I am in a network-restricted location (one that also involves many large men with guns determining if I make it past the front gate or not), so this (and, for that matter, other posts this week probably) will be brief.

There’s a pair of webcomics coming up to ending points, and it’s fascinating to see both threads of story (sometimes years in the making) come together, hinting at the conclusion. For starters, A Girl And Her Fed has been telling a complex story about individual and societal freedom for a decade or so, with a five-year jump between Act One and Act Two. Act Two wrapped up its penultimate chapter today, with all the pieces in place for a resolution of the long-running Big Bad story¹. A’course, chapters at AGAHF run 100-200 strips, so we’re a good ways from the wrap up.

What makes the progression especially interesting is creator KB Spangler has been filling the five-year story gap between Acts One and Two with a two series of novels (five so far, sixth coming soon), each written from the POV of a major character. The strip and the books are independent, but there are definite connections; there’s a fairly major spoiler about what happens to a pair of characters in the novels in a strip, for instance. Telling a story in multiple directions, from multiple starting and stopping points, in multiple media is a neat trick and it’s going to be fun to watch Spangler pull it all off.

At the same time, KC Green’s He Is A Good Boy is hurtling towards a conclusion. It started out as a seemingly unrelated series of weird tales about an acorn named Crange, and sometimes a grasshopper named Emerson, but each of them seemed to die a bunch and then just continue with their adventures. Cartoon logic, in other words — the end of a story resets reality and starts over again.

But there were … things that hinted that Crange was part of something bigger. Characters disappearing and returning, talking about things that Crange didn’t know (and, frankly, didn’t give any fucks about). Circles and spirals and the literal God and The Devil came and went, and then it all blew up:

Green hadn’t just been goofing with us. There are many Cranges (Crange?) and Emersons on parallel realities, and a mechanism for gathering them togther. Now most of the Crange and most of the Emersons are dead. The society that the Emersons have built are somehow dependent on the Crange, almost as a harvestable resource. And there’s the oldest Emerson and the First Crange, a swollen god that the Emersons have built their world around. It’s Green, so it’ll be wonderfully weird (and weirdly wonderful) as it concludes, and the actual ending will absolutely come out of left field. There’s 280 pages of sometimes slow burning story (and sometimes wildly conflagrating firestorm) to get caught up on so that the big finish² makes sense. Get readin’.

Spam of the day:

SJ Ren Faire- Aug 4-5 & Folsom Ren Faire- Sept 2018 – Joi the fun

I’m not sure why I’m getting renfair invites from mid- to northern California. Anybody want to joi some fun?

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¹ Big Bad in Act One was an irritation, then an antagonist, and ultimately revealed as a mastermind planner. She escaped. She’s burned her allies but has a big trump card (a proverbial ticking bomb in her back pocket) and is on the run but not out.

² Green prefers denouement.