Annotated 16-3
Oh, alt text, how I wish you were true. But when it came time to set up “Epic Rap Battles of Gastonia,” there was a more obvious conflict to mine for Syr’Nj’s performance.
Syr’Nj’s plan to disrupt the enemy’s coalition is really a damn good one, and I wish we’d followed up on it a bit more. No amount of shared grievances or hand-based iconography is going to make such wildly different cultures anything more than allies of convenience (though time and trade might eventually consolidate their bonds). Gondolessa’s personal and professional relationships with Harky, and the avians’ great variances in humanlike intelligence, would make splitting off the avians easier said than done. But even weakening the average avian’s conviction that humans and their allies are merciless could dull their enthusiasm on the battlefield, and that would count as a win. Instead, Ardaic’s treatment of Yalaria here is going to bite the Peacemakers on the ass pretty directly after Rana shows up.
Both me and Phil, but especially Phil, did not intend for Yalaria’s arc to end quite here. We thought Rana might get a chance to rescue her or that she might escape on her own. But other plots kept commanding our attention, and by the time we could return to the issue of what had happened to her, enough time in Arkerra had elapsed that there could really be only one answer.
Poor Yalaria, a victim of other priorities.
Good thing Rana never found out about Aradic’s involvement in Yalaria’s death.
To what extent Rana was aware of Ardaic as an individual, I doubt it would have changed anything. Accepting Gastonia’s surrender and allowing humans to be part of Penk’s new government was something Rana dealt with, however well or badly he did, offstage.
In panel 1 it looks like Syr’Nj is making sure her head is attached properly. She’s probably just meant to be checking her hair, but you’d think she might consider treating the wound on her arm a slightly higher priority.
Talk about feeling like your story is a living, breathing project.
“Have you fed words to Yalara’s arc lately?”
“Me? Not since chapter 16, I thought you were doing it.”
“Awww shit, she’s dead by now then.”
the first indication that Ardaic is Lawful/DontGiveAFuck.
I think the term is ‘Lawfully Awful’.
What’s with the girl band?
The hint is in the filename.
I appreciate the SHE reference!
At the risk of starting an Abbott and Costello routine, who is ‘She’? It’s a pretty vague term to Google and expect useful results.
I had to Google image search the picture of the three Asian women up there, to get this on facebook;
“S.H.E is a Taiwanese girl group whose members are Selina Jen, Hebe Tien, and Ella Chen. The name of the group is an alphabetism derived from the first letter of each member’s name.”