Old Wounds: Part Fourteen
Chapter: Season Eight
Charlie is realizing this for the first time and asking the actual questions now but it has been on my mind since I introduced the Mantles to the series. Not to put too fine a point on things but something starts here, today, in this strip.
HOVER TEXT: The middle school dances of my youth were handsy as hell. Well, not for me. I wasn’t there. I was in the art room playing Dungeons and Dragons but the elf ladies in those game were GOOD TO GO. #teenager
I was on point with the wizard question. Is this my psychic power manifesting? AM I A PSYCHIC BRIAN!?
I bit my lip when I read your comment because I knew this was coming. That happens in the comments sometimes. Good call too, BTW.
This storyline is good, but I hope we get to the dang game setting at some point, cause that supers setting was really cool
I think those lines might start to get kinda blurry pretty soon….
Only Brian can juggle issues of depression and parental abuse while exploring Santa and real life Jedi. God i love this strip!
Wait, Jeanie just broke the 4th wall? Hmmmm….
After an interesting detour through the archives (2011-12), it appears that Jeanie, as a full-fledged DM, would have The Narrative. Which ALSO includes the power of reading people’s innermost secrets, which is a double-whammy with her Mrs. Claus.
I have no idea if this would involve a tendency towards a little 4-wall-breakiness, but it amuses me to think so.
(Brian, your comic has excellent world-building. It is VERY cool how those skills show up here as well as in developing game settings.)
Or 4-wall-breakiness is in itself a power of the Mrs. Claus mantle, or related to a power of said mantle.
Though I guess with The Narrative one could recognize plot lines as well…
Or maybe it was just a gaming joke told to other gaming friends ie Saying “Rolled a crit” when something good happens doesn’t (always) mean some cosmic dice are rolling behind you, just that you got lucky. “There’s a punchbowl of storylines” could just be the same way of saying, “Dallas is getting a meet cute, Carlos is working through things, can we just save that one for later and get to the Den to get this game on the road.”
Or something like that…
Still fun to chew on none-the-less.
It’s funny. I just took the Mantles as either an alternate storyline or just intrinsic and taken for granted or “just so” in your world. But now you are confronting seemingly head on. And course you would. If anyone would be so direct about this question in that world or any other it would be a roleplayer. I look forward to seeing wbat happens from this beginning Brian.
And I wonder if Carlos’ past somehow fits into it as well.
What happened to the ladycop that Charlie was taking a shine to?
It was on Brian’s list of loose ends to come back to or wrap up. It’ll come.
Yep! Soonâ„¢
I wish we had D&D in the art room at my Middle School Dances. We just had basketball and dancing.
Big art room.
I’m here all week!
I wish. People weren’t great at basketball, so more often than not they would miss the designated hoop and caused paint to go EVERYWHERE, which the dancers then slipped on and it was absolute chaos. 🙂
That made me laugh out loud on a particularly shit day. I thank you.
Thank you! I’m here all week!
And just like that we’ve jumped into the deep end of the ramifications pool
Seriously tho I’m deeply looking forward to seeing where this new thread goes, so many movies, books, stories etc all have those big “magic is real X fictional person is real” moments and never give the rest of the people time to have those “wait if that’s real….” moments; probably because it’s just easier not to, bravo for actually bringing this up
That’s a damn deep pool, too. The skull sweat required to hold onto a storyline in a magic universe is immense. The book I really want J. K. Rowling to write is “How I Did the Harry Potter Series,” with the messy details of how she avoided the many plot and suspense pitfalls of a world where you can wave wands at most things. All things considered, she actually did a pretty good job on it.
Basically, an author invents a really great magical or SF idea that he needs for one storyline, and if he’s not careful, it cripples all the other ones.
At times, half of Star Trek’s writing seemed to be ways of pulling the transporter out of the show. Terry Pratchett invented the Omniscope for one book, and had to invent a dozen reasons that the concept couldn’t be used to wreck the plots of all the rest of the books. Pratchett also did a good job on this, and was noted for sitting very firmly down on the whole magic thing, and only letting it out when it was absolutely necessary. Or when it was funny.
It ain’t easy.
When it comes to worldbuilding and magic (and everything else, I may be a fanboy…), Brandon Sanderson is absolutely brilliant.
Kevin Hearne does a delightful job at this as well, so do Brent Weeks, Jim Butcher, and especially the great ones Dave Duncan, David Eddings, and Ed Greenwood
This was the exact thing that made me fall in love with Charlaine Harris’ ‘Southern Vampire’ books. Book Two, Sookie asks ‘huh, they told us that vampires didn’t exist and yet here they are – I wonder what ELSE we’ve been told doesn’t exist, really does?’ The answer of course is ‘everything’.
Question about Charlie not sure if it’s ever been addressed but was he born blind or did something happen later in life? Thought of this question because him wanting to learn magic made me think of the Lost years of Merlin series were the main char is blinded but learns to see with second sight. What ever happens love this comic it continues to be a source of happiness whenever I read it.
It occurs to me that, while the characters don’t yet know about it, the office of Easter Bunny has been recently vacated…
“Mommy? Why are all the eggs brown and orange? And.. just sitting in the open?”
I laughed way too hard at this. Good job.
Funny you should mention that, I just sort of assumed Trevor was eventually going to end up the new Easter Bunny and this strip along with Brian’s comments is reinforcing that.
Well, if anyone off the group could be trusted with magic, it’d probably be Charlie. Brett and Jeannie have Mantles, Sam and Carlos have some issues that magic would probably make worse until they each got a good handle on it, Trevor can’t be trusted to keep his mouth shut and Dallas would likely get revenge (understandable, but rally not helpful in the long term).
Charlie is mellow and easy going, rarely let’s things get to him, and probably the calmest of them. So if any of them could trusted with such power, it’d be him. 🙂
This is so true. <3 Charlie!
Or maybe…you wouldn’t have to be blind anymore?
“Who is A. Handsy and why is there a middle school named after them?
I was blind but now can see!
Is that a crack I see in the 4th Wall?
Reaeaally hoping this comes back in the wrapping-up 🙂