That’s great - well done and absolutely worth it :)

I did not know that. Thank you! It’s good to have a response next time the Sauce Mafia descend upon me.

A lot of people get weirdly aggressive about other people “eating food wrong”.

Try saying “actually, sometimes as a treat, when just cooking for myself, I quite like eating pasta with just a little salt and a little butter, or maybe a little grated cheese on it” in front of a group of people…

“YOU SHOULD PUT SAUCE ON IT”
“WHY AREN’T YOU HAVING A SAUCE”
“YOU CAN GET PRE-MADE SAUCES QUITE CHEAP, IT DOESN’T COST MUCH MORE JUST TO ADD A SAUCE”

Any vowel is permitted - so fack, feck, fick, fock, fuck and controversially fyck are all valid.

[Edit] International readers should feel free to say fåck, fæck, féck, fîck, fõck, fœck, fück etc

Makes you think of what could have been, if they’d done the new Fallouts as tactical/Turn Based RPGs, rather than first person shooters - although the new Wasteland games do a pretty good job of filling that niche.

Who emptied the shopping basket in the last panel?

I do appreciate that the listed recipe is “relatively quick and simple”, but I’m not convinced by “literally the same effort”.

If it was, then why would anyone buy the millions of frozen/boxed/packeted “just put it in the oven for 30 minutes” or “just put it in the microwave for 2 minutes” meals? They’re not buying them for the high-quality taste, surely?

Massively cheaper and almost certainly better for you, yes - but arguably not as low effort as “beep beep beep, ping”.

Your “no effort” meal, sounds like a lot of effort to me.

My low effort meal is “open packet, put ready meal in oven or microwave”

I either use the default names, or give them “standard English older bloke names”. The grander the adventure, the more un-grand a name they get.

Things like “Ian Williams”, “Neville Smith”, “Terry Phillips”, “Frank Jones” etc. The sort of names that would work for the City Council’s Road Maintenance Department.

This must be an older map - where’s Acid Reflux Ridge and Think-I’m-going-to-shit-myself Mountain?

Depends how he dies.

If he gets Gaddafied by his own people, I imagine his successor might try to do things differently.

Yeah, the Steam Deck is actually pretty good for this on most games.

On a computer, you can, I suppose, set up a keyboard shortcut to pause the process, but you still think “this should just be part of the game in the first place”.

Not being able to pause or save at any point.

I’m a “grown-up” these days, but I grew up with games and they’re part of my life, and I love them - but in the larger scale of things, they’re still toys. The requirements of a pet/partner/child/phone call/doorbell will always nearly always outrank them.

“We don’t let you pause because it’s a simulation and and you can’t pause real life so it means the game is more realistic” = piss off

I love this. Great characterisation, style and expression.

Thanks for including the time-lapse too, it’s really interesting to see the order, decisions and alterations during the process.

I can’t tell if this is real or not.

Absolutely stunning. I love it.

I’m tempted to say “don’t add stippling, don’t change a thing about it”.

[Edit] Just had a look at some of your work in previous posts, where you have added stippling to it. I’m now “pro-stipple”.

Wes Fucking Streeting? He’s even more right-wing than Starmer!

There absolutely should be a ‘next time’. You’ve done a really nice job there, and if you already have ideas for refinements and improvements (and assuming you actually enjoyed the process of making) you should certainly continue with it.

Absolutely spectacular.