I think they are referring to our actual souls. Not us as human animals being called souls. The Wapsiverse subscribes to the religious notion of the soul as being the true self, and the body as just a machine the soul controls.
Not necessarily a “religious belief”. “Soul” is a term that is quickly understandable and can be used for reference purposes.
Considering that the “gods” we’ve seen don’t seem to be actual gods – i rather liked the term “immortal politicians”…
(BTW, apropos of nothing in particular, but talking about “souls” reminds me – don’t know if they still use the term, but according to some books i’ve read, at least at one time airline manifests referred to “SOB” – “Souls on Board”…)
Tygr,
Neither Judaism nor the Catholic Church would agree with the esteemed Mr. Lewis. We are made to be unified beings, and it is only the Fall that causes them body and soul to ever separate. When the Second Coming, well, comes, all souls will be rejoined to their bodies, as they should be.
There seems to be, but they’re “working” elsewhere and not in the story, but then there are lots of people in the world that aren’t in the story either. I have never seen myself or any of my Hispanic neighbors in the comic for instance 😉
She must be in touch with others in some way to carry out her other duties. Frankly, I’m surprised she would still do the demon judge thing given her self imposed exile and the reasons for it. I’d have thought she would have cut herself off from all use of violence. I wonder if this is something new since she began to let herself out of the library from time to time now. It seems like her old habits are resurfacing.
Note how Phix talks about helping Brandi, not Monica, on that page. That makes me wonder how much Phix was involved in shaping the plan Brandi concocted during the previous time-loop. Without her self-restrictions, one might have expected Phix to hunt down the rogue demons herself rather than relying on Brandi’s plan, so maybe Phix used Monica, Shelly and the GGGs to accomplish basically the same thing. If so, that would be another reason for Monica to reevaluate her opinion of Phix. That wasn’t a pleasant experience for Monica. Come to think of it, convincing Brandi to go along with her part of the plan this time was bad enough.
Actually, despite what she says, Tina has to answer to both human society laws and demon laws.
There must be an awful lot of sphinxes out there since there are billions of people thereby indicating there are several times that in demons. If there are only a half dozen per human, that’s 36 billion demons of which to keep track and reign in. No small feat. Must use computers.
Perhaps, but aside from tourching a spider in her eye socket, we have not seen her do anything extra-human. Her bones, apparently break just like ours and, I suspect, she can be permanently killed just as easily as us (despite her original resurection). I doubt there is any coming back from a shotgun blast to the head, for example. Also, she can’t poit, so she can be locked up. Perhaps something will be revealed, but thus far, she seems as subject to police enforcement deterrents as the rest of us.
That’s true, but without the body being functional, the demons can’t do squat in the human world. The same for the soul. So if her legs were broken, she (they) can’t walk and get anywhere. Tie her up or handcuff her and she is as helpless as a human in a similar situation. At least as far as she has been shown to this point. So she is subject to the same physical laws as us, and the same limitations.
Good point. I suppose, given that factor, there could even be fewer demons than people. I wonder about Tina’s demons though. Since they forgot everything else, and their unique situation, they may be working Tina exclusively. Same with Shelly. They combined into one entity for her, so they may also be her’s exclusively. When she dies, they will separate again into individuals, according to the story. At least that’s how I interpret the “ceasing to exist” part that was mentioned.
But would we really want domesticated demons? They serve a useful purpose just as they are. Much like our animal instincts come in handy from time to time when push comes to shove. A domesticated Panic might decide not to bother us just when panic is the right thing to do. Whereas, the wild Panic will give us the “juice” regardless.
Interesting tidbit: There was a project to domesticate foxes (in Russia, IIRC). In less then 20 generations, they had docile foxes that had completely lost the instinct to lash out when approached.
Interesting part is the other changes. Their faces got ’rounder’, their muzzles shorter, and their ears began to flop. They began to wag their tails and vocalize like dogs, too. They are apparently amazingly cute, too. Here wikipedia’s disappointingly short article on them The things to take away from this is that it takes a startlingly short amount of time to domesticate an animal, and that by selecting for behaviors (insert nature vs. nurture comment here), we have domesticated ourselves as a specie for millennia.
There is theories of social-culture evolution based upon the selection of memes. Given that, it might be possible to ‘breed’ a stock of demons who begin to be domesticated. What the unintended consequences of that (bobed ears, rounder faces, dog noises, etc) to the demons?
That’s assuming demons breed at all. Perhaps there is a fixed number of them and that’s it. They are, after all, eons old. Reporduction may have been a thing of the past a few billion years ago as a means of population control. After all, if noone died, they would overrun the place they lived initially.
I also have to wonder if, some day, we will get to see demons of a guy, like Kevin, for example. What if it turns out they are also female and not male as we would expect? That would make perfect sense. To me anyway.
Fascinating study. That finally explains the white in my coat and my droppy ears. Not to mention my ability to decern where food is located by watching people stare in it’s direction. Then there is the whole dog whistle thing.
Did you also note that the experiment was a failure? They wanted to breed foxes with good fur that would not be so aggressive and could be raised in captivity–but their fur was one casualty of the process…
A domesticated Panic that quickly analyzes the situation and takes the most effective action instead of flailing blindly is a real asset. Firefighters, police, lifeguards, EMTs, active duty military, etc., go through a lot of training to “domesticate” their panic reactions in exactly that way.
I don’t think we domesticate them as such. They just become less and less meaningful for a given person as that person learns to overcome their influence. Much like Monica has come to understand.
I never was that familiar with Battlestar Galactica – it just fell through the cracks of a busy life at the time – but I knew I had seen the word felgercarb before. One of the Dracon High Council in Longyear’s “Enemy Mine” was Carb, of the clan of Phelger. Addressed as Phelger Carb. I love little tips of the hat like that – it’s like hearing the Wilhelm Scream in some film where you least expect it.
I get the feeling that Phix is actually on Tina’s side… the “warning” was just to let her know the seriousness of her situation, as if Tina steps over the line, Phix won’t be able to intervene.
I think your feelings are right in this matter. We could be wrong, but some people aren’t giving Phix the benefit of the doubt about what happened. Maybe some of Tina’s demons are upset about the incident, but the collective seems to be brushing it off. I don’t think Phix did it just to be mean or to bully Tina because she can.
I tend to agree. I would guess Tina’s demons fall within her ‘jurisdiction.” It may be Phix’s lack of vigilance and strict decipline that caused the situation to get out of hand (concerning the rogues) in the first place. It all began with the emergence of Tina 2.0. That should have probably been put down right away, but Phix, for whatever reason, didn’t do it. Now she is living with the consequences of that inaction. I think her conscience, which may be much more developed than most of her kind, is keeping her from just terminating Tina and be done with it.
I should probably stop focusing on how much I want Phix to confront something more powerful and wise than her having a really bad day, and spend more time focusing on how much I just wanna hug Tina right now.
but If something was more powerful AND wise it wouldn’t want to fight her and she would come away from the experience refreshed and invigorated… I doubt this is what you want for Phix?
I don’t know. Phix is more powerful and wise than the rogue demons, and I’m pretty sure they did not come away from the experience/confrontation refreshed and invigorated.
no, the secret to great tasting coffee is the whole ‘journey’ from the tree… growing conditions, country, roasting, after treatment, are only a few of many strange things that make them different… But if course if you have 1000’s of years practice in this, it sure helps…. 🙂
Do the Collective still manage other souls, or are they now assigned only to Tina as the punishment? Maybe these are the first steps taken towards an evolution for the Collective into a form more suited to protect, like, I don’t know, shall we say…… SATA—-, *ahem* I mean, a Sphinx?
I recall (though perhaps wrongly) that Tina’s Committee of the Whole is on its last go-round, and that when the body gets to the end of its line, the ride is over for them — permanently.
Is Tina opening up to Monica about her purpose? That she is looking out for Monica because of what happened with the bus? Perhaps as payback for allowing Tina 1.0’s demons to go free?
In reading Steven King’s work, I came across the revelation that souls are distinct from spirits, and also from bodies. So what is a soul?
Ask the ocean and the beach: what is a shore?
A spirit can exist without body, a body can exist without spirit, but if the two intersect, that is a soul.
Interesting. We’re learning things about Tina, aren’t we?
Demonology 101 is now in session.
Interesting… they refer to us as ‘souls’.
I think they are referring to our actual souls. Not us as human animals being called souls. The Wapsiverse subscribes to the religious notion of the soul as being the true self, and the body as just a machine the soul controls.
Not necessarily a “religious belief”. “Soul” is a term that is quickly understandable and can be used for reference purposes.
Considering that the “gods” we’ve seen don’t seem to be actual gods – i rather liked the term “immortal politicians”…
(BTW, apropos of nothing in particular, but talking about “souls” reminds me – don’t know if they still use the term, but according to some books i’ve read, at least at one time airline manifests referred to “SOB” – “Souls on Board”…)
I agree with SoWhyMe. I think Tina has Tina’s body and personal demons, but not Tina 1.0’s soul, for example.
The FAA still uses the term “souls on board”, btw.
“You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” – C. S. Lewis.
Tygr,
Neither Judaism nor the Catholic Church would agree with the esteemed Mr. Lewis. We are made to be unified beings, and it is only the Fall that causes them body and soul to ever separate. When the Second Coming, well, comes, all souls will be rejoined to their bodies, as they should be.
That was A Really Good Comic too! http://faith.rydia.net/ 🙂
Actually I think this is more like “Advanced Demonology 301” for Monica.
she is…are some of these demons?
You mean… there are more than one? O_o
Apotropaic sphinxes, that is.
There seems to be, but they’re “working” elsewhere and not in the story, but then there are lots of people in the world that aren’t in the story either. I have never seen myself or any of my Hispanic neighbors in the comic for instance 😉
Well, there’s the Collective – they qualify as “some” rather than “one”.
Remember, Phix addressed Tina in the plural – “… you names came up …”
Oh. Never mind.
Pennance, anyone?
Not the first time I heard of a demon playing well with others .
So there ARE other sphinxes. I wonder if Phix’s exile cut her off from those, or if she had visitors in that Library.
She must be in touch with others in some way to carry out her other duties. Frankly, I’m surprised she would still do the demon judge thing given her self imposed exile and the reasons for it. I’d have thought she would have cut herself off from all use of violence. I wonder if this is something new since she began to let herself out of the library from time to time now. It seems like her old habits are resurfacing.
Yeah, she didn’t say exactly what self-imposed restrictions she was letting up on, so we don’t know.
Note how Phix talks about helping Brandi, not Monica, on that page. That makes me wonder how much Phix was involved in shaping the plan Brandi concocted during the previous time-loop. Without her self-restrictions, one might have expected Phix to hunt down the rogue demons herself rather than relying on Brandi’s plan, so maybe Phix used Monica, Shelly and the GGGs to accomplish basically the same thing. If so, that would be another reason for Monica to reevaluate her opinion of Phix. That wasn’t a pleasant experience for Monica. Come to think of it, convincing Brandi to go along with her part of the plan this time was bad enough.
I now have the song “someone to watch over me” going through my head.
“Every Breath You Take” for me…
Hmmm…
How comforting.
Actually, despite what she says, Tina has to answer to both human society laws and demon laws.
There must be an awful lot of sphinxes out there since there are billions of people thereby indicating there are several times that in demons. If there are only a half dozen per human, that’s 36 billion demons of which to keep track and reign in. No small feat. Must use computers.
No she doesn’t “have to” answer to human laws.
Unlike the average human lawbreaker, i strongly suspect that Tina has ways of completely evading human retribution.
Perhaps, but aside from tourching a spider in her eye socket, we have not seen her do anything extra-human. Her bones, apparently break just like ours and, I suspect, she can be permanently killed just as easily as us (despite her original resurection). I doubt there is any coming back from a shotgun blast to the head, for example. Also, she can’t poit, so she can be locked up. Perhaps something will be revealed, but thus far, she seems as subject to police enforcement deterrents as the rest of us.
Not quite. Her bodies’ bones break. Tina (all of her) doesn’t have bones. Remember: they took over a body that the occupant had taken leave of.
That’s true, but without the body being functional, the demons can’t do squat in the human world. The same for the soul. So if her legs were broken, she (they) can’t walk and get anywhere. Tie her up or handcuff her and she is as helpless as a human in a similar situation. At least as far as she has been shown to this point. So she is subject to the same physical laws as us, and the same limitations.
If teams of demons can be assigned to more than one person, they won’t necessarily outnumber humans. The enforcement was rather lacking in the previous arc, too.
Good point. I suppose, given that factor, there could even be fewer demons than people. I wonder about Tina’s demons though. Since they forgot everything else, and their unique situation, they may be working Tina exclusively. Same with Shelly. They combined into one entity for her, so they may also be her’s exclusively. When she dies, they will separate again into individuals, according to the story. At least that’s how I interpret the “ceasing to exist” part that was mentioned.
And so went the first little step in the domestication of demons…
But would we really want domesticated demons? They serve a useful purpose just as they are. Much like our animal instincts come in handy from time to time when push comes to shove. A domesticated Panic might decide not to bother us just when panic is the right thing to do. Whereas, the wild Panic will give us the “juice” regardless.
Interesting tidbit: There was a project to domesticate foxes (in Russia, IIRC). In less then 20 generations, they had docile foxes that had completely lost the instinct to lash out when approached.
Interesting part is the other changes. Their faces got ’rounder’, their muzzles shorter, and their ears began to flop. They began to wag their tails and vocalize like dogs, too. They are apparently amazingly cute, too. Here wikipedia’s disappointingly short article on them The things to take away from this is that it takes a startlingly short amount of time to domesticate an animal, and that by selecting for behaviors (insert nature vs. nurture comment here), we have domesticated ourselves as a specie for millennia.
There is theories of social-culture evolution based upon the selection of memes. Given that, it might be possible to ‘breed’ a stock of demons who begin to be domesticated. What the unintended consequences of that (bobed ears, rounder faces, dog noises, etc) to the demons?
That’s assuming demons breed at all. Perhaps there is a fixed number of them and that’s it. They are, after all, eons old. Reporduction may have been a thing of the past a few billion years ago as a means of population control. After all, if noone died, they would overrun the place they lived initially.
I also have to wonder if, some day, we will get to see demons of a guy, like Kevin, for example. What if it turns out they are also female and not male as we would expect? That would make perfect sense. To me anyway.
Fascinating study. That finally explains the white in my coat and my droppy ears. Not to mention my ability to decern where food is located by watching people stare in it’s direction. Then there is the whole dog whistle thing.
Did you also note that the experiment was a failure? They wanted to breed foxes with good fur that would not be so aggressive and could be raised in captivity–but their fur was one casualty of the process…
A domesticated Panic that quickly analyzes the situation and takes the most effective action instead of flailing blindly is a real asset. Firefighters, police, lifeguards, EMTs, active duty military, etc., go through a lot of training to “domesticate” their panic reactions in exactly that way.
I don’t think we domesticate them as such. They just become less and less meaningful for a given person as that person learns to overcome their influence. Much like Monica has come to understand.
In that case where did her speech about the concrete in the basement and where she gets her coffee come from?
Good point, but that may have been a defence mechanism. She may have had that as a story to tell anytime someone became curious about her past.
Wow
Wonder what phix would say to tina sticking up for her?
I wouldn’t get my hopes up. She’d probably assume it’s a rather complex form of sycophancy to trick her into being less vigilant.
Nah – Phix is pretty good at cutting through the felgercarb.
Oh. My. Heck.
I never was that familiar with Battlestar Galactica – it just fell through the cracks of a busy life at the time – but I knew I had seen the word felgercarb before. One of the Dracon High Council in Longyear’s “Enemy Mine” was Carb, of the clan of Phelger. Addressed as Phelger Carb. I love little tips of the hat like that – it’s like hearing the Wilhelm Scream in some film where you least expect it.
Tina isn’t protecting Phix, she’s trying to keep Monica from being caught in the middle.
I get the feeling that Phix is actually on Tina’s side… the “warning” was just to let her know the seriousness of her situation, as if Tina steps over the line, Phix won’t be able to intervene.
I think your feelings are right in this matter. We could be wrong, but some people aren’t giving Phix the benefit of the doubt about what happened. Maybe some of Tina’s demons are upset about the incident, but the collective seems to be brushing it off. I don’t think Phix did it just to be mean or to bully Tina because she can.
I tend to agree. I would guess Tina’s demons fall within her ‘jurisdiction.” It may be Phix’s lack of vigilance and strict decipline that caused the situation to get out of hand (concerning the rogues) in the first place. It all began with the emergence of Tina 2.0. That should have probably been put down right away, but Phix, for whatever reason, didn’t do it. Now she is living with the consequences of that inaction. I think her conscience, which may be much more developed than most of her kind, is keeping her from just terminating Tina and be done with it.
Awww – Collective Tina is such a sweetie…
I should probably stop focusing on how much I want Phix to confront something more powerful and wise than her having a really bad day, and spend more time focusing on how much I just wanna hug Tina right now.
but If something was more powerful AND wise it wouldn’t want to fight her and she would come away from the experience refreshed and invigorated… I doubt this is what you want for Phix?
I don’t know. Phix is more powerful and wise than the rogue demons, and I’m pretty sure they did not come away from the experience/confrontation refreshed and invigorated.
So, the REAL secret to great tasting coffee is not the water and brew time, but rather being a soul shredding demon. Got it.
Go to Starbucks. From what I have been able to gather, that seems to be all they hire.
burn, dude…
no, the secret to great tasting coffee is the whole ‘journey’ from the tree… growing conditions, country, roasting, after treatment, are only a few of many strange things that make them different… But if course if you have 1000’s of years practice in this, it sure helps…. 🙂
Sheesh, conflicted much, Tina? You might be a crazy collection of demons inhabiting a dead girl’s body, but it’s okay. We love you.
Do the Collective still manage other souls, or are they now assigned only to Tina as the punishment? Maybe these are the first steps taken towards an evolution for the Collective into a form more suited to protect, like, I don’t know, shall we say…… SATA—-, *ahem* I mean, a Sphinx?
AFAIK Tina’s Collective are assigned only to Tina as punishment, nobody else until Tina passes.
I recall (though perhaps wrongly) that Tina’s Committee of the Whole is on its last go-round, and that when the body gets to the end of its line, the ride is over for them — permanently.
Is Tina opening up to Monica about her purpose? That she is looking out for Monica because of what happened with the bus? Perhaps as payback for allowing Tina 1.0’s demons to go free?
The phrase ‘the company of souls’ would make an exellent book title.
In reading Steven King’s work, I came across the revelation that souls are distinct from spirits, and also from bodies. So what is a soul?
Ask the ocean and the beach: what is a shore?
A spirit can exist without body, a body can exist without spirit, but if the two intersect, that is a soul.
Hint, hint…