Annotated 19-11
Merry Christmas!
Now that we were including Shanna in the narrative, we could start leaking in a few other references to our other works. Hence “Toppfer West,” a reference to Toppfer University, a sequential-arts school from Sketchies. Sketchies and its ragged band of art students was Phil’s and my main project together before GA: I’m not sure if it’s a real thing in Sepia World, but it probably is.
Toppfer U, in turn, was named for Rudolphe Töppfer, a seminal figure in early comics history who deserves more credit than he gets. You can see how an art university might choose to honor him, even if setting up in America meant they had to drop the umlaut.
Less explicable are the guards apparently named for Norton Antivirus and Kaspersky Anti-Virus, unless Carol’s so paranoid that she’s giving her own security team pseudonyms so no one targets them. Which would be a nice parallel to Shanna’s subterfuge here, I suppose. At least their names are pretty analogous to their function and efficiency.
It’s not like Norton is a particularly uncommon name. There’s probably hundreds of security guys named Norton.
Kaspersky is uncommon enough (at least in non-Slavic countries) that the coincidence is more striking, but that actually, I think, makes this a bit more likely (assuming a Kaspersky applied for the job).
I can see someone in HR noting the names and deciding to assign them to work the same shift and area.
Or, they’re buddies, formerly of the French Foreign Legion and took new names fitting their ambitions.
I mean, that *could* happen, I guess.
I figure one’s a nickname or middle name that he started using when they noticed the connection.
Its probably just the universe specific context, or carol’s paranoia, but that last panel continues to strike me as kond of… apropriative ? predatory? Theres something more sinister about an elk mount preorder bonus in the context of the elves mourning in the other half of the chapter. Its a big picture flavor to why HR’s methods are villainous, but this is a strong moment for it, to me
Pre-orders.
They get you to pay big money because they give you some random junk, which with any luck has no real usage in game either, just to get your money for a game that’s not as good as promised, not at all like promised and in some cases still in mid-development with you working for them as playtester AND paying them for the “privilege”.
It’s just because of the pre-order. “Get your cr*p while it’s hot.”
I think that last text balloon is the closest we’re ever going to get to my particular fan theory: Carol would immerse herself in one of the spare tubes and in Arkerra, Fr’Nj would be her avatar. (Shannon would do the same and her avatar would be Kur’Ik.)