Annotated 3-8
From some of your comments yesterday, I gather Syr’Nj’s crush was not nearly so clear as I hoped we’d made it, which makes me wonder… is it canon at all? It was definitely my authorial intent with Phil and Erica backing me up, but looking it back over, there’s only one place in the story where Syr’Nj’s actions couldn’t be explained some other way. Still, it’s kind of surprising to me when readers fail to ship. They’ve declared OTPs with flimsier evidence than this.
Here, for instance, I felt that while she’s taken slurs a lot worse than “green dude” without flinching, her sudden libidinous interest makes it very important to her to clarify that she is female in every way. But maybe you just read that as purely evidence of Frigg’s skill at trolling. Anyway, let’s all thank Gravedust for interrupting Syr here because, while I don’t know how she was going to end that sentence, I can’t think of any ending for it that wouldn’t be painful to watch.
The bit was also partly inspired by the “is that a BOY or a GIRL” comments that Frigg generated upon her introduction.
I hoped it’d be a bit of a mystery who spoke the last line, but “got a line on this” can’t be anybody but Byron.
I think you all did too good a job of making Best the kind of jerk everyone just wants to see get his comeuppance, instead of the bad boy who just needs love.
At this point in the story, he’s definitely not relationship material. And maybe that’s part of it: maybe readers only jump on subtle signs of attraction for pairings of people they’d WANT to see find someone.
She does look at him, but her expression did not give it away. She’s not smiling but more wondering, like she does not know what to make of him.
Yeah, I guess they kept a realistic subtlety to it because they didn’t use any form of the tried and true “blush”. You know what they say, “if they blush, they crush”.
And before you ask, nobody. Nobody says that.
She objects to being misgendered, therefore she must have a crush on some guy? Wow. Anyway, um, sick burn by gravy in panel 4 …
You’re right, the objection by itself is hardly enough evidence for that. It was mostly the staring over two consecutive panels in different scenes that I expected to get people thinking in that direction.
tbh when I saw that I thought “she doesn’t trust this guy… he does seem pretty shifty, can he really pull his weight or is he going to sell the party out somehow?” I saw her reaction to Frigg’s trolling as being stressed and on a hair-trigger, in part because she was distracted keeping an eye on Shifty Shit Elf. I literally never realized she had a *crush* on him until it was pointed out in this recap. XD
Yeah, this is me, too.
If I were to take Syr’s reaction as anything other than ‘she expects racism from humans, but being misgendered is unusual enough to get her attention’ (especially since misgendering elves usually goes the other way*), I’d have taken it as an indication that Syr was trans, and therefor misgendering would be a much sorer spot. But the former felt like more than enough explanation.
* Which is a whole kettle of offensive fish all on its own.
I just assumed that Frigg would call *anyone* a “dude”, since she re-uses the term on Gravedust immediately afterwards.
Maybe if Syr’Nj was blushing in those two panels where she’s staring at Best? Maybe with bonus goofy face? That seems to be code in comics for expressing attraction. Her wide-eyed expression here reads more like she’s disturbed by Best and doesn’t trust him at her back. But I often fail to pick up subtle clues in comics so…
I think this expresses best how I interpreted her behavior and expressions.
Maybe it was too subtle for a ship, on a guy that’s too much of a dick right now for anyone to want good to happen to him.
You have two nice or regular guys in a story and one says “Hey thanks, I appreciate it” and everyone’s gonna be “OHHHHHHH THEY FUCKIN’!!”
I must reiterate that I’m just not good with subtle, though.
And that I like Best. Later.
To be fair to Frigg, “Gravedust” is a pretty awesome name.
Frigg never did get that name when he died.
I honestly always expected at least a nodding joke about that, haha.
To be fair, he was wrong about not being in a position to object.
I remembered that Syr’Nj had a brief crush on Best, and I seem to recall that while it was never really a plot point, there was no doubt about it. I didn’t pick up on it this early, though, and I don’t remember when and how it was made clear.