By the way, Pablo: I took a peek back again at the “you need better protection” strip, and you’ve pretty much nailed what Maya would look like in her current situation. You can actually tell the difference between her in her “hooded” form vs. her “natural” form.
Apparently. She was holding together pretty well up until a year ago, real & wapsi time (based on holiday/seasonal celebration comics). While she’s hinted at being a little ‘off’ since M cancelled the GGG’s ‘perpetual drunkenness’, Jin didn’t really start to loose it until January ’09, and it’s been a pretty rapid decline since ( Reference: http://wapsisquare.com/comic/uponatime/ ), which I have a suspicion is the lead-in to our next major story-arc.
You know, it’s funny… I think if Alan hadn’t shown up on 1/23/09, we would have gotten a pretty accurate version of the last attempt at destroying the calendar machine – which would have ended with Jin’s mom getting sucked into the machine permanently when the hammer stopped vibrating.
“Ripping of fabric” – I think we have a sound effect for last week’s “giant sucking sound”.
Of course it’s her. The pause after the last “muffin…” proved it… it was basically, an “oh my… what happened to you?” pause. The rest was talking to her like you would talk to a delusional person who had no idea what was going on.
Yes, i must obey the groupthink, i cannot think differently than the hive mind, i will obey, it is her mom because (insert what everyone else is saying here)
Memories can change over time, as well… what she remembers of her mom is likely quite different from present reality. Added to her state of mind.. then.. yeah, she might never really recognize her… :/
Okay, that is definitely Jin’s mother. Why? Who else would call her “muffin crumb”. Heh, you know for some reason when Jin was talking about why the calendar machine needs to be fixed, I kept getting this Pinocchio style “I’m a real girl” thing going through my head.
… how did they have muffins back in ancient aztec times to know to call her that?
She shoulda called her somethin like… spicy cocoa-pod
(Spicy hot chocolate I think came from the Aztecs)
I can also imagine her gazing enviously at muffin based cultures whenever she manifested togive people hints and nudges.
“Why yes Monica I (your grandmother) can teach to read a really cool ancient language but first I need you to eat that muffin you brought with you slowly, and describe the taste to me please.”
I’d LOVe to see the mathematical proof because I thought JL is that everything has a 1 in 2 chance of being true/happening. So, Everyone has a 1/2 chance of speaking english, aztec, glyph, mayan, greek, german, etc. etc… up until it crashes out of solution as one or the other and is observed. Plus, With the multiple loops and the multiple occurrences of Maya throughout history, and all the time in the demon realm to study and work on her language skills and the potentially infinite amount of knowledge that can be held within the golem mind (as no limit has been stated as far as I know and Jin seems to have a very LARGE memory)… I’d say there’s a good chance she may know every language there is. But by JL, it’s all 1/2 chance. Until we see her speak it.
Also, with the idea of infinite knowledge on mind: the library is outside of time, as is the demon realm, no? Then why does time seem to pass normally within the library as compared to the real world? Or is it simply Phix and the sphinxes, demons, etc. that are exempt? But it is stated the demon realm is outside the affect of time. So, Does this have any effect concerning telepoiting? It is said one cannot telepoit to/from the demon realm, so, why is that? Is the demon realm a prison? And is telepoiting free to occur for the library because they have a guard that will dispatch those unworthy of being there? (To be honest, I see DR and LR as a Hell/Heaven type thing.)
ya see, it’s because pi r not square, pi r round, cornbread r square, which explains why the math of the calendar machine was wrong and made it go all brokedown. So they’d have cornbread muffins practically anytime in history, and the crumbs come from the corners.
I don’t know. I think her condition is more akin to shell shock than outright insanity. she might not ever truely recognize her mother, but that doesn’t mean she can’t come to accept this woman as her, given time.
In any event, she is now facing a brand new set of circumstances. The previous 56 times, good or bad, had the comfort of familiarity about them. Generally, she knew what was to come each time. Not so from here on. Now she is out of her 80,000 year comfort zone. Sorta cast adrift. I think her mind has weighed anchor (or broken the anchor chains) and is adrift now as well with no idea of what course to chart. She needs a new purpose in life, having fulfilled her old one.
I’d go with the insanity plea on this one she has experienced millennia of untold mental trauma to her mind. I mean seeing friends and lovers die over and over again has to to be crushing to someone. Also if i remember right theirs inferences that shes been in relation ships with Monica’s grandfather and Shelley i mean time resetting then meeting some one you deeply care about again and they remember nothing at all about you that has to be up their with death of a loved one if not worse.
I’m getting a major “reverting to childhood” vibe from Jin.
You know, she wasn’t all that old when she got thrown into this calendar machine mess (see the book, The Timekeeper’s Daughter, for info on that). She may have been holding on to this “we’re gonna fix the machine, I’m gonna get my mommy back, and I can go on and live and die like a normal person.” And mommy wasn’t there at the beginning to tell her that it wouldn’t work like that.
I like how Maya replied to her in that last panel, though. Full of pathos and empathy.
The way she uses the term “muffin”, by the way, reminds me of how Phix refers to Monica as “pumpkin”.
You know, I worked all night with this strip in my mind. Couldn’t get it out. Got home, pulled it up again, and it’s just as heart-rending as it was the first time. True pathos. Masterfully done.
A bad case of the shakes.
It’s time she had a break from it.
Send her to the rear.
(Shirley I’m not the only one reminded of that, what with it fits so well… “I’m young enough to look at / And far too old to see / All the scars are on the inside / I’m not sure if there’s anything left of me”)
Hey, as I pointed out earlier today, Bud punching Jin started the chain of Jin’s visible lapse into delusion, maybe another shot to the jaw from Bud will fix it.
Hey, as I pointed out earlier today, Bud punching Jin started the chain of Jin’s visible lapse into delusion, maybe another shot to the jaw from Bud will fix it.
…and besides, Bud probably still has … issues … with Jin and wouldn’t mind doing an empirical experiment to find out if it were so…
Poor Jin … finally has her mom and doesn’t even know she’s there. And Jin’s mom … few things are more heart-breaking than losing a child, unless it’s when your child loses her grip on reality. I hope Jin recovers. Hugs to both.
…and i’m pretty sure that if i could track down the strip in which Jin’s mom sliced and diced a guard to impress an evil king, we’d see a face there that we’re seeing here.
Also, you see them both in profile and facefront, and they have very similar almost identical face structures, the ‘mystery woman/ Jin’s mom’ just looks a bit older. And as I see it, in the “muffin… I… promise I’ll help you find her” quote there is an implied ‘am your mom’ in the second (…), but she obviously realizes Jin’s gone off the deep end, and decides to comfort her instead of causing her added stress by trying to convince Jin of who she really is.
wow…so sad…poor MOM!
SoWhyMe..good point about Jin out of her comfort zone…and now the realisation that it will never be “fixed” and they are who they are…so will she live forever?
And at what point in the timeline did Bud take Mom? Before she was sucked in or before the machine was started? and how will her absence from the past effect the now?
or…If she took her from the demon realm…why isn’t she a demon like she appeared before? …ummm…er… wasn’t she a demon before??
If I’m following the story correctly, when May tried to destroy the Calender machine she was blasted out of our reality and into the Demon Realm. She’s not a demon herself, but she is a killer mage (literally) AND an immortal clay golum like her daughter, although perhaps not as powerful. Bud evidently found her there and brought her back. Although I’m wondering, given Bud’s power level, just how powerful demons are that she was running from them instead of cleaning their clocks…
Jin took the revelation that she’ll never be human again much better than I expected. Or it might be that she’s so disassociated it hasn’t sunk in. Either way, poor Jin. Poor May.
I wonder if Monica’s going to want to have words with her ‘grandmother’.
Wow. Pablo.. just wow. I have to give you kudos for this.
My 2 cents on the Jin/Jin’s mom thing. Jin has been stuck in a time loop and was losing her grip on reality steadily with her primary focus being the calendar machine being fixed. Now the calendar machine has been fixed, she’s lost it completely and doesn’t recognize her own mother or has gone blind as well as crazy.
Her mom was the only other person as being mentioned in the comic as ever having anything to do with the calendar machine directly. So that has to be Jin’s mom.
The Shelly bombshell would make a killer storyline and seems quite plausible. I was originally going to agree with blindness, but going back over it I think her eyes might just be blank to emphasize the “blank stare” of Jin having sort of lost it. But I don’t think she’s lost forever…
Ummm.. Old Jin and New Jin?
No, that’s mommy.
By the way, Pablo: I took a peek back again at the “you need better protection” strip, and you’ve pretty much nailed what Maya would look like in her current situation. You can actually tell the difference between her in her “hooded” form vs. her “natural” form.
Paul tiny edit: “too bad”
Thanks. =) All fixed.
Oh crap. I think fairportfan might have hit on something. Is Jin Blind, or what I said… mad?
Pupils are showing in the first frame.
I think Fairportfan was right. She is at the end of her rope. Spritual, physical, mental exhaustion.
Actually, he was the one that suggested the blindness… not me. Still though.
Oops. blushing
Poor Jin. That just hurts.
I actually feel more hurt from Maya – she did all this to fix the calendar machine, but she’s lost her own daughter.
SO….
Jin’s insane now?
Apparently. She was holding together pretty well up until a year ago, real & wapsi time (based on holiday/seasonal celebration comics). While she’s hinted at being a little ‘off’ since M cancelled the GGG’s ‘perpetual drunkenness’, Jin didn’t really start to loose it until January ’09, and it’s been a pretty rapid decline since ( Reference: http://wapsisquare.com/comic/uponatime/ ), which I have a suspicion is the lead-in to our next major story-arc.
You know, it’s funny… I think if Alan hadn’t shown up on 1/23/09, we would have gotten a pretty accurate version of the last attempt at destroying the calendar machine – which would have ended with Jin’s mom getting sucked into the machine permanently when the hammer stopped vibrating.
“Ripping of fabric” – I think we have a sound effect for last week’s “giant sucking sound”.
No, Jin’s mom disappeared with the first attempt to destroy the calendar machine – which damaged it and set off the repeating cycle of 56 time loops.
Although “The air and her body made the sound of ripping fabric” is a pretty awesome line – esp. with Jin zoning out to a partial golum state.
The Deep End, shes gone off it
Jin’s Mom?!? and Jin doesn’t realize it anymore?!?
Naw, seems like she’s crazy now.
Now??
poor jin
Yes! It’s Jin’s mom.
Right, because that’s why she’s trying to help Jin find her… self? Yeah, um, newsflash, that’s not Jin’s mom.
Of course it’s her. The pause after the last “muffin…” proved it… it was basically, an “oh my… what happened to you?” pause. The rest was talking to her like you would talk to a delusional person who had no idea what was going on.
Yes, i must obey the groupthink, i cannot think differently than the hive mind, i will obey, it is her mom because (insert what everyone else is saying here)
No, (insert what Pablo is saying here)
Wonder how long it’ll take for Jin to be able to recognize her mother. And what about Jin’s b/f?
stjen: Wonder how long it’ll take for Jin to be able to recognize her mother.
Probably never. She’s that damaged, mind-wise. :^(
Memories can change over time, as well… what she remembers of her mom is likely quite different from present reality. Added to her state of mind.. then.. yeah, she might never really recognize her… :/
Okay, that is definitely Jin’s mother. Why? Who else would call her “muffin crumb”. Heh, you know for some reason when Jin was talking about why the calendar machine needs to be fixed, I kept getting this Pinocchio style “I’m a real girl” thing going through my head.
Damn.
The boat finally comes in, but the lighthouse keeper has gone………..
… how did they have muffins back in ancient aztec times to know to call her that?
She shoulda called her somethin like… spicy cocoa-pod
(Spicy hot chocolate I think came from the Aztecs)
They were both around thousands of years before the Aztecs. Muffins exist everywhere. =)
All hail the eternal muffins!
Really wrenching news for Jin though, once she recovers her marbles.
They would at least have had cornbread.
I can also imagine her gazing enviously at muffin based cultures whenever she manifested togive people hints and nudges.
“Why yes Monica I (your grandmother) can teach to read a really cool ancient language but first I need you to eat that muffin you brought with you slowly, and describe the taste to me please.”
But the whole “speaking in English” thing didn’t bother you? ;P
According to Joel’s Law, Everyone Speaks English.
I’d LOVe to see the mathematical proof because I thought JL is that everything has a 1 in 2 chance of being true/happening. So, Everyone has a 1/2 chance of speaking english, aztec, glyph, mayan, greek, german, etc. etc… up until it crashes out of solution as one or the other and is observed. Plus, With the multiple loops and the multiple occurrences of Maya throughout history, and all the time in the demon realm to study and work on her language skills and the potentially infinite amount of knowledge that can be held within the golem mind (as no limit has been stated as far as I know and Jin seems to have a very LARGE memory)… I’d say there’s a good chance she may know every language there is. But by JL, it’s all 1/2 chance. Until we see her speak it.
Also, with the idea of infinite knowledge on mind: the library is outside of time, as is the demon realm, no? Then why does time seem to pass normally within the library as compared to the real world? Or is it simply Phix and the sphinxes, demons, etc. that are exempt? But it is stated the demon realm is outside the affect of time. So, Does this have any effect concerning telepoiting? It is said one cannot telepoit to/from the demon realm, so, why is that? Is the demon realm a prison? And is telepoiting free to occur for the library because they have a guard that will dispatch those unworthy of being there? (To be honest, I see DR and LR as a Hell/Heaven type thing.)
When Paul tried a comic with pre-Mayan dialogue, for some reason it never caught on…
Muffins are multi-trans-dimensional, omni-multiversal, pan-transcronal, and yummy!
ya see, it’s because pi r not square, pi r round, cornbread r square, which explains why the math of the calendar machine was wrong and made it go all brokedown. So they’d have cornbread muffins practically anytime in history, and the crumbs come from the corners.
Or something like that.
Is this how Markovian math differs from Euclidian math?
And cornbread is almost as good.
And, of course, bearclaws.
Musn’t forget the bearclaws… *sage nod*
I don’t know. I think her condition is more akin to shell shock than outright insanity. she might not ever truely recognize her mother, but that doesn’t mean she can’t come to accept this woman as her, given time.
In any event, she is now facing a brand new set of circumstances. The previous 56 times, good or bad, had the comfort of familiarity about them. Generally, she knew what was to come each time. Not so from here on. Now she is out of her 80,000 year comfort zone. Sorta cast adrift. I think her mind has weighed anchor (or broken the anchor chains) and is adrift now as well with no idea of what course to chart. She needs a new purpose in life, having fulfilled her old one.
Are you my mummy?
No, that will be when they fix the “Toilet paper holder of the GAWDS” after a short break.
I’d go with the insanity plea on this one she has experienced millennia of untold mental trauma to her mind. I mean seeing friends and lovers die over and over again has to to be crushing to someone. Also if i remember right theirs inferences that shes been in relation ships with Monica’s grandfather and Shelley i mean time resetting then meeting some one you deeply care about again and they remember nothing at all about you that has to be up their with death of a loved one if not worse.
Wow.
I’m getting a major “reverting to childhood” vibe from Jin.
You know, she wasn’t all that old when she got thrown into this calendar machine mess (see the book, The Timekeeper’s Daughter, for info on that). She may have been holding on to this “we’re gonna fix the machine, I’m gonna get my mommy back, and I can go on and live and die like a normal person.” And mommy wasn’t there at the beginning to tell her that it wouldn’t work like that.
I like how Maya replied to her in that last panel, though. Full of pathos and empathy.
The way she uses the term “muffin”, by the way, reminds me of how Phix refers to Monica as “pumpkin”.
You know, I worked all night with this strip in my mind. Couldn’t get it out. Got home, pulled it up again, and it’s just as heart-rending as it was the first time. True pathos. Masterfully done.
Poor Jin. A true casualty of this long, long war.
A bad case of the shakes.
It’s time she had a break from it.
Send her to the rear.
(Shirley I’m not the only one reminded of that, what with it fits so well… “I’m young enough to look at / And far too old to see / All the scars are on the inside / I’m not sure if there’s anything left of me”)
Hey, as I pointed out earlier today, Bud punching Jin started the chain of Jin’s visible lapse into delusion, maybe another shot to the jaw from Bud will fix it.
…
Or Maybe since Bud broke it, Brandi must fix it…
Ack, opened up another puzzle!
…and besides, Bud probably still has … issues … with Jin and wouldn’t mind doing an empirical experiment to find out if it were so…
Poor Jin … finally has her mom and doesn’t even know she’s there. And Jin’s mom … few things are more heart-breaking than losing a child, unless it’s when your child loses her grip on reality. I hope Jin recovers. Hugs to both.
OK, where exactly in the story does it explicitly say that this is Jin’s mom?
IMPORTANT: Our comments and imagination do NOT count as canon.
Because Jin’s mom was the only human stuck in the demon world, which is where Bud just retrieved that person from.
She was quite clearly about to say “Muffin… I AM your mom” and, sadly, realized that Jin was too far gone for it to click.
Also, see previous. “Go to her. She’s been waiting.” Who else would Jin be waiting for, when she explicitly says she needs to find her mom?
Gotta say – if that avatar is what if randomly assigned to you, it sure looks appropriate for the screen name…
…and i’m pretty sure that if i could track down the strip in which Jin’s mom sliced and diced a guard to impress an evil king, we’d see a face there that we’re seeing here.
You Need Better Protection
Compare the profile of the woman in the third panel with the first today.
That was Jin herself – the strip the day before makes that clear.
The strip before that strongly suggests it was Jin, not Maya. But maybe Brandi & Bud misinterpreted Jin’s comment.
Also, you see them both in profile and facefront, and they have very similar almost identical face structures, the ‘mystery woman/ Jin’s mom’ just looks a bit older. And as I see it, in the “muffin… I… promise I’ll help you find her” quote there is an implied ‘am your mom’ in the second (…), but she obviously realizes Jin’s gone off the deep end, and decides to comfort her instead of causing her added stress by trying to convince Jin of who she really is.
Okay I finally get what’s going on for the most part… poor jin.
wow…so sad…poor MOM!
SoWhyMe..good point about Jin out of her comfort zone…and now the realisation that it will never be “fixed” and they are who they are…so will she live forever?
And at what point in the timeline did Bud take Mom? Before she was sucked in or before the machine was started? and how will her absence from the past effect the now?
or…If she took her from the demon realm…why isn’t she a demon like she appeared before? …ummm…er… wasn’t she a demon before??
If I’m following the story correctly, when May tried to destroy the Calender machine she was blasted out of our reality and into the Demon Realm. She’s not a demon herself, but she is a killer mage (literally) AND an immortal clay golum like her daughter, although perhaps not as powerful. Bud evidently found her there and brought her back. Although I’m wondering, given Bud’s power level, just how powerful demons are that she was running from them instead of cleaning their clocks…
Jin took the revelation that she’ll never be human again much better than I expected. Or it might be that she’s so disassociated it hasn’t sunk in. Either way, poor Jin. Poor May.
I wonder if Monica’s going to want to have words with her ‘grandmother’.
Heh… that’s what I was going to say. I fully expect Monica’s first words to her are not gonna be pleasant.
“WHY WERE YOU PRETENDING TO BE MY ABUELA????”
But that’s not the biggest bombshell that’ll be dropped by the assembled personae.
Shelly: “Mom?”
Looks like, for now, Jin might have to depend on the kindess of strangers.
Actually, we’ll see what a Mother’s Love can do.
Wow. Pablo.. just wow. I have to give you kudos for this.
My 2 cents on the Jin/Jin’s mom thing. Jin has been stuck in a time loop and was losing her grip on reality steadily with her primary focus being the calendar machine being fixed. Now the calendar machine has been fixed, she’s lost it completely and doesn’t recognize her own mother or has gone blind as well as crazy.
Her mom was the only other person as being mentioned in the comic as ever having anything to do with the calendar machine directly. So that has to be Jin’s mom.
Well, the only one i’d imagine Bud going to any trouble to bring back, anyway.
Well, this is a sucky place to have caught up… Now I’ll have to wait to find out what happens next! D:
Umm – why does May’s skin have that … odd … texture?
Maybe cuz she’s been in the demon plane so long her skin is starting to have a 2D texture on it like demons’ skins do.
Good eye!
Two words: no sun.
The Shelly bombshell would make a killer storyline and seems quite plausible. I was originally going to agree with blindness, but going back over it I think her eyes might just be blank to emphasize the “blank stare” of Jin having sort of lost it. But I don’t think she’s lost forever…
OUCH.
Jin’s really gone off the deep end, isn’t she?
Alas, insanity has its price; Jin doesn’t know who’s standing in front of her, and maybe never will.