Page 217
This is the page where I get to simultaneously throw both a bunch of YA novels and the British school system’s ranking of secondary students into levels under a bus at the same time. Maida doesn’t appreciate dividing kids up by who’s special and who isn’t.
It was interesting, one of the points of feedback I got from the sensitivity reader I got to read my script was that they thought it was very important that if Maida was a good Muslim she should be very against joining an organization that attempts to run the world with any level of secrecy. Which is what I had in mind for her anyways, but it did encourage me to push a little harder on that point of view. Maida is never going to be okay with there being a class of people who get to manipulate everyone else.
Panel 2: Tahmaseb: "You are gonna do it, yeh?" Maida: "You're not upset?"
Panel 3: Tahmaseb, with genuine concern: "Why would I be upset?" Maida: "The shidafu are the enemy!"
Panel 4: Maida: "They're the ones pulling the strings behind the scenes, running the Earth and pushing around the whole world. They go against everything I believe as a Muslim, and as a revolutionary."
Panel 5: Maida: "Even just the way they talk about school, basically admitting they've set it up to keep people from thinking too hard about the world."
Panel 6: Maida, making quotation marks with her fingers: "Except for a 'special few' who get to be powerful, and get to go to their secret university for geniuses."
Panel 7: "It's obscene, is what it is." Tahmaseb: "Yeh, of course it is. But power cuts both ways, innit?"
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