Pretty outfits for the sake of pretty outfits ftw.
Aaaand now we get to one of the biggest narrative flails I did in the whole comic. Obviously Jany had to find Walker’s secret Being prison — but how? What kinds of suspenseful lead-up hints could I drop? How would she accidentally get past all the security Walker undoubtedly has?
I had no idea. Had plenty of material in mind for what happens after Jany finds the thing, but was coming up empty for more in-between moves to get her there.
So I just…took the leap. Looked at all the unanswered questions and unfilled gaps, then pole-vaulted straight over them. Smash-cut to Jany and Kara Lynn at the prison entrance, absolutely no explanation, and frankly I hope most readers will just roll with it and not notice.
Readers who were around when the page originally dropped — do you remember what you thought at the time?
Jany (thinking): New post in the locked Being
community! . . . oh, it’s something about Congress. They aren’t that important, right? Gonna bump it down with a post of photos from the new flat.
saturn39: check out where i’m living <3 it’s right by the lab, so i can walk there if the weather’s nice! violetbauble: Looks great! How’s it goin w/ ur xperiments?
saturn39: brilliant. lately we’ve been testing KL’s shapechanging!
saturn39: she can make her bodymass into all sorts of materials. fabric, stones, anything! they don’t last if you take them away from her, but the scientists say it’s great anyway =3
saturn39: and her outfits are the PRETTIEST omg
saturn39: like obvs she’s gorgeous whenever, but they give her prompts for materials & she goes all-out <3
Dr. Lin: That’s it for today’s schedule. Unless you want to stick around?
Jany: Can’t, sorry. Ms. Walker asked me to come by her office at half five.
Dr. Lin: See you tomorrow! You know the way, right?
Jany: No problem!
. . . I think this may be the wrong door.
I thought nothing of it.
To be fair, this comes from a guy who found the loading dock for the CS building where I went to college (door with no room number label sandwiched between two classroom doors clearly too close together to be a classroom itself), talked with the guy who was staying up all night working on getting fluid dynamics for computer generated animated boobs right despite him doing this in a closed lab I officially didn’t have access to (wrong floor but otherwise right room number for a computer class I had that would meet the next day), found where the radio station was in my college dorm without anyone directing me there or knowing they had one (it was near the laundry room, but you needed to make a wrong turn and then try a few obviously not right doors to get there if you were going for the laundry room), and for the longest time had a policy of finding anywhere I had to go to at least one day in advance if at all feasible because I had a bad sense of which places were clearly not where I was supposed to be going.
I though that Walker is bad at security, but, like, not unrealistically bad.
Well, that also.