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do you still think about it, page 10
🕑 Added 2022-02-09 06:25:25 +0000 UTCfirst page - prev page - next page
through the last few pages, i've noticed a lot of continuity errors -- some just because i decided to retcon details. i'll be changing sugar's hairstyle to mostly only be grown out where she had shaved hair in her drop-out, rather than having fuzz all along her temple like a regular human hairline. her design isn't really built to have a full hairline! it's been odd, and i forgot to mention on the last page that i tried out a different haircut and it looked better, so i would be changing the other sketched pages retroactively.
also, the glass of water needs to be fuller. the script has her drop a fistful of pills into a glass of water and drink the water instead of like... eating the pills and then gulping water. i appreciate the nuance in it, and it's a less predictable set of actions, so it's easy enough to change the water level retroactively.
the overdose is much less dramatic -- the first scene with the knife sets the tone, and many of the other ideations aren't as gorey. they don't need to be obvious, as the general intent of the story was already communicated in a really obvious way.
i also wanted sugar's implicit motivations for suicidal surges to not just be self-loathing; you can see the meat and knife are external triggers for the first ideation sequence, and for this one, it's the bottle of her amphetamines. she deliberates over it and decides if she can be productive without it every day -- what the actual trigger is isn't the bottle of pills itself, but the relevant awareness that she has to go to work.
she has to be awake, she has to earn money, and it doesn't matter how she feels during this process. it's why i took the time in the last few pages to give attention to symbols relevant to lola (bouquet, bedroom where she's still asleep, and i may actually remove her painting in the panel where sugar looks at the front door so they're only visible on the walls in the panel where she looks at the bedroom hallway!) and to her work (her medication, the front door).
on the next page, there's a hard cut to sugar getting into her car, which will help solidify the association with medication and work, and the fact that work is a direct barrier between sugar and lola being together.
lola won't really completely function as only an anchor or a reason to not commit suicide for sugar over the course of the comic, as she is a vector for both an extreme sense of guilt and intense feeling of attachment and purpose. still, many times lola is juxtaposed in this way, and the more pleasant moments of the comic (for sugar) revolve around lola.
the implications of this particular ideation are probably uncomfortable for a reader -- sugar's general idea is that she'll just never wake up, but the person who would find her dead CANNOT be anyone but lola in the scenario. at the same time, just wanting to go back to sleep with your wife instead of going to work is not really an unrelatable sentiment.
it is a direct contrast to her ideation in drop-out, where she wanted to be nothing, untraceable, not remembered, and not in anyone's way. i didn't exactly write her to WANT to specifically harm anyone else by killing herself, but her mind does not make a delicate dance around the hypothetical other to get to what it wants anymore, which will also be obvious in a couple of other ideations.
i wanted for any given reader to grapple with that discomfort and come to their own conclusions for what it means about sugar and how her character has changed; although many of those conclusions will be bad faith -- such is the nature of sugar, and certainly the nature of suicide.
anyway, i think that's all i have to say for this one. really glad to be getting back into the swing of things, but if i get too excited, i will push it.
