November 6, 2015: You'd Be Cursing Too

[JustRight]

I am eternally grateful to THunt for 'Sonova crap!', much preferred to most other expletives, including 'You pile of dung!' 'Sonova crap!' is in the same league as 'Mother pussbucket!'

[Raza]

I think tbh part of it for me is a timing issue. This page came right after the most recent sexualising-things-that-probably-don't-want-sexualising-actually debate, further discussion around unintentional but still potentially problematic misogyny in the comic and so on. The graphic and slightly ritualised beheading of one of the only female characters happening to occur in the timeline shortly after that was just an unfortunate schedule coincidence, and probably my brain made links that wouldn't have been there otherwise. I'm sure (or I hope?) it wasn't intentionally sexualised, but I did look at it and go "um..." and the guy who pops up every now and again to oh-so-kindly tell us he's gathering gory girl stuff for his private ...'collection'... apparently noticed it too, which...I would like to forget immediately.

Hahaha, brilliant. I just noticed I've barely posted on this incarnation of the forums except to comment on Idle and Thunt's impressively creepy gore doll picture back during the time-out. I guess that's just the sort of thing that pushes me the final inches across the threshold of deciding to come in and talk about a comic. Anyway, sorry to squick you out; it's a price I'm willing to extract to break unconventional sexual interests out of the confines of taboo status, but I'd genuinely rather do that without upsetting anyone, if it were possible.

For what it's worth, yeah, I see your perspective. My experience with sexual interests that don't have socially approved outlets is that in a lot of people, they tend to lie dormant, never quite becoming conscious but painting situations that arouse them with a certain gloss of interestingness that can affect decisions without the person ever truly knowing what's going on. I expect that Idle's curse is going to have plenty of plot-relevant appearances - getting a free ressurection 1/day is pretty bloody significant if you're going out dungeoneering, after all - but you still wonder if it's truly coincidence that it appears in one of the otherwise scarce hot, lightly dressed females, right? Still, even a psychologically informed speculation at Thunt's motives here is just speculation, and I don't think it's crossed the line where it warrants thinking differently about him for it, whatever it is that you would think if he were consciously or unconsciously gravitating towards drawing sexy gore. And although I see that violent sexual interests can be pretty tough to disentangle from misogyny when they occur in heterosexual males, as someone who finds beheadings hot in either gender, I'm inclined to think those people still deserve the benefit of the doubt on that count, too.

[nikohl]

Hey, man. I have plenty of nonstandard interests. I even talk about 'em on the internet. Hell, if you look hard enough on this very forum you can see me talking about talking about them elsewhere on the internet. I just don't talk about 'em here because it's not really the place. Having said that, beheading is way outside the scope of things I find in any way fun. So, you know...YKIOK but YKI(most def)NMK. It's not my intention to judge you for your preferences. It's also not my intention to armchair-analyse Thunt's subconscious or his predilections, so I'm gonna leave the whoooole rest of your post alone.

I just found it telling that you gave the page the thumbs up as far as "interestingness" at the same time as I gave it the thumbs down for "squickiness" - we're both seeing it. That's what I wanted to point out with my tiny-text sentence.

[Xavier78]

as someone who finds beheadings hot in either gender

Way off topic but I don't care. You should seek professional help. That isn't normal, or charming, or anything but sick. Why you would feel the need to share something so stomach turning is way beyond my comprehension.

[Raza]

Hey, man. I have plenty of nonstandard interests. I even talk about 'em on the internet. Hell, if you look hard enough on this very forum you can see me talking about talking about them elsewhere on the internet. I just don't talk about 'em here because it's not really the place. Having said that, beheading is way outside the scope of things I find in any way fun. So, you know...YKIOK but YKI(most def)NMK. It's not my intention to judge you for your preferences. It's also not my intention to armchair-analyse Thunt's subconscious or his predilections, so I'm gonna leave the whoooole rest of your post alone.

I just found it telling that you gave the page the thumbs up as far as "interestingness" at the same time as I gave it the thumbs down for "squickiness" - we're both seeing it. That's what I wanted to point out with my tiny-text sentence.

thumbsupgoblin.jpg

Way off topic but I don't care. You should seek professional help. That isn't normal, or charming, or anything but sick. Why you would feel the need to share something so stomach turning is way beyond my comprehension.

I'm motivated to share it because there's people around who feel like you do, and whose attitudes are going to get to someone more fragile than myself if our culture doesn't change for the better. And well, y'know, 'cause it went and got to be semi on-topic ITT.

Look, I get that violence is bad and scary. Your instincts aren't serving you entirely wrong there. Obviously, there's no ethical way to actually behead people, so it's a kink that can't be practiced. But there's no one worse off because there's hentai dedicated to themes of gore, or because there's people that enjoy looking at that, and judgment like yours isn't called for. People are wired to get turned out by all sorts of weird stuff, and the world is a much unhappier place for the fact that we're compelling and shaming each other into keeping it to ourselves or suppressing it altogether, turning arousal into anxieties and then taking those out on the next person to fall out of line.

So yeah. I'm capable of being turned on by gore. I'm not going to hurt anyone to indulge that. I'm not sick or otherwise ethically challenged, to the best of my ability to discern such things. I've also studied sexology, and there's no competent sexologist that would treat someone for an egosyntonic fetish like mine without a comorbid psychiatric disorder to actually make it dangerous. Deal with it.

[nikohl]

*ninja mod appear*

I'm not going to mod voice anyone because nobody's done anything wrong. I'm just going to say - we're a tolerant place here, and as long as nobody is doing anything against our forum rules, generally being a dick, or promoting things that are illegal, they are pretty much all welcome. Please bear that in mind while reading and contributing to the forums.

This is off-topic, but we totally have a suitable subforum for this kind of discussion if you guys would like to continue it there.

[Lady Dawn]

*ignoring obvious troll*

I think the beheading is quite relevant. It makes clear what is happening and that the curses suck. They really suck and in very silly ways which only makes it worse.
I wonder often though about when severed necks are displayed as red surfaces with a little round in the middle.
We know that the spine is quite at the back and apart from the spine we mainly have the esophagus and the trachea. So what we see most visible is the esophagus? But that is the only of the three that is all made of soft material. Also is it actually that white or should it have more shadows?
Second thing is shouldn't Idlle bleed more? There are a lot of arteries being severed, among which 2 huge ones. She should be bled quite dry within a short time.
Good thing that the resurrection afterwards sets her head right back, replenishes her blood and .... ehm erasing the tattoos is not an advantage from my viewpoint because I would be somewhat sad if my tattoos were erased.
I am looking forward to see how she will probably get new tattoos. I assume she has a curse that gives her tattoos every time that some trigger is met. So it will be interesting to see what the trigger is.

[RocketScientist]

I am eternally grateful to THunt for 'Sonova crap!', much preferred to most other expletives, including 'You pile of dung!' 'Sonova crap!' is in the same league as 'Mother pussbucket!'

Someone else who still says mother pussbucket!

Hmm. Now that it's shaded and the tattoos are still missing, I'm intrigued about that. I guess tattoo removal would be good if you have tattoo regret. Saves you getting a coverup. lol.

IIRC, Thunt said a long time ago that he wasn't going to get anatomically correct with gore. Characters are just big bags of red with indicators or bones or whatnot. I wouldn't read more into her innards than that. The lack of gushers of blood is probably also just to minimize gore.

[thousandinone]

Regarding Idle's Tattoos-

I'm also guessing that applying them is part of a curse. After all, if she's resurrecting without them here, and she has to die and resurrect on a daily basis, they'd have to be re-applied daily?

They could also be body paint, or a magical effect of some kind- more likely than the idea of manually applying such extensive and colored-in tattoos on a daily basis. We're talking a lot of time out of a day and generally requiring multiple visits using modern day methods; I imagine tattooing at the technology level depicted here is more time consuming rather than less.

Their presence is too consistent before the beheading and their absence too consistent after the beheading to chalk it up to an unfinished page or an oversight.

[Zathyr]

I don't have any personal experience in the matter, but I've heard that if an artery is cut cleanly and perpendicular to its length, it closes up on its own almost immediately as the muscles contract and don't relax at the end. Please correct me if I've heard wrong there.

The beheading seems like a good a way to die as any. Better than most. Quick, efficient, get it done and over with.

[BlueAmaranth]

Yeah, I don't know that there's really a better alternative to the beheading under the circumstances. (Anyone who doesn't want to hear about the various methods of sacrificing laboratory animals, please don't read further.)

In a lab setting, anesthesia followed by cervical dislocation or decapitation is pretty much the gold standard for humane euthanasia of rodents. It's pretty brutal, because you have to snap the rodent's neck with your hands or use a tiny guillotine. For the researcher, it's awful until they get desensitized to it (I never did, I had to switch to exclusively in vitro work). On the other hand, you can put them in a CO2 chamber and walk away for a few minutes, and that feels a lot less brutal for the researcher, but it probably means more suffering for the animal. Sometimes the violent, bloody method is the more humane one.

So if I were writing a comic where a character had to die every day, and anesthesia/other medical stuff wasn't available but bladed weapons were, I would probably go with beheading too. But I would also probably use some kind of discretion shot rather than actually showing the decapitation in its full glory.

[FailsWildly]

Weird, the whole beheading thing doesn't bother me in the slightest, then again, I like to read really violent and gore-filled things so there's that, but this seems quite tame. I mean, we saw some pretty bloody things in the Maze of Many. I agree it's a pretty weird curse, but curses are cuses and tend to be weird and confusing by nature.

As far as, "You pile of dung!" goes, I assume it's because Forgath's player is a (Young?) girl and possibly deems it unladylike to swear in the conventional sense. Or, perhaps his class and alignment dictates him to not swear or keep it to a minimum?

[SpeaksManyLanguages]

I'm one of the people, who are bothered by dismemberment in general, though people have talked a lot about it here and i don't really have anything new to add.

One of the russian readers raised a question: does Bowst get XP from this?

My guess is not, as it is not a betrayal, where one party technically becomes two and there is a fight between them, estimating threat level, etc..

[Synch]

Yeah, I don't know that there's really a better alternative to the beheading under the circumstances. (Anyone who doesn't want to hear about the various methods of sacrificing laboratory animals, please don't read further.)

In a lab setting, anesthesia followed by cervical dislocation or decapitation is pretty much the gold standard for humane euthanasia of rodents. It's pretty brutal, because you have to snap the rodent's neck with your hands or use a tiny guillotine. For the researcher, it's awful until they get desensitized to it (I never did, I had to switch to exclusively in vitro work). On the other hand, you can put them in a CO2 chamber and walk away for a few minutes, and that feels a lot less brutal for the researcher, but it probably means more suffering for the animal. Sometimes the violent, bloody method is the more humane one.

So if I were writing a comic where a character had to die every day, and anesthesia/other medical stuff wasn't available but bladed weapons were, I would probably go with beheading too. But I would also probably use some kind of discretion shot rather than actually showing the decapitation in its full glory.

Completely agree. In my background as an animal welfare inspector, I was trained in cervical dislocation and cranial ablation for small animals, and captive bolt gun for larger animals. It may seem messy/cruel/brutal, but its certainly better than transporting a mortally wounded animal many miles just to be put to sleep. One of my worst days was having to euthanise over 300 chickens with my bare hands after a battery farm caught fire (buy free-range please people) as it was just the quickest, most effective and least stressful way of ending their suffering, and after a while you become robotic in your desensitivity, but I was glad I did it. (After a while that leads to compassion fatigue, but thats another kettle of fish.)


Anyone else not really warming to Idle and Bowst or is it just me? They just seem like filler to me until Korgath is reunited with the others. Maybe its just because they're new, but I just find him one-dimensional and her irritating. And she looks stupid.

[Glemp]

Korgath

We are not starting that again.

I like Idle, and I'm kinda warming to Bowst since he's helping her with her...unusual curse requirements. That said, he's still a lot more annoying than MM was at level two.

[nikohl]

I wasn't going to get into the mechanical aspects of killing things kindly but since others have, those of you who know my background will know why I agree with BA and Synch and those of you who don't - meh. I agree with BA and Synch.

And Glemp, I imagine that was just a typo, no need to shout.

[Morgaln]

Anyone else not really warming to Idle and Bowst or is it just me? They just seem like filler to me until Korgath is reunited with the others. Maybe its just because they're new, but I just find him one-dimensional and her irritating. And she looks stupid.

So far they haven't had much chance to get interesting, since there wasn't much screentime and it has mostly been used to give us a list of the curses they suffer from instead of establishing their characters. They might pick up a bit later.
I'm just curious what keeps that gravity-defying wrap Idle wears from sliding down her thighs. There must be some serious magic involved there, because that thing looks like a wardrobe failure that already happened.

[Glemp]

And Glemp, I imagine that was just a typo, no need to shout.

Oh, I know. In retrospect that was a bit bigger than I wanted - re-editing.

[BlueAmaranth]

I'm kinda warming to Bowst since he's helping her with her...unusual curse requirements.

Yeah, same. I've got kind of a soft spot for characters who are willing to bloody their own hands to help people even though they hate doing it. The way I see it, if you have the power to save someone by doing something morally ambiguous, like beheading a party member to save her life in the long run, and you don't do it, you're not absolved of the choice you made just because you chose inaction. There are characters who would rather "let Idle die" than "kill Idle," just so they don't have to personally carry the burden of having committed a "sinful" act, and I don't have much sympathy for them.

It's kind of a lite example since it'd be really hard to argue that it's actually morally wrong to behead Idle in this situation. It's no trolley problem. But Bowst could have decided he was too uncomfortable with killing her and forced her to do it herself every day instead, so this still makes me like him more than I did before, even if he's mostly just the dumb guy so far. I'm interested enough to give him a chance to win me over.

Idle's not really doing it for me, though.

[Wolfe]

Shouldn't Bowst punch himself in the face when he says "Relax, mr. level four"?

For clarification, the facepunch curse triggers when he says "what", not "four."

Aaah, that's right, ins't it! His thing with the word "four" was jealousy about Forgath being level four, wasn't it?

[Morgaln]

Anyone else not really warming to Idle and Bowst or is it just me? They just seem like filler to me until Korgath is reunited with the others. Maybe its just because they're new, but I just find him one-dimensional and her irritating. And she looks stupid.

So far they haven't had much chance to get interesting, since there wasn't much screentime and it has mostly been used to give us a list of the curses they suffer from instead of establishing their characters. They might pick up a bit later.
I'm just curious what keeps that gravity-defying wrap Idle wears from sliding down her thighs. There must be some serious magic involved there, because that thing looks like a wardrobe failure that already happened.

Also wanting to add, part of the problem for me is that the way the two got introduced didn't fit the situation at all. Forgath just had a near-death experience fighting a cursed paladin. To the best of his knowledge, Kore is currently chasing his best friend through a dungeon crawl. For all Forgath knows, Minmax might already be dead at this point. Even worse, Kore told Forgath that he would kill his family, friends, and everyone else who lives in Forgath's home. He should be terribly worried and scared. It just doesn't fit that he would sit around and idly joke with those two while doom is hanging over everyone he knows and loves. He should be eager to save Minmax and warn his clan before it is too late.

For similar reasons, the goblins and Minmax shouldn't hang around in that cave, sightseeing. Kore could be upon them any minute; with all the "sometime later" panels we had, it's strange he didn't catch up to them already. They should be hurrying along, trying to put as much distance between them and Kore as possible and hoping to find a place where the way branches so they can lose him for good.

[SpeaksManyLanguages]

For similar reasons, the goblins and Minmax shouldn't hang around in that cave, sightseeing. Kore could be upon them any minute; with all the "sometime later" panels we had, it's strange he didn't catch up to them already. They should be hurrying along, trying to put as much distance between them and Kore as possible and hoping to find a place where the way branches so they can lose him for good.

They've spent an awfully lot of time in the very first room. If Kore were to enter the dungeon, he would have fallen into it, to them. So, they can be quite sure that the mouth of the entrance is closed and will probably be closed for a while.

I wouldn't be surprised, if Depths of the Dragon's Maw opens only once per party, or even just once a year at all.

I don't have anything to say about Forgath, though. I dislike this thread of the story too.

[Morgaln]

For similar reasons, the goblins and Minmax shouldn't hang around in that cave, sightseeing. Kore could be upon them any minute; with all the "sometime later" panels we had, it's strange he didn't catch up to them already. They should be hurrying along, trying to put as much distance between them and Kore as possible and hoping to find a place where the way branches so they can lose him for good.

They've spent an awfully lot of time in the very first room. If Kore were to enter the dungeon, he would have fallen into it, to them. So, they can be quite sure that the mouth of the entrance is closed and will probably be closed for a while.

I wouldn't be surprised, if Depths of the Dragon's Maw opens only once per party, or even just once a year at all.

I don't have anything to say about Forgath, though. I dislike this thread of the story too.

But do they know that? Can they be sure he won't be able to enter the dungeon? Maybe the entrance take an hour to reset, maybe a day, maybe a year. If it is a year, they're good; not that this is likely, since there were far too many corpses in that trap room for that, after a year they would be far more decayed. If it is just an hour, they really don't have much time. They cannot risk that he finds a way in and catches up to them and they cannot depend on assumptions. Also, Kore can go around the mountain; technically, he's even supposed to have access to a mount as a high-level paladin, so he could do so far quicker then they could. The longer they tarry, the closer he will be on their trail when they come out. They want that trail to be as cold as possible when he arrives at the exit so hopefully he won't be able to pick it up.

[Synch]

Also wanting to add, part of the problem for me is that the way the two got introduced didn't fit the situation at all. Forgath just had a near-death experience fighting a cursed paladin. To the best of his knowledge, Kore is currently chasing his best friend through a dungeon crawl. For all Forgath knows, Minmax might already be dead at this point. Even worse, Kore told Forgath that he would kill his family, friends, and everyone else who lives in Forgath's home. He should be terribly worried and scared. It just doesn't fit that he would sit around and idly joke with those two while doom is hanging over everyone he knows and loves. He should be eager to save Minmax and warn his clan before it is too late.

Yeah, I think I mentioned on one of the earlier panels it seems a stupid time to suddenly introduce two characters who so far seem only to serve as comedic devices immediately after one of the biggest climaxes of the comic. Its actually very anti-climatic and is leaving a sour taste in my mouth. After all the tears and the Sad we've had in the comic, now would at least be an appropriate time for some. Instead, we get Minmax bonding with his mortal enemies and Forgath having campfires and smores with some kliks and walking punchlines. Unless we skipped the futile endeavours to escape/rejoin, sadness and resignation. We saw a tiny bit of that from Minmax, but nothing from Forgath.

Bah, sorry about the Korgath typo. I don't know why I automatically type that, I'm sure this isn't the first time too. I think its because it sounds better as a name than Forgath in my head.

[Arch Lich Burns]

Bowst and idle are very lucky the blade sliced through perfectly on the first swing. That does not always happen with hatchets and similar instruments. His sword is not a gullatine, it could hsve easily taken more hits to behead her, which is why O do not think ot was the best method of killing her.