Renate

Her name was Renate, as some of you figured out last week. We’ll probably see some more of her in Stefen’s memories later on but that’ll be it. I hope you guys aren’t terribly disappointed.

For the curious ones – in the written original she never got a name and was just a simple nurse who bandaged Robert’s arm. She was later on mortally wounded in the attack, Robert found her in the morning… Still conscious and numb from the pain. She asked him to quicken her passing. Which he did.

I obviously changed that part a lot. Robert’s character is a bit different now, that kind of scene wouldn’t fit his development and I also believed that kind of thing is far too heavy after a rather silly beginning of this story, where we made some magic, ran around the place and complained about the military not doing the job properly. It seemed too out of place and would damage the character too much. So I let her die alone.

Renate – a researcher, Dr Stefen’s personal assistant, secretly dreaming about finding a decent boyfriend among those thugs in uniforms (a wish that hadn’t come true even though she worked for more than 5 years for the military, a picky lady, she was), died on the 93rd page of Chapter 1. May she rest in peace.

 

67 comments on “Renate”

  1. NiWo21k Reply

    The last panel is one of your best (i cant say this often enough) – it works in every way.
    Its just such a sad ending for her 🙁

    Its always interessting to hear how things changed over the course of time, in this case how the story changed with time.
    To be honest, i think the way its now works a little bit better – if you still used something like “please help me and free me from suffering” it wouldnt be that effective, because its now everywhere in books, movies etc. If you something too often it just looses the impact it should have, and i am glad you wrote the story the way that there are no words so that the effect on the characters is more severe.

    And i love how this scene is continuing.

  2. SKy Reply

    Okay, it’s not easy to give me the feels – but this…? Q-Q
    Now if you wanted to finish me off, Stephen would quietly pick up her glasses and keep them in his chest pocket as a memento.

  3. Lone Wanderer Reply

    Maybe she’s still alive? Y-yeah! I mean, just shove thos- her internal, uh.. small- or is that large? Just shove her intestines back in, an-and uh.. Like, just move the skin back together with your hand, and put some- uh.. Some nice super glue on it, just- just a whole bunch- just a WHOLE bunch’a’it, like… like a good palm sized glob because tha-that stops the-th-the bleeding and stuff, right? Or if that’s not, like.. Right on hand, maybe some uh.. Needle and thread? Duct tape? Yeah, that’s sure to help her until she can get some real-

    Ah, who am I kidding, exposed organs shows she was a red shirt from the start.

    • NiWo21k Reply

      “…exposed organs shows she was a red shirt from the start.”
      Hey she was more than a red shirt – she did something and was – at least for Stefen – an important person 🙁
      A red shirt is only there to be killed off without anyone realy noticing and commenting – just for a shock second.

    • Rateus Camp dweller Reply

      There’s plenty of red-shirts in the Capital Wasteland. Bow wow wow…

  4. ForlornFoe Reply

    No wonder she never made it to the cast page…

    This non-glorified sudden death is very fitting. Great job delivering it in a silent, sad moment. And the sun keeps shining, birds keep chirping…

      • Rateus Camp dweller Reply

        What part of the massacring demons and soldiers with machine guns and heroes with swords (katanas?) made you think that?

        • NotImportant Reply

          I said so myself and I think it’s even in the “About” section. I am a bad person ๏◡๏

        • Zenanii Reply

          Well, darker stories will usually set the mood early on with a super depressing/disturbing scene (Dreamkeepers or Ava’s demon are good examples). I was expecting this to be the lighthearted and jolly kind of brutal manslaughter akin to Hellsing Ultimate.

          • NotImportant

            And it will be, for the 98% of time. I need to surprise you guys sometimes, otherwise you’d get bored quickly, right? I would.

    • Rateus Camp dweller Reply

      Just having a nice rest whilst airing out her intestines at the same time?

  5. Crestlinger Reply

    From start to finish let the record show that she was a gutsy character.
    Now check those papers she was shielding with her body Before the blood gets to them!

  6. Hurokun Reply

    i love how you mix happy moments with tense and then sad ones, its hard to find an author willing to explore these little extremes (like, most would not open her belly out and put exposed organs there)

    the page choked me for a moment, with is what i believe was the intention, so was really well crafted~

    also the little extra info just make this page even better. the interesting history, amazing art style and your ability to balance moments like these is what make this comic a finding for me.

    keep up the great work 🙂

    • JW Reply

      (like, most would not open her belly out and put exposed organs there)

      And now you have me imagining candy coming out instead… (because I immediately ask myself “but then what do other authors put there”)

      • Hurokun Reply

        usually, just some injuries and lots of blood.
        way less graphical than organs :p

        but candy would be cool too 8D

  7. Dragon Master Reply

    Hmm, Stefen will either be sporting a stylish eye patch from now on, or he will have on wicked cool scar along his eye. Maybe both. Then again, given it’s him he may just outfit himself with a laser shooting monocle-machine type-thing over his bad eye.

    • JW Reply

      Looks more like a head-wound than a gash across his face to me. So I think he’ll just be wearing a hat.

      • Dragon Master Reply

        Yeah upon further review, looks like your right and it IS a head wound and not a cut across his face. Oh well. I’m both relieved that’s he’s not hurt to bad, and disappointed we won’t get to see what kinda weird shenanigan he’d make up to replace/fix his eye.

        • JW Reply

          Cyborg Stefen would be cool.
          Well, okay, just replacing the eye isn’t a high degree of cyborg. But he’d be sure to lose a limb or two if it was an option.

  8. Dragon Master Reply

    LOL I just read the bonus strip on TopWeb comics. I know those people, your being THAT again. Sometimes I AM those people.

  9. Night Spark Corporal Reply

    i knew this was coming still a shame that this character had to die off so soon there was room for good development for her but if the story demands this as a way for character development of others then so be it. on a relatively positive note this has the Akame ga kill story feel to it

    • NotImportant Reply

      I did wonder if I can make her stay somehow but no, this had to be done for many various reasons. At least I hope the scene is engaging enough and what comes later will be soothing for both Stef and you guys 😉 Not only boring characters die!

    • ety Reply

      “on a relatively positive note”….. I personally think the deaths in akame ga kill were incredibly pointless and horrid story writing, but sure. The “everyone dies” thing has been done much better in other stories that I can’t bring to mind right now.

      • JW Reply

        I sort of agree, though I should add that Akame ga Kill at least did a better job than Magical Girl Raising at making me care a bit about a character before they killed it.
        (Though in both case, I haven’t the foggiest if the manga resp. light novel they were based on were better in that respect. Anime does pose some limitations to what you can do.)

        • NotImportant Reply

          I haven’t tried Akame ga Kill and to be honest Magical Girl Raising project bore me after few first episodes. I know it gets better later on but… meh. Maybe I just couldn’t stomach the main heroine who simply wanted for everyone to survive even though it was impossible and didn’t do anything except being sad that the world is so unfair. At least that was the impression I got :/

          • JW

            It didn’t really get better later on, to be honest.

            I liked the idea, but they didn’t manage to make it work. I don’t think you can really get away with killing more than 2 or 3 characters in cours, because you can’t start to care about them.

          • ety

            Akame ga kill was a decent show, but they more or less pointlessly killed off all of the characters at the end of it and it felt really lackluster as a result.

  10. ety Reply

    Gahhh, no, this made me grumpy 🙁

    Only a little bit, the story’s good and this isn’t bad in context. But! it still totally sucks, pardon me while I go write a fanfic where she survives (that I probably won’t actually do ince, I haven’t even had any time recently to draw or paint 😐

  11. god_one Reply

    Yay, just like real life. Worthless sack of shit survives, but someone I liked has to die. screw you.

      • god_one Reply

        I know right? My best friend just died recently from complications of surgery, but you are still around so…

        • NotImportant Reply

          If you are serious – my condolences. I know how it feels when a simple surgery suddenly steals a person.

  12. KTrimbach Reply

    Sorry, She’ll always be the beloved nameless lab assistant to me. 🙂

    P.S. What happened to Kasper, Miss Pigtails’s brother? I don’t see him in any of the tent pictures. I thought that was his dead body 2 pages back, but you call that one Wally??

    • NotImportant Reply

      Lol that was a joke and it wasn’t a dead body but Stefen curled up on the ground, on the next page he stands up.
      As for Kasper – can’t say anything now without it being a spoiler, you’ll need to worry about him for few more pages ;D

      • antrik Reply

        I’m pretty sure this was about the one on the watch tower… Military grunts all look kinda alike when not showing their face 😉

  13. ChuckTheProphet Reply

    Wow, what a page to come back to after not checking in for a couple weeks.

  14. Rexhinalt Reply

    I envy people who join the comic on or after this date; they’ll be able to experience the entire character arc in a day or three, rather than having to wait the six months us original readers did…

    • Klorix Camp dweller Reply

      To be honest, on one hand it is very enjoyable to get to read the chapter as a whole (or almost) at once. On the other hand, you (I) cannot really develop the feelings for characters that fast. So when a side character dies, it’s sad, but the impact is much weaker than if I had taken the time to study them in their pages, discuss with other people, etc.
      It’s a double-edged sword, really.

      But I’m happy, in this case I did not have the time to binge-read (although I had a peek at the coming pages), and most characters are making themselves comfortable in my heart.

  15. Acnari Reply

    Fantastic job on this one (and all the others)-just to echo what other people are saying; the fact that you did this without any dialogue-you just let it be what it was, no frills. Very moving.

    • NotImportant Reply

      Ahh I could listen to you guys repeat yourselves like this aaaaallll the tiiiimeeee <3 Thank you and I'm glad it worked!

  16. SotiCoto Reply

    NO.

    UNACCEPTABLE.

    Someone get the nude-face ginge girl to cast a Resurrection spell.
    You don’t just kill off the best character like that! You can’t give Renate a Project Mayhem death!

    “Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created.”

    You hear that? RESTORE. RESURRECT. Make this comic not-doomed again!

    • NotImportant Reply

      I’m enjoying this so much… x’D Thank you for allowing me to start my day with a laugh <3

  17. Jodin Reply

    Well this made me sad. I had hoped she would have survived.

    Unfortunately, for a story this brutal, if you had kept to only unnamed NPC’s getting killed, it would have eventually taken a lot of the tension out of the story. Letting us mourn her alongside the other characters is just good story, I think.

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