page 1297 – a mess has been made
I, um, may have gone a little bit overboard on the art for this one. See, this is what happens when I push a page concept back a week and have extra time to think about it. Stuff starts to go a little overboard. By the way, though, if you can make it out through all the mess, there’s actually multiple little references to previous Far Out There foodstuffs in that pile. Let’s see how many of them are actually intelligible!
Anyway, we’re really coming up on the home stretch of prep for the yearly Big Splurge Of Holiday Comics… which I’m just gonna confess right now I am WAY behind schedule on. So just as fair warning over the next few weeks: TWC Voting Incentives MIGHT randomly go on hiatus again with minimal warning. I don’t want to, especially during December itself since I want there to be SOMETHING non-Christmas going up, but there’s also only so much time in the day, and more and more of it keeps running out. So I guess we’ll just have to play it on a week by week basis, at least through the rest of November. Let’s see what happens!
EDIT: TWC Voting Incentive is up! I literally had gone to bed and had to get back up when I remembered this wasn’t done yet.
I was expecting Cap’n Crosby to be expecting half the Vending Machines torn to pieces, their contents half-eaten and half-“spread around the room, walls, and even ceiling like there was a food-fight celebration and half a million people participated”.
Now the question is, how did Stillez, or Tax, manage to make the Food Monster for Stillez to play with?
The vending food industry puts a lot of dubious additives and preservatives into that stuff to make it last forever, and tiny little warnings on some of the packages caution that they are NOT to be mixed together under ANY circumstances. (If they are mixed together, foodmonsterification may result. GalacticMegaChemCorp Ltd, owner of Granny’s Homecooked Vendfoods, Inc. disclaims all monster-related liability as a result of users not following the tiny warnings.)
Either that, or Megaweapon tossed some Mad Scientist’s monsterifier down there when he was exploring the bowels of the ship 10 years ago. Or a couple weeks ago. Whenever that happened.
Cap’ Crosby’s got a problematic relationship with expectations. On the one hand, he’s been around the block enough times to know exactly how bad everything can turn out. But on the other hand, he also knows that nothing jinxes everything quite like believing you know how things are going to turn out. It’s a terrible conundrum.
Also, “10 years ago. Or a couple weeks ago. Whenever that happened.” is the best description of Webcomic Time that I’ve seen in a while.
If that’s the case, then my timing on everyone’s ages could easily be wrong. As in, if 120 Earth Years produces 12 Year Olds, then my aging of Cap’n Crosby should be about 80 years regardless, because I previously was not assuming he’s actually a 1,200 Year Old who looks like he’s 800.
And the Cap’n’s relatively easy as age-guessing goes – we’ve got Avatar, who doesn’t Age at all, the Zombie kids who were created rather than born so their ages are indeterminate, Principal Baby, who’s been established to be a middle aged guy, Sophia, who I don’t think it’s ever been defined if she’s a precocious kid or really an adult who looks like a kid, and what about Tax and Stilez – should their ages be measured in dog and cat years, respectively? For that matter, Stilez has super-metabolism, she may have been an adult by the time she was 3 or something- it would seem legitimate to design a supersoldier to waste as little time as possible in child form. Even without distorting the progression of Time, you’d have to hire a professional Nitpicker just to keep track of people’s Birthdays.
@Ed8: You also didn’t mention Marshall, the Hoch’ren Honnee and anyone else who uses a dematuration capsule because they’re rich enough to ignore the law.
…and just the general fact that all these characters are being drawn by an artists who only knows how to draw four or five faces, and most of those look like small children.
Every face looks like a child’s face when their eyes take up three quarters of their head. It isn’t really your fault that you have difficulty in making them look like they’re different ages with the art style the comic has had since day one.
…well, besides the fact that it’s your art style, and design choices that has the faces be three quarter’s eyes, but that’s pretty much irrelevant at this point.
Tbh, I assumed this was a side effect of the battle that Tabitha had while getting food from the vending machines for the Tween Boy Squad a while ago.
*bites tongue*
That actually makes sense, Reynard. Good on you for remembering that. Also, new problem, your explanation makes sense. This is Far Out There, and things making as much reasonable sense as what you just said does is a cause for concern.
Blitz biting their tongue just means that you have either given him an idea, or ended up close to the truth.
So, all up, we can expect the thing Stillez is fighting to be a MUCH BIGGER PROBLEM than it currently appears to be.
…Though, given that there isn’t really a bigger problem possible in the FOT Universe than being in the same general vicinity as Stillez, it can still resolve itself with just the people in the Vending Storage, with the only detriment being that the Vending Storage is going to be empty at the end of it.
I wanted to write a reply where I just restate “bites tongue” in more complicated medical terminology… but apparently “tongue” is the actual official scientific name for our weird mouth muscle, so the joke wouldn’t work.
…and yes, please do remember to bring up the fact that I spent time today looking THAT up when I inevitably complain in the commentary on the next page about how late I had to stay up to finish it.
masticates lingual muscular tissue?