[0908] Special Encounter
└ posted on Thursday, 3 August 2017, by Novil
Our yearly Sandra and Woo and Gaia artwork contest has started! The prize money this year is a whopping $1100! So don’t miss your chance to become one of the winners!
- Larisa: The sun is super hot and bright. Having a picnic on it must be a-w-e-s-o-m-e!
- Sandra: I… don’t think you’d survive that.
- Larisa: Anything is possible! You just have to believe in yourself!
- Sandra: Don’t believe everything cartoon bunnies tell you.
- Larisa: Of course my boyfriend would have to come along…
- Sandra: You want to fly to the sun with a… boy!??
- Larisa: Sure! Boys are the b-e-s-t-e-s-t thing!!
- Sandra: Are you… “special”?
![[0908] Special Encounter](/comics/2017-08-03-0908-special-encounter.png "[0908] Special Encounter")
Poor Larisa, doesn’t know yet that sun isn’t even made of fire, those are nuclear reactions instead…
Trimutius wrote:
Almost as good as fire.
Larisa is definitely special, though not the way Sandra is implying.
Sandra’s way of saying “with a… boy!” implies that she is not friend with Cloud yet. She could be friend with him already, only she does at this point consider having a boyfriend (as opposed to a friend who’s a boy) an alien concept, but I think she would have said boyfriend instead of boy in that case. On the other hand, she’s eleven or younger in this strip and children that young sometimes expresses themselves poorly.
Larisa doesnt seem to have changed in any way while growing up 🙂
C’mon Sandra, you don’t just aks people if they’re “special”!
Also, am I the only one to think Larisa is incredibly cute in the last panel?
@ Vidad:
I’ll agree with you. She looks cute. That in and of itself scares me.
Yes Sandra, Larisa is very special.
Poor Sandra.
And so it begins…
Pyrophilia is certainly unusual. one could argue that Larisa is a overly social psychopath that just happens to love arson and flames
@ Novil:
Novil wrote:
I would say even better then fire. It is like buring the atoms themselves. Way more energetic then any oxidation process. And while some dying stars do just fizzle out, some go out with a real bang.
Novil wrote:
Better than fire. Larisa would love a nuclear “flamethrower”, were it possible.
“And that’s how we became best friends”
This is Larisa – ‘Special’ doesn’t even begin to cover it…
@ Crystalgate:
I assumed that Sandra is still at that, ‘boys are icky’ stage. Larissa is just acting mature for her age…or just crazy, not sure which.
I’m all ok with pyromania and pyrophilia, but being so close to the enemy?? Having a picnic on enemy territory? No thanks. If I can’t see my breath, it means it’s way too hot outside.
Trimutius wrote:
The thing you see as fire is not the oxidation process itself but plasma made hot from it – which is exactly what Sun is from. The nuclear reactions are only happening in core and make the rest hot. So, Sun IS made of fire.
So who’s the lucky scorch mark?
I just really like how this is kinda going back to the fact that these are freaking 11 year-olds. I like the silly, it’s a nice change from the norm.
I don’t know it it’ll let me post a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBK-4YSLDew
Melinda really reminded me of Larisa there. 😀
To the last panel regarding the question – “Yes and No”
@ Trimutius:
Best kind of fire
Of course she’s special – she’s a main protagonist, after all.
Nnnnot the way you think, Sandra.
Not the way you think.
This answers my question.
All the Larissa-ness is there.
Wonder how old they are for Larissa to already be into boys.
Also, love Sandra’s response.
Can wait to see how they became friends.
@ Crystalgate:
Eleven seems a bit old. If Sandra is 13 in the comic, this young Sandra must be like, 6 or 7, maybe 8… still in the ‘boys are gross’ stage. She even considers Larisa ‘special’ for liking boys.
@ Trimutius:
To hell with thermodynamics I’ve got imagination … (votes for Brexit and or Trump)
Dammit, I totally missed the “ON” the sun in the last strip!
Mis-read it as “IN the sun”… Nice and subtle!
byteflush wrote:
Dude, do you live in Antarctica? ’cause that’s the only place where you can see your breath 24/7.
CinCoutMagus wrote:
She’s more of a pryotagonist, in my opinion.
Did Sandra just called her “retarded?” You know, in polite way.
@ Mousie87:
My assumption here is that they are 9 in this comic. The comic started in 2008, Sandra was 11 then, the headstone of her mum lists 2006, and this seems to occur directly after that.
Which cartoon bunny was spouting that line?
And is this where Larsia and Sandra met?
And yes this is a prequel to the rest of the strip, the lack of woo is to emphasize that.
And the “as a child” tags emphasize that they are younger. 11 is a cusp as it were to
puberty, Larsia due to her problem may be further along.
We meet Larsia, if the tags are correct, for the first time, in publication order, in strip 33, which I just looked up. I just got the Russian gas joke, explanation, which I needed since I didn’t live in Europe. I do remember reading about it, but it didn’t affect me personally so I didn’t associate it, because it was long before I started reading this strip.
We don’t see Larsia again until stips in the 60s, which establishes her as a major character.
We haven’t seen Landon for a while about 150 strips
@ Walter:
Perhaps this should be strip minus one?!
I wondered about the cartoon rabbit too. I googled the quote and didn’t get any references to cartoon bunnies. Sandra may have imagined a cartoon character saying such a thing or they may have a few different cartoons in universe.
@ Mousie87:
8 would fit within ” eleven or younger”. Eleven is the absolute highest age she can possible have, but it is indeed very likely she’s younger than that.
Darwinskeeper wrote:
Maybe Peter Rabbit?
Thisguy wrote:
There’s a difference?
You know, given just how precocious she is, I wonder if she wasn’t abused. I’ve seen this sort of thing among children coming from bad homes.
the title just made me think: Sandra encountered a wild Larisa! special skill burning heart, fire’s power is boosted!
Kaze Koichi wrote:
Nah she called her Neural-atypical, or as you would say “weird in a polite way”
I have to say, Sandra looks slightly older than when she got woo. Would it mess up the chronology if this is slightly post-woo? Or, I suppose would be more descriptive, if the first few strips were actually a bit farther back than we thought?
I’m pretty sure the answer is yes, I’m afraid.
Where are you getting 2006 from? The panel where it shows the headstone has the year co seed up, you can only see 20..@ Vidad:
@ Cricket Possum:
http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2009/01/15/0025-an-overdue-visit/
I didn’t know I wanted this, but now I can’t live without it. what is this madness
@ JLBonnar:
Cute little girl with a sunny disposition and fiery inclinations. Hot any way you look at it. Don’t touch, you’ll get burned.
@ Crystalgate:
I’d have tipped 8 or 9 from their looks.
@ Vidad:
I have, often even. But you’d have had to see the crowd that showed up at the parties we had in the woods. Short Bus, helmets and straight-jackets all the way. IQ that matched shoe sizes. But, you could get them to run head first into a dead tree to try and knock it over by the end of the night. Ah, the memories.