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Illumination 3 page 12

Illumination 3 page 12 published on 54 Comments on Illumination 3 page 12

Bonus fun fact: that’s Blanche’s dad. The Noirs are an old and influential family in the Liverpool Avalon.

Thank you for everyone who came out to see me at TCAF! It was so much fun! Now I’m chilling out in Minneapolis for a few days before I jet back off to Canada for VANCAF next weekend! Table D7! If you’re in Vancouver COME STOP BY! Yeah Canada!!!!

54 Comments

HA! KNEW it was Blanche’s dad! He’s a handsome fellow, for sure.

Ah, for the best, James did not outright say he has the Sphinxes sole survivor. He would’ve had a lot more than just the elders clamoring if he did.

Shut up Ravi, just… shut up

I just realized something that’s bugging me. Unless I’m mistaken, all of the elders have appeared in half-form. Is this to represent they are all present on equal footing?

Isn’t the centauress in her fullform? I think it’s just useful to have dexterous fingers + opposable thumbs (or a human face to talk with in Barnaby’s case), is all.

Wait a minute, MICHELLE IS AWAKE, does that mean, she knows now all what the sphinxes once knew?

She’s known all of that since breaking contact with the Phoenix Egg in chapter 2.
But it pretty well overloaded her and knocked her out cold early in this chapter.
What she’ll choose to say and/or show here will be interesting.

Wondering at the extent to which people know Ravi. He would have been known – his shop didn’t materialise out of nowhere – but he might have been forgotten by everyone in the mean time. Also wondering at the extent to which he will be able to shut up, and speak when spoken to… it doesn’t seem terribly likely that he will. Michelle, on the other hand…

Nuala: I think we should hear this account direct from the sphinx’s mouth, as it were. Ms. Jocasta, you have the floor.

Michelle: *freezes up* ………… *slowly turns to stone*

Madame U: Well, don’t look at me!! I am still BLIND!!!!

>:=)>

A second Jimothy? Wait until Dr. Hobbes hears about the waterbending.

Dr. Hobbes: He can WHAT?!?!?!!!??? Good God, NO!!!! … That’s it, I’m moving to another avalon!

Nuala: NO! You can’t… you mustn’t… DON’T LEAVE ME HERE WITH THAT BLUE-HAIRED TERROR!!!!! *sob*

Barnaby: *hops hurriedly to the exit* You’re on your own, chaps!!

Mr. Noir: Fellows… before any of us give way to panic, I believe I have the skills to direct this threat away from us…

And so…

Mr. Noir: *carefully dips brush in pot of red paint* *begins painting target on Tobias Finn’s back*

Tobias: WHYYYYYYYY??!??!??? X>

>:=)>

With how easily James was able to phone Barnaby in Wonderland, I’m thinking Wonderland must be near a mobile phone base station in the UK.
It would be quite odd for it to have a physical phoneline, since the phoneline would quite literally vanish into nowhere, and that would make Wonderland a Place That Has To Be Investigated.

Not necessarily. For complicated & boring reasons mostly related to the Telegraph Act of 1899, Hull has it’s own telephone company & ISP, Kingston Communications. It’s possible that the avalons might have there own. More likely they are just connected to BT (and Virgin) through a combination of large bribes, broad hints about black sites & illegal cable taps

Yup, hey Ravi. I still find it funny that a family of White Deer have the surname ‘Noir’.

Yup. In French, Blanche’s name translates as “light dark” (or “white dark” or “fair dark”, but I think “light dark” is the most accurate translation in this case.)

People tend to think “noir” means black, but actually that would be Nègre (which also, oddly, means “ghost writer”.)

Addendum: Now that I think about it, Blanche’s name is very appropriate, given the White Stag’s significance in Celtic tradition. Its role was to lead people to new beginnings, new places, new insights and new knowledge. In that sense, it can be thought of as a guide… “lighting the path through the darkness”, if you will.

“light dark” is also an accurate enough definition of the word penumbra. Whether that is at all noteworthy is debatable(unlikely, even), but Blanche has been something of a lone stable point for Tony in all this harpy nonsense from the last story. A bit of a lighter shadow in a sea of “darkness”- things are really uncertain for him right now, but Blanche is still his friend. Probably coincidental, but hey, it sounds kinda nice.

“Noir” is black as in the color. Black people can also be called noirs and it’s okay (though the English term “black” is increasingly used instead). “Nègre” is a word that you can use in some contexts without too much fuss (1. for a ghostwriter, 2. for the best-ranked student officer in a class at the Saint-Cyr military school). Using it for black people isn’t as bad as its English cognate (the dreaded “n-word”), but it’s still pretty bad and you shouldn’t do it.

French adjectives have masculine and feminine forms, so blanc and noir are masculine forms of white and black, while blanche and noire are the feminine forms. Blanche exists as a girl’s first name, definitely not as a boy’s name. Despite their family name, the Noirs mustn’t have much knowledge of French language or culture.

“Blanche Noir” doesn’t mean “light dark”, if you wanted that you’d get something like “Claire Sombre” perhaps, which, again, would be a girl’s name, while the feminine adjective “claire” doubles as a girl’s name, the masculine adjective “clair” doesn’t double as a boy’s name.

I think Madam U might try to insist to bring the sphinx under her wing. Think of all the profit they can make if they create medallions for the species that don’t have any yet!
I know of a certain harpy who’d love to volunteer to be her test dummy until she gets the hang of it (having the knowledge is one thing, but developing the actual physical skill is an entirely different monster. No pun intended)

But seriously though, she’s likely the most well informed person on the current state of the medallion market and its recent history. Michelle might need that type of knowledge to complement the one she inherited

I’ve always thought that would be the end game of this comic. That Michelle eventually learns how to create medallions and Tony and all the other ‘monsters’ would get theirs.

That and maybe she could learn how to fix Gregs broken medallion

And Myra’s and Sam’s Medallions as well
Myra’s spider styled Medallion has that crack in it which causes one of her eyes to be permanently in Bugbear glowing mode.
Sam’s Medallion failed to transform him from human form to full form, and form locked him with enlarged canines and eagle yellow eyes, and he cannot transform back to human form.

You know.. I just want to point out: Barnaby is a white rabbit. From Wonderland. Wearing a waistcoat.
Worried if he’s late.

He might well be THE White Rabbit.

Actually, he’s called Percy in the made-for-TV movie “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland”. In the Tim Burton movie, his name is Nivens McTwisp. Nowhere else is his name mentioned (as far as I know). It is worth mentioning that it doesn’t rule out the possibility that he uses multiple names.

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