Dec 24th, 2025

I didn’t say this last page, but Emmalise was not in my original rough bullet-point outline. She suddenly manifested once I started hammering out the details around the party. She’s a love letter to the musical, but particularly to the version of Emma that exists in the first half, who I always felt got severely underused. Her brazen acceptance of humanity’s evil is such a great establishing trait, and then she barely gets to interact with Hyde? C’mon, I want more drama than that!

Anyhow, that’s why Emmalise shows this interest in the science here. And don’t worry, she isn’t just here for a one-off appearance. Her sudden apparition in this scene rippled out into further plot points, so she’ll show up again.

Relevant to the comic’s current arc, I went to this super fancy work party last week. It was… interesting. Not terrible, but something I was very much masking for. Shoutout to my bestie (hi Johanna!) who came as my +1 and kept me sane. This company is sort of terribly managed, and the literal next day a bunch of insane stuff happened that resulted in me quitting. It was wild. Dear god there is so much tea.

I helped set up the party, so I had some insight into it. And I know the company opted for all the cheapest options, despite picking a fancy venue. They were trying very hard to look like they were fancy and rich and put together, but on the inside they’re disorganized and hemorrhaging money. Oh, the relevant themes…