Entitlement 1
New storyline! This one appeared both in Guilded Age Plus and in the start of Volume One. As I said in the former…
“Anybody who opens up the Guilded Age print volume and thinks that the first page is going to tell them what the story’s about is going to get some headaches. Well, there’s a little of what Guilded Age is all about here, particularly class warfare and the manipulation of fantasy tropes. You gotta set them up properly before you can subvert them, after all. But Espero is not exactly a big-shot recurring villain. He doesn’t even lead to any later developments in Guilded Age history, not like Tectonicus, from the first few pages published online, does.
“Still, I think he’s a lot of fun in this limited space. You can tell he’s kind of a hermit from the way he talks to his teddy bears, er, [nearly] nonverbal magically-created warriors. If he did manage to conquer a town or two, I imagine the administrative challenges would quickly eat him alive.”
The title’s double meaning here may be a little too clever for its own good, especially since as I type the notes for this re-presentation, I keep slipping up and accidentally calling the story “Enlightenment.” But in any case, that double meaning should be clear by the end of the story.
Naming dirt after a sea-food based dish is pretty ironic, which makes sense considering how much iron they’d presumably be made of.
What are you talking about? What seafood-based dish?
Surf n’ Turf.
The turf in surf n’ turf refers to the fact that half of it (the steak) comes from the land (or turf)
I’m pretty sure it’s meant as a double pun on the authors part, note the spelling of serf here. He’s calling them farm workers made of farm land. Espero himself here is probably unaware of the seafood dish similarity.
A Despero I don’t recognize! Clearly I need to watch more cartoons…
It’s from The Brave and the Bold.
“…and you are my magickally-created listeners to my monologues.”
It’s clever for him to get it out of his system before he has an adventurer to talk to.