OOPS #365
Aug14
All right, looks like everything’s up and working! I’ve been sitting on this site redesign too long, and just needed a couple days to get everything remade. And in a strange bit of good (?) timing, my Wacom tablet died a few days ago, which I assumed was the universe’s way of telling me to get off my ass and update the site already. Thankfully Wacom made a speedy repair and delivery back, so I’ve already sketched up the first few panels of the next OOPs page.
And a special shoutout to Xandispin, who first suggested a site update several months ago, then set up this snazzy new WordPress layout for me to customize (which I then sat on until this past week). Thanks man; it took me long enough to get around to it, but without you the site would still be looking like something from the early 2000’s!
Seriously, I was manually creating pages and re-entering every altered link when there was a new page, using a long-defunct version of Dreamweaver 2001. That gets tiring real quick.
Anyway! There’s some new stuff in the Art & Extras section now as well, which you might not have seen if you don’t frequent Deviantart and such.
Oh, so Vizlet DID fill Kass in!
Very good, now Kass gets to flex those mercantile skills! Hopefully they aren’t too rusty, or at least he can shake the rust off pretty quick
Schmooze the guy, Kass! Schmooze him GOOD! He believes himself and his way to be so superior, so if you play in to that, this should be easy. But… is it ever truly easy? What tricks does ol’ Narky Nark have up his… sleeves?
Narklet is intelligent, but he’s young and he has a big ego. I think he’ll be easy to flatter
The maximally-infuriating kind of intelligent that nonetheless has absolute resolve to prioritise their preconceptions over any amount of contradiction.
Flatter, flatten, whatever works!
Narklet also has the sort of world view that thinks it has already accounted for everything. When those worldviews are correct they are powerful and useful, when those worldviews are wrong they lead to interesting mistake when running into “Outside Context Problems”. I mean any sort of problem the worldview doesn’t even have space for or didn’t even comment on.
Do we know how much Narklet knows about the antiquities and the transformation? If he already knows about transformation then he might have some plan like exposing Kassen. If he isn’t even aware of the possibility then he will fail in this and not even be able to imagine why.
Well, yeah, Vizlet warned Kass onscreen early in the comic. Like… page 27.
That is all nice and good, but whatever Kass’s dad taught him, might I point out that Kass himself on the ranking ladder of the merchant guild managed to reach the grandious heights of Logistics Security Guard.
And yet, he has enough game to understand how to deal with the Trademaster’s requests and how to deal with bureaucracy.
The early pages show that Kass and Elim were refugees from a war where their land / country ceased to exist, which means whatever family ties they had were gone. So I’m guessing Kass grew up learning the trade, the war happened, lost everything… and so he didn’t become a merchant. But he was offered a job and so he took it.
And think about it, Kass shows remarkable smarts for someone who was just a “Logistics Security Guard”. Given enough time (and if he hadn’t been Yingletfied), he might have actually risen through the ranks organically and become a guard leader.
I will now and forevermore view Kass getting serious as Yinglet Kass summoning Human Kass like a Stand behind our favorite diplomat.
I don’t think that is Kass. I think it is supposed to be Kass’s father, since he is calling upon the skills his father taught him.
Ehhhh, doubt it. The stand looks about the same age as Cass before his accident. We don’t know how old his dad got to be of course, but I doubt cass would imagine him as being his own age
Kass has a different jaw and ear shape, just hit First and go compare, i do think that our stand here is Kass’ father probably how Kass remembers him as a child.
The comparison with older art would normally make sense, but Valsalia’s style seems to have changed since then. This can be seen by comparing early ‘Yinglet Kass’ renderings in the comic to the current iteration…so that may be just as true for older ‘Human Kass’. As for who the merchant image is here? I agree that it’s likely his father. Also; acknowledgement that ‘someone’ beat me to this post…:-)
You can see human Kass just a few pages back on OOPs #348. Human Kass on that page has paler skin and a differently shaped chin.
Human Kass there is paler as a whole because he’s a reflection in a mirror. The chin shape is hard to compare because of different angles.
Has no one considered that it is simply an idealized version of the concept of self he has in that moment? He’s pulling full upper-middleclass energy and so he broadened the chin a bit to look haughty, but he’s still pretty grounded in reality so he’s not wearing golden silk or presenting a feckin 12 pack of abs. It’s just middle ground, “I am better than you and that’s why you’ll never suspect that I know that.”
This is the most sensible conclusion. Yes, Kass is wearing what their father might have worn (or perhaps a Val Salian merchant, not sure that is Dinnish style), but is channelling it into an idealised vision of the self’s “life energy” – similar to JoJo’s concept of a Stand, albeit with less of a physical representation.
Agreed. Besides, if you look center forehead you will notice a feature identical between yinglet and human. This is almost certainly Kass’ idealized self. Unless Kassdad also hair a hair horn.
I compared the skin color with human Kass on some other pages and it looks like he does have nearly the same skin tone, but the chin is definitely different. The guy on this page has a really wide chin with a cleft.
My guess is for Kassdad, he was mentioned and we have never seen this outfit before. But I could be overemphasizing the wrong clues.
That hair is almost in order. Kass’s bedhead is such a universal constant even a complete DNA re write into a female yinglet couldn’t undo it….
The differences you notice can be explained away by 11 years of artistic evolution. The extra jewelry (index ring and pendant) are a better evidence in favor of the Kassdad Hypothesis.
You can see human Kass just a few pages back on OOPs #348. Human Kass on that page has paler skin and a differently shaped chin.
I think its more likely this is his dad, especially given the outfit.
human cass jumpscare! 😀
i do love the fit though.
and very “here comes the smoulder” energy
I think that is actually supposed to be Kass’s father, since that is the person he is thinking about.
He’s doing it! He’s releasing his Bankai!
Lol xD
I was imagining that Kass was going to argue to Narklet that he is doing an important job for yinglet kind, showing the humans that yinglets are more than pests to kill or pets to keep and protecting yinglets from the dangerous human nations by forming a strong alliance with a friendly one. Maybe he is still going to do some of that after saying the right things to get Narklet to like him.
yeah, I’m expecting something along the lines of “the vast majority of the yinglets in val salia are exiles, I am literally the only yinglet there considered ‘respectable’. my presence there, my diplomatic efforts here, are the only things keeping our entire species from being labeled ‘a nuisance’. if I don’t return to the mountain, they will consider this diplomacy a wasted effort. I am doing this for the good of all yinglets.”
I was more thinking that he would focus on how strong and dangerous humans are and that yinglets can’t protect themselves from humans without allies.
I would agree with you but your forgetting he’s dealing with more less a zealot. Reason and logic are often loss on those types.
So… Kazz is going to *sell* him a bill of goods, then.
Yeah, this should be fun…
Well, in this case, the goods to be sold are the idea that Kass is in an important position, forming a strong alliance with the human city. The trick is to sell him on the idea enough that he allows it, while thinking he is achieving a victory over Kass.
they have patriarchs for that sort of thing
Narklet saying that “even a single one” would “undo generations of progress” is… weird. It’s really weird, actually; it doesn’t just sound to me like hyperbole from a fanatical person–it’s too specific of a consequence, it doesn’t make sense to say that if you just mean that it would be a horrible loss or that it’d be a grave return to the old ways or something.
There’s actually a few things here that make me suspect that line is hiding something: there’s another phrasing quibble in that “outside of the enclave system” is another strangely precise way to word it if the intent was just to express that it would be deeply unethical or something; Vizlet’s plan to get (or at least her Machiavellian reaction to) Kass cutting free a Yinglet with an underdeveloped shelltooth; the fact that the culture (presumably including the enclave system) was handed down by a single gifted male; and the fact that said system has Eugenics™ built in.
Together, it seems like there’s some reason that the elders need females to stay within the enclave system beyond just protection of the valuable and sacred; Narklet’s statements here combined with the structure of the society and precisely how Vizlet seems to want to subvert it all add up to make it look like there really is something dangerous about a rogue female beyond political sway or the risk of an unaffiliated enclave forming.
My main guesses right now are either that the strict breeding control that exists in Yinglet society as of now is being intentionally manipulated in some way to serve an as of yet unclear goal (specifics in spades you see), or that it’s as simple as them having seen what happened after Vizlet was exposed to human culture through travel and recognizing that that jeopardizes their control. I’m not terribly confident in either, but I’m pretty convinced there’s some actual reason beyond the cultural that this is so important.
Unfortunately depending on how (obviously a former human/intelligent/unfavorable towards Kass/indoctrinated/politically shrewd) Narklet actually is, that makes me worry shmoozing might be about to fail Kass; compromises are hard to reach when you have a hidden agenda that makes compromise implicitly unacceptable.
One female x seven matings per clutch at 6? clutches a year …. yeah thats a lot of genetic information and experimentation to lose. Lippy is really good at tracking genetic markers , they intentionally combined katajak and poak to make a big warrior, there is a breeding schedule , and on a trade caravan someones job is to take all that info back down south… they definitely have a eugenics program for SOME end.
I think the trick for Kass will be setting up the situation so Narklet comes away thinking he is the winner when, in reality, he has gained nothing.
oh! You just reminded me of the FG02 field guide wayyy back in the prologue, which mentioned the Greater and Lesser Yinglet subspecies and how they attack each other on sight.
Also, if it really is all about eugenics, then Narklet will be fine once Kass reveals he has zero interest in laying eggs.
No, that’ll just mean Narklet will *force* Kass to lay eggs.
He has been heavily implying that he has to lay eggs for a while. Or ELSE.
The question is, who will better protect Kass’ right to make such an unorthodox choice?
Ivenmoth managed it… just about. Perhaps they will do a better job of it now.
But they have that luxury because they do not rely on yinglet eggs for societal survival.
Conversely, the enclave system assumes that part of the role of the (relatively rare) females is to lay eggs, but provides structure and a modicum of control over pairings and the eggs produced; as opposed to the free-for-all, might-makes-right approach roughly represented by e.g. Brakka.
Given what we know about Yinglets, Narklet is, broadly speaking, correct. Kass would – in the normal state of affairs – end up laying eggs, if only from random males who have nothing to lose (or just let their instincts get the better of them). It almost happened once already.
From this perspective, it’d be better for Kass and the matriarch to have control over the manner and timing of the mating, and better for eggs and hatchlings to be cared for by trained specialists. Meanwhile the males’ job is partly to defend the females and their eggs… with their lives, if necessary. It’s not just females who have significant responsibilities.
Quite the opposite. I am pretty sure the possibility of Kass eventually settling into their ” natural place” as an egg factory by gentle persuasion is the only thing keeping him from swarming the place with his scavengers and launching her onto the breeding schedule with a trebuchet. Once thats off the menu all bets are off.
He’s referring to Zeska, Zally’s mom, and how she’s run off with exiles into the wilderness. They’re (supposedly) living like bandits. But that also means that she’s probably partly acting like their matriarch and just doing her best to take care of these poor boys who’d be stuck on their own without her holding them together. She’s likely breeding with them and had a daughter or two with them by now, putting them on their way to becoming a non-affiliated (semi-nomadic?) enclave, which the elders can’t abide. While I’d not be surprised if Vizlet and/or Beizel have a means of limited contact with Zeska’s group, Narklet is definitely on orders to watch for any communication.
To Narklet, Kass should return to the proper life of a female in the enclave rather than risk falling into similar decadence in the city with the exiles there. Narklet’s drunk the kool-aid and believes the system is the one and only way for Yinglets to live. In his mind, she should be in this or another enclave, helping breed and care for more yinglets. This poor, lost female would be treated like royalty if she did, so what’s the problem?
If the exiled Lopin ever bangs Kass, Narklet will lose his shit.
I think Kass will be the first to lose his **** if Lopin bangs him…
That is definitely Kassdad. Kass’s bedhead is such a universal constant a complete species and gender re write couldn’t get rid of it.
Yo, yings. Gow tight is Kass’ rizz game?
I guess I got a question. Is yinglet society a monoculture? Its origins would kind of imply that it is but I also find it hard to believe no yinglets exist outside the enclave system. A female yinglet living outside the enclave’s strict protection can’t be completely unheard of. Even the matriarch spent her early years travelled and apprenticing.I’m just kind of surprised Narklet assumes the enclave is the only home a yinglet could ever know. There must be other yinglets and possibly even other societies in parts of the world beyond the seemingly limited reach of the enclave just statistically right?
Zally’s mom ran away to join some mountain raiders. Possibly the bronze axes?
Whatever caused the lesser yinglet to VERY quickly evolve into the greater yinglet (possibly zat zing) only happened 138-200ish years ago so aside from a scant few individuals they’re holding it together so far.
I think that Zeska was Zally’s older sister, not her mother.
More Vizlet reactions! Hoooorays!
Oh my clamz. Za schmooz is overz nine zhousands…
Lessee if Kass goes for za legenzary smek/schmooz combo… *blink blinks*
(Possible double post sorry) It’s truly impressive how Narklet can be talking about how females must be protected and adored while at the same time EVERY SINGLE WORD out of his skeevy mouth is making my skin crawl with visceral discomfort. I want to see Kass run verbal circles around this creep.
Since no one else evidently has: jojo
My stand「Cash or Credit」has no weaknesses!
Bro is so locked in that he’s summoning himself as his own stand.
Having finally read this far down, I see others had the same idea!
(I haven’t actually seen it, but was vaguely aware of the concept.)
If it really were the “natural order”, you wouldn’t have to disallow deviation from it, would you?
Not withoit being eeevil. It was and to some extent still is a widely held philosophical position.
A group which does may still have an advantage against one which does not.
Embrace the schmooze!
Hm. Maybe Kass can turn back into a human, but only into a baby, so he’ll have to grow up again…
Or maybe Isher will turn into a yinglet as well.