Poor future Fred... I feel so bad for him.

Future Freddie is becoming Present Freddie.

Indeed.

So wait, Fred's a Timelord?!

Actually he's borrowing it from Kathy's grandpa Leo, who collects time machines, and who traded with a guy for a TARDIS with a fully-functioning chameleon circuit.

Took him weeks to get it to stop looking like a giant chameleon.

I see he took the phraise "chameleon circuit" a little bit too litarelly.

The fact that Kathryn's body is in the room with him in the last panel, and presumably isn't where she was killed, is a little creepy and very much heartbreaking.

It's actually supposed to be a ghostly image, a memory that's haunting Future Fred, but I couldn't make it any more transparent without it disappearing altogether. I do like the way it looks surrounded by the candles, though.

Ahhhh...okay, that makes more sense, and upon a closer look I can see how some of the candles are visible through her head/hair. I think what got me was that since much of that TARDIS background was a dark blue, it was hard for me to notice the transparency and thought she was dim due to the low lighting.

I agree. I was going to put her on the left, over the control panel, but after talking it over with my husband, he pointed out that making her the last image that is seen would make the picture more powerful. I also liked the look of her surrounded by candles, as in a funeral. The trade-off is that she doesn't look like a ghost image because there's little background to see through her.

Now I gotta ask:

As soon as Freddie entered his office, he took his glasses off.

Was that just so now you could tell the two apart? If so, that is brilliant.

Yes, it was. :)

There are other "tells." Future Fred's wearing a uniform without any insignia. His background is an elaborate TARDIS interior, while Present Fred's office is plain and hand-drawn, like the earlier stuff from Carry On was. In my head, the hand-drawn backgrounds indicate "dull reality" while the photomanipulated ones indicate the fantastical world of Rackenroon.

The problem I faced with two identical characters having a phone conversation was how to differentiate them, and to make it visually interesting. Because face it, watching someone talking on the phone is BORING.

So I had Fred take off his glasses so I could make him more expressive. He's experiencing emotions that his future self had locked away. Future Fred is harder and colder. Present Fred even smiles at one point in this scene.

And I also used squared-off dialog balloons, a jagged "electrical" tail, and a slightly smaller font, to indicate the voice on the cell phone.

One other little detail, is that I realized he would not be able to read the cell phone screen without his glasses, so I made it have a voice to announce the incoming call.

I try to be thorough.

The one tear....that one tear....that broke my heart.

That was Fred, melting.

Sometimes you gotta talk some sense into yourself. Literally.

You're telling me that neither the guards nor the constantly cloaked SBD units can protect Kathy as closely as Frederick can himself? Now I know that's too far-fetched of an excusable answer. I get the fact that as a male hyena he's essentially a glorified meat shield and fall guy no matter where he stands in ranking and favoritism, but I really got to wonder how come he's the ONLY ONE to take all the blame for Kathy's death in the future and not anyone else tasked with that same duty (i.e. the SBD units, any of the palace guards, etc.).

Well, the SBD guards can't sleep with her, which is what his future self is implying. As her husband he can be in bed with her, the last line of defense, the one person she can trust implicitly. Guards can be bribed or killed. Her husband should be willing to die to protect her.

The reason why he was blamed for her death in his time-line was that the lions got into the bridal chamber, and Jinjur and Vyschuss--the real culprits--blamed him for the betrayal. He had fought with Kathy and had disappeared the morning of the assault, so it was easy for them to say he'd unlocked the door and beat it out of there, knowing the marriage was a loveless, contractual political match, so it made no difference to him whether she lived or died. Since it was rumored that he intended to kill himself had he married Jinjur or Vyschuss, and "Old Stoneface" was known to have no emotions,, and to be a calculating schemer, it was not a hard sell.

Future Fred originally wanted to fix things to salvage his own reputation. Kathy's death threw Rackenroon into chaos, and war broke out between the rival factions, which then called in their allies, and soon a world war was raging. So he also wanted to avert that disaster. (I patterned this after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand starting WW I.)

He told his past self that he needed to allow himself to fall in love with Kathy, so that he would be willing to protect her and die for her if necessary. What he didn't count on was that he would start getting the memories Present Fred was laying down, which made him ache for what he had lost.

Even though they uncovered Jinjur's plot, Future Fred still sees disaster looming, because the lions are still planning their coup. So now he has to warn himself to protect Kathy at all costs, lest the horrible future he's trying to change still comes to pass.

I think he should look behind himself...

Vix

.... Wait does this mean that Future Kat's going to remember the alternate timeline, or will future Fred simply Blip out of existence? Or is it more of a corporate merger where Future Fred will inevitably become past Fred with no recollection of the alternative timeline, but rather the experiences his past self has with him?

.... Eh, that's going to be Future Spike's problem.

Kathy has no knowledge of the alternate timeline, only that Fred had borrowed her grandpa's TARDIS in order to pack up her entire apartment in an hour.

Sandy was present when Future Fred gave his first warning to Present Fred, but she, too, believes she dreamed it.

I was really only asking because... from the looks of that last panel, Future Fred brought Future Kathy with him. And if he (FF) is gaining memories because of what Past Fred is experiencing, then logically... The same should be true for her... although, it may not count because she is dead (so her soul would still be in the original future timeline).

Mind you, it could just be a symbolic memory and not her literally being there (Of which, I can only assume is for when Past Fred succeeds then Future Fred can see her "come back", despite the timeline updating would mean she never left.... Sorry, Time Travel logic is easy to understand, but very hard to put into words.

As I mentioned upthread, that's representing an image from his imagination, not an actual body in the room. I turned down the opacity to make it more transparent, but there's not much to see through it.

(puts hand to chest and sighs in relief...)

Future Fred will succeed only when his timeline is deleted.

Oh if only we all could have the chance to talk to our younger selves at that one moment that we knew we screwed up worse than any other time in our lives.
The things we would say.

But would we listen?

wibbly wobbly timely stuff