There’s an SF book – Manxome Foe, maybe? – definitely one of that series by John Ringo and Travis Taylor, anyway – about the adventures of a definitely mixed space crew; military, civilian and alien.
One of the civilians is a brilliant but somewhat crazed female genius. One of the people who traveled with her in the ship in a previous story explains that it is necessary to keep her from becoming bored.
If she’s bored. she looks for Things To Get Into.
Someone asks how much trouble one small woman can cause.
Her friend says “imagine a ferret on crack.”
That is the image that comes to mind when i think of Bud and Shelly sitting around, bored and trying to think of Something To Get Into…
With my stepdaughter, her husband and our two granddaughters living with us now, Kate and i have remembered that passage with some regularity, especially when Natalie, the two-year-old is Up To Stuff.
We all tend to get nervous when we realise that (A) we don’t know where Natalie is, and, (B) we haven’t heard anything from her in a while…
Fairportfan: that was definitely Ringo and I’m not sure if it was Manxome Foe but it definitly was from the Into The Looking Glass series. First Weber, then Bujold, now Ringo. This is the first forum I’ve ever seen that mentions three of my all time favorite authors. I like them mainly because they write their characters as actual people, not stereotypes. Like Paul here, no matter how strange or futuristic or even absurd the situation they find themselves in, I never actually think that they are anything but real people in rather odd situations. That’s suspension of disbelief made easy.
Kate’s offic is next door to the Hall County Youth Detention Center – i haven’t asked her if they heard anything about the disturbance at the YDC yesterday. Considering that the IT office is in the 911 center, i suspect they did…
It must be a lot more than just poiting stuff. It was very important that demons not be able to get the ability to those things. She probably has the ability to do all sorts of things if she could just figure out how to do them.
With the ability to *poit* anything anywhere anytime … what additional abilities does one need? Provided, of course, one has the perception and concentration needed to use the ability as needed. (Look! 1000 lances coming in from all sides at 200 kmph!)
Of course, I would end up dead, as I stopped to convert KPH to MPH … “Let’s see, 200 kph … do I multiply the kilometers by .62, or do I divide it by AAAUUUURRRGGGHHHH –!
Does this mean that Bud and Shelly came to the conclusion that Monica poited the bullets away or at least changed their paths? If so, why did Bud call it luck? Maybe Bud decided that it was more than luck after she talked to Brandi.
It’s also strange that Shelly worked so hard to loose the bet. I don’t think that Monica would have ever figured it out on her own. Actually, Monica is relying on what Bud told Shelly. If that was true, it must have meant that Monica used magic somehow. Then Shelly used reverse psychology or sarcasm to get Monica to consider Bud’s explanation. Now Monica is at least accepting the possibility, but she still didn’t seem convinced. Shelly immediately declared defeat, anyway. It’s as if Shelly wanted an excuse to buy Bud a case of beer. She must have been really bored!
Because Monica had to figure out what she did rather than just knowing what she did, is it really a useful ability at any other time than panicked crisis? What would Bud’s “protection” have done if the bullets had already torn into her skin-tight clothing before Monica somehow redirected them?
And I agree, the thought of what Bud and Shelly can get up to because they are “bored” is quite scary and amusing at the same time.
That is what I have been reacting too these last few days. The “explanation” given and what has been provided in the strip to not match up. At the time of her bullet trick-luck-poit-doorway effect M did not exhibit (and still has not) the level of poit control needed to accomplish it.
I do not believe that M was able to poit the bullets.
I do believe that M could have been in “doorway” mode.
I do not think bringing in other abilities not yet part of the Wapsi Universe should be used to buttress the unproven poit theory but rather use existing abilities that fit the “facts” better as they have been drawn.
Unless the artist/author directly states that she did poit the bullets then I will stick with the “doorway” theory. He did say that Bud “did not protect” M.
I would say that in terms of plot tie-in and double meaning the intangible aspects of the “doorway” mode are much more ghost-like and fit some of the back story of M. The poit aspect started out as just an offshoot of the golems for plot and pacing convenience.
I don’t take this as a complete explanation, just another piece of the puzzle from Shelly’s perspective. Until i hear more from Bud, I’m not going to be sure of anything in that regard…
…but if all Shelly is trying to do with all this is screw Monica up for another exotic adventure, I’m pretty sure she’ll be unfurling a “Mission Accomplished” banner soon!
I really have no idea what Bud would have done to protect Monica if Monica hadn’t managed to do it herself. She might have been trying to put Monica back together. I assume that Bud was caught off guard by Monica poiting into the middle of the gunmen and didn’t have time to do anything. It’s possible that she already knew the gunmen couldn’t actually shoot Monica, but it didn’t come across that way.
One unlikely possibility is that Monica happened to say something that put a protection spell on her. Early on in the story she occasionally accidentally cast spells by saying things using words she learned from Mayahuel. Paul didn’t show her saying anything using the glyphs, but it could have happened, I suppose.
Insulting? I suppose, like beauty,l dust, and contact lenses, “insulting” must also be in the eye of the beholder. I fail to see anything insulting in my comments. Perhaps someone could go down the list of each comment deleted and point out the insult therein? Or was the punishment to delete all comments, regardless of insulting content? I’m at a loss here.
Just a curiosity… when you poit things away… say, for example, a speeding bullet (Step aside, Superman!) does the object continue to travel at the same speed, velocity, and direction it was traveling in wherever it poit’s to? If so… and if Monica really did poit away the speeding bullets… and we all know that teleportation… sorry, ‘poiting’ has a beginning point and a destination… where did those speeding bullets end up?
The current thinking on teleportation is that things retain their velocity but not necessarily their vectors. All internal referenced vectors will be retained, but the entire object might be pointed in a new direction from its original vector of travel. In other words the “poit” might be to just in front of the shooter but back in the opposite direction without violating the laws of conservation of momentum.
Sweet! It sounds like my half-joking reference to refraction the other day…but in that case, real interfaces cannot bend energy at any more of an angle proportional to the ratio of the indices of refraction, and then only towards the plane of the interface…if one could cause a localized warping of spacetime (for instance), then energy could probably refract in pretty much any direction, and could travel as fast as the laws of gravity will allow…
OK if I read this comic correctly ( http://wapsisquare.com/comic/we-have-rules/ ) then M is still a doorway, but one way only. So she could still do the bullet trick if it is “doorway” rather than “poiting” because she is still a doorway to the demon realm, just not vice-versa.
Actually, Shelly locked Monica’s gateway with the key she got from Tina a couple of strips after the one you referenced, so no more travel to/from the demon realm via Monica…
This is the unstated point to my argument that she was in “doorway” mode to accomplish the bullet trick.
Now that the door is locked she can not do the bullet trick again. So the whole thing is moot and Paul is safe to continue the story unencumbered.
He has never said she did any poit on the bullets and I do not think she did. There is a safe way to explain it without having to replicate it or make it cannon to the Wapsiverse – she was in “doorway” mode.
But that is just me and he can explain it any way he wants.
Everyone needs to remember the most important law in fiction, just because a character says something, explains something, etc — that doesn’t mean that it’s true, that that is what really happened, that the character knows their ass from a f**king hole in the ground, or that the author subscribes to their beliefs. Bud is explaining what she saw. Bud was protecting M only in the sense that she was keeping an eye on her. A rather arrogant statement on her part to call that helping, but she’s not from an age of gun-play and picked up most of her modern repertoire from watching television with Brandi.
Love their looks , in the first panel .
Bored.
There’s an SF book – Manxome Foe, maybe? – definitely one of that series by John Ringo and Travis Taylor, anyway – about the adventures of a definitely mixed space crew; military, civilian and alien.
One of the civilians is a brilliant but somewhat crazed female genius. One of the people who traveled with her in the ship in a previous story explains that it is necessary to keep her from becoming bored.
If she’s bored. she looks for Things To Get Into.
Someone asks how much trouble one small woman can cause.
Her friend says “imagine a ferret on crack.”
That is the image that comes to mind when i think of Bud and Shelly sitting around, bored and trying to think of Something To Get Into…
Having raised a ferret, and helped with two others, I can honestly say that a ferret on crack is as amusing an idea as it is terrifying
Now , a squirrel on crack . . .
Leave the squirrels under the couch. Do NOT give them any ideas…
Somehow I don’t think this is going to turn into El Goonish Shive any time soon
El Goonish Shive with these bustlines….
*faints*
Apparently, a ferret on sugar is bad enough. (Sluggy Freelance)
With my stepdaughter, her husband and our two granddaughters living with us now, Kate and i have remembered that passage with some regularity, especially when Natalie, the two-year-old is Up To Stuff.
We all tend to get nervous when we realise that (A) we don’t know where Natalie is, and, (B) we haven’t heard anything from her in a while…
Fairportfan: that was definitely Ringo and I’m not sure if it was Manxome Foe but it definitly was from the Into The Looking Glass series. First Weber, then Bujold, now Ringo. This is the first forum I’ve ever seen that mentions three of my all time favorite authors. I like them mainly because they write their characters as actual people, not stereotypes. Like Paul here, no matter how strange or futuristic or even absurd the situation they find themselves in, I never actually think that they are anything but real people in rather odd situations. That’s suspension of disbelief made easy.
Oh, God…
How much damage, colateral and otherwise, has been inadequately explained by the phrase, “We were Bored.”
From an old Doonesbury comic, Phred the Viet Cong soldier was testifying in front of a Congressional Committee:
Congressman: So, why did you invade Cambodia?
Phred: We heard a noise. We were curious.
That also happens to be one of the “Basic Errors In Thinking” that we dealt with at my workplace. “I used ‘I was bored’ as an excuse.”
By the way, I work at a juvenile detention facility.
Kate’s offic is next door to the Hall County Youth Detention Center – i haven’t asked her if they heard anything about the disturbance at the YDC yesterday. Considering that the IT office is in the 911 center, i suspect they did…
“hee, hee!” The things we’ll do when we are bored.
so after stopping a major world event, brandi and shelly have turned into a couple of old gossips
BUD and shelly even.
So what are these “additional abilities” that Monica has? Fascinating. Inquiring minds want to know more!
It must be a lot more than just poiting stuff. It was very important that demons not be able to get the ability to those things. She probably has the ability to do all sorts of things if she could just figure out how to do them.
With the ability to *poit* anything anywhere anytime … what additional abilities does one need? Provided, of course, one has the perception and concentration needed to use the ability as needed. (Look! 1000 lances coming in from all sides at 200 kmph!)
…which is a problem easily solved by poiting *oneself* out of the way.
Of course, I would end up dead, as I stopped to convert KPH to MPH … “Let’s see, 200 kph … do I multiply the kilometers by .62, or do I divide it by AAAUUUURRRGGGHHHH –!
Does this mean that Bud and Shelly came to the conclusion that Monica poited the bullets away or at least changed their paths? If so, why did Bud call it luck? Maybe Bud decided that it was more than luck after she talked to Brandi.
It’s also strange that Shelly worked so hard to loose the bet. I don’t think that Monica would have ever figured it out on her own. Actually, Monica is relying on what Bud told Shelly. If that was true, it must have meant that Monica used magic somehow. Then Shelly used reverse psychology or sarcasm to get Monica to consider Bud’s explanation. Now Monica is at least accepting the possibility, but she still didn’t seem convinced. Shelly immediately declared defeat, anyway. It’s as if Shelly wanted an excuse to buy Bud a case of beer. She must have been really bored!
Some magical systems refer to the mana that magic-users can summon “luck”…
Because Monica had to figure out what she did rather than just knowing what she did, is it really a useful ability at any other time than panicked crisis? What would Bud’s “protection” have done if the bullets had already torn into her skin-tight clothing before Monica somehow redirected them?
And I agree, the thought of what Bud and Shelly can get up to because they are “bored” is quite scary and amusing at the same time.
That is what I have been reacting too these last few days. The “explanation” given and what has been provided in the strip to not match up. At the time of her bullet trick-luck-poit-doorway effect M did not exhibit (and still has not) the level of poit control needed to accomplish it.
I do not believe that M was able to poit the bullets.
I do believe that M could have been in “doorway” mode.
I do not think bringing in other abilities not yet part of the Wapsi Universe should be used to buttress the unproven poit theory but rather use existing abilities that fit the “facts” better as they have been drawn.
Unless the artist/author directly states that she did poit the bullets then I will stick with the “doorway” theory. He did say that Bud “did not protect” M.
I would say that in terms of plot tie-in and double meaning the intangible aspects of the “doorway” mode are much more ghost-like and fit some of the back story of M. The poit aspect started out as just an offshoot of the golems for plot and pacing convenience.
I don’t take this as a complete explanation, just another piece of the puzzle from Shelly’s perspective. Until i hear more from Bud, I’m not going to be sure of anything in that regard…
…but if all Shelly is trying to do with all this is screw Monica up for another exotic adventure, I’m pretty sure she’ll be unfurling a “Mission Accomplished” banner soon!
If she was acting as a doorway, somewhere on the other side there are some really annoyed demons.
I really have no idea what Bud would have done to protect Monica if Monica hadn’t managed to do it herself. She might have been trying to put Monica back together. I assume that Bud was caught off guard by Monica poiting into the middle of the gunmen and didn’t have time to do anything. It’s possible that she already knew the gunmen couldn’t actually shoot Monica, but it didn’t come across that way.
One unlikely possibility is that Monica happened to say something that put a protection spell on her. Early on in the story she occasionally accidentally cast spells by saying things using words she learned from Mayahuel. Paul didn’t show her saying anything using the glyphs, but it could have happened, I suppose.
Wait til Monica accepts and gets the hang of the POIT control. Shelly could find herself wearing her underwear backwards for no reason.
Worse, late for a date with Officer Boytoy
Isn’t that the best reason to do anything?
At the risk of opening a can of worms, is there a reason all my posts from yesterday and today are gone?
Because this is a moderated forum, and you can’t post randomly insulting comments with impunity.
Insulting? I suppose, like beauty,l dust, and contact lenses, “insulting” must also be in the eye of the beholder. I fail to see anything insulting in my comments. Perhaps someone could go down the list of each comment deleted and point out the insult therein? Or was the punishment to delete all comments, regardless of insulting content? I’m at a loss here.
I thought telling another forum member that their daughter might be ready for “My First Ankle Monitor” might rub someone the wrong way.
Granddaughter, actually.
OK, so why did you delete all the others?
Oh, btw, there really are ankle monitors for children. Babies even.
You know, I am struck by a sudden thought. I wonder if Mayahuel and Phix have ever met? Phix knows about Mayahuel; does Mayahuel know about Phix?
Just a curiosity… when you poit things away… say, for example, a speeding bullet (Step aside, Superman!) does the object continue to travel at the same speed, velocity, and direction it was traveling in wherever it poit’s to? If so… and if Monica really did poit away the speeding bullets… and we all know that teleportation… sorry, ‘poiting’ has a beginning point and a destination… where did those speeding bullets end up?
The current thinking on teleportation is that things retain their velocity but not necessarily their vectors. All internal referenced vectors will be retained, but the entire object might be pointed in a new direction from its original vector of travel. In other words the “poit” might be to just in front of the shooter but back in the opposite direction without violating the laws of conservation of momentum.
Sweet! It sounds like my half-joking reference to refraction the other day…but in that case, real interfaces cannot bend energy at any more of an angle proportional to the ratio of the indices of refraction, and then only towards the plane of the interface…if one could cause a localized warping of spacetime (for instance), then energy could probably refract in pretty much any direction, and could travel as fast as the laws of gravity will allow…
Simplified: Speedy thing goes in, speedy things comes out in different direction
Oh, you’re no fun…
If I had the ability to point, then I certainly wouldn’t need a car. By the way where do I go to apply for a Poit License?
Down at the DMP—dept of motor poiting.
Or something.
(crickets)
OK if I read this comic correctly ( http://wapsisquare.com/comic/we-have-rules/ ) then M is still a doorway, but one way only. So she could still do the bullet trick if it is “doorway” rather than “poiting” because she is still a doorway to the demon realm, just not vice-versa.
Actually, Shelly locked Monica’s gateway with the key she got from Tina a couple of strips after the one you referenced, so no more travel to/from the demon realm via Monica…
But perhaps because she went through the portal cloth (okay, the portal “tattoo”), her ‘door” was opened?
Meaning that she became, essentially, a ghost-like being until she poited herself home?
This is the unstated point to my argument that she was in “doorway” mode to accomplish the bullet trick.
Now that the door is locked she can not do the bullet trick again. So the whole thing is moot and Paul is safe to continue the story unencumbered.
He has never said she did any poit on the bullets and I do not think she did. There is a safe way to explain it without having to replicate it or make it cannon to the Wapsiverse – she was in “doorway” mode.
But that is just me and he can explain it any way he wants.
Everyone needs to remember the most important law in fiction, just because a character says something, explains something, etc — that doesn’t mean that it’s true, that that is what really happened, that the character knows their ass from a f**king hole in the ground, or that the author subscribes to their beliefs. Bud is explaining what she saw. Bud was protecting M only in the sense that she was keeping an eye on her. A rather arrogant statement on her part to call that helping, but she’s not from an age of gun-play and picked up most of her modern repertoire from watching television with Brandi.
Shelly’s expression is HILARIOUS!!! (we were bored…)
That expression has doomed MANY men.
my friend, you’re preaching to the choir…
I couldn’t count the number of times someone at work has asked why I broke something and my response has always been:
I’ve told you and told you: if you let me get bored, I cannot be held responsible for what happens.