Chapter 16, Page 30
[Employee Hour Details]
Officer: Madison Wynter
Type Start Time End Time Reg Hrs OT Hrs
Shift 11/09 07:00 11/09 21:00 8.00 6.00
Shift 11/10 07:00 11/10 20:00 8.00 5.00
Shift 11/11 07:00 11/11 19:00 8.00 4.00
Shift 11/12 07:00 11/12 19:00 8.00 4.00
Shift 11/13 07:00 11/13 22:00 8.00 7.00
Danger Zone One. Story by Midnight. Art by Salaiix.
“You’re still only one person, Wynter, and you are already reaching the point of diminishing returns. Keep on this path and you will be laid up in critical condition yourself, if not worse. And then what? You can only spread yourself so thin before you start cracking. As it stands, you are a threat to yourself and to your partner in the field. I am recommending you for immediate leave. Go home and get some rest. Argue and it could become suspension.”
While most of your comment is exactly what Raye should say next, I strongly disagree about the last three sentences. If she just orders Madison to rest it’s not going to happen. She needs to explain and persuade – perhaps even press the question she already asked, because Madison might actually be trying to kill herself. Or order rest while setting up someone to monitor that Madison actually does rest.
And if she needs to be ordered after all that, that just further proves she’s in no shape for active duty, especially what she puts herself through.
I dislike Madison more and more as time goes on.
Well to be fair, we saw during that flashback sequence that she has experienced some traumatic stuff, and clearly suffers from PTSD because of it, her cold personality that she shows to others is a front to hide the pain she feels inside
More likely than hiding a pain she is feeling, her coldness is due to avoiding feeling. The pain is still there, she hasn’t dealt with it, but this way it is rare that she has to feel it. That’s why people keep doing this to themselves: it works too bloody well! The problems are for a long time rather limited. And at first they also seem to diminish over time. But when you keep avoiding feelings, you do it to all feelings with all people and the loneliness and the pain builds up. Eventually the problems grow. You go crazy, in various ways and to varying degrees.
Avoiding feelings is a good way to deal with them sometimes for some people, but only if you come back to said feelings and deal with them within a couple of months.
I like her more and more. She has issues, but those have understandable roots. I love to read stories where the characters develop, not just in their relationships with other characters but also internally, as Madison clearly needs. But for this to get somewhat resolved in a reasonably realistic manner there probably needs to be 5 to 10 years of in-comic time.
At that point the fanservice elements should at least start looking a bit different from most if not all fanservice, at least on Madison, which I doubt will happen… but if the characters can age and mature both in story and visually with select unrealistic exceptions I’d be more than happy to continue reading this for a long long time! Or prove me wrong and do fanservice where all parts of these beauties do mature, women who both keep fit and remain childless tend to still look good (just not young and “perfect”) AFAIK. They are far less frequently shown though, so I don’t quite know.
On the other hand, if Madison is suddenly magically okay or if we’re somehow supposed to believe a story where she works through it all in a few months, this story really loses a lot of its potential – for me personally. I’m likely to keep reading anyway, there is more to it than Madison, but I’d be less enthusiastic about it. Others might agree or disagree or not care either way.
I agree, I was already a fan of Madison but all this makes me appreciate her more. Sure, it’s fun to see her in Terminator-mode when she’s getting thrown through walls and STILL taking down the criminals, but witnessing her more vulnerable side humanizes her in a big way. I kind of wondered if there was more to her stone cold ice queen facade, and this chapter really answered that question.
Also showing that she does get routinely hurt really adds in a risk factor that she’s not just some invincible badass 24/7. There’s a high cost for all the cool stuff she’s able to pull off.
PTSD is over used feelings. :p Also, how much time has passed between her being a merc and her being a cop?
Though, they have everything that’s happened in this comic, happen in two weeks time.
Eh PTSD doesn’t really have a stature of limitations some people have issues with it for the rest of their lives that’s decades and decades. If you don’t get help with dealing with it it will never go away
When I say overused feelings. I did mean, over used it fiction. Every hero has to have their ptsd!
For something that doesn’t effect everyone (3.5% of people), fiction makes it feel more like 100%.
What Madison did in between Satori’s death and Reena’s arrival we know very little about (as far as I remember). She had been at the PCPD for some time, churning through most of the officers that could feasibly be partnered with her at a rapid pace. But we don’t know how many that was – it may have taken her just a few weeks or possibly a year.
And we don’t know if she did anything, or maybe spent some time doing nothing, in between working for Death Widow and the PCPD. Finally, I don’t think we even know whether she left Death Widow directly after Satori’s death or not but I think we can assume she did.
Dopey comment on your part, Brand X. PTSD is often underreported in real life and that 3.5% applies to the general pop. You of course left out the much larger percentage that affects vets who’ve been on active duty and seen actual combat, which is AGAIN, often underreported. Those numbers can range upwards of 20%, some studies report as high as 30%. What Madison suffered through would clearly have an impact on any soldier. To think that something like that wouldn’t have side effects on the human mind would be more unrealistic.
Also, funny how people suddenly think they’re experts because they Google searched something. “Overused feelings” LOL SMFH Got mates who served who are dealing with this stuff. Tell them it’s “overused feelings” chucklehead.
This scene strongly reminds me of Paradigm Shift. Just with nakedness
^-^
There is one thing I have learned through the years of reading and commenting on web comics is not to write the script that the artist/writer is doing. I, along with the rest of us who follow, love to imagine or hypothesize what is going to happen next. That’s the fun of making comments. But I never try to encourage or persuade our writers what should or needs to be said next. That’s not my place to do so. I just enjoy what is laid out in the next pages to come. I always keep in mind that I am just a casual observer.
Yes, will comment on what has happened, speculate on what might happen, but never tell the author what must happen next
Duly noted. The more I get invested in a story, the more I tend to voice my opinion on what aspects of the story makes it so. Several webcomics I follow have encouraged or straight up asked for such feedback (“What makes you follow this comic?”), which may have ended up cementing this tendency of mine a bit too much.
Now that I think about it, the only feedback asked for here (IIRC) was early on about the extra info in text form beneath the comic. Which I do think is a great thing for worldbuilding! It made a large positive difference when trying to grasp the world as I started reading. Now that the world is firmly established in my head it serves a different purpose, occasionally providing interesting detail and currently as the main way we get to know chief Hardiman.