The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
[PA Comic] Monday, March 16, 2015 - The Judging Wood, Part Five
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
[PA Comic] Monday, March 16, 2015 - The Judging Wood, Part Five
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2015/03/16
Unknown User on
+6
Posts
Loving the expression on her face, nicely wrapped this up
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
The blue bird is the good conscience and is happy with this.
The owl is all "He's just going to eat all my food you know"
And she's negotiating.
We don't need to see her actually letting the boy go because it isn't important. It's implied.
Yeah that's how I'm feeling, like a page or two is missing in this story. It's not an issue keeping things mysterious or vague; it's about the flow feeling off to me and the story seemingly skipping big chunks and not inferring the answers to some pretty big questions.
I dunno. It's a beautiful comic and I'm always excited for more Daughters, but yeah.
Or to try to cram story into a few pages without sacrificing too much gag-a-day time. I'm almost never left wanting more from the forays into storyline comics; I'm just left wondering why they use the "don't show everything, don't give a clear resolution" trick almost every time. It's interesting as a hook, but with multiple story comics in multiple worlds using the same tactic, it just feels like I'm being shown the "NEXT TIME ON GOOSEBUMPS" chapter at the end of the book any time a story arc shows up.
EDIT: For this specific instance, It's actually odd. There's more of a "resolution" than most of the stories (in that we have a muddy beginning, a middle, and a somewhat clear end), but with one-and-a-third stripes with the boy in focus and most of another strip with the treant (?) in focus, having neither of them actually present for the resolution makes the pacing feel pretty jarring.
Implied, but they also very specifically don't show her wrist in any of the panels. For all we know, she could be wearing that wrist-scarf as a trophy from a different boy they actually did kill, though that's rather unlikely.
Liking the art, not quite sure what I think about these blotches, whats up with the ones on her shoulder and stomach.
Also I am stuck on the word free. It appears that she has the Lookout's scarf. I suppose she left him to determine his own fate. Like if he could survive his grievous wound, he would deserve to live despite having taken something that wasn't his. Did he trade the scarf as some have suggested? At first I thought that perhaps that word implied that she had killed him, but I don't think so because they're implying he could return. I suppose "free" actually might mean free from her own will, since she could have healed or actively killed him. She is not dressed in her old village clothes though. Can we assume that for every person whose justice they decide for the Eyrewood, they take a trophy to create their new identity- atleast clothing wise. It makes me wonder where she got her bandages and the cloth around her hips and the bracelets on her other arm.
Also, I really appreciated the practical outfits of the first 2 daughters. And this one? A bandage tubetop and diaphanous skirt? Bonus for art mishap in day 2, panel 3.
Ok, so I'll step back to base assumptions. Jerry and Mike know what they are doing. Why tell this "pointless" story with an almost dumb seeming Daughter. My guess is they are telling the middle chapter of Daughter development. The "teenage years". I can't say it really jibes with what I've seen before. Hanna seemed pretty together at the end of The Call. And I've never been a teenage girl, so I won't speculate about what it's like. Still, I don't have a better guess. Maybe they are saying that the forest calls Daughters at random, and sometimes results vary. Maybe the process doesn't go smoothly for every Daughter, and this is what it's like when it is rough.
I consider my level of interest in the Lookouts setting "moderate." I'm not thrilled every time new stuff about it appears and I don't groan either. But this is the first time they've done a Lookouts-related comic series where I kind of feel like the whole thing was a waste of time. Nothing really happens in it at all; the central dilemma of the plot, such as it was, was meaningless since it looks like the kid is going to bleed out alone in the middle of the forest now anyway; and it didn't really tell us anything new about the setting or its lore or institutions.
Beautifully drawn and colored though.
When the birds started babbling about getting married, I thought maybe the Treant was interested in the boy because it wanted to bind him to the Daughter somehow, like an overzealous matchmaker. ("There's a BOY in the woods! Get married NAO!") But then it never came up again, so...
Someone said everyone in this arc is an asshole, but I don't see how the boy is anything other than lost and in the wrong place at the wrong time. The only evidence we have that he did anything wrong is Cowl's accusation, and Cowl seems like the paranoid sort.
The only thing I can come up with for this arc is that it's supposed to show what the Daughters are like from the perspective of the villagers - that is, weird shit that doesn't make any sense. Except the boy isn't the POV character, so that doesn't really work either.
I really like the Eyrewood setting and usually look forward to those strips, but they usually make more sense than this.
I think she is just asking Cowl if they are cool again and I believe that she is pissed off at him because having that bloodthirsty owl on your ear all day must get old real fast.
One job that this series did very well is to make me want to write my own stories about these people. The world is very interesting and vast, even if it's mostly disconnected and vague. Reading this felt sort of like going to an Eyrewood grocery store, where all of the individual ingredients are laid out sufficient for food creation. But, without your own intervention and time investment to take them home and mix them up in a new way, there's really no meal there.
They're all animals owls eat. Pretty sure most owl species only hunt ground-bound prey, they don't take birds on the wing like falcons or Accipiters.
With regards to her being pissed, if we assume those spots are blood, it may be the case that she was also mending the Lookout's wounds while also having Cowl bitch about helping a human, and is now still dealing with Cowl being a bit of a dick.
Either way, I feel like they will have to develop it a lot more, since now we know only a little bit about this world. And if they want to go with graphical novel, then they might have to make a background book.
First to point out something: In the first page we see Trill's arms and she lacks the red scarf, so she took it from the boy. And in the second page we see a semi-lively boy asking not to be killed, which seems to imply he is hurt but not at death's door, so he's probably alive. And the grove-lion was probably there to show how he got hurt, because he was scouting from the village and ran into the creature and got hurt, which means he may not have done anything to hurt the forest. Thus not being "ripe" or worthy of dying, because the Daughters protect the forest and humans are part of the forest. It might only be when they actively harm the balance that the Daughters wish to harm them.
We assumed that the birds were there to act as the devil and angel on the shoulder and would both give counsel to her before she acted, by her mentioning the "conclave". But rather than give counsel, what if they are there to test her, but she doesn't know that? So in this case the reason we get an overt amount of "devil" is to test her about what she will do when fueled with anger or pressure to be a unforgiving act of nature? And the bird marriage bit was just to emphasize the "angel" wasn't trying to counter the "devil" and was instead being nonsensical, so the decision would solely rest on Trill's choice and not because someone else convinced her to be merciful. The final page implies she released the boy and as mentioned from the second panel he was not at death's door and is definitely alive; Trill most likely, having shown her influence over the grove-lion, did not let it kill the boy. The final page is to show how Trill grew wiser and by doing so is reflected in that by looking older. If you notice, she appears more adult, her features are sharper and less round, especially in the face, implying age, because a rounder face is associated with youth. Her horns appear longer and having greater dips in them. And she has more flowers in her hair. She grew WISER, being closer to the Wood-Wise, because she sparred him. And as mentioned, humans are part of the balance, he most likely got hurt by the grove-lion and not from him trying to hurt the forest, so he didn't deserve to die. Her overcoming the pressure of Cowl, the "devil," telling her to kill and without the "angel's" counsel of being merciful, she made the correct choice to keep balance by sparring him and thus became wiser from the experience. The final act of saying she will know if he returns and does harm, also shows wisdom because it means she has learned that people can do bad thing even if shown mercy or kindness and that she will enact it if she must. So she is wise enough to be forgiving, but to take precautions just in case.
Awesome interpretation. I didn't visually see the change but I really love the idea now that I study it closer!!