>_> Speak for yourself, Gregory. I think the thunderstorm was a perfectly appropriate and even borderline elegant way of covering up this very slight and superficial change, which might not even have caught the attention of many readers, anyway. Thunderstorms actually exist, after all, unlike many of the other things I could have pulled out of my ass.. uh.. assortment of plot devices.
And, yeah, this was a legit and rare case of me going back on such a design decision. After some somber reassessment, I came to the conclusion that using a traditional Indian personification of envy was just too weird and out of context…so I replaced that with a more modern and better-known personification, which also better fits the Canadajapanese setting of this chapter.
Since the strip wasn’t published yet, I could have gone back and simply replaced the character ahead of publication…but is that what a real B-movie producer would have done? Throwing away footage that was already done and paid for, and doing it over (and worse paying for it all over again)? Especially when there’s a simple and elegant* way to make the switch without wasting anything already produced? No way. So, in a case of art imitating life…the life of artists making art that imitates…art life…imitating…uh…life…art…
…anyway, that’s why I did it this way.
More on Thursday.
* Simplicity and elegance would naturally be assessed, in this case, relative to the production costs involved. The more expensive the footage in question, the lower the threshold a plot device would have to cross to count as elegant for solving the problem. >_>
Ah yes, this version of Envy is far better known (at least outside India). In case anyone doesn’t recognize him, this Envy is from the manga/anime Fullmetal Alchemist (there are rumors of a live action movie, but let’s pretend it never happened).
This also meams that instead of a headless (neckless?) guy, we might later on see more heads than we asked for.