3388 Mourning
on September 28, 2020
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I officially have a YAFGC patreon!
https://www.patreon.com/YAFGCRich
Okay. Yes.
Don’t DO that to me!
t!
Of course, as others were saying in the last strip, it’s a testament to the quality of Rich’s writing on this comic that Chimera *might* have been dead.
t!
He was in a pretty bad spot when last seen, with a goddess-dragon chewing on one of his necks!
I think *I* would be wanting a nap after that, too!
t!
No garenter that all of chimeria is okay, dragon was the one who got bite.
True. It’s an interesting question: Can Chimera survive with a dead head, like Virgil Earp?
t!
Ditto! I mnot sure i can take much more of that kind of thing!
He’s sleeping, not dead.
I think he’s getting better!
No, he’ll be stone dead in a moment.
That was a hilarious update. My thanks!
Once again, the Beholder King with the brilliant fake-out.
The synthesis of the writing, and the mastery of facial expressions–Gren in panel 2–is what makes it work.
Also, thanks for the bit of humour in the midst of what will still be plenty dark, despite the victory.
Don’t forget Gren’s feet in panel four 😛
*SNORT* …. tumble.
Gren will be needing a bath after that.
…. as if she didn’t already.
Thought it more she fell back from relief (or shock that the ‘dead’ Chimera wasn’t), getting *SNORT*ed on by Lionra sounds better 😀
I was thinking it was lion halitosis that knocked her off her feet, but yeah, a blast of chimera snot to the face would pack a hell of a punch too!
Yeah, the halitosis was what I was thinking of as well, didn’t think of snot
Hm. 2 heads waking up. The third remains limp…..
In so many ways.
t!
…. hmmm … Chimera was hot candidate on "can’t be alive without magic". If he’s ok, I don’t think the magic shortage itself killed anyone. There are still the ghosts which might disappear, though. And of course, considering there was a battle, there could be plenty of characters killed by something else.
I suspect that there are different types of "magic", from the raw energies that mages would tap into, to the deeper nose-thumbing at rules of physics as we know them. Thus Beholders are not so strictly bound to our understanding of buoyancy, and creatures like ol’ Chimera here can live, breathe, and fly because size issues aren’t as unforgiving as they are in our "real" world.
My theory is that this world runs more on cinematic physics, or Narrativum as Terry Pratchett called it: where things happen because of expectations or the Rule of Cool, where reality is shaped by perception more than the other way around.
…phew.
Well, Chimera survived going mano a mano in combat against a deity… something to brag about, like, forever…
However long *that* will be…
Yay Chimera!
Can’t kill off Chimera until he meets Lady Chimera first
We really need that to happen.
I think I’m going to need a new manicure from the way BK has me biting my nails waiting…
Oh you know your beloved CPT Fang lived.
Someone has to become the new deity of chaos.
I’m 99% certain Fang is alive.**
But I worry about other beloved characters, as well.
IF Rich decided to kill my Boo, I would be disappointed but understanding, because, as a writer, I know you have to move the story along sometimes, despite what the fans want.
That being said, IF Rich were to actually do so, his supply of cookies & brownies would be cut off indefinitely as I would go into extreme mourning and sit Shiva for thrice as long.
**the 1% is what I refer to as the "George RR Martin margin"
I strongly suspect that, if Captain Fang ever did die, he’d fail to notice and completely no-sell it. Images of the Reaper, exasperated, pulling a Pythonesque "You’re not fooling anyone, you know….get on the cart, come on now" and our good Captain bellowing "Sugarpie, Honeybunch" at full volume while continuing to run amok, respirate, pump blood, affect the material world, et cetera fill my mind, and they are beautiful images indeed.
You know…I’m not entirely sure Captain Fang *can* be killed. Even by Rich. Yes, Daffy, it’s possible, in strange enough aeons, for the *duck* to emerge triumphant from a "Duck Amuck" situation!
*Hands you your favorite pie*
Best Proposed Fang Death Scene EVER
For some reason I got very heavy lion witch and wardrobe vibes from this strip.
¡PLOP!
This strip could be called: Good Mourning
Rich is letting out his in RR Martin.
I have not read any of George RR Martin’s books. Nor have I seen a single episode of the series. But his name is evoked whenever my comic deals with death in any significant way, and I do believe I know to what it refers.
The fact that GRR Martin killed off many of his perceived main characters through the course of the Game of Thrones series.
I would like to point out a couple of things here.
1: George RR Martin did not invent death.
2: George RR Martin did not even invent the death of characters.
3: George RR Martin did not even invent multiple character deaths in a series.
and finally:
4: CHIMERA SURVIVED! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT????
I also note that GRRM is generally observed to be quite callous, indifferent, and cavalier with death in his works, some would say even to the point of cruelty.
You treat death much more respectfully, and audience attachments to characters tremendously respectfully. You aren’t bound by them, of course…but I couldn’t imagine accusing you of mocking your audiences for caring, of which some have accused GRRM.
I just can’t see any similarity between the two of you, with regard to your treatment of death in your work…and as I’m emphatically not a GRRM fan, myself, I assure you this is not a negative observation, at all.
I would be more pithy, that GRRM likes to write tragedy, where the villains win and the protagonists either suffer terrible fates, or live long enough to become villains themselves.
That isn’t quite correct and is overly simplistic. Martin has fooled everyone into thinking that side characters are main characters because they have massive amounts of the book written from their perspective. But the fact remains if you took a step back and looked at only the plot, not the character work, it is obvious who is and isn’t a main character. His work is only considered much darker than other works because he shows the nitty gritty of fantasy worlds you usually only see from the perspective of the hero of the story exclusively. Imagine if the original star wars movie was a few seasons of television that show you a storyline involving Biggs, or Greedo. Their deaths would seem shocking- almost cruel. But you didn’t get that, you only saw Luke and Han’s perspective for most of the movie.
Besides, Martin’s reputation for killing characters only really became a meme after the TV show’s red wedding, which was handled much differently in the television series than in the books- to maximize your attachment to the characters that were doomed to die after they served their purpose to a larger narrative.
Relax, Rich. I think what stands out about GRRM is that he uses death to subvert expectations. His approach is basically making you care most about those that are doomed, without letting you know beforehand that they are doomed.
In a way, it is a valid literary approach, a way of telling the audience that when nasty things happen, the victims had names and people who cared about them, and making damn sure we are the ones who care. But it can get tiresome after a while.
Your storytelling is more satisfying in the end, when the "good guys" eventually win, but at a price. Where the world moves on, changes with time. And sure, everything must end, even Lady Marion must die one day, but it doesn’t have to be today.
Just remember what G.K. Chesterton said: the point of tales about dragons isn’t that there are dragons, but that dragons can be defeated.
A Game Of Thrones was published August 1, 1996, and apologies if you were there and thus know this already, but it was *absolutely necessary.* There were only two kinds of Fantasy novels back then:
1. The same damn thing over and over.
2. Identical parodies of that same damn thing over and over.
(and Glen Cook, but he was one drop in an ocean)
To address Rancourt’s comments about the perception that Martin is "callous, indifferent, and cavalier with death," those accusers have failed to recognise that his approach was to *honour* death, or more accurately chracter writing and thus *real people* themselves, by acknowledging that death and life are not beholden to human desires for justice, that sometimes people have horrible deaths even after living arduous lives, that, for example, noble people do not always survive by virtue of their honour alone, and that sons do not always survive to avenge their fathers. He didn’t do it out of cruelty; he did it out of perceived necessity, and, yes, *love* of the genre. That was 24 years ago, and the landscape has changed. It’s become more varied, less exhaustingly banal – and he’s a big part of the reason why.
And Rich, if I may presume, I’d like to add to your list:
5. George RR Martin spent TWENTY-FIVE YEARS writing numerous novels, novellas, and short stories, to significant acclaim, before writing that *one* thing Internet People know and talk about. Sheesh.
t!
Ah, the old story of the "overnight success"–twenty-five years later. 😀
In total agreement with you, t!
"Sandkings" blew my mind when I read it–won the Hugo, Locus *and* Nebula awards with that one.
Then there’s *Fevre Dream*, etc.
I admit, my issues with his treatment of death go back to Wild Cards, but I completely acknowledge them to be personal and perspectivally bound. The fact that you’re arguing in Martin’s defense is a credit to the author, in my eyes especially, and I did not mean to bash the guy here, only to speak to some of the perceptions of him that may have (mis)informed the comments.
Set your mind at ease, my friend.
> I did not mean to bash the guy here,
Of course not. And you didn’t, not even close.
> only to speak to some of the perceptions of him that may have (mis)informed the comments.
That was 100% clear.
t!
PS – thanks.
t!
@Rich
LOL!
I wasn’t complaining, and I was more referring to the readers here reacting than anything you actually did.
As to Martin’s reputation, while you are quite correct in what you say, the truth is that permanently killing primary characters in a developing story is rare. At the end, sometimes, but over the course of it, not so much. That you were willing to kill a beloved character like Arachne – and then *not* magically bring her back at the end (another common trope) – is quite rare in my experience.
I think the mainstream Marvel/ DC comics have made us particularly sensitive to this as they NEVER kill a character off. Any ‘dead’ character will always come back, one way or another.
But the truth is, that it makes for a far better and realistic story if even important characters don’t have ‘plot armour’. A story about a single primary character – James Bond as an example – you know the main character isn’t going to die, at least not before the end, but not so much the secondary characters. And in an ensemble story you can give the impression that anyone can die, although in fact a few may actually have that plot armour, but it is invisible to the audience, with other characters dying you are never sure who has it.
Fun fact, Flemming tried to kill off Bond at the end of at least two of the books, but for one reason or another he ended up bringing him back.
Doyle tried to do the same thing with Holmes, but public outcry prevented him from keeping Holmes dead. He had wanted to kill off the character for a while, and had started demanding higher and higher fees for stories, but they would be paid and another story would be written.
Also to add to what others have said, being listed with Martin is not an insult. Death happens, and it is often cruel, but most of the time the characters that die are ‘mooks’, nameless nobodies that nobody appears to mourn. But in reality, somebody mourns almost everyone, because everyone is known to someone.
In a story that is accomplished by letting us come to know that character, to connect to it, so that if they die there is an emotional response as opposed to ‘mook 37 is dead, they are running out of cannon fodder’.
Admittedly many of the rich and powerful have often been accused of that callousness, utter indifference to the lives of soldiers, or even civilians, as long as they get what they want they don’t care who the dead are. But writing a story that way is not actually good writing.
And in reality, good people can die badly, and – sadly – bad people don’t always die the way they deserve (in a series I am reading, two VERY evil characters died far too easily for my tastes, I wanted them to know it was coming, that all their cruelty only resulted in them dying badly). That is life, the virtuous are not guaranteed to ‘live happily ever after’, and the evil and not guaranteed to get what is coming to them (some may argue they rarely do – everyone dies, but I think few like to think about the true monsters dying peacefully in their beds at a ripe old age).
I have seen no evidence that Karma is a true thing, as much as I wish it was. So even though it may irk me and other readers at times, it is better writing to have death be unfair than otherwise. Because it often is.
My biggest beef with GRRM is the fact that his villians have much more enjoyable lives than anyone else, as if the author is trying to enourage every one of his readers to be as Evil as they can be. A true sociopath on a recruiting drive, that’s how he always came off to me.
And being a GRRM fan is a lot like dating a Serial Killer and then having the nerve to be shocked that you were his last victim.
Not just talking about the hot mess that Season 8 of the series was, at least they got an ending. There will never be a last book in the series unless someone else writes it.
I also think that it is assinine that Fantasy writers try to be "realistic" in a patently unreal setting.
That isn’t what I am looking for anyway. Evil is constatly victorious in this world, I am trying to get AWAY from that crap when I I buy a book or go to a movie.
Used to, anyway, I am finding Fan-Fic far mroe rewarding than anything main-stream now.
So, yeah, the hell with GRRM and his genocidal approach to everything. Even sex is miserable in his world; its either rape of prostitution… what a sad, dark life he must have had.
Anyone can destroy stuff, especially when all he ‘created; was a super-sized version of old England during the War of the Roses.
I would like to thank Eric, Rancourt, and Richard for their well-thought out, and well-expressed, adult discourse.
t!
*inner
At the best of times, a battlefield is not going to have much consideration for your mental equilibrium …
Since Drowcup wasn’t present when Dewcup killed her, I assume no one knows that Charlotte is also dead.
*Is* Charlotte dead? Dewcup choked out her possessed form much like Drowcup did to Queen Liz’s…and Liz recovered fine. Charlotte had been possessed for a much longer time, of course, and there might have been nothing left of her own mind by then, but I don’t think we know for sure.
Resurrect Arachne! The Dark Elf Spy must LIVE!!!
…
I’m kinda fond of her and really miss her…