theft
Original: theft on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Interviewer (a younger person with dark hair): How do you come up with new writing ideas?
Older writer (a woman with light, curly hair): Stealing. Theft. The older I get, the more brazen.
Panel 2:
Older writer: All "creative" people steal. We take something old, wipe a little modernity on it, and call it a career.
Panel 3:
Interviewer: But if everyone steals, how did writers ever come up with anything?
Older writer: That is lost to the mists of history.
Panel 4:
(The older writer raises her hands theatrically; an inset shows two silhouetted faces.)
Panel 5 (caption): 200,000 YEARS EARLIER...
An ancient woman with light curly hair: One time, things good. Later things bad. Later things maybe good again.
A listening woman: Ooooooooooh.
A man with a beard (off to the side): Me steal that.
Votey:
The older writer (face shown close up): Me also throw in sex appeal here and there.
Interviewer (a younger person with dark hair): How do you come up with new writing ideas?
Older writer (a woman with light, curly hair): Stealing. Theft. The older I get, the more brazen.
Panel 2:
Older writer: All "creative" people steal. We take something old, wipe a little modernity on it, and call it a career.
Panel 3:
Interviewer: But if everyone steals, how did writers ever come up with anything?
Older writer: That is lost to the mists of history.
Panel 4:
(The older writer raises her hands theatrically; an inset shows two silhouetted faces.)
Panel 5 (caption): 200,000 YEARS EARLIER...
An ancient woman with light curly hair: One time, things good. Later things bad. Later things maybe good again.
A listening woman: Ooooooooooh.
A man with a beard (off to the side): Me steal that.
Votey:
The older writer (face shown close up): Me also throw in sex appeal here and there.
Alt text
A five-panel SMBC comic. An interviewer asks an older woman writer how she comes up with new writing ideas. She replies, "Stealing. Theft. The older I get, the more brazen," and explains that all "creative" people steal something old, wipe a little modernity on it, and call it a career. Asked how writers ever came up with anything if everyone steals, she says it's "lost to the mists of history" while gesturing dramatically. The scene flashes back 200,000 years to a prehistoric cavewoman telling a simple story: "One time, things good. Later things bad. Later things maybe good again." A listener goes "Ooooooooooh," while a bearded caveman beside them mutters, "Me steal that" — implying the first story was immediately plagiarized. In the votey aftercomic, a close-up of the writer's face as she adds, "Me also throw in sex appeal here and there."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.