1.13.16
on July 19, 2021
at 3:00 am
sorry dude, she’s pretty OP, but “sweeping social reform” is not one of Life’s abilities
Aurora
A fantasy webcomic. Updates M-W-F.
sorry dude, she’s pretty OP, but “sweeping social reform” is not one of Life’s abilities
My goodness if the seventh panel is powerful!
False, you gotta chill. There’s nothing you can do about this in the short time you guys are gonna be here. Besides, I think Tynan’s got your prison break covered when he rolls in.
Fight on mountain side
Falst argues with Alinua
Sure hope no one sees…
(Bonus)
Pointy ears make cloaks
look like animal hoodies.
They look very cute.
I genuinely live to read these strips.
This is one of the main reasons I absolutely adore this comic, cause this is the perfect subversion of the “one good act toppled the evil system” trope. Cause really if killing one corrupt leader and freeing one prison can liberate an entire country then the entire empire was on it’s last legs anyhow.
Oooo this is pwetty comic! :0
Alinua, the godless self-exile, spitting hard socio-political facts at Falst, the rebellious lone catboi.
@HelloHaiku that’s a really cool haiku! One funny thing I noticed tho is that the way I pronounce alinua is “ah-linn-oo-ah” so weirdly it wouldn’t be a haiku if I was reading it lmao although red’s pronunciation is three syllables, like yours so your ones more correct lol
Oooooh this is some good dialogue right there. Yes yes, very pleasing to read
Also, i doubt its a prison full of jaywalkers..
Her hood is back
The Alinua cat ear hood is back. Yay.
I genuinely wasn’t expecting the conversation and topic to go in the direction of wider socio-political problems but I’m all for it. Zuurith’s system is so well imbedded into the city’s society and psyche it would take years of reforms to change it.
This shows of Falst’s here-and-now thinking again; freeing prisoners without considering the long term implications; differences between the power to move mountains and the power to change society.
A part of me has a horrible feeling he’s going to accuse Alinua of not caring about people, without knowing her backstory of self-exile explicitly because she cared about people. The resulting argument would not be pretty; it’d make an interesting page and delve into their character dynamic more, but still not be pretty.
TL;DR: Catboy and Life elf should join a debate team, perhaps it’ll help them home their skills.
Sorry Falst, but your creator is familiar with Avatar the last Airbender, where a mass jailbreak in chapter 1 didn’t cause much change and even the jailbreak in chapter 3 only really helped with the personal plot
Dialogue and action, I‘m so happy!!!
Falst in panel 9
“Nyeh! My scheme has been foiled by rational thinking! Curses!”
Yooo panels 4 & 5 with Falst’s cloak looking like it’s spilling between is super dope
Honestly, I think both Falst and Alinua are right. These people shouldn’t be incarcerated en masse for what are likely mostly petty crimes like theft and trespassing (if such a large amount of the police force and likely a band of mercenary bounty hunters are dispatched to imprison one person running on roofs, that says something about how severely any crime is punished here), and that’s not even touching on anyone who’s imprisoned for being who they are (ferin, exiles, divine champions, sentient swords(?)). But on the other hand, even if these people were freed from the prison, they wouldn’t be truly free until they escaped the city, and everyone in the city would likely be subjected to even harsher laws in retribution (I don’t think Zuurith is beyond implementing executions in the name of “justice” or setting an example). Riots definitely bring attention to problems within a society, but they can’t fix those problems by themselves.
okkk intense issues being discussed here also red would you pleas consider a double update
Hm. Come to think of it, wouldn’t massive rainfall potentially drown everyone on some of the lower floors? If there’s a windowless basement or something, then that would suck. The windows seem to be on an angle, so it’d at least be likely that stairs would become inaccessible if the rain is heavy enough, I think. Or maybe I’m wrong? I don’t have a ton of experience with floods.
Yeah, “Sweeping social reform” seems more like a Fire thing.
Should probably clarify, “precise social reform” is beyond Fire’s ability. Also, still haven’t figured out how to make the Reply button work.
~Dup Boa Bei, Di Da Ba Da Do~
Love her or hate her,
she spittin’ straight fax.
Honestly, the real root of the problem seems to be Zuurith imo. But he’s gonna have to choke on at least a cartful of humble pie, before he’d admit that he’s the problem
Alinua used Logic
It’s Kind of Effective
Falst is Angered by the use of Logic.
This whole arc so far, just… whoof, hittin’ hard.
This is probably my favorite page to date.
I think that Falst trying to free Kendal and the rest of the prisoners is a good way to show his character. he never had the need to think long-term, living in the forests and all,so it’s understandable that he would go with the first solution at hand, and when he befriends people who don’t put him down for who he is, he’ll do anything to help them, so that justifies why he’s acting without thinking.
Anyway, i can’t wait until Tynan arrives and unleashes chaos on Zuurith’s land.
At some point in “The Phantom Menace”, Qui-gon calmly remarks that the Jedi are not on Tattooine to free slaves. A screenshot of this moment was later posted on Tumblr with the caption “The Jedi Order f*ckin DESERVED to get Order 66’d.”
It’s interesting to see a version of that tension play out here as well. Falst is wholly justified in his outrage over the evil of the carceral system of Zuurith and the suffering that it causes, but Aliuna is desperately trying to make the argument that A: Like Qui-gon, they have a larger objective which they have to remain focused on for the Greater Good (TM), and B: There is no viable long-term solution currently available to them which can be accomplished through sheer brute force… other than the imprisonment or murder of a number of people comparable to the number currently imprisoned in the mountain redoubt.
If the American Civil War tells us anything, it’s that sometimes that is the ONLY solution. But Aliuna clearly feels that she is not the person to make that call, and Kendal’s stated purpose for his restraint within his cell tells us that he feels the same way. (Erin, a beneficiary of the system that permits Zuurith’s atrocities, has a vested interest in *opposing* any kind of revolutionary action, but is too invested in his own inflated self-image as a “nice guy” to actually do anything one way or the other.)
Falst may try to hammer home the point to Aliuna in the next page that some things have to die to be reborn, but may concede the point that he’s very much running half-cocked without a well thought-out plan for how to dismantle the power structure of an entire city-state and how much bloodshed that would entail (not to mention dealing with Zuurith himself…), much less given any kind of thought for the reconstruction effort that would be needed to truly bring about a lasting end to the injustice of this place.
Still… I love Falst so much here. He’s saying what everyone *desperately* wants to believe in this situation: The fervent hope that with the right people in the right place, a monster can be decapitated in one fell swoop and usher in peace and prosperity to an oppressed people. I truly don’t want him to lose that spark, to be ground down into quiet compliance by necessity of The Big Picture and a series of flowery worded & morally bankrupt non-aggression principles.
There’s a lot of elements that I love in this comic, and one of them is the way Red had written Falst and the story/characters around him. I’ve seen characters with similar characteristics to him before, mainly a heroic character who want to do good but has a self-centered and oddly naive or limited worldview. Each of these characters has quickly become my least favorite or even most loathed because these traits are rarely acknowledged by the other characters or the stories as a whole. In addition to just being plain annoying, it also always feels like a waste of story telling and character development potential. Not so with Falst.
Red doesn’t try to hide these character traits or disguise them, and even has other characters or the story itself show why this is a problem. It not only makes the world within the story feel more real, but suggests that there’s going to be some awesome character development by the end of the comic. Instead of being annoyed or disengaging from the story, I’m really enjoying the way the story is unfolding and looking forward to learning how it all plays out. This is really top tier writing and characterization,
hmm
i’ve come to like the phrase
“become ungovernable”
well-written conflict and dramatic lighting, yes 10/10 but also falst’s hair squished by hood !!1!
I just took another look at the comic, and the position, framing, and body language of the characters in each frame is just superb. I can SEE Falst’s righteous anger in the way he stands (and his face. But the stance really helps). You can see Alinua’s logical… I don’t know if desperation is the right word. But you can see it in how she is clinging on and… I don’t know the word for that either. Prostrating? Not quite what I’m looking for and definitely doesn’t seem to be in the reverence or submission sense. More out of necessity than anything with how that prison is made. *Chefs kiss* Excellent job Red.
It could be interesting if there are one day enough people in the prison to start a small government there.
Huh I just had a new thought.
They say necessity is the mother of invention. What if it’s because humans are tired of being ruled by gods that they begin making there own governments, starting with zuurith?
Did any of this make sense?
Just binged the archives and this comic is SO GOOD and it’s full of characters who are all SO GOOD I love all of them even the assholes.
To mmc:
Ah yeah, I chose to
use Red’s pronunciation
to write the haiku!
Though I’m more used to
saying “ah-linn-oo-ah” than
“uh-linn-wuh” as well (^_^)
Maybe some of those people inside the prison might have ideas on how to fix their own society. So just.. leave a hole in the wall and let them make the choice?
we all joke around now, but think what would happen if a mountain full of hardened roof trespassers were to be unleashed on this unsuspecting city.
absolute
chaos
I just binged the whole thing in less than 24 hours. Now I have to WAIT for updates like a mere peon. Amazing work, Red.
And glad to know I’m not the only one for whom the Reply function doesn’t work.
I wish more than anything I knew how to heal a broken society… all I know Is exactly how not to do so.
I mean. Causing a massive break out and every prisoner to spill out into the city, might shake things up enough that they could change for the better. Eventually. After a lot of chaos and conflict. Even if it’s the prisoners running away rom the city.
So if you don’t mind torpedo-ing any hope of diplomatic relationship with other cities. Do it.
Breaking that thing wide open will probably, maybe, definitely cripple Zuurith ability to imprison everybody.
I find it rather interesting that in chapter 11, Falst was, I guess, more doubtful of Alinua’s and Erin’s magic, in saying they’re too reliant on a power that isn’t theirs. But now he’s asking for their help and acknowledging their power, now when he needs their help…
@Yellow Rose slaves are typically not allowed to form governments
@DrRandy same on both accounts. Is your nick a Rimworld reference?
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it
Alinua has her cat cloak back!
How has no one seen them?
existential questions
red is incredibly based
Oh my gosh, hooded pointy ears peeps are my newfound passion
Alt text: what do you MEAN “prison break” isn’t literal
Cat ear hoods, cat ear hoods for everybody!
Wooo
Dang, it’s interesting to see that, despite being shunned by society since his birth, he still has a strong sense of justice about him, perhaps due to him understanding the plight of the imprisoned
“people spill out into a city that’s utterly hostile to them” is incredibly thought through powerful wording.