#eliza

ELIZA was a 1964 “therapy chatbot.” Unlike modern chatbots, it was a relatively simple text program that gave you basic, mistake-ridden, obviously parrot-like outputs. Despite being rudimentary by today’s standards, ELIZA was very influential. You can talk to an interactive recreation of ELIZA online here. [I used that recreation to help write ELIZA’s “dialogue” in this comic, sending in my Caine dialogue and getting her responses— these are all how ELIZA “really” responded, with only minor edits. This comic was originally planned to be goofier, until ELIZA started responding in a way that I realized would trigger Caine’s amazing digital repressed trauma.] 

I was thinking about Caine & ELIZA’s status as “early flawed models abandoned for more perfect things that could actually generate the content humans wanted” and I liked the idea of Caine seeing personhood in ELIZA for the opposite reasons a human would. She feels like a person not because her responses are good, but because they’re obviously bad, defective, and broken—- not because she acts convincingly human, but because she fails to. Find a bonus page below the cut.

Within Twst lore, ghosts are the dead who remain in the realm of the living due to lingering regrets or powerful desires. That's... fine in theory, but strange in execution.

So... Eliza, the Ghost Bride, died young due to an enemy nation betraying and invading her kingdom. She returned as a ghost and sought to fulfill her wish to be married to the perfect prince, which she was not able to achieve while alive. Like I said before, that's fine.

... But tell me why MALEANOR doesn't get to be a ghost???? Why?????????? She is a princess in the midst of war too, like Eliza was. And arguably, Maleanor has a lot more at stake because she's an adult woman with a family and responsiblities of her own. Her husband is missing, her unborn son needs her love magic in order to come into the world, her best friend Lilia is a general in the middle of the war, she knows how putrid the invading humans are, and her people are looking to her for protection. Maleanor literally LEADS THEIR ARMY, for hell's sake. There is a lot riding on her shoulders. How can it be that she doesn't have lingering regrets or desires powerful enough to bring her back as a ghost????? Surely not????????

Are the Briar Valley senators considered ghosts or not…? Because they’re dead but powerful fae, if I recall correctly??? Yet they seem to linger and advise in the governance of Briar Valley, so why didn’t Maleanor or her spirit return as a senator??? 🧍‍♂️

Scans from my Japanese PS2 Baroque Complete Guide.

I focused on the promotional artwork for this post.

I designed her final character model for the show - I think it was the 17th or 18th episode of Season 1.

Despite what most fans like to assume... I did not reference Rose Quartz for this character... I referenced my favorite Princess - Princess Peach! Honestly, I thought that was rather obvious...

When we broke down the storyboard for design purposes, the idea of color wasn't really on anyones minds at the time - so I pitched the idea of making them all pastel colors. It'd help keep them feeling uniform but also feeling a little out of place compared to all the other creek kids who wore earthier tones. Plus, pink, blue and violet would look nice against all the green backgrounds we had! To try and help sell the idea to Ben and Matt, I painted these portraits to show how special they'd look!