Perhaps, but he’s been working way above his pay grade for awhile. Remember, he was responsible for restoring the girls’ personalities after they were reconstituted as individuals.
It’s hard to say of course, but I think May is on the right. Mythologically, Mayahuel is the mother of the Centzon Totochtin, the 400 Rabbits – so May is probably the one with the rabbit motif. (She’s also goddess of the maguey plant, but the bit above the eyes looks only vaguely like a maguey in bloom.) Bud should have a goat if any animal appears, but I’m not seeing it.
The patterns may simply be part of how the brain organizes input across its connectome. Essentially, these are the organic equivalent of low-res pictures: the basic data is there, with rudimentary organization, there’s just not enough to display precision.
So they do resemble stress-related hallucinations like one gets with migraines (as Jay-Em et al mention below), but patterns to represent beings of the spirit world or the dreamtime are found in nearly all cultures.
Australian aborigines would call them Old People.
Golems don’t have organic brains anymore. Never forget that everyone in this scene has been dead for over ten thousand years.
I was going with the eyes (assuming that’s what they are). The left one has eyes shaped more like May’s, while the other’s are more rounded. Also, in the first frame, Bud’s eye level is about a half an eye height above May’s, as they are in the last panel.
While eyes do glisten,
When words are whisperin,
From an elder dark.
Tis friends you’ll be needing,
As the bojam is keening,
To try and hunt the snark.
By the key she is holding,
Ask not what’s unfloding,
Hit reboot to reset the spark.
I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s a bit too accurate to be just an artist’s imagination. Especially the shimmering blocky-pattern in the background is a give-away.
It is said that Van Gogh had severe migraines too, and they gave him the inspiration for his swirly skies and stuff… I think that could be true..
This would be easy to write as a crossover fanfic.
The TARDIS appears and one of the Golem Girls cries, “Him again?!?” Monica tries to get a straight answer out of people and again is reminded that she’s surrounded by people thousands of years old, all of whom collect bizarre personality quirks the way hoarders accumulate newspapers. (The Doctor fits in perfectly with this, of course.) Meanwhile the Doctor is going off on one of his own escapades.
I suggest that The Doctor stood up Brandi on a blind date in Byzantium and still feels awkward about it.
We wanted story. We got story. Right between the eyes.
So, is the presence of the power key in such close proximity the reason she has zoned out now or has it all finally caught up with her and she’s visiting Flatland for the duration?
Isn’t this where Jin has been going for almost half a year in Wapsi time? She’s nearing her rendezvous with her other side — but will our heroines be there before calamity is inevitable?… (now I’m totally in movie serial mode)
From the looks of it she’s been collapsed for quite a while, so I would imagine the Key had nothing to do with it. Unless she went down the moment Shelly brought the fully activated Key back into the normal universe, in which case she’s been like that for several days. Which would be bad.
I wonder where Crispy is. If she’s going to strike, now is the time to do it, while Jin is defenseless…
Very interesting points. It would make sense she went down the moment Shelly came back. Crispy, assuming she’s more than an hallucination, could make things additionally difficult at this point. Everything’s going too smoothly for this to be all there is to it.
….Am I the only one that thought Jin was hiding and listening for them from somewhere in the second to last panel at first? That’s what I did until I noticed the placement of the speech bubble.
A reboot might wipe everything and start Jin from scratch. That could be both a blessing and a curse. At the least she would no longer be Jin and that would be a shame.
Thanks, bmonk! I forwarded these along to a musician I know who is working on some “musical impressions of modern haiku”.
I have a feeling that any of these three would produce some rather unsettling (or scary, or at least frustrating) music Might make an interesting sound-track for a quiet evening of scotoma-filled hallucinations.
Meh – I dunno. I’m more thinking of the movie this belongs to:
Brasil, meu Brasil Brasileiro,
Meu mulato inzoneiro,
Vou cantar-te nos meus versos:
O Brasil, samba que dá,
Bamboleio, que faz gingar;
O Brasil do meu amor,
Terra de Nosso Senhor.
Brasil!… Brasil!… Prá mim!… Prá mim
Again, I have to comment on the hands. Especially her left hand is subtly telling everything.
I can draw pretty good, but hands always somewhat eluded me. Kudos to Paul for using small details like that to illustrate Jin’s utter unravelling.
Hi, you’ve reached Jin, I’ve currently stepped away from my mind at the moment but you can reach me in the 3rd circle of my inner psyche. Please, leave a message at the beep and if I haven’t vaporized the known universe i’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
If I recall the relationships between my constants correctly,
e^(i * pi) – 1 = 0
So, I think you’re onto something here. The results of trying an imaginary calculation on “e” and “pi”, minus 1 (clearly Jin’s ego), and you’re left with zero (which seems to be where her rationality is heading right now).
Given the complexity of the Calender Machine I suppose we should have expected the Golem Girls to be somewhat mathematical… but I hadn’t expected it to manifest itself in this way.
Poor jin… and poor everybody else, if this goes badly. I agree, this is Not Good.
(Euler’s identity) rather than “minus one”. That actually corresponds more closely to Jin’s situation, I guess… “result of imaginary calculation on e and pi, plus one ego, equals zero”. Nirvana (or nasty trippy Jimson-weed-style loss of self) all wrapped up in one formula.
I will be optimistic enough to put forward that May and Bud are not necessarily in danger right now. just because they look like something out of a late-60′s experimental animation short doesn’t mean she sees them as a threat…
…or anything, really.
What interests me the most is what Bud was going to say after “You just have to…” because if they need Jin’s participation they are prolly SOL.
Yes, Jin has effectively divided by zero. She’s probably no danger at the moment because the CPU is busy processing code with multiple infinite loops, but I hope Mayahuel and Bud can pull her out anyway. She looks so beautiful and so pitiable all at once…
Country singers are bad to build an entire song around a catch phrase. Especially if it’s curently popular. They all follow the same pattern and choose from among 3 or 4 tunes to which to sing it.
I just hope that they remember to get Alan. When I have had to deal with severe Schizophrenic friend in the past sometimes an important person of object can break the brain-lock that forms.
This could be a very dangerous place for a mortal right now. Jin could rip him to confetti before knowing what she was doing and no one could stop her in time. Best left to the powerful immortals.
I wonder if it’s even dangerous to touch her, sort of like with the relic. Her problem is that she is out of sync with current time. Perhaps anyone who makes physical contact would be drawn into her reality as well. I guess we’ll soon find out.
Yea, for a little bit I forgot that this is the world of portals and poiters. One wrong move and Alan would end up being chased by a Sphinx or find himself orbiting the moon on his own.
oh my…. makes the phrase no one is home and turns it on it’s head…..
Hello! My name is Kaleidoscope, and I see lots of things differently from regular people! It’s lots of fun — until it isn’t fun anymore…
Uh oh… Poor Jin…
Don’t worry, she’s not completely gone. I mean, those aren’t Ice Cream Fish.
Heh, true!! XD
That’s worse than my worst acid trips back in the ’70s, and eventually acid wears off… who knows how long this will take to run its course.
Oh wow that last panel is what she sees?
Man I hope Jin is ‘together’ enough not to vapourize it.
*hugs Jin*
We’re afraid the Jin you’ve tried to reach is currently not available Please leave a message after the beep…
*honk*
Oh frak
Why am I seeing two sets of eyes/faces in that last panel???
*shudder*
Ravens in the eyes of the left one; rabbits – or are those simplified coyotes – in the eyes on the right?
Tepoz, you’re being to damned quiet!
This is way beyond Tepoz’s pay grade.
I read that as “Tepoz’s gay parade”. Sometimes things are better with dyslexia!
Perhaps, but he’s been working way above his pay grade for awhile. Remember, he was responsible for restoring the girls’ personalities after they were reconstituted as individuals.
I’d say he may deserve… a raise.
Does he even get paid at all?
From the way things work, he’ll get a new cool sounding title with more responsibilities and earn the same amount.
I believe the last panel is Bud and May ala Jinvison©
I believe you’ve nailed it.
Could very well be. Worst case of astigmatism ever.
I’ll take a guess and say the left one is May.
It’s hard to say of course, but I think May is on the right. Mythologically, Mayahuel is the mother of the Centzon Totochtin, the 400 Rabbits – so May is probably the one with the rabbit motif. (She’s also goddess of the maguey plant, but the bit above the eyes looks only vaguely like a maguey in bloom.) Bud should have a goat if any animal appears, but I’m not seeing it.
The patterns may simply be part of how the brain organizes input across its connectome. Essentially, these are the organic equivalent of low-res pictures: the basic data is there, with rudimentary organization, there’s just not enough to display precision.
So they do resemble stress-related hallucinations like one gets with migraines (as Jay-Em et al mention below), but patterns to represent beings of the spirit world or the dreamtime are found in nearly all cultures.
Australian aborigines would call them Old People.
Golems don’t have organic brains anymore. Never forget that everyone in this scene has been dead for over ten thousand years.
I was going with the eyes (assuming that’s what they are). The left one has eyes shaped more like May’s, while the other’s are more rounded. Also, in the first frame, Bud’s eye level is about a half an eye height above May’s, as they are in the last panel.
All that is left connecting Jin to reality is a single thread, half the width of a human hair, and that thread is strained to its limit.
Fluff’s over. Now someone has to go get her, and that will be tough. Nice arc, Paul. Thank you!
I’ve got wild staring eyes
I’ve got a strong urge to fly
But I’ve got nowhere to fly to
Ooooh Babe when I pick up the phone
There’s still nobody home
Good, so I’m not the only one who was reminded of that song.
While eyes do glisten,
When words are whisperin,
From an elder dark.
Tis friends you’ll be needing,
As the bojam is keening,
To try and hunt the snark.
By the key she is holding,
Ask not what’s unfloding,
Hit reboot to reset the spark.
Careful with that axe, Eugene…
Oh dear.. Poor Jin.
Looks remarkable like what i see when having one of te more severe migraine-attacs, swirly outlines and all… Brrr…
Seeing her like that, all floppy and stuff is really sad….
Wonder if Paul gets them and so drawn from experience
I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s a bit too accurate to be just an artist’s imagination. Especially the shimmering blocky-pattern in the background is a give-away.
It is said that Van Gogh had severe migraines too, and they gave him the inspiration for his swirly skies and stuff… I think that could be true..
sweet!
so the tardis WILL be appearing in a future Wapsi episode!
excellent
That would be the crossover of all crossovers… Lol
The van goghepisode was the last one i saw with Matt. Lost interest aftervthat somehow..
Drop in on Wapsi Square? I would be honoured. Imagine Me and Monica ‘poiting’ about.
This would be easy to write as a crossover fanfic.
The TARDIS appears and one of the Golem Girls cries, “Him again?!?” Monica tries to get a straight answer out of people and again is reminded that she’s surrounded by people thousands of years old, all of whom collect bizarre personality quirks the way hoarders accumulate newspapers. (The Doctor fits in perfectly with this, of course.) Meanwhile the Doctor is going off on one of his own escapades.
I suggest that The Doctor stood up Brandi on a blind date in Byzantium and still feels awkward about it.
O. M. F. G.
…umm, this could be bad.
Having said that, wonderful line drawings in the last panel, even if they fill me with anxiety for Jin’s state of mind…
We wanted story. We got story. Right between the eyes.
So, is the presence of the power key in such close proximity the reason she has zoned out now or has it all finally caught up with her and she’s visiting Flatland for the duration?
Isn’t this where Jin has been going for almost half a year in Wapsi time? She’s nearing her rendezvous with her other side — but will our heroines be there before calamity is inevitable?… (now I’m totally in movie serial mode)
Haha. Wow. Yes that is a wonderful set up for the trailer. Bravo!
I thought the power key would help her not make her worse
or is it the case she needs to get worse before she gets better?
From the looks of it she’s been collapsed for quite a while, so I would imagine the Key had nothing to do with it. Unless she went down the moment Shelly brought the fully activated Key back into the normal universe, in which case she’s been like that for several days. Which would be bad.
I wonder where Crispy is. If she’s going to strike, now is the time to do it, while Jin is defenseless…
well
getting jin to kill everything she loved would be brilliant revenge…
Very interesting points. It would make sense she went down the moment Shelly came back. Crispy, assuming she’s more than an hallucination, could make things additionally difficult at this point. Everything’s going too smoothly for this to be all there is to it.
Friday’s cliff hanger may be a doozie.
According to May the voices are worse because the key (threat) is near, in other words they are fighting to keep Jin.
….Am I the only one that thought Jin was hiding and listening for them from somewhere in the second to last panel at first? That’s what I did until I noticed the placement of the speech bubble.
Not Good.
Uh oh –
Test Patterns.
Hopefully she won’t blindly defend herself when they start to help her – or blindly flee.
Wonder where her guy is?
lets hope he hasn’t been diamondized
“Diamond-eyes’d”? “Brilliant”!
actually I ment crushed into a tiny diamond (like what Bud did) but i like your idea also
Oh look! The walls are melting again!
Let’s tune in and drop out, see sounds and hear colors!
Damn, she blue-screened again. May will have to push Ctrl-Alt-Delete and reboot her.
Three appropriate “error haiku”:
Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
The system has crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
And, I really, really hope a reboot works.
A reboot might wipe everything and start Jin from scratch. That could be both a blessing and a curse. At the least she would no longer be Jin and that would be a shame.
Thanks, bmonk! I forwarded these along to a musician I know who is working on some “musical impressions of modern haiku”.
I have a feeling that any of these three would produce some rather unsettling (or scary, or at least frustrating) music Might make an interesting sound-track for a quiet evening of scotoma-filled hallucinations.
Anyone else reminded of Louis Wain’s paintings after he completely lost it?
Ditto that. I’m guessing that last image is how Jin now perceives Bud and Maya.
Meh – I dunno. I’m more thinking of the movie this belongs to:
Brasil, meu Brasil Brasileiro,
Meu mulato inzoneiro,
Vou cantar-te nos meus versos:
O Brasil, samba que dá,
Bamboleio, que faz gingar;
O Brasil do meu amor,
Terra de Nosso Senhor.
Brasil!… Brasil!… Prá mim!… Prá mim
She’s found her “Brazil”?
Again, I have to comment on the hands. Especially her left hand is subtly telling everything.
I can draw pretty good, but hands always somewhat eluded me. Kudos to Paul for using small details like that to illustrate Jin’s utter unravelling.
The snozberries taste like snozberries.
Hi, you’ve reached Jin, I’ve currently stepped away from my mind at the moment but you can reach me in the 3rd circle of my inner psyche. Please, leave a message at the beep and if I haven’t vaporized the known universe i’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Potato.
wibble
No, no, no, no.. It’s” put your underpants on your head, stick two pencils up your nose and go ” wobble, wobble”
Oops…wrong funny stuff.. :LOL:
Of all the things I’ve lost, my mind I miss the most.
Of course she’s out of her mind… it’s dark and scary in there!
Yep, if I was in there, I’d want to get out of her mind as well.
Oh dear…I’m more than a little terrified of where/how this will go.
“Little”?
The reality you have dialed is not in effect. Please check the value of pi and dial again.
I vote for this comment
That’s her problem. She’s trying to calculate the final digit of pi to the base e.
If I recall the relationships between my constants correctly,
e^(i * pi) – 1 = 0
So, I think you’re onto something here. The results of trying an imaginary calculation on “e” and “pi”, minus 1 (clearly Jin’s ego), and you’re left with zero (which seems to be where her rationality is heading right now).
Given the complexity of the Calender Machine I suppose we should have expected the Golem Girls to be somewhat mathematical… but I hadn’t expected it to manifest itself in this way.
Poor jin… and poor everybody else, if this goes badly. I agree, this is Not Good.
Well, it’s
e ^ (i * pi) + 1 = 0
(Euler’s identity) rather than “minus one”. That actually corresponds more closely to Jin’s situation, I guess… “result of imaginary calculation on e and pi, plus one ego, equals zero”. Nirvana (or nasty trippy Jimson-weed-style loss of self) all wrapped up in one formula.
Hope she finds her way back! Perhaps May and Bud can arrange a screening of a good mathematical path-finding exercise to lead her ego back home?
Before proceeding, they should probably all poit to an empty universe somewhere for the safety of this one.
No, like any uber-powerful entity, she’s trying to calculate the ultimate prime-number, so, call her back in a couple of trillion years..
Well, I’d say that the prime she’s trying to calculate is probably
122438342521754351521884930169066644686977063596050480923667346568475095296514586636523010746972028649081868823707899980556062547118209370177655243607018688481962800266383467852222626222947479216602964613112557086326929104586475432024470163669017537583517378457943949343881713123005604401431188327484240440427
(Yes, this is a real 1024-bit prime number… in fact it’s the upper member of a Sophie Germain pair of primes).
If you represent this big integer on a computer in Intel byte-order format (least significant byte first) it shows up as
6B2C940D119EB00057652772652061667261696420746865204A696E20796F7527766520747269656420746F2072656163682069732063757272656E746C79206E6F7420617661696C61626C652E20506C65617365206C656176652061206D6573736167652061667465722074686520626565702E2E2E0004C367FC0EA55BAE
and the part which is framed by the bytes containing 00:
57652772652061667261696420746865204A696E20796F7527766520747269656420746F2072656163682069732063757272656E746C79206E6F7420617661696C61626C652E20506C65617365206C656176652061206D6573736167652061667465722074686520626565702E2E2E
is actually the ASCII string which reads
“We’re afraid the Jin you’ve tried to reach is currently not available. Please leave a message after the beep…”
as Leak seems to have found recorded on her answering machine.
Aaaaand Like a Cold slap-in-the-face-with-a-wet-Trout,the Story Continues on a Not too pretty note.
I will be optimistic enough to put forward that May and Bud are not necessarily in danger right now. just because they look like something out of a late-60′s experimental animation short doesn’t mean she sees them as a threat…
…or anything, really.
What interests me the most is what Bud was going to say after “You just have to…” because if they need Jin’s participation they are prolly SOL.
Do they need to use her access panels?
It will be interesting if May pops open Jin to fiddle around inside. Only Bud has been seen to have an access panel before.
Yes, Jin has effectively divided by zero. She’s probably no danger at the moment because the CPU is busy processing code with multiple infinite loops, but I hope Mayahuel and Bud can pull her out anyway. She looks so beautiful and so pitiable all at once…
Have to admit there is, indeed, a disconcerting kind of beauty in Jin’s posture, almost like something from a neo- romantic dramatic painting.
By the way, dud anyone notice Jin’s left eye is the snake-eye, and her right eye the normal human one? Nice visualization of a completely split mind….
Good call, I missed that.
Jin’s sanity check came back labeled “Insufficent Mental Resources”…
Resources enough, but they are currently scrambled quite seriously, and one can only hope that the key is, indeed, “the key”
I’ve had days like this.
Gone? WHADDAYA MEAN GONE? Golems can’t die…can they?
The lights are on, but nobody’s home. Poor Jin.
Country singers are bad to build an entire song around a catch phrase. Especially if it’s curently popular. They all follow the same pattern and choose from among 3 or 4 tunes to which to sing it.
I was actually expecting an anthropomorphic ice cream cone in the last panel there.
What the heck does “from the outside” mean?
It means that when they put the thingy inside Jin she will function normally but it bolluxes up the CPU when it’s not inside her.
When you come back to the story you don’t mess around!, good stuff Paul!
I’ve seen schizophrenic progression in art in patient studies, and it looks just like this………
I just hope that they remember to get Alan. When I have had to deal with severe Schizophrenic friend in the past sometimes an important person of object can break the brain-lock that forms.
This could be a very dangerous place for a mortal right now. Jin could rip him to confetti before knowing what she was doing and no one could stop her in time. Best left to the powerful immortals.
I wonder if it’s even dangerous to touch her, sort of like with the relic. Her problem is that she is out of sync with current time. Perhaps anyone who makes physical contact would be drawn into her reality as well. I guess we’ll soon find out.
Yea, for a little bit I forgot that this is the world of portals and poiters. One wrong move and Alan would end up being chased by a Sphinx or find himself orbiting the moon on his own.