#leif and thorn

[leifandthorn]

Burning That Bridge 18/51

(Read the original post on Leif & Thorn)

[namedafterflowerstournament]

Botanic Tournament : Kales Poll !

Kale Vandelay (Hi-Fi Rush)

Kale Romero (Monster Prom)

Kale Romarin (Leif and Thorn)

Kalen Leroux (Muted)

Kale (Hatchetfield)

The two with the most votes will join the main bracket

[basedstoutland]

If I had a nickel for everytime there's been a green haired, green eyed nonbinary person named Juniper who have fighting prowess and can summon their weapon of choice at will in a piece of media that I like, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's odd (and cool) that it's happened twice.

(Said characters being Juniper from Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and Juniper Sel from Leif & Thorn.)

[dailycrippledcharacters]

Birch Persil (Leif & Thorn)

[Image Description: Official art from the web comic. The art is a sketch on paper that is made to look aged. Birch, a chubby man with short hair. He is sitting with his legs crossed. One of his legs is amputated below the knee. He is not wearing a prosthetic. He is wearing a tunic and shorts. In one hand, he has a thin rapier. Text beside him reads: Transtibial Amputation. End ID.]

Birch is an amputee.

[foundfamilyhq]

[strontiumsun]

Magical Star Knight Thorn in my approximation of @inchworme's chibi style. I had this big idea of drawing the various magical people of @leifandthorn with Pokemon and though I could combine it with this chibi style but it didn't work, XD

[canon-lgbt-characters]

Leif of Sønheim from Leif & Thorn is mspec !

[semper-legens]

32. Leif and Thorn: Forget Me Not, by Erin Ptah

Owned: Yes Page count: 187 My summary: Things are going weird for Thorn Estragon. Amid an outbreak of the Whispers, he's dealing with a crowd of people wanting to break into the Embassy and looking after his bed-ridden friend who really shouldn't get the Whispers right now. But juggling all of that is not his problem anymore. The Woman in Black is on the case, and on the case, and on the case…yep, that's right, it's a time loop. My rating: 5/5 My commentary:

New Leif and Thorn day! At least, I'm writing this on the day the book arrived on my doorstep. Given the queue, it's probably been about a week before you're reading this. Anyway, Leif and Thorn! People who've been around these parts for a while will know that it's one of my favourite webcomics, I'm actually currently doing a full reread at the minute, and I have gotten each of the print copies of the books as they come out since I started reading. And as a webcomic, you too can go and read it for free right now! Check the link at the start of this paragraph! Anyway, this covers the arcs from Ø is for Øverwritten to Final Rest, but is mostly dealing with the Time Loop plot. Let's go!

It's a sign of a good ensemble piece, I think, that this volume is mostly about people who are not title characters Leif and Thorn, and for me to barely notice it beside a little bit of lampshading. Okay, granted, future Thorn does show up and is a major character, but the main arcs covered in this volume are from Mulberry and Rowan. More on Rowan later, but who the hell is Mulberry? Turns out the Woman In Black is Leif and Thorn's time-travelling future daughter here on a mission to keep a particular Big Bad Thing from happening (Kale getting the Whispers) and is stuck looping around one particular day in order to achieve that goal. Which sounds a lot sillier on paper than it does when it shows up! Poor Mulberry shows a lot of pluck and grit here - she's trying her hardest to put everything back together and avoid all of the family drama stuff while still being very much affected by, you know, seeing her dad and also her dad (and maybe probably also her dad) as younger people. Her almost gleeful throwing herself through this loop, trying options over and over again and even skipping bits so that she can figure out all of the puzzle pieces is really interesting and relatable - she's almost approaching gamer girl status in how she approaches the time loops, it's really interesting. That Mulberry has a connection to the people she's observing adds a good angle, she's not able to detach herself entirely from the characters because she's related to some of them! I fucking love time loops, man.

The other main story here is the Rowan/Archie one, where Thorn's knight Rowan goes on a date with showrunner of an NCIS-style show Archie. They get in some Peril from a dark magical girl, we get more of Team Thorn's magical girl Atarangi and her system, and that's all very well and good but what I want to talk about is virginity! Specifically, Rowan is very much into casual sex and one-night stands, we know this as a character trait of his at this point. Archie, however, is self-described as a thirty eight year old virgin who's not necessarily asexual or aromantic, but hasn't had a lot of experience with romance and sex. And the way they negotiate that is really interesting! There's conflict there, but it's not triggering or anything to me as a sex-repulsed ace - they have their own feelings about it, but ultimately deal with it in a very adult and very reasonable way. It's something that you see so rarely in fiction and I have to commend it for being a really engaging look at sexuality and asexuality (if that's what's actually going on with Archie) from a different angle.

Next up, a summer camp where things are most definitely about to go wrong at all…

[sailor-cresselia]

I got a really good package today~!

So, for a Long time I’ve been reading @erinptah’s webcomics, especially including the ongoing @leifandthorn.

The 6th collected volume has finally come out, and my copy just got in!

And so did the original sketch of the cover art! :3c

Bonus pic of all the books and art cards together.

…I do mean All the books, lol. The second pin set (from this package) is destined to become a pair of needle minders, and best kitty Tiernan is gonna help me do my cross stitch!

Go read Leif And Thorn, its real good!

[the-obnoxious-sibling]

dipping my toes into new fandoms is always a horrifying moment of potential self awareness. yes i immediately latched onto the horribly undersocialized yet incredibly competent character who didn't know enough about the world to know he was slavishly devoted to The Bad Guy until he met Our Protagonist. yes i did it twice in as many shows. what of it.

[leifandthorn]

It's Pride Month, have some purple Leif/Thorn cuddles with rainbow accents.

[namedafterflowerstournament]

Botanic Tournament : Aromatic Herbs and Spices Bracket !

Round 2 Part 1 Poll 2

Estragon/Tarragon :

Sage :

[turtlebot113]

Hey @netherworldpost have you ever seen this webcomic leifandthorn.com

I think you would like it, if only for the fact that these vampires will absolutely discuss both economics and art with you in depth

(It might not be a friendly discussion, but still!)

You see it's quite simple: if they call the earth Gaia, it's fantasy. If they call it Terra, that's sci-fi

[dailycrippledcharacters]

Iona Nibelungsen (Leif & Thorn)

[Image Description: Official art from the web comic. Iona, a light-skinned woman with pointed ears and purple hair. She is wearing an ornate purple shirt with gold embroidery. Her coat is also purple with a fluffy white collar. Her hair is tied back in a braid with one strand sticking out. Her eyes are yellow and she has rectangular purple glasses on. Her ears are pierced with studs. End ID.]

Iona has a limb difference and uses a floating chair.

[foundfamilyhq]

[semper-legens]

96. Leif and Thorn volume 5, by Erin Ptah

Owned: Yes Page count: 185 My summary: In the not-too-distant past, Sønheim is in the grip of the novel Brumavirus, forcing the poor beleaguered vampires to go without most of their servants for an indefinite period. Oh, and also the servants are falling ill, but who cares about them? They can just be replaced with convicts from Pottersfield...including one very familiar face. Meanwhile, in the present day, Leif learns an unpleasant truth, and Thorn considers doing some crimes. My rating: 5/5 My commentary:

I don't think I need to rave about how much I love Leif and Thorn these days. I mean, my last writeups of the collections have covered that ground well enough. But in case you missed it - Leif and Thorn is a fantasy webcomic, set in a world of magic and gem-tech, where two men fall in love across two very different nations. You can read it here! This volume mostly covers the Quarantine with the Vampire flashbacks, including all of the other arcs that happened over that time. This is another one that I was reading live as it went out, so it's kind of weird not only to see in dead-tree format, but also to read it all in one rather than spaced out over weeks and months! It's also really cool, I'm so glad Ptah has managed to carry on with publishing the comic in these paperbacks. I love having webcomics on my shelf! And a paper copy of the Patreon bonus stories - I'm already a Patreon supporter, but it's neat that they're finally collected in the books so that those who aren't can read them.

The main story, Quarantine with the Vampire, is a flashback to about a decade ago in-canon, when a Covid-inspired pandemic called the Brumavirus was ravaging the country. Which doesn't affect the vampires, but for the fact that their servants are going down with it. So they borrow some people from a local prison. And one of them is Valrún, Leif's mother. Up to this point, the only thing we knew about Leif's parents is that they did A Bad Thing that caused Leif to be in such an astronomical amount of debt. Valrún gives conflicting accounts of why she is in prison, and expresses that she just wants to keep her son safe from servitude. That he is already in servitude is unknown to Valrún until someone points it out. And so, she takes the most drastic action she can. She dies...and is reincarnated as a child, years later. Even here in the Future Times, there's still so much mystery surrounding Valrún and exactly what her game is. She's incredibly dedicated to Leif; if Leif had another parent, which I think he did, they aren't mentioned. She's presented at first as being kind of innocent, but she's cleverer than she initially seems. She manages to trick the vampires and the authorities into killing her to further her goals, and plans to hide her status as a long-runner after she reincarnates. She's most definitely playing the long game...which makes it double heartbreaking when Leif finds out she's dead.

Speaking of Leif, my favourite little substory is in this collection too - the story with Leif at Rocky Rapids, his first placement, where he discovered his knack for decorating and gardening. Poor boy. He really didn't have a lot to look forward to, being prepared for a life of servitude at a really young age and knowing he's in this for the rest of his life. Seeing his optimism, and the beginnings of his internal conditioning to be as subversive as he can get away with, really grounds his character. And contrasts well with one of the later stories, where Leif is held in isolation at the Embassy for 'running away' (he was over the limit of how far away from Thorn he can be, a limit neither of them knew about) and has to submit to his terrible manager. We get to see how far Leif has come, the ways he can get around his programming without technically breaking a rule - and the guards at the Embassy, particularly ex-servant Lulen, are growing to sympathise with him seeing the poor treatment. I'm really excited to see where this one goes.

One of the side-plots centres around prince of my heart, my dear damaged Kale sheltering after the whole getting-stabbed-in-the-side thing. Since men in pain is my favourite character archetype, I'm into it. Poor guy needs another ton of therapy to get his head right about what just happened to him - but he's working on it, and Thorn is in his corner. Also highlighted here is Dex, aka the other Agent D, aka the stabber in this equation. Dex interests me - Ptah walks the balance here between 'cool motive, still (attempted) murder' and 'actually Dex kind of has a point' exceptionally well. Dex wants revenge on Kale for the whole murder thing, as well as blinding and brain damaging their beautiful and sensitive husband Hermosa. Who, incidentally, does not want Kale dead...nor does he want Dex to get caught by the authorities. He starts off in a medical facility, then goes into a fugue state where he believes he's been kidnapped by the abusive company Kale used to work for, and escapes. After he's found, Dex's sister Pascentia manages to persuade the authorities to let poor Hermosa stay home.

It's a really well-handled storyline - nobody's by necessity in the wrong here, everyone is sympathetic but realistically human. Hermosa isn't a victim, he has agency and makes his own choices. Dex isn't a villain, they have good motives but their choice of actions are questionable at best; and yet, it's mostly Kale that's their blind spot. And Kale himself is neither villain nor victim. He knows what he did was bad, but it also wasn't entirely his fault. Yay, complex morality! The delicate struggles going on are so engaging to read, and so interesting to follow. I love this comic, I can't praise it enough, and if you like the things I've been talking about here, you should definitely check it out.

Next up, a brief trip to a deserted island.