Seriously.
Find a light pollution map and drive to the closest middle of nowhere with no light pollution to just stare up. 15/10 Excellent waste of time.
Bring food and warm clothing because it’ll be hours before you realize that you’ve been standing there staring in wonder at what you’ve never seen.
But the thing is: no one’s going to believe her. She has a duty to speak the truth and to seek justice, but it will come to naught. That’s what’s going to break her even as she’s breaking down now.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Shanna sought truth and found more than what she was expecting, more than what anyone was expecting.
There is a way to make it believable. Stating the events as exactly they happened is beyond most peoples acceptance of reality.
However cults and satanic worship is believable, so if she frames it as HR being some crazed cult leader (which he was!) and that he was holding people against their will for insane experiments, it can be believable.
Cultist with mind-altering substances is not hard to believe. The camera couldn’t have caught the weird shit when the gravity failed, nobody could orient. So “It got trippy.” Also, nobody in SepiaWorld knows dick about the altercation in Arkerra. So nobody’s got any idea what all was going on. Just the antigravity and purple glowy shit and that might be related.
Yes and as I wrote last week it’s probably why Carol will be committed to a psychiatric hospital instead of prison. Perhaps she was trying to warn her.
Things seem pretty wrapped up in Sepia World.
This means the actual comic finale should take place in Arkerra, as it should, in its glorious full technicolor.
Please let it be so. Pleeeeeze.
I have to say I haven’t been reading the comment pages for the past while, but unless I missed something, isn’t there still a question of whether or not the original gang will ever return to Sepia World? Even if their bodies in the tanks weren’t registering brain activity, there were SOME bio readouts, a link existed while they were plugged in. I won’t be disappointed either way, I’ve been very happy with how things have gone, I’m just not sure everything is actually settled.
their sepia-world bodies were pretty mulched in the last comic. i think their return to their original state is a hard no.
as for whether they still exist in arkerra, whether arkerra still exists at all.. i dont think so, honestly. Dedalus was, going by the information given in the comic, the creator of arkerra. with him just as mulched as the five.. i dont know. they could go a number of directions here. i dont think the happily ever after trope is going to see much air-time though. they stopped a nascent meta-god with their …essences?, and the writers of GA have rarely shied away from MCs paying a fair price for power.
whatever happens, i am as excited to see it as i am sad to see the mainstay of my webcomic intake wrapping up. and, if Dominic Deegan taught me anything, it’s that unanswered questions are sometimes the best way to end things.
and, creators.. whatever happens, thank you for bringing this story to life, to us, and to the considerable level of memorable greatness it stands at. i havent posted much, but i’ve been along for the ride since about chapter five or so, and it’s been wonderful.
Um. Technically, the last we saw from Arkerra was Gravedust firing an arrow armed with all five of their souls. Which was kinda how he’d been sending everybody to their contented afterlives with vengeance fulfilled and whatnot for, like, the entire run, yanno?
They had all actually died and stuck around. At least once. I’m thinking they’re now together in whatever their afterlife should be. I don’t know if that’s Arkerra or something else.
I will be surprised–and disappointed–if they’re actually dead, afterlife or no (what is this, C.S. Lewis?).
To head off the immediate misunderstanding I can see coming: I will be surprised and disappointed if Syr’nj, Byron, Gravedust, and Frigg are actually dead. I know their sepia-world players are.
The real question is if The Five were ever “inside” or attached to their bodies …
For the ENTIRE story.
It seems reasonable to their “Tron upload” was always a one way permanent trip due to a flaw in “god’s” science and that their bodies have been at least brain dead if not all dead since before we first saw the tubes.
I’ll see your Asimov and raise you a Pratchett: “If the Creator had said, “Let there be light” in Ankh-Morpork, he’d have got no further because of all the people saying “What colour?”
With all those city lights you’ll be lucky to see any.
Seriously.
Find a light pollution map and drive to the closest middle of nowhere with no light pollution to just stare up. 15/10 Excellent waste of time.
Bring food and warm clothing because it’ll be hours before you realize that you’ve been standing there staring in wonder at what you’ve never seen.
Shanna was holding up so well, but if she has to break down this would be the best time.
But the thing is: no one’s going to believe her. She has a duty to speak the truth and to seek justice, but it will come to naught. That’s what’s going to break her even as she’s breaking down now.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Shanna sought truth and found more than what she was expecting, more than what anyone was expecting.
There is a way to make it believable. Stating the events as exactly they happened is beyond most peoples acceptance of reality.
However cults and satanic worship is believable, so if she frames it as HR being some crazed cult leader (which he was!) and that he was holding people against their will for insane experiments, it can be believable.
Cultist with mind-altering substances is not hard to believe. The camera couldn’t have caught the weird shit when the gravity failed, nobody could orient. So “It got trippy.” Also, nobody in SepiaWorld knows dick about the altercation in Arkerra. So nobody’s got any idea what all was going on. Just the antigravity and purple glowy shit and that might be related.
Yes and as I wrote last week it’s probably why Carol will be committed to a psychiatric hospital instead of prison. Perhaps she was trying to warn her.
Things seem pretty wrapped up in Sepia World.
This means the actual comic finale should take place in Arkerra, as it should, in its glorious full technicolor.
Please let it be so. Pleeeeeze.
I have to say I haven’t been reading the comment pages for the past while, but unless I missed something, isn’t there still a question of whether or not the original gang will ever return to Sepia World? Even if their bodies in the tanks weren’t registering brain activity, there were SOME bio readouts, a link existed while they were plugged in. I won’t be disappointed either way, I’ve been very happy with how things have gone, I’m just not sure everything is actually settled.
Their bodies were ripped apart and dangling from the tubes 2 pages back.
Answers the “unless I miss something” bit. Whoopsy.
their sepia-world bodies were pretty mulched in the last comic. i think their return to their original state is a hard no.
as for whether they still exist in arkerra, whether arkerra still exists at all.. i dont think so, honestly. Dedalus was, going by the information given in the comic, the creator of arkerra. with him just as mulched as the five.. i dont know. they could go a number of directions here. i dont think the happily ever after trope is going to see much air-time though. they stopped a nascent meta-god with their …essences?, and the writers of GA have rarely shied away from MCs paying a fair price for power.
whatever happens, i am as excited to see it as i am sad to see the mainstay of my webcomic intake wrapping up. and, if Dominic Deegan taught me anything, it’s that unanswered questions are sometimes the best way to end things.
and, creators.. whatever happens, thank you for bringing this story to life, to us, and to the considerable level of memorable greatness it stands at. i havent posted much, but i’ve been along for the ride since about chapter five or so, and it’s been wonderful.
Um. Technically, the last we saw from Arkerra was Gravedust firing an arrow armed with all five of their souls. Which was kinda how he’d been sending everybody to their contented afterlives with vengeance fulfilled and whatnot for, like, the entire run, yanno?
They had all actually died and stuck around. At least once. I’m thinking they’re now together in whatever their afterlife should be. I don’t know if that’s Arkerra or something else.
I will be surprised–and disappointed–if they’re actually dead, afterlife or no (what is this, C.S. Lewis?).
To head off the immediate misunderstanding I can see coming: I will be surprised and disappointed if Syr’nj, Byron, Gravedust, and Frigg are actually dead. I know their sepia-world players are.
Deep underground, a single arrow comes to rest, buried in H.R.’s God Machine… and Colors begin to spread from it.
What about Best?
What about him?
I won’t be disappointed if he’s dead (sorry, T and Phil; you did too good a job of making him repulsive for too long). I will be rather surprised.
From my understanding he didn’t actually make Arkerra so much as he copied and modified it
The real question is if The Five were ever “inside” or attached to their bodies …
For the ENTIRE story.
It seems reasonable to their “Tron upload” was always a one way permanent trip due to a flaw in “god’s” science and that their bodies have been at least brain dead if not all dead since before we first saw the tubes.
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
I’ll see your Clarke and raise you an Asimov.
“Let there be light.”
I’ll see your Asimov and raise you a Pratchett: “If the Creator had said, “Let there be light” in Ankh-Morpork, he’d have got no further because of all the people saying “What colour?”
Fuck.
If the Creator had said that in Ankh-Morpork, on the other hand…
Starships were ment to fly…
FUCK YOU ALT TEXT IT’S STILL TOO SOON
As digital Best sits singing Major Tom in a virtual spacecraft.
The stars are right! Cthulhu f’thagan!
I don’t… I don’t like where this is going…
So heeeere am I floating in a glass tube
Faaaar below the world
Planet earth is sepia
And there’s signs of schizophrenia
Saved me the trouble. ^_^
(The first line was exactly what I had in mind. I hadn’t really decided on the rest yet.)
How about just “Planet Earth’s one hue and there’s nothing I can do”?
I tried to come up with something to go with “sheep ‘ya” but I don’t recall that particular spell being used in Arkerra….
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
And then the screen comes up…In Technicolor world!
I do love how the photo is just about the right tones for sepia world.
Why was the second word of what Shanna was sob-stuttering out going to be capitalized?
I think it was more that the whole word was going to be capitalized because her voice cracked or something, making it louder.