Comic for Monday, Apr 2, 2018
Commentary
Posted April 2, 2018 at 1:00 am
That moment when an NPC knows your past choices.
I refer to this page as “Ghosts Of Comic Criticism Past”, as Magus is basically unleashing a slew of actual criticisms of the first Sister story arc at Elliot.
I feel I made a mistake in the previous comic in that I presented information regarding Magus’s world and how they perceive gender in such a way that it could be interpreted that Magus simply wanted to make Ellen male because “she’s a fighter, so I’m going to transform her based on how my world does things.”
That is not the case.
Magus’s culture does have an issue with gender in that it pressures people to assume the sex “appropriate” for what sort of work they want to do. It’s enough of the norm there that Magus kept what we consider a feminine name even after changing. Not only is it not considered unusual, it can be seen as a mark of pride in his world, emphasizing and owning the choices they’ve made (be it choosing to be male or female for whatever reasons).
But that’s not Magus’s motivation here. He sees Ellen as a man who was unreasonably forced to become and stay a woman. He feels a mix of anger and guilt about it, he’s been stuck in a ghost-like state for ages, he’s had to do all sorts of things he feels bad about to get a body again, he just killed the closest thing he’s had to a friend for months, he’s looking at someone he thinks he would be helping while desperately feeling the need to atone for various actions, and the current voice of reason in the room is someone Magus believes complicit in forcing Ellen to remain female.
Dude needs a vacation in the worst kind of way before he’ll be thinking even remotely straight about something like this.
Of course, now that I’ve brought up past criticisms, I need to point out that I doubt anyone who made those criticisms would agree with Magus’s solution. He’s reached a conclusion that I suspect would anger a lot of those same people. This isn’t some weird allegory for “those darn people who had opinions over a decade ago.”
I feel I should also note that the gender politics of Magus's world isn't considered an allegory for anything, either. It's a result of me thinking "hey, what's a potential consequence of a world in which magic is plentiful, and this sort of permanent transformation is ridiculously easy to do? OOH, there's one!"
tl;dr - Magus thinks he's atoning for a sin and correcting an injustice. He is mistaken about that, but that's his perspective of this situation.
