Skip to content

Kill Them with Kindness 3: Underhoof

Kill Them with Kindness 3: Underhoof published on 75 Comments on Kill Them with Kindness 3: Underhoof

There has been a lot of discussion in the comments about what Cy is, so I hope this page helps! This whole comic is about Ike’s family, so it is a safe bet that all water horse monsters are bugganes.

Wow you are all in for such a treat, Ike’s mom is a PEACH.

Don’t forget about the BIG SALE going on in my store!! Big savings! Gosh gosh!

75 Comments

“Peach” must be another word for “female dog” where you come from, if her dialogue is anything to go by. Poor Ike. Poor everyone.

That’s pretty much my reaction. Her insisting on calling Ike by his first name is just icing on the already uncomfortable cake.

I know parents get attached to the names they give their children, but if Ike has made it clear enough that he prefers to be addressed by his middle name so that even Cy, who must hear him referred to as Petrus by their mother as much if not more than he hears him called Ike or Isaac by anyone else, calls him Ike, their mother is being willfully obtuse by continuing to use his first name.

I have the same issue… work calls me the first name, my family my middle name (which has two pronunciations, and they use both), and my friends call me Simba/Symbi because that’s what I prefer. It’s obnoxious. I feel like a dog being traded around at times…

The reactions of Horace and Lee show, quite clearly, that the mother is not exactly well regarded. And she has quite thoroughly ignored Rhonda, and treated Ike’s band as being of extremely minor import.
All in all, I can easily see why Ike’s manticore father made himself absent from the picture.

The interesting thing is, she might not always have been this way, considering she once was willing to date a ‘monster’. Manticores don’t have a very nice reputation, as Ike has lamented before in-comic.

She might be one of those people that goes a little strange as they old.

That’s actually an interesting point. She doesn’t seem like the type of person who would have dated a monster in her youth, does she? Kory’s said in a couple of places (though all I can find right now is an old Forumspring answer I have saved in a word doc) that there are disguise magics other than the medallions, but that they are more dangerous, prone to mishaps or requiring a high price from the user. If we assume Ike’s father was willing to take the risk of that, it opens up a lot of possibilities about the relationship Ike’s parents had, and it may even explain why Ike is a crossbreed.

Oh my goodness Cy is nearly as adorable as Colin. Why are all of your monster babies so cute?!

Headcanon: Peach is one of those people that insist on using terms like underhoof and gelding or whatever other terms that make the termanology unique to bugganes because she is an eletist and think that its super important to make sure bloodlines and heratige is always preserserved. Most other residents lst use kid or underfoot since these are generic terms.

Is it just me, or does the idea of one’s gills being constantly exposed to drying air sound monstrously uncomfortable?

If Cy is too young to know buggane shape-changing magic how DID they get him from the London Avalon to the Liverpool one without him being seen? Can bugganes case illusions too?

“how DID they get him from the London Avalon to the Liverpool one”

I’d guess that the part about “furniture being moved around” suggests a neat cop-out here. Moving vans rarely tend to have windows …

(… he wrote, as if the drivers were using sonar … hey, gives a totally new meaning to “Batmobile” … ! >;-> )

Is anyone else reading Horace’s expression in the second to last panel as “Lynn, why is Ike acting like he has no idea what is going on? I thought you were going to tell him”?

Perhaps Ike is starting to wish that he’d disappeared into that shoe shop when he had the chance. However, sometimes problems can cancel each other out. I’m thinking:
– “Now, Petrus, who is this young… lady?”
– “Ah, mum, this is Rhonda Phelton. Rhonda, this is Lynn, my mother.”
– “Hello, Lynn, how do you do?”
– “That’s Mrs. Sanford to you. And *sniff* it seems that you’re a pipe-smoker… how unladylike. Petrus, I do hope she is only an aquaintance of yours…”
– “Actually, mum, she sort of wants to be me girlfriend…”
– “…I see. And you’re far too much of a gentleman to slam the door in her face. I raised you well, my son. Leave this to me…”

Rhonda, however, will see what is going on, and is probably about to step in with a “Let’s go to the park!” or similar, and whisk them all away with a parting “Nice to have met you, madam!” over her shoulder. She probably wasn’t that interested in shoes anyway…

Or maaaaaybe:

– “I tell you what- I’ll take them shoe-shopping with us!”
– “Miss, if you can manage that, you’re a better woman than I! Indeed… if you can meet me at the Rose Cafe, at five on the dot, with my children whole and smartly shod, and your nerves and hair intact, I will reimburse you for the footwear, and be ready to talk to you, woman to woman, regarding your plans for my eldest son…”

I love the fact that she refers to Nemean Lions as “those… people” directly in front of a Nemean Lion… ;3

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think there’s Nemean lion in this episode at all. Rhonda is a Bohemian, and Ike is manticore/bugain.

Indeed you aren’t! Point is that if Lynn is prepared to dismiss the whole race of Nemean lions in such terms – ancient, mighty and cohesive as it is – then how is she going to treat a lone Mittel-European heraldic beast, especially one that appears to be making moves on her son? (FYI: the coat of arms of the old kingdom of Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic, is a white lion with a forked or double tail and a golden crown.)

The novelty has run thin on the small horse child in Ike’s arms, mostly because of that last panel. I admit is was funny for the first 4 seconds, but as someone with 2 younger siblings I can honestly say that was some cheap humor.

Cheap humor, or an accurate representation of the nature of small children?

I would say both, because not all small children find amusement in such things

Speaking as someone with two older siblings, one of whom has lived in another state as the rest of the family for most of his adult life, very little of what Cy’s doing is likely for his “amusement” per se. It’s more likely that he’s just been missing his big brother and this sort of thing is how Cy shows affection. If we want to assume Cy is particularly insightful, we could consider the fact that the way Ike related his history back in Exchanges gives the impression that he’s felt unwanted for much of his life. Nothing says “you’re important to me at least” like Cy’s level of unabashed enthusiasm to see Ike.

As for the “Look what I can do with my hands” thing, he’s probably been wanting to show off his shape-shifting progress to Ike for months, and now that Ike is right there to show he just can’t wait.

Unbridled enthusiasm rings true for me, but I’m not seeing much shifting in the forefeet to hands – am I being particularly unobservant?

Maybe that’s why Ike needs to look at them *that* close. :-P

“Oooooo, faking yer hoofprints, *that*’ll help not to get found out by ’em humans!”

Is Horace a brother or a stepfather? He looks like he could be either.

I thought it’d be a Kelpie, they tend to be the first water horse monsters which come to mind :P

Except that Kelpies tend to *drown* anyone who tries to ride them. According to folklore, in general, Kelpies are nastier than Buggane. Though that makes me think Ike’s mother has a little Kelpie in her (I don’t like her very much. I’m a pretty tolerant person, but I think even I would give her a proper telling off.)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Content Footer