Jun 302011
 

RainbowdrinkerMari wrote:
> Wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up

That got a bit more violent than usual. But then again, so did you.

But it was just a dream, you tell yourself. Everything is fine now. No royalty is looming behind you, Quill-Weave is evidently unimpaled, and your internal organs are where they belong (that is to say, in a giant pile inside your midsection). Everything is fine.

You bawl anyway.

You don’t even know why. Maybe you just didn’t want to watch your friend die. Maybe you wanted to believe the nightmares were just another thing you left behind in your old life. Maybe sometimes you just need to fucking cry. Sure, you knew it was a dream, but that didn’t make it feel any better. You really want a drink but at the same time you know that would just make everything worse. So you cry instead, until it feels better.


TheFinalWraith wrote:
Katia: Imagine who you could have been if this fucking monster hadn’t been ruling your dreams. Then try and be that person.

Honestly, you’d rather not think about “what you could have been”.

Without the nightmares, you could have had a different childhood. You could have grown up wealthy and living in a castle, had a family who loved you, and maybe even begun learning magic at an early age immediately after discovering your birthsign. You never would have become an alcoholic. You wouldn’t have to live off other peoples’ charity. You’d probably still be a virgin, too.

But just look how you ended up. Times like this, when you think about what could have been, it really does feel like your whole life is just the epilogue to a sad story. Like you already failed, and this is just the long aftermath. Like no matter how hard you try to rise up there will always be something anchoring you to your past.

But you guess that doesn’t matter anymore. You’re Katia Managan now. Some dumb Khajiit slut has been screwing her life up beyond repair for the last nineteen years, but you’ve only been around for three days. Who knows what will happen.

Sure, you might have some problems. Among other things, you have horrifying, emotionally distressing nightmares every time you sleep sober. But you’re sure you’ll find some solution. Hell, even if you have to live with the nightmares for the rest of your life, you still have it better off than that Khajiit slut from Hammerfell.

You’re a wizard. You have friends. You went to a formal dinner with a scary countess! And today, you are going to meet up with an Imperial Legionnaire and travel to Kvatch. Things are looking up for you. When you think about all that you accomplished yesterday alone, things start to look brighter. You start to feel like maybe this is the prequel to something great.

Things are looking up. The nightmare woke you up a bit early, but that’s probably for the best. You have a lot of stuff to gather up before leaving. The letter, map, machete, pencil, lockpick…

In fact, now that you think about it, you need some way to mentally keep track of your supplies…

  • Scy

    INVENTORY GET

  • Jared

    It’s a HATCHET, not a machete!!!

  • Dmit

    inside your misection

    i think you meant midsection? oh well you do have a habit of letting typos linger for months ~

    • Kazerad

      Curse yoooouuu, old typos! My greatest foe.

      Thanks, and fixed.

  • Skelitor

    For a second there i thought that OLD blood on the ground was Quill-Weaves, and that’s why Quill-Weave looks dead over Katia’s lap, and that’s why it says it was more VIOLENT then usual… But thank god i’m wrong.

    • Burgrus of Corgi

      That’s what I thought until I saw Quill-Weave breathing. I was rather scared.

  • NoriMori

    “Things are looking up for you. When you think about all that you accomplished yesterday alone, things start to look brighter. You start to feel like maybe this is the prequel to something great.”

    TITLE DROP! 😀

  • Lochcelious

    And nobody comments on the obvious cuteness of QW’s sleeping…she must be really tired.

    • SplinteredReverence

      I was thinking the same thing. This inspires varying shameless cuddly fantasies with a reptilian humanoid.

  • Kajex

    I’m actually happy that she’s crying. And before people demand my head on a pike, my reasoning is that the alternative is that she hides those feelings at the bottom of a bottle and comes out worse for it. It’s not even been a week for her, and instead of relapsing into the very thing that ruins her, she’s brave enough to cry and submit to those emotions, if only to let them out until the storm passes.

    All the same…

    … she needs a hug.

    • tech

      And a big peice of cake.

      • callos

        a whole damn cake.

        • manarim

          (cake is an equally poor solution take it from me)

  • Robrand

    Given that this update was made back in June, this has probably been discussed on whatever forum there is about this, but I can’t help writing down something I’ve been thinking of (also helped by the fact that this update has only 9 replies): Dead King+Hammerfell+trauma during childhood+set during Oblivion.
    I’m wondering if in the character background it turns out that her family worked at the royal court of Daggerfall.

    • Robrand

      And I forgot that Hammerfell =/= High Rock, so I’ve just busted my own theory.

  • Lard

    Why the fuck would you possibly want to still be a virgin?

    • Asdasd

      … while I’m not sure we’re coming at this from exactly the same perspective, I have to agree. The dichotomy set up here – ‘sluts vs. virgins’, with the implication that having had sex makes you a slut, something to be associated with other serious personal problems such as alcoholism – is kind of troubling.

      Especially since it’s not exactly clear who’s making these assertions – the character to herself, or the narrator to the character (the second-person perspective effectively blurring both into one voice. But I think the author is most likely putting the question to the reader, rather than handing out his own judgement: is it right for Katia to think of her former self in this way?

      • Kazerad

        Katia’s narration is in her “voice”, not mine. I think it should (hopefully!) be pretty clear by now that she has a lot of unhealthy thought patterns.

      • Woundedkneecap

        It’s more of a jarring comparison, a “what if” that matters a lot to Katia. She, from her current view, finds the life style she mentions more favorable than the life she lived up to this point.

        Katia is going to associate sex with booze, then booze with her problems when she thinks in a “what if” kinda way. In other panels she doesn’t always do that, she encourages the thought of it sometimes (or at least is a good sport about it). I don’t see any hidden agenda or extreme view here, just a simple case of “the grass is always greener” after such a horrific event. Poor girl.

    • Rik

      Possibly because not everyone wants to throw away their virginity for no good reason? Just a thought…

  • Cerulean Starlight

    >You could have grown up wealthy and living in a castle, had a family who loved you, and maybe even began learning magic at an early age immediately after discovering your birthsign.
    That’s “begun”, not “began”; after all, you used “grown”, not “grew”, right?

    • Kazerad

      Haha, whoops.

      As a native English speaker, past participle conjugations are something I’ve never actually learned formally. I usually just go with what sounds right, and were it not for Spanish classes I wouldn’t even know what the different verb forms were called. I’ll get a hang of it eventually, though!

      Corrected!

  • The Dragonborne

    Seriously no one yet noticed the blood on the rag in the basket has a nuclear symbol drawn upon it?… just me?

  • The Dragonborne

    er radioactive actually but still..

    • Ziz

      Actually, it’s a biohazard sign. The radioactive sign is six solid block rays of alternating yellow and black around a circle of yellow I think.

  • Cole

    Daw Quill is so cute laying over her.

  • Hjgduyhwsgah

    This has actually given me a very good idea for a roleplay. A character who suffers recurring nightmares!

  • Elosan

    Inventory menu! YES!!!

  • Lineo

    oh, inventory now :)?

    i have a question.how many
    animated comics are out there?
    because i also had this idea before
    but i’m not an “art artist”.

    • Alex

      You may be interested to know that the first webcomic( not counting Dr. Fun, which was originally a newspaper comic) was animated! It’s called Argon Zark, and updates, on average, about twice a decade I think? I still recommend checking it out, just for the sake of history.
      http://www.zark.com/pages/aztitle.html
      (The animations don’t really happen until the the end. They’re a lot more prevalent in the second story.)

  • dramspringfeald

    Missing the lock pick

  • fatblackidd

    That side boob…

  • Bewarethecarpenter

    Just checking; how old is Katia meant to be exactly? She says she’s been screwing her life up for the last nineteen years (in another page it was twenty), is this counting from when she was four and the nightmares started, or was it after then?

  • dtlux14

    NICE WAY TO KEEP TRCK OF SUPPLIES!

  • Dragon

    Sylladex get?