Annotated 27-9
Aw, man, Carol, you were doing so well in pages 5-6, but panel 1 here, geez. You don’t stop someone like Shanna by tempting her with goodies. She’ll blow through that bullshit like it’s not even there.
I mean, I guess it was worth a try; journalism is wildly underpaid and Shanna has a mother to support. But this shows the limits of googling somebody and deciding you know them based on a bit of reading.
You might think telling Carol how she knows she’s lying is a tactical blunder on Shanna’s part, like telling your enemy that their fortress has a broken door when you’re just starting to bring your armies in. But Carol won’t be able to correct for that flaw long-term; she won’t be able to help herself. So all Shanna’s done is make her more nervous, which will probably make her more transparent, not less.
Also, it doesn’t even have to be true to have the desired effect. Make up a tell then call her on it.
Overcorrecting might even turn into a whole new tell.
Also Carol shouldn’t have volunteered ‘why’ Ferris was ‘let go’ — that’s grounds for defamation lawsuits if someone had been let go and been denied jobs because of someone flapping their jaw in either a reference check or in this case to a reporter (note, sometimes firings are so public that there’s little choice in the matter).
Everything is those two meeting, from the begginig, is so full of wrong stratey on Carol part…poor her, shes just a pawn, really. No mind for games.
Yep … she stormed in with a nice plan, and then charged right through into the middle of Shanna’s favourite battlefield … And while Shanna’s disguise as Felicia Day wasn’t very convincing, her disguise as the somewhat naive reporter type getting all angry about violence in video games works so much much better (because it’s also true) that Carol didn’t even consider she might be interested in anything else but game content until it’s too late. This is the kind of mental Judo I dream of being able to use…
I think this is one of the reasons Shanna is one of my favorite characters. I’m fan of the hard-nosed investigator trope. So I enjoy seeing her cut through the BS without missing a beat.
I think everything here from beginning to end reveals that Carol is on her own.
She went in with a plan that played out perfectly in her head. But had she run it by anyone not completely stressed out and maybe roleplayed it a bit, fundamental flaws would have been identified and corrected.
Always an interesting moment because it reveals how much backstory in Arkerra was retconned into existence- the Five have only been in there for two *months*, at most maybe the *instant* our story began.