As with the previous scene with Azarek in the hold, it can be tough to find new and interesting angles with characters in fixed positions, like at a dining table. A lot of it came down to figuring out which characters would be sharing dialogue and then seating those characters next to or across from each other. That way, I’d be able to focus on just the characters in a two-shot (or three-shot) without having to draw everyone else in between who wasn’t essential to the shot.
Hahaha! Payback Time!
See volume 1, chapter 1.
A: Can I sit here dear?
B: Sure, we can discus our garden dispute.
B: Smile at camera 3 over there.
A: Drat!
The one thing Cember and Ril agree on is that Roka’s bluffing sucks (Ch. 1, p. 7), so even if Sky doesn’t ruin it next page by expressing surprise or confusion at these lies, I doubt it’ll fool Miss Fake Name here.
It would be hilarious if Olisa was a waterworld with not a single street and the closest thing to a street on Olisa are the gantries between the loading platforms and docking platforms. So Sky was living hard and heavy on a 2 x 15 meter strip of corrugated steel without even a handrail.
Jayd: “Isn’t Olisa streetless?”
Roka: “It got better?”
Sky: “My parents were streetfarmers… They were trying to grow road networks.”
Cember, Bennesaud, and Ril: *glance at each other and cringe*
Jayd: “Really? On a waterworld?”
Roka: “Yeah, that’s how they died. They were morons… Forgot they could not breathe underwater.”
Jayd: “What with that flying bit, I could see that… What were their names?”
Sky: “Uhhh… Names? Right! Uhhh… Rain… and Cloud… Cumulus?”
Somewhere out there, there is an alternate universe version of RUNNERS that is much more of a straight-up comedy. This scene would fit perfectly there, and I would read it.
Why lie when you can lie outrageously, right?