Far Out There

In the earlier draft of this page… well actually it was “drafts” plural because Astrid finding the mug was going to be the end of one page, and her reading the note was going to be where the full extent of the present scam was explained.  But again, I had to condense a lot of things to keep the page count down, so the exposition about how they’re rigging the list to get extra toys made and then selling them for a profit all wound up happening earlier.  I needed to fill up the extra space with new narration without just repeating myself, and it hit me that it’d be perfectly in character for Astrid to be more concerned with letting everybody know how clever she was about figuring out the plot than actually communicating that information to other people.  You know those people who only tell stories for the benefit of their own hearing themselves say it?  That’s Astrid.