Annotated 28-14
“Priorities.” There is maybe one other reason to promote Magda to the spot; for all her enthusiasm here, she’s the only one who seems to understand what war is and what loss means. Hers is a tempered optimism, and it’ll be tested soon enough.
Ah, there’s another Harky grin in panel 4. Though this probably counts as one meant for Gondolessa.
IIRC, the other Tectonican Dwarves vanished from the story after this page, though some references to dwarves worshiping Tectonicus cropped up later. That might’ve been an oversight on Phil’s and my part (their powers could’ve helped in the last four chapters or so), but it might just be a sign of how quickly Iver abandoned political support for them, once it became clear they weren’t gonna get him what he wanted. Edit to add: I did NOT recall correctly and they WILL show up again, but I maintain that their lack of prominence for twenty-plus chapters after this may still say something about Iver’s true priorities.
“once it became clear they weren’t gonna get him what he wanted”
Which was what, exactly? I can’t really see how it would have served his agenda better to have one of the other candidates chosen rather than Magda.
See yesterday’s commentary. Iver wants to have an agent within the Champions, and the other candidates are much more susceptible to his influence.
Mmhm. Had Harky started favoring Iver after this, calling him “Fellow Tectonican” and counting on his understanding, then these characters might’ve been given a bit more to do.
There’s also the fact that Harky didn’t even look at her; instead Chicken Boy looks at her for all of 5 seconds and says “this one” and that’s it. Iver is undermined not just by the choice but also by whom it was made. It shows Harky DOES trust someone, someone else DOES have high authority, and that someone is Gondolessa.
Or, at least, that explanation (as well as Iver’s personality) helps well explain why he would spy on his leader later; he wants to know WHY Gondolessa has authority. He might even think that the Avian “has” something on the Troll and wants to know it himself to gain at least some of that power.
Harky also says in so many words that no one else on the war council is as important as Gondolessa or has their priorities in order. To the sole other member of the war council in earshot, it’s quite backhanded.
The other Tectonican Dwarves actually show up at the very end and participate in the defense of the House, including here but they’re in the background of other pages too: http://guildedage.net/comic/chapter-49-page-12/
So noted, and revised!
I like how annoyed Iver is frowning that Magda is chosen. You have to feel for him— he is all set up for one of his pawns to get power, and they chose the least pawny of all of them. So disrespectful.
Not related to the current comic, but does anyone know why all Guilded Age pages are causing my browser to freeze momentarily? Eventually it pops up and asks me to stop whatever is causing it, but doing that for every page (especially on a re-read) is getting annoying.
I’ve noticed that too, as have others. It’s been going on since about the start of September
I haven’t noticed that happening recently, but when I was, it was the ads. Had to temporarily turn my Adblock on for the site.
I kept forgetting Gondolessa was a man during the comic’s original run. Pages like this one would remind me, and then it’d slip right out of my mind by the next time we see him and I’d go on thinking the avian leader was a woman. It took Iver trying to use their relationship to his advantage for the realisation to finally sink in.
That’s not a terribly surprising presumption to make. A lot of larger raptors have more dominant females – bigger than the males, at least. And though the are humanoid, they’re not mammalian; there’s no biological reason to give them features like breasts. Those are usually added to have the outside party aware of characters’ genders at a glance and to add a sense of familiarity to something that is otherwise quite alien. As well as… other, shall we say, less wholesome reasons.
It was always the “essa” suffix for me – just sounded feminine to my Western European ear