228:Bathroom

Author Notes
Big point: It’s hard to convey sarcasm in written form. I tend to hope something like a smarmy grin will illustrate it well enough, but I had this horrible image in my head of everyone misreading the last panel as Gavin actually outing Todd. Maybe no one will read it like that, but to ease my neurotic mind: Gavin’s being sarcastic. He knows it’s the kind of thing that’ll piss Todd off, so it’s exactly what he’s doing. This is actually a good tactic for shutting up homophobes in general, but it probably works better for Gavin than it would, let’s say Rudy. Gavin’s at least bigger than Todd.

Middle point: Originally, the second and third panels were shown from an angle that had Rudy facing the reader. It kinda looked like he was still… doing his business. I feel like the side view doesn’t look as good, but I felt a little awkward when it wasn’t necessarily clear whether he was standing at a sink or a urinal.

Little point: Someone’s gonna ask, so allow me to remind you the different colored collars denote different grades. Rudy’s orange collar puts him in tenth grade. Todd’s green one shows that he’s in eleventh grade. Gavin’s (unseen here) blue collar means he’s in twelfth grade. Admittedly, you don’t really see the green one very often, but there really just aren’t a lot of significant junior year characters. And for what it’s worth, we should be seeing more red collars (ninth grade) soon too. ^_^

Not really a point: Yes, it is extremely convenient that Todd shows up in the bathroom when Rudy’s in there… with Gavin apparently already in there. I’ve got no explanation for that. It’s highly unlikely, yes, but for purposes of moving the story along, it had to happen.

Summation: Eh. I don’t really like this page too much. It totally worked better in my head.