Annotated 13-1
So here is our final poster image, and as Phil wanted, it’s pretty metal! Like Frank Frazetta if he toned down the male-gaze fanservice. Bladed weapons aren’t really Frigg’s thing usually, but we seemed to need some more traditional monster-slaying imagery here.
The wolf’s words are designed to be somewhere between the Courage Wolf meme and his more extremist cousin, Insanity Wolf; we asked John to render the former but adapt him to our needs. I think the fact that he’s not quite one meme or the other lends him a little more ambiguity: we’re never entirely sure whether he’s Frigg’s friend.
For a while, we thought the wolf might be a more remote force here, urging Frigg on while she fights against an ogre five times her size. Having her fight against her own spirit animal from the start was more potentially confusing, but it was also more Frigg, and even at this stage we were pretty sure we knew their relationship would end with this dream made more literal. You can’t be the divine avatar of defiance and also just take dictation as the gods tell you what to do!
Strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey will be complete!
With the imagery of golden shining armor and glowing sword far too large to fight a blue tribal tatooed wolfman larger than life, I was near certain that the Exalted RPG system was an inspiration to this page.
Even the rhetoric of achieving impossible odds fits nicely with the motifs of the Solar Exalts.
I think its even more satisfying to know that it was purely original, however. Using an internet meme to encourage Frigg is increasingly hilarious the more I think about it.
Huh. Never seen the wolf meme’s before.
What inspired you guys to pattern some of the gods off of memes? And how did they become gods in Arkerra? Did Frigg believe them into existence?
Neither had I, until Phil and T instructed me to draw Frigg’s Wolf god like them.
What better form for gods in an online web comic to take, than those of internet memes!
However, it occurs to me now since HR created the game world of Arkerra from a real world out in space, duplicated it; perhaps he duplicated the gods of that world too. Or perhaps they are the real gods of that world intervening in the game world.
I’ve not seen most memes. If memes are supposed to be ideas spreading themselves like lifeforms, I seem to be on an island. But they like me here, so…
Comment: “Mothafucks” might be my favorite Frigg swear.
Questions:
Does “him” in the last panel refer to Best?
Did anyone ever draw fanart of the muppet mud wrestling?
“Him” refers to the god, “get” here means “attack, defeat, pwn.”
Not that I’m aware of!
Ah, that makes perfect sense. It seemed weird, because I thought Frigg just saw Best as a way to get laid. Then I thought maybe she was having guilt because she feels a duty to protect the group, and Best was at least a temporary member of the group. That made a little more sense, so it’s been my headcanon up until now.
If this were actually god, I’d be religious.
Also auto-correct turned that last word into “delicious” at first.
Y’know I was thinking of adapting Frigg’s whole deal as 5E Paladin subclass, and now I know to give said subclass the name “Oath of Defiance” with the vows for it written cleanly right here.