Annotated 47-40
FB: “This is the worst knock-knock joke I’ve ever been a part of.”
Man, those faces, especially that last Shanna face. Top-notch.
It’s been pointed out to me that shooting out a door lock is more or less impossible. I think Flo made an issue of that as we were scripting this scene, and as you’ll see, we went in another direction. If so, I honestly forgot this long enough to end up using the trope again in a recent Traveler, but I’m probably done with it now. And I’m glad Flo pushed for better, because the strategy chat we get here turns out to be an important step in Xan and Shanna’s development. You’ll see what I mean tomorrow.
I suspect that if Shannah had used the gun on the door, even if it did work, the rest of the story might have played out _very_ differently …
Indeed I agree the expressions are absolutely fantastic here, but it was Xan that drew my attention in the last panel right of the bat. I love it, haha.
As far as shooting a lock is concerned you’re right, it doesn’t work too well. A cheap padlock and a sufficiently powerful gun could do something, but there’s a big mess. Any more sophisticated lock (such as a door latch) isn’t going to just open after getting a bullet.
What you do, like in the image, is target the door. If the lock/latch isn’t connected to anything you can just push the door open. In real life there’s still limits to what can be done, but in a comic where you have an arbitrarily flimsy door and an arbitrarily strong gun, that can work.
There’s always the Sneakers method.
It is possible to shoot out a door lock but you’ll usually need something bigger than a handgun to destroy enough of the lock or door to open it. A shotgun is most commonly used for breaching doors for this reason. It’s also usually easier to destroy the hinges of most doors instead of the locks as most places never bother reinforcing those against damage.
Of course, firing any sort of weapon throws stealth right out the window and would get the police involved much faster so it’s probably a good thing they didn’t need to.
For me, this just came across as Xan being terrible at planning ahead.
Law of role playing games infiltration: Try a different door to get a fresh security roll. Maybe spend a willpower/fate point/whatever next time too.
My impression was that Xan is suggesting that they could use a gun to threaten someone to let them in than assuming she could shoot the lock open
Yeah, that was my initial read as well, but resorting to threats of violence seems out of character for Xan.
I mean, this is all sort of overlooking the fact that most commercial door locks are mag locks, not deadbolts.
Although funny story–on job I worked at had the plug for the mag lock plugged in RIGHT OUTSIDE THE DOOR. I asked the building manager for a keycard so I could come in after hours and he reached up like three feet up the wall, pulled the plug out, and said “here you go.”
Which is all to say that even without USB ports on a door handle there’s some shenanigans you can get up to. Even if it’s not so dumb as pulling a plug out of a nearby power jack, all buildings are required to have at least one door that unlocks if the power goes out.