Hey guys! Hope you all are doing well. I’m doing good, overall, and while I know this week’s page isn’t the most exciting to look at, that dance scene should be coming up in a few pages, and it’s a scene I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. Quick note for the reader: More or less, Theo only has eyes for Katrina. He’s not interested in Akila (despite her best efforts), and him asking to feel Violet’s… patchy things is out of actual curiosity for what they feel like, and isn’t making passes at her. I don’t think he realized the subtext of his question, if I’m being honest. He’s probably too excited at the thought of Katrina being OK with him having a thing for her.

Speaking of Theo and Kat, I think I figured out why Katrina is able to tolerate Theo’s eternal optimism and cheerfulness. In my head, when Katrina sees Theo being happy, she kinda forgets her troubles for a while, and just is able to enjoy life. His optimism may be annoying to some, but for Katrina, it’s a sort of spot of light in her life. Also yes, if it wasn’t obvious, she likes him too. I still wouldn’t say they’re full on dating, but they’re becoming closer friends.

You might have noticed how the characters seem to be scratching their backs a lot, and the meaning of it probably wasn’t as clear as I thought. Overall, a character scratches their back or neck when they’re thinking hard about something, for example (on this page), how Theo should phrase his question so Violet doesn’t get angry. Second note to the reader: You can’t tell due to the panels, but Violet is wearing shorts. This is pretty unusual for her – as she normally likes to cover up as much of her false body parts as possible (which is why she wears the nylon suit thing), but Theo kinda surprised her (in my head she had just gotten out of the shower.) The scene where Katina was explaining how she and Akila met was originally written as a flashback, but while I can probably get away with using the fog to censor Akila’s… upper torso once, a whole few pages of it would start getting kind of ridiculous. So I settled on just a panel of it. Speaking of Akila, here’s her art evolution. She’s changed a lot since my first drawings of her!