OOPS #364
Aug03
Vizlet stress levels rising exponentially
Hi-res and textless version available for free on my Patreon!
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.
(If this posts twice it’s because I had some error trying to post it the first time)
Some interesting tidbits I can point out now that commenting works for me and these two are on the same page.
Narklet and Kass look almost identical. Color, markings, build, everything. The only real differences are hair color (which we know Kass retained from his human self) and Narklet having a bit of fluff at the tips of his ears (but not always).
With this in mind: we never see the tip of Narklet’s tail. And while Kass has a fairly masculine snout for a female, Narklet has a feminine snout for a male.
It’s true that we never see the tip of his tail, we come close on several pages but it is always slightly cut off. That’s a good observation.
Is it possible that Narklet is ‘Sweet Polly Olivering’?
But isn’t Narklet supposed to represent and uphold yinglet traditions?
Conservatives conserve their power and the structures that enable that power. They will often talk about tradition, family values, community, protecting some group, or something else seemingly positive when positive words might change the behavior of others. Conservatives will just as often talk about “the other”, disease, danger, military matters, controlling purity, or other negative things when they think fear will sway people. When anyone puts conserving their power at the forefront, they can’t help but eventually run afoul of truth.
Erm… you lost me there ^^”
Narklet was sent by “enclave elders” to preserve their power. We don’t have a lot of other details. In real history lots of people conserving power structures have done “anything necessary” to conserve that power. Not a value, just a no nonsense accounting of history, in fact if we pick examples I would like to start centuries ago to prevent a heated argument.
Narklet is appealing to tradition to do what the elders want. He is likely doing other things too. Some are likely genuinely beneficial and some are likely not altruistically motivated. Like his archaeological pursuits, if he was just recording and analyzing that would be benevolent, but it seems he is looking for powerful antiquities the elders can exploit.
I am not saying he is right or wrong to do any of these things (maybe the elders have very good reasons we don’t know). I am saying he will likely need to deviate from the truth as a more objective outsider might see it to achieve his goals. Perhaps lying about social structures while knowing antiquities can alter them or lying about the antiquities he is finding.
The better the reasons the elders have the less he will need to lie. So far it seems the culture in Val Salia and this enclave are about as progressive as the tech and economics allow, so those reasons would need to be really reality shaking to be good enough to divide peaceful Yinglet/Human integration as seems to be Narklet’s goal.
You say that like liberals don’t also pursue power.
Why do people keep injecting real world human politics onto a comic about fantasy societies and creatures?
That is because the comic is being read by a person who will inevitably make the connection because that’s what they have experienced and learned.
This makes sense, thank you
Your politics. They are dumb and based in presuppositions rooted in your own prejudices.
Holy shit, well spotted. That’s not an accident, it definitely means something for the story. Either Narklet was created by similar means to Kat, or Zat Zing turned Kas into a (partial?) clone of him for some reason.
How hard we think it would be for a female Yinglet to “pass” as a male? Would just trimming the tail bush work? Or do they have pheromones that would be harder to mask? What does it change if Narklet is a female disguise?
I ask because we don’t know what the antiquity potion does in entirety, do they all make Yinglet females?
As a Narklet x Kass shipper, this is a positively delightful realization. And now I’ve got a whole new theory to posit (based entirely on “it would make for a hot ship”): Narklet as a gender-nonbinary time traveling Kass from the future, here to help Kass realize that what they want is in front of them, not behind. Narklet won’t make it, but the comic will end with Kass dying their hair and stepping into the time machine to become an unending moebius love story.
That strikes me as unlikely given if that was the case, Narklet would peobably try to push this from a different angle to get Kass on board with it. But looper stories are wild in general, so who knows.
heck yeah, it’s the improbability of a causality loop that makes it delicious! Narklet being unable to remember their conversations because they happened too long ago. Not knowing when events are unfolding the same from a different perspective. Unwittingly hiring the same guy because Kass never learned who Brakka was. It’s 120% crackship.
This is amazing and chaotically hilarious. Fits your avatar, haha
Isn’t that like….selfcest?
I think that Kass was turned into a generic female yinglet
Narky being from one of the main enclaves is a mixture of purebred yinglet so really close to generic yinglet.
Being one of the outliers, Val salia has a higher number of genetic weirdos and founder effects.
Even without assuming that greater yinglets weren’t created by zat zing in the first place , Kass is deliberately brown paint and Narky is brown because he’s all the paints thoroughly mixed together.
Alright, then why are they exactly the same shade of brown, have the exact same eye color, have the exact same markings in the same shade of light brown, etc.
I know Kass is a generic Yinglet. I’m saying I think Narklet may have been made by the same process.
This.
Kass was turned into a baseline yinglet. Narklet was selected because he’s baseline yinglet.
Also thus far it seems the magic goo only creates females, though there are only two examples of it in action. Narklet is male, so it’s unlikely he was also created.
Interesting observation. Personally, I don’t think it’s coincidence.
Kass has breasts. They may be vestigial, but they’re there. Narklet does not. Narklet is male.
The magic goo apparently changed Kass into as close to a generic, baseline yinglet as was possible with his previous form. Narklet comes from a conservative political group that seems more than a little yinglet supremacist (for lack or a better term), so it makes sense that he is also pretty close to baseline yinglet. In the same way that the Nazis tended to recruit mostly blonde haired, blue eyed “aryanmorphs” into their SS jackboots (just an example – no Godwin), the ones who sent Narklet to the enclave would have sent only a “pure” yinglet with “pure” ideology.
It should be no wonder, therefore, that they have a similar appearance.
Personally I don’t think this is a particularly plausible theory, but it definitely would make for an interesting foil for Kass. Someone who resists thinking of themselves as a yinglet vs someone who has so thoroughly embraced it that the other yinglets thing he should loosen up a bit. Sort of the supernatural version of “immigrant patriotism”. We also know that he’s interested in the artifacts for some reason despite the fact that, as a traditionalist, you’d think he’d want to avoid contaminating the ‘pure’ yinglet ways. The only question is how the hell a changeling would end up becoming a patriarch in a distant enclave in the first place
“We are not meant to live as humans. YOU are not meant to live as humans. Not anymore”
Ohhh, Narky Narky Narky.
You have no idea what’s really going on, do you?
Then again, Kass probably doesn’t, either. Is he even aware of Narklet’s position in all this, how important it is to maintain appearances?
It might have been better to not be… QUITE so forward with that information, buddy… Sorta, leading Narklet on, like ‘Oh yeeeaaahhh maybe someday, zhanks for zhe offer’.
I can see he tried, but I think he went a BIT too hard on establishing his position to get Narklet off his back, but… Vizlet should have prepared him better, really.
Vizlet has indeed informed Kass about Narklet’s positions. Kass is doing good diplomacy-wise, in my opinion, except he is as stubborn as Narklet.
One smart thing for Kass would have been to pretend being distracted by something else, and change topic, taking advantage of Yinglets being flighty. That has the disadvantage of appearing weak-willed, when compared with Viz, Nark.
Another solution would have been to evade forward, making promises to eventually “return” into the loving arms of family, but not right now thank you very much. This has the disadvantage of Narklet returning to the topic at every meeting in the future.
I think Kass is deliberately trying to bait Narklet into saying or doing something he’ll regret later.
Given that Narklet has been desperately searching for artifacts like the magic goo rock, it’s likely he knows exactly what it does.
So it’s also quite possible he has suspicions about Kass.
Even if they found something similar, they might think it was a sex change potion and fountain of youth.
I’d be impressed if Kass is able to hold it together, depending on what Narklet says next to expound on his point. Worst case scenario, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s violence.
Likely not violence, but I could see Kass getting in Narklet’s face and giving him a piece of his mind.
I know it’s mainly for cartoon emotive reasons, but it does raise the question; do yinglets actually sweat? Anything with that much fur, especially fur that I assume it quite oily waterproofing reasons, doesn’t seem like sweating would be very practical.
Very few animals sweat; only about a dozen or so mammals do it, and most of them only from specific body locations (for example dogs sweat but only from their paws). Humans are weird. Where most mammals pant to cool off, we are what you might call super sweaters. We have sweat glands almost everywhere, and we produce multiple kinds of sweat. That’s one of the reasons why we are almost hairless even though we are very small compared to most other hairless mammals (such as elephants). Sweat and fur work to cross purposes, and sweaty fur soon becomes dirty and smelly (not good for avoiding disease and predators).
The more you know.
Since yinglets are furry, it’s highly unlikely they sweat. Given their riverine lifestyle, it’s unlikely they ever need to. At most they’d have oil glands, which are not quite the same thing.
So when you see a yinglet sweating bullets like Vizlet, you know she must be REALLY anxious given that physically she can’t actually sweat.
Horses sweat. I am not disagreeing. Most furred creatures of that size don’t use sweat to cool themselves.
Horses are one of the dozen or so mammals that do sweat, but their sweat is different from humans. Human sweat is watery and oily. Horse sweat is soapy, and probably evolved that way to help them deal with being both sweaty and furry. Consequently it’s also a lot less effective at cooling than human sweat. That’s how Native Americans used to catch horses. They’d literally walk them down, for days if needed, until the horse literally collapsed from heat exhaustion. Humans aren’t just weird. We’re scary.
What I want to know is if yinglets have unidirectional lungs like birds (also dinosaurs) or dead end lungs like mammals. Birdy lungs would make panting a lot more effective, especially if they also have pneumatic bones. All the yinglet exiles we’ve seen loafing around on rooftops and wherever in town probably weren’t (just) being lazy. They were probably trying to stay cool in the heat of the day.
Given that yinglet eggs seem more like monotreme eggs than bird eggs, they probably only have mammalian lungs, but it’s an interesting possibility (especially when combined with hollow bones).
Now I’m imagining Yinglets with those dark magic bird vocal machines.
Lmao, Vizlet’s reactions are golden 😂
Agreed! She starts to sweat right in the first panel during Kass’ opening welcome speech, and it just get more intense with every panel. 🙂 And I suspect Ambassador Kass really does NOT know what s/he just said.
…
This is going to be good… 😉 🙂
This is the first update I’ve seen since I started reading and caught up last week! I wonder how many details I’ve missed, because I read it all so quick or what I might have retained because I read it all so quick. Things like how similar Kass and Narklet look, but, because I’ve read it all over the course of a couple days, I remember Narklet plotting with another yinglet about the different antiquity dig sites, implying he has some kind of connection. There are so many cool ways this could play out.
Someone else proposed that maybe Kass is a clone of Narklet. I think it’s more likely they’re both similar because they were both made by antiquity potions.
Vizlet is not one given to the classic “Oh, Crap” reaction.
Right now that “Oh, Crap” reaction should be in a museum, it’s that classical an example.
Meanwhile, Kazz is showing why they are the Diplomat here.
I’m surprised she’s able to be so polite to Narklet, given that his name was on the lips of her attacker, who he employed to help with whatever skullduggery he’s got going on. Let’s see how long it lasts.
Narklet better be “really” careful here with the patronizing… “Mansplaining” to Kass is NOT going to end well from the standpoint of treating him like some brainless, naïve individual with no common sense… This little “innocent misogyny play” Narklet seems to enjoy engaging in could VERY EASLILY backfire into Kass reading him some kind of “riot act” in the least, and outright turning the tables to a return-fire of back-handed insults to Narklet’s own obvious “weaknesses” in Kass’ opinion… This could end up being a real “foot in mouth” moment for EITHER of them, either figuratively OR literally, depending on how it pans out…
“Mansplaining”? Really?
Narklet’s a True Believer. He’s a zealot. He’s zealotsplaining.
It’s a lot easier to understand the plot when you don’t unnecessarily paint it with inapplicable modern real world human political concepts.
Jadugara used the correct terminology. Mansplaining is misogynist trait, not a political one.
Wonder what it’s going to be like when Kass figures this dude basically ruined his whole life.
Oh, Narklet you’re being cringe. Do yinglets have a concept of cringe? They probably do. Narklet should brush up on that.
Zhee hee. Am I zhe only one who thinks Narklet is pweddy? Narklet could brush up on me instead….
(‘ows zhat for cringe? Ehehehe)
Oh, they definitely do. Just look at Vizlet’s face. It has “CRINGE” written all over it.
It’s… about to get messy, isn’t it?
Narklet the narc. Someone really ought to introduce this guy to the sport of ying-flinging.
I think from Narklet’s point of view Kass is spouting some sovereign citizen crap. “Oh no, I belong to Ivenmoth”.. Like. No lady. You’re a yinglet , we have a yinglet government and our rules apply to you. You’re running around on your own NOW but there’s a timer before you have to make with the egg making.
It’s quite an unsettling point of view by today’s standards.
I think there’s one thing Narklet is forgetting. Kass wasn’t always a yinglet, so has intelligence that’s a lot higher than normal for one. I’m pretty sure Kass knows precisely what he’s doing, like baiting Narklet into saying something he shouldn’t.
Also, I absolutely LOVE Vizlet’s reactions. XD
Not forgetting. Narklet doesn’t know that.
It’s possible, though, that he suspects…
Hopefully Narklet doesn’t try to prove Kass wrong by any evil means.
Narklet is coming of kinda creepy to me on this page