Liner Notes for Special Prize

 

Liner Notes for Special Prize

This is a bit of an awkward structure. The big fight is at the start, everything else an anticlimax. Well one thing about a serial is that you get to try things out. Filler episodes, formally designed episodes, special occasion episodes, issue episodes, and experimental episodes. There’s something here, about confrontations and conflict, the different approaches, even if it’s not quite in focus.

Still I’m pleased with the big fight. The fall out from Agonistes and Vinculus turning the tables on the fight fixers keeps going. I could write the whole series about this if I wanted! Gangsters versus gladiators. And because Agonistes is the flashy one, the one with the charisma and charm and lover of spectacle, they tackle him in a grim manner, sending five killers after him.

Should have sent six. Should have sent sixty.

The sword or the axe. A gladiator may technically be a slave, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have privileges. It’s legal to kill Agonistes if he offends, but not to torture him. This is, of course, still a threat. Though to a man who’s just won against five gladiators in the arena, not that big of one. If he’s willing to be careless with his life he can use that.

So what does he want? He wants everyone to acknowledge his greatness. And he can’t just demand it. He has to seize it, demonstrate it. Can he beat the three best gladiators, on sequential days? If he can then everyone will have to acknowledge it.

And if he can’t? Well what a spectacle. What an effort. What hubris! A tale they’ll tell for years.

There’s some politics going on as well. Agonistes doesn’t worry about it. Not really his business. Something about a foreign country, their leadership factions each trying to get support from the empire, each trying to gain an advantage over the other.

Not really the sort of things gladiators get involved in. Not until one side or the other wins and they hold a festival to celebrate.

That’s how it works normally anyway.