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fresh meat, page 50
🕑 Added 2019-11-22 09:19:35 +0000 UTCjust lines for now... will be updated to flats in a couple of hours. you can see this is another longer page, almost 2 times the length of the average page... and i only woke up about 5 hours ago. -_-;
i really didn't want to split this one into 2 pages though, because i felt like it gave too much narrative weight to the exchange between kim and carmilla.
this page in general was tricky, because it was establishing 2 fairly important things: tabitha as kim's roommate, and carmilla asking for kim's blood pack rations.
some things that got cut:
-an exchange between tabitha and kim after entering the room where kim asked where the blankets were, and tabs says there are none. she seems compelled to follow-up that she should share her hoodie, but that's her only one, and you get very cold when you don't eat. carmilla then added that there are no blankets as a precaution against attempting to hang yourself, instead of explaining where the bathroom is, to inject her back into the scene.
-another, alternate exchange between them where kim asks if tabitha has any spare clothes, and she says no. you can see i tried to follow up on the fact that tabitha has only worn one sweater for the duration of the comic here twice, but both got scrapped. it might just be a silent detail the reader can notice or not notice... which isn't necessarily a bad thing all the time.
-kim asking carmilla where she would get these things offered and carmilla stating she's a seductress and a sire with many ghouls. carmilla's vampire delusions have yet to be directly stated in the comic, but i've been trying to drop larger hints to progress to it. ultimately this was at the tail-end of the structure, so it was cut because it wasn't essential and i needed to wrap up an already large page.
-carmilla saying in panel 2 or 3 that she has some important business to attend to to clarify who was being held back at the end of check-in.
the room in this page compared to kim's old room only has several differences: the corners of furniture have tennis balls fixed to them, the beds have no sheets, and there are no bathrooms installed into individual rooms... similar to how the day room in this wing had several slight changes, like a lack of a snack area (even if locked with a padlock), no window, and unpadded chairs.
another side note... carmilla's bat hearing has been alluded to several times so far now, like on page 41 where she heard tabitha approaching in the active lunchroom, or page 47 where she heard kim approaching (although retrospectively because i removed a beat, it can just seem like she's leaning back because the other nurse already opened the door and said something...)
anyway... that's all i've got for now. i'm hoping tabitha being kim's roommate wasn't too obvious a choice. she's been the quietest of the bunch, and that gives her more space to have exchanges relevant to the themes of the story as different characters start to have their small arcs.
EDIT after adding the flats: also, lockout is a thing they do to keep people from oversleeping... but it didn't really matter how much sleep you got, and it definitely didn't matter that a lot of people there were on drugs that tend to make you drowsy, or, like in sugar's case, receiving ECT treatments that tend to leave you physically exhausted.
also, this page implicitly stated that carmilla has a frame of reference for consciously "being weird" and her definition of weird doesn't seem to include drinking blood, which i forgot to point out. it's humorous to me but also indicative that carmilla is in many ways chafing on other people by choice rather than because she is mentally ill.
Comments
Peligrin
Oooh she avoids entering the room for vampire reasons huh! I pondered on that panel for a couple days, figuring it was a hospital rule or something, before just now getting it. Love this page btw, carmilla’s innocence face is so unconvincing, she’s so gremliny hehehe
gray Folie
i was thinking while doing this page, it demonstrates kind of a disdain for carmilla that i feel is important to the story (not narratively but tonally), but it also kind of demonstrates kim as somebody who's not always snippy and mean, too. i couldn't think of a reason she wouldn't do a favor for somebody out of good will alone, especially a teenager, since their brains are heavily geared towards fitting in. she could have recalled that she's not allowed to have a blood pack and a milk carton, but it was in the morning when she was kind of dazed already, and i went back and checked the line that was stated, and it was actually worded pretty ambiguously on top of it. kim's going to start showing some more familiarity and empathy now that the cast is more consistent, but i imagine despite carmilla's grating personality, she's probably also relieving presence because of how much she breaks the ice. it's hard not to feel included on some level because she tends to go around and directly address individuals. also yeah, i imagine carmilla's not doing so hot with just blood, probably like somebody who lives on "juice cleanses" or something similar. i've actually thought about how she's functioning outside of the story with this delusion kind of substantially, maybe to no productive end, it was like -- she could either have a disorder where she just sort of represses any memory of consuming other food after reaching a certain threshold, or she could have an even more complex pattern of disordered eating involving "binge eating" or panic-purging. makes me sort of grateful she's not the protagonist so the deeper issues covered up by her public face don't need to be explored. also she was probably just going to say some stupid shit like "or maybe deez nuts"--
Talonwhisker
For seemingly being generally annoyed by Carmilla's existence, Kim is amazingly tolerant of her, ha. Going to see what she wanted, getting blood packs for her. I wonder what Carmilla was gonna suggest ("Or maybe..") before she heard the nurse coming? Also, you might have addressed it before, but does Carmilla have nutrition issues because of her blood-only diet? I can't imagine it'd be able to sustain you very well.
