The Book of Three

We see glimmers of his goodness throughout - you could say that his refusal to kill Gurgi when begged to do so is a bit of foreshadowing of this moment; his heart told him it was wrong and then the extra compassion he learns from Medwyn gives him the courage to stand up to Doli in a situation where the dwarf’s solution makes more practical sense. It’s such a character-defining moment! And with typical Alexandrian simplicity the story just whizzes right through it. I love getting the chance to slow it down.

Thanks! Yep, dramatic angles all the way here!

Thanks - yeah, it was about time I came back to this style; it helps me clean things up.

Glad you think so!

Hahaha yes she is. He’s finally showing the boy she wants him to be, and neither of them even know it. Love this dynamic.

It is a good parenting moment isn’t it? If this were my kid I’d be busting.

Not gonna lie, Doli’s expression is one I have felt on my face reading certain things over the last few years. That horrified realization that yes, this person really is this willfully ignorant/stubborn/ludicrously prone to conspiracy theory…I’m afraid I have no poker face so it’s a good thing I’m usually not having these encounters face to face. Poor Doli, I so empathize - even though he’s wrong here.

Taran’s expression is my fave though. It didn’t occur to me until laying out the page that the situation could be as tense as his needing to physically defend the gwythaint from Doli, who despite his stature could doubtless win any conflict with him at this point, but just the hint of what could have happened - or at least what Taran is prepared to do, even if Doli never would have gone that far - really adds to the drama.

Thanks Peter! I appreciate that you always take the time to comment, even briefly. :)

No problem! As a young and very much less skilled artist, I always get a little thrill when someone notices my work and compliments it, especially if it is someone I don't already know personally...cause then I know its genuine. :)

Oh I won’t ever take a permanent break - I am determined to see this book through to the end, and I will never leave fandom. If I’m ever silent for more than a year, you can reliably assume I’m dead.

Doli’s not being human, and being played mostly for comedy, make his face more flexible, haha.

In fairness, he’s definitely obnoxious many times in the first couple of books - what teenage boy isn’t? That’s what makes them so relatable, and gives him a starting point for the arc he undergoes until the end. I think it’s a bit odd that people expect so much more of him from the first story. He’s a flawed hero but his heart is in the right place - like Huck Finn or Harry Potter.

Amen to that, too. Love the character development Taran goes through. Wish they had explored that aspect (and others...) more in the movie.

I think those that are hard on Taran forget what it's like when you're a teen. Teen age boys ARE full of themselves. I want to strangle my own teen (who is about the same age as Taran in the second book) daily. But, he's a good kid and learning what it takes to be an adult, so he always lives another day.

Ah, good quote, sublime, even!

And of course there’s always: “Many live that deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.” Etc.

Where would be be without our Authors, I say.

I do confess that particular quote of Tolkien's has always resonated with me, probably most notably because Bilbo's pity and Gandalf's acknowledgement that Gollum's purpose may yet prove to be beneficial helped solidify my own principles relatively early in my childhood. As with Lloyd Alexander's works, and many others, I believe that the dispensing of wisdom through fiction is an invaluable tool for educating children and helping them learn early the values that will make them well balanced, respectful, grateful, happy and productive people when they grow up.

Amen ... and in Taran's case he is overcoming fear of serious harm AND, which can be worse for someone his age, fear of disapproval from everyone around him.

The ideals of mercy and forgiveness are most strongly associated, at least in the Western imagination, with Christianity at its best, but there are also secular ethical philosophies that equally require those qualities. Utilitarianism makes the minimization of suffering a terminal value, which means that doing harm, in self-defense or as punishment, can only be justified when it can realistically be expected to prevent greater harms in the future. My current favorite work of fiction, Eliezer Yudkowsky's fan-fic Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, makes this point in two of my most-loved passages. First this, from Chapter 85:

Sometimes Harry thought the deepest split in his personality wasn't anything to do with his dark side; rather it was the divide between the altruistic and forgiving Abstract Reasoning Harry, versus the frustrated and angry Harry In The Moment.

[...]

There was a step beyond Abstract Reasoning Harry which he could take, given time enough to compose himself and the right surroundings; something beyond Abstract Reasoning Harry, as that was beyond Harry In The Moment. Looking up at the stars, you could try to imagine what the distant descendants of humanity would think of your dilemma - in a hundred million years, when the stars would have spun through great galactic movements into entirely new positions, every constellation scattered. It was an elementary theorem of probability that if you knew what your answer would be after updating on future evidence, you ought to adopt that answer right now. If you knew your destination, you were already there. And by analogy, if not quite by theorem, if you could guess what the descendants of humanity would think of something, you ought to go ahead and take that as your own best guess.

From that vantage point the idea of killing [spoiler redacted] seemed a lot less appealing than it had a few hours earlier. Even if you had to do it, even if you knew for a solid fact that it would be the best thing for magical Britain and that the complete Story of Time would look worse if you didn't do it... even as a necessity, the deaths of sentient beings would still be a tragedy. One more element of the sorrows of Earth; the Most Ancient Earth from which everything had begun, long ago and far away, ever so long ago.

He is not like Grindelwald. There is nothing human left in him. Him you must destroy. Save your fury for that, and that alone -

Harry shook his head slightly, tilting the stars a little in his vision, as he lay on the stone floor looking upward and outward and forward in time. Even if Dumbledore was right, and the true enemy was utterly mad and evil... in a hundred million years the organic lifeform known as Lord Voldemort probably wouldn't seem much different from all the other bewildered children of Ancient Earth. Whatever Lord Voldemort had done to himself, whatever Dark rituals seemed so horribly irrevocable on a merely human scale, it wouldn't be beyond curing with the technology of a hundred million years. Killing him, even if you had to do it to save the lives of others, would be just one more death for future sentient beings to be sad about. How could you look up at the stars, and believe anything else?
-----

And this one, from Chapter 115. It's a bit spoilery, but the fact that Harry defeats Voldemort in the end isn't much of a spoiler in a non-grimdark HP fan-fic, and the fact that Harry is very different from canon!Harry because of something Voldemort did to make him that way isn't much of a spoiler in an alternate-universe fan-fic based around a stronger, smarter version of Harry, either. Here it is:

Harry looked back up at the stars. Here below the atmosphere the stars twinkled, they were embedded in the false dome of the night sky, stretched out across the wash of the Milky Way that glowed like a long ribbon, as if they were all close enough that you could fly up to them on a broomstick and touch them.

What would they want him to do now at this juncture, the children's children's children?

The answer to that also felt obvious, if it wasn't just the part of Harry that still cared about Professor Quirrell doing the real talking.

Harry had needed to do the thing he'd done, it had prevented greater evils, Harry couldn't have stopped Voldemort if the Death Eaters had fired first. But that thing Harry had done wasn't something that could be balanced by a not-necessary tragedy happening to one more sentient being, even if that being was Voldemort. It would just be one more element of the sorrows of ancient Earth so long ago.

The past was past. You did what you had to do, and you didn't do one scrap of harm more than that. Not even to balance things out, and make it all symmetrical.

The children's children's children wouldn't want Voldemort to die, even if his minions had. They wouldn't want Voldemort to hurt, if it didn't accomplish anything compared to him not hurting.

Harry breathed deeply, and let go of - not his hate - not quite his hate - he hadn't been able to hate his creator even at the very end - but even so, Harry let go of something. Of the sense that he ought to hate Voldemort, that it was a hate he was obligated to feel, for the endless list of crimes that Voldemort had committed for no good reason, not even his own happiness...

It's all right, the stars whispered down at him. It's all right not to hate him. It doesn't make you a bad person.

Well-written. I'm not enough of a Potter fan to seek out fic, but I can see why you appreciate this one so much.

Love your reply, Thracecius. I know I'm trying to have that quality of mercy in the story I'm writing. With some sorrow and high adventure, of course, but still going to have that in there.

Thank you kindly, Smoit, the world can use more authors who advocate for mercy, which is not always an easy thing to offer or render appropriae
If you finishver decide to share your work online, please let us know where we can read it. I could always use a tale of high adventure with all it's trappings (sorrow, romance, swashbuckling, etc.). There's too few real adventure stories these days it seems, at least in the movies. Everyone seems to want super heroes and grim dark "realism". Give me Indiana Jones, or Krull, or The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, or even something slightly more modern, like Secondhand Lions, any day of the week. :)

Fflewddur has a response next page, right now he is stunned that this is even an argument, because he is more inclined to agree with Doli and thinks maybe Taran is being crazy here.

Eilonwy handed Hen’s rope off to Gurgi, who was absolutely not interested in seeing the gwythaint up close.

Yea, it was Medwyn who told him their history and he’ll reference that in a little bit.

There’s plenty of fan activity! Sadly about 3/4 of it come from me, at least at the moment - but between fanfiction and art over the years, the series is more solidly represented than you might expect. Hope you’re enjoying the read!

Thanks so much, I'm glad you are enjoying it!

That's true, and so far Doli has been nothing but cantankerous and belligerent, so Taran really does take a big risk here - or at least believes he does, which is just as good.

Oh this is so nice to hear - congrats on making it through school, on your own creative pursuits, and thank you so much for following for so long. It's so heartwarming to know people are still checking in, and finding new things to appreciate, despite my snail's pace at updating! Many thanks for the visit and the comment. <3

That is high praise indeed! I have noticed the tremendous amount of engagement, too. I don't compare mine much with other comics, because this one is so unique a story compared to most genres on this site that it's really apples and oranges, and I sincerely wish that more of the excellent works here got the feedback they deserve. But I think the community we've all built here is very special, and the level of thoughtfulness and intelligence in the comments is due a lot to the age of the average Prydain fan. Most of us here are somewhere above 30, lol, and this is not to disparage my younger fans, who show their intelligence and maturity by being fans of the Chronicles. I just observe that at this point, young adults who have grown up in the "smart device" generation are very accustomed to showing their appreciation, if they do at all, by a single click of a "like" button, rather than by feeling the need to expound at length. Phones do not make typing a comment as automatic an impulse as it was when I was starting to create fan material 15 years ago - and even then, probably only one out of a hundred readers/viewers actually commented. The "golden age" of internet fandom was brief - I remember it, and I miss it, but I have something like a little microcosm of it here, frozen in time, thanks to how enthusiastic Prydain fans are to discuss these books. I'm so grateful for it and for all of you.

It's funny you put it like that, cause as a younger guy (27) I sometimes feel far older than the rest of my generation. I can't stand smartphones, and I am lost at sea when it comes to social media, so its almost as if I actually do belong to an older generation.

I like your standard of intelligence and maturity, too: being fans of the Chronicles. :) I wonder though if it is enough to be a fan of your work...cause to be honest I never really could get into the originals the way I can into your adaptations. Something about the style Lloyd used just didn't jive with me. But the story and characters are spectacular, and your passion for them has brought them into my life, where otherwise they probably never would have. So there's that. :)

Thank you, Bill - I SO appreciate your comment over on the fic page; you can, by the way, own a physical copy of Daughter of the Sea, if you’re interested - I had it printed as a book and can do more at any time.

I won’t ever abandon this project, though certainly my updates aren’t as frequent as we could all wish. Keep checking in and meanwhile I do hope you will read the books!

Ahh, yes. We do not speak much of that abomination film in these parts. Though I conceded, that for anyone who did not have the books to compare it to, it was a groundbreaking piece of work and did fit in well with the run of sword-and-sorcery fare popular in the 80s. It will always make me sad, though.

Thank you! I appreciate all your comments!

Just want to chime in with my two cents of support. I was so thrilled and enthralled when I found this comic years ago. I also can't even believe that it's been that long.

I guess this comic has been a part of my life now more than some people I'd consider extremely close friends. Kinda weird, that. But it's an amazing comic, and as I said, I'm here 'til the end! ('Less I get squashed be a falling piano or something.)

Thank you so much. I'm so glad you are still here for it!

This makes me so happy to hear!

Much agreed re: underrated. Thank you so much for your comment! I am still working on it, believe it or not. Life just gets in the way quite a bit.

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