Page Commentary No. 219

Gunwild: Ooo a heating element built right into the table for tea. That sounds convenient but I bet it needs a lot of safety features!

Psu: Well... if anything it could be a sort of smart induction plate which sorta uses magnets to heat up metal objects. It can stay pretty hot though, once the teapot has been lifted. So the surface would change color to indicate it's dangerous to touch. ANYWAY. I think besides some of the visuals like how Maddy keeps an Enterprise in her office, or how Talps' room is all round and purple, I think we have to talk about Xerran biology.

Gunwild: I'm trying to remember why I thought of this "they only develop secondary sexual characteristics when they're actually going to pair off" thing... I think it's because that kind of later metamorphosis is only rarely seen in earth animals, so I thought, "What if it was just a normal part of life that people dealt with in a pretty human context."

Psu: I think it came about partially because of how the characters were designed. Both Maddy and Kettering were kinda short and could be read as pretty young, visually. Maddy is in fact a young captain. But Kettering was like... I think I remember how in the movie Master and Commander, they had a couple kids on the ship that were being trained to be future navy captains. That's sorta what I pictured with Kettering. And then it was interesting to have him actually be a kid, so he'd end up with a rapid growth spurt so we could show time passing in the comic. Which I think Gunwild is always wary of for good reason.

Gunwild: I apologize if I just gave him an English surname because the Regency Navy is a ripoff of the Royal Navy and it reminded me of Horatio Hornblower or Aubrey-Maturin or the Temeraire books. I've never been to Kettering, or Northamptonshire overall, if you live there. It's probably nice.

Psu: I'm a little surprised more of our characters DON'T have Hornblowy type names.

Gunwild: "Hornblower" must be a tough name to have if you wanna learn a string instrument or the drums or something.

Psu: Hmm... remind me that when I need surnames for characters I can just use stuff like Drummer or Beatboxer. Oh, I also wanted to talk about how Maddy is with Kettering in this page. I think I distinctly remember a comment on the site about this one, where the reader was surprised to see Captain Vrax has this sorta relationship with one of her crew members. To be sure, the number of non Drone crew on their ship is actually very small. So I imagine they'd all have to get along to some extent. Even if they can communicate with anyone via video calls it was nice that Kettering was able to confide with his superior officer about such a delicate subject.

Gunwild: Yeah. I feel like it's creepy when say, a Star Trek Captain Janeway gets really invested in the personal lives of her crew. But I dunno, I wanted this to play more like a teacher who's trying to answer a kid's questions about their maturing body and make it not scary for them.

Psu: Well with Janeway they made the mistake thinking that she'd be a "motherly" character to her crew when in reality RUTHLESS Janeway was the best part of Star Trek Voyager.

Gunwild: Next ship captain protagonist I write is being a jerk, all of this niceness is in danger of rubbing off on me.

Psu: Well you also like Star Trek Discovery more than I do.