Archive for annotated-chapter-16

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Annotated Chapter 16 Page 16

May09
by Erin Ptah on May 9, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Lake Room plaqueHonestly, I’m kinda surprised Miranda even bothered giving the school a bunch of money, instead of just dropping out. Is she keeping her options open, thinking she really might go back at some point? Or is this just mollifying the admin so they don’t get in touch with her dad about it?

Fourth Mercury is the pentacle on the rug in Cohen’s office. And Miranda got a double dose of info out of this visit — now she also knows that Sparrow’s “I can totally do magic too” line was a bluff.

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Annotated Chapter 16 Page 15

May08
by Erin Ptah on May 8, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Mouse in a maze, about to bomb through the wallOne of two references to Miranda’s foreshortened college career.

It came up earlier that she picked her school to get close to where Poe’s previous Master was based. Now that she’s achieved that goal, she’s not particularly attached to the place anymore. So unattached, in fact, that I never gave the school a name or a specific location.

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Annotated Chapter 16 Page 14

May05
by Erin Ptah on May 5, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Nanoha geared up for a fight…and the interviewer is a cameo of Manager Ludolf, also from Leif & Thorn.

A challenger appears!

It is totally possible to refuse a challenge to the Game. If Bennett was faster on his feet, he would’ve gone “…to what?”, and, if Miranda spelled it out, “no, I don’t have a Being, what are you talking about.”

(And if he had nothing to do with Beings, he would’ve looked blank. Probably eventually prompted her with “to what?”)

So Miranda wasn’t banking on a Poe-Cybele fight, here. (Although she would’ve been ready if Bennett accepted.) Her main goal is to suss out Bennett’s reaction…and hopefully, to give him a good scare.

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Annotated Chapter 16 Page 13

May04
by Erin Ptah on May 4, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Signs like 'Down with this sort of thing' and 'I care about issues'Okay, here we go with some Fun Joke Signs.

On Bennett’s side:

  • something something “Racist”
  • If Gay Marriage is legal, how will My Marriage survive?
  • Born Again American

On the anti-Bennett side, with Sparrow:

  • Leviticus Also Said “No Shrimp”
  • What do we want? Time travel! When do we want it? Whenever!

Bennett’s opener is a reference to the time when conservatives pretended to be furiously concerned over wearing flag pins. Wells’s opener (changed in the remaster to replace something more generic) is from the famous Lauren Morrill tweet.

The audience question (and that’s a cameo of Elisa, from Leif & Thorn) is a purposely non-serious word-salad.

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Annotated Chapter 16 Page 12

May03
by Erin Ptah on May 3, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Pendulums with Second and Sixth MarsAnother reference to Sparrow smelling familiar, which kicked off a fresh round of speculation in the comments.

Did she smell different to mammal-based Beings in particular? Was she a descendant of the original creator/binder of Beings? (This was originally posted before Interlude 3, so readers didn’t know that Beings had different creators over time.) Did she happen to have the same name as the original creator/binder of Beings? Was she, indeed, Cohen’s daughter? Or maybe Patrick’s daughter?

Turns out that yes, it’s the Cohen one, and Cybele is picking up on the scent after being locked up by Cohen for a serious chunk of time. That said, I don’t think she would’ve noticed — except that Sparrow had a Being hanging around with her, which prompted Cybele to look closer.

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Annotated Chapter 16 Page 11

May02
by Erin Ptah on May 2, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Alert rabbit standingThis doesn’t even come up in the dialogue, but Sparrow’s sign reads I Stand with Planned Parenthood. No jokes or puns or gags, just a nice frank statement of support. A quick search for the phrase “Planned Parenthood saved my life” will turn up stories about scores of unrelated people talking about why.

Okay, back to Specific BICP Universe Issues…

Sooo close! Sparrow gets so close. Like we were talking about with Cohen earlier — she lands way off the mark in the end, but she has Cybele genuinely nervous for a moment there.

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Annotated Chapter 16 Page 10

May01
by Erin Ptah on May 1, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Skintones matched to Pantone swatchesI spent a lot of time during high school/college in communities where a prevailing sentiment was “to be a good white ally, you should support and agree with the One Right Opinion that is shared by all people of color.”

If you knew of a POC who didn’t agree with the One Right Opinion? Well, that was just a way to rationalize your racism, and pretty sus — seems like maybe you made this whole person up in the first place.

If you’d heard multiple conflicting takes and weren’t even sure which was the One Right Opinion, that just proved you hadn’t educated yourself enough.

Conservatives think this is great, because they can just make a Twitter sockpuppet and use a black/woman/trans/etc stock photo as the icon, and it’s like a magic spell that makes all their tweets the One Right Opinion! Isn’t that how it works?

Sparrow, at least, has been on this merry-go-round long enough to know where it’s going (even if she has every reason to believe Cybele is a real black human being) and not buy in.

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Annotated Chapter 16 Page 9

Apr28
by Erin Ptah on April 28, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Full disclosure: again, this is 2010 in-universe, and the still-findable appearances of the term “Superwholock” can be traced to 2011 at the earliest. It’s not quite as drastic as the “Pikachu hadn’t been released yet” discrepancy, because it’s totally possible that earlier uses of the word Superwholock have vanished from the internet, but still a bit of an anachronism.

It’s definitely a thing Emma has on the horizon in her future, though.

Sparrow will never appreciate the crossovers as much as she does Inspector Spacetime, but she can respect the feels.

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Annotated Chapter 16 Page 8

Apr27
by Erin Ptah on April 27, 2023 at 12:01 AM

types of glassesRe: those cars in the parking lot: I tried, okay?

Re: Emma: again with the “things I wear that I never see in character designs” detail, she wears glasses for distance vision only. So she didn’t need them for the makeout session, and she didn’t need to put them back on to sit around the table having a chat — but she does need them for driving. (Legally as well as physically.)

I get why most series don’t do this — it’s hard to keep up with the continuity for a character who needs glasses in some specific situations and not others. (Unless you’re doing a Clark Kent, where they’re a package deal with a whole look.) But it would be nice if they tried a little more.

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Annotated Chapter 16 Page 7

Apr26
by Erin Ptah on April 26, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Mug: Keep Calm and Call BatmanSparrow’s pride gets a liiiittle knocked down by her meeting with someone who has benefits. And paid vacation days. And a car!

She has a Batman mug. There’s another cup on the table between Bianca and Emma — not sure whose it is — but it looks like just a clear glass of ice water. A little lax of me, skipping the opportunity to work in a funny caption there.

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