Q&A: July 2022

My goodness, it's finally here. Our first ever PATREON EXCLUSIVE Q&A!!! I'm excited. Are you excited? Good.

First order of business: since we're officially hitting the metaphorical ship with the metaphorical champagne bottle... thank you to all the ASPECT HOLDER patrons who took the time to submit a question! There were so many fun ones and we're super happy to see you guys engaging with the new rewards, really brings a tear to the eye.

Second order of business: we ended up getting this ready a bit later than we wanted, due to real life getting in the way of our schedule and what not. Ideally, the next Q&As will be posted a bit more toward the middle of month rather than the tail end of it. 

Also, for all you $12 patrons out there, look out for the sketch submission box to be open soon!

Now, without further ado, let's get cracking.

1. "Are there any relationships between characters that were originally going to be a part of the story but were then removed?"

AUSTIN: There were a few! Memory escapes me at the ripe old age of 24, but hey, you start going senile at 25 if you're being honest with yourself, so it's not uncommon to find those symptoms early.

Ones that come to mind are Sova and Arcjec, who used to have kind of a pale thing, with Sova being the one with more interest. There wasn't too much going on there, they had good chemistry but ultimately Laivan was the better choice. We decided to keep it simple and leave them as friends. This was before the soulmate system too, so there could be multiple crushes going on at once. Ditto for the Arcjec/Taz/Ellsee/Laivan dynamic before we decided Arcjec and Ellsee were siblings.

In that same vein you also had Murrit and Calder, who were meant to be pale at one point. I remember this specifically because Heather drew a silly comic based off a Vine with them. Remember Vine? This was at a point in development where Murrit had a far less realized character, more a typical money hungry bruiser than an incomprehensibly devious schemer. Calder's (now former) admiration of him is one aspect that did stick in both instances, though.

Albion and Dismas were meant to be a more involved thing once upon a time too, but it never really blossomed into more than a compelling one-sided thing on Dismas's end, which still remains in the comic as a currently unseen aspect of how their relationship went. The way I see it, Albion treated Dismas with an immediate kindness he doesn't readily get, and he took that to mean he should be romantically intertwined with her in some way.

EDDIE: Man, can you imagine this stuff? Definitely left in the cutting room floor for a reason. Dismas having had a past baby-crush on Albion for "she was nice to me and my friend" reasons is very funny and endearing, though. I bet he's so retroactively embarrassed about that.

2. "How and when did Arcjec start smoking? Does it impact his physical health at all? Also, does this confirm that they're indeed the worst smelling character out of the main 12?"

AUSTIN: I resent the Arcjec smelliness accusations. That guy takes hour and a half long depression showers and smells like charred caramel and cherry cough syrup on his worst day! Let's not judge someone just because they wear copies of old clothing. Are we going to overlook that Ellsee lives in a tent? That Occeus works with corpses? We shouldn't let olfactory elitism take hold like this, goddamn it.

Oh, right, the actual question. I think he started during his reclusive spiral without much of a plan. You know Arcjec, they're a bit easily subjected to emotional whims and sort of follow the lead of whatever they feel like at the time. It's why whenever he and Taz get into an argument it can turn into a hotheaded spitefest for a bit. Starting to smoke was something like that for him.

I don't think it messes with his health much, though. He hasn't done it for long enough, and while repitonian cigarettes do still have nicotine in them, I feel like they're arguably less harmful than ours due to being sugar-based rather than tobacco-based.

3. "What's tea made with on Repiton? What's Gerbat's soda of choice? What effects does Dr. Pepper have, if it exists on Repiton?"

AUSTIN: There are two different kinds of tea on Repiton: the more typically consumed kind which is a chocolate and Kool-Aid mix with hot milk, and the herbal remedy kind that people like Gerbat hand out.

XAM: I think that city folk usually consume the regular version because that's all they have, but rural folk might experiment with adding new stuff/replacing ingredients, so their tea exists on a scale from awful to palpable and close to normal human tea. I don't know Gerbat's feelings on soda, but as far as tea goes, he's got a no kool-aid policy and likes experimenting with ingredients for the art of it.

EDDIE: And unfortunately, we had nothing on Dr. Pepper in our official soda records. Feel free to headcanon any wacky uses to your heart's content!

4. "What's the most horrible monstrosity that Turnin consumed?"

AUSTIN: I wish I could tell you, but they put me and everyone else that knows under NDA.

EDDIE: You really don't want to mess with Turnin's lawyers.

5. "Does Racren have a workout routine? Does he count macros? Or is he just a natural at being a swag joth?"

EDDIE: The universal truth of the matter is that if you want some swag muscles, you gotta work for them, even if you're a funny grey alien. So yes, Racren probably has a workout routine! Please don't ask me about specifics though, none of us work out. My job is sitting at my computer and drawing things, I don't even know what a macro is.

6. "What kind of soda WOULD each of the main 12 be?"

EDDIE: Haha I see what you did there. 

You'll have to forgive us, but those kinds of "list something specific about each of the main cast" questions sometimes just don't come very naturally. You really have to be inspired to take them all to the bank. I WILL say though, the one thing that immediately came to mind here was Occeus being a nice little can of Guaraná Antarctica. (That's a brazilian soda, for any of you gringos out there)

Now you may be a little confused why. This thing's not even blue. And to clear that up I would like to show you a picture of what a Guaraná fruit looks like:

Pretty thematic huh. Also it packs twice the caffeine you find in coffee beans!

7. "This is not related to lore, but HOW do you draw circles so well? It's driving me crazy."

EDDIE: With the power of a magic tool called the "ellipse", set to anti-aliasing! It's very easy you just click and drag it.

8. "Are there any easter eggs you've hidden in panels?"

XAM: Shrek Wazowski. (From this page.)

EDDIE: What the fuck.

AUSTIN: Oh yeah, so this is obviously age old VE. That panel was done by Calicorn, who is a friend that worked with me, Momo, Joy and others on Act 8 and Act Omega, and they just... put him in there. I forget about him for long periods of time.

XAM: I'M  T H E  T R A S H M A N

EDDIE: No further explanation required, I think.

9. "I was wondering about the Edolon-Aumtzi connection? I'm not really sure what that means to me so answer that how you will."

EDDIE: Only you can find the meaning to that question, I'm afraid. You must look deep within your heart and go on a self-reflective journey. A pilgrimage of sorts, perhaps? Let us know how that goes!

That aside, I guess you could say Aumtzi is an external contractor currently taking on a gig from Edolon's cult... that he blackmailed them into by snooping on Edolon's private Corporate records. Remember SBB Volume 11? Yeah, that. So, not a very tight relationship. They're not even proper coworkers! It's stinky man on stinky man violence and mutual distaste, I would say. Means to an end, you know how it goes.

Maybe we'll see how that pans out in Volume 12, huh?

10. "What is Edolon's favourite Weird Al song?"

AUSTIN: "Everything You Know Is Wrong".

11. "Follow up question: What are Talald and Seinru's favorite Weird Al songs?"

AUSTIN: "Everything You Know Is Wrong" also.

EDDIE: Sensing a trend here.

12. "What would be the reaction to No Way Home on Repiton if it came out before everything went to shit?"

AUSTIN: I don't think modern repitonian audiences would find it all too daring. Their algorithms have made far more innovative multiverse nonsense by this point. Three spider-men? Laughable. Eight? Child's play. Fifty? Nothing to these trolls.

13. "What is the deal with cars? A lot of typically four-wheeled vehicles are hovering while motorcycles (one notable example in particular) do have wheels. Does this have anything to do with their age? Does the truck in SBB volume 1 have wheels in order to support the weight of the cargo, or is it because it's an older model?"

EDDIE: Ooooh, I love talking about lore minutiae. I think it's probably a safe assumption that newer, fancier models of personal vehicles have that top of the line, cyberpunkish hover-shine to them, while older models keep their lame ass wheels. Not sure if it has anything to do with weight necessarily - Repiton is full of advanced scifi technology, what with the auto-fixing liquid glass, Borderlands guns, intelligent babysitter robots and whatnot.

If you take that angle into account, I think it's very fitting that Secily's bike still keeps the good 'ol wheels to the ground vintage charm, being that she's a known technophobe. As for Necron's beat-ass rusty truck, I like to imagine Oricka fixed that hunk of junk with some sweet hover mods, as she likes to do for dear sweet 'Ron sometimes. :)

14. "How does the Regulator Academy go about its “recruitment”? Is there an age/caste restriction and/or requirement?"

EDDIE: Repiton's brand of hemospectrum-related discrimination is CONSIDERABLY less stratified than Alternia's, so you'd be hard pressed to find any occupations that are straight up off-limits to certain castes (with the notable exception being jades and reduplication). I imagine you need to be at least 6 sweeps in order to apply for a position in the academy, given that its the legal age where Corporate cuts off its credit assistance and trolls need to start looking out for themselves. Though if they're taking on trolls that are THAT young, I can see them having some sort of junior cadet program until they're a little bit older and ready for the real job. That would probably also work as a trial period for the new recruits, though I don't think the regulator position is strictly off-limits to anyone that hasn't undergone this junior training period, per se. They would just have separate, adult-only intake classes.

And that about wraps it up! We hope you guys enjoyed reading through these. We'll open a new question submission box next month for the August Q&A, since I think this system worked out pretty well, so you'll know when we're ready to start tallying up those q's again.

Seeya!

- Eddie, Austin and Xam