Page Commentary No. 186

Gunwild: I'm too soft to make fictional kids this sad on the regular.

Psu: I admit I wasn’t prepared to talk about this page again, even though of course we knew it was coming up. I think we had a lot of tough conversations about where this story would go here.

Gunwild: It came out really well. I'm just gonna be sad until I get to read the next few pages because that poor little robot deserves to be happy. Ah well, at least the evidence drawer code amuses me.

Psu: He’s alright. Basically it’s not unlike Bender getting buried underneath Roswell New Mexico for a thousand years. Or the end of the movie, AI. I’m pretty sure I’m one of two people that actually likes that movie. And that might explain a thing or two about my creative choices...

Gunwild: Well I know we both love "Roswell That Ends Well," have watched it together, and have probably mentioned that we think it's pretty much the perfect single sci-fi comedy story. "Choke on that, causality!" So I guess it's nice to put characters through the wringer and then have them work out surprisingly well - a comedy in the Shakespearean sense, I think.

Psu: I think any story or comic, on a long enough timeline, deserves to encounter the whole spectrum of emotions and stuff. For a long time the only person in the comic who ever felt sad was Maddy! And she probably doesn’t even deserve it! Not saying that Cassiopeia deserves to be sad here. But it sorta helps us understand her character a bit better. Everyone’s been through some rough times. And everyone’s said the wrong thing to a friend. And everyone has had that one person they wished they said good bye to, properly.

Gunwild: I hope when this pandemic is over, we all get to come out of our stasis boxes and reunite with people and let them know how important they are to us. I'm gonna hug you, is what I'm saying, Psu. This is not a thing you can avoid.

Psu: Oh noes... anyway, we got a lot of good responses to this comic. I remember when we posted this, I would check to see what people thought. It was a risk, ya know. We had a lot of people worried for this little toy that we had only seen for like... two strips in the entire comic. And yet they seemed to empathize with Beebot and Cassiopeia. I think this wasn’t too long after my pet cat passed away. And while I don’t think I specifically channeled those feelings into this, it was worth it to explore sadder scenes. But I was also glad that peopled picked up on Beebot grabbing the flower. I wanted that to be a little hopeful thing people could look forward to seeing in the next few pages.

Gunwild: Indeed, we planned it well. I think that touch was something we did not argue about at any point. 'Cause even if we're fighting about how the story should be told, we probably want it to mean the same things.

Psu: There were a lot of things that, because we got to plan it visually ahead of time, we used to the story’s benefit. Since I knew I needed a cop for the next scene, well I gave this guy a beard that you’d recognize right away even if you saw it all grey and stuff! Visual side of this page, I’m really happy with how ti came out. The street scenes I think still feel really good. You don’t lose focus on Cassiopeia but she feels very lost in a big city. You’d think Santa Claus could help her out but it was a very rough Christmas that year.

Gunwild: I'm glad she eventually found people to be nice to her...