Blonde Sunrise - SPOILERS

[Jitter]

This thread is for discussion (including spoilers) about webcomic Blonde Sunrise featuring monsters, monster hunters, violence and other stuff. Blonde Sunrise was presented by RanVor as comic of the month in March 2022 here: https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=1237.135

Read it here: http://www.blondesunrise.com/index.html

Seriously, do! It’s great! Here’s part of RanVor’s introduction:

Synopsis: In the town of Creston, elite units of hunters protect the citizens from vicious monsters, most common of which are lycans (werewolves). One night, a rookie hunter Leonard Derrin meets a lycan girl named Daine (not Diane) who tricks him and turns him into an omega lycan under her control. From then on, Leonard is forced to cater to the whims of his new mistress while hiding his affliction from fellow hunters. And as he gets introduced to more and more of the werewolf society, he starts to discover that maybe the lycans aren't so bad, actually. Meanwhile, a series of brutal attacks sparks an investigation that slowly, but surely causes everyone's dark secrets to begin to unravel...

Content warnings: A caveat here is that I had stopped reading this comic for over a year and only returned to it recently, so there might be things I don't remember.
- Violence and blood, though not too often and not particularly graphic. That said, murder plays an important role in several subplots.
- Parental abuse and references to bullying.
- Occasional swearing.

Rating: probably T.

Art: Serviceable. It's not terrible, but won't be winning any awards anytime soon for sure.

Spoiler warning: this thread contains spoilers on the plot up until the newest page at any point in time.

[Jitter]

P 1038, March 18 2022

Ran, you asked in the comic of the month thread about your theory that Michelle and Vince are half siblings. Yes! I have been working up to the same idea! Vince seems to not be a full lycan, so Ophelia would have been a human? And Vince’s dad’s wife Lilly someone else? This is something I’m still confused about.

BTW you warned about parental abuse, I can’t really say what it was that tipped me off but I knew from the first sight of him that this is the abusive one. Quite a feat by the artist considering how the art is nowhere close to realistically detailed.

[RanVor]

Yeah, Flint definitely looks every bit like the big meanie he is. There's just something unsettling about his design.

I need to reread the comic because I don't remember all the details, but there's certainly (and unsurprisingly) more going on than we know. It's likely that more will be revealed soon, considering that Gerald Grand is in a bit of a pickle right now, which makes now the perfect time to explore his past...

[Jitter]

I wonder whether any of the so called human characters are actually human. Right now I’m particularly confused about Cyran.

[RanVor]

Cyran is generally strange but considering how adamant he is about removing the lycan curse from Leonard, I think he's probably human.

[Jitter]

Hmm, maybe so, but was either he or his father AND sister under some sort of curse then? He just admitted to having killed them, which makes it a bit hard to consider him a good guy right now. I’m sure there’s more to it than “I just snapped” but yeah.

[RanVor]

I never said that he's a good guy, only that he's human. Humans can be worse monsters than actual monsters.

[Jitter]

As was just recently demonstrated!

I mean Leonard is dead set on believing Cyran wants the best for him, and at least until recently the readers were led to believe he’s good, just mistaken about the lycans. Or that’s how I read him.

[RanVor]

People aren't all good or all bad. So far, Cyran has been nothing but a good friend to Leonard, and he has only known the good side of him. The same applies to Michelle as well, she was shocked to learn that the rumors about the Antinous family were true. At the very least, he is genuinely concerned about both of them. There's still a lot of context missing, so it's hard to judge how evil he really is at this point.

[Jitter]

You are of course 100% right, and much of the interest of Blonde Sunrise is exactly due to this reason. Actually it’s quite funny how easy it is to go to the good guys / bad guys dichotomy even after repeatedly having been shown that’s not how this story works

[Jitter]

This is a rare urn of events, have a protagonist turn out to NOT have done some sinister thing.

[RanVor]

True that. It begs the question, though - if Leonard didn't do it, then who did? My first suspect was Grand, but why? Did he stage the entire thing just to recruit Leonard, or was it just a side benefit of a greater plot? And if Leonard didn't kill Orion, why did Grand recruit him in the first place? He's not exactly competent at his job.

I wonder how much of Leonard's initial reaction was because Orion was Daine's father and how much of it was anger at being thrown into prison for nothing.

[Jitter]

He also seems upset that he started killing what he now understands is people. So perhaps he thought “oh well, I’m already a murderer, it makes no difference if I become a hunter too”, and now realizes that he wasn’t a killer until he chose to become one.

I wonder if Grand knows something about what sort of creature Leonard is (even though Leonard doesn’t) and has something planned related to that?

[JoB]

if Leonard didn't do it, then who did? My first suspect was Grand, but why?

Whoever did it apparently knew that Orion was a lycan, hence the silver bullet. I think that if Grand had known that, he would've shot Orion in public (which IIUC would have had everyone see him turn into his wolf form) - that would've not only been his job, but also cemented the hunters' position, as well as his own, for a long time.

But we also know that (at least approximately) when Orion died, Leonard was in his house and something weird happened with the stove fire he handled to set the house ablaze - a particular talent of the fire witch. With witches also being known for the ability to see souls, and thus be able to tell lycans from humans. And we also know that in that storyverse, witches can take over only female bodies ... oh look, the person who became PM instead of Orion happens to be a woman ... would like to abolish the hunters ... and, unlike any other higher-up we've seen so far, seems to work without any assistants that could happen to learn a thing or two about her ...

[RanVor]

Whoever did it apparently knew that Orion was a lycan, hence the silver bullet. I think that if Grand had known that, he would've shot Orion in public (which IIUC would have had everyone see him turn into his wolf form) - that would've not only been his job, but also cemented the hunters' position, as well as his own, for a long time.

But we also know that (at least approximately) when Orion died, Leonard was in his house and something weird happened with the stove fire he handled to set the house ablaze - a particular talent of the fire witch. With witches also being known for the ability to see souls, and thus be able to tell lycans from humans. And we also know that in that storyverse, witches can take over only female bodies ... oh look, the person who became PM instead of Orion happens to be a woman ... would like to abolish the hunters ... and, unlike any other higher-up we've seen so far, seems to work without any assistants that could happen to learn a thing or two about her ...

Oooh, good catch! I didn't think of that, but it makes a lot of sense.