"A thousand years have passed by, and an evil villain is planning to destroy sivilization as everyone knows it. Other villains are seeking revenge or massive destruction."
A Hate Story is a webcomic by Agnar Idsøe, as the sequel to his earlier work, the simply-named Agnar's Comic. Its progenitor began as a Sprite Comic, but eventually transitioned into sprite-like original art.
It can be found here
. Not related to Analogue: A Hate Story.
This webcomic provides examples of:
- Above Good and Evil: The Raider repeatedly states he doen't believe in good and evil, only consequences.
- Affably Evil: Don, the Lich Lord Emperor of the Empire of Lich'Moor, is actually a friendly guy who loves showing people pictures from his family photo album.
- After the End: The world's advanced technology was destroyed and replaced with magic, creating a low-tech, high-magic fantasy world instead.
- The Alcoholic: Tara'Kaul, due to her Power Incontinence.
- Amusing Injuries: Often inflicted by the main cast on each other, since they're all Nigh-Invulnerable.
- Apathetic Citizens: The living citizens of the Lich'Moor Empire aren't fazed by anything, up to and including the building they're in being lit on fire.
- Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?: Zordon and Miranda have an unspoken one in this strip.
- Art Evolution: The art noticably improves between Agnar's Comic and A Hate Story.
- Attack Its Weak Point: The Voices are immune to most forms of attack, but are instantly destroyed by water magic.
- Back from the Dead: Ellen and Miranda, but in completely different ways.
- Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: The Raider's MO is to do this for other people.
- Bleed 'Em and Weep: Death Rose is subject to this when she's forced to kill one of her own soldiers to protect her Secret Identity.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: William cares for and is protective of the people he knows, but can't even comprehend any other life as having value.
- Butt-Monkey: Among many other things, Zordon is constantly forced to be around elves, whom he hates with a passion.Zordon: This brings back memories from my first lone trip at sea... ...and my first shipwreck.
- Call-Back: There are many references to events that happen in the prequel comic, particularly The Shattering.
- When Tara'Kaul goes insane from reading the Raider's mind, she commits a massacre in almost exactly the same way the Raider did in the prequel comic.
- Card-Carrying Villain: The Raider's occupation is "villain", and he constantly refers to himself as such.
- Cassandra Truth: The Raider is fond of telling people his plans to their face when he knows he'll be written off as joking around.Crystelia: Raider, this is not a joking matter!The Raider: It's the truth! I swear it! It all takes place after your wedding!Crystelia: Shut it!
- Cerebus Syndrome: The light-hearted joking around becomes significantly rarer as the Raider's plan begins to come to a head from this strip onward.
- Chekhov's Gun: William's ability to commune with his followers later allows him to escape from a magical prison.
- The Chessmaster: The Raider, full stop.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Magic works this way. Interestingly, if someone believes Magic A Is Magic A, then it is that way for them. The Raider isn't pleased when he realizes it's why he lost his magic powers.
- So many people believe William is a god that he starts to be able to hear their prayers.
- Cluster F-Bomb: The Raider gives one when he misjudges the distance to a wall and swings into it on a rope. Doubles as a Precision F-Strike since expletives are generally rare and it's the first time we see the Raider make a clumsy mistake.
- Color-Coded Characters: The main characters all have differently colored magic. William is red, Ellen is blue, the Raider is white, and Zordon is yellow.
- Continuity Nod: The Raider's excellent story-telling abilities and his weakness to water magic.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: The Test of the Album, one of the prerequisites for becoming a lich lord, consists of being shown the entirety of Don's family photo album. (He had a very large and loving family.)
- Cool Old Guy: General Victor is capable of singlehandedly dispatching entire troops of soldiers despite being over 80.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Anytime the Raider decides to kill someone. Even if they're the majority of the Assassin's Guild.The Raider: I'll make this brief.
- Damsel in Distress: Queen Crystelia.
- Dark Action Girl: The Death Rose wants to be one.
- Deadpan Snarker: The Raider rarely makes an entrance without being snarky.
- Description Cut: There is a particularly dark one when William and Ellen joke about how the Raider is never really shocked by anything, right as he discovers Tara'Kaul's hanging corpse after she's killed herself.
- Don't Make Me Destroy You: The Raider keeps most of his secrets by threatening anyone who learns them. This backfires on him when Zindy, who is vital to his plans, learns his identity and he doesn't know how to deal with it.
- Dramatic Irony:
- The fact that Martin Bluewind is the Raider is made obvious to the audience long before other characters catch on.
- Only the Raider (and the audience) ever realize the Death Rose is Queen Crystelia. Later, Queen Crystelia "kills" the Death Rose in an unfortunate accident that no one else was present for.
- Dramatic Thunder: When Martin discovers Tara'kaul killed herself.
- Embarrassing First Name: Zordon's real name is Robin'Kei. The Raider calls him Robin whenever possible.
- Evil Counterpart: Achnor to Morgosh.
- Evil Gloating: Achnor is fond of this.
- Evil Is Easy: The Raider's reason for being a villain is that he doesn't have to give excuses or justify anything he does to anyone.
- Evil Laugh: Achnor has a good one. The Raider, notably, does not.
- Evil Minions: Don controls a loyal nation of zombies, wraiths, banshees, and liches, though none of them are inherently evil and the intelligent ones just act like ordinary people.
- Evil Sounds Deep: The Raider intentionally lowers his voice to invoke this. His real voice is that of a 17-year-old.
- Eviler than Thou: The Raider to Death Rose. William to Miranda.
- Eyepatch of Power: The Raider wears one to cover where his left eye should be.
- Fantastic Racism: Zordon hates all elves. Elves hate the undead, even intelligent ones. King Caspar believes everything that's not human is evil and should be destroyed.
- Foreshadowing: The Raider jokingly mentions he hopes Tara'Kaul doesn't transform into another Raider.
- A God I Am Not: William constantly insists he's not a god, and hates all his worshippers.
- Grand Finale: Everything is scheduled to take place immediately after Queen Crystelia's wedding.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Everyone thinks Zordon is half-elf because of his pointy ears. He's actually half-orc (which also have pointy ears) and just inherited a human skintone.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Zordon
- Heroic BSoD: William gives this to three people at once by explaining the origin of elves and orcs.
- Hypocritical Humor: The Raider is full of this.The Raider: [sneaking around] Anyone sneaking around this late can't be up to anything good.
- I Am the Noun: The Raider states that he understands consequences because he IS consequences.
- He also says he knows what's happening in the underground, because he IS the underground.
- Iconic Outfit: The Raider is so well known for his trademark blue outfit that all he has to do to disguise himself is take it off. Lampshaded in this strip.
- Icy Gray Eyes: The Raider's one remaining eye is noted to be cold and grey.
- Informed Attractiveness: Everyone comments on how extremely attractive Martin Bluewind is when he takes his sunglasses off. The pseudo-sprite art style means his face looks exactly the same as just about everyone else's.
- Kamehame Hadoken: Most attacking magic takes the form of a giant laser beam.
- Kick the Dog: The Raider occasionally murders random innocent people just because they were there at the same time he was annoyed at something. The Death Rose calls him out on this.
- William incinerates fifty innocent worshippers because they annoyed him by following him around and singing his praise.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: The Raider doesn't give much thought to people's lives, but he loves and cares for cats.
- Knight of Cerebus: The Raider, when he gets serious.
- Large Ham: Both Don and Achnor.Don: I'm alive!
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Alexandra uses this to restore Ellen's rationality.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: A number of plot points and twists in Agnar's Comic are spoiled by A Hate Story.
- Limited Wardrobe: Everyone wears the same clothes all the time, unless they're in disguise or getting married.
- Love Interest: Zordon and the Raider are this to Queen Crystelia.
- Mayfly–December Romance: Elves live a long time, but neither of Queen Crystelia's love interests will ever die of old age.
- Meaningful Name: Guildia is the city of guilds. Elvor is the city of elves. Deathmoor is the city of undead.
- A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Tara'Kaul can read minds, and hates it because she can't turn it off.
- The Mole: Lawrence.
- Motor Mouth: Zordon, aka the babbling village idiot, doesn't actually need to breathe. Once he gets started, he usually doesn't stop until someone snaps and blows him across the room.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Raider, Lord Nightmare, Possessor, and The Forsaken One, to name a few. Most go by more benign nicknames, though.
- Nay-Theist: Everyone hailing from the Lich'Moor Empire will acknowledge William's deific status, but refuse to worship him.
- The Necrocracy: The Lich'Moor Empire, although many of its citizens are living people.
- No Endor Holocaust: Averted with the destruction of Guildia.Martin Bluewind: The whole destruction of the most populated city in the entire world. Humans. Elves and orcs. Dwarves. Poor. Rich. Noble. Children... Scum and saints... No warning... No chance... No hope...
- Omnicidal Maniac: Achnor is perfectly happy to destroy himself if it means he gets to watch the rest of the world be destroyed too.
- Only Sane Man: The Raider, Ellen, and Miranda all believe themselves to be this.
- Perky Female Minion: Nelly.
- Physical God: Almost every member of the main cast is one, to varying degrees. Somewhat justified in that the story focuses on the same characters as the prequel comic, which took place 1000 years previously, and every ordinary person would have been long dead since then.
- Right-Hand Cat: The Raider has an ordinary snow-white cat that he occasionally talks to and pets.
- Pointy Ears: All elves and orcs have them.
- Poke in the Third Eye: William instantly detects Tara'Kaul reading his mind, and threatens to destroy her sanity if she doesn't cut it out.
- Rebellious Princess: Queen Crystelia became the Death Rose because she was tired of royal life.
- Really 700 Years Old: Zordon, William, Don, and the Raider are all over 1000 years old and look exactly the same as they always have, since none of them age. Especially egregious with the Raider, who looks seventeen under his outfit.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Ellen was accidentally trapped in the Void by William for a thousand years, slowly going insane with hate while also absorbing incredible magical power on par with his. When she finally escapes, she's very motivated.
- Royally Screwed Up: Even before the Raider has his food spiked with a rationality-removing drug, King Caspar is extremely paranoid and unstable.
- The Sleepless: The Raider. It becomes a plot point because even the undead require mental rest.
- Speech Bubbles: Played with often. Don's text boxes turn maroon-on-black when he uses his lich voice and drip blood when goes full ham. William's oblivionoid voice is red-on-back and Ellen's is pink. Achnor's text boxes are always yellow and the Voices have borderless blue text, indicating their formlessness. Zik'Viiel's text boxes also change after Keith kills him and he becomes a Voice.
- Spell My Name with a "The": The Raider and, intermittently, the Death Rose.
- Stealth Expert: Sneaking is second nature to the Raider, despite always going around in a bright blue outfit. He can even sneak around up on the ceiling.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: The Raider usually shows up suddenly right behind someone, but almost always just casually walks away in full view afterward.
- Sufficiently Advanced Alien: The oblivionoids were weapons created by these. Even the Raider is afraid of them.
- Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: Red Magic is this. Yellow Magic is exactly the opposite.
- Tempting Fate: "Well, everything is set! There is no way anything could possibly go wrong!" — General Blaze, moments before being splattered everywhere.
- "As long as there is magic, there is Elvor."
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The Raider gives a crushing one to Death Rose, which leaves her in tears.
- Took a Level in Badass: After Tara'Kaul starts to gain the Raider's powers, she's able to go toe-to-toe with William.
- Took a Level in Cynic: Queen Crystelia after prolonged exposure to the Raider.
- Villain Protagonist: The main character is the most notorious villain in history, trying to commit the worst atrocity in history.
- Villainous Breakdown: The Raider begins to slip into this after the unexpected destruction of Guildia reminds him of his hometown. It only gets worse after Tara'Kaul commits suicide.
- Wall of Text: When Zordon is asked to explain everything he knows about the Raider from start to finish without holding anything back, he does.
- Weaksauce Weakness: The Raider's only weakness is water magic. It's also the Voices' weakness, since they were once part of him.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Raider.
- White Hair, Black Heart: The Raider has an even mix of black and white hair that ends up looking silvery.
- Wizard Duel: Ellen and William have one when she finally catches up to him. It doesn't go anywhere because they're both Nigh-Invulnerable.
- You ALL Look Familiar: Non-important characters suffer from this, mostly as a result of the pseudo-sprite art style. It's lampshaded on this page.
