For the survival of the hive
Out-of-Placers
A story of inconvenient changes
Support The OOPs
OOPs now has a Russian translation which updates shortly after the English pages are posted!
Older RU pages: https://acomics.ru/~OutOfPlacers
Now also in French:
And Ukranian:
Gah, WordPress keeps logging me out, so every time a new page comes out, there’s a 76% chance I need to press tab twice and loggin again…
… that aside, goddamn, that is some DEEP ancestral trauma to have an indrel react to a baxxid like this.
It took me a bit to realize that’s what’s going on here. It’s not clear if it’s Baxxid in general or something they do related to what Kalgkur has been doing. It also seems to be that part of what is setting her off here is also the fact that Lopin is afraid, and it’s not clear if she is connecting it with her being a large predator, or if that would even make sense to her considering she thinks of him as a member of her Hive and thus would never aggress upon him.
Either way, the fact that she is resisting acting on her instincts is a good reminder that she is fully sentient, and that all of the silliness and weirdness is cultural differences and lack of knowledge. I think it’s very good for high fantasy to occasionally have the character who speaks weird and doesn’t know things remind us momentarily that they are not at all stupid or animalistic, just coming at the story from an alien perspective…
Taking a second look, with the dead indrel body in the first panel, she talks about something she saw/sensed that made her scared. the second panel with the head of the Baxxid, she refers to the senses she coincides with the fear.
Panels 3 and for show how Indrel are taught to fear this scent by equivocating the scent with pain…
but then in the last 2 panels, she’s doing her best to drown out those senses to see why Lopin screamed and is also scared, but it’s hard since she’s still getting used to the distant feelings other people give off to her. after a bit of realization, she sees that he “screamed” not because of the baxxid, but because of HER. And she certainly didn’t want this…
I don’t think Yannit even realizes right now how scared Lopin is of her. She’s way too focused on Kal’s scent and what it’s doing to her.
Wait a sec. What if it’s not Kalgkur that’s scaring Yannit? What if it’s something else entirely?
No, that’s definitely a baxxid skull in the second panel, right below “Old Enemy.” She must not have connected the living baxxids she saw in the streets below to the scents she was taught in her hive. She must not have been close to Varakses when he came up to visit the trademaster. Maybe the baxxid larvae who dig the vents don’t leave the scary scent behind. But now that Kalgkur has just walked down this hallway, all emotional and stuff, the scent is loud and clear.
Called it, kinda.
This implies that it isn’t a natural predator-prey relationship, but a cultural association that they have to teach.
So there’s a cultural animosity between the two.
Also how has Yannit not been exposed to this smell yet? Baxxid are fairly common in this place. I’m guessing it’s associated with Kalgkur’s recent berserk mode.
Love the comic from Yannit’s perspective. Now I’m wondering how Kal will react to Yannit.
I did not realize panel 2 was a baxxid head, I thought it was a puddle with a couple of rocks and a broken limb. This might explain Yannit’s reaction in #264, especially considering what Kass says right before Yannit hunkers down while describing the “claw worms.”
I love these Yannit-centric strips. They show the depth of this world, with races that are genuinely different from one another not only in form, but also in function. The color-coding of the words has me trying to puzzle out their significance: dark blue for nouns/things, refried-bean brown for “us” nouns, orange for agitation/anxiety, and halos for extra intensity. I can’t tell if this is Yannit’s internal dialogue, or whether Lopin is hearing all of it. I assume the next comic will clarify this, at least.
Good catch on her ‘hunkering down’, I hadn’t noticed the change in her stance.
Oh, good catch. That explains Yannit’s reaction completely.