August 1st, 2017
1 Aug 2017 · page 719 of 1306
*victory music*
Cast: Sidney Malik, Verity Cunningham
Comments (77)
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I love the look on pride's face in panel 2, that expression just made my night.
Um. Wasn't Ben... Oopsy?
Edit: He was pulled to safety before. Never mind.
[https://www.youtube.com/wat...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3FnpaWQJO0 "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3FnpaWQJO0")
You should be proud Vee, look how happy you've made Sid... er...
She's a bit lonely... Just like Ben.
You know, the more I think about it the more I realize the cousins have a lot of similarities in their stories. Both are really smart, sarcastic blondes who each have a specialty they inherited from their grandfather (Ben's magic and Verity's inventing). They're both introduced working for an enemy in disguise and then spend the rest of their introductory chapter working to correct this, which ends in the enemy being defeated and a sin being released. They work alongside a duo consisting of a tall, cheerful, good hearted person and someone more serious whom they bicker with but are shown to actually care about.
Love this!
Thinking about this some more: this section in particular really points up the similarities between Ben and Verity. I've never thought of Vee as having any kind of problem with her self-esteem (unless having way too much of it counts as a problem), but this page makes it seem like all that arrogance might be covering up an inferiority complex not too different from Ben's.
Very insightful, both of you.
Vee: ...Well, you can stop grinning like that! steps out through frame
Sid: Sorry!
Vee: And stop looking at me like that.
Sid: Er-
Vee: I see you, silently trying to judge me. Just stop it! And Ben, stop breathing like that.
Ben: What?
Vee: That pompous sort of exhaling thing that you do when you think you're right.
Ben: I-
Vee: And you-! Stop...
Wolfe: I think maybe Fraulein Cunningham needs some space, and time to herself, ja?
Vee: Stop being... perfect like that! UUUUUUUUUUUgggggggghhh! strides off, clutching her head
Sid: Er... was she positing a... relationship between me and Harry?
Earlier...
Alexa: (on video) Oh, and by the way, EVERYONE'S shipping Harry and Sid. wink
Mal: Shipping?
Harry: pulls on pipe with nervous irritation I dread to think.
>:=)>
Please, no spoilers of upcoming comics :-)
I imagine it's maybe more like . . .
"Aha! I have defeated Pride! Where would you have been without me?"
I think you meant to post this on [fanfiction.net](http://fanfiction.net "fanfiction.net")
pffh nah it's Archive of Our Own that has a Widdershins section :P
Good to know.
LOVE! THIS!
victory music
Possibly even Victorian music
Boooooooooo
Wolfe Voice: I'm so disappointed in you.
"That does NOT mean..." Whew...cutting it close there, Verity....
"Thank you for saving our Universi..."
"You're welcome. Now get me twenty of your most not-stupid mages. I want them ready to go in fifteen minutes, with full emergency field kits and their heads on straight about not arguing when we tell them what to do. Because we are absolutely TIRED of cleaning up this mess by ourselves."
You want MORE people involved in this mess, susceptible to Greed, Sloth, and Lust? You want to do this thing where we rescue half the party from every sin TRIPLED IN SCALE?
Turn in your hero card. I'm busting you allll the way back down to Entry-Level Optimist until you learn sense!
The next three are WHY I want the meat shields. This is the first area where the party can get high-level NPCs with natural resistance to the powered attacks that have been running said party ragged up to know. Assume that five get used up countering Greed, and the rest with Sloth -- Sloth is going to be an absolute BEAR of an opponent, because it has an avatar that the party probably doesn't want to bother capturing -- and that'll still keep the group nice and fresh for Lust.
"Optimism." HA! -- Adventuring has its own Cold Equations, you know.
Well thanks for THAT lovely nightmare right before bed. Are you TRYING to get fired?
Feh, what could possibly go wrong? It's pretty clear that everything gets easier after Pride, so the worst will be over before they face Lust.
(Can I jinx this any more thoroughly?)
You could pull a Ben and say it can't get more embarrassing so we should just get go and be done with it.
(Well I was talking about Cold Equations, but let's go with this.)
Oh, yeah, they have Lust ALL figured out by now! It'll be a walk in the park!
...Dare I say it?
What could possibly happen?
"Nice and fresh for Lust"??!?
Dealing with an eruption of Lust is traditionally considered to be the fun mission when you're cleaning up the Seven Deadlies. You know and I know that Kate's probably going to make it less light than that, but then Kate would make an excellent GM if she isn't one already.
That's not what I object to... it's the use of the word "fresh" in conjunction with the word "lust"...
shudder
Speaking (maybe a bit too much) seriously, I think the field-party must consist of people who can trust each other (even if through a third party) to be more than just competent and clever. To be someone whom you would go on a scouting mission and trust your life with. Of course, our heroes are still flawed human beings, we see it, and they fail at times, but taking total strangers into the group is even more risky.
(It is the reason why I see Wolfe and Ben's decision to let Voss join them for one mission as an significant one.)
Thus: "not-stupid." :) Given how much of Widdershins magic is centered around dealing with sentient personifications of emotional states, their best mages presumably are the ones who can keep their heads on a swivel when random explosions in the emotional world are going off. I assume that the ones at the University got blindsided by the sudden eruption of Pride; now that they're rescued and alerted, they may be sending out their own teams anyway.
> I assume that the ones at the University got blindsided by the sudden eruption of Pride
I thought about it and decided that there were "the first wave", people caught by surprise, trapped with and without Pride's direct influence, and "the second wave", who realised what happened, tried to do something with it and failed, getting themselves trapped, too. (As Ocean Burning noted, "We're definitely not doing the right thing, but it's too late now" might be said by someone of them.) Maybe, because of that several of them got quickly what Ben and Sid were doing and took up their tactic. And, possibly, there were some people which hid themselves or ran away.
But all of it is pure speculation, of course.
There's nothing sudden about an eruption of pride within any given faculty; it's a permanent state of being. :P
Awwww
So, does this mean that the university has a whole bunch of new little picture frame rooms?
Looks like most of the rest of them evaporated when they were emptied.
Victory Unintentional
A few days ago my kids were watching the scene in Moana where the main characters are confronted with a giant crab that basically has the stereotypical dragon's hoard encrusted on its shell. As the crab started singing "I used to be a drab little crab" I suddenly heard Verity in the back of my head asking "So tell me, how does one get to be so lurid and tasteless, anyway?"
Yay!
Great scary shadow talons-of-doom in panel one, also.
That moment when you're hammering home your point and the other person is having a completely different discussion.
I find myself wondering if she's met the eldest Barber sister.
eheheh you will get an answer to that pretty soon
Oh, my. They would get along like a house afire...
...with much screaming and running around.
Should we save time, and start the shipping now?
I'm definitely looking forward to the lovers' quarrels between them.
See, and I ship them for all the cool things I could see coming out of the relationship. Them having a partner who could both braid their hair for them in the morning and spar with them in the evening, especially when they've had a bad day. Each having someone who understood their dedication to their job because it matches their own, someone who wasn't intimidated by their temper and personality because that too matches their own. I also love the idea of the Cunningham and Barber families blending and seeing the grandparents' reactions, Harry's reaction to Nicola's choice, and Ben's to Verity's (I see a "hurt them and I will make you suffer" talk, with Ben probably also going to Verity and being all "please don't mess this up I have to work with her a lot and I really respect her").
Overall, it could just be a really fun ship.
Both of them would need to grow up for that to happen. Each of them is drawn as being fundamentally self-centered. That's obvious with Verity, of course, but Nicola expects her partner to "understand" that she comes second to her job. That just isn't how it works...
That's not how I interpreted the conversation between Harry and Nicola. I had the impression that Polly was overly clingy/needy.
Same here. It made me think of something from one of my favorite fantasy series, the Twelve Houses books by Sharon Shinn: one character points out that anyone who wants to marry/be in a relationship with one of the King's Riders (a troop of extremely skilled and fiercely loyal soldiers) can't just cling on and expect to be made happy; they have to have their own strength and self-sufficiency for the relationship to work. I suspect the same thing applies to being the girlfriend of Captain Nicola Barber.
The moment (a while ago) I had a first thought about this possibility (Nicola and Verity being together), I recalled Nicola's words "Someone who speaks her mind" (from there: [http://www.widdershinscomic...](http://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/character-questions-2-2/ "http://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/character-questions-2-2/") ) and despaired. ))
I wonder if Verity met Nicola and Harry when they both were in police... and if Harry left police to work with Verity as a hunter partner.
But, are you saying that Verity does not speak her mind?
I may misunderstand what the expression means (not native English-speaker, yes), but I thought about Verity denying her feelings of certain kind, -- jealousy and fear, for instance.
Maintaining of your facade may be OK in your working hours, but become a real problem in personal relationships.
Maybe we see Verity differently... I have perceived her as a rather forthright person.
That seems really plausible to me. And now we can add the extra wrinkle that Nicola could have been jealous of Harry about Verity.
/jwlm sharpens fanfic pencil...
I could see it being a bit of both. Nicola does seem to be dedicated to her job, as does Harry, and being with someone who ultimately needs more attention than they can give... well, that's a poor fit. Which is sad, but that is life.
Definitely see it being a bit of both, but I also feel Verity would understand that because she's the same way.
Too much real-life violence for my fun fiction.
I think that Vericola will be lots of fun to watch...
No! Bad Shipper! Down!
"Too many [Barbers]" ( [http://www.widdershinscomic...](http://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/march-14th-2017/ "http://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/march-14th-2017/") ), I remember. :)
It's hard for me to imagine how they could have not met (even if briefly) at some point, at least in a professional context. However I prefer the author response :D
Well, she didn't say that they hadn't, just that we would find out about it soon. Really, I'm just excited to see them interact whether it be romantic or friendship or professional or what have you because any of that would be fun to see.
Wonder how Ms Harriet is going to get along with Pride? She did help summon it in the first place.
Wasn't she just kinda around for that?
Yeah, Vee and Lin on their own were more than enough.
Pride might have a shot at Mal though, now that I think about. After all, it knows some very embarrassing things about him that Mal doesn't know about (such as him almost getting them all killed by two of the deadlies in a row and still proving inferior to a guy who didn't finish school), plus Ben did say that "even O'Malley" was better than him.
What I kind of want to happen is that Pride drops some remark about Ben's breakdown, and Mal bristles: "What'd ye do t' him?!"
Just after Ben's breaking the main mirror I got a mental picture of furious Pride shouting at Mal, "Oh, you're one of those which totally destroyed your pal's self-esteem and made me fall?! REVENGE!" :))
And confused Mal's reply: "We're speaking about the same guy, are you sure?" :)
I don't know, there were three rows of RRRRRRR, when Harry, Verity and Lei were shouting each at other. Also, "I'm the best" and "Some of us were doing the right thing from the start" from Harry were... remarkable.
Oh, all three of them were fueling it, definitely. Can't wait to see the next update...
I didn't go back to reread, so I concede to your facts.
Comment for the last several updates: I love the deepening, fading colors of purple and violet (diminishing from the hot pinks and bright magentas of Pride) in the atmosphere as Pride loses power. That delicate, muted violet color of the mirror in the second panel is too beautiful for words...
How's Ben going to react when he realises Sid got Vee out of the mirror?
I just realized that we had to have this battle at the University so that Ben and Sid could have their moments of humble confession.
And it is suitable that the University would be filled with arrogant personalities, so proud of their petty accomplishments.
But if I were Pride, I would head over to the seat of government -- to trap the blowhards who are so full of themselves in spite of their profound lack of accomplishments. [I'm thinking of the US Senate at this present moment, but this holds true most everywhere.]
this is the opposite of a humble brag. it's like prideful self deprecation. sigh only vee.
G...good job team, you did it?!?