Original Commentary

I was considering having him be mobbed by anonymous co-workers asking him to fix something on the second floor, because everyone thinks he's in charge of it. Didn't work. I spend about fifteen minutes trying to find another way of destroying paper (besides "scribbling over it in black marker", which really doesn't flow right) before settling on "shredded again". Sometimes the simplest answers are the best. I was going to have Brisbane mention "She can run Lemon Technology, a medium-sized company, but she can't brew her own coffee", but that'd just be a little much. That and Ms. Taylor can brew her own coffee. She just chooses not to - Terrence

Modern Commentary
I like the rhythm of "shredded, burned and shredded again". I maybe should have stopped there.

The third panel shows that Brisbane is filtering information to and from Ms Taylor - which is part of any admin assistant's job; you need to keep executives focused on the right problems instead of dealing personally with everything. But Ms Taylor doesn't know that Brisbane is doing this, which is going to become a major issue- Terrence

Original Commentary

So, does this count as constrained writing? Good question. Two characters and as much exposition as you can stuff into three panels. Anyhow, there you have essence of Ms. Taylor - pushy, health-conscious, cheap, divorced (non-custodial), arbitrary, coffee-drinker - Terrence

Modern Commentary
The problem with doing one comic for each pair of characters is that you can't reiterate things.

I feel like we're showing how all the characters relate to each other, and you and I know that this is how they always are. This is Ms Taylor being so Ms Taylor and Brisbane handling her competently.

But a point in every direction is the same as no point at all and if I try to introduce everybody, you remember nobody - Terrence

Original Commentary

Yes, for our purposes, Richard and Sinclair count as one character. I think this is the second time we've mentioned what Lemon Technology actually does. When writing this, I did some research. I'm still not sure if any companies actually do this in the real world. As importantly, you'd never hear about them if they did. There's got to be somebody making money creating and selling functional fragrances to companies who choose not to make their own - and you'd figure that a lot of small-to-medium companies wouldn't. No point trying to re-invent concentrated pine scent - Terrence

Modern Commentary
There's a Twilight Zone episode, A Kind of a Stopwatch, in which the lead character keeps making inane and irrelevant suggestions in his company's suggestion box. Like how hot dogs should be square so you can serve them in hamburger buns. That's probably an influence on Richard and Sinclair's constant stream of good-for-other-companies business ideas. - Terrence

Original Commentary

Let us add "conflicted about her ex-husband" to Ms. Taylor's list of properties. Robert came off a little bland in this - I was going for "comfortable talking to Brisbane", which is prominent until I get a chance to show a counterpoint. And "unable to make a decision". -Terrence

Modern Commentary
The permissions themselves aren't important. But they're a bundle of contradictions. "Edit without the ability to change or view" doesn't really leave anything.

I've adjusted the second panel a bit when re-lettering. Didn't change anything but it's now in different bubbles since they're separate demands that Ms Taylor made. Otherwise, the fact that it's a big list of incompatible demands kinda gets glossed over by the length of things - Terrence

Original Commentary

This is one of the harder comics to write, because Kimberly and Ms. Taylor's relationship is based on a quiet, slow antagonism covered by professionalism. That makes it kind of hard to summarize into three panels, at least starring the two of them. If I had them talking to other people, they'd say things directly. But anyhow, Ms. Taylor never really did much mothering but would like people to think she's a decent mother regardless. She's very knowledgable about business, though - Terrence

Modern Commentary
Sometimes, Ms Taylor wants to be a good mother but doesn't know how. She's trying. Sometimes. Not often. But sometimes.

Note that this doesn't involve apologizing or learning anything about Kimberly- Terrence

Original Commentary

There was a bit of confusion with this one between Terrence and myself... see, when Terrence writes comics while exhausted, sometimes he forgets little things like explaining who which character is talking to (when there is no reference of this in the dialoged). I had some confusions over this comic with panel one, as Jake was not mentioned at all in the first panel, I was under the impression that only Brisbane and Robert were in the panel and Robert was talking to Brisbane (which, well, makes no sense). I talked with Terrence about this right after I first read the comic, so that was no problem.

There was a slight issue I didn't really foresee until Terrence saw the finished product, with the third and fourth panel... I knew Jane would be in panel 3, since she had a line, and if shes in the panel, Roberts going to be looking at her. But the problem was that Robert was originally apologizing to Jake. Terrence suggested the change to Jane which made it more or less make sense. The other problem was the fourth panel... I still don't know if Terrence meant Jane's line to be suggestive when he wrote it, but ah well. -Isabel

Modern Commentary
It's meant to be heavily implied that Jake's services are a lot less in-demand than he says. Nowadays, you've got a whole lot more in the way of remote tools. I work from home. I could theoretically set up in a computer store's cafe and work from there. Back in 2007, Jake would pretty much have to show up in person wherever he works. - Terrence