Suicide squad

They all have a death wish. For different reasons, but still!

Next page: https://www.patreon.com/posts/page-iii-25-hd-35915852
Next next page: https://www.patreon.com/posts/36181261

How are you guys doing? The situation in Japan is pretty weird, the same number of cases every day, the same number of people on the streets strolling, both numbers too high for my liking. But I’m still going out for a long walk every weekend to move my limbs a little, but we’re trying to avoid people and shops/cafes/anything so maybe it’s fine? I’ll let you know if I start coughing.

I feel like I have even less time than usual, somehow. Maybe because we started watching the Umbrella Academy (it’s pretty fun! I love Hazel, btw) or maybe because I’m playing Stardew Valley when I don’t feel like doing anything. It’s hard to keep yourself motivated when there’re no donuts. But! I’m almost done with the draft for the second part of Historia project and I bought myself a new tablet (finally Intuos Pro, I always had the cheapest version, so far I don’t see any difference besides Photoshop randomly losing pressure sensitivity and driving me nuts). I hope this week will be a bit slower and more productive than the last one and I can make some more sketches. Last week I only managed one more, for the other side of the slumber party:

Pinecone poker~ Filip didn’t know that counting counts as cheating (at least in Kasper’s book).

As always, feel free to drop by Replay’s Discord: https://discord.gg/ttgpurr and stay well!

42 comments on “Suicide squad”

  2. Crestlinger Reply

    No reason to worry, not that they’re going anywhere where time is a factor in not being eate…oh wait….

  3. FuryoftheStars Camp dweller Reply

    So they don’t want to mention the visions to the one person who might have further insight into it? Ok….

  4. Refugnic Reply

    You might want to check Julia’s first sentence. ‘Why both of you blacked out…’.
    I believe ‘Why did both of you black out…’ would be grammatically more correct, if I am not mistaken.
    ‘What is it’ in itself appears to be correct, but I believe ‘What happened?’ works a little better in this context.
    Also, I believe it’s ‘discussed’, not ‘discused’. (Yes, I know I’m terrible) 😉

    Heh…poor Sofia, always getting left out.
    And it was such a nice excuse to finally kiss Robert…err, profile herself as a life safer…err…do something good.
    Yeah, I’m sure that’s it.

    And I’m sure she would’ve taken equally good care of Ada too…if time allowed it, of course.

    Though I do wonder…what gives Sofia the idea, that ‘if Julia is not going’, that there would be ‘a free spot’ in the exploration party?
    I guess it didn’t occur to her, that the reason why Julia is not coming is, that there was no ‘third slot’ to begin with. 😀

    That they don’t tell her about the visions is…interesting, but also understandable.

    First off, if the others knew that they randomly black out and revisit the past/future (which might well be lethal), they’d never let the two of them go…at the very least not unsupervised.
    In the best case, they’ll be treated as ‘gone nuts’.

    Second…the verdict’s still not out, whether Julia is to be trusted.

    • NotImportant Reply

      Oh man, thanks for fishing out the typos, I’ll fix those after work!

    • Alex Reply

      Wow, you found so many typos. Btw: You’re not supposed to place a comma before “that”. 😉 You did it four times. But you also did it right once, when you wrote “if the others knew that they”.
      And I think the comma in your last sentence is a mistake, too.

      • Refugnic Reply

        Argh, stupid commas!
        Seriously, I am doing fairly well with my vocabulary and my grammar (no match for an actual native speaker, but for someone who taught himself like 70 % of what he knows today by reading, I think I’m doing somewhat well…), but these stupid commas are my personal Achilles heel!

        I never know where to put them. 😀

        That the comma rules are quite a bit different in German does not help either. 😀

        My personal favorite is ‘the comma at the end of direct speech’.

        German: “Also, ich geh’ dann mal”, sagte Ted.
        English: “Alright, I’ll be off,” Ted said.

        FUN! 😀

        So yeah, I’m not…all that good with commas and where to put them. 😀

      • Alex Reply

        Yeah, I place most of my commas intuitively, too. I just remember that one of my English teachers once said “kein Komma vor that” as if it were an obvious rule everyone should know by now (grade 12 or 13), but I didn’t remember getting taught that one before and frmo then on it stuck with me.

        But your English is very good overall for a non-native speaker. You’re better than a bunch of my work colleagues, even though we’re mostly programmers (some HW, some SW), which means having to research stuff in English all the time and having English business partners.

        I taught myself a lot as well by reading books (read all of Discworld and Hitchhiker’s Guide), playing RPGs (mostly Final Fantasy 7, 8 and 9) and watching a ton of Anime in Japanese with EN subs. 15 years ago there weren’t many German subs and the quality was about 640×480. And of course there were the good old webcomics like OOTS, 8 Bit Theater, Bob & George, Sluggy Freelance, Freefall and Sabrina Online. Man, sprite comics were so hilarious, seeing people with roughly 0 art skill and about the same amount of story skill just throw together something where characters talk random crap, occasionally slamming their readers into walls of text without a care in the world. XD Especially Bob & George will always have a place in my heart.

      • T3h Ogre Reply

        I once had a creative writing instructor who described my liberal use of the comma as, and I quote, “having the appearance of one upending a condom, upon a page full of letters, struggling to be words and phrases.” (Please note the use of the period after the closed quote…take that, Britain!) I have been, actually, quite admired of the ability you each possess to express yourselves in my native language, much more better’n me. I doubt, even after 11 years of French and Russian, that I would be able to converse as fluently in a foreign tongue. Foreign being used quite liberally here, as you each write in English as though it were not foreign atol. It took me several blog posts and comics to discern NI’s Polishness; all this time, I just thought she was Canadienne (it was the donut obsession that threw me off…). Were it not for Refugnic – I might run by all the “errors” without a second glance. Too right your were, Alex, to point at that Refugnic’s use of a comma in his last sentence was in error, also. Got a little ‘and’ on the front of your sentence there, Alex (that’s to be read like someone describing mustard on the front of someone’s shirt after it squeezed out of the hotdog bun, all whilst having nacho cheese sauce on the side of their own mouth). [Winks at both]

        I am a subscriber to the free range use of the English language and its controls (read punctuation); this might, however, explain my lack of getting published. Commas and periods are just the masters tools to slow you down, force you to take a breath, and put a stop to your thoughts.

        And don’t get me started about carriage returns with line feeds. They’re graphically paralyzing.

        I believe Sofa-cat is finally beginning to accept Kasper as the big brother figure we all know and love – she didn’t even elbow him in the ribs, not once. Have you ever noticed that Ada’s cotton balls never fall out of her ears? Whenever I have an earache, I can never get mine to stay in like that.

        Where I come from, if you were to fall asleep like that (or lose consciousness as the case may be), you would certainly awake to find yourself missing eyebrows and having a sharp black mustache, and quite possibly a large, profane word scrawled above your missing eyebrows in the same sharp black as your new mustache; there would certainly be a flower and sunshine drawn on your cheeks (if you’re lucky, they’d be on your face).

        Glad to read that you are well, NI. I hope the rest of all y’all stay safe and well, also.

      • Alex Reply

        Thanks for the compliment, ogre. 🙂
        Yeah, I should get used to using “furthermore” or “also” instead of “and” at the beginning of such sentences. Your poetic descriptions are fun to read. XD

      • Refugnic Reply

        Heh, I would do well to remember that one, I guess.

        My primary issue with a ‘comma before that’ is most likely because, in German, you usually DO place a comma before the direct equivalent ‘dass’ (but then again, I had a close D in German when I was done with school, so I might not be on the best authority for that one). 😀

        And tell me about it.

        When I hear my colleagues talk in English, I often find myself cringing internally…but much to my comfort, the people they are talking to are usually not all that much better.

        My personal favorite experience in this regard was, when we received a delegation from Britain (some 3 years ago or something) and I had the pleasure to talk with them for a little while.

        They actually said, that they were surprised at how good my English was…apparently they expected something quite a bit different from their visit. 😀

        Of course, while speaking, you don’t hear the misplaced commas. XD

        I think my starting point was ‘Star Ocean’ for the SNES…and from there, I just kinda kept going.

        Also, Ogre…I believe it is quite a common rule, that the period needs to be placed at the end of the quoted sentence, unless it is followed up by an ‘action description.’

        Which means (and please correct me if I am wrong):

        Ted said, “So yeah, that happened.” is just as correct, as:
        “So yeah, that happened,” Ted said.

        Again, correct me if I’m wrong. 😀

        As for my apparently somewhat refined grade of expression…well, there’s multiple reasons for that.
        First one: I’m odd and I have that on good authority. 😀
        Second: I’ve been writing stories in both German and (mostly) English for some 20 years by now…I would sure hope that all that practice is slowly paying off.

        It’s really fun though…according to school, I should be utterly incapable of living the life I do.
        I graduated with a close D in German and an E in math.

        And then, just a little later, I graduated my job training with an (almost) straight A on all subjects, scoring best of my year and have been programming little miracles for 10 years now. (which probably amount to nothing compared to the other programmers here, I’m sure, but hey: Big fish in the little pond, am I right? ;)).

        And I’ve written like…I don’t even know, 10 large stories, some of which I’ve even sold a few copies of.

        So yeah, school has most spectacularly shown itself incapable of correctly assessing my abilities. 😀

      • T3h Ogre Reply

        Shortly before I was born, my nation revoluted from her Majesty’s island (it was his Majesty at the time, as I recall). In seeking our independence, we established that all commas, periods, exclamations, and questionable markings should be placed before the quotation and that colons, halfa-colons, and the dash should follow the quotation. We were resolute In our belief that this was proper form, wrote treatises (MLA handbook, AP style guide) on the subject and called our new language English; not to be confused with English, mind you. The English never confuse English with English, and will point out from time to time how colourless our colors have become. I can only imagine how confusing writing in English is when confronted with English, as I have a difficult time with English myself. Don’t quote me on this explanation, however, as I often confuse my English with my English. Also, I am a poor guide for grammar in English, too; having long ago created my own English.

        Right then. Carry on carrying on. 🙂

      • Alex Reply

        “They actually said, that they were surprised at how good my English was”
        *cough* comma *cough* 😉

        I love writing stories, too, but I program stuff for money, so that’s what I’m doing the most.

        As for oddness: If being mainstream means watching trash TV and drinking beer, then I’m happily odd.

  5. Refugnic Reply

    Because I kinda challenged myself to see how long it’ll take until my rhymes run out. 😀 :
    (Could anyone help me out with the formatting? I’d like to put the text into italics, but I’m not sure, whether [i]BBCode[/i] would work)

    ‘Tis a party, where you’re not invited,
    Same goes for you, don’t get excited.
    The visions we share, we share not with you,
    the bump to the head? A lie, get a clue.

    Now off with you, be on your way,
    go ’bout your lives, but please, do not stray.
    Cute little Sophie, so eager to die,
    yet she won’t see, who’d be left back to cry.

    • JW Reply

      You can use html (<i>…</i>) for italics,
      I posted a list of possible formatting a while ago.

      • Refugnic Reply

        Ah, HTML tags work?
        I couldn’t remember. 😀

        Sorry for troubling you, thanks for the reminder. 🙂

        • JW Reply

          Oh, it’s no trouble.
          It’s always nice to feel slightly useful early in the morning 🙂

  6. Regis Earsquake Reply

    Here in germany, the new infektions are going down. But that comes with it’s own chalenges. How do you explain an population, that there is a difference between things getting better and things beeing good. Like the number of new cases is still too high to really follow the trail of infection and to isolate people, who came in contact with this person. So if we’d lift the measures now, the infections would just go up again…

    • Refugnic Reply

      I happen to have a doctors appointment today…a routine checkup, nothing major.
      Still, I’m going to wear a face mask when I go in, contrary to when I go shopping…cause y’know, it being a reasonable assumption to think, that the other people who are waiting at the doctor might just be contagious.

      So yeah, I think, we’re a long way from ‘things being good again’.
      Though I’d guess there are some upsides to the current crisis, most notably environmental ones.

      I mean, when was the last time, the world as a whole got as much as a breather trying to deal with all the crap we’re blowing into the air with our cars, planes, factories and what not?

      And now?
      Suddenly even politicians can actually use internet telephones to consult with each other instead of going around half the world just for a bloody photo! 😀

      • Alex Reply

        When I go to a doctor I ask them how long the wait is and if I can go for a walk until then. I really don’t want to sit in a waiting room with a bunch of sick (mostly old) people, regardless of whether or not a pandemic goes around. Also I live just around the corner, so I can just go home and play video games until it’s my turn. And if it’s a different doctor I just play video games on my smartphone until then. 🙂

      • JW Reply

        I’ve heard that the younger generation in the north of India is amazed to be able to see the mountains. The elders still remember, but the young never saw it through the haze of smoke.
        Shutting all the factories does wonders for clean air.

      • Refugnic Reply

        Yeah, I can see what you mean, Alex…and personally, I’m not too fond of ‘visiting the doctor’ either, especially if there’s nothing ‘wrong with me’ at the time. (Periodic checkups require me to show up once every 3 months, because of a stupid chronic condition)

        It often feels, like you come out less healthy than you went in…and of course the waiting times are plain out waste of time.

        If you can do that, it’s great, but thing is…most clinics couldn’t even tell you, ‘how long the wait is’, because one patient takes longer, whereas another one is done after 5 minutes…I’m usually one of those ‘done after 5 minutes’ candidates.

      • Alex Reply

        Yeah, some patients are faster than others, but if the waiting room is packed they tell me I can come back in 60 minutes and usually I still have to wait for another 15 to 30 minutes, but at least it wasn’t 90.

      • Alex Reply

        @JW: Yeah, India and China have been polluting the air quite badly. There’s no denying that Corona did a lot for the environment already and it only just started.

        • NotImportant Reply

          I’ve heard that in China, more people were saved due to lower pollution than died because of the virus. Not sure if it’s just a rumor but would be a nice flip side.

      • Alex Reply

        Yeah, that could very well be true. Google says that about 1 million people die of air pollution each year, so if the smoke is now closer to something that’s humanly manageable and there are 4632 Corona-related deaths in China so far, then the virus really might be about 10 times less bad than their air pollution.

      • T3h Ogre Reply

        So, that’s how I caught this oldness thing – by waiting in the waiting room with t3h mold p33ples. Should have gone for that walk with you, Alex, but, the magazines held me back. Durn my obsession with Cher. I heard its contagious, though, most everyone eventually catches t3h mold.

        I am not ready to toss industry to curb, quite yet. I wouldn’t have found out that other folks outside of my nation like donuts with sprinkles too, without it; I would have continued to assume you all eat crepes with grasshoppers like they show on t3h TVs. And from my elderly standpoint (pollution and otherwise) we have come great leaps and bounds in a short time. Sure, we have things to improve but we’ll figure it out.

        The bad thing to this pandemic (besides the short term disease we face [meaning that we are dealing with it now – not that it is passing quickly or that it is not a large disaster]) is the longer term closing up of stuff. Sure, eventually we’ll all head back to work – but that lifestyle is changing. Outside of Asia, I never really saw folks wearing masks daily and that was part of the culture (courtesy) – now that is looking like it will be a common thing out of necessity – even when and if COVID passes. I was hoping to travel to Germany this year to impress people with my ability to mangle the German language spectacularly while folks smile and say, “we speak English, you know…” But, with travel restrictions, border closures, and lots of restaurants, hotels, and businesses closing it looks like I might have to wait longer; and I still want to see Taiwan and Japan before I succumb to the OLDs.

    • The_Squished_Elf Reply

      I believe an appropriate way, in English at least, would be “less bad”. Alternatively, simply say “IT’S WORKING! KEEP IT UP!”

      • Refugnic Reply

        Or, if we wish to stick with our British (somewhat) neighbors, we can just borrow the infamous posters they used during WW II.

        ‘Keep calm and carry on.’

        Really, what more is there to be said?
        Whether the enemy are the Nazis or a virus…the moment you lose your calm and stop carrying on…they win.

      • Regis Earsquake Reply

        I’m not too fond of the war analogy.

        War is about exploitation of people to enforce the interests of your own group. And while it might be a justifiable intrest or the exploitation might be the lesser evil, that’s not really what is happening right now. It’s more about putting your own interests behind the needs of everyone. Ther are no different groups with different intrests. There is only one group, and that’s humans.
        It might be slightly polemically, but the fight against Corona is about saving people. War is about killing people.

        That might be a very german way to look at things. Due to our history, we tend to frame war more negative than other countries.

      • Refugnic Reply

        Regis, I’m German too.

        And I agree with you on one thing: War always only has one winner, and his name is ‘Death’…everyone else always loses, no matter how much they claim to have gained by waging war.

        And I am very grateful, that Europe did not have any wars to really speak of in almost a hundred years soon.

        As for the analogy…as I said, I’m not a big fan of wars myself.

        However the concept still remains the same…there’s currently a threat…a substantial one.
        Whether that is ‘a large group of people’, ‘some nutcases with explosives’ or ‘a virus’ does not matter in this context.

        Now you have a few options on how to react to this threat.

        You can panic, forget your humanity, think only of yourself and maybe those close to you…scale that up, and you’ve got a mass panic with everyone hoarding supplies up to the point where society collapses…the threat wins without even having done anything.

        You can ignore the threat and act as if there wasn’t any sort of problem…that works fine, I guess…until the threat is actually at your doorstep, as illustrated very nicely by what I hear from the USA.

        Or you can ‘Keep calm and carry on’, to get back to the poster.
        And this does by no means mean ‘Ignore the threat’…on the contrary, you must be aware that the threat exists…and do whatever you can to stop it from ruining your life, country, world…but not in a fit of panic or hysteria, but calmly.
        And when the best thing you can do is to ‘carry on’, then that is what you have to do.

        Yes, right now it’s ‘only’ a virus instead of a some nutcases, who aren’t happy with what they have…and in a sense, that’s actually a very nice thing.

        Because right now, for the first time in what feels like centuries, mankind has, at long last, a common enemy to unite against.

        Might be a good test run for when Aliens get the messages we’ve been sending them and decide to say ‘Hello’. 😀
        Though, seeing how the world is ‘united’ right now, I’d wager a wild guess that we’d be all kinds of screwed if a hostile alien race decided to swing by. 😀

      • Regis Earsquake Reply

        It certainly has similaritys to a war, no doubt. I just think that the core of the action, the reason why people work against the virus, is almost the complete opposite than in a war.
        In a way, the similarity to war comes from the fact, that it needs a determined, collective action from everyone in the society. In that way, corona is more similar to war than modern war (^^)’

        I’m still not convinced with the aliens, though. There might be people that say that the aliens are a conspiracy and a hoax to discredit a certain politican.

      • Refugnic Reply

        Yeah, I see what you mean. 🙂

        As for the aliens…I for one believe quite firmly, that there is life somewhere out there.
        Potentially even intelligent life.

        Sure, it’s one huge coincidence, that life managed to develop here on Earth…but the cosmos is vast.
        I find it very hard to believe, that this planet of ours here is the only one in the entire universe, where the conditions for life had been met…

        The issue of ‘aliens coming by’ on the other hand…that’s an entirely different story.
        As stated previously, the cosmos is a very big place…so even if they got our message (or our TV program, for that matter), they’d still very likely have a VERY long way to go to get to where we are…so unless they have some nifty device, that allows them to ‘fold space’ (and thereby allow moving (a lot) faster than light), chances are extremely slim, that they’d go to the trouble of coming here, hostile or not.

        Err…this is the Sci-Fi blog, right?
        No?
        Aww crap…alright, I’ll see myself out then. 😀

      • JW Reply

        War always only has one winner, and his name is ‘Death’…everyone else always loses, no matter how much they claim to have gained by waging war.

        Actually, the merchants of death are generally also winners.

        And without getting into whether it’s ever better to start a war than not, it’s certainly sometimes better to win a war started by someone else than lose.

        And I am very grateful, that Europe did not have any wars to really speak of in almost a hundred years soon.

        The most recent genocide in Europe (Srebrenica) isn’t even 25 years ago yet.
        Although, admittedly, recent examination of our history books (in the Netherlands) does seem to confirm it’s not something we speak of.

    • T3h Ogre Reply

      I think the point to social distancing and other mitigation factors was to slow things down enough for the world to catch up and make a plan. The infection/contagion rate is too high; the infection rate was always going to go up again. The plan was to learn how to treat it, so that mortality would be lower – and to reduce the impact on care services so that we could deal with the disease over a longer period of time – rather than all at once.

      We’re beginning to see that there are a lot of people with antibodies that never were severely symptomatic – or were reduced severity in symptoms of the disease mistaking it for flu; if this turns out to be true, then that’s a good thing and the disease will run its course quickly. We were not practicing the mitigation efforts to stop the virus cold – that was never going to happen it’s too contagious and people will still contract it – but, rather to try and slow down the sudden impact. I think we will still see an increased infection rate regardless of social distancing – but hopefully, it will be more manageable.

      I also don’t think the new measures will ever go away, not completely. We’ll go back to work sure – but that, in my opinion, has been permanently altered. I think fewer people will want to travel as often as they did before, and I think culturally we’ll see an adoption of masks, no shaking hands, other societal changes. Good, bad, or indifferent time will tell.

      • Refugnic Reply

        For whatever it’s worth, I’ve never been much of a travel person…I think I’ve been outside of Germany like…3-4 times in my entire life thus far…one of the times being a two day business trip to Sweden, which will very likely not repeat.

        So no big deal for me there.

        The ‘no shaking hands’ is a change, sure…but one I can live with.

        The masks on the other hand…I’ve worn one recently to go see the doctor and that was such a bother…I was really glad when I was back out of there, I can tell you.

        I wear glasses (because I’m a little shortsighted, although I somehow have managed to make my eyesight no worse over the past 10 years, even though I’m at the computer pretty much constantly…) and the bloody breathing air did of course not escape through the lower end of the mask, no Sir…it went right up into my eyes, fogging up my glasses big time.

        I seriously had to put my glasses down in order to read the book I had brought. 😀
        The assistant told me, that I needed to put the cloth beneath the glasses, but I’d rather not have the cloth hanging in my eyes…so yeah, face masks and me…are not going to become fast friends in the near future. 😀

        And yeah well, we’ll deal, right?
        After all, we have to…remains to see, how long it’ll take the eggheads to devise a vaccine or whatever that actually works…though quite honestly, if that thing really is anything like the flu, no vaccine they find will work permanently…there is a reason, why we need new flu shots every year, after all.

        • JW Reply

          though quite honestly, if that thing really is anything like the flu, no vaccine they find will work permanently

          From what I’ve heard this virus isn’t very changeable (unlike flu). So hopefully a vaccine will be the end this strain.
          And if it’s not. Well, we already deal with many different strains of corona-virus (which together with rhino-viruses are the main cause of the common cold). So there’s a good chance that even if it does adapt to escape the effects of vaccination, it’ll become more benign like those variants.

          I wear glasses (because I’m a little shortsighted, although I somehow have managed to make my eyesight no worse over the past 10 years, even though I’m at the computer pretty much constantly…)

          My eyesight somehow actually got better over the last twenty years.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Facebook

Become a Facebook fan! Read the news, see sketches and notes about future pages! Join the community and share comics with your friends! Spread the love and madness!

Read More

Japan photo blog

If you are curious about my travels (well, those to Japan at least) check out my photo blog on Tumblr! Plenty of amateurish, inspirational pictures from multiple trips.

Read More

Hakeme

Digital painting tutorials by NotImportant. Completely free and for everyone who wish to learn - basic drawing tutorials, advanced digital paintings, videos, steps and tips!

Read More