This day’s strip has inspired some rather pessimistic thoughts.
You spend a lot of your life molding yourself to another person. You are the things that you experience. Then that other half up and dies on you. Or they’re disappointingly flawed or don’t quite carry some of the responsibilities of being involved in your life so well. Or vice versa.
You didn’t have to involve yourself, mind you. Except that this appetite existed long before you really could question it, and before you might even consider whether you should question it.
No more so than any other individual or group who is hit hard by grief.
Rana’s exhibiting a boilerplate passage through the stages of grief, and it’s being handled with a good understanding that the passage through the stages is sometimes pretty muddy. right now we’re at a mix of anger and depression with just a hint of bargaining (maybe if I do enough damage this won’t hurt as much).
I’d expect it’s a lot closer to the mentality of their victims… or at least their victims’ families. Yazidi, Coptic, Israeli, or even the “wrong” variety of Muslim… there are a LOT of people in bad shape, emotionally (well, or dead), and you’re worried about the ones doing it to them?
He’s just asked to kill people for revenge on someone he knows being executed for killing people. I don’t think the comparison was meant to be favorable to extremists.
They tortured Yalaria before executing her. The standard practice being that you torture your prisoners anyway just in case they do know something and are holding out. You break them until they’re a wreck. Then once you’re sure that there’s no useful intel to be had, you kill your prisoners of war.
This is standard policy for Gastonian war. Small wonder the World’s Rebellion hates them. Nobody really has standards of . . . erherm . . . humane treatment. Judging by the way orcs are treated by all sides and how the gnolls eradicated the other fuzzy peoples. The losers are just property or strategic assets to the winner.
I don’t think the comment above was meant to be exclusive but rather an attempt at empathy?
“Terrorist Muslims/Refugees/ect” get a lot of stereotypes and hate from a lot of people in the US right now, ashamed of that as I am. This applies to the broad Muslim community as well as those that act against us. People have and will always do horrible things, but there is usually a strong emotional motivator behind them, and we tend to just assume everyone threatening us are monsters.
I don’t agree with characterizing a group of people with a single mentality, people are more complex than that, but its a lot more humanizing than what we get from some in the US right now.
Including the media.
I’m not saying any violence is forgivable. But people talk about 20 KIA US soldiers rather than 50 drone-exploded indigenous children.
Pretty sure Phil just saw a few words, got triggered and went into “NO U”-mode without even bothering to read what he was actually replying to.
Pretty sure everyone has done that at various points. Then again, Phil does sometimes show signs that he prefers to get offended by certain things than to bother actually reading them to see if they’re saying what he believes they’re saying. The corrupting influence of the regressive left is strong in the webcomics community, unfortunately. At least people aren’t immediately banned for it here… which is a bit better than most.
“The corrupting influence of the regressive left” -> Idiotic rambling. Why not use the ability to differentiate (which you clearly possess) a little more?
PR isn’t my strong point. Phrasing things in ways that won’t wind up a fair portion of easily triggered sobs, again, not my strong point. No point pretending to be good at something I’m not.
But your dismissal of it as “idiotic rambling” just makes it sound like you’re utterly unqualified to judge.
About 50 years ago, being left-wing meant seeking peace and acceptance. These days it seems to stand for being offended by everything, petty retribution, and simply reversing the paradigm of bigotry while calling it “equality”. The term “regressive left” is entirely justified because these days the left-wing ARE the right-wing, but just wearing different colours. They’re metabigots. Just bigots claiming to be against bigotry because some kind of deeply-seated insanity leads them to believe they can beat hate with MORE HATE. You’d think none of them ever watched the original Star Wars trilogy.
I’ve got mad respect for Phil for what he does with this comic… but getting set off by certain words and completely misunderstanding the intent behind them as a result is not looking good for him… and I’ve noticed it happen quite a lot here. Dude is reactionary…
Someone needs a little interview with a certain Savasi. Even if he isn’t still doing the mystic thing, Gravedust knows how to counsel the bereaved, and this dude really needs some counseling.
Yikes. I just realized how rough it had to be for Rana to stand in front of the Peacemakers. It was the Peacmakers that were responsible for Yalaria’s capture (albiet not the exact same ones that he met). But to add insult to injury, the Peacemakers came back from the dead (twice for Byron). Yalaria never has.
Nice lighting detail, especially in the first and last panels, John!
It’s a sad tale, to be sure, but one all too familiar in Akerra. Somehow though, I don’t think Rana is going to need Penk’s permission to go out in a blaze of glory, because Corruptor HR is now on the loose, and that spells bad news for everyone.
Just goes to show you, love is for the birds.
This day’s strip has inspired some rather pessimistic thoughts.
You spend a lot of your life molding yourself to another person. You are the things that you experience. Then that other half up and dies on you. Or they’re disappointingly flawed or don’t quite carry some of the responsibilities of being involved in your life so well. Or vice versa.
You didn’t have to involve yourself, mind you. Except that this appetite existed long before you really could question it, and before you might even consider whether you should question it.
Put stilts on Iver, tell Rana its a human, several months of therapy-problem solved.
Rana deserves his revenge not some substitute. Seeing as how Adric is just going through the motions I think both could find peace in a final duel.
Well, he does, but the closest target for his revenge is *kinda* Syr’Nj, and we can’t have that soooo….
He’s living on a wing and a prayer…
Sounds more like Rana is asking Penk’s permission to go on a suicide mission rather than anything else.
I agree. Rana seems completely self-destructive right now, not in the sound mental state necessary for a soldier.
I’m hoping Penk directs Rana to Gondolessa instead. There’s a chance he could help him mourn.
Yeah, it sure sounds like he’s rip for a suicide mission, but he’ll be quite determined to really f**k up the enemy pretty good before he dies.
I know I’ll get hate for this, but Rana’s mentality right now is probably akin to some of those Muslims we keep ‘liberating’ abroad.
No more so than any other individual or group who is hit hard by grief.
Rana’s exhibiting a boilerplate passage through the stages of grief, and it’s being handled with a good understanding that the passage through the stages is sometimes pretty muddy. right now we’re at a mix of anger and depression with just a hint of bargaining (maybe if I do enough damage this won’t hurt as much).
I’d expect it’s a lot closer to the mentality of their victims… or at least their victims’ families. Yazidi, Coptic, Israeli, or even the “wrong” variety of Muslim… there are a LOT of people in bad shape, emotionally (well, or dead), and you’re worried about the ones doing it to them?
He’s just asked to kill people for revenge on someone he knows being executed for killing people. I don’t think the comparison was meant to be favorable to extremists.
That message would have been clearer if a bit more clarity and nuance had been deployed from the outset.
They tortured Yalaria before executing her. The standard practice being that you torture your prisoners anyway just in case they do know something and are holding out. You break them until they’re a wreck. Then once you’re sure that there’s no useful intel to be had, you kill your prisoners of war.
This is standard policy for Gastonian war. Small wonder the World’s Rebellion hates them. Nobody really has standards of . . . erherm . . . humane treatment. Judging by the way orcs are treated by all sides and how the gnolls eradicated the other fuzzy peoples. The losers are just property or strategic assets to the winner.
Getting hate for spreading hate?
His sort of condition is absolutely not exclusive to “Muslims Abroad” or any group, no matter how much you’d like to characterize it so.
I don’t think the comment above was meant to be exclusive but rather an attempt at empathy?
“Terrorist Muslims/Refugees/ect” get a lot of stereotypes and hate from a lot of people in the US right now, ashamed of that as I am. This applies to the broad Muslim community as well as those that act against us. People have and will always do horrible things, but there is usually a strong emotional motivator behind them, and we tend to just assume everyone threatening us are monsters.
I don’t agree with characterizing a group of people with a single mentality, people are more complex than that, but its a lot more humanizing than what we get from some in the US right now.
Including the media.
I’m not saying any violence is forgivable. But people talk about 20 KIA US soldiers rather than 50 drone-exploded indigenous children.
Pretty sure Phil just saw a few words, got triggered and went into “NO U”-mode without even bothering to read what he was actually replying to.
Pretty sure everyone has done that at various points. Then again, Phil does sometimes show signs that he prefers to get offended by certain things than to bother actually reading them to see if they’re saying what he believes they’re saying. The corrupting influence of the regressive left is strong in the webcomics community, unfortunately. At least people aren’t immediately banned for it here… which is a bit better than most.
“The corrupting influence of the regressive left” -> Idiotic rambling. Why not use the ability to differentiate (which you clearly possess) a little more?
PR isn’t my strong point. Phrasing things in ways that won’t wind up a fair portion of easily triggered sobs, again, not my strong point. No point pretending to be good at something I’m not.
But your dismissal of it as “idiotic rambling” just makes it sound like you’re utterly unqualified to judge.
About 50 years ago, being left-wing meant seeking peace and acceptance. These days it seems to stand for being offended by everything, petty retribution, and simply reversing the paradigm of bigotry while calling it “equality”. The term “regressive left” is entirely justified because these days the left-wing ARE the right-wing, but just wearing different colours. They’re metabigots. Just bigots claiming to be against bigotry because some kind of deeply-seated insanity leads them to believe they can beat hate with MORE HATE. You’d think none of them ever watched the original Star Wars trilogy.
I’ve got mad respect for Phil for what he does with this comic… but getting set off by certain words and completely misunderstanding the intent behind them as a result is not looking good for him… and I’ve noticed it happen quite a lot here. Dude is reactionary…
Someone needs a little interview with a certain Savasi. Even if he isn’t still doing the mystic thing, Gravedust knows how to counsel the bereaved, and this dude really needs some counseling.
Yikes. I just realized how rough it had to be for Rana to stand in front of the Peacemakers. It was the Peacmakers that were responsible for Yalaria’s capture (albiet not the exact same ones that he met). But to add insult to injury, the Peacemakers came back from the dead (twice for Byron). Yalaria never has.
What happened to Yalaria? The last Yalaria-tagged page shows her still as a prisoner.
It was said she was executed off-screen.
Nice lighting detail, especially in the first and last panels, John!
It’s a sad tale, to be sure, but one all too familiar in Akerra. Somehow though, I don’t think Rana is going to need Penk’s permission to go out in a blaze of glory, because Corruptor HR is now on the loose, and that spells bad news for everyone.
Thank you, Thracecius!
Something about Rana’s face makes him look like one of the muppets, and muppets craving nothing but blood is a good thing. :D
Would that be Sam the Eagle?
‘What are you looking at?’ ‘The wee puppet bird!’