And this wraps up the BiteyFish storyline. Just about everyone got a piece of the action in this one, which is pretty satisfying. It took forever to finish, but you can’t win them all.

Middle management is not a fate I would wish on anyone, but if there’s a character capable of bending the world to her will it’s Mary. Well, the female lead does a pretty good job at it, too, but she was already there five years ago. That story happened before the strip ever started.

I have a few stories I want to fire off in rapid succession, but I’m not sure exactly how I’ll do it yet. I’ll have to figure it out soon, though, because I don’t want to waste time on interstitials if I can avoid it. I enjoy doing them, but I want to keep the head of steam rolling for a while longer. All I can promise is that there will be more comics.

If you were wondering why the desk looked a bit different and had different computer equipment in the last strip, here’s the reason why.  Data were planted in the BiteyFish logs which are managed by IT.  Nobody called me on it, so I don’t think anyone noticed the details in the last strip.  That’s a nice thing, because it means I can get away with being a bit lazy from time to time.  The only thing better than committing a crime is to not get caught.

This part of the story is just about wrapped up, and soon we’ll be following other characters again.  Hang tight!  Thanks for letting this one run a bit longer than usual without giving up on me.

I’m not really happy with how the last panel came out, and I wish I had done something to indicate the dramatic shift in time (and place) between panels 2 and 3 better, but live and learn.

I’ve kept Joelle’s hair color changing throughout the strip.  I think it helps to characterize her, even if it makes the character less instantly recognizable.  So, pros and cons.  Time will tell what is right.

One of the things I’ve done differently this strip is give her a base hair color and “streak” it pink.  I’ve been doing this by playing with brush opacity and hardness in Photoshop Elements*.  This has been pretty interesting, and it may start working its way into the rest of my coloring process.  As with most changes, it’ll probably be subtle but with other changes will make quite a difference in a hundred strips or so.

* — I originally typed Photoshop LE in there, which I haven’t used in years.  Man, I’ve been doing this too long.

I have a personal issue with web filters: it implies a distrust of the filtered, a presumption of guilt instead of innocence.  If an employer does not trust an employee to do the job at hand, I’d much rather see a passive monitoring and follow-up than to simply assume traffic is evil without any evidence to the contrary besides the word of some third party who doesn’t make clear their criteria.

All of that gets away from the central issue, that is, trust (or the lack thereof).  Joelle’s arguments here are only applicable to certain spheres and do have counter-arguments.  I won’t tackle the issue of trust in the comic, because frankly, it’s intractable.

Hey, I loves me some Internet.  Lowering the barrier to entry of immediate, worldwide, limitless, flawless replication of ideas is an amazing thing.  In contrast, the World War II museum sent people out to canvas the country and interview men and women who were involved in the war effort.  A lot of time and money were invested in gathering relatively few stories.  It scares me to think of it sometimes, but this generation of digital-savvy people will provide a greater breadth and depth of social commentary than any before it strictly from its Internet droppings.  The ability and willingness to share so much of our lives digitally, to have so many records so readily transferable.

Well, the idea leaves me at a loss to describe it.

Mary and Joelle are probably my favorite characters in the strip.  Every character is a bit of me, exaggerated, and baked into people I know.  Joelle has a good bit of the prescriptivist in me, and the urge to make systems run smoothly by forcing logic upon them.  Mary loves to be the Devil’s advocate.  I wish I could make points as succinctly and as entertainingly as she seems to be able to do.  I guess if I spent a half hour over a few days scripting my responses, then I would be able to.

I have watched many a TED talk, seen many RSA Animate videos, and read a fair amount about the modern workplace, and why it is lagging (not just here in the United States, either).  Recently I re-watched Jason Fried’s TED talk, which you can watch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XD2kNopsUs.  I’ve wondered a lot about what it is that drives people, and why different sized companies and companies with different levels of success are correlated with different employment styles.

I don’t know what the solution is, but I do know that the current system of offices, managers and meetings is not conducive to creative productivity.  It may work for some types of productivity, but one size does not fit all and it has serious consequences.  Employers, managers, please do more research in to these topics and make sure you are supporting your employees, not managing them.  Help them be more successful, and not only will you get more productive work but you’ll get better quality work and happier employees, all without costing you much if anything.  Heck, you might even save money!

If it helps, tell your bosses or corporate governance committees that I’m a highly-skilled consultant and that you paid me a lot of money to come to those conclusions.  I can fake some invoices.

I like this one. It has a parade of characters and a general insanity around it. I wish I could tie things up like this more often.

I’m curious as to Mr. Fuzzybuns’ history: This is clearly not his first victory over humanity, even for his young age.  I don’t imagine his previous victories relied on allergies, either, at least not all of them.  I doubt we’ll ever visit his history because his future has much more potential.

I have at times portrayed the two animals in this strip (the lobster and Mr. Fuzzybuns, the kitten) as spiteful, malicious beings.  I find it humorous when someone says that humans are the only animals who are malicious, or kill for fun.  One merely needs to watch a housecat stalk its prey, or jilt a devoted dog and come home late to find a remote corner of the house sprayed to see otherwise.  Perhaps it’s less prevalent in non-humans, but if that’s true I believe that’s more due to the fact that so much energy has to be put into surviving that so little is left over to hold grudges.

I once watched a hummingbird feed from a feeder outside a store.  There were easily a dozen feeders, all of different shapes and sizes, all full of food.  When another hummingbird came along, the first hummingbird left his perch and chased off the newcomer.  This dance went on for a good five minutes before the second hummingbird gave up and left for good.  I also remember, growing up, when some fledglings fell from a blue jay’s nest outside our house.  My cat, being cuirous as her kind are, went to inspect the ground dwellers.  I have no doubt in my mind that she was going to determine their tastiness in as thorough a fashion as possible, and the mother blue jay apparently had no doubt as well.  She not only chased my cat away, she dive-bombed anyone who came out of that house for two months.  My cat was a hunter who ate what she came across, and the blue jay was of course defending her children as any mother would do.  Classifying her two-month reign of terror over the whole household, however, can only be seen as spiteful.  I can’t say I blame her for being spitfeul, of course; rather, I see it as only natural that animals are just as capable of being jerks as humans are in their own ways.

I also wish to point out that the animals represented in this strip also have their redeeming traits and moments.  They’re not always jerks.

Extra-Holy water is Holy water blessed directly by a Pope. It gets more sanctified as more Popes succeed him. Mary had water blessed under Pope Paul III, who opened the Council of Trent. How she got her hands on Holy water from a 16th-Century Pope is another question; Yet another question is, how will she get MORE Extra-Holy water?

I hope you enjoyed my detour. It’s a nice way to break out of my routines and let my creativity loose. A downside is that it really limits how much exposition I can give. I have a limited number of panels as it is, and every time I fork the story I reduce the amount of attention I can give to any one piece. It’s frustrating, but that just means I have something to come back to some day.

Paranormal detectives will be on the shelf for quite a while, but I do hope to come back and explore this more.