There seems to be a sort of free-floating haze of nastiness in Veritas. Glad I don't go there.
This was up at midnight. but I conked out before I could post my usual around-midnightish update reminder. So I guess some of you might've already seen it. Oops.
Also, one of my rats seems to be filled with babies. This is kind of surprising, since I've been trying to get her filled with babies for over a year, and nothing ever came of it. I've just been assuming she was infertile for a while, now. But no, her sense of timing is just crappy. GOOD GIRL, OLIVE. MUMMY LUVZ YEW.
I'm going to go boil her an egg.
Congrats Olive!
I like the fact they don't speak. I like them very much, looking forward to seeing more of them.
Congrats to your ratty! :)
That mask looks kinda familiar, but I can't place it. Is it based on something cultural?
I dunno what real cultural masks they may resemble, but wickerheads have show up before in the comic, very briefly, when Ray and Ben were out on King Street.
Ooooh, baby ratlets! okay, pups, for the technical. The only time one of my rats had babies, she had 11. if you take pics of Olive and her nestfull, I would love to see them.
maybe it helped that you stopped trying to fill her with babies and another rat gave it a shot instead?
oh, and are you coming to fallcon?
patric
The masks of the Wickerheads are reminisant of the masks used to protect the face in Kendo practice. I want one, now.
Is the plotline of the Sincerists an homage to James Morrow's novel City of Truth? It's been a while but I seem to recall the enforced honesty in that speculative civilization tended to the rude as well (the interesting implication being that etiquette has a firm foundation in lying)...
The Sincerists are more of a comment on the inherent futility and hypocrisy of fundamentalist ideologies, as crummily as I may end up communicating that. But that definitely sounds like a book I'd want to read.
And are we surprised that people take the need to be forthright as an excuse to be rude, under the guise of honesty? Just because you're honestly an asshole doesn't make you less of an asshole.
But being Sincerist allows you the attractive bonus of feeling unassailably morally superior while you're being an asshole!
Ah, okay, it's not on his arm. It looked like he had his sleeves rolled up in the first panel. >_>
It makes sense that total honesty would correspond to a lack of manners, because really all manners consists of is the vast majority of people pretending that they don't dislike the vast majority of other people. All he's doing is saying to people's faces what he would normally say behind their backs.
Are the wickerheads some kind of sub-group of the sincerists (who avoid dishonesty by not saying anything at all) or are they an unrelated subculture who happen to be in a sincerist hangout?
It's hard to imagine anyone who's NOT a sincerist wanting to hang out somewhere like that.
I think you would probably like James Morrow's work in general, Spike - check out Towing Jehova and his current stuff about witchcraft - I asked because the eponymous city in the novel I mentioned is called Veritas. Small (speculative) world(s)...
nanojath: Wow. That's a hell of a coincidence! I named the cafe after I searched Wikipedia for "truth." (That article's surprisingly long.) I live across the street from a library, I'll look up Morrow there. Thank you!
And Mashuren: the wickerheads are... well, no one's really sure. The Sincerists are rude to them, but the Sincerists are rude to everyone. Wickerheads are kind of new to the city, and their only uniting elements are their masks, parkas, silence, and mildly dazed demeanor. The only two times I've shown them, they're traveling in pairs, but I don't think that's a requirement.