That alt text is another little Flo tic I love. I barely remember the Cinnamon Toast Crunch ads, although there is a basketball-themed Cheerios ad that lives rent-free in my head and probably will to the day I die (“The unsinkable taste of Cheerios, you’re never sunk with those unsinkable O’s, you stay on top, your power to go-o-o, you’re never sunk with Cheer-ee-ohhhs, you’re never sunk with those… Cheerios!”). I can’t find that one online, strangely enough, but I know it was real. Parody lyrics involving “unthinkable” and “stunk” were the height of comedy to my preteen mind when I was first exposed to it, and I remember those, too.

It’s hard to know when the hand-on-the-shoulder gesture is a good move, especially post-pandemic, but I think the spirit of respect in which Byron makes it is coming across.

In case you forgot, Syr’Nj is calling back to this scene, and John’s taken care to render Brother Tom much as he appeared then (i.e., in Erica’s style).

It does seem like maybe this issue should’ve come up before, but it’s worth remembering that they don’t know “that fortune-teller” is anything more than just some cultist, who could’ve easily gotten himself killed after their last encounter.

(And while his predictions did come true, they weren’t… that different from what I’d expect a fortune-teller with no special abilities to say. A lot of Syr’Nj’s idealism about peace between her people and Gastonia could be gleaned just from the fact that she was a wood elf in Gastonia with an “on a date” vibe, and a lot of chiseled fighter-types would probably like to hear they’d have an army one day. He made a couple too many correct predictions to just be a lucky guesser, but no one of his predictions had the stick-in-your-mind, ominous quality of “Birnam wood come to Dunsinane,” if you follow me.)