Obviously, this strip would have worked slightly better if it had run before, or ideally on, Dec. 31st…but, with all of the chaos going on in my scheduling this chapter, I’m happy already that I managed to run it in the correct week, at least. >_> It would definitely have been even worse if it had run next week…or some time in February…
And the scheduling within the story is very fortunate, of course – lining up Biff’s annual, inexplicable ruckus with a situation that calls for utmost stealth has always been a goal of mine. The bucket list is growing shorter…
What exactly Biff does to bring about fireworks out of nothing remains unexplained, again. Since it’s unlikely that there were any crates with fireworks stacked up at the edge of the forest clearing, my best guess is that he somehow managed to bump into Gregory’s magic hat just right to cause the spectacle…but even my best guess is only as good as yours, so don’t necessarily consider that canonical. The canonical explanation remains “?”. (And I hope Gregory didn’t get his hair singed.)
Snuka sees the disaster coming, but naturally too late to do anything about it – if there even was anything to do about it. Trying to prevent Biff’s every-year-at-the-end-of-the-year accident could well upset the balance of the fundamental forces of the universe, or waken some ancient god from a timeless slumber, so it’s probably safer not to mess with it, anyway. Study panel four for a rare glimpse at what Snuka looks like with his eyes open – which also serves as explanation why he usually keeps them shut or nearly so.
Even as a paladin, Snuka retains some muscle memory of the correct way to sneak, it seems. So much so, in fact, that even K’ip follows his lead…who usually shouldn’t have too much of a problem sneaking naturally. Not that K’ip would look markedly less ridiculous if he snuck his natural way – he tends to stick his ass out too far, since his legs are actually to long for a cat.
So yeah, the year is off to a pretty bad start for our friends – but I hope the opposite is true for you. More on Monday.
It seems the fishing minigame either didn’t have a seasonal event or they just didn’t catch and/or notice the associated fishes.
If they had remembered the date, they could have tried to reverse the situation: Setting up some fireworks and hope that Biff ‘accidently’ blows away the the hordes of evil – or at least causes a large enough diversion to sneak away under it’s cover.
Yeah, if they had noticed the date in time, they could have actually tried to weaponize Biff’s unusual proneness to seasonally-specific accidents. But they had no chance to notice it…because that would have required me to think of it in due time, and I totally didn’t until far too late. XD I have no idea how I manage to get surprised by annually recurring events time and again.
Biff, still being unfamiliar with the physics-defying abilities of being female, had some leftover fireworks in her hammer space from the Takeshi Castle incident. When reaching for a handkerchief to wipe the sweat off her brow (because as a thief, she has to be sneaker than everyone else and so try twice as hard to be silent; because it’s Biff), she ended up reaching into her hammer space and pulled out all the fireworks instead.
Incidentally, that same strip (Act 2 Strip 58) mentions Middle Ages calendars aren’t exactly the most accurate when it comes to the timing of New Years.
XD That’s actually a pretty good explanation – or, at least, it makes as much sense as the next best one. I haven’t actually thought about whether Biff has access to hammerspace, now that she’s female. Or how she’d react to that…on the one had, it would answer a question that has bugged him for some time. On the other hand, given his experiences at the hands of the mallet, knowing of its permanent, latent presence could easily cause her to develop paranoia. Or suffer from flashbacks to ‘nam whenever she sees it. To that one time when Charlie Cong overran their landing zone, frenziedly wielding wooden mallets… *thousand yards stare*…