1.22.4
on July 10, 2023
at 3:00 am
achievement unlocked: It’s Life All The Way Down! skilltree unlocked! unfortunately the skilltree has infinite nodes and branches
Aurora
A fantasy webcomic. Updates M-W-F.
achievement unlocked: It’s Life All The Way Down! skilltree unlocked! unfortunately the skilltree has infinite nodes and branches
For mobile readers.
Alt-text: for instance, do you have any idea how many gut bacteria you have? none of us are ever REALLY alone
Image source: branches
Aurora Question #73: What death (MC or SC) would emotionally hurt you the most?
What does “MC” and “SC” mean?
Main character and side character.
kendal, falst, dainix, or tess. i love ali and erin but because of their circumstances they can’t really die
Void Dragon and the Collector in the near future, because suddenly killing off well established antagonists to switch to a bigger bad who we’ve never met kills stories faster than any other trope.
Aluina in general, because I actually really like her.
Probably Falst, Kendal, or June(Junior Archivist).
Mostly because they’re the ones that most feel like their character arcs haven’t been finished.
Alinua, because she’s my favourite character; Kendal, because I’m unreasonably attached to him; Vash, in the ‘collector destroys his soul’ kind of dying, because I’m attached to him as well; Erin because he’s another of my favourites. Damn it, the whole Floof Squad. I love these characters too much.
Any of the MCs dying would hurt me. They’re all so precious I can’t pick one, and I feel like Red is a good enough writer to make any of their deaths hurt if she wanted to.
Tess, because she’s the character we’ve gotten to explore the least and she’s already ridiculously awesome and nice just from what we’ve seen of her!
Thank you @Ell and @Zer0 fir asking and answering the question I was confused about too. I humbly ask @Q.M. to remember that they, (any gender), is/are addressing an international fan based and not assume everyone understands local convention, (The internet transcends national boundaries and is global in nature and even wider in spirit if not fact).
I agree with @Rashkavar and add that I love the Floof Squad in general. I am not a fan of George R. R. Martins who kills off interesting characters in his books (and Game of Thrones series)
Yeah that was on oversight on my part, assumed they were common internetspeak but I don’t think I’ve heard them outside of my friend group irl. I’ll try and do better in the future, srry
Can I answer a different, potentially more interesting question: how likely is Red to kill off members of the Floof Squad and why?
Erin and Dainix are unlikely to die because them dying completes their main quests. Stopping the void dragon from escaping is arguably the party’s main-main quest, and Erin dying completes it successfully. Too easy. Similarly, Dainix dying stops his demon from destroying anything else, and he didn’t even need to travel the the Soulshaper Monastery. Boring!
Alinua dying wastes so much potential. She’s the vessel of a primordial previously thought dead and has to grapple not just with this cosmic happenstance, but also the idea that she’s *not* going to die horribly in a chimeric explosion any day now and she needs to get on with living life. No competent writer would waste all that potential.
Kendal was my top pick until a couple of chapters ago. He does have the main quest of defeating the Collector and freeing Vash, but there’s no reason *he* has to do this. If he died, you can bet your butt that Alinua, Erin and Dainix would see his mission through, no matter what. Alniua, in particular, would be shattered by grief (as the past few chapters have demonstrated), giving tons of characterisation potential. The big thing that’s changed recently is that the lost souls of Vash have given Kendal the secondary quest of living a life that gives their deaths meaning. Prime story potential, and it can’t be fulfilled by the rest of the party if Kendal dies, greatly reducing the chance of it happening.
Falst is relatively safe by the virtue of his only skin in the game being the skin on his own back. Butchering of a metaphor aside, he doesn’t really have a main quest to complete or fail, he doesn’t really have people depending on him or a responsibility tied to him. He’s mainly just along for the ride, generating drama by being relatively underpowered and a racism focus. And Red won’t kill him off while she can still make him suffer more.
Tess is in a dicey situation. Sure, she doesn’t have a main quest, but she has Erin. He cares a lot about her, and didn’t want to get her involved in his mess in case she got hurt. If she dies, and particularly if he’s responsible… oh the drama. The main thing keeping her safe is the rule of cool. Red and the fans love her too much to stand for her being killed off. Tess is the answer to your original question.
I don’t expect that Red will kill off any of them, though. She loves them too much, we love them too much, they’re more interesting alive and that’s not really the tone Aurora has, anyway.
The idea that Falst is safe from death mostly because there’s more opportunity to make him suffer is somewhat hilarious to me
Fantastic analysis, I salute you
Alinua
Dainix, tho im attached to all of the floof squad it feels like he has the most going for him, he has the least trauma so killing him would seem cruel
This makes me think of Red’s trope talk on character deaths.
“I love all my characters and refuse to murder any of them!”
Let’s just hope that’s still true XD
Down, down, Down we go, where we stop, nobody knows!
Yeah, life goes down until the rock starts turning soft from the heat. And I can’t guarantee that it stops then, we just don’t know how it could survive that.
Throw in magic? All bets are out.
Well, in Aurora anyway, Life goes down and down and down until it reaches Stone’s third heart where a nice old lady is stabbing a god infused lava lamp.
It must go down to Void Dragon at the center of it prison since I assume Voidy is a living being.
Void is alive in the same way the other primordials were right (bare with me if you will)? Fire, Stone, Water, ect. were alive, but then you had Primordial life beside them. Would any of them be composed of life? Or were they not made from “living” things that grow since they are each primarily of their respective element. They clearly have an incorporeal aspect as well being that they think and are people. I think this may be the Soul that they have. Much like how they have souls and are composed of one element mainly, The Void Dragon is withering, so would that withering hunger have life?
Need to make a hole in the earth? I smell another Alinua tree moment!
“How can she stand it?” Be careful Alinua, that line gave me Collector-vibes. I know I joked a while back that with your connection to a primordial and your purple and green colour scheme, you’d become the final villain of the comic, but I wasn’t serious.
Another sensible limitation of Alinua’s abilities; her mortal mind trying to comprehend the vastness of a primordial in all its disparate forms was bound to be difficult. She was overwhelmed here trying to find two lifeforms in a mostly barren set of ruins; can you imagine how much trouble she’d have if she attempted this in a forest or city teeming with life?
Even with these two on the job, I’m still on edge this chapter. The sheer number of cave crawlers, potential void shenanigans, the wrong assumption Red alluded to on tumblr, the potential inclusion of Kendal in this chapter implied by the cover; I really don’t know what to expect this chapter.
“another Alinua tree moment”
You really don’t want to be underground when the earth is being torn asunder. It’s one thing when hundreds of people in a mountain prison is going to drown in a horrible flood if you don’t do something fast and large scale, this situation needs a little more finesse. I’m hoping Erin’s Stone abilities can get them to the boys without collapsing the whole complex.
Red alluded to a wrong assumption of tumblr? Who made the assumption, the fans or the characters in the setting?
She said she noticed an interesting fan assumption, she didn’t mention what it was
Now the link worked 🙂
This is what Red said on Tumblr according to a comment on the last page of the previous chapter:
“noticed kind of a cool assumption going around from this chapter, wasn’t intentional but I’m looking forward to the knifetwist when it’s disproven”
-Red on Tumblr
Which is to say, it was us, the readers making some nebulous wrong assumption.
Is it just me or… does life look angry? She’s well within her right to feel incredibly hurt and frustrated by this, regardless of if she actually wants to find some way to detach herself from the world, she’s wrapped up in so many things and so intricately that she can’t move on her own, just like Alinua said. How can she stand it indeed…
is it just me, or does alinua’s eyes look more yellow in the last panel
In the last panel (5) Alinua’s eyes look more green than yellow to me and her face looks more sad and concerned rather than angry.
Hey Alinua, maybe you should have told us they were in danger when you first found out instead of continuing to search further so you can get sadder and waste more time while they slowly asphyxiate.
She may have been getting sucked in… Mesmerized.
P.S: I remember contemplating taking inspiration from your username one of the times I was brainstorming an Aurora username for myself if I ever dared join. Which is to say it’s pretty awesome.
Life looks… Angry in that first panel. Look at the angle of her brows, and how her eyes are just slightly pinched.
I agree and the eyes above and below Primal Life’s central main two look narrowed in disgust as well.
Poor Erin! He looked so worried and concerned! Seeing Alinua crying must have been a gut-punch to him.
I am curious why Erin jumped back and prepare a spell rather than go and comfort Alinua. It implies he was scared by what he saw flowing out of her. Wish I remember what element Erin’s right forearm taps is.
I’d say it’s easier to memorize the colours and effects of magic, especially because it will allow you to identify other mages’, and even magical creatures’ magic usage. Erin is using stone magic here, basically just smacking the roots Alinua is sensing with a big rock spike.
Here be info: https://comicaurora.com/magic/ in the extra lore!
Stone! If you zoom in you can see the tattoos, and grey is the colour for stone magic. ^^
I think that part of why he stayed back was that a) life magic is infamously dangerous if you lose control, b) Alinua wasn’t responding to him calling to her, and c) she seemed to be in distress. Put those together, and it’s not unreasonable to assume that something went really wrong in the magic department, and that fixing that part needed to be prioritized before emotional comfort. (At least that’s my personal read on it)
I feel like this was an excuse to show Erin using stone magic… have we ever seen that before?
Side note: Skill tree with infinite nodes and branches? Yeah no I’d cry too.
yes, he created a tent thing towards the beginning of the comic and then when shrike had falst, alinua and tess cornered, he levitated her and her squad by their armor
Thank you for pointing that out @Alleyyy! (smile)
Thank you!
I (For some reason) can’t reply to any of my replies, but thanks @Alleyyy
It seems as though Alinua’s unaware that she was crying; granted, she couldn’t exactly perceive herself well while her perspective was widened so far like that, but it’s still odd that she subconsciously started crying. Maybe it’s an indication of the sympathy she feels for Life, how quickly saddened she gets upon remembering her situation.
OOF
is aurora gonna get existential? because while I do not need another 17776 I wouldn’t be opposed to it
Careful Alinua; there are some things man was just not meant to comprehend, as The Collector found out the hard way.
I don’t think the Collector learned the lesson I learned when the Collector destroyed Vash’s city and took his soul…
@Wandering Shade (because the reply link on your comment in particular doesn’t work for me…)
This is what Red said on Tumblr according to a comment on the last page of the previous chapter:
““noticed kind of a cool assumption going around from this chapter, wasn’t intentional but I’m looking forward to the knifetwist when it’s disproven”
-Red on Tumblr”
Which is to say, it was us, the readers making some nebulous wrong assumption.
If I had a nickel for every time I read about
a character with a magical ability to manipulate living matter
gazing into the inner workings of a being that has died in the past by whatever definition
and getting overwhelmed by a vortex of fractal infinity
in a webcomic, I would have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s still weird that it happened twice.
What was the other time?
Hover over my username!
I’ve stuck the URL to the beginning of that comic in there, cuz what I’ve said might be kind of a spoiler for it, and I want people to only be able to find out which comic it is if they want to! Hopefully it works!
TL;DR: I looked into the abyss and the abyss spoke to my soul.
I’ve been busy figuring my life out a bit lately. May be late on a few. I bet this isn’t new, but just wanted to make a more “official” statement.
Good luck to you getting your ducks in a row!
No no no, Turtles! It’s Turtles all the way down! XD But yes it’s gratifying Red gets that reference hehe. :3
“Branches on branches that never stop and don’t know how to stop” is perhaps one of the most poetic (and slightly eldritch) was of describing life that I’ve heard. As a biologist, I approve!
The skill tree also grows like kudzu.
Let’s get down to business, to go find the dudes
After overloading, they’re down there, she concludes
(Sees Alinua contact Life) Huh, so that’s what it looks like when I zone out… Neat.