So I found Wilde Life through the webcomics thread here, and fell totally in love with it - I backed the Kickstarter and can't wait to get my filthy little hands on it. Spoiler: Spoilers And today's page has a lot of people sort of coming to the realization that Cliff has been fairly badly abused. Someone actually linked to their great post on it. And my heart breaks for him. But also - my heart has been breaking for him since he showed up, because being part of Kintsugi and the things that drove me to become a member of Kintsugi mean that I tend to be . . . alert to this kind of thing. Which I figure is also true for most of the people here. Which makes me feel weird about participating in the discussion there? Because I'd thought it was . . . obvious enough to not deserve a mention. Poor Cliff. My heart is extra breaking for him right now because Oscar is basically his only friend and his provides his only safe space and Cliff just killed someone to save him and now Oscar doesn't want to be alone with him. Non-spoiler discussion: Do you also cry about Cliff a lot? Did you back the Kickstarter and if so are you looking forward to the comics? Fic recs?
I didn't see the kickstarter until it was over because I'm clueless and I am pining horribly. Seriously, one of the best comics out there right now. Spoiler Hooo boy. My feelings about Cliff are... complicated. Because yeah, I didn't put together the history of abuse until just now. I figured he had Complicated Things going down. You just don't get that kind of hyper-aggressive posturing unless you're desperately afraid that your autonomy and space will be violated if you're not constantly defending it. But I hadn't pieced together the exact thing. But... gonna be honest, I find Cliff really comforting. Because he's still fighting. He's still angry. He hasn't given up and learned to be helpless. So my reaction to that last page was baby. <33 Yes, assert those boundaries, make the rage face. The one I really cry over is Oscar. Because there is something very wrong in that man's life. And I think Wilde Life is too well-written to have him be so accepting just as an author stand-in. But like, we all know that I'm 80% pure rage by volume, so I may be an outlier adn should not be counted.
I will lend you the paperback to read in that form if you want? Spoiler I mostly just want to, like, carefully pass him a blanket and make him lots of hot chocolate from scratch? But yeah, it's so great that he can still be angry about what's going on, that he still has that kind of agency?
@Zin YES JOIN JOIN JOIN TELL US OF YOUR FEELS I love the Thunder Children too. ._. And the roses. Just... the small and dark and dangerous is so my jam.
YESSS. I did some reread of the early stuff today, and got myself upset about the fact that Oscar basically decides to adopt Clifford when his mom is yelling at him. And the part where Oscar is running so hard from his problems that he's amazingly chill with all the weird in Podunk. Any thoughts about whether the demons he's running from are literal? Like, he's weirded out by stuff, but it's new stuff, and his reaction to Sylvia is to do science.
By the by, I asked on Kickstarter and the author will be selling the books on the webpage in about a month, sooo... *-*
M-W-F I think? I'm not sure. At least three times a week! I just get it in my feed reader. I'm so glad you got into it! I love it so much.
It's basically the holy grail like that. Spoiler: Sylvia I'm really curious about what's happening with Sylvia right now - I really like that she didn't follow through on the 'you can never leave' thing, but she also seems like she's coming loose at the seams? Like, I'm not sure if it's dead-so-long-humanity-fading thing, because the timing on that seems eh, but the one alternative I can think of - that being around the supernatural and being believed in in an unprecedented way is impacting her relationship with reality - seems like it could only end sadly and idk how to feel about that.
Spoiler: high pitched screaming their FACES on page 264. And the light on Cliff and how he's like 'i dare you to lie to me' and my heart is just breaking
