Annotated 14-20
Gotta say, being able to pull together and defend their home in the moment like this is a pretty good argument for Gnometown’s centralized superclan culture, even if it is xenophobic and a bit willfully blind. Most people in a crisis of this magnitude would be mutely staring until it was too late.
I keep fielding questions about this, so let’s put it down here: the relationship between Sepia World role-players and their “characters” in Arkerra is meant to be a little complex and ambiguous. Nothing would ruin the series faster, in my mind, than treating Rachel as nothing more than Lia’s creation, or Bandit as Chrissie’s, etc.– they’re real people with real thoughts and feelings (well, except that the whole series is fiction, but you know what I mean). So if there’s a conflict between the two, I tend to go with the interpretation that maintains their realness.
Rachel is little-sistering Frigg here because Rachel is a person and currently has that personality, and also “because” Lia wrote her some dialogue (and/or selected from a dialogue tree, but this scene seems unlikely to use one of those). Did that actually originate with Rachel, influencing Lia to write those lines, or from Lia, steering Rachel’s development, or from some third force, entangling them both like spooky action at a distance?
That’s a lot like how writing fictional characters feels sometimes. “I am in charge here, aren’t I?”
So here’s something I’ve been uncertain about: What, exactly, are the professors and Taro (and others?) doing here? Are they building weapons for Gastonia under the original contract? Selling to the World’s Rebellion? Dealing under the table with anyone who will pay (Which I assume is basically just those two)?
Is it me writing this dialogue (outside of the literal sense) or is it my characters saying this of their own accord and personality? I love the dichotomy as I’m writing my novel, and to read about it here!
OK, what exactly is the update schedule here? When I checked this morning, it was still on page 17, and had been for at least a couple days. Now it’s 12 hours later and it’s on page 20. I’m getting seriously confused about when I should check for the next page.
Nearest I can tell, it’s midnight eastern. There are some DNS (?) quirks that are causing the “next page” button (etc.) not to always update on refresh, though. I’ve had some luck typing the expected page name by hand.
I generally set it for 11 PM-midnight Eastern Standard Time, but there have been occasional glitches. I’m currently on vacation, so the last one escaped my notice for a while.
I just have it in an RSS feed. When it shows up here, it shows up in my feed. No checking or clicking “next page”, it all just works.
I figured some of their ability to pull together so quickly wass due to more than a few of them already being riled up because of Bandit being back. A few of the vigilante bent might have even been actively hunting her.
Isn’t that generally how character writing works? They need to be their own people, otherwise the start to become inconsistent.
Unrelated to today’s comic in itself, but thank you for introducing me to a new manga via the commentary box!
T’s final bit of commentary reminds me of the Dark Tower relationship of author/text.