Chapter 5: Page 21
Land of Confusion: Page 21
NOTES FROM JASON
The word of the day and the word of today’s page is mickey. As in, being slipped a mickey. If that phrase seems foreign, then you clearly haven’t watched many old movies, particularly of the noir variety. You should change that.
The last post was a bit light on commentary, but that’s okay, because I can provide some tidbits right now for you. The previous page was all about the mysterious Mr. Huggins, a character who’s been around for quite a while. We first saw him at the end of Chapter 2, but he was mentioned far earlier. Among the many things learned about him in the prior page, he’s an infamous hacker known by the moniker ‘Scarlet Pimples Yells.’ That name showed up in the very first chapter during the news broadcast, one of the captions scrolling at the bottom of the screen/panel. I wonder whether we should have brought more attention to the hacker and his digital attacks earlier on, but I don’t really see where it could fit in naturally. Its current placement instead serves as something hiding in plain sight, that you notice upon a second viewing and realize its importance. I always like those details in stories, so naturally I had to try some of my own. It also demonstrates that all of our major characters appear or are mentioned in the first chapter. All of them.
Huggins’s role as a master hacker comes courtesy of him being a lamster, his item the bluetooth device in his ear. It’s something we never touched upon earlier, though perhaps his capabilities were suggested through his actions. I don’t know for sure, but here we fully confirm it. He was a character thought up early on, or rather, a person with a bluetooth device that granted hacking skills. Similar to President Carnelius, for a while he didn’t have an actual name, just a codename, which was of course Bluetooth. Hell, we still call him that, just like we still call Carnelius Good Book. But over time he did get his full name of Percy Huggins. Randy provided the last name, and I the first. The last name is a play on the name Hugin, one of the ravens of the Norse god Odin. The other raven is named Munin, whose name goes to Harker’s loyal henchman Munn. His first name is tied in with his hacker name, Scarlet Pimples Yells, a play on The Scarlet Pimpernel, whose alter ego is a man named Percy. I read The Scarlet Pimpernel during those early years of The Jacket’s creation, so a reference to that was inevitable. If you haven’t read the book, do so. You won’t regret it.
Anyway, back to today’s page. Our characters seem to have commenced the first step of this ritual without realizing. Or at least I hope so. We also get a glimpse of someone new. Who is this someone? And what’s his involvement with Virgil and the ritual? Are his intentions to help our characters or has the State caught up with our renegades? We’ll find out later. You know how this works by now.