Annotated 6-4
The title’s a little weird here, I admit, because “war” probably refers best to this prologue and “bonds” to the bonds of friendship that will be forged or firmed up in the pages that follow this one, with “war” somewhat more loosely describing the fight against the nunnery. It has nothing at all to do with gaming and no extra meanings beyond “here’s this phrase which is usually interpreted one way, but today we’re interpreting it another way.” It’s not the worst option I could imagine, but eh.
With this page, we’ve officially seen the last of the flash-forwards. Under the heavy influence of TV’s Lost at the point of its greatest critical and commercial success, we put these in the early chapters to counterbalance their relatively quiet character development with scenes of the team rocking hard as a team. As the “main stories” got more action-packed and drew the team closer together, the flash-forwards got progressively quieter, and with this chapter we’ve completed the reversal. If you’re upset about the Peacemakers having to let this injustice stand, rest assured they’ll be spending the rest of this chapter “kicking ass en masse” to make up for it.
That said, I know these time-jumps confused the audience a lot, and if we had it all to do over again it’s possible we wouldn’t have done them like this. At least the last three chapter-opening scenes are necessary to GA‘s larger plot, but we could’ve structured them differently or at least thrown up some “Later…” and “Earlier…” captions.
“So I coulda gone casual for this trip?! This is twenty pounds of plate I’m hauling dipshits, and that aint even counting the fucking shield!”
I remember being confused about why people were confused about the time jumps. But i suppose it was a bit jarring when there’s no indication that it *is* a time jump.
Last panel could’ve shown those “overwhelming odds” in the distance as they group is walking away.
More confusing than the time-jumps was the thought that I must’ve missed a page somewhere, one in which we got a glimpse of this multitude of slavers, or whatever it is that gave Byron the impression that they didn’t stand a chance.
(Of course, with Harky later being the first troll we meet, and wiping the arena floor with them, I wasn’t sure whether “overwhelming odds” actually meant “two trolls wielding whips”.)
I had trouble with the “overwhelming odds” too. Maybe is was from not seeing it, but even the glimpse from the page before showed 3 orcs for each troll. It would certainly be a risk taking on a bunch of trolls and hoping the chained up orcs could aid in the fight, but it always seemed like a risk this team would normally take on.
“Overwhelming odds” as in, “if we attack these guys we’ll have to fight the entire might of the Savage Races in the near future and probably get ourselves killed even if we happen to win today.”
Of course, if they’d know that that was going to happen anyway they might have decided differently, but hindsight’s 20/20 they say.
I will be frank: Chapter 6, page 3, panel 2 was supposed to convey many more trolls than the two, and one reason I’m less than sanguine about the current layout for that page is that it does seem to lose that detail. So in case Frigg’s “en masse” isn’t enough for you, yes,
the team is outnumbered as well as facing the toughest species on two legs in Arkerra outside of land sharks.
I had forgotten Frigg being so open with her sense of morals this early in the story. I mean, she’s not outright condemning it like Gravedust is, but it’s pretty clear she thinks it’s fucked up.
Yes, “Earlier” and “Later” tags, or “3 months from now” and “Back to the present”, or anything like that would have been a big help. But the story and characters were so good I stuck with it in spite of my confusion. So worth it!
I agree. It took me a long time to figure out that they must have been time jumps, but from when to when, I struggled. Little unobtrusive tags like “Back to the present” would have helped, even in sortof a general way to place things without needing to get specific about how many months/years forward or backward.
I got that they were time jumps with this one I was mostly confused about the previous freeing Frigg storyline being interrupted for seemingly no reason with a future plotline, I did find it and still do find it a weird choice.
I’m honestly surprised Frigg didn’t just say, “F this, I’m goin’ in with or without you!”
She never seemed the type to just calmly follow orders in the face of a moral quandary.
I agree that these flash forwards are necessary for the pacing of these early chapters, the glimpses of where they are going to end up works really well to keep us readers invested in the early growth of the characters and the group dynamic.
Most other places they’ll do a flash back but often that ends up slowing down the pacing of the “now” line.
As for confusion I didn’t read these live so I had a few chapters all at once to read and they came across as obviously flash forwards to me. At least after the first time it switched back and I realized it wouldn’t just be disconnected vignettes of adventuring.