Definitely in the top ten best episodes of any show I’ve ever seen, and this is the first time I’ve ever felt compelled to be on the side doing the punching.
If Nudge can poit, now would be a good time. If not, then it would be a good time to revert back to 9 feet.
I have to wonder though, how it is Nudge has been alive so long and have so many enemies, yet not learned to fight? OTOH, she has learned how to take a punch really, really well. Conscience girl may need to step in now.
It may take someone on her level to actually hurt her and have it ‘stick’. Shelley’s not a demigod, but I sense an adrenaline-powered punch winding up. I hope she remembers the “I was told to” line before Nudge has to have her jaw wired shut……
Which raises the other question…has she been in hiding so long that she has never had the need to take on a human form? She did refer to humans as “animals ” when she first walked in…
Along with the other words spoken here – you have to remember she’s called a Trickster. No doubt she’s used to using brains rather than brawn, fast-talking her way through and around things.
Poit or Thip?? I’m with Katze–she’s a Trickster, not a Warrior. Tricksters are at their strongest when they are in the shadows and can control events, not when they are in the thick of the battle.
Well if i get my animism right it was needed to let have shelly her vision of rabbit. See its pretty hard to get vision without the usage of drugs – thus you either are in really deep mediation or you get delirious in some kind of danger/trigger situation etc. .
The rational mind has to be blended out for a time so that your perception can shift to some kind of spiritual view where one can met his Anima.
Since Jin needed Shelly in the state where she had met rabbit whithout wasting to much time she used Nudge to power her out to the point where her rational mind blacked out because of the lack of food, sleep aso.
Yes it was prolly not Jin…but what intrigues me is that tricksters are agents of chaos, seemingly answerable to no one but whim. So whoever “ordered” her to lead Shelley away must be very powerful indeed…
If what Shelly says in panel four is true…that means someone, other than Monica’s doubt, was working AGAINST our capable crew to keep the calendar machine from being fixed/destroyed…
(I don’t think that Monica’s doubt could have sent Nudge out to get rid of Shelly)
I’m still holding on to my last cycle’s Brandi idea. She asked Nudge to lure her farther to put her so close to death that she’d be a gateway like Monica. Jin didn’t intend for her to go that far.
One thing I’m curious about is that Jin said Shelly actually saw her anima before Jin ever showed up.
Or they were making SURE that there would be a glyph reader out of one or the other girls. What if there were cycles where Shelly went to watch cartoons instead of following the coyote? Or if Tina 1.0 had a driver instead of being behind the wheel? Something as simple as Tina 1.0 NOT missing a redlight could have put her well in front of Monica’s bus and left our team without Tina 2.0′s guidance. Folks have been flipping out about Jin’s controlling the situation, well seems to me there’s another hand making her look, well, clumsy.
Monica’s a Glyph reader because Jin’s mother taught her to read Glyphs. And Jin had no idea Brandi set it up so Tina would be in that accident. She just thought Tina was a casualty. I think it’s pretty clear Jin was never very good at orchestrating a solution to the Calendar Machine. Jin failed time after time.
Well, Jin first had to figure out how to fix the CM, then assemble all the pieces, then put the right cast in place. That’s an AWFUL lot of manipulation and orchestration over a span of centuries that she did successfully. What she wasn’t good at was preparing for surprises, like her own Doubt planning to take over at a vulnerable point, or coming up with a lateral solution. Like instead of fixing the CM, chuck it into the Demon Realm. Fortunately Brandi was on top of both those things…
Imagine living through Myst instead of playing it. That would give you a small percentage of how frustrating Jin’s life must have been. It would take 1450 years, aprroximately, to reset bad solutions. And, no friggin’ clues on what was done wrong that time…
Hmm
Nudge and Phix both were/have been in the library
besides Jin (and demons?) were the only ones unaffected by the time loop.
Jin said she got there too late so maybe nudge was just doing what she was told to do but M crash messed it up a little.
Possibly why Nudge ended with Tina? Maybe Jin told her to look after the girl M had inadvertantly killed?
Well, Pablo could really throw us all a knuckle-curve by having Jin show up, see a disheveled Nudge, and say the magic word that would have us all tearing our hair out until Monday:
Poor Nudge..She must be a sucker for punishment though. Why did she change into a human? She must have known there would be some grudges…Orrrr..she’s about to divulge the real mastermind behind it all….
I guess we’ll find out yet another layer of connections, complificationing the story even more… heheheh…
She assumed everyone in the group had settled their opinions of her since the incident with Monica and Phix. However, she knew on entering the coffee shop that Tina was still peeved. She didn’t realize that Shelly would figure that out so quickly after meeting her. that’s what happens when you assume… you make an ASS out of U and ME. XD
“Not by that wall!” I LOLed. I kind of picture that comment as coming from some demonic Martha Stewart. “Oh gawd, not by that wall, it’ll ruin the whole motif we have going! Do it in the corner where the blood can spatter for Feng Shui!”
I’m kind of waiting for someone else to pop in and join in, though. Someone has to stop it, after all.
Interesting that Shelly would use the term Anima. From Wikipedia “in Carl Jung’s school of analytical psychology – In the unconscious of the male, it finds expression as a feminine inner personality: anima”. Argh, my unconscious self is unable to communicate through my too tired conscious self. sorry.
Old Wolf: And this is why I don’t contribute to a Wiki. I don’t want it on record just how many assumptions I have to discard every time the story line makes a sharp turn!
Boy! So now we have another manipulator in the background? Well, the political figures who were present when the calendar machine was turned on are still around, from what Jin said, and perhaps some of them are a bit more clued in than Jin suspected.
Perhaps the failure to break the closed time loop Jin was forced to live through so many times wasn’t just due to her inability to get it right. Perhaps there was someone or something actively working against her.
Someone that Nudge answered to, or was compelled to obey? Just how much of the trick she played on Phix was her idea? Have to think about this one for a while.
I say it’s Dietzel! The pizza girl is his henchwoman. What do we really know about this so-called dog? And then there are the background carvings in the last panel here: http://wapsisquare.com/comic/look-at-the-time/
So–what we need is a copy of Brandy’s book, or another such tome, to give us some idea of how the whole 55-times-repeated cycle plays out. Then we would have some idea of the shape of history and the relationships for our Wiki.
I’m not afraid of Nudge Dying considering she’s a demi-god but I’m pretty sure if the punches continues she’ll feel the pain of dying and live to talk about it. ^_^
Okay, call me crazy, but I think this is why Nudge took human form. She’s able to take a beating due to being magical, and she knows everyone has some aggression to take out on her. Maybe this is her form of penance?
Someone needs to go talk to Brandi eventually here… some people in the comments have brought up the point that BRANDI was behind at least 80% of the events of this machine shut down trail…. Jin did a bit of it, but Brandi was the brains of the operation behind the scenes.
It comes down to ‘break the eggs to make the omelet’… the girls are gonna get pissed about the Nudging that created them as they are… but without Nudge doing what she did… Monica would never be a Glyph Reader, Tina would never be up and about to be giving the integral last bit of advice to Shelly, who would not exist to have stabbed Monica with the key to shut the door.
Everyone hates Nudge right now… but they’d be going on yet another trip back to the beginning in two years without her…
“Kill her over there” — laughed long at that one. And I LOVE Shelly’s face in panel 3 — what an expression!
Ah, so Tina did get the place redecorated…
I’m with you. And it can’t be all bad as long as they are worried about the decor.
Yep, Shelly’s turn now.
Yeah Shelly, nobody likes an inconsiderate murderer! :p
…And don’t come back till it’s over, over there!
Hahahaha!
Love the pacing, BTW.
And Ol’ Nudge must have more hitpoints than Goku. Did’ja notice her black eye is almost gone in just a few seconds after Tina quit pounding her?
She’s a magical being.
Hey, it works for others: http://chugworth.com/archive/?strip_id=152
But not all others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9j%C3%A0_Q
yikes, do they need all those accents???
yes, ‘Deja Q’ is a *very* apt episode of STNG!!!
Definitely in the top ten best episodes of any show I’ve ever seen, and this is the first time I’ve ever felt compelled to be on the side doing the punching.
I’m glad my idea of why she healed so fast was the right one…
well, it does still hurt, a person doesn’t have to die of electrocution to learn that sticking their tongues on sources of electricity is a bad idea.
Her power… ITS OVER 9000!
If Nudge can poit, now would be a good time. If not, then it would be a good time to revert back to 9 feet.
I have to wonder though, how it is Nudge has been alive so long and have so many enemies, yet not learned to fight? OTOH, she has learned how to take a punch really, really well. Conscience girl may need to step in now.
It may take someone on her level to actually hurt her and have it ‘stick’. Shelley’s not a demigod, but I sense an adrenaline-powered punch winding up. I hope she remembers the “I was told to” line before Nudge has to have her jaw wired shut……
HEhehe. “Kill her over there.” Wow.
Perhaps being nine feet tall, with Large Impressive Horns and hooves has something to do with her survival all these years.
This is, after all, the first time ever (apparently) she’s taken actual corporeal human form.
Which raises the other question…has she been in hiding so long that she has never had the need to take on a human form? She did refer to humans as “animals ” when she first walked in…
Along with the other words spoken here – you have to remember she’s called a Trickster. No doubt she’s used to using brains rather than brawn, fast-talking her way through and around things.
Poit or Thip?? I’m with Katze–she’s a Trickster, not a Warrior. Tricksters are at their strongest when they are in the shadows and can control events, not when they are in the thick of the battle.
Oh, jeez!! HAHA!!
Best line I think I’ve ever heard from Tina. XD
I think Nudge might be more scared that Shelly’s holding her off of the ground with just her left hand…
Hmm… I suspect Jin told Nudge to lead Tina astray… Just a hunch.
Why would she do that? Jin needed Shelly. This makes it seem like someone else may have been controlling Nudge.
Well if i get my animism right it was needed to let have shelly her vision of rabbit. See its pretty hard to get vision without the usage of drugs – thus you either are in really deep mediation or you get delirious in some kind of danger/trigger situation etc. .
The rational mind has to be blended out for a time so that your perception can shift to some kind of spiritual view where one can met his Anima.
Since Jin needed Shelly in the state where she had met rabbit whithout wasting to much time she used Nudge to power her out to the point where her rational mind blacked out because of the lack of food, sleep aso.
If it was one of the GGs, it would have been Brandi.
Yes it was prolly not Jin…but what intrigues me is that tricksters are agents of chaos, seemingly answerable to no one but whim. So whoever “ordered” her to lead Shelley away must be very powerful indeed…
Gee… who could conjure up the symbol of a rabbit? Maybe… the MOTHER of the 500 Rabbits?
Shark teeth in Panel #4 FTW!
I don´t think that are shark teeth its the gumline that gets visible
I think those are her gums?
I… wait… what? Fer’s comment totally wasn’t there when I posted, but now suddenly… it was there long before mine? According to the time stamp?
What witchery is this?
I guess it’s Tina’s turn to hold a Nudge…
BRFFFFFFTTTTTT!!!!!!
Nope. Shelly’s.
Wow! Looks like Nudge dug herself a grave.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Round Two.
If what Shelly says in panel four is true…that means someone, other than Monica’s doubt, was working AGAINST our capable crew to keep the calendar machine from being fixed/destroyed…
(I don’t think that Monica’s doubt could have sent Nudge out to get rid of Shelly)
I’m still holding on to my last cycle’s Brandi idea. She asked Nudge to lure her farther to put her so close to death that she’d be a gateway like Monica. Jin didn’t intend for her to go that far.
One thing I’m curious about is that Jin said Shelly actually saw her anima before Jin ever showed up.
Our pal, Nudge?
Considering the Aztec motif that Tina has going on in parts of her coffee shop, some blood splatters would not be out of place.
Or they were making SURE that there would be a glyph reader out of one or the other girls. What if there were cycles where Shelly went to watch cartoons instead of following the coyote? Or if Tina 1.0 had a driver instead of being behind the wheel? Something as simple as Tina 1.0 NOT missing a redlight could have put her well in front of Monica’s bus and left our team without Tina 2.0′s guidance. Folks have been flipping out about Jin’s controlling the situation, well seems to me there’s another hand making her look, well, clumsy.
I’m sure they were Roadrunner cartoons…
Monica’s a Glyph reader because Jin’s mother taught her to read Glyphs. And Jin had no idea Brandi set it up so Tina would be in that accident. She just thought Tina was a casualty. I think it’s pretty clear Jin was never very good at orchestrating a solution to the Calendar Machine. Jin failed time after time.
Well, Jin first had to figure out how to fix the CM, then assemble all the pieces, then put the right cast in place. That’s an AWFUL lot of manipulation and orchestration over a span of centuries that she did successfully. What she wasn’t good at was preparing for surprises, like her own Doubt planning to take over at a vulnerable point, or coming up with a lateral solution. Like instead of fixing the CM, chuck it into the Demon Realm. Fortunately Brandi was on top of both those things…
Imagine living through Myst instead of playing it. That would give you a small percentage of how frustrating Jin’s life must have been. It would take 1450 years, aprroximately, to reset bad solutions. And, no friggin’ clues on what was done wrong that time…
Brandi managed to do it without Jin’s advantages though.
Bud has claimed that Brandi is the smartest of the lot. And, she had access to her own Cliff-Notes version of what’s going on…
I wonder how the results of this excursion will affect Nudge’s desire to have ‘regular visits to Earth’?
This can’t go on! Cue Monica’s entrance…
Hmm
Nudge and Phix both were/have been in the library
besides Jin (and demons?) were the only ones unaffected by the time loop.
Jin said she got there too late so maybe nudge was just doing what she was told to do but M crash messed it up a little.
Possibly why Nudge ended with Tina? Maybe Jin told her to look after the girl M had inadvertantly killed?
Well, Pablo could really throw us all a knuckle-curve by having Jin show up, see a disheveled Nudge, and say the magic word that would have us all tearing our hair out until Monday:
“Sis?”
Poor Nudge..She must be a sucker for punishment though. Why did she change into a human? She must have known there would be some grudges…Orrrr..she’s about to divulge the real mastermind behind it all….
I guess we’ll find out yet another layer of connections, complificationing the story even more… heheheh…
She assumed everyone in the group had settled their opinions of her since the incident with Monica and Phix. However, she knew on entering the coffee shop that Tina was still peeved. She didn’t realize that Shelly would figure that out so quickly after meeting her. that’s what happens when you assume… you make an ASS out of U and ME. XD
This…..cannot end well for out lil trickster. :S
But yeah, Karma is really tossing it at nudge at the moment! D:
Oh yeah I forgot to ask, Do demons and deities have dental?? Im thinking Nudge may require some of that in the very near future.
“Not by that wall!” I LOLed. I kind of picture that comment as coming from some demonic Martha Stewart. “Oh gawd, not by that wall, it’ll ruin the whole motif we have going! Do it in the corner where the blood can spatter for Feng Shui!”
I’m kind of waiting for someone else to pop in and join in, though. Someone has to stop it, after all.
Kinda reminds me of the running gag over in QC about Faye throwing Pintsize into the same dent in the wall.
Interesting that Shelly would use the term Anima. From Wikipedia “in Carl Jung’s school of analytical psychology – In the unconscious of the male, it finds expression as a feminine inner personality: anima”. Argh, my unconscious self is unable to communicate through my too tired conscious self. sorry.
Old Wolf: And this is why I don’t contribute to a Wiki. I don’t want it on record just how many assumptions I have to discard every time the story line makes a sharp turn!
Boy! So now we have another manipulator in the background? Well, the political figures who were present when the calendar machine was turned on are still around, from what Jin said, and perhaps some of them are a bit more clued in than Jin suspected.
Perhaps the failure to break the closed time loop Jin was forced to live through so many times wasn’t just due to her inability to get it right. Perhaps there was someone or something actively working against her.
Someone that Nudge answered to, or was compelled to obey? Just how much of the trick she played on Phix was her idea? Have to think about this one for a while.
Well you make a good point – Wikis aren’t that good for ongoing storylines with more twists than Lombard Street…
But for things that are canonically established they provide a good reference.
My little cast of characters listing is woefully out of date at the current time.
I say it’s Dietzel! The pizza girl is his henchwoman. What do we really know about this so-called dog? And then there are the background carvings in the last panel here:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/look-at-the-time/
I’m putting even money on Oscar…
So–what we need is a copy of Brandy’s book, or another such tome, to give us some idea of how the whole 55-times-repeated cycle plays out. Then we would have some idea of the shape of history and the relationships for our Wiki.
I’m feeling a bit badly for Nudge right at the moment, even though she has been quite naughty…
yeah…all she wanted was to get warm and caffeinated… I’m guessing M might walk in at any moment to put an end to this…
I think getting warm is probably the last thing on her mind at this point…
Creepy needs to ger het bell out again…
Looks like it is Bud to the rescue, hopefully.
Nudge is not having a good day…
Shelly’s got super strength AND I suspect knows how to fight. If that punch lands it’s going to really hurt…
http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/20p72
…mostly for the last panel. I’m thinking Tina/Shelly powered Nudgerocket with limited re-entry capability.
Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I’m not afraid of Nudge Dying considering she’s a demi-god but I’m pretty sure if the punches continues she’ll feel the pain of dying and live to talk about it. ^_^
Oh, shiznit! This would be a terrific time to consider abject groveling and tearful pleading.
Not that it would help much, but still…
So apparently, the cold is the least of her problems. I bet she currently misses the awkward tension of the library.
Poor Nudge – she is finally finding out that actions have consequences – even if, as she said, she was under orders.
Forget Chris, everybody hates NUDGE!
Okay, call me crazy, but I think this is why Nudge took human form. She’s able to take a beating due to being magical, and she knows everyone has some aggression to take out on her. Maybe this is her form of penance?
Penance Maybe? Because she sure isn’t doing this for fun.
Pennance, or a way to reveal knowlage she cannot reveal? ‘I didn’t TELL them, they beat it out of me…’
Will Shelly land the blow, or will what Nudge said sink past the several layers of hard candy and hit comprehension?
The doubletake of realization would be another good visual moment.
Someone needs to go talk to Brandi eventually here… some people in the comments have brought up the point that BRANDI was behind at least 80% of the events of this machine shut down trail…. Jin did a bit of it, but Brandi was the brains of the operation behind the scenes.
It comes down to ‘break the eggs to make the omelet’… the girls are gonna get pissed about the Nudging that created them as they are… but without Nudge doing what she did… Monica would never be a Glyph Reader, Tina would never be up and about to be giving the integral last bit of advice to Shelly, who would not exist to have stabbed Monica with the key to shut the door.
Everyone hates Nudge right now… but they’d be going on yet another trip back to the beginning in two years without her…
With friends like her, who needs an anima?
*flees*
Yeeech. You had BETTER run!
“This town needs an anima” – The Joker
Somehow, I’d always mistaken that for enima. :O
Well, Poodles! It’s 40 minutes past one.. where’s the Friday Cliffhanger Update???
That IS the Friday cliffhanger!
(I’m already pulling my hair out…)
five till two (EST)… arrrgh.
I know!! I’m about to lose it!! DX
Now 65 minutes late….Wonder if Paul’s okay? Maybe it’s just lines down due to the hella weather.
Crap! Nah, just loaded all the comics except for Friday’s. I forgot to format it too. Should be up now.
Ruh-roh. 70 mins past. I hope Mr. Taylor’s alright.