Week 52! (Patreon)

So, like Eve, you may have forgotten that Connor was also actually a Randomly-Generated Character in his first appearance in comic 061, the first comic of 2009, where his legs were really goddamn long because I had some issue with that at the time for some reason. Or it was because of the weird tall panel, I dunno.

Also like the situation with Eve, I'm a goddamn liar, cause Connor also wasn't truly 'randomly' generated. I hit the Randomly-Generated Character button until a male, non-straight canine of some sort came up, and 'jackal' was the first result. Why? Well... pff, honestly, I wanted a Joel from Concession stand-in, at the very barest of standing-in. Not similar in any way beyond being a green-eyed canine, really. It's silly, but whatever, that's why he's a canine.

In his RGC info, I say, quote, "How Campy and him met and their relationship until now is a bit interesting and somewhat "steamy," but that's for another time." How Campy and Connor met was actually touched upon in an abandoned project most have either probably forgotten or never heard of called where side-stories would be told in the form of blog entries being written and posted by the FH cast. One of these stories was Campy blogging about how he met Connor, and it was basically just them colliding into each other on a street sidewalk and Campy instantly falling for him. It was an interesting project idea, I kind of regret not going through with it more (although, of course, reading through what I have saved makes me cringe, as is proper with something you wrote over 5 years ago).

Some other details about Connor... well, the fact that he's bisexual, and his reveal at the Autumn Ball as Campy's date confirming that Campy was also bisexual. Sexuality and more 'adult' themes weren't present in the Old Canon at all, and so in making the reboot, I wanted to include deliberate instances of non-straight characters and interactions. Campy was a prop basically in the Old Canon, so in redefining his character to actually have character, I decided that he would be a nice candidate to take on a non-straight role in the main cast. I've also tried to not make it a HUGE thing that characters are non-straight, because I feel like pointing it out and shoving it in the reader's faces beyond what you'd see in real life is annoying and forced (well, except Max, I guess). 

How Connor's relationship with Campy ended up developing, where Connor became very clingy and emotional and territorial, butting heads with Bruce to the point of physical violence eventually... this aspect of Connor's personality and the plot of Arc 11 was deeply rooted in and a reaction to the experiences and feelings and actions I myself had gone through and done relatively recently at that time. I won't go into specifics, but I wanted to... tell a story and show off characters with these flaws that I myself had, as a sort of "warning" and as a reflection of a way real-life romance can go. Media tends to heavily romanticize young love and relationships, but I wanted to show that there are problems that can arise, especially in the heavily-romanticized stuff like being inseparable and overly-passionate and overly-sensitive and unintentionally selfish, and that it can be bad to allow yourself to be those things too much. Basically I just wanted to tell a realistic sort of love story and relationship, and teach a lesson to prevent people from going down the same sort of path I did.

Other little tidbits... Connor is the only adopted character in the cast, with a squirrel mother and horse father, mostly only because I thought it'd be interesting, since most characters that are adopted in stuff have that fact be a major part of their character arc, and I just kinda wanted it to be a 'normal' thing to the character and everyone else in contrast. Connor also is supposed to be good at playing the violin, although I've never drawn him with one ever, so I dunno if that's still gonna be a thing. And finally, for some reason, whenever I look at Connor, I kinda feel like he should be of Native American descent, maybe mostly in his hair-style I guess, I dunno.