or the more obvious answer, Shelly was singing at the right frequency to make the doll resonate, however, she didn’t realize it was the doll glowing in the window, she thought it was the sun.
@kramegame – Ooo…that’s a possibility. I was thinking that she was entranced by or somehow linked to the doll by singing at the right frequency to produce pretty lights and didn’t notice the passing of time (totally zoned out…which could scare a parent to the point of them smacking their kid to see if that produced a response).
And before anyone says that zoning out like that is unlikely, it’s not. I do it when not medicated (yay ADD!), and frequently someone yelling in my face or giving me a not-so-gentle nudge is the only way to snap me out of it.
well, the way i read it, Shelly was remembering the setting first, keep in mind this is her supposed “first” memory, so she is probably pretty young. The setting being whatever window she was at, the doll, and her perception of the time. However, she then describes what she had been doing, which was singing. She could have been singing before her memory, and as a result her memory always showed her that it was the sun in the window. However, she now knows what the dolls are capable of, and perhaps reflecting over the memory further, will show her and us that she witnessed the doll glowing and then continued to hold it up to the window. Memories change the more we remember them, because we second guess them, and because we learn new things as we age, which changes the way we think about events.
Thanks, SWM. That was the exact comic I had in mind…so the dolls modulate light via music-driven resonance…so if she was holding it in the morning sun when her father knocked it out of her hand, how could it have been night??
There was something about that when they were figuring out how to use the dolls in the temple, and they either responded to the lights the GGs/Monica could generate, or…something…
Ehktualllly, perfect pitch refers to the ability to reproduce a given note/sequence correctly from memory without “searching”. Knowing that a note has a specific name is more of a “golden ear” trait and training. Someone who can perfectly sing/hum a tune heard once several hours/days previously has perfect pitch. True, someone with Perfect Pitch usually also has a Golden Ear, but the reverse does not hold and is more common.
I used to have the ear (wrecked by medically induced tinnitus), but I’ve never had the pitch.
Absolute pitch (AP), widely referred to as perfect pitch, is the ability of a person to identify or re-create a given musical note without the benefit of an external reference.
I have never heard “perfect pitch” used to describe the ability you describe.
However, considering the on-line discussions i’ve seen about things that seem perfectly simple to me – like exactly what “duplex” means referring to housing, or people flatly asserting (apparently with some cause) that if your name ends with “Junior”, you officially lose the “Junior” when your father dies – i know that it’s quite possible that, in places or circles i’ve never encountered, it means exactly that.
I have to derive some crud for work…can anyone with knowledge of the archive give some dates when the dolls were explained, like how to make light with them or … something?
I don’t mean to be a nit-picker, but I have to pick this one nit for sure. Shouldn’t it be “He punished you by sending you to bed” or am I just missing something?
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/andyou/
Another short interlude with the chasing hammer.
These are coming in reverse order…start at the bottom of this string and work your way up…
Well, because of this damn job getting in the way of my Waspi time, the order is completely jumbled. You should read it -
3rd – 4th – 2nd – 1st
And it was originally intended as a reply to the mysitcal texan…
Sheesh
Looking back over the sequence in The Library, the artwork is fantastic. Especially The Library itself. I am constantly in wonder at Paul’s artistic skills.
I don’t know why (maybe cause I’m reading it alone in the middle of the night while sick) this strip creeps me out a lot more than some of the strips that are meant to be creepy. Just the realization of something so wrong in her childhood that she never noticed was there before. Creepy.
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright -
|: And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done–
“It’s very rude of him,” she said,
“To come and spoil the fun!”
Maybe that’s why Shelly’s father–and then Shelly–were sulky?
Now this. is getting interesting. Shelly doesn’t fub morning and night for nothing….
I have to say, I really like the way Shelly is getting some extra character development. Together with the “maturing” of Bud, it makes for some interesting interaction.
considering how excited she was when she was offered the job, I’d say she is there full time. XD
Even if she was there part time, she would probably work at the Garage as well, just in case she ever needs her car skills again.
Several types of tribal ceremonies can take a while, and when underway, exhibit that blatent disregard for timekeeping. Sweat Lodges, Sun Dances, Peyote Cermonies, and the more modern “49″ (one of these things is not like the other) will go on for a long time, but seem to end too soon. If Shelly found the right note, or combination depending on what she sang, it’s also possible she poited herself ahead a few hours, and that’s when her dad found her, not knowing she skipped from morning to night, maybe guessing right then that she did. When your a parent to a mahn-sape tah-lee (ornery/rambunctious girl), you’re just happy she ends the day in one piece. Put the Warp Key away, and put her to bed, tomorrow will keep til tomorrow.
If she moved through time, then the parents would have gone crazy looking for her all day. Apparently she was still pretty small at this time. She would have heard from her family and/or neighbors about her having vanished all day into the night in the following days. Plus there is no indication the dolls can also move one forward through time.
OTOH, it would make sense SOMETHING happened between morning and night given that the doll’s “power” would have been abruptly cut off when the sun went down. Was she invisible? If so, the parents would have still gone nuts looking for her.
Not at all, but we’re talking about earliest memory here, so I’m figuring she’s still very little. Litle kids don’t just go off and no one watches them or ever checks on them. When she doesn’t show up for lunch parents would start to get worried and go looking, even if she were a bit older. At least caring parents would. there are limits to “just come home whenever you feel like it and in one piece.” I would find it hard to believe Shelly’s parents would just let her wander off all day on a routine basis and not care. She would have to, at least, show up for the noon meal or she had no structure in her life. I would find that hard to believe. Being Comanche is not an excuse to just let little children run wild with no supervision.
There’s clearly more to this…anyone recall what the distortion of light through the dolls when modulated did to time dilation? I have indeed experienced this very thing inside a sweat lodge. It seems to be just a few minutes of intese searing heat, and then you find you’ve been in the thing for four hours…
Didn’t do anything to time of which we are aware. What you experienced was a distortion of the perception of the passage of time, not time dialation.
Even if she held it up to the sun and hit the correct note, I’m not sure the doll would have done anything more than become a light show. In the temple, the girls had to hold them up to their face-lights for them to do their thing properly. They used their eye-lights just for aiming. http://wapsisquare.com/comic/on-command/
Now, if Shelly also has a face-light …
How about: Shelly was singing to the sunrise, her dad knocked it out of her hand and sent her to bed – because it was dawn and no one had to get up for hours!
Just wanted to clarify something. Her father probably knows very little about the dolls. Instead, it seems more likely he came home from work to find her still looking out her window, possibly singing and slugged her to wake her from whatever trance she was in.
Besides, we still haven’t gotten an explanation for her amazing strength or her incredibly thick skull. This could be a beginning toward that.
He didn’t slug her, he just knocked the doll out of her hand. And why did he have to do that? I don’t see how she could have been in a trance all day without another family member noticing at some point and already knocking it from her hand.
As to the thick skull and all, yes, this may be the beginning of that explanation, hopefully.
Well, it would appear that she was in a trance all day, and so far it hasn’t been said that no one noticed. Either that, or she wasn’t home all day after all. She could have been elsewhere… or elsewhen.
Most likely she was at it all day, and he came home, noticed, and was scared to realize his daughter wasn’t responding, at all.
So he knocked the scary thing from her hand to snap her out of it, and still charged with fear, (close enough to anger,) sent her to her room.
Since it WAS part of the clock, it’s possible it did do a localized distortion, causing her to miss the whole day, and who is to say her father hadn’t just spent hours looking for her only to finally spot her there…where she’d been the whole day. He may have already been tearing his hair out in fear for her when he finally spotted her, tranced out, and knocked the offending focus from her grasp.
Wholly shit! Was Shelly singing the sunrise? Or producing the light herself via singing??
Or she sung the clock around, until it was night.
“Let’s do the Time Warp again! (Woooo!)”
or the more obvious answer, Shelly was singing at the right frequency to make the doll resonate, however, she didn’t realize it was the doll glowing in the window, she thought it was the sun.
Her father knew something about the doll? It’s implied. And he’s still alive to answer questions, if he will.
Nah, really obscure would be stating “Shelly was singing Sonate nr 3 BWV1005″
Whoops..meant to comment Ray..
Well..sorta fits here too…
Kramegame: You win. Sometimes Pablo could help the rest of us out by
being a bit more obviouswhacking us over the head with the obvious stick.@kramegame – Ooo…that’s a possibility. I was thinking that she was entranced by or somehow linked to the doll by singing at the right frequency to produce pretty lights and didn’t notice the passing of time (totally zoned out…which could scare a parent to the point of them smacking their kid to see if that produced a response).
And before anyone says that zoning out like that is unlikely, it’s not. I do it when not medicated (yay ADD!), and frequently someone yelling in my face or giving me a not-so-gentle nudge is the only way to snap me out of it.
she said “I had it up by the window in the morning sun”
“I was singing, he knocked it out of my hands”
“he sent me to bed because it was night”
Now by my guess, her singing may have ‘activated’ it, so she may have been in a trance, woken up 15 hours later by her dad???
I dont see how she could mistake her ‘golem light’ for the sun… but hey you tell me…
@Julie: hey, great minds… :p
and yes, I can get that, when I am concentrating hard, but only for 20 mins or so..
well, the way i read it, Shelly was remembering the setting first, keep in mind this is her supposed “first” memory, so she is probably pretty young. The setting being whatever window she was at, the doll, and her perception of the time. However, she then describes what she had been doing, which was singing. She could have been singing before her memory, and as a result her memory always showed her that it was the sun in the window. However, she now knows what the dolls are capable of, and perhaps reflecting over the memory further, will show her and us that she witnessed the doll glowing and then continued to hold it up to the window. Memories change the more we remember them, because we second guess them, and because we learn new things as we age, which changes the way we think about events.
#1 … Someone in the household would have noticed a child zoning out for hours long before dad got home and would have snapped her out of it already.
#2 … The dolls do not generate light by themselves, They simply modulate light shining on them when resonating to the proper frequency:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/ancientdiscoball/
There is something more to be revealed. Perhaps tomorrow. Since it’s cliff hanger day, likely not.
Thanks, SWM. That was the exact comic I had in mind…so the dolls modulate light via music-driven resonance…so if she was holding it in the morning sun when her father knocked it out of her hand, how could it have been night??
Was the room completely dark?
Could the doll have played with the room light?
Now they did use flashlights to experiment, and they needed 4 ‘eye-lights’ for final showdown.
Ah, yes. Singing a selection from J.S. Bach’s “Art of the Fugue State”
+2 for obscure pun mastery!
* ERROR! DOES NOT COMPUTE.
Wait a minute. How can Shelly be hold a doll in the morning sun and then be punished by being sent to bed at night?
There was something about that when they were figuring out how to use the dolls in the temple, and they either responded to the lights the GGs/Monica could generate, or…something…
see my comment below…
Shelly’s hammer emitted the right note to make the dolls glow.
(Apparently Shelly has perfect pitch, BTW, since – as i recall – she named the note the hammer played without using a reference.)
Yep.
She has a degree in music, it’d be disappointing if she didn’t.
Not necessarily; i suspect that a large percentage music majors don’t, because it’s not a common talent.
(Had a friend twenty/thirty years ago who had perfect pitch, loved classical music … and hated cassette decks.)
Perfect pitch has nothing to do with having a degree in music; a rare percentage of musicians have it, and many scientists believe it’s genetic.
Ehktualllly, perfect pitch refers to the ability to reproduce a given note/sequence correctly from memory without “searching”. Knowing that a note has a specific name is more of a “golden ear” trait and training. Someone who can perfectly sing/hum a tune heard once several hours/days previously has perfect pitch. True, someone with Perfect Pitch usually also has a Golden Ear, but the reverse does not hold and is more common.
I used to have the ear (wrecked by medically induced tinnitus), but I’ve never had the pitch.
From Wikipedia:
I have never heard “perfect pitch” used to describe the ability you describe.
However, considering the on-line discussions i’ve seen about things that seem perfectly simple to me – like exactly what “duplex” means referring to housing, or people flatly asserting (apparently with some cause) that if your name ends with “Junior”, you officially lose the “Junior” when your father dies – i know that it’s quite possible that, in places or circles i’ve never encountered, it means exactly that.
Limk to the Wikipedia article that i forgot to include.
So she was singing to the doll non-stop for an entire day? I can see how her dad finally got fed up with that — if that’s the real explanation.
Love the weird and wonderful backdrops for this conversation.
Speaking of singing to things, I like this story:
A. she sang for an entire day, or
B. she ‘travelled’ to the end of the day, or
C. something else happened
either way, she has “Lost Time Syndrome” which is common among abductee claimants. Somehow I doubt aliens were involved.
I have to derive some crud for work…can anyone with knowledge of the archive give some dates when the dolls were explained, like how to make light with them or … something?
That would be great, Mkay?
It was the silver chasing hammer Phix gave to Shelly. It was a c-note IIRC. Looking for the strips…
Maxwell asked for it back–he had a date.
Oh, yeah, Max . . . wasn’t he Thomas’s grandson or something?
Thanks so much for putting that song in my head. Worse yet, I keep repeating that same line over and over.
A C-note isn’t nearly enough to pay for all the trauma this crew has gone through…
But it is enough for a girls night out for two…
Not if they’re both going to be drinking echidna martinis, it won’t.
I prefer hedgehog martinis, but that’s because I’m a SEGA fan…
I don’t mean to be a nit-picker, but I have to pick this one nit for sure. Shouldn’t it be “He punished you by sending you to bed” or am I just missing something?
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/workingsupper/
The evening when Shelly and Bud explore the dolls…
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/andyou/
Another short interlude with the chasing hammer.
These are coming in reverse order…start at the bottom of this string and work your way up…
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/decipherthebook/
Aaand the start of it. Begining a few days early for the full effect.
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/coolness/
Finally, a one shot a few day after.
Might be the sexiest Shelly.
Evah.
Well, because of this damn job getting in the way of my Waspi time, the order is completely jumbled. You should read it -
3rd – 4th – 2nd – 1st
And it was originally intended as a reply to the mysitcal texan…
Sheesh
Looking back over the sequence in The Library, the artwork is fantastic. Especially The Library itself. I am constantly in wonder at Paul’s artistic skills.
Either Shelly missed a good portion of the day, or everyone did…
let the sun shine, let the sun shine in…
I don’t know why (maybe cause I’m reading it alone in the middle of the night while sick) this strip creeps me out a lot more than some of the strips that are meant to be creepy. Just the realization of something so wrong in her childhood that she never noticed was there before. Creepy.
Taht’s amusing – it tuened the punctuation from the site where i picked that up into a smiley.
Me likey…
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done–
“It’s very rude of him,” she said,
“To come and spoil the fun!”
Maybe that’s why Shelly’s father–and then Shelly–were sulky?
I think Kramegame nailed it upstairs. But now I’m rilly rilly curious about Shelly’s dad – and how much he knew.
And I forgot to mention that’s a really dynamite top Shelly has on… :3
Now this. is getting interesting. Shelly doesn’t fub morning and night for nothing….
I have to say, I really like the way Shelly is getting some extra character development. Together with the “maturing” of Bud, it makes for some interesting interaction.
Ooh, and Paul’s attempt at “bloom” in frame 4: verrry nice. Very nice indeed!
Well, he’s a photographer…
(I remember the Galaxy Express 999 movie included some really nicely-animated lens flare when the headlight tracked across the screen…)
I see value in these to paying a visit to Shelly’s dad.
For those wondering, Shelly’s dad is alive, he ran the autoshop she used to work at.
Still does, i assume. She’s gotta have some income… If only to pay for replacement grills.
Or V8 engines that somehow get broken…
She teaches Kick-boxing, and weight training at Jaqui’s yoga studio, these days..
which pays quite well regularly, if i’m not mistaken. never mind when the business is backed by a vast inheritance, if it ever needed it….
But does she do it full-time?
She started out part-time.
considering how excited she was when she was offered the job, I’d say she is there full time. XD
Even if she was there part time, she would probably work at the Garage as well, just in case she ever needs her car skills again.
Several types of tribal ceremonies can take a while, and when underway, exhibit that blatent disregard for timekeeping. Sweat Lodges, Sun Dances, Peyote Cermonies, and the more modern “49″ (one of these things is not like the other) will go on for a long time, but seem to end too soon. If Shelly found the right note, or combination depending on what she sang, it’s also possible she poited herself ahead a few hours, and that’s when her dad found her, not knowing she skipped from morning to night, maybe guessing right then that she did. When your a parent to a mahn-sape tah-lee (ornery/rambunctious girl), you’re just happy she ends the day in one piece. Put the Warp Key away, and put her to bed, tomorrow will keep til tomorrow.
Oh – i like that idea!
If she moved through time, then the parents would have gone crazy looking for her all day. Apparently she was still pretty small at this time. She would have heard from her family and/or neighbors about her having vanished all day into the night in the following days. Plus there is no indication the dolls can also move one forward through time.
OTOH, it would make sense SOMETHING happened between morning and night given that the doll’s “power” would have been abruptly cut off when the sun went down. Was she invisible? If so, the parents would have still gone nuts looking for her.
More to come. Film at midnight (CST).
Did you miss the part tht says:
Not at all, but we’re talking about earliest memory here, so I’m figuring she’s still very little. Litle kids don’t just go off and no one watches them or ever checks on them. When she doesn’t show up for lunch parents would start to get worried and go looking, even if she were a bit older. At least caring parents would. there are limits to “just come home whenever you feel like it and in one piece.” I would find it hard to believe Shelly’s parents would just let her wander off all day on a routine basis and not care. She would have to, at least, show up for the noon meal or she had no structure in her life. I would find that hard to believe. Being Comanche is not an excuse to just let little children run wild with no supervision.
There’s clearly more to this…anyone recall what the distortion of light through the dolls when modulated did to time dilation? I have indeed experienced this very thing inside a sweat lodge. It seems to be just a few minutes of intese searing heat, and then you find you’ve been in the thing for four hours…
Didn’t do anything to time of which we are aware. What you experienced was a distortion of the perception of the passage of time, not time dialation.
Even if she held it up to the sun and hit the correct note, I’m not sure the doll would have done anything more than become a light show. In the temple, the girls had to hold them up to their face-lights for them to do their thing properly. They used their eye-lights just for aiming.
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/on-command/
Now, if Shelly also has a face-light …
How about: Shelly was singing to the sunrise, her dad knocked it out of her hand and sent her to bed – because it was dawn and no one had to get up for hours!
What I find interesting about the dolls is the fact that, according to Bud, only she, Brandi, or Jin could have made them. Yet she had no memory of their creation.
Though, of course, Mayahuel could make one, I suspect …
Or there is another golem out there no one knows about.
Just wanted to clarify something. Her father probably knows very little about the dolls. Instead, it seems more likely he came home from work to find her still looking out her window, possibly singing and slugged her to wake her from whatever trance she was in.
Besides, we still haven’t gotten an explanation for her amazing strength or her incredibly thick skull. This could be a beginning toward that.
is my geek showing? ☻
He didn’t slug her, he just knocked the doll out of her hand. And why did he have to do that? I don’t see how she could have been in a trance all day without another family member noticing at some point and already knocking it from her hand.
As to the thick skull and all, yes, this may be the beginning of that explanation, hopefully.
Well, it would appear that she was in a trance all day, and so far it hasn’t been said that no one noticed. Either that, or she wasn’t home all day after all. She could have been elsewhere… or elsewhen.
Paul will spill the beans eventually.
Just a question. Where does this scene take place?
Probably just some restaurant in town. OTOH, with Bud’s ability to poit it could be anywhere in the world.
Most likely she was at it all day, and he came home, noticed, and was scared to realize his daughter wasn’t responding, at all.
So he knocked the scary thing from her hand to snap her out of it, and still charged with fear, (close enough to anger,) sent her to her room.
Since it WAS part of the clock, it’s possible it did do a localized distortion, causing her to miss the whole day, and who is to say her father hadn’t just spent hours looking for her only to finally spot her there…where she’d been the whole day. He may have already been tearing his hair out in fear for her when he finally spotted her, tranced out, and knocked the offending focus from her grasp.