1.9.23
on September 25, 2020
at 4:00 am
hey man let’s not make this a competition, we BOTH have nonhuman angst and that’s okay!
Aurora
A fantasy webcomic. Updates M-W-F.
hey man let’s not make this a competition, we BOTH have nonhuman angst and that’s okay!
I shall call him Mini Me
Guys, look at the height difference!
Falst is so short, it’s almost adorable.
However, I get the distinct feeling that we are not out of the woods yet, and that negotiations are about to break down.
I don’t think Falst is short. at least, not much shorter than Alinua or Erin. Kendal is just fucking tall. He was the vessel of a god. He’s probably kinda big.
He’s shorter than Erin, and Erin is already on the shorter side of the height spectrum.
He smol
Nah I think Red said he’s only kinda tall. Falst is just really short.
Awwwwwwwwww
Awww as in adorable, or awww as in “you poor thing”?
All of the above
broo mom said its MY turn on the angst train
This
Kendal. Kendal.
pet the kitty.
Do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT pet the kitty! It scratches.
I pet the kitty anyways. I’m in chainmail if it does scratch.
So? Cats gonna scratch. It’s worse if he bites hands. Much, much worse.
He could still stab you; mail armor is vulnerable against stabbing.
Wear full plate armor if you REALLY want to pet him
BRIGANDIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE
I feel like if this was a show their would definitely be somecreepy bad guy conversation music playing right around now. As falst says all this in a must-have accusatory villain voice.
I love this page so much.
Oops thing wasn’t loading sorry for so many duplicate comments
Kendal is so cool T.T He ain’t book smart or magic smart … but look at him go: Just awesome :3
Guess he multi-class Heart+Paragon 😛
Do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT pet the kitty! It scratches.
When Falst said “It must be nice” my hear broke a little.
Yeah I’m most definitely spotting some internalized racism
Will Falst join the gang? I hope so.
Almost definitely. Red draws him too much on twitter for him to NOT join the gang, and in the Time Travel trope talk there’s a drawing of what is clearly “the gang” from Aurora (you can easily identify Kendal and Alinua, and Erin too) and Falst is definitely in it.
And I’m very happy about the fact that he’s joining.
wait where is this? timestamp? I couldnt find it…
thx
The alt text is amazing
yeah the alt text is usually funny but I don’t think I’ve ever laughed that much from one
For 1/2 a second there in panel 4 I thought lion boi was rubbing it in. I was ready to deck him.
Even the pretty moon shots went angst
WARNING: Speculation ahead probably belongs in a TV tropes discussion, but I’ll put it here anyway.
Given that Kendal is lining up so well with the child-like paragon trope(see last Monday’s comic’s comments), especially with the unintentional sympathy this time, I wanna theorize on possible future team dynamics. This is mainly based on the fact that said type of paragon is a subtrope of what I’m gonna call the Kid-Salty-Rebel-Quiet trope (name suggestions are welcome) which is a loose team dynamic system which i think might be a compressed five man band or a subtrope of four temperaments:
(Examples are Steven universe, RWBY, NITW, DDLC, Hazbin Hotel (I’m not saying these are good, they’re just examples i have)
Kid is a trope I’ve already discussed, usually the main character(Steven, Ruby, Mae, Sayori, Charlie)
Salty is the character who is either uptight, or close to distress/getting ticked off, sometimes the “cultured one”also usually lancer to kid(Pearl, Weiss, Bea, Natsuki, Vaggie)
Rebel is the one who breaks the rules in some way, ranging from slacker to badboy to reality bender
(Amethyst, Yang, Gregg, Monika, Angel)
Quiet is mostly self explanatory, but also the one with kind of a big secret (Garnet, Blake, Angus, Yuri, Alastor)
Anyway, my guess is that Erin would end up fitting Salty(but not the lancer kind) but Alinua is a bit harder to place, and i don’t know who the fourth would be right now. Also I could be wrong, so there’s that.
If Falst ends up joining the team from Kendal’s nat 20 persuasion checks, he’ll probably fit the “rebel” archetype; though not in a Gregg-esque “I’m here for the chaos!” sort of way, or the generic Amethyst-esque “Screw your rules, I’ll do things how I want” sort of way, but more like a young leftist (I think? I haven’t actually met many): “The rules of society f***ing suck, and they need to change; until they do, I won’t support them.”
I agree that Erin fits the “salty” archetype; he isn’t the Bea variant of salty (depressed and bitter because the world f***ing sucks, see young leftists again), he’s a bit more like Pearl: naturally pedantic, arrogant, and stubborn, probably due to his aristocratic upbringing.
Alinua doesn’t really fit in this trope, though; by process of elimination, she’d be in the “quiet” archetype, but she doesn’t really strike me as being calm, aloof, and mysterious. She’s more like Katara from Avatar: compassionate, emotional, traumatized, and sociable.
(Btw, Angus is a sweetheart)
Oof, careful, Kendal. The “We’re not so different” approach is almost always followed by a “you don’t know how I feel!” explosion. Especially when one character can pass easily in human society and the other can’t.
Ah, the old sympathy gambit. Gotta love it.
This may just be my trans instincts kicking in, but I’ll be so grumpy if Falst turns out to just be a bad guy… although this page has also solidified my understanding of why I find Kendal so easy to identify with…
Pretty sure he’s gonna join the gang since he’s in so much trope talk art
*Anger translation*
Kendal: “Listen here you little s***, you think your life sucks?”
“I’ve been alive for less than two weeks and in that time my city has been destroyed, my best friend has almost died MULTIPLE TIMES, and I’ve been attacked by an ancient primordial dragon god inhabiting this snarky, know-it-all, scholar! You think your life is hard? Come back and tell me when you’ve had your soul LITERALLY TORN FROM YOUR BODY.”
That being said, I’m sorry for all the discrimination you’ve had to face. Want a hug?
Is this about people who say ace, bi, pan, and aro people are straight passing and thus not oppressed? Cause I feel like this is about people who say that ace, bi, pan, and aro people are straight passing…
I thought it had to do with Red’s experiences with anti-semitism… Although your explanation seems more plausible.
Red is jewish? Also, isn’t she ace of some variety. I remember something like that being hinted at in a trope talk.
She is asexual and Jewish; asexuality was confirmed in their first Q and A, Jewishness was confirmed in her video on Hanukkah.
Also, considering I myself am aroase, it took an embarrassing amount of time for me to finally realize the potential subtext going on here… guess that shows how oblivious and/or sheltered I am…
I can see Red projecting some of her own personal experiences onto this scene, and I love it!
Falst can SMELL him?
Animals have a pretty refined sense of smell compared to humans, I’m not surprised that Ferin would have it. I mean, dogs will think that strangers smell weird; it makes sense that a godly avatar would also smell different since they’re on a level above ‘unfamiliar human’.
“You’re also very misinterpreted by them, but the other way around, you’re human but they won’t recognize that.”
I see your Misunderstood Outcast Angst, and raise you my Disconnected Demigod Avatar Outcast Angst.
Are we sure Falst is looking at Kendal in that last panel? Judging how they’re positioned in the light along with how the speech bubbles seem to be coming from outside of his field of vision I think Falst is actually looking at the moon and realizing he’s running out of time to complete his moon ritual shenanigan
Your bothered by the fact people treat you like a human being? Incomprehensible. I don’t believe it.
I think in this scenario it’s important to draw the distinction between being treated like a human and being treated like a person
Right, Elves in this universe are treated like people, while not being human, and Ferin aren’t treated as either, while being human.
Also have you realized that background characters tend to call everything that tends to attack them “beasts” by default? The chimera, the ferin, etc
Passing vs. Pride
You’re angsty and I’m angsty. Why don’t we do angsty things together?
Kendal looks a tad sinister in the second to last panel. I’m sure it’s nothing.
These lines kinda put those earlier scenes of just Kendal and Alinua into a new context. I think, to a degree, when he says, “They treat me like something I’m not” he’s probably talking about those times where Alinua tried to get him to prioritize his own needs. She finds it jarring that he’s spent his entire life surrounded by–and trying to protect– dying people. But he just isn’t able to view himself as anything but a vessel to protect people.
I love when characters call out other characters for behaving as though only their pain matters or pulling the ‘must be nice/lucky you’ card on someone they barely know. It cuts through so much drama and really sets up a better tone for the story moving forward.
Alright Kendal, I see you and your ace experience metaphors and rep and whatnot, I see you
classic Acephobia vs racism conversation right there…
as a mixed race person who is very white passing i 100% feel Kendal’s struggle here. ive had conversations like this with family members before. its difficult to know you dont truly fit even when others think you do
Not to trivialise your struggles but i feel it too in a way, but less race and more Sexuality. Either way it’s really tough when people think you’re one way and can’t really understand the way you grew up and see the world.
Especially when so many people think it’s easier to be queer than be POC because you can hide it.
or at least that’s how i see this conversation…
Dang when did Kendal become such a relatable character?
Is it just me, or did the moon just turn red…?
There are two moons. One of them is red.
I think i went all starry eyed when i read this page. Because it’s a big part of what makes me insecure. There’s so much discourse online about whether or not Asexual people should be considered a ‘real’ part of the LGBT community because we can just so easily ‘fake it’ or because no one can really tell unless they try to get in bed with one of us. But talk like that really just makes me feel like we don’t have any issues at all, and like we aren’t pinned against a world that puts sexual desires on such a high pedestal… it really makes me happy when I see this kind of representation, because really it’s the first time I’ve ever seen any character say something like this. And i know Red had said before that she intended to represent a lot of her experiences as an asexual through Kendal, but actually seeing it… it really is something else.
This made my day is all i’m saying, it makes me so mad now that i see this comment isn’t appreciated more than it is.
crap, i meant to say ‘Comic’ instead of Comment. Didn’t mean to sound egocentric there
“and like we aren’t pinned against a world that puts sexual desires on such a high pedestal…”
Oh boy, I don’t know if I’m ace but that sentence feels so relatable…
alright im gonna go for this being a gay allegory and not a race allegory bc as a black person,it just feels more comfy for me bc the other character has animalistic features. all in all: good metaphor. well handled
I mean I doubt it’s supposed to be a perfect 1:1 allegory for any specific group but the parallels are definitely present
I’ve been reading this on a tablet and I finally pulled it up on my computer to read the alt text, which is to say that I just reread this entire comic to read all of the alt text. Totally worth it.
is… is this a transgender metaphor?
Oh boy, I felt that, I really did. Thanks red for first teaching me that theres such a thing as ace. But now also conveying all my feelings as a migrant, ‘high functioning’ autist and as I’ve recently found out asexual.
(I honestly don’t know how to convey a half genuine half sarcastic tone through text so I’ll just leave this part here)
I can definitely relate to what Kendal’s saying here, though in a different way from some of the other commenters. I’m a white American, but I grew up in Southeast Asia (attending an American international school, but one with students from a bunch of different countries). I’ve been back in the States for a while now. But, while I may be able to pass easily for “ordinary American”… I sure don’t feel like one, even now. And even though I’m now attending grad school less than an hour from where I was born… it definitely doesn’t feel like “home”.
I can definitely see the parallels with hidden sexual or ethnic identities that others have brought up. But it also speaks to my weird, mixed-up cultural identity issues as a “third culture kid” and “hidden immigrant”, and I appreciate that!
TL;DR: Round 2: angst contest.
Bonding over not being human? i like it!
Alt text: if YOU’RE angsty, and I’M angsty, then WHO’S DRIVING THIS PLOT
Image source: misinterpreted
I’m sorry but why did this feel like a conversation between two trans people