Chapter 8 Page 10
January 14th, 2014Blaise has an idea on how to save Snow-by-Night on Chapter 8 Page 10. Nothing like a good scuffing to get rid of a binding circle. To see a preview of what happens next, please vote for Snow by Night on Top Web Comics.
The SpiderForest comic of the week is Lapse. Check it out when you get a chance.
There’s a lot of great, intuitive comments here.
And yet, all I can think is how much I’m going to laugh my ass off if Jassart ever falls in love.
Looks like all hail is about to break loose….
For some reason I feel sure that something really bad is going to happen to Blaise. Like maybe stepping into the aether-sucking-circle kills him and lets Snow escape idek =/ Can’t wait for the next update.
I think Jassart is showing his true colors being self centered only using Blaise’s feelings as an excuse to collect money from Snows’ aether. Blaise is realizing he loves snow and I feel will be her heart.
I have really enjoyed this story and I will give it my vote for top comic. Thank you for a great story
I’m interested what Jassart is saying with respect to Blaise in panel 2.
I mean, they just recently pulled off a major heist, one which should have them “set” for a very long time income-wise (if nothing else because they can’t afford to make a big splash spending money in town lest it draw unwelcome attention).
What “prize” ought Blaise be keeping his eyes on, I wonder?
The prize? A third of the vast amounts of coin from all that aether! Just because M. LeBlanc just pulled off a big heist, doesn’t mean he does not want more gold. And, assuming that there are no legal consequences for killing a manitou, this would then explain why he is suddenly wealthy not to mention he’d be a hero when Bertrande uses all the aether to cure the next plague.
Of course M. Dansereau is already spending all his money on expensive boxes at the opera, women and good clothes. Lucky M. Alde isn’t exactly Sherlock Holmes.
Hi everyone. I’m glad this story is inspiring a lot of comments. All the characters are flawed. They all have their biases and shortcoming. Feel free to rag on them. I do ask that you be respectful of other commenters, especially if they have differing opinions. Remember the cardinal rule of alchemy. We are all one.
Well, I’ll answer people who are annoyed that I take Jassart’s side instead of Blaise’s.
It starts simple: I like Jassart better than I like Blaise. Jassart is more intelligent, he thinks more and better, and frankly, Blaise’s POV is too simplistic for me.
I’ll point out that most pages have at least a few comments calling for harm – and sometimes death – to Jassart and Bertrande, and it seems to be fully accepted. But talking against Blaise or Snow gets a ‘What the Hell’.
Moreover, Blaise has pretty much said he’s not helping Snow for herself, but simply because he feels needed. That’s a personal, selfish need. That’s not even love, that’s dependance, and that actually makes Jassart’s point about a drunk and his liquor true.
It certainly clashes with Jassart being ‘an evil bastard’ like many have been saying outright. A spirit made out of ice and snow, who can freeze human beings to death easily? Come on! Most normal people would lean towards Jassart’s wariness and distrust, especially since it seems Manitou have a bad reputation. From an outsider’s POV, he’s acting more sanely than Blaise is.
Even so, he’s disliked because he’s hurting the spirit, a spirit who seems to have no problem with the idea of hurting others and seems to act like an aloof bitch quite a lot.
I’m not going to hate Jassart because he doesn’t trust Snow and is acting against her (this is the equivalent of the 1700s, people like Jassart and Blaise have likely done pretty bad things at times to survive and thrive). And I’m not going to like Blaise because he feels needed by a spirit.
That about sums it up. The comments need a counterpoint to the huge Jassart-hating things that people say, anyway.
Jeremy, there are several counterpoints to your response here (and the general thrust of your commentary thus far).
(1) On the previous page, your response to someone telling Blaise to punch Jassart and rescue Snow – which is not, I might add, “Jassart-hating” – was to wish that Jassart would slit Blaise’s throat. In fact, reading through the comments this chapter I found exactly one person who said they wanted Jassart to perish, which stands in contrast to your claim about the comments.
(2) Jassart and Blaise’s motives are rather secondary to the fact that Jassart is deliberately enabling the destruction of a sapient living being (and not in battle, self-defence, or as a sentence for crimes committed), whom he has deceived, twice now, on the false pretense of helping her, while Blaise is trying to prevent her destruction. What is more, he has also resorted to deceiving his best friend as part of this process.
Even accepting the murky ethics of Jassart & Blaise’s professions for the sake of suspension of disbelief, at this moment, what Jassart is doing is wrong, and what Blaise is doing is right.
(3) You have on several pages given your opinion on Snow-by-Night’s potential for violence. It must be said that, the in-comic evidence is that she has not yet killed anyone, and in fact only was prepared to resort to lethal force after someone else tried to kill her. Belkar Bitterleaf, she is not.
(4) It seems very clear to me that Snow-by-Night’s journey as a character will entail her learning how to have a heart (I dare say that she will find it as it grows, metaphorically, within her, rather than as a literal object) – indeed, her journey was launched by a desire to better understand humans. That stands, in my view, in stark contradiction to your characterization of her on previous pages.
There is nothing wrong in liking Jassart and Bertrande more, as characters, than Blaise and Snow-by-Night. But at the moment, Jassart and Bertrande are trying to destroy Snow-by-Night, who has done nothing that we know of to merit such treatment, and Blaise is trying to stop them. As far as I am concerned that is reason enough to cheer Blaise on over Jassart this chapter, even if we later move on to cheer Jassart on in the future.
Snow is an aspect of Winter. Having seen men frozen to death, I refuse to see her in a positive light.
If winter was made up of aspects, physical beings, I’d mark them as mass murderers. Again, I’m not yet to the point where I’ll cheer ANYTHING that can easily freeze a man to death, the sight of which still gives me nightmares. Accept that much.
Now, it might change. But, so far, she still needs to developp more.
Although I agree that her dying would be too much, I must admit that I see that as a well-deserved comeuppance, metaphorically speaking. And I personally love the idea of a human (Bertrande) managing to humble an aloof and rather overconfident spirit.
Her potential for death and violence is well-established. On that point, I won’t budge.
As I said, in real life, most of us would act like Jassart. I’m not going to fault him for being human.
Blaise isn’t even doing this for her. He’s doing this for himself. If he didn’t feel needed, he likely wouldn’t even be there.
Romantics sometimes bring far more trouble than pragmatics. A romantic directly caused the sack of Troy, according to the Iliad.
My line of thinking is more aligned with Jassart’s in general. Everything else, even putting Snow in danger (and as I stated, I think she at least partly deserves this) is secondary to my psychological leanings. Although I wouldn’t have approached things the same way as Jassart did (I’d have plain told Snow to go away, leave my friend alone, and never, ever come back), I’m not a thief. Jassart is a thief, who’s lied his way through so much that lying likely comes naturally to him.
As far as the throat-slitting thing was, it was sarcasm more than anything else. I’ve seen people pretty much portray Jassart as such an utter jerk, with some people implying that he enjoys the pain he’s causing, that I simply showed an action such a man would take if Blaise got in the way. The written word doesn’t convey sarcasm very well.
At any rate, it all boils down to this: right or wrong, I like Jassart much more than Blaise, even though Blaise is the designated hero here.
Yes, Blaise will succeed at saving Snow. Of course. If he didn’t, the story would end there. Yes, Jassart’ll get his ass kicked. Or something similar. Many readers will cheer when it happens.
I’m not going to cheer when it does. I’m on Jassart’s side. For now.
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Wait… so, since you’ve seen men freeze to death, any aspect of winter is evil? If you’d seen people die of heat stroke and thirst from drought, would any aspect of summer be evil?
I disagree with the views you’ve expressed in general, but I can see your reasoning behind them. That one, though, just makes me go HUH?
http://blog.legacy.com/2011/06/23/yes-it%E2%80%99s-true-more-people-die-in-january/
But if conscious aspects existed, then I would pin cancer and infection on spring.
Hey now, I only said Jassart was KIND OF evil… >:D
He is definitely the intelligent one in the relationship. I sort of get the feeling that Blaise would be tending bar, or in the employ of some construction company or something. Not that that’s a bad thing, just that he doesn’t seem to have much ambition and seems likely to do the easiest thing. In that way, Snow is good for him- to stir him up a little.
O.O Go Blaise?
I wonder what will happen now.
GOBLAISEGO!!!
i actually feel kinda bad for jass. i think [or rather, hope] he means well but talk about going about things all wrong lol. i’m just worried he’s doing this only because he doesn’t wanna lose his advantage when doing thievery xD; i hope not tho…:C
UGH the suspense tho I CANNOT TAKE IT my heart cannot take it vjksdf/screaming
hchano, you just go back and draw dreamscar, because we can’t take the suspense there, either. Don’t you dare to have a heart attack, you hear me? :D :P
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This strip reminds me on the intro video of the pc game Sacred. A dark mage tries to summon a demon in a protective circle, but the drawing of the circle goes wrong as a minion accidentally scuffs it…
… I only wonder now what will happen now as “the ghost is out of the lamp”. She is likely too weak to wreak havoc, though.