Guilded Age

So the Feuerbach referenced here was Ludwig, the famous anthropologist who critiqued Christianity and influenced Marx. A reflection on E-Merl’s current atheism or Guilded Age‘s critiques of capitalism? No, I think the reason we used his name to reflect on the winter elves was his early thesis, On the Infinitude, Unity, and Universality of Reason. And I…completely forgot all of that until I looked it up just now. Guilded Age: Sometimes we’re even smarter than we are! (TM)

I mentioned earlier that Flo and I plotted out some versions of E-Merl’s arc where he got into dark magick and a dark personality for a while until someone (we were thinking Frigg) pulled him out of it. These next three pages are the short version of that idea, and I think I like it better for being short. For one thing, I didn’t want to load the guy up with too much guilt over his own actions on top of his grief. For another, we’ve already seen enough of the team ignoring or mistreating E-Merl’s obvious crisis, and the plot is going to require them to move on without him after this chapter. So they really have to give him their focus here, or they’ll just kinda be assholes. Even if Syr’Nj is right to bench a teammate who’s starting to make dangerous judgment calls.

I also mentioned there were two points in this story where E-Merl’s grief over Rachel’s death threatens to turn him into something that’d horrify her. This is the second one of those. Read his last line on this page, and then remember who it is that he’s missing.