GTS – Page 124 – Kidd Commander!

GTS – Page 124

by Aria on March 11, 2022 at 10:50 PM

EDIT 4/1: Surgery went really well!! I’m still taking time off of everything until my follow up on the sixth, but I’m feelin real energetic already so hopefully I’ll be back to work after that. I got about half the update finished before I went in, probably won’t take toooo much longer to get it posted once I can draw again; I’ll try to get an estimate when I’m back to work. I really hope y’all like it =D

EDIT 4/9: The cintiq has been moved to my temporary work space and I’m back to it! I’m still not at 100% so my estimates might be a bit off in one direction or the other, but let’s aim for the update to be finished by the 20th. As always thank you so much for your patience, and don’t forget you can keep up with goings on through any of my social medias!

—

alright y’all, my surgery is on the 31st and there’s a big ol batch update coming after that so sit tight! This is exactly the stopping point I wanted to avoid but what can you do lmao. Here are some links in the meantime:

If you wanna be informed about updates as soon as they happen, keep up with sketches, art, and other things I do, OR you just wanna hang out with some chill folks and chat about KC (or Magic the Gathering Arena or whatever we’re into at the moment) join the Discord! Agatha is also there and she’ll even show you a cool bird picture if you’re nice to her. I also post a lot of KC fic on AO3 if you want something to keep you busy until updates start again, OR if you’re feeling spry maybe you’d like to add something to the wiki or the TVTropes page! They haven’t been updated in a GOOD minute though.

If Discord’s not your thing, you can keep up with the comic on:

Archive Binge
Twitter
Tumblr
Belfry Webcomics
Piperka
Comic Rocket
…or the RSS feed, which is at the bottom of the page! I’m Shinesurge on tumblr and twitter, if you’re interested in my personal shitposting interspersed with comic junk.

Finally, it’s been suggested I ought to remind folks about the Patreon more often, so here’s a reminder that Patreon is what keeps things up and running around here. It’s a bitty little thing so literally any amount helps a lot!

Love y’all, thanks very much for reading! I’ll check in after the procedure and give y’all an update on when to expect the next pages.

Allen Charest

Toulouse, a few pages ago: Being comfortable here is a mark of corruption and sin. Suffering is a sign that you’re close to god.
Phineas: I AM FILLED WITH HATE, PAIN, RAGE AND SUFFERING!!! FUCK!!!!
Davis: That’s clearly because you’re evil and full of the devil.

It feels like there’s a really wide disconnect between the prophet and the holy book, and Davis just isn’t interested in stepping out of his comfort zone to look at that. And the comfort feels like a sin here! What a day.
- Aria
  
  hf i love this analysis haha. I obviously can’t talk about Toulouse’s feelings here too much, but given the fact that christianity has been hijacked by conservative politics while its own messiah was a blue collar hobo wandering around begging for food and starting riots at places that tried to pervert religion for personal gain IT’S really not so surprising that a gap seems to be forming here
Gay Kitty

Something something Davis talking about Phin fleeing from the light while Phin’s literally glowing. Also, I avoided the real version of this bullshit but. Yikes
- Allen Charest
  
  Reminds me of that song about Jesus saying “he will bring us goodness and light” that somehow doesn’t dream about anything concrete, no specifics to hold a church accountable for failing to reach. Not singing about food for the hungry, or healing for the injured. Just “goodness” and “light”.
  - Aria
    
    almost like the point is to be able to attach a belief system to whatever cause is relevant at the time instead of like, you know, spiritual peace or whatever! i’m sure nobody would ever use religion for something like that tho~
- Aria
  
  I’ve complained about this during this arc plenty of times already but MAN it’s super hard to fully express how insidious this kind of thing is to people who weren’t born into it, there’s really nothing I could write that could cover everything. The big thing to remember is that “faith” is hammered in as SO important that it literally trumps reality most of the time? When the teachings don’t make sense or conflict with your actual life you’re taught to trust in jesus instead of your eyes, and in turn The Church which is an extension of jesus, which is how we get like. basically every evangelical problem lmao
  - Gaisa Sanktejo
    
    Believe me, I’ve seen various forms of brainwashing, be it religious or those like hitler, putin and such filling their peoples heads with lies and so on.
    Its never fun and just the act of walking away from some of these zealots who’ll actively chase you down to force their beliefs down your throat is kinda dissappointing.
    To me, I see Phin doing her damndest to not go “supernova” since it could potentially do more harm than good to the innocent bystanders
D

There’s….

something, always something about pushing people who make promises. Righteous people pushing people to break promises. They’re bad so they make them, but they’re bad so their going to break them. (Why not help them along?)

Phin is trying so hard right now it shows, but much like the kind of person who does callouts on the regular, “defenders of the people, the innocent” and busybodies, the “caring neighbour”, Davis just “knows” she’ll slip up doesn’t he. If she slips she’s bad, and she’s going to. And he wants to be there to resolve it, so what if it provoked?

Whooo… geez.
- Aria
  
  I’m SO glad someone decided to comment on this, the scene isn’t over yet but it’s been really hard not to like. Prioritize Davis during this sermon? I narrowed it way down to Phineas’ perspective on purpose (nobody wants three pages of Actual Sermon and I didn’t want to draw it lmao) but I was worried this aspect of what’s going on here wouldn’t come through, the fact that he’s twisting the knife because she’s damned either way and they both know it. It’s such an agonizing part of religious trauma, like, you either have to sit quietly and let it keep happening around you, which makes you another unsympathetic face in the crowd for someone /else/ in the room who feels alone in their own suffering, or you speak up and then you play right into their victim complex, a hateful person ruining our nice sunday afternoon SEE how awful these atheists are UGH
  
  Quite literally the only winning move is not to play, but they’ve infected so much of daily life for so many of us we gotta play anyway. I’m tired man!
Aria

Storebought light is NOT fine, doesn’t count >:(
marithness

Argh Phineas is right, exploding here is not the best way to help those trapped kids, but the urge to show that asshat what real divine light is and raze this creepy church to the ground is overwhelming. He’s taunting her into it and he has NO IDEA

good luck with the surgery, I hope you recover fast and with minimal pain!
- Aria
  
  Most of being Phineas is just trying very hard not to start fires tbh
  
  Thank u! gonna do my best
  - Allen Charest
    
    Unless some shit got real messy real fast in the KC special 2 (which I’ll get around to buying SOMEDAY) she has succeeded at that entirely! I know Ulrich has, and I think Agatha has a laser she didn’t bother with collateral for, but the pyromancer’s adopted child has somehow managed to be the only one on her crew I can say has not set anything on fire! And I probably won’t be able to say that for long now but oh well.
Demon

This..

Is about agency and respect.

Like it or not, agree or not, Phin is ABOVE most of existence. It is not unlike a parent supervising children, or a shepherd with his flock. There are things that change when YOU intervene. There are options and angles that only you, or someone like you, can know. The ones below have their own interactions and rules. Once you step in, choice ends. If you interact on their level, you have to follow the same rules they do. They will not understand the WHY of what you do, just that you are doing something strange/forbidden/new…

Just by passing by, Phin’s choices were limited. This affected her friends and peers. She wants and deserves respect from someone on her level. She is not getting it. But there is more going on than just a territory dispute.

As an adult, you do not fight in front of children. (Yes… It happens so often it is sickening..) It hurts them in ways that will take years to find and heal, if that is possible.

An adult, seeing children being hurt and abused, action becomes necessary. Unless you are an authority, it is not your place to intervene directly. You will cause more harm than good, and probably solve nothing. Sometimes the abuse is too much, and any action is better than none.

It is not Phin’s place to change a lifestyle, a religion. The lies, and harm being done, are getting close to the point of no return. But simply lashing out will just produce anger and hatred in response. The bugs and the faithful only know what they can perceive. Forcing them to know the truth will change them, and they will hate her for it.

Again, I love the complex and murky nature of this comic. Thank you for the art.
- Aria
  
  And thank you for such a thoughtful comment!! It’s always really reassuring to be reminded that this comic’s audience is like, picking up more of the weird grey area stuff going on in the plot and not just waiting around frustrated that nobody’s punched anybody for so long lmao
  
  (although i do have a lot of fun with the punching too so it’s certainly not the worst thing for people to look forward to hehe. We Contain Multitudes, etc)
Allen Charest

One thing I realized a few days ago but keep forgetting to mention is.
Phineas was fine when the literal prophet of god got possessed and started preaching while leaking divine juice, but now this schmuck starts saying regular-ass words fully contained within sound as we know it and he’s convinced it’s the divinity that bothers her. Or at least, he’s trying to convince everyone else that’s the reason.
Evan Cross

I’m So eager for this guy to get his block knocked off by phineas
Beach Fox

Pastor, I know you think you’re poking a lion to prove a point, but that’s a lion with an ongoing Supernova in their soul and I think this miiiight just backfire you a tinsey little bit.
How’s your Prophet with the whole Bringing Back The Dead aspect of the job?