“Does it really threaten to break the fourth wall? Surely movies exist in their world. Shelly is just trying to imagine the closest modern expression to her unique experience, and Heather is naturally taking the question realistically,” said Yamara to Gildarts.
Others overheard their conversation about the sphinx and her friend.
She smirked at Dstryfe. “When you grow up in a place where they’re only the thickness of a pencil lead on graph paper, you come to learn a lot about walls…”
Danzier “listens” in contemplative silence to their conversation, pondering the reality of walls in general and the relative value of breaking them. She decides not to share much lest she be considered crazy.
they aren’t breaking the 4th wall, it’s just the camera angles we see. if they were attempting to break the wall, they would be talking to US the readers, not each other… remember that they are not cognizant of the fact they are cartoons (that we know of…) and therefore don’t know about the wall in the first place.
“Right,” said Yamara turning to Scantron. “They aren’t presented as being aware of their natures as characters. Hm…” Yamara twisted her forelock and paused for thought. “Though Shelly is led to ask after an audience. She obviously sees the need to reenter a human life, and any unreachable witnesses to that were not considered before, because, by Heather’s definition, they cannot help her achieve that.”
She adjusted the jewelry gracing her head. “I wonder how much such witnesses could really influence such a life.”
that Headpiece of FriNn must not have been completely de-plushed…
the AUDIENCE IS SHELLY… so she’s basically saying that she still doesn’t feel “enlightened” by all of it (if that’s the right word to use in this instance?).
it would be the same thing if Bill Murray’s character in the movie Groundhog Day, saw the exact same movie WE saw (about HIM as the character), he would be thinking “ok, this movie i’m watching is SUPPOSED TO make THE AUDIENCE think about the consequences of what they do and say more, but “I” AM the audience… so how’s that gonna help me, i’m the one that just got done LIVING THE MOVIE, and I’M STILL ME… i don’t FEEL different, so how’s that gonna help?! then when he goes to a trusted friend for advice, one that doesn’t know what’s going on, only to have that person you tell you “oh, that’s ok the movie is supposed to make the viewer think about things more” Bill would also be going “huh?” just like Shelly is now… see the dilemma that Shelly is in?
“As TXMystic was saying yesterday–and today,” Yamara replied, glancing around the haze of her bridal veil for the Texan, who was around somewhere, “Shelly was the observer of her own story, many times. And as you suggest, she’s Bill Murray’s character having seen his own movie.
“Of course the point Shelly has arrived at is that she is no longer that audience. Show’s over, she has to participate. How does she rejoin the mortals, knowing that there are still immortals watching?”
She gave Scantron a gentle nudge with one white silk-encased elbow. “How can one carry a conversation about personal growth when only one side is aware of where she is in her own personal arc?”
“I’m normally not such a scenester, but my friends keep dragging me into all sorts of venues. But then, we each of us have our definitions of what constitutes work and play.”
They are not breaking the fourth wall; they are postulating who might be behind a fourth wall, and what they should be learning. Or better: if Shelly were behind a hypothetical fourth wall, what would she learn?
While only one of the original five band members has died, I’m sure the rest have better things to do than keep up with our comments here. Although it is a great comic and one or more may be reading this as we speak.
But, the 4th wall is real in that Paul is the one that crosses the wall, all the time. He is the conduit. Paul enters into their world to show us the story. The characters come from him, his mind, his heart, his talent, his intellect, his soul. But, he physically lives in our world. His work crosses the 4th wall, all the time. The fact that the characters haven’t crossed the 4th wall in their conversation, doesn’t mean that they haven’t (Paul hasn’t) pulled from our world, and taken “stuff” into their world. There’s no way it cannot happen. Paul is their “Creator” creating and telling their story, and if he chose to, he could have them address us, the readers, but the characters would have no way of knowing if we were real, since only Paul has the ability to go back and forth to have contact with both sides, and since there can be no evidence of this world, that stays in this world but crosses into that world. Therefore, the characters would have to have faith that we, the readers, exist.
Meanwhile, here we are in our world, believing in a God and believing in an afterlife and spiritual realms (or not), but not physically experiencing objective physical phenomenon that can serve as perfect proof/evidence of the spirit realm. And in a way, we have our conduit who lived, but still we are in the position of only having faith that our conduit is passing us good information of the reality on the other side of this wall (mostly called a “veil”.)
The blond with the big hammer is Kasey, a Stickle – Stickles are all brilliant gadgeteers … but their stuff intermittently blows up. Their current home planet is Stickle 5 – let us not discuss the fate of Stickles 1 through 4.
The redhead in the slinky gown is Reona – who seems on track to be Zap’s girlfriend. Eventually. Her prosthetic right arm transforms into a hella big energy cannon. Built by Kasey. So far it hasn’t blown up. So far.
And the blue floaty girl is the avatar of their conscious and intelligent ship, (whose name i’ve forgotten).
I think the 80k+ years helped her with perspective, but at the same time she probably feels disassociated. How do you “fit in” with ‘normal life’ when you’ve seen yourself die 56 times? And not go crazy or treat ‘reality’ like a dream or cartoon?
FYI, we the readers are projecting the supposed 4th wall inference. Paul has never hinted that his characters know they are in a comic, I see no good reason for him to do so now.
I concur. Really only the demons (and maybe Mayahuel) have a good perspective “outside” human reality, and I don’t think the Demon Realm maps well onto the internet.
Nudge would tell people that they were characters in a comic strip! But that’s just because she’ll say anything for a laugh. As a trickster god it’s expected of her.
All the time in the world (and 81ka is a pretty good approximation) won’t help all that much if you can’t recall what you need to sort out, or are distracted too much of the time.
As I said yesterday, in one sense she is the character as the 56 Shellys that entered the tree realm after her, and Shellinx is the “observer” in this case.
Of course, we all are thrown in with the “readers” in this scenario, but have we really proven we learned anything? I’m just as confused as Shelly!
i think that Shelly is asking Heather’s opinion of whether or not the characters in those movies will make better choices AFTER they get out of the looping than they did BEFORE they got into it initially. it doesn’t help that the answer Heather gave about the “viewer” being able to see clearer, was in a round-about way NOT giving Shelly an answer, because both Shelly and us readers know that the Shelly that is asking IS the viewer as well as the looper, and she still doesn’t feel like she’s any better off than she was before (and that’s WHY she’s asking for the advice!) i think that whole thought train(wreck) was why she was tossing and turning in the prior pages.
The only problem with that theory is that Shellinx was the only one who was aware of the repeats…and in the movie metaphor Shelly used, the person repeating the same event over and over again is always aware of the repetition…which suggests that she sees herself not as the observer but as the poor sot who experienced it for someone else’s benefit.
Sucks a bit…but given her millenia of life experience, I’m sure she’ll make sense of it eventually. 🙂
^^Right. Only as Shellinx was she aware of what each of her former selves is doing, yet still realizes each of those characters was in fact an incarnation of herself, and I think that after seeing all those Shellys perhaps jogged her memory of having been the observed, while also being the observer…I’d be confused myself!
Wait a minute…I am confused…and the limoncello is gone…and the wolves are coming!
People would start to ask questions if Shelly got pointy teeth too. It is weird enough that Tina and the GGG have them. Shelly’s established with normal teeth. Her suddenly having ‘sharp’ teeth is only going to make outsiders think the group is actually a cult or something.
… which actually isn’t too far from the truth. (>^_^)>
Man, I get this exact same anxiety ALL THE TIME. That my entire life and actions are nothing but a metaphor for an invisible audience to learn from (and leer at and perhaps make fun of).
Not surprising. In essence, with all of the digital communications we have, ‘virtual’ worlds we play games or roam around in, etc, I think that an increasing number of people will feel detached from reality.
‘Reality’ is just the brains way of interpreting where we are and the interactions we have. If the brain is stimulated enough it doesn’t matter what the body experiences, hence movies like the Matrix.
Ah, but in “The Matrix” if you died in the simulated world, your body in the real world also died. Which was why I didn’t think much of the so-called hero. He was slaughtering people in the matrix world without a thought, therefore killing them in reality as well. These were just poor people caught up in the whole thing and not some bad guys. That made the whole premise suck for me.
But i think he redeemed himself in the fight against (agent?) Smith, because he didn’t technically kill any of them, just knocked them out, until he de-corrupted them.
Not quite. I never watched any beyond the first movie, but it is my understanding the “Smiths” were just temporary software replications of an AI program. None of them, including the original, were ever alive, nor had a body to be killed.
SoWhyMe: you need to analyse the other movies, they explain a lot.. The architect designed the first matrix as a utopia, no death or pain.. the whole thing did not work properly..
think about it, what would be the point in avoiding bullets??
It seems that Shelly goes from a hypothetical-3rd-person in the 1st panel to a first-person-this-is-happening-to-me-right-NOW tense in the 3rd panel… and that is bound to get awkward for both of them in a few panels/updates. i foresee Heather being told about the whole shebang, and i’m HOPING for something similar to Amanda’s reaction to Monica, and NOT Monica’s PARENT’S reaction…
She more-or-less has told Heather what has happened but only in a vague aroundabout way. She has already proceeded to the point where one of the better scenarios is to explain everything (with proof) before Heather starts thinking that she’s crazy.
However, there are other ways of explaining away her reaction — she could, for example, say that she’s lost in a role playing game but, even then, her strong emotional involvement could also make Heather think that she’s crazy.
Yeah…my initial thought on reading this one was “And thus Shelly blew the normal right out of her interactions with Heather…Welcome to the Wapsi side!”
I don’t know. I like the effect. Shelly is more “handsome” than she’s ever been before, looking like a self-established woman instead of a happy-go-lucky girl, yet her hands look very old. It fits her, outwardly he is young, nubile, but inwardly she is been through an eternity, and that effort shows on her hands.
Shellinx can be both the audience and the person in the time-slip in this case.
She witnessed everything and also experienced it.
So hopefully from her experience she would have gained the knowledge that sometimes bad things happen (which lets face it. we know it happens but happening to us?) and no matter what you try sometimes you have to let the bad thing happen to make good things occur.
from the viewing you cannot only just try one thing. you have to take into consideration everything.
oh and for the record.
my personal oppinon is that the time-slip things make people grow in ways they didn’t think possible.
take bill murry in groundhog day.
he was a self-obssessed jerk who didn’t really care about anyone or anybody.
til he got stuck in that day.
sure he went off the rails and stuff but by the end of the film he found out the best way to be happy was to help out as much as he could and had changed so much that he even wanted to live there.
Meh…details! 😛 Nine times out of ten, I’m more likely to refer to the character using the actor’s name. This is either because:
A) It’s been long enough since I watched the movie that I forgot the character’s name (I’m awful with names that aren’t in my face all the time), OR
B) The person I’m talking to isn’t as familiar with movies (or that movie in particular) and wouldn’t recognize the character name…only the actor’s.
That rare tenth instance is when I’m talking to a fellow movie fiend and it’s a movie we both know and love (or the character has become a part of basic social knowledge like Captain Kirk). 🙂
One of Philip K Dick’s later books – Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, i think – “captainkirk” (as a single word) has become the popular term for both pot-boiler sci-fi (as opposed to “science fiction”) films and for the lead character.
(I.e., “There’s a new captainkirk at the Railto, and John Smurd is playing the captaikirk in it…”)
She’s apparently changed from a walking barrel of gunpowder with a very short fuse, to a person that overthinks stuff, and counts to ten befor blurting something out.
Seeing multiple choices play out is very educational.
That reminds me: in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a popular party prank using the finite improbability generator is to make all the molecules in the undergarments of one’s hostess move three feet to the left. Presumably this could be done to her outergarments as well–provided it’s the right sort of party.
Is this that sort of party?
(Or can it be done in this cosmos only by suitable mis-poiting?)
Well, I use google reader, and the comics stopped appearing. This sometimes happens, and the solution is to unsubscribe and resubscribe, except now when I resubscribe no comics appear, or posts of any kind, and the feed is no longer called “wapsi square” but “Free Microsoft Word 2010 Tutorial — Sale -182% price off”. Very strange.
“But what does it mean?”
YAY! Back to whimsical speculation! I can tell you’re all very excited…
Shelly is assuming that the audience, or even the lesson (if there was one) is important. What if they’re not? or what is she being compared to to make a metaphor?
To be honest this whole conversation reeks of Phix…perhaps just part of her sphinx-i-ness, but I feel like Shelly was asking more of a riddle than an actual question…
Well, I still wouldn’t ask for a refund because it’s not the cinemas and/or DVD rental places that script and make the trailers. Even if it was, it was still my choice to watch it.
On the general point of trailers: If every interesting bit was in the trailers (or I suspected they were) then I wouldn’t want to watch the film as it’ll be a disappointment. The only way a trailer could fulfill that is if the film was pretty dire to begin (there should be a lot more than a couple of minutes of interesting bits) and such a trailer would, most likely, include spoilers.
A good trailer should give you enough to allow you to make your own judgement but not enough to spoil the movie. Trailers should give you an idea of the plot and of the general atmosphere but leave you to discover the film yourself.
I have demanded my money back when the file experience was bad due to things under the control of the theatre management – bad sound, things like that.
More than once, though, i have been tempted to do what my friend Starhelm said as we exited Damnation Alley on its opening day and demand my wasted time back.
It’s why I’m a polytheist. Seems flippant to assume one isn’t being watched, and hubristic to think that the infinite would be the only party interested.
It sometimes feels like a continual coming of age drama despite the fact that I’m old enough to remember 1200 baud modems, Mount St Helens blowing its top, Chernobyl and the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
If you consider that those born in 1990 are now adults (that thought sends a shudder through me) and those born in 1980 are now over 30 then you can see the significance of what I said (considering the “coming of age drama” format normally deals with people in their teens and, rarely, 20s).
In other words, in 1980 I was old enough to want to watch the news — it might have been [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUEZvnbYq54]John Cravens Newsround[/url] (link is to an episode from 1982) but it was still the news.
I remember being out in the field being chased through wet Virginia woods in the final week of Navy Counter-Insurgency School, preparatory to going to Viet Nam during the Apollo 11 landing.
I was in 9th grade when the JFK assassination happened – in rural SC, where more than one student cheered aloud in class when the principal announced the news over the PA.
Having turned fourteen on 22 October 1962, and having read most of my dad’s complete collection from 1941 on of Astounding/ANALOG by then, and being rather too imaginative for my own good, i have never been able to believe very much in my chances of surviving past the end of the week…
A comedy (and not necessarily a good one) that involves early melodra but is also a tale of empowerment with a touch of not-at-all-up-to-Hollywood-standards romance…and my story is FAR from over. 😀
One of those ‘Comedy of errors’ from the 30’s to the early 50’s. I swear things just- happened to prevent what I wanted, then after 30+ years of looking I found the love of my life and we’ve been together almost as long.
The best of all possible intros to the intermission.
Long may our movie run.
They’re in the middle of a city park! You can barely see it in the last panel, but go back and look at the backgrounds over the last few strips.
This would be a bad place to sphinx out.
And, personally, I’m hoping she doesn’t let Heather in on it all…
Down at the bottom of this page, I found a link to an adult-oriented art page with the classic Cherry Poptart comics. This brought about certain memories that I couldn’t help but think about.
When I was little, my dad always called me Cherry. I loved that name, and in fact even insisted on cherry-flavored everything… even the cherries.
However, I soon learned to dislike the name when I hit high school, thanks of course to Miss Poptart.
That’s why I try to get people to call me Cherish. That’s my birth name and it’s not associated with a fictional tramp.
I used to love it when dad brought home a big batch of fresh cherries and when I was done, he’d demand to know where the pits were and poke me in the belly button and announce, “there they are!”
I guess I should be clearer. I didn’t post that just to show a cute picture, that’s also my sentiments on this comic. It’s looking too much like a wrap up of the whole series.
Most comics strips do a fourth wall joke? Sherman’s Lagoon characters got tired of people staring at them. Then told the audience to go read cathy. Barkeater Lake had two characters become self aware of how strange their lives are. Then the talking dog drags them off screen for “retraining”.
Least I could do has a great one where one of the characters says “it was the least I could do.” to one of the others and is procedided to be slaped by the artist for stuping to that level.
Nudge has golden colored irises, her face is a very light gray brown and the markings are almost white, a very,very light blue gray. Her hair is a rich dark chocolate brown.
*settles back in a spiderweb hammock, with a cheese danish and a 64oz mocha shake*
To quote one of my spiritual mentors, Yogi Berra:
You can observe a lot by just watching.
Gets up and checks danish selection, shakes head and returns to couch in the corner with refill of Irished tea and a large plate of Pumkin pie and ice cream. And asks as he puts it down ‘Who wants a refill?’
Sigh… that thing that I can’t accurately describe where the background and foreground mesh, creating a fuzzy edge around Shelly’s head, and which occurs most often when she’s puzzling something out.
4th wall integrity at maximum captain she cant handle much more O_<
Divert all auxiliary power to the shields! That wall MUST hold, damn it!
CAN YOU HEAR US NOW, SHELLY?
BLINK TWICE IF YOU CAN!
Well, it was a good try. Maybe tomorrow….
“Does it really threaten to break the fourth wall? Surely movies exist in their world. Shelly is just trying to imagine the closest modern expression to her unique experience, and Heather is naturally taking the question realistically,” said Yamara to Gildarts.
Others overheard their conversation about the sphinx and her friend.
dstryfe grins slightly, butting in on the overheard conversation. “I, uh…I see what you did there.”
She smirked at Dstryfe. “When you grow up in a place where they’re only the thickness of a pencil lead on graph paper, you come to learn a lot about walls…”
Danzier “listens” in contemplative silence to their conversation, pondering the reality of walls in general and the relative value of breaking them. She decides not to share much lest she be considered crazy.
they aren’t breaking the 4th wall, it’s just the camera angles we see. if they were attempting to break the wall, they would be talking to US the readers, not each other… remember that they are not cognizant of the fact they are cartoons (that we know of…) and therefore don’t know about the wall in the first place.
“Right,” said Yamara turning to Scantron. “They aren’t presented as being aware of their natures as characters. Hm…” Yamara twisted her forelock and paused for thought. “Though Shelly is led to ask after an audience. She obviously sees the need to reenter a human life, and any unreachable witnesses to that were not considered before, because, by Heather’s definition, they cannot help her achieve that.”
She adjusted the jewelry gracing her head. “I wonder how much such witnesses could really influence such a life.”
that Headpiece of FriNn must not have been completely de-plushed…
the AUDIENCE IS SHELLY… so she’s basically saying that she still doesn’t feel “enlightened” by all of it (if that’s the right word to use in this instance?).
it would be the same thing if Bill Murray’s character in the movie Groundhog Day, saw the exact same movie WE saw (about HIM as the character), he would be thinking “ok, this movie i’m watching is SUPPOSED TO make THE AUDIENCE think about the consequences of what they do and say more, but “I” AM the audience… so how’s that gonna help me, i’m the one that just got done LIVING THE MOVIE, and I’M STILL ME… i don’t FEEL different, so how’s that gonna help?! then when he goes to a trusted friend for advice, one that doesn’t know what’s going on, only to have that person you tell you “oh, that’s ok the movie is supposed to make the viewer think about things more” Bill would also be going “huh?” just like Shelly is now… see the dilemma that Shelly is in?
“As TXMystic was saying yesterday–and today,” Yamara replied, glancing around the haze of her bridal veil for the Texan, who was around somewhere, “Shelly was the observer of her own story, many times. And as you suggest, she’s Bill Murray’s character having seen his own movie.
“Of course the point Shelly has arrived at is that she is no longer that audience. Show’s over, she has to participate. How does she rejoin the mortals, knowing that there are still immortals watching?”
She gave Scantron a gentle nudge with one white silk-encased elbow. “How can one carry a conversation about personal growth when only one side is aware of where she is in her own personal arc?”
@yamara
nice replies.
all of em.
see what you mean 🙂
“Seems to me,” remarked Xiutecuhtli, “that you might have spent some time in the Place sometime in the past, ne?”
“I’m normally not such a scenester, but my friends keep dragging me into all sorts of venues. But then, we each of us have our definitions of what constitutes work and play.”
They are not breaking the fourth wall; they are postulating who might be behind a fourth wall, and what they should be learning. Or better: if Shelly were behind a hypothetical fourth wall, what would she learn?
Which is the irony here.
.. and what about the fifth wall?? asks someone looking in on us from the fifth dimension….
While only one of the original five band members has died, I’m sure the rest have better things to do than keep up with our comments here. Although it is a great comic and one or more may be reading this as we speak.
“Well, this audience-seeking does have its dangers,” she said to Illiad. “You haven’t seen Beaver and Steve much around lately, have you?”
LOL Yamara 🙂 good link, but surely that is the 3rd wall??? left and right being the 1st & 2nd – you need another dimension to get a fifth..
She is not Breaking the 4th wall (yet )but she found a window in it and is looking out.
We all wonder at the play, we are playing in,
what character we should play…
but…..few look out there well look
Look, out there in the audience…
“PEEEEE-PLE! Aieeeeeeeeeee! …”
PBH
Bugs Bunny for the win!
can you see the white rabbit, neo??
But, the 4th wall is real in that Paul is the one that crosses the wall, all the time. He is the conduit. Paul enters into their world to show us the story. The characters come from him, his mind, his heart, his talent, his intellect, his soul. But, he physically lives in our world. His work crosses the 4th wall, all the time. The fact that the characters haven’t crossed the 4th wall in their conversation, doesn’t mean that they haven’t (Paul hasn’t) pulled from our world, and taken “stuff” into their world. There’s no way it cannot happen. Paul is their “Creator” creating and telling their story, and if he chose to, he could have them address us, the readers, but the characters would have no way of knowing if we were real, since only Paul has the ability to go back and forth to have contact with both sides, and since there can be no evidence of this world, that stays in this world but crosses into that world. Therefore, the characters would have to have faith that we, the readers, exist.
Meanwhile, here we are in our world, believing in a God and believing in an afterlife and spiritual realms (or not), but not physically experiencing objective physical phenomenon that can serve as perfect proof/evidence of the spirit realm. And in a way, we have our conduit who lived, but still we are in the position of only having faith that our conduit is passing us good information of the reality on the other side of this wall (mostly called a “veil”.)
And maybe we’re just characters is Hisstory.
…. IN Hisstory. (oops)
Good question :S
I believe we are miss Shelly.
Yes! We are that audience! CAN’T YOU HEAR US?
*sigh* nope 🙂
Hmmm.. the further down the comments, the harder it would be to hear them from the strip..
Maybe if the First Commenter Shouted REAL LOUD AND USED ALL CAPS!!!!
Ya, that might do it!
Got as high as I could and tried as loud as I could–no luck.
um, I think Paul is sleeping(earplugs to make sure of beauty sleep), he cannot hear you…
Sounds like she is still a little confused about everything. I had sort of hoped that 80+k years would have sorted things out better for her.
It takes more than time to sort things out, it’s not like she set out to better herself in all that time (atleast for all we know).
Also yay for party girl Elliot! 🙂
I’m sorry for anyone who doesn’t understand that last sentence.
Heh. A while back i was rotating four EGS avatars.
On that note, where are your current avatars from? For the first time in a while, I don’t recognize them.
Zap!
This one is Zap, the title character.
The blond with the big hammer is Kasey, a Stickle – Stickles are all brilliant gadgeteers … but their stuff intermittently blows up. Their current home planet is Stickle 5 – let us not discuss the fate of Stickles 1 through 4.
The redhead in the slinky gown is Reona – who seems on track to be Zap’s girlfriend. Eventually. Her prosthetic right arm transforms into a hella big energy cannon. Built by Kasey. So far it hasn’t blown up. So far.
And the blue floaty girl is the avatar of their conscious and intelligent ship, (whose name i’ve forgotten).
Sorry. Zap is the guy with the pointy hair in the blue circle. got the wrong gravatar.
Wait till you see the next set.
i think shelly want to tell heather wath happend to her without telling her to much stuff around that.
I think the 80k+ years helped her with perspective, but at the same time she probably feels disassociated. How do you “fit in” with ‘normal life’ when you’ve seen yourself die 56 times? And not go crazy or treat ‘reality’ like a dream or cartoon?
FYI, we the readers are projecting the supposed 4th wall inference. Paul has never hinted that his characters know they are in a comic, I see no good reason for him to do so now.
I concur. Really only the demons (and maybe Mayahuel) have a good perspective “outside” human reality, and I don’t think the Demon Realm maps well onto the internet.
Nudge would tell people that they were characters in a comic strip! But that’s just because she’ll say anything for a laugh. As a trickster god it’s expected of her.
All the time in the world (and 81ka is a pretty good approximation) won’t help all that much if you can’t recall what you need to sort out, or are distracted too much of the time.
As I said yesterday, in one sense she is the character as the 56 Shellys that entered the tree realm after her, and Shellinx is the “observer” in this case.
Of course, we all are thrown in with the “readers” in this scenario, but have we really proven we learned anything? I’m just as confused as Shelly!
(slinks into corner with chilled Limoncello)
i think that Shelly is asking Heather’s opinion of whether or not the characters in those movies will make better choices AFTER they get out of the looping than they did BEFORE they got into it initially. it doesn’t help that the answer Heather gave about the “viewer” being able to see clearer, was in a round-about way NOT giving Shelly an answer, because both Shelly and us readers know that the Shelly that is asking IS the viewer as well as the looper, and she still doesn’t feel like she’s any better off than she was before (and that’s WHY she’s asking for the advice!) i think that whole thought train(wreck) was why she was tossing and turning in the prior pages.
ooohh..Shellinx as the “observer” of 56 Shelly’s fates.. Interesting thought..
The only problem with that theory is that Shellinx was the only one who was aware of the repeats…and in the movie metaphor Shelly used, the person repeating the same event over and over again is always aware of the repetition…which suggests that she sees herself not as the observer but as the poor sot who experienced it for someone else’s benefit.
Sucks a bit…but given her millenia of life experience, I’m sure she’ll make sense of it eventually. 🙂
^^Right. Only as Shellinx was she aware of what each of her former selves is doing, yet still realizes each of those characters was in fact an incarnation of herself, and I think that after seeing all those Shellys perhaps jogged her memory of having been the observed, while also being the observer…I’d be confused myself!
Wait a minute…I am confused…and the limoncello is gone…and the wolves are coming!
Don’t worry about that last fact–most of the wolves around here are friendly.
And many of those den quite peacefully in the ‘confusion corner’ , and make excellent pillows, as long as you keep the drinks full.
Haha, she’s totally not controllng her body well, her hands are changing in the first panel.
Whoa. Missed that.
That might provide the proof of her story.
not quite, she’s had the nails since she got back…perhaps instead of keeping sharp teeth like Phix, maybe she kept her claws? 😕
People would start to ask questions if Shelly got pointy teeth too. It is weird enough that Tina and the GGG have them. Shelly’s established with normal teeth. Her suddenly having ‘sharp’ teeth is only going to make outsiders think the group is actually a cult or something.
… which actually isn’t too far from the truth. (>^_^)>
Man, I get this exact same anxiety ALL THE TIME. That my entire life and actions are nothing but a metaphor for an invisible audience to learn from (and leer at and perhaps make fun of).
Not surprising. In essence, with all of the digital communications we have, ‘virtual’ worlds we play games or roam around in, etc, I think that an increasing number of people will feel detached from reality.
‘Reality’ is just the brains way of interpreting where we are and the interactions we have. If the brain is stimulated enough it doesn’t matter what the body experiences, hence movies like the Matrix.
Ah, but in “The Matrix” if you died in the simulated world, your body in the real world also died. Which was why I didn’t think much of the so-called hero. He was slaughtering people in the matrix world without a thought, therefore killing them in reality as well. These were just poor people caught up in the whole thing and not some bad guys. That made the whole premise suck for me.
But i think he redeemed himself in the fight against (agent?) Smith, because he didn’t technically kill any of them, just knocked them out, until he de-corrupted them.
Not quite. I never watched any beyond the first movie, but it is my understanding the “Smiths” were just temporary software replications of an AI program. None of them, including the original, were ever alive, nor had a body to be killed.
SoWhyMe: you need to analyse the other movies, they explain a lot.. The architect designed the first matrix as a utopia, no death or pain.. the whole thing did not work properly..
think about it, what would be the point in avoiding bullets??
I find your current plotline uninteresting. Please check the script pages for updates.
Sounds like facebook…
Shakespeare’s As You Like It, 1600:
JAQUES: “All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances. . . .”
Win. 🙂
Oh no! She’s on to us! Destroy the planet!
Control, this isDelphar 7. My mission is in jeopardy. Destroy planet, I repeat, destroy planet…
Heather (experiencing mental whiplash) intelligently replies”Huh?!?”
I’ll buy that for a Dollar!
It seems that Shelly goes from a hypothetical-3rd-person in the 1st panel to a first-person-this-is-happening-to-me-right-NOW tense in the 3rd panel… and that is bound to get awkward for both of them in a few panels/updates. i foresee Heather being told about the whole shebang, and i’m HOPING for something similar to Amanda’s reaction to Monica, and NOT Monica’s PARENT’S reaction…
Given Heather’s one-time interest in Shelly, maybe a reaction more like Kevin’s would be good…
She more-or-less has told Heather what has happened but only in a vague aroundabout way. She has already proceeded to the point where one of the better scenarios is to explain everything (with proof) before Heather starts thinking that she’s crazy.
However, there are other ways of explaining away her reaction — she could, for example, say that she’s lost in a role playing game but, even then, her strong emotional involvement could also make Heather think that she’s crazy.
Yeah…my initial thought on reading this one was “And thus Shelly blew the normal right out of her interactions with Heather…Welcome to the Wapsi side!”
*waves arms over head*
Hey!! phweeet! over here!
any guesses as to when the story starts breaking the 4th wall?
I’m getting “Peeping Tom” vibes! (shudddeerrr)
What – you’ve got a tripod with a knife built into a leg?
Because the “camera” seems to be a little low for straight story telling.
Sorry, that should have ended in a “?”.
This new and improved Shelly is killing me. Could she be any more lovable?
she could be holding sowhyme hamster-in-a-tube (below)
that’s the only thing i can consider 🙂
Haha!! Hey that’s us!!
Hey Shelly!! Over here!! XD
*waves*
Good question Miss Wahnee..
“Who watches the Watchmen”
Or “I gotta feel like..somebody’s waatching meeee”
Shelly’s hands are really worrisome. Maybe a Sphinx-sized bottle of DOVE ™ is in order? 😛
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Sciens. Scit si forte scriptor?
*sighs*
babblefish failed.
it translated the same words as english…
Try Google translate (auto detect or Latin to English).
ooh
nice one skulker 🙂 cheers 😀
*bookmarks for future reference*
I don’t know. I like the effect. Shelly is more “handsome” than she’s ever been before, looking like a self-established woman instead of a happy-go-lucky girl, yet her hands look very old. It fits her, outwardly he is young, nubile, but inwardly she is been through an eternity, and that effort shows on her hands.
SHe’s simply asking where do I go from here.
What’s the next step.
Did I learn my lessson? What was it?
Did someone see a map for me around here?
I suppose
Shellinx can be both the audience and the person in the time-slip in this case.
She witnessed everything and also experienced it.
So hopefully from her experience she would have gained the knowledge that sometimes bad things happen (which lets face it. we know it happens but happening to us?) and no matter what you try sometimes you have to let the bad thing happen to make good things occur.
from the viewing you cannot only just try one thing. you have to take into consideration everything.
or something like that 🙂
oh and for the record.
my personal oppinon is that the time-slip things make people grow in ways they didn’t think possible.
take bill murry in groundhog day.
he was a self-obssessed jerk who didn’t really care about anyone or anybody.
til he got stuck in that day.
sure he went off the rails and stuff but by the end of the film he found out the best way to be happy was to help out as much as he could and had changed so much that he even wanted to live there.
Bill Murray, i thought?
Oops – i read your post as “Bill Mumy”…
Don’t you mean the character he was playing? We don’t know what Murray, himself, thought of it.
Meh…details! 😛 Nine times out of ten, I’m more likely to refer to the character using the actor’s name. This is either because:
A) It’s been long enough since I watched the movie that I forgot the character’s name (I’m awful with names that aren’t in my face all the time), OR
B) The person I’m talking to isn’t as familiar with movies (or that movie in particular) and wouldn’t recognize the character name…only the actor’s.
That rare tenth instance is when I’m talking to a fellow movie fiend and it’s a movie we both know and love (or the character has become a part of basic social knowledge like Captain Kirk). 🙂
just like takin’ digs at the coyote
he is an easy target
poor wild.e
One of Philip K Dick’s later books – Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, i think – “captainkirk” (as a single word) has become the popular term for both pot-boiler sci-fi (as opposed to “science fiction”) films and for the lead character.
(I.e., “There’s a new captainkirk at the Railto, and John Smurd is playing the captaikirk in it…”)
That’s very true for Shelly.
She’s apparently changed from a walking barrel of gunpowder with a very short fuse, to a person that overthinks stuff, and counts to ten befor blurting something out.
Seeing multiple choices play out is very educational.
the counting to ten
does that work?
i’ve known people who do that and are just as angry after the count as they would have been before the count.
or are they doing it wrong? 🙂
Probably. Most people are unaware the count has to be inside out and sideways for it to be effective.
Some try taking a deep breath between numbers.
A time-slip? Oh — that explains it!
With a bit of a mind flip
You’re into the time slip
And nothing can ever be the same
You’re spaced out on sensation
Like you’re under sedation
Let’s do the Time Warp again
Let’s do the Time Warp again
Oh…you mean it’s just a jump to the left?
possibly next a step to the right 🙂
and i’m pretty sure that Heather wouldn’t mind putting her hands on Shelly’s hips…
That reminds me: in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a popular party prank using the finite improbability generator is to make all the molecules in the undergarments of one’s hostess move three feet to the left. Presumably this could be done to her outergarments as well–provided it’s the right sort of party.
Is this that sort of party?
(Or can it be done in this cosmos only by suitable mis-poiting?)
That’s crazy! Slingshot around the sun–pick up enough speed, you’re in Time Warp–if you don’t, you’re fried!
–Dr. McCoy, Star Trek 4–The Voyage Home (I may not have the quote quite right, sorry…)
Is anyone else having trouble getting updates through a feed reader?
people have mentined rss feed issues but paul said he couldnt find an issue on one of them.
you might need to be specific.
Well, I use google reader, and the comics stopped appearing. This sometimes happens, and the solution is to unsubscribe and resubscribe, except now when I resubscribe no comics appear, or posts of any kind, and the feed is no longer called “wapsi square” but “Free Microsoft Word 2010 Tutorial — Sale -182% price off”. Very strange.
“But what does it mean?”
YAY! Back to whimsical speculation! I can tell you’re all very excited…
Shelly is assuming that the audience, or even the lesson (if there was one) is important. What if they’re not? or what is she being compared to to make a metaphor?
To be honest this whole conversation reeks of Phix…perhaps just part of her sphinx-i-ness, but I feel like Shelly was asking more of a riddle than an actual question…
Here’s a valid question:
If you were to meet the audience that watched your life in a movie, what kind of movie do you think they would have watched?
comedy? tragedy? thriller? mystery? eros? what?
Andy Warhol’s “Sleep” (1963) is a movie running 5 hrs 20 minutes about his friend, John Giorno, sleeping. Just sleeping.
That would be the film of MY life. Although with more tossing and turning.
aw.. noting that a little Bobby Lewis can’t cure.
snickersnort!
Boring. The kind where the audience walks out part way though, and demands their money back.
that never happens
most people are too stingy to leave a film they just paid for and stay til the bitter bitter end 🙂
I have walked out on a movie in a cinema and, more often, stopped DVDs I’ve hired/bought when I didn’t like them.
However, I would never demand my money back because I can’t hold the people who I paid responsible for my poor judgement.
What if they carefully engineered the trailer to include every possible interesting moment of the movie?
Well, I still wouldn’t ask for a refund because it’s not the cinemas and/or DVD rental places that script and make the trailers. Even if it was, it was still my choice to watch it.
On the general point of trailers: If every interesting bit was in the trailers (or I suspected they were) then I wouldn’t want to watch the film as it’ll be a disappointment. The only way a trailer could fulfill that is if the film was pretty dire to begin (there should be a lot more than a couple of minutes of interesting bits) and such a trailer would, most likely, include spoilers.
A good trailer should give you enough to allow you to make your own judgement but not enough to spoil the movie. Trailers should give you an idea of the plot and of the general atmosphere but leave you to discover the film yourself.
I have demanded my money back when the file experience was bad due to things under the control of the theatre management – bad sound, things like that.
More than once, though, i have been tempted to do what my friend Starhelm said as we exited Damnation Alley on its opening day and demand my wasted time back.
fantasy meets reality i suspect
like ‘bridge to terebithia’
All of the above.
It’s why I’m a polytheist. Seems flippant to assume one isn’t being watched, and hubristic to think that the infinite would be the only party interested.
In Wapsi, Amanda voices the closest thing to my outlook in life here: http://wapsisquare.com/comic/bigger-idiots/
Though perhaps the real lesson Shelly should take away from her life-as-fable is the bottom line of such morality tales: Be careful what you wish for.
Because there seems to be at least one audience who might be very very interested in that Relic she was charging:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/still-there/
Okay, but I think the snowflakes have left for the summer.
The snow is gone, but the flakes are still there.
i like to think there are just as many intelligent people as there are idiots in the world.
It’s just that the idiots have better press coverage.
(same can be applied good/bad)
It sometimes feels like a continual coming of age drama despite the fact that I’m old enough to remember 1200 baud modems, Mount St Helens blowing its top, Chernobyl and the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
mount st helens was in 1980 🙂 not so long ago 🙂 but most people have forgot the 2004 eruption so .. you’re doing well 🙂
If you consider that those born in 1990 are now adults (that thought sends a shudder through me) and those born in 1980 are now over 30 then you can see the significance of what I said (considering the “coming of age drama” format normally deals with people in their teens and, rarely, 20s).
In other words, in 1980 I was old enough to want to watch the news — it might have been [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUEZvnbYq54]John Cravens Newsround[/url] (link is to an episode from 1982) but it was still the news.
Hmmm–I can remember watching Apollo 11 on the moon, and also watching the Watergate hearings. But not JFK’s assassination.
It was already ten years back when I realized that I could be a grandfather, or that my (hypothetical) kids could vote. . . .
I remember being out in the field being chased through wet Virginia woods in the final week of Navy Counter-Insurgency School, preparatory to going to Viet Nam during the Apollo 11 landing.
I was in 9th grade when the JFK assassination happened – in rural SC, where more than one student cheered aloud in class when the principal announced the news over the PA.
Having turned fourteen on 22 October 1962, and having read most of my dad’s complete collection from 1941 on of Astounding/ANALOG by then, and being rather too imaginative for my own good, i have never been able to believe very much in my chances of surviving past the end of the week…
Oh–and thanks very much for being the first people in a long time to not make me feel old. 🙂
The scary thing for me is that I know the first eruption better than the second…because it was my birthday.
A comedy (and not necessarily a good one) that involves early melodra but is also a tale of empowerment with a touch of not-at-all-up-to-Hollywood-standards romance…and my story is FAR from over. 😀
Hmph…”melodra” is missing a “ma”. That’s what I get for stopping in the middle of typing a comment to answer my phone. 😛
Don’t worry–I read it as you intended, and didn’t even notice until I got to your correction post.
So far… comedy and fantasy with tragic undertones… sort of like “Role Models” when you think about it too much…
you never put yours down cherish? 😀
One of those ‘Comedy of errors’ from the 30’s to the early 50’s. I swear things just- happened to prevent what I wanted, then after 30+ years of looking I found the love of my life and we’ve been together almost as long.
The best of all possible intros to the intermission.
Long may our movie run.
Shelly is addressing reality, of course, and Heather is addressing a rhetorical and literary question.
There is about to be a sudden crunch as the two collide.
You mean “crunch” as in:” Sph..Sph…Sph…SPHIIINX!! CRUNCH!! munch munch…hmmm taste like chicken..
Naah.. I am just spouting nonsense.. Would be cool though if SHell did “The Sphinx” for Heather..
could be why they’re in the middle of nowhere…
They’re in the middle of a city park! You can barely see it in the last panel, but go back and look at the backgrounds over the last few strips.
This would be a bad place to sphinx out.
And, personally, I’m hoping she doesn’t let Heather in on it all…
Actually we taste like pigs, AKA Long Pork. And if you ask the Flavor Robot we taste like bacon (cigarette smoker with too much salt in their diet)
Down at the bottom of this page, I found a link to an adult-oriented art page with the classic Cherry Poptart comics. This brought about certain memories that I couldn’t help but think about.
When I was little, my dad always called me Cherry. I loved that name, and in fact even insisted on cherry-flavored everything… even the cherries.
However, I soon learned to dislike the name when I hit high school, thanks of course to Miss Poptart.
That’s why I try to get people to call me Cherish. That’s my birth name and it’s not associated with a fictional tramp.
…. done rambling.
Good thinking, demanding cherry flavored cherries.
I was a kid, so sue me!
I used to love it when dad brought home a big batch of fresh cherries and when I was done, he’d demand to know where the pits were and poke me in the belly button and announce, “there they are!”
Whoa! Clearly you didn’t ascribe to the common childhood notion that if you ate a seed, whatever it was would start growing inside you.
I did! 🙂 I have a watermelon garden in my tummt by now! 😛
or that potato would grow behind your ears if you didn’t wash them..
cannot believe i fell for that one as a kid…
I thought it was in the ear. But, yeah, everything’s real to you when you’re little.
I played “the floor is lava” too much as a kid… even just now I lifted my feet thinking about it… 😆
http://tinyurl.com/5shltk6
Awwww.. poor critter…. 😛
I guess I should be clearer. I didn’t post that just to show a cute picture, that’s also my sentiments on this comic. It’s looking too much like a wrap up of the whole series.
next time use a lizard
all i am is struck by the adorableness of the … hamster?
Good thinking. Lizards are never adorable.
http://tinyurl.com/3fteqcr
*sqeeeees*
yea..i know..i’m odd.
Most comics strips do a fourth wall joke? Sherman’s Lagoon characters got tired of people staring at them. Then told the audience to go read cathy. Barkeater Lake had two characters become self aware of how strange their lives are. Then the talking dog drags them off screen for “retraining”.
Least I could do has a great one where one of the characters says “it was the least I could do.” to one of the others and is procedided to be slaped by the artist for stuping to that level.
4th wall hell… we’re up to about 7 in this arc.
Nudge statuette progression:
Aaaaand another teaser..or not.. just browse
PS. It’s covered in primer, so I can see easier see flaws, and what should be improved.
To all of You fans (and to Paul..if I dare..) what colour are nudge’s eyes???? And what about the face-markings?
Nudge has golden colored irises, her face is a very light gray brown and the markings are almost white, a very,very light blue gray. Her hair is a rich dark chocolate brown.
Awesome work! 🙂
DUDE!! Thnx a bundle!! Cool..Now I know where to go. 😀 *&- <–happy as a daisy..
OK, Solbet, one more adjustment to your excellent colorizing job.
Just … wow! Great lifelike detail.
/agreed
Dude, wow, I’m having trouble describing my state of awe with resorting to earthy language. That is fantastic.
Save a mold of the head and then you can make chocolate Nudge heads on a stick….mmmmmmmm….
I am in favor of this plan….I’m just saying…
*settles back in a spiderweb hammock, with a cheese danish and a 64oz mocha shake*
To quote one of my spiritual mentors, Yogi Berra:
You can observe a lot by just watching.
mm cheese danish sounds quite nice when i google it.
i assumed it has sultana/raisins in it for some reason but it doesn’t. sounds tasty 😀
and i always confuse yogi berra to yogi bear. im sure its a disability…
*starting to drool slightly*
Save some for me.. It sounds delicious…
cheese danish was always preferred over doughnuts in my house as a kid…
Gets up and checks danish selection, shakes head and returns to couch in the corner with refill of Irished tea and a large plate of Pumkin pie and ice cream. And asks as he puts it down ‘Who wants a refill?’
Which metaphors are which, and why is there that thought-flare around Shelly in the last panel instead of the first?
What thought flare?
Shoot! Goes with the post above.
Bloom, actually.
Sigh… that thing that I can’t accurately describe where the background and foreground mesh, creating a fuzzy edge around Shelly’s head, and which occurs most often when she’s puzzling something out.
kind of like the basic depiction of Spidey-Sense?
I think that’s just the upcoming sun’s light behind her.