Annotated 7-20
KILL. KILL. KILL. Kill. KILL. KILL. KILL. Kill. KILL. Kill. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. Kill. KILL. KILL. KILL. Kill. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. Kill. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. Kill. KILL. KILL. KILL. Kill. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. Kill, but these days my focus is almost wholly on Syr’Nj’s experience. So cerebral is she that despite never experiencing this before, she hasn’t gone straight to violence, though she may have gotten there if left alone with that spell for another minute.
The way her eyes roll back makes it seem like she’s just checked out for that 60 to 90 seconds or so that Byron’s struggling with his inner demon, but she will later testify that she saw Byron fight his way through this madness.
Regardless of whether she was conscious for those few seconds or not, it’s not clear what she knows about Byron’s prior experience with similar spells. But she’s no fool, and that title he carries around like a scarlet letter is a pretty big clue that he’s not as new to them as she is.
(kill)
I’m always reminded of my first experience with this motif in media: Kefka from Final Fantasy 6*
*3 back when I first played it.
Nice to see someone else old enough to make that distinction.
Kill kill kill kill kill?
You currently have the perfect avatar for that comment.
there is solace in simple instructions
Not going straight to violence here is…a sign of being cerebral? o_O
Did Byron really resist the spell or did Tom “dose” him just the right amount so that it traumatizes them but doesn’t escalate too far?
Ever play a game that you know have scripted “too important to die” characters, so as to put that protection to the test?
I think maybe Tom did that here.
I always thought it was very weird Byron carries Berserker around all cool and he doesn’t berserk, but it was even weirder when the lore behind the berserking was revealed. It was a harrowing, traumatic experience and he just adds it to his name. It’s not really owning it to get over it either, he’s very much far away from that, but it’s not like carrying it like a cross, he doesn’t show to be a penitent man… But doesn’t use it either!
It’s like I accidentally kill my mother and am (naturally) damaged by the event but start calling myself Mario Matricide.
It makes perfect sense to me with the gaming nature of the comic. Byron has an incredibly typical backstory and surname for an RPG character. It’s the kind of thing that happens when a roleplayer names their character first, and then works backward from that for the backstory.
I don’t remember exactly, but I loosely remember HR later in the comic saying something to similar effect.
Maybe he learned not to talk about his past … the hard way?
That’d give him a well-cemented nickname, because people are assholes, and by then it’s easier/stealthier to just adopt it, rather than risk new associates from coming across the nickname in the wild, so to speak.
Coincidentally, I’m currently watching Kill la Kill for the first time. It’s… a lot cheesier than I expected, based on the title alone.
It never occurred to me that the spell was targeting or affecting Sy’rnj until I read it in the commentary here. I’d read this as an attempt to trigger Byron’s berserker curse already in place, with Byron resisting because of Syr’nj.
Seeing her expression in panel 2 pointed out and knowing that the cultists later do inflict berserker curses on multiple targets makes the intention here more clear though.
Same.
Maybe this was an early development form? Byron was the original test piece, and they are working towards the “virulent berserker zombie plague” version they created later?