. Amber is merely the first reflection.
Dunno, but whatever it is seems to be crossing the shadow… streams.
Don’t cross the streams!
I think he’s talking about Plato’s theory of Forms. That everything is an imperfect version of a Form and only by understanding the Form can we hope to fix problems with the imperfect versions (as I understand it).
Well yeah. The world of Forms would be the more perfect layer I was talking about, at least according to Plato. Where HR takes the idea remains to be seen.
***WARNING! Brown-noseing ahead!***
Of course if there was a perfect Form for a web comic it would look like Guilded Age.
Brown Star?
Like onions!
Shadows have layers! Like onions and ogres.
And everybody loves ogres!
Wait… that can’t be right….
wow you missed it.
The analogy isn’t anything about ‘perfection’, it’s about REALITY.
You see, the guys in the cave see only the shadows cast by the object, and think they know reality. They have no idea that the real object exists, so if that’s all they see, then that’s all that exists. Think about this in a more philosophical realm and you have the conundrum of the senses. If I show you a red ball, you think I’ve got a red ball. In truth, however, you know nothing about the ball that I’m holding. Is it soft, is it firm, is it fragile? You see a red ball and think you know what it is. Not quite a match when it comes to the shadows, I know, but it’s not a perfect analogy.
The point is, Plato was suggesting that the entire world, everyone included, is living a life of complacent simplicity. Plato’s aforementioned idol coined the term “The unexamined life is not worth living”. The point is, if you just see a shadow on the wall and don’t look any further, you’ll never really understand the object.
Now, what HR is trying to suggest is that he has gone further and inspected situations more closely. He’s implying that he has examined existence and drawn more in-depth conclusions about it, but unfortunately he’s committed the same flawed assumption of knowledge. When it boils down to it, you can never truly observe any thing, you can only observe the light reflecting from it, the gravitational pull emitted by it, the changes it makes on its environment. The object itself is just beyond your reach. The same goes for what HR is trying to get at, the concept of TRUE reality.
In short, he’s going just a bit crazy.
It’s a good thing you clarified that, or I would have kept on believing Plato’s explanation like Fenlander did. Stupid Plato, didn’t understand the Allegory of the Cave…
Of note: Plato believed that the ideal forms are observable, given sufficient thought. (One might draw a connection to the likely-apocryphal story of a group of philosophers spending three days debating the number of teeth a horse has without anyone ever suggesting a trip to the stables to look at actual horses.) Maybe I can understand that red ball you’re holding by observation, or maybe not; I don’t think Plato much cared. But if I think enough, I can determine objectively all the properties of the archetypical red ball, because the perfect archetypical red ball actually exists in the actual world of perfect forms, and I can actually access it by thought alone.
In certain ways, Plato can come off as pretty crazy.
Well… not exactly. Plato criticized the theory of forms himself at quite a length. Even if you discard that criticism – the notion that you just had to “think enough” doesn’t do his concept of anamnesis no justice.
Here’s a question to consider: why do we say the shadows aren’t real? They’re observable. They obey the laws of physics. Why should we define “real” such that that’s not good enough?
As chickpeas mentioned: It’s an analogy. The object-shadow-relation corresponds with the reality-image-relation.
Another way to look at is that if we can project a virtual reality onto a computer OS, who’s to say that someone else isn’t projecting our reality onto something?
I was going to post a long-winded essay essentially making a similar comparison, but it seems you already reached an effective conclusion without making nearly as many predictive swipes at potential spoilers. So I’m going to sit on my speculation.
Besides, I don’t expect HR’s experiment to work the way he intends it to. I expect it’ll backfire, with horrendous effects – because that’s what happens when you meddle with dark and mysterious forces.
I took it the other way around. The world with color is projecting its light into this monochrome world of limited sights. But all we can see, when we play a game, are the shadows.
I love the sepia stuff, but if they end up discovering they’re *also* fictional characters I’m burning down a forest. (You guys like forests, yeah?)
I’m not sure I’ve ever once been under the impression that anyone in this universe is a fictional character.
Well I mean this is a fictional webcomic. (I think. Man, what a plot twist it would be if it wasn’t.) But I don’t think “adventure world” is a fictional world created in this universe’s “modern world.”
One of these worlds has color, and one doesn’t. Yet.
You know what color is? It’s light.
Or is it actually an *absence* of light? Think about it.
Okay, yeah, fair point. Arkerra’s status as fiction is still well and truly up for grabs (and leaning towards non-fiction right now).
Main thing is, I don’t want the sepia world to discover our world.
(And I quite like threatening to burn down forests. It’s maliciously ridiculous, but weird enough that it can’t possibly be taken for a real threat even in this fucked-up world we live in.)
Well, technically they are fictional characters (my apologize to the next forest that gets in Mr Ak’s way).
Hmmm… I wonder if this means we’re going to see some breaking of the fourth wall?
I know. I just don’t want *them* to know.
Quick! To the 8th Dimension and BEYOND!
No matter where you go, there you are.
But, are you? … Really?
Always felt that deserved a sequel
Reminds me of several extraordinarily stoned conversations back in college.
It’s all sophistry, anyway…
Have you ever looked at your hands? I mean really looked at your hands?
Saphistry is better for you
I have always loved the Allegory of the Cave. I really enjoy seeing it show up here.
Same here. However, GA is using it in yet another context/perspective: discussing virtual reality (and, by extension, fantasy worlds). AMAZING. THUMBS UP. :-D
Have I gone on about how interesting I found Thomas Metzinger’s “The Ego Tunnel”?
Among other things, he describes consciousness as a matter of constructing a simulation of external reality in which we are situated, and comparing that “World 0” to other hypothetical worlds. One reason this appealed to me is that it agreed with an idea I’d long held, that narrative is fundamental to human consciousness and identity — which explains why we’re so compelled by fiction, by role-playing, and so forth.
One interesting question that comes up, is how can you distinguish “World 0” from other imagined or dreamed worlds? Metzinger suggests that our embodiment is critical — we identify “World 0” because of our innate sense of our physiological processes and awareness of the extent of our body, and so forth. In some mental states, of course, we can lose contact with our awareness of these things.
Which brings us to the tanks.
And thus, people’s desire for lucid dreaming.
The ability to temporarily construct a world of their own rules and desires, while asleep.
Of course, then you have to start wondering if we’re all living in one gigantic lucid dream..
Within a dream..
Within a dream..
Within a dream…
There are four suns!
Quadruple… sun… power?
I keep committing myself to the idea that you are actually Patric Stewart. You want to keep helping me out with that is fine by me.
:D
You are educated stupid by the Greek aristocracy and cannot comprehend Plato’s harmonious four-sun time cube.
Love me some cubic time. :P
“the internet is a series of cubes…”
No, that’s Minecraft.
That should account for quite a lot of light.
How many suns do you see?
Yes, there are, Mrs. Baldwin. Alec, Daniel, Billy, and Stephen. And the firstborn sun is the most disappointing.
Always felt that that Baldwin who was Firefly stole the charisma and talent from the ‘real’ Baldwin’s (except Alec, maybe Alec was adopted)
Adam Baldwin from the (short-lived) TV show ‘Firefly’, and longer running TV show ‘Chuck’, is not related to the ‘Baldwin Brothers’ except by coincidence of surname.
Fortunately. :D
Yeah, that’s why said “the ‘real’ Baldwin’s”, and that Alec is really his brother (who got adopted by the other Baldwin’s, the ones with the 3 talentless brothers)
There was a fourth boy in the brady bunch?
And then Dedalus built the Matrix.
What if C-A-T….really spelled DOG?
No, no. Any cat will tell you that C-A-T spells GOD.
Onward to discover the HYPERREALITY.
Also, video games. Cause, y’know, peeling back the veil of reality with nothing but willpower ain’t gonna pay the bills.
In a sense, He is right about the seeing part: We see only the waves of light, which are reflected of of a thing. (Regardless, if these thing are the real deal to begin with.) Also, our minds have filters, who are in place to prevent our brain from overloading on information.
And an overload isn’t pretty, just ask/search for people without all or any of these filters.
Also, if I remember correctly, light behaves sometimes as a wave, sometimes as a marterial. (Or was that energie/material?)
Wave/particle.
Wavicle.
Particave?
Party Cave!
Allegory of the Cave Party!
I feel a little in the dark here… Maybe if someone could shed some light on the topic?
You’ll see.
See what though?
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one” Al Einstien
“Reality is an objective illusion caused by the absence of adequate alcohol concentration in the subject’s blood” – free translation of a modern Greek comment on Plato’s theories quoted by an anonymous vine-philosopher (ampelofilosofos) in a bar at Plaka, under the shadow of Parthenon
The object is just empty space. Crack it open and you’ll find just a few atoms. Crack open the atoms and you’ll find more empty space and just a few quarks. Crack open the quarks, and you’ll find more of the same. This road leads only to madness
No, this is SEPIA-WORLD!!
The universe is a giant fractal. 99.99999…..% of the universe is nothing. 0.99999999……=1, so the entire universe is nothing. We do not exist. The universe does not exist. We are not real. We are just the dream world of what is real or perhaps the secondary dream world of what is real. Who knows we may even be the tertiary or further down the line.
I’m sure Carol is thinking that she is not nearly high enough to be having this conversation.
Guys, you do realize Plato came up with this when he was compleately tanked right? He just remembered it… what makes the shadow is not always what the shadow shows.
Not Plato,
Socrates.
Plato just wrote it down.
We mortals are but shadows and dust. Shadows and dust.
How about Dust in the Wind?
Good thing I’m not mortal then.
So… All the drama in sepia world boils down to….. Am I a real boy? All of it because HR is stuck in some emo juvinial existential funk about the nature of reality. What a douche.
Can you prove that you are real?
How about this comment? Is this real or something your mind has created to fill a void?
If I cannot tell the difference with empirical results, it does not matter.
A yup what he said. The nature of reality is irelivant since I still need to poop
Yep. The look behind the curtain can’t not be disappointing.
It is almost as if someone is illustrating our very existence, which we then play out in some sick play. At least we can then project our own illustration (but with animation!) for our own amusement.
Yes that must be it!
It isn’t the light, it is the thing between the light and the thing! Aliens!
weird sync, i’m reading the last chapters of micheal reynolds’ ‘a coming of wizards’ and it’s pretty much all about this stuff. holographic principle.
Spoiler alert:
There’s no such thing as objective.
The end.
“What is the light? Is it merely energy from the sun…”
No, it isn’t, HR. It isn’t even coming from the sun. Read your Plato, don’t just try to quote by heart!