Swords The Webcomic | Bluesky
Transcript Image 1
4 Panel Comic with title banner across the middle
Title Banner: Choose Your Weapon
1: A sword that is stronger the more books you have read [A golden curved sword with a hole in the middle, a brain sits on the back of the sword, the handle is the brainstem. Lighting crackles around the brain. Loose pages are seen just off frame. Barely visible in the background is “42”, “LXIX”, “33”, “M”, “XLII”]
2: A sword that is stronger the more lies the opponent has told you [The sword resembles Pinocchio, his body stretched out like Superman. His nose spirals out from his face like a whip.]
3: A sword that is stronger the further you are from home. [A large grey beaten up single sided sword with a hole in the middle. A brown backpack hangs from the hole. There are several bumper stickers on the sword, two read “Lake Tang” and “SWRD”.]
4: A sword that is stronger the more your back hurts. [A sword so massive it doesn’t fit in frame. Energy bursts from the blade]
Footer text: Episode CMXLV © 2018-2025 ~ MATTHEW J WILLS ~ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE USE OF THIS IMAGE TO TRAIN LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS IS PROHIBITED
@SWORDSCOMIC
Transcript Image 2
4 Panel Comic
1: Choose Your Cursed Sword
2: Curse where every third word you say is an antonym [A sword with a blade that resembles a purple and slightly silver tongue curls outward. The cross guard resembles a lower jaw with teeth. The handle is pink with pink stripes wrapping it and a black pommel]
3: Curse where you can only see through the eyes of people who can currently see you. [A orange elvish-looking blade, long with a narrow base like a waist, with a white chevron across the middle and a white stripe across the cross guard. The pommel is a safety cone.]
4: Curse of smelling smells from three minutes in the future. [Sword with a blade that resembles a long nose with too many holes. The cross guard is the nostrils with teeth below it and a tongue for the handle.]
Footer text: EPISODE MIII © 2018-2026 ~ MATTHEW J WILLS ~ MADE IN NZ ~ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE USE OF THIS IMAGE TO TRAIN LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS IS PROHIBITED
@SWORDSCOMIC
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I think the second has the most potential. But I don’t need a sword to be honest.
If you’re homeless does that make sword #3 insanely powerful or insanely weak?
I threw my back out last night so I’ll take that 4th one right now. Normally I’d take the 1st though.
Edit: on reflection I’ll take the “books read” one anyway because no sword in the world is awesome enough that I’m gonna be swinging it in combat with crippling back pain.
Sun Tzu hates the #2.
Book sword seems an easy pick assuming the scaling of the power ups is remotely similar - if you’re an educated adult you should already have a decent power level, its strength isn’t going to vary wildly on you (lies would be particularly bad for this), you can have a strong sword without living in pain, and if you need extra power you can just smash through a bunch of childrens books in a few hours.
In terms of the curse sword smells from the future seems the pick. Changing every third word would cause a lot of communication annoyances and seeing only through other people’s eyes would make you blind a significant amount of the time.
Not to mention the obvious anti-synergy of other people’s eyes and book sword. Reading from other people’s eyes would be tricky to say the least.
seems pick scaling power remotely if educated should a level, isn’t vary you be for can strong living and need you smash bunch books few terms curse from seems. Changing word a communication seeing other would blind amount time.
The last sword is more of a superpower than a curse
Knowing something about the future three minutes in advance.
I wonder if three minutes is enough to profit a lot off of day trading stocks. One smell, the stock is going up. Another one, it’s going down… but three minutes isn’t long.
Theoretically you can use it to communicate with past you so yes, definitely. Smell lavender, stocks are going up. Smell shit from a butt, they shat the bed.
And 3 minutes is plenty with leverage!
You don’t want to do the shit smell specifically because one bad fart could destroy your fortune.
Wise words that I’m sure only experience can teach you, thank you.
I was thinking more of something like smelling smoke 3 minutes before a fire, smelling burnt stuff before a missile strike, smelling a ferocious animal before it approaches, smelling a gas leakage before it happens, etc
My wife has this “superpower”. It’s only useful is rare circumstances. Most of the time it’s a curse.
But how…
there are so many questions
She’s 3 minutes closer to his butt than he is.
It’s more that time moves slower when closer to large masses.
The seeing through someone else’s eyes would make you a poker god.
You’d never know what your own hand is unless someone cheats.
It doesn’t say that you can’t see through your own eyes, which can always see your nose.
I’d say it’s a god power in general if you can train yourself to move accurately from arbitrary 3rd person perspectives. Though even if you just briefly look at other people’s screen and go back to yours, you can turn that into a huge advantage.
I’m assuming you could switch back and forth at will.
Then it isn’t a curse at all?
In poker, you don’t play your hand, you play your opponents.
Just play with your cards face up on the table
Plus the worlds best military spotter
through eyes you god
How is smelling smells three minutes into the future a curse?
I mean if it works similar to other time powers like seeing into the future, that future would be preventable.
Smelling the future and acting to it seems like pretty awesome, and three minutes is pretty long… You have enough time to act and escape you death maybe, if you suddenly don’t smell anything anymore… Or you can make sure that you only eat the best food available… Since tasting food is mostly about smells… You could become an awesome cook… you just have to deal with the five tongue senses…
I think the smells from 3 minutes in the future would be full of paradoxes if you try and use it to game the system.
You smell your toast burning, so you pop the toaster early, now theres no toast to burn. But you still smelled the toast burning, so now youre just having a stroke.
More like you can never actually act on the information without creating a time paradox. So if stop the toast burning it actually means your house is on fire instead. You prevent yourself from shitting your pants, but the toilet explodes the moment you sit down.
That would be the same with future sight… Which people would argue is a super power…
smelling smells three minutes into the future
Is the sense of smell fundamentally enhanced? My MIL can’t smell anything and hasn’t been able to since a teen. I on the other hand have an over sensitive sense of smell.
I mean if it works similar to other time powers like seeing into the future, that future would be preventable.
Depends on if can you can still smell current smells or if everything is fast forwarded by 3 minutes.
Like lets say I smell a bakery down the road (within viewing distance but too far to actually smell) but I don’t like what they’re baking so I flip over a garbage can and cover myself in rotten eggs. Now if I changed the future, the baking smell should be replaced by the egg smell the moment I commit to tipping the garbage can. BUT if I instead smell rotten eggs 3 minutes before approaching the garbage can than my decisions are decided independently of the smell preview.
All the same situation would happen with future sight. My point is just that if you assume that future sight has resolved those questions, situation and paradoxes in a beneficial way, because it is a super power, the future smell would be a super power as well, and not a curse…
If future sight has resolved them is a bad way, then it would be a curse, just as any other future sense.
Just imagine always having to see all possible sights three minutes into the future at the same time. There always is a miniscule chance of all air molecules bunching up in the corner of your room or you falling through the floor…
All the same situation would happen with future sight.
Future sight is almost never portrayed as the viewer’s vision being permanently fast forwarded such that they cannot see the present. I honestly can’t think of an example where it is tbh.
People with future sight always see the present at some point. This ‘curse/power’ is fundamentally different if you can only smell what is 3 minutes in the future and not the present.
Sure, my argument is that not the modality of the sense matters, but the circumstances of that power. The resolution, the filtering and the agency someone has over that experience.
Smell compared to sight would also cause generally less of a brain overload, since smell is low bandwidth compared to sight. So if future sight as a curse might be worse than future smelling.
Doubling the amount of information you sense just in two moments, now and the most likely future in 3 minutes, might be more bearable with smell.
Are you even reading what I’m writing??
smelling minutes future I it to powers into that be the acting seems awesome, minutes long… enough act you if don’t anymore… can that eat food tasting mostly You an you to the senses…
Are you well? Maybe you should sit down, get out of the sun and possible call your local medical emergency number.
well? Should get the possible local number.
Obviously I’m picking the back pain sword, tho the book sword is a close second pick for me.
By the power of Kidney Stones, I have the power!
[Hai Yo intensifies]
The only see through eye that can see you curse can be a blessing. Ask any blind / nearly blind person.
it makes you blind when you are alone, though. the only one not actually cursed is the smell one. might even be an advantage
No it doesn’t make you blind if you blind by default. It is only an upgrade from not being able to see :D.
And you can always carry a pocket lizard with you :DMake that a chameleon specifically. Can see you with one eye and watch in a completely different direction with the other.
No depth perception though.
I would just like to point out that even without the sword, you can still always carry a pocket lizard.
True true!
Yeah you’re right, it would be an upgrade for blind people, but still a curse for anyone else. And I don’t think the lizard would work, as it says you can see through the eyes of people who can see you.
Hmm… I think some lizards are more people than some people we all know…
Still a win even if its not working :D
I’m fucking OP with the traveller’s sword.
Dual-wield book and back pain sword. My back hurts from hunching over too many books.
3: worthless because home is where I am.
4 though…
Gimme the first sword and I’ll do god-tier damage.
first I’ll damage
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