page 1310 – dun goofed
Well, I for one can’t possibly see there being ANY negative repercussions from this particular turn of events. Nope. None at all.
So… Yeah… Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed a stunning lack of any new TWC Voting Incentive last week. Sorry about that. I got hit with a big ol’ heaping pile of Real Life going into the weekend and that completely got lost in the shuffle. Don’t worry, it wasn’t anything bad, just a whole bunch of “Oh right, I occasionally have to behave like a grown up” moments all happening one after the other. Clearly, as a person who draws funny pictures for The Internet, I find that sort of thing very disorienting. Case in point, me zonking out so hard Monday night while in the middle of working on this page that I’m not getting it finished and posted until noon Tuesday. Well, hopefully the dust will have settled enough by Thursday that THIS week will get a regularly scheduled new Incentive (And just for the record, I’m not trying to crank one out NOW because that would just further thrown off whatever semblance of a routine I have, making it even more likely that I’ll forget again)
EDIT: I ACTUALLY REMEMBERED THIS TIME!!!!!!!! New TWC Voting Incentive is up!
Well boys. It’s been nice knowing you… but I suspect your trip home is getting expedited.
that shade of eyeball red is really only a Level 1 Layla Alert..there’s not even any flames yet
https://faroutthere.com/comic/page-893-formal-threatened-apology/
(Although even a Level 1 is not to be taken lightly)
I disagree. Layla in the linked had time to develop her rage to a certain level, while it’s INSTANTANEOUS here. This isn’t a Level 1 Layla Alert. It’s the initiation of a Level 2 Trigger Harmed Alert, which is effectively a Level 2.5 Layla Alert.
The best result I can think of for this would be Lynne & Avi to be sent to bed without desert. They get an age-appropriate punishment for everything that happened, and none of the children are murdered.
I’d expect that Layla would definitely rate a bit of spilled food on a far, far lower scale than Tabitha’s prior offense, though. Unlike a bit of ice cream, Tabitha’s offense could not be erased with a wet cloth and maybe a bit of soap. Spilled food barely even counts as having ‘harmed’ someone. Tabitha’s was more like a betrayal, by a friend (of which she has precious few) who she trusted to be around Trigger, wheres nobody in their right mind would trust the four stooges around anyone or anything ever. This is like the 2nd or 3rd person they’ve spilled stuff on already in just this meal – it’s pretty much par for the course.
Keep in mind, though, they’re already on notice for disrespecting Trigger in the past, so there’s kind of a Three Strikes situation at play.
And what’s more, there’s also the question of how she feels about them bullying Marshall to factor into her potential reactions.
Everything about what happened here is a different situation. Yes, one of Layla’s few friends accidentally betrayed her and Trigger by doing something significant while acting as if it’s insignificant. But Tabitha is still one of Layla’s close friends, and the main issue came from the casual nature of it.
This time, however, we have at least two brats who have been creating a scene the entire time during a nice dinner. They made a ruckus during STEAK TIME, have attacked the nice chef/server who should have been eating with them, and have now thrown food onto Trigger because they decided to prioritize fighting with each other over who received the first bowl of desert over actually eating said desert.
Basically, the other example is a bigger individual problem, but also a one-and-done. This one has been building over the entire meal, and has only grown over time. The kids have been more annoying than a crying baby on an airplane, which takes REAL EFFORT, and now their fighting has thrown food all over Trigger.
So, yeah. To make an analogy, Tabitha’s actions were a knife-cut down the arm. Large, painful, but ultimately simple to deal with and everybody understands it’s a problem. The Kid’s actions, particularly Avi’s actions, are each about a hundred pin pricks. Horrible, but initially not a problem. Continuing for as long as they have, however, results in bigger problems that are harder to deal with. You KNOW to bandage an arm wound. You DON’T KNOW how to deal with the bleeding resulting from a few hundred thousand pin pricks.
Perhaps, but Tabitha is basically an adult, as is Layla, and so should be expected to act responsibly – these brats are just little children (and probably will be for the rest of their lives), not really something an adult should be angry about for more than a few moments at most, and so really merit something of only a child’s punishment, as you said, to bed without dessert or some such similar thing. Send them to sit in the corner as a time-out. For a couple weeks….
(If she’d just punished them properly after the first few pinpricks, or strikes, depending on your metaphor, they would have settled down, at least for a while, so it’s half Layla’s fault she ignored it this long anyway!)
…although, I’m probably in error in thinking Layla is a reasonable person who should be expected to act reasonably about things…don’t tell her I said that…
And what does Tabitha and Layla being “basically adults” have to do with anything? We’ve seen plenty of “definitely adults” in positions of authority who appear to have the mental faculties equivalent to these children, if not worse. Combine that with the fact that I suspect that lifespans in FOT are far longer than ours, and the cultural equivalent of one’s “teenage years” could easily reach until someone reached their 30’s.
Even in the real world, people are currently half-expected to be immature brats well into their early 20’s. Honestly, I feel like the current expected age of expected “functioning adult” status for the average person in the real world is currently around 25.
In before “This is why Blitz avoids mentioning characters exact ages” 😛
Ooh, the hobbit aging approach. (Age of majority is 33, with your 20s considered to be a time to be a young dumbass)
(I’m always a fan of slightly expanded age timelines- as opposed to the really weird ones like d&d elves not being adults until 100 which raises weird questions about how long it takes them to learn)