Annotated 23-8
I like Byron’s metaphor for the aging process, which feels like it’d emerge from his culture (not Battleshire, but the “ax-swingin’ trade” where he made friends with Braggadocio and Sundar).
I also like our use of Syr’Nj’s history here, but I should mention it’s kind of weird that she’s been dressing and speaking as if she plans to go along on this adventure, but this page is the last we’ll see of her this chapter. Since Syr’Nj hopes for a political solution, it wouldn’t be out of character for her to go, and in an earlier draft, she did. It also wouldn’t be out of character for Byron to convince her to stay behind and let him deliver that political solution, based on their convo here. But we never quite get the moment where Byron says, “I think I need to be our ‘Syr’Nj’ this time” and she and Bandit agree to that. Honestly, with all the pressure I was under, I probably meant to include it and just forgot.
So, uh, yeah, about that “roommate not wanting to be my roommate anymore” thing… I should probably stress that we’re still friends today. But even so, at the time, it stung. Not as bad as the end of some romantic relationships, but still, I related hard to E-Merl here.
But…. but Auraugu’s not gray…
FWIW, I get the roommate thing.
I made a policy of not rooming with friends, back in the day. I watched entirely too many friendships end when people decided to live together. Room with strangers; worst case, you’ve found one more person on the planet you can’t stand.
Ditto. He’s still my best friend, but living together was rough by the end and we didn’t hang out a lot for a few months after.