ZOMBIE FORUMS

Not really.. I see it as the difference between a charcter "not speaking" or not being able to come up with something coherent (or tight-lipped, choosing not to speak, in some cases) versus, say, standing there mouth hanging open.

ie:

"Shit!", Jon exclaimed, as he realized what was going on below him. Sarine's mouth and brain worked at cross purposes while she tried to explain. to herself mostly, exactly what *humans* were doing using time-magic like that, and with weapons she hadn't seen in human hands in several centuries.

or something like that.

Because, "..." looks better and makes more sense than "Ek...gk...bw...gweh." In this context it's a visual representation of the sort of stuttering sound people make when they're too shocked to come up with words, but keep trying to anyways. This differs from simply having one's jaw drop. (In a different context the interpretation will also obviously be different).

This BS answer brought to you by ImpyHuggles!

^-^'

fixed

What can he do? The monk had his number from the moment he fired the rifle, if not sooner. The monk is looking right at him. Besides which, he's not sure what the fuck just happened, a guy seemed to unilaterally teleport into existance in front of a guy he'd just shot.

I was hoping that Sarine might even the score somewhat here, but judging by her facial expression, she isn't exactly miliseconds from opening up a can of whoopass.

She might get out if she leaves now, though. I don't think the Ensigerium would kill an elf and risk provoking war, at least not without the obligatory "WTF are you doing here" interrogation first.

Whose carcinogenic properties and connections to flipper-babies are purely conjecture.

...

Buy ImpyHuggles today! They cure depression, back pain, marriage, erectile disfunction, and diarrhea. Unless she squeezes too hard... in which case it may have the unfortunate sideeffects of depression, back pain, marriage, erectile disfunction, and diarrhea.

Coming soon to a Poe near you.

I read the first part laughed. Started to type something, and saw the bottom part. Which made me rofl. Poor Poe. Back pain, ed, and diarrhea, man's three greatest enemies.

Then my work here is done.
Hectonkhyres, away!

You forgot about (repeated) blunt trauma to the balls.

Yes. But that generally comes afterwards. Usually in the course of really fun sex or as a lady's way of saying there isn't going to be any sex. When at the dinnertable, it is often replaced with the much more civilized fork in the leg.

Yeah but a perplexed, somewhat-panicing reaction can be deduced by the way Poe drew her face. If she doesn't have a dialogue box, we can simply assume that she's not saying anything.

I guess one thing it does is add interaction that jumps out at the reader from the character, bringing her from the background to the forefront with the reinforced info that she really doesn't know what to say.

But really isn't it a little redundant?

In a face-to-face interaction (or a live action movie or whatnot), a lot of the information that "..." conveys is usually conveyed through motion. Rather, through lack thereof; it's usually not just a sudden blank or surprised expression, but also a momentary freeze that conveys "I'm having a fight-or-flight decision moment here" (or in other contexts, paired with different expressions, something else like "I can't believe you just said that").

In a purely textual interaction like chat, saying "..." is a lot different from saying nothing. By itself it conveys the same think as a blank face and a pause. Paired with an emoticon, it can convey other things. All of these convey different things than just saying nothing or emoticons by themselves. The "..." implies the paused motion. In chat, sometimes people will preface a comment with a line of "..." to indicate such a pause before their response, which is of course very different in effect from actually waiting longer before replying, since there's always lag time in chat, as people type at different rates.

The same sort of chat rules seem to apply in comics. There is no motion and thus no timing in comics. Chat likewise has no real sense of timing because of the lag time required to type a response. So "..." is useful in conveying the paused motion that goes along with whatever expression, or goes before whatever comment that is made after it.

Sarine here isn't just thinking "wtf!", which the expression alone would imply. She's thinking "... wtf". Subtle but important difference.

While everything is correct about the Bukkake Convention that allows the usage of "...", which I use on a regular basis, Sarine's face is emoting these reactions in order:

1) Shock - at seeing Jon pull the trigger

2) Surprise - at seeing a Durus Flamma being used

3) Acklowledgement - at confirming that the object she saw under the robes was indeed what she thought it was (Just for reference: the previous strip had her assessing the situation in her mind when she ran across something in her mental image of the targets that piqued her curiosity, thusly she attempted to bring this to the attention of Jon before he pulled the trigger.)

4) Amazement - at seeing a human wielding a Durus Flamma

5) Puzzlement - at her not having figured it out sooner

6) Querying - at "How the Fuck do I get out of here without losing Jon in the process?"

Let her answer come about in the next strip... whenever that may be. The best part of course is her look. Apparently this is what it takes to catch an elf off-guard. That look's priceless.

Edit: So much so that I HAD to make it my avi.

What I mean is, he's telling Sara to escort the cardinal and his assistant out of the room. To me, this implies that Warrel intends to take on Jon himself.
It's not much, but it beats the alternative.

I'm sorta getting the feeling Warrel isn't entirely supportive of this particular test of Anita's. Anyone else?

Cue Ghastly and his 'schoolgirl looking at first cock' joke.

That or the precursor to laughing uproariously to Ghastly and his Hubjo!

I've always read the "..." as one of the reaction sounds that we don't really have good letter-sounds for, such as the closed mouth-back of the throat growl one responds to especially asinine comments with (typed it would be sort of an 'm' and 'r' but at the same time, because if you do them sequentially everyone reads "mur" which doesn't quite convey the same emotion), or, I think in Sarine's case, the sound of a sharp intake of breath through the teeth (sounds like a hiss, except backwards, and ssih just doesn't make sence when typed).

Sarine spontainiously grew herself a cock and accidentally sodomized Jon.
Yup. That explains the facial expressions.

The Gewehr has been losing people to the Ensirgim for some months now. No one in the organization has any excuse for not knowing how dangerous they are. They even have eye witness testimony from at least three survivors.

From http://errantstory.com/archive.php?date=2006-08-23.