Far Out There Christmas Break – page 11
It’s always nice when the content of the comic matches my own mental state. Yeah, I’m glad I went ahead and declared that the Voting Incentive wouldn’t be done today, because BOY was that never gonna happen. It’s been another very distracting few days… which is impressive seeing as how there was a freak snowstorm Sunday and nobody’s been able to leave the house for anything. Actually, the main problem is just that I’ve been burning the midnight oil too much working on these things, which has left me in an exceedingly distractible state.
So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go take an exceedingly long nap. It’s the responsible, productive thing to do.
(Historical Notes: Even more fun from the comment section, where it was theorized that even messes like this are still less trouble to deal with than Ichabod.)
The way I see it, Mariska’s issues ARE major issues… but they primarily only involve Mariska and how she acts. No matter how big a problem she has, the final result for anyone else (excusing Ichabod, who helps fix many of her “broader” problems) is that she’s causing a ruckus.
Ichabod, on the other hand, rarely ever has any problems with how he acts, but near always has a disaster that somehow involves other people. Often a LOT of other people.
Basically, the difference between them from the Nitpicker’s Guild Standpoint is that the biggest issue Mariska has requires them to pay bail money, while the biggest issue Ichabod has ended up requiring talking to an interplanetary council… or five… and several environmental impact reports… in seven different star systems… and that was a month or three before Stillez appeared, let alone had been rumoured and met Ichabod, so she wasn’t involved in it at all.
As for Ichabod himself, he was nonplussed about the entire situation. Despite it killing one of his travelling companions, getting a second pulled into a dimensional, or interdimensional, rift in space-time, and having two more (who were a happily married couple) run off and end up joining armies on opposing sides of the ongoing war.
Yes, I did just try to suggest my own Noodle Incident for Ichabod. So what?
Statistically speaking, the odds of any made up noodle incident turning out to be real for Ichabod are WAAAAAAAY higher than any other character.
Even if that’s true, is my noodle incident really the biggest problem Ichabod has ever caused for the Nitpicker’s Guild? Because I was trying to create a final result for the biggest issue for the Nitpicker’s Guild that Ichabod has ever made. Who knows, this result I made up might not even reach the top 10 for him.
Knowing the rules of the Far Out There universe, the absolute worst thing Ichabod has ever caused for the Nitpicker’s Guild would probably have to go in the extreme opposite direction and be some really boring bit of legal tedium. Something incredibly complicated and with long-lasting consequences, but utterly uninteresting to talk about.
It’s the Nitpicker’s Guild that the trouble was caused for, not anyone else. We outright know (admittedly from future comics) that a fair number of them find “sheer tedium” to be a way to relax. The only way that would work is if it was combined with tight deadlines, and a layer of overly needlessly complicated politics about what paperwork needed to be completed/handed over and when, to the point of tripling the workload of those who had to do the paperwork.
Even people who love tedium only love they type of tedium they love. People are very picky. Especially Nitpickers. If they’re forced to do other types of tedium, they will hate it at least as much or more than the rest of us, after all, it’s keeping them away from doing the AWESOMELY FUN RELAXING kind of sheer tedium.