CURRENT STORY DISCUSSION

Woo! Double updates and awesome pages!

Ah, so the consciences weren't created specially on the occasion of more people coming to Nod after all...
Also, Megan, you're super awesome for the bigger updates (Well, not ONLY for that XD)

Yay! Megan loves us!

Michael wrote:Yay! Megan loves us!

OK, I'll go with that. I was actually thinking, "boy, she must be in a hurry to be done with this..."

I like your idea better!

carl-E wrote:

Michael wrote:Yay! Megan loves us!

OK, I'll go with that. I was actually thinking, "boy, she must be in a hurry to be done with this..."

I like your idea better!

It's both! I want to be done, but I'm also really happy about how nobody was a dick when they pointed out anachronistic flaws in Sadako's backstory. Everyone was very nice about it. So you all get a reward!

YazzyDream wrote:Megan, you are so awesomeamazingawesome.

I couldn't agree more!
so cool!

Eldan wrote:

YazzyDream wrote:Megan, you are so awesomeamazingawesome.

I couldn't agree more!
so cool!

I agree also! <3

Ugh, Sadako makes me so sick. I can't believe she doesn't understand that she can't just make Elli fall in love with her. And if she tried, she might be able to do it properly by being a good friend first.

Although to be honest when I got to the bottom of the first page it might be more toturous. Have you seen the episode "Only a Dream" of Justice League? I thought it might've been more along those lines.

Btw, I think this is a better done version of Elli's dreamscape than the first time. So, good job.

YazzyDream wrote:Although to be honest when I got to the bottom of the first page it might be more toturous. Have you seen the episode "Only a Dream" of Justice League? I thought it might've been more along those lines.

"There may be some momentary discomfort."

Still looks pretty hideous from here. Pain just sort of stops being pain after a while. Despair's the gift the keeps on giving. Especially considering the time differential between Nod and the Earth, that's 14 hours to every one waking, right? 1/15 of that's girls life is spent free of Sadako. Can you imagine how desperately she must try and stay awake every day? The physical and chemical tortures she must exact on herself? The decline of her health as she denies herself sleep? And it's still just a blink and sigh compared to her weeks in the clutches of the Dream Queen. She's a doll dreaming she's a living girl now.

EDIT: Actually, mentioning Dr. Destiny made me remember the old Neil Gaiman comic, '24 Hours In A Diner'. Suddenly, Sadako seems like such a nice little girl...

Oh god, Sadako. This is so horribly sick and twisted. Poor Ellie, to be tortured in her dreams by the dead girl who's last act was to make an advance on her...

I had recurring nightmares when I was younger, and I think that's why I don't really remember dreams anymore. I managed to block them out a little too well. But this goes WAAAAAYYY beyond a recurring nightmare. It will probably lead Ellie to madness and suicide to escape her own dreams.

I just have trouble understanding how Sadako could have lost so much of her humanity so quickly. Did she really have so little of it to begin with? Or is this an effect of he eye, or of being ruler of Nod?

Brain hurts. Eyes weepy. Another 24 hours to wait.

@ Carl-E: Sadako might have lost her humanity quickly due to the time difference between Dream World and Real World. a few weeks for Ellie would be a few centuries for Sadako (give or take)

and I must say, in these new pages, Sadako moves instantly from cute to creepy.

I agree. This is a horrible obsession that Sadako has and it makes me wonder how Ellie handle this in the end. Did she commit suicide just to avoid these dreams or did she just accept them and allowed herself to get brainwashed? I wouldn't want to be stuck in such a messed up dream with a woman who's downright obsessed with a single blonde-haired girl. Maybe this is why after she vanished, Sadako began trying to find a replacement for her utmost desires.

I almost wonder if Lia became a replacement for Ellie... maybe that doesn't make much sense. I'm not quite sure.

There is an eerie beauty about the style of these pages. It totally gives me the creeps, but at the same time there is a kind of "Alice in Wonderland" sort of feel that makes it beautiful.

She ha definitely fallen in to the dark side.

Oh dear heavens Sadako you are just
I don't even have words.

Poor Ellie.

It goes so quickly from being "Aww, she really wasn't that bad" to "AUGH!"

Also, I just noticed this--Megan, I know you hate it when people point out things repeatedly but I didn't see where anyone else had pointed this out yet. On the previous page, discussing the boxes, "separate" is misspelled as "seperate."
Sorry if that's already been brought up.

Also Ellie's eye in that first panel where she turns around is just absolutely beautiful.

/doublepostshot

I feel both amazingly sorry but also i am amazingly disapointed over Sadako.
I feel sorry for her as she never had the chance to have a real love (she had in the start but she got torn away from her) and she died unloved. All she wants to do is be loved, have a friend. No one gives it to her, she even got killed.
After a while of being left alone and ignored a human becomes desperate and most likely the act she did before she got killed is a result of that..And a bit of NOD madness I kind of hope this will outcome a good end for Sadako and not a sad bitter one as usually it is in stories with villains and good guys.

I think a couple of real world time months of this are actually well deserved. It still makes Sadako a creepy psycho though.

I'm going to be the devil's advocate here and argue that Sadako had NO ideia Ellie wasn't with her in her dreams out of free will. She was just a really needy and naïve girl... hell, in Sadako's place, confirming that they were really sharing time in their sleep, I would have also come to her all happy and greet her the same way they did over nine thousand times before. I suspect Ellie is complaining of Sadako following her around more because of the dreams... what did she do in real life to REALLY deserve being called an obssessive stalker? Try to compliment her? Try to leave her a note? Give her a gift? Can that be considered obssessive stalking?

For me it is only now that Sadako is acting batshit insane towards her. It makes me also wonder if the connection with Clandy was really broken, because otherwise Clandy is doing a really lousy job. But hell if Ellie doesn't freaking deserve this. Murdering (passive homicide is more the correct term, but) a girl whose only crime was having a childish crush on her? Not cool.


P.S. - I'm going to nitpick here... Sadako is Japanese, spent most of her life in Japan save for a very few couple of months, and she dreams up a completely western-style castle? Wouldn't it make more sense if her ideal of a castle was something more along these lines? I can imagine why she settled for a western dress that is awfully (and probably not consciously intended to be) similar to her school uniform, but I don't get the castle.

P.P.S. - Awesome, awesome touch the kimono folding as she reappers in Nod while dying. Once someone pointed that out it made me see those pages completely differently. It adds an emotional impact I can't really explain.

I want to say that what happened to Sadako, aside from the death being an accident, was entirely her fault; couldn't take a hint, couldn't let it go, ignored warnings, forced herself onto an unwilling girl, etcetera.

I want to say that, but the truth is that Sadako was incredibly young at that age, and even scientifically speaking, wasn't mentally developed enough to make good decisions. The truth is that she was the responsibility of her father, just as all children are the responsibilities of their parents, and that it is his fault that he didn't keep close enough tabs on her, or raised her well enough not to make these kinds of decisions. At the very least, hired someone trustworthy enough to do so.

But even so, after all this time, the way Sadako is acting is unforgivable. She's just being a brat, who can't get what she wants, so she takes it by force and deludes herself into believing it's okay.

To Ana: Ellie didn't murder anyone. She wasn't the one who touched Sadako, or shoved her, and from the looks on both her and her boyfriend's faces, they didn't mean for her to die in the first place. The truth was that Ellie was just a normal girl back in that time period, minding her own business, who just happened to be on the receiving end of this other girl's affections; what did she do wrong, at all? Nothing. She absolutely does not deserve this.

I registered here just to say that I am absolutely loving this current story arc. It's so deliciously creepy.

Hiya, long time lurker finally malting the feathers of anonymity. The latest pages pages have gotten me thinking:

a) I notice in the latest page that Sadako (or as I like to refer to her as: Coco-pop-fruit-loops) is developing a teeny bit of a bag under her swirly eye, like the ye' ol ex-king of Nod. Now as a bona fide member eye bagged family, I theorize that either the eye bag stops her from getting proper sleep, if any at all, or heavy use of it wears her down.
Or she could be really allergic to some Nod-pollen.

b) Something I also saw was the...uh...creepy parallel she is kinda drawing to Fiona. I mean, Cocopopfruitloops makes mention of her eyes, and then when she goes to Lia's house and tells Lia to look her in the eyes and Lia just kind of submits - maybe it wasn't just that Sadako didn't condone it... I mean the whole thing was a bit jarring in the first place, but now...hmm... But then again, what Lia said at the end of part 1 could be a double reassurance that Fiona wasn't controlling her feelings as Fiona might think later on... God I'm over-thinking this. Still, perhaps what Fiona is doing is inexcusable...

c) More of an extension on b really, but do you notice that Ellie's dreamscape looks a lot like Fiona's and Lia's love hut? Is it what happened to the room after Ellie vacated for unknown reasons? Is it a device Megan is using to make us draw parallels to their two stories? Coincidence? All three? (puzzle out that one)

d) It's hard to put it into my head that the Cocopopfruitloops Fiona met is really just fifteen. God, I feel sorry for her, forever stuck in the emotional sess-pool of the teen years.

e)I was thinking. Ruler of Nod = Eternal bedhead?

f) I just realized that the comic title fits perfectly with the Salt N' Pepa song: 'Let's talk about Yu+Me'...
...and now I can't stop singing it.

g) Chance #196 = *Hysterical Laughter* *Immediate guilt at laughing at Ellie's pain*

Wow, that was a long first post. I had more to say than I thought I would. It started out as just, "Megan, you're a fox. In a good way." (Megan Fox...0_o haha)

What the heck is everyone talking about with the folding kimono????

Am I dense or am I just missing something here?

From Wikipedia;

Kimonos are wrapped around the body, always with the left side over the right (except when dressing the dead for burial)

So really, it's more the lap in the opening of the kimono that changed for Sadako, indicating that she was now deceased. Edit: compare 769 to 776

A tiny detail, but one that Megan should be proud of!

purplefreak wrote:What the heck is everyone talking about with the folding kimono????

Am I dense or am I just missing something here?

When Megan first drew this cover, someone pointed out that there is a specific way to fold kimonos - when you're dead and they're burying you, they fold it one way and when you're alive, you fold it a different way. They had to point it out because Megan had originally drawn it the wrong way (she went back and changed it)....the artist she was using for inspiration draws dead/zombie-like people in kimonos, causing Megan to draw it the "dead" way. Heh.

Ana wrote:I think a couple of real world time months of this are actually well deserved. It still makes Sadako a creepy psycho though.

I'm going to be the devil's advocate here and argue that Sadako had NO idea Ellie wasn't with her in her dreams out of free will. She was just a really needy and naive girl... hell, in Sadako's place, confirming that they were really sharing time in their sleep, I would have also come to her all happy and greet her the same way they did over nine thousand times before. I suspect Ellie is complaining of Sadako following her around more because of the dreams... what did she do in real life to REALLY deserve being called an obsessive stalker? Try to compliment her? Try to leave her a note? Give her a gift? Can that be considered obsessive stalking?

For me it is only now that Sadako is acting batshit insane towards her. It makes me also wonder if the connection with Clandy was really broken, because otherwise Clandy is doing a really lousy job. But hell if Ellie doesn't freaking deserve this. Murdering (passive homicide is more the correct term, but) a girl whose only crime was having a childish crush on her? Not cool.

I have to say, this post is uncomfortably close to victim-blaming. The current pages have elements of mind rape in them. :/