well, for november 14-16 originally, actually, but
This was intended to be a sequence where we see Dorothy go to class and realize, whoops, she's the subject of her own poli-sci class. We've known that Bart O'Ryan was one of Dorothy's professors because of Walky's "Lawsome!" webcomic for a few years, but I wasn't actually sure of the logistics of Dorothy having someone who may or may not be the dean of the law school be her instructor for one of her freshman-level poli-sci classes. I worried this part would be too small and incidental for Bart O'Ryan.
(Bart O'Ryan was a major antagonist from the end of It's Walky!. He existed to point out the protagonists' many war crimes, which made Our Heroes very ornery. Think Walter Peck from Ghostbusters. He's right, but HEY. O'Ryan's introduction to It's Walky! also included a publically-broadcast image of Joyce kissing Her True Love for the first time! It sort of works as an intercontinuity parallel, even if I'd forgotten about that detail when writing this.)
(I've forgotten so much of It's Walky!, you guys)
Anyway, I needed to consult the #1 Bart O'Ryan Fan.
So I poked Wack'd, asking, hey, should Dean(?) Bart O'Ryan be Dorothy's undergraduate class instructor, is that too implausible, too stretchy for O'Ryan's potential importance, and she was like "the answer should always be 'use bart o'ryan' if the question is 'should i use bart o'ryan'" and so hey, everybody, it's Bart O'Ryan!!!! That penciling of the instructor in the fourth panel up above was a generic professor dude that I subsequently drew Bart over.
But if this is gonna be Professor Bart O'Ryan's Important(?) Debut, I decided the strip needed more Dutch angles and drama, though. So Dorothy's hat-pull-down got pushed back a strip.
Ha ha ha Dorothy, why can't you be more like the inspiring individuals in this photo?!?! That was part of something I've been wanting to do with Joyce/Dorothy getting together -- a few years (for us) earlier, Jennifer chastised Dorothy for not having charisma, and only becoming interesting to her when Dorothy had a fire lit under her ass about Joyce. The idea was that Joyce would manifest Dorothy's rizz. But of course, Joyce isn't here right now, so Dorothy is just Dorothy, asking thoughtful, unpopular questions.
So to better push that story angle forward, there was originally a middle strip where the class lionizes Dorothy (without realizing it was Dorothy) as an Incredible Amazing Charismatic Ladysmoocher or whatever. And Dorothy starts warming up to the idea a little. Maybe she COULD be President, after all! so long as she doesn't ask any questions
But whoops, she does have questions! Dorothy's gonna Dorothy. And then so we have the above strip as the final, third part, with Dorothy's second-part question about optics being moved into this strip and given its space.
So those three strips existed together in the buffer. But months later, For Reasons, I went back for rewrites!
I decided that maybe I didn't want a whole middle strip about Dorothy being lauded. If we're to learn that Joyce completes Dorothy's charisma, we can learn that a different way later. Just imagining the 24-hour period of comments section on this strip gave me hives. So I yanked out that middle strip entirely. And I consolidated the first strip to incorporate Dorothy's two important reactions from the middle strip, first of realizing Oh Hey That's Me, Yikes, and then of her pulling her hat down over her face. Lost a Dramatic Bart O'Ryan panel, oh well.
(and that original panel of Dorothy's hat-pull wasn't very good, so i made it cover her face better)
and then the third strip unaltered as originally completed, now the second in the sequence
sequence feels a bit anemic now, admittedly, but it gave me room for other, newer strips
UPDATE: i have been convinced to run the previously-ditched middle strip by the fine folks below, so now i guess this post mostly exists to preserve the un-unused strips
the second and third strips run together tomorrow, and i've moved up this post's free access period to tonight at update time