Master’s Edition Kickstarter tier spotlight:
Softcover BICP Omnibus: No frills, just the Master’s Edition boxset in paperback. Plus an exclusive mini-print, because I like doing those. Plus the basic digital rewards.
There was a discounted Early Bird Softcover tier, but (unless someone switches tiers later) those are all spoken for…
This page (and this Q&A bit, later) are the entire reason I have a George Washington tag. (The married Italian couple don’t get one at all, sadly.)
First appearance of Walker and her Being; second appearance of Kara Lynn; first step down the historical-research rabbit-hole that will lead Sparrow to find out what happened to the Mouse (no relation). So that makes the page about half Important Plot-Relevant Foreshadowing, half General Worldbuilding Flavor.
“About a hundred” is some generous rounding-up; the real number is 72. More specifically, it was 72 from the 0030s (creation of the Donkey) to the 1940s (loss of the Mouse).
A whole lot of closed tabs later:
George Washington was said to have a fleet-footed Rabbit which he used to send messages. Its human form resembled a Cherokee youth, though Beings were unknown in the New World before the Europeans arrived.
The youngest Being-owner on record (name withheld to protect her privacy) currently lives in the United Kingdom. Upon the death of her grandmother, she inherited a Being in the shape of an iguana.
Ms. Ann Walker, CEO of Walker International, offers compensation for owners of Beings willing to participate in simple experiments.
Hitler wrote that Beings are “not part of Nature” and “a Jewish abomination”. Of Nazi experiments attempting to destroy Beings, only one was successful, and the details are lost.
A marriage license was revoked in Italy in 1913 when one party was found to be a Being. Records do not state which.
Sparrow: You would think someone would write a how-to book. “Owning A Being For Dummies.”
Not that it would have much of an audience, if there really are only about a hundred of them . . .
Ooh, a Discovery Channel documentary! I’ll have to see if I can pirate that later.
Turns out Hitler was right. Well, mostly.
Also, did you already posted the full list of beings here or is this first time? It surprises me how many birds are on list …
Is the 72 limit? Would it be possible for someone to create another being before 1940s, and would it be possible now, to replace Mouse with something completely different?
I posted the full Being list on Tumblr a while ago, and I know I’ve linked it here before…
And yes, 72 is the limit, and the destruction of the Mouse opened up a new slot.
Early in the comic, one of the plot threads I had planned was “Cohen makes himself a new Being.” (It would’ve been a New World animal — a first for the group — and something black-and-white, to go with his whole aesthetic.) Eventually decided his arc should focus on passing the torch (his research to Miranda+Sparrow, his Being-ownership to Bianca) and helping to change the status of Beings in general, rather than just trying to replicate what he had before.
Well, I MIGHT’ve missed it first time …
So it wasn’t just because they run out of usable animals.
Isn’t list of animals specific to America rather short? Domesticated ones would be alpaca, American Mink (fur farming), guinea pig, llama, Muscovy Duck and turkey. There are much more very specific animals in Australia … and obviously, the ideal black&white being would be penguin :-), but those aren’t really from America …
…no? There are thousands of animal species native to the Americas.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-animals-live-in-north-america.html
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-animals-live-in-the-amazon-rainforest.html
And those sites don’t even mention fish or invertebrates in their stats. (Admittedly, it’s not like Cohen would have gone for a flatworm Being…but even a subcategory like “frogs” still gives him hundreds of options.)
So, skunk?
Brilliant blog…