page 1438 – Intense Rivalry
As much as I’d like to go on a “Hey, remember THIS?” tangent about Alphonse getting jealous about Tabitha calling Avatar cute (complete with some links back to past instances to drive up some extra website traffic), I think the REAL reason he’s cranky here is because I’ve totally flaked on getting a fresh TWC Voting Incentive done in time to go up along with this. Under normal circumstances, I’d just set this finished page aside for a bit while jumping into working on the Incentive, then post ’em simultaneously. Alas, I’ve been up working on this for a WHILE, and I’ve got places I gotta be tonight, so I really need to get some sleep at some point before all that. I’ll do a fresh update to go along with next Tuesday’s page, sorry!
Pronoun Nitpick: of -> so
Nitpick of your nitpick: neither “of” or “so” is a pronoun, at least in the context of Tabitha’s sentence. “of” is generally a preposition, and “so” would be an adverb.
Dangit, foiled again!….ummmmm….in the far distant future, due to the evolution of the english language, plus some weird experiment a Mad Linguist did once, they will both be considered pronouns!
link to first instance of alphonse being jealous of avatar 17years ago to drive up web traffic:
https://faroutthere.com/comic/page-203-backronyms-are-stupid/
The more I look at this, that seems like a terrible way to carry kids – wouldn’t you normally need to support them under their arms? It’s like they might be strangled…well, I guess Avatar is fine…and I don’t know if zombies even need to breathe…and Tax has got to be unnaturally durable just to survive in the vicinity of Stilez this long. So I guess maybe they’re fine after all.
Yeah, this is one of those cases where drawing something “correctly” just didn’t work for the page layout. The original intent was for the kids to be held by arms around their waists, more or less horizontal on either side of the holder. But that was so awkward to try and space out properly (characters overlapping other characters in close quarters gets complicated to draw REAL fast) that I just gave up and drew everyone being held vertically, even if that’s not how you’d “really” do it. I did attempt to suggest that they’re being held by the shoulders rather than the necks, but there’s only so much that be done.
They were drawn “correctly” on the last page, literally being carried with Tabitha’s and Stillez’s arms underneath the kid’s armpits. So the new grip is purely for framing purposes.
Exactly, it’s one thing to draw stuff like that in a wide shot, another entirely to make it work in a cramped close-up.
One more nitpick, you misspelled Tabitha in the Tags, so the Tabtha tag applies only to this page 🙂
Gee, can ya tell I’d been awake for a while by the time I posted this?
Alphonse, you want a way to get all of that “adoration” that’s aimed at Tax to simultaneously be aimed at you? There’s a simple solution. Date Avatar. Then any adoration received from Tabitha to Avatar will, mostly, go to you both as a pairing.
…yes, that WILL decrease the amount of adoration Tabitha gives to your sister. Yes, that will likely cause her to act out and destroy stuff to get Tabitha’s attention again. Yes, I do understand that you’re upset that Tabitha normally calls you cute, Bridget cool, and rarely uses those words for others (excluding, now, Avatar also being called Cute), but still.
Then there’s the difficulty in getting Avatar to agree to date you, as your intention is purely to get more attention from your adoring mother figure. But still.
I was starting to say something about Alphonse’s actual thought process here, but it’s actually going to come up in the TWC Voting Incentives eventually, and I don’t wanna spoil anything.