Phone It In

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All right! We return on Friday with a new comic and and a new round of Q and A! If you've got a question you'd like me to answer, just pop it in an email with "Q and A" in the subject line. (Or tweet it at me.) See you then!

-Sam Logan

Shifty

For those who don't remember (or never knew), Shapeshifting Slug society is very insular, very practical, and very discouraging of individual identity. Most of the shifters who leave their underground homeland do so because they want to explore the world and develop a unique identity for themselves. It's something I actually got to dig into in the "universe guidebook" portion of the Underground RPG! (Which is available as a physical book here or a digital PDF here!)

Come back on Wednesday for our next comic, team!

-Sam Logan

Sam and Fuzzy Q & A:  Translated Edition
Got a question you want answered? Just drop me an email with "Q & A" in the subject line!

"Is there any significance to the specific years Cynthia wasn't performing in this strip? I feel like there's a level to the punchline I'm missing." -Max

There isn't! The joke is just supposed to be that the dates prove she actually is close to 100 years old, which she had just denied. But you are not the only person who asked this question, so I think I maybe didn't word the dialogue as tightly as I could have. I think I also picked some years that have a lot of historic ressonance, like 1945, that make it feel like she might be referencing certain historic events. (But in reality, I just picked 'em to make sense with her age, and also to align with when burlesque fell out of vogue for a few decades.)

"What language would each of the characters in Sam & Fuzzy want to learn?" -Alex

I guess it depends on which characters already do and don't know more than one language! Fuzzy definitely only knows English. Sam probably has a minimal, awkward grasp of high school French from growing up in Canada that is slowly erroding the older he gets. Gert and Jess probably know quite a few languages -- Gert because she is very educated and Jess because she has learned a lot about human cultures. And Fidgital -- along with all robots -- would be fluent in almost all human languages.

But I guess none of those guys are good examples of characters who want to learn new languages! For that, the characters that spring to mind are Dev and Alicia. Dev doesn't speak Hindi, and probably feels a little guilty about it, but her mom was the only person in her immediate family who was fluent. I think she would like to know it, but isn't actively trying to learn. Alicia, on the other hand, is probably actively using duolingo or something to try and learn Japanese, so that she doesn't have to rely on fan subs and scans.

"Is Rikk going to get into the S&F universe equivalent of NFTs?" -Chris

I think Rikk wouldn't get into them until the bubble had already burst. Fidgital, on the other hand, was probably all over it.

That's all for this week, team! Come back on Monday for our next comic.

-Sam