Annotated 34-19
It is perhaps worth remembering here that Arkerra’s racial issues are not ours: humans here are far more likely to be prejudiced against elves or gnomes than against different colorations of their own species. Some slight instances of the latter prejudice may exist, but more on the level of Terran prejudice about hair color. That said, it’s interesting which reactions we ended up assigning to the white and nonwhite guys here.
My read on Scipio and Lectrus, without checking the script, is that they start off intense but are getting a little tired of their interrogations by panels 3 and 4, but they perk back up when they see a guy who just seems to be radiating guilt even before the lamp starts radiating his guilt.
[checks script] Ah, I see we didn’t even specify what was going through their heads in the script there. We just asked for these two to be modified because putting them in the exact same pose through all five or six frames would’ve felt unnatural. The more specific reactions were John’s call.
The fourth guy kinda sounded like would have wanted to be…
Yeah, he just seems disappointed that someone else killed Claude before he got the chance.
More like he’s grieving him, IMO.
… Wait.
*remembers how Lectrus’ lamp works*
D:
What are you getting at?
This webcomic had a Battlestar Galactica vibe in that there was no racism amongst the colonists, but the inhumanity against others is glaring at times.
I don’t think it’s hard to imagine that our world would be more like this if there were some other sapient or near-sapient creatures on the planet that we co-existed amongst and with which we interacted. I mean, the more we learn, the closer we could place some non-human apes into that category, along with certain birds and a few oceanic mammals. And look how we treat them.
Why are Scipio and Lectrus looking *away* from the suspects in the middle two panels?
Probably processing their Xth villager and just getting tired of the whole ordeal with no guilty parties seeming to pop up.
Someone should have told them about binary search algorithms.
You divide all villagers into two groups of equal size, then ask each group collectively if they did it (and they all need to answer). If the lamp lights up, you divide that group into two equal groups and repeat the exercise.
That should lead you to the murderer very quickly.
Of course, asking a large group of people becomes impractical once you approach a few hundred people because you won’t notice if one person does not answer. But you could still do it with 10 people or so in one batch. Bonus of this method: If the lamp lights up, you pick the most suspicious person based on their reaction to the lamp, ask that person again individually, and have a good chance of being done already.
With regards to the annotation I am reminded of a Discworld quote:
“Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.”
Woops, not Mendy meant to be a reply to this comment, apologies.