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Annotations Every Day - Written by T Campbell & Flo Kahn - Illustrated by John & Jason Waltrip

The tragedy is that, ultimately, we caused this massacre to take place. And due to its fictional nature, it would never have happened if you didn't see it. So way to go, guys, you killed Leafport. Hope you're pleased!

Chapter 5 – Page 3

on May 5, 2010
Chapter: Chapter 05
└ Tags: Byron, Gravedust
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Discussion (47) ¬

  1. Joe
    Joe
    May 5, 2010, 12:13 am | # | Reply

    That alt text is almost worse than the link in my name.
    Almost.

    • Riotllama
      Riotllama
      May 5, 2010, 1:30 am | # | Reply

      xkcd ftw!

    • Malificus
      Malificus
      May 5, 2010, 3:04 pm | # | Reply

      Though it’s worse than the character in the link in mine.

      • TraderInTown
        TraderInTown
        May 6, 2010, 7:45 am | # | Reply

        Looks like an interesting sort of webcomic. I’ll bookmark it and Archive Binge later.

    • The Indomitable Eric
      The Indomitable Eric
      May 5, 2010, 5:02 pm | # | Reply

      Jesus Christ, Joe, what the fuck is wrong with you! Stop that!

      • Phil
        Flo
        May 5, 2010, 5:45 pm | # | Reply

        All we’re doing is playing God! Just playing!

        • TraderInTown
          TraderInTown
          May 6, 2010, 7:46 am | # | Reply

          Ha!

          Cause it’s D&D.

          Which is a game.

          Ha..

    • MrTeatime
      MrTeatime
      May 5, 2010, 11:51 pm | # | Reply

      Whenever I feel bad about having had a hand in the fates of fictional characters, I look over .

      • MrTeatime
        MrTeatime
        May 5, 2010, 11:52 pm | # | Reply

        … the end of One over Zero: http://www.undefined.net/1/0/
        Sorry, I’m not good with HTML.

    • SotiCoto
      SotiCoto
      June 21, 2013, 10:23 am | # | Reply

      … Meh.
      I’ve gone on a murderous rampage loads of times in loads of games, killing all the innocents in sight and most of the guard… only to then reload from an earlier save and “do things properly”.
      But despite my reboot to last save, I still remember it. It still happened.
      And it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
      Killing fictional people doesn’t even come close to bothering me.

      NOT being able to watch them die one by one however, leaves me disappointed.

  2. SteelRaven
    SteelRaven
    May 5, 2010, 12:22 am | # | Reply

    I’m pleased! Little hint to Byron’s past, nice.

    I hate nitpick such good artwork but it took me awhile to relies those brown spots where bodies and not rubble, wouldn’t something a little more red be fitting?

    • Carl-E
      Carl-E
      May 5, 2010, 12:35 pm | # | Reply

      Not if it weren’t recent. Blood dries brown. And maybe there wasn’t a lot of blood – we don’t know what happened yet!

      • SteelRaven
        SteelRaven
        May 6, 2010, 1:05 am | # | Reply

        I only suggest red to make the bodies more apparent in panel 6 though I want to not that I do think panel 5 looks great.

  3. AdamZero
    AdamZero
    May 5, 2010, 12:25 am | # | Reply

    Damn, just….

    Somebodies gonna get axed.

  4. Josh
    Josh
    May 5, 2010, 12:32 am | # | Reply

    Panel four had me confused for a moment, but my little brain puzzled it out.

  5. Daladar
    Daladar
    May 5, 2010, 12:51 am | # | Reply

    Agreed, I had a little trouble figuring out that those brown swatches were, in fact, corpses.

    Who knew you got +10 to Hide when you’re dead!? YES! -self-high-five-

  6. Randonimity
    Randonimity
    May 5, 2010, 1:10 am | # | Reply

    This page makes me want to give Byron a big hug ;^;

  7. SwitchbladeKult
    SwitchbladeKult
    May 5, 2010, 3:01 am | # | Reply

    I thought it would be fun to make a pun or two for each page going forward after the pun fest a few pages ago but this page has ruined that… way to go.

    • ahdok
      ahdok
      May 5, 2010, 7:43 am | # | Reply

      That’s quite a body of work you’ve undertaken.

      • Em
        Em
        May 5, 2010, 9:01 am | # | Reply

        This page just reaffirms how much I like your comic.

  8. Hypothetical
    Hypothetical
    May 5, 2010, 3:18 am | # | Reply

    Soooo…where is Byron from then? ( Heh, as if we could know…)

    Look again folks. Panel four is a major Flashback. ( Compare it with panel 5..you’ll get it.)

    Friday is going to be awesome with a capitol AWESOME.

    • Hypothetical
      Hypothetical
      May 5, 2010, 3:19 am | # | Reply

      Oh, and panel 2….nice Shock look on Gravies face.

    • Fren
      Fren
      May 5, 2010, 7:46 am | # | Reply

      The sepia tone in panel four was probably some sort of hint on that tip, yeah. Friday should be interesting!

    • Anonymous
      Anonymous
      May 5, 2010, 3:45 pm | # | Reply

      Battleshire, probably.

  9. TraderInTown
    TraderInTown
    May 5, 2010, 7:11 am | # | Reply

    Sheeeeeeit.

    Where do I sign up for this job?

  10. LunarTick
    LunarTick
    May 5, 2010, 7:22 am | # | Reply

    I first thought that Gravedust was using his mystic powers to question Byron about his past. But, yeah, these panels really work for me. (and great alt-text)

  11. ahdok
    ahdok
    May 5, 2010, 7:44 am | # | Reply

    what’s that behind Gravedust in the last panel… a mop?

  12. Justin
    Justin
    May 5, 2010, 7:59 am | # | Reply

    The thing behind Gravedust is his Hawk, you can see it on his right hand in earlier panels. I actually missed the bodies in panel 5, I was looking more at the ruins and Byron’s posture and comparing them to panel 4.

  13. TraderInTown
    TraderInTown
    May 5, 2010, 10:01 am | # | Reply

    Wow, Byron’s kept the same axes since he was just a lad. Durable sons-a-bitches aren’t they?

    I guess that’s why he doesn’t believe in intra-species murder.

  14. Wyrd
    Wyrd
    May 5, 2010, 10:03 am | # | Reply

    It looks like Byron does indeed deserve the title ‘berserker’, and I can see why he is so careful to remain in control.

    I have to agree with the others who stated that the bodies in panel 5 really don’t work. Even having realized that they are bodies, they still look more like mud puddles to me. It took me a minute to realize what was going on because the image didn’t make sense until I figured out what it was supposed to be, at which point I could find the parts of the image that previously did not make sense.

    • Carl-E
      Carl-E
      May 5, 2010, 12:39 pm | # | Reply

      What is with you people? They have faces, feet, limbs – they’re clearly bodies.

      And I can barely see!

      [harumphs at the underappreciated eyesight of others]

      • TraderInTown
        TraderInTown
        May 5, 2010, 1:09 pm | # | Reply

        I hear ya. I see the bodies just fine, because mud puddles don’t look like that.

        Also, my right eye is completely worthless. One of these days I’ll just remove it altogether so all the blood wasted on it can go to my left eye and make it super-powered!

        I’ll be THE MONOCLE

        • SteelRaven
          SteelRaven
          May 6, 2010, 1:13 am | # | Reply

          Get a Eye-patch Trader, then you can ether go by Snake or Nick Fury.

          • TraderInTown
            TraderInTown
            May 6, 2010, 1:09 pm | # | Reply

            YES

            I like the way you think.

      • SteelRaven
        SteelRaven
        May 6, 2010, 1:11 am | # | Reply

        You can see everything fine in panel 5, panel 6 it gets a little more cluttered with both Gravedust and Byron inn the forground. My eyes keep goeing to the village first, Byron and Gravedust second, then the bodies.
        I still love the page, panel 5 makes the whole page for me.

        • Wyrd
          Wyrd
          May 7, 2010, 8:43 am | # | Reply

          The bodies are much more visible in panel 5. In panel 6, they have no depth to them, making them look like a part of the ground, which is why I compared them to mud puddles.

  15. Person of Consequence
    Person of Consequence
    May 5, 2010, 12:26 pm | # | Reply

    I like that the alt-text is getting all Scott McCloud on us.

    • Hypothetical
      Hypothetical
      May 5, 2010, 2:56 pm | # | Reply

      I was thinking that it was going very Schrodinger

      If we had not observed that the massacre had taken place, then it is uncertain that the massacre did indeed take place. By observing the massacre we have now fixed it as a localized temporal-spacial event.

      • Joe
        Joe
        May 5, 2010, 5:20 pm | # | Reply

        It makes me feel kinda godlike.
        Just think of all the other webcomics that, despite their unquestionably large followings, have stories that never happened simply because I don’t read them.

        Mwahahahaha

      • BeetlesBane
        BeetlesBane
        May 5, 2010, 8:43 pm | # | Reply

        Actuaslly that’s mor Bishop Berkley than Erwin.

      • SteelRaven
        SteelRaven
        May 6, 2010, 1:24 am | # | Reply

        “I created a town, called it Leafport. I filled it with towns people, hard working farmers, crafty merchants, full hardy adventures, laughing children. Then I killed them all and left their bodies in the streets as the town I created then burned to the ground. Why did I do this you ask? I needed a plot device.”

  16. BossMuro
    BossMuro
    May 6, 2010, 2:15 am | # | Reply

    Heh, didn’t see the bodies in panel five at first, and I got the impression that Byron went through a vivid flashback every time he walked into a town.

  17. TheObliviousOne
    TheObliviousOne
    May 7, 2010, 9:50 am | # | Reply

    What does gastonian mean?

  18. Custodes
    Custodes
    May 7, 2010, 8:07 pm | # | Reply

    Context implies Gastonian is a term for people from a location in the comic world. Similar to American or German.

  19. Locke
    Locke
    January 16, 2011, 3:29 pm | # | Reply

    Archive binging to find this page. I can’t help but wonder what hand Byron had in the destruction of (what I assume to be) his childhood home?

  20. Anne
    Anne
    June 21, 2012, 7:08 pm | # | Reply

    Every time I find myself upset about a fictional death, I take solace in the literary present. Even though the first time we encounter Leafport, it is destroyed, I’m good enough at rationalizing to consider
    a.) In order to have a corpse-strewn path, a town must have citizens available for slaughter.
    b.) If a town has citizens available for slaughter, it has some sort of life as a town.
    c.) In a well-written story, characters are often allowed some autonomy to lead the authors in the right direction.
    d.) This is a well-written story.
    e.) Therefore Leafport could have led a fictional life quietly to itself in the background while we were watching Pirate ships and things.
    f.) Literary present steps in and says “Because this is a work of fiction, which is read and re-read, it exists in a constant state of flux. So, even though for me, right now, Leafport is destroyed, for many other fledgling readers the town still exists, if only in potentia. And considering this IS a work of fiction, potentia is good enough for me!”

    And ta-da! The guilt I briefly felt for bringing about the massacre of Leafport can safely resume business as a fraction of the random generalized guilt making up approximately two fifths of my psyche.

  21. atypicaloracle
    atypicaloracle
    October 30, 2012, 5:22 pm | # | Reply

    Either Byron survived his village getting wiped out Conan-style, or the last time he lost his temper he killed off his entire town and didn’t wake up until two days later when the fires finally died out.

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Guilded Age is co-written by T Campbell & Flo Kahn, and illustrated by John Waltrip. Site design by Samantha Kyle. Fonts by Blambot.com.
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