Each time I log in THIS…happens. I love the berserker class.
…
We probably should not do that. Actually, this is pretty deep. ‘what-can-change-the-nature-of-man’-deep.
Sorry, you’re barking up the wrong tree if you haven’t twigged to the fact that we’re not going to stop until we’ve taken this pun chain to the end of every root and branch.
Me neither. Besides, “first” is not even a real comment. It has anything to do with the comic and contributes nothing to any ongoing discussions either.
He makes a good point. It’s his fault that the curse even exists in the first place. The smart thing to do would be to lock him up indefinitely (or, in this case, keep him dead) until a cure is found. It’s not like quarantining someone with an infectious disease isn’t a thing that happens all the time.
I mean, Gravedust has basically proven that death doesn’t mean jack to him, he can pull people back whenever. Shame he doesn’t do that for, y’know, the rest of the guild and not just Syr’nj’s favorite snugglebunny.
Is there an actual good reason to bring Byron back? He’s probably used up all of his good feelings with the adventurers, what with being the source of the berserker plague (The dude advertised himself as Byron the Berserker and I doubt that Bandit was quiet. It can’t be much of a secret, or a stretch, for the surviving Guildies.) and being the ONLY ONE to come back to life (again!) would fritter away even more of that. He’s basically useless as a figurehead, and there are better fighters than him in the world. If Syr’nj and Gravedust would be honest and admit that they want him back for purely selfish reasons, that’s one thing, but right now they just seem like jerks and idiots for focusing solely on the guy who’s important to them and ignoring the fact that he’s still just a stabbing away from turning into an infectious bloodthirsty ragebeast.
Not that they necessarily know this, but he’s also one of The Five, which supposedly have the power to influence the world around them, to the point of defying the powers of Mr. Evil Godpants. Good or bad, Byron has power in that world that’s beyond most of it’s other “residents”, such as Bandit herself. Just like Frig, Gravedust, and Syr’nj. (and MAYBE Wav? Too soon to tell)
There isn’t a good reason for bringing him back that isn’t metagaming, and Gravedust has no way of KNOWING this, but having more of the Five united together is probably a good thing if they oppose the new demigod in the neighborhood. Which is more or less inevitable as he’s already told Syr’nj that he wants them dead.
The problem is he’s drawing his conclusions from bad information. He thinks the curse has died with him, when it obviously hasn’t. It’s still in the world of the living, and now that he’s in the world of the dead, it seems to be blocking off the flow of spirits into the final afterlife, and it’s possible that not even HR knows what the cosmic ramifications of THAT could be. Returning Byron to the world of the living, however out of control he might be, could actually be a less dangerous option than having him being in the world of the dead… and therefore a giant rage-demon there as well.
The berserker curse in the world of the living is a relatively known quantity. In the world of the dead it could be much, much worse.
Of course, this line of thinking assumes that resurrecting Byron wouldn’t just leave the rage-demon in place anyway.
Yeah, this is where I am, too – Having the curse die with him might be grand, but that isn’t what’s happening. Hopefully Gravy is going to point this out with some tact…
Very nice analysis! It’s difficult to tell what will happen, one way or another, where Byron is concerned, because no one has ever dealt with a situation like this before, not even HR. I’d certainly LIKE to believe that removing Byron from the afterlife would pull the giant rage demon with him, but there are too many unknown variables in this equation right now.
What I’d like to know: What game developer codes a an afterlife for “dead” characters to inhabit? This simple observation puts me much more heavily in favor of Akerra being a “real” world (so much as anything appears to be in this epic storyline) than one that was programmed on a computer. Granted, we don’t know much of anything about this magic stuff that HR has been using, or how extensive it’s impact is on “the game”, but it seems more likely to me that “Kingdoms of Akerra” is merely a bridge to, rather than the source of, Akerra.
It’ll be fun finding out what the answer is, even if I’m completely wrong. Who knows, maybe “Sepia World” is the creation of the Winter Elves? :D
Guild Wars did. Well, technically, it was possible for living characters to visit the afterlife (and there was one encounter where you could potentially fight as a ghost there), but it’s a similar principle. In this case, HR might have had to make an afterlife zone in support of Gravy’s player’s desire to play a unique class.
More generally, most games, if they don’t allow the possibility of travelling to the afterlife in one way or another, still have lore that says what happens to the dead (or, at least, what the living believes happens to the dead). If my theory as to the nature of the relationship between Arkerra and SepiaWorld is correct, then all it would take for that afterlife to exist would be for the players to know that lore.
Uh, sorry to tell you this, but you aren’t the only guy possessed by a murder ghost, and I think most of the other axe wielders are either dead or locked up after the last massacre.
Sorry, is this one of those emotional scenes? You can never succeed in logicing those things.
Kind of hard to argue against Byron, when we know that if he returned, it would be only a matter of time before the Cultists grabbed him up for another round of “Who Wants To Be A Beserker?”
There’s a really cool parallel here to Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree + “I accept the challenge”. Minor spoilers for the plots of each story (they’re each like 10 page comics).
~First, for some context, the plot of “The Giving Tree” (according to Wikipedia):
The book follows the life of a female apple tree and a boy who are able to communicate with each other; the tree addresses the human as “Boy” his entire life. In his childhood, the boy enjoys playing with the tree, climbing her trunk, swinging from her branches, and eating her apples. However, as time passes he starts to make requests of the tree.
After entering adolescence, the boy wants money, and the tree suggests that he pick and sell her apples, which he does. After reaching adulthood, the boy wants a house, and the tree suggests he cut her branches to build a house. After reaching middle age, the boy wants a boat, and the tree allows him to cut her trunk to make a boat, leaving only a stump. Each such stage of giving by the tree ends with the sentence “And the tree was happy”
In the final pages, the boy (now an old man) meets the tree once more. The tree sadly states she has nothing left to give, as her apples, branches, and trunk are gone and only a stump remains. But the boy wants only “a quiet place to sit and rest,” which the stump can provide. This final stage of giving, and the entire story, end with the sentence “And the tree was happy.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Tree#Plot_summary) [Retrieved Apr 11, 2016.]
~And here’s the juicy part – the plot of “I accept the challenge”, recounted by this scholarly article.
“Relationships also figure prominently in The Giving Tree , his second book for children, as well as in The Giving Tree ’s adult analogue, a four-page cartoon called “I Accept the Challenge.” Col- lected in his 1979 book Different Dances, the cartoon begins with a nude woman sitting on a trunk on which the words “Real man wanted” are written. A rather confident (and nude) gentleman approaches the woman and kicks away the trunk, wordlessly offering himself to her. She thereupon whips out a pair of scissors and begins gleefully to cut away the man’s appendages until nothing remains but his torso. The cartoon ends as it began, with the woman sitting on a trunk (now recognizable as the man’s torso) on which we see, “Real man wanted.” This illustration is unmistakably similar to the final image in The Giving Tree of an old man sitting on a stump, facing away from us.” [Thomas Jr., Joseph T. (May–June 2005). “Reappraising Uncle Shelby” (PDF). Horn Book Magazine 81 (3): page291. Retrieved Apr 11, 2016.]
I just don’t see the parallel you are trying to point out. And The Giving Tree was one of the worst “children’s” books ever written. It tells us that it’s ok to be codependent and let another person literally destroy our life because that’s all we know and we get “happiness” from someone else’s temporary “happiness” The boy was a user and didn’t care about the tree or what was best for it. I read that book and it made my skin crawl for a week
I don’t quite either, to be honest. Sorry.
I just figured “trees being compared to bodies, related to being a good man”. I guess one could call that similar imagery being the parallel; not necessarily a similar message.
And yeah, I agree. I don’t like the message. A healer and a giver needs boundaries and self-care and callousness in order to actually do good. If you do nothing but give, you will have nothing left, and then you can’t give anymore.
Someone wrote a response book called “The Other Giving Tree” that just gives apples. It ends with the “Other Tree” being happier, and its “child” being a more mature and respectful person for it.
The purpose of the Giving Tree isn’t to be happy, give apples or produce a feel good ending, there’s plenty of that Disney type shit floating around. It’s also not about “transferring resources”.
The Giving Tree teaches you the price and sacrifice of unconditional love, like that given by a parent. It teaches that cruelty doesn’t always stem from hate or obviously villainy. It makes you reflect on your own behavior and how you treat others and it teaches you not to be a dick because life sucks enough as it is. It’s not just a lesson for kids but for all ages.
His achievements seem to be filtered through his shame. Does he believe this to be ALL he has ever achieved?
… Who knows?
In other news, I got banned from commenting on YET another webcomic.
How many is that now?
Shortpacked, Sister Claire, Supernormal Step… and now Namesake as well. No idea why. The first was localised, but the others have all been Discus-based, as far as I’m aware. Maybe there is a pattern there. I mean a pattern besides the SJW-tendencies of the last three.
Phil. I really hope you might at some point understand that what SJWs represent is not human decency and it never will be. It is hypocrisy. They represent everything they claim to oppose, merely by reversing the context. When they say “equality”, they only ever mean a reversal of the existing paradigm.
They are not nice people, Phil.
They’re sick in the head… and they need curing.
It’s almost as if he’s keeping a log of all the innocents he’s killed.
You son of a bitch.
Son of a Birch?
You’re barking up the wrongnmnooo, must resistarghgrmblrrrghh
Absolutely magnificent.
That comment, with that avatar in this context only makes it more appropiate.
“I say, what a splendid massacre.”
No, it simply does not work with MY avatar.
This is even better than the captain’s log and I’ve enjoyed quite a few of those.
Each time I log in THIS…happens. I love the berserker class.
…
We probably should not do that. Actually, this is pretty deep. ‘what-can-change-the-nature-of-man’-deep.
Woo hoo! Pun-ked!
And actually it seems as if he’s keeping those innocents as logs.
Trees, torsos … Either way he’s chopping trunks.
Wood you please stop?
Sorry, you’re barking up the wrong tree if you haven’t twigged to the fact that we’re not going to stop until we’ve taken this pun chain to the end of every root and branch.
It’s like he is some kind of Axe Murderer or something.
That’s so saxeist. Just because one murders people with an axe doesn’t mean…
…he is not allowed to use swords, halberts or rubber chickens.
I mean halibuts.
Halberds? Stupid translator.
He’s free to kill people with halibuts, too.
Man, is it really too much to ask people to leaf off? Am I that much of a sap?
Yes, if you continue this folly agenda.
Byron was always a cut above the rest in record-keeping.
I think he’s kind of sappy, myself.
His logjam is turning into a blood pudding.
First!
DAMN IT
I will never understand why people even care about that.
Funny thing is, I can picture Frigg saying both of these things
Me neither. Besides, “first” is not even a real comment. It has anything to do with the comic and contributes nothing to any ongoing discussions either.
You DON’T?!!1!! This is the INTERNET! These things are tremendously important! Ho can you not know this?
…
Effortlessly, it seems.
Good for you :-)
This made me actually lol anyway.
He makes a good point. It’s his fault that the curse even exists in the first place. The smart thing to do would be to lock him up indefinitely (or, in this case, keep him dead) until a cure is found. It’s not like quarantining someone with an infectious disease isn’t a thing that happens all the time.
I mean, Gravedust has basically proven that death doesn’t mean jack to him, he can pull people back whenever. Shame he doesn’t do that for, y’know, the rest of the guild and not just Syr’nj’s favorite snugglebunny.
Is there an actual good reason to bring Byron back? He’s probably used up all of his good feelings with the adventurers, what with being the source of the berserker plague (The dude advertised himself as Byron the Berserker and I doubt that Bandit was quiet. It can’t be much of a secret, or a stretch, for the surviving Guildies.) and being the ONLY ONE to come back to life (again!) would fritter away even more of that. He’s basically useless as a figurehead, and there are better fighters than him in the world. If Syr’nj and Gravedust would be honest and admit that they want him back for purely selfish reasons, that’s one thing, but right now they just seem like jerks and idiots for focusing solely on the guy who’s important to them and ignoring the fact that he’s still just a stabbing away from turning into an infectious bloodthirsty ragebeast.
Not that they necessarily know this, but he’s also one of The Five, which supposedly have the power to influence the world around them, to the point of defying the powers of Mr. Evil Godpants. Good or bad, Byron has power in that world that’s beyond most of it’s other “residents”, such as Bandit herself. Just like Frig, Gravedust, and Syr’nj. (and MAYBE Wav? Too soon to tell)
There isn’t a good reason for bringing him back that isn’t metagaming, and Gravedust has no way of KNOWING this, but having more of the Five united together is probably a good thing if they oppose the new demigod in the neighborhood. Which is more or less inevitable as he’s already told Syr’nj that he wants them dead.
says bandit :)
The problem is he’s drawing his conclusions from bad information. He thinks the curse has died with him, when it obviously hasn’t. It’s still in the world of the living, and now that he’s in the world of the dead, it seems to be blocking off the flow of spirits into the final afterlife, and it’s possible that not even HR knows what the cosmic ramifications of THAT could be. Returning Byron to the world of the living, however out of control he might be, could actually be a less dangerous option than having him being in the world of the dead… and therefore a giant rage-demon there as well.
The berserker curse in the world of the living is a relatively known quantity. In the world of the dead it could be much, much worse.
Of course, this line of thinking assumes that resurrecting Byron wouldn’t just leave the rage-demon in place anyway.
Yeah, this is where I am, too – Having the curse die with him might be grand, but that isn’t what’s happening. Hopefully Gravy is going to point this out with some tact…
Very nice analysis! It’s difficult to tell what will happen, one way or another, where Byron is concerned, because no one has ever dealt with a situation like this before, not even HR. I’d certainly LIKE to believe that removing Byron from the afterlife would pull the giant rage demon with him, but there are too many unknown variables in this equation right now.
What I’d like to know: What game developer codes a an afterlife for “dead” characters to inhabit? This simple observation puts me much more heavily in favor of Akerra being a “real” world (so much as anything appears to be in this epic storyline) than one that was programmed on a computer. Granted, we don’t know much of anything about this magic stuff that HR has been using, or how extensive it’s impact is on “the game”, but it seems more likely to me that “Kingdoms of Akerra” is merely a bridge to, rather than the source of, Akerra.
It’ll be fun finding out what the answer is, even if I’m completely wrong. Who knows, maybe “Sepia World” is the creation of the Winter Elves? :D
Guild Wars did. Well, technically, it was possible for living characters to visit the afterlife (and there was one encounter where you could potentially fight as a ghost there), but it’s a similar principle. In this case, HR might have had to make an afterlife zone in support of Gravy’s player’s desire to play a unique class.
More generally, most games, if they don’t allow the possibility of travelling to the afterlife in one way or another, still have lore that says what happens to the dead (or, at least, what the living believes happens to the dead). If my theory as to the nature of the relationship between Arkerra and SepiaWorld is correct, then all it would take for that afterlife to exist would be for the players to know that lore.
Ok Gravy, I know we should’ve done this much sooner but it’s time you took the test.
How many walkers have you killed? How many humans have you killed? Come now, be honest.
And finally, why?
Byron is spilling his guts… no, sorry. Those belong to someone else
Uh, sorry to tell you this, but you aren’t the only guy possessed by a murder ghost, and I think most of the other axe wielders are either dead or locked up after the last massacre.
Sorry, is this one of those emotional scenes? You can never succeed in logicing those things.
That’s blood, not log icing.
With the right things at stake, blood can be log icing.
A pieceable kingdom.
Those guys in panel three are looking a little stumped.
I think the art and the design idea of this comic is amazing.
The wood he’s been seen to have been chopping in his peaceful repose is subconsciously guilt over all the lives he’s taken.
Breathtaking, honestly.
Looks like Byron’s stumped Gravy.
Kind of hard to argue against Byron, when we know that if he returned, it would be only a matter of time before the Cultists grabbed him up for another round of “Who Wants To Be A Beserker?”
There’s a really cool parallel here to Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree + “I accept the challenge”. Minor spoilers for the plots of each story (they’re each like 10 page comics).
~First, for some context, the plot of “The Giving Tree” (according to Wikipedia):
The book follows the life of a female apple tree and a boy who are able to communicate with each other; the tree addresses the human as “Boy” his entire life. In his childhood, the boy enjoys playing with the tree, climbing her trunk, swinging from her branches, and eating her apples. However, as time passes he starts to make requests of the tree.
After entering adolescence, the boy wants money, and the tree suggests that he pick and sell her apples, which he does. After reaching adulthood, the boy wants a house, and the tree suggests he cut her branches to build a house. After reaching middle age, the boy wants a boat, and the tree allows him to cut her trunk to make a boat, leaving only a stump. Each such stage of giving by the tree ends with the sentence “And the tree was happy”
In the final pages, the boy (now an old man) meets the tree once more. The tree sadly states she has nothing left to give, as her apples, branches, and trunk are gone and only a stump remains. But the boy wants only “a quiet place to sit and rest,” which the stump can provide. This final stage of giving, and the entire story, end with the sentence “And the tree was happy.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Tree#Plot_summary) [Retrieved Apr 11, 2016.]
~And here’s the juicy part – the plot of “I accept the challenge”, recounted by this scholarly article.
“Relationships also figure prominently in The Giving Tree , his second book for children, as well as in The Giving Tree ’s adult analogue, a four-page cartoon called “I Accept the Challenge.” Col- lected in his 1979 book Different Dances, the cartoon begins with a nude woman sitting on a trunk on which the words “Real man wanted” are written. A rather confident (and nude) gentleman approaches the woman and kicks away the trunk, wordlessly offering himself to her. She thereupon whips out a pair of scissors and begins gleefully to cut away the man’s appendages until nothing remains but his torso. The cartoon ends as it began, with the woman sitting on a trunk (now recognizable as the man’s torso) on which we see, “Real man wanted.” This illustration is unmistakably similar to the final image in The Giving Tree of an old man sitting on a stump, facing away from us.” [Thomas Jr., Joseph T. (May–June 2005). “Reappraising Uncle Shelby” (PDF). Horn Book Magazine 81 (3): page291. Retrieved Apr 11, 2016.]
Weblink to the PDF: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~jtthomas/shelby.pdf
Edit: I meant, *full* spoilers for the plots of each story. But I consider it minor, since each story is really short.
I just don’t see the parallel you are trying to point out. And The Giving Tree was one of the worst “children’s” books ever written. It tells us that it’s ok to be codependent and let another person literally destroy our life because that’s all we know and we get “happiness” from someone else’s temporary “happiness” The boy was a user and didn’t care about the tree or what was best for it. I read that book and it made my skin crawl for a week
I don’t quite either, to be honest. Sorry.
I just figured “trees being compared to bodies, related to being a good man”. I guess one could call that similar imagery being the parallel; not necessarily a similar message.
And yeah, I agree. I don’t like the message. A healer and a giver needs boundaries and self-care and callousness in order to actually do good. If you do nothing but give, you will have nothing left, and then you can’t give anymore.
Someone wrote a response book called “The Other Giving Tree” that just gives apples. It ends with the “Other Tree” being happier, and its “child” being a more mature and respectful person for it.
The purpose of the Giving Tree isn’t to be happy, give apples or produce a feel good ending, there’s plenty of that Disney type shit floating around. It’s also not about “transferring resources”.
The Giving Tree teaches you the price and sacrifice of unconditional love, like that given by a parent. It teaches that cruelty doesn’t always stem from hate or obviously villainy. It makes you reflect on your own behavior and how you treat others and it teaches you not to be a dick because life sucks enough as it is. It’s not just a lesson for kids but for all ages.
Well, Byron does have a point.
Quite a few of them, actually.
They’re all over his right side, really
His achievements seem to be filtered through his shame. Does he believe this to be ALL he has ever achieved?
… Who knows?
In other news, I got banned from commenting on YET another webcomic.
How many is that now?
Shortpacked, Sister Claire, Supernormal Step… and now Namesake as well. No idea why. The first was localised, but the others have all been Discus-based, as far as I’m aware. Maybe there is a pattern there. I mean a pattern besides the SJW-tendencies of the last three.
…
Guilded Age is a comic about literal social justice warriors. If you’re looking for respite from human decency, you will not find it here.
Phil. I really hope you might at some point understand that what SJWs represent is not human decency and it never will be. It is hypocrisy. They represent everything they claim to oppose, merely by reversing the context. When they say “equality”, they only ever mean a reversal of the existing paradigm.
They are not nice people, Phil.
They’re sick in the head… and they need curing.