Latest Page Discussions/Comic Update Chitchat

[Solokov]

.... I'll be honest... I was expecting something more like a banshee from mass effect 3.... not a more or less mundane troll.

But yeah, looking back that guy who she breathed in his face is infected for sure.

[yung_chrysanthemum]

i can buy into your theory, Grade E cat. something has always seemed weird about ukko-pekka ever since he was introduced in the family tree. e.g. why doesn't he have a surname?

here's my theory: i think ensi might still be alive. i don't think anybody has ever explicitly said that she's dead. plus we don't see her gravestone in lalli's hometown which seems like a significant detail.

it's even possible we're currently viewing her dream, and not lalli's (which could answer some comments i've seen on disqus expressing disbelief that lalli would have been present when ensi went to confront hilja)

if it is ensi's dream, that probably means she's close by -- so the crew will meet her soon after the dream most likely.

[thorny]

I'm having trouble figuring out what's happening in that last panel. At first I thought the gun had exploded. Discus comments seem to think the troll struck Cat Man, though somebody thought it threw something at him -- but I can't see what's actually striking him. Though maybe that's troll appendages down below the rifle barrel.

It's also occured to me that maybe what Lalli sensed about the bundle wasn't the creature inside but the masking spells themselves?

[Temteno]

You aren't alone Thorny - I had trouble to make sense of the last panel too. My theory is that the troll attacked the Cat Man AND he fired the gun at the same time.

I tried to circle with different colors what parts are what (in my opinion).

Spoiler: The troll anatomy • show

Blue = Some gooey mess. Maybe brains, some important organ, tongue or its 'weapon'. At the moment I have no idea, but that seems to have "punched" the Cat Man.
Red = Maybe it has been previously hair or maybe it's some sort of weird teeth set now. Still no idea, it seems to protect the gooey mess though.
Yellow = The whole other body. I didn't circle the legs that are on the side, but the general idea should be pretty clear.
Pink = The gunshot. Seems like the Cat Man put the gun into the troll and shoot it (that's where the 'blam' noise comes from').

Hopefully this made things somewhat clear. I just hope that I understood the panel right after analyzing it for a good time 

[thorny]

Thanks, Temteno; that did help some.

-- Cat Man's alive, it looks like; though who knows for how long?

Is that blood on one cat's leg in the last panel? Might not be the cat's blood, of course, even if so. I find myself hoping that they survive somehow, at least.

[thorny]

I keep thinking of that blood trail starting at the bed. Something that was still partly Hilja, and that must have been in pain, went and lay down on the familiar bed in the familiar comfortable cottage, probably seeking comfort. And then what she turned into split her body apart and climbed up into the rafters --

[wavewright62]

I keep thinking of that blood trail starting at the bed. Something that was still partly Hilja, and that must have been in pain, went and lay down on the familiar bed in the familiar comfortable cottage, probably seeking comfort. And then what she turned into split her body apart and climbed up into the rafters --

Yes, the lovely bed with the sun streaming down onto it, which would have been so comforting to Hilja but so intolerable to the troll.  8(

[thorny]

Those last couple of pages: definitely feeling-sorry-for-the-troll time.

I'm seeing, I hope correctly, resignation in that last gesture and not just cowering in fear: more 'OK, I know what you have to do, but I'm not going to watch.'

-- I had been somewhat expecting all through this that Hilja-troll had some sort of plan, and had thought at first that she was deliberately in ambush and was then running to somewhere specific from where she could carry out further plans. It doesn't seem to be that, though; both the attack on Cat Man and the dash away from the cottage seem to have just been a panic reaction, attempting to get away without any actual plan. So whatever was going on with the Thing in the Package, Hilja must not have expected to herself become trollified -- either that, or she was indeed under the control of somebody/something else, which did expect that to happen but didn't care. If the second, I really hope she was somehow unaware at least most of the time of what was going to happen.

[Grade E cat]

I suspect Illmari is going to be "in dire need of less itchy clothes" soon...

[wavewright62]

Any plan that *counts* on trollification happening cannot be a good plan, seeing as how only a small percentage of infected persons turn into trolls.  Unless Hilja or whomever has figured out a way to up those odds significantly, Hilja's trollification would seem to be by-blow of the procedure.

I wonder whether Ensi can communicate with Hilja on the spirit plane to get some answers, before she dispatches her onward.  But I feel that if Ensi attempts this, Hilja might get away?  That would set up an oddly disembodied malevolence and also the fabled 'mistake.'  But as usual, anything I guess is unlikely to be true.

[thorny]

I suspect Illmari is going to be "in dire need of less itchy clothes" soon...

I have an unpleasant guess about the next page:

Cats still puffed up. Ilmari, who just said 'it's over now', says to the cats, why are you still fluffed? is there another troll here somewhere? and reaches out to pick up a cat --

and they both back away and start hissing at Ilmari.

Any plan that *counts* on trollification happening cannot be a good plan, seeing as how only a small percentage of infected persons turn into trolls. 

The rest of them die, though. It seems unlikely that Hilja intended herself either to die or to trollify. So either she was trying to do something else and it went horribly wrong; or she was under control of something/somebody else.

[Grade E cat]

I have an unpleasant guess about the next page:

Cats still puffed up. Ilmari, who just said 'it's over now', says to the cats, why are you still fluffed? is there another troll here somewhere? and reaches out to pick up a cat --

and they both back away and start hissing at Ilmari.

I happen to remember that right before going to search for Hilja, Catman and his cats were right next to Illmari, and the cats were fine. When Kitty was first shown avoiding Tuuri, the two of them had spent an entire day in different rooms. While the presence of both a beast and a troll would probably overshadow that of someone just starting to get sick enough that cats would notice, the cats puffing up at Illmari would require Illmari to have literally passed the threshold between metaphorical pure white and metaphorical very light red during the time the "weapons inspection" took to happen.

[thorny]

True; but we don't know how that happens. Maybe there's a line that's passed fairly suddenly; and maybe stress can bring it on faster.

But it's also entirely possible that my guess is wrong.

[wavewright62]

Somebody was searching for this - Laufey's discussion on kade:

Since there's been quite a lot of discussion on kade lately I thought to put together a small kade introduction!

Kade

First things first - anyone could be a kade. There's even a saying that the whole land is full of witches and kade, which refers to people generally having an ill will towards each other. Kade translates roughly as "envious" or "jealous", a person who feels so powerfully negative about lacking something that this negativity itself twists them into a kade and makes their every act an act of malice. A kade could steal all the happiness from a house, or according to another saying "envy can empty a whole lake of fish"; a sudden turn of bad luck or loss of reputation for someone/s who hitherto had been enjoying good fortune was usually explained as work of a kade.

Kade didn't even have to do much, although occasionally they were said to use magic against people. Usually a mere glance at your direction could give you bad luck (which is why newborn children were kept hidden until their first tooth grew = until they had gained themselves a luonto-soul). Not every kade was this dangerous however, a normal person turning kade could not cause much damage simply because their power level was not high enough. A dangerous kade would either be a talented witch, or a person who enjoyed a powerful position in society. Occasionally a lifetime of bitterness and envy could also grow a dangerously strong kade.

Kade could for example make the cows stop giving milk, turn good luck to bad, cause accidents or sudden damage to property (without being present in the actual calamity), cause arguments, turn best friends or even happy, married couples against each other, send nightmares and creatures called "night-cry" that make newborn babies cry all night long and so forth. Kade could also spread illness, boils and rash...

In the old Finnish calendar the last Thursday of each month is "day of kade", a day when anything you try goes wrong and everything you start ends up badly. In comparison the 8th and 9th day of each month are good luck days, and if you have to start a project that'll take a while to finish, it's always best to start it in the beginning of the month and especially on the 8th and 9th days.

[Róisín]

I remember that! Thanks for finding it. Laufey is a treasure.