fresh meat, page 4

i am very, very tired, i haven't slept since 2 am thursday, i'll fix anything wrong in the morning, as i'm not even lucid enough to be able to tell anymore, but enjoy as-is for now.

(the lighting in the hallway bit was pretty interesting to do, because i wasn't using a light source color concept or photo reference, just a visual memory mainly i'd describe as "dirty florescent light")

EDIT: OKAY, i'm awake now, so i wanted to say some stuff about the page that i wrote notes abouts, y'know, keep it interesting.

1) "nurse #3" (the lizard) is a boyd's forest dragon lizard, but her species didn't mean anything special or add subtext. i like to shake it up, keep people guessing about whether things are symbolic or not. i think it helps have your own personal interpretation of a story more when it's not obvious!
they also weren't in the script originally, and nurse #2 (meerkat) was the one who led kim to the next/last part of this scene. they don't have a lot of lines, but what i did here was basically introduce a type of nurse i noticed a lot: "chill" nurses. these ones seem nice and friendly compared to nurses like the meerkat, but truth be told, they usually only seem that way because they don't care. they won't punish you, but they definitely won't stop somebody else from doing it, either!

2) nurse #2 doesn't show up again after this (i noticed that kim's lingering glare could possibly be interpreted as planting some long-standing protag v. antag relationship). she was pretty interesting for me to write, if only because some angles of why a character is so remorselessly mean are interesting to me.
nurse #4 (who starts her appearances on the next page) is my top least favorite nurse in the story, and her personality is pretty similar to nurse #2.
the main difference between them to me is that #2 loves her job and #4 doesn't. so while they're both very openly hostile and a little vindictive, meerkat made me think more when i was writing her, because she wasn't just transparently taking out her frustration with a long shift on a patient, like #4.
i think that nurse #2 outside the scope of the story would probably be somebody who finds nothing more satisfying than winning a debate. i think she feels most accomplished when she can get somebody to do what she wants, and that even if the means to the end are obviously frowned upon, it means she chose the right method if they do it. i think she would hate chess, though, because there's strict rules. she'd be more of a scrabble person...
i was thinking about adding some clever line to send kim off from nurse #2 here, but i thought it might be overwriting and that the nurse would probably already feel like she won when she mentioned she's been assessed for a lack of moral integrity. most of the lines i considered were interestingly positive and a little snide, like "shame, i almost don't wanna turn you over" or "(to other nurse) i like this one, she makes a LOT of unique faces." also considered hanging a lampshade on the pink slip here by having the nurse say she wrote kim a testament for her moral character too, which was less fake-friendly and more of a straight up threat.

3) i was really debating where and if i'd put a conversation between characters heavily implying that what happens here might be illegal and the staff are aware of it. it could easily be a little heavy-handed, but, you know? people can be pretty overt in real life.
i decided it was best to put the conversation in before the story started, if i didn't want kim to blatantly accuse something happening to her of being illegal and have a doctor more promptly acknowledge it might be but there's nothing she can do about that. playing with meerkat nurse's basic personality when i wrote her in, she seemed like a good fit.
the other big contender for options was the two nurses in this page having a longer exchange between each other while going through a bit of information for intake, kim asks if something they just said was illegal, and they were both amused by the idea that it mattered. this one made a lot more sense when nurse #3 was the same staff member as nurse #4.

4) she originally called kim "kim" here instead of "kimmy" but it felt kinda weird for her to know what specific shortening of kim's name she preferred.
"kimmy" felt more condescending/presumptuous, and i'd already written something about somebody calling kim "kimmy" to be friendly in later in the script, and i figured the specific context here added a little more depth to how kim reacts in that scene.