Chapter 14 – Page 1
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Annotations Every Day - Written by T Campbell & Flo Kahn - Illustrated by John & Jason Waltrip
…Gastonia’s not really all that neat-o a place-o, is it?
They’re doing pretty good for a medieval kingdom who had to knuckle their way up between a bunch of magic using betters and horde-like lessers. I don’t believe in the in-built progress of history, but it is true that improvement is a gradual process that takes generations.
It’s a great place, lots of trade and work is being made on improving technology, mundane and magical. It’s just got a fair bit of human superiority complex/racism.
And a bit of sexism too, as revealed here
Still, a WOMAN, WOOD ELF, became a medic in one of the most prestigious corps of the Gastonian military, so there has been far, far worse places in that regard.
We’ll be able to judge it better as the story goes on, how much are they willing to change, who will help our heroes do this, who is already trying to do this.
I suspect the authors will show us and I’m looking forwards to it.
Byron’s gonna go berserk on that fly! Quick! Someone get a Jain monk.
“So far, we’ve worked on hypnotism techniques, and while we can’t get rid of the rage entirely, we can change him so that he only starts ‘zerking under very specific conditions.”
“So, you make him only ‘zerk when something impossible happens?”
“Alas no, changing this requires a change of identity, and only the smallest shifts are even possible. We’ve changed Byron, and now we believe he’s much safer in public.”
“What did you do?”
“He’s now ‘Byron the Bee-zerker'”
I require a post card with Byron’s antler face on it.
Seconded!
All work and no rage make berserker get horny.
And blue. And pink.
And possibly green.
Oh look. It’s Hern the Horny!
They’re gonna get married! He’s already on his stag knight.
<positive feedback />
Syr’nj is Byron’s hantler. What could go wrong?
lol, The Great Game didn’t save Cairhien in Wheel of Time, either.
Says you. Arguably, Moiraine was the most skilled player of the Great Game ever. She managed to out-do the White Tower, without getting caught, managed to at least partially steer the Dragon, and somehow convinced Thom and Mat to pull her out of the Tower of Genji. She was also Cairhienen. Since Cairhien fulls within the general parameters of the entire world, and by playing the Great Game Moiraine has (so far) managed to prevent the entire world from collapsing into a heap at the feet of the Dark One, an argument could be made that the Great Game did, in fact, save Cairhien.
And if someone had played it a bit more successfully and organised a coup when Laman first came to the throne, Cairhien might even have been saved from the first Aiel War. But the Age Lace was probably never going to allow that to happen.
^ This.
+1
Is- is he changing colors? Please tell me that this is his hallucination.
I don’t even want to think of how long the commercial for those drugs would have to be to list the side effects!
Cool Cucumber kool aid
warning, side effect may include: random groth of animal features. colour changing. lack of attention span. an odd buzzing or clacking sound when moving. Loss of rationality. A severe hatred of flys. Belief one is a fly. belief one is a fly who cannot fly. spontanious cryogenic eruption. sexism. poor fashion sense. spouting outdated catch phrases. taste like cucumber. erections lasting longer than 48 hours
results may vary. please contact your nearest kool aid vendor with your concerns and/or cash.
HLY:
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA HA HA HA! HA.
Not all that long:
“Side effects may, and likely WILL, include growing antlers, continuously changing colors, and in extreme cases, testicular hemorrhaging, death, or even becoming a hippie.”
I hope they aren’t hallucinations! Byron now gets +2 to charge attacks and can potentially hide better in bright, mono-colored rooms.
Oh, so this is that “very special” episode that deals with sexism, is it?
Whoopee. So they don’t just have to deal with racism but sexism now. Yeesh.
Raxism ftw.
Yeah, did anyone not see that one in the mix for Gastonia?
One form of hierarchy-preserving bigotry is rarely far from others.
Augghlbgh!
I’m a bird! I’m a bird! I’m a bird!
So, someone gave you the bird?
You haven’t heard?
Word.
Well, I can honestly say that was not the answer I expected. We knew your average Gastonian citizen was pretty racist, but sexist?
Well, thing of the times if you will. Heck, most countries don’t give woman equal footing until after industrialization and evne then it doesn’t always come quickly.
WoW is a utopia as far as not having sexism in a fantays medieval setting.
…so tired I hardly care how god awful my spelling is.
And even post industrialization some countries still don’t give equal footing. (I’m looking at you, Muslim countries).
I’m suprised, that people are suprised, at the unsuprising news, that gastonia is sexist.
Of course, other cultures managed to give women complete superiority over men. The Minoan Civilisation appears to be one such example. It must be said, most of these were thoroguhly wiped out by waves of invaders – the Minoan example, the Mycenaeans.
Actually possibly just a wave – the destruction of a nearby island led to a change in society that ended the classical period of the sn ake cult anmd brought in a more war like culture.
Save that their society continued just fine for the next 200 years AFTER the eruption of Thera, and suspiciously fades out as the Mycenaeans appear. Admittedly, coincidence is not causality, but it is highly suggestive, especially when Mycenae then absorbs Minoa.
I seriously doubt the Minoans were a matriarchy tbh.
Argue with Evans. He wrote several incredibly uninterestng books on the subject.
Only a few decades ago, in the US and Europe, it was commonplace for people to say publicly that women shouldn’t hold positions of authority. While social conservatives are hesitant to say that aloud now, you can be sure that many of them are thinking it. If you look at hierarchies in many institutions, you’ll often find near parity at the base, but only men at the top.
Closer to home — for me anyway — are gender disparities in STEM careers, particularly IT. Mention this issue in many online forums, such as Slashdot, and it will quickly become clear that there are a significant number of hardened sexists who believe women don’t belong in IT.
Or look at discussions of whether there should be women in combat units in the military.
All in all, it’s quite easy to imagine the marshal saying something like this in our world. We have no right to be smug.
Nailed the issue, thank you Owl.
FoolishOwl has it. D’y’know that the US House of Representatives is 17% female… and this is a record high? Or that about 40% of physics undergraduates are female, but only 8% of tenured physics professors? (Note: Numbers are from memory and so a bit dodgy, but I’m good with numbers.)
From another angle: Even on the nicest, best-moderated forums I know, I meet folks claiming that there are almost no girl or gay gamers, so it is not only okay but good business sense if lots of female armors are skimpy but none of the male armors are. They somehow never take account of the fact that much of the potential female audience (me) finds this disparity so repulsive that there are games I will never play, knowing little more than the screenshots tell me, because of this issue.
I agree that massive sexual discrimination is a problem, and incidentally, your numbers are pretty accurate. I would like to make one small point about how job statistics need to be understood, though.
In the workforce, it takes several decades for people to rise from the bottom to the top (eg. undergraduate to tenured professor). Therefore, a better comparison is undergraduates from thirty years ago to tenured professors now. That still does not alleviate the problem that only about 8% of tenured professors are female, but it does add an important piece of analysis to gender discrimination issues. This is called path dependency – the way the old structure worked governs the way the new structure works, even when the old structure no longer exists (and you can bet patriarchy still exists, which just makes this even stronger).
That kind of path dependency is also very important because it helps explain why disparity still exists in new appointments. People in positions of authority, when they choose successors or even just underlings, tend to choose two types of people – people like them, or people they like. Both categories tend to favour people of the same gender, sexual orientation, qualifications, and opinions. Therefore, path dependent domination of the top leads to domination of the middle, which then, through weight of numbers, continues the domination of the top.
Then you factor in the too many people, of both genders, who believe that either discrimination doesn’t exist or that it doesn’t involve them (as victim, perpetrator, or both), and the whole problem becomes even messier.
+1 – this is one of this comic’s best threads.
It’s even more fun when the body type doesn’t suit the stereotypes of the gender. I’m 6 ft tall and more thickly built than most men I know since it takes nearly no effort on my part to gain muscle mass. My favorite nickname out of all of the Viking-esque nicknames that I’ve had is “Olga the Manslayer.”
While it’s less difficult for me to get positions of leadership and responsibility as a woman, it also means that I get the brunt of blame for a group mistake far more often than I would expect otherwise–whether or not I’m leading. It also means that getting a job in conservative towns is next to impossible because I’m expected to be 5’6 and a twig.
Gold Star.
Have you seen a single woman in a position of authority outside of the PCs?
Only one that had any remote sense of power, and she died.
“Augh! The prophecy–“
What about everyone favourite Abbess?
‘Course, she died too I think.
We haven’t seen many woman in positions of authority among the Savage Species either.
This is true…I wonder if there’s an Amazonian race in this game?
~sighs~Poor Byron man…see someone tries to change him..I know it’s played for laughs..but he has horns..and is LOOPY…if they got attacked right now he’d be useless..and dead
“Do tell? Being a woman is an issue? Well, since the head of the Gnomish inventor’s guild is female, that may explain why they decided to kick your pathetic sexist patriarchy to the curb.”
This may be the scene where Syr’nj discovers Berserking is sexually transmitted….
Time to adjust the meds a little, I think.
What? You don’t like pink?
It clashes with everything.
Next panel: THWIP! Byron’s frog tongue catches that tasty fly.
Did… did I miss something? What the hell is happening to Byron?
he’s taking his medice, it stops him freaking out by making him litteraly freak out :P
One name: Joan of Arc
WITCH!!!! WITCH!!!!!
…
The antler’s aren’t from the medicine; Syr’nj has been cheating on Byron with Frigg.
Does it count as cuckolding without the nuptials?
Women… They get a you in a monogamous relationship, tell you they like you for who you are, then they just start trying to change you.
multicolored antler Byron and serious sexism talk on the same page, what a comic.
also, how does Byron change shirts with those antlers?
carefully. very, very carefully.
He asks Syr to help, nudge nudge wink wink
Also, I agree with Syr’s face: -.-
“Ahem. We seem to be out of SALT LICK.”
I don’t know why the party are still being called “peace keepers”. They’re more of a special ops unit now.
I’m reminded of the mercenary battleship from Schlock Mercenary: Serial Peacemaker.
Finally, a ship to stop the bloody war between Lucky The Leprechaun and Tony the Tiger.
Don’t forget the B-36 Peacemaker, one of the largest bombers ever made.
First thing I though of was FarScape, honestly.
*thought
Y’know what would have made this page perfect?
2011-12-02-Guilded Age ch14 pg 1 copy.gif
Byron needs to slowly change colors while we watch.
In fact, I’d like for that to be the next page: reindeer Byron, changing colors like a string of gaudy multi-colored Christmas lights.
This discussion does appear to be happening in the main hall, despite there being only three of them. Why not have it in the antechamber to the antlerchamber?
I can so picture Byron channeling Roosevelt and shouting Bully now.
Careful, man. Mess with the elf, you get the horns.
Oh, hey. My new Gravatar is a drunken Alan Moore!
Much better than Nervous Fop.
“Say, would you mind passing that cauldron?
“ARISE MY MESSENGERS OF DEATH, OUR TIME HAS ARRIVED!
I don’t know why I said that….”
I was going to suggest that we can’t be sure yet that Ardaic is actually sexist himself — and then it occurred to me that the point here is that he was ignoring Syr’nj to ask the guy who has suddenly grown antlers, is rapidly changing color, and is babbling nonsense, why he isn’t out leading the team.
I’d say that Ardaic’s a dead man–but knowing this comic, he may be left alive to put a message across. Just because you save the world doesn’t mean that problems like sexism and racism go away.
I’ve been watching some Farscape on Netflix recently and I can’t help but think “Peace Keepers” when I see “Peace Makers” no matter how hard I try.
I so wish they had gotten the subtitle for Farscape on Netflix. At least I got my Peacekeeper Wars DVD to watch.
I just assumed the antlers and colors were a side effect of the anti-berzerk serum. No?
third panel Byron face is gonna be the best Gravatar Ever!
Great dialogue in the last panel. Great content, well-timed.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Byron! The hippie persona is Nyj’s thing!
Perhaps she’s going back to her roots. Feeding Byron drugs… Seriously…
err… I mean, Nyj’s thing!
Wow, first glance I though this was a gag page.
I’m with Valdrax and going to say these are hallucinations Byron is having during the conversation.
Ardaic obviously just doesn’t know how to make a sandwich. The poor bastard.
John Montagu has yet to invent it,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Montagu,_4th_Earl_of_Sandwich
If not racism, it’s sexism
That building.
I’ve seen the front view of the real thing in a Google Image Search once.
I believe the results for the same search have changed now, but it used to be the #1 result for “Tudor Building” or something along those lines.
AND this isn’t the first time I’ve seen the particular building in question portrayed in a webcomic. Shame I can’t find the other comic where I saw it any more… Maybe another day.