March 29th, 2019
29 Mar 2019 · page 886 of 1306
Yes, she still has the gun. No, she is not going to use it on them.
Cast: Eliza Swift, Vincent Knott, Will Sharpe
Comments (64)
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I hope he can fight!
I love Eliza
Aww yes character development
Hjmmm, I'd have cashed in on the recent demonstration of marks(wo)manship to ward them off - never mind; now we get to see some quarterstaff/broomstick play plus a bit of Sharpe practice.
Will's beating down on the people who were beating him down- Ah, I see what you did there :3
damn, nice development will! although those first two panels physically hurt me,, poor lad..
glad he’s helping out tho, real improvement!! good job man.
Progress, ho !
Of course she can't use it on them. 'Tis wicked to shoot people who have been mind controlled unless you absolutely have to.
Especially when you don't have enough ammunition to make sure there are no witnesses left.
Will has impressive fighting moves!!!! :D
OH NO, BABY!!! AAAAAAA THIS IS SO POWERFUL
Bond-style-one-liner high-five WILL!
The guy Eliza hit with the broom still hasn't gotten the bucket off his head, which may help a bit with the odds!
Honestly, I'd be surprised if he's still conscious after that.
He seems to be picking himself up in panel 3.
She's stronger than she looks.
Limit Break!
Interesting... I wonder if the emotional hit he's taking is counteracting whatever spirit was bound to him to encourage him to run.
I mean it's either that or the Power of Friendship <.< Abandoning the only person who thinks you're worth saving is perhaps not a move a lot of people feel great about taking...
She could take out the bullets and hit them with the gun
The broom is probably a better melee weapon then a pistol.
They could have just run away... the mind controlled dudes are only interested in Sharpe.
I dunno. Have you ever been really mad at someone you couldn't yell at so you took it out on someone else? I think that principle might be in play here too.
Yay! Go Will! Be the Superhero We in the Audience know you are!
ACTION WIZARD!
Ah, and there's that sweet, sweet character development kicking in just in time. Gotta love it.
(Also, I love how Eliza asks Knotty if he's learned any impressive fighting moves with sort of an air of "Who knows, this night has already been weird enough that I'm not going to rule it out." That ability to just sort of roll with everything is very important when you're a Widdershins character!)
She might mean since the last time he was around rather then the last time she saw him in the next room over.
With Sharpe in reach, the students will focus their attacks on him. He may or may not have l33t fighting skillz (I'm guessing not), but then, chances are the other students don't, either. They don't have weapons, and their thinking is clouded by rage. Sharpe seems to be physically fit, and he has begun well - the glasses-guy is going to be stunned and gasping for breath for a bit.
This is going to be interesting...
I doubt Sharpe will be able to beat the students by himself, but while the fight is going on, I'm sure Eliza will be able to settle it in whatever way she prefers.
I have fallen a little bit in love with this ponce and I am not sorry.
That second panel is just...agh, right in the gut.
So his wrist is hurt, then.
Glasses guy is not only losing his glasses, he's likely to have a cracked rib from that knee in the back plus weight of an adult falling from a height. That puts him in the same category as bucket-head man. Nominally five against two is now three against three and two halves.
It might be more like two and two halves (there were four students, not five) against two and one half. I'm pretty sure Knotty only has one good arm right now, which will limit his ability to help in the fight.
Make that one and two halves - I doubt Sharpe's arm is in good shape either.
O.K., so that's one and two halves (our heroes) against two and two halves (the four students). But Eliza has the broom. The revolver could be used as a threat, if the spell allows the mind-controlled students to react to threats.
...and the students have bottles, classic brawling weapons. This could get messy.
fro them
I wouldn't have expected the people down there to attack anyone else when they could still see Sharpe... I guess mindless rage isn't exactly precise.
Sharpe... the safeword... use the safeword
Well I guess kicking them is more satisfying
I think he’d have to overcome his own “Sharpening” in order to say it.
Right. I've been thinking this for two pages now -- I think he's being pushed towards overcoming it... and we're close, but we're not quite there yet. At least a little bit of other stuff has to happen first. If/when he does, that'll be a big turning point.
I agree
Whacking him in the self esteem like that made me realize something. It hasn’t been directly stated in the comic, but I think Verity has some serious self esteem issues and wizard envy.
I mean, she was apparently raised around her cousins, all three of which were wizards, and her grandfather, who was apparently both a wizard and engineer of a high caliber. She reacts very badly when Harry “replaces” her with a wizard. She was quite ready to engage in illegal activities to stage an anti-magic protest at the anchor (the extent of said illegal activities is unclear as she might have been aware that Lei was a willing participant and not a kidnap victim). She always acts superior and in control, which, like Sharpe, might be there to mask insecurities.
And, given that both she and her grandfather are engineers, it’s hard not to imagine that she wanted to be like him at some point and might well have been hurt when she found out she couldn’t build enchanted technology. Alternately, maybe she was disappointed about not being able to do magic, so she got into engineering instead.
Granted, it’s possible she’s just naturally conceited, but I suspect there’s some emotional trauma lurking there. I’m definitely going to ask about it during the next Q&A anyway.
Well, it might be both. Trauma can take different forms. I mean, Ben certainly had self esteem issues, but their results looked not like Verity's, in general. Except the mirror episode, and there Verity was envious of Sid being Harry's partner, not his wizardry. (And the reasons he is better partner for Harry than Verity, in her opinion, are the matter of his personality, not his wizard talent.)
I doubt Verity would answer the truth being asked, though. :)
I agree, but I might be able to sneak up on her with a question like "So, why did you become an engineer?" or something.
Now, now, she COULD still use the gun as a bludgeoning device.
They invented the phrase "pistol-whipped" for a reason!
You are referring to holding it by the barrel and hitting a person with the handle. That can cause a gun to fire accidentally. Think about which way the barrel is pointing. However, she would also have opportunity to use the broom like a spear or a kendo practice sword.
It's not impossible and a hard object is better then nothing, but a long stick is better.
Some of the things being said in the first panel seem like things Sharpe has probably heard from his family for years.
Oh, Sharpe. Had you gone away, your poor fellow students would have calmed down. Now there's a noisy fight and others will join too...
I can't see Kate having new random others join in at this point -- she'd have laid down at least a little bit of foreshadowing somewhere. The only other people previously introduced who could potentially be on this level are those two convenient professors from the department of exposition -- but even if they'd been subjected to the Sharpening process, the implication from their conversation was that the two of them were done with their marking of papers, and heading home.
[https://widdershinscomic.co...](https://widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/february-19th-2019 "https://widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/february-19th-2019")
So, not them. However, Flack IS likely to show up in person at some point soon, because the profs said they had seen her.
Well their odds... still arent even
BUT now they're CLOSER to even
So here's a question for discussion... based on the evidence Kate has supplied so far, what can we conclude about what happens to a victim of Sharpening when the trigger condition no longer applies?
The trigger is "recognizing that you are in the presence of Will Sharpe." The porter, who apparently didn't know Sharpe all that well (or isn't all that smart), took a while to recognize him. Interestingly, the cook recognized him right away -- had he been hanging out in the kitchen a lot? And of course his fellow classmates knew him instantly. Anyway. That's the start condition, and it's been set to release the emotion of intense rage, which individuals rationalize according to their own natures.
But what happens when the victims are no longer in the presence of Sharpe and have no immediately obvious way to pursue him? Does the rage go away? Do they calm down?
Do we have any clues?
The only clue I can think of is this page ( [https://widdershinscomic.co...](https://widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/february-5th-2019 "https://widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/february-5th-2019") ), where the cook storms into the larder after they've disappeared into the vent. In her last panel she's clearly still under the influence, but we don't know how long it lasted after that.
Eliza could have fired it into the air.
Wait, no...that's where Sharpe was.
(Also the noise would probably have drawn Sharpened mooks from all over the school)
Oof, that guy's not going to be walking again any time soon
She's run out of bullets hasn't she?
Pity stayed her hand.
Ah, a fellow aficionado of ‘Bored of the Rings’.
I read that 40 years ago, but I've never forgotten that part.
Tim, Tim Benzedrine!
Hash, boo, Valvoline!
Clean, clean, clean for Gene!
First, second, neutral, park!
Hie thee hence, you leafy narc!
“I sit on the floor and pick my nose and dream exotic dreams...”. Oh dear, that really was 40 years ago wasn’t it? You realise Ms Ashwin wasn’t even born then?
That poor student's back...