Skip to content
On hiatus until January! Happy new year!

Homecoming 6: Awkward Conversation

Homecoming 6: Awkward Conversation published on 84 Comments on Homecoming 6: Awkward Conversation

Welcome, White Board readers! I promise this comic is more than just a kid having awkward conversations with her mom, hah hah.

Also I have a guest strip up at TJ and Amal today!

There’s 30 days left on the Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales Kickstarter! Only 3 grand left, let’s do it!

84 Comments

… huh. I wasn’t actually expecting this response.

… then again, this could still go any number of ways. :3c

Wow, mom actually looks more pissed than confused or shocked. Maybe she knows more than she’s let on?

That was my my view as well. Mum looks ticked more than anything else….

The actual reason for her expression is the big question…..

Actually… I also meant to comment on the “WHAT.” being a statement rather than a question…….. This is one of the things that makes me question what Mrs J’s objection is about…..

Way to go Michelle! I knew you had it in you! I knew you could say it! Though still suffering from the enormity of it all you mustered the courage to come right out and say it without breaking down! Very adult of you! More adult than many adults! Bravo!

Well now that we have the P word out of the way, the direction this will take will all depend on what mom’s facial expression is supposed to mean. It appears to have a dose of anger in it and not much confusion! So if it is primarily anger:
A– Is she mad at Michelle for spewing out such a bunch of baloney?

B– Has she jumped to the conclusion that Michelle has been taking drugs and is angry about all the work it will take to recover her from this mess?

C– Is she brewing a storm of anger against Greg for leading her precious daughter astray into the realm of psychodelics?

D– Is she angry with dear departed dad for breaking some promise about raising their daughter as “normal”?

E– Is she angry with certain non-human powers who are messing with her family?

F– Is she angry with herself for devising and carrying out a flawed plan that was supposed to protect her daughter?

There is a severe coldness in her expression that suggests a powerful mind that just kicked into flank speed trying to formulate an air tight emergency plan of action. All the tenderness and joy has suddenly drained away. I would say that Mom is a lot more than she appears.

Alas, we will have to wait another week to find out where this is going. Have mercy on us Kory, please don’t let next week leave us at almost the same point we are at now. You have us all dangling by a thread and two weeks would be too long to endure in that state.
Please, Pretty please, Pretty please with sugar on top!

Wouldn’t it be likely that Michelle’s late father wore a medallion like that all his life? Her Mom should at least recognize that.

Good pickup, TB. Had not heard that commented on so far…..

Perhaps Mr. Jocasta obtained the medallion after his death? Or, as other people are positing, he wasn’t the magical side of the family.

After his death? Maybe. If the medallion had been hidden away by a distant ancestor, nobody in Michelle’s immediate family would need to wear it to stay human (I had to go back and review the “rules” in “Orientations.” This way either her father or mother could be carrying the bloodline without knowing it.

Still think it’s her Dad, though. In her dreams, Michelle has seen him as a full Sphinx.

Hooboy. Poor Michelle. Cannot WAIT to see what brand of crazy her mom decides is the source of this– drugs, booze, boyfriend, brainwashing, stress, religion, any combinations of the aforementioned… unless Mom suddenly throws a fit: “Oh my God, I always thought you’d take after me when you got your amulet!” and turns into a minotauress or similar. “Honey, you were supposed to have HOOVES, not WINGS! Where did I go wrong?!?” **DRAMADRAMA**

O.O OMG!!!! You’re not gonna make a twisted and her MOM is actually the sphinx and she has been hiding her medallion are you?!?!?!?!?! I know you can’t answer that, but it’s still fun to speculate. Also if her dad really is the sphinx are you going to reveal that one of the powers sphinxes have is to make the medallions? Again speculating based on the fact that her dad was a jewelry maker. LOVE LOVE LOVE you’re art and story lines. I’ll never stop saying that. Keep up the good work and I’m excited for the Borogove game to come out. Perfect timing would be my b-day XD lol but really I’m just happy I was able to buy one.

I’m been wondering if ‘sphinxes made medallions’ was going to be a story twist for a while, but I’ve kept it under my hat in case it was a thing Kory didn’t want to reveal yet. But since we’re talking about it…

– ‘Sphinxes going extinct’ would certainly explain why medallions stopped being produced.
– Michelle’s medallion is blank. Didn’t one of the characters mention that the blank ones are the oldest ones? If Sphinxes did come up with Medallion-magic, it would make sense that they’d make ones for themselves first.
– Yeah, Michelle’s father, the unturned Sphinx being a jewelry maker might be another hint.
– Sphinxes making medallions (and deciding which races get them) is a much more interesting reason for the dragons to go to war with them than just “jealous about magic”.
– If this story becomes, at least in part, about Michelle rediscovering how to make medallions, Kory seems to have carefully set up a few “learning experience” medallion problems for her:
* First, you’ve got Greg who has a cracked medallion. All the parts are there, it just isn’t all connecting.
* Then you’ve got Myra, whose medallion is missing a chunk. This time, a part is missing, but the rest of the design is there.
* Third, you’ve got Sam, who seems to have a *defective* medallion. It locked on to him, but didn’t make him a reverse-griffon. So now you don’t know which part is bad and have to do some diagnostics or something.
* Finally, you’ve got Anthony, who seems to have had some sort of very old disguise spell cast on his ancestor, but does not possess a medallion. This seems like a ‘final test’ kind of thing, where Michelle has no materials to work with and has to come up with something from scratch.

Of course, this is all speculation. :)

Medallion magic being linked to sphinx magic may also explain the delay in Michelle’s Turning. Every description we’ve heard of a medallion-induced Turning indicates that Michelle should have turned into a sphinx as soon as she picked the medallion up off the sidewalk, but she was able to get back to her dorm before anything happened.

Michelle doesn’t need to take her medallion off. She might not be a showoff like Royce, but she’s got pretty fine control of her transformation, and could easily reveal just a mid-form hand or arm to back up her story. Her mother might still freak, but Michelle will have no trouble demonstrating the truth as gently as possible.

She might get better mileage by including her father in the dialogue more.

Mom: Did your father say anything to you?

Michelle: Uh, “Michelle. Ma belle. These are words that go together well. My Michelle.”

Mom: *sniff* *sob* *cries*

Michelle: (assumes her furry midform, enfolds he mother in her arms and wings)

I have a feeling that the mom is a creature. When the father visited her he was in a roughly human shadow form – if he was dead, wouldn’t he have reverted to his true form? Either the mother is a sphinx or some other creature, maybe Michelle is the combination of two creatures and just resembles a sphinx :P

“You say that NOW but you don’t know the kind of crazy that’s about to come out of my mouth.”

Brilliant.

Michelle is right of course. Telling your mom you’re pregnant is WAY easier than telling her you’re an ancient sphinx monster. XD

I always love these scenes, where the shape-shifter or superhero has to explain to their disbelieving friends and family, who laugh at them or think they’re crazy and then abruptly stop when they show it off. (Hey, we already got one of those back with Tony and Blanche!)

Take off the necklace, Michelle. Let it all come out.

Personally, I was hoping for a scene where Michelle is like “Do you know how Dad died?” and her Mom’s like, “Oh, it hurts so much to remember. Please let’s talk about something else.” and she’s like “Okay,” and turns into a sphinx and Mom’s like daaaaaahhh wat, and then she turns back and says, “So, about Dad.”

So has anyone else noticed that in the very last frame, Mama Jocasta has suddenly sprouted a wart or mole just below and left of the corner of her mouth. I am thinking the shock and stress are causing her to fail to carefully control her visible form. Her chin may have sharpened too. Now lets see, what females in legend have sharp chins and skin bumps growing on their faces. Do you suppose that she is going to suddenly turn green? Is that cat her familiar? Of course the lump could just be a random artifact of her mid or true form and not be an indication of her species. Only a few more days to the next twists and turns.

By the way Kory, are you going to work on a screen play version of this story. Given what can be done with special effects these days, it would not be out of the question, it worked for J.K. Rowling! But I am not going to wait for the movie! Just waiting from one week to the next is enough torture. You weave a captivating yarn Kory Bing!

Y u all think Mama Jocasta is mageekal?

I don’t think anything is happening with her expression other than her disgust at what she thinks is her daughter joking about her husband’s death. Like Michelle said, it devastated them, and here she is apparently making up silly stories about it. Mama Jocasta is just not amused, not a harpy or something lol. I would be :| if someone joked abut my significant other like that, too.

I do think she’ll have a heart attack if she sees Cute Fluffy Michelle tho.

I probably would have left out the “my dead father gave this to me” bit until we got past the “I’m a magical creature” bit… coming from having a dead father, I’d think it would be at least a bit easier to understand emotionally…

I was wondering if it was still possible to buy/preorder/provide funding for a pack of Borogave cards. I would be more than willing to pay full price and shipping in order to get a deck but it seems I have come to late to get in on the kickstarter. (I only came back to reading this comic today). Is there some way for me to do this?

Personally, I think trying to get it all out in one speech bubble was the wrong approach for Michelle. It makes her look like a babbling fool. Better approach:

“I’m not human, and neither was Dad. *beat* Let me know when you reach the point of needing a physical demonstration. So, it started when I met Dad’s ghost…”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Content Footer