Comic for Friday, April 22, 2016

[Siergiejew]

Alt Text: "Self Reflection"
Double Natani all the way across the mindscape.


That's what I was waiting for. More Natani. And Even more Natani.

But seriously, older one meets younger? Your mind is more messed up than i thought, Nat

[TinyVoices]

(minus sleeping Natani of course)

Unconscious Natani finding an unconscious Natani....

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyphU82XQ7Q[/video]

[Napoleon]

Does this mean Natani is her own spirit animal?

[Bellhead]

"Damn. I end up stacked when I'm older. What a pain." -Best line ever. Of all time. This is making me laugh SO HARD right now! XD

But, in all seriousness... Does this mean that the "real" Natani, the original female, was just trapped in this mindscape this whole time? Could that be why Nat's been acting more and more feminine in recent comic months? The passive feelings of her past self?

Also, young Natani has a much more.. feminine stance than old Natani ever did. She seems more proud of what she is.

[ReBob]

Well, I have no idea what to say about this. Is this younger Natani his self from when the incident occurred?

This might throw some of the theories into disarray. At least cause some changes.

[Ketzal]

Oh neat, I was wondering what the self-image in her mind would be. Kinda curious why they have different eye colors though...

[Niara]

Looks to be a reflection of Nat's self before the shattering.

My original guess was on "Female image Nat meets male image Nat, and they have to have a serious discussion about 'how' or 'which' Nat wakes up"...

This feels at least similar to that concept, in a few ways...

Without Zen's presence holding everything mind-and-soul together more cohesively, all that's left is all Nat - and it's still fractured and broken, but apparently hanging together on its own. I suspect that this is the point at which Natani needs to have an honest back and forth with him- and herself, and decide who they are, who they want to be, how they want to be, and just as importantly, why they want to be those ways... before he or she can wake up.


Edit: Six-fingered young-Nat. Cannot unsee.

[MuonNeutrino]

Well. THAT'S a thing. I can safely say, whatever I was expecting, it wasn't this.

Side impression - I like all the little details about young!Natani compared to present!Natani. Aside from the obvious one commented on, young!Nat is also several inches shorter, much less muscular, has slightly lighter-colored hair on top of it being cut shorter, and also isn't currently sporting the beginnings of a winter coat. And, of course, two brown eyes compared to two grey ones. And there's... something... else about the face, hard to put my hands on it but young!Nat *looks* younger in some undefinable way. I just love the little details Tom puts into his characters.

Anyway, that aside, holy crap, so much new speculation fuel here. Obviously, young!Nat being here demands explanation, and there are two obvious ways I could see it going at first glance.

One, young!Nat is 'dead', in the sense that she (? Can we call young!Nat 'she'? I think I'm going to do that for the purposes of this post, anyway.) represents the parts of Natani's soul that were destroyed. In this case she's some fraction of a person, and Natani is somehow breaching the walls of the afterlife and talking to a ghost here. This could possibly be suggested by young!Nat apparently not being already familiar with what present!Nat looks like.

Or two, young!Nat still represents those 'destroyed' parts of Natani's soul, but her presence here means that those parts weren't actually *destroyed*, just... misplaced in some fashion. In that case, does it mean that Natani still *does* have a female identity buried somewhere deep down? And if so, what would it mean to have *both* male and female gender identities at the same time? (As I am assuming Natani's statement about gaining a copy of Zen's male gender identity is still applicable.) If there were still those bits down there, perhaps over the years they've healed back together, but havent been able to actually manifest themselves as more than hints due to the link? (Or, perhaps due to the link *and* the fact that their places in Nat's psyche had been taken? What would it mean to have two different, equally valid fragments of a soul fighting for a spot?)

Or, I suppose, neither, and young!Nat is just a figment of present!Nat's imagination, and perhaps represents Natani trying to come to terms with his own seemingly 'feminine' impulses (or at least that's how he'd label them). I'm not sure why he'd do that by constructing a mental image of his own younger self, though, unless because that's the last time he thinks of himself as having been female.

Or, for a bit darker of an interpretation, young!Nat is the 'original' Natani *in her entirety*, and the soul fusion actually *created a new person* out of copied pieces of both Nat's and Zen's souls while suppressing the original. She's been in there the whole time, slowly healing, and now that the link is gone she's able to come to the surface again? I don't think this would fly with the usual tone of the comic, but it's a thought that occurred to me, anyway.

Gaaaa. So many ways this could go. I hope Tom doesn't resolve it by having Natani somehow just regain a female gender identity, though; that would feel like a bit of a cop-out to me, a bit of an unsatisfying way to resolve such a central conflict of his character. We'll just have to see...

(Also, on another aside related to young!Nat's appearance, as best as I can tell Natani would probably have been about 6.5 at the time when his/her soul was shattered, so if we assume that young!Nat here represents that time, this is a further window into keidran aging (though it would be odd that young!Nat doesn't have a winter coat, then, since that *did* apparently happen sometime during the winter). This would tend to support my personal belief that keidran puberty hits at about 6.)

[Mionikoi]

Lol. Tom throws a curve ball! I thank him! ^.^

[Meribah]

Hmm, looks like Natani is about to have a little heart-to-heart with herself. Considering the different eye colours between the two Natanis, I'm guessing the young Natani represents the "whole" Natani, as she was before the fracture. Maybe Natani will realize her gender is female after all? Can't wait for the next page! This page is beautiful, though.

[jacobc62]

Is this younger Natani his self from when the incident occurred?

Looks like it, considering she has two brown eyes and short hair.

Oh neat, I was wondering what the self-image in her mind would be. Kinda curious why they have different eye colors though...

See ReBob's quote and my reply for your answer for Young-Natani, plus Current-Natani has no color due to a lack of a working soul (or so it no longer seems by the looks of it)



Also, is it bad that, due to Young-Natani having two brown eyes, that I thought it was a genderbent Zen for a second?

[ReBob]

My guess is the younger, smaller Natani is an imprint/remnant of Natani from back when his soul was torn asunder, or damaged or whatever. What is left of his old soul, if you will.

The Natani we are familiar with is Natani, well, as we know him. With the gray eyes, soul mend, and those abs.

And of course, I was ninja'd with the equivalent of this in longer posts while I typed this. I will say that, based solely on young Natani's comment on how stacked he becomes, I don't see any conflict based on identity lasting very long.

Struggling to post this...

[Taxouckk]

I wanted to bring my two cents into the discussion, but considering what is being talked about, or more precisely HOW it is being talked about, I can only guess everything has been said in the last thread (that I didn't read) already and I would just end up being redundant.

Still, since I do not know the meaning of "shutting up"; I think it's pretty safe to assume Natani does in a normal situation see herself as female, and it was really only the mental link that changed her gender to that of her brother, as was explained long ago in the comic. I mean, why try to find another explanation when it was given to us as exposition already?

[ReBob]

I think it's pretty safe to assume Natani does in a normal situation see herself as female, and it was really only the mental link that changed her gender to that of her brother, as was explained long ago in the comic. I mean, why try to find another explanation when it was given to us as exposition already?

I've never gotten into discussion on this subject, and I don't see myself doing so until we get confirmation on how Nat felt on the subject before the link. To my knowledge, we don't. We know he disguised himself to get into the guild, and we know he wanted to be male, but we don't know like we know now how far it went.

Please correct me if I am mistaken.

[Combak]

Well, I'm pretty sure no one expected that, although it does explain the odd voice Natani had heard on the previous page.

For all the folks commenting on how made Natani will decide to go with a female gender identity, note what the younger version of Natani says: "Man, I end up stacked when I'm older. What a pain." Assuming "stacked" refers to heavy chested and not muscular, it seems even young Natani didn't like being a girl much.