Page Commentary No. 286

Gunwild: Teeny tiny medal is there.

Psu: That was a critical detail... that I really had a hard time remembering to include in a lot of these pages.

Gunwild: Well, maybe it's just hard to see unless you're looking for it!

Psu: Well now that we've pointed it out, someone could take it upon themselves to look at every page to see if they can spot the Doggo medal. And while you're at it, read the whole comic again!

Gunwild: These windows are cool, if this was an animated show I imagine they'd have patterns that waved and changed to suit the music and such.

Psu: It's actually one of my favorite pages in the comic. I love the visuals and it's not often I use such a striking composition. The bottom left panel is one I'm particularly proud of.

Gunwild: You should be!

Psu: And I really like how we led up to the next page here, we get to use Kreuz in a cool way and show off her guards. It'd be a really nice place for a final boss level. But we wanted to tell our readers pretty earnestly that she's not the one Maddy is worried about here. I figured on having her look in such a way that the reader should know exactly who she sees. I remember we discussed how to handle that cliff hanger for the page.

Gunwild: It's a little tough for me to recall, how'd we do it? (edited)

Psu: Not totally sure! It's been a few years! But if I can recall, we had some discussion as to whether or not it should actually be a mystery. But like... when I think about how stories tend to work, and knowing our audience is pretty clever, I figure they would know or guess it was Cassiopeia. Not saying that it was predictable but the way we set things up led to a specific conclusion.

Gunwild: That is true. In that there are a few other characters you could get away with making it, but Cassiopeia makes the most sense, so it's not crucial to continue obfuscating.

Psu: So when it came to that last panel, I don't think we wanted Maddy to do a shocked "You?" expression as a cliffhanger. It was more interesting to say that Maddy figured it out too. And I think... her looking "disappointed" makes it absolutely certain that it's Cassiopeia on the other side. The real question was gonna be, how was this conversation gonna end.

Gunwild: Ahh yeah, I feel like that was a distinction we worked on, you're reminding me now.

Psu: We're writing this late in the morning now, so we're both kinda sleepy and forgetting things.

Gunwild: Well now you're just confessing we're being unprofessional... like how you went out of your way to get me to have Kreuz say something that could be read as suggestive. Possibly. If you're into that. Not that I complained.

Psu: I forgot about that... just like the tiny medal.

Gunwild: It's subtle. The medal is also subtle. We're subtle!

Psu: Subtly suggestive.

Gunwild: Well now you've make it sound like we don't do much at all...