Annotated X14-8
This mini-story is kind of a two-parter, so I’ll explain it better after we reveal where it’s going. But it’s nice to see this completely other side of Lia after we opened with her raging against, and then beaten down by, corporate apathy. You start to understand how the playful side of her mind could seem to improvise Rachel’s backstory.
(“Seem to” being the operative word, because entangled players and characters had their separate existences before and after, but let’s not get into that whole mess again rn)
I also enjoy her entirely appropriate deployment of the f-bomb, which sets just the tone we need.
Honestly, it would have been a ghast if this actually happened at the end on the comic. HR is undoing reality then we see Santa fighting Frost Giants.
Plot twist: Santa was Odin all along, just lying in wait for when the frost giants would reappear!
Due to the nature of Odin, I don’t know whether you are joking or not because Odin and Santa have a lot of parallels
Zalocin might be joking, for all I know, but it’s actually true. Back in the day, in addition to all of Odin’s other titles, he was also Father Jul (pronounced Yule). And Yule, of course, was the Pagan fore-runner of Christmas. So Santa Claus, aka Father Christmas, is indeed a more-Christianized Odin.
See Terry Pratchett’s ‘Hogfather’.