Okay so this is a thing, but I am freakin' curious now... What IS IT that makes Kevin and Kell unique on the human side of the portal?
The most logical theory so far, as someone in the comments of that strip says, may be that they're an interracial couple. Past strips indicate wolves and coyotes would take the role of Native Americans (who, perhaps due to the predatory nature of wolves, might have a better chance of survival in Domain than Native Americans unfortunately did here) whereas Rabbits are native to European countries, so maybe that's it.
They may be a same sex couple, but this seems less likely since we know from past strips that the DNA of the characters has to MATCH their human counterparts with the exception of species. Though I guess they could still be a Trans same sex couple since a trans male would have XX genetics. However the most likely equivalent to a Human Trans character in the series is Bruno, not Kell or Kevin.
So how come the only apparent source of college education funding is the Easter Bunny scholarship? Seriously, Fiona can't apply for any other scholarships or take out student loans to pay for school? The comic acts as though Rudy and Fiona will need to split the world's only scholarship and then work part-time to pay the rest of their bills. Of course, in regards to loans, Fiona may just not want to go into debt for school, but the comic doesn't even address this at all - it just pretends that if Fiona isn't mind-boggingly rich, she can't afford school (yet Lindesfarne got through without any issues...?)
Bad writing.
When Martha was temporarily turned human, Lindesfarne was both baffled and squicked by Martha's sweat. Humans are not the only species that sweat: Equine and bovine species both sweat. That Lindesfarne - a biologist by training - would be so weirded out by this is just odd, Rule of Funny or not.
Holbrook knows as much about most animals as Stan Lee knew about spiders, let's put it that way.
Why, exactly, did Lindesfarne HAVE to go confront Desdemona about being a vampire (bat) then and there? Isn't that something that could've waited until after the wedding? Hell, pull her aside at the reception and talk to her then if it had to be aired out. Rushing over in the dead of night smacks of drama for drama's sake... which is sort of a bad tendency for a scientist to have.
It's a bad tendency for a comic to have, but this comic does it routinely anyway. You can call it illogical, but at least you can't call it inconsistent.
Wait... I can get behind "rushing over," but both species are nocturnal, which they say often, so the "Dead of Night," thing doesn't really hold up.
Fair enough.
You know now that I think about it, maybe the best explanation (besides Rule of Drama) is that Lindesfarne wanted the news to get out before the wedding. She is a scientist who cares deeply about the truth, and grew up in a multi-species household so she also knows the prejudices a lot of people have. By revealing there'll be a vampire bat at the wedding, she basically weeded out the fair-weather friends, and was left with the people who truly loved and accepted her and Fenton's family, not to mention Desdemona was probably wondering about it her whole life. She found who their real friends were, and allowed her mother in law to be to start being herself.
So exactly how old is Edgar? Apparently a lot younger than Rhonda.
There wasn't initially any evidence to suggest that he and Rhonda were not in Rudy's age group at Caliban until Rhonda received a scholarship, which showed her in Lindesfarne's class, and Rachel is probably a year behind Lindesfarne. It's hard to say when or if Rudy will graduate from high school, considering that Lindesfarne has already graduated from high school and college (after skipping some semesters with credit), but I suspect when he does, Edgar will be in his class, unless he gets held back somehow.
Did Franklin and Randy get gradually retconned from being the parts of them that remain in Kell and Rudy's memories to being ghosts? In Randy's first appearance, he seems to know about Rudy saving Lindesfarne from the cougars, which happened long after his death and could suggest that Rudy is having an imaginary conversation with him, since he didn't say anything that Rudy did not know or could not have known (He also doesn't apologize for his affair until Rudy finds out about it). However, Franklin tells Kell that her becoming a Herd Thinners executive was his idea, not hers, which surprises her. This could be interpreted as what Kell thinks he believes, but Franklin and Randy eventually Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence (if they were parts of Kell and Rudy's memories, this amounts to forgetting them), which could indicate that they remain as ghosts with their own memories.
This. I have, for a long time, taken issue with every single joke being explained, even the blatantly obvious ones, and have tried to ignore it, but...just look at the opening panel. Does Holbrook really think we're so stupid that we've forgotten the premise of one of the main characters? And then the last panel...explaining the punchline because apparently with that sort of set-up the joke still isn't blatantly obvious enough.
It's not the only comic that does this; Dilbert often uses a similar heading to "remind" readers that the little red cat is "Catbert: Evil Director of Human Resources" despite the fact that Catbert is the most popular character among fans. K&K is just a very "soft" comic, with both the storyline and format targeting a more casual readership than most serial webcomics. (Consider that it also runs as a newspaper comic, and newspaper readers don't have the benefit of past strips or a characters page.)
The comic has also probably been done so that people who were tuning in for the first time could follow along. Not everyone would know Coney's nature immediately.
But the problem still stands: if you don't know about Coney's nature, the explanation still makes no sense.
But that's why the first caption includes the statement Coney the Carniverous Bunny: so the folks just tuning in for the first time know she's carnivorous, and her actions make more sense... how does this NOT make sense?
The answer is far simpler than that. Kevin & Kell is a newspaper comic, that just happens to be hosted on the web instead of published in a newspaper. Holbrook writes it like a newspaper comic, and that includes eternally doing tired little references like that.
It's not a newspaper comic anymore, having only run briefly in one paper. However, Holbrook had been a newspaper cartoonist for over a decade before K&K started, and he grew up reading Peanuts and other newspaper comics, so he followed the model he knew best. You have to write each strip with the awareness that it could be someone's first time reading it, hence the Schulz-esque "Well, here I am" dialogue that appears from time to time. Not to mention that after 25 years of almost daily updates, the archive has grown well beyond what could easily be consumed in a couple days' binge.
Does it bother anyone else that from what I've seen (and I've reread the entire strip several times) that only identifiably male characters have ever been seen to have died from predation in the comic? I can't find or at least no instance stands out of a female character being killed as prey. The only known female deaths I can really notice (outside of the gags regarding short lived species like mayflies) are in backstory for Corrie's mother dying in childbirth and Danielle's death at the hands of other rabbits for betraying their anti-predator organization.
An in universe explanation could be that male animals tend to take more risks in order to impress more females, and as a result males tend to die younger. Also, population growth is limited by the number of females and the predators are sentient so they could be thinking about the future. An out of universe explanation would be humans are animals and on some level hold the same ideals, so tend to feel stronger about violence against females.
I don't think gender biased chivalry really works in this universe like it does in a human one, though. I think perhaps it depends on the species, and which roles are usually played by which gender. Leona, a lioness, once mentioned that she respects her father "for taking on a Hunting job, which in lions is normally staffed by women to support her". Wolves seem to have the concept of the Alpha Male - but female wolves hunting isn't unusual, so Kell doesn't stand out for being a professional predator.
Simple. It's likely that in this world, some females ARE hunted, but in not as great numbers as mentioned above. We don't see these because they are not important to the plot or story they are trying to tell. Just as it doesn't go into detail about a crime happening in a place non-story relevent, if it's not important to the story, we don't see females being killed. I mean think about it; the pelts of prey and such in the strip COULD be from females for all you know, they just don't need to say it.
Also even if the old fashioned idea of chivalry doesn't apply, the logic behind it does: the idea of "women and children first" in a disaster situation was originally rooted in the fact that a women was considered more important because of the nature of their physical reproduction - a man can produce many more children in a lifetime with various females, but someone with a uterus can only do it so many times. So it could well be a species survival thing too: The more women you kill, the harder it is to keep a species prosperous, and in a world where literally thousands of species are fighting for the same basic position on the ecosystem...
The current "Kell loses her CEO job" plot has...so many issues. Okay, #1, if all RL ever had to do to take the company back was just tell his board "Hey, I want my job back," why didn't he do that before? Or while he was in the hospital? I mean, this just makes the entire violent CEO battles even more pointless if they can just buy their way into the top jobs (and really, I can't imagine investors being cool with a corporate culture in which a complete hack can take over just because he offed the old guy, but fine, it's a universe where you can eat your neighbor and everyone is cool with it.) Did he just wake up one morning and go "I'm going to go be the CEO again!" And the board just shrugged their shoulders and ran with it? No, corporations do not work like this. They don't dump a profitable CEO without cause, that is the fastest way to destroy their investment. If Kell did nothing but grow their marketshare, they have no reason to oust her or to stay loyal to the old guy. Okay, I know this is fictional universe, but the plots are still required to follow some kind of internal logic! Is there some kind of logic to this that I missed?
The "logic" is that the RL loyalists were all old-school predators who openly disdained Kell's less... er... predatory tactics and preferred RL's Darwinist leadership style. It STILL makes no sense from a business standpoint, but at least the underlying logic is consistent. RL seems like the type to take the massive financial hit getting rid of Kell would bring - via shareholders, the buyout of Kell AND the large chunk of Herd Thinners staff who quit in protest - just to make a point.
This continues - every single thing Kell did that only increased the company's profits are now conveniently reverse? Over pride? What? This makes no sense, why not just take credit for them? I realize the true reason is so that Kell doesn't have to do any of the actual work or suffer any of the risk it would take to start a corporation from scratch in the real world, but come on, this is Idiot Balls all over.
...theft of company property is legal? I...guess? You know, I wish the comic would just decide whether its pure fantasy or not.
The "why didn't he do it sooner" thing was explained: RL was biding his time until he was at full strength and Kell would be no match for him in a straight-up challenge.
Except since he proved physically challenging her wasn't necessary and even after the challenge, he could have removed her from the position via the board, there's no reason for this (except the obvious need for instant plotlines vs. plots that build naturally.)
Physically challenging Kell wasn't necessary. But R.L. knew that if he played this card before he was at full strength, one of his supporters would be likely to double-cross him with their own physical challenge.
He's also smart enough to bank on Kell's own civility playing against her in that she wouldn't play his game his way to remove her. And overall, the guy is just an asshole.
Plus any of his idiotic moves could easily be explained as Angelique whispering in his ear. She was the power behind the throne long before she took over in her own right.
In the Expanded Universe story on Catherine Aura's twitter feed apparently the imbalance that causes the people in the anthro world to lose their "instincts" has the opposite effect on humans, causing them to behave more like animals. While Rule of Funny and all that, it still doesn't make sense that the effect would be symmetrical because while the anthros were artificially uplifted the humans are naturally evolved animals that have their own set of instincts that wouldn't suddenly vanish reverting them to the level of non-sapient beasts.
Doesn't R.L.'s corporate management style constitute a blatant violation of the "Targeted hunting is murder" rule? He's been known to kill and eat would-be competitors while they're in the process of applying for loans to start competing companies. You can't plausibly call that a random hunt casualty.
According to this blog post by Lindesfarne, R.L. essentially has enough power in his hands to Screw The Rules; the post directly says that "the edict against preying on those you know doesn’t apply to him".
I seriously think Holbrook made that up on the spot so problems couldn't easily be solved by Kell eating the offender. Otherwise, explain why Ralph targeted Kevin for years.
Pretty sure Ralph's logic was "trying to spare his sister the pain of marrying a herbivore". It wasn't Predation - it was outright attempted murder, which the 'no eating people you know' rule seems to exist to prevent. (I.e. if you're killing to eat or protect others, it's survival. If you're killing for any other reason, it's murder. The lines blur a lot between those two extremes but establishing any kind of balance that isn't flawed would be extremely difficult in a world where people HAVE to eat each other to survive.)
Maybe Kell would not just eat an Offender because she believes it would be unsporting? There's some sketchy character evolution in play (this IS 18 years worth of work) but her attitude seems to be that using her carnivorous traits to get someone out of the way is unethical unless she's doing it for a good reason. Maybe it's marrying a rabbit that caused this attitude? Whatever the case, one of the logical consistencies of this universe seems to be that ultimately someone ALWAYS pays in a society based so viciously on the food chain -Mark's parents were eaten because of his girlfriend's brother, Danielle died for betraying a rabbit association, Bruno had to deal with prejudice towards his dietary changes. Whether the "don't eat thy neighbours" ethical code can be applied to the rest of the world (and whether society follows it's own laws) is besides the point. It still exists. And just like in this world, rules are not always obeyed. That the code is flawed is practically a given because of the world they live in, but that's not really the characters fault. And hey, I guess at least they don't have nuclear wars and the massive pollution problems that a world with humans as the dominant species do.
If vampire bats are completely analogous to vampires, does that technically make Fenton a Dhampir?
Yes, except unlike practically every other Dhampir in fiction, he is not cool or compelling at all.
Why don't we see more hybrid creatures like Coney? As a carnivorous rabbit, the result of a wolf mating with a rabbit, she's pretty much universally treated as an anomaly the likes of which has never been seen before. But consider the relationships we see in the comic: wolf/rabbit, wolf/fox, hedgehog/bat, rabbit/squirrel, wolf/sheep, rabbit/mouse, lion/tiger, lion/rhino - it seems as though interspecies relationships are really common. More common than same-species relationships, if anything. So wouldn't cross-species breeding happen all the time?
We've seen at least two: Corrie (She's Ralph Dewclaw's daughter) and Francis Fennec (son of Kevin's sister, Danielle and George Fennec)note Technically, three; if you count Corrie's clone, Mary. And the stigma is cross-diet (carnivore/herbivore), not cross-species (Recall that Kell's first husband, Rudy's father, was a fox). Domain's a big place and we've only seen small bits of it.
The better question might be "Why haven't we seen a hybrid that isn't a Dewclaw?"
Well, we have once. A "Cabbit" (which is also technically a predator/prey relationship.
Rhino characters Rachel and Carl having poor vision is consistent with real rhinos, but do these two also have bad hearing? Both have misidentified the gender of other characters (Bruno and Leona respectively) who had rather gender-indicative names, and it seems unlikely that Bruno sounds female and that Leona sounds male, especially given respective body sizes (which do tend to have some effect on voice).
, but I am freakin' curious now... What IS IT that makes Kevin and Kell unique on the human side of the portal?