Annotated 43-14
FB: “Sepia to black.”
Some readers took me to task for the relatively high odds I gave Shanna yesterday if the JJ she’d gotten the drop on hadn’t been softened up by killing two cops. I dunno, 1 in 4 probably is too high…but the real point is, it wouldn’t be nearly so dramatically satisfying. John did a great job with the first frame here, in which JJ tries to respond to the threat Shanna represents but has lost too much blood to get his gun arm to work.
There goes another hat flying off Shanna’s head. Honestly, she loses them like she’s Syr’Nj.
Always felt that this scene gives some personal closure to Shanna, who has doubtless been wrestling with the fact that she couldn’t pull the trigger last time and someone died because of that. Of course JJ demonstrating the he is not merely a violent thug but actually a repeat murderer probably make things much easier for Shanna – she wasn’t able to kill to save herself, but killing to save others, that is something she has realised she can do. Shanna’s odds of pulling the trigger, and hitting the target, this time is feels like it should be better than last time regardless of JJ’s state because she doesn’t have the doubt of “do I really have to do this?” anymore. Something that someone like JJ who doesn’t seem to have ever been bothered by conscience so much of convenience might never really understand.
Hard to say killing brings anyone closure or a sense of justice but it it does balance the scales narratively.
That’s also my view. This is not going to end like an episode of [1980’s cop TV series], with some incredibly bad joke and everyone laughing like they like it. I’m pretty sure that Shanna will be wrestling with this moment for the rest of her life.
Yeah, dramatic license and all, but again I wish Shanna had been shown taking the body shot. A head shot is tough enough for those experienced with the greater accuracy of a rifle. For someone’s first pull with a less accurate hand gun, it really puts the fantasy in the comic.
Probably true, based on what I gather — but then, if she had hit him somewhere else, not quite killed him, then again, and again … until he’s finally down … that would make for a much bloodier and dramatically also more messy ending to JJ’s arc, that I would not have liked to see here.
Even as it is, I had preferred if she had not ended up killing someone. But then, I guess Chekhov was getting *very* impatient already …
Maybe she tried for a body shot, but hit his head by mistake.
That would make it a lucky shot.
Yeah, I can work with that.
We wanted a quick and unambiguous death for JJ. A body shot might have looked survivable, considering his build. We haven’t always been as clear as we wanted to be; in this instance, we wanted no doubt.
Sepia as it may be, Sepia world is a lot closer to my reality than Arkerra, so I’m happy that this scene was not dragged out any longer than necessary.
Shanna being able to pull the trigger once is a big enough thing. Her doing so multiple times, after probably-fatally-wounding-but-not-quite-killing JJ, just to make sure he stays dead … would have done very different things to her, and to me, as a reader.
I think the format of the picture itself underscores the finality.
Black silhouette on white is all by itself a massive “nothing will ever be the same” cue, which then is modified by whater the silhouette portrays.
I am fairly confident that any sort of center-body hit with exit wound splatter would have come across as entirely final in this context.
I honestly don’t understand what is with people fixating about targeting* instead of seeing the real artistic license, which is the exit wound appearing where JJ’s *would be* after the projectile hit, rather than the actual place the bullet landed.
*a 5 m headshot, even for an amateur, really impossible? – although I kid myself, it’s just an armchair shooter thing.