FaD strip: stay

i really, really wanted to draw this and pushed it out on my day off (some of it the two days beforehand). the smear effects seemed like they would be really fun to draw, and the section where the lineart just drags across the screen behind dupe is the primary motivator for drawing the comic.
i think maybe the sentiment that you can't always take control of your life, even if you try really hard, even if everyone wants you to succeed and wants to help, was interesting (and in this case funny) to me, too.

this comic is a synthesis of two separate conversations. i think the synthesis of multiple dialogues will continue, as it gives me the opportunity to address two comics in one.
when dupe mentions that she wouldn't have been as merciful as gray if the power dynamic was swapped, that was originally from a conversation where she was very bitter about having behavior and feelings suppressed for being weird or self-destructive. blue mentions that dupe wasn't so nice when she was in charge, either, and asks what she would do if she were in the position of power that blue is. she says that she would probably be much more proactive about "crushing them into nothing" than gray had been.
it's just condensed into an allusion here because, while it can color my own perception of dupe to know that, the leading conversation wasn't generally meaningful. the only thing that i thought should be recorded is the insinuation (or outright statement) that if she could, dupe might not act very differently from how she acts in transition of power. the character growth visible over the course of these strips is genuine, but the knowledge that other parts of her brain can and have overpowered her would easily feed a violent defensiveness and resentment. with power struggles between the figures in these comics, it can very much feel like the stakes are the right to be alive, to exist at all.
she can come off very woobified from her current issues -- i've gone out of my way to prioritize comic strips that feature dupe, and feature her sympathetically, to make her come off less like she's irredeemably evil and just a personification of self-destructive urges -- and i think it's beneficial to signify that she kind of acts like an asshole if she has enough power to do so. that little mention in this strip and the way she acts in heart-to-art help tone the "poor dupe" element down.
it's a really odd struggle, too, and not very "relatable." i compared dupe trying to disobey the dissociation with drake trying to disobey dupe - the dissociation is literally what created her identity. it's not just like a machine destroying the machine that made it, but like trying to jump into the fourth dimension, trying to rip away from the fabric of her very being while keeping the being part.
also, the gag where dupe says something to gray and comes onto the screen from the opposite direction is just a gag, nothing meaningful. i have to work "physical" interactions within the framework of comics, which need to be read a certain way. in the beginning, i knew i wanted dupe to come up from behind, and thought it'd be funny if she talked from the left first. flipping the entire scene to have them moving left-to-right felt really weird, so i didn't just do that instead.
OH also blue is just not affected by dupe's blurring AoE because he had to be hurts at one point... far worse than dupe's kind of blurriness. he's like the guy who injected snake venom into himself repeatedly to built an immunity to it.

mawkish sits on a donut bed in the morning to be carried downstairs. it's uncomfortable for her to be picked up in my arms. the conversations combined took maybe a total of 60 seconds, so mawkish wasn't exactly asked to wait for centuries in this comic. the events of most of these comics in reality happen very rapidly, like your own thoughts are probably almost instantaneous. some of them, like heart-to-art and the cage, happen over longer periods of time like an hour.

wow, what a whole lot of talking about parts of my psyche that don't feel like they're mine at all. welp. enjoy--