Trying the more text-heavy format, mostly so I can squeeze in Avery’s verbal vomit.
Today's edition of the Secret Commentary is empty, because Dave failed to come up with something for it.
Trying the more text-heavy format, mostly so I can squeeze in Avery’s verbal vomit.
selkie, you silly, they aint gonna forget that too quickly. im glad avery explained that though- the sarnothi have been thrown into an entirely new society, how the heck are they supposed to adjust to human culture in a few days. its only natural for incidents like this to occur. i hope the talk with tehks parents(?) goes well! they seem kinda shy
Pretty sure based on Tehk’s guardian being his uncle, there’s at least one, if not both, parents missing/gone. Yay war…
I don’t mind the text heavy bit. It’s a lot to convey.
Same. This works well, and I appreciate having the info. Thanks!
“Glowbugging.” Tehk did the bugging so Selkie did the glowing.
Hopefully his Aunt and Uncle can talk some sense into him.
XD He’s not that easily distracted Selkie.
well, that *is* an explanantion for tehks behaviour – and that of all other newly arrived sarnothis – but it doesn´t explain benny at all. HE has been around+ among humans for years….which shows that either the integration program sucks – or simply doesn´t care about such things – and that brown doesn´t care either. he´s bennys step dad after all, he had YEARS to personally teach the kid better……but failed to do so. so either he is (deep down) ok with the prejudice, or a lousy (absent?) father.
bottom line is, brown lost quite a few brownie points in my book in this scene
Daddy issues.
Humans killed his real father. Then his mom remarries. To a human. A human who works for the human government. Honestly, I’m supposed they’ve made this much progress.
^ daddy issues with I’m a teen, you ain’t my real dad and I bet in this whole war thing nobody has asked or cared how they feel. The death of their loved one kicked off a crap ton of bs politics between two arguing factions that has destroyed/changed every aspect of their culture and its existance.
So yeah. The fact they talk to each other at all is progress.
Let’s hope “talking to his guardian” doesn’t backfire, they might not get what the fuss is about either and Tehk could lash out for being tattled on.
I have read a lot of comics (probably thousands of comics, both print and web verities) and a text heavy page like this is sometimes the only way to go.
Otherwise you risk several pages of monologing slowing down your rhythm and interrupting your story. With a webcomic it could mean keeping your audience waiting for a week or more and possibly losing readers.
As long as you try and keep them to a minimum (which you have so far) you shouldn’t have any problems.
I’m really enjoying your comic, the characters are charming and the setting quite realistic. I hope you keep the comic format (my preferance) but if you do decide to change to a text only format I wouldn’t mind.
I’ve also seen other comics that either released a novelization of the story (Girl Genius) or use the author comment section to add annotization to the script (irregular webcomic and schlock mercenary to name a few) webcomics have far more freedom than any other medium.
Actually… I think that Benny has the right idea after all. From what we’ve seen throughout this arc, it kind of feels to me like all the Sarnothi expect this to just be friendly ribbing. “Yes, technically that was an insult, but because its ME and we’re mates it’s just playing around and you can insult me right back.”
I’m not saying that it would always be friendly, but in this case – if Selkie had grown up around other Sarnothi, she and Tekh would be exchanging these insults in the same way that insults become inside jokes among friends. It would be a way that they *bond* while lost and confused in a very different world.
The conflict is caused because Selkie didn’t grow up around other Sarnothi. That’s a fact which Tekh both doesn’t know, and doesn’t have enough context to understand how that’s changed how the two of them need to interact.
(Is the concept of friendly insults a thing that America has, or is it only an Australian thing? It’s an extension of being able to turn a swear-word into a insult or the friendliest cheerful greeting in the world based entirely on context and who you’re talking to.)
Well the concept is here, but I usually see the opposite – ‘Bless your heart’ is NOT a term of endearment
while we DO have it over here in the USA, a lot of people get “professionally offended” by practically anything now day… therefore, unless you REALLY know the crowd you’re hanging out with and can do it safely, otherwise if a lesser-known individual is with you (or even just walking by) you can get in trouble actually USING that style of greeting and/or speech… so a lot of people just aren’t doing it much in the interests of NOT getting in trouble… blech…