The Answer Post (#7)

So it turns out I forgot to post the thread for new questions last time. But that’s OK, because the last set was also so late that my inbox was filled up with a bunch of great anonymous questions, along with some that were sent in since then despite the absence of a public Question thread. So here’s an entire set of Bonus Answers (that are not bonuses in any sense of the word) culled from my private messages. Enjoy.

(For this installment, the asker for every question "Anonymous (via private message)")

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1.) I’ve noticed that when someone asks you about your favorite thing you tend to pick something from Good Deeds Gone Unpunished. Is that your favorite story you’ve written overall?

Probably, yes, at least so far. I enjoyed the freedom to create all-new characters and write plots that only tangentially affected the main storyline of the comic, and I think I was able to really bring everything I’ve learned about writing to bear on it as a result. Plus the fact that the stories were plotted, written, and drawn entirely before being released gave me the ability to more carefully control the tone and message. I didn’t need to spend a page accounting for something I had forgotten to include on a previous page, and I could choose to place the jokes where I wanted rather than at the end of every strip. Also, I think the O-Chul story in particular stands on its own with no need to know anything else about OOTS for the first 90% of its page count, which is something I’m really proud of. Sometimes it’s just a little too easy for me to get caught up referencing my previous work as a sort of storytelling shorthand and I’m happy I mostly avoided that.

2.) You said that the Twelve Gods are functionally all true neutral, as their worshippers' alignments average out to true neutral. Does this mean that alignment is roughly evenly distributed in OotS-verse? Are most people true neutral and the other alignments are comparatively uncommon? Or (for example) are most people good and there's a few Xykon-sized outliers bringing down the average?

The standard answer for D&D worlds (which I happen to agree with) is option #2—most normal mortal people are True Neutral and the other alignments are comparatively uncommon. The reason I think this is that I characterize TN mainly as wanting Good things for your friends and family and Evil things for your enemies. Or perhaps the freedom of Chaos for yourself but the rule of Law for other people. This is frequently described as extreme self-interest but I think it’s just as often a position of ethical and moral inconsistency. A lot of ordinary people simply don’t spend that much time thinking about these “big picture” issues and instead arrive at whatever conclusion feels right at the moment when presented with a dilemma, leaning more on whether or not they personally like the individuals involved rather than any universal principle. Think about one of the most prominent TN in the story, Therkla: She wanted good things for Elan (CG) and Kubota (LE), whom she liked, and bad things for Hinjo (LG) and Kohaku (CE), whom she didn’t.

Characters with one of the four other alignments generally involve a more conscious commitment to the ideals involved, especially with regard to applying them in difficult circumstances where one might be tempted to make an exception. For example, a Lawful person would probably expect whatever rules they espouse to apply even to themselves, even when that is detrimental to them. A Chaotic person might believe certain freedoms should be enjoyed by everyone, including those who would use them in ways they disagree with. A Good person obviously wants everyone to be treated with dignity and fairness, including those who oppose them. And while an Evil person might not go out of their way to harm every single person they meet, they may view anyone they know as an acceptable target to be harmed if doing so ever becomes beneficial to them—whereas a Neutral person maybe balks at hurting people on their “side.”

So the end result is a big mass of people who are, as you say, functionally True Neutral, often with leanings one way or the other but lacking the dedication to stick to any particular principles.

3.) What was the purpose of including Tinkertown? Nothing that happened there had anything to do with the gnomes and could have been in Cliffport instead.

I think it’s more that I saw an opening to draw an adorable town of steampunk gnomes and I took it. I mean, did you see all of their little hats?!?

Also, at that point in the story, I didn’t want to check in on Julia or the CPPD or deal with the fact that Elan had broken out of their prison and then never went back. It was better to have a fresh location, and since it needed to be somewhere that could service the Mechane, I came up with the idea of a town of gnomes.

4.) Did Thor basically confirm that the movie theater intermission strip is canon?

Yes, the intent was to reveal the Intermission strip as something that happened on one of the other worlds before the current one. But I can’t take credit for having thought of that at the time it was published. While I had worked out the secret of the multiple worlds back then, I didn’t think to assign one of them to the movie theater snack world until much later.

Specifically, I decided that when I was considering writing an entire story about the movie theater snacks for inclusion in Snips, Snails, and Dragon Tales. It was going to be called “32 oz. of Vengeance!” and feature Soda in a Kill Bill-type quest to defeat Pizza and avenge Milk Dude, joined by a love interest of a bottled soda—she obviously was going to be a ninja, since she snuck in from the convenience store across the street. The reason I scrapped the plan is that what you just read was more or less the entirety of what I could come up with for it. I wrote a few pages of script where the characters simply acted out the basic clichéd plot with no interesting character moments or even that many funny jokes. So when I started to run short on time, it joined Milk Dude in the trash and I recycled the basic imagery (especially the pizza-cutter katana) for the panel we see during Thor’s dialogue.

5.) Was the purpose of the scene with Xykon not being able to taste coffee [that occurs in Start of Darkness] to show that as the moment he became truly irredeemable?

A few things on that. First, I don’t think anything in that scene makes Xykon irredeemable. What makes him irredeemable is, as I articulated with Miko’s death scene, the complete lack of acknowledgement that redemption is even needed. And that’s not to say that Xykon and Miko are even remotely on the same scale of wrongdoing, but they both represent an unwillingness to accept responsibility for their actions. Compare that to Vaarsuvius or Belkar, who have both taken the first step by realizing that they’ve done bad things. That makes them potentially redeemable—whether they can actually redeem themselves (much less within the scope of this particular story) remains to be seen. Or think about someone like Redcloak, who seems to dance on the edge of both regretting his actions but then convincing himself they were unfortunately necessary. Which side of the line he ends up on will be largely determined by how the story shakes out from here. Seeing the problem is only the first step, after all, and hopefully Soon’s words to Miko are enough to show you that no one is getting a “throwing the Emperor over the side means everything bad you did is wiped away” free pass here.

Second, the purpose of that scene was more to show Xykon losing touch with his humanity, specifically the way that his biological body may have actually been preventing him from becoming a true monster. While he was alive, his thirst for death and destruction was tempered by his physical wants and needs—things he liked too much to destroy them. Once he became a lich, he had no restraints and no desires, and nothing to keep him entertained other than hurting others. It’s the equal and opposite of what happened with Roy when he lost track of time in Celestia. When the mundane reality of corporeal existence was stripped from him, Roy was free to experience nothing but endless contentment. Xykon has nothing but time, and nothing he finds meaningful to do with it.

6.) Who can break the Fourth Wall? I thought it was only the main heroes but then I realized that the demon roaches do it alot and so does Thor.

Anyone in the comic could theoretically do it, but as a wise rabbit once said, “Not at any time. Only when it was funny.”

7.) You have talked in the past about how Teleport and Resurrection make writing stories in a D&D setting difficult. Are there any other spells or character abilities that you find are constantly getting in your way?

Arguably, the entire corpus of abilities that characters possess are something of an obstacle. If I were writing a fantasy story that had never been attached to D&D, I would be free to define what my characters could and could not do. As it is, I have to explicitly inform the audience every time a character can’t do a thing that they would expect of them, such as calling out V’s inability to teleport. Marvel generally doesn’t need to take time to tell you what spells Doctor Strange doesn’t know, you know?

Although sometimes it can work the other way. Take the modrons that just appeared in the comic. I realized I needed a way for Redcloak to speed up the exploration process to pressure the heroes, and since Redcloak is big on summoning anyway, I thought it would be fun to summon a modron. But I didn’t know exactly how that modron was going to tangibly help until I went and read their monster entry and saw that (at least in one edition) they had unlimited wall of force. That seemed like the sort of thing that could be abused to skip a bunch of encounters, so I had my rationale for why Redcloak chose that particular summoning.

All of that said, I don’t want to skip out on answering the question, so: At the power level that the heroes are at right now, there are a lot of “invisible” spells that would often affect the outcome of a fight. Especially things like fire immunity or mind blank, where having it means being able to completely no-sell an enemy attack. It’s become a bit awkward to constantly need to either show those spells being cast or have someone discuss how they have such-and-such a spell running. But neither do I just want to eliminate their usage because the very fact that my heroes are getting more comfortable using these spells is, in fact, character growth! So I guess the upshot is, you should probably assume everyone also has a bunch of invisible numerical bonus spells on at all times and I’m just not going to mention them explicitly unless it really matters.

8.) Do you like Denouements? I know that’s an abrupt question and obvious lead in to something else, but some people I’m arguing with are saying one of your longest running subplots isn’t having its ending foreshadowed and isn’t going to have a denouement after the climax.

I appreciate the fact that you did not actually ask me about the exact subplot in question, because obviously I wouldn’t answer that due to spoilers.

In general, yes, I think denouements are an important part of storytelling and I expect OOTS to have an extensive “wrap-up” of various plot threads after the resolution of the last actual conflict (at least those that are not resolved before or during the conflict itself). On the other hand, I know for a fact that a number of situations that I’ve seen readers deem as questions that need to be answered are definitely not going to be answered, because they’re not actually important and I’m fine with letting the details be filled in by the readers’ imaginations. So I guess the real question here is, is the subplot you’re concerned about necessarily one that I think is important enough to deserve a denouement?

9.) What’s your favorite baseball team?

Oh man, I don’t usually answer highly polarizing questions like this. But I’m a NY Yankees fan. Primarily because baseball was specifically not something I grew up watching. I only became a fan after I moved out on my own, when I lived in NYC for my graphic design career. That would be circa 1998-2003, which just so happened to be a very good time to be a Yankees fan. I will also watch the Mets, in the way that one might drink Pepsi when Coke isn’t available.

10.) All six members of the order have evolved over time. Have any of them become easier or harder to write because of the ways they changed?

Everyone except Durkon is harder, because for the other five characters, their growth and development has been toward making them better people one way or the other, and that’s cut down on the number of jokes that rely on meanness or stupidity or carelessness or other negative traits. I often will write a punchline then stare at it and realize that the character can’t say that anymore because they grew out of that mindset a while back. For example, I try to avoid Roy just utterly shutting Elan’s dumb ideas down, or Elan doing something knowlingly reckless that could lead to someone getting hurt. So if I really like the joke, I have to find a way to repurpose it into their current relationships, I.e. the joke has become that Roy treats Elan’s dumb idea as a legitimate suggestion.

With Durkon, I don’t really have the same problem because his development in Utterly Dwarfed was more about understanding why he is the way he has always been. If there’s anything that Durkon is now doing consciously that he wasn’t before, it’s trying to be assertive and not blend into the walls, and that’s actually easier to write than when I was sort of biding my time until it was his turn to get the spotlight. Even just having Minrah there to serve as his cohort sort of automatically gives him something to do.

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And that’s it for the Not-Really-Bonus Answers! I’m going to go post the next Questions thread literally right now, so I don’t do this again next time.