phantomchick replied to your photoset “WE COULD HAVE HAD TARVEK BE DEAD FOR REAL, BUT INSTEAD IT’S LARS, WHO...”
it's related to the whole 'actors' thing with the heterodyne stories, lars IS trope aware because they live in a world where those tropes are literal dramatised transcriptions of recent history, but for Agatha he was still prepared to storm a castle even though he wasn't the hero of the story, so to me the 'never stood a chance' line was just such a hefty dose of tragic, a game changer in the story really and at the very least, agatha has been pie calmed there when she stops fighting the baron otherwise she very well could've continued rampaging in Lar's honour until she was no longer capable of doing so
That’s a nice take! I was being a bit tongue in cheek, I do think the ‘he’s an actor used to imitating the Heterodyne story’ is a cool point to bring up I didn’t immediately consider relating to his death, but that does add an extra layer. Honestly, if we hadn’t had the “crush on Agatha” subplot at all and emphasized THAT bit more, it would have been much more interesting and tragic to me. As it is, Lars dying for a girl he put on a pedestal, seeing her more as a legend than a PERSON...well, it’s tragic, but I don’t think the story really focuses on or sells what MAKES it tragic to me, or sell that to me, at least in that moment.
“Main Hero rampages over a minor character’s death for five minutes and has to be snapped out of it, but once they are they’re fairly whatever about it and focus on actual Important Things and the character is largely forgotten, that was their one moment in the sun but also the end of their story” is honestly a trope I see a lot, and this comic plays it pretty beat for beat so far. Agatha reinforces her status as “Magic Special Legendary Main Character” by going all MagicRage for Lars’ sake for a bit and it’s like, “well see he wasn’t actually ordinary because he did a big flashy thing that saved ME, The Important One!! And I Cared about him for a while because of that, before moving on to More Important Things”. That doesn’t really emphasize “ordinary people are important” to me as much as...you’re important as long as you’re doing something that allows the Important people to do Cool things, have their Cool Battles and tell their Cool Stories, then you’re forgotten and dead and that’s it.
Lars was in love with shadow, a story he was constantly imitating, and he died for that story because he thought that was the best an ‘ordinary’ guy like him could do, the most meaningful impact he could have. That is sad! but the story really hasn’t emphasized why it’s sad yet, instead it just kinda reinforced the whole deal. Like, hey, Lars did get to be relevant for a few seconds and Agatha did care about him for a little bit because of that, just like he wanted! And then she was snapped out of it and moved on, just like he’d expect her to!
If the story really wanted to sell “ordinary people matter” it could have emphasized Lars doing things that are heroic in really ordinary ways, like you know, emotionally comforting someone, etc, and these things genuinely are given the weight and importance of more traditional flashy heroic acts by the story. They could have had him learning that “mundane” heroics actually matter just as much as all the flashy stuff, if not more!
or if we want to go tragic with it, we could have had him genuinely build a relationship with Agatha, do this save, say it was for the best since because he could never be with a Heterodyne anyway and Agatha being like “dude! I liked you bc I thought you saw me as a person! You had that awesome jewelry making hobby too, you had way more going for you than your relationship with me! Why the hell would you think something like this?” and he dies realizing he Fucked Up. (Or something similar. just a silly example)
I mean looking at Agatha’s other ‘potential’ relationships: Gil is obsessed with Agatha and really focused on the fact she has the “spark”, how she’s “special” in comparison to other girls and “special like him”, Tarvek is also fascinated with her Legacy, if the story’s trying to send an “ordinary people matter” message, I’m just not getting much sincerity in how things are playing out so far, but it might change, though! There are interesting threads there that could go somewhere! We’ll see!
