Annotated 11-20
Okay, so here’s an explanation no one asked for: Best’s life force registers to Gravedust as “fading quickly” because he is still alive but moving out of this dimension. If they were somehow in a position to make all this rubble invisible, what they would see is Best still falling through extradimensional space, visible but distant, like Venus in the morning sky.
I said earlier that none of the group would leave Best behind, but they don’t all necessarily know that the others wouldn’t leave him behind. Syr’Nj has already had to talk Frigg out of killing Byron just a day or two ago, so it’s not surprising she wonders if Gravedust’s hesitation is him deciding not to risk the group for an obvious non-asset. He isn’t, but it’s worth asking.
Speaking of Frigg and Byron, though, this is their first real conversation since their resurrection, and it’s got some of their old vibe. Frigg’s temper makes her slow to forgive, but her short attention span does mean she can sporadically forget.
Maybe this is silly but have you ever thought about doing a spinoff about Best’s time in Cyberia? Is there “official” canon on what happened to him there?
I guess he was changed purely by virtue of being in another world the same way a player switching games would make a new character for the new game that’s different but still represents them.
I don’t think this is a silly question at all.
We dropped a few breadcrumbs of information about Best’s stay in Cyberia, especially in the scene that took place within it, featuring the onetime allies he’d left behind. I’ll get into that more as appropriate.
This sounds like the kind of bonus story we could’ve cranked out if we’d done print volumes 4-9, but outside these annotations, Phil and I have pretty firmly walked away from GA at this point. I never say never, but I have a lot of ideas I’m playing with that have nothing to do with GA and I’m happy to have the time to explore them.
I always thought the Cyberia stuff would be a lot more relevant. At the end I guess it was just to prove there’s more dimensions that this and SepiaEarth and that Best is generally a talented and good person but he turned rotten due to “upbringing”. You know, same person, different circumstances, different products.
Always thought there was at least a bonus story on plus or something.
Also, perhaps, that the “Fantasy” genre has a load of really toxic backstory tropes that are missing from (most) SciFi..?
Maybe if they heard that sound effect Mario makes every time he goes down a pipe they’d know he went to another dimension.
While headshots have certainly become a thing for Gravedust, an even better alt-text would be “…suck Best’s soul into an arrow while he’s STILL ALIVE?!?”
By the time we saw Best again, I’d pretty much forgotten everything about him except him being a self-centered ‘feminine hygiene product used on a Summer’s Eve’. The musical instrument, his color, his destiny; everything. By then, I’d forgotten Bandit wasn’t always part of the core five.
I’m always amazed by people who can remember what happened two or three years ago in a continuing story