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Well, Uaid got his Superman... moment. Only Ashley ain't gonna walk back the bitter-sweet self-sacrifice the way Brad Bird did. That first frame with Uaid's ruined hand curled protectively around Matty sure is some poo poo.
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Jan 31, 2022 13:29
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| # ? May 11, 2024 18:19 |
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Skippy McPants posted:Well, Uaid got his Superman... moment. Only Ashley ain't gonna walk back the bitter-sweet self-sacrifice the way Brad Bird did. That first frame with Uaid's ruined hand curled protectively around Matty sure is some poo poo. it was barely even a Superman moment, Uaid just gulped down the juicer because it looked tasty quigley saying “I need him” pretty much confirms his relationship with matty (and uaid to a lesser extent) is based on obligation rather than affection. he looked after those two as an excuse to go on breathing. I think he’s going to find that much more difficult with one dead “son” and another who hates his guts
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Jan 31, 2022 14:06
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Well the good news for Quigley is that he's only got like maybe five more years tops himself! I admit, I was surprised by the page today for a number of reasons.
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Jan 31, 2022 14:51
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Oxxidation posted:it was barely even a Superman moment, Uaid just gulped down the juicer because it looked tasty I. Am not. A gut.
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Jan 31, 2022 15:51
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Oh Uaid. 
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Jan 31, 2022 16:12
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Kyte posted:fwiw I don't think most people know about Quigley beyond "Quigley betrayed the state and stole a weapon in the process" and probably aren't even aware Matty exists. Isn't there a famous play based on Quigley? At least the sanitized version of his story? Even if it can't be staged back home I'm sure the key notes are known.
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Jan 31, 2022 16:28
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:Isn't there a famous play based on Quigley? At least the sanitized version of his story? Even if it can't be staged back home I'm sure the key notes are known. Yeah, it's not very accurate but it's certainly famous based upon how people bring it up to Quigs.
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Jan 31, 2022 16:42
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Kinda marathoned this i one day and one insomnbiac night. Ooh boy, what a comic. Will it ever not get worse?
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Feb 5, 2022 14:27
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going back through old strips as it turned out, matty was wrong
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Feb 12, 2022 06:13
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Going from binging a long-running webcomic tor eading updates slowly is always a tiny bit frustrating haha. This is one of these stories where I always wanna know what happens next.
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Feb 18, 2022 15:36
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I feel like Bastion would be more interesting if I had a clearer idea of what the guy actually wanted. of course he’s driven by an extreme do-no-harm philosophy, wanting to “cure” death itself a la daniil dankovsky, but his doctoring is diluted by black tongue politics, general troublemaking, and his hangups over prakhuta. his involvement in Duane’s assassination was motivated by a healthy helping of “gently caress this guy personally,” since Duane was an enthusiastic hunter of black tongues, but that grudge hasn’t come through too strongly in the story itself. when Ilganyag tells him to cure the plague, is she reminding him of one of his own close-held goals, or mocking him with a goal far more “mundane” than abolishing death? he’s just too diffuse for someone who’s ostensibly one of the protagonists. mostly comes off as yet another opportunity for Cope to draw a naked sexyman
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Feb 18, 2022 17:05
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I never saw Bastion as one of the protagonists. He's a key actor, yes, in that his actions contribute to the reader's context, but an actor he remains. He initiated the story (creating Duane, putting Sette out on the road), but beyond that he's mostly been someone who elicits important dialogue from other characters (Prakhuta, Rham, Ilganyag, Ruck) that they would otherwise have no reason to share with the audience, and certainly not with Duane or Sette. He has definition, of course - he does bad things for (what he feels are) good reasons, and then feels bad about it later, masking his struggles with glib sarcasm - but he's ultimately a tool of the narrative (as are most characters in every story). Seems to me, based off this latest page, that Lady Ilganyag (who I'd wager is the more important character) is telling him his usefulness is over. She has no need to kill him, but if he doesn't pack it up, she won't make him welcome. Bastion's previous tangent gave us a bunch of important information, after which he was prevented from rejoining the action for several chapters, all to answer the question: "If Bastion's such a bang-up wight who's invested in the success of the project, why isn't he presiding over its conclusion? If you have wizards, why not let them 'do' it?" Because he's on the run from his own people, kept unconscious by the Lady, and is now being told flat-out to back off (which he may or may not do; my money's on "May"). If anything, Cope seems to have taken a lot of steps to keep him out of the spotlight. He's mostly been a tool to facilitate exposition, and if Cope wants her talking head attached to the body of a beautiful man, well, it's her webcomic. She can draw whoever she wants. Bastion himself isn't the point, it's the knowledge he reveals, and I'm okay with that.
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Feb 19, 2022 06:04
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i think the story's expanded enough to include protagonists outside the main traveling party of Duane/Sette/Jivi/Quigley/Matty/ or to put it another way, he's a growing protagonist, in much the same way Anadyne is a growing antagonist. i'm just not all that taken with him so far
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Feb 19, 2022 14:15
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I feel like Toma was a protagonist from before we even really met the Quigleys. A secondary one, but he's always been shown to the reader acting moreheroically than, say, Daddy Quigs. Elka's the one for me personally who grew from a supporting cast role to a member of the protagonist ensemble.
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Feb 19, 2022 16:09
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eh Bastion's a supporting character, it's just he has more presence than others, which I'm sure to be part of his concept as a character who has the most comprehensive idea of the structure of this story and theoretical ability to influence it, yet inability/unwillingness to do so. Like an inverse Timofey.
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Feb 19, 2022 16:12
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Bastion certainly wants to pull off the evil necromancer act but ultimately he's just the latest favorite sucker for an inhuman entity that found a really great way to recruit a bunch of suckers that will let you implant mind control metal in them is to pretend you can give them the answers to the whole death thing. He certainly has his own ambitions here, and let's face it he absolutely will return the Black Tongue's attention on himself and get to face that knife or worse again- but he's just Sessine's personal puppet in the physical realm when it is all said and done. She's got her hooks into Duane and Sette so she doesn't need him as much but she can absolutely keep him away from directly interfering with them. Also I'm in the comic's Discord so I can also say per word of artist that Bastion's project with Duane is actually not considered terribly unique and honestly a little *pedestrian* when asked if his old human master would have viewed his project with pride. Its Prakhuta's silver monster that is a real work of art, from the perspective of your average mad scientist/mage. Which only feeds my theory that there is a lot more to the whole thing with the use of plods than what is currently known in general, for what that's worth. So Bastion is more like the guy in college more interested in getting into everyone else's pants and just cribbing off of someone else's work when it came down to crunch time. But what better way to make it obvious that he was going to cock everything up from the start?
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Feb 25, 2022 03:21
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On todays page, Ashley must have thought "hmm how can I make clowns even more horrifying?"
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Feb 25, 2022 12:16
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Tar_Squid posted:Bastion certainly wants to pull off the evil necromancer act but ultimately he's just the latest favorite sucker for an inhuman entity that found a really great way to recruit a bunch of suckers that will let you implant mind control metal in them is to pretend you can give them the answers to the whole death thing. He certainly has his own ambitions here, and let's face it he absolutely will return the Black Tongue's attention on himself and get to face that knife or worse again- but he's just Sessine's personal puppet in the physical realm when it is all said and done. She's got her hooks into Duane and Sette so she doesn't need him as much but she can absolutely keep him away from directly interfering with them. Reading this over has reminded me that I basically have 0 idea what's going on in this comic, big-picture-wise, but I still love reading it day to day. That's what makes it so good.
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Feb 25, 2022 14:26
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the extremely broad picture is that Duane and Sette are blundering through a series of tricksy plots set up by Alderode (to preserve its internal hegemony), Cresce (to destroy Alderode), and Sharteshane (to make mad bank), with those plots being manipulated by Ilganyag and Ruckmearkha for reasons of their own. then you have the deadly intrigue of Cresce’s royal court, this latest business with Mikhaila, the Black Tongues scurrying around the edges of things, et cetera. lot of story in this story it’s darkly amusing how Sette’s abusive dad is coming out as one of the more upright characters just because of the competition. all Nary wants is to make enough dosh to quit crime and his manipulations have survived everything the world’s thrown at Sette so far
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Feb 25, 2022 15:04
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Well there's always time for the big reveal of what kind of hosed up poo poo he did in order to get ahold of her as a baby.
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Feb 25, 2022 17:54
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Had to do a monster of a double-take after an oblique comment on Ash's QnA: does the 'construct' at the head of the float remind you of anybody? a leadership figure in the new Blacktongues, perhaps?
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Feb 28, 2022 07:20
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GreyjoyBastard posted:Had to do a monster of a double-take after an oblique comment on Ash's QnA: Well something has to hold that mask in position, why not tiny arms?
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Feb 28, 2022 18:16
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DrSnakeLaser posted:Well something has to hold that mask in position, why not tiny arms? I think the hilarifying part is the very full belly. it’s looking like Roger was finally spent
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Feb 28, 2022 18:25
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Its also hilarious how Paul was originally set up as kind of a whiny foil to Bastion but here he is being the most reasonable Black Tongue on the float, going 'honestly, dude, why did you HAVE to use children's arms for your candy throwing plods, its a bad look' and supposed nice dude Maur going 'well they were going to rot otherwise so.' Guessing moral integrity was never a thing that Lady Illangyag ever looked for in her not-harem. We haven't even gotten to the real meat of events today at the port and the Black Tongues are already proving to be a difficult sell to society. They'd better step up once the fun starts at the port or I can't imagine the Queen or anyone else publically supporting them anytime soon. Too bad the stupid bird lady already spoiled the ending.
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Mar 1, 2022 17:59
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oh ffs ruck isn’t even the worst thing to appear on the latest page how is this chapter still going
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Mar 2, 2022 05:50
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Welp, that city is getting nuked.
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Mar 2, 2022 15:18
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Oxxidation posted:oh ffs ruck isn’t even the worst thing to appear on the latest page I was asking myself "worse than ruck? I don't see the silver anywhere", and then I took a look at the last panel.
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Mar 3, 2022 00:40
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1) ah, there's my boy and his face-hands 2) uh oh
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Mar 3, 2022 07:32
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It sure didn't take long for the fun to arrive, did it?
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Mar 7, 2022 20:41
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bit of a coincidence that all these nefarious personages would show up in some backwater town at the same time
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Mar 7, 2022 21:30
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I don't think it's that much of backwater. It's at least big enough for Queen Sonorie to do her Tirnasday thing there.
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Mar 8, 2022 04:38
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habeasdorkus posted:I don't think it's that much of backwater. It's at least big enough for Queen Sonorie to do her Tirnasday thing there. It's a tour procession, they're hitting a bunch of towns. The townies in the shop were just talking about how it was small and out of the way enough that some parts of the procession hadn't even joined up yet.
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Mar 8, 2022 04:46
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Well, I entirely missed that!
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Mar 8, 2022 22:07
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So Lemuel was in the plot to turn Duane into a weird undead something something? I'm rereading again with that knowledge but I don't see anything that adds sense to what he did. Are there any fan hypotheses on what possible motivation he could have?
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Mar 9, 2022 00:22
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day-gas posted:So Lemuel was in the plot to turn Duane into a weird undead something something? I'm rereading again with that knowledge but I don't see anything that adds sense to what he did. Are there any fan hypotheses on what possible motivation he could have? i think the intention was for duane, newly-ordained Soud composer and pride of Alderode, to be tragically slain on the way home by despicable Crescian saboteurs, conveniently strengthening the Vits' power over the country (especially the Ssaelit faction). duane messed that up a bit when he decked bodie and scuppered his chances of composerhood, but the wheels were already in motion by then and it's not like anyone was going to talk about it. lemuel's role was to keep the guard patrols away from the assassins and make sure mikhaila was with duane that night, which would distract him from being able to deal with the assassins personally bastion joined for a chance to test his necromancy on a tacit caster (and he's none too fond of duane to start with), but i'm not sure what they needed him for in the first place - the black tongues seem a little extravagant for extra muscle. either way, the assassins hosed the plan up even further when they stabbed mikhaila, and bastion patched her up and told them to keep her out of the way while he worked on duane as for lemuel's feelings on the whole mess, i'm sure it's exactly how he justified the temple massacre: "i'm sick with it, but it's the way it is." sette's line about how he only ever does what he wanted to do anyway is probably dead-on - lem's part in the plot must be eating part of him up inside, but there's another part that took a wicked bit of pleasure in putting his arrogant, moral coward of a brother in his place
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Mar 9, 2022 00:56
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They're gonna make the kid kill their dad as an initiation, aren't they?
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Mar 10, 2022 04:52
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I rather suspect Lemuel was in on the resurrection bit - or rather, on Bastion trying to send a coherent soul poking around the khert - but wasn't properly informed about the, uh, side effects. That might more generally be a secondary motivator for the Ssaelit side or the conspiracy in general. In other words, maybe Bastion's contribution to the conspiracy was the same thing Bastion wanted to do.
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Mar 12, 2022 00:30
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Well Lem helped gather some parts for Duane's corpse and smuggled him out of the country, right? Or was that a fever dream of Duane's?
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Mar 12, 2022 01:05
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Duane, insane as his brain putrified, broke his nose and ran away. Lem had no idea what'd happened to him until encountering him at Litriya.
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Mar 12, 2022 01:20
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habeasdorkus posted:They're gonna make the kid kill their dad as an initiation, aren't they? I'm glad that I appear to have been wrong about this.
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Mar 12, 2022 19:56
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