Yokoka's Quest

Anddd here we go, Kalliv’s been named so I have a few things to say about him (and I’ll also add him to the cast page soon, he’s also joining Mao’s party) so here’s some ramblings.

The thing is, originally Mao’s mouse had a bit of a role in the first chapters (he was named Yô by the way). In the pre-draft version there’s a comic page I drew (just one) where he says he witnessed Yokoka leave the village, and Mao was kind of physically abusive towards him. Then in the actual written version, Yfa tried to eat him (which is what led Mao to attack him originally), and nobody would ever let me live that down. In fact, all of my readers were horrified to find out Yfa would try to eat a mouse even though he’s a fox, and everyone assumed he was vegetarian, so I took that out and made it canon. Now Yfa feeds on fruits and would not harm a living creature, so you can all rest easy. Seriously, I still hear about it, 12 years later!

But after the first few chapters, the mouse was just kind of there and never did anything, ever, for the rest of the story. And I mean, that would be fine, but everyone was getting hooked on the mouse. Even in this version when I posted the first chapter, people were already making theories about the freaking mouse that wasn’t supposed to do anything for the entire story. I considered leaving it that way, and just being kind of mean, but it started to feel like a missed opportunity after a while.

I also wanted my girlfriend (Kikiine) to contribute a character to this story like I contributed one to her comic, A Mirror’s Tale (said character will come much later, so I won’t be spoiling that) and on a whim I said, “if you want to design a person version for the mouse, go ahead and have some fun.” She loved the idea, and after a bit of work, here’s Kalliv! He actually ended up being exactly what I was lacking for Mao’s plot in the story, and I couldn’t be happier for my cute little adopted son! I hope you all like him as well :>