Collision, pages 20&21

Comic can be found here at my site (all pages in one), and here at deviantart (link to gallery folder that also contains all pages).

(Warning for mostly obscured dead animal on both pages, but no visible blood)

These are the last two pages of the comic.

First, plumage news: Dusk has pin feathers, too! So far only on his wings and tail fan, and his feather development is still behind Sunny's, but he's getting there. The down has also finally spread some since we last saw him, perhaps prompted by the cold weather. Starlight is getting pretty fluffy, too, though her feathers are a different kind from what Dusk and Sunny are growing in those pins - single filament protofeathers instead of the more complex pennaceous feathers, as she gets the trait through a different ancestor. Besides paravian, she's also part tyrannosauroid and therizinosaur.

So, now we know what the Indoraptor was up to around the car. Also here's the answer to whose POV that one panel looking up from the undergrowth on page 6 was. Indo would probably be pretty good at looking for lost chicks, what with being able to find them just by body heat, at least so long as there aren't other complications like more warm bodies happening to suddenly be in the exact wrong place at the wrong time.

Blue and the Indoraptor being parents with chicks to protect is one of those differences from canon that I think has potentially a big impact. Had it been just the two of them, there might not have been a collision in this situation (though in another, eventually there might). Had Ilon and Evriela not had children (including the "child" a pet is to a lot of people) with them, things could also have gone differently. But I hope I've managed to not make what happened seem like anyone's fault in particular, on either side. Bad decisions and ones with unforeseenly unfortunate consequences may have been involved, but that's life, it's rare everyone does everything perfectly in any given situation, we can all just try our best.

Though both humans and dinosaurs end up recognizing that the encounter was accidental on both sides, no complete understanding is reached.

Blue is a pretty good human interpreter, but she has her blind spots, like how the concept of pets and (tw: blood, animal death at link) farm animals seems to elude her. And, she can overestimate sometimes how well humans understand her in return. Her idea of her tone here when telling the humans to get off her lawn is probably somewhere around "firm but polite" (she bothered to talk to them instead of biting, after all), while the humans certainly didn't see it that way. I think she also doesn't always fully grasp just how scary she is even to Owen, and is confused by his reacting accordingly, because she's his daughter, right? Why should he be scared of her. Though she knows she is not a human, I still think that due to having imprinted on humans as a chick, at least on some level, part of her just doesn't know that, and expects the humans whom she deigns to treat like she would treat a fellow raptor to also see her as a peer. That probably played a part in why things went as they did with this human encounter, too, for better or for worse.

I mentioned earlier that I had my human characters be a family because that's the standard group dynamic for human main characters in a JP/W movie, but it is also because the dinosaurs involved are, too. And I do find the dinosaur families, individual ones and in general, featured in the movies interesting, too, and how they compare to the movies' in this sense conservative portrayal of human characters where nuclear families are idolized and everyone should want to have kids... unless they're dinosaurs, in which case no unauthorized breeding for you, but whether the humans like it or not, life finds a way. This whole AU about Blue and the Indoraptor being cute and cozy is, after all, partially inspired by the thought that Owen and Claire seem to get their (relatively) happily ever after with each other and a kid, but to protect them and enable them to have that, Blue kind of sacrifices what could perhaps have been a chance for her to have that, too, and that's a little too convenient. So what if she did get to have both her human alive and a new raptor to befriend, regardless of that she and the humans might have a very different idea of whether the scary monstersaurus surviving is going to be the beginning to a horror movie or to a romantic comedy. And both can be right.

This comic is also partially inspired by, I suppose, Battle at Big Rock, which I really liked but thought had some missed potential that The Lost World on the other hand managed to tap into really well. I mean of course, yet again, the T. rex family, although I haven't mentioned as many times, I think, that along with other ways they're great, they act as a narrative foil for our human family of Ian, Sarah, and Kelly. No, really. Ian's character arc in the movie is to learn to take responsibility and treat better the people he loves if he wants to keep them in his life - "if you wanted to rescue me from something, why not rescue me when I really need it, actually be there when you say you will?" and "you like to have kids but you just don't want to be with them" are some choice quotes about Ian "always on the lookout for a future ex" Malcolm's track record as a boyfriend and a father. The rexes on the other hand work perfectly together as a parental unit and go above and beyond for their baby. The "monster" of the movie is a better dad than you, Ian, git gud. Also I'll argue that the raptor gymnastics scene is a parallel to the baby rex turning out to be more lethal than expected to something preying on it, but we're getting off topic. The scary animals have understandable and sympathetic motivations just like the humans, even though the two groups have conflicting goals.

The missed potential I think Battle at Big Rock had was in having the cute dinosaur family be the already easy to root for herbivorous Nasutoceratops (as much as the spotlight on a dinosaur that isn't a theropod is nice for a change). What if instead or in addition the scary predator was a mother Allosaurus teaching her gangly fledglings to hunt? Or maybe a fledgling or two by themselves, bumbling and clearly inexperienced to the point of being at least a little endearing. Still scary, you still want the cute human family to be okay, but a little more incentive to remember the carnivore isn't a monster, either, for being a carnivore.

The comics I've been drawing of Blue and Indo and their little family have been from the raptors' point of view, but every once in a while their life would end up intersecting with that of humans, and the different perspective on which creatures are the main character round these parts.

I hope I pulled off what I was going for.

Thank you for reading!