I'd like to introduce a new member to the TGS team: Velo, my new colorist and BG inker! Their first page posted last week (this announcement is a week late--oops!)!! Please offer them a warm welcome! My previous colorist, Tiina Purin, finished her last page a few weeks ago and will be taking time to focus on more personal work. 

Of all the Lodgers, I have the clearest image of Virginia Ito's backstory (partially because I know more about Japan, so it's easier to daydream in that space). She was born into a once-powerful samurai family that had fallen on hard times. Her father was training her to be a samurai*, which she absolutely hated. One day she stole one of her grandmother's kimono and ran away to England, where she could form her own identity away from the pressures of her family. She finds England pretty dirty and gross but not dirty and gross enough to ever ever ever go back to Japan. 

*I think when I first introduced Ito years ago, I was still figuring out Ito's gender identity--I originally ID'd her as possibly nonbinary but later dediced that she was a (binary) transwoman.