ooooh boi ...

What have u done ?

Had hoped that I was gonna be wrong. Bye Brutus. :(

A wise person once said:

If your villain boss starts remarking that they "wouldn't kill you that way", then starts talking about how you've become an emotional liability for him, find a new job, immediately.

That being said, Clovis is definitely getting rolfstomped by the end of this chapter. Anyone wants to take bets as to how?

thefoxwolf1 said:
A wise person once said:
That being said, Clovis is definitely getting rolfstomped by the end of this chapter. Anyone wants to take bets as to how?

What I predict is: that he just send Brutus to sleep for him to be exploded with the mansion but then he gets roflstomped and can't blow up the mansion and Brutus is Fine.

Maybe Clovis just stole his memories. Brutus could still wake up later, it wouldn't even be a first for the series.

^The fuck?

My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. I really hope this is just for shock value and Brutus will be brought back later. Hopefully.

vexd said:
If you’re going to rip something off, Tom, you can aim a little higher than The Force Awakens

The level some people try too hard is truly sad sometimes.

Also I feel this will stick. Not enough people seemed to understand how terrible Clovis was, now you do (sadly)

rukaisho said:
Exactly what I was thinking. I didn't think Tom would be so utterly stupid to draw inspiration from one of the most reviled trilogies in recent memory.

Been a trope for a while, try again

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeadlyHug

thefoxwolf1 said:
A wise person once said:
That being said, Clovis is definitely getting rolfstomped by the end of this chapter. Anyone wants to take bets as to how?

That sounds familiar, heh.

Yeah, Clovis wasn't even trying to hide it, because he knew Brutus was too dumb to pick up on what he was implying.

Tom could always pull a gotcha, and we learn later that Brutus is still alive, but had his mind wiped or something else that would let Clovis leave him alive without being a liability. Personally I hope this is the outcome. Brutus is a bad guy, but he's also a lovable dunce.

rukaisho said:
Exactly. Thank you for proving my point. The fact that it's a trope with its own definition should have immediately raised red flags and made Tom think that maybe he should go for something more original.

If you avoid everything that is a trope you physically cannot make media at this point. There are enough tropes for things that every movie, every comic, and every story in the world physically cannot avoid all of them. Is it contrived? Yes. Does it fit the character? Also yes.

Noooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!

camkitty said:
The level some people try too hard is truly sad sometimes.

Also I feel this will stick. Not enough people seemed to understand how terrible Clovis was, now you do (sadly)

Terrible bas he is, he's not made of stone. At least he shows remorse for doing this.

Yeah kind of suspected he'd use some form of intense sleeping magic.

I mean that also leaves room for Clovis to have not had the heart to finish him off as well but in the same vein Tom has killed off characters before.

I feel in part though it's a matter of in too deep to back out now. Like with his female form he can't risk any chance of the secret getting out whatsoever lest all he's built himself up to be is turned back on him.

Nora is truly a vicious enemy

A good writer has to have the ability to be truly evil at times.

marcus_furelius said:
Tom killing off a character to avoid drawing a ship that's infinitely more popular than the protagonist pairing because he's salty yet again that background chars and villains get more attention than Trace and Flora

And doing it in the most predictable shitty "twist" just so he can act like he kills off characters even though Brutus has done all of one thing in his entire comic tenure

And also trying to tell the fans NO LOOK CLOVIS DID CARE ABOUT HIM DON'T YOU GET IT? Despite not showing ANY of that and just having Brutus talk about it once and Clovis now going YOU DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH YOU MEAN TO ME BRUTUS

Fuck this comic has never had great writing but Tom really manages to get worse with every few pages

I had this moment where I was expecting Clovis to be the mirror version of Trace.

Why does Trace get to be forgiven just because he has amnesia?

Wow, if people really think that Tom's killing off a character just to spite the shippers... I have some pills that reverse vax-caused autism for you. You'd believe me.

wollypegger said:
A good writer has to have the ability to be truly evil at times.

No
A good writer has the ability to toy with their readers and make them jump to the wrong conclusions.

NOOO BRUTUS QWQ BIG SAD. May best boy chase squirrels in heaven

.......What!?! THE FUCK!!!!

marcus_furelius said:
So not Tom then, because everybody called this a mile away

In fairness, "a mile away" in this context is the literal previous strip.

georgie_leech said:
In fairness, "a mile away" in this context is the literal previous strip.

Well, if you want to be fair, you should also keep in mind that before the previous strip, there wasn't much reason to consider this turn.

As for Clovis, i'd say this is perfectly in character. Though i think storywise it would be more interesting if it somehow fails (as opposed to Clovis having a last-second change of heart).

Either way, i expect this to bite him in the ass later.

Eyuuuuuup! Fuckin' called it! I KNEW it was coming!

CLOVIS, YOU ABSOLUTE BASTARD!!!

In the name of everyone F**K YOU CLOVIS!! >:( i called it but its still a kick in the balls

llollt said:
Well, if you want to be fair, you should also keep in mind that before the previous strip, there wasn't much reason to consider this turn.

As for Clovis, i'd say this is perfectly in character. Though i think storywise it would be more interesting if it somehow fails (as opposed to Clovis having a last-second change of heart).

Either way, i expect this to bite him in the ass later.

One possibility is that it failed specifically because Clovis couldn't bring himself to kill Brutus. That some part of him choked up and instead chose to erase Brutus' memories and leave him behind because he knows that Brutus is a flaw in his armor and potentially the only person who could stop him

llollt said:
Well, if you want to be fair, you should also keep in mind that before the previous strip, there wasn't much reason to consider this turn.

As for Clovis, i'd say this is perfectly in character. Though i think storywise it would be more interesting if it somehow fails (as opposed to Clovis having a last-second change of heart).

Either way, i expect this to bite him in the ass later.

Actually I have a theory about that.

Path 1 is that somehow Brutus survives and joins with the Trace Brigade, which leads to a confrontation with Clovis. Amnesia may or may not be involved.

Path 2 is Natani manages to somehow cast the heart's desire spell on Clovis, which causes him to see Brutus alive again. This leads to immense confusion, pain, and his inevitable death as the spell is left on him.

Personally I think Tom is if not an exceptional writer a competent and respectable one. No it isn't exactly Lord of the Rings here but it coils be significantly worse. Borba worse.

His work is passable and, if anything, straightforward. Twists alone do not a great story make. And while you can see them a mile away that doesn't stop them impacting you.

I like how he writes. Yeah you can see the eventual conclusion but it still has some form of impact and in most cases makes for a heartfelt casual peruse.

Honestly if anything I'd advise Tom lean back on the drama elements and focus more on what he's good at: making simple heartwarming romance with bits of comedy and drama sprinkled in to keep it fresh. The current arc is pretty good but it doesn't feel like his strong suit is high stakes/heavy drama. He doesn't quite build characters strongly enough to make them stand.

No idea how this went from a sharing of personal theories to a critique on Tom's writing style but eh

jackxano said:
My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. I really hope this is just for shock value and Brutus will be brought back later. Hopefully.

Same. But i would not expect it since as much as i hate to admit it it give better character developpment to clovis to kill the one person he appreciate.

jacked-assassin said:
I had this moment where I was expecting Clovis to be the mirror version of Trace.

Why does Trace get to be forgiven just because he has amnesia?

Who said anyone forgave Trace? Especially after what he did to Rose

Brutus always had this "too good for this sinful earth" vibe to him in the non-canon material. I was a little suspicious of his inclusion in the main comic.

I'm hoping the big lovable goof is just sleeping but, I'm not holding my breath for it.

My dog died in her sleep 2 days ago, needless to say this update was a kick to the balls.

Hell before that there was a dead dog on WandaVision the actual day she died.

I'm not trying to gain any attention or pity points here im just venting.

literally why does anyone think the side material is canon? its all just for patreon incentives lmao.

also yeah it sucks ass that the gay wolf/fox couple isn't gonna be thing. that actually would been a nice, interesting angle for this comic to explore for once instead of straight fanservice.

marcus_furelius said:
Tom killing off a character to avoid drawing a ship that's infinitely more popular than he protagonist pairing because he's salty yet again that background chars and villains get more attention than Trace and Flora

If Tom wanted Trace and Flora to get more attention, wouldn't he, you know, put them in more pages rather than BARELY SHOWING UP for the past few months? Recently, outside of the short bit with Rose and Detritus, most pages don't feature them at all. Or they're basically supporting characters for a line or two. If he were salty like you claim, he'd be shoving them in every page.

alyn said:
literally why does anyone think the side material is canon? its all just for patreon incentives lmao.

Tom seemingly uses reactions to the side-comics and non-canon stuff to determine whether or not to work them into the main comic. See shipping Karen and Maddie. Maddie was initially hostile to Karen. But the side stuff paired them often, people really liked it, and then they started getting friendly in the main comic. He even upped Maddie's age from 12 to 17 (still calling that a retcon myself) so, IMO, the age difference between them wouldn't seem weird.

Brutus has left the server

drakkenfyre said:
If Tom wanted Trace and Flora to get more attention, wouldn't he, you know, put them in more pages rather than BARELY SHOWING UP for the past few months? Recently, outside of the short bit with Rose and Detritus, most pages don't feature them at all. Or they're basically supporting characters for a line or two. If he were salty like you claim, he'd be shoving them in every page.

Trace and Flora were featured in 13 of 36 pages within the ongoing chapter, so I wouldn't say they're showing up that rarely. IMO the main issue is that there weren't really that many pages in the first place, since Tom rarely makes more than three pages a month (but often even less) these days.

marcus_furelius said:
So not Tom then, because everybody called this a mile away

*hostility goes here, wiped because it's unimportant*

Yesn't.
You know, you can twist things more than once or twice. Lemme cite a very well known example: Severus Snape from Harry Potter. Without going into spoiler, he sunk deeper, and deeper, and deeper into that area, making readers hate him more than the de facto villain. And then in a very important scene they flipped it all on its head, making people do a full 180° on their opinion on him.

Let me then toss in a different scenario and another and another, all from something I'm well familiar with:
Kamen Rider OOO: Ankh doesn't care about anyone other than himself, he only helps the hero until he can complete himself... But eventually he sacrifices himself for the hero and is happy to do so.
Kamen Rider Fouze: Sagittarius Zodiarts is the bad guy all the way through, kill one of the hero's best friend, is forgiven after his defeat, then with his dying breath he uses Aquarius Zodiarts' healing ability to revive said hero's friend.
Kamen Rider Wizard: Wiseman. He caused a major breakout of Phantoms, he kicked off the entire plot, resulted in NUMEROUS DEATHS, all because he was wanting to revive his daughter with the philosopher's stone. And then he gets backstabbed by one of his henchmen.
Kamen Rider Drive: Oh boy... I'll just cite names: Machine Chaser, Brain, Heart, Medic. These four were bad guys, these four redeemed themselves in BIG. DAMN. HEROES. moments. In the case of Brain, Medic, and Heart, their redemption hits HARD.
Kamen Rider Ghost: Necrom. He goes similar to Gentoku below, but he becomes a good guy because he learns what the machine that gave his kind a body that would never die was actually doing and has a change of heart.
Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Dan Kuroto sets himself to be a good guy, turns out to be a villain, becomes a "good guy?" and stays there. There's also Parado, who was a bad guy, eventually "dies" and redeems himself when he comes back.
Kamen Rider Build: There's two instances: Gentoku (who was evil, went deeper into the dark, then became a good guy. And then Evolto, who was pretty much the Kefka of the Kamen Riders, all he did was for the evulz... Until a post-series film reveals he became this crazy because of his brother, who destroyed their home planet and he wanted to take revenge. And if you look at some other material you notice that the Blood Tribe that he belongs to are EVILER THAN HE IS, and he actually had standards and was excellent at manipulating people for the best results, and he pulls that at his half-son to draw his full power so they can avenge the Blood Tribe and then leaves Earth.
And lately: Kamen Rider Zero-One. Since this last one is very new (even if it was concluded last year), I won't talk about it.

PS.: Oh, yeah, did I mention you how GREAT Kamen Rider is at toying with people's guesses?

I have a feeling that Clovis did this out of mercy to Brutus rather than any evil desire. Clovis is about to do something that will have drastic consequences, most likely against Trace as to get his revenge against Nora. It'll be an uphill battle and I don't think that Clovis has the heart to see Brutus be burned alive by a dragon because of it. Brutus is a dangerous liability to himself with his limited intelligence, so Clovis put him down like an elderly dog who's starting to have more bad days than good days because he couldn't bare to see him suffer.

How Fucking Predictable tom. This Fucking Cliche is boring especially since you taken the way the last star wars movies has went.

tsukiyomaruzero said:
What if Clovis used a spell to swap genders with Brutus?

Or what if he's making Brutus sleep to prevent him from joining Clovis on whatever he intends to do?!

1: if he could have foiled Nora's gender-swap magic like that, he would have done so by now.
2: he doesn't know about the crazy shit going on in the manor right now, so even IF that was his plan... Shits about to go south.

deratizatorrr said:
Trace and Flora were featured in 13 of 36 pages within the ongoing chapter, so I wouldn't say they're showing up that rarely. IMO the main issue is that there weren't really that many pages in the first place, since Tom rarely makes more than three pages a month (but often even less) these days.

Yeah, I'm really frustrated with the pace of the comic these days. I know Patreon's pulling in the money, but I can't help but feel annoyed seeing 17-20 Patreon sketches + 2-4 colored ones a month while we only get one page of the main comic every 2-3 weeks now.

yugijak said:
Yeah kind of suspected he'd use some form of intense sleeping magic.

I mean that also leaves room for Clovis to have not had the heart to finish him off as well but in the same vein Tom has killed off characters before.

I feel in part though it's a matter of in too deep to back out now. Like with his female form he can't risk any chance of the secret getting out whatsoever lest all he's built himself up to be is turned back on him.

Nora is truly a vicious enemy

It was only when Nora reacted and chastised Reni FROM WITHIN A MEMORY, that I truly began to understand how powerful she is...

Its not clear if she actually said that in Trace's presence off camera (like future sight), or if even a person's memories of her are self aware. Either way is intimidating to say the least.

marcus_furelius said:
So not Tom then, because everybody called this a mile away

And I love, *love* Tomdrones getting mad at pointing out shitty plot points because they can't handle the fact they've wasted potentially 16 years of their lives reading a comic that's trying to rival GoT and the sequel trilogy for horrible writing
He's not gonna draw you free art cause you waste time defending him on a porn site you know
He won't even acknowledge your existence unless by happenstance you manage to win with one of the fotm sketch themes and he's forced to stick a tag of yours on the sketch
He's just burning the comic down as quickly as he can muster now because he's so tired of the shitty setting he's created that he wants to be done with it and find a way to still earn a free 8k a month from preteens who want to coom

That was savage, and unnecessary...
If you don't like the series, then stop reading it. Nobody wants to hear troll-speech, its an ugly, hurtful language and the world can do without.

rukaisho said:
Oh hey. Markiplier wanted me to relay a special message to his brother Tom on behalf of everybody after reading this page.

I love your sense of humor (No sarcasm whatsoever)

clekomuvuk01 said:
That was savage, and unnecessary...
If you don't like the series, then stop reading it. Nobody wants to hear troll-speech, its an ugly, hurtful language and the world can do without.

if i could favorite your coment i would

I've been into this comic for years sadly my two favorite characters were Brutus and Rose, so after years I'm literally fucking done reading no more I'm out.

also, this comment section is the perfect representation of the Clovis is Brutus big tittied tsundere girlfriend crowd begin forced to face the fact that Clovis murdered his way to the top of the guild of assassins, is someone who sold his own parents to slavery, and is an implied rapist

As much as I like Brutus, I really hope Tom doesn't do a "joking, he's ok" moment. For the sake of story, I hope Brutus did die.

It really does help just elevate the lengths Clovis will go, even killing someone close, to tie up loss ends. Also helps us, the audience, want to see Clovis get his faced kicked in twice as hard. But atleast we got to see that Clovis isn't completely, mustache twirling, "I have no friends. I used you!" evil.

mortox said:
What I predict is: that he just send Brutus to sleep for him to be exploded with the mansion but then he gets roflstomped and can't blow up the mansion and Brutus is Fine.

You do know the page is titled "Poisonious Friendship" Right? that asshole magically poisoned the Good Wolf Boy! All my saddness for him dying is being overshadowed by all of this UNYEILDING RAGE!!

mad_dok said:
As much as I like Brutus, I really hope Tom doesn't do a "joking, he's ok" moment. For the sake of the story, I hope Brutus did die.

It really does help just elevate the lengths Clovis will go, even killing someone close, to tie up loose ends. Also helps us, the audience, want to see Clovis get his face kicked in twice as hard. But at least we got to see that Clovis isn't completely, mustache-twirling, "I have no friends. I used you!" evil.

I like Brutus too, but I don't want his death undone either.

I'm expecting Clovis to suffer a fate worse than physical harm.

frostefyre said:
If you avoid everything that is a trope you physically cannot make media at this point. There are enough tropes for things that every movie, every comic, and every story in the world physically cannot avoid all of them. Is it contrived? Yes. Does it fit the character? Also yes.

Exactly.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/TropesAreTools

Was going to respond to the previous one complaining about tropes but they seem to have deleted thier comments when people disagreed with them

eranormus said:
also, this comment section is the perfect representation of the Clovis is Brutus big tittied bwomed tsundere girlfriend crowd begin forced to face the fact that Clovis murdered his way to the top of the guild of assassins, is someone who sold his own parents to slavery, and is an implied rapist

Louder for the people in the back :O

camkitty said:
Louder for the people in the back :O

*Points at black & white signs.*

post #1535897 post #2376807

eranormus said:
also, this comment section is the perfect representation of the Clovis is Brutus big tittied bwomed tsundere girlfriend crowd begin forced to face the fact that Clovis murdered his way to the top of the guild of assassins, is someone who sold his own parents to slavery, and is an implied rapist

I mean let's note down the subjects Twokinds uses for it's story for a moment.

Slavery
Abuse
Loss of Identity
Loss in general
Depths of Desperation (let's get back to THAT one in a bit)
Racism
SEXUAL abuse

For a fairly lighthearted comic based on school experiences (at least originally IIRC) Twokinds gets into deep stuff.

And thar depths of desperation thing seems to be a really common factor in his stories. The lengths people will go to in order to keep their version of 'normal' or whatever they had before.

Clovis here.

Trace with... Literally everything he did in his past life.

Natani to retain male identity

Raine's family

The list goes on. Tom's a lot better than I think he gets credit

First off: LOOK AT THE NUMBER AND LENGTH OF RESPONSES! That's fantastic. People really do love and connect with this story, don't we?

Also: Saw it coming a mile away, and it still sucks. I think Brutus was set up as a lovable character just so Clovis could remind us all what a BASTARD he is by murdering him for absolutely no reason. I hope I'm wrong, but it doesn't look good for Brutus.

poor brutus we thought we knew him well.

but we know the shit that goes on from the twins personal experience with the 'boss'

drakkenfyre said:
He even upped Maddie's age from 12 to 17 (still calling that a retcon myself)

Maddie stated that she was 14 when Flora asked her after finding out Eric wanted a painting of her. She even questioned if basitins age like keidren or humans. You could say that her lying about her age is a retcon, but I think it fits the character, and Tom wrote a good reason for her.

Just wanted to correct some info, she lied and said she was 3 years younger, not 5. Also note how Tom specified 17 and not any older.

"E tu Clovis."

All the "killed Brutus because of a fan ship" posts are making me a sad panda.

At the very least, since when has a canon plot point ever stopped shippers from whipping up new spank material? Shippers will ignore anything that doesn't suit their desire for 2 or more characters who have absolutely no reason to be even friends, let alone lovers, to be banging each other in wild orgies.

Also, even having been on the internet for literally decades I still can't get over how overblown and unwarranted a sense of self-importance internutters (not a typo) have, to think that something is done by a creator purely to spite them, and act as if there was some obligation for the creator to do things a certain way just because some overly entitled fans demand it. Look over to my avatar, and try to catch a clue.

Aaaand there it is, yeah if people are shocked that this happened after all the obvious flags tom placed in the last page I don't know what to tell ya. Really doubt that Tom did this over the ship (which is most likely still going to keep going strong despite), this was most likely going to happen sooner or later since it's the easiest way for Tom to establish Clovis as truly evil.

eranormus said:
also, this comment section is the perfect representation of the Clovis is Brutus big tittied bwomed tsundere girlfriend crowd begin forced to face the fact that Clovis murdered his way to the top of the guild of assassins, is someone who sold his own parents to slavery, and is an implied rapist

Honestly... Yeah the art and ship is cute but it leads people to forgetting that Clovis is actually in fact, pretty fucking evil. There was no way Brutus was making it out of this chapter alive despite Clovis liking him.

imagoober said:
All the "killed Brutus because of a fan ship" posts are making me a sad panda.

At the very least, since when has a canon plot point ever stopped shippers from whipping up new spank material? Shippers will ignore anything that doesn't suit their desire for 2 or more characters who have absolutely no reason to be even friends, let alone lovers, to be banging each other in wild orgies.

Also, even having been on the internet for literally decades I still can't get over how overblown and unwarranted a sense of self-importance internutters (not a typo) have, to think that something is done by a creator purely to spite them, and act as if there was some obligation for the creator to do things a certain way just because some overly entitled fans demand it. Look over to my avatar, and try to catch a clue.

Seriously.

Even ignoring fan drawings, since when has the death of a character in the comic stopped them from appearing in non-canon material that Tom himself draws? Which I'm pretty sure have featured ClovisxBrutus shipping...

lucaflowe said:
Aaaand there it is, yeah if people are shocked that this happened after all the obvious flags tom placed in the last page I don't know what to tell ya. Really doubt that Tom did this over the ship (which is most likely still going to keep going strong despite), this was most likely going to happen sooner or later since it's the easiest way for Tom to establish Clovis as truly evil.

Honestly... Yeah the art and ship is cute but it leads people to forgetting that Clovis is actually in fact, pretty fucking evil. There was no way Brutus was making it out of this chapter alive despite Clovis liking him.

Kamen Rider Build NEW WORLD: Grease:
At a point it's HEAVILY implied the Hokuto Three Crows gave their lives to produce Phantom Gas (to allow other Riders to transform after they lost their Nebula Gas, which was vital for transformation) and the power up Perfect Kingdom for Grease.

Then turns out, at the very conclusion, that they didn't tell Grease whether they were alive or dead, just let the implications sit because it would cause him to develop strong emotions and gain a massive boost in Hazard Level (consider it "power level") to allow him to use the Perfect Kingdom powerup... And the Hokuto Three Crows were actually alive and better than they have ever been.

Bottom Line is: it could be an emotion play on the reader and/or on Clovis. How could this work on Clovis? Self-hypnosis, creating the belief that he was able to just kill Brutus to allow himself to move on.

Double Bottom Line: FFS, people, CHILL DOWN! No need to go for personal attacks and the like! And I know I may be overanalyzing, but I just like sticking to the WMG in tropes and the like.

69th comment, NICE!

lucaflowe said:
Aaaand there it is, yeah if people are shocked that this happened after all the obvious flags tom placed in the last page I don't know what to tell ya. Really doubt that Tom did this over the ship (which is most likely still going to keep going strong despite), this was most likely going to happen sooner or later since it's the easiest way for Tom to establish Clovis as truly evil.

Honestly... Yeah the art and ship is cute but it leads people to forgetting that Clovis is actually in fact, pretty fucking evil. There was no way Brutus was making it out of this chapter alive despite Clovis liking him.

Even if that's true that doesn't make it any better.
Having a character do something evil purely to show that they're evil and to illicit an emotional response from the reader isn't good writing.
It's incredibly shallow and manipulative writing and it just shows that you've truly ran out of ideas on how to develop your characters.

There was no reason for Clovis to do this, there's no motivation, it makes no logical sense yet he did it because Tom wanted to show that he's evil and to kill off a minor character to establish a false sense of risk to the main cast.

A character who is evil just for the sake of being evil is not a well written character, it's bland, it's uncreative and it's lazy.
He's essentially just reduced Clovis to a cartoon supervillain with a personality as two dimensional as the comic itself.

Anyone who is trying to delude themselves into thinking that this is good writing has obviously gone to the Game of Thrones school of story telling.

marcus_furelius said:
So not Tom then, because everybody called this a mile away

And I love, *love* Tomdrones getting mad at pointing out shitty plot points because they can't handle the fact they've wasted potentially 16 years of their lives reading a comic that's trying to rival GoT and the sequel trilogy for horrible writing
He's not gonna draw you free art cause you waste time defending him on a porn site you know
He won't even acknowledge your existence unless by happenstance you manage to win with one of the fotm sketch themes and he's forced to stick a tag of yours on the sketch
He's just burning the comic down as quickly as he can muster now because he's so tired of the shitty setting he's created that he wants to be done with it and find a way to still earn a free 8k a month from preteens who want to coom

based

solaceopossum said:
Even if that's true that doesn't make it any better.
Having a character do something evil purely to show that they're evil and to illicit an emotional response from the reader isn't good writing.
It's incredibly shallow and manipulative writing and it just shows that you've truly ran out of ideas on how to develop your characters.

There was no reason for Clovis to do this, there's no motivation, it makes no logical sense yet he did it because Tom wanted to show that he's evil and to kill off a minor character to establish a false sense of risk to the main cast.

A character who is evil just for the sake of being evil is not a well written character, it's bland, it's uncreative and it's lazy.
He's essentially just reduced Clovis to a cartoon supervillain with a personality as 2D as the comic itself.

Anyone who is trying to delude themselves into thinking that this is good writing has obviously gone to the Game of Thrones school of story telling.

Oh, believe me I'm not defending Tom or his writing on this, just stating that since it is the easiest way to establish villainy it was the most obvious one Tom would take.

people act like this was to establish villainy, like this is Clovis first appearance so tom needs to make we know Clovis is a bad guy, the problem is that Clovis's villainy was established well before this, in dragon masquerade we got to know him for the first time, there it was established he was a first-class scumbag, then we got him begin the one who sent the wolves to attack the town where a lot of people probably died, Maeve and Adira almost begin one of them, and then we got him killing roan with fire and smiling at it, this page is not to establish how super evil Clovis is, it has been established before, this is just a consequence of Brutus and roan getting captured , Clovis comes personally to tie up loose ends, most of what has been showed of him before shows how ruthless he is, we got to know that he likes Brutus, the thing is that he simply cares about himself far more than he cares about brutus

solaceopossum said:

A character who is evil just for the sake of being evil is not a well written character, it's bland, it's uncreative and it's lazy.
He's essentially just reduced Clovis to a cartoon supervillain with a personality as two dimensional as the comic itself.

Anyone who is trying to delude themselves into thinking that this is good writing has obviously gone to the Game of Thrones school of story telling.

He didn't reduce Clovis to this level. Clovis has ALWAYS been so lazily designed. Even going back as far as prequel Clovis has no backstory. He just exists to be the antithesis of Zen and Natani and consequently every other protagonist, which sucks because Clovis has so much potential, unused depth and development we'll never get to see.

deadlysteak said:
Clovis only has any potential to be interesting because of Brutus. Without Brutus there's no arc for Clovis. Brutus can't die at this point. Stop losing your marbles, our goodest boy is going to be fine.

Unless Tom just wants to show us Clovis is evil, something he has already eatablished, which would make him a bad writer (I know, gasp)

No matter what route he takes from this point it's going to be bad writing.
If he keeps Brutus dead then he wasted a character for shock value.
If he brings him back then he's a copout and a hack who used emotionally manipulative writing.

tsukiyomaruzero said:
Wrong. Keeping Brutus dead would be the bad move, revealing he wasn't dead is the good move. Making him disappear for long and bring a suspiciously similar expy (either by appearance or personality) would be an outstanding move

Ah yes, the Rise of Skywalker approach.
"The Emperor is dead... lmao just kidding he's back now after a really long time because people like him and this franchise is going down the shitter"

Truly the pinnacle of storytelling genius.

omnicidal said:
Maddie stated that she was 14 when Flora asked her after finding out Eric wanted a painting of her. She even questioned if basitins age like keidren or humans. You could say that her lying about her age is a retcon, but I think it fits the character, and Tom wrote a good reason for her.

Just wanted to correct some info, she lied and said she was 3 years younger, not 5. Also note how Tom specified 17 and not any older.

Yeah, people keep repeating this. I KNOW what she said in the comic. I still believe it's a retcon. Tom starts doing Karen/Maddie stuff in the side-comics, it becomes super-popular. So he steers them together in the canon comic, and what do you know? Maddie's now 17, because she "lied" about her age before. And now we don't have an awkward pairing of a 12 and 16 year old. He didn't go above 17 because Karen's 16. And I'd have to go back through the archives because I'm fairly confident she said she was 12. He also did plenty of side-comics and one-off images of her doing things typical of a child. Especially the Christmas one with her in PJs, sleeping in the arms of her mother.

Not every detail about a story is known before hand. Tom himself said years ago that he had a general idea of where the story would go, but otherwise was making it up as he went along.

Ergo, retcon.

solaceopossum said:
Ah yes, the Rise of Skywalker approach.
"The Emperor is dead... lmao just kidding he's back now after a really long time because people like him and this franchise is going down the shitter"

Truly the pinnacle of storytelling genius.

You do you, but you know zilch about storytelling.

tsukiyomaruzero said:
You do you, but you know zilch about storytelling.

*I* know nothing about storytelling?
And you do?
Lmao, keep deluding yourself J.J.

rukaisho said:
We didn't want Brutus to be dumped into the Laura tier and forever become the subject of non-canon and lol random images on Tom's Patreon. Brutus had a chance to make an actual impression in the story but Tom offed him way too soon. His relationship with Clovis could have made for an interesting dynamic to flesh out the Prince of Greed from being yet another cartoon villain stereotype. What we got instead was just some shoehorned exposition before Brutus was rather unceremoniously and insultingly killed off.
I'm honestly surprised more people aren't angry or at least disappointed by this amateurish writing.

I was responding to the "killed because of fan shipping" thing.

Personally, I agree that Brutus could still be an interesting character, story-wise. Mind, as far as I'm aware we still don't have absolute confirmation that he's dead. I can believe either way, that Clovis killed him or did something special to remove him as a potential danger (such as a memory-wipe), but left him alive because Brutus is literally the one character Clovis has expressed any sentimentality about. Even if he did outright kill him, there's shenanigans about just how dead dead is afoot (the other half/third-ish of this current arc).

(As for the quality of the writing, Tom's never been the best writer the internet has ever seen. On the other hand, he does hit some interesting points from time to time.)

solaceopossum said:
*I* know nothing about storytelling?
And you do?
Lmao, keep deluding yourself J.J.

You're the delusional one.

At least I've seen and read enough stories to know what a good story can do for cases like these, and so far... Tom can still do things to subvert expectations.

tsukiyomaruzero said:
You're the delusional one.

At least I've seen and read enough stories to know what a good story can do for cases like these, and so far... Tom can still do things to subvert expectations.

Subverting expectations for the sake of subverting expectations, we really do have a regular Rian Johnson over here.
Just FYI, nobody had their expectations subverted, we could see this shit coming from a mile away.

eldfjall said:
I was responding to the "killed because of fan shipping" thing.

Personally, I agree that Brutus could still be an interesting character, story-wise. Mind, as far as I'm aware we still don't have absolute confirmation that he's dead. I can believe either way, that Clovis killed him or did something special to remove him as a potential danger (such as a memory-wipe), but left him alive because Brutus is literally the one character Clovis has expressed any sentimentality about. Even if he did outright kill him, there's shenanigans about just how dead dead is afoot (the other half/third-ish of this current arc).

(As for the quality of the writing, Tom's never been the best writer the internet has ever seen. On the other hand, he does hit some interesting points from time to time.)

I really think it's too optimistic to believe that Clovis only wiped Brutus' memory or that Reni would somehow revive him in a later page. Especially with how poorly handled Laura was in earlier chapters.
Nope. I firmly believe that Brutus is dead as a doornail and only the most egregious of retcons or contrived of plot twists will be able to "fix" this. Though the damage has been done at this point.

solaceopossum said:
Subverting expectations for the sake of subverting expectations, we really do have a regular Rian Johnson over here.
Just FYI, nobody had their expectations subverted, we could see this shit coming from a mile away.

k, Dom Quixote

I'm done here, this post is full of haters.

tsukiyomaruzero said:
k, Dom Quixote

I'm done here, this post is full of haters.

Bye Felicia

I really, really hope he isn't dead, and doesn't die. This is more heart-wrenching to me than any other death in the series thus far... I'd take amnesiac, or permanent injury, or anything really. I just think he deserves better than to die like this.

223rem said:
He didn't reduce Clovis to this level. Clovis has ALWAYS been so lazily designed. Even going back as far as prequel Clovis has no backstory. He just exists to be the antithesis of Zen and Natani and consequently every other protagonist, which sucks because Clovis has so much potential, unused depth and development we'll never get to see.

He would probably have even less than he currently has now if people hadn't requested so much art of him from Tom.

rukaisho said:
I really think it's too optimistic to believe that Clovis only wiped Brutus' memory or that Reni would somehow revive him in a later page. Especially with how poorly handled Laura was in earlier chapters.
Nope. I firmly believe that Brutus is dead as a doornail and only the most egregious of retcons or contrived of plot twists will be able to "fix" this. Though the damage has been done at this point.

Who said anything about Reni?

At most I expect Reni would be the one to discover it. But to fix it? Trace is literally dealing with the possibility he may have discovered a means of reversing death before his mindwipe. Right now it looks like he had set it up so that the mind/spirit/whatever would be transferred into a new body, but that might only be necessary because the old body decayed before Trace figured it out. If Tom's setting up Clovis to be a primary antagonist, it would be an interesting issue to see if he was able and willing (I expect it would take a hell of a lot of convincing - not because of who, but because of the deed itself, as part of what he's been going through for a while is acceptance of death) to resurrect the former right-hand man who got betrayed, because doing so presents the best opportunity to get information (Brutus might be dumb, but you don't have to be smart to get your memories read. And, for that matter, Brutus could be turned into an ally considering his betrayal by Clovis, trusting nature, and knowing Trace and company brought him back). And consider the other issues it might bring up - how would Keith feel to find out that Laura could have been brought back for real if only they'd known that it was possible? Or more immediate an issue, would attempting to do whatever resurrection ritual Trace thought up in his madness be dangerous for him (likely, yes)?

It wouldn't be retcon, or even all that contrived of a plot twist.

rukaisho said:
One dimensional "Evil for the sake of being evil" characters are one of the most trite and boring things in any medium and is just a clear sign of laziness on the writer's part.
Brutus was a far more interesting character compared to his boss (and honestly, most of the characters in this rag) and his death was completely unwarranted.

Or you know, whatever other new nonsense you can think of to whine about this comic given your history lol. You might want to try a blacklist

No, he's just sleeping... right guys? Right?

Well... I was having a good day

rukaisho said:
It's just one of many ludicrous theories floating around on the official Twokinds forums. But I find it to be even more illogical than Clovis killing his most loyal bodyguard to begin with. This page should not have happened. It's just a complete waste of a fun character and a potential interesting arc for an otherwise generic one-note moustache twirling villain.
And I can't see Brutus ever joining the protagonists in the off chance he does get revived. And not just because I feel the group is a little too wolf heavy as it is (Natani, Zen, Sythe). Brutus was the Yang to Clovis' Yin and they were only meant to play off each other.

Yes, it's illogical. Certainly as a story element. From the perspective and knowledge we have, at least.

But think about it in-universe. Even accepting that it's illogical, Clovis isn't exactly a creature of logic. He's done plenty of illogical things - just look at his treatment of Zen and Natani. Or his self-admitted "weakness" for Brutus while he's justifying (to himself) what he's about to do.

And honestly, this whole thing reeks of a ("logical") premeditated cleaning up of "loose ends". Like he's eliminating anyone who knew him (within a certain level) before he got that artifact from the Templar, ally or not. Sure, he takes the one transformed into a cow back, with some difficulty, but a cow can't talk (and Clovis appears to think being turned into a cow is an ironic punishment for him - again, being illogical). The fact Clovis appears to have brought an artifact ring that's done something to Brutus adds to the premeditation aspect. His not bringing his two new bodyguards can be explained by having multiple targets and limited time, but I find it interesting he orders one (over their protest) to keep watch in the hall. He seems extremely confident about their chances, but leaves behind one of his bodyguards as a guard instead of detailing another henchman that he had brought with him (he mentions "the boys" taking the henchman-turned-cow back to the rift (I assume the eponymous "Riftwall" in Adira's tavern), but he couldn't retain one of them to stand guard instead of one of his bodyguards)? I think he didn't want to have what he did in the dungeons witnessed (he can say Brutus was already dead when he found him, when he returns without him).

(And, if Brutus is somehow not dead or doesn't stay dead, and does do a face-heel turn, I'd venture that he'd be a supporting character not directly attached to the main group, or if for some reason he is attached to the main group, there's another separation into A and B groups like before they met up at the mansion. And it would be interesting to see him involved in some capacity if/when the gang goes after Clovis - you say he's Clovis' yang, now Clovis believes he's dead or otherwise incapacitated (creating an unbalanced yin), and he shows up again in a confrontation with Clovis? Feels like the kind of dramatic situation Tom would write.)

Oh Clovis I went from liking you to hating you to liking you again but I should’ve known better the signs were everywhere kinda wish Brutus left with your more attractive pirate sister would’ve been more stomachable than this. I hope natani fire style jutsus you into oblivion.

>NOOOOOOO NOT THE HECKIN PUPPERINO!!!!!

By the way I thoroughly expect my other favorite character rose to get the axe now as well it’s practically written on the wall in bold bloody letters.# so anoyed

iunderstand said:
By the way I thoroughly expect my other favorite character rose to get the axe now as well it’s practically written on the wall in bold bloody letters.# so anoyed

Oh yeah. I can smell twist-villain for miles

So anyone else notice Clovis may have cast 2 spells this page not 1?

Panel 3 the ring is green and the last panel the ring is yellow?

(On closer inspection though it might have just been the spell ending so... IDK. Probably just the spell ending.)

I honestly hope Brutus survives for the simple fact it would create a lot of room for character development.

Like would Brutus be mad or would he just accept it because his boss is smarter than him and likely had a very good reason. Or would things go even further and the attempt at killing Brutus might cause Clovis's men to realize none of them are ever truly safe from him and mutiny.

In addition Clovis just cut the only insurance policy he had should his amulet lose charge or worse become dispelled/destroyed. He's just cornered himself should things go south.

This does make for some fairly interesting reading

rukaisho said:
On top of the numerous plot contrivances and annoying characters which have too much focus in the narrative (*coughNatanicough*), seeing the abysmal treatment of characters such as Rose and Brutus for the sake of "shock value" really is the final nail in the coffin.

Translation: My favorite characters aren't being focused on, so the ones that are are annoying and this means the whole comic sucks, and the author can't write for shit. This type of complaint occurs in every comic fandom.

Natani is a main character. Rose and Brutus are not. They are side-characters. And Brutus has had more side-comics and non-canon stuff than actual canon appearances. If people didn't respond positively to those, he probably wouldn't have even been named in the main comic or have gotten this far.

As for Rose, she's a Keidran. She should be dead from old age by now. Right from the start of the mansion arc, her still being alive was suspicious and was lamp-shaded *in the comic itself.* Now we know why. That's not killing a character off for "shock value", that's part of the story. Until then we hadn't heard from Rose in literal years. Her being reintroduced was nice. It'll be a shame if she ends up permanently dying at the end of this, though.

And before the accusation, I'm no one's sycophant. I've had several complaints about the comic over the years, but I'm not acting super-salty just because my favorite characters happen to be tertiary and aren't being treated like the mains.

yugijak said:

Panel 3 the ring is green and the last panel the ring is yellow?

I think it's a matter of the ring was full of green gas as you can see a puff of green smoke above the ring in the last panel.

drakkenfyre said:
Yeah, people keep repeating this. I KNOW what she said in the comic. I still believe it's a retcon. Tom starts doing Karen/Maddie stuff in the side-comics, it becomes super-popular. So he steers them together in the canon comic, and what do you know? Maddie's now 17 because she "lied" about her age before. And now we don't have an awkward pairing of a 12 and 16-year-old. He didn't go above 17 because Karen's 16. And I'd have to go back through the archives because I'm fairly confident she said she was 12. He also did plenty of side-comics and one-off images of her doing things typical of a child. Especially the Christmas one with her in PJs, sleeping in the arms of her mother.

Not every detail about a story is known beforehand. Tom himself said years ago that he had a general idea of where the story would go, but otherwise was making it up as he went along.

Ergo, retcon.

She said she was 13.

jacked-assassin said:
She said she was 13.

Thanks for checking, I didn't really want to dig through the archives for that one page.

jacked-assassin said:
I think it's a matter of the ring was full of green gas as you can see a puff of green smoke above the ring in the last panel.

I don't think it was smoke so much as the color of the magic he used but your point is still very valid.

Does make me wonder if Brutus would live because Clovis cut it short and he recovers or Rose steps in right before Brutus were to actually die since her restrictions were lifted and she knows everything that goes on in the house.

That said I think this is definitely going to haunt him. Something else he won't be used to

yugijak said:
I don't think it was smoke so much as the color of the magic he used but your point is still very valid.

Does make me wonder if Brutus would live because Clovis cut it short and he recovers or Rose steps in right before Brutus were to actually die since her restrictions were lifted and she knows everything that goes on in the house.

I'm pretty sure Rose isn't doing anything ATM. It seemed fairly clear that as Trace and Flora got closer to the secret room that her spirit or whatever she currently is started to withdraw and become less lucid, to the point where we see her (apparently) back in her body, whispering. Given what he was originally created for, Detritus himself might have control over her as well.

Holy he..wow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkc_UqD48Ng

drakkenfyre said:
Thanks for checking, I didn't really want to dig through the archives for that one page.

I easily found it due to a joke I made about Trace's cooking.
post #2590880

yugijak said:
I don't think it was smoke so much as the color of the magic he used but your point is still very valid.

Does make me wonder if Brutus would live because Clovis cut it short and he recovers or Rose steps in right before Brutus were to actually die since her restrictions were lifted and she knows everything that goes on in the house.

That said I think this is definitely going to haunt him. Something else he won't be used to

I think Rose is incapacitated right now...

jacked-assassin said:
I think it's a matter of the ring was full of green gas as you can see a puff of green smoke above the ring in the last panel.

She said she was 13.

And she lies all the time and was a spy even at that time

theonefreeman98 said:
Geez Tom kills of a popular character for the first time in YEARS and the comments are an absolute salt mine.

ikr? And without the incredibly non-canon Clovis/Brutus side-comic, likely no one would've cared. Seems like lotssss of people are confusing non-canon side-comics with story canon.

theonefreeman98 said:
Geez Tom kills of a popular character for the first time in YEARS and the comments are an absolute salt mine.

The only reason Tom killed him off is because he was popular, that's the issue.

Without reading any of the patreon sketches you'd have no idea who this character is and you wouldn't care, he has no effect on the overarching plot what so ever.

So the only reason Tom would have for killing him is to make the audience suffer without committing to a death that would actually affect the plot.
And that is bad writing, it's shallow and emotionally manipulative.

On top of that, in-universe it makes no sense in the slightest for Clovis to kill him, in fact Clovis has actively fucked himself by doing so.
He killed his most loyal servant, all this does is open up Clovis to every single person who wants to backstab him because it blatantly shows that loyalty will get you nothing, and now he no longer has a bodyguard.

Man, all these Tom drones out in force downvoting any dissenting opinion on Toms writing.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wIQXFDtr5gE/maxresdefault.jpg

dirtydeed said:
Wow, if people really think that Tom's killing off a character just to spite the shippers... I have some pills that reverse vax-caused autism for you. You'd believe me.

And isn't it like that? I have some potion to completly cure your foil cap-caused heavy autism and down syndrome. You'll be gratefull for this.

rukaisho said:
Welp, looks like Tom's sycophants are showing up in droves to downvote any dissenting comments about their lord and savior's masterpiece. So there is no real point in me continuing the discussion. Because God forbid anybody have opposing viewpoints without some salty cancel culture rejects getting butthurt and silencing you for it.

For my own sanity though, I will be blacklisting this comic and not be reading it for the foreseeable future. I've had a love/hate relationship with this story for the longest time. But this chapter is truly the straw that broke the camel's back for me. On top of the numerous plot contrivances and annoying characters which have too much focus in the narrative (*coughNatanicough*), seeing the abysmal treatment of characters such as Rose and Brutus for the sake of "shock value" really is the final nail in the coffin.

So good luck to all those who want to continue this frankly demoralizing journey. But this is where I get off.

took you long enough, if you dont like the comic stop reading, bash it on a blog,dont go to the pics of the comic to bitch about it, we get it you hate the narrative, you hate the creative decisions, we dont care, you will not convince us to hate this comic, just blacklist it and move on, there are at least five other furry webcomics on the net, no one is forcing you to read this one

eranormus said:
took you long enough, if you dont like the comic stop reading, bash it on a blog,dont go to the pics of the comic to bitch about it, we get it you hate the narrative, you hate the creative decisions, we dont care, you will not convince us to hate this comic, just blacklist it and move on, there are at least five other furry webcomics on the net, no one is forcing you to read this one

"If you don't like the sequel trilogy don't watch it"
"If you don't like GoT season 8 don't watch it"

"If you don't like 'x' don't watch/read it" is an utterly ridiculous and brainless argument, if you can even call it that.

NUUUUUUUUUUUUUU! Brutus! ;_; You were such a good boy!

Hope Clovis gets very dead after that. I'd like it to turn out that Brutus is far more resilient than that and somehow lives but I somehow almost feel this will be permanent. Maybe Rose will live though! Eh? EH?

solaceopossum said:
The only reason Tom killed him off is because he was popular, that's the issue.

Adira is super-popular. She's still alive. Reni is super-popular. Still kicking. Keith is GOD-LEVEL popular with lots of people. Still alive. See how that logic works?

On top of that, in-universe it makes no sense in the slightest for Clovis to kill him, in fact Clovis has actively fucked himself by doing so.
He killed his most loyal servant, all this does is open up Clovis to every single person who wants to backstab him because it blatantly shows that loyalty will get you nothing, and now he no longer has a bodyguard.

Who's going to tell? He burned the trapped henchie alive. The other two henchies are elsewhere in the mansion and didn't witness anything, and Brutus is (let's assume) dead as well. They're in a mansion that has active magical defenses, shit's going down, and they probably witnessed that a dragon broke out of the roof. All Clovis has to say is he found no one was alive in the dungeon when he got there. Who's going to know otherwise?

drakkenfyre said:
Who's going to tell? He burned the trapped henchie alive. The other two henchies are elsewhere in the mansion and didn't witness anything, and Brutus is (let's assume) dead as well. They're in a mansion that has active magical defenses, shit's going down, and they probably witnessed that a dragon broke out of the roof. All Clovis has to say is he found no one was alive in the dungeon when he got there. Who's going to know otherwise?

Most of those characters have significant impact on the plot, which would mean that Tom would have to actually THINK about the utter trite he's crapping out if he were to kill them.

You seem to be completely ignoring what I said about him killing Brutus because he's popular and because it manipulates the audience into being sad without having any consequence on the overarching plot.

And Clovis went to "rescue" his henchmen and both of them suspiciously disappeared never to be seen again, a monkey with down syndrome could figure out what happened.

solaceopossum said:
which would mean that Tom would have to actually THINK about the utter trite he's crapping out if he were to kill them.

If you hate Tom's writing so much, why are you still reading his comic? That's on you, dude.

You seem to be completely ignoring what I said about him killing Brutus because he's popular and because it manipulates the audience into being sad without having any consequence on the overarching plot.

I'll repeat my previous question.

And Clovis went to "rescue" his henchmen and both of them suspiciously disappeared never to be seen again, a monkey with down syndrome could figure out what happened.

Did you miss the fact that this is 1. In a literal dungeon, and 2. The mansion has MAGICAL DEFENSES and they knew about it? He comes back, says he found them dead. You think his other henchmen are going to question him?

Also, step 1 of being an effective villain: Never hire people smarter than you. The hired goons don't need to be smart to do what they do.

theonefreeman98 said:
Geez Tom kills of a popular character for the first time in YEARS and the comments are an absolute salt mine.

I bet Tom is so happy that Brutus became popular. He gets a super easy dramatic kill, doesn't have to touch any of the main cast, and sent the fans into a tizzy. All over a ship between an expendable side character and an underdeveloped villain that had no chance of happening in the comic.

lucaflowe said:
All over a ship between an expendable side character and an underdeveloped villain that had no chance of happening in the comic.

Yeah, ITT: People unable to differentiate between canon and non-canon, and are now salty and livid. It's kind of amusing to see some of them make Brutus out like he's some super-important character to help justify their rage, though.

drakkenfyre said:
If you hate Tom's writing so much, why are you still reading his comic? That's on you, dude.

I'll repeat my previous question.

Did you miss the fact that this is 1. In a literal dungeon, and 2. The mansion has MAGICAL DEFENSES and they knew about it? He comes back, says he found them dead. You think his other henchmen are going to question him?

Also, step 1 of being an effective villain: Never hire people smarter than you. The hired goons don't need to be smart to do what they do.

It's obvious that it's not even slightly worth my time trying to argue with you.
You're just going to keep sticking your fingers in your ears and refusing to actually listen to anything that anyone says.

drakkenfyre said:
Yeah, ITT: People unable to differentiate between canon and non-canon, and are now salty and livid. It's kind of amusing to see some of them make Brutus out like he's some super-important character to help justify their rage, though.

Again you make it completely obvious that you entirely miss the point of why people are annoyed by this.

solaceopossum said:
It's obvious that it's not even slightly worth my time trying to argue with you.
You're just going to keep sticking your fingers in your ears and refusing to actually listen to anything that anyone says.

You mean I'm not going to say your opinion is right. Repeating something over and over does not make it right.

solaceopossum said:
Again you make it completely obvious that you entirely miss the point of why people are annoyed by this.

Nope, I know exactly why. People fell in love with the NON-CANON Clovis/Brutus ship because they wanted the former as the UwU big-busted cute girlfriend for the big, dumb but lovable wolf. And now they're angry AF because it appears their husbando got killed off in the actually canon comic.

223rem said:
He didn't reduce Clovis to this level. Clovis has ALWAYS been so lazily designed. Even going back as far as prequel Clovis has no backstory. He just exists to be the antithesis of Zen and Natani and consequently every other protagonist, which sucks because Clovis has so much potential, unused depth and development we'll never get to see.

One possibility is that Clovis is going to fall into the parallel lines of sympathy and revulsion. We're starting to see WHY Clovis is who they are, but we're also seeing them go further and further into evil. Similar to Trace, in a way. We're seeing more and more of why Trace went into full-bore fanaticism, and understanding that, but we're also seeing more and more just HOW bad he was

drakkenfyre said:
You mean I'm not going to say your opinion is right. Repeating something over and over does not make it right.

Nope, I know exactly why. People fell in love with the NON-CANON Clovis/Brutus ship because the former seemed like a UWU big-busted cute girlfriend for the big, dumb but lovable wolf. And now they're angry AF because it appears their husbando got killed off in the actually canon comic.

People are annoyed because it's such an utterly contrived death that serves no purpose other than shock value and makes no sense at all both in universe and in the meta and it just shows how utterly trite Toms writing is.

But sure, keep being an airheaded sycophant and pretending that this Last Jedi style writing is actually good, maybe Tom-senpai will acknowledge your existence if you simp hard enough for him.

223rem said:
He didn't reduce Clovis to this level. Clovis has ALWAYS been so lazily designed. Even going back as far as prequel Clovis has no backstory. He just exists to be the antithesis of Zen and Natani and consequently every other protagonist, which sucks because Clovis has so much potential, unused depth and development we'll never get to see.

One possibility is that Clovis is going to fall into the parallel lines of sympathy and revulsion. We're starting to see WHY Clovis is who they are, but we're also seeing them go further and further into evil. Similar to Trace, in a way. We're seeing more and more of why Trace went into full-bore fanaticism, and understanding that, but we're also seeing more and more just HOW bad he was

clekomuvuk01 said:
1: if he could have foiled Nora's gender-swap magic like that, he would have done so by now.
2: he doesn't know about the crazy shit going on in the manor right now, so even IF that was his plan... Shits about to go south.

Somehow, though, it perfectly fits Clovis' ultimate flaw. Short-sighted myopia. He focuses so intently on his own short-term (or long-term, we can't say yet) plans that he neglects to consider the problems that could happen due to outside factors

solaceopossum said:
People are annoyed because it's such an utterly contrived death that serves no purpose other than shock value and makes no sense at all both in universe and in the meta and it just shows how utterly trite Toms writing is.

Brutus was a nobody. He was literally faceless in his initial appearance. The only reason you feel this way about him is because you're emotionally invested in the non-canon stuff. And you're trying to justify the anger by acting like you're criticizing it for any other reason.

But sure, keep being an airheaded sycophant and pretending that this Last Jedi style writing is actually good, maybe Tom-senpai will acknowledge your existence if you simp hard enough for him.

If you'd bother to read this thread, you'll see that I complained about how the comic's update schedule is so slow these days, and said that I've had several complaints about the comic over the years. If you dig into my comment history you'll see criticism about Tom's baiting & switching, including recently. Yep, I'm a sycophant. Also, I've never once tweeted, emailed, DM'd, or even sent smoke signals to Tom. Nor have I ever posted on the TK forums or his Patreon (of which I'm not subscribed.) Yeah, I'm simping. I'm simping real hard. /s

solaceopossum said:
Even if that's true that doesn't make it any better.
Having a character do something evil purely to show that they're evil and to illicit an emotional response from the reader isn't good writing.
It's incredibly shallow and manipulative writing and it just shows that you've truly ran out of ideas on how to develop your characters.

There was no reason for Clovis to do this, there's no motivation, it makes no logical sense yet he did it because Tom wanted to show that he's evil and to kill off a minor character to establish a false sense of risk to the main cast.

A character who is evil just for the sake of being evil is not a well written character, it's bland, it's uncreative and it's lazy.
He's essentially just reduced Clovis to a cartoon supervillain with a personality as two dimensional as the comic itself.

Anyone who is trying to delude themselves into thinking that this is good writing has obviously gone to the Game of Thrones school of story telling.

One thing to consider though, is that Clovis MAY have a reason that we're not privy to yet. He's mentioned that he's trying to spark a war between Wolves and Foxes, so killing his lieutenant and leaving the body in the GRAND TEMPLAR'S house may be a part of that goal. If there's any villain i'd compare Clovis to, it's David Xanatos from Gargoyles. Enigmatic, manipulative, and often playing the game one step ahead of both heroes and watchers. By killing Brutus, it gives him both an out (Brutus is clearly dear to him, so OBVIOUSLY it wasn't his doing because why would he send his beloved friend), and a way to sway opinion

drakkenfyre said:
If Tom wanted Trace and Flora to get more attention, wouldn't he, you know, put them in more pages rather than BARELY SHOWING UP for the past few months? Recently, outside of the short bit with Rose and Detritus, most pages don't feature them at all. Or they're basically supporting characters for a line or two. If he were salty like you claim, he'd be shoving them in every page.

Tom seemingly uses reactions to the side-comics and non-canon stuff to determine whether or not to work them into the main comic. See shipping Karen and Maddie. Maddie was initially hostile to Karen. But the side stuff paired them often, people really liked it, and then they started getting friendly in the main comic. He even upped Maddie's age from 12 to 17 (still calling that a retcon myself) so, IMO, the age difference between them wouldn't seem weird.

I don't think it's a retcon. I think it's more to establish something. Maddie lies just as easily as she tells the truth. All the other Basitin we've seen are almost completely honest (they may not tell the entire story, but they generally won't LIE outright). Maddie is, first and foremost, a spy. She knows how to play on sympathy, how to deceive, how to spin situations to her advantage, and how to use her appearance to misdirect others. It's more a reveal of how well she can fool others, which may set up a bigger chain of events

133 comments
jesus fuck yall

shinigamiraptor said:
I don't think it's a retcon. I think it's more to establish something. Maddie lies just as easily as she tells the truth. All the other Basitin we've seen are almost completely honest (they may not tell the entire story, but they generally won't LIE outright). Maddie is, first and foremost, a spy. She knows how to play on sympathy, how to deceive, how to spin situations to her advantage, and how to use her appearance to misdirect others. It's more a reveal of how well she can fool others, which may set up a bigger chain of events

The evidence points to it being a retcon. The page where we learn her age was eight years ago. In that time we've had plenty of side-comics and one-offs that show her doing things associated with children, including the one of her mother cradling her at Christmas, while she's in pajamas. I said this earlier, but Tom himself says he makes it up as he goes. He has a rough idea of where the story will go, but everything else is on the fly. I don't think he was playing the long game with her lying about her age eight years prior, especially without it being brought up before now.

It's pretty simple. The Karen/Maddie stuff became popular, he decided to start rolling it into the main comic, and adjusted her age so it wouldn't seem weird.

camkitty said:
And she lies all the time and was a spy even at that time

I never claimed Maddie was honest when she said that.
I was just providing a reference to what was said when it came to her age.
If you want further confusion about Maddie's age you can go to
https://twokinds.keenspot.com/characters/
Where it says her age (as of this post) is ???
Or you can look at this character sheet
post #2177707
Where it says 17 (Often claims to be 13).

solaceopossum said:
You seem to be completely ignoring what I said about him killing Brutus because he's popular and because it manipulates the audience into being sad without having any consequence on the overarching plot.

I would wager the fans' sadness over Brutus is secondary to the main point of the scene: Clovis is a backstabbing hypocritical selfish bastard who deserves what's coming to him. Outside of the Dragon Masquerade, this is Clovis' main appearance in the comic. Brutus, being his "innocent" obedient right-hand wolf (in as much as a member of an assassin's guild who's entrusted with defending the boss can be innocent), was the best way to show just how far Clovis will go for his own gain. Brutus becoming so popular was just icing on the cake.

solaceopossum said:
And Clovis went to "rescue" his henchmen and both of them suspiciously disappeared never to be seen again, a monkey with down syndrome could figure out what happened.

Roan was killed because he failed. The only reason Sam wasn't killed was because Clovis thought being turned into a cow to be milked for the rest of his life was a fate worse than death (something "the boys" think is just hilarious; I don't think they'll be missing Roan one bit). As for Brutus, Clovis said:
"But then I learned you were alive, and... despite my amulet, my first thought was getting you out. It made me realize just how much I came to value you."

Clovis realized he fell in love with Brutus. A "gay" emotional hangup, within a deadly organization within a sexist, bigoted society. Clovis is an egomaniac who hates feeling weak and hates parts of himself that he perceives as weak, and will do illogical and harmful things to stop feeling weak. As much as it pains him now, the sooner he can get Brutus out of the picture, the sooner he can bury that secret and ensure no one can use it against him. What matters more than someone suspecting he killed Brutus is ensuring the emotional baggage Brutus brought being alive can't be used to drag him down from the top. As it is, the emotional baggage Brutus brought by being alive is what drew Clovis to assault the estate personally, which could very well end up being his downfall, proving the point.

Just a note for y'all who think Brutus is only sleeping

To everyone worried or thinking Brutus will appear later alive and well I highly doubt that.
No character that died truly comes back to life save Eschure who was a templar with other templars on his side.
Saria died to posion became a ghost.

Laura: died to internal damage brought back as an illusion and is a ghost in side comics for years.

Alaric: Died by fall damage when fighting Keith never appeared again.

Rose: presumably died of old age before the comic "started" is currently a magic AI who monitors the mansion. Not alive never seen alive by readers outside of side comics.

Tom is pretty consistant in keeping the dead, dead.

Did Brutus have potential? Yeah some but we kind of got the long and short of it in the side comics and one offs plus he isnt a main character or main antagonist so he was doomed to be under developed and unlikely to be Rezd by either A or B team. Unless Natani or Zen suggest it for some reason.

😳😱🥺🤭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

muddypaws said:
😳😱🥺🤭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Basically Clovis: "No momma, he's my dawg, i'll do it" ... oh wait... i sold my mom....

MOOMMMMAAAAAAAA UWWUUUUUUU

i wonder how much time will take before a mod notices this war of a comment section

223rem said:
Just a note for y'all who think Brutus is only sleeping

TBF, that's a fan wiki anyone can edit.

drakkenfyre said:
The evidence points to it being a retcon. The page where we learn her age was eight years ago. In that time we've had plenty of side-comics and one-offs that show her doing things associated with children, including the one of her mother cradling her at Christmas, while she's in pajamas. I said this earlier, but Tom himself says he makes it up as he goes. He has a rough idea of where the story will go, but everything else is on the fly. I don't think he was playing the long game with her lying about her age eight years prior, especially without it being brought up before now.

It's pretty simple. The Karen/Maddie stuff became popular, he decided to start rolling it into the main comic, and adjusted her age so it wouldn't seem weird.

One possibility is that the side comics are from before the main story (not that we can tell, since Maddie's a babyface still). Either that, or Maddie is honestly a bit of a kid deep down

Are we supposed to expect to see ghost brutus in the sketches now?
Brutus gang about to be besties with the Laura gang.

shinigamiraptor said:
One possibility is that the side comics are from before the main story (not that we can tell, since Maddie's a babyface still). Either that, or Maddie is honestly a bit of a kid deep down

I don't understand why so many people seemingly find it hard to accept a retcon. It happens. It happens to countless stories. Some things are literally built on retcons after retcons (WoW for example. Blizzard will retcon things at the drop of a hat for a myriad of reasons.) Or Star Wars, which George Lucas has Swiss-cheesed with retcons.

Things change as a story gets progressively older. TK is 16 years old, that's a hell of a long time for a webcomic to run, only a few get that old. Fewer still that old that are still running. So something eventually getting retconned isn't unusual.

Look at Flora: When the comic started she was much more animalistic, with growls and purrs and so on. Trace even makes comments that he keeps forgetting she's an animal. But that slowly faded, and she doesn't do it anymore. Her stopping that wasn't explicitly mentioned, nothing was said that you could point to and say "there's where it was retconned." It was just a change in her character. Did you notice it? Few did. You might not've even remembered her doing that until I just brought it up. Stories and characters change over time, they're rarely written in stone. Authors rarely have every single plot point of every character mapped out from beginning to end. And (third time I've said this) Tom has said he makes most of the story up as he goes.

And again, we have a very simple progression here: Maddie/Karen (Kaddie? Maren? No, wait...) started becoming *very* popular on his Patreon, and it's leaked over to the main comic. In the same vein, fem!Clovis/Brutus also became very popular, and influenced the main comic. If not for that, this entire bit of him being "rescued", Clovis turning on him, etc. wouldn't have even been a thing. Brutus started out as Nameless Henchmen #2, who progressed to Nameless Prisoner To Be Interrogated. After the Patreon stuff, suddenly Brutus and his backstory gets expanded. In both cases the extremely positive response led to Tom working bits of it into the main comic.

I can accept the explanation about Maddie's age from an in-comic point of view, but out-of-comic I know it was a simple retcon. We learned her age literally half the comic's life ago. And we've seen pictures backing that up since. A sudden recent surprise change isn't going to make me believe Tom planned that all along. Especially not with him admitting he makes it up as he goes.

shinigamiraptor said:
One thing to consider though, is that Clovis MAY have a reason that we're not privy to yet. He's mentioned that he's trying to spark a war between Wolves and Foxes, so killing his lieutenant and leaving the body in the GRAND TEMPLAR'S house may be a part of that goal. If there's any villain i'd compare Clovis to, it's David Xanatos from Gargoyles. Enigmatic, manipulative, and often playing the game one step ahead of both heroes and watchers. By killing Brutus, it gives him both an out (Brutus is clearly dear to him, so OBVIOUSLY it wasn't his doing because why would he send his beloved friend), and a way to sway opinion

Huh

I... Never even considered that. That's actually a really good point depending on who finds the body first.

Leaving it in the Legacy estate is a definite risk but if it DOES work out that way then that is an excellent move

drakkenfyre said:
Things change as a story gets progressively older. TK is 16 years old, that's a hell of a long time for a webcomic to run, only a few get that old. Fewer still that old that are still running. So something eventually getting retconned isn't unusual

Come to think of it IIRC Sabrina Online ran for exactly 20 years before wrapping up. If this keeps up Twokinds might even surpass that.

drakkenfyre said:
I don't understand why so many people seemingly find it hard to accept a retcon.

People have been suspicious of her age since she first mentioned it, given the context in which she said it (being caught as a stowaway), the result of her saying it (getting protected, pampered, and fed by Flora/Trace), and her job (a military spy). It wasn't until the Maddie/Maeve shipping started that allowing people to think she could be 13 was kind of creepy (it was already established that Basitin age like humans), at which point Tom was kind of forced to clarify. Consequently, there's three viable options: Tom was making it up as he went, so never settled on a true age himself until the fanshipping made him pick 17 as the better of two options, or she was always 17 and he just didn't want to keep the charade going any longer (there's enough going on without yet another side plot), or she was meant to be 13 and the fanshipping made him reconsider/retcon it. All three are possible explanations.

drakkenfyre said:
Look at Flora: When the comic started she was much more animalistic, with growls and purrs and so on. Trace even makes comments that he keeps forgetting she's an animal. But that slowly faded, and she doesn't do it anymore. Her stopping that wasn't explicitly mentioned, nothing was said that you could point to and say "there's where it was retconned." It was just a change in her character.

That could be seen as character development. She was a runaway slave, but as she got closer to Trace, her behavior changed to be more human-like to match him. Who knows how much of that was intentional storytelling, or maybe Tom wanted to pull back on the more overt human/animal relationship connotations, or maybe Tom didn't realize himself that he stopped having her do that.

A better example may be the planned love-triangle between Trace/Flora/Keith. In the early chapters, there were clear hints of Keith developing an attraction to Flora, but those hints just stopped and it was never brought up again. At the same time, Zen and Natani were meant to be one-off characters who were going to be killed after they failed to assassinate Trace and the gang, but their story grew as he wrote them, Natani became the new love interest/foil for Keith, and they're where they are now.

watsit said:
At the same time, Zen and Natani were meant to be one-off characters who were going to be killed after they failed to assassinate Trace and the gang, but their story grew as he wrote them, Natani became the new love interest/foil for Keith, and they're where they are now.

wait tom was originally gonna kill the murder doggos?
Thats odd to consider the entire story without them.

223rem said:
Come to think of it IIRC Sabrina Online ran for exactly 20 years before wrapping up. If this keeps up Twokinds might even surpass that.

FreeFall's been running for 22. But it's so sloooow. Only about three months have passed in-comic in 22 frigging years. And that's with 3 strips a week like clock work for all but two days.

Twenty-two. Frigging. Years.

watsit said:
That could be seen as character development. She was a runaway slave, but as she got closer to Trace, her behavior changed to be more human-like to match him. Who knows how much of that was intentional storytelling, or maybe Tom wanted to pull back on the more overt human/animal relationship connotations, or maybe Tom didn't realize himself that he stopped having her do that.

It was just a minor example of an early character trait that eventually went away as the story progressed. But I do like your examples better.

thefoxwolf1 said:

Brutus always had this "too good for this sinful earth" vibe to him in the non-canon material. I was a little suspicious of his inclusion in the main comic.

No. Brutus was a hired killer. Brutus has killed before, and would have killed again. He tried to burn down Edinmire right in front of everyone, in order to spark a war between humans & wolves. An attack that would have killed dozens (including Maeve) if Trace had not been there to intervene

Brutus is dumb, and loyal to a fault, but he's not THAT dumb. Beneath that sweet smile, and that soft fur beats the heart of a hardened killer. He'd snap your neck on a whim from Clovis.

And from what we can tell, he's NOT like Natani & Zen. He wasn't desperate, or on his last leg when he decided to work for Clovis. He was just a big, dumb brute, happy to kill as long as he got his paycheck.

And he found out the hard way; even for all his loyalty to the boss, Clovis would not hesitate to 'remove' him if he became an obstacle.

rasol said:
No. Brutus was a hired killer. Brutus has killed before, and would have killed again. He tried to burn down Edinmire right in front of everyone, in order to spark a war between humans & wolves. An attack that would have killed dozens (including Maeve) if Trace had not been there to intervene

Brutus is dumb, and loyal to a fault, but he's not THAT dumb. Beneath that sweet smile, and that soft fur beats the heart of a hardened killer. He'd snap your neck on a whim from Clovis.

And from what we can tell, he's NOT like Natani & Zen. He wasn't desperate, or on his last leg when he decided to work for Clovis. He was just a big, dumb brute, happy to kill as long as he got his paycheck.

And he found out the hard way; even for all his loyalty to the boss, Clovis would not hesitate to 'remove' him if he became an obstacle.

if i could favorite this comment i would

rasol said:
No. Brutus was a hired killer. Brutus has killed before, and would have killed again. He tried to burn down Edinmire right in front of everyone, in order to spark a war between humans & wolves. An attack that would have killed dozens (including Maeve) if Trace had not been there to intervene

Brutus is dumb, and loyal to a fault, but he's not THAT dumb. Beneath that sweet smile, and that soft fur beats the heart of a hardened killer. He'd snap your neck on a whim from Clovis.

And from what we can tell, he's NOT like Natani & Zen. He wasn't desperate, or on his last leg when he decided to work for Clovis. He was just a big, dumb brute, happy to kill as long as he got his paycheck.

And he found out the hard way; even for all his loyalty to the boss, Clovis would not hesitate to 'remove' him if he became an obstacle.

really sheds a new light on everyones "best-boy uwu fluffeh doggo adorbs fren huggle wuggle"

rasol said:
No. Brutus was a hired killer. Brutus has killed before, and would have killed again. He tried to burn down Edinmire right in front of everyone, in order to spark a war between humans & wolves. An attack that would have killed dozens (including Maeve) if Trace had not been there to intervene

Brutus is dumb, and loyal to a fault, but he's not THAT dumb. Beneath that sweet smile, and that soft fur beats the heart of a hardened killer. He'd snap your neck on a whim from Clovis.

And from what we can tell, he's NOT like Natani & Zen. He wasn't desperate, or on his last leg when he decided to work for Clovis. He was just a big, dumb brute, happy to kill as long as he got his paycheck.

And he found out the hard way; even for all his loyalty to the boss, Clovis would not hesitate to 'remove' him if he became an obstacle.

Yes, in the main comic, Brutus is a cold-hearted killer and committed terrorism for his boss without a second thought.

In the non-canon material, Brutus was portrayed as a lovable doofus who wouldn't hurt a fly (spare that one scene where Brutus is defending Clovis from his would-be assassins).

As you are no doubt aware a fair number of people were primed for his death to hit HARD. I was drawing similarities to the perception of Brutus's innocence and death to the fate that "too good for this sinful earth" characters tend to have.

yugijak said:
Huh

I... Never even considered that. That's actually a really good point depending on who finds the body first.

Leaving it in the Legacy estate is a definite risk but if it DOES work out that way then that is an excellent move

The other possibility is that he WANTS teams Taverndatter/Legacy to know it was him (since Natani and Zen may recognize Brutus as one of Clovis' top dogs). Thus causing a sense of paranoia that he can exploit. Similar to a known criminal leaving a calling card so that someone starts getting paranoid and sparks an incident by jumping at shadows.

223rem said:
really sheds a new light on everyones "best-boy uwu fluffeh doggo adorbs fren huggle wuggle"

Yup, everyone's favorite 'good wolf boy' will run a sword through you with a smile for a pay-check and a pat on the head from Clovis

This gives me kylo killing Han vibes and we all know how that character and his storyline ended up... a burning train wreck that everyone hated.

Doesn’t inspire confidence that Best Boi’s death will ever be worth it.

warwolfkiba said:
This gives me kylo killing Han vibes and we all know how that character and his storyline ended up... a burning train wreck that everyone hated.

Doesn’t inspire confidence that Best Boi’s death will ever be worth it.

To be fair to Tom Brutus was never a "best boi" in universe and presumably has a fair body count under his belt just cause Clovis said "do it". Though unlike Kylo offing Han Clovis didn't do it under the guise of being torn between good and evil and he flat out acknowledged him of being a liability emotionally plus Clovis doesn't have temper tantrums and is unthreatening like Kylo is. His death is to serve as seeing Clovis getting his hybrid teeth kicked in to be cathartic/ to show him he wouldn't spare even his closest people to those that didn't follow the side comics and noncanon sketches.

Please consider one item. Trace Legacy's estate is a massive resurrection machine similar to Victor Von Frankenstein's Castle. So, with the current explosive situation in Trace's estate with Rose as the lynchpin, Bruno might be resurrected by said nightmare device to pursue Clovis? or replace Rose?

Just thinking aloud...

littlebigorc said:
Please consider one item. Trace Legacy's estate is a massive resurrection machine similar to Victor Von Frankenstein's Castle. So, with the current explosive situation in Trace's estate with Rose as the lynchpin, Bruno might be resurrected by said nightmare device to pursue Clovis? or replace Rose?

Just thinking aloud...

No it's not? Rose wasn't brought back to life. Trace bound her to the mansion before she died AFTER using her for experiments; Rose herself says this. She's trapped in some form of half-alive/half-dead state. And Detritus is a flawed, magical copy of Trace. Not a risen thing.

If he could raise the dead he would've done so with his wife. Being unable to he instead came up with Plan B, err Z. Find a similar-looking person, steal their body, and (presumably) magically bind her spirit or at least memories to it.

You know a thought occurs.

Clovis might also have done this to reaffirm himself. If He's developing feelings to the point he'd willingly risk harm/death to quote 'his far more valuable self' what if the other big reason is to nip that in the bud?

Brutus got himself caught. And if it were to happen again what would stop Clovis from risking basically anything and everything to rescue him?

Especially if that were to topple his empire or worse be used against him.

In the world of crooks emotional bonds are a noose that easily hangs you, so he may be trying to cut that end loose before it strings him up.

Think about it. He went out of his way to do this as swiftly and painlessly as possible. Completely unlike him. He was afraid of hurting Brutus. Afraid of hurting someone he is ment to consider a tool.

That kind of adds a different context to the situation. Especially doing it first hand since he's forcing himself to, put politely as possible, rip the bandaid off the wound.

And I think perhaps if Brutus hadn't almost died this never would have happened. Or at least might have happened at a much later time when it would be too late for Clovis to find it even plausible to do.

Makes me wonder if Clovis is cruel on purpose to keep himself emotionally strong enough to do the things he does. So he can reinforce his beliefs.

yugijak said:
You know a thought occurs.

Clovis might also have done this to reaffirm himself. If He's developing feelings to the point he'd willingly risk harm/death to quote 'his far more valuable self' what if the other big reason is to nip that in the bud?

Brutus got himself caught. And if it were to happen again what would stop Clovis from risking basically anything and everything to rescue him?

Especially if that were to topple his empire or worse be used against him.

In the world of crooks emotional bonds are a noose that easily hangs you, so he may be trying to cut that end loose before it strings him up.

Think about it. He went out of his way to do this as swiftly and painlessly as possible. Completely unlike him. He was afraid of hurting Brutus. Afraid of hurting someone he is ment to consider a tool.

That kind of adds a different context to the situation. Especially doing it first hand since he's forcing himself to, put politely as possible, rip the bandaid off the wound.

And I think perhaps if Brutus hadn't almost died this never would have happened. Or at least might have happened at a much later time when it would be too late for Clovis to find it even plausible to do.

Makes me wonder if Clovis is cruel on purpose to keep himself emotionally strong enough to do the things he does. So he can reinforce his beliefs.

Well, yeah. That's literally the entire point here. Clovis is saying Brutus has emotionally compromised him, and he did something crazy (in his mind) by risking his "substantially more valuable self" (his exact words) due to the feelings he developed. Something he "can't afford." So he's removing the temptation to ever do that again.

drakkenfyre said:
Well, yeah. That's literally the entire point here. Clovis is saying Brutus has emotionally compromised him, and he did something crazy (in his mind) by risking his "substantially more valuable self" (his exact words) due to the feelings he developed. Something he "can't afford." So he's removing the temptation to ever do that again.

Yeah... I'm just curious if he's explaining it to Brutus or to himself still.

And I'm wondering if it's because he CAN'T let those things happen not just because he doesn't want them to.

I still wonder if that inability to hurt him causes immediate or delayed feedbacm

yugijak said:
Yeah... I'm just curious if he's explaining it to Brutus or to himself still.

And I'm wondering if it's because he CAN'T let those things happen not just because he doesn't want them to.

I still wonder if that inability to hurt him causes immediate or delayed feedbacm

He's an incredibly self-centered, egotistical evil bastard. He cares nothing for anyone but himself. His henchmen are tools to accomplish his tasks, and are 100% disposable.

He's presumably gone almost his whole life like this, so developing feelings for one of his disposable tools probably shook him to his core. In his mind how could he, the most important person in the world, give a single shit about a nobody far below his own self-assigned value? Even worse, cares enough to risk his own life to retrieve him, AND value Brutus' safety over the amulet this entire charade was payment of? The amulet that (we can infer) allowed him to regain his normal body? He's valuing Brutus over his own self, over regaining his own body, and as self-centered and egotistical as he is he cannot, will not allow himself to do that.

So Brutus had to be removed.

drakkenfyre said:
He's an incredibly self-centered, egotistical evil bastard. He cares nothing for anyone but himself. His henchmen are tools to accomplish his tasks, and are 100% disposable.

He's presumably gone almost his whole life like this, so developing feelings for one of his disposable tools probably shook him to his core. In his mind how could he, the most important person in the world, give a single shit about a nobody far below his own self-assigned value? Even worse, cares enough to risk his own life to retrieve him, AND value Brutus' safety over the amulet this entire charade was payment of? The amulet that (we can infer) allowed him to regain his normal body? He's valuing Brutus over his own self, over regaining his own body, and as self-centered and egotistical as he is he cannot, will not allow himself to do that.

So Brutus had to be removed.

Very much so

I'm interested to see if he develops regret over it. If it haunts him or if the rest of his crew start feeling insecure about leaving him at the helm.

After all if Brutus isn't safe from him who is.

Clovis I think is turning into one of if not THE most interesting character. Possibly a foil to Natani.

Natani was desperate to hold their identity but through circumstance and positive support has been opening up.

Clovis is on the other hand doubling or even tripling down on their beliefs and way of living.

Next page should be very interesting.

yugijak said:
Very much so

I'm interested to see if he develops regret over it. If it haunts him or if the rest of his crew starts feeling insecure about leaving him at the helm.

After all, if Brutus isn't safe from him who is.

Clovis I think is turning into one of if not THE most interesting character. Possibly a foil to Natani.

Natani was desperate to hold their identity but through circumstance and positive support has been opening up.

Clovis is on the other hand doubling or even tripling down on their beliefs and way of living.

The next page should be very interesting.

There is also a small plausibility Clovis is being set up to be the lesser of 2 evils if he faces off against Detritus.

jacked-assassin said:
There is also a small plausibility Clovis is being set up to be the lesser of 2 evils if he faces off against Detritus.

Yeah I actually hadn't thought of that. Its just ever so slightly possible that maybe by some marginal fraction of a percent of a chance Clovis might end up having to team up (probably temporarily) with team legacy in order to face Detritus who at this current moment seems to be the bigger bad guy. But then again maybe not because Clovis is a bigger villain in the long-term with trying to start a race war whereas Detritus seems to just be a short-term villain occupying Trace's house. Its always possible and maybe enough fans could combine autism to meme the story in that direction.

223rem said:
Yeah, I actually hadn't thought of that. It's just ever so slightly possible that maybe by some marginal fraction of a percent of a chance Clovis might end up having to team up (probably temporarily) with team legacy in order to face Detritus who at this current moment seems to be the bigger bad guy. But then again maybe not because Clovis is a bigger villain in the long-term with trying to start a race war whereas Detritus seems to just be a short-term villain occupying Trace's house. It's always possible and maybe enough fans could combine autism to meme the story in that direction.

I don't expect Clovis to team up with the main cast in any shape or form. But in the grand scheme of things, Clovis is a pawn for Brahn.

jacked-assassin said:
I don't expect Clovis to team up with the main cast in any shape or form. But in the grand scheme of things, Clovis is a pawn for Brahn.

And THAT leads me to believe the amulet is booby trapped.

I mean I thought the amulet might fail/disappear/etc but being reminded about that means it could happen as part of Brahn's plan

Hell maybe the amulet is subtly messing with Clovis's decision making too

yugijak said:
And THAT leads me to believe the amulet is booby-trapped.

I mean I thought the amulet might fail/disappear/etc but being reminded about that means it could happen as part of Brahn's plan

Hell maybe the amulet is subtly messing with Clovis's decision making too

I don't know if it's messing with Clovis's decision making, but Clovis in the main comic and The Dragon's Masquerade comes off as a greedy short term thinker.

jacked-assassin said:
I don't know if it's messing with Clovis's decision making, but Clovis in the main comic and The Dragon's Masquerade comes off as a greedy short term thinker.

Greedy? Yes.

Short term? Might be the context or my overthinking but not as certain on that one.

I mean his open backhanded comment about dealing with tits on the previous page was kind of unusual for him.

He's also handling this himself instead of say hiring someone to do it for him.

Then again not only is it the Legacy estate but doing it himself might actually have been a move by Brahn to get rid of HIM.

I'm actually trying to remember how Clovis learned Brutus was still alive when the only ones who again IIRC could have told him were trapped in the estate as a chicken and a cow.

Or could it have been that other fox?

drakkenfyre said:
No it's not? Rose wasn't brought back to life. Trace bound her to the mansion before she died AFTER using her for experiments; Rose herself says this. She's trapped in some form of half-alive/half-dead state. And Detritus is a flawed, magical copy of Trace. Not a risen thing.

If he could raise the dead he would've done so with his wife. Being unable to he instead came up with Plan B, err Z. Find a similar-looking person, steal their body, and (presumably) magically bind her spirit or at least memories to it.

Thing is, if he can re-bind the soul or whatever, then combined with magical healing there's no reason (that I can think of) he can't re-bind it to the same body. The issue in Saria's case, I think, is that it took him too long to discover how. Her body has already decayed far, far beyond repair. So he needed a fresh body.

Brutus' body, on the other hand, is fresh. For that matter, he appears to have been killed by magical means, so there's possibly not even any physical damage that needs repair before his soul or whatever is re-bound to it.

Of course, if it's a memory implant... then I got nothing.

(I'm still concerned about what this ritual, if ever performed, would to to Trace. He wasn't exactly sane when he came up with it and he's already suffering effects from the few times he's (willingly or not) used dark magic, which is almost certainly involved because why wouldn't it be?)

drakkenfyre said:
He's an incredibly self-centered, egotistical evil bastard. He cares nothing for anyone but himself. His henchmen are tools to accomplish his tasks, and are 100% disposable.

He's presumably gone almost his whole life like this, so developing feelings for one of his disposable tools probably shook him to his core. In his mind how could he, the most important person in the world, give a single shit about a nobody far below his own self-assigned value? Even worse, cares enough to risk his own life to retrieve him, AND value Brutus' safety over the amulet this entire charade was payment of? The amulet that (we can infer) allowed him to regain his normal body? He's valuing Brutus over his own self, over regaining his own body, and as self-centered and egotistical as he is he cannot, will not allow himself to do that.

So Brutus had to be removed.

This. 100% this. A lot of people are claiming that Clovis' murder of Brutus is 'bad writing', when actually, it makes him a lot more interesting than being just some 'rich prick mob boss'

Clovis never planned to rescue Brutus. He had a thought. A single passing thought about risking his own neck for a lowly henchman. And that shook him to his core. It made him question everything about himself, and how he has built himself. That was unacceptable.

So he went to the mansion to deal with the issue, personally. If for no other reason, then to make certain, with his own eyes that this weakness had been removed PERMANENTLY.

Say what you will, but Clovis has conviction. His world view might be twisted, but he holds true to himself. And to be honest, I think if you actually saw how the gears turn in his head, you would see Clovis is a very broken individual. He seeks power to protect himself from a world that doesn't accept him for who he is.

Remember, wolves & foxes HATE each other. So he can't fit into either of their worlds. And as a keidran, he certainly wont fit into the human world either. And other keidran seem to have no love for others who are not of their kind. In his mind, he cant afford to have weaknesses like friends.

And truth be told? He might be right about that. The twokinds world is pretty broken. Full of hate, and racial prejudice.

yugijak said:
Greedy? Yes.

Short term? Might be the context or my overthinking but not as certain on that one.

I mean his open backhanded comment about dealing with tits on the previous page was kind of unusual for him.

He's also handling this himself instead of say hiring someone to do it for him.

Then again not only is it the Legacy estate but doing it himself might actually have been a move by Brahn to get rid of HIM.

I'm actually trying to remember how Clovis learned Brutus was still alive when the only ones who again IIRC could have told him were trapped in the estate as a chicken and a cow.

Or could it have been that other fox?

His open backhanded comment on breasts might've been a sign that he knew he was going to kill them.

I think the town guards had to file a report with who was arrested and where they were put.

That or a certain black cat.

Clovis is also probably the only one of his men who could've broken Trace's security magic to get in.

Brahn sending Clovis to Trace's estate seems extremely risky with what Clovis knows.

That other Fox being Carver?

jacked-assassin said:
His open backhanded comment on breasts might've been a sign that he knew he was going to kill them.

I think the town guards had to file a report with who was arrested and where they were put.

That or a certain black cat.

Clovis is also probably the only one of his men who could've broken Trace's security magic to get in.

Brahn sending Clovis to Trace's estate seems extremely risky with what Clovis knows.

That other Fox being Carver?

Risky yes

However:

This could cause Trace to be expelled from the town. If Clovis and Trace fight the resulting fallout could be enough to allow him to imprison Trace for disturbing the peace.

If possible that amulet could actually let Clovis have a clean shot at Trace depending on how much it can nullify.

If Clovis DOES engage Trace there is a significant non zero chance of him dying, covering up a loose end.

Clovis going here might be to Brahn what happened to Brutus but less direct.

As a theory.

And yes Carver

rasol said:
This. 100% this. A lot of people are claiming that Clovis' murder of Brutus is 'bad writing', when actually, it makes him a lot more interesting than being just some 'rich prick mob boss'

Clovis never planned to rescue Brutus. He had a thought. A single passing thought about risking his own neck for a lowly henchman. And that shook him to his core. It made him question everything about himself, and how he has built himself. That was unacceptable.

So he went to the mansion to deal with the issue, personally. If for no other reason, then to make certain, with his own eyes that this weakness had been removed PERMANENTLY.

Say what you will, but Clovis has conviction. His world view might be twisted, but he holds true to himself. And to be honest, I think if you actually saw how the gears turn in his head, you would see Clovis is a very broken individual. He seeks power to protect himself from a world that doesn't accept him for who he is.

Remember, wolves & foxes HATE each other. So he can't fit into either of their worlds. And as a keidran, he certainly wont fit into the human world either. And other keidran seem to have no love for others who are not of their kind. In his mind, he cant afford to have weaknesses like friends.

And truth be told? He might be right about that. The twokinds world is pretty broken. Full of hate, and racial prejudice.

Someone who gets it.

Characters do not die due to bad writing. If anything it can preserve it for good and be for the better foe them.

Characters CAN be ruined by bad writing. Which is typically a process of making unfounded often random decisions with no sort of decent backing or logic behind it. If the logic is sound it's well written, the more solid the better.

The catch being of course that said logic is so wildly dynamic you can't set it in stone. The only true foundation is a consistent cause to effect.

Effect A leads to cause B leads to effect C ad nauseum.

So as an aside... Can we get a new behind the scenes sketch of Brutus comforting Clovis for having to go through with this for the page?

jacked-assassin said:
I don't expect Clovis to team up with the main cast in any shape or form. But in the grand scheme of things, Clovis is a pawn for Brahn.

i completely forgot about Brahn and my memory was filled with Clovis. That said i never realized even Clovis has a boss. Or is he a mere associate?

223rem said:
I completely forgot about Brahn and my memory was filled with Clovis. That said I never realized even Clovis has a boss. Or is he a mere associate?

Just my head cannon talking, but I think Clovis would consider Brahn an associate while Brahn would consider Clovis a hired thug.

I also try to remind myself Sythe was part of an attack on a human village before Clovis and Brutus were.

jacked-assassin said:
Just my head cannon talking, but I think Clovis would consider Brahn an associate while Brahn would consider Clovis a hired thug.

I also try to remind myself Sythe was part of an attack on a human village before Clovis and Brutus were.

Another possibility is that Clovis and Brahn are both playing games of chess against each other, each setting the other up to get screwed. Brahn may have kill-switches set up on the amulet (either literal or figurative), and Clovis could use Brutus and the others as a way to scapegoat both Trace and Brahn by associating (Brutus and Carver, his "dear associates" were "senselessly killed" by humans, and specifically, Templars). Notice how Clovis already suspects Brahn will double-cross him...

Just thinking..., with Rose now fully unrestricted.., could she revive Brutus?

muddypaws said:
Just thinking..., with Rose now fully unrestricted.., could she revive Brutus?

How? People in this thread talking about resurrecting him are missing that if resurrection were possible, Trace would've used it to bring Saria back, and none of this would be going down.

drakkenfyre said:
How? People in this thread talking about resurrecting him are missing that if resurrection were possible, Trace would've used it to bring Saria back, and none of this would be going down.

It's leaning on the potential that Brutus is only MOSTLY dead not ALL dead

Courtesy of the Princess Bride

The problem with Brutus living is Brutus is Clovis's only real ally. And I doubt Brutus would hate Clovis if Brutus were still alive.

If Clovis is harmed or killed as a female and it isn't some other villain or Natani then there is a plausibility that there will be this backlash about transphobia.

If Clovis is harmed or killed as a male then there wasn't much reason for him to be cursed by Nora.

If Clovis only loses the magic that keeps him male and his henchmen find out he loses his way of living without losing his life.

And IF Brutus is alive he's probably going to care too much about Miss Clovis to see her hurt.

Sadly if Brutus lives it would be really cowardly as a writer. Have some teeth if killing someone off. Expecially if they are beloved but otherwise not that important. Remember Brutus only started because Tom accidentally drew the captured wolf from the attack too cute :P

camkitty said:
Sadly is Brutus lives it would be really cowardly as a writer. Have some teeth if killing someone off. Especially if they are beloved but otherwise not that important. Remember Brutus only started because Tom accidentally drew the captured wolf from the attack too cute :P

post #1048476

mortox said:
What I predict is: that he just send Brutus to sleep for him to be exploded with the mansion but then he gets roflstomped and can't blow up the mansion and Brutus is Fine.

No. He's dead. Check the page title. "Poisonous" Friendship.

jacked-assassin said:
post #1048476

HAHAHA exactly

yugijak said:
It's leaning on the potential that Brutus is only MOSTLY dead not ALL dead

Courtesy of the Princess Bride

You don't resurrect non-dead people. Resurrection implies being brought back to life. And it's been firmly established that not even Trace himself, with all of his power in his former life, had that ability. It literally drove him mad trying to do it, and this arc is about his Plan B (C, D, Z?) now coming back to bite him and everyone else.

So if Brutus is actually dead, he's gone. He'll be relegated to non-canon side comics like Laura.

drakkenfyre said:
You don't resurrect non-dead people. Resurrection implies being brought back to life. And it's been firmly established that not even Trace himself, with all of his power in his former life, had that ability. It literally drove him mad trying to do it, and this arc is about his Plan B (C, D, Z?) now coming back to bite him and everyone else.

So if Brutus is actually dead, he's gone. He'll be relegated to non-canon side comics like Laura.

I was making a point on the idea he's not fully dead and that's what a lot of individuals are hoping for.

You can be resurrected from say a death coma or similar near death state.

But on the flip side this could also double as a point that in Twokinds dead is dead and dealing with that is an issue for everyone

drakkenfyre said:
You don't resurrect non-dead people. Resurrection implies being brought back to life. And it's been firmly established that not even Trace himself, with all of his power in his former life, had that ability. It literally drove him mad trying to do it, and this arc is about his Plan B (C, D, Z?) now coming back to bite him and everyone else.

So if Brutus is actually dead, he's gone. He'll be relegated to non-canon side comics like Laura.

One possibility is that he's not dead-dead, and merely catatonic or somehow sealed away (think something like sealing his memories/essence away, so "Brutus" is dead, but there's still something there). It might establish firmly that for all his capability for malice and cruelties, there is some part of Clovis that is capable of love and mercy. Think a villain like Xanatos occasionally showing streaks of love for his family or his sense of fair play

Anyone else remember that Zen used a "sleeping poison" on Karen
and Maren? Perhaps Clovis used the same thing. Only time will tell.

Just a side note i felt worth adding here, it seems quite fitting that Tom would choose the name Clovis for this particular character. The real Clovis, a Frankish king who ruled from 481 to 511 CE, was infamous for using treachery and murdering even his own family in order to cement his own power and to ensure the Frankish kingdom would pass only to his four sons.
The name is...fitting.

223rem said:
Just a side note i felt worth adding here, it seems quite fitting that Tom would choose the name Clovis for this particular character. The real Clovis, a Frankish king who ruled from 481 to 511 CE, was infamous for using treachery and murdering even his own family in order to cement his own power and to ensure the Frankish kingdom would pass only to his four sons.
The name is...fitting.

And Brutus doesn’t get to stab Caesar either.

Stage One: Denial

Clovis really cared for Brutus...
That's why he killed him.

(edit) It's been a year... This still hurts

XD SolaceOpossum and Rukaisho were definetly the stars of this crazy comment section.

poor, sweet, baby Brutus... rest in peace...