Page Commentary No. 173 (Patreon)

Gunwild: Is that tea or cappuccino?

Psu: Hrmm... I distinctly remember thinking about tea when I drew it. But I suppose Toyn can be a Cappuccino guy. I've been talking to Gunwild a lot about coffee lately but it might be surprising to learn that I'm not that big on fancy coffees. I just think I like my coffee a certain way and am particular about how to make it that exact not too dark, not too acidic, not to hot, not too sweet, but with a hint of nutty flavor kind of way.

Gunwild: Psu is a bad influence on me, I just bought a rice cooker. This is all very fascinating information about our process. Actually tech-wise, I wonder if you had a specific idea about the way that holo-screen thing collapses and shrinks down like it's made of liquid? Personally I feel like the image is constructed from some kind of chemiluminescent fluid that gets shaped by an energy field.

Psu: That might be more thought than I put into it. I just figured this was a different way of projecting a hologram that I haven't done in Cassiopeia yet. It's sorta an unintentional recurring theme here, where it's been SO LONG since I drew the last hologram that I completely forget how the holograms are supposed to work. It isn't until we do the projections in Body Snatchifiers that the holograms start playing by consistent rules. We can say that Toyn's screen here IS a sort of collapsible screen, it might be a sort of glass that takes a liquid shape to dissolve into the table when the screen is no longer needed. Anyway, wanna talk about the story here? I think this is the first page, or maybe second page, where none of our main characters do anything.

Gunwild: I'm tense about it because it's so long since we set this up but we haven't pulled the trigger on it. OR HAVE WE?!

Psu: What has it been, like 9 years? Webcomic arcs take a while...

Gunwild: If I could do it now I might cut out the "make it" line because that would have suggested faster action than we've seen. It was really just done to heighten the drama of this page and that's on me.

Psu: Well we also had major page delays. We didn't quite know what shape the next few arcs would take. We just wanted to give this page some sort of impetus. Like it had to be important. Or we had to hint that there's larger things at work here. As webcomics tend to do. But it's fair to say we haven't made the progress in our story very obvious. At least until the most recent storylines.

Gunwild: It's easy to say you intend a cohesive long-form narrative, but another thing to pull it off. As Aristotle said, "Many poets tie the knot well, but unravel it ill." And that's not me saying that because I'm some kind of smart guy who knows his classics, it's me saying that because I was finally cajoled into reading Poetics like last week so it's all fresh in my head.

Psu: I always just forget which one I agree with, Plato or Aristotle... But yeah, I think we've managed to talk about the visual side of this page. I'm really happy with the surface of Toyn's desk. I'd love some sorta black desk like that where your screens can just pop out as needed. But I think like... if we could revisit how we told the overall story over the course of the years the comic has been up, AND we could reposition where we place certain teases. This would probably have come up somewhere else. Where do you think we should have put it now? With hindsight?

Gunwild: Is it too cowardly to say that I have trouble considering that question because I am working regularly on how to make what we have work, rather than positing alternate realities in which I have an easier job?

Psu: It's fine. No real sense in reworking what we can't. Instead we work with what we got!

Gunwild: We got somethin' pretty good though!

Psu: I think it's pretty good too. Could just use a few post release patches. Like Cats.

Gunwild: Why'd you have to jinx my positive closing sentence?

Psu: I liked Cats...