Page 18. Realistic.
Gotta make an executive decision here: Not only will this also be a one-update week, but the rest of February and all of March will be one-update weeks as well. With the preparations and traveling I’ll be doing for Emerald City Comicon, that’s just how it’s got to be. In the meantime, join me this Wednesday, 2/22 at 7pm CST for a livestream!
If you’re a Patreon pledger who’d like more information on how the next couple months will go, read on:
For Patreon people especially, I understand how this new update schedule is a bummer. We’ve consistently hit a monthly amount that for some time now had guaranteed twice-weekly updates. Lately, the work that would normally going into that second OHS update has been going into Meal instead. Your pledges have helped me produce comic pages, but ones that are too early in production to share.
This suggests to me that my Patreon is due for a restructuring so patrons can better understand what to expect from me in 2017: OHS at a slower but steady rate, and consistent work on Meal. I will give my Patreon page a facelift in mid-late March to reflect these changes.
Thanks for your patience as I shift my workload a bit. My 2017 projects are super exciting and I look forward to sharing them with you!
If doesn’t seem very fair to people who are paying for O Human Star content are now having to wait once again for it when it was promised.
I would understand taking the whole month off and just masterposting updates on both comics at the end, but you seem to be having trouble keeping up with both projects with the time you’re allowing yourself.
You’re right, which is why I’m doing my best to keep people in the loop as to what’s happening with my schedule these days so they can decide whether they’d like to continue backing me through this platform. I have to scale back my time on OHS to meet my deadlines for this new graphic novel, and I don’t expect that everyone who’s backing me for the former will be interested in the latter. All I can do is keep people informed about what I will be working on and delivering in 2017.
I’m not a Patreon person, but it sounds to me like you’re doing the responsible thing in keeping people in the loop and bringing your workload to what is feasible right now. I feel privileged and delighted to read this amazing comic at any time! Of all the comix in my feed, this is one of those I’m most excited to see an update from.
That’s why I use RSS for OHS, and rejoice when it has an update!
We could DEMAND you keep up, and work yourself to death (or serious illness), but I already see a few others who (try to) do that.
Time for you to build your own clone, or hire a crew of free talent, to help out around the studio (yeah right!)
I am a Patreon person, and I have no problem with this either. I would much rather the artist work at a sustainable pace than try to kill themselves to meet deadlines (and likely burn out and stop there comic).
Black Butler, SVTFOE, and O Human Star were all things I began to loose faith and interest in until now! Al looks just like Sulla when he smiles like that. Adorable to the max!
Good to know. Thumbs up.
´get ´im, luci !!
´damn right, brendan can’t speak to you Like That!
I can’t articulate just how repulsively wrong Smilin’ Al is in panel 3, so I’ll just be over here screaming into a pillow.
At first i was like “lucille, that’s his dead s/o, he’s understandably freaking out” but then i remembered that no one knows about them…
Also this is proving my theory that all the synths come from a scan of Al’s mind and are all subtly conscious of that. Maybe Tuba sculpted the face?
How about “Lucille, that’s his dead colleague he’s worked alongside for years and co-founded a company with?”
Yes, in theory he shouldn’t speak to anyone that way. In practice, she’s being really touchy at a time when he could use understanding.
As someone who seems to have a habit of being rude without even realizing I’m doing it, getting attitude back about it absolutely RUINS my day. Or the next few hours at least.
I’m not faulting Lucille at all, but it would be nice if people would just say “Um, that was kinda mean” or something without all the implied J U D G E M E N T
I think Brendan was the one who was rude without realizing it, and Lucille was the one who gave attitude back: “Brendan. You may not speak to me in that way.”
I wasn’t saying Brendan should say the words I quoted. What I meant was that that was my thought, just as Osent’s quoted words were their thought. If I were a friend of Lucille’s standing there, I’d probably say something gentle to defuse the situation – something like “Hey, Brendan just saw a ghost – I’m sure he didn’t mean to yell.”
Yeah, I thought she was being too harsh to Brendan. Like yay for standing up for yourself and all of that, but he just saw his dead “friend”…
…Yikes.
She’s a disabled woman of color dealing with an able-bodied white man in a field where the prevailing culture is not on her side. If she doesn’t insist on respectful treatment, she’ll simply stop getting it. And so will the rest of her team.
Not like, maliciously, just, because that’s what people are used to doing. Casually, like Brendan just did, like he never would have done to a white man he had a working professional relationship with.
Another example of casual racialized misogyny is how much backlash there is here against her saying even a firm & restrained “No you do not talk to me like that” when being yelled at like she’s a puppy who peed on the carpet.
She didn’t yell back. She spoke over his yelling to say one sentence, then moved to remove the thing that was upsetting him and is all concern by the next panel.
She hasn’t even asked for an apology, which he very much owes her.
I very much appreciate that she’s standing up for her right to be *treated with basic human decency*. And I’m hoping that Brendan is a good enough person and friend to understand that he was out of line & that he’d never have yelled at another white guy like that, and to appreciate the chance to do better.
*Points up and frames Shweta’s comment* Thiiis. It’s so refreshing seeing Lucille draw this boundary with Brendan. His response to her should be “Sorry.” And he shouldn’t do it again. Hopefully he figures that out someday.
That said, it also speaks beautiful levels of Brendan’s shock at seeing such a realistic (and uncharacteristic!) expression on the face of his dead lover he has chosen not to tell anyone about, out of respect for said lover, who he suddenly and unexpectedly lost in the middle of an important fight. I’ve been wondering if another factor in Brendan’s silence is because he really took Al’s caution to heart once the company took off. He can be open about his own sex life, maybe… but not Al’s. He understands that disclosure as a posthumous breach of consent, even if it hurts him not to be able to process or talk about it.
Brendan’s feelings for Al are profound, and it shows in the omission, which is my favorite kind of storytelling. <3
And, as long as I'm here – we've already seen in this story that Brendan has some difficulties with other people's boundaries. It is so cool watching how Blue handles the writing here, producing interesting, lovable, admirable characters who not only make cringing mistakes, but deftly turning down some tropes and changing the narrative. Brendan is in pain, but Lucille is not there to be emotional maintenance when he's not treating her well. It's an important nuance and I love that it's there.
It’s also worth noting that a) Brendan has been shown as treating Lucille with naught but respect so far, so his reaction *is* shocking to her, and b) by this point she’s already confided in him about the way she’s treated like a pretty bauble by her male, white colleagues, so his reaction can also feel like a betrayal. God bless Lucille, TBH.
Yay, thank you for being so articulate about this you guys:) @Grimmalkin and Shweta. I agree and… Her response is nice role modeling to see as well. They are both friends and good folk though he’s let himself fall into this social trap this time. Calm, gracefully pivoted.
That. Everything Shweta said.
There’s no exclamation point… No sign that Lucille was anything more than firm. She even immediately acts to shield Brendan from additional harm, and then prepares him for the possibility of future harm that she can’t control, all despite Brendan acting like an ass.
If y’all think she was acting out of line, you might want to do some conscious unpacking of the attitudes that make you feel like Lucille should just silently put up with that behavior.
i simply move to +12 your commentary, Shweta.
i descri’e no flaws, nor caveats to “state on your behalf,” here.
The one thing I disagree with Schweta about is that Brendan would not have yelled at a white man that way. From everything we’ve seen about Brendan, I think he would have yelled at anyone the same way. He was completely shocked and reacted without thinking.
Heh! I’m not entirely sure she didn’t do it herself – or at least take full advantage of someone else doing it – in order to drive the point home to Brendan. Enjoying the dynamics here.
I agree. She is behaving defensively, and I don’t at all believe she is unaware of their relationship. When Brendon did the public talk, it appeared Lucille was putting it together. What I have been wondering is what her feelings are for him. Al didn’t like their friendship. Was there something he picked up off her he didn’t trust?
Given her reaction of surprise, and the “Oh. That’s realistic”, that is not a plausible conclusion. I highly doubt she’d have done that given the last panel, too. That’d be very sadistic.
Actually someone who is trying to cover their tracks would do exactly that. I would not suspect her, but when Brendan gave the speech about Al Lucille appeared to be piecing together their relationship. She also comes off as a little schmarmy at times, and it seemed interesting Al instantly disliked her. This doesn’t mean she is behind things, but it does make her a suspect.
Also… I wonder if the person who designed this Al (whether it be Lucille or not) has been involved in returnjng hin to life? Such mystery!
Ooh, very interesting!
This seems like a pivotal panel for the series. You humanized an essential reality of technology, especially informatic tech. The users of any tech you develop will appropriate it and build things you never anticipated. I saw this happen time and again with the web infrastructure I built in the 1990s. At the time it was trivial. These days, we really have to think about what empowered users can and will do. In the balance this is tremendously good. I’m once again reminded that I need to pick up some hard copies of this wonderful series.
Good for her to tell him where to get off… and then move on. That’s what friends and colleagues do. Or should. She doesn’t know of their relationship, so all she saw was “static”. Blue knows exactly where this is going and how to set the scene. Yeah, I’m riveted.
And all you Patreon peeps feeling miffed, please give Blue her due in keeping everyone informed. Not a position she enjoys, I’m sure, but I just know the story is worth the wait.
I say good for her even if she’s guessed their relationship :)
I wish I could be half as graceful as her when being casually treated as a lesser being.
Lucille’s point here is very interesting and relevant, IMHO. We’re used (conditioned?) to thinking of technology as being the boon given by promethean geniuses (even as we expand our “hall of fame” to include minorities who were cast aside), but that’s just another re-dressing of the Great Men Theory of history, according to which the masses are just moved passively by a few influential individuals.
We have spent much time, in this comic, with geniuses and mavericks of all stripes, but to truly embrace the human facet of the story is to realize they are not mighty pivots, but strands in the tapestry of history just like the “common folks” are, and they do not have sovereign control over the way their creations and discoveries bloom outwards.
God, I love this comic.
I’m not sure I believe that Luce doesn’t know who did that face. After all, she found the one done by “the boys” easily enough, and this one showed up immediately after that. It may be that she remembers who came right after the boys, but is afraid to tell Brendan after seeing his reaction.
Jesus christ, I take a break for a couple months and come back to this heartbreak? When are we getting back to the present, with an Al that isn’t dead?