August 11th, 2017
11 Aug 2017 · page 722 of 1306
Pride is having a real heck of a day.
Widdershins Volume 6 is now available in the online shop! You can also get a bundle of all 6 books thusfar!
Cast: Harriet Barber, Jack O'Malley
Comments (104)
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Oh, "scorn it or something", I recognise Sid's initial plan. :)
But hell, Mal really is going to desummon Pride blindly. :/
I like Harry turning him to face the right direction in the last panel. Teamwork!
Perhaps he'll have to draw following magic rings blindly too :(((
But nevertheless he's still smiling, even laughs!
Eh... I forget what's entirely involved in the desummoning, but it seems like the circle is drawn already, and if I'm remembering everything correctly, that's pretty much all that requires sight? The rest of it should just be "point the witch in the right direction and let things happen' (while Harry reads the words to desummon it, heh).
Indeed - Mal wasn't able to read in the first place, so not being able to see the incantation won't make much of a difference.
We should've remembered that Mal is the best at scorning things.
i love these two getting along! now i hope mal turns out to be a long-lost cousin!
This is wonderful. :)
It's nice to see how effective a team Mal and Harry are, if they just act like adults. Sort of. ;)
Love that expression.
Woody Woodpecker with a hangover.
huh huh huh ha huh....huhuhuhuhu ugh...
Looks less a peacock, more of a Foghorn Leghorn, (after the booby trap backfires).
Fortunately, I say fortunately, I keep a cabinet of strong refreshments for just such an emergency.
They say "Pride goeth before a fall..."
Pride: And now I've fallen, and I can't get up! X>
>:=)>
Actually this is a case of Pride going AFTER a fall.
The full quote works quite well. "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."
Tilde would've handled the situation much better.
F-friends :') Poor Pride though, it's not THAT tacky. Just sort of sentient feather boa-ish.
Is it wrong that I'm actually feeling a little bad for her? Because I am...
Nah, it's okay.
I do find it interesting that you've decided it's a "her" though?
I kind of think of Pride as "her" rather than "it" or "they," too, both because her associated human was female and the character that most closely relates to her in the current active cast is female.Gluttony and Lust are "he"s to me for similar reasons. Envy, conversely, is "whatever will make people envy it the most," hah.
I mean, I know they're technically genderless, and thus should have neutral pronouns used for them, but without any humanoid features attached to them, I connect them to the humans they're associated with.
(At the risk of sounding super-defensive, I am far, far better at remembering pronouns for people, I swear!)
This tends to happen for me too. I started out thinking of Pride as more female because it was Lei and Verity that played the biggest parts of It's summoning, and then shifted to thinking of It as more male when Ben and Sidney were taking center stage. Which makes sense considering the fluid nature of the sins.
I tend to think about Envy and Pride as female, maybe only because Russian words for them have the feminine grammatical gender. :) Though with Envy it is a matter of its behaviour, too.
If it makes you feel any better, I'm currently seeing Pride as "Big Bird at a drag revue."
Big bird in fishnets is way less risqué than just about any other fishnet application.
Truth. It was a very interesting question, by the way.
For me, it was always the eyes and other facial dimensions. Having dabbled in the art world, I know a few things one does to a face to make it look more masculine/feminine, and some of the feminine ones are there. Though I have to say Alétheia's explanation makes a lot of sense to me.
I'm lazy and think of them all as male, female familiars, stated genderlessness, and all. I'm really enjoying everyone's reasonings, though!
Yeah, I see Pride as male. Probably because of the peaCOCK base, peaHENS are much drabber animals.
Pride has long eyelashes. This is an almost universal indicator of being female. The pink color pattern also influences my perception, but those lashes seem a solid indicator.
So, although technically the spirits have no gender, this seems a fundamentally female form.
The phrase "prima dona" comes to mind.
Sentient feather boa-ish is probably the description of this incarnation of Pride ever.
What about mutant peacock....? :(
Pride: Please just send me back, I can't take it anymore!
I've realised just now that blinding O'Malley is Envy's shtick, too. :/
Pride just steals everyone else's stuff and uses it for its own.
It makes sense, though; Pride is where Envy wants to be, and Envy is the wind beneath Pride's wings. No wonder they have a bit of overlap.
Pride is invoking this image for me...
Pride's behind the times. Now it's all about humble brags and ironic pride.
In fairness, it is the 19th century where they are
Mal keeps smiling, despite his blindness - is he happy to have a soul after all? :) I think he is. And a beautiful one too :)
But this fussy chicken isn't desummoned yet, beware!
And just another thought, a bit offtop: Henry and Izzy never saw the actual witch.
If they did - perhaps they could recall smth from two decades ago, when a poor scared little boy had to flee for dear life from Widdershins...
I think he's enjoying getting the better of Pride, too.
A fussy, tantrum-throwing chicken XD
Should have just manifwsted as Ms Superbia. ;)
Ummm, as i recall, Superbia and the others were merely humans who were serving as avatars for the Deadlies.
Additionally Tilde and Elodie decided that being with each other was more important than Luxuria's games. I don't think either one of them has any interest in reprising their roles as Superbia or Invidia. (I am still hoping for a small cameo for the two of them in this chapter.)
Me, I hope they're several towns over. Cozy In a snug of a particularly tea room focused once-pub, inn or hotel with a massive pot and a good spread. :)
Says something that I wish a pair of "dastardly" ex-villains well, no? xD
Well, they were fun and I think they redeemed themselves by helping Henry derail Luxuria's original plan. I also wound up with a soft spot for them after the end of the last chapter.
I know; but Pride pretending to be her could not possibly be doing any worse... ;)
Plus, you know, Superbia's just a great character design.
Did you guys call it, or what? Ahhh, satisfaction!
Oh my...Pride is having the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
...and, unfortunately, there is no Delm of Korval in Widdershins.
"Laughin' me bloomin 'ead off!" As I feel one of the characters of this comic might say. Or, in more modern terms, "LOL".
Poor pride, we did get our reprise of vee's tacky comment after all and it's only an indirect reprise. (All I can remember about you is that someone else said you're tacky.) This is definitely not how it wanted this day to go.
Yay team!
"What's wrong with all these humans?!"
Centuries of Christian tradition in the virtue of humility!
Pride would have enjoyed much more success in pagan Greece or Rome or Japan.
I do remember all these stories about punished hubris, though. :)
I mean, these deadlies don't appear to be born out of the Christian tradition of the seven sins at all.
I'd word that differently, since the idea of these particular seven spirits/emotions being "deadly" is coming directly from the medieval Catholic doctrine of the deadly sins. They may or may not be expressed in quite the same way, but the idea that is definitely consistent -- that these seven are the worst and to be avoided -- would have certainly have been taught, handed down, and instilled in people for generations in the Widdershins world, just as they were by the Catholic church in the real world.
I worded that exactly as I meant it. These deadlies appear to be based more on the sort of common understanding of the seven deadly sins that's developed over time in common parlance, which while was born of the link in the church, is not a link that's casually understood by most people anymore.
These are not demons who are inspiring people to to take 'pride' in themselves above god, for instance. In fact, religion has actually never been mentioned by the text; rather than faith in a divine being or humility before one god, our protagonists use and are felled by their own foibles and connections to others.
No spirit on screen has ever been defeated by faith in the divine. I'm not saying it couldn't be. But we've never seen that, and I think that the linking of these particular seven sins and the victories of our heroes at large to a deeply Christian society is not the point.
Besides I'm pretty sure that Mal would throw something heavy and sharp at any preacher who had something to say to him.
Oh, I see, you meant in-universe. Whereas I may have taken this whole thread slightly off-direction; I was thinking in terms of where the author gets ideas, since I'm pretty used to the approach of fantasy being written without a religious element in-universe. Well, now I'm completely unsure as to how the original comment was intended : P
Never have I loved Mal more than on this page. That smirk!
"...a relief, not havin' t'look at it." Somehow, it took me until now to realize that Mal isn't as impressed by seeing the fully-summoned Deadlies as everyone else is. Sure, maybe they are bigger and more dangerous-looking than other spirits, but they probably don't look much weirder than the spirits and malforms he's used to seeing all the time.
I'm also sure that Pride looks quite a bit less impressive in monochrome.
But the various types of spirits are the only things Mal doesn't see in monochrome - his glimpse of Pride before it held the mirror up would have been in full flashy color.
I'm sure he's glad that he doesn't have to see it, but he also says it to...well...scorn it, or something
I'm just going to say that after last strip thinking that this is a really stupidly aimed attempt on Pride's side having Jack call it out like that is pure awesome.
I'm loving the fact that Harry's about to "[f]all for that" and it's Mal who saves her...
Aww they're supporting each other. That's character development for the both of them honestly
"Победители" ("Victors") - another fanfic by Heylir. Something about Ben, Wolfe and Voss.
[http://archiveofourown.org/...](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11775792 "http://archiveofourown.org/works/11775792")
Maria, thanks for pointing these fics out. It always makes my day when someone recommends quality fic.
Heylir, I fed the fics through an auto translator which I know butchers some of it, but from what I can see these are some quality fics and I'm glad you're writing in the fandom. Keep up the good work!
=== Maria, thanks for pointing these fics out. ===
My pleasure :)
I try now to talk Heylir into translating them into English.
Some steps are taken already ('The "Duff Degree" ' namely, some paragraphs) :)
But it's a big job, and she's now fully in working on two more fanfics...
Nevertheless we'll try :)
Thanks a lot, your kind words are very aspiring. :)
Seconded, I read the English translation of the Victors, and it is by far one of the best fanfics I've read (probably even better than Lackadaisy fic "Perennials")
Wow, thanks! I'm very flattered.
I think Victors is my favourite from my Widdershins fanfics, because it deals with the most unusual and appealing for me theme of Widdershins. I really love how strongly it's worked out in "Curtain Call".
I liked that it was from Ben's perspective as well, and it's all very much in character. I tried running the other fics through a translator but it didn't come out so well. The only one that was intelligible enough was the one about ben getting his degree (the title translation says something along the lines of Degree <<for the="" poor="">>, not sure if that's at all accurate since I don't know any Russian)
I hope I'll post the English translation of this fanfic, "The Duff Degree", soon.
Hmm, wouldn't Harry have made Mal a bit...proud by saying that he could deal with it blindfolded?
Or maybe they just think that little of pride.
Pride is reminding me of Ducktales in the last panel, haha
Edit : Woo hoo !
"Life is like a hurricane / Here... In... Widdershins...
Rifles, smartphones, horse-drawn carriages / It's... A... Bunch o' Sins..."
I really appreciate the look on Harry's face in the first panel. It's a beautiful capturing of a moment of indecision, and it makes her somehow look so much younger and/or less sure of herself. It's not that she's even fallen for Pride's temptation yet; the first thought has just crossed her mind.
It's a great example of how one can be swayed by words even though with a little reflection, one would never agree. Like walking our of a movie you liked but agreeing with your friend it was terrible. Or like talking to someone who makes you uncomfortable simply because they're talking to you. #seriouslifeapplicationmoment #watchoutforeachotheritsscaryoutthere
I think that's what makes the sins so scary. They prey on the big doubts yes, but they can also grasp at the smallest of things. Like how during the battle with Envy Sidney was almost sucked in because he has a dream of someday being on stage, even though normally he would be upset by how in distress the people on stage were.
Pride: You mean some people don't CARE about me????
...These two have been kicked while they're down, and they know humility almost too damn well.
Then again, they DID just share a moment of realizing they both nearly lost to the same one of the Deadlies.
Also, there's a LOT of good character work in this last arc, which highlights the strengths and flaws of the various characters.
Well, there are a few things. How long have you got?
Ah... the synchronised "so last season" approach. I like it. :)
What's wrong with them, Pride, is that you and your 'siblings' attacked their world.
They know they have to be the very best they can be to stop you from ruining their reality.
As usual, sins carry the seeds of their own downfall inside of them. :p
So this is what wounded pride looks like. Ouch.
Hmmm....do all mirrors blind him or is this something specific Pride did? Like he seemed surprised it happened, hints that this was new for him.
I think what made the difference was being inside the anchor, in his Witch Space. Mal's never liked looking in mirrors, but my impression is that that was just because he was uncomfortable seeing himself with no aura. In here it seems to be a different matter.
Were we ever explicitly told he has no aura, or was this an audience assumption? Because the sequence here makes me imagine that O'Mally has a magnificently bright and colorful aura, which is so bright and visually "loud" he hates looking at it. And that unexpected mirror gave him a eyeful of it with such intensity it temporarily blinded him.
When Ben got the Sight, he saw Mal auraless. While everybody else, including himself, had aurae.
Edit:
[http://www.widdershinscomic...](http://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/october-6th-2014/ "http://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/october-6th-2014/")
[http://www.widdershinscomic...](http://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/november-21st-2014/ "http://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/november-21st-2014/")
Hmmm. Good point. Thanks for the handy links, by the way.
Yet this wouldn't explain how his reflection temporarily blinded him here. Maybe it is the case that his aura is indeed dazzling, but it is not visible in the corporeal world? It's only visible on the spirit plane and/ or in this place between the two worlds?
After all, to paraphrase O'Mally's own simile, looking at himself in black-and-white and without a face, in contrast to everybody else he's ever seen, would be quite unsettling perhaps, and he may well prefer not to look at it.
But his reaction here, even without the blinding, definitely suggests seeing a "something" that shocks him, rather than seeing a "lack of something". Or so it seems to me.
I imagine this will be addressed sometime, somehow.
I guess being a little boy, Mal was somehow blocked from his aura, as well as was badly scared and traumatized by... Acedia?
He fled - and far away from the Ancor he couldn't feed his power. During many years.
He was like... emptied. And his block forbade him to take magic from air, even when in Widdershins, causing him horrible headaches.
He had to endure this pain for a while and make himself really near to the Ancor, to... errm... to get the block broken?... To be able to absorb enough magical energy? ... To start to normalize?
This is a hypothesis ! :)
I will put forward the fact that Mal did manage to manipulate magic, in Widdershins, in order to banish Wrath at Voss's party. He just needed a little help from his friends. That was pre-anchor.
Still, on the whole, as for how it all works, your theory is as good an anybody else's as far as I can tell.
>Maybe it is the case that his aura is indeed dazzling, but it is not
visible in the corporeal world? It's only visible on the spirit plane
and/ or in this place between the two worlds?
That's my guess - he's never seen it before now and had no idea it even existed, which would account for the shock.
It's just temporary blindness...right? :C
Surely. I think it's like when you've been flashed by an overwhelmingly bright light (but not so bright as the sun, for example). It hurts the eyes, but you do recover.
Yes, I think so. Still, I have to wonder if losing his sight altogether would be harder or easier for Mal than just losing the spirit sight and having to see "normally"...
I am intrigued that while team A used talking themselves down to defeat pride, team B is talking each other UP - "she's not daft enough to fall for that", "bet you can deal with it blindfolded" - while talking Pride itself down.
That's a really interesting point! Both approaches seem to work, but this one is probably more healthy for the humans involved...
I tend to think it works now and there because Pride's influence isn't powerful enough any more for making any bit of (even healthy) pride fatal one. And lack of mirrors helps, too. :)
I mean, Wolfe got trapped in the mirror because of one little praise from Sidney, so it is no wonder that Ben and Sid didn't try to talk each other up, rather contrary, Sid asked Ben for insulting him.
They cheer each other up at the expense of Pride, belittling it: "It's actually a relief not havin' looked at it." - "You are not missing much... It's tacky... It's so pitiful you can deal with it even blind!"
No wonder such praises can only hurt Pride.
And we have to understand - they are actually acting, making sorta show for Pride. It's not entirely sincere words of them. They know it's very dangerous.
"AUGH!" XD
Now you've hurt our Pride
I love Pride, definitely my favourite of the Deadlys. Envy wants to be as good as her, but she knows is.