Comic for April 12, 2020: Dragons and Stone

[Technic[Bot]]

I must say that I like the direction Tom took with Nora's characterization. Without changing her core character (carefree, affable, fun attitude...) he's showing her as more and more inhuman, closer to an eldritch abomination on the same level as the Masks.

Anyhow regarding Nora her character has always rubbed me in the wrong way.

Just want to mention / remind you guys that from the very first time we met Nora, she seemed totally ok with the idea of eating Keidran and Basitin. This has always given me the vibe that she doesn't care about or respect sentient life, at least non-human sentient life. She has always seemed to me to be a very amoral character; she just does whatever she feels like, with no moral concerns whatsoever.

I dunno, I always read that panel as a joke.

Honestly, I think this thread kind of speaks to one of the biggest problems when it comes to characterizing Nora: namely, that she's really, really lackadaisical, so it's also really, really hard to tell when she's serious. Plus, how little we see her combined with how powerful she is means we only ever really see the consequences of her actions without seeing the motivations behind them, so whether she's a mischievous trickster or a carefree-to-a-fault sociopath depends entirely on what motivations you read into those consequences...hopefully we'll get to see more of her later so we can come to understand her better

I have to agree with you.
Nora has had very little "screen time" and unlike other characters like Flora. We have very little information about her past, her interests, goals, motivations, fears, dreams etc. As you point out it is really hard to tell when she is joking and when she is serious so we do not even know if what we see is her real personality or just a carefully maintained persona she keeps around her. Since there are so many blanks in her characterization then we really just fill it with what we want.
Hopefully we get to know her a bit more in the rest of the comic. That being said i have this hunch that she might not survive the whole story.

Today i learned a new word!

[Chicken Man]

What is it with dragons and stone?

What about gryphons and soup?

Biscuits and gravy?

My point is dragons can make inanimate objects sentient to the point of personality. Dragonstone. Powerful magic indeed. Yet it is so casually matter of fact. Is a diddly dang looming lizard statue guardian a common sight?