page 735 – throwing money at the problem
WOW, this page is late. Sorry about that, guys. Remember how I confessed that I hadn’t gotten an extra page done before leaving for Animazement? Yeah, this is why that’s a problem. I up and zonked out while working on the page last night, and… well, just look at all the words on this page. This isn’t one to try and do while half asleep. Heck, even after that, it’s still a sloppier page than I would have liked.
And speaking of unfinished, you might very well be reading this page with no color or anything. This page is overdue enough as it is, I didn’t wanna make you guys wait any longer while I colored everything in. So, here’s the half-done version to look at until I actually DO get everything finished.
There’s still not gonna be a new Voting Incentive today, though. We MIGHT have a new one on Friday, though that depends on how much progress I’ve made on Conventional Wisdom by then. Cross your fingers!
EDIT: Okay, yeah, it’s colored in now. Funny thing, even though gun seller guy’s been appearing for months, I only just now had to decide on his hair/skin/clothes colors. Up ’til now, I’d been able to cheat and just make everything purple.
(Historical Notes: Even as I write this in the summer of 2020, there’s still a lot of unanswered questions about just what Astrid’s background really is. It’s established that she really IS as rich as she acts, and the eventual reveal that she was childhood friends with Augusta proves this isn’t some recent development, but then there’s moments like these which suggest there’s more going on in her history than just growing up loaded. I’ll be honest, I don’t really have a solid answer for that yet, partially because Astrid hasn’t NEEDED to have that stuff answered yet.)
@ Comic: Dude, you just succeeded in sneaking past Stilez. Continue sneaking away and hide far away.
@ Historical Notes: Astrid probably had much of her “rich idiot” hate build up from her police work, particularly the hate about them trying to buy their way out of every trouble. The number of bribes she’s probably been offered, only for her to reveal that she has more money in her emergency funds account than their net worth is probably significantly high.
Don’t knock bribing your way out of trouble – a significant percentage of the funding for many Galactic Police Departments comes from bribes just from Castral and Iconal alone for getting out of trouble!
Bonus points for working obscure secondary characters into the theory!
Yeah, it just hit me as I re-edited these that it doesn’t make a lot of sense for him to fixate on getting help from Disonar instead of just fleeing. The REAL reason is that I needed him to dump those jewels on Disonar to resolve the money troubles that got him wrapped up in all this to begin with. There were probably less awkward ways of accomplishing that, though.
Though I can’t name any examples offhand, I’m fairly sure I’ve seen numerous TV/movies where there was a cop who was supposedly independently rich. Usually the reason given is either or both of 1. Noble desire to help society 2. It’s fun. #2, of course, works a lot better when you’re a TV/Movie cop than a RL cop, and most of your job is car/boat/helicopter/motorcycle chases and gunfights without any of the actual risk of death normally associated with them, nor generally any risk that your massive trail of destruction will have killed hundreds of bystanders, or that you’ll be fired/jailed for the millions in damages you caused. Still, I would guess Astrid to be more of a Reason#2 type. Particularly if her job mostly consists of James Bond type police work rather than the usual type.
Miami Vice is another obvious example, though it’s kind of borderline since the whole premise of the series is that the main characters only get to live it up because they’re using confiscated goods from crooks to maintain their cover as high rollers.
I think that movie where Wil Smith was a cop he was supposed to be independently rich also.