Annotated 26-15
By the bye, the colors in this chapter are choice: not so monochrome that the individual characters don’t pop, but the blood-red theme does a lot to give this story its consistent, urgent atmosphere. That was mostly Jason, I think.
Rachel’s hesitance over the word “brothers” may underscore the point. Despite how horribly wrong things have gone, she still has nostalgic feelings for when it was just her and her sisters against the world. It is hard for her to accept the reality she now faces: not only does she no longer have those bonds with Hestia, Blair, and Tamara, but others have taken their places in her heart. I thought my love for my first girlfriend was forever, and I tried to maintain it for a long time after things were over. Letting the passion die felt like a betrayal, you know?
Phil did prevail upon me not to have E-Merl bust out a signal fireball. One-handed, his ability to cast flame is severely limited, so he uses an illusion-self instead.
The tone over everything gives it the feeling of a war film, they’re behind enemy lines, and things are happening now.
Interesting about the brothers thing. It’s always hard when you’ve grown past someone, when what you thought shaped your world, no longer fits. Often we don’t realize it until we’ve wedged ourselves into a very uncomfortable position.
On Scipio, I like that it’s him delivering this, he doesn’t play around. When he talks it’s to make a point.
I think it was a good call with E-Merl and fire, him going up against Hestia would take the focus and put it squarely on their fiery conflict. Fire can be such an intense and emotional tool, I feel like it would make the stakes between them too emotionally charged, considering he’s just a guy who showed up, and she’s just another villain to him. Besides E-Merl is more of a catch you by surprise, lead you int a trap kind of guy, less of a shoot you in the back with a fireball fellow.
What was Blair thinking when she tied E-Merl up so sloppily? First she breaks his arm, then apparently bandaged him and went out of her way not to hurt him further by tying only his legs.
E-Merl only got loose by burning the ropes. He didn’t use his pyro once during the fight so there was no reason for her to suspect E-Merl had other means of escape with no weapons and his predominant (?) casting hand broken. The fact Blair took the time to set E-Merl’s arm and bandage it tells us they still think of themselves as the good guys… in spite of the skull cracking and murders because they are fighting the real ‘monsters.’
In addition to Steel Raven’s point, it wouldn’t really help the situation to make a helpless prisoner yelp in pain, not when they’re trying to have a conversation and might need to hurt him later. So some scraps of righteousness, some practicality, and a solid grounding in E-Merl being easy to underestimate.
I assume there are ways to tie up someone who has only one arm. (Even if he appears ‘armless.) Even worse, in a setting that includes magical artifacts, not to search a magician for any such items seems a massive oversight. So I guess this is where Blair’s blind spot comes into play. Maybe usually they don’t take hostages?
Yyyeah, this whole situation is pretty improv on the sisters’ parts, it’s not like they have any experience fighting a group like the Peacemakers. And E-Merl’s sort of a magical nonconformist; it’s not like there are a hundred other street magicians out there using his methods.
We *could* have drawn the ropes over his arm instead of under it in frame 3 of the previous page, but that wouldn’t have made a lot of difference to the plot except to put E-Merl at slightly greater risk of burning himself to get free. Blair wouldn’t have known to tie his fingers together or to strip him.
But why does he announce his imminent escape attempt?
Cause he’s a magician by trade, it’s not a trick if no one is watching while you do it. But also, maybe he thinks his friends are waiting for a distraction. E-Merl’s a funny dude.
Think E-Merl is also trying to distract them. The longer they are chasing him and his dups, the loger they are not are not trying to kill his friends.
Maximum confusion for his multiple illusions. If he waited any longer, it would be obvious which way he wanted to go.
Cheers,
Côté
I’m having trouble with the premise here from the start, I’m afraid. The two people the sisters beat up for “penance” didn’t act in any way like members of a terrorized community; they acted like, if they knew anything about the sisters beforehand, it was positive. I get that you wanted the sisters’ violence and cruelty to come as a surprise to the audience, but, it would have worked better for the story if Nizar and Sieglus had both acted desperate to avoid the sisters’ notice.
That’s a fair point about Nizar at least, but I think I can justify it a bit. Sieglus seems to be just passing through the area, taking jobs where they come, like we saw Byron do back in Chapters 1-4, so he was probably meeting Hestia for the first time. Nizar must have seen the sisters around at some point, but he seems like the kind of person who’d assume anyone in authority would take his side until he suddenly, painfully learned otherwise. You know the old gag: “‘I never thought leopards would eat my face,’ says woman who voted for the Leopards Eating Faces party.”