Annotated 5-24
The Ritual of Blood Bond was something of a necessary evil for us as storytellers. We didn’t have time to show that it would even WORK on someone as stubborn as Frigg, we hadn’t set it up beforehand as a means of breaking unruly charges, and there was no plausible way we could use dialogue to even explain what exactly it was.
But if all Frigg had to do was hold onto her stubbornness for as long as it’d take the team to rescue her, then there would be no ticking clock and the stakes would feel lower. Sure, Scarlett gets through Frigg’s armor a bit here with the “You don’t have a friend in the world” tack, but would any of you really believe that conventional brainwashing could render Frigg past saving before the Peacemakers broke her out? Doubt it. At least this way there’s a chance of losing her.
We’d already muted some of the tension by showing flash-forwards with Frigg fighting alongside the others and looking no worse for wear, which was one reason we opted not to do any more flash-forwards after the end of this volume.
Tomorrow, we head right into Chapter 6. I’ll be saving the guest strips and other bonus content for an inter-volume intermission between Chapters 6 and 7.
Bonus content! That’s generous, considering people originally had to pay for it.
A-Team theme intensifies!
…or Mission Impossible. I honestly can’t remember how subtly they played this out to start.
Mission Team!
I love it when a plan will self-destruct in five seconds.
That is…scarily accurate to how these people work.
No no, “I-am-possible”
I still have no idea what she’s talking about.
Yeah, did we ever learn what that blood bond thing was?
It is in the name. You bond over a nice meal of blood pudding, and frigg really can’t stand blood pudding.
Presumably something magical that would force the role on her so either magical slavery or brainwashing or a milder variant of those.
Campbell explains in the annotation that no, they didn’t actually use or explain it anywhere, it was just a narrative device to add tension. Judging from context and the fact that Drsgon Age: Origins has just come out the year before I’m guessing it’s a mind control ritual.
That’s my guess – I think it makes the sisters suitably horrifying, on top of the kidnapping and violence.
Bandit: *sniffs* “Yep, we’re on th’right track!”
Byron: *sniffs* “Huh, yeah, even I can – hoo, boy – even I can smell it now.” *coughs*
It’s all that sausage she eats. And beer. Lots of beer.
For us readers it does not work, as we know rescue is on the way.
In-universe it looks more hopeless. To keep up your spirit until you’re rescued, you need to have some confidence thet there will be a rescue. As far as Frigg knows, the rest of the team does not even know she’s gone, let alone that she knows they would come looking for her and that they know where to look.
Just leaving it at “Ritual of Blood Bond” is fine. They’ve got magic, it sounds unpleasant, things are about to go all Room 101. It helps establish that they’re a credible threat to Frigg, even if she’s tanked all their torture so far. It works.
I liked her from the beginning, but I think this is the moment when I became fully on board with Frigg. I really admired her defiance to the very end.