page 1354 – these hugs are PRESCRIPTION
Actually, Tabitha just knows this because she went back and binged previous comics, like all good readers do 
And speaking of needing sleep, MAN I’m glad this is the only page of Far Out There I’m set to do this week! Only having a new TWC Voting Incentive on the schedule after this never felt so luxurious! Then again, I really should talk about taking things TOO easy. February IS a nasty time for End Of The Month Deadlines, and I’m gonna find myself scrambling to finish another round of Patreon stuff before I know it. Seriously, I’ve got another Far Out There short story in the works right now, and I’m gonna at least TRY to get it done by the end of the month. I mean, I almost certainly won’t make it, but having a deadline to at least ATTEMPT to meet is about the only way I can motivate myself to finish anything at all…
EDIT: IT FINALLY HAPPENED! A NEW TWC VOTING INCENTIVE IS UP!!!
To what degree does Layla know or not know that she has sleep problems/nightmares/etc? Or to what degree is her denial here sincere or just covering?
That’s an excellent question, actually. The only other person she’d be comfortable around enough to have ever really seen her asleep is Trigger, and he’s the very definition of the kind of soothing presence that would nullify the problem.
Then again, it’s establishes that she DOES notice she’s been crying when she wakes up, and tells herself otherwise, so there’s definitely some denial going on as well.
Now I have to go back through 1,353 strips to check if she was ever asleep when Trigger wasn’t around but others were. I’m pretty sure there were Christmas strips, and possibly incentives, but those don’t count.
Edit: After searching on the term “sleep” in hopes of narrowing it down a bit…I ended up with pages and pages of search hits where Blitz complained in the Author remarks about not getting enough sleep
probably a link between the prevalence of such posts and Blitz making the a character trait for one of the lead characters
From memory, Layla’s only been shown asleep in the comic a few times, and Trigger was likely at least in the same room for the few times it wasn’t brought up as something notable.
We might have had her arguably seen by Ichabod while sleeping alone during the prank arc. I’ll just go check that real quick.
Nope. She was awake in bed, and Trigger KNEW she would be awake.
https://faroutthere.com/comic/page-117-something-mischievous-this-way-comes/
Thus, Layla’s sleep issues have been a part of the comic the entire time.
You know what’s really funny? I genuinely don’t remember when I first decided that would be a thing. It just sort of… manifested as part of her character.
It’s never been referenced since, as far as I recall, but there’s got to be something going on with Ichabod as well, as per page 118, he only sleeps once every few days, and essentially goes into a coma at that time. Or maybe that’s just normal for his planet? Not every radically bioengineered human race has to look weird on the outside. Perhaps his planet has a 100-hour long day cycle so they engineered their sleep cycle to match. Not sure why they’d go into a coma during their sleep cycle? Maybe nobody trusted anyone else to be awake while they were asleep, so they made sure that when it was sleep time everybody STAYED asleep?
Honestly, for Ichabod I suspect it’s more his personal equivalent of “There’s so much to mentally stimulate myself! It’s so much fun to work until I collapse unconscious! And the sleep is so restful, I can’t imagine doing anything else!”
It’s a part of the reason why he became a Nitpicker. That said, about three quarters of the Nitpicker’s think that Ichabod’s sleeping habits are weird and unhealthy, including the ones that directly experience other realms of existence on a regular basis. The other quarter either don’t care, or don’t know what a normal regular sleep schedule is, beyond the definition of “regular sleep schedule”, and so think that so long as Ichabod is sleeping in a consistent manner he’s fine.
If it was a day, then maybe, but it’s several days – not humanly biologically possible with any amount of work ethic or enthusiasm unless you’ve been biologically or genetically altered or use some future-drug that would have horrible side effects. Same for being in a coma when sleeping, it exceeds the range of normal human sleep ability.
An alternate theory – his sleep habits were originally normal, until that one time he got hired to nitpick She Who Sleeps Behind Sleep, and ever since he’s been like this.
Other alternative, a significant portion of the “Jesus Freak” Caravan’s (that is LITERALLY the name given to them in the comic) are followed by humans genetically modified to be optimal office workers, able to work for a week straight without rest, only to go into restorative short-term hibernation afterwards.
The project failed not due to the modifications not working as intended, but because the VAST majority (they stopped counting once it reached 95%) of those modified went out of their way to abandon standard society and never return. Of those who didn’t effectively abandon society in it’s entirety, it wasn’t unusual for them to be terrible at office work due to insufficient training & aptitude for what they were trained in.
I do want to say here that, like a lot of characters in this comic, I feel like Ichabod’s whole personality and backstory is better suited as a big pile of random non sequiturs than anything properly planned out. So probably all of these things are true at the same time, plus several more none of us have thought of yet.
yay, i’m caught up with the comic now! just the two other tabs of binging farther back into the parts i had already read because following links and the incentive gallery
Now I just need to finish re-posting the rest of the Voting Incentive & Patreon Gallery so there’ll be even MORE to binge!