You don’t think her husband had anything to do with the pregnancy? Was there something I wrote that suggested that Falahn didn’t do things the ole’ fashioned non-magical way?
Considering she "got pregnant almost immediately after", I totally expect she was already pregnant while doing the ritual. Doesn’t mean the husband was not involved.
If Marion and Ch’Thier are biological sisters — and nothing other than their divergent appearances suggests otherwise — then ancient elven magical-world genetics is different from our own. 😉
Then the change from elf to elf goddess to human goddess to mortal human, against a gradual background progression from a world mainly following magical laws to one following physical laws as well, may have rewritten the nature of Falahn’s very existence, multiple times.
But even after all that, Falahn’s genes must retain some vague memory that "Oh, yeah, we’re actually closely related to Marion the Muse! Here, kid, have your aunt’s hair!"
mucat, you’re now one of my most favorite readers (there is a list, mind you). Yup, there’s nothing to suggest that these ancient Elves couldn’t just spontaneously be light haired, dark haired, light skinned or dark skinned genetic science be damned. And so it turns out that one of Falahn’s twins has dark hair and one has light hair.
What kills me is that people say that Ranna looks more like her mother than Ch’Thier, when the only difference in the way I draw them is that Ranna has dark hair and Ch’Thier has light hair.
ALSO that Ranna’s hair is done up in little braids like her mother while Ch’Thier goes for pig-or-pony tails. But there’s nothing genetic about that at all.
The hair might not be the ONLY reason they think Ranna takes after Falahn so strongly.
Falahn’s facial expressions and general attitude show a powerful sense of mischief and experimentation — or, in the view of the snootier Pantheon folks, suicidal recklessness. This is not to say that Ch’Thier lacks a sense of humor, or that Falahn was a stranger to deep, careful contemplation, or (especially) that Falahn would have been anything less than appalled at the rot that eventually took hold in Ranna’s soul.
But even at the worst of her Evil Overlord days, Ranna rarely LOOKED evil (unless she was really losing control of her anger.) She looked like a clever, fun-loving tiefling adventurer who had somehow figured out how to make Enlarge spells stack in ways that the rules never intended. 😉 And in that sense, she still showed uncanny echoes of her mom.
While I agree people knocking about the flaws in my cosmology can be frustrating sometimes, it usually isn’t and besides: If they’re emotionally involved enough to even think about it, I’m honoured above many.
Two strips back, you see her with the man she loved (and married from what I gathered) and the reason she performed the ritual. So he’d be the father of the twins.
ok that explains their personalities, but what about the whole trying to destroy the world wither on purpose or accident?
if this ends up being like avatar the great divide that will be too much.
Considering she’s a goddess she absolutely could just walk away.
Hell, if this makes her stop being evil and just focus on chaos then that’s a massive improvement to the entire world which would make the death and suffering a somewhat worthy sacrifice for the greater good.
Most bullies are recognised as the ‘normal’ or ‘good People. Especially because the victims of bulliying tend to lash out verbally/violently against their surroundings.
Its a difficult subject and intentions mislead often.
Yeah, because bullies tend to do their bullying behind authorities’ back (sometimes literally), and the authorities only see the bullied reaction (by the time they turn to the bully, the bully has returned to their sweet ‘innocent’ self)
I know you’re joking, but some folks seem to be leaning that way…prematurely, I would say. Maybe the fact that Marion used the verb "bully" for Ch’Thier’s and not for Ranna’s colors that response?
But the panels show both sisters as equally stubborn, equally prone to alternately love and bully the other. Ranna destroys (er, "improves") Ch’Thier’s drawing; Ch’Thier shoves Ranna. Ranna is dismissive to Ch’Thier’s order, Ch’Thier is dismissive to Ranna’s chaos.
There’s no good guy or bad guy here — not YET; those are roles people grow into with time — but there are vital lessons that both sisters need to learn. Sadly, future history tells a darker story. (I dread the next strip: does something happen to Falahn before she can finish teaching them? Even the best parents and teachers can end up raising a sociopath anyway, but an early and jarring tragedy would make that outcome more likely.)
The girls don’t learn what they need to in THIS Age, but where there’s life, there’s hope. There’s also accountability, but that’s a matter to figure out AFTER we understand what went wrong.
Rich, once again, like you did with Lewie, you’ve told us a back story that adds a lot more depth and dimension to your characters. It also helps explain a lot of things and brings a bit of sympathy to Ranna. Though that sympathy doesn’t extend to the terrible things she’s done to people as well as to Ch’thier.
I’m looking forward to reading more about Ranna and Ch’thier’s backstory and how they changed over time. Though I have a suspicion one thing about Ranna hasn’t changed. I bet she still colors outside the lines. 😛
Why does that last panel give me a Lucy & Linus vibe? 🙂
I love your character style, Rich, you manage to make cartooning both fun and reasonably detailed, which is still a mystifing balance to me. I suppose if I spent enough time trying to develop my drawing skills I might figure it out eventually, but some artists just "have the knack". I’m glad you share your stories with us! 🙂
Gotta say, I absolutely love Falahn, and the way she dives into her new human-scale lifespan as if it were the only one she ever had or imagined. No time lost on regrets or on sterile philosophizing…just "learn voraciously, love fiercely, teach patiently, and leave the world a better place." And make terrible mistakes along the way, as we know she’s doing, but that’s no reason not to love her.
As he did so often, Terry Pratchett said it well. I’m thinking in particular of a scene in Reaper Man, as the demoted-to-mortal Death holds up his own freshly minted hourglass full of sand. Not MUCH sand — the powers that had stripped him of his old job didn’t want him hanging around long enough to cause trouble — but sand that actually BELONGS to him, rather than flowing past endlessly as he remains unchanged.
“SEE, ALBERT! I HAVE TIME. AT LAST, I HAVE TIME."
Albert backed away nervously.
‘And now that you have it, what are you going to do with it?’ he said.
Death mounted his horse.
"I AM GOING TO SPEND IT."
It is *really* interesting to watch their complementary differences develop while remembering in the back of my mind Marion’s assertion that the balance is ‘crap.’
To be fair, I don’t think Marion’s angry claim of "complete and utter crap!" was aimed at the concept of balance itself. She seems to respect Falahn’s philsophy quite a bit. She was talking about Ch’Thier’s MISUNDERSTANDING of Balance.
Ch’Thier believes in the a Balance of Good and Evil — either because her mother never had a chance to finish teaching the girls her REAL philosophy, or because they rejected or forgot it over the years.
And she saw Good and Evil as competing sides. Every creature, she argued, has the capacity to choose one side or the other, or even to change sides midstream…but it IS a choice. The Balance is on a larger scale: neither Good nor Evil ever wins a permanent victory. I’m certain she did not intend it this way — which is why Marion’s words can shock her — but Ch’Thier’s world is an endless stalemate into which mortals feed their lives, but never accomplish any lasting change.
Falahn’s balance of law and chaos, on the other hand, is a balance of deep natural forces, not of factions. Each person, to excel at art or science or love or war or wargi fancying, must strive to understand, appreciate, and embody BOTH these forces. Law and chaos also never "defeat" each other, but it’s because they’re not trying. They are Yin and Yang, complements, not rivals (the stubbornness of our adorable godlings in this strip notwithstanding.)
Good and evil, meanwhile, are just relative descriptions. You can’t defeat "Evil", because it’s not an actual thing, but you can end AN evil. Want to end the evil of slavery, permanently and definitively? It won’t be easy, but there’s no cosmic balance standing in your way, just the usual human bloody-mindedness. Bit by bit, history may later report, you SUCCEEDED, in that what was once an almost universal institution is now an aberrant anomoly which people nearly everywhere will unite to stamp down if it appears. (There are OTHER evils in the world, some of them new, but fewer of ’em than if you hadn’t acted.)
You want to advance "Good"? You can’t; it doesn’t exist. You want to advance A good, such as knowledge? Knock yourself out. Again, it won’t be easy, because science never is, but what you learn will STAY LEARNED (at least if folks like Trevor have their way, which they totally can. No cosmic balance stopping ’em, just carpal tunnel syndrome and the Squid Familiars’ Union.)
Maybe part of the reason this world has not progressed much in recent ages is that even Ch’Thier, an undeniable advocate of knowledge and enlightenment, is resigned to the idea that libraries will burn, civilizations will fall, and the Evil of ignorance will have its day, until the Balance swings once more.
THAT is what Marion rightly called complete and utter crap.
This an excellent, and you’re absolutely right in pretty much everything.
What I intended in my too-brief post was that I’m looking forward to seeing, and always have in the back of my mind, the process you describe in your paragraph, where somehow this concept gets corrupted in their mind. going from Chaos and Order to Evil and Good.
And now, the coherent version. Despite the best efforts of this interface.
This is an excellent post, and you’re absolutely right in pretty much everything.
What I intended in my too-brief post was that I’m looking forward to seeing, and always have in the back of my mind, the process you describe in your second paragraph, where somehow this concept gets corrupted in their minds. going from Chaos and Order to Evil and Good.
The switch from Law/Chaos to Good/Evil appears to have been caused by the opinions of their worshipers over time. We’ve seen how worship can "create" gods, so it’s only reasonable that it can also "change" those gods to reflect how their worshipers conceive of them.
It’s been a lot of Ages since then. Maybe as half-mortal, half-gods, the Twins literally CAN’T store memories beyond a certain duration. The mortal parts of their nature just weren’t designed for it.
So they forget, and their worshippers rewrite the things they’ve forgotten, and they end up THINKING they understand things (like Ch’Thier’s version of the Balance, and Ranna’s conviction that she’s MADE out of Evil) that are simply and catastrophically wrong.
Marion DID say that she’s had to remind them who and what they are again and again over the Ages…and their reaction was not "We know, and we’re tired of hearing it." As far as the Twins appear to remember, they’re learning all this ONCE AGAIN for the first time…
Pick up your copies of YAFGC Volumes 1 - 5 at our online store. Multi-book bundles and sketch editions available.
Kids will be kids. Divine kids will be…
Holy terrors?
t!
god awful ?
Bad pun things, both of you
Have a cookie
Ok from the look of it, Falahn used an impregnation on herself to have the twins & Ranna looked more like her mum than her sister is.
You don’t think her husband had anything to do with the pregnancy? Was there something I wrote that suggested that Falahn didn’t do things the ole’ fashioned non-magical way?
Considering she "got pregnant almost immediately after", I totally expect she was already pregnant while doing the ritual. Doesn’t mean the husband was not involved.
"Almost immediately after", from the point of view of a long-lived (or immortal) elf can still be years.
It also depends on whose story universe they inhabit.
By the way, whose genes gave Ch’Thier light hair?
If Marion and Ch’Thier are biological sisters — and nothing other than their divergent appearances suggests otherwise — then ancient elven magical-world genetics is different from our own. 😉
Then the change from elf to elf goddess to human goddess to mortal human, against a gradual background progression from a world mainly following magical laws to one following physical laws as well, may have rewritten the nature of Falahn’s very existence, multiple times.
But even after all that, Falahn’s genes must retain some vague memory that "Oh, yeah, we’re actually closely related to Marion the Muse! Here, kid, have your aunt’s hair!"
mucat, you’re now one of my most favorite readers (there is a list, mind you). Yup, there’s nothing to suggest that these ancient Elves couldn’t just spontaneously be light haired, dark haired, light skinned or dark skinned genetic science be damned. And so it turns out that one of Falahn’s twins has dark hair and one has light hair.
What kills me is that people say that Ranna looks more like her mother than Ch’Thier, when the only difference in the way I draw them is that Ranna has dark hair and Ch’Thier has light hair.
ALSO that Ranna’s hair is done up in little braids like her mother while Ch’Thier goes for pig-or-pony tails. But there’s nothing genetic about that at all.
The hair might not be the ONLY reason they think Ranna takes after Falahn so strongly.
Falahn’s facial expressions and general attitude show a powerful sense of mischief and experimentation — or, in the view of the snootier Pantheon folks, suicidal recklessness. This is not to say that Ch’Thier lacks a sense of humor, or that Falahn was a stranger to deep, careful contemplation, or (especially) that Falahn would have been anything less than appalled at the rot that eventually took hold in Ranna’s soul.
But even at the worst of her Evil Overlord days, Ranna rarely LOOKED evil (unless she was really losing control of her anger.) She looked like a clever, fun-loving tiefling adventurer who had somehow figured out how to make Enlarge spells stack in ways that the rules never intended. 😉 And in that sense, she still showed uncanny echoes of her mom.
> mucat, you’re now one of my most favorite readers
Seconded!
t!
mucat’s always been quite perceptive. Thirded. 🙂
Fourthed.
At what point do people remember it’s a cartoon and just enjoy the story? Been wanting to say this for years.
While I agree people knocking about the flaws in my cosmology can be frustrating sometimes, it usually isn’t and besides: If they’re emotionally involved enough to even think about it, I’m honoured above many.
I didn’t mean it as a "flaw", I was just curious and didn’t think things through.
I also timed this badly and Rich gave a perfect response. Let my mistakes be equal a measure as my successes.
Did you perhaps skip a strip? Two just posted on the same day for me…
(Reply to Hee in case unclear)
Two strips back, you see her with the man she loved (and married from what I gathered) and the reason she performed the ritual. So he’d be the father of the twins.
ok that explains their personalities, but what about the whole trying to destroy the world wither on purpose or accident?
if this ends up being like avatar the great divide that will be too much.
Patience, patience.
The world is just too chaotic for Ch’thier- with all those random cliffs and mountains and such..
And its too orderly for Ranna….
So- its gotta go!
Okay, all of this is fascinating and adorable.
But Ranna can’t just walk away from all the harm she either inspired or did during her most recent appearance, surely.
Weeee shalll seeeeeee
all I hear is evil chuckles in my head now & I’m giddy
Have a cookie
Considering she’s a goddess she absolutely could just walk away.
Hell, if this makes her stop being evil and just focus on chaos then that’s a massive improvement to the entire world which would make the death and suffering a somewhat worthy sacrifice for the greater good.
…
Beware, beware when tempted to use the phrase "the greater good".
Only if using it as an excuse.
Why not? Hillary did.
Ranna looked like such a happy kid 🙁
And when they met again during the battle, Ch’Thier was being her usual bullying older-sister
Dismissive. Not bullying. I think that since Ranna was trying to kill people if they didn’t follow her, that qualifies more as bullying.
Last frame looks like an angry Jerry from Tom & Jerry.
Probably the best animation EVER.
So…Ch´Thier was the "bad" one
(Joking, just joking)
And, because she was the ‘nice’ one, people tended to take her side more than Ranna’s
Have seen that far too often
Most bullies are recognised as the ‘normal’ or ‘good People. Especially because the victims of bulliying tend to lash out verbally/violently against their surroundings.
Its a difficult subject and intentions mislead often.
Yeah, because bullies tend to do their bullying behind authorities’ back (sometimes literally), and the authorities only see the bullied reaction (by the time they turn to the bully, the bully has returned to their sweet ‘innocent’ self)
I know you’re joking, but some folks seem to be leaning that way…prematurely, I would say. Maybe the fact that Marion used the verb "bully" for Ch’Thier’s and not for Ranna’s colors that response?
But the panels show both sisters as equally stubborn, equally prone to alternately love and bully the other. Ranna destroys (er, "improves") Ch’Thier’s drawing; Ch’Thier shoves Ranna. Ranna is dismissive to Ch’Thier’s order, Ch’Thier is dismissive to Ranna’s chaos.
There’s no good guy or bad guy here — not YET; those are roles people grow into with time — but there are vital lessons that both sisters need to learn. Sadly, future history tells a darker story. (I dread the next strip: does something happen to Falahn before she can finish teaching them? Even the best parents and teachers can end up raising a sociopath anyway, but an early and jarring tragedy would make that outcome more likely.)
The girls don’t learn what they need to in THIS Age, but where there’s life, there’s hope. There’s also accountability, but that’s a matter to figure out AFTER we understand what went wrong.
typo fix:
…used the word "bully" for Ch’Thier’s *actions*…
Totes adorbs
Rich, once again, like you did with Lewie, you’ve told us a back story that adds a lot more depth and dimension to your characters. It also helps explain a lot of things and brings a bit of sympathy to Ranna. Though that sympathy doesn’t extend to the terrible things she’s done to people as well as to Ch’thier.
I’m looking forward to reading more about Ranna and Ch’thier’s backstory and how they changed over time. Though I have a suspicion one thing about Ranna hasn’t changed. I bet she still colors outside the lines. 😛
lines, shmines! if it makes you happy, do it!
have a cookie
Cookie! *nomnomnomnom*
Any chance these two are also the White and Black Guardians of Time? Or will become them? We already know they exist in the same multiverse. 🙂
On twin detail obsessive, the other, ADHD…
Why does that last panel give me a Lucy & Linus vibe? 🙂
I love your character style, Rich, you manage to make cartooning both fun and reasonably detailed, which is still a mystifing balance to me. I suppose if I spent enough time trying to develop my drawing skills I might figure it out eventually, but some artists just "have the knack". I’m glad you share your stories with us! 🙂
Gotta say, I absolutely love Falahn, and the way she dives into her new human-scale lifespan as if it were the only one she ever had or imagined. No time lost on regrets or on sterile philosophizing…just "learn voraciously, love fiercely, teach patiently, and leave the world a better place." And make terrible mistakes along the way, as we know she’s doing, but that’s no reason not to love her.
As he did so often, Terry Pratchett said it well. I’m thinking in particular of a scene in Reaper Man, as the demoted-to-mortal Death holds up his own freshly minted hourglass full of sand. Not MUCH sand — the powers that had stripped him of his old job didn’t want him hanging around long enough to cause trouble — but sand that actually BELONGS to him, rather than flowing past endlessly as he remains unchanged.
“SEE, ALBERT! I HAVE TIME. AT LAST, I HAVE TIME."
Albert backed away nervously.
‘And now that you have it, what are you going to do with it?’ he said.
Death mounted his horse.
"I AM GOING TO SPEND IT."
It is *really* interesting to watch their complementary differences develop while remembering in the back of my mind Marion’s assertion that the balance is ‘crap.’
t!
To be fair, I don’t think Marion’s angry claim of "complete and utter crap!" was aimed at the concept of balance itself. She seems to respect Falahn’s philsophy quite a bit. She was talking about Ch’Thier’s MISUNDERSTANDING of Balance.
Ch’Thier believes in the a Balance of Good and Evil — either because her mother never had a chance to finish teaching the girls her REAL philosophy, or because they rejected or forgot it over the years.
And she saw Good and Evil as competing sides. Every creature, she argued, has the capacity to choose one side or the other, or even to change sides midstream…but it IS a choice. The Balance is on a larger scale: neither Good nor Evil ever wins a permanent victory. I’m certain she did not intend it this way — which is why Marion’s words can shock her — but Ch’Thier’s world is an endless stalemate into which mortals feed their lives, but never accomplish any lasting change.
Falahn’s balance of law and chaos, on the other hand, is a balance of deep natural forces, not of factions. Each person, to excel at art or science or love or war or wargi fancying, must strive to understand, appreciate, and embody BOTH these forces. Law and chaos also never "defeat" each other, but it’s because they’re not trying. They are Yin and Yang, complements, not rivals (the stubbornness of our adorable godlings in this strip notwithstanding.)
Good and evil, meanwhile, are just relative descriptions. You can’t defeat "Evil", because it’s not an actual thing, but you can end AN evil. Want to end the evil of slavery, permanently and definitively? It won’t be easy, but there’s no cosmic balance standing in your way, just the usual human bloody-mindedness. Bit by bit, history may later report, you SUCCEEDED, in that what was once an almost universal institution is now an aberrant anomoly which people nearly everywhere will unite to stamp down if it appears. (There are OTHER evils in the world, some of them new, but fewer of ’em than if you hadn’t acted.)
You want to advance "Good"? You can’t; it doesn’t exist. You want to advance A good, such as knowledge? Knock yourself out. Again, it won’t be easy, because science never is, but what you learn will STAY LEARNED (at least if folks like Trevor have their way, which they totally can. No cosmic balance stopping ’em, just carpal tunnel syndrome and the Squid Familiars’ Union.)
Maybe part of the reason this world has not progressed much in recent ages is that even Ch’Thier, an undeniable advocate of knowledge and enlightenment, is resigned to the idea that libraries will burn, civilizations will fall, and the Evil of ignorance will have its day, until the Balance swings once more.
THAT is what Marion rightly called complete and utter crap.
This an excellent, and you’re absolutely right in pretty much everything.
What I intended in my too-brief post was that I’m looking forward to seeing, and always have in the back of my mind, the process you describe in your paragraph, where somehow this concept gets corrupted in their mind. going from Chaos and Order to Evil and Good.
t!
And now, the coherent version. Despite the best efforts of this interface.
This is an excellent post, and you’re absolutely right in pretty much everything.
What I intended in my too-brief post was that I’m looking forward to seeing, and always have in the back of my mind, the process you describe in your second paragraph, where somehow this concept gets corrupted in their minds. going from Chaos and Order to Evil and Good.
t!
The switch from Law/Chaos to Good/Evil appears to have been caused by the opinions of their worshipers over time. We’ve seen how worship can "create" gods, so it’s only reasonable that it can also "change" those gods to reflect how their worshipers conceive of them.
This… Is me and my sister…. That’s kind of funny.
And I can even tell you now that my sister is a engineer while I am a perfoming musician so erhm yeah… I’m Ranna in this equation <_<
But yeah, when she was a kid she would be so damn methodical with all her puzzles and stuff, it makes sense she became an engineer honestly.
And I would do all those artsy things driving people nuts… heh.
Ranna, the goddess of ADHD!
Lookit those cute little baby godlings!
I wonder why they don’t remember Aunt Marion? Sounds like they spent a lot of time together back in the day.
It’s been a lot of Ages since then. Maybe as half-mortal, half-gods, the Twins literally CAN’T store memories beyond a certain duration. The mortal parts of their nature just weren’t designed for it.
So they forget, and their worshippers rewrite the things they’ve forgotten, and they end up THINKING they understand things (like Ch’Thier’s version of the Balance, and Ranna’s conviction that she’s MADE out of Evil) that are simply and catastrophically wrong.
Marion DID say that she’s had to remind them who and what they are again and again over the Ages…and their reaction was not "We know, and we’re tired of hearing it." As far as the Twins appear to remember, they’re learning all this ONCE AGAIN for the first time…
Marion clearly remembers all of this though. So "it's just been too long" doesn't work as an explanation.