- Frederick Trevo: Lydia…!
- Aeleos: Come with me. I’ll fly you to the castle.
- Alissa: What about Lydia?
- Aeleos: She’s already returned to Gaia. There’s nothing I can do for her.
- Aeleos: Frederick, you may come along too.
- Frederick Trevo: Lydia…
- Aeleos: I’m waiting, Frederick.
- Aeleos: You fought bravely. This won’t be forgotten.
|
Loading ...
I wonder if Ryn got his sword back?
Aeleos is rather to the point, but at least he’s fairly polite. Also, I’m betting riding a dragon is rather rare, though the preferred method for dragons ferrying others if necessary or expedient (that is, the dragons prefer it). Even with the circumstances, I would be ecstatic to get to ride a dragon.
Poor Lydia we hardly knew ya, and you’ve already gone to Gaia. 🙁 You’re good at conveying emotion in this comic Novil. I feel really sad just looking at Fredrick holding Lydia’s body. I don’t know if they were married or just friends, but they obviously had a close bond regardless.
At least on the positive side everyone else gets to ride a dragon. That’s really cool.
They were friends.
Back at it again with the dead characters. Wait no this is one of the few times people have actually died in this conflict since the attack by the red flow magicians. Shocked. Great art loving your portrayal of dragons
She was two days away from retirement.
Even though we hardly knew her as a character, the feels are real. o7
Aw, Lydia. :'(
I’m sort of hoping the funeral won’t hit me
Game of Thrones characters have a better life expectancy.
I give up, I keep feeling like I missed something. Everything seems so disjointed. They are transported here, suddenly this happens, everyone seem okay. This seems to happen a lot.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the webcomic, just someone I don’t know if there’s a pacing problem or I’m missing something and I’m a moron. I’m usually not fond for exposition dumps but for once I’d welcome it.
@ Apvogt:
„We can’t let this happen again. We need to build a secure TWO-day-before-retirement safe room.“
@StarMech it helps tor read the comic from the beginning once in a while. Trust me, things are much clearer then, cause this is an ongoing story not a gag-a-day-one.
Lucario wrote:
The same thought occurred to me. There was time enough for him to have retrieved it, “off-screen”, before climbing aboard the dragon.
“Tonight, on a very special Clone High, one of the clones you’ve grown to love will be horribly killed.
This is not some cheap-ass stunt where we lamely introduce a new character just to kill him off!
A clone dies tonight!”
Lydia can’t be killed, because she sworn to carry my burdens ! 😉
I’m sorry for question, but how had she died? Had she bled out instantly? Lydia might have gooten serious internal bleeding, torn guts, broken hip and some other injuries from this, but come on, they have mages that can heal with a wave of a hand! Just get her to proper surgeon and then to healer, cleric or whatever they’re called.
Btw, Novil, are your dragons humanoid?
@ Arklyte:
Dragons can obviously not be “humanoid”, the word means “similar to humans”. Dragons are completely different from humans, because first they seem to be reptiles, second they are magical creatures and third they have a completely different anatomy.Even if they were able to get a human appearance by shapeshifting magic (which might well be an option), that would not make them humanoid. Novil’s dragons are a sentient species of (at least) human level intelligence that socially interacts with humans, if that is what you meant by humanoid.
@ Arklyte:
Lydia got her thigh, hip and abdomen crushed and torn apart by one incredibly powerful bite and being violently shook afterwards, thereby loosing a great amount of blood. Though you are right that one could survive such an injury for a few minutes if one is lucky (or unlucky, depends how much you value living a few minutes longer while bleeding slowly to death and how likely you may be rescued by healing Magic 😉 ), and that many fantasy/movie characters do tend to survive such injuries, in reality, it would be quite probable that you would more or less instantly die from system shock if such a large part of your body was maimed by a sudden external force. We are talking about the equivalent of getting your lower abdomen run over by a truck or getting a load from a big shotgun in your belly short distance.
Aeleos is speaking in first person present tense. That’s rare for a dragon.
Delta-v wrote:
actually…
http://www.sandraandwoo.com/gaia/2014/08/26/the-letter-of-jael-bara-081/
dragons seem to speek in first person present… imps do not.
both are supposedly draconic races…
@ Arklyte:
@ someguy:
I agree that the dragon is surprisingly humanoid. It is a lot larger, has wings pinned at the shoulders and a tail at the tailbone, has scaly skin and a dinosaur-ish head, of course. But it has proportions and joints that seem remarkably human considering it is nowhere close on an evolutionary tree. Why does it have legs and arms and thumbs? It’s body is notably similar to humans, even if it is outside the bounds of what you would call humanoid.
In the midst of all the sombre proceedings comes Aeleos’ “I’m waiting, Frederick.” I find it unintentionally funny.
While I personally do not much care for on screen character deaths, especially not of the good guys, I have to give you credit for handling it well thus far. From the first to this the most recent, it’s all added to the story and carried with it the feeling of importance and danger and the fact that the world is very much in termoil and danger.
While this scene’s closing does convey the sense of gravitas as the situation I find it difficult to overlook that the female red shirt was the one to die.
Women in refrigerators is a real trope and a real problem. I grant she was not a damsel in distress. She was a female introduced just to be killed in service of the atmosphere and character reactions. (note: No plot relevance. If she was removed, altered or unharmed the plot would have remained unchanged.)
Because showing death is so rare in the series it makes the event stand out even more. It becomes hard to ignore that a whole comic page was taken to showcase the death and reactions to that death. Her death has become character development for everyone but her own.
I hope in the future Novil can be mindful to not fall into this trope that cheapens the lives of female characters.
@ Arklyte:
A puncture to the major arteries of the thigh can indeed lead to death within minutes. From the loud crunch noise it also seems her thighs and/or pelvis were crushed, which can also lead to very swift death. 🙂
@ Wandre:
I think you hit it on the nail there: “female” red shirt. So far as I am aware, previous Red Shirts that I have come across in both literature and visual mediums the Red Shirt has ALWAYS been male. I do not believe the Woman in Refrigerator trope applies here because (1) Frederick is not a main character, (2) this is the only scene they have appeared thus far, and (3) he did not discover her body, thus he cannot have a deeply dramatic character overhaul. I understand that the WIF is a sexist and overused tool, but to try and make this situation equivalent is a long stretch at best.
Wandre wrote:
Death usually does that to people, I’m afraid.
Wandre wrote:
seriously? If anything this gives a positive pr at least equalistiq view on this wolds gende issues. She was a soldiet and died on duty! This actually happens rarely in any literature as women are seldomly part of the army.clooking at real life history its always men who die in combat so having a woman as part of the fighting force and losing her lifer to do her job shows that women are capable of the same treatment as men.
Also its certaibly NOT a woman in a refrigerator. Who are you? Anita Sarkesian? At last she describe that trope correctly.
So this could only be this trope if frederick suddenly became the new lead (unlikely) and now, because of her deathcsets out for vengence and she bwcomes his major drive and motivation…. I dont se that coming in the near future.
Oh and what if frederick had dyed? Would you accuse novil of sexism because only men die in battle, women have to be protected so as asexist writer he wouldnt kill them? Could you feminists please stop find sexism literally everywhere no matter what?
The only question that appears in my mind is how Aeleos knew Frederick’s name.
@ Apvogt:
but then everything changed with the shadow beasts attacked
Wandre wrote:
So the overwhelmingly male majority among red shirts in literally all media (especially Star Trek, whence the term came) does not cheapen the lives of male characters?
You have any idea how sexist your post is?
Just pointing out the irony here.
And sure, I’ll admit that, on some level, the fact that Lydia being female may have helped the drama have slightly more impact to the part of the audience not immune to gender bias. But what worries me more is the implication that if it was Frederick that died, it would result in no one shedding a tear, because he’s just another disposable man. Even if you accept this as truth, you shouldn’t accept this as something that SHOULD be true. And even if you did accept this as truth, you shouldn’t take trying to avoid this outcome as “invoking a trope”.
TL;DR: Try to imagine if Frederick died, and Lydia was crying over him instead. Would it make this comic better? Would it make it less sexist? Would it make it more sexist? Or is the notion that there is even a difference sexist in and of itself?
@ someguy:
Or being attacked by shark/crocodile/bear/lion/other big predator. She needs to be extremely unlucky to die immediatly.
And I was refering to body proportions as seen better on previous page where he is landing.
@ Publius:
I see what you mean. The biceps, pecs, and abs do strike me as rather human.
Arklyte wrote:
Three things might cause rather quick death from that bite:
1. If the teeth impaled internal organs, particularly kidneys, liver, spleen.
2. If the teeth had venom of some sort.
3. If the creature has the ability to drain energy.
Given the creature is from the dark zone, 2 & 3 are likely to be true.
Old_Man_Tai wrote:
well supposedly quiete a lot of people have already died everywhere around… so I kind of think most people are starting to get impervious to looses unless they hit them personally… a dragon who likely outlived generations of humans… would probably get crazy if insvested much emotions in that.
longevity does have it´s drawbacks.
At least this character death isn’t as bullshitty as some others that I’ve seen. (Looking at you, Rooster Teeth)
Nice job Novil, you’ve made everyone care about a character we’ve only known for about 12 pages.
@ Samantha:
Hmm, for some reason I haven’t thought about such possibility. Giving out bows to random people now becomes more logical.
The question of humanoid form of the dragon still stands though: is it their normal form or they simply go around in whatever is most comfortable at the moment?
@ Wandre:
Seriously??? When have I ever seen a woman beeing used as “redshirt” again… the only two cases were both in starship troopers…
Dizzy Flores (who in the book was male btw… as there were almost no women in the infantery, they were supposedly better at flying ships)
and Ivette Deladrier when Roger Young was shot down (in book that never happend and she was sending off the roughnecks in the end when they dropped over bug homeworld…)
contrary to that… men are portrayed to just die everywhere around in most movies… Well i guess it is kind of logical – preserving a female than can continue a line is kind of logical aproach and well, all species do it and try to protect them for harm at cost of expendable males.
But sometimes it simply does not work end everyone has to fight. And everyone has to risk dying.
@ Wandre:
You ARE aware that the majority of ‘main’ characters are all female right? Lili, Vivi, San, the only ‘supporting’ female thus far has been Alissa. All the men have been nothing but ‘supporting’ roles once the girls took to the stage; Sandril in particular has been nothing more than the token ‘pretty rich boy’ for most of the goings on.
Trolling about tropes or what-not that don’t even apply just looks kind of weak to be honest, and for my vote, if the male guard had kicked the bucket in the jaws of the beast the impact would have been almost nil. I am not condoning the death of women over men, but in general the world of Gaia seems very female-oriented from the start, so men taking the backseat from time to time is perfectly acceptable.
This is not our world, what passes for logic here does not have to apply to them.
Just saying..
@ Paeris Kiran:
In most species females don’t try to use it in arguments against males. Especially if for their species males are larger then females and they exist on technological level when higher physical abilities are very important for the job especially in military since so far I haven’t seen even crossbows(who while not being firearms also potentially allow their user to punch beyond their weight thanks to things like crankshafts for example;)) used as much as bows(who despite fantasy stereotype of being used by agile characters benefit from longer limbs provided by taller user and higher draw weight that comes with extra muscle mass).
Starship Troopers differ very strongly between the book and movie because the book is supporting pro-military view of the author and film is made with anti-militaristic view. However I regard them both as being right to some degree.
At least this dragon is actually a dragon and not a wyvern like in game of thrones tv show
Arklyte wrote:
yeah well the good old book actually has a dedication to a drill sargeant, and is generaly described as the tribute to the “poor bloody infantry” which does the the worst job in the army and receives the least amount of credit and recognition.
Airforce, Navy, Artillery… everyone toying with big guns, ships, sleak planes… fighting from the rear with comfortable beds…
I would not actually call the book pro-military itself – it essentialy describes IDEAL military. Military where officers are commisioned only because of competence. Military which essentialy is powerless itself to effect the political system. (with even in book blatantly stated that in peace time most “citizens” comes from non-combat auxiliary services – like teraforming Venus, testing survival equipment, or beeing a labrat for new medicines)
with essentialy only one goal – being ready to fight and die where ordered.
And well – that applies for infantry… K9core had 50 percent officers… the other 50 were neodogs… fleet was almost all officers… because of chain of command required.
but that was really not the point –
the point was is that it seems to be the one and only movie I can think of just now which would treat “redshirts” death to females. Somehow… I think the real thing probably is… there is not that much audience for it…
for a male seeing a female die in any way he could have possibly prevented… it must seem like utter personal failure in natural order of things.
A female seeing the thing is likely equally shaken – because it can easilly happen to her.
We males are essentialy conditioned – I think both by society and genes, to simply accept that we are the first ones to die when the situation calls for it.
Lydia! Why did you decide to wear that red shirt today?!
@ Novil:
It’s still sad, Ollie.
Let’s be honest…..
Maybe while they were friends the relationship was starting to grow beyond that stage. Now Freddie’ll never get that chance, let alone if he’d’ve had the chance…
Jim
?
Waiting for the ‘Oops’ as they’re flying into the city. Over a cabbage seller for maximum effect.
@ Delfic:
+1
I always hate it when the artists can’t tell the difference. I somehow managed to find a calendar with 12 dragon portraits where none were wyverns.
@ StarMech:
i agree with you. the storyline surely has become very fuzzy and confusing. plotpoints seem to be dropped and mysteries seem to be left unanswered forever. i read multiple story comics that dont update too often and they dont have this problem, so the person who told you its cause this isnt a “gag a day” comic is very wrong
@ Paeris Kiran: Here’s another view. Whatever is more rare seems more valuable. On the frontier, in the military, on ships, and in many other dangerous conditions, women have historically been very rare, because we’ve lacked the freedom to travel and the respect to be recruited and trained. This led to men in these environments coming to believe women are a precious resource to be preserved, whereas men are ubiquitous and easily replaced, reinforcing the whole mindless state of affairs. Both sexes in equal supply in the world, of course, and are truly more or less equal in value.
Because men muscled their way into positions of power, power itself is still considered a ‘masculine’ institution, which has led to it being wielded mostly through men working for other men. This results in huge and powerful organizations staffed almost entirely by men. In the course of their travels, explorations, and dutiful service in regions where women aren’t permitted to go or rewarded for going, they develop and build upon their distorted views, much as law enforcement officials tend to develop a distorted view of how honest and moral people are due to spending so much time around criminals and need to get back in touch with reality at least once in a while.
The conclusion we could draw from this is that if all the most powerful organizations were led and staffed by women, they’d have little contact with men, and the exact same thing would happen in reverse. Men would be kept indoors and forbidden from travelling, women would do everything for them–including dying–except for whatever ‘men’s work’ could be done safely behind closed doors. This has nothing to do with gendered professions. If the most powerful people in the world were knitters and bakers due to some kind of yarn sorcery and violently explosive gravity-defying bread loaves, it would still work the same way. It seems it’s just a consequence of a landslide of social momentum rushing on out of control due to the self-reinforcing nature of the delusions and prohibitions it carries.
Ultimately ‘who dies in this episode’ could have come down to a coin flip, and I wouldn’t use this one example to try to extrapolate whether this comic is sexist or not. Instead, I’m just going to say it’s not sexist because it’s always had both strong and weak, sympathetic and unsympathetic, moral and immoral characters of either sex, which is more than I can say for the vast majority of literature everywhere.
For what it’s worth, I would have been impacted slightly more if Frederick died… because I felt he received slightly more characterization than Lydia since his introduction! Both of them were introduced such a short time ago that I don’t find it that shocking either way. Yes, your mileage may vary. This is not that big a deal, it’s an establishing moment for the situation the city is in, not so much for the characters or the author. I wonder if making both the guards women would have kept this from becoming a political discussion.
Crestlinger wrote:
But this is not the Earth Kingdom, nor are they riding Aang’s glider..