DM Chapter 2 considerations so far

1 - "Black on White": Well, first, I have to take an aside for the name.  There are several potential implications in a name like that.  The most topical one is reference to black-on-white crime--considered by some extremists to be a proud symbol of an oppressed underclass rising up against privileged social structure, but to most others is just one way of representing some crime, or perhaps representing prejudicial hatred.  But you can also get into things like the colors of chess/Othello pieces, the form of an outline drawing on otherwise blank canvas, symbolism of corrupting influence, or (this is obviously a stretch) the kind of light/darkness symbolism that created tension within the climax of Samurai Jack's "Jack vs. the Ninja".  However you slice it, if I read all these possibilities together like tea leaves, it suggests this chapter will involve a stark contrast and action (possibly a force of nature) creating a tense and perhaps ugly conflict.

Yet the first page is not monochrome like so many of the previous pages--it is bathed in the same glow that our now adult protagonist witnesses.  If Scarab's reaction is part of an honest effort, perhaps Marik alone sees this glow.  Looking back to the chapter 1 ending page again, I'm not quite sure what's going on.  Was Marik looking at his potential future self (even if the hair on that guy doesn't match the eventual outcome)?  Or perhaps the glow and the call of these mysterious lights (not sure if the colorful fireflies or the enhaloed moon) interact with supernatural forces he perceives, or are tied to this vision of a svelte direwolf the way a spirit guide would be (think of the wolf scene in "Fantastic Mr. Fox").  But this call is not toward pure nature, as the well-fitted suit would attest...

BUT...even if the hair doesn't match...maybe it did or was supposed to at one time?  Why (as a writer and conserver of drama) mention the ragged 'dos?  It could be a red herring or just my imagination, but there's a lot to take in within an otherwise simple time lapse.  The invitation to ponder a mystery is quite powerful for me.  Maybe I'm sort of staring mindlessly into fireflies myself.  Whatever--I can't help it, it's kind of in my nature...  But navel-gazing is fun when a friend you trust is providing the fix.  So thank you for that.

Back to the story proper, then: There's not a lot going on here, just establishing the roles the two have taken at a basic level.  Scarab is still a lovely sort of martial maiden, and even if they've been together for some years, the relationship feels quite fresh.  It could be just a writer's wish fulfillment, but it might also speak to the possibility that they don't see each other terribly often.  Is Marik often away on "business" as he'd once promised after completing his training?  (On a side note, I appreciate how Marik has grown into the laceration scars of his youth--how they've grown broad and shallow.  They don't add to any sense of rugged beauty but are just an expansion of the lumps he took when much younger--wounds that never properly healed.  But not drinking all of your healing moon juice didn't help anything either way, did it...?)

2 - The eager excitement of Scarab to contemplate her mate's return makes her seem almost like a prom date.  It's quite cute, but it also belies a sort of wide-eyed ignorance.  Combining this with her working with tailors/armorers and her originally having been the only one to regard a fully deranged "it" creature without fear, and I get the impression that this is both a flaw and a feature of her personality.  I bet she'd really dig astrology, on top of the frivolities her considerate husband entertains for her.  For what we see, though, they merely exchange a gift, an embrace, and a sense of concern while hunting down this Takoma girl they know well.  (Their daughter!?)

3 - That daughter is out exacting vigilante justice against a thieving classmate.  We don't know if Kaori is just Takoma's classmate or something more, but she exudes a very male- or alpha-like possessiveness in laying down the law.  Also, her having the eyeglow like her father and his is enough for me to understand that the eyeglow is likely a feature of the direwolves, and probably significantly linked to their unique personality and sense of self.  (Sidenote: I really appreciate that you have the characters state names often.  I'm very bad at remembering names, and it might be part of my personal mental challenges that I struggle with any story that doesn't reiterate names from time to time.)

4 - Takoma seems to have a fledgling protection gangster's mindset--concerned more about reputation and order than justice or material gain.  We also see that she's really close with Kaori after all (the blush says it all).  So the tomboy attitude likely runs bone-deep for her.  How'd she get to be so rough, I wonder?  And why does it seem like the Azemus line just has a way with getting away with brutality?  It seems like that one boot has been stomping for ages, and I ever more anticipate the other boot of the great "you can't just do that shit forever" reality check to drop.

5 - Awwww...gotta love the daddy hugs.  I got nothing else to say here--just like the character establishment and seeing the reunion on an aesthetic level.  Well, okay, I could say that hugging daddy first is significant to show her heart leaning toward the direwolf lifestyle (or maybe just being glad to have a known ally there in a world that harshly judges you, as her dad also experienced).  Plus, we get another hint that Motly, presumably a major front in "the war", is not a pleasant place to be.

6 - "The war" marks everything, it seems...every little aspect of culture, the new and the old.  The parallels I sense with real-world events are chilling...but I don't need to go on with you about that.  Scarab summarizing the group's reaction to the Helius Court encroachment with "tonight's about us" is something I can really sympathize with.  When it seems everything you love is slowly slipping away, that doesn't take away the normal personal desire to just have that routine, to ignore greater trends (real or imagined), and to just be grateful for whatever shrinking oasis you still have.  I hope they have a wonderful meal to remember--especially Marik, the one who actually fights and presumably caters exclusively to anti-HC causes despite being a hired claw.

7 - Ha, I was talking about gyudon just earlier today--so refreshing...  What the HELL is the maitresse d' going on about "mind if I cater"?  Is this just part of a highly tradition-based albeit big and busy establishment for the ownership to pop up wherever they'll best provide service...or are this place's services about more than food?  I'm probably just imagining things, but it seems kind of like an IMPURE self-invitation to the family conversation.

Oh, Takoma is adopted??  Well, I'm back to the drawing board on the significance of eye color, then.  I wouldn't have suspected she was part direwolf by appearance alone--she looks like Scarab's species with longer ears.  Putting my theorycrafting aside, they really do seem to behave like a solid family unit despite the apparent .  Makes me kind of long for having a family again.  Feels bittersweet, to say the least.  (That's why you don't usually hear me singing praises about the Applejack parents episode the way others do.)

8 - Ah yes...the old "buy your own car" talk.  Pretty interesting that Takoma would think to bribe the parents into helping her with her goals.  Guess it follows from the "pay you to play nice" incident from earlier.  Kind of strange for someone who wants to be a mercenary to have the heart of a bargainer.  So her resolve to succeed is not quite the warrior's fire that Marik had at that age (however poorly it served him at the time).  Like with Scarab's polyanna tendency, this seems like a key character feature and flaw.

And last but not least, I see that Scarab's handling of this situation irks Marik on some level, but we can't quite see what keeps him from being open about those feelings.  My best guess is he'd rather give Takoma every opportunity to live and die by the sword, preferring to see her as a potential warrior instead of a...doting child?  But a decade or more of wear, tear, and a matured relationship have made him respect Scarab's judgment, if only on the principle of maintaining peace.  At no point do I suspect this is a matter of Marik getting his rage under control so much as valuing the decorum in traditional life as contrast to/respite from the adrenaline-soaked hellride he faces on the job.

9 - Up to this point, I have noticed that Marik has had the vaguely unsettling/UFO-like glow of the stars or aether about him in every shot (except one in page 2 where the void-like moon halo captured it instead), in contrast to everyone else being enveloped in the warm jovial glow of the city.  Scarab puts a point on it here, even if she can't precisely see what we see.  This tableau particularly strikes me as a calm-before-the-storm moment where sharp conflict will first enter the scene.  Given the themes in the chapter so far, I expect Marik's family values to be called into question in some way, likely indirectly or as a matter of dramatic irony (since we know from chapter 1 that he has something of a villain's origin story).

I know that this is the Purple Haze Festival, but I'm sure by this point that the haze is also indicative of what calls the direwolf away from civil life, like a ritual drumbeat drawing a tribe to reverie--only no one else can hear it.  But as Leon reminded him, Marik's unique spirit and body are what "ought to" serve him best in life.

10 - Oh my...  Assuming Scarab is recalling her past in a genuine manner, that polyanna attitude of hers now flashes its shadow.  The unyielding devotion of a friend and budding lover looks equally romantic and hopeless from the outside.  In ways, it may be very good and healthy to shackle yourself to a person, to form something stronger and worthwhile.  But she had also witnessed and properly heard a young upstart who raged nastily and failed utterly against the old masters.  What the world recognized as a warning sign, she took in as a herald of future promise.  This is, I think, disturbingly true-to-life in how sentimental women choose dangerous mates.  But we're given many reasons to suspect he is TOO dangerous, that he lacks too much of a grounding to be honed into a reliable head of household, and that she's been too far gone for too long in this nostalgic little love song she hums the bars to here.  The burden of Takoma doesn't mean much to her (for better and for worse) because she is in her mind a part of that song, not truly a full person, not really an actor in the world.  And it WOULD be fine to just be what you want to be...but no, I don't like where this is going--not when the fingers on the flute are just as raving mad, just as windswept...

Then I saw it, the hands..."Black on White"...  I started to tear up for a moment.  This is going to get painful sooner, not later, I just know it.  (This COULD be a setup for a domestic abuse scenario, and I wouldn't mind if you went there briefly...but I like these characters too much and I'd hate for them to be utterly wrecked.  "To love your characters, you must be willing to make them suffer"--god, it isn't any better whether it's your fic characters or someone else's.)

11 - Well of course something had to happen.  But what's going on with Marik, up his sleeve or his coat pocket, the concealed shiny bit?  It could be something shiny and precious, or a communication device, or any number of things important to mercenary work.  He's never really far from his work, is he?  I note that the glow of the HC symbol is not the same hue as the city glow.  If I had to guess, you chose the purple haze to more match Marik's eyes (and the psychedelic Hendrix reference...wait, HENDRIX??), and the city glow you settled on was meant to complement it, but its closeness to the necessarily bright and yellow HC motif is just unfortunate coincidence.  But it does BLEND IN well enough, doesn't it...?

12 - Woo Superhero Landing!!  Also, now Daddy's girl has an excuse to be caught in the crossfire.  The elements of drama align.

13 - Yep, I thought I remembered this country's name properly.  And now we get another reference in Lynard (though the band name is Lynyrd Skynyrd, you don't need to change it necessarily).  We see this Helius captain is stern but not swallowed by militant gruffness.  I suppose that falcon's eye has a sort of surveillance camera or similar effect.  We were given the impression before this that HC operates like a sort of continual coup d'etat on a larger, perhaps global scale.  In this, an image must be maintained; the captain must play a pivotal role in just how much blood should be spilled for the cause.  Though this particular occasion must involve something personal to them as well...

14 - Hm.  All the HC baddies wear masks.  Stormtroopers real and fictional, Pig Masks, and every other collectivist regime militant or otherwise.  The exposition suggests there are newbies in this squadron, which isn't going to work out so well for them.  They're prime examples to be made of by our fearsome protagonist.  I just wonder how much blood will be shed by him.

15 - So he makes it the interloper's choice.  Lovely.  But I don't think this is going to get very far in interrupting the assault either way.  Marik's claws are already fearsome in a way I would call supernatural.

16 - Marik gets a notch on the ole BAMF belt.  Now it's time to root for the underdog.  Give 'em hell, man.

17 - He seems pretty comfortable with wreaking abuse and suffering on the HC, but perhaps less fond of causing fatal damage.  So strange for a lone actor to try to manipulate an enemy force through fear alone...it's quite unlikely to actually work unless you know every trick and can turn every hand to favor you.  Without that, you'll just eventually be overpowered by a foe who knows no fear, or taken in your sleep by one more cunning.

18 - Ah...is our captain pulling a Mad-Eye Moody with that falcon?  Well, the Germans also had papal inquisitors back in the day, no less ruthless than the infamous Spanish sort.  Overall, it's quite interesting that this world has guns and yet melee combat is still part of the rule of day.  Even the puritanical HC cannot free itself from a flair for chivalrous combat.  Actually, this all gives me the impression that the entire world of this story is filled with moral convictions and probably has a lot of ego and righteous charge in every continent, country, and quarter.  Nice to see a good old-fashioned longsword at play here, and that tightly drawn armor is spiffy--but surely the captain must know how foolish it is to brandish plain old steel against this devil's arms.  And that devil bears no special marks, no adornments, just the bare bones for mercenary work (presumably with very well-stitched pants) and a thirst for cleansing his home of the filth of these emissaries of false promises.

If Marik is about to hit a wall with the captain's capabilities, what will it look like?  Will it be more of the same rack of disciprine?  Or might it be a simpler failure to comprehend the scale of the threat against his way of life?  I can't answer that yet, but I'll enjoy wondering for now.