[0717] Dropping The Bomb
└ posted on Thursday, 10 September 2015, by Novil
I expect at least 300 comments. Don’t disappoint me.
- Larisa: Hi, Landon. Are you enjoying the hiking trip with your dad?
- Larisa: I’m glad you two are having some fun despite the ugly divorce.
- Larisa: Sooo… did you like the pic I sent you?
- Larisa: You’re cute when you stutter. I can’t wait to give you your real birthday present once you’re back!
- Larisa: Haha, you will! See you soon, sweety!
- Sandra: Didn’t you just forget something?
- Larisa: Like, what?
- Sandra: For example, mentioning the national scandal you caused half an hour ago?
- Larisa: Pfff…
- Larisa: I’ll be blind in ten years and dead in twenty. I don’t give a damn if some puritans have a problem with my naked body.
Well that turned serious right quick. Good way to put things into perspective. I figured she had something like this, now we know. If it is Wolfram it also explains somewhat her impulsive behavior, as that is also listed as a symptom.
Well, this explains why Larissa’s so eager to have sex as soon as possible, and repeatedly, too.
Larissa will be so surprised when she’s still sighted and alive in 25 years…
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
-comic0126-
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
@ TV_Junkie:
I found this on an ad at xkcd.com just yesterday. It’s not often you find a web comic compelling enough to read all 716 pages in a day.
Just a random thought: is it possible that Woo can tell that Larisa isn’t all that healthy? I know he saw her take meds but just a thought if maybe he’s always known. I know he’s not a dog but it’s just a thought in my head. I also imagine she has to have more than diabetes killing her… She’s so open with that prognosis but wasn’t she hiding her medicine intake before? I wonder if she’s told Sandra everything.
@ yellow103:
Well that revelation would explain her behavior, so while it is shocking, it’s not as shocking as what she’s already seen from Larisa.
@ Chibiraccoon:
The way Woo was looking at Larisa after his ‘encounter’ with her ‘extra’ meds tells me Woo is VERY aware something is seriously wrong with her.
Wow. Stuff just got really interesting again. (Even though in my opinion it would’ve worked as well without the last two updates before, but w(h/o)o cares).
Also I think Novil forgot to put a ‘s’ after ‘bomb’…
Indeed, MHS. This isn’t dropping the bomb. This is outright carpet bombing.
There’s underage sex, a callback on Landon’s mom, divorce, and currently incurable, deadly affliction that has been hinted at for a long time (and an explanation as to what it was been promised for quite some time too).
And as short as the comic is up, the comments were already up to 59 and on the second page when I started writing this.
Now as to finding a cure for Larisa. Fortunately for her, the comic does take a little while. At max the characters age about at the same speed as RL. And if a cure was found in the next few years, something we’ll wish upon all people suffering from the same condition, I’m sure Novil would implement it somehow. Even if it might mean changing the fate he had originally planned for her (given that the comic runs for that long, we are talking one to two decades here).
Unfortunately for anyone affected, I consider the chances of such a cure to be found to be rather low. The main problem I’m seeing being the rather low number of people that seem to suffer from it. Which means it simply doesn’t pay for any pharmaceutical company to put too much money into research on it.
Hey Novil, are we ever going to know how or why Landon`s folks got divorced
Honestly, I rather expected her to blind herself in a fire-related accident before then anyway, so that’s not really much of a shock to me?
@ Jerry:
Quite possibly. Larissa being diabetic has been covered in the strip so we know about that for sure. However in this strip, when the kids are exploring the warehouse, it’s hinted that she also has other serious health issues that her friends don’t yet know about.
West wrote:
Uncontrolled diabetes does that. At her age, there would be no reason to suppose she could not get it under control and have a reasonably healthy adulthood. If diabetes is all it is. Whether speculation about Wolfram’s is correct or not, I fear the main point – that Larisa has something progressive and incurable – is correct.
… Well um…. Damn…. A lotta people have been saying diabeties (thought for the record my mother has fought type 1 since she was 12 than you very much), though I think in her case it’s more likely for something to explode in her face…. Pyromania and all that.
Yeah, that’s more or less what I guessed regarding Larisa’s future, ‘way back when the “secrets” page came out.
Maybe this kind-of justifies Larisa not getting into more trouble? After all, what’s the point of punishing someone who already has a life-threatening illness? What can your “punishment” do which compares to that?
I’ve always expected that Larisa’s “enjoy life to its fullest and to heck with convention” attitude came from her relatively short life expectancy. This just makes it explicit.
Now I’m adding that I think Novil originally intended for Larisa to be hiding the fact that she’s HIV-positive (probably from a blood transfusion) and has to take retroviral drugs to keep it from progressing.
I think that idea has probably been abandoned because retroviral drugs have progressed to the point where most HIV-positive people can live long and healthy lives. I think Novil is still struggling to come up with a replacement condition.
But I should also make it clear that all of the above is total speculation on my part and I don’t know for sure anything more than anyone else does.
There’s nothing funny down that road
I think Landon will find out about his social girlfriend soon enough when he gets back to school…
I am curious as to how Larissa will top the picture… and how Sandra will react to the news… also, will Woo see if he can get the Raccoon god to help?
(70th comment) novil didn’t disappoint me here. I’d almost forgotten why I love this series.
hey larisa can defy the laws of physics so why would she obey wolframs ^_-
I
Aw, poor Landon. Divorces suck.
@ hamstap85:
Stupid keyboard.
I’d rather go deaf first, personally
We got a huge bomb and also a side dish of a nasty divorce.
Anyway, Larisa blushed when she mentioned Landon’s real present. Larisa is not a very blushy person, so that says quite a lot.
In about 6 hours, 75 comments. 96 hours between comics. So, if comment rate can be modeled as a square root function, we should be just barely good 😛
This is the most times I’ve commented on this comic. If I could edit previous comments, I’d have just combined them.
Wolfram Syndrome sounds very likely to me (thanks to all those who posted about it). I’m guessing that Sandra doesn’t know about it and thinks that Larisa is referring only to the effects of her diabetes, and possibly Larisa is counting on that. But perhaps Larisa is ready now to reveal her secret.
I find it interesting that many commenters seem to be assuming that Landon and Larisa either already are having sex or are going to have sex. It’s possible that there is a close-in-age exception to the law about age of consent, and Landon’s birthday passing means that he is now covered by that law along with Larisa, hence them having sex would be at least tolerated under the law.
I remember hearing a news story some years back about a 14yo boy who was fatally ill and was expected to be dead within a few months.
At the time, the age of consent was 16 with parental consent. The boy was asked what he wanted most of all before he died, and he answered that he wanted to experience sex with a woman.
The family quietly hired a prostitute and even the hospital staff cooperated with allowing what followed. The story only came out after the boy had died, and the authorities declined to investigate further since there was no living “victim” nor were there any witnesses willing to testify to the supposed “crime.”
Age Of Consent is probably a good guideline, but treating it as a hard-and-fast rule is just insane.
@ Melkior:
You may be right. Novil has told us in comments that he abandoned his original idea for her secret, but he has also continued to indicate that she does have secret.
@ Melkior:
Sword Art Online already did that, and it’s controversial enough there. Final Fantasy references were incorporated when the characters were introduced, but other things that are neither original nor funny probably wouldn’t go over well.
Wow. Looks like we finally get the secret Larissa’s been hiding for so long…I’d been expecting something difficult, but this? Bomb indeed.
So, who knows?
We know Zoey knows. We also know Woo knows, though I doubt Larisa knows he knows it. Besides the factory, he was there within earshot when she told Zoey (albeit he was there in the meta role, appologizing for audio difficulties.)
Does Sandra know? I am guessing yes. It would be in character for Larisa not to “burden” her friends. Zoey, yes. Friends, no. But if that is the case, why would she suddenly out with it now? Also, Sandra’s expression looks more like sympathetic concern than shock.
Does Landon know? Again I’m guessing yes. There was a touching moment when he took her for a walk in the park, and she said “just be kind to me.”
I seriously doubt if Cloud knows.
Melkior wrote:
Me too. I will keep mine separate though to help contribute to Novil’s request for 300 comments.
Lookfar wrote:
But I will refrain from adding meaningless comments just to up the total.
@ Lookfar:
Oops. I just did.
Well, that escalated quickly. T^T
Commenting to help the 300 (SPARTA!)
It honestly wasn’t until reading some of the other that I understood the real bomb was Larisa’s comment. I have a very odd way of thinking, and if someone had said this to me, I would have likely blown it off as over-dramatic. Not to be harsh just… that seems so unlikely to me, I don’t consider it for a moment to be the truth.
It seems I could be wrong… And now my mind is swimming with possibilities. Cancer? Diabetes? Some other disease? I’d wonder if it was possibly Hepatitis except for all Larisa plays around I’m honestly willing to guess she’s a virgin (maybe a bad guess but… she seems so loyal to Landon and the other guys I’ve heard/seen her with don’t seem to have gone “all the way”).
But there’s also the guess that she’s just… well… wrong. Even if it was something like HPV giving her the likelihood of cervical cancer, or bad genes, or something the doctor said… I didn’t think I’d make it to 24, and neither did a lot of other people. My heath was just too bad. Honest they were surprised I saw 18. Now I’m 27, and still going strong (and no where near blind, something doctors told me I’d be by 30- as a matter of fact my eyes have gotten a bit better as I try to take care of myself). So it honestly might not go that way.
Well this is already way too long a comment but…. Anyway here ya go!
I forgot Larisa’s diabetic until this strip, honestly.
But as a diabetic myself, if you control it with the medication and diet you shouldn’t go blind or die. So… keep taking the insulin and watch the cookies.
Well there it is. I was waiting for another big hint since the bag of medicine. Now I actually have some future symptoms to google
Melkior wrote:
No, it’s been always Wolfram’s Disease.
@ Novil:
Wow, word of god confirmation apparently
Novril, did you lose a friend or family member to that? I lost an email friend I never met but was very fond of to the Marburg variant of Multiple Sclerosis. She left behind a very loving partner and two little twin girls and those of us who knew her over the ‘Net cried for days. The death of the well-loved elderly is hard enough but death in the prime of one’s life is tragic beyond tragedy.
Man, I read about Wolfram’s disease and that’s just sad.
Saw this, thought little about it, scrolled down to comments, then…
This Wolfram Syndrome sounds nasty.
I’ve done some extensive research, and I can tell you the real thing that will lead to Larisa’s death — the cartoonist.
Larisa’s short life is no more and no less inevitable as Roy Batty only getting 4 years to live in Blade Runner. It’s manufactured pathos for the sake of tragedy, or vice versa.
And the whole gritty dark reality of Worfram’s is fatally undercut by the fact that they are living in a universe that is marbled with a situational and arbitrary level of supernormal happenings. I cannot properly invest myself in the inevitability of Larisa’s rapid decline when the next storylines might feature sentient talking wildlife or the now ever-more-frequent creation of black holes.
Larisa is suffering a horrible degenerative disease . . . at least until Cloud’s sister invents a cure as a school science project, or maybe just until curing her provides a knee-slapper of a punchline.
tl;dr version: This universe is too silly for incurable diseases to be taken seriously.
Remind me of the grandfather I never met.
@ TV_Junkie:
We already know. Type 1 diabetes. Nasty stuff. Average life expectancy is 40-50 years old if you do everything right and in the end use dialysis. But I know someone who’s fairly healthy in his early thirties ^^; it’s possible to live a lot longer than she thinks.
Helping out with the comment count 😉
Well… that got very depressing very quickly. I’m just going to go huddle in a corner now.
Thor wrote:
I respectfully disagree. Though light hearted, and often downright silly in its plot details, Novil has always made the main characters believable and human (even the animals). So when he does address the more serious aspects of life, I, for one, have no difficulty with it. It fits somehow.
Wow, and someone’s already beat me to updating TV Tropes.