Comic Report #89 - The Other Side

Hello again!  This week I've got the beginning of the next page ready for you to look at.  Fun story: last night I went to open this file and found it was corrupted! Oh no!  Luckily now that I'm a Clip Studio Paint user a backup of a previous state of the file was saved automatically so I was able to recover my work and pick up on the last 20% that didn't get recovered.  It was real late last night too so I was very worried about not having anything to show today, but instead I've got this page inked and flat-toned and ready to share.

So a weird thing has been happening during this arc.  For some reason when I post a page people keep expecting the outcome to be Alice not reciprocating Lizzie's confessions. I thought the previous page would have laid it to rest but that wasn't the case, so now I'm adamant about getting this scene drawn so its outcome can be unambiguously established in the comic archive.   Hopefully this page will be the one to do it.

So my objective for this page is for Alice to share her own feelings, having heard Lizzie confess her own.  I'll put a disclaimer on this post in case people don't want to be spoiled on details yet, since the pages are coming along fairly quickly.

[spoiler below]

Lizzie had been sort of oblivious to her own feelings until recently, which is a fault she had to work through; in contrast, Alice has had strong feelings for Lizzie for a while, but has been afraid to speak up.  Part of Alice's background is she's lost a lot of loved ones, so she's had this lingering fear about losing people if she got too close to them.  She's been working through her feelings, unsure if she should open up about them or if doing that would cause her to lose her companion for one reason or another.  This was my initial thought, but I want to word the way it's presented in a way that, like Lizzie and her ex-fiance, doesn't come across as whining or overly negative.  This is a celebratory scene so I want to try to present information in a way that's upbeat and joyous.  Here's how I'm planning that.

The first panel is sort of a mirror to the first panel from the previous page, with the camera close behind Lizzie, with Alice centered in the shot.  The previous page ended with her saying "you have no idea how happy I am right now", so this page is her expanding on that beat.  The first panel focuses on her own confession, that she's been in love with Lizzie for a bit but struggled with how to say it.  Alice may bring up her fears, as an element of her character to be expanded on momentarily.

In the next panel she goes into when and how she fell for Lizzie.  The first moment where she thought she might really love this woman was back on page 216; the tough and carefree Stacy seemed to have disappeared, and Alice was afraid of being alone and suffering a similar fate.  Lizzie didn't judge her for this and agreed to spend the night with her on the fold-out bed, stating how she'd stand up to anyone who came to take her away.  Given the overarching circumstances of this comic, this was probably the first big moment where Lizzie started to reassure and stand by Alice, alleviating her fears in an extremely fearful time.  This is where Lizzie begins to really keep Alice safe.

Panel three elaborates on this, calling back to page 238, where Lizzie leaned forward to close the van door and block a shotgun blast pointed at Alice.  This was the moment where Lizzie really started jumping in front of guns for Alice, leading up to the event that put a notch in both of their ears.  This is where Lizzie lives up to her claim that she'd protect Alice, and is probably one of the major pivotal moments where Alice begins to feel safer around Lizzie.  That is a big part of the core of Alice's love for Lizzie, is the way she makes her feel safe in a dangerous world, which in turn lets Alice open up and be her sunshine self.  

A fun detail about the two flashback panels is they call back to specific panels from those respective pages, but the camera is pivoted; they're shot from Alice's perspective.  

Panel four is the summary moment, shot from an upward angle paralleing Lizzie's own shot on the previous page.  Here is where Alice can say how knowing the woman she loves reciprocates the difficult feelings she struggled with how to say herself alleviates one of the last lingering fears she's had throughout this ordeal.  It's like a weight being lifted, and why Alice looks as emotional as she does.  She wasn't sure if her feelings would cause her to lose the woman who made her feel so safe, and now that love has come home to roost and everything is going to be okay. There's nothing left to be afraid of.

The last two panels round out the moment, with Lizzie taking her hand in her own.  She assures Alice she'll always fight for her, and she's not going anywhere.  I want to reinforce the theme of safety, communication and mutual respect between the two.  I wanted to try to make sure this was set up right, especially for the next page.  We'll get there soon enough, though, for now I'm going to try and get this page finished before next Friday to keep the ball rolling.  

Thank you, as always, for your patient support of my work.  This scene has been important so I've been putting a lot of focus on getting these pages finished in short order so they don't draw out too long.  After this I've got about two more pages to go.  Until next time, have a nice weekend!