Annotated 49-46
So, yeah, this page is #2 on my list of “three speeches I feel like the end of Guilded Age could just do without.” Then as now, I would prefer this to be a silent page, but if I’d suggested that, I’m pretty sure Flo would’ve decked me.
I exaggerate, but only somewhat. This concluding statement by Gravedust feels redundant to me, but it was very important to her…in our notes, she describes it somewhat cheekily as her “summary thesis on the meaning of the human soul,” and she was working on it right up until deadline. So, as ever, you guys can decide for yourselves which version is the better one.
Gotta say, though, that I’m also not sure about Carol breaking through the glass with the butt of the gun to make sure she has a clear shot at HR–seems like we might’ve solved one logistical issue by creating others, there. Bulletproof glass is also gun-butt-proof glass, though why you’d expect the glass to be bulletproof is beyond me, honestly. It is true that a shot right through the glass wouldn’t necessarily be “clean,” but it’d still go through. If we needed to shoot him in the heart, we could always say Carol was aiming for the head.
FB: Now, if you have an inability to control the OTHER kind of spirits, you might ALSO find yourself acting like HR, here.
Between the glass and the fluid, the stopping power would have been reduced and the aim may have been screwed up. With a pistol and with physics already going wonky, taking as many variables out of the picture as possible is reasonable.
That’s a reasonable point.
Yeah, my interpretation was more about letting the liquid out first.
Yep. I saw a demonstration once, of someone firing a gun at an underwater target, in a glass bath tube, at a sharp angle to the water surface. After hitting the water, the bullet started tumbling like crazy and more or less fell to the bottom of the bathtube. Pretty sure that a rifle with big and heavy enough bullets would not have such a problem, but Carol’s gun would have no chance at hitting anything she aimed for.
My interpretation is that she isn’t necessarily convinced (yet) that she wants to shoot HR, but maybe she hopes that bursting the tube will somehow interfere with what he’s doing. I mean, that fluid is probably there for a reason, so it’d stand to reason that removing the tube and the fluid might have an effect. And if not, it does give her a clear shot.
Although I still enjoy the art, the almost indecipherable dialogue makes this one of my least favorite pages of the whole series. 100% agree that this would’ve been far better served in silence.
I remember being vaguely disappointed when I first read this page. The last line of the previous page was a perfectly-succinct comeback that didn’t need expanding on. In contrast, this page felt like rambling nonsense that had almost nothing to do with what came before it.
Hearing that Flo meant it as a serious look at the meaning of the human soul… well, honestly it’s a bit concerning. I know that she took it hard when Guilded Age didn’t end up as successful as she’d hope, It almost feels like she’s trying to make up for that “failure” by making the story as profound as possible… which she was frankly I’ll-equipped to do. The scene would be stronger if Gravedust’s comment were the final word, rather than the preface to a poorly-thought-out treatise about the soul.
Given what you’ve shared about her behavior as the series went on, it almost feels like the disappointment caused some major mental anguish that she let fester and consume her.
Perhaps the glass was weakened by HR absorbing it.
This page could have been wordless and still work but considering I remember other readers *still*debating if the game world was just a game, thought it was a way to hammer in this is something more. Besides, it’s not like HR wasn’t going on and on forever about ‘Look at me! I’m a god! I am forever! Bow before me, insects!’ and it’s 100% in Gravy’s nature to go ‘OK, let me philosophically break down all the reason why you are not a god before we put your average ass in the forever box!”
My first reaction was also to be pretty doubtful of a gun wack breaking curved glass of that thickness. I do think the page needs words or at least sounds, but the speech does lose me. The tone seems off as well. Wordy, poetic dissertation doesn’t seem to fit the action of the scene. Perhaps all it needs is brevity.
I actually feel that the style is more on-character for Gravedust than some of his dialogue on the previous pages. But yes, they are more words than would be good. And more pages, too. There’s a lot of action going on, and while slowing down time just before the big crash usually works for me I think it’s been dragging on for a bit longer now than would have been good.
The text as it is is a bit meandering but I think I prefer this to an entirely silent page. Ideally, I think, each panel would have a few words of a full sentence.
I love Guilded Age to pieces, warts and all but…yeah this page would have been better silent.
Gravedust’s soliloquy here is meandering nearly-purple-prose that says essentially nothing.
Myth busters did some experiments on the stopping power of water. I think that only a couple of feet was needed to stop even a .50 cal. A pistol shot would be much easier to stop.
Apart from the text (that sort of sentimentality never lands as intended for me so I don’t feel like I’m qualified to judge it), I’m just really confused about where Byron is. Like… is he actually in the knee (where the box positioning sort of locates him)? That works against his whole cutting to the heart of the matter dialog earlier, doesn’t it?
I am uncertain but I think he might’ve climbed up the side around his rib where Gravedust and Syr’Nj blew up a chunk. It’s the only opening I see, but it am a tad lost like you.
I viewed that inset as accounting for Byron’s presence, since everyone else was in the third panel.
I think the main problem is that Gravedust’s speach becomes meandering and doesn’t match the pace in the visual storytelling of the page. A minor problem is that Gravedusts voice in Sepia world is rather unclear. Can Carol hear Gravedust?
If I would suggest a fix it would be to cut half of the speech and place it in Arkerra. Take speech ballon 2 and 3 in the first panel, and ballon 3 in the second and place them in the first panel. Then take ballon 3 in panel 3, and ballon 1 and 2 in panel 4 and place them in panel 3. (With minor language changes)
Far as I can see, little meaning is lost by this. It makes it clear that Gravedust is talking in Arkerra and the amount of speech to action makes more sense.
I see many commenters don’t care for Gravedust’s/Flo’s insights into why HR is a fool for attempting to control someone’s spirit. I do agree that Gravedust’s dissertation needed more brevity, but I think it’s necessary. Many similar scenes in anime and manga (and sometimes in western media, as well) show heroes and antagonists using abstract/esoteric powers while some secondary character explains to the audience why the hero’s metaphysical mojo is stronger than the villain’s. Otherwise, we would only see a display of psycodelic special effects and an abrupt end of the battle that would seem arbitrary and random to anyone but the writer.
Agreed…Flo needed an editor, here, but one to clean this overly wordy and borderline fauxlisophical rant down to a more pointed…er…point, not one to cut it completely.
While I agree that Gravedust’s speech here came out rather fluffy, I will say that this specific version of this specific page would not do it for me if it were silent. For his initial rebuttal to be the last words before the fight ended the action would need to be further along by the time he said it imo.
Pretend the italics ended after “page” lol
Ending Gravedust’s speech on the previous page would have been fine, and overlaying this speech here is also not ideal, but:
1: I think then this page would have needed to be either much shorter (i.e. the important items be included in other pages) or get some other dialogue.
2: I think what Gravedust says here might have been said with a little fewer words, but I can relate to it, and I like it. Maybe this was not the best place for it, but it’s good to get this stuff out there
3: It does give Gravedust something specific to contribute, other than being carried by Syr’Nj and helping her put some dynamite in place, which anyone else with sufficiently low body weight could have done.
That said: I also do feel that this whole scene drags out a lot longer than expected, and a lot longer than I remember it from the first read. We’ve been listening HR talking about his immense … powers … for a pretty long time now.
Yeah, I don’t like this speech at all.
Necessity or superiority of alternative versions aside, one inconsequential technical fault I find with this particular version is inconsistent verb (and pronoun, but…) agreement at the bottom of the third panel.
Any may be singular or plural, ’tis true. However the text as written can’t make up its mind. It should read either “Any who wish … do so …” or “Any who wishes … does so …”.
To be clear, this [i]is[/i] inconsequential, and such switches are much more common in speech (which this is) than in formal writing.
Yes, this speech is so disjointed and oozing with faux insight that I got confused and thought it was HR burbling again.
Both times it ran.
I’m going with The Flo on this one (pretty sure I am no where near the first person to that). Absolutely appropriate that Gravedust pontificate at the point of this soon to be passing- of HR and of the connection between two worlds and all that goes with it. Especially since this is the wind up to the punch(es) that are silent.
Really interesting to me how split the opinions are about the speech. I like it, in part because it slows the action of the page and makes us look at it. I’d have liked it to be somewhat shorter/tighter but … this is Gravy.
And he’s tying together why the 5 resist HR and also why Carol ultimately returns to herself. I think that’s needed.
I wonder if it would have worked better in “Gravedust is writing this down later” narrative boxes?
I thought the inset of Byron made since, because the last we saw, he was on a controlled(?) ‘zerk right through HR’s projection.
Unfortunately, as often with unattributed speech bubbles, I assumed it was someone in-panel, so first thought it was HR still rambling, then maybe Byron. Finally realised it was Gravedust in the 3rd frame
On the topic of Syr’Nj carrying Gravy with one arm, for an extended time, I just noticed that https://guildedage.net/comic/chapter-10-page-5/ would make that seem unlikely :)
…but acknowledge that if the authors took 10 times as long as me to forget about that scene, they’d still have no chance to remember it when writing this one.
I actually didn’t mind this speech at all. It feels like Gravedust (he’s done similar narrations in the past) and I feel it works well with the situation they’re in. The five are not in dispair, but they certainly understand what’s at stake, and a speech like this (internal or otherwise) sometimes can help to keep the mind steady while many things are happening around you st the same time. Maybe that’s a bit of projecting on my part, but tha’s part of art, right?
I’m also not a fan of silent pages just for the sake of silent pages, and I feel this had to be filled either with the speech or with music for the sequence of events to land well. (Of couse, music and comics are almost imposible to mesh in a working way, so we often get text. Which is fine by me.)