The names on the lockers belong to Canadians I knew!  Transformers fandom-specific Canadians.  One is a kid who we technically kidnapped by driving him across the border to a BotCon without full consent of his mom.  (She thought we were going camping.  In Canada.  And not North Carolina.)  The other is a guy you might know better as the webcartoonist of Funny Farm and Accursed Dragon!.

The guy getting hit with a fish in the background of the final panel is a reference to Josh Phillips’ forum avatar.  Josh Phillips, the cartoonist of Avalon, the fictional setting this storyline is taking place in, which I haven’t actually spelled out explicitly in these commentaries yet.  He was taking a lot of hiatuses at the time, and so, for the lulz, I wrote a storyline that took place within his webcomic “in between updates.”  See, the school was frozen.   Just a good joke, between friends!  Hopefully!  Oh god, was i being a jerk

i’m sorry josh

Also, here Robin says “transgendered.”  The preferred wordage these days is to drop that terminal -ED because of all sorts of reasons, and also I don’t recommend your webcomic’s single reference to trans people being an insinuation that they only exist provocatively.