2018-08-14 Expansion Pack

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nottere
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Re: 2018-08-14 Expansion Pack

Post by nottere »

I am very concerned about how Gary's boss is going to behave around Sandra. Is that just me?

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Osaru Sensei
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Re: 2018-08-14 Expansion Pack

Post by Osaru Sensei »

christopheftw wrote:
Sun Sep 09, 2018 7:43 pm
Can we get some music for this montage?
Spidrift wrote:
Sun Sep 09, 2018 9:49 pm
Well, there’s one obvious option.
Calaron wrote:
Sun Sep 09, 2018 10:03 pm
I was thinking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaLegF2hAxI always makes for nice montage music, regardless of what is actually happening.
Y'all are forgetting the most iconic music for this kinds of shindig
Spidrift wrote:
Thu Jul 14, 2016 5:16 pm
She is indeed a wonderful artist who could doubtless turn her hand to anything, but from what I've seen, I don't get the feeling that she's very interested in depicting some of those bits in all their wrinkly Lovecraftian glory.
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Spidrift
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Re: 2018-08-14 Expansion Pack

Post by Spidrift »

nottere wrote:
Mon Sep 10, 2018 2:25 am
I am very concerned about how Gary's boss is going to behave around Sandra. Is that just me?
Yvan’s certainly a jerkass Casanova wannabe, so it’s not a bad question. On the other hand, we’ve not been given any indication that he pesters Tracy, so it seems that it’s possible for him to work with an attractive woman without being an arse.

I guess that either he has just enough sense to compartmentalise his work life and skirt chasing, if only to avoid legal problems, or he honestly wants to become a great seducer, in his sexist-jerk way, and realises that abusing his power wouldn’t make him that.
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Storm-forge mystique
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Re: 2018-08-14 Expansion Pack

Post by Storm-forge mystique »

What I'm noticing is how much time seems to have passed. Even if we do see the rest of the cast again, it'll be weeks or months later, so that really is where their stories leave off.

I guess it makes some sense as a breakpoint - Alex, Eloise, and Nadine have come to an "arrangement," Pierre is off the hook with Sandra and Eloise seems to have given up on him, the twins are gone (to Canada, maybe?)... but it just feels bizarre to cut so abruptly and thoroughly to Sandra, who was feeling more like a supporting character toward the end. At the very least, Ingrid, Lavali, and Marie have been left hanging. (Odds on Ingrid and Lavali having hooked up in the interim?)

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Spidrift
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Re: 2018-08-14 Expansion Pack

Post by Spidrift »

Yeah, setting up a whole bunch of parallel plots and then throwing just one of them into an accelerando phase looks a bit clumsy. These comics have always been careless about time, but even so.
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dmra
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Re: 2018-08-14 Expansion Pack

Post by dmra »

The problem with Sandra doing well at the games company is that it raises the question (again) of why Sandra doesn't seem to have made even the smallest effort to contact her friends. Or perhaps DMG Montreal has a policy of not communicating with DMG Paris. I can't think of any other reason why Sandra wouldn't have asked them to pass a message to Lavali.

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Spidrift
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Re: 2018-08-14 Expansion Pack

Post by Spidrift »

Stop being logical. You'll make the writer uncomfortable.
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Chewtoy
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Re: 2018-08-14 Expansion Pack

Post by Chewtoy »

Personally, I like the development here. Sandra fell into all of her good fortune... she never had to work hard to earn it. She suddenly was simply given the glamorous life of a top model. Zoe dumped her back at her starting point, and now Sandra’s own drive and desire to be a model is making her pay her dues and come up the traditional way (no doubt helped by the experience she already gained, but still.)

Zoe was trying to get Sandra to respect the modeling life by emulating those dues... cramped living conditions with a bad roommate, smaller jobs, even progression, but Sandra couldn’t get past the idea that the modeling life was just handed to you on a platter. So Zoe put her in a position where she’d have to pay her dues for real.

When Sandra makes it back to Paris, she won’t be there on the whims of some flighty photographer. She’ll be a real model who can (mostly) take care of herself, and I think Zoe will be proud of her.

dmra
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Re: 2018-08-14 Expansion Pack

Post by dmra »

Spidrift wrote:
Mon Sep 10, 2018 10:09 am
Stop being logical. You'll make the writer uncomfortable.
The real problem I have with it is what it says about Sandra as a person. None of her friends had anything to do with what happened to her and as far as Sandra knows none of them have the slightest idea about what did happen to her. As far as she knows for them she's just disappeared without a word. Since they've always stood by her it just makes her look self obsessed and insensitive.

A quick "I'm fine and doing well back in Montreal" just to put their minds at ease is the least a friend deserves.

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Spidrift
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Re: 2018-08-14 Expansion Pack

Post by Spidrift »

Well, it was established a few strips ago that she didn’t know how to contact any of them (despite the, you know, existence of Google), and I think we were meant to take that as final. Hence, we’re not supposed to open the question again now.

No, it doesn’t make any sense. But it helps if you think of all these strips as being, essentially, sexed-up versions of 1960s Archie comics. The modern world is mostly an inconvenience for the writers (except for the availability of contraception).
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dmra
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Re: 2018-08-14 Expansion Pack

Post by dmra »

I'm all for the willing suspension of disbelief but it does help care about the comic if characters stay at least partly consistent and plausible.

Bad writing can be forgiven more easily if the end product is funny but there haven't exactly been a rush of punchlines recently to justify Sandra acting like a uncaring moron.

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lordoffiling
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Re: 2018-08-14 Expansion Pack

Post by lordoffiling »

Another possibility is that, somewhere during this months-long montage (pretty sure months, no way she did all this in any less time) she did re-establish contact with her Paris friends, and we just have not been shown yet.

They could be buddies on Facebook and voice chat in the Carmen Chamelia Discord on the regular for all we know at this point.
"Rather than simply enjoying these comics, we log in to these forums to argue about them. [...] We are some strange people, and I guess we have nothing better to do." - lordoffiling

dmra
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Re: 2018-08-14 Expansion Pack

Post by dmra »

You're right that that is a possibility but it seems more likely that it's a case of out of sight is out of mind. Something like Chloe in Dangerously Chloe seeming to have forgotten that she had a mother and friends before she was bound to Teddy.

We did see Sandra talking over her circumstances with Didi and she could just as easily have been shown to be speaking to Lavali, Cammi or Marie. Since the writers have chosen not to show Sandra talking to them when they quite easily could have it seems to be a big jump to assume she's doing so in the background.

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LarsenSan
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Re: 2018-08-14 Expansion Pack

Post by LarsenSan »

RConrad wrote:
Sun Sep 09, 2018 9:21 pm
LarsenSan wrote:
Sun Sep 09, 2018 8:42 pm
The lack of text makes me think this is just a dream Sandra is having after an exhausting labor day...
That'd certainly be cruel.
And that's why it's probably true.

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Eisu
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Re: 2018-08-14 Expansion Pack

Post by Eisu »

Spidrift wrote:
Mon Sep 10, 2018 12:12 pm
Well, it was established a few strips ago that she didn’t know how to contact any of them (despite the, you know, existence of Google), and I think we were meant to take that as final. Hence, we’re not supposed to open the question again now.
I'm not the writer of this series, so my say is not final on this (nor do I know what Dave's plan for this is), but how do you google search for someone when you don't know any of their last names? This is the search result I get for just putting in Lavali:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Lavali& ... e&ie=UTF-8

It would not point to any specific person at all (Except for Andrew Lavali's Linked in at the bottom and that's an Executive Director of a company, which is a position way higher than our Lovely Lavali (spin off name, coining it now)).

You may search for DMG but Lavali's not a developer of the games over there, she's mostly a PA type person (doing things like errands mostly( so she wouldn't really be listed in the developer staff section of the website and you really hardly see a PA name on a game website section (or staff names of a company website most of the time) and you COULD contact DMG to say, ask for a person, but most of game website's contact is for games development or games error and stuff like that. You don't contact a company and say, "I know Lavali, can you connect me to her?" and I don't think the staff who's answering those e-mails would take it seriously. The development section of a games company usually don't handle answering the e-mail of those asking about the games, they have especially hired staff for that and usually they're not as directly connected to the development staff as it is.

Now, you may also search for Domenico's agency but... does Sandra even know what Domenico's agency name is? Hahahaha... all signs kinda really indicated to "No".

Searching for Alex and Marie without knowing their last names is pointless due to the fact that those names are too common.

Finally, searching for Domenico and Zoe themselves might be the easiest way due to the fact that these two are famous... but they just fired her! Why the hell would they even reply to any of her searching for them back?

As for being back at DMG, this is still DMG Montreal and only in this strip recently have she been in contact with the boss of this side of the company. So one of two things why she wasn't able to make contact with Lavali (which really is the only person she really knows from DMG Paris other than Tristan and Tristan hates Sandra) is a) contact between DMG Paris and Montreal might be only on a professional basis and not on a "can you contact this person (who's not even, as I said, really on a developmental level staff member), our model wants to talk to her" kinda basis or b) Contact between the two branches is really only boss-to-boss kinda thing so Yvan really wouldn't be able to ask the other boss for Lavali (whom the boss probably doesn't even know exist).

Now that I typed it out, it might the case of both reasons rather than one of the two, ha ha ha ha ha.

Anyways, that's what I'm thinking if you wanna see a semblance of logic behind this.

Also, I'm just saying that she may have even attempted to contact them but find results that's no closer to getting her in contact with any of them back.

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