I hope you guys didn’t mind too much the early emotional detour with Lex and Toby. This was frankly the only time I could pull this storyline off and it’s one I wanted to do as it develops both characters nicely and touches on their backgrounds. I’ve had some generally positive reactions to it and I do hope it wasn’t too heavy handed.

While the plot discusses issues of bigotry present in the Space Pawdyssey universe, it comes from a couple of interesting real live events.

First is Toby’s reaction to Lex’s endangerment. That moment of panic when you just react without thinking and common sense flies out of the window. That’s basically what happened here.

The trigger for it though was, as described in this comic, the fear of someone being hurt because of you. Anyone who has grown up gay or a minority may have been put in this scenario. I remember discussing public displays of affection among same-sex couples. You can be out and proud but refuse to show any kind of affection towards your partner in public out of fear that someone could take offense and hurt THEM. You fear impacting the safety of someone you care about.