Unused strips for November 30-December 2 (Patreon)

I sat on these strips for about a week or so, feeling a general dissatisfaction with them, but unable to come up with how to solve it.  This should be a big moment!  Bigger than them trying to punch each other to death a few strips ago, but it felt like it kind of limped to the end.  (the strip where they and Carla arrive at Roller Derby would have run after this unaltered)  

This should've felt more like the very beginning of The Killing Joke where Batman shows up in Arkham and was all like "dude, Joker, we're gonna murder each other if we don't cut this out, how can we cut this out."   I can't remember what the catalyst was, but I realized I needed to restate the stakes.  There wasn't enough tension.  The storyline's resolution needed to feel more triumphant, and that doesn't land properly if they kind of go "sure whatever let's go hang out."  Plus neither Amber nor Sal trust themselves to do the right thing, and that had to be put at the forefront.  I made them testier with each other, and Amber reminded us that she thinks she's essentially a stabby machine that needs to be kept in check.  I added Sal reaching her injured hand out for a handshake as a more overt statement of purpose.  And the storyline's title is "Flyin' to the Red," so dangit if we don't need some solid red backgrounds as we reach the finish line.   Being offered forgiveness is a surefire way to make Amber's brain go unhappy.    It's the Big Moment the original version was lacking.  

My regrets are losing the better lead-in to Dina's pachycephalosaurus-gathering punchline, since Amber's tee up ("what *I* want to hear is....") got moved forward a strip, and also Amber's "sitting Riker-style" quip.  It didn't fit the flow of the conversation, such as it was, anymore.

oh and my wife made me delete the arms off the chair sal was sitting in despite my insistence that all the chairs should be the same and that dina's chair couldn't be armless and she said yeah you're being Weird again