For every new Secret Knots comic I make a Patreon exclusive post with sources, references and bits of worldbuilding, including those that were left only as background concepts. This is the dossier for the comic “Outside”, read the comic here.

1. Inspiration

My friend Rodrigo Zuloaga, a graphic designer, suggested the idea for this one, perhaps inspíred by his own experience at some media company. I remember he told me about this office where people were really into the decoration of their work space, and also that a story about a cubicle designer sounded like the kind of fantasy tales I tell, and I agreed. Much later, and with some weird additions, it became this story.

But I also wanted to set a comic in the lockdown days, a time in which we are, in various ways, still living. A story with masks and empty streets, out-of-business coffee shops and closed tattoo parlors. For some months, we’ve been consuming media where the reality didn’t match the “present time”, and even if now some new releases are catching up with this context, as it was bound to happen probably, it still seemed interesting to delve a bit in some themes particular to this period. Some of it became the ambience for the comic, and the inspiration for the way Lydia experiences her return to the outside world, where she clings to the feeble safety of watching this new weirdness from the interior of store windows.

There’s some subtle invasion going on, a pattern Lydia starts to recognize from her unusual job at the cubicles: men who look exactly alike, a reference to a constellation. In my mind I started to call them “the Percivals”, and I imagined them as more menacing characters in the beginning. But I kind of ended up digging the Percivals and their neutral manners.

Their true nature is left unexplained in the comic, a mystery that could point to aliens as an answer, but not conclusively. In a previous version of this story, the design Percival asks for his cubicle was also a graffiti that pointed out a hidden vanishing point in some alley, Percival is last seen crossing through some kind of portal, while Lydia is left considering her own escape from this reality. It was probably a more traditional fantasy tale and I felt it needed a longer format to work out well. The escapist theme of that version became an agoraphobic feeling in the one I drew: the invasion of the Percivals is the sign of a difficult return to the outside world in the eventual end of the pandemics, the fear that things won’t really be the same as before, and furthermore, that every day brings new big changes to get used to. Sort of a ‘What’s next. Aliens?’ joke, in the face of the daily news that may seem a little bit ‘more historical’ that we’d wish to.

I had fun drawing the characters in this one, and found in the main character a voice that I could use for other stories eventually, so I included a last minute ‘A Lydia Ray story’ tagline in the title, to leave that door open.

2. Process sketches and references

First Lydias

Losely based in the shoes of the picture

Street reference; forgot how to draw lettuce

Boss before I added the hair

Outlander

Working at night

Change of clothes

Pose sketch and final

The face. Original sketch reminds of pikachu meme

Crowded street reference

Moving subway reference

3. Headcanon

Things that were considered, could be happening, or definitely happen, in the background of the story

• The Percivals are the x-files kind of aliens, human-alien hybrids or clones that are awakened during the end of the pandemic.
  

• They miss their home star, but it also reminds them of a complex past. They show a strange reaction to its depictions, fault of a still developing human mimic facial expression system. This is also why the office Percival puts a framed photo of one of his clones, a humble imitation of his human colleagues’ family pictures.
  

• This one comes from patron The Lampades observation: Lydia is working on an angel-themed window at the end. Are the Percivals angels? It would explain their apparition in eventful times. Do angels come from Canis Major? Have they, always?
  

I hope you enjoyed these notes! If you got this far please leave a like, feel free to comment, add to, or contradict the headcanon as you wish. There’s a Discord server where we can hang out and discuss this story as well.

Your support makesThe Secret Knots stories possible. Thanks you!

J.