Revenge of Ask T Questions

[SniperCT]

Still wonder if we should've done Nick and Melody's love story, though.

If we ask about it in this thread, will you tell us Nick and Melody's love story now?

Probably!

So will you tell us please 'cause we love you? <3

Pretty please with a cherry on top?

[Valerie]

I hadn't thought much about it before, but now that there are some color examples on the front page...
Has Sara's lipstick always been black? I assumed it was red and colored that way for style purposes.

I assumed that was also the case for other black-lipped cast members, like Cyndi and Karen here.

[Azrael44]

1) Going for a Ph.D., doing some editorial work to help finance it.

2) Yun Sung had immigrated for college, with her mother's support. She works in a bookstore.

<3 They sound like my favorite kind of couple. Isn't Duane a bit too young for a PhD though? o.O. What's he specializing in?

Duane specializes in language studies. He's doing work related to machine-to-human and human-to-machine communication.

OH MY GOD! Duane started the Skynet Project! You bastard, you've doomed us all!

[Alice Macher]

In this strip from "20 2020 Pennies," we find that not one but two of the potential future Pennies went into public relations. Did that in any way influence your decision, when you were plotting "Six Septembers Later," to have Penny actually choose that field? (I'm not asking whether it was foreshadowing because at the time you were plotting and writing "20 2020 Pennies" you presumably had little idea yet of much that would happen past "The Popsicle War.")

[Zanosuke Kurosaki]

1) Going for a Ph.D., doing some editorial work to help finance it.

2) Yun Sung had immigrated for college, with her mother's support. She works in a bookstore.

<3 They sound like my favorite kind of couple. Isn't Duane a bit too young for a PhD though? o.O. What's he specializing in?

Duane specializes in language studies. He's doing work related to machine-to-human and human-to-machine communication.

OH MY GOD! Duane started the Skynet Project! You bastard, you've doomed us all!

By that logic, Doug Ramsey of the New Mutants needs to *stay* dead, since his power is languages, including machine.

[TCampbell]

Still wonder if we should've done Nick and Melody's love story, though.

If we ask about it in this thread, will you tell us Nick and Melody's love story now?

Probably!

So will you tell us please 'cause we love you? <3

Pretty please with a cherry on top?

HE.. was a witty math nerd whose social life was confined to a few friends and a close-knit family. SHE... was an activist whose wealthy parentage only made her more keenly aware of injustice in the world. At this time, Melody was more of a firebrand than Aggie remembers her. She was always pro-peace, but more willing to shock people to achieve her end goals, like a PETA campaign.

As soon as he saw the passion she put into her protests, he was smitten. His early attempts at banter with her, though, failed to produce the desired result. He soon realized that the way to her heart was through her causes. To his credit, he knew enough not to simply echo her slogans, not to sacrifice his self-respect just to get along with her. But he studied those causes and found a lot to agree with in most of them. He didn't just join her protests, but found his own ways to contribute: demographic analyses that told her what places in the city would be most responsive to her efforts. From him, she learned that wit could be a lot more effective than shock; that one had to be judicious about how and when to move people out of their comfort zone.

When Melody asked him why he was being so helpful, he replied, "Look, I feel about you how I feel about you. You're a girl, so I just assume you have these emotion-detecting powers. But I can't ask you to feel the same; that's up to you. In the meantime, I'm doing this for the same reason you're doing it. It makes me feel like I'm a better person, you know? Now, these data models suggest..."

Of course, the start of any relationship does involve that "asking," that unspoken question. But Nick kept it as unspoken as he could, trying not to make his hopes into demands or expectations. And quickly, Melody, who had never had a peer so thoroughly embrace what was important to her, found her thoughts turning more and more often to the boy with long hair, and what it'd be like to run her fingers into that hair, to take off his glasses and lose herself in his eyes.

The summer between junior and senior year, they spent time together almost every day. It took time for Nick to realize just how hard Melody was falling for him, which only magnified her desire, until one day in early July, she put her palms on his temples and her tongue in his mouth. Things moved pretty quickly after that. The two were having sex within a week. They made some effort to keep it safe sex, but they weren't always able to control themselves or plan... and by late senior year, they had a child on the way and some big decisions to make.

Nick never even considered the possibility that their unborn child was anything other than their responsibility, and just as he'd done with Melody's campaigns, he immediately started applying his mathematical knowledge to increase their odds of success as parents. His stance ultimately cost him some of his closeness with his own family. Melody's parents weren't exactly thrilled either: they raised the possibility of an abortion more than once. But ultimately their own children wore them down. NIck's unwavering dedication to Melody gradually impressed Melody's folks, and even today, Nick is always welcome in their home.

They attended college together, one with a strong pre-med program for Mel, even though she had to take a very light first semester and graduated after he did. Nick spent some of his early career years in data entry, while Melody continued to study medicine as well as they were able. It wasn't until Aggie was eight or so that they were able to renew Nick's goal of teaching and Melody was able to get out to some protests again... just in time, they felt, to send Aggie a message about pursuing one's dreams.

Melody's time was shorter than she knew. And the hardest thing for Nick was that, for once, he could not be honest with Aggie about his feelings. Crushing depression, screaming fury, paralyzing fear that without Melody he might fail Aggie... none of this could ever be shared with Aggie, except as a general admission that he was sad and sometimes frustrated. She had too many wild feelings of her own about the matter, and he absolutely had to be her rock. That was what Melody would want. Eventually, he dealt with his grief in his own terms, on his own time, by focusing over and over on the one thing Melody had always wanted most for him, and for everyone. Peace.

[TCampbell]

I hadn't thought much about it before, but now that there are some color examples on the front page...
Has Sara's lipstick always been black? I assumed it was red and colored that way for style purposes.

I assumed that was also the case for other black-lipped cast members, like Cyndi and Karen here.

You're right about Cyndi and Karen, but Sara has adopted a sort of neo-goth look since coming out which extends to the lipstick.

[TCampbell]

In this strip from "20 2020 Pennies," we find that not one but two of the potential future Pennies went into public relations. Did that in any way influence your decision, when you were plotting "Six Septembers Later," to have Penny actually choose that field? (I'm not asking whether it was foreshadowing because at the time you were plotting and writing "20 2020 Pennies" you presumably had little idea yet of much that would happen past "The Popsicle War.")

Yeah, good assumption.

I looked over those twenty, and tried to think of a few more potential careers, but then as now it seemed like the most probable course for her. (I also considered politics, but I doubt that even 2017's political landscape will fit her and her colorful past.)

Those two PR Pennies were also there to make one more point: that your job is not everything about who you are. One of the PR Pennies is happy, productive and in control of herself; the other is in the early stages of an alcoholic breakdown.

[Valerie]

HE.. was a witty math nerd whose social life was confined to a few friends and a close-knit family. SHE... was an activist whose wealthy parentage only made her more keenly aware of injustice in the world. THEY FIGHT CRIME.

On a more serious note:

Melody's time was shorter than she knew. And the hardest thing for Nick was that, for once, he could not be honest with Aggie about his feelings. Crushing depression, screaming fury, paralyzing fear that without Melody he might fail Aggie... none of this could ever be shared with Aggie, except as a general admission that he was sad and sometimes frustrated. She had too many wild feelings of her own about the matter, and he absolutely had to be her rock. That was what Melody would want. Eventually, he dealt with his grief in his own terms, on his own time, by focusing over and over on the one thing Melody had always wanted most for him, and for everyone. Peace.

;_; <3
That whole family needs hugs.

[Tamar]

Given that Quiltbag will be about sexualities of various kinds, and that it'll involve adult characters as opposed to minors, do you and Jason foresee dealing with love/sex scenes any differently than you did in Penny and Aggie?

(Yes, everyone, I'm aware of what I'm asking and make no apology for it; I'm just trying to phrase it in as non-creepy a way as possible. Particularly since such scenes, where they include nudity, don't have to be portrayed in a "tee hee giggle" nor an NC-17 manner, but rather can provide a bit of fanservice without detracting from or overshadowing the story. The bedroom scenes in the final arc of Cool Cat Studio are a case in point.)

[Valerie]

Sort of along that vein, can you tell us specifically what kinds of sexualities the comic will deal with? Will we see any asexuals? Will it pass into "squick" territory?

[TCampbell]

Given that Quiltbag will be about sexualities of various kinds, and that it'll involve adult characters as opposed to minors, do you and Jason foresee dealing with love/sex scenes any differently than you did in Penny and Aggie?

(Yes, everyone, I'm aware of what I'm asking and make no apology for it; I'm just trying to phrase it in as non-creepy a way as possible. Particularly since such scenes, where they include nudity, don't have to be portrayed in a "tee hee giggle" nor an NC-17 manner, but rather can provide a bit of fanservice without detracting from or overshadowing the story. The bedroom scenes in the final arc of Cool Cat Studio are a case in point.)

Wow, is there a more explicit way to do them, without showing breasts and genitalia, than what we were doing by the end of Penny and Aggie? I hesitate even now to show bare breasts and genitalia, because just last weekend a close friend of mine told me that "showing bare breasts" in sexual contexts was one thing that led him to define Menage a 3 as "porn." I don't want to touch off a big is-it-or-isn't-it debate, but I personally have never been comfortable with that label. (In MA3's case, I prefer the term "sex comedy.") I'm all for some fanservice (Brandi's Christmas card, anyone?), but I don't want Quiltbag to be seen as nothing but sexploitation.

I mean, I expect we'll find new ways to express those scenes, but aside from those two taboos (which cover a lot, it's true), I'm not seeing any way we really could shift the portrayal of sex to a more adult basis. Unless you really are asking about just those taboos, and I missed the point. In which case, see above.

[TCampbell]

HE.. was a witty math nerd whose social life was confined to a few friends and a close-knit family. SHE... was an activist whose wealthy parentage only made her more keenly aware of injustice in the world. THEY FIGHT CRIME.

On a more serious note:

Melody's time was shorter than she knew. And the hardest thing for Nick was that, for once, he could not be honest with Aggie about his feelings. Crushing depression, screaming fury, paralyzing fear that without Melody he might fail Aggie... none of this could ever be shared with Aggie, except as a general admission that he was sad and sometimes frustrated. She had too many wild feelings of her own about the matter, and he absolutely had to be her rock. That was what Melody would want. Eventually, he dealt with his grief in his own terms, on his own time, by focusing over and over on the one thing Melody had always wanted most for him, and for everyone. Peace.

;_; <3
That whole family needs hugs.

Yeah. I'm not sayin' this is the only reason Aggie stayed huggy with Daddy through her teen years, when most girls suddenly need more space, but it certainly was a factor.

Incidentally, the main reason I didn't pursue Nick and Mel's story at the time was: I couldn't figure out how to make it shed light on events in the teens' lives, bearing in mind that the teens should always be the focus of the series. In "Modern Maturity," we learned a lot about the kind of people Rob and Lynda were as they began to take a more active role, and we got some perspective on real-life "slap slap kiss kiss" relationships while we briefly teased the idea of a Penny-Stan pairing. But none of the characters were slated for teen pregnancy out of wedlock, and none of them were slated to die, and the idea of Aggie meeting someone in the middle of one of her political campaigns struck me as hard to do because the political scene changes so quickly. (There was about a day when I thought Aggie might lose her virginity on the night of Obama's election. That'd feel kinda dated by now.)

The big way I could see to relate it would be to do a story about Aggie herself finally trying to put that grief behind her, and that would have meant not doing "The Lady and the Tiger," which I'd wanted to do for about four years before we finally got to it. So... I'm not sure I was right (it is certainly one of our most powerful backstories), but the decisions still make sense to me now.

[Alice Macher]

I hesitate even now to show bare breasts and genitalia, because just last weekend a close friend of mine told me that "showing bare breasts" in sexual contexts was one thing that led him to define Menage a 3 as "porn." I don't want to touch off a big is-it-or-isn't-it debate, but I personally have never been comfortable with that label. (In MA3's case, I prefer the term "sex comedy.") I'm all for some fanservice (Brandi's Christmas card, anyone?), but I don't want Quiltbag to be seen as nothing but sexploitation.

Understood, but Tamar did mention the final arc of Cool Cat Studio, which you did write, and that featured not only the bare breasts of four characters, but also a hint of Liz's pubic hair. And that last was with Belinda shown going down on her. So my question is, was that level of explicitness (which is without doubt far more than what any of your other works, even the BDSM scenes in Fans, have ever shown) partially Gis's idea? Totally her idea? If the latter, was it a subject of much disagreement between you two, the way that the post-"Popsicle War" direction of P&A was for you at around the same time?

(Edited: Tamar wants me to add, just to make it clear, that whether there's nudity in Quiltbag or not will have no bearing whatsoever on her enjoyment of the comic. Nor will it on mine. Just so you don't get the idea that we're specifically demanding it. We wouldn't do that, no joke. Fanservice is awesome but stories with actual plot and characterization are one thing, and porn is another. Despite what Alan Moore says. And we don't read your and Jason's works for porn. Nor Gis's; we agree with you there too.)

[bunnyThor]

Let me re-phrase what I believe Alice and Tamar are getting at above.

If you were making a comic about war, you could successfully make one where all the blood and wounds and dead people are obscured by convenient props and strange camera angles and artfully placed speech bubbles. This could be understandable if you were particularly concerned about the delicate sensibilities of your hypothetical audience. However it would detract from the seriousness of your intentions and message and undermine any sense of verisimilitude.

If you were making a comic about sexuality, you could successfully make one where all the breasts and genitals and sexual acts are obscured by convenient props and strange camera angles and artfully placed speech bubbles. This could be understandable if you were particularly concerned about the delicate sensibilities of your hypothetical audience. However it would detract from the seriousness of your intentions and message and undermine any sense of verisimilitude.

Or to make it terse: How much authenticity are you willing to sacrifice for the sake of some of your potential audience's boundaries?