Seventy years ago, the sun stopped setting...
It's Been a Long Day
is a fantasy adventure webcomic begun in 2022. It takes place in a Constructed World of humanoid creatures in which the sun hasn't set for 70 years.
The show's story centers around Moza, a young human woman whose recurring dreams embroil her in a trans-species political conflict and lead her to seek out answers in the particularly alien land of Paucady.
It's Been a Long Day contains examples of:
- Best Friend: Venchi seems to be this to Moza. The two are roommates and engage in all kinds of light-hearted banter.
- Book Smart: Moza is shown to be rather precocious even from a young age. At the beginning of the strip, she works, very enthusiastically, at a bookstore.
- Cool Old Guy: Iani seems to be this. Cranky as he may be, he clearly respects Moza quite a bit, and offers her advice about the Paucadians.
- Dream Sequence: The comic opens with Moza's recurring dream, a flashback of her 10th birthday.
- Empathy Pet: Moza's croaking frog, Kuku, with whom she is very close. Moza and Kuku have a few (albeit one-sided) chats, and Kuku tends to mirror her reactions during conversations with other people.
- Endless Daytime: The sun hasn't set for 70 years.
- Evil Chancellor: Conductor Mud is hinted to have shades of this.
- Moza: Make sure you get his order right... I don't want you getting poisoned or something.
- Gentleman and a Scholar: Iani, at least to some extent. He is bookish and clearly very intelligent, and serves as a kind-hearted mentor to Moza and good friend to Pogoshi.
- Grumpy Old Man: Downplayed with Iani. Though he is cranky (in Pogoshi's words, "curmudgeonly"), this stems moreso from his genuine passion for philosophy and literature rather than any standard "bitter old man" tendencies.
- The Hero: Moza, at least in the beginning.
- Inscrutable Aliens: The Paucadians are an in-universe example, having been more or less estranged from the other three humanoid species for at least 70 years. Iani suggests that this divide may be even more fundamental.
- Moza: (holding a Paucadian book) You think anyone around here could translate it?Iani: The Paucadians are so different from the rest of us... I'm not sure it would even be possible.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Between Moza and Pogoshi, the owner of a café near her house.
- Interspecies Friendship: Moza (human) and Pogoshi (Captain), for one. The latter is also implied to be friends with the also-human Iani. In general, the three non-Paucadian humanoid species seem to coexist quite amicably.
- Loon with a Heart of Gold: Iani displays shades of this. He is adamantly passionate about extremely niche academic disciplines and prone to non-sequiturs, but is also a genuinely kind mentor for Moza.
- Non-Human Sidekick: Kuku, Moza's oddly intelligent pet frog.
- Platonic Life-Partners: Moza and Venchi.
- The Professor: Iani, at least to some extent. He's an Eccentric Mentor to Moza with some heated opinions about philosophy - not to mention he owns a bookstore, and it's implied that he's at least pretty familiar with all of its contents.
- Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Of the four humanoid species depicted in the comic, three of them are remarkably similar to humans, namely: humans, proper; the Captains, who have large, wrinkly heads; and the Abadai, whose main difference is being very small. Paucadians, on the other hand...
- Sapient Pet: It's hinted at that Moza's pet frog, Kuku, is very intelligent, and just unable to speak. It reacts to what she and others say and even references the contents of her own dreams.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Iani is characterized in this way. His first appearance sees him frustratedly deriding the discipline of "Bosniocular Kleptophysics" as "pseudo-intellectual drivel."
- Starfish Language: Paucadian is an in-universe example. Iani suggests that it is fundamentally impossible to translate.
- Translation Convention: It is implied that the comic's human (and some non-human) characters are speaking, well, Human, a language fundamentally distinct from English.
