#my setup is in fucking shambles over this but at least i have a reason to keep my table clean now

[antirepurp]

trying to get used to a screen tablet shit's wild

[conceptstage]

Happy Sune’s Day

AO3

Beau yawned as she shambled tiredly down the stairs of the Xorhaus, scratching at her stomach and looking through half lidded eyes to keep from crashing into anyone. She had a flash of red and pink and frowned, wincing, then forced her eyes open all the way. It took a moment for her half asleep brain to recognize what she was seeing but, as it did, her eyes widened in horror.

“Oh, shit,” she hissed.

The entire hallway was awash in pink and white and red, paper hearts and curled streamers hanging from the ceiling and walls. She glanced to the right into the living room and there were paper hearts taped to the walls in a heart shape with hearts littering the floor too. She turned to the left into the kitchen and there was a curtain of strings covered in heart beads blocking the room from her sight. She stepped through the beaded curtain and sighed in relief when she didn’t saee a single heart inside, but she did see Caleb sitting at the table and frowning at a mug of coffee, Nott sitting at his side and cutting a shape that was definitely not a heart out of red paper, Yasha leaning against the mantle of the roaring fireplace, and Fjord sitting across the table from them and giving Beau a commiserating smile.

“Caduceus put his foot down and said no decorations in here or the kitchen,” Fjord said when he saw the relief on her face. “Fire hazard.”

“What the fuck is going on?”

Fjord shrugged. “It’s Sune’s Day. I guess it’s just a Menagerie Coast thing, but it’s basically just a celebration of love and romance. Apparently, Jester’s a big fan.”

The beads behind her clattered as someone moved quickly through them and Jester grinned, lighting up the entire room. “Happy Sune’s Day!” she cheered. She stepped up beside Beau and laid a paper heart necklace over her head and it got caught on her ear. Jester leaned over and pressed her lips against Beau’s cheek. “Mwah!” She thankfully turned away from Beau before she could see the dark flush rising on her cheeks and the tips of her ears and hurried over to the fireplace to lean up on her tiptoes to lay one over Yasha’s head and press a kiss to her chin since it was all that she could reach. Yasha smiled softly and accepted the necklace and kiss gratefully. “Happy Sune’s Day!” She laid another necklace over Fjord’s head as well and kissed his cheek too. “Mwah!” She went to Caleb next and kissed his temple and then Nott and kissed the top of her head.

Beau watched her with wide eyes and then finally reached up to unhook the necklace from her ear and let it settle around her neck. “Jes, what is this exactly?”

“It’s Sune’s Day! A wholesome celebration of romantic and platonic love. And I just love you all so, so much!”

“Romantically or platonically?” Nott asked, grinning with pointed teeth.

Jester giggled and winked. “That’s for me to know.”

Caduceus stepped out of the kitchen already wearing a paper necklace and carrying a plate of pastries, all heart shaped, some with pink and red sprinkles, and some gushing raspberry jam. He sat the plate on the table and leaned down so that Jester could kiss his cheek.

Caleb looked at the pastries wearily. “H-How are we meant to celebrate?” he asked, picking up the pastry that seemed the least sweet and brushing off a dusting of sprinkles.

Jester shrugged and sat down at the table on his other side. “Like this. Kids sometimes make cards for their friends but I made these necklaces instead. And you eat heart shaped candy but I searched like all week and I couldn’t find any heart shaped anything in this city. And then for couples and stuff they go all out. They go on dates and give presents and flowers and then they go home and have lots of sex on a pile of rose petals with candles and chocolate sauce. My momma used to get all kind of presents and candy from her admirers and she would give a special Sune’s Day performance with love songs and people would throw roses at her feet.” She said happily. “I always wanted someone to be romantic with on Sune’s Day. Maybe next year.” Before anyone could respond, she jumped back up to her feet, snatched up a pastry with raspberry filling leaking out the side, and started skipping towards the beaded curtain. “Well, I’m gonna go finish decorating the War Room.”

Beau waited until she disappeared out the doorway and then turned sharply to the others. “Guys, I think we need to do something for Jester today.”

Caleb frowned curiously and tilted his head, his mouth half full of pastry. “Like what?”

“Did you see how sad she was? We need to do some of those romantic things for her.”

“Have sex with her on a pile of roses and chocolate sauce?” Nott asked.

Beau’s neck felt hot and she shook her head. “No, fucking- The other stuff. We can get her flowers and shit if it’ll make her happy.”

Fjord cleared his throat. “I actually saw something in a store the other day that I thought she might like but I didn’t buy it at the time. I can go get it.”

“There's no sun here,” Caduceus said mildly. “No sun, no flowers.”

“Fuck!” Beau hissed. “Where can we find flowers?” She pondered it for a moment, then turned to Caleb with a smirk. “How many times a day can you do that transportation circle thing?”

He blinked and then understanding dawned on his face. “What are you thinking? Zadash or Nicodranus?”

“Zadash, I think. If we went to Nicodranus we’d need to send a message ahead of us and let them know we were coming. What else, what else can we do?”

“I can play a song on my harp,” Yasha spoke up. “She likes to dance, doesn’t she?”

“I can dance with her,” Caleb offered quietly.

Caduceus looked back at the kitchen. “I have plenty of material left over, I can make a lovely heart shaped cake.”

Nott stood up in her chair. “I’ll keep her distracted while you all get ready! I’m good at keeping secrets.” She gave Beau an obvious significant look and Beau glared at her.

Fjord stood up from the table and came to stand next to Beau. “I’ll go to the store and then meet you two at the palace to walk back together?”

Beau nodded and waved Caleb over. “Let’s set up the circle in your room.” He nodded and stood up to follow her down the hall. They could hear Jester humming loudly from the War Room as they snuck by and ducked quickly into Caleb’s room. Caleb started drawing the circle and Beau leaned against the door to keep Jester from wandering in and she could hear Nott and Jester talking through the wood. “Nott’s distracting her. Let’s hurry.”

He finished the circle with a dramatic flourish that made Beau roll her eyes and it started to glow. He stepped in first and she followed close behind. They arrived at the Cobalt Soul with little fanfare and Beau, in her gray Expositor vestiges, was let through the building with ease. They blinked into the sunlight as they stepped outside, it had been a week without the sun and the heat against their skins felt refreshing as they made their way to the Pentamarket. 

The flower store seemed like the kind of place Jester would love and Beau made a mental note to bring her back here next time they were in town. It was a little brick, one story building sandwiched between two taller brownstones, looking diminutive between them with a small little garden out front and window boxes hanging in front of the picture windows. The only reason they knew it was a flower shop and not a kind witch’s urban vacation cottage was the sign on the roof that read ‘Harietta’s Flowers’ in hand painted red.

Beau and Caleb exchanged a slightly dubious glance but stepped inside, a small bell tingling over their heads as the door opened and closed. The building was bigger than it looked on the outside and it was stuffed full of flowers. One side of the aisle that lead from the front door to the counter was loose flowers, a sort of ‘Build Your Own Arrangement’ setup and the other side was premade bouquets. There was a middle aged halfling woman standing in front of the counter and she looked up at them when the bell rang, her eyes lighting up ecstatically. 

“Oh hello~! Hello, hello, I’m Harrietta, welcome! What can I do for you?”

“A friend of ours celebrates Sune’s Day and we’re looking for flowers for her.”

“Oh, how sweet. I wish every year that it was a more common celebration on this side of the mountains. Good for business. I have some arrangements that will be lovely for it,” she said, waving them forward and leading them through the rows of bouquets. She brought them to a table labeled ‘In The Doghouse’ that had a bouquet with two dozen red and pink roses and another that was a cluster of different flowers formed into the shape of a heart.

“These are apology flowers,” Beau grumbled.

Harrietta shrugged. “That’s just marketing. They’re still lovey-dovey bouquets, they don’t have to be for apologies.” She turned and hurried off back to her desk. “I’ll be waiting for your purchase!”

Beau frowned at the two options laid before her and Caleb cleared his throat, speaking to her quietly. “The roses are pretty standard. I think that Jester would enjoy those. But the heart seems a bit more like Jester, do you think?”

Beau sighed. “Yeah, I- You don’t think that hearts are too… Do you think if I gave her a big heart made out of flowers it might insinuate certain… feelings?”

“We are all doing things for her that would otherwise seem to convey romantic interest. I do not think she will think twice about it if you do not want her to. Do you want her to?”

“I- No! Of course not.” She sneered and picked up the roses. “These. I’ll get her these.”

Caleb shrugged. “It is your gift, it is your decision.”

Beau frowned down at the roses then quickly sat them back down and picked up the heart instead. “Let’s go.” She turned and hurried away before he could respond.

She purchased the heart made out of flowers and then Caleb drew the Rosohna circle out in front of the store and they stepped through quickly. As promised, Fjord was waiting for them outside the palace with a gift wrapped box held under his arm. He gave Beau a kind smile when he saw the flowers she’d picked and she scowled and hid them behind her back. “The fuck you looking at?”

He shrugged but he was still smiling. “Nothing. We heading back?”

Caleb nodded and started walking ahead. “I am sure that Nott is running out of ways to keep her busy.”

Beau brought up the rear, waiting until Caleb and Fjord were chatting quietly ahead of her to pull the flowers out from behind her back to stare down at them in her hands. She gently ran her thumb over the petal of one of the white flowers that she couldn’t name and wondered for a moment what Jester might say if Beau gave it to her romantically. If this wasn’t a group thing, if this was a them thing and she could be honest about the swirling emotions in her chest everytime Jester smiled at her. 

“Beau! Look out!”

Beau looked up and saw a horse, riderless, carriageless, running right towards her. “Fuck!” she exclaimed, throwing herself out of his path of destruction. Her galloped passed her, not even stopping and nearly barreled through a group of school aged drow children who screamed and scattered. 

A portly half orc with a bald head was gasping as he ran too slow after it. “St-” he gasped for breath but didn’t even look at her on the ground. “Stop that- gasp- horse!”

“Motherfucker!” Beau exclaimed, moving to her feet and brushing dust off her pants. Caleb was watching her with wide eyes and then he glanced down at her feet. She frowned and then followed his eyes and saw what was left of her flowers stomped into the cobblestones. She stared at it for a moment and then looked up at the sky, wondering which of the gods were fucking with her right now. “Really? Really, you pieces of shit?” she muttered, then she looked back down at the flowers.

“Beau-” Fjord started, but he cut himself off when Beau shook her head.

“I can’t- I can’t fucking go back empty handed. You guys go home, get started, do your dancing and your gifts and shit, I’ll find something for her in town and catch up.”

“Beau,” Fjord said again when she turned to walk to the shopping district. “I think that Jester would rather have you there than have whatever gift you’re gonna get for her.”

“I can’t- I can’t just do nothing for her when you guys are all doing shit. What if she thinks I didn’t care enough!”

“This is Jester, though. You know that kind of thing doesn’t matter to her. Just fist fight with her in the training room, she loves that shit.”

Caleb reached forward to catch her arm as she passed him by. “Beau… She will understand.”

Beau shook him off. “I won’t be long. Don’t wait for me though. I- Maybe I can find some perfume that smells like cotton candy or something, she’d like that, right? Go, have fun, I’ll be an hour, tops.” They were still frowning at her as she hurried away but she didn’t look back to see if they’d gone. They didn’t follow her, at least.

She got a couple weird looks in the shopping district, but at this point most people knew who she was so no one was too suspicious of the lone human smelling all the perfumes. There was nothing sweet smelling so she moved on to the next store, not really going in with a plan or a wishlist, just hoping to find something that would make Jester smile.

It was hard to tell the passage of time with no sun, but she knew that it was getting late. After it had passed the first hour her chest started to feel tight and it just got worse as the second and third and fourth hours passed her by. She felt like she’d stopped at every shop in the district by the time she was forced to give up. She didn’t have Caleb’s talent with telling the passage of time, but even she could tell that she was creeping up on the sixth hour since she’d left Caleb and Fjord alone in town.She found herself standing at the front door of her own home but she didn’t want to go inside. She shoved her hands into her pockets and started pacing in the road. Most of the windows were dark, her friends probably tired from their festivities and fast asleep, but the room that she shared with Jester still had the flickering orange light of a candle. 

She licked her lips nervously and decided that she didn’t want to set off the chime at the door and instead climbed up the wall to the balcony. She thought about going into their room, explaining herself to Jester and asking for her for forgiveness, but she chickened out and climbed all the way up to the roof, pulling herself up over the wall and meeting Caduceus’s judgemental gaze as she stood up straight and brushed her hands off on her pants.

“What?” she hissed at his frown.

“Jester missed you at the party,” he said, relaxing back on his little makeshift bed and closing his eyes. “She saved you some cake.”

“I couldn’t… I couldn’t find a gift.”

“The gift of your company is all she was asking for.”

Beau waved him off and opened the hatch to climb down silently to the second floor. Just as she was about to walk down to the first floor, her bedroom door opened suddenly and Jester stepped out in her nightgown with an empty cup. 

She blinked at Beau in the darkness and gave her a sad, forced smile. “There you are. We were worried. I… I saved you some cake.”

Beau looked at her owlishly, unsure what she could say or do to fix the emotion in Jester’s eyes. “I… I’m really sorry, Jes. A horse-”

“They told me.”

Beau sighed and turned to face her, running the tips of her fingers nervously over her undercut. “I was looking for something to replace it but… I don’t fucking know. I’m not any good at romantic shit, even pretend romantic shit, I saw some things that I thought you might like but it wasn’t… I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“Beau, I didn’t need a present.”

“I know! The fucked part of it is that I know that! But the idea of coming back empty handed when everyone else was doing all this nice shit for you- I guess I didn’t think that me by myself was gonna be good enough or whatever.” She cleared her throat hurriedly before her voice cracked. “Did you have fun at least? Yasha said she was gonna play you a song.”

Jester smiled softly. “She did. It was really nice, maybe you can talk her into playing it for you tomorrow.”

Beau reached for the cup in her hand. “Water? I’ll get it for you.”

Jester hesitated but then handed it over to her. “I guess if you’re getting it for me it means that you’ll have to come back to the room and you can’t avoid me all night. Thank you.”

Beau just nodded and hurried down the stairs. She took the few seconds that it took to fill up the cup with cold water from the ice box to try and calm her heart as it tried to beat its way out of her chest. When she went back to the room, the door was cracked slightly and she stepped in to find Jester sitting on Beau’s bed by the window, cast alight in the soft white glow of the moon outside.

She gave Beau a smile as she walked inside and then waved her hand and cast thaumaturgy to shut the door behind her. Beau couldn’t help but laugh a little under her breath. “That’s not locked, you know,” she said, walking over to hand the cup to Jester. “I could still make a break for it.”

“You won’t.” She sounded more sure than Beau felt. She took the cup gratefully and had a small sip as Beau sat down beside her. “You by yourself is enough, Beau. You’re more than enough. I don’t need fancy things when I have you and the others. It was very nice to be treated that way for one day but I would have been just fine if we’d all hung out in the living room together all day and just talked.”

“I know. I just wanted to show you, I guess, how much I… you know... Cared about you.”

“I know already.” Jester sat the cup on Beau’s nightstand and then took one of Beau’s hands in both of hers. “But.. you know… it’s still Sune’s Day for another two hours. If you were still super determined to get me something I have an idea.”

Beau smiled a little and squeezed Jester’s hand. “Alright, shoot.”

“There’s this legend that goes along with Sune’s Day. It says that anybody who has their very first kiss on Her day would be blessed by Her and would be lucky in love for the entire rest of their lives.”

Beau sat there quietly, at first not comprehending the words that Jester was saying and then not believing her own ears. “You- You want me to give you your first kiss? What about Fjord at the- the temple?”

Jester shrugged, unbothered. “I don’t think it counts as a real kiss. And I think Sune would agree with me. Will you give me my very first kiss, Beau?”

“Yeah… I- Yeah, if that’s what you want.”

Jester grinned. “It definitely is!”

Beau cleared her throat and turned herself on the bed to face Jester head on. “How do you wanna do this?”

“Preferably with our two mouths touching,” Jester teased, grinning.

Beau felt reassured by her jovility and rolled her eyes, smiling softly. “Alright, close your eyes.”

Jester did so and puckered up her lips adorably. Beau reached up and laid her free hand against the side of Jester’s face and Jester leaned into it, her puckered lips relaxing as she was unable to suppress a smile. Beau swallowed audibly and leaned forward before she could over think it and pressed her mouth solidly against Jester’s. Her tense shoulders sagged and she held the kiss for several seconds, then started to pull away. 

Jester’s hands released Beau’s and snapped out to grab her by the shoulders. “Wait,” she mumbled against Beau’s mouth and pressed against her more fully and enthusiastically, pressing closer and closer until she was practically sitting in Beau’s lap. She finally pulled away but she didn’t go far and didn’t climb out of Beau’s space. Beau’s eyes opened to look at her face but Jester’s stayed closed for a long moment like she was thinking about something deeply. Finally, her eyes opened and searched for Beau’s, smiling softly when they met in the moonlight. “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t have a lot to compare it to but I think that was a very good kiss.”

“Yeah,” Beau said, feeling breathless. “It was pretty good.”

Jester frowned, offended. “Just pretty good? It was my first kiss, it better have been better than ‘pretty good’.”

Beau laughed. “It was fantastic, Jes. Better?”

Jester grinned and nodded, getting to her feet. “Better.” She picked up her cup and moved it over to her own nightstand. She sighed as she laid down in her bed and pulled the blanket up to her chin. “Good night, Beau. Happy Sune’s Day. I hope you have lots of love for the rest of the year.”

Beau nodded and laid down as well, staring at the ceiling so that she didn’t stare at Jester. “Happy Sune’s Day, Jes. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Jester said through a yawn.

Their room fell into silence and Beau must have gone to sleep at some point because she dreamed of being able to kiss Jester over and over whenever they wanted.

[pomegranate-salad]

Seeds of thought : DIE #2

Hey everyone ! So many works I need to be SOTing right now. I decided to prioritize this, because well, new comic, needs all the attention. Plus, everytime an issue gets sold out, we get a new cover from Stephanie Hans. I live for them now. Anyway, spoilers of course, enjoy my thoughts and opinion under the cut.

HINDSIGHT IS D20/D20

 When I was a kid, I had this French comic in which they had a page that asked : “what happens after a movie ends ?” and there were a series of vignettes that answered that question in a proper humorous fashion. For example, one of these vignettes showed the last scene of a movie where a car of the heroic lovers drove in the middle of the road into the sunset onto their bright future. The next panel showed the two lovers in court, and the judge saying : “bright future or not, you crossed the lane line and I’m revoking your licence”.

 When I was seven, as most things do when you’re seven, it blew my mind. Nevertheless, this silly comic highlighted the universal, unbreakable truth of all stories : when it’s over, it’s over. There’s no more. And even today, as fanfiction has become its own genre, as no comedy is complete without a fourth wall break, when you close a book, when you turn off the TV, nothing can happen anymore. There is what the story implies will or might happen next, but sooner or later, you reach the point where you exhaust whatever the story contains of foreseeing. Each story writes its own last will ; but whatever happens after that, the story is dead : it still exist, but it won’t move forward, it won’t go back, it won’t do anything at all because it has stopped being able to do anything with itself. The only way for more to happen is for the author to write more. But that inevitably means writing a different story.

And that’s why, as sad as I could have been to leave a story I loved behind, for me there was always a sort of relief that came with reaching the end of a story : the relief that came from complete stillness. Because there’s no more, there’s no more pain, there’s no more stress, there’s no more excitement even, there’s no more reason to be alarmed at all. No reason be involved at all. Only when we reach the end of a story, can we be free from it. Outside of the contraption of the story, the characters’ actions don’t exist. THEY don’t exist. And you definitely know where I’m going with this.

 The genius of DIE is not to take us to an elaborate gritty deconstructive fantasy RPG world. The genius of DIE is to take us back to it. Back to the story that’s already ended. Yes, I know I said in my last SOT that I didn’t think the characters were over their first visit in DIE by any means. The story of Ash and the gang is not over (by the way, I’m just going to call him Ash and use he/him pronouns until we get more on this issue, if needed I’ll edit accordingly). But functionally, narratively, the story of DIE the world, DIE the tabletop campaign, is over. The heroes arrived, the heroes did some shit, the heroes left. The story welcomed them and then the story ended. More than that, the story ended and nothing came to replace it. Sol’s speech is not the only thing that happens when thoughts curl up. The entire DIE world the gang is now in is nothing but a giant curl up. A new story did not emerge from the same setup. Sol just dug up the corpse of the old one and smeared make-up all over it.

The return of the heroes in a fantasy world they once knew is not a ground-breaking idea in fantasy by any means – I mean, Narnia did it. But in the usual take on this plot, the trigger element to the world the heroes return to is their leaving the world, not their being there in the first place – or in Sol’s case, staying. The second Narnia book showed us a world in shambles because the heroes saved it then left it, not because the heroes saved themselves and one of them was left behind. And maybe what I’m about to say will be disproved by future issues, but I’m not under the impression that the characters were particularly anything to the world of DIE, least of all heroes. They seem to mostly have been there. Some parts they barely set foot in, and the way they talk about the supposed “big bad” of the first game, the main reason they came after him seems to have been that they prevented them from going home. As a setup, the world of DIE seems to have been a bit underexploited. But come to think of it, was it really that great a setup ? Ash’s narration goes back and forth on the issue. Sol’s imagined world is either described as brilliant or the exact kind of pretentious overwritten stuff you’d expect from that particular breed of teenager (Elves but written by William Gibson is complicated… But is it, Ash ? Is it really ?)

 But all of that maybe-not-that-great world, all that hammered fantasy stuff, are rendered new and interesting in context. I’m not the first one to point out that this setting allows characters to offer perpetual commentary on their younger selves. My shots at teenage pretentiousness are fucking text. If nothing else, this is a genius move to deflect any and all criticism of the comic’s take on the RPG genre : if it’s overdone, if it’s overwritten, you’re not smart for pointing that out, that characters are way ahead of you. But more interestingly, this moves every single “big idea” of the “transported in a fantasy world” plot further up the road. The main example is the reality vs fantasy ethical debate. Think how many pages in how many books were dedicated to exploring the ethical ramifications of being in a fantasy world without knowing if what you did was “real” or not. Do you have to be ethical when you play a game ? Would Kant play Grand Theft Auto ? This is a massive debate. In DIE, it’s addressed in issue #2 on one page. But it would be a mistake to think DIE is selling this question short, or “getting it out of the way” : like often with Gillen, the form is the point. The underhandedness of this debate among the characters is what makes it interesting. Because it’s a debate they had before. This is something they decided on. They set rules. They built an ethics system. They also saw the limits of it. Because no matter how lawful good they decided to play that thing, there’s always one player to just do what they want, or there’s always not even that same player doing some stupid wordbinding spell because that’s just a throwaway romance secondary plot, and who hasn’t fucked with one of those before. All the time it would have taken the comic to establish the characters coming to terms with this debate, disagreeing, coming to a solution, is time that can be used to see this solution unfold in glorious consequences. And you know what ? I’m willing to bet that the characters weren’t even that bad the first time around. But they were there, and that’s really all consequences need. Another thing to think about ? Maybe the reason the characters came to having this debate was that at some point, they didn’t think they would ever go home. Maybe the world they moulded the first time around, was the world they thought they would spend their lives in. You’re welcome.

 So does that mean DIE is going to leapfrog every single of these important questions to simply present us with the consequences of the characters’ choices ? Probably not. But every single decision and facet of this new story is going to come with its own asterisk : this isn’t the first time around. Everything is loaded. Nothing is ever innocent. This is the Monty Hall problem halfway through : one door has been opened, will you change your choice ? And for us, who didn’t get to see which doors our heroes picked in the first place, that’s going to be a hell of a ride.

  WHAT I THOUGHT OF THE ISSUE

 The idea of this section was for me to get a bit more personal about my thoughts, without feeling like I needed to make a big point. So let’s get personal : I do not like Ash. By which I don’t mean I think he’s badly written, I mean I don’t like him as a person. As in, we would not be friends. I already had that feeling when issue #1 came out, but I tried to be generous because we’d seen so little of everyone, but now we’re two issues in, let me confirm : I do not like Ash. I do not like his fake self-flagellation hiding some very real condescension, I do not like his teenage angst with a twenty years old aging flavour, I do not like that he’s introspective in the least interesting way possible, and for someone who boasts that he learned to “tell stories”, good god is he an annoying narrator. Yes part of it is intentional. And no, I do not particularly like any of the other characters either. And you have to take into account protagonist bias, meaning that the character you spend the more time with is the one you have the biggest chance to like, but also the biggest chance to hate instead of simply dislike. But hey, I never claimed to be the perfect reader. And for now, Ash is annoying the shit out of me. To me, he feels as if you’d taken Laura from Wicdiv, kept her just as laborious and self-hating, but removed all the parts that actually made her likeable. Which leads me to ask the question : can I be honest about the quality of an issue if I’m that bothered by who’s telling it ? The answer, as always, is that I can be honest with myself : I’m probably not as high on this issue as many people are. And the principal reason for that is definitely the main character and narration. Don’t get me wrong, this issue is a thrill : the scene with Sol is chilling – I think he might be my favourite character, actually – the combat scene is narratively masterful, the ending is a bit of cheap shot (I’m fairly certain I’ve seen this eyes plotpoint in several other stories) but god damn if it isn’t effective. Oh, and let’s take a moment to praise the art, Lord knows Stephanie Hans needs me, whose stick figures make the Monkey Christ lady look like Michelangelo, to praise her. But jokes aside, I want to give credit to how Hans resisted the appeal of painting the classic huge detailed fantasy world first chance she got. Instead, her vision of DIE is one of a weirdly deserted, bright yet gloom world, which fits the mood perfectly. To borrow from the issue, her use of colour looks like fantasy feels, without feeling the need to overbear on the raw emotions of this issue with more detailed pencils (Ash’s digression about Maria is also probably incidentally the most I’ve ever liked his narration). Best panels for me are of course the ones where you can see the sides of the DIE. Probably because it manages to feel so small and so huge at the same time. I’m a sucker for intimate fantasy.

So, this issue, minus Ash, is nothing I don’t love. But on the other hand, this issue doesn’t really exist without Ash. Try as I may, I cannot deny that part of the appeal of the issue comes from his narration and his personality. Yeah, he’s a whiny controlling drama queen, but I put up with an entire issue of Woden monologuing and this was one of the best things I’ve ever read, so you know what, I can put up with a little bullshit. I don’t think Ash has to be a good person, or even someone I like, for DIE to be good. I guess at this point my problem with him is that I don’t find him interestingly unlikeable, as was the case with Woden. Maybe it’s because unlike Woden, there are several people in my life who remind me a lot of Ash, and since they’re not necessarily assholes, they’re not people I have an excuse to outright avoid and thus with whom I’m much more familiar with. So who knows, maybe I’ll make peace with Ash. Comic’s still young. Meanwhile, my opinion on issue #2 is pretty much the same as for issue #1 : this is remarkable work, brilliant in some aspects, almost irritating in how proficient it is at doing its own thing, and maybe just a touch overconfident in its ability to walk the line between profound and navel-gazing. But when DIE keeps it simple, when it just wants to touch you instead of punching you in the gut, then it’s fucking unstoppable. If you’re not on the DIE train yet – well first, I admire and fear the way you powered through this post, but also, jump in, like now. You won’t regret it.