What upsets Will the most in this moment? We don't have all the data yet, but Hanna can't be helping. I don't love this sequence, I think I could've done better with the lettering and really building that tension and anger. I also fudged the backgrounds in places, probably under time constraint, but it's just a shame for a double-page installment to deliver so little. At any rate I needed to bridge the gap between this and the next emotional beat, and so it delivers. I'm probably repeating myself at this point but there's an aspect of "transportation" that's not always easy in storytelling, literally getting characters from here to there, but also moving the pieces of the plot to where they need to be. Sometimes I found myself stuck on a destination, with less regard for the journey than was needed.
7 thoughts on “#774 + 775 – over the moon”
jrahme
Meredith, you don't give yourself enough credit. I think these pages were amazingly delivered, showing will's frustration over his open relationship with Aimee giving both the freedom he feels he needs, but not giving the emotional trust he subconsciously craves. The only way he knows how to express this is physically exerting his frustration, while superficially saying everything is fine, not matter how much he knows on any level it isn't and this is just one more facet of his life he needs to make a drastic change in to fix.
You've created an amazing work of art in Octopus Pie, and I'm greatful every day to get to take a part in the experience of both having read the initial posting, and re-reading the story with my own aged perspective and your incredibly insightful commentary!
Marshall
How are you finding the transportation issues in your video game? Feels like there would be a lot of overlap, but still quite different since the character has some agency in moving around.
granulac
hard to guage! On one hand I can add puzzles where I feel the timing would benefit… on the other hand, everyone will be playing at their own pace. I think a lot of this will be ironed out in the testing stage.
carl
Wait, video game?
cwbuecheler
http://perfect-tides.com/
wykstrad
I think that "transportation issues" almost always get worse in the back half of the story, if only because of how the audience is primed to respond. When they're still figuring out who characters are and what sort of world they're in, I think they're less likely to have preconceptions about what should happen to them. When the ending gets closer, audiences get more nervous about everyone's final destination, and more fixated on how individual decisions bring characters closer to or further from their "ideal" stopping point.
It's a completely different type of story, but I think nothing demonstrates this so well as the Game of Thrones sequels. One of the reasons the books have been so long delayed is because the author literally can't figure out a way to get the right collection of characters into the same room, and the last few volumes feel like it–you can almost hear the author trying to work it out like a chess problem.
Rereading the first few volumes, I can see that he has been carefully stage-managing his characters like this from the start–it's just something that you don't pay as much attention to, because you're learning about characters and the world and wondering about the mysteries he's set up–all wells that have pretty much run dry at this point. So now, much as I try to be generous with the remaining books, I feel like I'm waiting around to see if the last few moves happen the way I think they will. "Don't run out of backstory before you run out of story" seems to be the takeaway here.
kev
The use of flat background colors like this for every frame could easily be overwhelming, but it's comes off as soft and pleasing. If I unfocus my vision it's like looking at a modernist painting.