ZOMBIE FORUMS

He's got the shotgun/rifle pointed at Sara.

Is that the same weapon he had while he was up on the ledge? I don't seem to recall him switching from his rifle..

http://www.errantstory.com/archive.php?date=2006-10-20 shows him holding his pirate hand cannon (sawed-off shotgun) while the rifle is not there

http://www.errantstory.com/archive.php?date=2006-09-29 shows him shooting warrel with the shotgun then seemingly pulling out his revolver... i assume both shotty and revolver could be hidden in his cloths as shown by
http://www.errantstory.com/archive.php?date=2006-09-27
and he has long since dropped/abandoned the rifle.

Take some predicate "X", such as "have been trained by..." or "are faster than..." or "like chocolate ice cream", whatever. Now compare:

"I hope that you X."
"Please X."
"Do me a favor and X."

If any of them make sense for X, then they all should, though the conjugation may have to change from between the first (which is non-imperative) and the second and third (which are imperative). [i.e. the third would have to say "be faster than" rather than "are faster than"].

The problem is that there is no separate imperative form of the past-tense of "to be" (since you can't really ask someone to have done something in the past), so Jon winds up having to use the non-imperative "have been" (which is the past tense of "are", rather than "be"), as I just did above with "have done" (which is the past tense of "are doing", rather than "do"). This is fairly common usage in English: I frequently see phrases such as "to have been there at that time, he must have...". (Compare "to be there at that time, he must...") So asking someone to "have been" something appears to be normal English usage. Jon asked Sara to do him a favor: in particular, that favor is to "have been" something.

The parenthetical "do me a favor and" is what's throwing you guys off.

There was a better way that line could have been written, and still keep the same meaning:

"...Sara... do me a huge favor by having been trained by the same idiots who trained that fuckwit over there... please..."


as an aside, i'm surprised that nobody else has commented on how Sara hasn't yet activated her weapon's blade, or even raised it in a battle-ready posture which suggests one of several things (these aren't all the possibilities, but are the few that stand out to me most):

1. she is allowing (hoping for?) Jon to end her life, because of some kind of deep guilt over what she has done in the past up to this point. If any of you remember the television series Angel (starring David Boreanaz), there's a powerful episode (i believe it's title was "Five by Five") that closely mirrors what i'm trying to say. i could describe the scene in detail, but there's a YouTube video of it. if anyone has seen the episode that i'm talking about, you'd know exactly why i feel this standoff between Sara and Jon parallels it with such accuracy.

2. She's delaying on purpose, hoping for her partner in grime to off the Elf, while Jon is frozen in place, not knowing what to do or how to react, where/when afterwards, Sara and Warrell will off Jon, and she will return to the Ensigerium village where all she recieves is a slightly more ornate robe, a higher pay wage, and who the hell knows what else that could possibly justify killing the only blood relative she has left.

The first suggests that Sara is redeemable, the second suggests that she's become such a cold blooded killer (well, she alredy was, but bear with me anyway), that she would kill her brother as easily as she has killed anything else. Not a cheerful family reunion, but what can you do.

I hope our protaginists survive this, and that Sara can leave with them at the end, but i don't know how likely that will be. Fortunately, monday is only 2 days away ;)

- Ptrix

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Sure it's gramatically correct, but it is hard to understand.

Errr... I'm pretty sure she's doing that in the not-quite-a-panel in the upper right. The blade is definately active in that shot, at least.

oh, damn. THAT was Sara? i thought it was another angle of Warrell slicing up Sarine while Jon is watching from a distance, distracted, thus adding additional urgency to his predicament. (In the dramatic, "oh fuck, i'm just standing here, while fuckwit over yonder is cutting up my woman. (looks to the side, sees Warrel doing his thing) gotta act NOW!..." kind of way)

and so on.

[edit]
Sara's hair color is lighter than that, and i can't think of a practical reason why she'd be looking downwards with her knees bent, appearing to have just completed an upward sweeping motion with her weapon as if she'd just sliced someone across the back.
[/edit]

if i was wrong, then my bad.

I originally thought as you did. Then I noticed that figure has boobs and is using a different kind of Durus Flamma than Warrel is (his is a lancea, hers is a dolan). That also looks more like a fighting stance (preparation to strike, dodge, block, etc) than the end of a strike's extension.

when i read todays comic i thought Jon was asking Sara to help him and stop Warrel. but after flicking through all you guys have written i now think his going to try and shoot her and use the sound of his gun to cover up the second one so he can shoot warrel. and his just hoping she'll doge it.

two possibilites, i'm betting on an option C.

Though Jon's line was hard to read, we all eventually came to understand it, therefore it is a valid sentence. Standard American English is as Illogical a concept as Greedo shooting first. Ie. It exists to cause controversy, and to make it look like someone has control over "how things are SUPPOSED to be done." In this case as in many cases, control itself is the illusion. The French have an academy dedicated to keeping their language "pure" this is why so many french teenagers are starting to speak more english. "Pure" or "Standard" languages stagnate and die quickly.

It took me a while to accept this and I had a lot of help. I have a degree to teach english and when I started school I took it for granted that "Standard American English" was something that one could use, could achieve or could own. However, I now feel that there is no such beast, and even if it did exist, it would be a sad and expressionless creation reeking of falsehood.

English, in whatever form it is spoken, is a dynamic language, it changes all the time. Trying to say that someone is grammatically incorrect after you already read and understood the meaning of their sentence is just silly. This does not mean that you have a "catch all" excuse for why pepole can't understand what you're writing. To wit, a careful consideration of audience is important for any writer. Poe, knowing that we are an educated and intelligent audience chose to use a "non-Standard" construction for Jon's line. This shows that he has a considerable amount of regard for our ability to correctly interpret and understand his work. Even thought it took almost three whole pages of messages back and forth for some people, I believe that we have proved his trust in our abilities to be well founded and I thank him for his consideration.

On to a more relevant point.

Will Jon be the superhero now?
I think it'd be freaking sweet if he managed to incapacitate Warrel and Sara, Save Sarine and get away before the inevitable rush of slow moving guards arrives. I don't expect it to happen, but it'd be nice for the "good guy" to win one. I gotta say, I do get tired of "Badguys" winning all the time these days. I understand why it happened, it's a trend in all forms of literature, nobody wants to see the "good guy" win and escape clean. Everyone has to be dirty.

ok... sorry if you read all this expecting some nugget of knowledge.

Well, everyone sort of understands what Jon said by this point, so I'll try to walk around the huge grammatical argument. What I'm wondering right now is if anyone has any fun ideas as to WHY he said it.

A few possibilities:
a) He hopes Sara is as gullible and conceited as Warrel, so he can come up with some sneaky plan to shoot her. Would seem unussualy cold for an assasin that goes out of his way and risks himself to help anything that has ovaries because he feels guilty over his little sister.

b) He hopes she is as good as Warrel, and can dodge a shotgun blast at close range. He doesn't want to see her hurt, so he's firing under the assumption that she is not at risk from that particular shot.

That said, Jon is a lot more luky than he knows. Sara is clearly pissed of, which is a very good thing for him. Emotionless Sara would have killed him before he could put up the guns (likely while he was asking 'what the hell is going on?!). This Sara is conflicted enough to make a mistake like letting her opponent get a shot in.

The question then is, what is she going to do? Why hasn't she killed Jon already? Is she having second thoughts about the mission? Has she been hiding her true nature from everyone in the village and in fact hates the monks? Or is she going to overcome whatever is stoping her right now and try to kill Jon after all?

To an even deeper point, Jon is more or less a bumpkin and not a bastion of refinement. I don't think he'd go through the trouble of saying a well-thought out sentence such as, "Sara, please do me a favor. Please, dear sister, have been trained by the same ninnies that trained that poor chap over by my esteemed college."

Nope, Jon, in bumpkin style, says what he means, "Sara, do me a huge favor and have been trained by the same idiots that trained that fuckwit over there." His use of "fuckwit" is a clear indicator of his propensity for vulgar, "common" language. As such, the grammatical construct everyone's arguing over fits his character.

*Claps* Well played, Poe, well played indeed, sir.

Possibly to someone with a lot of firearms experience, but to Warrel, in his circumstances? And the entire business requiring a microsecond reaction? Jon may have it exactly right.

As far as Jon knows, Warrel triggers his time-fugue based on his real-time reactions. That is, there is no magical auto-trigger for the effect, as we suggested Sarine might need for her defence against a time-monk. Note that the only monk killed by the Gewehr thus far was taken by a silenced rifle shot from a considerable distance. The bullet hit him before he could react to it to the gun being fired. Jon, and the other Gewehr having nightmares about the monks the past few months, must have given that incident a good mulling over in their minds, wondering how they might duplicate that success under other conditions.

To get a shot through with the pistol, Jon has to camaflouge the drawing and firing somehow, to cheat Warrel's peripheral sight and hearing.

In which case, he hopes Sara is going to dodge the shotgun blast and hesitate before (a) hacking both his arms off or (b) running up and giving him a hug.

There is also (c) time-fuguing over to Warrel and pushing him into the path of the bullet.

Note: the soddoff was fired at Warrel, and it didn't have that much of a spread at short range.

After taking another look at the strip, I am heartily impressed by Sarine's resiliance. She's <i>still</i> moving around and casting spells.

...and in swoops Ellis, to the rescue.

I sort of thought this was like, 5 seconds before wednsday's strip, with the ARRGH being her getting slashed in the back.

Nicely said.

I've been wondering ...

You are almost certainly correct. Jon's going to pull the trigger as Warrel poses for his killing blow.

It'd be better for my peace of mind (Jon is spending a lot of time jawing away, and I doubt events would pause respectfully for him to finish) if that was how it is, but I don't think so. I think this strip starts imediately after wednsday's, with Warrel's lancea in the same position from wednsday's last panel as it is in friday's first. Then in the second panel he slices Sarine's right elbow.

Heck, for all I know, Sarine's scream after the slash across her back was soundless. I recall Jim Cavizel saying once that during the filming of a scene from The Passion of the Christ one of lashes actually hit him and sliced his back. Nobody else noticed it at the time because it caused him to lose his wind in an instant and it was all he could do for theappreciable future to try to breathe.

Jon's lack of dialouge after witnessing it still manages to be one of the better lines in the comic thus far though. Right now Jon and Sarine have a monopoly on selfless acts. I wonder if they get out of this one if they'll just go back to hostile sarcastic banter and/or loathing.