Both, actually! Episodes will be self-contained examinations of a specific theme or idea, but underlying that will be the characters’ ongoing lives and arcs. I try to do the same thing with my webcomic– it’s not serialized, but it definitely goes from point A to point B.
That ending conversation is just stuff i have thought myself, the things i’ve told myself, it’s all horribly real for the most part. Yeah, i wanted to try to explain all that stuff to people, and also writing about that stuff helps me deal with, it’s honestly one of the biggest positives to being an artist– working through my own issues by exploring them in various narratives. You can give yourself a pep talk as well, you can write about depression but then remind yourself that you CAN be fine and you CAN be attractive to others, and even when you’re not fine you can still remember when you were and always know you can get back there. There is always cause to believe.
On inspiration for the series
The inspiration for whatever i write is just whatever i happen to feel strongly about, and whatever i can speak about from a place of honesty. So that’s generally just whatever personal ideas or issues i’m dwelling on, and then i try to find the meaning in those by exploring them in some kind of hopefully-satisfying narrative. Weird premises are an asset as well– non religious confession booths and such…
On why all the characters have a bunch of tattoos
I know people with a bunch of tattoos, so there was probably some influence there, plus it’s mostly just another canvas to fill in with something interesting. I have no tattoos in real life though– i’d be afraid of getting something i get sick of looking at, or noticing some tiny imperfection in the art that would have me sawing off my arm with a steak knife…
Read the rest of the Reddit AMA here which could possibly be still ongoing at the time of this writing. Stream People Watching on Cracked.com’s Youtube channel.
Hi Ashley, thank you so much for reading and we love the feedback. Note that on that day we had 14th posts go up and only ten posts show on the front page, so it's possible the preview had already been archived by the time you got to it. One recommendation would be to add our RSS feed to your favorite news aggregator service like Feedly, this way you get all of the latest posts!