- Scarlet: No, Julius, please come back. Please come back!
- Leyton Wayt: Is that your daughter?
- Tibor: Adoptive daughter. Her parents were murdered by Grondan soldiers.
- Leyton Wayt: Who died? Her brother?
- Tibor: Her boyfriend. He was her one and only. His whole family died during the crowd crush.
- Leyton Wayt: Goddamn. Poor girl…
A Sky Full of Stars 100
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55 thoughts on “A Sky Full of Stars 100”
Anonymous Pie
Ooof.
Dys
Damn…
Ike
Bit of a surprisingly anticlimactic turn of events – though I hope this guy turns out to be some kind of Professor.
Professor Leyton if you will XD
Puyon
Well. We probably all could have anticipated that any spark of light and joy in Scarlet’s life would be constantly ripped away from her unceremoniously.
Doesn’t mean it doesn’t still suck to see. All she has is Tibor and ambitions that need to be actualized before she lets anyone else get too close.
Hegel-Marx
Gaaaaaaaahhhhh! 😭 NOVIL, I HATE YOU!
I hope Scarlet will meet Theodor* in near future.
* see SFOS 041
Kitsune
There’s no way. That must be plot bait, right? Like when everyone assumed Son Goku died, but he didn’t, because they didn’t see him for a long time. That must be it.
Pappenheimer
Not that kind of comic. Unfortunately.
Clannadfan
I saw the clannad moment coming. And now I’m still sheading a tear over one page of a webcomic. In other words: you two did an amazing job as author and artist!
Intrebute
Oh damn, it wasn’t just Julius, it was everyone. God that sucks ;c
Chris
Bleak, very bleak.
Vicious Sand
Boo! And not the ghost kind, either! They don’t have those, right?
No room for love in this comic. Unless the old guy is there to mention that “that blond haired kid” got buried there, and set up that the wrong body got identified.
The Mirkening house is unoccupied, and S-T have to sleep somewhere…
Melkior
Well…. there’s a downer for you.
I really didn’t expect it to go dark like this, but it’s realistic that something like that could happen.
Now I’m really hoping that the bodies have been misidentified or something, but that seems unlikely.
Lee
Agreed. I was thinking plot armor would protect Julius, his parents I’m not surprised about. It could be an “it’s somebody else” plot twist, but not thinking that’s too likely.
WAhydrohead
Well that sucks.
Cheuk
Well dang, like everybody else I thought it was just a split up and lost situation, and not a mob crush and killed 🙁
Yellow
Ok, really, I’ll now stop reading that comic too. As I already said about the ‘Gaia’ comic, I come here to experience an entertaining story, not “Game of Thrones” (where characters, even popular ones who acted brave and selfless, die _without_any_valid_reason_ story-wise, just to ‘add realism’) …
Crystalgate
Killing of a bellowed character is a trope that preexisted Game of Thrones by ages. I would argue that Julius is closer to a male version of a damsel in a fridge than anything from GoT.
As for GoT, in the books at least, the primary reason for good guys to get killed is lack of pragmatism. They may have done the good thing, but they did not make a good strategical or tactical choice and paid the price for their decision making. This applies to villain as well, both Joffrey and Tyvin just got murdered because of poor decisions. Tyvin in particular would have been treated as a villain that the heroes need to overcome in 99% of any other story. Basically, you do not get any protection from the consequences of your actions just because you’re a hero or a villain, bad decision have bad consequences, moral or immoral. There are characters who are protected though even in GoT.
ME
Really? Julius was always a secondary character, any who isn’t Scarlet or Tibor is. Loss is one of the core driving forces behind human narrative, and from the beginning the entire story’s premise is based on a descent toward darkness, not being an entertaining romp.
I’d rather a story keep me engaged rather than knowing ahead of time everything that will happen due to plot armor and narrative tropes. You’re welcome to your own preferences, certainly, but it seems a loss to bow out of this fascinating story for the reason given.
As for “without any valid reason”, getting caught in a food riot on a starving planet seems pretty darned valid and realistic to me. Or is it only anonymous people who are supposed to suffer in such situations?
BadRoad
I guess that means there’s an opening at that fancy school?
HoMa
Sad as it is.. I don’t think it happened only for the sake of realism. Sure one thing is clearly pictured real: the famine and the looming “eternal winter”. The world here is not an idealistic one – but I think positive events are also portrayed: kind of relatable with the current world events.
Another thing Novil wrote is that these events from Scarlet’s childhood are for building character. I guess it was already a sad backstory up to this point but the constant loss will surely be a burning motivation to solve the mysteries and change the world in her future.
ToBeFree
Not cool.
Tsath
Sometimes the world is unbearable.
Kwak
Scarlet is always right.
He would be alive if he had blindly obeyed him.
Scarlet won’t be a hero.
Agnarr
Huh?
Jude
I hadn’t commented in regard to the last page as I really didn’t think Julius was dead, only that he’d been badly injured and was recuperating somewhere else. This page definitely seems to confirm that Julius is dead. I’ll hold out the idea though that due to the crowd crush, bodies were harder to identify and someone else is buried here.
'phoon
Yea, having named graves is … from someone out of town is interesting. Once it means they had time and resources to actually give them decent burials. Such events can easily reach hunderts of victims which can require putting them in mass graves (with the available time/tech). But how did they identify them? Well their friend was with them but she MAY have survived or have family herself who in turn identified the corpses. Another interesting aspect could be how the buerocracy is depicted. To me it kind of hints at a preussian mindet towards paper so there is a chance they ownr identifying papers and carried them on their person for their out of town visit. Of course for a german this is pretty streightforward (you have to own one, not neccearily have it on your person but a lot of people do and it has been like that or similar for a long time)
Karla
I’m surprised that most readers did not expect Julius to die. It was quite clear to me from the start that at some point he would drop out of the story, since otherwise, he would naturally be one of the main heroes. When there was no chance anymore that he and Scarlet will break up, and then it was strongly hinted that his father is doing the wrong decision regarding the famine, I was expecting him to die. Which is something very different from wanting him to die.
Personally, I don’t like stories where people reasoned whatsoever are slaughtered by the author, but this is different: novel is not randomly killing people we love, but doing that really, and only to portrait a serious and hard time. I love how that is done. Not every story has to be super happy all the time!
May remind you that in Gaia a very likable minor character also died, but even much less predictable way. You can’t have stakes in a story where everybody is happy all the time.
Losses give depth to a story.
Crystalgate
I do not think that Julius would have been one of the main heroes if he hadn’t dropped out. Just because he is Scarlet’s boyfriend it does not mean he has what it takes to live a hunter gatherer life and explore dangerous ruins. It looked to me like Scarlet was expecting to go without him and then return and marry him once her quest was completed.
The fact that the famine went so well for Scarlet and Tibor where they ended up thriving from it was a big hint that something would go wrong though.
SadBeaver
In SFOS 076, Scarlet says: “Tibor, Julius and I would never be able to return to Milik.” Milik is her home village. So she expected Julius to join her on her quest.
Crystalgate
You’re right, she says that in a context where it’s clear she meant for the three of them to go there as part of the quest. I do not think that Julius was the kind of person who would do well in this kind of adventure, so I may have made assumptions I should not have.
HKMaly
Just because Scarlet PLANNED it that way doesn’t mean he needs to die for it to not happen.
But yes, it was kinda obvious she couldn’t find him now.
Sekhmet
I expected Julius to disappear from the story, since this is the adventures of Scarlet and Tibor. From the whole context (famine, cold, war), it was quite guessable that he was going to die. But I kind of hoped that it was going to be something else: breaking up (things like that happen!), Julius going to study far away, or taken prisoner, or badly injured so that he can’t go adventuring, or…
But yeah, unfortunately, I expected this to happen. Poor Scarlet, life has been hard on her.
Poyntre
I don’t agree with you. A secondary character doesn’t need to die, if so, we have not stories but serial burial graves. Simply they could grow up and naturally became separated by life. The problem of killing a child character and the suffering of other child character by it is the cruelty, Novil is putting the stakes high in his story.
About some deaths in Gaia, yes, some of them I am totally unable to understand. But even Conan Doyle tried to kill Sherlock Holmes (he was totally fed up of him), and he had to resurrect him, and not for a matter of money.
Crystalgate
All Scarlet has left now of the machine of eternal summer. She already showed a dedication to her quest that is not seen in most children and most of her childlike moments we’ve seen were in company of Julius. I wonder if there will be much child left in her and if we will get someone who now lives solely for her quest.
I also wonder if we will get to the grown up Scarlet soon. We have seen enough that it would make sense to fast forward to grown up Scarlet now, but there can always be even more build up.
Finally, the whole family died, not just Julius. Considering the not huge but still notable distance between Julius and his mother, this must have been a very bad crowd crush with dozens of deaths.
The_Pink_Spartan
Saw this as possible pretty much from the moment they tried to get married. Remember the adult Scarlet we saw in that promotional image? She was standing alone. She’s being set on the path of a Tragic Hero Journey.
Still hurt tho. There was even a tiny bit of hope from the previous page.
Take the time you need to grieve, Scarlet. You’ve got a long road ahead of you.
'phoon
Well, I too kinda hoped he survived, possibly permanently disabled because of the perspective of the last page. Obviously not.
Makes me kind of worried about Tibor too.
Lokitsu
I respect your writing, Novil, but I’m not sure if can keep reading. I knew this wouldn’t be a light-hearted story, but i think this is too dark for me right now. The real world is already too bleak by far, I need my stories to have more hope in them. Good luck and maybe in time, when I’m in a better mindset, I’ll revisit Scarlet and Tibor.
Graybeard
I can relate to this, having had too many deaths in my family in the last few years, one of them my wife of thirty-plus years. 🙁 I’ll keep reading for now, because it’s a superbly drawn story with fascinating characters, but I’m not sure how much longer the walking on eggshells can go on.
ETG77
To quote SAO Abridged: “Quit kicking my heart in the dick!”
Sharpless
I assumed that something would happen to Julius, maybe not this, but something that would remove him from the story permanently.
Sharpless
Assumed from when Scarlet left, and Julius stayed, I mean
Andi
That was my feeling as well. Though I thought through some events they would find themselves on different sides of the same conflict, and Scarlet had to choose between him and saving the world
Jazz
Sad page, but happy 100th episode of your newest fantasy epic!
Wisteria
I’m a monster who can’t resist to make that joke :
“Julius Mirking’s epitaph : He had a crush and he was.”
Pharmadan
Whelp I’d say 98% chance he’s not coming back.
While there are still story options like- wrong body, not actually dead but sold to slavery or army, etc etc , they don’t really seem like the kind of thing for this particular story. Too much of a “sidequest” type thing.
Could very well be wrong though. I’m not the excellent author who’s reached 100 pages on a THIRD comic.
Midgard
100 in this chapter. The comic is at 138, or 140 if you count covers.
Thomas
Okay, but hear me out- why did he clarify that she is his adoptive daughter specifically? That’s… kind of obvious… unless wolves and humans are able to interbreed which seems like a very strange detail. If this is a translation issue, it might make more sense to say “Yes. I adopted her after her parents were murdered by Grondan soldiers.”
Crystalgate
They are able to interbreed. The children will be 100% fox, wolf or human, no half something.
Thomas
Welp. That’s what I get for not reading the extra content outside the comic. Thanks for letting me know, I’ll have to look at this stuff I guess..
Hegel-Marx
Is is a very strange detail, but foxes, wolves and humans can procreate, as it’s explain in https://www.sandraandwoo.com/scarlet/setting/#relationships
That’s why my assumption is that wolves and foxes were created from humans through genetic engineering (a long time ago, and civilization has regressed, so everyone has forgotten about it). Even stranger is that the offspring is not mixed in characteristics, but has completely the characteristics of one of the races of its parents.
Nachum
I think he wanted to stress that her parents were killed as well, and it’s just a different way of phrasing it.
Shadow Threat
Poor Scarlet. She lost her family, now her boyfriend…. It’s hard to find words for this. 🙁
Tauben
Time to discover ancient necromancy tech!
Abrakonda
I had few pages to read to catch up and this one welcomed me when I clicked my bookmark. Ooof my emotions, catching up was hard ngl, even worse when it was like four pages only, no space for some misunderstanding
BlackDragonSlayer
🙁
Poll
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Ariana Carolus Athamas Baako Bolin Cyril Evelina Ferrus Gale Nenawa Gavin Carolus Iona Jehona Shardyk Julius Mirkning Kala Silverspring King Protos Lauro Levon Goldwood Leyton Wayt Luitpold Marik Marton Princess Elodie Raymond Reto Mirkning Reva Scarlet Carolus Silvana Mirkning Tibor Frey Viola Vreni Yerim Zach Ilkin