Annotated 43-11
Action stories often have trouble with characters who talk when they should be taking, well, action. “Before I kill you, Mr. Bond, let me tell you my plan.” Sometimes villains talk to their intended prey when they really should be focused on stalking and shooting them, not giving them time to spring a trap. Gamers joke that “talking is a free action,” but this sort of thing often pulls me out of the story a bit.
This scene avoids that problem, I think, by giving a lot of motivations for JJ to pursue talk. He needs to process Xan’s threat, and he’s intrigued by the tactical information that the video slowly reveals to him—although there’s one tactical detail he’s overlooked, related to who’s missing in this scene, that will be important in a few more pages. But the most important reason he keeps talking is a psychological one, and it’s one that Chrissie, Daniel, and Lia unpack pretty thoroughly in the text here.
FB: “Today, GUILDED AGE presents a scene in which a black trans person and her friends work in concert with policemen to bring a killer to justice. Despite these troubled times, we believe in a future in which such a scene will not be remarkable.”
I don’t know why people complained about the comic shifting away from the fantasy elements, doesn’t get much more fantastical than cops actually arrive in a timely manner and provide a solution to a problem instead of making it worse.
Well, back when this was first being published, that would have been a much more controversial comment. It’s still pretty controversial even today, but a lot more people agree with it now than would have then.
Their gamers, this is the equivalent to Swatting only their is a actual threat this time.
That happens plenty of times in real life too. Those just aren’t the cases that show up on the news.
I never quite understood that first sentence, the one with “It’s a poor excuse for a man…”
Some who rather fight than talk has a poor constitution. True but strange coming from a hired killer, though hire killers tend to have a unique psychology to them when you read up on the matter.
That’s a slightly weird / slightly out of date / somewhat poetic phrase:
Somebody who’d rather fight than talk even they don’t have to, is not “a real man” (“a poor excuse for a man”)
“taking is a free action,”
While that would be an interesting game mechanic, I suppose “talking” is what you meant.
It just occurs to me that the police was not super smart about announcing their presence to a professional assassin like that. They should know there’s someone in there who is not just armed but has no trouble shooting people whenever it serves his needs.