Astrid’s Calamitous Christmas Caper – page 7
Yeah, I know, the obvious thing would be for elves to be running this place, but the very fact that it’s the obvious thing is why I couldn’t do it. Instead, it’s the glorious return of Squishyfupplebutter! …or maybe this is an off-shoot culture, one a LOT less dramatic than the ones we saw before. Or at least a different KIND of dramatic.
Anyway, this marks the end of my first batch of mass queued pages. Hopefully, by the time this page actually goes live and anyone reads it, I’ll already have another batch of pages loaded up and ready to go. I mean, it IS all fully written, and that’s the hardest part… but not the most time-consuming. The OTHER reason why I decided to go with the whole newsprint look for this series of comics was in hope that it’d be faster to bash out than the big, full-color pages I’ve traditionally done for December. And I guess it is a bit faster… but not THAT much faster.
It definitely seems like they’re an offshoot culture of Squishyfupplebutter, the real question is whether it was a peaceful separation, or if there was a Cuddlywuddlywumplesviolentdecadeslongcivilwar involved. Given the scope of creating presents for an entire galaxy with a quintillion kids, the population of pseudo-elves may have been the larger faction.
Honestly, I suspect that the elves were willing genetic modifications to make those there enjoy their stay more. Squishyfupplebutter, meanwhile, are the descendants of those who went through the process, but didn’t want to stay making the toys.
This would also explain the Squishyfupplebutter’s proclivity towards cute things, and predisposition towards panic. Their ancestors were literally genetically modified towards being satisfied with constant workloads of highly repetitive tasks and making other people happy. That type of instinct doesn’t transition all that well towards high-stress environments and personal danger.