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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I read a bunch of the first strips, but the little girl's personality was far too grating for me to tolerate. This stopped me from reading it three or four times in the past, but this week I finally pushed through to the second chapter and things got a lot better.
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Feb 1, 2013 21:57
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Wait, that isn't what the story is about anyway? I wouldn't advise skipping the first chapter. Just be aware things pick up a lot afterward.
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Feb 2, 2013 03:25
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The only real question is whether his family was killed horribly or mercifully quickly.
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Mar 1, 2013 01:41
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Equally possible: he will set him on fire, blow up his house, cover him in dog poop, and depants him, but not hit him.
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Mar 27, 2013 13:56
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As far as I can tell, our happy fun-time executioners there are subtracting some heat from the giant fire-pit and adding it directly to the prisoners.
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Apr 1, 2013 13:59
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Thoughts about this last page: 1. They clearly did something unusual to Duane, because they asked for him to be alive before they did it. Did whatever it was result in his condition, or was there another purpose to it we haven't seen yet? If they were making him into an undead horror, why just leave him in the snow there as a message? If they were leaving him as a message, why not kill him normally? 2. I don't see Mikaila's dead deceased corpse anywhere. 3. According to Ssaelit belief, Ssael was betrayed and died but the Khert didn't take his memories. He wandered around in it for a while looking for a purpose before the whole deicide thing occurred to him. Duane is wandering the Khert here after his betrayal and death. Is there a connection? 4. Sette is just finding it harder and harder to laugh Duane off as an attack zombie. 5. Goddamned Murkoph. Why are you here? Why are you even a thing? I sure hope somebody stabs you in the face repeatedly before you start making GBS threads up the story. (I know this isn't going to happen, but let me dream.)
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Jun 27, 2013 02:15
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Actually, that Tumblr post does help a lot. Particularly the part about Murkoph being a henchman in Unsounded. (A henchman to whom, I wonder.) And she's dead on about the importance of good villains to a story. I don't think anybody here doubts that Ashley Cope can write a good story. The problem is that when the creator and the reader have different levels of interest in a character, you can get all kinds of problems. It's not the character itself, it's the mismatch that generates issues. The author will tend to allow a lot of room for their favorite character to appear in and influence events, and the less interested the audience is in that character, the more difficult this makes it to enjoy the story. The classic example of this is Wesley Crusher. Gene Roddenberry really, really liked that character no matter how much the fans hated him, so we got to see a lot of him in the series when Roddenberry was alive, and he was always saving the day or being smarter than all the adults or being the dramatic or moral focus of an episode when really most people wanted him to be ejected into space via the nearest airlock. It's not that Wesley Crusher couldn't have been a good character, in small doses, but he just refused to go away and kept using screen time that could have been spent on more interesting characters. Murkoph is the same way. There just isn't a lot of interest to him; he's the dude whose reaction is and will always be "gently caress him, who cares if he's sad, let's make out" and the fact that he's saying this to a little girl makes it more horrifying but not more interesting. He's a rampaging Id who exists just to be inappropriate but smile a lot so we can't hate him too much, and we've all seen his like in a dozen stories. That's why his placement as a henchman is a positive thing. If he's not supposed to be the main villain (or, God help us, a protagonist), his screen time will be limited and hopefully directed towards some specific ends, which might avoid part of the issue of him just eating up the whole story. That type of character works best as a henchman anyway; in small doses he might be okay. Now, that being said, it's possible that Ms. Cope can make him interesting as time goes on; we'll see. Lord knows I found Sette kind of irritating in the first chapter (and still do when I reread it). I don't think it's too likely, though, and that's also because he's a favorite of hers who predates the story. She's got a strong conception of his character already and it's unlikely that she'll evolve it in the same way she might evolve Sette or Duane's characterization as the story progresses. Murkoph is basically the rapomatic murdertron who will make wisecracks and crude jokes about the other characters, and he's probably just going to stay that way. E: In terms of his appearance, I think sometimes it's easy for the author to forget that most of her readers aren't following her tumblr, formspring, alternate formspring where she answers questions in-character, personal website, etc. People who are watching all that stuff don't need much introduction to Murkoph. idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Jun 28, 2013 |
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Jun 28, 2013 18:01
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A summary of recent events: Every night Duane turns into a semi-mindless zombie. Last night one of the villainous henchman broke into their hotel room. Duane killed him, ate large chunks out of him, and was playing with his viscera in the morning when Sette came in. Normally he turns back to his normal self in the daytime, but that wasn't happening for reasons that haven't yet been revealed. He also obeys her commands while zombified if she uses this magic amulet, for reasons that haven't yet been revealed, and that didn't work either. She opened the curtain in case sunlight would help, but all that did was cause his shadow to turn into a weird hole in reality that she subsequently fell into (while keeping zombie-Duane off her with a magic sex toy stocked in the room). She spent a while apparently poking at the next/previous buttons and other controls around the comic, because she's outside her normal reality and apparently can see that stuff. Then she landed in the Khert, the underlying structure of reality in Unsoundedland, which is very colorful. After poking around through a few miscellaneous areas (including one where she saw Geffendur priests doing the ceremonial twin murder/cannibalism thing they do and one where she cut a bunch of fetuses free from the ground for some reason) she was chased by a bird with breasts and ended up hiding in Murkoph's cave. She unwisely let him out because she thought he might defend her from the bird, but it turns out that he's a bad person and was going to rape her. Then the bird showed up with Duane's green translucent ghost, which apparently wanders around the Khert when he's busy being a zombie. It defended her from Murkoph but as a result of contact with it Sette ended up experiencing some of his memories. The memories involved him hanging out with his family, being a giant dork, standing up to his government on principle, hitting a douche, showing off his staff skills, getting beaten up for his principles, and then being murdered alongside his favorite daughter and left in the snow. Now we're back in the Khert and Murkoph is hanging around being a jerk. Sette is sad because knowing about Duane and seeing him as a human being is making it harder for her to treat him as a mindless weapon.
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Jun 28, 2013 18:18
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I think Bongo Bill already said most of what I would have, but a couple of other things:TheFuzzyLumpkin posted:I seriously am starting to think the only reason people are reacting this way to Murkoph versus Starfish is that Murkoph isn't fat and gross-looking and Starfish is, because Starfish is canonically WAY worse than Murkoph at this point and nobody has lost their goddamn minds about the fact that he's in the story. It's probably worthwile to contrast Murkoph and Starfish as villains. 1) Let's start right away with their physical appearance. Since you mention it, yes it helps that Starfish is not supernaturally attractive, but it isn't so much the appearance as the attention that's called to it. The most recent page is a great example. We've got almost a quarter of the area devoted to what amounts to a cheesecake shot of a rapist. I'm not saying it's wrong to have attractive villains, but the emphasis on that aspect of the character is something that's going to make people worry about the author's opinion of the character. 2) Starfish is integral to the plot already, and Ms. Cope has very carefully laid a lot of groundwork to explain why. He's one of the prime movers behind the entire thing at this point. Murkoph is some crazy dude in a cage that just showed up out of nowhere and started talking like he's important. His perceived level of importance to the plot is at odds with the attention devoted to it. 3) As far as we know, Starfish's only actual power is that he's amoral, kind of clever, and has some money. He manages to be the leader of a gang, some of whom DO have special powers, just on that basis. Murkoph is an unkillable murder-zombie. The latter might make a better villain in some stories, but in this one the interplay between philosophies and politics is as important or more important than people smashing each other over the head with stuff. Starfish fits into that universe better because he can participate on that level, albeit with an absolutely disgusting philosophy. 4) Nobody has ever said Starfish is awesome. The author has said before that Murkoph is. Starfish is an effective villain, and good for the story, but "awesome" feels a lot more like a term of personal praise than something you would say about an effective villain. Now all of that having been said, I'll repeat what I mentioned before: the formspring post where she talks about how she sees Murkoph's role in this story made me think this whole thing might work out okay after all. If he just ends up being a crazy guy that floats around the plot, it'll probably be fine. I think before reading that, though, it was pretty reasonable to worry that the dude who was the author's character in a role-playing game, who is on the front page of her website playing a blood-spattered guitar, who she's drawn a zillion pictures and mini-comics of, and who she said was the basis of the entire story to begin with, might be a problem if he showed up in the middle of the plot. Cowcaster posted:This is an utter shame, and I choose to continue not reading any of the material outside the comic. That's probably the wisest course, honestly. The other stuff about the world is really fascinating, but it does meander an awfully long way from the comic. So far I think we've mostly gotten the information we need when we need it (with the occasional minor head-scratchers, and slightly under-emphasized stuff like Murkoph's introduction). I mostly dodged the other stuff until we got to Alderode and I wanted to find out why dudes were being burned alive in the town square and I never really felt confused about things.
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Jun 29, 2013 01:37
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You know, if the next few panels involve Duane giving Murkoph a tremendous beatdown of one kind or another, that would be really cathartic after the events of this chapter.
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Jul 4, 2013 04:31
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The random "wacky" serial killer character is generally the worst character, yes. The worry isn't just that, though; the main issue is that in the roleplaying game this comic was based on, Murkoph was played by the author and was basically her favorite character. Her web site is full of art of this character and she has said many times how interesting he is. So what we have is a character that we consider boring and annoying that we fear will become important in the comic and eclipse characters we are actually interested in because of the author's interest in him. Basically, Murkoph is Scrappy Doo. That said, since the last time he showed up, Ashley Cope has said in her Formspring that Murkoph is not going to be that important in this story. As long as she sticks with that, I don't see any long-term problems, just the occasional eye-roll for a few pages when he shows up.
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Oct 12, 2013 17:07
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Their family is pretty violent overall, and the culture they exist in is similarly violent. Sette's dad probably justifies what he does as toughening her up so she can be ready to run the family business after she murders him for it. (Which he expects her to do soomeday. That's how he got the business from his father in the first place, if I recall properly.) Edit: Found the relevant Formspring stuff: Ashley Cope posted:His da never thought he'd be thief-lord, that's for sure. Nary was always smarter than everyone else around him - too smart - and not all that interested in the family business. Thinking he might one day make a good accountant or even consigliere, his father sent Nary to the capital for an education, but he got mixed up a few years later with the Foolscap family, an organisation that makes problems disappear for Sharteshane's elite. Nary started skipping class to do work for them, thinking it might be a way to get a foot in the door to a better class of people, but then got in a fight over money he felt he was owed, killed some guys, and had to flee back to Tawhoque. idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 00:21
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It's also not clear how much of his original body has to be left for him to keep going. She's been very coy about that on Formspring, presumably because it's plot-relevant. The answer could well be "absolutely nothing".
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Nov 6, 2013 14:53
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Practical instruction in anatomy for all the kids. Any bets on the chances of Cresce actually being involved in this at all?
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Nov 25, 2013 14:58
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Yeah, I figure the likelihood is near zero. The thing I'm really curious about is whether Sette will recognize this; she isn't particularly politically knowledgeable and at the time she was probably thinking of other things. Duane certainly hasn't figured it out in the last few years, and is not likely to unless something seriously changes his mind about Alderode soon. The simplest way to deal with the situation would probably be to put on a glamour, hire a few actual honest-to-god Crescians to join their group, and tell them they're murdering Duane for exactly the reason they're later going to confess to. Of course, none of the ringleaders will be present when they are conveniently captured.
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Nov 25, 2013 16:10
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It's both things. She's saying "yes, I'm manipulating him, isn't that what I was supposed to do with that information", but she's actually manipulating him by being mostly sincere. And she is feeling lovely about the whole deal from beginning to end, and pissed off that she's feeling lovely about it because she's supposed to be A Hardened Criminal and not susceptible to those feelings.
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Dec 6, 2013 21:35
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He's also the dude who created the spell to keep Elan alive (that's the subverted Crescian guard that helps Sette get across the border). His first name is Bastion. Despite being in the comic for like four pages, he's clearly one of the big movers behind events.
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Dec 18, 2013 15:13
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Duane isn't really a racist. He'd be fine with any black people living in Alderode, especially if they were Ssaelit. So, in other words, renounce your culture and religion and you'll have no problems with him!
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Jan 10, 2014 00:58
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If I've understood Ms. Cope's explanation correctly, first materials contain their own version of the khert, like a sort of mini-world. Khert lines from the outside world don't go in, and the ones inside don't go out. So you can enchant them by working with their internal khert lines, but also they resist any magic that tries to effect them via lines in the outside world.
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Feb 3, 2014 05:45
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I'm sure Sette will meekly accept this and not in any way make plans relating to it!
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Feb 21, 2014 15:38
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Things I learned today: the correct way to pronounce "Cresce". I'm really liking the new face on Duane. It's much more expressive for things beyond "soul-searing abject horror" (which the old one was pretty okay at).
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Apr 21, 2014 22:13
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We already know the man's a monster. His personal symbol is a noose. He's participating in the transport of slave-pain-powered first silver, providing most likely underage whores to a literal child molester, subverting essentially the entire police force of a city, and perpetrating a really ridiculous haircut. His reaction when one of his employees suffers permanent disfigurement is "put some lotion on it" and he makes a joke about it a few seconds later. The fact that with all of that he looks a cross between Errol Flynn and Lister from Red Dwarf kind of tickles me.
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May 3, 2014 03:27
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She didn't actually stick her finger in there, just got it too close. That said, she knew this was Nary Frummagem's daughter, so standing there insulting her repeatedly was not what you'd call a life-enhancing move.
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May 4, 2014 04:40
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According to Ashley on her Q&A tumblr (which replaced formspring once it became unreasonably lovely), neither medicine nor magic knows how to put that thing back on in its present state, so, yeah, she's going to be short a fingertip. Most likely she'll have to get a glamour for her customers. Maybe save up for a prosthesis like the one the Peaceguard guy Duane mutilated was going to get.
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May 5, 2014 02:54
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Oxxidation posted:booby-trap Well, Duane did say he would fight them all.
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May 5, 2014 16:52
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Ashley, via Tumblr posted:He’s a product of his environment. Alderode’s a fiercely patriarchal place. So yeah, by our standards he’s pretty sexist. And again posted:An Aldish free-thinker is someone like Vienne Quigley who actively wanted to tear down the caste system, take apart the Dammakhert, dismantle the government, redistribute the horded wealth of the ruling families, provide social services, end the endless aggression against Cresce, open the borders, and establish equal rights for women and the less esteemed castes. If she hadn’t lived out in the boonies she’d have been seeking out The March and joining them instead of trying to design them weaponry from afar. Yep.
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May 20, 2014 17:10
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Someone in Cresce, possibly. Cresce itself, no way. This page explains a lot. The whole point of sending Sette was to keep Duane on-task, which means that whoever arranged for that to happen (working with Bastion) knew him very well, enough to know that he wouldn't be able to act against Sette and would go all the way with her to keep her safe. This person was almost certainly Lemuel or someone getting information from him. Nary and Stockyard both think Duane is just a plod; Sette is the only one outside the conspiracy that is aware of his true nature, and only because of the events of last chapter (which is presumably why that had to happen before this point, to influence her thinking). Duane, one kind of weapon, was being shipped to the same place another kind of weapon (the first silver) was also sent, along with a mechanism that can control him. (Sette can only use it to control him at night, but that doesn't mean it has no influence on him the rest of the time if someone knows what they're doing.) It feels very much like some kind of horrifying nuclear pymary is planned, but aimed at who, and for what purpose? To win the war, or just end it?
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May 21, 2014 14:53
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It's definitely possible, but my current belief is that her main contribution is that she's a little girl and someone knew how Duane would react to that.
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May 21, 2014 15:09
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I agree with that. I'm just not sure her mysterious attributes were a specific and deliberate part of Nary's plan. They've already borne some fruit, for instance, in her ability to walk in the Khert and see what was up with Duane - we're given the impression that this is not something most people would have been able to do. And almost certainly your average person wouldn't have been able to free Murkoph, which is likely to have implications down the road. But it's unlikely that either of those were things Nary intended to happen.
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May 21, 2014 15:57
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There's a definite irony in this scene - Stockyard may think Sette's been duped (and he's right), but he's been duped just as thoroughly, about Duane's nature and almost certainly about why he's being shipped and what happens next.
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May 23, 2014 13:48
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Yeah, between Duane and Toma those guys are about to have a lot of problems.
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May 28, 2014 13:52
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I appreciate the intent there, Sette, but you might have waited to do that until you had a chance to warn Duane.
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May 30, 2014 20:08
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It would be kind of amazing if Stockyard just thought a minute, and then said, "You know what, you have a point. Let's pack it up!"
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Jun 4, 2014 13:51
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Yeah, we don't see it directly because the fact that she's been making Duane walk at night isn't something we're supposed to know right away. Which is extra-funny when you re-read the first chapter and see how Sette is all WHO NEEDS MAPS ANYWAY HAR HAR WE'RE NOT LOST. She's not just being an overconfident jerk, she's actually intentionally deceiving Duane!
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Jun 19, 2014 14:06
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Don't forget Matty and Jivi. It's easy enough to make a case for Duane, too, especially if you can be understanding of his circumstances what with growing up in a weird hellhole and currently being an undead abomination. Sette isn't as bad as she wants people to think she is. And the bad people seem to die off pretty regularly. Starfish is the only Red Berry Boy left, for instance.
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Jul 25, 2014 02:24
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I think Sette may currently be running away with the "best character" trophy.
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Aug 6, 2014 07:01
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This is it right here:
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Aug 13, 2014 14:44
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This would be a really, really good time for Quigley to kick down the door looking for his kid.
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Aug 27, 2014 23:58
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On the plus side, the chapter ending here still means there's a chance that Quigley will bust in the door and accidentally save Elka.
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Sep 11, 2014 03:48
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Sette has been knocked around plenty in her life. Anyway, I'm sure that this plan will work out perfectly for the gang and the next chapter will be all about them counting their money for delivering Duane.
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Nov 10, 2014 15:30
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