Many people, over the course of Leftover Soup, have asked me what event or trauma or history caused Lily to be the way she is. As with Max, though, I didn't want Lily's childhood past to completely define her present or future. I think you'd be a tad miffed if someone attempted to explain your entire current personality as the result of a single event that occurred when you were five. You probably wouldn't buy it, if some biography of Gandhi presented his nonviolent philosophy as the result of a single bullying episode in his past, or Hitler's genocide as the result of being kicked out of art school.

But yeah, you guys wanted some insight into Lily's childhood? Here it is.

Oh, and just because I get asked this any time I draw a white dude with a shaved head, no, that isn't a self-cameo. My ears don't look like that, my nose doesn't look like that, I don't have a protruding Adam's apple, my eyes and eyebrows aren't that colour, I don't have an earring, et cetera, et cetera. That dude is, as the transcript says, an eavesdropping rando. I suppose I could have arranged a cameo from another webcomic, but I didn't really have time to set that up.