Annotated Chapter 6 Page 12
We’ve seen Representative Karen Park in silhouette/background a few times, but this is the first close-up of her face.
Also, the first recap of Everyone We Know With A Being So Far…several of whom still don’t have confirmed canon faces. Which is how you can tell they’re more important! They’re being held off for full-on dramatic-reveal scenes of their own.
Reseda: We were talking about how to investigate Sparrow’s little quirk. Can she barge in on a battle when it’s any two of us fighting, or just Patrick?
Patrick: We’d have to find another Being to test it with. One whose Master is trustworthy. And one who’s willing to battle Reseda even if it means passing up a fight with me.
Sparrow: We could ask this Miranda chick. But it doesn’t sound like she’d be happy to do us any favors.
There’s the guy with the rabbit. Who doesn’t seem totally stable, to be honest.
Reseda: At least it would be a good show. Cybele — that’s what she’s called these days — is in top form.
Sparrow: And there’s Representative Park. If she’s interested the next time she comes back up from DC.
Those research projects, Walker and Cohen, would probably hook me up with someone . . . but I don’t like the idea of being a lab rat, you know? Uh, no offense to the rat-shaped Being.
I’ve read enough stories which make frequent name drops to important not-appearing-in-this-story characters to not associate not getting a picture of someone with them being extra important. They might be, but it can be hard to tell just by that detail. I’d say, in real life, a name drop without a picture is tied to someone of serious future importance less than 1% of the time. In stories, it’s closer to 50%. But it’s certainly less than 9 times out of 10.
That said, if I recall correctly, the story is framed as a couple of in story novices are learning about a particular topic, and there’s people mentioned who are researching that topic – they’re going to be super important. I mean, if there were more than two mentioned, it would be possible that only one or two would be important, but that’s not this situation.
On the other hand, for me at least, the fact that there’s a shadowy figure instead of just not including anything points to later importance. For example, if Cohen really was not important, the panel might just have a picture of Walker. Including the Cohen outline definitely gives me a “details to be relased later” impression, which implies they will be returning at least once later (now, that might be for just a single appearance, but from my experience it’s often the author waiting to establish details until *they* have it worked out, which is often at a later arc in which they become more relevant/visible)