rustedtusks.com

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"Y'know, if nothing else, living here has incredibly sharpened my 'Hey, there's someone coming for my dick!' defense skills." -

I think we can assume Tony is guilty. Of what, though?

I've sort of been conditioned to think that any time a dead body appears in this work, Tony Ray is behind it. But I presume that everybody in the Slop world dies eventually, and at least a few of them manage to do so without Tony Ray's personal intervention.

The carving on the leg is a hint. Could be a false hint, though, either from the author (grrrrr! ) or from the real killer.

As for the cause of Tony Ray's guilt, it could be he was the murderer. Or it could be that as a murderer in other cases, he feels a pang to see the pain murders cause in the friends and family of the victims, which makes him feel guilty now even though in this case he wasn't the one who did it. Or it could be he somehow felt responsible for protecting Rita and her friends, and feels guilty that he failed. Any of those would be sufficient to make him feel terrible.

The last idea-- that he was trying to protect the victim in this case, but failed-- intrigues me. We know from his reaction to Marian that on those occasions where he tries to do something good, he invests all his heart in it. It is as if he knows he is the monster and usually lives with it, but on occasion somehow manages to do something that hints he might be more than just the monster. And those few occasions, those only occasions of good in his life, are precious to him.

(Tony Ray reminds me of a review I read for the movie Unforgiven. The reviewer said "The sad thing is not so much that men can go on living, knowing they're damned, but that it becomes so easy for them to do so." But it's not always easy, is it, Tony?)

Tony's volunteering to get the snot kicked out of himself for Rita (and it is not his first time for this at all) seems uncharacteristic, too. Granted that in the past I've gone on about how, pardon the pun, he is sloppy enough in his murders that it seems he wants to be caught, and he is so determined to destroy anything good in his life that it seems he wants to be punished. But those instances are hidden, perhaps even from himself. Here, he's open and conscious about his willingness, or desire, to be punished. That makes me suspect that his crime or "crime" in this particular case was different from the usual, and that in some ways he feels worse about whatever happened here than he does about anything else.

The dead rott is Rita's pup. Even when they're grown, one is not intended to look upon one's dead children. He didn't kill her.... but he wants to be careful. Rita will have absoutely no qualms over offing him... or anyone else, if she suspects involvement. What hurts the most already happened, she isn't gonna care a damn what might happen thereafter.

--lj

'some days are diamonds.... some days are stones.'
-john denver

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"Y'know, if nothing else, living here has incredibly sharpened my 'Hey, there's someone coming for my dick!' defense skills." -

I enjoy SLOP because of the story... It's unique because it does not cater to the 'specifically-acceptable' when taking the whole "online comic" arena into play.... It tests us,...not because it is specifically tailored to be "witty" and "tricky" per-se,...but because it honestly portrays a "difficult" story,...one that's not necessarily easy to stomach.

It does it in two ways...:
1). It let's us, sometimes forces us, to take a hard look at a seriously broken person. Someone who wasn't always "that" broken, but who has, over the years, become more and more of a monster... Not a mythic bogeyman,..but a real-life monster... The kind you might accidentally run into when walking back at night from the corner store... this story is not always easy to watch for me,...and it's meant to be this way,....which is why I admire it. It makes me think about the human condition. In the hard and gritty truth of the current human condition, the fearful truth, is that this could be anyone we know,..this could be us... Anyone can "break" for a variety of reasons,...at any time,...and that's a little hard to deal with...

2). It places the reader in a situation where they must see the main characters of the story in an "animal" light, exposing more brutish, animalistic aspects of their personalities that would otherwise not exist (or more importantly, get ignored) in a non-anthropomorphic story of exactly the same kind. What tickles me about this is NOT necessarily the fact that they are portrayed as animals in the story,..I mean,..that's not as important to me as the fact that the Artist/Author of SLOP has decided that to make this feel "real",...to make the reader "believe" in these animalistic traits, he has developed a world in which the fact that they are animals is a foundational event in its tangible past... They don't just happen to look like animals,..they ARE animals. And when placed in situations that present some mirrored aspect of OUR (human) everyday world, we are reminded that we, in truth, are animals too; of a different species, yes...but animals nonetheless. We are bestial when we least want to be, and we are often bestial to one another in ways that this "comic" brutally portrays.. Not cute,..not "furry",..bestial.....and all the rest of the trappings (the cell-phones, the cars, the clothes) are there to force us, the reader, to accept that these characters are us... And where as we might not always want to see ourselves portrayed in this manner,...we must,..because this is the journey the author is taking us on... And we can't look away...because the "animal" is always with us,..inside of us,....no matter how much our "polite society" teaches us otherwise.

It is because of this,..because of these two things,..that I graciously overlook and place little importance on details like the mini-gun (and whether he technically could or could not carry it around) and those nicely rendered martial art stances (and whether they would or would not be effective when used by someone with digitigrade legs). When details are obviously added by the author to take advantage of the fact that these are not human-shaped characters (such as chairs with tail-holes and interesting shoe designs), and that their society has developed in completely different ways from ours because of their unique attributes, then I'm excited and grateful that the author has consciously decided to add even more emphasis to the "alien-ness" of the world, where appropriate. But likewise,..I also recognize that the author/artist has a VERY difficult task on his hands; the task of making sure that we are also carefully ensconced in an atmosphere that we can identify with personally and fairly easily relate to....one that doesn't twist the eye away from the story he is telling by throwing so many "alien" things at us that we are distracted from the "feelings" (1 and 2) that he is trying to portray.

This is, no doubt,..a hard and daunting task,..and I'm fairly certain that he must think about this each and every time he puts ink and pencil to paper... "What do I make alien this time, and what do I allow to remain familiar...?" Make something too tailored to the alien world, and it throws readers off the emphasis of the story (thus harming #1 as mentioned above) ,...make them too "normal' (to our world), and you lose the sense that this is not a different world based on "uprisen" animals of various kinds (thus harming the delicate sensibilities evoked in #2 as stated above). This is a hard, hard, question.... And it becomes even harder when the "little things" are poked at, prodded at,..and their validity scorned by those who are supposed to be "enjoying" it...

Just remember,..these are hard decisions to make,..and he's making them as an author,...for us....every single time he sits down and begins this daunting task. Aside from all of this, he’s also very much an artist, and the hardest thing for an artist to do is actually place his or her art out in the open for others to either enjoy or tear apart… It can be like laying one’s baby in the arms of a total stranger, trusting them to hold it gently.

What I’m NOT saying as that we should avoid ALL critique (after all the best “babyâ€

Let me also add,..as an addendum to my last posting, that this was in no way meant to be any kind of personal attack or admonition against Andrick.. My intent isn't to "rile up" Andrick with my comments any more that it was Andrick's intent to "rile up" anyone (especially the author's) with his... After all,..Andrick's signiature is "Obligatory Agitator"... He prefaces his statement's with a "don't mind me" type of phrase... and he ended them with him "running away", which was funny... I’m very sure he didn’t intend to hurt anyone’s feelings…

I'm merely addressing something that I'm noticing more and more these days... And I'm simply trying to remind people why we're all here,..and even more importantly, why the author/artist is here....

Andrick,..as one member of the community to another,...please forgive me if I have offended you with any of my observations, these words weren't meant to hurt,..merely to grow awareness for all (which is an assumption that I'm even qualified to do that, I admit)....

Jadúgara ^_^

Jadúgara, I wish I had someone like you in another forum. Sometimes people do get wrapped up in expressing their own opinions and forget that those opinions do have an impact; I have been guilty of that as one webcomic author has told me.

I recognize that Rita has issues, that she is still not coping with the loss and is still suffering from grief and anger. I recognize that Rita is channeling those emotions into training and has been doing so for a while. I recognize the regrets that both the vepr and the rottweiller have in the verbal exchange though I cannot begin to fathom all their origins. I recognize the pasts of those two characters are more deeply entangled. I recognize the exacting work, study of anatomy, and illusion of motion that Mulefoot has created for this scene; I also recognize very few peers Mulefoot has in this level of artistic excellence.

I don't think anyone else could do what Mulefoot has done. Mulefoot thinks things through in such a way that at once makes the story foreign and familiar. We are getting a look into a fantasy world with the rendering an anthropologist would find exacting. We are following threads of story development that would intrigue criminologists. We are getting tastes of the psyches of people that would be the subjects of psychologists' thesis (thesises?). On top of that, our presiding author/artist is getting better as he goes along.

I know that the fighting stance and moves have little to nothing to do with the larger story and easily conveys what Mulefoot wants to pass along to the reader about the character Rita. I also know that I may be the only one to look at those three sequential panels and be put off. Mulefoot chose to do that scene like that. I don't think that was the best choice. Mulefoot may think I'm right. Or he may think I need to lay off the crack I've been smoking. Whether Mulefoot thinks I'm being helpful or a dick does not matter so much as he knows that those three panels didn't seem right to me and caused me to look back at them again until I found out why.

It's a minor quibble that could easily be lost in the body of a great work. And that is why I thought it should be passed along, because it does stand out as being uncharacteristic of the attention to detail that Mulefoot puts into "Slop."

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"Y'know, if nothing else, living here has incredibly sharpened my 'Hey, there's someone coming for my dick!' defense skills." -

Excellent Andrick,..and thanks so much! Well-responded, my friend,..and well-written...

THIS is how a good community (and thoughtful communication) should work.

Thanks for allowing me to indulge in my soap-box approach everyone....

Jadúgara ^_^

Another nasty thought bubbles up.

"Rita.. want me to be HIM for you?" Tony Ray letting Rita beat him in place of some other person?

I wonder if HIM might be Pomander. After all, he had to come from somewhere. He had to first encounter Tony somewhere.

I know that scary, scary dog is going to show up again, but Slop is nothing but shadows. Which shadow conceals him?

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Sometimes I wonder what tomorrow's gonna bring
When I think about my dirty life and times.
---Warren Zevon

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Sometimes I wonder what tomorrow's gonna bring
When I think about my dirty life and times.
---Warren Zevon