PREQUEL (quest)
| Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | PREQUEL |
| Author(s): | Kazerad (and various collaborators) |
| Date(s): | 12 March 2011[1]–Ongoing |
| Length: | |
| Genre: | MSPA-style art quest |
| Fandom: | The Elder Scrolls |
| External Links: | prequeladventure.com |
Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
List of Collaborators and SourcesArt AMKitsune Credited with animation.
Cider [1] Credited with basically all kinds of art (talk graphics, whole panels, closeups, etc) and some animation starting in 2013.
Dapperpixel [2] Credited with art, especially terrain.
Em [3] Credited with the first draft of the swirly thing.
Makkon [4] Credited with environmental art, intro art for [s]Katia: Infiltrate, and the swirly thing.
MikeyTheFox [5] Credited with "auxiliary spriting".
MyEmeraldTears [6] Credited with art.
Credited with art.
Squiggles [9] Drew the ethnic diversity mural in 2012, a reference to this photo of Andrew Hussie. Also credited with other art, for example some lineart and talk graphics.
Programming and Code Caliber [10] Credited with website code.
Ch'marr [11] Credited with programming.
Chevy Ray Johnston [12] Credited with Flashpunk
Connor D Credited with programming.
Flaise [13] Credited with programming.
FriSha Credited with the intro sound to [s]Katia: Infiltrate.
Kobalstromo Credited with programming.
Kryptos Credited with website help.
Metal Hurlant [14] Credited with additional code libraries.
Ryavis Credited with programming, including enemy AI.
Samuel Adler Credited with "basic arithmetic for tedious image positioning".
Sound/Music CynicalCanasian [15] Credited with voice acting.
DragonXVI [16] Credited with music (“Hope For You Yet”)
Freesound.org A long, long list of users.
Makkon [17] Credited with music/sound effects.
Credited with music (“The First Snow”, “Just Your Average Day”, “Summer Nights”, “Uncharted Territory”)
Silence [20] Credited with music (remix of "An Astrailhad" by Beltaine, “Weregilded”)
MyUsernamesMud [21] Credited with music (apparently "the song from the old Shop flash")
Miscelaneous Akunim [22] Credited with "additional resources" — probably it was art.
Dakota the Golden Retriever Jemmysponz’s late dog. Credited with modeling.
Guoh [23] Credited with "additional resources" — probably it was art.
Malic [24] Credited with writing help.
QuiMoritur Credited with sound hunting, probably on freesound.org.
Stupidjellyfish Credited with sound hunting, probably on freesound.org.
Zokva Credited with "additional resources" — probably it was art.
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PREQUEL is a MSPA-style quest written and drawn by Kazerad that takes place in the Elder Scrolls universe. It started in a thread on the MSPA Forums but eventually moved to its own website when the thread had almost 2,500 responses, or nearly 100 pages[1] for increased readibility.[2] PREQUEL has a good handful of collaborators who work with Kazerad to produce art, animations, and coding for the website and make it possible for the site to include flash animation, flash games, and fancy immersive website coding.
The website's About section offers this summary:
PREQUEL is a story on the internet. It has been called several other things too, including “Making A Cat Cry: The Adventure“, “Everything Is A Federal Fucking Issue And Also Trying To Make You Miserable“, “Katia Managan: Alcoholic, Vasilikphobe, Adventurer“, and “Slutcat Adventures 2: Daggerfall“. All of these names are equally descriptive and accurate.[2]
PREQUEL has a fairly robust fandom of its own, including a great deal of fanart.
Canon
The quest starts with the khajiit Katia Managan arriving in Cyrodiil, having emigrated from Hammerfell. She struggles with alcoholism, poverty, a phobia of royalty, and her own self-worth. She takes to heart one character's unkind assessment of her: "It's okay. You tried your best. Your 'best' just happened to be slightly worse than everyone else's 'average'."
Recurring Characters
- Quill-Weave
- An Argonian writer who Katia is almost friends with and owes a lot to. Also an NPC in Oblivion.
- Sigrid
- A Nord in charge of the Kvatch Mages' Guild. Also an NPC in Oblivion.
- Gaius
- Captain of the Guard of Kvatch, suffers from nightmares about a cultist.
- Stephane
- A Breton mage and priest at the Kvatch chapel. Member of the Kvatch Mages' Guild
- A Completely Ordinary Human Woman
- Sometimes called "Nah", a vampire who lives in Kvatch.
- Gharug gro-Upp,
- An Orisimer "professional highwayman" who Katia has a blackout-drunk one-night-stand with. Based off of the nameless highwayman NPCs in Oblivion.
- Asotil
- "A Soldier of the Imperial Legion", helps Katia learn to fling fire and get to Kvatch. Based off of the nameless Imperial Soldier NPCs in Oblivion.
- The Ancestor Ghost
- Sometimes called "Aggy", a ghostly guardian ancestor Dark Elf who helps Katia understand her magic.
Collaborators
On September 22nd, 2013, Kazerad started using collaborators for PREQUEL on a regular basis.[3] A couple days later, Kazerad explained his choice in a comment on the site:
Serious talk, guys:
With the amount of time I spend working on little mini-games and stuff, it's becoming pretty clear that I can't keep the comic updated at an acceptable speed AND with the level of complexity I want it to have. Now, a normal, boring person would look at this fact and conclude that I need to "choose" one or the other. But I prefer the much more reasonable conclusion: I need a second Kazerad so I can do cool stuff at a faster rate.
When the initial cloning experiments failed, I fell back to a more conventional solution. If you've noticed any differences in art style in these last couple updates, it's because my friend Cider has been helping out with the art! I am training him to be a second me, though he is still getting the style down. We decided to keep it a secret at first to see if anyone noticed, and like two people did. Now that you all know, you can entertain yourselves by trying to guess which parts were drawn by him and which were drawn by me. I'll tell you the right answers if they make me look good.
I've outsourced parts of the art to friends before, but usually just a panel or two, never on this scale. So far it's been a surprisingly fun experience; I've been catching up on some other stuff and preparing things for future updates while my comic continues to update even faster than it was before. We're going to try to kick it up a notch this coming week and see if we can update it faster than once-per-week. And meanwhile, I'm going to try to knock out a bunch of other stuff I've been procrastinating on, like making the fanart page not suck. It kind of needs it.
So the moral is teamwork or something, I don't know. Also, create copies of yourself so you can be Voldemort.[4]
Fandom
The fandom mostly seems to congregate on the PREQUEL website and a large percentage of the fandom has definitely come from the Homestuck fandom. The comment sections under each update are where discussion tends to happen, and they try not to get off-topic. A 2015 featured comment sums up the ideal state of the comment section:
You should only make a comment if you have something to say. Let's not try to reach a pointless comment milestone again. Talk about the comic, it's [sic] author, or the website. Maybe some elder scrolls discussion even. You can do it, I believe in you, kinda.[5]
Some parts of the fandom ship Katia and Quill-Weave, although canon has seemingly made it clear that it won't happen.
Archives and Fannish Links
- Booru for fanart
- Visual Archive
- DeviantArt group
- Steam group
- Facebook group
- PREQUEL tag on AO3
- TV Tropes page
References
- ^ a b Archive of the first page on the MSPA forums.
- ^ a b About PREQUEL, posted 12 July 2011. Accessed 21 October 2018.
- ^ Cider's first credit, probably added retroactively, is on this page.
- ^ Kazerad. Comment on this page. 7 October 2013. Accessed 21 October 2018.
- ^ Unidentified BA Awesome, comment on this page. Posted 12 July 2015. Accessed 21 October 2018.