Letting go

I’d put something snarky in here but nah, not this time…

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Thanks for all the support last week, I was just in a bad mood, sorry for making you guys worry! I did manage to draw a lot this weekend so I’m happy (I don’t post my realistic-style drawings anywhere though, I only share them on the Discord…). Also, Historia’s second path is written and we’re putting it into the game engine now. Next will be sketching all the assets, I’m so excited! This will actually be the first time I kind-of-publish something kind-of-like-a-novel, so I’m very curious what people will say. I hope my writing isn’t a complete disaster heh

Oh, right, I drew this as well:

Anyway, I hope the pandemic is treating you all well. We’ve got smaller and smaller numbers of cases in Tokyo so fingers crossed. Although I’m scared that everyone will just throw away the masks and socialize like crazy once the emergency state is lifted… Which of course will immediately make things worse. Oh well. As for me, I’ll most likely continue working from home until October (because I can) and well see what happens after that.

Stay healthy guys! And try not to be too angry at poor Filip 😉

42 comments on “Letting go”

  1. JW Reply

    Maybe he should have started with why, instead of jumping to the conclusion.

    On the one hand, I’m fairly confident having a girlfriend isn’t against the rules for doing ritual magic. On the other hand, I can understand why Filip wouldn’t trust himself to keep chaste with such a sexy girlfriend around.
    But it’s only for the duration of the apocalypse. The way he’s breaking her heart now, there’s no going back when it’s over.

    • Alex Reply

      Wouldn’t be so sure about “no going back”, as I’ve seen people going back to partners who were much worse to them than Filip apparently being autistic or something.

      But I agree with the rest of your comment.

    • Refugnic Reply

      Yeah, definitely not the best way to intro this kind of talk.

      I mean, to the observer it is rather obvious why he is doing what he is doing, but for Nina it’s, once more, the end of the world.
      She (most likely) has already lost everything and everyone she’s ever held dear, so Filip was her one thing to hold on to…the one thing to keep her smile going.

      It is commendable, that he would put ‘being useful’ or ‘being able to protect people’ before his own well-being, but he definitely needs to work on his explanatory skills.

      I mean, I’m terrible with people, but not even I would intro a breakup like that. 😀

      • Alex Reply

        Yeah, and I wouldn’t even break up with her for a reason like that at all. I mean, if his only reason really is “People can get wizard powers if they don’t have sex for long enough and I want to do magic.” then I’d just say pretty much that to her and ask her if she’s okay with it and if she wants some wizard powers, too. Problem solved.

        Also the name of this comic totally implies that he should get a do-over for this scene. 😉

      • Refugnic Reply

        The name does imply that, however who’s to say that this IS not the do-over of the scene?

        As I have hypothesized a while ago, the visions could well be memories of a different timeline Ada and Robert went through…as in: The world ended, everything was lost (the red desert and Faust dies)…and there’s only one way to fix things: Go back in time and make sure that things don’t play out the same.

        Caveat: Robert and Ada, who, according to the hypothesis did the ‘traveling in time’ did not retain their memories of the different timeline.
        They only come back as ‘visions’, but without the required context.

        As such, without the ability to ‘consciously make different decisions, due to lack of information’, chances are, that things would play out the same as ‘they did the first time around’.

        On the other hand, Ada did see Laura wielding magic, which is how she got the idea to try magic with the kids…so that’s a deviation from the ‘original path’.
        On the first go, she might well have figured that one out way later and the kids she is now teaching might well have been dead at that point.

      • Alex Reply

        Well, thus far I thought that “replay” just meant that they’re having visions that replay events of the past or the future. But we’ll eventually see if time travel was involved as well.

  2. Alex Reply

    Wow, Filip is so blunt, even when talking about breaking up.
    While it was fun to see him tease Ada, this time his behavior is kinda harsh. I wonder what his reasons are. He doesn’t seem to be the type to develop or lose feelings for someone. If he’s doing it because he’s targeting Ada next, then that’s so not going to end well.

    • Refugnic Reply

      Up to now, I at least have some left-over respect for his decision to pursue magic instead of romance.
      If he starts to woo Ada after dumping Nina like that…that’s when I’ll start hating him.

      And I imagine quite a few people from the camp will feel quite the same way.

      • JW Reply

        Hah. Ada already doesn’t like him; I can’t even image how that dislike would multiply and manifest if he were to try to woo her.

        I wonder if she also has a printout of a book of curses. Maybe there’s something suitable in there.

      • Alex Reply

        Yeah, if he manages to explain himself he can get some left-over respect back from me, too. 🙂

        @JW: Tsundere always end up with the guy they hate.

      • JW Reply

        Even if I considered Ada a tsundere (which I still don’t), Filip wouldn’t quite fit the other role, imo.
        Besides, Robert is already the guy she doesn’t want to date but gets jealous over when he so much as looks at another girl.

      • Alex Reply

        I’m just kidding about Ada ending up with Filip. 🙂
        While he isn’t the standard tsundere-counterpart, a tsundere isn’t required to get that typical dumb aloof stereotype like in Haruhi.

        Whether or not Ada is a tsundere is certainly debatable, but iirc I’ve read it somewhere on this website some years ago, but I can’t find it anymore. I see that she is bitchy in a cute way and that she’s affectionate towards Rob, so for me she qualifies as a tsundere, but not what you’d typically expect in Anime.

          • JW

            I’m fairly certain there are anime with college age tsundere that aren’t much better than the 15 year old versions. As well as ones hundreds of years old (but they might qualify as forever 15(ish)).

          • NotImportant

            So tsundere’s never grow up?! Or maybe anime industry is just unable to escape the trope? Unable to write anyone else but high school girls…? Are there no reasonable women in anime?

            Hm.

      • The_Squished_Elf Reply

        The other comment around here about Filip getting a “replay” has me imagining, in response to this thread, if Filip went back in time after all this to be Levicky

      • Refugnic Reply

        It sells, that’s all there is to it.

        Reasonable and ordinary people are boring to watch…people crave the drama. 😀

        @The_Squished_Elf: That would be a major twist indeed, however it would require Filip to not just ‘go back in time’, but also to do so ‘in spirit form’.

        As in: He leaves his body behind, goes back in time and ‘possesses Adam’ to do his bidding.
        Other than that, it would appear that Adam and Filip are entirely different persons.

        If Filip went back and took his (aged) body with him, Adam would need to look like Filip does now, only older.
        So really, possession or a ‘camouflage spell’ are the only viable options.

        I do like the thought though. 😀

      • JW Reply

        So tsundere’s never grow up?!

        I think part of growing up means stop being tsundere. And society today gives a lot of opportunity for people not to grow up, until some event forces them to. (I suppose as an extension to that, in foregone days, it was a privilege of the rich; hence the naive/unreasonable princess trope.)

        Or maybe anime industry is just unable to escape the trope?

        I think it’s as Refugnic said, it sells. It’s what (some/many) people want (and a lot will settle for). There’s some nice variations though, and sometimes even some psychological development that leads them to be less tsundere.

        Unable to write anyone else but high school girls…?

        Isn’t girlishness somewhat of an ideal in Japan (more so than elsewhere)? But there’s definitely more mature types. Belldandy comes to mind. And lots of awesome anime-moms. And two of my favorites, Kō Yagami (from New Game) and Kobayashi (from Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon). I mean, they have their quirks, but they’re definitely women I could fall in love with if they were real, whereas a lot of anime heroines would make me run in fear for my life.

        Are there no reasonable women in anime?

        Oh sure, but I think “reasonable tsundere” is a bit of an oxymoron. But there’s definitely reasonable women in anime. Even reasonable school-girls. Even surprisingly many reasonable* younger siblings to unreasonable older brothers/sisters.
        (* At least in comparison.)

      • Alex Reply

        I think there are many shades of how extreme a tsundere can be. Just because someone isn’t Louise doesn’t mean they’re not a tsundere.

        • JW Reply

          Sure. But you risk getting on a slippery slope there, if you’re not careful. You can’t just say that if A is tsundere and B is at most one micro-Louise less tsundere than A, then B is also tsundere. Because then everyone is tsundere.
          There isn’t some clear cutoff. So basically you have a large grey area between clearly tsundere and clearly not tsundere where people will make different judgments about what they do or don’t consider tsundere.
          And, given that I don’t consider her tsundere but some do, Ada evidently falls somewhere in that grey area.

      • Alex Reply

        Don’t worry, gray areas are everywhere, I know my way around those. 😉 Your logic is like that paradoxon of Achilles never being able to run past a turtle. You can’t go one micro-Louise after another infinitely. That problem can easily be evaded by tackling it from both ends at once.

        A tsundere is by definition someone who shows their affection to someone by being bitchy to them, so I view Ada as a tsundere who is, compared to typical Anime-tsundere, toned-down and also has other character traits.

        • JW Reply

          Your logic is like that paradoxon of Achilles never being able to run past a turtle

          That’s a whole different paradox. Because there the time each step takes decreases to 0. This is the paradox where when you remove grains of sand one at a time from a heap, you’re left with a heap of sand without any sand.

          You can’t go one micro-Louise after another infinitely

          There are exactly 1.000.000 micro-Louises in one Louise, so infinity does not show up in this paradox; zero (hah) is the absolute minimum.
          The “paradox” is that there is no hard border between one class and the other. When does a heap of sand stop being a heap of sand? When does a long distance stop being long? When does a tsundere stop being a tsundere? There simply isn’t a line to left of which everyone agrees it’s one and to the right the other. Is all I’m saying.

          A tsundere is by definition someone who shows their affection to someone by being bitchy to them

          There are a lot of definitions. For example, according to dictionary.com “A tsundere is a character, most often female and in anime, who switches from being tough and cold towards a love interest into being soft and sweet.” ( https://www.dictionary.com/e/fictional-characters/tsundere/ )
          I also kind of like the third one on urbandictionary.com: “A girl who hates the fact that she loves the fact that she’s in love with you” ( https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Tsundere ) I like how it captures that element of internal conflict.
          I’d probably rewrite yours to “a tsundere is someone who can’t show their affection to someone without being bitchy to them” or “a tsundere is someone who is bitchy to someone because they don’t know how to show their affection”.
          Similar to that last one, I’m currently inclined to describe a tsundere as hiding/covering her inability to deal with her feelings of attraction by throwing a tantrum.

          But whatever definition one takes, it leaves some things open to interpretation. After all, what should one consider “bitchy” / “tough and cold”? Or when is someone a love interest? And how do you know if someone is bitchy because they dislike someone, because they have a bad day, or because they like someone but can’t show it in a way a sane person would.

  3. Refugnic Reply

    The decision’s made, the word is out,
    Filip wants to join the bout.
    To serve, protect, but love no more,
    Nina’s shaken to the core.

    Don’t blame yourself, you did no wrong,
    it’s not your fault he says ‘so long’.
    And you, my friend, you are a fool,
    the way you go is just too cruel.

    A word of reason you now must speak,
    lest next you’ll feel, a burning cheek.
    Them foolish words, hurt to the core…
    magic might work, but love? No more.

  4. Crestlinger Reply

    Heh. I give him four days to find out he can’t cast anything to begin with then see if he wants her back.
    Now fight, flight, or faint?

  6. Andy Reply

    I could be very, very wrong… but as I am looking at this, then it is not as it seems on the surface….

    • Refugnic Reply

      Care to share your ideas?
      I mean, the worst that can happen is ‘being dead wrong’. 🙂

      As for me, the current development suggests that Filip breaks up with Nina because he is required to be ‘pure’ in order to perform Ritual magic like Ada does…and ‘having a girlfriend without having sex’ is difficult, so ‘not having having a girlfriend, because you must not have sex’ seems like the…easiest solution.

      Not the best, mind you, but the easiest.

      • Alex Reply

        Okay, is a relationship like that really that difficult, given the life-threatening circumstances?
        I mean, the previous page kinda implies that she’s quite a horny woman, but is it really that difficult to reason with a woman like her that surviving is more important than cleaning the cave together? She could still do it herself and keep him just for the snuggles, right?

      • Alex Reply

        Yeah, I got that one from the German comedian Carolin Kebekus when she complained about the fact that there are so many synonyms for male masturbation and nothing for the women and then at the end of her rant she mentioned that one after all. 🙂

          • JW

            cleaning the cave together

            I suppose there is that stereotype of men doing a half-assed job at cleaning and the woman having to finish the job herself.
            …
            sorry

            Yeah, I got that one from the German comedian Carolin Kebekus when she complained about the fact that there are so many synonyms for male masturbation and nothing for the women

            I’m willing to bet there’s a webpage out there with at least a hundred.
            Urban dictionary is probably full of them as well. (Not sure if it has a reverse search)

            (Of course, that’s all immaterial to a comedy act. It only has to be plausible enough so people can go along with the thought process.)

            I’m torn between “amazing” and “terrible” XD

            It can be both. It can even be amazingly terrible and terribly amazing.

      • Andy Reply

        My ideas?

        Well…

        1) The previous page: Nina’s last words are ‘impossible for me’, Filip’s response, in this context, with what I am assuming is a ‘thoughtful’ look on his face is: ‘Actually Nina’… Keywords there are ‘for ME’.

        2) The current page is, in my mind, part of a sequence… I am fairly sure about that. At my age, I am aware that the famous saying about ‘assume’ is very correct, painfully so at times. We don’t have the whole story yet.

        3) Our beloved NI is not below being a little ‘tricky’ at times. There are ‘layers’ in this work if I am not very much mistaken – and on that one I am sure that I am not. Too much effort has gone into the detail for that not to be the case.

        So I am going to sit on the fence and repeat: As I am looking at this, all is not as it seems on the surface.

        (And yes, you are correct, ‘dead wrong’ is one of my more highly-developed skills – I have been achieving that status all of my life.)
        ((Yes again: I have seen the page title.))

  7. Rateus Camp dweller Reply

    And thus begins the awkward “how long do you leave someone to get over their break-up before you tell them you’ve loved them for ages” period for someone…

  8. Thozmp Reply

    Could just be me here, but I think Filip is doing this for more then just magic. I think their relationship wasn’t that solid, or maybe it has been eroding for a while now, with Filip disengaging and Nina trying to hold on. In less apocalyptic circumstances, I think he’d still be breaking up with Nina.

    Guess I’ll wait and see.

  9. eldestdawn Reply

    Boy, you go back there and give that girl a hug and tell her it’s not her fault. make sure she knows that she did nothing wrong. otherwise she will end up in a bad place.

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