6: pet pet pet pet pet pet pet

december 22nd, 2025

transcript

Ollie steps quickly between Pepper and the approaching children, calling out “WAIT! please stop!”. the kids skid to a halt, with the tiger-striped kid clotheslining the longer-snooted kid, whose arms flail wildly as they recover their balance.

striped kid: gasp!
snooted kid: a TALKING doggy…

both kids descend upon Ollie, ruffling their hands through the fur on his head and neck, while chanting “pet pet pet pet pet pet pet pet.” Ollie protests “hey–“ and is trying to look stern but smiling despite himself, while Pepper watches on, her inital surprised expression having softened into a cheerful smile.

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we’re back! this sequence of interacting with these kids is the first lil’ writing roadblock I’ve encountered with An Apple A Day!.

when I decided to revamp Applesauce with Sprinkles as an Ollie-and-Brook-centric story (have I shared yet that the catlike human is named Brook? their name is Brook!!), I’d been toying with the idea of writing it as a novel of the non-graphic variety, and I’d made a general list-of-scenes-in-order story outline and written out a first draft of the first two scenes in novel form. obviously I’ve since decided to try posting it in webcomic form instead, which I think is a good idea — my current biggest writing struggle is keeping my momentum going, so seeing actual pages up on a public website instead of tucked away in a private notebook is helpful for keeping me motivated, and I think the tone and content of AwS are better suited to visual than written media. a lot of the story revolves around the fact that Ollie looks like a dog and Brook looks like a cat, and methinks being able to visually show that will really help with conveying the various things I’ll be trying to convey!

but anyway, in those first draft scenes, Ollie and Pepper didn’t encounter any kids on their walk — this scene in my story outline is just “Ollie and Pepper are on a walk and have a nice time.” in the novel version, Ollie is mostly thinking worldbuilding-exposition-y thoughts to himself while Pepper is doing her own thing, interspersed with a bit of playing together. here in the comic version, I’d rather show things via action than just give Ollie a million thought balloons, so I thought I’d throw some other humans in and give them a chance to interact, so I added the kiddos! but then I realized that the specifics of how they interact here will be both a) an important introduction to Ollie’s personality and b) have implications for plot things later down the line, so I decided to sit down and script out the next several pages before drawing this one. now I have a decent idea of where this scene is actually going, instead of improvising it page by page, and it’s nice 🙂

I’m not sure if what’s happening in the first panel is super clear — my intention is that Ollie is quickly stepping between Pepper and the kids to intercept their approach, while the kids are skidding to a halt (but I ran out of room to show their feet skidding, so instead the tiger-y one is clotheslining the other one). same with Ollie’s expression in the last panel; I’m going for “annoyed but also entertained, and trying and failing to look stern and serious!” I’m happy with how the rest of it turned out though! Ollie is canonically SO soft and SO fluffy

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