Gabriel reveals to the audience that he's a deeply cynical misanthrope. Note how he takes a jab at Gideon's sculptures. Is this man a friend or not?
I have a lot I'd like to say about Gideon and Gabriel's relationship, but I'll leave the critical analysis to the comments for the time being.
My apologies for the lateness of the page! I've had a lot going on in my life lately.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that I added an FAQ to the "About" page of the comic!
On one hand, I get where Gideon is coming from, on the other I can totally see how the dude is manipulating him. He's probably going to become a "love to hate" character for me.
I'm assuming you mean Gabriel? Yeah, he has this way of stretching the truth for his own benefit. He knows how to take your weaknesses and use them against you: Gideon’s social fears in this case. He’s definitely supposed to be a love-to-hate character lol
I was thinking, I would probably follow a social media account that posted sculptures of macaroni and cheese based statues.
But this is the 90's! You best bet is a 30 second spot on the news but I know Gideon would want neither.
A Twitter page or art show with noodle art would probably generate a great response, but Gideon doesn’t know that. He’s afraid of being perceived as “weird” and being made fun of. And Gabriel knows how to push his buttons.
Gabriel is so hateful because most of us in the creative trades have had one of them around us, leeching on our psychic energy and self-doubt.
"Leeching on psychic energy and self-doubt" is a solid description of what Gabriel does.
Keep going, man. I think you're really getting though to him.
Or just getting to him. Tomayto, tomahto.
Gabriel knows how to push his buttons, but always stops short of calling him slurs. Just go the extra mile, Gabriel, I'm sure that insulting Gideon is gonna make him decide to stop having mental illness symptoms
/s
"I hope you realize that it is a VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW to use a macaroni product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling"
The dialogue is so great here. To Gideon he may see it as Gabriel looking out for him, but to the audience we can definitely see he's being manipulated. The interactions between these two are great so far! ^^
Daaaamn, somehow I was expecting Gabriel to go on a rant along the lines of "see, THIS is why you shouldn't get out of home, if you keep asking people weird stuff they're gonna think you're weird, they'd make fun of you because they'd never understand but *I* am your friend and *I* am the only one who understands" and so on and so forth... but this was much, much more subtle and yet even more devastating. He didn't outright accuse Gideon of being "weird" (despite the jab at his sculptures)... but he STILL got the message through, while also managing to add more fuel to Gideon's paranoia. The dude knows exactly what he's doing and is pretty damn good at it D:
Thank you! The subtlety of Gabriel's manipulation of Gideon was tough to write, but it needed to be clear that he's encouraging his anxiety on purpose while still being a plausible "friend." My first draft from like 2015 had him straight-up yelling at Gideon and the "frenemy" dynamic was not present at all.
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