Far Out There

Sweet Celestia on high I am SOOOOO glad I don’t have to look at this page anymore. As you no doubt have noticed, it is VERY late. Well, that’s because I completely botched my first attempt at drawing the final panel and had to start over from scratch at around 1:30 am. See, my original concept was to show the three close up from a low angle, all dramatic like. It really would have looked a lot better than the version seen here… if only I could draw tricky perspectives like that worth a crap. Instead, the picture turned out awful and just got worse the more I tried to fix it. And then the looooong night began. (and just for added annoyance, I didn’t realize the altered layout would leave so much empty space until it was too late to put any more characters in it. Hence awkward speech bubbles from characters who have no reason to be out of frame)

For all that griping, though, I DO like the contrast between Avatar and Layla in their reactions to Tabitha. Avatar’s trying her best to be civil, but just can’t hide how weirded out Tabitha makes her. Conversely, Layla’s TRYING to keep up her snarky, unfriendly act… but come on, EVERYONE can see she’s happy to have a gal pal to chat with. This is the kind of thing that makes stupidly long nights fun.

Oh, and just in case you didn’t already notice while waiting for the main update, new voting incentive!

(Historical Notes: Along with the obvious “Oh, THAT’S what she’s been keeping under those baggy shirts!” comments, there was some interesting discussion about exactly how Layla & Trigger have been on board the ship by this point.  In particular, it’s interesting because I don’t really know.  As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I had a close call early on with Layla & Trigger’s age in relation to each other.  Initially, Layla was just supposed to ACT more grown up, before I realized things only made sense if she was LITERALLY more grown up than Trigger.  Thankfully, I’d never explicitly SAID they were the same age yet, so there wasn’t actually anything to retcon, and ever since I’ve tried to leave as many of these types of details vague just in case I have to change anything later on.  In the case of them being on board the ship, I try to leave out any specific acknowledgement of time passing so that I can go back and slip in whatever flashbacks I want without contradicting anything.  That, and this comic moves SO FREAKING SLOW that “webcomic time” hits it even worse than usual, so it’s best not to remind anybody.  And also, I’ve never really been entirely sure how time is measured in an inter-planetary society… wait, do I give this rant again in one of the later pages?  This feels familiar.  Geez, talk about your timeline confusion…)