noob question...

Hey people.

I'm a new guy... let me just say I frikken love this webcomic. Jack does a superb job at keeping us interested/hooked to his work! It's also refreshing to see that he's not another stereotypical "furry" artist who feeds his fans endless pervy drawings... Jack has created believable characters. The fine line he can tow around awesome, and funny makes me value his art.

with that being said: I have a question about the nature of the world our heroes find themselves. someone probably already asked this, but I just want to know. this is for Jack or anyone else who has info or ideas on it. Basically, is there a background story as to why there are anthropomorphic critters walking around? The story was very ambiguous about it at first, and Pip even ridicules Art a couple times when he mentions alerting the authorities to the various adventures they find themselves in! this makes me think that the public would think it strange to see a squirrel or cat-girl or a penguin perv... but wait... they go out in public all the time! Kat works as a photographer! Vanity is even a famous author!

so what's the story? are animals just an inferior race of sorts (the Quads basically being lab-rats at Quinten)? or are they a construct of art's overly creative mind?

ANSWERS!

They're characters that just live in their own little world. IF you think it's anything more than slice of life with cartoon animals mixed in with human poeple, then it really isn't.

cenaris wrote: IF you think it's anything more than slice of life with cartoon animals mixed in with human poeple, then it really isn't.

well, I mean obviously they are... and I was only joking with those last two suggestions, but I'm just curious as to why pip warns art like that. that's all.

FWIW, I've always thought that SA is in an alternate universe, possibly the future of a Steampunk universe like that of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

To me, the Anthros were the result of some lunatic genius in the Victorian era like Dr. Moreau or Victor Frankenstein trying to breed animal characteristics into humans. The anthros bred true but can't interbreed with ordinary humans (even though the plumbing is compatible) because of genetic differences. So, you've got little ethnic minorities of cat-people, rabbit-people, dog-people and so on. They are as oppressed as any other ethnic minority with equality under law but facing a lot of xenophobia and, paradoxically, xenophilia in their day-to-day-lives (note Hilary's successful career in porn before she went legit). If anything, they face more trouble than that of pure human ethnic groups because of their extreme physical differences.

Scarlet and her sisters are somewhat different, being genetically-engineered and vat-grown bio-computer processor elements rather than the decendants of the Victorian anthromophicism experiments. It remains to be seen if they can reproduce viably and whether their rodent genes would breed true.

I asked this exact same question a year or two ago.
The official answer is: "Because "

It's like mage-earth, a game world i designed ages ago.
All the stories are true.
See Bast in ancient Egypt.
See the talking dog in the roman empire.
If Art and Kat have a kitten it will look like Di Gi Charat.
As to weather Scarlet was bought, kidnapped, uplifted, or cloned, that's covered in the artist's artistic license.