Weekly Update - 79

I would first like to welcome Quinn, who is our first ever Landlord-Tier subscriber!  Just... I'm honestly beside myself with such incredible generosity, thank you SO SO MUCH!!!

Comic This Week: Yes (I think so)

Max Poster: I haven't forgotten!

Drawing: Page 115 and Hero character sheets for Patrons

Playing: Rimworld.  Too much Rimworld...  This is what happens when one of my favorite games of all time gets a major expansion.

Rambling:

I mentioned on last week's comic that I wanted to talk some about the interaction between Max and Kiera in Page 114... two characters who we've yet get to see interact with each other in the actual comic.

The reason is because the interaction between Max and Kiera genuinely surprised me, and it got me to really start thinking about why I, the creator of both characters, would be surprised and/or confused by their interaction.  Max, who generally likes and/or loves everybody, seems shocked and probably displeased with Kiera showing up to ask him for favors.  He is really reluctant to help her, but he caves easily when pressed.  And his reaction, though it struck me as the only way he could react to her showing up like that, confused me.  It wasn't a question for me whether or not he would react that way, it was more a question of me not initially understanding why he would react that way.

I've mentioned quite a few times before that I'm what I believe is a Discovery author... sometimes called a "pantser" given that I supposedly "fly by the seat of my pants" (though I despise both the term and its origin for being wholly inaccurate and kind of demeaning)  While it's true that I discover my story more than I construct it, these characters take a certain form in my mind, and I craft a tale around them, almost a sandbox for them to play in, then I see what they do and how they interact with it, and I write that.  It's still a lot of work, and I'm definitely not flying by the seat of my pants or pulling random lines of dialogue out of my ass.  It's a talent, perhaps a skill, that enables me to see my characters, put my head into theirs, and imagine what they might do or how they might react in a way that makes sense, without even fully consciously being aware of everything about them.  It takes a lot of empathy to imagine myself in someone else's situation, I suppose, and having an interest in human psychology probably doesn't hurt to help me imagine how they might react in a way that's different from what I would do.  Riley has really been the only character I truly struggled to understand in this way, though even she eventually made sense to me once I realized she's just a normal girl with mental conditions that make her APPEAR mad from an outside perspective.

Many times I've thought that all of my characters are originally some aspect of me, or someone I know, imagined out to an interesting value, though through iteration and just... seeing what they do in different scenarios, they often take on a form and function of their own without my conscious involvement.  It never does me any good to try and force my characters to act or behave a certain way.  It feels unnatural.  It grinds inside my brain.  It's almost like they fight back when I try to write them doing something they don't want to do.  For example, this story has Kiva going to the Citadel.  It's kind of an important part of the story.  But Kiva did NOT want to go to the Citadel.  He really, really didn't, and I couldn't force him to go.  It was hard work to lay out an array of events that would make him feel like he had no other choice.

Similarly, I know that Max likes Kiera, because Max likes everyone (with few exceptions, but mostly everyone), and Max and Kiera have likely only ever had positive interactions in the past.  Yet, when she shows up... he's not really too happy about it.  It took me a lot of time to figure out why Max would react how he does to Kiera showing up, even after the script was written.  The answer that I eventually came to is that... well, it's pretty complex.  There's a lot of facets going on, but primarily, Max isn't stupid.  He knows what's going on with her.  He's also likely heard Kiva's side of things, and Kiva has probably instilled in Max some paranoia about her ability to manipulate people to get what she wants...