Alien Romance, the daily comic strip
Jan. 6th, 2026 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gs_silva
Jon is taking his lunch break at his new job. I suppose he's been bringing his lunch and eating at his desk every day so far, so he won't have to make the effort to walk down the hall on crutches and take the elevator to the cafeteria. But he's doing it this time.
When he arrives at the cafeteria double doors, he pauses to catch his breath, and wonders if it was worth it to come here. Probably not. But then Sarah, the mainframe technician we met briefly in an earlier scene, throws open the doors. "Jon! Hi! Let me get that for you," she gushes, and invites him to sit with her.
I've done numerous scenes where Jon is taking his time going places or performing tasks, and we all get to watch his slow progress, panel by panel. Sometimes, he's in the background while other characters do things in the foreground. I have one scene, not in the book or the daily comic but just for a feedback exercise, where it takes him 3 pages - that's about 16 panels - to pour himself a drink and sit down with it.
I had a friend in college who was disabled, and was extremely defensive about the pace at which he operated. Well, I say 'a friend' but we only hung out a few times. He had the hots for me, and I didn't reciprocate because I was dating the custodian, and then he found a girlfriend and we kinda never saw each other again. But that's neither here nor there. The thing I found interesting was the whole concept of living your life at your own speed. Especially because Jon has three speeds! Racing speed, limping speed, and a complete standstill.
The speed of his personality adjusts to the speed of his body. I wonder if anyone ever noticed that? While he's never extremely outgoing, when he's in his good wheelchair, his personality gets stronger. So even though he's pretty sensitive to the general cultural attitude that being in a wheelchair isn't a good thing compared to not being disabled, he certainly feels better when he's in it.
Thoughts
Date: 2026-01-07 01:32 am (UTC)<3 kishÅtenketsu.
>>I've done numerous scenes where Jon is taking his time going places or performing tasks, and we all get to watch his slow progress, panel by panel. <<
That's very realistic. Disability makes everything take longer.
>>I had a friend in college who was disabled, and was extremely defensive about the pace at which he operated.<<
Yeah, that can happen.
>>The speed of his personality adjusts to the speed of his body. <<
Clever.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2026-01-07 05:21 pm (UTC)1. It goes a long way toward explaining why I had conflicts in creative writing classes. Fortunately, it only held me back in my first one. After that, I learned how to use lit fic to my advantage. So many people complain about lit fic! But it's not really a thing in itself. It's just a tool, and one I relied on heavily (and still do).
2. Foreshadowing for today's daily comic! Which I finished just before I read your comment. :)
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2026-01-07 11:53 pm (UTC)Fiction comes in many flavors. Not all of that requires conflict. Look how popular the "cottoncandy" and "curtainfic" branches of fanfic are.