Page Commentary No. 288

Gunwild: "What are you gonna do, stab me?" - Quote From Woman Stabbed

Psu: You've waited weeks plus years to make that commentary joke. 

Gunwild: Anyway Maddy's right, Cassiopeia's a big pain in the butt... but probably not evil. It's very vexing.

Psu: I think we realized that AFTER we came up with the idea for the comic. And this page sorta captures everything we've had in the back of our minds with this story. When we started making this webcomic, it was just gonna be a goofy space "thief." And well... she was mostly going to target people that deserved it, like the Regency. But then... what about the people in the Regency?

Gunwild: Ya. Well, on a technical level, I'd say the first three panels look really good and I feel sort of weird because I'm sure this would be hard to deliver out loud as dialogue. But the way it drops over the course of the panels, with the changing expression, is a good rhythm so I don't think I'd change it. That's proper comics.

Psu: I just like the idea that because the moon is in the same place and cut between the panels, it makes it look like Maddy is coming closer and angrier at Cassiopeia. And Maddy doesn't actually like being angry.

Gunwild: Yeah she looks like she has to swallow that in Panel 4... she goes on a whole face-journey! There's probably a technical term for that like "performance" or "arc of the scene" but I'm gonna stick with face-journey. It's more fun. (edited)

Psu: You are your wordliness. I'm looking at some of these words here. Honoriness. That's a hard one to say out loud. But I guess that's what makes Cassiopeia sound like Cassiopeia.

Gunwild: I watched a lot of Rugrats as a kid, it's always sort of stuck me that someone who speaks in a juvenile way is just as happy to change or adapt words they know into other forms for other uses... including me, I guess. I do that all the time. But it's how English works, and it's already the language with the most words!

Psu: It gives ai robots trying to understand human speech a headache though. Maybe this is how we'll develop Turing tests in the future. See if the machine can understand Rugrats speech.

Gunwild: Or it will learn our secrets and use them against us, like all the cool thinking computers. "We know English. We will add your lexigraphic and vocabulary distinctiveness to our own. Silence is futile."

Psu: See this is why you're the writer. You can figure out the Borg joke when I didn't even realize there was one to make. Anyway, did you have more thoughts on writing this page? In a way, this is a big climactic moment for our characters.

Gunwild: I just wanna say my favorite comment was "Can't believe the comic is about to end next page." I know they weren't serious, but if I ever thought of a piece of writing advice... you want get people to understand at least what the stakes feel like to the characters. If you've got that, then you've got a scene on your hands.

Psu: I like that you managed to end this page on a joke. A joke about potentially getting stabbed.

Gunwild: Page turns are where you put a tension hook or a gag. I'm willing, this one time, to accept a pat on the back for managing both.