fresh meat, page 31

whew. this page was rough... like every page. i'm just glad to have gotten it done in a timely fashion.

i haven't posted any updates on writing progress because... i chopped a bunch of scenes from the script of fresh meat and hit the point where i don't actually have the interactions scripted yet. so i need to really try to pry some of the brass-and-tacks hard rough draft scripting from my brain.

i'm in the mood to talk about the writing a bit, so first i'll talk a little bit about what i was chopping in the script. for reference, while doing page 23, i said carmilla's appearance was 8 scenes away from that point. this is the third scene to happen after that point, and carmilla is very probably going to be in the scene after this. so, about 50% of the script got pared down.

my first line of defense for trying to deal with a script that's turning out way too long is looking for anything superfluous or literal -- in my brain, nuances can mean a huge difference to me, especially when i'm afraid that readers might not be able to put larger mental leaps together (i will admit there's a large gap in reading comprehension in the given audience of fresh meat).

a digestible example of that would mean, for example, on this page, i know that kim needs to move to the hallway and sit at a phone.
in the most literal way, i could show her walking to the phone through several panels.
in the least literal presentation, i could have cut straight from somebody informing her she has a phone call to kim sitting at the phone with it ringing.
the latter is much easier to draw, obviously, but it demands a lot more from the reader to put together what happened in between those 2 panels.

with that said, some scenes could be merged just from re-reading what i already canonized and figuring out what i thought i'd made clear enough, and some could be merged just because they were only separate to not overwhelm the audience with plot happening.
this scene is ideally going to be a composite of 2 scenes, one where kim learned that judy was going home and felt betrayed, and one where she got a call from her parents. in between that scene was going to be one more where she was told (SPOILERS i guess) that she isn't allowed to make phone calls -- that got moved to later instead. i guess maybe it isn't the best choice... i don't know. sometimes it really isn't about what's technically correct and just what i think is best. some elements in the decision:

• as separate scenes, kim had more room to express hostility towards judy. she was going to hear that judy was getting released, go out and ask about her evaluation, blow up at the nurse manning the counter, and judy would come to collect her. kim would ask why she cares anyway, since she's leaving.
  i already preemptively merged the beat where kim asked about her evaluation into a different one a few pages ago, so that was then superfluous. she expressed hostility towards the main cast instead in the previous scene, so that was also redundant.
• i felt that by the time i'd reached this page, i'd clearly shown a lot of staff aggression towards kim already, and didn't need to push more on her for the plot
• i also felt that seeing how many pages this had added up to, the audience would probably appreciate getting to the next plot element, kim's evaluation sooner rather than see more of the same old
• i knew that with fewer scenes, the audience's sense of time would be dubious, especially with the lack of clocks in most of the scenes. i decided that i would just have to assume they would be able to piece together approximate times based on recurring staff on duty, the slight changes i make in the lighting from scene to scene, and exposited information that indicates time like how kim skipped breakfast or that check-in had already occurred.
• upon reviewing kim's parents, i thought that she should probably have to call them. originally i didn't want to include her parents more than i had to, but i started writing this comic years ago and it's changed a lot, as has my view on how people come to being suicidal, especially actively suicidal as kim is.

speaking of her parents... that's another last thing i wanted to express thoughts about.

i actively remind myself not to make all of my protagonists white. for a while i went with some kind of informed sense of diversity as it exists in real life, so... for example... it doesn't need to be justified why kim is asian, knowing that asians exist all over the world. but since she's a fictional character, some things do need to be justified, so i know that i need to exercise caution with double-checking and modifying character designs or deciding they shouldn't be a certain race due to the overwhelming stereotypes associated with given characteristics.
chinese names and how they're structured aren't intuitive to me, and i'm just hoping my research was enough for a simple name for her mom. she's obviously somewhat more assimilated, but i don't want to always just point at a given character and say "assimilated, because it's easy! for me!"
i've asked my wife for some substantial guidance with how i should handle kim's parents. i am aiming for a somewhat emotionally distant set of parents who are kind of pushy, and don't seem to acknowledge anything they consider childish or embarrassing, basically. i'm not sure if i'll include her dad yet, but i do know they won't be visiting. it isn't about BEING chinese in a psych ward, it's just not treating her like a white character, and i think this level of detail and allusion is sufficient.
mainly, i just wish i'd had more time to consider it, because, besides the necessary research, i've learned that suicidality isn't something that's wrong with your brain, most of the time. there's no suicide chemical or neurons that you happen to have.
most people are suicidal because of overwhelming, painful circumstances they can't escape, and while that isn't always due exclusively to home life, at this point, i believe people don't reach this level of desperation unless their support structure at home is failing them completely... so i knew i needed to include that in kim's characterization to some degree when i got to this point.
when i first conceptualized fresh meat -- and i'm really feeling its age as something i came up with when i was like 21 at this point -- i conceptualized myself as a suicidal person. i didn't know why i was like that, even though i could give reasons for why i wanted to die; they didn't feel like they explained why i was SUICIDAL, because i knew other people also dealt with any individual issue and didn't react how i had.
either way, i want to finish the story, since i'm this deep in it, but i've accepted it's never going to be anywhere near perfect in my eyes, since i don't resonate conceptually with it anymore.

anyway, i think that's all i have to say about this page, sorry if the long talky talks about writing are annoying. this gave me at least an idea to write some thoughts down on whether or not to resuscitate a story...