Annotated 45-18
FB: Watcher in the weeds, behold these evil deeds… and bluster, meet duster.
I think I (foolishly) believed that Flo would stick to my policy of calling Keynes “Commander Keynes” from now on. It makes some sense from a character perspective, if she’s trying to give up her old life and commit fully to this new one, but Flo was like “She’s OWNING the banditry, it’s part of who she is” and I didn’t have the energy to argue. I mean, it’s fine! She’s in a group that’s clearly cool with her entire history, so it’s not like she needs some new title to make them respect her. I’m just more into character transformation than a lot of other comics writers, Flo included.
Also, Watcher was renamed at some point: the last draft of this script has her as “Nella.” This page and her newer name do a pretty good job of explaining her: she has a few magicks which allow her to observe things.
Looks like Brock is as good at improvising in a fight as he is with patter!
I suspect Brock and Bandit can’t have quite the perspective of Taro’s plans that we as readers have. Because otherwise the combination of that candle and those documents would make a very compelling invitation, especially with Ardaic and Taro in the room.
From Bandit’s perspective, it wouldn’t be incredibly important if Ardaic survived but done the right way, it would even give Ardaic a very plausible way out of his current dilemma: *somebody* (tried to) burn down the whole Iwatani estate after noticing that their attempt to assassinate the entire family failed to kill Taro. They did this by locking Taro in his father’s study and setting fire to it. Poor kid didn’t stand a chance!
Ardaic would be could even get a good alibi because he would have been locked in there together with Taro and would have the scorch marks to prove it. He just happened to be barely alive but unconscious when a heroic servant of the house managed to break down the door and drag him from the room. Sadly, his help came too late for Taro.
Now, at least that last bit is a bit too involved, and definitely not something Bandit could come up with in a hurry, but I like the idea :)
Pretty sure that if she could look into her own future for a second, she’d definitely have gone with that here.
I mean, character transformation doesn’t require a name change. She’s absolutely a different character from when we met her, name notwithstanding.
Where is Keynes’s named used…?