page 1303 – Regular Parenting Stories
Once again, we have a page where a certain part of my brain feels like it belongs in the “two updates a week” schedule and probably doesn’t do enough to justify itself here in the “one a week” era. But on the other hand, I really did need to do SOMETHING to remind the reader that, oh yeah, there ARE more people at this dinner table. And darn it, as soon as the idea for this “zooming out” effect, I just wanted to try it out.
Also, am I forgetting something, or is this the first time we’ve seen Tabitha actually talk about the pointy ear things in-comic? I know it’s been discussed elsewhere, like in the comments or back on the old forum, but I feel like it’s never come up in universe before. I’m legitimately not sure, though, because I’ve been up for a LOOONG time, and I kinda need to hurry up and get this page online so I can get some sleep.
OH! And speaking of things that got put off for an unhealthy amount of time, I really DID get the new TWC Voting Incentive series up and running over the weekend! It’d be tempting to try and blame all the time I spent re-posting that older stuff to the Incentive Gallery for the lateness, but actually I had some birthday cards to draw for the weekend as well, and apparently forgot that we exist within the linear passage of time where time spent on one thing is necessarily not there to be spent on another anymore. Hopefully I’ll be able to juggle things more properly this week.
EDIT: …AND I NEARLY FORGOT AGAIN, but this time I remembered to do the new TWC Voting Incentive before the sun rose over here, so it’s still kind of on time. (In my defense, it was because I got all wrapped up in finishing some new stuff for Patreon, which I guess is better than “Oh, sorry, I was playing Tetris for seven hours” or whatever.)
I’m just surprised Tabitha even remembers that the kids can’t talk – seeing as how she frequently forgets that tiny detail since she can understand what they’re saying perfectly. And then she ends up enrolling them in a Christmas choir….
https://faroutthere.com/comic/the-far-out-there-christmas-parade-page-12/
See, she’ll remember her wacky science project, but she’ll just get so wrapped up in it that she’ll forget what it’s actually for.
What I want to know is if Tabitha has sorted out the potential issues with them aging. After all they are Zombie Children, and even if they can grow (which we, the audience, don’t know if they are doing so yet) they’ll still likely have issues with normal biological processes like puberty.
Because, quite honestly, if they age normally and she hasn’t sorted out how they’re going to go through Puberty, that’ll be an even bigger problem than if they aren’t actually growing. If they aren’t currently growing, then she can deal with Puberty as a part of the process to get them to age. If they ARE growing, then Puberty is an immediate problem.
I actually had tried to work in something into Tabitha’s dialog to address that as well, but the wording was just too awkward (and you know it must be bad if even I’M upset at how clunky a sentence is).
My understanding at the moment is that Tabitha does indeed want them to grow up, and has a long-term plan to have it happen on it’s own, but at the moment she has to give them regular “tune ups” to encourage the process along.
The only way I can see it working is through replacing the talk about their ears with talk about how she’s manually assisting with them aging, and the “talk” line with one about puberty. For example:
Tabitha: “And if I can ever figure out a way to *technobabble* so that their cellular biology is again degrading in the manner of the living without wiping their memories or *technobabble troubles*, then they’ll be able to age without my annual tuneups.”
May: “Wow, parenthood sure is a lot of work!”
Tabitha: “That’s nothing, you should hear the stuff I have I gotta workout before they’ll be able to go through puberty.”
Yeah, pretty much. That’s the sort of thing that would probably need a whole page or two devoted just to it.
Not really, it could have easily just been the majority of this page. Shrink Avi’s laughter word balloon, shorten Layla’s speech to “I’d wish that I was on the other end of the table, but I’m sure that I would consider the conversation there worse than this”.
After that, have panel 1 take up half the space so that panel 2 could be 2 panels. One of which is dominated by Tabitha and her Technobabble, the second of which being focused on May and her response.
Of course, I’m saying all of this after the fact, without the character’s own opinions influencing me, and without creative instincts steering me towards a certain direction or giving me some of the thousands of other things Tabitha could have been talking about. So I have an unfair advantage in working out how you could have done that one very narrow possibility.