page 1273 – Reasonable Theories
True Fact: this page was “written” in the form of me drawing several random silly May faces, then making up some dialog after the fact that looked like something she might be saying. And yes, I have absolutely pulled this stunt before.
Anyway, as I write this early Tuesday morning, I’ve only got around 48 to do a pretty massive amount of prep work for Animazement this weekend (though, thankfully, I DID get all caught up on Conventional Wisdom stuff over the weekend), which pretty much guarantees that a new TWC Voting Incentive just isn’t happening. Only one more week of this, gang, and then we’ve got two whole months before I wind up in crunch mode again!
And speaking of which, if you happen to be stumbling onto this comic after reading one of those silly flyers you found laying around the convention: Hi! It’s usually a bit more colored in than this!
Ichabod, May is your karmic punishment for the things you pulled with Mariska during childhood. It doesn’t matter who started what, May is YOUR punishment. Getting May to you was MARISKA’S punishment for those same actions. If it seems unfair, you have Layla, Trigger and Author’s Intervention on your side to make things fairer.
Ichabod would contend that this isn’t a fair statement, on the grounds that Mariska was the one pulling everything back in the day, and he was just an innocent victim being dragged along.
Most people who knew them back in the day will challenge him on that.
Well, I don’t really think this is karma’s punishment for anything in his childhood, unless karma’s name is actually “Sophia” and his childhood means his earlier days as a Nitpicker – I think it’s already been established somewhere, don’t recall if it was in-comic or author comments, that Sophia did this specifically as punishment for something or other that I forget, because he wasn’t supposed to have a trainee at all. (I’m getting lazier in my old age – used to I would spend hours digging through the archives to find the specifics…and probably get sidetracked rereading entire arcs and forget what I was looking for in the first place….)
Oh, so THAT’S why site traffic’s been down lately! 😀
No, but seriously, it’s in page 1156 that we get as close as we get to a direct confirmation of this… though it actually Aunt Domino talking, so i dunno how “direct” that can actually be.
Ah, but that puts the blame onto Stillez, not Ichabod. Nitpicker’s can’t be considered responsible for the actions of Stillez, and punishing him due to anything related to Stillez is against their own terms and conditions. Regardless of how responsible he is.
…Him not returning calls is all on him, but I believe that it’s been a long-standing issue with Ichabod.
As for who is responsible for their childhood antics, between him and Mariska, it honestly doesn’t matter. May is still his punishment, regardless of which of the following he fits into (or pretends to fit into):
– Driving force (which he probably was)
– A collaborator who helped things work out (which he certainly did)
– A protective support dragged along (which he likely fit less than he’ll admit to)
– Or An innocent bystander who merely witnessed all the trouble (almost certainly not the case, particularly with how prone Mariska STILL is to getting caught in things).
There’s also the implication that May is, in her own way, an even more amped up version of what young Mariska was like back in the day. So Ichabod being saddled with her now could be seen as time being a flat circle (or whatever).
Ah, but May isn’t going to be a quarter as bad as Ichabod & Mariska together were. Not on any pages actually shown in the comic, at least, and those are the events we know about. That’s why she’s merely a Karmic Punishment, and not Cosmic Irony. Which is why I put “Author’s Intervention” as one of the things on Ichabod’s side to make things fair.
That is true. I’ve been tempted to suggest that the Nitpicker’s Guild now make a policy of discouraging young Nitpickers from being trained in packs specifically due to the precedent those two set.
You should draw someone (a scraggly version of Ichabod?) with squished cans of bread saying that and images of some of Ichabod’s youthful misadventures in the background. Maybe to/around May?
The “Nitpickers can’t be held responsible for Acts of Stilez” is just clause in their contract with customers, to protect the Guild financially from being responsible for planetary scale destruction, it’s not a life-rule that affects everything they do – your boss can certainly hold you responsible if you cause her problems by actively seeking out contact with Stilez. Though the number of people in the Galaxy who would even attempt such an insane course of action is vanishingly small to begin with.
Hmmmm…I could have sworn that Mariska mentioned it at some point or alluded to it as being the result of something Ichabod had done specifically that Sophia had revoked his previous “no trainee” exemption.
Looking back, Mariska forgot to even tell Ichabod about his apprentice, due to being distracted by arguing with him.
That was the first tease, then MUCH later on Ichabod tried to call Sophia for an explanation. Sophia is IN that scene, but Aunt Domino is the only one they allow Ichabod to talk to.
It may have been an author comment, or in the discussion section. I’ll definitely have to set aside a few hours to go hunting for it.
I think something went wrong with posting today’s comic. This page is smaller than normal – viewing in new tab shows me the pixel dimensions are 424×600, instead of the usual 600×849.
Can you tell I’d been up for a LONG time when I posted this? (No joke, I had to re-save this page SEVERAL times because I kept noticing speech bubbles pointing at the wrong characters)
Incidentally, the page has been swapped out for a properly sized one, though depending on your browser, it might take a while for the cached image to be refreshed.
Wow, that’s much better now – I thought I was going to need a new prescription on my glasses earlier! 😀