6311: Heart and Dean's Botched Collaboration
| Heart and Dean's Botched Collaboration |
 Made by: shiningpikablu252 |
Explanation[edit | edit source]
This strip is essentially a defictionalization of the strip being created in iToons #749; most of its premise is well-explained in the author's notes. This strip was timed to submit just twenty minutes after that strip went live, at 3:30 AM CST on November 30, 2023; the author would have timed them to be simultaneous, but the e-mail client the author used only allowed timers to go off at the top (x:00) and bottom (x:30) of each hour and mezzacotta features go live at 3:10 AM (or 4:10 during daylight saving time, which was applicable when this strip ran) in the author's time zone, the North American Central Time Zone (mezzacotta features' upload schedule does not factor any daylight saving time). The author's own use of timers, and especially admitting to using them in this very explanation, may serve to explain just how the in-universe Square Root of Minus Garfield strip got submitted in the first place--Heart may have also set a timer on her own e-mail client, which was unaffected by what went on in the iToons strip. The black line surrounding the perimiter of the strip is intended to make the boundary between the actual interface and the non-functional spoofed interface of the strip clear. The spoofed interface is rendered at the horizontal dimensions of 1080p resolution, but are zoomed-in to simulate a 720p resolution environment; this is due to such settings having been used in the author's setup at the time of this strip's creation, using the same Chromebook laptop in the author's possession at the time of his mother's death earlier in 2023, with the visual settings set to the Chromebook itself and not to user accounts.
The "B24" part of the fictional strip number is a representation of the original strip date of the Heart of the City strip used in iToons #749, 2023-11-24, the month represented in hexadecimal; a fictional strip number complete with hexadecimal digit was used in the first place in order to clearly distinguish the strip-within-a-strip from any actual Square Root of Minus Garfield strip (the closest parallel to the fictional strip number would be strip #6124, essentially the fully-decimal number corresponding to what you'd get if you started counting the hundreds place and only the hundreds place in hexadecimal after reaching strip #5000).
Some differences in text formatting between submission and runtime ended up making the title of iToons #749 as visibly rendered in the author's notes inaccurate; the actual title of that strip, "Emoji of the Ci--", includes two dash characters at the end indicating that indicate being cut-off mid-word, the dash characters of which were wrongly dropped in the transition between the submitted and actually-ran author's notes as visually rendered (the link to the iToons Explained page correctly retains the title dashes).
The in-universe screenname attributed to Dean, "DeanJ1931", is an allusion to the actor James Dean; 1931 was his year of birth. (Country singer and sausage king Jimmy Dean, on the other hand, was born in 1928.)
This wiki is not subject to the same constraints on emojis that ultimately caused the incidents that inspired the iToons strip that preceded this strip; this is the natural emoji sequence: 💩🎵🕺🐯🍕🏥📢🏒💄🚱🇧🇶😢.
The author writes[edit | edit source]
Actual author of the strip-within-a-strip: shiningpikablu252
Essentially, what you're seeing is an in-universe representation of iToons #749: Emoji of the Ci; the strip-within-a-strip is intended to be the Square Root of Minus Garfield strip Heart (here screennamed "Heart@City") and Dean (here screennamed "DeanJ1931"), key characters of the comic strip Heart of the City, were working on during the events of the iToons strip; what is shown is a fully-prepared strip and the transcript up to the point where things screwed up in-universe. Dean worked out the visual elements, while Heart wrote the dialogue and attempted to prepare the submission. The poop emoji (the first one part of Irma's Emoji Special, mind you) ended up causing problems for Heart as she was working on the transcript while preparing the strip for submission, and indeed the iToons strip ended with color bars. Because the problems flared up in-universe during work on the transcript, there are no in-universe author's notes apart from the original strip date, which was prepared earlier on. Which begs the question... how did this strip actually get submitted in-universe in the first place? And is there any importance to the number 5B24?
The backstory of the iToons strip can be read on the strip's page on the iToons Explained wiki; the key part of the backstory involved incidents involving emojis that happened on consecutive days right here at Square Root of Minus Garfield.
In the iToons strip, the poop emoji was stated to be part of the third line, but here the poop emoji is shown to be the beginning of the fourth line. This could potentially be seen as a possible continuity error, but also keep in mind that the character sequence verbally stated by Heart in the iToons strip still holds even when the actual lines ended up split (the poop emoji still does follow the phrase "Emoji Special").
Original strip: 2023-10-21.
Transcript[edit | edit source]
{The strip resembles the Square Root of Minus Garfield interface at time of submission, with the centerpiece being the strip's strip-within-a-strip. Most of the interface shown within the strip looks no different than what you see surrounding the strip; however, the number and title of the strip-within-a-strip is portrayed as "No. 5B24: Emoji Special", the strip's date is shown to be "202x-yy-zz", and the authors of the strip-within-a-strip are stated to be "Heart@City" and "DeanJ1931". The strip-within-a-strip has no author's notes, and its original strip date is stated to be 2023-10-21. The transcript of the strip-within-a-strip is replicated below up to the point of the first emoji; all emojis and Garfield's final thought bubble are not included in the transcript of the strip-within-a-strip}
Jon: Irma, what's your special today?
Irma: Let's see...
Irma: Emoji Special!
Irma: {series of emojis: poop, music notes, dancer, tiger, pizza, hospital, bullhorn, hockey, lipstick, non-potable water, Caribbean Netherlands, crying face}
Garfield: I may not understand emoji, but I can get behind this special!
