Just had a scary thought. Not sure how she’d pull it it off , but Brandi might have ‘arranged’ for Jin to free the Chimera from the priests’ control. Her guilt may be that she made sure the civilization that did this to her died.
The real question is; How was she in a position to strike a deal with anyone/anything? From this point on, she was a prisoner who was savaged relentlesly. No apparent power at all. There has to be more to her background than simply a worker in a nursery, or something more occured in that pit than we know.
I thought I had had the ancient intrigues worked out in my head, even the ones Paul had remained silent about. But I had overlooked the possibility of Brandi acting on her own. Her narration to the fly appeared to be resgination to her fate, with a possible struggle against one last personal horror before the end. I did not connect that that horror would held tactics that she could have actively enjoined going in.
So bravo, author. In any other supernatural story a character talking to a fly would have made it painfully obvious.
I love Monica’s face in the second panel. It conveys simultaneous feelings of horror, disgust, and how do I respond to this in a much clearer way than words ever could.
Wow, to start a week with something that would have made a great cliffhanger. Now I am wondering if this is why we never see her (or Bud’s for that matter) demons hanging around.
Somewhere along the line Paul mentioned that their demons were stripped away in the process of them becoming golems. The fact that Jin retained her demons was unusual and a result of her training.
I think the quote your looking for is what the chimera did to the little girl that Bud see’s. I think the quote from Bud is: Unlike Tina, those people had there body’s, energy and demons were ripped from from existance so savagely that it left the fabric of reality bleeding.
No, I was thinking of something Paul mentioned in the comments somewhere. I’m pretty sure it was during the segment where everyone was in the calendar machine chamber, but that is rather long, so the exact comment would be tricky to track down.
Brandi is ‘nice’ and sometimes, the nice ones have the meanest streak. Whoever she made a deal with, I’m guessing those Lanthian bastards got the worse part of that deal.
ps: enter “evil Brandi” the vengeful mind behind ALL
So, I was wrong and right. She is a master-schemer, but used it for evil revenge.. oooh how dramatically classic all of this..
I wouldn’t call it evil to rid the world of those bastards — that was a cleansing that *really* needed to be done. That Brandi was likely the one to set that cleansing in motion is most interesting — though we do know she’s got the brains for it.
True. And if all she destroyed was the priests and their little empire, then fine. But it went way beyond that into the realm of evil.
OTOH, it could be the society at large was so corrupt and murderous, elimination was the only solution. Much like the Aztecs. Personally, I consider it a good thing they fell. Much evil came from there. I wonder if Lanthis was modeled after that civilization in many ways. Especially the brutality and the rightly hostile enemies they had. Thus the pressing need for a super-weapon. The brutality many have been systemic in the culture. Not just something limited to the priests per se.
Welp, we know Brandi’s had more dealings with the Demon world pre-Calendar Machine destruction than anyone else sans maybe Monica (post, obviously, puts May and Bud over her).
And we know that next to no evidence of that civilization exists now, even compared to the other various cultures the Chimera eliminated during its rampage.
I *gasped* as hard as Monica did when I read that….Damn… If I ever get around to that trans dimensional portal…Imma find one that those priests exist in and rock their shit….just damn.
As for Brandi, I will be waiting with bated breath for wednesday.
C’mon now. When the Chimera wiped out the Lanthian empire, he had to do temp work with all the ‘primitive’religions until one that was going to stick came along…
But Satan did open a pizza parlor… in Pompeii!
Pompeii is home home os the worlds oldest pizza parlor. I was there, and they still had ancient pizzas in the oven!
It seems ,maybe, all the rage making the chimera uncontrollable wasn’t all on Bud’s shoulders. A good part of it was from Brandi, too. That’s why Jin couldn’t control it; it was two against one.
Okay, now who was Brandi making deals with? Satan, Rogue demon queen, The Politicians, or someone else? It’s gonna be a good week!
Makes sense. Just proves what we all suspected, I think. An object lesson for the ages… join the Dark Side by hacking the Lanthian’s voicemail, and you’re in the slippery slope headed down towards turning their whole subcontinent into slag.
The calendar machine was made long before the golem thing happened. May only had herself made into a golem so that she could destroy the calendar machine.
You are right that the calendar machine was created first, but Maya didn’t try to destroy it until about 11,000 years after the golems were created. She had had the priests turn her into a golem so she could get it back from the priests, not to destroy it.
So wait … she had the CM built to fix Jin’s problem, then did nothing for 11,000 years after starting it? Does this mean it was working and helping Jin all that time? What were Jin and Maya doing all that time? Manipulating the political scene?
More holes here. Why didn’t May kill all those with knowledge of the golem making process before leaving with the CM? She obviously had no qualms whatsoever about killing people before.
hmm
if she truely thought she made a deal with an lanthian deity it would explain why she thought Jin was an angel.
i seem to recall the older gods being not as ‘nice’ as the christian one?
(and yes. i know. you don’t need to say it….)
I seem to recall that they would accept a person to their servitude and make them their slave not condemn them to hell. That they could actually have quite nasty things happen to their enemies.
Sort of … Scorpian King deal?
Poor girl does have a horrific set of coincidences to back up her faith really…
Makes a deal
Angel comes to help
Angel frees them to allow BRANDI to enact the anger she desires.
Seriously if I had made the wish before all that happened I would believe it also!
I could be only that she prayed to an evil deity that evil would happen to the priests and she thought her prayers were being answered when Jin attacked the priests, then she was disappointed when Jin failed.
Brandi’s only problem might be that she is upset that she would have prayed for evil. Or she might think that she damned her soul. Or something else. We’ll just have to see where this goes.
It might be that she made a deal with the spirit of the kid she killed, I suppose.
So far the only gods we know of were really people like Maya and Tepoz who wouldn’t have been gods to her. That doesn’t mean she didn’t think other gods existed.
oh hush
i did say I KNOW
nice was a wod i descirbed cuz most people know GOD (christian god) as good and SATAN as bad.
it was fudged in the older religions
A wise teacher giving an introductory counseling course advised that the most important thing was to draw out the person’s story. Then he added, “of course, sometimes you don’t want to know the story.”
This seems like one of those times. We want to know, but I’m also very much afraid of knowing.
Quite so. In real life, knowledge not only brings power, it also brings with it information we would have rather not ever known. I know there are many things and events I would like to forget. Even though some did not involve me or may have occured thousands of years ago. All to often ignorance really IS bliss.
Knowledge brings power, with power comes responsibility, whether or not you like it or accept it. It’s why generals sometimes pay the ultimate price for losing.
Oh, see in re Yamashita, for spelling out of this doctrine. I studied this case, and I’m still not sure I agree with the verdict, though I understand why they ruled the way they did. It boils down to if you have the power you are responsible, even if you were thousands of miles away from the actions that occurred.
Responsibility is only meaningful if one is held responsible. Holding someone responsible is a matter of judgement if he/she is not directly involved in whatever the situation was. Judgement, in turn, is a matter of interpretation, current morays and who is in power at the time. Therefore responsibility is a fluid thing, meaningful only on the context of the time.
Simply having knowledge of something bad does not always mean one has the power to really do anything about it. And, if you can’t do anything about it, are you really responsible?
Well, that was poorly done. I realized after posting that I did not make it clear that the second paragraph was not directly supported by the first. It was a separate thought. The first had to do with changing the rules after the game was played, as in the case cited. That is to say, holding those involved to a different standard than they, and their society/government, had when they commanded others.
Well, the storyline has made it clear for years that the Chimera’s destructiveness was driven by the pain, rage, fear, despair, and other negative psychic states of the girls who were put to a horrible death to create it.
It doesn’t feel to me as if we’ve ever known much about how this was possible. There’s always been a big helping of “Oh, it’s a spell, it’s ancient-tech / magic, we can only assume that it’s true because Paul was written that it is so.” Details were lacking within the story-line.
And, I guess, to me it has felt a bit out of proportion… could the pain of two or three individuals truly provide the incredible power needed to destroy a civilization and half-level the planet?
It’d make more sense if the power itself was coming from elsewhere, and being embodied into the GGs and the Chimera, with their pain being used mostly as a means of focusing or controlling it. Could it be that there was the equivalent of a Vimana cell incorporated into the Chimera?
Maybe we’re about to find out? If there was other-dimensional (demonic?) involvement in the process which created and fueled the Chimera… perhaps we’re about to see what it was.
Eagerly awaiting That Which Is To Come (and knowing that it’ll probably shred at a few heart-strings along the way)…
It was/is coming from somewhere else. The GGGs obtain their power from the potential energy of the galatic rotation. They simply channel it. How this is done we don’t know, it just “is.” The artifact was capable of governing that power so as to reduce it as desired. In forming the chimera, they were able to channel that power to an even greater extent. It’s surprising they didn’t completely obliterate the solar syatem. I suppose they might have had Jin not been a restraining counter force. The suffering is what caused them to channel it into a destructive wave of energy. But even that was only a small fraction of their ultimate capability.
Note that May is a (seemingly) indestructible golem, so that seems to be mainly Glyph-programming the atomic structure.
Cracking the universe is another matter. I don’t think a vial of plutonium or some other little thing like a vimana cell would be enough. Reality-bleeding universe busting implies interference from another reality and universe, cf the demons.
With Jin added in the mix, that brings in the power of the CM. Her addition seems to have been an afterthought, but we’ll see.
In any case, it’s starting to look like Brandi is the one who Brings The Fun.
PS – Now that the CM is gone, is the Chimera weakened? Doesn’t seem like it. Must have been on “internal” power.
And I think Bud knows this story we’re about to hear. The last we saw Bud, she was genuinely terrified of Brandi. Not unlike she was back at this moment.
(Monica’s expression back then is priceless. Silly Bud. Brandi would never hurt a fly.)
I don’t recall anything saying that the negative psychic states were supposed to control or power the Chimera. They are what prevented any control over it, as I understand it. The torturing was to keep the girls from controlling the chimera, so the priests could control it. (They didn’t torture Maya, so she was able to retain control of herself.) But Jin messed up the ability of the priests to control the chimera; as a result nothing could control it. Boom!
I think perhaps we go too carried away with the idea that Bud was selected for her anger and Bud for her pain.
Maybe we will learn something, but keep in mind that the GGGs are incredibly powerful as they are. No “negative psychic states” are required.
In that cartoon Monica says Jin could have gotten out of the pit at any time. With her legs disabled, I’m not sure how unless she could poit back then even. Doesn’t appear she poited in, however. And if she could, seems like she would have poited the girls out before then.
Monica makes that statement upon realizing that Jin can poit, and therefore could have saved herself. This spurs M to turn over a few more cards (“the priests would just find other girls”), and endanger the world in the cause of justice and free will.
But cheer up: It all could still go horrifically wrong!
Okay, so why not poit the priests away then? Somewhere from which they could not return. Not to mention, if they did get more girls, she could just poit them away too. They would eventually give up. There are a host of alternatives better than killing yourself. Makes little sense to me. I don’t think she could poit at that time. That would make the most sense story-wise.
And Tina emphasizing that she is a complex of psychological states. Demons being of of vastly greater age than the universe itself should be more than enough explanation of a power source.
Stuck a deal with?! 0_0
Hmmm. I didn’t see that coming.
Maybe Brandi has more to feel guilty about, now, than we had realized?
Just had a scary thought. Not sure how she’d pull it it off , but Brandi might have ‘arranged’ for Jin to free the Chimera from the priests’ control. Her guilt may be that she made sure the civilization that did this to her died.
Yeah…that’s the part that gave me chills.
And now we find out what dark secrets Brandi has in her past.
The real question is; How was she in a position to strike a deal with anyone/anything? From this point on, she was a prisoner who was savaged relentlesly. No apparent power at all. There has to be more to her background than simply a worker in a nursery, or something more occured in that pit than we know.
It’s certainly not her power, but her position in others’ agendas. She’s a human earmarked for delivery to the Chimera Factory.
That might have some value to certain incorporeal parties.
Good point.
You’re saying that the Cart of Death in which we saw Bud and Brandi being taken towards the temple was actually a Trojan Hearse?
:: holds out Pun Jar demandingly ::
I think Paul is saying that, yes.
I thought I had had the ancient intrigues worked out in my head, even the ones Paul had remained silent about. But I had overlooked the possibility of Brandi acting on her own. Her narration to the fly appeared to be resgination to her fate, with a possible struggle against one last personal horror before the end. I did not connect that that horror would held tactics that she could have actively enjoined going in.
So bravo, author. In any other supernatural story a character talking to a fly would have made it painfully obvious.
*plink* pays for Dave ’cause of genius……
Oh my . . . I’m glad this wasn’t Friday’s comic!!
Ow.
Paul does have a way with words and images, doesn’t he?
Yeah, I’d say. Heck of a storyteller, he.
He does indeed. I’m still trying to pick my jaw and heart off the floor.
Paul’s one hellastory-teller; as others have noted, we get sucked in, immersed by Paul’s skills and care for the characters.
Very few authors/artists ever do that.
Kudos, Paul. Kudos.
We get sucked in… and then suckered
I love Monica’s face in the second panel. It conveys simultaneous feelings of horror, disgust, and how do I respond to this in a much clearer way than words ever could.
It looks to me like she’s shocked, sad, and just… horrified by what happened to a close friend.
… who may never have talked about this before with anyone… not even Bud?
Hell of a trauma to carry around for 18,000 years
Excellently evocative analogy in frame one, too…
“Strongly” might be a better word than “excellently”…
Effective.
Wow, to start a week with something that would have made a great cliffhanger. Now I am wondering if this is why we never see her (or Bud’s for that matter) demons hanging around.
Somewhere along the line Paul mentioned that their demons were stripped away in the process of them becoming golems. The fact that Jin retained her demons was unusual and a result of her training.
I think the quote your looking for is what the chimera did to the little girl that Bud see’s. I think the quote from Bud is: Unlike Tina, those people had there body’s, energy and demons were ripped from from existance so savagely that it left the fabric of reality bleeding.
No, I was thinking of something Paul mentioned in the comments somewhere. I’m pretty sure it was during the segment where everyone was in the calendar machine chamber, but that is rather long, so the exact comment would be tricky to track down.
… those pigs…
But, uh-oh… Brandi’s last line sounds ominous.
Way more than ominous.
Brandi is ‘nice’ and sometimes, the nice ones have the meanest streak. Whoever she made a deal with, I’m guessing those Lanthian bastards got the worse part of that deal.
WAY more than ominous.
I suspect, though, that it’s the “why I lost most of my memories” explanation.
Dunt Dunt DUNNNN.
http://www.dramabutton.com/
Yep – dat it!
Oooohhh.. Now this is getting interesting….
ps: enter “evil Brandi” the vengeful mind behind ALL
So, I was wrong and right. She is a master-schemer, but used it for evil revenge.. oooh how dramatically classic all of this..
I wouldn’t call it evil to rid the world of those bastards — that was a cleansing that *really* needed to be done. That Brandi was likely the one to set that cleansing in motion is most interesting — though we do know she’s got the brains for it.
True. And if all she destroyed was the priests and their little empire, then fine. But it went way beyond that into the realm of evil.
OTOH, it could be the society at large was so corrupt and murderous, elimination was the only solution. Much like the Aztecs. Personally, I consider it a good thing they fell. Much evil came from there. I wonder if Lanthis was modeled after that civilization in many ways. Especially the brutality and the rightly hostile enemies they had. Thus the pressing need for a super-weapon. The brutality many have been systemic in the culture. Not just something limited to the priests per se.
“brutality many have been systemic” = “brutality may have been systemic “
Welp, we know Brandi’s had more dealings with the Demon world pre-Calendar Machine destruction than anyone else sans maybe Monica (post, obviously, puts May and Bud over her).
And we know that next to no evidence of that civilization exists now, even compared to the other various cultures the Chimera eliminated during its rampage.
Coincidence?
To paraphrase Freud, sometimes the world destroying chimera is just a world destroying chimera…
Seems like that’s the response I get here EVERY time I look for subtext. Fudging blue curtains. (>^_^)>
Of course, symbols may be both–that’s the essence of a symbol, that it points two, or many more, ways.
So don’t give up on subtexts.
Remember: we’re all confused too.
I *gasped* as hard as Monica did when I read that….Damn… If I ever get around to that trans dimensional portal…Imma find one that those priests exist in and rock their shit….just damn.
As for Brandi, I will be waiting with bated breath for wednesday.
Oh my.
Attacking an infant, whether or not intentional, is something you never forget.
Oh cool.. Satan!
I wonder SHE was gonna make an appearance in the Wapsiverse.
*grabs popcorn*
*starts listening to Black Sabbath*
Neh.. I do not think that my aunt Janeese will make an appearance in Wapsisquare
( true name witheld for privacy reasons)
I think all of us have known Satan in one of his many incarnations.
Hardly any reason to think that a Bronze Age Hebraic hatchet man has any place in ancient Lanthis.
The demons in Wapsi are older than the universe itself.
Though we have yet to see a male one. You may be on the right track there…
C’mon now. When the Chimera wiped out the Lanthian empire, he had to do temp work with all the ‘primitive’religions until one that was going to stick came along…
If he was so clever, he’d just have opened a pizza parlor in Pharaonic Egypt.
You can’t believe everything you read in Milton and Sinfest.
But Satan did open a pizza parlor… in Pompeii!
Pompeii is home home os the worlds oldest pizza parlor. I was there, and they still had ancient pizzas in the oven!
Isn’t it more that Satan closed that pizza place in Pompeii–permanently?
I suspect the “dealee” will turn out to be much more evil and nefarious than Satan.
I guess this goes to show that Monica is actually listening and does actually care.
She does care a lot
She just needs a whack upside the head once in a while – and that is what Brandi gave her on friday
If that was a whack, this is piling on.
I should have said, “this is a beating.”
It seems ,maybe, all the rage making the chimera uncontrollable wasn’t all on Bud’s shoulders. A good part of it was from Brandi, too. That’s why Jin couldn’t control it; it was two against one.
Okay, now who was Brandi making deals with? Satan, Rogue demon queen, The Politicians, or someone else? It’s gonna be a good week!
Agreed..
Rupert Murdoch
Makes sense. Just proves what we all suspected, I think. An object lesson for the ages… join the Dark Side by hacking the Lanthian’s voicemail, and you’re in the slippery slope headed down towards turning their whole subcontinent into slag.
No, no someone much closer to Satan. Perhaps the latest incarnation even … George Soros.
The Politicians didn’t exist at that point in time — only many thousands of years later when May started up the Calendar Machine in the New World.
The calendar machine was made long before the golem thing happened. May only had herself made into a golem so that she could destroy the calendar machine.
You are right that the calendar machine was created first, but Maya didn’t try to destroy it until about 11,000 years after the golems were created. She had had the priests turn her into a golem so she could get it back from the priests, not to destroy it.
So wait … she had the CM built to fix Jin’s problem, then did nothing for 11,000 years after starting it? Does this mean it was working and helping Jin all that time? What were Jin and Maya doing all that time? Manipulating the political scene?
More holes here. Why didn’t May kill all those with knowledge of the golem making process before leaving with the CM? She obviously had no qualms whatsoever about killing people before.
hmm
if she truely thought she made a deal with an lanthian deity it would explain why she thought Jin was an angel.
i seem to recall the older gods being not as ‘nice’ as the christian one?
(and yes. i know. you don’t need to say it….)
I seem to recall that they would accept a person to their servitude and make them their slave not condemn them to hell. That they could actually have quite nasty things happen to their enemies.
Sort of … Scorpian King deal?
Poor girl does have a horrific set of coincidences to back up her faith really…
Makes a deal
Angel comes to help
Angel frees them to allow BRANDI to enact the anger she desires.
Seriously if I had made the wish before all that happened I would believe it also!
I could be only that she prayed to an evil deity that evil would happen to the priests and she thought her prayers were being answered when Jin attacked the priests, then she was disappointed when Jin failed.
Brandi’s only problem might be that she is upset that she would have prayed for evil. Or she might think that she damned her soul. Or something else. We’ll just have to see where this goes.
It might be that she made a deal with the spirit of the kid she killed, I suppose.
So far the only gods we know of were really people like Maya and Tepoz who wouldn’t have been gods to her. That doesn’t mean she didn’t think other gods existed.
Hey, eschmenk, about the god thing. Nudge is a demi-god. They have to come from somewhere… you know when a god falls for a mortal…
Yes, and there is whoever set up the library. I didn’t meant that god-like beings didn’t exist.
Paula: i seem to recall the older gods being not as ‘nice’ as the christian one?
“Nice is a weapon.”
–Tony Millionaire, Maakies
oh hush
i did say I KNOW
nice was a wod i descirbed cuz most people know GOD (christian god) as good and SATAN as bad.
it was fudged in the older religions
i seem to recall the older gods being not as ‘nice’ as the christian one?
Which one? That ol’ Hebrew war god in Samuel and Job is not what I’d call nice. Some of the later revs are more palatable, but still . . . .
I think the point is who is saying they weren’t as nice.
They don’t talk much about the first wife any more. Though that ‘council of gods’ business in Genesis makes for some awkward silences at Thanksgiving.
Okay, what if they came for Brandi for other reasons?
And, she made a deal to get in on the chimera as part of her machinations of revenge?
Or her feelings of being a monster?
(Today’s strip gave me the creeping whim-whams…)
A wise teacher giving an introductory counseling course advised that the most important thing was to draw out the person’s story. Then he added, “of course, sometimes you don’t want to know the story.”
This seems like one of those times. We want to know, but I’m also very much afraid of knowing.
Quite so. In real life, knowledge not only brings power, it also brings with it information we would have rather not ever known. I know there are many things and events I would like to forget. Even though some did not involve me or may have occured thousands of years ago. All to often ignorance really IS bliss.
Knowledge brings power, with power comes responsibility, whether or not you like it or accept it. It’s why generals sometimes pay the ultimate price for losing.
Oh, see in re Yamashita, for spelling out of this doctrine. I studied this case, and I’m still not sure I agree with the verdict, though I understand why they ruled the way they did. It boils down to if you have the power you are responsible, even if you were thousands of miles away from the actions that occurred.
Responsibility is only meaningful if one is held responsible. Holding someone responsible is a matter of judgement if he/she is not directly involved in whatever the situation was. Judgement, in turn, is a matter of interpretation, current morays and who is in power at the time. Therefore responsibility is a fluid thing, meaningful only on the context of the time.
Simply having knowledge of something bad does not always mean one has the power to really do anything about it. And, if you can’t do anything about it, are you really responsible?
Well, that was poorly done. I realized after posting that I did not make it clear that the second paragraph was not directly supported by the first. It was a separate thought. The first had to do with changing the rules after the game was played, as in the case cited. That is to say, holding those involved to a different standard than they, and their society/government, had when they commanded others.
[ Relevant to all character and audience ]
Mooommmyyyyyy….!!!!
Well, the storyline has made it clear for years that the Chimera’s destructiveness was driven by the pain, rage, fear, despair, and other negative psychic states of the girls who were put to a horrible death to create it.
It doesn’t feel to me as if we’ve ever known much about how this was possible. There’s always been a big helping of “Oh, it’s a spell, it’s ancient-tech / magic, we can only assume that it’s true because Paul was written that it is so.” Details were lacking within the story-line.
And, I guess, to me it has felt a bit out of proportion… could the pain of two or three individuals truly provide the incredible power needed to destroy a civilization and half-level the planet?
It’d make more sense if the power itself was coming from elsewhere, and being embodied into the GGs and the Chimera, with their pain being used mostly as a means of focusing or controlling it. Could it be that there was the equivalent of a Vimana cell incorporated into the Chimera?
Maybe we’re about to find out? If there was other-dimensional (demonic?) involvement in the process which created and fueled the Chimera… perhaps we’re about to see what it was.
Eagerly awaiting That Which Is To Come (and knowing that it’ll probably shred at a few heart-strings along the way)…
It was/is coming from somewhere else. The GGGs obtain their power from the potential energy of the galatic rotation. They simply channel it. How this is done we don’t know, it just “is.” The artifact was capable of governing that power so as to reduce it as desired. In forming the chimera, they were able to channel that power to an even greater extent. It’s surprising they didn’t completely obliterate the solar syatem. I suppose they might have had Jin not been a restraining counter force. The suffering is what caused them to channel it into a destructive wave of energy. But even that was only a small fraction of their ultimate capability.
Daren would agree with you.
Note that May is a (seemingly) indestructible golem, so that seems to be mainly Glyph-programming the atomic structure.
Cracking the universe is another matter. I don’t think a vial of plutonium or some other little thing like a vimana cell would be enough. Reality-bleeding universe busting implies interference from another reality and universe, cf the demons.
With Jin added in the mix, that brings in the power of the CM. Her addition seems to have been an afterthought, but we’ll see.
In any case, it’s starting to look like Brandi is the one who Brings The Fun.
PS – Now that the CM is gone, is the Chimera weakened? Doesn’t seem like it. Must have been on “internal” power.
And I think Bud knows this story we’re about to hear. The last we saw Bud, she was genuinely terrified of Brandi. Not unlike she was back at this moment.
(Monica’s expression back then is priceless. Silly Bud. Brandi would never hurt a fly.)
I don’t recall anything saying that the negative psychic states were supposed to control or power the Chimera. They are what prevented any control over it, as I understand it. The torturing was to keep the girls from controlling the chimera, so the priests could control it. (They didn’t torture Maya, so she was able to retain control of herself.) But Jin messed up the ability of the priests to control the chimera; as a result nothing could control it. Boom!
I think perhaps we go too carried away with the idea that Bud was selected for her anger and Bud for her pain.
Maybe we will learn something, but keep in mind that the GGGs are incredibly powerful as they are. No “negative psychic states” are required.
In that cartoon Monica says Jin could have gotten out of the pit at any time. With her legs disabled, I’m not sure how unless she could poit back then even. Doesn’t appear she poited in, however. And if she could, seems like she would have poited the girls out before then.
Monica makes that statement upon realizing that Jin can poit, and therefore could have saved herself. This spurs M to turn over a few more cards (“the priests would just find other girls”), and endanger the world in the cause of justice and free will.
But cheer up: It all could still go horrifically wrong!
Okay, so why not poit the priests away then? Somewhere from which they could not return. Not to mention, if they did get more girls, she could just poit them away too. They would eventually give up. There are a host of alternatives better than killing yourself. Makes little sense to me. I don’t think she could poit at that time. That would make the most sense story-wise.
See my links above.
“Just like Monica, I reminded Shelly that her demons are always with her. She just has to choose when and when not to listen to them.”
Alhough Creepy appeared after Brandi left Shelly, Brandi never mentions demons during their conversation, only emotions.
“Only raw emotion was in was in your ashes! Free will was not a part of that mixture.”
And Tina emphasizing that she is a complex of psychological states. Demons being of of vastly greater age than the universe itself should be more than enough explanation of a power source.