page 1304 – Healthy Dinner Chit Chat
So, last time I grumbled about how these recent pages felt like they made a lot less sense pacing-wise so long as Far Out There was still updating once a week instead of twice, but it hit me while working on this that I’d misdiagnosed what was bugging me. I mean, yeah, it’d be really dang nice if I could get back to two pages a week, but the thing actually bugging me RIGHT NOW is the fact that I didn’t properly structure this whole arc out right. I’m having to take time out to remind everybody about characters and details that we haven’t seen for a while, but that didn’t HAVE to be a thing. This whole time we should have been cutting back and forth between dinner upstairs and Stilez’s misadventures down below more regularly, instead of lumping so much of it into one long blast. See, this is what happens when I don’t sit down and actually doodle out rough drafts of future pages in big chunks. It’s a LOT easier to catch this kind of long-term pacing issue when everything’s physically laying in front of me than it is when it’s all just nebulously floating around in my head.
BUT ANYWAY, if you’re wondering just what the heck the context of that second panel is… well, me too. I basically scrounged up whatever details I could remember from a pretty wonky dream I had the other night, but I very much don’t remember what narrative was supposed to be connecting these snatches of imagery together. See, the fact that THIS is the kind of stuff that knocks around in my head is all the more reason I shouldn’t be drawing so much of Far Out There’s page-by-page stuff without a rough draft to iron out the kinks.
EDIT: VOTING INCENTIVE UP!
Explaining what’s going on in that last panel could be the subject of the next Halloween comic.
@ Blitz on Page Comment: At least until they read your webcomic. Then they’d just be mildly confused, because you do these types of things on a regular basis in the comic.
Now to explain what’s happening in the second panel!
– They are at a Seasonal Holidays Themed Amusement Park, trying to help them with their cost-saving measures.
– The baby Deer is there because they keep live Deer for the annual Xmas Celebrations, and that particular breed of Deer does double duty by transitioning from looking like Reindeer into looking like Unicorns towards the end of their life.
– Putting the Unicorn Heads into the Pumpkins is a Halloween Cost-Saving Measure Mariska thought up, due to them glowing and being effectively immobile under most circumstances.
– This also gives a uniform date to execute the Unicorns, which needs to be done somewhere between the Horse Caring Celebrations in September and the start of the Christmas Celebrations in either November or December, depending on whether or not they have a specific theme for November. If it’s done before the Supernatural Creature Jamboree in July, the Amusement Park is in serious trouble.
– Not executing the Unicorns means that they cause… issues… during the Christmas Celebrations as they try to lead the Deer acting as Reindeer for the Park.
– The necessity of the Flailing Fan Guy’s is because it’s effectively the easiest and most practical form of environmental manipulation that allows for the Unicorn Heads to be moved, with the sole exception of them being stored within something like hollowed-out Pumpkins.
– Whitby and Chelsea-Lambda are there on behalf of Marshall’s parents, because they like them more than they do Mariska. They aren’t actually doing any work, except watching over Mariska’s first job with Marshall.
– Whitby just stole that door because he could.
Coming in late:
“Because he could” is a good explanation for pretty much anything that involves Whitby.
Also, I find myself strangely compelled by the idea of Marshall’s parents not being fans of Mariska. That feels like the sort of thing running gags are made of…