- Scarlet: Who are those people, mom?
- Ariana Carolus: Grondan soldiers! Quick, go and hide!
- Ariana Carolus: Hhw!
- Scarlet: Mommy!
The Machine of Eternal Summer 026
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- Scarlet: Who are those people, mom?
- Ariana Carolus: Grondan soldiers! Quick, go and hide!
- Ariana Carolus: Hhw!
- Scarlet: Mommy!
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34 thoughts on “The Machine of Eternal Summer 026”
Ike
Well, the fire nation DID attack and everything changed.
Vincent
So Scarlett will go hibernate in an iceberg?
Mark
Wait. Do the Grondans live underground or did they dig a tunnel all the way from Grondland(?) to wherever that is?
Kazuma Taichi
I figure they’re coming out of the cellar looking for whomever just intruded on the machine
Manabi
I don’t think the machine Scarlet found has anything to do with the soldiers. I believe the setup Novil’s going for is that Scarlet’s quest to find the machine happens because she’s driven out of her home (and probably home country) by the war. She knows machine exists, because she saw it as a child, but she can’t easily get to it due to the war.
Thomas
Geez, that escalated quickly…
HKMaly
I wonder if her opening the door activated some sort of alarm …. but yeah, we didn’t even know there is war and now suddenly …
Eric
I feel like we’re missing a page here. Last page they’re right at the house, you can see the wall in the background, and she’s taking Mom back to the nearby cellar, then all the sudden they’re deep in the woods?
HKMaly
I think the HOUSE is deep in the woods but the perspective could’ve been done better.
Eric
Right, this is what doesn’t work for me. In the last page they’re literally standing next to the house wall. OK, maybe they simply turn around and there’s a rocky hill next to the farm, but then the later panel shows them running through more woods. Just feels like a major continuity jump, all the more disorienting because we’ve never heard of these soldiers, country, or war, nor been given any reason to think there’s a cave system there. I mean, a few days ago her father was comfortable taking a cart of turnips to town without a gun, now there’s an invasion Mom’s apparently familiar enough with to recognize immediately? (e.g., not “OMG who are those men?”)
HKMaly
They are not standing THAT close and that running must be literally few steps. It’s shown badly but is still plausible.
Her mom likely recognized the flags. They are AWARE of those soldiers, just like I’m aware of Chinese soldiers despite never being close to one. But they had no reason to suspect they will ever get that close to their home. Not only is this invasion unexpected, they are probably not living near the borders.
But Grondan apparently prepared surprise attack, possibly with some network of tunnels.
Paver
Hey Novil i wpuld like to ask you did foxes and Wolves are maturing Foster than humans in recompesate fir their shorter lifespan, if Yes whet they hit their eqivment of 16,18 and 25? What us their pregnacy leght ?Sorry for spelling errors English is my second language
Graybeard
And so Little Eva Syndrome (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth ) claims another victim. I’m disappointed.
JD
I think you must have linked the wrong trope because that was is about an innocent child dying, not a mother. I mean, leaving the protagonist child an orphan is a trope, sure, it’s just not that one.
It did feel a little pointless though. We didn’t even know there was a war.
Graybeard
That was the trope I intended to link, not being able to find one at TVT for adults. In the language of TVT, this an “inversion,” but as such, it still works — highly appealing figure with all kinds of virtues who dies tragically and too young. Actually, the first analogy that came to mind was Bambi. but I couldn’t find a better trope for that.
HKMaly
The trope you want is https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeathByOriginStory and examples include Batman, Superman and Luke Skywalker … yeah, sure, it doesn’t include Mother having some virtues because that’s not really important for the story.
Crystalgate
Well, it makes sense that a world with depleting food potential would face wars.
HKMaly
Yup. Soldier who died for his country doesn’t need to be fed anymore.
Manabi
The wars would be over resources, so soldiers would be given priority for food as well. If you’re having trouble getting enough food and can get fed well by joining the army a lot of people would take that opportunity.
HKMaly
That’s true but not cynical enough.
HKMaly
Hide Scarlett! Like, there is quite nice hiding place behind the hidden door you just discovered …
Werwolfe
Batman: Motivated!
doclbn
Despite all precedence and justified prejudice it is not exactly typical of soldiers to shoot fleeing civilians in the back…
Kazuma Taichi
Might be in Grondar
Thomas
Yeah. The sudden appearance of the nation and the war are bad enough, but the immediate pointless murder- this page is terrible.
Novil
In several recent real wars and conflicts, more than enough civilians would’ve been “happy” if they’d “only” been shot in the back while fleeing.
boB
I don’t think she was shot in the back — panel 5 is showing damage to her front, which could be either where it hit her, or a shot that went all the way through from the back. However, the last panel doesn’t show any damage to the back at all.
So if she was shot from the front, while running away from the soldiers coming out of the cave, it means there was another squad that they were accidentally running towards — meaning a coordinated invasion from multiple entry points. I guess we’ll find out soon if that was the case.
My other question was of Scarlett continuing to run after her Mom was hit. I can’t imagine many children of her age not immediately going to their parent to see what had happened and what they could do about it. But maybe it had been drilled into her earlier that in a situation such as this (assuming the threat of war was always somewhat near), she must keep running to safely. Or she might be smart enough to have been able to process her Mom’s death and her own precarious situation quickly enough to continue running with only a head turn.
HKMaly
I think she was shot in the back and the last panel is drawn badly. It’s not only problem with this page.
Kazuma Taichi
Dang this just really ain’t Scarlet’s week
BlackDragonSlayer
WELP. Wanna take bets whether her dad makes it out, or not?
Vicious Sand
OK, so there’s a cave system there? While that might make sense considering the Hidden Cave, you’d think that it being a dugout for the military would have gotten some notice. And there’s a war that 1- we’re hearing about starting now. 2-there’s a hostile nationstate who we’re hearing about only now. 3-They gots no problems just shooting anything and anybody they see. Which is called murder of unarmed fleeing civilians.
For a big fatal zap gun, it doesn’t leave a mark on her. Dead is dead, but “how dead” is she? A life-saving defibrillator can be pulled out of the same nowhere that everything else just was.
Go player
Hmmm… I’m not such a big fan of the big coincidence of two highly unlikely events meeting at the exact moment to drive the story… the discovery of the machine and now the (not foreshadowed) invasion are just such two things. I’d prefer a slower story telling here, even though Oliver probably sees the need to pull us in quickly. It’s a webcomic with slim attention span, after all. Maybe the Gaia mode of prefabricating a bunch of pages before the start could have relieved some of this pressure? Gaia did start gently without too much hurry.
Graybeard
We don’t know that this is coincidence. It may be cause and effect. We’ll know in another page or three. If it really is coincidence, I agree with you, but it’s a shortcoming of the form.
Novil
While there’s a very small cave, the Grondans dug tunnels for their attack.
Poll
Characters
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