Patreon Thank-You Comic, June 2022
Added 2022-07-07 00:09:34 +0000 UTCI worry that there's a sort of racial 'fly in the ointment' to this joke. A large part of the humor of the joke sort of relies on this conception of "the hood" as something other, and as the child's upbringing and lifestyle as decidedly not that. In that case, using the visual shorthand of "nice little white boy", in the form of Ceasar, would make more sense. But a stunt like this is decidedly more in-character for Brock, who, despite being PoC, has had an extremely isolated and pseudo-suburbanite upbringing-- the kind you can really only have from being a year-round resident in a tiny island town. He is the furthest from "hood" imaginable-- hence his childish desire to bring that sort of fascinating exoticism to him. Of course, maybe I could have made the manner of Brock's upbringing more clear by dressing his mother in something more symbolically upper-middle class, like a cardigan with a button-up or something. But then that might muddle the fact that Brock's mom is a smoking hot milf, which is crucial component of GUE's lore.
Maybe I'm overthinking it? The setting of GUE is influenced heavily by Mackinac Island, Michigan, where I worked for a summer after college. As such, the kids characterization as being isolated and stir-crazy little super-suburbanites feels very natural an obvious to me, as that was the sense I got from some of the local youth there. Still, maybe that doesn't read clearly if you aren't intimately familiar with the setting.
Brock's dad is a squarish white guy with a beard and glasses. He's a novelist, probably.
