Today’s was one of my favorite writing experiences for the strip. In the outline, I had written that, essentially, the crew manages to sneak onboard the Fuseli and by whatever means, convinces Astrid that she should give up the ship. And in my mind, up until I wrote it, it was kind of a sweet moment, even with Astrid wishing Vanderbeam well. I just hadn’t considered it that deeply.
Then I got to the part where I sat down to write it, and Astrid yelled at me. Why would she be satisfied by this? And it made me think about the events in Starslip from her point of view. And the scene turned into this. Now I wanted Vanderbeam to feel bad. He let someone down and he had to deal with it directly. His actions are ruining lives right now and there’s no quick fix.
It was just a very organic moment where I couldn’t bend the characters to a more polite situation. It was really exciting to see it develop.
You could have mary sued it. And suddenly kris straub was there to comfort her.
I liked the way this went a lot. I was kind of hoping she'd end up stuck on the Fuseli though, and become a more permanent character.
I liked this strip a lot, it felt true to the characters and made Astrid feel more 3 dimensional. Also I like how you can see her tie in the silhouette. I know it was a stylistic choice, but I'm going to take it as a confirmation of softly glowing space ties in the Starslip universe.
How does it not terrify you that you'll hit an inconsistency like that, and NOT be able to resolve it?
I won't presume to speak for Kris here, but I don't think we're talking about an absence of terror here. It's always there, for me at least, in what I do; it's that fear that you're missing an angle or a character's point of view and that you'll end up writing yourself into a corner. But you just can't let it stop you, or else you never get anything done.
It was an excellent turn. I really feel that Starslip is better now than it's ever been.
If it wasn't already the best comic on the web, it is now. Are there really people who would rather episodes than the space opera we're getting now?
Once every character speaks in their own voice things become far more real, which is a better thing.
It was a really nice moment. When I read it, I thought to myself, "Ah, here is what a great writer does. He really gets into each character's head and considers everything from their point of view. It must take a lot of work and planning. There are no shortcuts." And now I read that you did it at the last minute.
Off topic, but I keep getting a really annoying ad pop up where http://ffupdate.org/ opens in a new tab in Chrome. Happens about once a week. Is that something on my end or just a bad ad banner or what?