And that’s why Grace and Mandy are roommates in Dumbing of Age.
A lot of characters are going to start dying very, very soon, and very few will have your attention more than Mandy and Grace here do. I’m not sure what caused me to pause and give them this much panel time after them rating as essentially nobodies for a few years. Before this, what did we know about them? Vanishingly little. And now, using the most horrific means, we know too much.
Scenes like this are a large part of why I don’t strive to kill characters anymore, even beyond the “dude you write a college comic strip” element. I don’t have the heart or the stomach for it. At some point in your life, your brain flips from “I’m gonna murder everyone off at the end like it’s Evangelion” to “aww jeez these are people with families.”
UPDATE: oh WAIT
That’s right, I was a little fundie kid still at the time of this. Faltering, but all the trappings were still there bouncing around in my brain. Remember, I was a little baby Joyce. And so here I am, slowly coming out of my conservative upbringing, taking time to make sure that it was understood that the relationship between these two women was meaningful and real. It was real love. I was making a statement to myself (and the readership). By…. fridging them, but, uh, baby steps.
oof
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because you can’t top George R. R. Martin’s body count
Dear Cheese, ain’t that the truth! I think shortly after he began writing a Song of Fire & Ice, he suddenly believed that Tony Stark did something just awful to the him. Then, when he realized he had created a House Stark for his book, he decided they would ALL pay for the imagined insult against him.
This is my last Serenade~
You went from Victory Gundam Tomino to Brain Powerd Tomino.
My brain went to Sailor Moon myself. Specifically “You’re warm, Michiru”
I wonder if the number of characters who die in the coming strips will top the number J.K. Rowling killed off in the last couple Harry Potter books.
It’s gonna be… a lot, for sure. I think the proportions may end up close, actually.
Rest in peace, Grace and Mandy.
I really liked them.
One might argue that it’s only true fridging when you suddenly kill off exactly one supporting character to affect the protagonists, and so this bloody invasion doesn’t count.
And they’re hardly the first people in these comics to make statements with their deaths.
Hi remember how I said back at Dina’s death that it’s hard to get tears from me these days?
Congratulations.