#but yes! very specific narrative structuring and storytelling choice..... excellent

[itsclydebitches]

re: that ask you posted a couple days ago about the male and female representation in RWBY, part of what makes RWBY's whole 'girl power' thing ring exceptionally hollow to me is the fact that there are like... no women in positions of real power in remnant. like at all. except the big bad.

winter is second in command to james. glynda is second in command to ozpin. all of the headmasters are men (for no discernible reason, imo; why theodore and not dorothea?). the leader of the ace ops was a white man (and then winter seemed to take over clover's position instead of either of the women of color on the team, and she was still second to james). RWBY is an all girl team, but JNPR was led by a boy despite a girl arguably being far more qualified (pyrrha). the happy huntresses are all women, and robyn had no real power to speak of--she didn't even manage to win the election, because jacques rigged it, and then the council ceased to matter. there was one (1) woman on the council, but she was so inconsequential that i can't even remember her name. (i suppose we're lucky it was the guy and not her who james shot lol) jacques controls the SDC instead of willow, even though he's not even a schnee by blood and actually married into the family for power. (and we don't even know how he got it over his wife.)

and then there's the white fang, which ghira led and not kali--and it's ghira who leads menagerie itself, while kali seems to be a housewife. sienna had five minutes of screentime before being brutally killed and her position assumed by adam, a man. cordovin is basically a one off lackey we haven't even thought about before or since. neo was second to roman. you have cinder, sure, who is a second but to salem, a woman, and raven as the leader of the branwen tribe--but what does it really say about your 'girl power' narrative when the only women with genuine systemic power in your world are villains or antagonists with massive bodycounts??

atla has the same sort of problem--a couple great female characters, but all the leadership positions are men (except the kyoshi warriors, an all girls group, and even then the leader of their island is an old man) and the one female mentor figure also turns out to be evil--but it at least has some great writing to help overlook that fact, and it came out in the mid-00's and so has some sort of excuse of being a product of its time. but rwby didn't even start until 2013 and it's still going and still making these kinds of decisions well into 2021.

where is this supposed girl power, exactly? am i really supposed to overlook the very patriarchal worldbuilding just because the title characters are girls?

That's an excellent summary of the situation, anon, and as with so much in RWBY, it comes down to the full context. Any one of these examples isn't necessarily going to mean much on its own. It's when you look at the pattern that you can start making a case for those conclusions: Why is the show marketed on "girl power" set in a world where men hold the vast majority of that power? And, more importantly, why is that setup not the point? We could easily have a story where that lopsided gender dynamic is the problem that the girls are looking to fix, but... that story doesn't exist. Like the problems discussed with Jaune, the supposed point here exists only on the surface. Dig just the tinniest bit — the above — and you hit on a lot of structural problems with this "girl power" world.

To add just a few details to what you've already said:

Salem indeed has power, but she's never allowed to fully use it. Each volume the frustration with this grows as Salem accumulates more abilities and then just sits on them. From literally hiding out for a thousand years to worries that she won't use the Staff in Volumes 9-10, Salem really isn't allowed to be the threat she's presented as on the surface. And yes, this is absolutely due in part to the "She's too OP and the writers don't know how to let her be that powerful while still having the heroes win" issue, but again, context. That problem doesn't exclude others occurring simultaneously.

Same double explanation with Summer. Yes, dead moms are an incredibly common trauma to dump on a protagonist, but it still left Yang and Ruby with Tai as their primary influence. And Qrow. The uncle becomes the extended family influence while Raven is the absent one/eventual antagonist. It's personal power as opposed to political power, but Tai, Qrow, Ozpin, formerly James... most of the mentors are men. Maria, a key exception, has been ignored in that regard. The story announced that she was Qrow's inspiration, setup her being Ruby's new mentor, and then... nothing. Nothing has come of that. She disappeared for a volume and then went off to Amity and was literally forgotten by the story when evacuating everyone was the finale's whole point.

Like that Endgame moment I mentioned, the Happy Huntresses feel a little too forced to me. Yes, it's the same basic idea as in ATLA, but ATLA, as you say, has a lot more going for it. The Happy Huntresses feel... on the nose? Idk exactly how to explain it. Like, "Here they are! Another team of all women! Isn't this how progressive storytelling works? Just ignore how this is a one-off team of minor characters compared to the world building issues discussed above." And if you're not paying attention, you miss just how insignificant they are, with a side of Robyn being, well, Robyn. The Kyoshi Warriors, at least, are based off of Kyoshi. A woman avatar who is a significant part of their history. That is, presumably, why they're an all women warrior group (but who notably still teach Sokka). The Happy Huntresses are all huntresses because...? There's no reason except that meta "We want to look progressive" explanation. Just like having all the women superheroes team up for a hot second so people get excited and ignore the representation problems across, what? 21 films? Don't get me wrong, I love that May is among the Happy Huntresses. I think including her in the explicitly all-women group was one of the better things RWBY has done in a long time, but the rest is still a mess.

RWBY is arguably about these smaller groups as opposed to systematic power (despite the writers trying to work that in with things like the White Fang and the election. Not to mention the implication that everything in Atlas is fine now that evil Ironwood has died and taken the symbol of wealth (the city) with him. We saw a human holding hands with a faunus after all. Racism and corruption solved, I guess.) So yes, our group is dominated by women... but Whitley is the one saving Nora, helping to defeat the Hound (plus Willow), thinking of the airships, and providing the blueprints they need to escape. Salem is our Big Bad, except Ironwood is the one the volume focuses on. Ruby is our leader, but Jaune is the one leading the group into the whale and getting praised for how heroic he is. Ren does more to shake things up, even if he's painted as the one in the wrong. Oscar gets to confront Salem and destroys the whale threat. Ozpin provides the information they need to evacuate. Meanwhile, when the girls do things in Volume 8 it's almost always followed by a long-stint of passiveness. Nora opens the door so she can be unconscious for most of the volume. Penny keeps Amity up so she can also be unconscious for a good chunk of time. Ruby sends her message and then sits in a mansion. Blake fights so she can tearfully beg Ruby to save her. Weiss, as said, takes a backseat to Whitley (and Klein). They forward the plot, absolutely, but comparatively it doesn't feel like enough.

It's that pattern then, no one specific example. More and more the personal power, not just the systematic power already built into Remnant, seems to be coming from the men. Not all the time, but enough that scenes like the tea drinking moment feel like a part of a much larger problem. Pietro taking control, Watts hacking, and Ambrosius literally remaking her when Penny is supposed to already be in control of herself and her fate. Winter being presented as the active mentor to Weiss, only to turn around and claim that Ironwood was actually responsible for everything. Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and May straight up commenting on how awful things are out there while Yang, Jaune, Ren, and Oscar lead the charge against Salem — with the latter three doing the most to forward that mission (no fear, semblance, cane). As others have only half-joked, Yang's supposedly badass moment was bringing up a mother she's ignored for six volumes and briefly blowing up the immortal woman for a couple of seconds (with Ironwood's bombs). Even Marrow is arguably the most significant Ace Op after Clover. Vine isn't actually a character, Elm slightly less so, Harriet is there to go crazy and try to drop a bomb (notably before admitting to never-before-existed feelings for Clover), but Marrow? He's the one who breaks out. Who is meant to heroically stand up against Ironwood. Who comments on how awful it is that teenagers are fighting and, regardless of how messed up the moral messages are, is supposedly pushing for active change while all the women in his group, including Winter, insist on maintaining the status quo. Look at all these choices as a whole, it makes throwaway worldbuilding choices like "All the Maidens are women" feel pretty hollow. Why does it matter if Amber is a Maiden if she dies in a flashback so Ozpin can struggle to pass on the power? If Pyrrha dies before becoming one so Jaune can angst about it? If Raven is one and then disappears from the story entirely? If Winter has enough power to break Ironwood's aura, but supposedly had no power throughout every other choice she made getting here? If Penny is one, but is continually controlled by men and then asks another man to help her die? It's just really unconvincing, once you look past the surface excitement of a woman looking cool with magic powers.

When you do consider the whole of the story — both in terms of our world building and who is forwarding the plot in the latter volumes, getting the emotional focus, being proactive, etc. — there are a lot of problems that undermine the presumed message RT wants to write. They say, "girl power" by marketing RWBY with these four women, but too many of the storytelling decisions thoroughly undermine that, revealing what's likely a deeply ingrained, subconscious bias.

[him-e]

what did you think of shadow and bone? have you read the books? i only read the duology

Thoughts on Shadow and Bone, now that you've probably seen it?

I think the show is alright? It lacks a real wow factor as far as I’m concerned, but it’s enjoyable. It’s especially enjoyable in those parts I didn’t anticipate to like / didn’t even know would be there. 

Whereas the main selling points leave a lot to be desired.

The good stuff: the visuals. The aesthetic. The overall concept. Production, casting and costumes are excellent, the setting is fascinating. The worldbuilding isn’t perfect and is sometimes confusing, which is probably due to the show jumping ahead of the books and introducing elements that happen much later in the book saga, but I’m loving the vague steampunk-y vibe of it mixed with more typical fantasy stuff and slavic-inspired lore, the fact that it’s set in dystopian Russia rather than your usual ye olde England.

I find it interesting that in this ‘verse the Grisha are simultaneously superstars, privileged elite, legendary creatures and despised outcasts, according to the context and the type of magic they wield. It’s A Lot, and so far it’s all a bit underdeveloped and messy, like a patchwork of different narratives and tropes sewn together without an organic worldbuilding structure. (there are hints to a past when they were hunted, but how did they go from that to being, essentially, an institutionalized asset to the government isn’t clear yet. There’s huge narrative potential in this, and I hope future seasons will delve into those aspects)

Many of the supporting characters are surprisingly solid. I appreciated that Genya and Zoya eventually sort of traded places, subverting the audience’s assumptions about them and their own character stereotypes, despite the little screentime they were given.

Breakout characters/ships for me were Nina/Matthias, and even more so the Crows, i.e. the stuff I didn’t see coming and knew nothing about (having only read the first book). (I thought the entire Crows subplot was handled in a somewhat convoluted way, at least in the first episodes; it was hard to keep track of who wanted Alina and why, but the Crows’ chemistry is so strong it carried the whole Plot B on its shoulders).

HELNIK. As an enemies to lovers dynamic, Helnik was SUPER on the nose, I’d say bordering on clichéd with the unapologetic, straight outta fanfiction use of classic tropes like “we need to team up to survive” and “there’s only one bed and we’ll freeze to death if we don’t take our conveniently damp clothes off and keep each other warm with the heat of our naked bodies” (not that I’m complaining, but i like to pine for my ships a bit before getting to the juicy tropetown part, tyvm). And then they’re suddenly on opposite sides again because of a tragic misunderstanding - does Bardugo hate high-conflict dynamics? It certainly seems so, because between Helnik and Darklina I’m starting to see a pattern where the slow burn and blossoming mutual trust is rushed and painted in broad, stereotypical strokes to get as fast as possible to the part where they *hate each other again* and that’s... huh. Something.

^That’s probably why I’m almost more interested in Kaz x Inej, because their relationship feels a bit more nuanced, a bit more mysterious, and a bit more unpredictable. (I didn’t bother spoiling myself about them, so I really don’t know where they’re going, but it’s refreshing to see a dynamic that the narrative isn’t scrambling to define in one direction or the other as quickly as possible)

-

Now, as for Darklina VS Malina... I found exactly what I expected. 

Both are ship dynamics I’m, on principle, very much into (light heroine/dark villain, pining friends to lovers) but both are also much less interesting than they claim to be, or could have been with different narrative choices. I’ll concede that the show characters are all more fleshed out and likable than their book counterparts, and the cringe parts I vaguely remembered from the books played out differently. And, well, Ben Barnes dominates the scene, he’s hot as HELL, literally every single second he’s on screen is a fuck you to Bardugo’s attempts to make his character lame and uninteresting and I’m LOVING it, lol.

But yeah, B Barnes aside, Darklina is intrinsically, deliberately made to be unshippable. 

It makes me mad, because it’s - archetypally speaking - made of shipping dynamite: yin/yang-sun and moon, opposites attract, COMPLEMENTARY POWERS AND SO ON. And what does Bardugo do with these ingredients? A FUCKING DELIBERATE DISASTER:

^ Placing the kiss so early on (season 1, episode five) effectively kills the romantic tension that was (correctly) building up until that point, and leaves the audience very little to still hope for, in terms of emotional evolution of the dynamic. 

Bardugo lays all the good stuff down as early and quickly as possible (the bonding, the conflicted attraction, the recognizing the other as one’s equal, etc) only to turn the tables and pull the rug so y’all sick creepyshippers won’t have anything to look forward to, because THEY’VE ALREADY HOOKED UP AND THAT BELONGS TO THE PAST, IT’S OVER, THEY’RE ENEMIES. This, combined to the fact that she falls for him *without* knowing who he really is, is the opposite of what I want from a heroine/villain ship (it’s basically lovers to enemies, and while that can be valid too, I wanted to see more pining and more prolonged, tormented symbolic attraction to the Shadow/Animus on Alina’s part). 

But here’s the trick: it’s not marketed as lovers to enemies - it has all the aesthetics and trappings of an enemies to lovers (the Darkling is, from the get go, villain-presenting, starting from his name), so it genuinely feels like a trollfic, or at the very least a cautionary tale *against* shipping the heroine with the tall dark brooding young villain, and I don’t think it’s cool at all. It makes the story WAY less interesting, because it humanizes the villain early on (when it’s not yet useful or poignant to the story, because it’s unearned) but it’s a red herring. The real plot twist is that the villain shouldn’t be sympathized with, just defeated: there’s a promise of nuanced storytelling, that is quickly denied and tossed aside. So is the idea of incorporating your Shadow (a notion that Bardugo must be familiar with, otherwise she wouldn’t have structured Alina and the Darkling as polar opposites who complement each other, but that she categorically refutes)

Then we have Malina. The good ship.

Look, I’m not that biased against it. I don’t want to be biased on principle against a friends to lovers dynamic that antagonizes a heroine/villain one, because every narrative is different, and for personal reasons I can deeply relate to the idea of being (unspeakably) in love with your best friend. So there are aspects of Malina that I can definitely be into, but it troubles me that in this specific context it’s framed as a regression. It’s Alina’s comfort zone, a fading dream of happiness from an idealized childhood, to sustain which the heroine systematically stunts her growth and literally repressed her own powers, something that in the books made her sickly and weak. But the narrative weirdly romanticizes this codependency, often making her tunnel vision re: going back to Mal her primary goal and centering on him her entire backstory/motivation, to the point that when she starts acting more serious re: her powers and alleged mission to destroy the Fold, it feels inorganic and unearned. 

Mal is intrinsically extraneous to Alina’s powers, he doesn’t share them, he doesn’t understand them, he has little to offer to help her with them, and so the feeling is that he’s also extraneous to her heroine’s journey, aside from being a sort of sidekick or safe harbor to eventually come back to. People have compared him to Raoul from Phantom of the Opera, and yeah, he has the same ~magic neutralizer~ vibe, tbh.

The narrative also polarizes Mal’s normalcy and relative “safety” against Aleksander’s sexy evil, framing Alina’s quasi-platonic fixation on the former as a better and purer form of love than her (much more visible and palpable) attraction to the latter. This is exacerbated by the show almost entirely relying on scenes of them as kids to convey their bond. I’m sure there are ways to depict innocent pining for your best friend that don’t involve obsessively focusing on flashbacks of two CHILDREN running in a meadow and looking exactly like brother and sister. LIKE. I get it, they’re like soulmates in every possible way, BUT DO THEY WANT TO KISS EACH OTHER?

Which brings me to a general complain: for a young adult saga centering on a young heroine and full of so many hot people, this story is weirdly unsexy? There are a lot of shippable dynamics, but they’re done in such a careless, ineffective way that makes ZERO EFFORT to work on stuff like slow burn, pining and romantic tension, and when it does it’s so heavy handed that the viewer doesn’t feel encouraged at all to fill the blanks with their imagination and start anticipating things (which is, imo, the ESSENCE of shipping). The one dynamic that got vaguely close to this is, again, Kaz and Inej, and coincidentally it’s also the one we didn’t get confirmed as romantic YET. Other than that, where’s the slow burn? What ship am I supposed to agonize over during the hiatus to season two? Has shipping become something to feel ashamed of, like an embarrassing relative you no longer want to invite in your home?

Anyway, back to Alina/Darkling/Mal, this is how the story reads to me:

girl suspects to be special, carefully pretends to be normal so she can stay with Good Boy

the girl’s powers eventually manifest; she’s forcibly separated from Good Boy

the girl’s powers attract Bad Boy who is her equal and opposite but is also a major asshole

girl initially falls for Bad Boy; has to learn a hard lesson that nobody that sexy will ever want her for who she is, he’s just trying to exploit her

also, no, there is no such thing as a Power Couple

girl is literally given a slave collar by Bad Boy through which he harnesses her power (a parody of the Twin Scars trope)

you know how the story initially suggested that the joint powers of Darkness and Light would defeat evil? LOL NO, Darkness is actually evil itself and the way you destroy evil is using Light to destroy Darkness, forget that whole Jungian bullshit of integrating your shadow, silly!

conclusion: girl realizes being special sucks. She was right all along! Hiding and suppressing her powers was the best choice! She goes back to the start, to the same Good Boy she was meekly pining for prior to the start of the story.

... there’s an uncomfortable overall subtext that reads a lot like a cautionary tale against - look, not just against darkships and villain/heroine pairings, but also *overpowered* heroines and, well... change? Growth?

Like, it’s certainly a Choice that Alina starts the story *already* in love with Mal. That she always knew it was him. The realization could have happened later (making the dynamic much more shippable, too), but no. 

[kierongillen]

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 32

Spoilers, obv.

While I've done this in my Tumblr asks, I forget if I've put this in the actual notes or not. I would presume I haven't, because if I'd put the following caveat in the Writer’s Notes and I'm still being asked when the Writer Notes are coming when they're later than usual by people who presumably read the Writer Notes it would be more than a little rude.

(I write the following, and then bounce back here to put a caveat on my caveat. Don't worry if you've done the following. It's not the end of the world, it's really only a minor annoyance in the larger scale of things, and you didn't know.)

I've done Writer Notes for every single issue of WicDiv. That's 34 (with the Specials), including this one. They appear before the next issue drops. I've gone as late as the day before the issue is released. I don't believe I've ever gone any later. That's how it's always happened.

“Before the next issue.” That is when to expect my Writer Notes. It is not “late” until the next issue drops.

I write them as soon as I have time. If I haven't done it earlier in the month, you may safely assume that I've got other commitments that have to be prioritised above writing something which is, in a very real way, not part of my job.

If you're worried whether you've missed them, the Writer Notes are always tagged on my tumblr. You can click this link and see if they're there or not. There is no need to ask me.

I do not appreciate anyone asking where they are and when I'm going to do it. Please, don't do it. It stresses me out, both in the frustration at the entitlement in believing I should be writing it instead of many of the other things I should be doing, and in the simultaneous and entirely contradictory response of I SHOULD BE DOING THEM WHY THE HELL AM I NOT DOING THEM I AM LETTING EVERYONE DOWN!!!!

There is only so much a creative can give.

Er... and that appears to have segued into this issue's theme, hasn’t it?

Jamie/Matt's Cover

We finally reach full bleed on the Imperial Phase covers. By this point, I suspect pretty much everyone has seen what we're doing with the covers, and the implicit question of “how can you follow something that's doing this to full bleed”.

This is one of my favourite WicDiv covers. Jamie and Matt have excelled themselves here. The nonchalance of Dionysus, a return of the Acid House badge and so on. It's completely different to all the other gods – as is the nature of Dio – but is also the most visually magnificent. I love this.

Noelle Stephenson

Is a force of nature, and doesn't really need me hailing her here. Suffice to say, BUY NIMONA IF YOU HAVEN'T. She jumped at Baal/Minerva, and we just sat and let her do her thing. Clearly with this issue's content it rubs up unusually.

Walking Dead Cover

Homaging their issue 150 cover. We did it with 32, which makes it kinda funny. Persephone in her issue 22 costume.

IFC

With the double-length of Imperial Phase, we're very much reaching the recap page's breaking point in terms of working out what information to include. I smile that I managed to fit “He is such a shit” in there though.

Page 1

Return to the three panel of the start of last time. Immobility remains the point. I had a slightly more writer-y line for Sakhmet in the second panel, but I generally find it's best to strip her back to Just The Facts. There's no need to fence with Sakhmet.

Jamie's addition of a bloody-handed yawn is a perfect way to add a secondary reveal to the scene.

Reading people's commentary. I find it interesting that people seem to have Persephone's expression in the last panel to be bored. It reads pretty clearly as a wince to me. It's a very small response – which is, of course, the point – but it's definitely not ambivalent. One of the things in comics is how much for characters to verbalise, and how much you can just leave to the art. This is not a thing which has any one solution.

Pages 2-4

There's a craft thing here of note – we only explicitly introduce the idea that there is a sexual consent issue at this point in the Woden scene. We don't think leaving that sort of threat across a month is either ethical or useful. In a serialised narrative, we try to weigh these things up.

(It's still relatively quiet. There's twelve Valkyries. The thirteenth Asian girl is Cassandra.)

The page transition of Dionysus kicking in is the sort of thing I love as a storyteller. Repeats with a tiny difference.

The dialogue was moved a little after drawing, so as to leave the final panel on page 3 silent. Jamie's expression was perfect and didn't need disruption – more so when Matt pops the reds.

The glo-stick nunchaku first appeared in Rising Action, and make a return here. They were inspired by Christian Ward and Catherine Rooney's wedding, when they distributed a bunch of glo-sticks during the 90s rave set the DJ dropped. I was spinning them around, and it got me thinking.

Page 4 is obviously the key image, capturing Dio's hamartia in the same way as Amaterasu's final panel in 31 captures her. I get upset to even think of this panel. Futile acts of bravery when all hope is lost is something which almost always makes me cry.

Anyway – just wonderful. Jamie and Matt nail it. The oppressiveness of the mass of green, the crowd against Dio, the soar of his body. Perfect. Nice work.

Page 5

The Red Shoes being the Hans Christian Andersen story about a girl who gets a pair of ballet shoes and can't stop dancing. It doesn't end well for her either.

It's been used all over culture – Kate Bush is an obvious one, but I tend to think of the 1948 movie.

Pages 6-7

We basically keep the rhythm of the last issue going. As in, hard cuts between multiple scenes when the drama is highest. I'll be interested to see how this works in the trade – page 1's refocusing of the action here is the stepping stone back to this location, but it's quite the jump.

Anyway – Sakhmet and Persephone's final conversation. I needed something like this.

Standard-y me structure of a two-page scene with the first row of the first page merged as is the last row of the second page.

Lots of great expression work here, especially in how tight Jamie is choosing to cut things. It's not just as simple as a slow zoom to the character's features, but there is a gradual increase. I like how Sakhmet starts in a neutral position... and then when she laughs at the first answer, she gets a little further away... and when she gets the response to the second question, she's very close. That also means we also get a great pull away.

Expressions again. Sakhmet's three close-ups are my everything, in how much she's saying – the downcast eyes in the third! Especially compared to the deadness of Persephone.

“I think we only get to hurt ourselves and maybe people who want to be hurt” is just :(

Pages 8-11

Reprising of issue 8, which was Dio at his most iconic. These four pages “count” as two pages in terms of page budget, in that only 4 panels are drawn on each page. That we spread it out over a larger space means it's much more emotionally impactful.

My brain is failing, but I believe Dio and Woden are the only two characters other than Laura who've ever had internal dialogue captions. That strikes me as interesting.

Cutting the dialogue short enough to make it vaguely keep to the beat was obviously important. It ticks along, relentlessly.

Matt's colouring here is, like Dio's first one, a story in and of itself – the fading colour as Dio is dragged down in the first page, the glitch on page 10, the third panel of page 11.

The “One more time” came to me as writing it, and I was genuinely horrified at myself. I can make any cultural allusion depressing. It's a gift.While at this year's Thought Bubble dancefloor, this issue was at the printers. Various friends had read it, and were there. When I dropped ‘One More Time’, I glanced at them, and thought about the unique awfulness of WicDiv, in that they knew and no one else did.

Pages 12-13

I wish I had a page or two more in the budget here. There's a couple of beats I wish I'd been able to linger on.

The drop of Dio in the first panel brought to mind the fall of 455 Lucifer.

Woden's line is harsh as fuck here, but also not entirely wrong. As we see, Cass was unaffected by Woden's power. He didn't need to do anything.

The last panel on page 12 originally had much more dialogue, and it was bullshit. I moved that to the next panel, and keep it sharper. WicDiv isn't a comic where people can shout speeches as they do stuff.

I'M A FUCKING CRITIC is much better anyway. Jamie and Matt did great stuff with the multiple levels.

“One More” makes me feel bitter too. Brunhilde's excitement is also telling. More anon on this, I suspect.

More exposition than I'd like in the last panel with Cass, but I suspect we lose you if you don't know why she's phoning Persephone.

Page 14

Yes, Persephone hasn't changed her ringtone.

We don't have space to go far into the fight here, but we have to give the two big beats. Baal's burst of power, and the specifics of the terrible speed of Sakhmet. The colour choices are what scream to me here. Each of those two central panels are so much about the individual god who is dominating them. There’s just such direct choices here.

We start on the phone, and end on Minerva's owl, to try and get a transition to...

Page 15

...Minerva. Clearly for where the story goes, we have to see Minerva in the nearby area. We wanted to show the emotional journey towards going there – that's a great conflicted last panel by Jamie. We discussed what method to use in terms of communication – specifically, we needed Minerva to have ‘READ’ notes on her phone so she knows Morrigan has seen the messages and is ignoring them. Which sets up Minerva to make her decision.

After the colours of the previous page, the low light of this one is also really striking.

Pages 16-17

The fight scenes in the Underground were all written Marvel Method, with more ideas than would fit in the space. As such, it was a question of choosing where to edit, both in terms of Jamie's choices on the page and my choices at lettering. There was certainly more possible lettering in the script... but, as I say above, I don't like fight scenes to talk too much. When this is all happening as quickly as it is, it seems to undercut it.

Boiling the exchange to the “Predator or Prey” call back seemed to be the right call to make. Boil it down.

(The other options were a reprise of Persephone's “We only get to hurt ourselves and people who want to be hurt” in the last two panels, which I felt would be too much. I'd hope it would be subtextual in it anyway.)

Page 18

We leaned into implication here – choosing the moments. The slump of the hands in the second panel is the key one for me. That's just horrible, as is Persephone's distress in the third one.

Pages 19-21

Yeah, this scene is hard, with the characters' frustrations and anger at themselves crossing back and forth. It's telling that we go to eight panel grid structure for the first two pages, which is my standard one for this kind of more emotionally grounded scene.

Worth noting the other Norns aren't there. I suspect Cass hasn't been exactly gentle with them either. Still – Cass echoes a significant proportion of the readership regarding Persephone, I suspect.

Explicitly closing off the “No Person” line from back in Imperial Phase.

Eventually Persephone reaches a point and pushes back. For both of them, it's not the lies that hurt. It's the truths. And... yeah, that argument is totally not over.

I kind of wish I had the machine go BLEEP! Rather than BEEP!

Pages 22-24

Yes, it is very much our beeping device on the mantelpiece.

Odd hitting the last page, in that it's one of the end-of-episode beats I've known seemingly forever. It is a particularly frustrating one, clearly.

We did have a bunch of chat over exactly what should that final line be. It was as mild as “Oh my” at one point, but I like the last one.

Beep Test being a fitness thing.

And that's it. A few more weeks and issue 33, the end of Imperial Phase and moving onto Year Four of the book. Just re-reading all of WicDiv so far in preparation for scripting of that year, and it's a strange thing to look at how far we've come. If you have never done a WicDiv re-read, I suspect this is a perfect time to do one.

Thanks for reading.