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Worlds & Stories Discussion Board / Re: Comic of the Month
« Last post by Linebyline on November 22, 2024, 12:09:20 PM »
No takers for November either? No worries, I've got you covered!

You know that spooky dark-haired ghost lady that comes out of the TV to kill you in that horror movie? (I forget what it's called, like Saw or Blair Witch Project or The Tigger Movie or something.) Well imagine if a similar but legally distinct ghost settled down with a kindly novelist and had an adorably wholesome daughter who takes after her mom. That's Erma, by Brandon J. Santiago, available on Webtoon.

Erma is the title character and silent protagonist. She starts out as the weirdest thing in the comic, except for maybe her mom, but as time goes on more and more oddness is revealed to exist and even be pretty normal. Which is probably one of several reasons that most people are perfectly chill with Erma, at least once they get used to her. Other reasons include "She's just so gosh darn cute" and her insatiable desire to be a friend to everyone.

It starts out as a gag strip with some short arcs. Later on the arcs get a little more plot to them, with Cerebus Syndrome finally kicking in just a couple arcs ago as Erma and the readers learn about her mom's side of the family. The heavier tone is broken up by some old-fashioned wholesome gag strips posted as filler as the family reunion arc took a long time to produce.

The art is charming, starting out in a newspaper comic style before evolving to a neater and more detailed version of itself. The family reunion arc shows a lot of manga influence, which is fitting since it's set in Japan. But in all cases, it's both charming and readable.

Some caveats: First, some content warnings. There's little violence before the family reunion arc, but there's definitely violence there. Like, a dude gets frozen solid and then shattered, on-panel. There's also animal harm, though not deliberate abuse or cruelty.* The comic's approach to horror is usually to twist it into something cute or wholesome (like Erma herself), but there's some genuinely scary stuff, and the arc after the family reunion arc is called "aftermath" for a reason as the body/psychological horror Erma goes through is seriously traumatizing. There are themes of prejudice, as not only does not everyone accept Erma but a lot of other spooky/paranormal types aren't as lucky as she is. There's also serious psychological/emotional and sometimes physical abuse (guess which arc) that's mostly in the past and off-panel but is very explicitly talked about.

Spoiler: * • show
Look, it's fine. The dog was already (un)dead, so being shot repeatedly by Erma's uncle didn't faze him. He got hit by a bus the next day and walked that off too, and none of Erma's playmates seemed bothered by the tire tread bifurcating his torso.

But still, there's an "oh no I accidentally shot your dog" moment, and then a "stop shooting my dog (who is apparently undead)!" moment after Uncle Bad Trigger Discipline panics when he sees the dog get back up. Fortunately Erma was not there to see this part.


The treatment of some of those issues, uh, feels kinda iffy to me? Like, mostly I'm not seeing a problem but in one case:
Spoiler: show
One of the earlier plot-heavy arcs is about a rat infestation at Erma's school that's being covered up by the administration, and turns out to be due to a whole rat-person civilization living beneath the school, which was built on top of their subterranean home. They (or at least some of them) have this Aquaman thing going on with non-anthro rats.

Part of the resolution of this arc is the standoffish, authoritarian, seemingly-human hall monitor Sydney being revealed as one of the rat-people (actually a hybrid, like Erma) and having the ability to transform (or at least having a magical disguise she can shed); ever since then, she and Erma's social circle have been friends, and she's appeared in rat-kid form. Another part is the rat-people at large being convinced by Erma's kindness and Sydney's bravery to stop hiding from humans.

The part that strikes me as iffy is that the whole rat city is moving away from the school to avoid disruption to the humans. That's your happy ending? People moving out of their ancestral homeland to avoid bothering the people who moved in after they were forced out? Kinda reminds me of that "history" textbook that went viral a while back for saying that First Nations/Native Americans (I forget offhand whether this was US or Canada) left their homes to "make room" for European colonists.


IDK, maybe it's just tone-deaf. I don't think that reflects the overall position of the story or its author toward issues of racism/colonialism/etc.; it just seemed like a red flag to me.

Last warning is, there's a lot of filler. Early on, it seems like it's going for a newspaper setup with weekly strips and Sunday strips, but the Sunday strips at the time are all single-panel fan art crossovers of Erma with pop culture characters (often but not necessarily horror). Later on these mostly get moved to the October "Ermaween" strips. But shortly after that happens, you see more and more "Sorry for the lack of updates, here's some art" posts as well as ads for merch and spinoff prose novels (at least one of which is written in-universe by Erma's dad). Finally, as mentioned above, regular one-off strips get posted as filler between installments of the family reunion arc. It's a bit of a pain (I've complained here about less intrusive filler in The Sword Interval) but the comic is still good enough that I can't be too mad about it.

So if you're sad that Spooky Month ended almost a month ago and you've run out of Halloween candy, check out Erma for an extremely sweet take on horror! (And if you're annoyed that it's not even (American) Thanksgiving yet and we've already spent weeks getting blasted with Christmas music, take heart, as Erma doesn't get along with Santa Claus either.)
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Yeah, I still love her sceneries so looked through it. And just couldn’t not read. No better than before. No worse either but yeah so no.
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Events Board / Re: YoinkTober 2024!
« Last post by Jitter on November 20, 2024, 04:32:07 PM »
Sorry for the delay, but here's another bit.



”What are you doing, Onni?”
“Nothing”
“I can see you’re doing something! You are looking all funny!”
“I’m not looking funny! I have things to do, leave me in peace!”
“I knew it! You are doing something! Tell me!”
“Sheesh… Grandma gave me a task, and I’m doing it. Are you happy now””
“What task?”
“A noita task. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I do too! I will be a noita like you!”
“Umm, I don’t know about that”
“It’s possible! Everyone says so! Some people just get it later than others!”
“Oh no, please Tuuri, don’t cry!”
“Tell me about the task then!”
“Oh well… Grandma told me to find the mightiest tree on the island.”
“Oooo! I can help!”
“No, you can’t. I have to do it myself.”
“Come on, Onni! The trees around home are big, maybe it’s one of them?”
“I don’t think it’s going to be on our own back yard, stupid”
“I am not stupid! You are stupid! And mean! And stupid!”

Well, at least that got him rid of Tuuri. At least for a while. Onni continued his quest of looking for mighty trees. There were many big trees, but none of them seemed to stand out.

Soon Tuuri had forgotten she was mad at him, and got back with a length of rope.

“Look, I found us a tool! Now we can measure which tree is the thickest!”

Sighing, Onni decided to give his sister a chance. He didn’t seem to be making much progress on his own. So, the siblings spent the afternoon measuring any thick trees, near the jetty, around Aunt’ Hilja’s place, on the southern shore. And Tuuri showed Onni a trick she had learned in school, how you can use your arm and thumb with a stick to estimate how tall a tree is.

But at the end of the day, they were none the wiser. The thickest trees were not the tallest, and how do you measure thickness anyway? Some trees branched to become very wide, while some had just one thick trunk. Pines were taller, but spruces were larger. And birch were the prettiest, according to Tuuri.

Onni was certain the mightiest tree would grow deep in the woods. Tuuri on the other hand thought that maybe the mightiest tree is the one that brings most happiness, which would then be the birch where the swing was, at the school yard. But they noted that the trees that grew alone, not inside the forested patches of the island, tended to be thicker, and that the school yard birch was a bit worse for wear, and not very mighty looking after all. 

“It’ hopeless! I can’t tell which one is the mightiest! They are all the same. This is a stupid task! I’m stupid!”
“You are just doing it wrong!”
“Well so are you!”
“But I’m not a noita, remember!”
“Ahhm, you are right. It is a noita task.”
“So, do something Grandma has taught you. Do it the noita way!”

The stupid little brat was… maybe she was onto something. Onni tried to calm himself down. Concentrating, he started to sense something. The familiar surroundings took on another layer of familiarity. He was starting to feel the trees, just like Grandma had taught him.

“So, what now? Did you give up? Why are you just standing there?”
“Tuuri, you were absolutely right. I need to do it the noita way. I’m sorry you can’t help me do it, but you already helped by reminding me! Thank you!” Suddenly Onni gave his startled sister a little hug, and wandered off so deep in concentration that Tuuri didn’t dare disturb him anymore.

In the evening, Onni came home from looking happy. Or at least less surly than usually.
“Did you find it then? The mightiest tree?”
“I did, yes! And it was the correct one! Grandma said I did well!”
“Ooo, I want to see! You must show it to me!”
“I will, you have earned it. Tomorrow.”

***

The following morning Onni led his sister to a rocky shoreline. Some small, scrawny pines were hanging on the almost bare rock.
“Here it is!”
“But… is it invisible? Are you mocking me? There are no big trees here, just these ones. Look, they are shorter than you!”
“They aren’t big, but this is an ancient tree!" Onni was pointing at one that was particularly bent and downright miserable looking.

"This pine right here is the oldest tree, and by far the oldest living thing, on this island! It has withstood the cold of winters, the storms of autumns, the heat of summers untold. And every spring a tiny little new growth has emerged. This tree was very old when the Rash came.”
“This tiny, stupid tree is the mightiest? Are you serious?”
“Yes, I can feel it. And Grandma says I’m right. Thanks to you I remembered to not look with my eyes but with my noita heart.”

Tuuri was still a little disappointed, but couldn’t help feeling a bit proud too. Maybe she did have some noita in her after all.




Yes, she absolutely understands she's not going to be a noita. She also understands how to make her brother do things she wants.
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Just took a look. Rather heavy-handed sequence about 'be nice to your enemies, or at least don't leave them to die'.

Both the main characters in the sequence seem to be thoroughly nasty, but I suppose their Faith will make them both Nice in the end.
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Newest pages seem to be from 1st November so apparently yes. I haven’t tried it either for a long while.
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I don't know; I just haven't looked for it for a while.
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Events Board / Re: YoinkTober 2024!
« Last post by Mirasol on November 11, 2024, 07:21:19 AM »
Well, I didn´t write some sort of goodbye-message yet as I figured you might still want to continue. :)

But still, thank you all for participating so far! :)) I find it so motivating to create something like this event together, and I had a lot of fun (as always)!

As for the Minecraft-thing, I must admit I´m not too sure on specifics either. :.D All I know about the Nether is that it is some sort of parallel fire-dimension where you need to do something if you want to beat the game´s objective (which is getting to yet another dimension and slaying the resident dragon, IIRC).
I have never done anything else in this game than build things though, so I´m no expert. :P

And I agree, volcanic features rule. I know that I have seen Scoria-fields before, but when I was 2 years old, so the memory is very fuzzy at best... But googling around alone gives some very nice pictures.
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Is that thing still going? The lack of discussion made me hope for the opposite...
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Worlds & Stories Discussion Board / Re: Girl Genius discussion OPEN SPOILERS
« Last post by thorny on November 08, 2024, 11:56:29 AM »
Not sure why there wouldn't be infinite Gkikas, though. Maybe she wasn't quite close enough to the device?

I would like to see Klaus with a turquoise blue beehive.

(I would also like a different reality right now, please. Though if that theory's right, it would sure explain a lot. Somebody (somebodies) would have to be in this one, after all.)
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