The Answer Post (Jan/Feb/Mar/Apr 2021)

Hey everyone, it's time for another set of my answers to your questions. Remember that only Patreon supporters can ask questions but it's free for everyone to read the answers. Also, I tried to make an effort this time to respond to some of the questions asked by private message after I realized I hadn't picked any of them in the previous installments. Sorry about that.

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1.) Anonymous (via private message): Do you regret killing fruit pie?

It haunts me to this day. You don’t know how hard it is to be writing a script and think to yourself, “This plot problem I’m having could be easily solved by the addition of a flaky fruit-filled sentient pastry with sorcerous powers,” only to have reality come crashing back in to remind you that you foolishly cut that option off forever. Clearly, the biggest mistake of my career. I wail and gnash my teeth when I think about it, often because I am eating a fruit pie at the time and gnashing teeth is sort of how you do that. It’s what he would have wanted.

2.) Sam: Did you enjoy writing for Tarquin? Was is hard to write the pun duel between him and Elan?

I did enjoy writing him. It was fun to think about how to turn Elan’s obsession with stories into something menacing, and it was also nice to use all of the Evil Overlord stereotypes that I hadn’t already explored with Xykon. The pun duel was not difficult at all. As a rule of thumb, it’s much more difficult to prevent myself from adding puns to a given strip than it is to deliberately add them. This is also true of every conversation I have ever had.

3.) Michele Nesci: Why did Redcloak think the polymorphed hobgoblin spy had to die? Redcloak ended up telling Xykon that he destroyed the resistance and retrieved the phylactery from them, so there seems to be nothing the spy would know that needed to stay secret. Did he not want Xykon to know he could have destroyed the resistance earlier? Did he have a different plan before he killed Tsukiko? If so, was the original plan?

He wasn’t saying that he definitely would have killed the spy on the spot, more like he was thankful that circumstances hadn’t taken such a turn where he felt like that was required. At the time that the spy died, Redcloak did not necessarily know that the hobgoblin craftsman had already finished the replacement holy symbol, so there could have been a timing discrepancy between when he retrieved the real one from the Resistance and when he returned. Maybe he thought he might need to pretend for a time that he didn’t have it at all. But the bottom line is, he was prepared to kill him if he needed to, and he was glad he didn’t need to. The exact situation he might have been worried about was probably not clear even to him.

4.) Leo Once3333: Are dinosaurs considered mythical creatures in the OOTS world? Or are they just ordinary animals that happen to exist in the world?

I mean, strictly speaking dragons aren’t mythical creatures in the OOTS world. They exist. Dinosaurs also clearly exist, because Belkar has one in his backpack. In order to be mythical, something would need to not exist but still have myths told about it, and I’m not sure what would qualify for that since there’s been stats printed for pretty much every imaginary monster ever conceived at this point. Maybe something from another fantasy IP? I guess people might be telling tall tales about balrogs and nazgul (or bilrugs and nizgal, in order to get around Frudu’s copyright lawyer).

5.) Jenni Black: During the Kickstarter event you did two Monsters for Every Season (Autumn 2016 and Winter 2018). I really love them. Have you considered doing more of these and offering them for sale?

Wow, do I have good news for you. I actually did four volumes of A Monster for Every Season for Kickstarter. I also did Spring 2012 and Summer 2013. You can download them from updates #37 and #65 if you were a Kickstarter backer, or you can buy them from Gumroad here and here if you weren’t. I’ve also done a second volume of Spring, helpfully called Spring 2, though that one is solely available on Gumroad. And Summer 2 is on the verge of being released soon, though I had put it on hold due to a technical issue I was having with Gumroad (that had nothing to do with purchasing, there was a problem on the back end). So, yeah. Three more you can get today, and a fourth coming soon. Enjoy.

6.) Rachel: How do dragons run in the OOTS universe? Is it more like a weasel or a lizard? Perhaps dachshunds?

Based on the way I draw them with long digitigrade legs, I would assume something like a larger dog or even a cat.

7.) Jeffrey Antwiler: I just started watching The Walking Dead a few months ago. I'm not sure if you have seen it. (Spoilers, sort of, on season 4) There is a character, a young girl, that loves the "walkers", and plays with them. She thinks they are misunderstood. This was in 2014, and I'm not sure what year Tsukiko came on scene. Was she inspired by this, a coincidence, did you think I already wrote that girl, or have you never watched TWD?

I’ve never watched The Walking Dead, but Tsukiko was introduced in 2007, seven years earlier. So if there’s any connection there, it was the other way around.

8.) Nathan Lewandowski: In this comic the roaches mention 9 different groups in this conflict. Have all 9 been revealed or are some still hidden?

This is one of those things that I think has been maybe taken a little bit too literally, as if there are exactly nine factions involved. The number was arbitrary when I picked it; the strip in which the line appears is one where it’s explaining that Redcloak and Xykon are not on the same side. Listing more than nine groups from this story with slightly different priorities and goals is trivially easy and there’s no “right” answer. The more important point was that there were still characters left to be revealed that would have their own goals that didn’t align with those of anyone already in the story. Remember, that strip was before Tarquin was introduced, or Hel, or Serini, or any of the gods at the Godsmoot, all of whom have their own interests in the Gates and the Snarl that don’t match up exactly with those of Redcloak, Xykon, the Order, Hinjo, etc.

So there have already been more than nine sides revealed, and any speculation on whether or not there are even more waiting to show themselves would get into spoiler territory.

9.) Andrea: Do citizens of Azure City/paladins/members of the Sapphire Guard dye their hair/beards shades of blue, or does it grow that color naturally?

It’s natural. It’s sort of an outgrowth of the way I drew, because I had given Miko black hair but that caused issues whenever she needed to put her arms up over her head—her stick figure hands would disappear. Since she had already given the name of her hometown as Azure City, I decided to riff on Emerald City from The Wizard of Oz and make almost everything blue, including the hair of many of its inhabitants. It was particularly needed for O-Chul, who couldn’t have a black beard because then you wouldn’t be able to see his mouth.

10.) Jamey MacIsaac: How much stuff winds up on your "cutting room floor"? I know you've said your scripts end up too wordy and have to be trimmed. Do you find that trimming is more often of the 'consolidation' variety or of the "that whole weird tangent about gnome commoners and railguns has to go'? do you keep a notebook/log of cool things you had to snip, in hope to find somewhere else to use it?

It’s more often the consolidation variety. A lot of times, I include explanations in my scripts for how or why something happened a particular way for the purpose of heading off confusion about perceived plot holes before they happen. When I’m tight on space, I re-evaluate those clarifications to see whether they’re something that the story won’t make sense without, or if I’m wasting space explaining details that 90% of the audience will get right away. The good thing is that if I get it wrong and everyone’s confused, I can usually add the explanation back in a later strip.

Other than that, I don’t really get to use much that I cut, because the story moves on from that scene and it doesn’t make sense to revisit the exact dynamics of it. Maybe some one-liners, though when it’s a clash between jokes and gratuitous explanations, it’s the jokes that win in the first place.

11.) Ludovic Gelli: Do you write the scripts for entire scenes in advance or strip-by-strip? For example did you write Durkon and redcloak's conversation in 1204-1210 all in advance and then separated it into individual pages (adding the necessary punchlines at the end of each strip) ar did you just had a rough idea of where the conversation had to be at the end of each strip and wrote that strip accordingly once the previous one was done? And do you proceed differently for conversations and battles?

I do both. Specifically for the Redcloak/Durkon conversation, yes, I wrote the whole thing out first. In situations where a conversation needs to explicitly move the plot forward, I develop the entire scene ahead of time because I need to make sure that there’s a logic to the points and counterpoints being made by the participants. It can’t just be a series of sentences, it needs to be an actual discussion where one idea builds off another. So I basically did exactly what you said: I wrote out the entire “argument” so that I had a complete and cohesive debate that ended the way I needed it to, then I went back and added jokes or asides so that I can break it up into multiple pages. (This does lead people to ask why a character didn’t make this point or that point when page 1 of the scene is published, and the answer is always, “Because that’s what they say on page 4.”)

But for other sorts of scenes, it’s less likely that I script it completely in advance. For battles, I almost never do, though I often have an idea of the end condition—what needs to happen for it to not be a fight anymore. Then I sort of wing it strip to strip until I get to that result. For example, when I started working on the showdown outside the dwarven council chamber, I didn’t really have anything planned out except for the end part inside the room. The inclusion of the giant death worm was entirely spur-of-the-moment, as was the personality I gave him and the fact that he ate Kandro (I expected Kandro to die, I just hadn’t worked out how). I’ve found that overplanning the battle scenes tends to make them feel like foregone conclusions, while scripting by the seat of my pants makes it more likely that the action will take some intersting twists and turns before it gets to the end.

12.) Anonymous (via private message): [This question started with a discussion of a situation with another group of D&D content creators and a particular controversy regarding how they interact with their fans which I have no opinion on and don’t feel I need to repeat.] By contrast, you don’t really engage with your fans on social media very much. Do you think that helps or hurts your comic, and what led you to make that decision?

I think it helps, because I am not a very social person to begin with, and the more I interact with fans directly the more likely I am to say something that gets taken the wrong way. I came to that conclusion largely by saying things that were taken the wrong way and deciding I should try to not do that anymore.

I’m also just naturally a very private person who doesn’t like to share much about my personal life. I’m never going to be the guy tweeting about what I’m doing that moment, partly because it’s none of anyone’s business what I do but partly because it only leads to people asking me why I’m doing that instead of working on the next comic. I understand that a lot of creators make their online persona part of their overall “brand” so that they can cultivate a feeling of intimacy with their audience, but that’s not something I’d be comfortable with. I write a comic, and the comic is the product, not me. And the nice thing is, I think my readers get that. I don’t really feel like I have had the problem some other creators have had where their fans started thinking they’re personal buddies, and subsequently began crossing boundaries.

Maybe I would have more readers if I did constantly engage on social media, but I would find it exhausting because it doesn’t come naturally to me. Once we’re at the point where I’m sitting around trying to think of funny things to say on Twitter, we would all be better served by me spending that time sitting around trying to think of funny things to say in my comic instead.

13.) Joey: How much of a challenge is it at this point to incorporate DnD rules into the story? I know you've said before that you don't have specific stats for characters (and don't sweat the details about every rule as written for given spells). But a comic like like #928 still requires the general knowledge of "contingency" spells. Is that mostly based on memory/continued experience playing the game?  Or do you come up with a storyboarding concept for a given comic first, then figure out how to make it work with DnD rules (looking things up as needed)?

It is entirely based on memory. In fact, in the interest of helping everyone understand where these concerns stand on my priority list, I have prepared the following flowchart that explains the steps I take in incorporating the D&D rules into the comic’s narrative:

(As a bonus, this also serves to illustrate the exact sort of thing that I am better off not expressing on social media. See how I tied those plot lines together? That’s what they call writing, folks.)

14.) Anonymous (via private message): You had much brighter and harsher colors in the older comics, but I like the colors you have now. What made you change the colors you use?

The original comics had an intentional childlike quality to them, and part of that quality was using the brightest, boldest hues for everything. But a lot of colors that look fine on a screen look terrible in print, and I had to revise them to avoid certain tints once I began publishing books. Also, as the comic went on and I improved the art style, the older choices looked more unnatural, especially when in the background. I started to pick more realistic colors for the scenery as I began drawing more complex situations, both to sell the scene and to help the characters be the visual focus of a given panel. Then eventually I began adding atmospheric perspective in the Utterly Dwarfed comics, which is where objects that appear further away have more blue in them, and that further anchored my color scheme to reality. I’m really happy with the overall effect recently, so I’m glad someone noticed it.

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OK, that's it for this batch. I'll put a post for new questions in a week or so, and thanks to everyone who asked a question even if I didn't answer it this time.