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Greg, if you won’t I will. It would be nice to kick that Yaksha off his high horse

I think it would’ve been obvious she had no connection to her species with what she said back at your “humble” little shop, Ravi-oli. Maybe learn to pick up on some not-so-subtle cues, you skirt wearing weirdo


Agreed, though a couple of Scots I know (and one rather large and burley Utilikilt wearer) would have somethin to say to you about the “skirt wearing” comment. Different cultures….. Ravi’s wearing a long dhoti, I believe, which is a man’s garment.

Oh, I didn’t know that. I was just trying to insult him in a very third-grade manner

uh so fyi what it’s coming off as (speaking as someone for whom the dhoti is a cultural thing), is a racist manner.

I’m sure that’s not what you intended but heads up so you don’t look bad and I don’t get gut punched in future.

Yeah, I wasn’t trying to be racist. I was trying to point at something people hadn’t pointed at yet, and me not being entirely aware of a lot of cultural norms outside of my own, I thought maybe I could go for the white skirt he seems to like. I now know not point at all leg-tubes people wear and assume “vaguely feminine article of clothing,” and what a dhoti is! Yay learning!

Wings make a lot of things awkward, such as passing out onto the floor and gently holding aforementioned passed-out person.

On a related note, I’ve always wondered how the muscles are supposed to work with the traditional “angel wings” configuration. Nothing on Kory, just a long-standing “thing” I’ve had for years: six limbs ought not to work on humanoids (or horses, or cats, or cat-like giant lizards, etc.). Same with centaurs, though I largely have that one sussed out to my own head canon’s satisfaction :)

Mmm. It’s really hard for the scientist in me to explain how it would work, either. I’m not a developmental biologist, but all vertebrates on Earth are tetrapods (four limbs). To create a human with four arms or four legs would require mucking about with the hox genes, which are the most stable genes in our entire genome, and hope you don’t screw up the rib cage too much, or cause irreparable damage to internal organs. Gryphons, Grecian Sphinxes, Oxypetian Harpies, etc., are hexapodal (six-limbed) vertebrates (two wings, four legs; or two wings, two arms, two legs).

For the sake of the comic, however, you have to remember the most important rule: Ta-da! Magic! Michelle’s wings aren’t actually in the “angel wings” configuration, that’s just part of the illusion created by the medallion.

And before anyone tries to point it out… yes. Centaurs (2 arms, 4 legs), Manticores, and Pterippi are all hexapodal as well. I haven’t forgotten about them.

And before anyone asks “hox genes? What the heck are those?”… well, since I’m a computer programmer, let me put it in programming terms. The hox genes are the ones that look something like this:


They don’t actually contain the code to grow arms and legs and whatever, but during the development of the embryo, the hox genes tell the other genes what order things are supposed to be in.

Scientists have been able to muck about with the hox genes in fruit flies and changed CALL PROC (ANTENNA) with another CALL PROC (LEGS). Presto, a fruit fly with an extra set of (useless) legs growing from its head.

Hope that explanation is adequate. :)


Gabe’s pairs of angel’s wings are most clearly visible in page 46 of Greetings From Dogpatch.
Pairs. Plural.

A Grecian Sphinx’s pair of wings are NOT illusionary.

Well to be fair, that’s a freaking angel. They’re probably entirely made of magic.

The ‘illusionary’ comment was referring to the fact that she’s in a midform right now, and therefore the magic is masking where the wings actually are, since she’s *really* walking around on all fours and magic just makes her look/feel like she’s walking upright.

…if that’s how it works I wanna see human-form main characters in an elevator with humans :D How would everyone stand/look like they’re standing? Can you feel someone stepping on feet the illusion tells you are currently hands and in midair?

….I guess I walked into that one with my bad explination.

No, it’s like how Jim explains it really early on–the ‘illusion’ feels real all around. It lets a bigger-than-normal (or even a normal sized!) giffin fit in a car along with the rest of the Origins gang, since I would love to see a sphinx, saytr, nixie, and griffin all try to fit in one in their natural forms. The ‘illusion’ feels real in every respect, which is why I put it in quotes. However the reality is that they really are their natural forms, magic simply makes them look however they want to look when they’re using their medallions.

The upshot of the point I was making is that the wings aren’t really where they look like they are, so the fact that the anatomy is borked doesn’t matter. Also magic be cray-cray.

I believe he’s making the same skeletally-based harpy/angel distinction I’ve made for winged characters in the MORFS universe. The classic (Alellean) harpy configuration is merely a repurposing of an existing limb pair. The “angel” configuration, seen here in gryphons and Grecian sphinxes and Okypedian harpies and perrytons, among others, requires either complex shoulders or, more likely, an additional pair of shoulders. Gabe, the only actual angel in the cast, is a special case who probably has an additional pair of complex shoulders.

Jeni. He’s talking about “angel wings” in a generic sense, not specifically referring to Skin Deep angels. And he was referring to the *position* of the sphinx wings being illusionary, not the wings themselves. You’re being overly pedantic again. :|

Greg, please do us ALL a favour and headbutt Ravi right THROUGH the floor.

Yes but first kick him where his children are then head but him through the floor. We don’t need anymore Ravi’s around the world. And I am not going to apologize for this.

Your statement implies that anyone would willing have sex with Ravi.

Or that beings that are literally pure magic and only take terrestrial form as a convenience for the people they interact with would even have (or understand the concept of!) sex.

He has a mortal form so that would imply his ability to have sex. Not that anyone would want to

Sadly, I’ve seen *no* evidence in our world of obnoxious dudes with unearned superiority complexes being unable to reproduce.

Maybe people are more sensible in the skin horse world XD

Also I LOVE how he’s clearly trying to do better (see his face in panels 3 n 4 and the actually useful info he’s providing) but when faced with all these mortals he’s having a *much* harder time of it than when it was just two of them. That feels super real to me, and also hopefully means more of them will get to be grouchy at him.

I suspect this is part of how times change – how we interact with self-proclaimed Authority is kinda different from how we did 800 years ago, as he’s finding out.

Screw the floor! Headbutt the prick through the fucking ceiling!

Here’s a thought, Ravi: Maybe explaining yourself better is an excellent idea just on GENERAL PRINCIPLES!

James told Ravi to not forget that, after their… disagreement… in the caves.
Illumination chapter 2, pages 5 to 16
But Ravi doesn’t care about mere mortal ants, so of course it’s forgotten everything said to it in the caves.

eh idk. if 800 years is nothing, what’s an hour? Even for a human, unlearning that level of underlying assumptions takes a long time.

When it’s happening over days of reading, we’re all like Ravi get over yourself already. But I just caught up on the comic and reading it all at once, if he’d been changing any faster it would have been implausible.

Annnd reading it all in one go, it’s p clear that if Jim had EVER been less knee-jerk hostile and more curious, and actually *asked* him what his deal was at any point in the past, OR like told his parents that this strange man was hugging him???? when he was a lil kid??? it might have led to an actually helpful conversation much earlier. Ravi is not the only person haring off on his own wrong assumptions here, they *all* have been except Michelle throughout Illuminations.

Headbutt him anyway. If not for what he’s done, then for what he is most likely going to do later.

It seems Ravi’s a prime candidate for entry into the “insufferable characters” hall of fame. We’ll put him right next to Zeppelin Von Schultheiss (lighter than heir) and Miko Miyazaki (order of the stick).

My dislike of Ravi has grown to the point where I would be willing to undertake a multi-year quest to disconnect him from his powers, just to make him gain even the slightest grain of empathy for those he considers ‘lesser beings’.

Amazing how fast Ravi went from being someone everyone thought was adorable, to someone everyone wanted to see nutted…

We thought:
Great, a New character and FINALLY some answers to questions that have been bugging us since Orientations.

What we got were:
No actual complete answers, just disjointed fragments of parts of answers.
Claims made with no proof.
Failing to teach Jim just how the hell his variant of the Finn Family Curse REALLY works. THAT silence continued even after pushing Colin into working with his variant.
A comprehensive lack of caring and taking responsibility for his actions and what those actions wrought. And we are seeing more of this last here at the start of chapter three.

Understand this:
Ravi is a character that so comprehensively narked off Mary that she did NOT offer Ravi the Hospitality of Xenia. To manage that so fast utterly tops Lynn’s abysmal behaviour.
Now if Ravi could do THAT to Mary, then what do you think our opinions of Ravi have become?

color me unconvinced (TM)
Mary’s not an angel. She’s got her feathers ruffled because she feels his waltzing in assuming he belongs in HER house as a close connection of HER guy’s ancestor, rather than a humble and careful guest like Michelle and Greg, is not ok. Note that it’s *not* her house by birth, so she’s that much more defensive of it.

That’s a very human position but it’s not actually a rational one. She has acted in ways that made Ravi less helpful not more, not that he knows it. They all have. Michelle is the only one who’s bothered to figure out what his perspective is and used that to show him how very wrong he is.

And in their place I’d be responding a lot like Mary but… that’s a people response not a perfect response.

You should have properly re-read Illumination chapter 2, pages 5 to 16
Ravi’s insults against the current Finns and the ones in centuries past, pushed James into shifting to fullform in anger.
Such insults against anything or anyone not going according to Ravi’s The Great Plan(tm) seems to be its stock in trade.
And when Ravi’s NOT insulting outright, it is being obnoxiously overbearing and lording it over the mere mortal ants.


you should have properly read my comment, but thanks for assuming that seeing things you don’t means I’m just not reading clearly enough anyway.

I’m kinda weirded out that in all the comment thread’s orgiastic violence and hate, you’re all missing the basic point about Ravi, which is, he is one seriously messed up Yaksha, and he doesn’t need any of these people or gain anything from their survival *except* the extent to which he cares.

He’s an extinction-level threat and if you were at all right, and he *didn’t* care a great deal whatever that means from his perspective, and if he wasn’t trying really hard for whatever messed up reason, the comic would be about to hit a rather nasty end.

Anyway narrative logic aside, I enjoy this comic & respect the creator, so I *also* firmly believe Ravi is more than your racist twist on a racist stereotype. But I’m done with all these comment threads in over a dozen comics all being so very gleeful about vilifying & and wishing detailed & sexualized violence on uppity Black & brown characters (while claiming it has nothing to dooo with raaace), so y’know, you do you. I got over being upset and am back to bored. bai.

It’s not racist. It’s not speciest.
But YOU would not know that unless you were a Patreon, and had all the Patreon Sketchbooks, and as a result knew how Kory originally was going to have Ravi looking. And then you’d understand the significance of a picture hanging on the wall of his shop kitchen in chapter 1 of Illumination.
All our aggressive frustration is solely due to Ravi’s obnoxious behaviour. We DON’T CARE about race or skin colour. In past stories, non-Indian characters have been on the receiving end of this because of their obnoxious behaviour. Lynn Sanford, and Anthony Gilis.

Uh, actually from what I remember Ravi may actually be a mantid being, with the humanoid appearance being a disguise, so skin color is certainly not a factor.

I feel like I’m the only one not bothered by Ravi. Then again, I see him as someone with a huge handicap; blind to the people and world around him. I don’t see him as helpful, and I’d probably be one to tell him, “You don’t know as much as you think you do.”

He’d probably respond with, “But I know so much!” to which I’d reply, “Yet so little in the present.” You’ve just gotta throw him off, and if nothing else, just ignore him.

He’s not putting in the effort to being concerned about her outwardly because he doesn’t stress, and that’s probably a yaksha thing.

Just because someone has a handicap that doesn’t mean people don’t get annoyed with them, it just means that people tend to have more patience with them, by this point however our patience is gone.

I concur Ravi should be put back into that sleeping chamber with a lock the key thrown away and chains and locks big ones.

We should take that key and put it in a box, put that box in another box, and then mail it to ourselves and then when it arrives we SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER! IT’S BRILLIANT BRILLIANT BRILLIANT I TELL YOU!!

you forgot a brilliant after the i tell you part. but before we lock him can i use him as a punching/kicking bag than use him as a pinata.

You use him as a punching/kicking bag/pinata. I’ll use him as a wrecking ball/sledgehammer.

gotta say the overblown violence against the darkest skinned character to have lines is … disturbing even if he’s the most obnoxious git in the world.

Like some of these are nastier things that have been said about outright villains at this point, and yet they are scarily like things that have been said to most of us darkies in real life.

We’re sorry if we’re making you uncomfortable but our responses are in response to the fact that Ravi as a person is being a total prick and not the fact that he has dark skin.

Your comments are more virulent than comments about actual demons, and your gleeful wishes for extreme violence against people who look like Ravi is *not* happening in a vacuum.

I’m sorry you think the only thing you’re doing here is hurting a feeling of mine. That is not the case.

If your intention really is not to be racist in effect, and promote a cultural context in which actual violence against real people is acceptable because e.g. their music was on too loud, you may want to walk back the violent talk. I’m assuming you’re unaware of that effect, and informing you of it. I’m not debating with you; I’m giving you information you seem to lack.

If you double down on your position given it, then that is in fact being intentionally racist. I can’t stop you, of course, but I will call it what it is.

The problem is yet again, publishing time to in-universe time. In terms of having lost patience with Ravi, of this day of this story we’ve seen maybe 6 hours of it, over about 2 years. There were the same complaints from us readers over Anthony’s behaviour in Reunion. That maybe 4 hour story, took a year to publish.
The characters in this story, have only been dealing with Ravi for maybe 6 hours all told, and they are all either at the point of losing patience with Ravi, or have already lost patience with Ravi.

Jeni it is the second one. And if there is anyone who needs to get the worst stuff done to them it is 100,000% Ravi.

and not like, the demons or anything, right gottit

:backs the heck away from all of you:

Well at least the demons acknowledge that their a-holes. With Ravi it’s aggravating how he stays so damn chipper and indifferent despite the fact that Michelle is shambling around like a zombie with a look on her face like she had a run in with Z͓͈͕͓̟̪͡ͅA̵͖̰͖͔Ļ͎̺̠̯̺G͔͔̘͔O.

“Being super annoying while dark skinned is a bigger evil than being an actual demon & deserves lovingly detailed depictions of extreme violence of a sort that is actually enacted on real dark-skinned people for the crime of being annoying in real life, at least once a month right now.”

“Also I’m not racist and this couldn’t possibly have any negative effect in the real world, because the people reading this absolutely aren’t affected by the cultural acceptability of wishing said violence”

I’m not bothered either I kinda love him :) Possibly because I just caught up.

But I’m actually a little uneasy about just how quickly everyone is happy to jump on the darkest-skinned person of color to have actual lines in forever in this comic like does everyone really think none of these very white brits notice that, and think they’re not acting like he’s an uppity native thereby making things worse themselves? Cause that’s exactly the dynamic actually, and it’s one I’ve faced in person, having been an INCREDIBLY obnoxious know it all in British schools.

And Ravi has no context of India under the Raj. 800 years means he missed it entirely and probably thinks that culturally they’re the adorable kinda backwards people and it’s nice they learned not to throw their sewage in the street like they were doing last time, which, sorry, *none* of the white characters are understanding and neither are a lot of commenters. Michelle is the only one who’s getting it.

(ftr: evidence says even small/poor houses had toilets n internal plumbing in south india 2000 years ago)

edit to add: i love him as a character. as a person I dunno I’d probably just find his lack of sexism so refreshing for That Kind of Older Indian Dude that I’d cut him a lot of slack, but I’d be gritting my teeth so hard you could hear it

…Pretty sure no one gives a damn about the fact that he’s Indian and is more focused on the fact that his demeanor and overall attitude have been generally annoying.

Scratch somewhat uneasy. Make it super freaked out but also glad to know your views so at least I don’t have to be seeing them on disqus.

I’m sure the disproportional violence wished on Gurwara (but not Max) is also nothing to do with his race. And the disproportionate and sexualized violence wished on Wilde Life’s current villain, on hers. And the fact that I read over 30 webcomics, and the discussions in many of them, and have exactly TWO in which dark-skinned characters are free from this kind of commentary, is irrelevant. Because who cares about numbers and actual studies on how this kind of talk affects real violence when you have a position to double down on huh.

Dude, I really think your making a mountain out of a mole hill here. I don’t care about race, I care about actions. And Ravi’s actions make me not like him because he is annoying to both me and the characters themselves, and Zulime’s action make me ESPECIALLY not like her because of the whole kidnapping, brainwashing, and the fact that she is involved in the murder of at least 2 people thing. I think you might be taking these things said by random people over the internet just a bit to seriously.

*Sigh* Yes, we’re aware of their race and skin tone – not “colorblind” but aware that they’re members of a minority group. That doesn’t give either Ravi or Zulime a pass on acting like jerks, however. It admittedly looks bad that we’re threatening violence towards minority characters, but believe me, it’s not racially motivated. (Frankly Professor Halliday from “Saint for Rent”- one of the whitest characters I know – drives me to violent anger.) But perhaps we should tone down the violent comments in general.

I’m really liking Ravi, though! I can see why the other characters would be a bit exasperated with him, but from my POV as a reader he’s fun. Also he’s an amusing spin on the “mysterious wise mentor” archetype – he’s not holding back information because ~you’re not ready to know~, he’s just too oblivious and unconnected from the mundane world to realise which parts need explaining. :D

And I just got to love how innocuously convinced he is of his own superiority. :’D But I’m not opposed to him getting goatbutted at all. In fact everybody should probably get goatbutted, that could only improve the comic. And Greg’s mood, ’cause I’m sure butting would be a great stress relief for a satyr.

To be honest, I agree. I actually really like Ravi as a character, mostly because I see a whole lot of characters who are incredibly old and yet not in the least bit jaded, or disconnected, or oblivious to ‘regular mortals’. This is a really interesting take on a creature who’s lived for thousands of years – he’s not malevolent, in fact he’s quite the opposite – but the fact remains that he does not (and maybe cannot) comprehend time the way ‘mere mortals’ do.

And I mean – think about it, even humans are like this! How many of us get impatient with the geriatric population for not understanding basic technology? And on the other side, how many of the older generation are just ‘youth these days’ without really thinking about how different our upbringings are? Multiply that by 1000x – you get Ravi, who lived for a long time in an age where sphinxes were prevalent and well known. He /should/ know better, but he’s working on assumptions that things he thinks are ‘common knowledge’ are still common knowledge, and you know what they say about assuming…

Ditto IMO Ravi is like, the best take on an immortal I’ve ever seen bar none :D

Also he’s doing what would have worked best in medieval england, being the wise mysterious Elder from the Scarily Cultured Orient where they have literacy and sewers so everyone must know everything. So this is like. Culture Clash of Doom and I love how BAD he is at it :D

Poor Ravi assumes too many things and as such has repeatedly made an ass of himself.

Maybe he needs to be plopped in front of a TV with Sesame Street playing continuously through every episode ever made up until just before the introduction of Elmo, and on loop if need be, until he gets it in his noggin some of those basic skills and concepts needed for communication with the real world.

Ravi repeatedly makes an arse of itself because it is a god-like Immortal which sees mere mortals as being nothing more than ants.
Ravi does not care about how mortals feel, because it cannot be BOTHERED trying to comprehend or remember such.

Have you ever tried actually understanding how ants feel (as opposed to humanizing them)? It’s hard. It’s brain-breaking. It doesn’t require empathy exactly, which is what would this be like for me. It requires extreme imaginative/creative thinking to see how it could possibly be to these alien creatures with alien forms of comprehension.

And I’m not sure Yakshas have imaginations in any human sense.

though here’s the thing I find funniest and most horrible about Ravi, all at the same time —

So he runs back to India and goes to sleep, right? And totally misses the British Raj, Partition, and every horror since.

Wakes back up, looks around. Sees enough of modern India to figure out how to dress to imply proudly-Tamil-modern-dude, which means he *knows full well* that most people are doing worse than he’s ever known before, in a whole lot of ways, and that the people in power are making it worse. And so our glorious hero of a Yaksha… books it back to England of course!

…where he uses the SLIGHTEST POSSIBLE excuse to convince himself that everything is ok because obv one finn kid having green hair means all is well.

This isn’t like, a strategic decision. This is grabbing at any delusion possible. And being a huge ass when he runs out of delusions to jump on.

For a Yaksha, this is clinging to Maya, the illusion that is reality, and denying suffering instead of accepting that it exists. If the mythology has any role here other than “Yakshas exist”, he is a *fallen* Yaksha and his powers have probably gotten more and more curtailed the more he runs away.

Which of course he would never admit even to himself.

What gets me is that he acts like the sphinx’s power source is common knowledge. Or at least something Michelle would easily be able to learn about. Even though they’ve been ‘extinct’ and there are no known written records of this. (In general in that time period you’re lucky if you find written records, since literacy was preeetty low.)

Also considering at least one of the power sources in a tomb that’s a HEAVILY GUARDED UNDERGROUND LABYRINTH I gotta assume any other connections to the power source are scarce and hard to get to.

What, was he thinking “oh, she will find it, it’s all in the Plan(tm)!”

Use LOGIC, Ravi, sheesh. But for now, headbutts are perfectly acceptable.

y’know about phlogiston right? When people are trying to logic from waaay wrong assumptions, they come to really weird conclusions. Ravi is far too wrong for logic to work, he *is* logicking this is what it leads to, he needs to stop and work on figuring out which of his assumptions are wrong (like, ALL of them except perhaps do not submerge humanoids in water or fire or really any element other than air)

I do indeed know about phlogiston, without needing to look it up online.
Before there was a precise enough way to track EVERYTHING from and about an object on fire, as it burned, people thought phlogiston WAS the element OF fire.
The completely inaccurate thinking ran: “The object is burning and you can see the phlogiston coming out of it as it burns.”

Right, so when scientists first learned that metals get heavier when they burn, they concluded that phlogiston had negative weight.

Because it was unthinkable that it wasn’t phlogiston at all.

That’s the kind of logic Ravi’s doing atm.

That was the problem. Not being able, then, to track EVERYTHING, before, during, and after, and understanding the chemical reactions involved.
I have a feeling that cold dark matter will turn out to be like phlogiston.

I’m reminded of a couple relevant quotes:

[Unfounded] logic a way of arriving at the wrong answer with confidence.

Scientific progress consists not of replacing ideas that are wrong with ideas that are correct, but rather with ideas that are more subtly wrong.

Psst, Greg, even if he does stop… headbutt him anyway. I mean, for someone who thinks he knows it all, Ravi has some remarkable gaps in his knowledge. Maybe the wakeup call might help.

Why stop with his head go for the family jewels with the goat feet.

srsly if you don’t want to sound like a violent racist maybe back up a bit

Every time I come back the conversation gets better and better. I really think this shows how talented Kory really is. It’s easy to write a character people would really like. It’s the characters that we love to HATE that shows the writer’s true ability and I think Kory captures that perfectly with Ravi. And Lynn, don’t forget Lynn. >:-)

None of us who read Kill Them With Kindness as it was being published, and who participated in discussing it, will likely forget it.

Do you mean ike’s mothr? I forgot her name but yeah sje is a really big asshole AND a racist.
It would be very awesome if michelles does achieve the ability to create medallions, and if she gives ike a medallion but refuses to give his mother one

Absolutely indeed.
Lynn Sanford really felt like every overbearing prejudiced stuck-up soap-opera mother.
And worse, for a number of us readers we either HAVE mothers like that or know them. So Lynn was really pulling the levers on us. As a result, there was, for the bulk of that story, in the comments, something of a competition to work out the most violent way to inhume Lynn.

You can kind of get where both parties are coming from on this though.
On the one hand, if Ravi had known she wasn’t privy to that info then he wouldn’t have been all “how could you not remember these things blah blah blah”.
But on the OTHER hand, he acts like such a know it all that him not even considering such a thing is infuriating and a headbutt is probably the least he deserves.

So much so! And actually it was obvious in about 2 lines that Ravi was working from really wrong assumptions, when he went on about her sphinx mother, and that was probably the moment to go WOAH BACK UP what you think is going on here is NOT what is actually going on what is it you think?

Still feel a lot sorrier for Greg though :D

Just how much Michelle would NOT have known of her Sphinx heritage should have been obvious by what is in pages 27 and 28 of Illumination chapter 1.
Her father, died when she was age 7, and he was unturned, and he did not know anything about the Sphinx Medallion he was keeping safe as a Family Heirloom.
Her father’s parents were dead before she was born.
So she had no chance to learn anything about her Sphinx heritage.

I, for one, cannot wait until Ravi is no longer in the comic.

…because this discussion about him is absolutely -vile-.

I get people are frustrated by him, but so many of these comments are honestly awful. ‘Hey Greg why don’t you cause massive physical harm to this guy!’, ‘I would literally go on a massive quest to depower him just to make him suffer’, ‘Ravi is utterly insufferable and it’s incomprehensible that being thousands of years old he doesn’t immediately do a 180 personality change when our plucky heroine calls him out on his crap therefore he deserves AWFUL THINGS to happen to him’.

Like, be frustrated that he’s kind of skirting the answers, sure. I personally find him fascinating– I’d be frustrated with all of this if I were actually in this environment, but as a reader (and as somebody looking at him with the understanding that he’s a being beyond (and therefore somewhat incapable of) normal human comprehension) he’s extremely interesting, but I can see why people might just get a bit frustrated that for all his knowledge it honestly went right over his head that Michelle legitimately didn’t know any of this stuff. I can see why people are frustrated with his apparent (yet not *malicious*) refusal to be completely helpful.

But a terrifying number of people are moving into actually wanting him to suffer harm. Actually wanting him to be brought down to earth in painful and/or humiliating ways. They are actually calling for significant damage to be done to a fictional character who has done no greater crime than behave like an actual human being. It’s been like this for months– after the early love of his ‘quirkiness’ gave way to his nature as a being effectively on a different plane, there’s been massive amounts of bile spewed all over the comments.

This is made even worse when people express they *don’t* want Ravi flayed alive (and are in fact extremely put off by the violent discussion going on in the comments) only to have other users come in with superior and condescending comments that seem intended to make them shut up about actually trying to field a discussion.

Can we please, please, *please* try and return to civil discourse and conversation? Because I’ve seen some pretty neat conversations in these comments, and I’d really love to see it again, but *this* environment feels discomfiting and toxic, and really at odds with the actual comic’s content and message. And nothing at all like a community I used to enjoy reading through.

Beautifully said. You summed up my feelings much better than I ever could.

And I could only imagine how Kory feels to see her fans saying such things about her creation. It’s one thing to intentionally write a character so horrible that readers have no choice but to hate them (e.g., Dolores Umbridge in “Harry Potter”), but it’s an entirely different thing to go out on a branch and write a character with a FEW unlikable traits and then see your readers react like this…

We back what Greg is saying, because he is a favourite character of ours, and his frustrated reaction to Ravi aligns with how we have come to feel about Ravi. So when Greg says what he does in this page, straight away, we are actively cheering Greg on, wanting him to do that to Ravi.

What James needs to do is to step in and remind Ravi of what happened and was said in the caves.

Part of the disagreement among all of us readers, at present, is driven by things being twisted out of shape by another reader.
An inaccurate allegation of racial prejudice, because that new reader had binge read the stories, but had only really read the comments on the most recent pages, and not the comments on the pages for Kill Them With Kindness, or Reunion.
Instant wrong assumption, we’re picking on the Indian guy because he is an Indian.

Except, as I said, this has been happening for months. While some of the responses on this particular page were to (irrational) allegations of racism, this ‘conversation’ about Ravi has reached a point of venomous bile. Every page is a litany of ‘Ravi is awful I can’t wait for somebody to put him in his place!’

It’s honestly become extremely offputting to even *want* to get involved in conversation in these comments, which is why I’m not even bothering to mention the contents of the comic anymore. Say what you will about the character, but it’s been said literally dozens of times, the point has been made, and every time it gets made it gets made with more vitriol and anger.

(Also, no, you aren’t cheering Greg on. Greg is saying something irrational out of frustration because he’s concerned about a friend he loves. People are telling him to actually follow through on a physical threat because *they want to see Ravi hurt*, not because they want to support Greg. There is a massive difference between these two points, although to be frank I don’t think cheering on grievous fictitious violence is justified for either of them.)

Thank you! Someone being annoying, even as annoying as Ravi has been, is no reason to wish violence upon them, especially not with the venom we’ve seen in this comments section. Ravi is trying to help and doing a lousy job of it, but people keep treating him like he set their mom on fire.

To add my two cents to this discussion, Ravi annoys me a lot less than he did at first. Once we learned how old he really is, I actually started to enjoy him again, like I did when he first showed up (and I admit I thought of him as the ‘cute little brown dude’ /sob). Because then I understood why he is the way he is, and he seemed like more of an actual *person* (or…praying mantis…or whatever). A character rather than a caricature.

And this way is more interesting anyway. I do so dislike when people are just exposition dispensers, saying everything our intrepid heroes need to hear without making them work for it. This is made somewhat more frustrating due to the slow pace of this comic, but I’ve stuck with it this long, lol…

Basically, does Ravi need to grow a compassion and learn how to explain properly? Yeah, maybe. Is he going to? I don’t think it actually matters, though the fact he apologized once already is huge and a positive sign.

Anyway, I guess that’s all I had to say on the matter. I also typed all that with a splint on my pointer finger and using an unfamiliar computer so it’s probably a small miracle I’ve said this much.

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