Annotated 23-28
“Heck, good enough” was my feeling about these last two pages, too. You may not be laughing at Frigg here, and yes, this might be the meanest thing she’s ever done, but it’s nasty-funny to me and Phil both for reasons I can’t articulate. Yes, Frigg, fucking a dude whom no one but you calls a girl is indeed “super gay.” The GAYEST.
The last two panels are solid payoff for earlier planting, and one of the bits of my original outline that I’m glad survived.
As Phil and I were finishing this chapter, we were getting our Kickstarter approved at last. This did not make us any less tense with each other as we bit our fingernails over Guilded Age‘s financial future. I remember letting a call from Phil go to voice mail while I was looking for a new living situation: a yurt on a goat and chicken farm, where I would carry out certain duties in lieu of rent. I’m not kidding, that was the actual offer. I was a little too nervous around some of the animals to be the farm owners’ first choice, but I tried.
I got back from the farm to find a volley of angry texts from Phil for ignoring his call, despite the fact that I’d TOLD him I was apartment-hunting. This was the last straw. The straw that broke the Campbell’s back.
Or it WOULD have been the last straw if not for what happened next. My replies included the quotes “I WAS AT THE HOUSING MEETING I FUCKING TOLD YOU ABOUT, YOU RIDICULOUS RAGE MANIAC” and “I should have been treated like a freakin’ HERO for shoving everything else in my life aside, during the PEAK of the roommate trouble AND Income Tax Day when I worked for a tax company, and getting that shit DONE.”
I cannot do justice to how cathartic that text session was, mostly because Phil took it like an adult and admitted I was right. Maybe not about EVERYTHING, but certainly about those two things. This is one of the things I deeply admire about Phil: as combative as he can be, he will often admit fault and apologize when others would defensively double down. He values HONESTY, and that is worth treasuring.
One solid apology doesn’t fix everything, of course. But it moved us onto a better footing as we approached the next chapter, which may have been harder on Phil than this one was on me.
“The straw that broke the Campbell’s back.”
I T what you did there.
Thanks for sharing. A lot of the time people take a regularly updated comic for granted, or don’t understand why creators might need flexible schedules or looser uploads. You guys devoted yourselves to something you got little back from even as it put strain on your personal lives. I can’t be the one to say if it was all worth it or not but I do want to say that the final product the two of you put out week to week was one that brought me great joy.
The comic is just as good the second time around and hearing the story that went into it only increases my admiration for Phil and you both.
I’m still wondering why Frigg is the first one to come running over to Rachel. Maybe it’s me, but the woman I love is somewhere on the battlefield and the battle ends, I’m not resting till I know she’s okay. Doesn’t matter if she just drop kicked my heart, I would need to know she was okay. I don’t think this is a wild thing, I think this is what most people would feel. E-merl let me down on this one, and he proved himself unworthy of Rachel here, as a friend let alone anything else. “If there’s a problem, we’ll face it together! That’s what people who love each other do!” The problem is her faith conflicts with her desires, and instead of trying to face that with her, he walked away. The next problem is she was beaten up to the point where she was near unconsciousness, where is he? Thinking about himself.
(Actually the fact that no one is coming to help her out except to mock her reflects poorly on the group, one of your number goes down, you pick them up. Bad form guys.)
I’m glad you were able to get that concession from Phil. That kind of…validation isn’t easy to come by. Many people will not give you a fair shake and cop to their nonsense.
Having been through a breakup where I loved someone so hard still, it hurt just to see them. Plus depression really does a number on your brain, and tells you awful things about yourself after a breakup, worse than usual. I can totally see how Emerl wouldn’t run for Rachel after she dumped him. It’s just too painful to show love that isn’t going to be returned.
Honestly, I never intended an answer for your first sentence other than “Frigg was the first team member to SEE Rachel lying there.” This isn’t about who’s dating who: if any fellow Peacemaker… Byron, Scipio, Fr’Nj, Gravedust, Bandit, and yes, certainly E-Merl… was first to see her lying face down like that, they’d have hustled over just to make sure she could breathe. The fog of war is hella distracting, though, and Rachel and Tamara’s fight got a bit separated from the others, which is also why Tamara was able to vanish without anyone seeing her leave.
I don’t really think there’s a way to “face the problem together” with someone when that problem is that they don’t want to be together with you. I’m afraid I learned that one the hard way. E-Merl’s actions aren’t perfect here, to be sure, but his hanging around Rachel right now wouldn’t make her life any better. Even in the limited context of the brawl, it probably would’ve just distracted them both and taken them out of the fight sooner.
If I was E-Merl. I’d probably think she wouldn’t appreciate any support from me.
On Frigg’s part, she probably thinks that Rachel didn’t care about E-Merl (that’s why she turned him away, right?), so she should be happy to hear that he’ll be taken care of. That’s just plain old Frigg logic..
It’s like we’re getting a whole new alternate reality with the annotations, beside Arkerra and Sepia World.
On another note, there’s something very Bugs Bunnyesque about Frigg’s expression in panel 2. Ain’t she a stinker! :D