Q&A 33: Bobby Swaps, writing prompts, celebs, Gilmores, Destroy History

Christoph Witt wants to know:
Bad Machinery is particularly dear to me. Two things I've been wondering: What was the deal between Mad Terry and Bobby Swaps in The Case of the Team Spirit? And, not to mess with poetic ambiguity, but was Ellen's foster-grandmother a selkie, too?

I had to go back and look at this just now, because I couldn't remember any of the details or why the mystery boys wanted the bow tie. It's a nice little sequence (which starts here if you want to read it). Anyway, I think you clearly see that Mad Terry is moved by whatever Bobby Swaps whispers to him, and Bobby Swaps is quite shaken. Terry asks him to say "I love you, my special little soldier." Or, you know, words to that effect. The words he always wanted his mad mother Mrs Terry to say!

As for the selkie question, that's ambiguous in the original webcomic run (to the extent that it's quite depressing) but slightly less so in print, where I added an extra page (now added to the pages on the website).

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Alex Blott asks:
"What are the three weirdest thing you've ever done to get yourself writing. Story games, monk-like oaths, outrageous constraints? Anything goes!"

My writing process is mysterious to me, stories will rumble in my subconscious for days and burst forth when the appointed hour comes as something approaching automatic writing. Of course, it was not always that easy, but I found washing up at the sink was often a cue for a mad notion to spill forth. I have had a dishwasher since 2014 so thank goodness ideas found another outlet. I never did anything weird to make writing happen. None of the "creative cues" things that people tout do anything for me. Oblique Strategies, cut-ups, story dice, it's just not how my brain works. My creative mind is a slow cooker for my own ideas and the fast food chef, the short order cook, only comes out when someone tells me theirs.

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Joanna Castellon says:
"What comes first: the story you've written or the idea of having a real life surprise celebrity guest pop-in to do something with the characters."

Context is king! These days I prefer to create a hybrid character when I can who represents the tropes of one or two celebrities, someone who is "mine". But clearly there are recent exceptions here where I did the exact opposite. Whimsical drop-ins would have been more a part of the old Scary Go Round/Bobbins world, a facet of early 2000s humour where "randomness" was valued, the old monkey pirate robot currency. Back then I was going for the maddest juxtaposition possible. Conversely, the appearance of Fanny Cradock in Great British Bump-Off was because I watched all her 1970s Christmas shows and became very interested in her. She was part of the project through all its various iterations. She's more the reason for the project than Shauna was - Shauna was added much later. The same with the mentions of Noel Edmonds' book in Solver. The specificity was key.

(If this isn't quite what you're referring to, Joanna, let me know in the comments and I'll have another crack at it.)

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Jacob Mattingly asks:
"What are your thoughts on Gilmore Girls? I noticed you comparing a scrapped Giant Days sequel to A Year In The Life and was curious what you thought."

Gilmore Girls was something I watched jointly with my then-partner at the beginning of our relationship and I loved it. It's a well-written, light, slice of life comedic drama, written in an archaic screwball style that I have always enjoyed, ostensibly for a teen audience but with a multi-generational cast. It's a long running TV show that isn't about murder, a place that it was fun to go to every week. I haven't watched the original series since 2012/13 so it's not fresh in my memory now, but even when it went off the boil, or Rory went "bad" and lived in a pool house, I still enjoyed it. The Sherman-Palladino-less last season is weaker but I still watched it all. I hated the Life Or Death Brigade, but then so did everyone, right?

The revival on Netflix, the four specials, I watched and came away from really wishing they hadn't made it at all. It felt awfully sour. I took lessons from that, as a writer, and I am still as guilty as the Gilmore Girls creators of going back when I shouldn't have. But the original series stands as something largely very good.

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Finally, Corwin Haught asks:
"Will there be any more Destroy History after NEMS is done?"

The first Destroy History strip is contemporary to the start of Bad Machinery in 2009. In 16 years there have been two complete stories (if I finish NEMS, and I should finish it, as long as I avoid falling tree branches). While I will not say no, even making this latest installment, I worry that webcomic-pace readers will be very weary of it after 16 weeks, no matter how much energy I put into era-specific detail, complex scene-setting panels, mad robots, and carefully designed likenesses. It's great fun, technically, to put together, but very challenging. I think other characters and stories probably have priority over Destroy History. Those upcoming 16 weeks are making me extremely nervous right now!

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Thanks for the questions! More answers soon!