Annotated 11-4
Unusually, Best’s lyrics here are Phil’s, and are they ever revealing. It’s a great little irony that Syr’Nj, who ordinarily might’ve sensed the cry for understanding in them, is too busy geeking out about her echolocation experiment (and okay, being preoccupied with escaping the trap). Best’s failure to gel with the group is almost entirely his own fault, but few things are 100%.
This was definitely the chapter that Phil pretty much took over writing the titles, though we’d both throw ideas at it for a while. I had to look up “Mirror’s Edge” even for this synopsis. (Also, we plain forgot to put in that title until like midway through the chapter, probably because the unusual structure was throwing even us off.)
(sigh) Alluding to Escher bathroom tiles isn’t quite the same as showing them. And where are the bathrooms in this place? Well, the sky elves were wizards, so maybe they addressed that problem J.K. Rowling-style.
When you say “Escher bathroom tiles”, I immediately think of his tesselations.
Also, I was thinking about the thread I started a few weeks back concerning my dream cast for Guilded Age, and it suddenly struck me who would make the perfect Gravedust (even better than John Rhys-Davies, IMO):
Brendan Gleeson
I haven’t seen his work, but he certainly has the look! And yeah, the tessellations were where we were going with that.
And Best shows loneliness, in his ridiculously egocentric way.
IIRC, when the sky elves conjure food, they just kind of teleport it from somewhere it already exists. So I guess it’d make sense that they teleport away the waste products. I just hope they don’t combine the two. O_O
Bringing stuff to you is conjuration. Sending stuff away is abjuration.
Transmutation can solve both problems!
….but they didn’t do that. If they had, they would have been less reliant on the surface for foodstuffs.
And that’s why they can’t have nice things. Aesthetic concerns.