Annotated 25-14
Earlier drafts of this scene had HR a lot talkier. He would have discussed his plans for Ferris’ body, making it clear he has intentions here beyond just killing a witness. And he would have spoken briefly about what he now regards himself to be.
Even now, I hesitate to go into any more detail than that, because this scene takes its strength from the terrifying void at the center of HR, and it would ruin things to fill that void with too much talk. The superficial “normal guy” is apparently still in there, but he’s clearly not driving the bus.
Spoiler for a classic film: in the script, I invoked the ending of the Donald Sutherland Invasion of the Body Snatchers, another wordless moment where a face we thought we knew is revealed to have a void behind it. (Man, you just don’t get endings like that in movies any more. Which is kind of strange, since we aren’t less anxious as a culture than we were in the 1970s, and we do want entertainment to speak to our anxieties at least sometimes. Too few studios, too much risk-aversion, too much focus testing… even Netflix doesn’t want to go there.)
Did HR just go “Scanners” on Ferris?
There’s motion lines at his arm, so more likely repeatedly smashing his head against the wall.
What wall? That’s Byron’s glass tube; you can tell because it’s red.
Seems risky to smash Ferris’ head against a glass tube with a man linked to another dimension you need for your world domination plans.
I’ve no idea what Brasca1 is referencing, but I don’t think he got repeatedly smashed. To me, it seems like he slammed Ferris once and then made his head explode with his Mathulu Powers.
The moovles on HR’s arm in panels 4 and 5. Though it doesn’t really matter much; he’s using some kind of magic either way.
Don’t worry I have faith this is a red herring and he’ll get better, don’t worry don’t worry.
“I heard you were dead…”
“I got better!”
I about lost it when i saw the alt txt.
I’m trying to decide if the sadness in his eyes in the last panel is a lingering shred of humanity or just ….what it thinks the face is supposed to look like in this kind of situation?
Because those mouth noises it’s making are the kinds of things bosses are supposed to say when they’re firing people, which makes them horrifying here, and it’s possible that whatever H.R. is now has simply tapped into the memories of his “Boss Persona” for something “appropriate” and the expression is simply part of that.
Which…really, that’s where the horror is right here. The uncanny valley effect of “this person is acting normal, while doing things that are horrifically abnormal” makes this murder extra creepy.
Amusingly enough, HR is wishing himself luck here – if you are already aware of what happens next.
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I never read this as HR having a “void” behind his face. He’s been unconsciously(?) cultivating a villain persona for months, at least, with his “destructive edits” to Arkerra, as the head of a “video game company” – and subjecting all the players to them, too, by proxy of their characters.
Given that these edits already affect Sepia-world people to an extent HR is willing to put negligible effort and concern towards, a transference of that lack of concern to people that probably at this point barely register as more significant – in this case, Ferris, one of his employees whom he never encounters anymore – did not seem that unlikely to me.
My first reading of this page (which only developed further along these lines while reading the subsequent pages) was that, between pretending to be an evil god in his “game”, and neglecting everything but his pursuit of the Five to the extent of becoming a “smelly basement-dweller” about it, HR simply stopped caring about what would happen if he used arcanometry to manipulate Sepia-world in the destructive and uncaring way he routinely manipulates Arkerra.
Oh, and he might dimly recall that Ferris is his employee and that the basement is top-secret, therefore making his employee’s sudden appearance there a “fireable offense”.
So yeah, not a void, just able to rationalize murder here by way of having become too used to habitually destroying other people’s lives.
Yeah, I agree.
I dunno, that’s a pretty spot-on description of a “void” where tjere should be humanity if you ask me…
Cheers,
Côté
To me, the characterization would need to be a little more alien, and a little less human, to qualify as a “void”, but we may be using slightly different metrics.
Evil is a fairly human concept, to my way of thinking. And we’re the best at it.
“I’m sorry but holding the idiot ball so long has given me radiation magical powers.”
I definitely agree that keeping HR silent does a lot more for him. Not just because it shows a glimpse of his insanity that way, but because his few lines and final expression show the remnants of his humanity that he had seemingly come so close to getting a grasp on when he was talking to Carol.
I’ve always thought that HR pulling himself together was due in large part to the fact that he had finally resolved to change tactics, maybe even change goals entirely. However, he had not yet decided just what he was changing TO. It’s become apparent that he has more options than he thought he did, after having come to terms with his existence as basically a god to the denizens of Arkerra and Cyberia, and if he pursues that path, maybe he can make all the sacrifices worth something. But that’s a big, big decision to make, and he’s got the time to think more about it. After all, he doesn’t even have everything he’d need to be able to enter Arkerra without forgetting everything about himself. In order to do that, he’d need… Ah, well, no sense worrying about it right away. There’s time. Surely something will come to him before long.
And then Ferris walks in, and it just clicks. This is how it changes. Ferris can’t be allowed to leave. This is how HR gets what he’d need to enter Arkerra.
The other part of it, though, is that HR DID snap. His new resolution to give up on getting the Five out and rethink his plans is certainly a breath of fresh air, but it’s not enough on its own to explain the full turnaround. His mind has walled up his guilt, and lost its ability to feel the full weight of it anymore. That’s why he can just very simply state the full extent of his criminal actions – he’s no longer struggling with the crushing emotional weight that would make it a near-impossible task to just put it to words.
This page shows both the void that allows him to do this, and the broken remnants of humanity that still gives him the tiniest speck of regret. The remnants that he may have been able to nurture back to SOME level of health if he’d been able to stick to his plan to walk away for a while. But, now, Ferris. Perhaps fate itself has decided to guide HR on the correct new path. And this brief glimpse of humanity is the dying gasp of his capability to feel guilt before he snuffs it out entirely.