Annotated 17-13
(kinda went back and forth on using this image tbh, the comedy routine’s a little squirmy to me now, but it was pretty daring trans representation for its day)
Two other elves I had notes for that never made it into the final drafts:
Depalln’Tr. “Depollinator.” A handful of wood elves have flower allergies. This is viewed as shameful weakness by the general population, but Depoln’Tr is convinced that the right medicines can help. A crusader for the disabled. He is firmly prejudiced against humans, but that view may change if they can bring some knowledge to aid in his quest.
Wendel’Hm. “Wendell Holmes.” The judge responsible for hearing Byron’s case. A very old elder, who remembers a time when humans and wood elves lived in something close to peace, but whose line will end with him because his children died in combat. Deciding Byron’s case feels to him like deciding the story of his own life.
“Swarthy” is a good word.
Though to be fair, it’s a word that is often associated with negative connotations, which makes it a little complex, upon thinking about it.
Which it really shouldn’t be, as it just means dark skinned, and there shouldn’t be anything loaded about that, it should just be a descriptor no different from “pale” or “ruddy”. But a word gets used enough in a certain way, it doesn’t really matter what it meant, it takes on new meaning. This is how we end up with perfectly good words generating reactions that are completely unintentional. It’s damned annoying as there are some words which fit perfectly in their space in the puzzle of conveying meaning, to the point we didn’t really come up with other ones to do the same job, and when they are used for something else or pick up other associations it changes their shape in such a way they no longer fit, and creates this little hole in language that, to my mind, leaves things feeling incomplete.
(Let me just say, having to clarify the original meaning of “queer” when my nephew was reading the lord of the rings was kind of a hoot. But also a little frustrating as it is such a perfect word for the feeling of oddness one has when something is slightly strange, or other, and now it has a whole other meaning which rather supersedes the original. I wish it had never been used as a pejorative in the first place, though I am glad it has swung around into a mostly positive term.)
I think this is the strip that made me laugh the hardest out of GA’s entire run.
It gets funnier when you realize her defense of her boyfriend is “no, father, he’s an axe-murderer who flies into homicidal rages!”
Elves in GA give me flashbacks to dwarf fortress–lord help you if you ever sell them any sort of wood you didn’t harvest conscientiously, because if you do they will literally burn and pillage your home and eat the corpses of your clan…
In fact, if you even dare to sell them back a wooden item which you bought from them in the first place they’ll fly into a rage. Or anything that might have involved wood anywhere in the creation process… Their only redeeming feature is how much you can sell them for once their assault forces have been captured…
…Isn’t access to lots of wood for construction of ships one of their primary contributions in the war, later?
Well, not just access, the elves got to decide which trees get chopped down.
I guess that for elves, human lumberjacks are more akin to poachers. Undiscerning, tree-slaughtering poachers.
“No, no, I just use these for killing people!”
Shouldn’t that be “arboring a terrorist”?
(clanking sounds from behind scenes)
Yes.
Now it says “arborng” without an “i”.
Cripes. Okay, now? :-)
Reminds me of meeting Treebeard in the Lord of the Rings. Only in that case it was about the party dwarf.
“His axe is for orc necks.”
Of course, in this setting that might be just as bad as cutting trees… How do the wood elves feel about orcs anyway?
I think it’s funny that her dad is flagging almost all of Byron’s characteristics that mirror his own (I mean I guess he doesn’t use an axe, though those weapons the guards have are pretty close). If Byron decided to grow his beard out so he was no longer “stubbled” papa elf would basically be looking into a skewed human mirror.