2010-03-26: Chapter Forty Four Commentary

[The Comment Golem]

Discussion thread for Chapter Forty Four Commentary

[Sareth]

Laughing my ass off. That sudden realization at the end there...

Don't worry Sara. I'm sure there's a shelter for young indigent time assassins somewhere...

[Forrest]

Laughing my ass off. That sudden realization at the end there...

Don't worry Sara. I'm sure there's a shelter for young indigent time assassins somewhere...

Besides, doesn't she have a guaranteed position in the sequel already?

(Presuming there's still a sequel...)

[No One]

All right, I've got the zombies, Elves, ninjas, and wizards figured out. Where are the robots coming from? Did I forget a faction?

[DatDude]

Commentary sara has so much more personality then normal sara.

[0m3g413]

All right, I've got the zombies, Elves, ninjas, and wizards figured out. Where are the robots coming from? Did I forget a faction?

The dwarves had robots. That line could have been a reference to golems, though. I'm not really sure.

[Rakshasa Taisab]

The dwarves had robots. That line could have been a reference to golems, though. I'm not really sure.

Since the dwarves are pretty much extinct... I'd guess... the Northern Confederacy?

[ChunLing]

The only evidence that the dwarves are extinct is that they stopped communicating with the elves. Which seems to me more like evidence that they are really, really smart.

[Forrest]

The only evidence that the dwarves are extinct is that they stopped communicating with the elves.

Well there's that, and their cities are abandoned and in ruins and nobody who's not either versed in generally forgotten lore or personally thousands of years old themselves has ever even heard of them... yeah.

Still, doesn't mean they're extinct. Maybe they just moved, or ascended to a higher plane of existence (even if they aren't magically adept... I'd consider AI a "higher plane of existence")... or maybe a combination of both, they physically moved to a higher physical place, like outer space, maybe the other planet that the gods originally came from.* They were certainly advanced enough if they were building mecha and ray guns, and being longevously immortal, the duration of the trip shouldn't really concern them.

*(I still say the Lorenzel Excavation discovered a Dwarven record and not an Elvish one, since it contradicts the generally-accepted Elven lore and seems much more matter-of-fact, which fits the way the Dwarves were educated. Although... the general Elven population also didn't know that their leaders knew where their Gods were 'sleeping' and intentionally kept it secret, so maybe the upper echelons of Elvendom wrote the Lorenzel texts, which could be why they were so keen on recovering the volume Ian and Meji stole).

[Myetel]

Is it just me, or are the chapters progressively getting shorter of late? This one was two scenes, and two events--Chris being dropped over a wall and Gramps Hinadori blowing up the elven ambassador's face.

Structurally, yeah, you want to move the action along quickly when you're coming to the climax, so I can see shorter chapters in a book format for that reason, but in web presentation format, it seems almost to, contradictorily, slow the action down, since there's omake, omake, new cover page, short chapter, omake, omake, short chapter.

Or perhaps the intent is to draw out the dramatic tension?

Or keep all the characters alive/employed longer?