For discussion:
It seems to me that children would be extremely precious, something to be protected, to the max. Maybe even to the extent that ppm wouldn’t want others to know they were around.
There’s the fact that veal is more awesome than the steer (no hormones! ), easier to catch, to snatch away, less food needed too.
What might be more interesting is hiding pregnancies. Used to be, women would go into seclusion (There’s a term for it too, but I’ve forgotten it), to protect the gestational female (and in this case, even better “veal”).
So I’m really not that surprised that we don’t see pregnant women, infants, toddlers.
There’s a couple parent/kid pairings and assorted siblings in the cast and we don’t get many closeups of life beyond the cast. Most scenes are set in places of business or a character’s home. I’m not sure why we’d expect to see many children if any are around. I can’t think of many kids in most horror flicks beyond the few there for shock value.
That said, there was a catastrophe and food and other resources are limited. Might not be the best time for most people to start a family.
i agree though that people wouldn’t generally see children walking around in the same locales as robot gangsters, BUT, i should have drawn more in the crowd scenes, just to make people aware that kids are around, and that there was a generational aspect to this society. if only to not make people wonder if it was intentional.
ok, you’ve all convinced me, next pit fight at unger’s butcher shop will be all todllers! we can graft little lasers to their fleshy mitts. it’ll be easier on the babies, cause their soft spots haven’t fused. easier to plant microchips in their little pink brains.
“I’m not sure why we’d expect to see many children if any are around.”
I am not sure if anybody had such an expectation. I’d expect children to be heavily underrepresented in such a story indeed. But there are a few scenes were we see normal daily crowd. And I’d expect at least teenagers to show up to a hunger riot, because that would totally happen IRL. (In fact some parents would totally parade their starving children in a hunger riot, hoping for sympathy. In vain of course, because the people in charge are all sociopaths.)
Nevertheless, the _author_ [ :-) ] gave a satisfactory answer to my question. I is OK, it is not necessary to show all aspect of life for the story to work.
I wonder if there was really such a plan or it was just the conjecture of those leaders.
BTW, a question to the author.
I could be wrong (because I have not re-read the comic for confirmation), but I remember only one single minor (looked like a young teen) in the entire comic and no smaller children. But this is supposedly a generation ship, and there is no sign of people being grown in tanks into adults or anything like that, so there should be a breeding population. Is this:
1. Just accidental and has no importance in any way?
2. A deliberate decision to leave out minors from a brutally violent comic?
3. Has some in world relevance (perhaps a reproduction crisis)?
The technology does exist, yes. But there is no sign of mass application. Also if repeated cloning of the original population was the strategy, this could not be called a generation ship.
that was a conscious decision on my part, so i’d say #2 is pretty correct. i feel like including kids makes the writer have to make decisions about the story i didn’t want to have to deal with. like in horror movies. if you see a kid, you know either the story is about to get way darker, or the children have plot armour. and the reader will be aware of the choice you made. i did have a storyline that involved that kid, but it didn’t add anything, and it didn’t really go anywhere, so i cut it.
but i think that people noticed it makes for an interesting discussion, since the reveal of the ‘generational ship’. but yeah, i should have shown more of a range in age of the citizens, to follow through on the idea that we’re 3 or 4 full generations in on a ship where people are assumed be raising families, only to see them perish en route.
For discussion:
It seems to me that children would be extremely precious, something to be protected, to the max. Maybe even to the extent that ppm wouldn’t want others to know they were around.
There’s the fact that veal is more awesome than the steer (no hormones! ), easier to catch, to snatch away, less food needed too.
What might be more interesting is hiding pregnancies. Used to be, women would go into seclusion (There’s a term for it too, but I’ve forgotten it), to protect the gestational female (and in this case, even better “veal”).
So I’m really not that surprised that we don’t see pregnant women, infants, toddlers.
“Confinement”! That’s what it’s called!
There’s a couple parent/kid pairings and assorted siblings in the cast and we don’t get many closeups of life beyond the cast. Most scenes are set in places of business or a character’s home. I’m not sure why we’d expect to see many children if any are around. I can’t think of many kids in most horror flicks beyond the few there for shock value.
That said, there was a catastrophe and food and other resources are limited. Might not be the best time for most people to start a family.
i agree though that people wouldn’t generally see children walking around in the same locales as robot gangsters, BUT, i should have drawn more in the crowd scenes, just to make people aware that kids are around, and that there was a generational aspect to this society. if only to not make people wonder if it was intentional.
ok, you’ve all convinced me, next pit fight at unger’s butcher shop will be all todllers! we can graft little lasers to their fleshy mitts. it’ll be easier on the babies, cause their soft spots haven’t fused. easier to plant microchips in their little pink brains.
“next pit fight at unger’s butcher shop will be all todllers!”
Sweet, toddlers are vicious
vicious AND delicious!
Eh … Europe and both Chinas are essentially child-free zones …
“I’m not sure why we’d expect to see many children if any are around.”
I am not sure if anybody had such an expectation. I’d expect children to be heavily underrepresented in such a story indeed. But there are a few scenes were we see normal daily crowd. And I’d expect at least teenagers to show up to a hunger riot, because that would totally happen IRL. (In fact some parents would totally parade their starving children in a hunger riot, hoping for sympathy. In vain of course, because the people in charge are all sociopaths.)
Nevertheless, the _author_ [ :-) ] gave a satisfactory answer to my question. I is OK, it is not necessary to show all aspect of life for the story to work.
I wonder if there was really such a plan or it was just the conjecture of those leaders.
BTW, a question to the author.
I could be wrong (because I have not re-read the comic for confirmation), but I remember only one single minor (looked like a young teen) in the entire comic and no smaller children. But this is supposedly a generation ship, and there is no sign of people being grown in tanks into adults or anything like that, so there should be a breeding population. Is this:
1. Just accidental and has no importance in any way?
2. A deliberate decision to leave out minors from a brutally violent comic?
3. Has some in world relevance (perhaps a reproduction crisis)?
Seagull has been cloned at least once.
The technology does exist, yes. But there is no sign of mass application. Also if repeated cloning of the original population was the strategy, this could not be called a generation ship.
‘the author’. oh my goodness, my ego is swelling!
that was a conscious decision on my part, so i’d say #2 is pretty correct. i feel like including kids makes the writer have to make decisions about the story i didn’t want to have to deal with. like in horror movies. if you see a kid, you know either the story is about to get way darker, or the children have plot armour. and the reader will be aware of the choice you made. i did have a storyline that involved that kid, but it didn’t add anything, and it didn’t really go anywhere, so i cut it.
but i think that people noticed it makes for an interesting discussion, since the reveal of the ‘generational ship’. but yeah, i should have shown more of a range in age of the citizens, to follow through on the idea that we’re 3 or 4 full generations in on a ship where people are assumed be raising families, only to see them perish en route.
Planned obsolescence — the hard way.