Annotated 38-4
Most of the early stuff in this chapter is mine, but Flo tagged in for this one, and what a job she and John did. This chapter was going to be mostly about the machinations of native Gastonians, but this moment needed some impact and there was only so much we could give it by words alone.
Homon, up to this point, has had a somewhat independent existence despite his denial of any identity (“I am no one”). He was a servant of HR’s shadow, not the shadow or HR himself. That’s all over, as of now. And HR has no more regard for this being’s independent spirit than he ultimately will for any other. He can be personable, even friendly, while they’re useful, but as soon as they’re in the way…fffft.
Couldn’t really think of any more appropriate accompaniment than what Flo put on this originally.
This took so much energy to produce that we had to take a very quick break afterward, but in these reruns, your next page arrives tomorrow!
Hmm. This is the only page on either run where Homon is tagged as merely Homon, rather than Brother Homon. Is there a reason for that, or is it just a mistag on the original page that carried over to the repost?
(I clicked the tag to see his last appearance, because somehow I’d misremembered him as getting killed along with Brother Tom, which doesn’t jibe with this page. It makes more sense now that I’ve confirmed that I was misremembering, though it’s funny that both his last appearance and this one (…which is also his last one, just in a different sense) have him in front of the ‘stargate’, as this is clearly not immediately after that one…)
Mistag! I’ll fix it later.
Just a nudge on this.
Thanks! Done now.
I just had the thought that his was a dramatic and almost painful looking entry and he could’ve self-inserted with his own background like any D&D campaign kind of thing.
He could’ve just shown up as a brand new member of the Head of Houses, with an extremely influential family that’s always been there but didn’t quite play a part for a bureaucratic reason or another.
Honestly doesn’t matter, not to him, he just wants to come in, be God and fuck shit up, but it was just a useless thought after seeing “damn he looked like it hurt”.
I guess he should have created Homon with a different look, but at this point it would have been annoying to create a new character when the one he *wants* to play is already there.
I also suppose that the pain was only felt by Homon, while HR was briefly wrestling with his spirit to take control of the body…
I fail to understand what “HR’s shadow” is supposed to mean. And I can’t say I understand the concept of the homunculus too well. What’s the difference between HR’s immersion and that of the main Five? Could Chrissy “become” Bandit by immersing herself just like HR?
I think “HR’s shadow” refers to the Sepia World version of HR here, because HR is referring to the Plato’s allegory of the cave, and he seems to believe that Sepia World itself is the cave, and once he enters Arkerra, he’ll become his “real” self (or at least a much more powerful version of himself — no longer a “prisoner” of the cave). The homonculus was never quite HR, because it was a mixture of his and Ferris’s blood. It was just a servant that he was able to create and insert into Arkerra to do his bidding.
Now, that flash-back … I don’t think I quite understand what that’s supposed to be about.
I suppose he was just dumped by his girl-friend or so, but then … something’s at the door, and he realizes he’s a wizard?
On some level, it’s clear that this is probably the moment when he realizes he wants to make a universe for himself and go live in it. But other than that, there must be a little bit more in there, but I find that hard to decipher.
Similar with the metamorphosis: We see him shed his body, and his soul moves to Arkerra — but later in the story, the that body is clearly still linked to his in-game fate. So maybe this more a visual metaphor?
That would be pretty secondary if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s keeping the Five alive and prefers to fight them in Arkerra rather than just turning off life support in Sepia world and seeing if that doesn’t solve the problem. (The problem that they have more power in Arkerra than he wants them to, not the problem of getting them out of there — but at this point he clearly doesn’t care if they live, so why not try the easy way first? He could tell Carol a story about it, and she’d probably believe it).
I’m not sure myself either but that frazzled look definitely points to the time he started becoming a recluse. My guess is that up until that moment he had been just an ambitious game developer who accidentally created/found something bigger than himself. Up until that point, he may have been honestly trying to figure the mystery of the five and how to get them back but then he became aware of the possibilities.
As for looking back at the door, I’m not sure what it means. Maybe that’s how he’s mentally acknowledging the world-shattering conclusions that his research until then (all the papers on the ground) made inevitable.
As for the flashback: He has been shocked by a cat video :).
(You can see it in context on .)
Also, apparently my HTML is rusty. This should link propperly to chapter 22 page 23.
Ohh! Dammit, I did not recognize the scene and was sure it must have been a scene from before the main story, what with his hairstyle being all different.
So … that seems to be the moment when he realized he can’t stay CEO for Hurricane during business hours and God of Arkerra in his spare time: Once he enters, he’s in it forever. And also the moment when he decides that that’s what he wants to do.
Hmm… and then the next page has him say something about getting the cultists to show him what he needs to know. It’s weird how I forgot all of that. But on the other hand, even the re-post of those pages was quite some time ago… So maybe letting the corruptor beast (and WAV?) through was some sort of experiment on HR’s side, to learn something he needed to know for his scheme? You answer one question, you find another…
For the first time ever I realize that Homon, like all the other PCs had to be an existing and living person in Arkerra. I always thought of him as an avatar of HR who only appeared at his behest and was fully under his control.
Except he’s not really a PC, more like an NPC with a link to Sepia world.
“When I realized what I was… that’s when I knew that I was Scott McCloud”