Issue 1 Downtime

Kay, with her notebook and laptop under her arm, knocks on Theresa's door.

"Just a second!" There was some rustling and muffled curses from the room on the other side of the door and then Theresa answered, tugging a t-shirt down as she did. "Oh hi, Kay. Come on in."

"Hey. What's going on in here?" she chuckles.

"That's for me to know," Theresa said, "Though probably not what you're thinking." She stepped out of the way to let Kay in. About that time, the sound system on her computer finished whatever song it had been playing and started another one.

"So you weren't dancing around your room? Okay!" she laughs. "Was wondering if you had some time to help me with the comic. I can come back some other time if you're busy..."

"Nah, always have time for you, Kay," Theresa sat down at her desk. "Feel free to grab Ashlie's chair, I don't think she ever uses it."

"She's a little weird, isn't she?" she says, pulling the chair over and sitting down, placing her laptop down on the desk and putting her notepad and a bundle of probably familiar pencils next to it.

"She's okay. I don't think she's used to being around a lot of other people, but there's a lot of that going around here." She pulled up Kay's site and moved out of the way so that Kay could log her in.

"Oh totally." she says, leaning over to log in. She has apparently managed to change it to her regular email address already.

"You get Brigid's costume updated?" She took control again and began poking through the settings for the site.

"Yeah. Everyone's really." she says, taking her sketchbook and flipping through it to a page showing most characters that had shown up so far, redesigned a little.

"Okay, a good place to start is probably the 'About' page. Get an avatar, picture, or something in there and get a brief bio set up. Like most things on the internet, only as much as you're comfortable sharing."

"Everyone kinda knows it's me drawing it anyway..." she says, apparently not having noticed that not all of the comments were from people from the school.

"It still won't hurt," Theresa said, switching over to the stats page. "Not all your visitors are from the school." She pointed at several referrals coming from outside the school network.

"Huh, wow... Yeah, guess you're right."

"My suggestion would be to draw something to put in the avatar. That way it can look however you want it and no one's going to think twice since it's a blog for an artist."

"Yeah I don't really wanna put myself out there. Well, beyond more-awesome-me in the comic."

"Just-as-awesome you," Theresa corrected. "I can call in a favor from an online friend of mine to get some border graphics if we can give her some basics to work with. Maybe a title image here," she gestured across the top with her hand.

"Yeah right." she chuckles. "And sure, I can draw something up. Just need to ask if I can use one of the school's scanners."

"I don't see why you wouldn't be," she said, minimizing the window to get to her desktop which was a drawing of a raven-haired woman in a two-piece bathing suit lounging on a beach. The woman had pointed ears and green flames wreathed one of her hands. Theresa pulled up a folder, showing various professional looking logos. "Here's the sort of work she does. She's pretty flexible though, so if we can give her the logo and some basic idea of colors you want, then she can put it all together."

"Yeah, I think that'll work. Did she draw that elf wizard too?"

"Yeah. I paid her for that one. You like it?"

"Yeah it looks great! Is that your game character?"

"Yeah, not in her usual costume, of course, but that's her."

"Oh really, she doesn't, like, kill orcs and dragons and stuff in a bikini?" she chuckles.

"I've contemplated it a time or two, but no," she laughed. "But the bikini's nicer to look at on a regular basis. Less spikes and skulls."

"No kidding!" she chuckles. "I wish I could draw like that."

"I like your style just fine," Theresa said. "You do better than I can." She made some more adjustments, "There, now I've got my own login to get in if I need to for maintenance stuff."

"Cool. Now I just gotta clean up the actual comic. Think I should fix what's already there with the new costumes?"

"You can if it's not going to be too much work, otherwise I wouldn't worry too much about it," she said.

"I never drew it for anyone but me. If it's gonna be out there I want it to look the part, I guess."

"Well, it's your comic, do what you like with it. I'm just your technical adviser."

"Nah, you're my friend and I wanna know what you think."

"I think some people are going to be unhappy, no matter which route you take. It's just a fact of the internet. So go with whichever will make you happier in the long run. Personally, I like the current style, so I don't see a need to go back and change, but I can understand wanting the consistency from start to finish."

"The style's fine, I mean, it's just pictures of my drawings right now and I was gonna tidy it up some. I don't wanna redo everything."

"I wouldn't sweat it then. Just forge ahead."

"Alright! Thanks for helping me out. It's confusing enough to try and figure out how that stupid image editor works." she chuckles.

"No problem. If you see something you think is a problem, let me know and I'll look into it."

"Alright! I'll do my best not to break things when I click around the site."

"It'd be hard to do something that can't be fixed by us. I mean, we're awesome," she grinned.