This is what I meant a while back when I talked about how I was really pleased with how Kyra turned out. For all the agonizing I did over who Kyra should be, I feel like the best thing for the strip was to make her a real character. The fact that she has a depth of real, actual human feelings lets me tell a proper story and give somebody in this thing a character arc. It also gives me some great counterpoint to play with, as it highlights how shallow Sinbad is by comparison. And frankly, half the punchlines in this strip are about how shallow he is, right? So it works out.

As for the idea of this particular strip, I couldn't be happier. That final shot of Mom looking suspicious was something I found very early on but hadn't figured out how to use. I often find frames before I find a use for them, and often I never do find a use that lives up to their standalone potential, but here I was able to tell a further story, by implication, of the Mom and the unseen Dad.

But the thing I'm proudest of here is that I got away with something. This whole strip was born out of me being lazy and/or uninspired. If you think about what the girl is doing here -- reading expressions and making up interpretations for them -- that's pretty much what I do to create this strip every single time. I look at what stills I have for a particular scene and think about how they fit together. This time, I had a wealth of great expressions, but when I sat down to try to puzzle out how they could be made to fit together and tell a story and/or joke, nothing satisfactory came to mind. Until I struck upon the idea that I could have the girl do what I was failing to do, and presto, strip complete.