page 1401 – As Long As It’s Not Diet
Okay, HOPEFULLY no one will need to read this, or at least there’ll be a LOT of extra stuff added afterwards when you do. Either way, I’m going ahead and queuing this rough draft SEVERAL days ahead of time because there’s threats of an ice storm right around the time I would NORMALLY be working on the new page. So as security against a power outage, I’m going ahead and getting SOMETHING ready to go live regardless. If it’s Tuesday morning and you’re still seeing a partially edited and not-colored-in version of this page, well, I guess that means I haven’t had lights on for a bit. Oh well. Support me on Patreon so I can buy some candles.
EDIT: Oh sweet! It’s Sunday night as I write this, and the lights are still on! Granted, there really IS a lot of frozen slush outside, and it’s gonna be so cold this week that it’s probably not going to go anywhere anytime soon, so having some powerlines go down isn’t off the table just yet. So I’m still glad to have ANY version of this page queued up ahead of time, let alone a finished one.
I’m also glad because this page is one of those gags I’ve been low-key building up to for YEARS. Seriously, look through the backlog of old pages and see how far back the “Layla asks for something” in it’s various permutations truly goes. I’ve had these particular beats kicking around in my head for a WHILE. OH! And to whom it may concern, here’s the rough draft of this page that would have gone live if I didn’t get this one finished in time.
What? No Xal-Gox rare meat flavored?
(Yeah, I know, the company officially calls it Xal-Gox Savory, but nobody really ever calls it that)
…okay, Marshall is forbidden from ever going into Hospitality. I don’t CARE how good of a cook he is, he’s too submissive. That’s a bad enough flaw for a Nitpicker, but for Hospitality it’s beggaring yourself because people want to eat for free.
I mean, it’s fine if he can avoid interacting with customers, but he’s showing right now that he couldn’t prevent himself from doing so.
Sophia clearly just wants a personal chef and is using a vacant spot on the Guild’s payroll to fund one, but without the normal contentious, argumentative, confrontational nature associated with a Nitpicker – she’s got enough of those already to deal with. He’ll be given a token Nitpicker position and base salary from Guild funds to be stationed at HQ, and will occasionally be assigned to nitpick food related issues to maintain his Nitpicker certification, just never in person nor interacting with the clients. Maybe he might nitpick a new recipe book or something like that. Just to prove “He’s totally a for real Nitpicker and not at all just a professional chef I hired a company expense for my own dining.” Which is, of course, also the reason he’s enrolled in the obligatory mentorship program, for appearances of propriety.
Ed8, we both know that’s wrong. Marshall is a child of Nitpicker Parents, and they’re the reason why he’s a Nitpicker-In-Training. The thing is, he’s great at handling the standard Nitpicker Troubles. Reality warping, danger to life-and-limb, and mind-breaking existences popping up out of nowhere all fine. Someone being mildly disappointed in the food he is responsible for, on the other hand, is something that he may never mentally recover from. And something that fraudulently occurs in the Hospitality Industry hourly, and I’m being optimistic by listing it as occurring that infrequently.
Honestly, I suspect that if he dedicated himself to it, Marshall would make a great Nitpicker. It’s the emotional attachment he has to cooking that is the trouble I conceve with him entering the Hospitality Industry, not anything else.
Just pointing this out, but unless I’ve forgotten some wording at some point, it’s not been specifically stated that Marshall’s parents are actually Nitpickers, just that they apparently want HIM to be one rather than a chef (Layla actively shut down the conversation before we got the details).
OK, I finally found it:
https://faroutthere.com/comic/page-1194-no-backstory-today/
unless there’s more info elsewhere. I did not check for additional info in authors comments.
Not only did it not say his parents were nitpickers, the strip did not even say that his family wanted him to be a nitpicker. “It’s just that his family…” could have lots of endings to it. Many reasons why family issues could lead to a nitpicker career path.
It’s just that his family is in horrible debt and Nitpicking was the only career lucrative enough to keep them out of debtor’s prison.
It’s just that his family pressured him into Nitpicking because it’s highly respected in their culture (like people used to push their kids into medicine even thought hey had no interest, for social prestige reasons).
It’s just that his family belongs to a foodie-hating cult and would disown him and burn him at the stake if he went into the food industry.
It’s just that his family lost a bet with the head of the High Nitpickers Council and had to donate their first-born child to the guild.
The more bizarre and complex the end of that sentence, the more likely it is in the FOTverse.
In any case, my concern has nothing to to with why he applied for the nitpicker job (family related somehow) but rather why Sophia accepted someone into a highly competitive position out of millions of applicants who is so obviously tempermentally unqualified for the work.
So, my intention WAS to imply that they wanted him to be a nitpicker, but in my usual very well organized manner, I’ve deliberately avoided pinning myself down on WHY just yet. As you’ve aptly demonstrated, there’s a wide variety of ways this COULD go.
I’m still shocked that in the comments for the previous strip you actually almost kinda sorta indicated a timeframe for something happening 🙂
Hey, as long as it’s vague enough for me to walk back at a moment’s notice 😀
I did remember most of that, but the implication there was still fairly thorough, and I chose to run with it. The fact that they actively pushed him to the Nitpicker’s and it wasn’t anyone unrelated to him that initiated it is what I was talking about.
The source of his parents being Nitpickers is that… who else would actively push their child into that industry? Particularly with sufficient political force behind themselves that his own reluctance is completely disregarded. Because I can’t see many situations where the Nitpickers take on reluctant members, particularly by force, unless it’s because the rest of their family are already Nitpickers, the Nitpicker Guild saw him grow up, and know that he can both do the job & wouldn’t be a failure as a Nitpicker, so long as he gets over a few “minor” issues.
There’s plenty of valid reasons why somebody SHOULDN’T, but as with so many things in life, that’s an entirely separate conversation than whether or not somebody WOULDN’T.
I wasn’t suggesting other people WOULDN’T push their children into acting as Junior Members of the Nitpicker’s Guild. I was suggesting that most people COULDN’T have their children join as Junior Members of the Nitpicker’s Guild.
Let’s use the three other examples of Junior Members of the Nitpicker’s we’ve seen. Child Ichabod, Child Mariska & May. All three of them are enthusiastic about finding weird things, investigating them, and dealing with the trouble that arises as a result. Perfect attitude for Young Nitpickers, just the type of thing that, if tempered correctly, results in capable Nitpickers.
Now look at Marshall. He does NOT care about mysteries. He is worried in the face of interdimensional demons. He tries to please everyone around him. None of that screams “Potential Nitpicker” loud enough, to me, that he could get into the program easily. If, however, he was raised around them and regularly showed that he has sufficient knowledge to be a Nitpicker.
Oh, sure, there could be a written test, with marking secretly being on based on how well they corrected the spelling & grammar mistakes rather than the questions provided, but then I would suggest that May might have had trouble getting into the program.
Lots of people are well connected, even without being directly connected to the guild – if Augusta decided Kevin was going to be a nitpicker, or pretty much any other job, he would get the job, despite having no apparent qualifications for anything. And you would need to be nearly as connected as Augusta to do that. They could just be someone the guild owed a big favor to. I expect these Nitpickers are frequently incurring favors that need to be paid back somehow.
Kevin would be fired from the Nitpicker’s before the hour is out, he doesn’t know enough and doesn’t care about learning. For example, my headcannon is that Aunt Domino is only still employed because:
-A) She has been a Nitpicker her whole life and was very effective for a long while.
-B) It’s cheaper, easier and safer all-around for her to be under constant security protection.
-C) The one time they did try to forcibly retire her, she misinterpreted the retirement home for a detention camp, turned the entire home into a warzone, terrifying the planet. Worse, none of the other residents allowed themselves to be disarmed afterwards, to the point where they literally need to give weapons to new residents now.
-D) She learnt a few too many state secrets over her career, and the main reason why the Retirement Home War isn’t a problem is because, if she DIDN’T start that war, one would have initiated about five minutes later anyway from all the assassins-or-kidnappers who replaced the staff, resulting in Aunt Domino’s War and arming of residents preventing the residents from being attacked.