Spacetrawler, audio version For the blind or visually impaired, March 2, 2020.
Stangor, nor her parent’s specific story, have ever been written or shown before. But Stangor’s parents were part of the broader story, covered in the third part of the previous Spacetrawler iteration. The specific incident referred to (of not getting paid) culminated here.
I don’t suppose Emily’s got a hanger or cargo hold in that ship big enough for the giant awesome-truck? I’d want to keep it.
Also, Stangor’s a female?
Almost everybody in this comic is female, except a few of the humans and maybe King?
Makes a change from the usual ‘Mostly men + token love interest and/or eye-candy character’
That hasn’t been my impression. I’ll pay more attention going forward, but I will be surprised if that is the case.
I, uh. Nogg, Krep, Kuu-Drac, Bikke, and let’s not forget Jabby, who’s kinda not anything. And those are just the characters who come immediately to mind.
There’s a pretty good character balance here, gender-wise.
I just realized I completely forgot Mauricio.
I’m really not sure what that says about me.
And Emily’s partner, Pierrot. And if we’re going back to book 1 (Kuu-Drac, right?), there was also that clueless Australian, I forget his name…
And Dimitri!
For Nomi: I believe you’re thinking of Dusty (Dustin?).
I do my best to keep an even gender balance. Sometimes it gets a little bit lopsided, but overall I think I keep it pretty even.
“If there’s 17 percent women, the men in the group think it’s 50-50. And if there’s 33 percent women, the men perceive that as there being more women in the room than men.”
…so, hey, readers getting the impression of “almost everybody is female except a few” probably means the author is succeeding at making a nice roughly-even 50-50 split.
Sorry Stangor, but that doesn’t fly. Do the crime, do the time. If a sobstory or somesuch is enough to get off the hook? Everybody’s got a sob story.
…. her?
That said, I do still hope Stagnor joins the crew. I like her. The right mixture of competent and :V
Finally, we have a motive! And a pretty good one, at that. I think this crew might be getting another member!
…and huh, I’ve just been referring to Stangor with they/them. Okay, then!
“Hello, my name is Stangor. You bankrupted my parents. Prepare to die”
“Hello. My name is Emily Taylor. Your parents funded jetpacks for a race of shape-shifting bags of snakes. Prepare to– What’s that behind you??”
Easy lead-ins aside, that’s a neat backstory rendered very briefly and cogently. Stangor’s misplaced enmity is now established and we can all work with that.
Hm. I doubt, though, that Emily will be as nastily direct as to send Stangor after Anesu. She doesn’t have Stangor’s parents’s money either. But sending him after the Laufian slinten pods could be interesting.
I reread the text and can’t find anything that establishes Stangor’s gender, though I see where such establishment was deliberately evaded. The potential for storymaking from this being so bloody obvious I’ll just shut the F up now, if that’s okay.
Stangor’s gender as established in the lines below the comic which includes a helpful link to the event in question.
Actually, Stangor’s gender was established way back in January when we first see her in the bar. In the audio narration Chris mentioned “a glass in front of her” https://www.baldwinpage.com/spacetrawler/2020/01/16/011620-stangor-is-looking/.
I keep telling you all to listen to the audio… it frequently includes extra tidbits of information.
Okay I think this last panel is my new favorite moment of the whole shebang. That. Was awesome.
Gender is not sex.
Gender is a human psychological cultural construct. Sex is the biology of it. So many ways from fission, budding, sporulation, to sex shifting and even having 3 sexes the usual male and female only the female then passes the ovum to a third minor female to gestate. (I have one such alien species like that.)
Then there is Stangor, the walking “?” on that. Less important than his/her/hir/SHe characterization we will get as the story flows like today. Motivation.
Nice to see such sex balance. Usually I’ve seen 4 males to every 1 female generally or worse. Grrl Power inverts that splendidly.
Some people have gone so fractionalized about it they insist on being referred to by their own made up gender. I think that is called complexification. Making things more complex than they need to be. I’ll leave that one alone.