I feel like we've established an immutable truth here. The only distinction between instances of this are how long it takes for you to realize that what came out is bad. For example, some kind of resplendent elven-type motherfucker comes out, and you're like "God Damn!" but he keeps coming out, and his whole cape is made out of screaming faces. Right? Seems good up front, then, face cape. It's things like that.

The specific visual reference here is to the Court of Oryx, but that's not where we were when we came up with it. Destiny is just lousy with fucking portals.

If you saw the strip earlier, you might have noticed that there was a fuck-up with the text, like so:

Gabriel asked me what had happened, and I told him, and then he said that I had to tell you about it or he would. This is what I chose.

So, I like words, and writing, except when I'm writing I can't actually see the words. I know that seems crazy, but it's like I'm aware of what the words intend and where they want to be. It's like Detective Mode in Rocksteady's Batman games, only for meaning. I don't know why it works like this and nobody believes me when I tell them! But it troo. Errors are introduced.

A lot of the words we use are either made up nonsense or colloquialized versions of things. The various tendrils of God Damn, just as Exhibit A, are occasionally fraught. I often pronounce it "got damn," which might not be universally parsed. And when God Damn It gets smooshed together, the wheels come off. Goddamnit? That N looks weird. Goddammit is probably right, but is it? There's also a legitimate Goddam in Merriam Webster. I have the same problem when I'm at PAX Aus. I can't tell if "Melburn" is functionally different from "Melbin." I say it the the latter way out of deference, that's the correct way to say it, but when I do so, does it just sound wrong? Are Melburn and Melbin truly the same thing?

So when I change my mind about how something like that is supposed to go, in this case Goddamit, and I bring it up to him, he's going to be furious because that layer is probably already rasterized. It's "easier" for me to open it in Paint, cut and paste the letters I need, and scoot the words around - provided what I need is present in the strip somewhere. Occasionally I have to go to more than one strip. But Paint doesn't want to save them in high enough quality, so I have this Irfanview thing I do. He could fix it in a minute, and it takes me way longer than that, but this way he (usually) doesn't find out. My midnight methods have a necromantic quality and are jealously guarded.

In truth, I just spelled it wrong. But entertain a universe where all of the above had been true. Wouldn't that make me an interesting person? I hope the answer is yes; I've invested a lot in this folksy yet erudite persona.

(CW)TB out.