page 1220 – Rapidly Interrupting Statements
Okay, first off, did everybody remember to drop in Sunday to see the extra comic? Because there was an extra comic on Sunday! Because of COURSE I went ahead and posted an extra comic on a day that was already so busy that it made getting today’s comic done REALLY tricky! These are the decisions I make in my life! Well, technically I did get the page done “early” enough to actually queue it up in advance, so it was still “late” enough in real life terms to complicate everything else going on Sunday, so the mockery of my life decisions still stands.
Speaking of decisions, I’m torn on how this page turned out. Part of me really wishes I’d split the comic in two: one page just of Tabitha getting the attention of Stilez and the Boys, so that we could see their reaction close up as well as hers, and then a whole second page for the bottom two panels so that the effect could be a lot bigger. There’s two things with that, though, beyond the obvious “well then I’d have to start drawing the page all over again” defense. For one thing, I really am making a conscious effort to be better about pacing the story to fit this one-page-a-week schedule, and that means speeding things up a lot. Heck, even when we DID have two pages a week, Far Out There was still guilty of dragging things out too long, and cutting the release schedule in half is only making that worse. I just don’t think spending half a month to milk the drama of Tabitha activating her trinket, to get to a gag that was already being set up LAST YEAR, is defensible. And speaking of which… I don’t wanna go openly discussing spoilers for stuff that hasn’t happened yet, but come on. If ya’ll have been reading Far Out There this long, you know how my sense of humor works. You can make at least a educated guess at how the pay off of this gag will work, and understand how, in one way or another, MAYBE I shouldn’t allow the build up to lead any readers to have expectations they shouldn’t. At least, not after we’ve already been playing at it for this long.
And speaking of things taking too long, time to place your bets again! Who wants to guess how late the new TWC Voting Incentive will turn out to be THIS week?
EDIT: IT’S UP! THE VOTING INCENTIVE IS ACTUALLY UP WHEN IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE! REJOICE AND BE GLAD!
given the subject of the currently displayed vote incentive, it would almost be inappropriate for the next one NOT to be late!
Hey, ya wanna know a secret? *leans in close* I’ve actually already got the next Incentive finished! It’s all edited and everything! I just need to actually remember to post it Wednesday night!
You haven’t got one of those fancy internet program gizmos (I think that’s the technical term for it) that lets you set it up now and the post appears on its own at a scheduled time? I thought for sure there would be something like that. You should probably complain to the sys admin that runs your web site 😉
*rimshot*
No, but seriously, I can totally load the image up HERE in advance, but I’ve never seen a way to pre-set a new incentive on TWC without replacing the current one. Honestly, though, remembering THAT is way less hard than actually getting the new incentive done in the first place.
I wish I knew enough about internetting to offer useful advice, it seems like there **ought** to be some way to do that, unfortunately i only know enough to leave smart-alec-y comments, which is not a particularly rare skill on the internet. 😉
It’s entirely possible I’ve just been reading the site interface wrong all these years, but it’s never been QUITE inconvenient enough to bother really experimenting to make sure. That is, to outweigh the annoyance of accidentally overriding the current incentive and having to reset it all over again.
and there’s only so many hours in the day and only so much room on your ever-growing list of things to do related to FOT!
Have you got those character profiles updated yet? I think you said you were going to do that back in 2012 or so? 😀
Plus, it’s never too early to start working on that FOT version of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol!
Actually, in my own defense, the Character Profiles really did get that update (actual pictures now!) but yeah, that Christmas Carol project will still be hanging over my head when I’m 60.
Oh,wow , look at that, there actually ARE new character profiles!! Sweet! When the heck did that sneak in there without my noticing it?! I just assumed that “new character profiles” were like bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, people talk about them but you never actually see them yourself, and know they’re not real, even though you really want them to be. Cross one thing off of that to-do list! 😉
I have read this comic page twice, with a fair amount of gap between them, and I am now scared that Alphonse is going to get traumatised by this.
Remember, though, he’s been raised in the Caligari household. Gazing down an infinitely unfolding rip in the very fabric of reality that unveils the maddening sea of chaos that ultimately devours all that will ever be is, like, Tuesday.
Besides, this is nothing compared to that hideous mutant Santa Claus. If he’s not permanently traumatized by that thing already he’s probably safe.
(assuming that was canonical of course)
I think that I’d be more worried about Trigger than Alphonse.
I don’t know, it’s really hard to say, because life for FOT characters is so much different than ours, what might be traumatic for us doesn’t even rate a “meh” for them and vice versa, Alphonse might not be fazed at all by a horror of mad science, but terrified by a random loud noise – Similarly, surely at least a little part of Trigger’s training to be a super saboteur would include desensitizing him to shocking/surprising/horrifying stuff, he could hardly sabotage a top secret project if the became catatonic with shock at every little atrocity he stumbled across on the way, and he’s seen some pretty disturbing stuff since he left his bunker too (for example at the arms trader’s convention) – on the other hand, it’s also true: He is Trigger, after all. Training and experiences can only offset so much of your natural personality. So..the correct answer is…whatever the author says it is for the humorousness of any given scene, of course! 😉
Oh yeah, that Santa ABSOLUTELY happened.
Merry Christmas! 😉