Rooms

A Comic with Commentary

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Rooms is 20!

Well, this is awkward.

It's Rooms 20th anniversary - an auspicious day - and all I'm uploading is this hastily cobbled together one panel monstrosity.

If you're thinking to yourself "Rooms deserves better!" then I agree. That's why I'm considering this whole year, from today, as Rooms' 20th Anniversary.

I've got a few ideas for how to celebrate but won't announce them just yet, in case I fail horribly to deliver. If nothing else, I do hope to put up one brand new Rooms story. Watch this space!

PS: I recently added classic-style comic navigation to the site so it's now easier to read through the archives.

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60.11: The End?

Well, guys, it’s been fun but this is it. The End. There haven’t been any new Rooms stories since 2016. I’m very tempted to make a final story called ‘Reunion” (you see what I did there?) but until/if that gets made, this is where things end.

When Rooms former website closed, I was disappointed, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Getting to re-post the whole saga again here and re-appraise the comic’s strengths, weaknesses, and inspirations has been a lot of fun.

It may never be a popular comic but Rooms will always have a special place in my heart. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it.

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60.10: Crushed

By this point, I could write a book on killing dogs in fiction for comic effect. I did it in my short film, The Beard. I did it while playing a crazed bike gang leader in a post-apocalyptic roleplaying game I played recently. I did it in a script that hasn’t got made into anything yet (but hopefully will in the future) and I apparently did it here too (this one I’d forgotten).

The reason behind all this casual fictional dog slaughter is that I’m scared of and intensely dislike dogs in real life (I considered writing a rom-com called ‘Must Hate Dogs’ once but didn’t think it would go down well). Now, don’t worry. I wouldn’t ever hurt a living creature, not even a dog, but it’s somewhat cathartic to be able to get this out of my system through my fiction (fun too).

I do always worry that people will get angry about these gags though. A lot of people really like dogs.  

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60.9: Branching Out

So I sat down to write this week’s commentaries for Rooms and then came to the realisation that there’s less than a week left of Rooms strips to write commentaries for. In fact, after this strip, there are only two more. For over a year, I’ve been writing these and posting them every day but now the journey’s almost over. 

Which raises the question… what next?

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60.8: Who’s the Boss?

Rebecca’s boss reminds me a bit of Bluto from Popeye for some reason (in panel 2 at least).

Anyway, Rebecca is learning about one of humanity’s worst traits – prejudice against others. Unless you’re a CSWAM (Cis straight white able male) then you’ve probably experienced this too. It’s not fun but, in an ever more divided world, always worth commenting on.

But yeah, I’m enjoying this storyline so far. Good work, 2016-me.

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60.7: Hurt

In literally the last strip, Rebecca was stating that she’d wanted to be a parrot because parrots don’t have to do jobs. Now, in this strip, she’s going to work and is ‘so glad’ about it. It’s a little inconsistent.

That said, this is a fun strip – mostly due to the great bird pun in the last panel. You can’t go wrong with puns.

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60.6: Jobs, Clothes, Teeth

Wow. Eleven years without meeting and then two appearances together in the same storyline. I think this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Rebecca talks about jobs here as if they’re an exclusively human thing but her brother’s career in both the army and teaching would suggest otherwise.

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60.5: Broken

Remember when Majesco told Rebecca that there was no way she could exit the cursed town as a bird and that the curse to make her a human would last until ‘the end of your days’? He was also pretty specific that this curse could not be broken, remember? Well, I didn’t.

It’s up to you if you think that this breaks the established continuity. I’d say that it doesn’t as it’s impossible to know whether a character is telling the absolute truth when you read a story. In this case, let’s just assume that Majesco was either lying or mistaken about how the spell he cast actually worked.

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60.4: Small Change

I like the idea for this story - giving the protagonist the thing they’ve wanted for a long time just when they don’t want it. Will the wedding still go ahead? Hm. I’m thinking there might be laws against that.

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60.3: Happily Ever After

Oh look, it’s James, Rebecca’s fiancé. We’ve never seen him before and he looks very generic but I’m sure there’s nothing to be worried about and the wedding will go off without a hitch.

On an unrelated note, Hell’s Bells was one of my least favourite episodes of Buffy (Xander and Anya were my favourite characters so you can probably guess why I wasn’t a fan).

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60.2: The Parrot and the Dove

Yes, weirdly, this is the first time that these two characters have ever met. It’s always strange when you realise two of your main characters haven’t appeared together at all so I thought I’d fix that here.

Also, in case you were still worried, Rebecca is still Rebecca.  

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60.1: The Only Choice

This is what happens when you leave these characters alone for a few years. They go and get themselves engaged. Rebecca’s come a long way since she bluntly asked Chex when they were going to mate (and, looking back at that strip, I can safely say my art’s evolved a lot too).

MH, on the other hand, is now less cool than Jules. Poor bastard.

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59.12: As Seen on TV

Poor Chex. It’s hard being rich, successful, and popular. Then again, as I’ve said before, I think it was a mistake making him so successful. Chex was originally sort-of based on me but then became some kind of weird wish-fulfillment fantasy which just isn’t very interesting.

So it’s nice to see him reassert his old self and head off with Star for adventures unknown. Is this the last time we’ll see Chex? Probably not but, if it is, it’s not the worst send off.

FUN FACT: This is the final strip in ‘Infamous’. Tomorrow, we start Rooms’ final storyline (so far): ‘iParrot’.

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59.11: Milton Keynes

Do you really, Star? I mean, come on… it’s Milton Keynes.

Joking aside, I’ll always have a warm place in my heart for Milton Keynes. The reason being that it’s the place where I first met a number of my online friends, from the Team17 community, outside of a computer screen (including Ben Paddon and Andrew Taylor).

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59.10: Brb

Turnus’ hair looks like Guile’s from Street Fighter in this one. His suit is also green which is the same colour that Guile wears (in his default costume) so I’m guessing this wasn’t accidental.

But yes, Chex’s slow descent into insanity has finally reached its inevitable conclusion. Well, it was only a matter of time.

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59.9: Big Fan

Oh, that Chex!

Yeah, this epilogue story is much more in line with earlier Rooms stories in that not all the strips have to develop the characters or move the story forward. This one doesn’t even have any fancy artwork. It’s the classic head-and-shoulders gag strip format that I’d tried so hard to get away from. 

I suppose, by this stage, I’d realised that having fun making the comic was more important than trying to create some epic masterpiece (which, let’s be fair, wasn’t happening anyway).

[rooms-comic]

59.8: Breaking Out

Wait… has Chex’s beard grown even longer? It definitely wasn’t this long, just a few strips before. I thought at first this must be because of the ‘three months later’ part of the story but that occurred before the last strip so yes, Chex’s beard is growing at an alarming rate.

Will this mystery be resolved at all? I’m guessing….no.