Dude, yeah, absolutely.

One of the things that gets easily made into something supernatural or makes people feel uneasy is new technology, so the eighties and early nineties is ripe with scary floppy disks and people stuck in cameras and shit because everyone was like whoa dude what even ARE home computers

I think it’s kind of cycling back now that people are finding these mediums like a little spooky, so I think now it has a little more to do with these being archaic things and less with them being new scary unknowns. It would be very easy just to ratchet back the appropriate technology, though. When I made the thing I wanted some of what they were dealing with to be intentionally outdated, like Johnny carrying a CD player around when I first posted the thing in 2005 was kind of sad and old but now 15 years later it’s got extra old, haha. But he could just as easily be toting Walkman around everywhere and the outrageous band Persona thing is like a one-to-one translation.

I didn’t want them to have the latest technology both because they were invisible homeless teenagers and because I kind of like the idea of it existing in a really nebulous time frame. I’ve gotten to solidify that somewhat by the song choices, where it’s like yeah this story happened in 2004 but the song they’re all singing is from 2016 and they all have televisions from 1983 so what the fuck is going on

I like to think of it being a bit like The Invader Zim Universe where the technology seems like a normal kind of modern and current but then also has like freakishly futuristic updates. Dib is the freakish future in the reSWAN scenario too, which is the only reason I allowed them to carry a tablet around, because it came from him haha

And I ended up using it to lead them into very nearly the pits of hell and nearly killed them all so yeah technology is scary is a good aesthetic in all eras

The Homicides were inspired by a Jem and the Holograms poster my first semester in college though so the 80s is 100% an appropriate reading. They are called the Homicides because I was looking for a word that began with H to make a direct parody and say Johnny and the Homicides. I made this garbage up in my astronomy class in a tiny notebook that I was sharing with my friend. For some reason we talked about combining Jem and Johnny and she thought of Johnny just murdering Jem but I decided in my college freshman delirium that Johnny needed to be a sparkly rock star (“it’s Showtime, Nailbunny!”) and this is my life now I guess