Chapter 27 Page 19 ~ At least you didn’t have this fight in front of the kids
Rosen: Yes . . . The “acquiring knowledge of all things created” sigil that you . . . keep on a rug in your office hall. A part of me did always wonder why you never tried to use it to find a way to “re-animate” your Patrick.
My own Being raised the discrepancies as well, but I shooed her away. No, no, I said, Mr. Cohen is a reasonable man! We can trust him, I said! And then your daughter summons me this morning to reveal that it was a lie, and she knew this all along?
Cohen: It’s not like I told her. She just found out.
Rosen: But you did not tell me! Your top researcher! Not only that, you had me working many hours to re-animate a box full of ordinary soil!
Cohen: Okay, to be fair, that was after Mandy started running the division, not me . . .
Rosen: And you think she learned this type of scheming from the mailman, perhaps?
Cohen: . . . Point taken.
I think she’s a little mad. That’s hours of her life she’ll never get back.
If it was paid work, what’s the difference? In my job I spend countless hours working on MUCH less useful things than animating box of soil.
(To be fair, not ALL my job was like that, and those hours probably could technically be counted … but I work there for years, so it adds up.)
Paid work can still take you away from doing something more valuable. Especially if you have a rare area of skill or expertise that isn’t being put to use.
I’m slightly lost on a couple of points, but I’m guessing with some sleep and next week’s page, I’ll wise up. :-)
Huh, what are you lost on? This page is almost all exposition, it’s supposed to be making things *more* clear, not less…
The fact that Sparrow’s mother knows anything about what’s going on, and especially that she knows more than the reader, is the big confusing surprise. I’m also feeling a bit lost with regard to who had what plans and how they interact with each other.
This isn’t Sparrow’s mom – this is Tansy Rosen, Master of the Donkey and excavator of the Jerusalem sigil. Like the info box near the start of the chapter said, she studies this for a living; she knows about as much as anyone in the strip.
Many the stuff about this sigil, I looked over all her past appearances and couldn’t figure out what it is/why she knows about it/how she got there (it looks like it’s in some part of Cohen’s, not a public space). But I didn’t have time for a deep dive into every appearance of Cohen to track down a strange sigil for healing Beings and my memory bites and I got little sleep last night. ;-) So this may be clear to everyone else.
(Also not sure how this relates to the previous pane’s reference to whatever Cohen’s doing which Sparrow & Miranda seem to know about, but it seemed almost like he was going there to meet Rosen.)
BTW Mara K refers to this as Sparrow’s mother; we met Sparrow’s mother at her house IIRC – that’s a different person, no?!?!?!
But again – bad/little sleep so I’m probably just being slow today. :-)
*”Mainly the stuff,” not “many the stuff.” ;-) Gah.
It’s not a ‘fixing beings’ sigil, it’s the ‘learn ALL the things’ sigil. (As seen “in use” over at interlude 2, page 14.) He’s got it on the rug in the entrance to his office, but hasn’t worked on it for a while – chapter 19, pages 3 and 4.
BUT Sparrow and Miranda were seen debugging it once Sparrow started working in the research area. (chapter 22, page 12)
Also, the research Rosen’s been ‘working on’ was first brought up back at chapter 19, page 24.
Definitely a different person, yes!
Like Cresselia said, the giant rug sigil has come up a couple of times. We haven’t seen Rosen specifically in this room before, but she’s worked for Cohen long enough that it would be weird if she hadn’t seen it.
I updated the page to have her identify it more clearly, even though Cohen would already know. (This is the problem with writing conversations between expert characters…there’s nobody you can naturally explain things to for the audience’s benefit, heh.)
Thanks, both of you! :::blush::: I’ve tracked down SailorCresselia’s references and, sigh, I was like a few pages away when I was following up the other day. So close! :-)
I fell into the rabbit hole of re-reading and re-skimming several chapters last night, not just the references from SailorCresselia. That’s great! :-D Rereading this (or Leif & Thorn) is always enjoyable.