Those initial A's that looked like U's weren't rewarding my lettering experimentation.

I could've replaced "As" with "While," which would have looked better.

"Qess" is "Kes," the upbeat blonde from the early days of Star Trek: Voyager. "Ghu" is another fan-term, a nondenominational invocation of the most basic concept of God.

Will shows a side we don't get to see as often as I'd like: chattering on about aspects of costuming and acting to anyone who's polite enough not to run. His use of pronouns shows how into the illusionism he is.

Rumy's drunken assumption is sort of reasonable, given that most romantic manga (again, especially Takahashi manga) feature characters who seem to hate each other but really love each other. We'd play with this idea a bit more in "Alien Worlds."