I feel like at some point I should detail the development of Gatty Ling, but it’s frankly embarassingly lengthy and the gist is “I made this character in freshman year of high school and could never settle on what to do with her.” She’s been a ditzy “Real Robot” pilot, a split-personality android daughter of a mad scientist, and really for the longest time was my go-to character to create in games until Eishi and Dixie popped into being-partly so I could maybe see if a particular play style or attitude stuck. The main constants for her were a naive but really persistent belief that she’s The Hero in spite of… mixed competence, let’s say and having pink hair.

The series’ name change from Gatling Guard (in various capitalizations or stylizations) to Angel Dust (BLEED) was done mostly since the giant robot aspect’s been downplayed a lot and partly because I wanted to open up the possibility of other characters sharing the spotlight or even taking over the main character mantle. After kicking around a few options a while, Dust stuck since it’s actually story relevant, and the BLEED subtitle is in reference to Gatty’s use of blood as a medium for her powers. So if I do other side junk later, I can call them stuff like Angel Dust: RUIN, Angel Dust: GAG, so on.