Q&A
What is Sideways Spa?
A webcomic based on the same idea as DM of the Rings and Darths & Droids. I highly recommend both. They interpret The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars as products of tabletop RPGs, in worlds where the works of fiction themselves do not exist and thus the players know nothing about them. This comic applies the same idea to Stargate.
Another comic based on the same idea, inspired by the first two, is The Bloody Nipple Saga, which gives similar treatment to Conan the Barbarian.
Why this name?
“Sideways spa” is how Thefourdotelipsis, a fellow user of Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki, nicknamed the Stargate device. I remembered it when I needed to come up with a name for this comic, and voila.
So, how much do the players know about the actual Stargate franchise?
Nothing. Nil. In their world, it doesn’t exist, with consequences best left to the TV Tropes Wiki to examine. The players make up the plot of the movie and the series as they go along.
In their universe, there is no Stargate movie, no SG-1, Atlantis, et cetera. This similarly affected the careers of the actors and crew. For example, Richard Dean Anderson is mostly remembered for MacGyver, and Ben Browder and Claudia Black for Farscape.
What software is this site powered by?
Custom-written software using PHP, MySQL, and the CakePHP framework, loosely based on the Wookiee’ QDB. I will release the code if someone is interested in it, but don’t expect anything spectacular — it’s minimalistic and tailored for my own needs.
What software do you use to make the comic?
Open source software. The movie DVD was ripped using Avidemux, which I also use to watch the movie frame-by-frame and take screenshots. The strips themselves are laid out in GIMP.
Like Darths & Droids, this comic uses the Gosmick Sans font for speech bubbles.