When shelly had to stab monica Creepy pulled out the worst thing to Shelly ever.
What would she have done to make Shellinx agree to let herself die so much.
I doubt anything phix said or didn’t say would have made shelly do anything but Creepy would have been on her case until she did.
Perhaps a picture of monica Bud Brandi and the rest writhing in flames as the world implodes due to the calender machines paradox?
Well, yeah..80000 years of relative solitude tends to have that effect.
Shelly’s real vision-quest wasn’t the one where she met Tochtli, but this, 80000-year banishment.
She’ll be the one to watch in the coming episodes. Together with her friendship with Tina.
Sooo, Phix is a daisy? I always felt she was a sweetie..C’mon, a non-violent Sphinx? She must be someone very good hearted and strong, to go against all sorts of mythical instincts.
No That little girl is in Jin… Driving her more insane or maybe keeping her more balance. I am not sure what Jin’s little girl is, but she was sweep up in the first moments of the Chimera disaster that sweep the planet.
Maybe the ghost of all the victims haunt Jin, but the little girl is just the frontrunner. Jin has “seen” many ghosts before, but they could be just her insane imagination.
I have never imagined Phix described that way before.
Also, damn! I came and saw only four comments – and there’s five by the time I called them up. Pablo really does update this thing early, too; it’s 10:30 Pacific time.
Well that answers earlier questions about where CG was. Also might explain why after 80k years of solitude Shelly didn’t go too loopy. Now the next question: when are they going to get her something to wear?
so far only one of the group whos seen CG is tina when she got stuck in the boiler room i belive and it dosent look like CG wants to freak em out by revealing herself now
hmm is CG still bound by the demon laws not sure if revealing your self is aginst the rules
Ever since the end of the calender machine arc, demons can no longer manifest outside their host. Tina is the only exception to this rule. Creepy Girl however, is no longer a demon, and is not bound by their rules.
Indeed! It has been established that Creepy Girl is a consolidation of all of Shelly’s demons into an animate conscience. The demon hunters go after demons because they’re all one-dimensional and erratic. CG is a summation of Shelly’s demons (Id-Ego-Superego anyone?) and very much not “demonic” like the others!
Tina is the exception? Don’t think so… the only thing peculiar here is that Tina’s “host” is an actually dead body. But those demons don’t manifest “outside”. Oh, but they did? Just can’t recall if that was pre- or post-CM-“repair”.
(Can really remember the rule you mention, but that’s beside the point)
“Creepy Girl however, is no longer a demon, and is not bound by their rules.”
It’s not a matter of being bound by their rules. It’s a matter of having the ability. The rogue demons were using Monica to break the rules. That ended when her doorway was closed. CLG never had access to Monica and has always been stuck inside Shelly because Shelly closed her doorway at the same time she created CLG.
nah, take look at Monica’s eye-line… it looks as though she is looking directly at CG right now. as for CG’s tan, i think that’s just a trick of the light, we usually see her in a darkened boiler room so when we see her elsewhere, it make her look different, kinda like a dark shirt and pants in a dark room, you can see that they are a dark color, but you cant really tell HOW black the pants are compared to the dark blue shirt. it’s only when they are both in the light that you can tell the difference… i think it’s the same principal here.
I also believe that Creepy can be seen by Tina/nudge/phix as they deal with demons regularly.
I doubt that anyone else could as no one can see Monicas barring Tina and even then Tina just had the impression Monica was…split.
Bud (and I think Brandi and Jin) has seen demons before. She saw Tina for what she was immediately, and Monica introduced her to her bundle of demons ages ago…back when she first gave Bud the advice not to listen to what demons say.
ah yes you are right 🙂
i also remember when monica was explaining about her demons to the trio
they could see her
AND when doubt was left out of monica
but monica was a doorway to all the demons
shelly was a doorway but it was locked and she has her own personal demon.
but tina is also locked.
hmm
@Julie: There was some inconsistency about that, but usually Monica had control over whether or not her demons were able to manifest outside of her. The fact that she showed her demons to Bud to make a point indicates that Bud couldn’t normally see them. Jin apparently could, but that was because of the bridge that was created when Bud pointed Monica’s Doubt inside Jin.
Paula is correct, though, they needed to use Monica’s doorway to be able to manifest outside of her. I think Paul said in a comment that Monica is the only one who can see her demons now that it is closed.
CG isn’t a demon any more. She’s not bound to their laws. But she’s not immortal either.
@scantron I don’t think CG is visible to anyone else yet. I think that CG’s appearnace in the last panel is just to let us know she’s still around. And from what CG said, I don’t think she’s visble to anyone else as well.
Even as jaded as Monica is with the supernaterual, I think Monica would have reacted quite strongly if CG has just appeared in front of her.
Visible or not, I think Jin may know that she exists. Jin looked very satisfied when CLG talked Shelly into going to Ireland to get the relic. Jin seemed to touch Shelly at the start of that. That may have been Jin communicating with CLG.
You know, perhaps it’s time Shelly introduced CG to her friends. Monica should understand her since she has such a direct, intimate relationship with own personal demons.
CAN Conscience manifest, though, to anyone but Shelly? Tina can see her, but Tina’s vision is not bound by the mortal plain and she can see lots of things. Since Conscience says she doesn’t want to scare the others that would suggest she might be able to, but we’ll have to see.
Monica might be freaked if a little girl suddenly appeared in front of her, particularly such a creepy little girl. Bud… I don’t know how she’d react.
Why do you think that Tina can see her, other than the time Tina was poited inside Shelly? The only other occasion that I can recall was merely a dream that Shelly was having. I may be wrong, but I think the other times that CLG was in front of Tina, Tina wasn’t actually seeing her.
Tina keeps getting flashes of Conscience, usually in her boiler room, usually when Shelly walks into the coffee shop, often under the heading “can you see me?”. Given that Tina reacts each time that happens, it’s clear it’s not just something we the audience see, she’s seeing it, too. The first few times it happened it rattled her, but since she spent that night trapped in the boiler room with her, it’s apparently just a surprise now, not a scare.
Your memory is different than mine. I think the time Tina was poited into Shelly was earliest Tina even knew CLG existed. This was just a dream, as far as we know. Shelly and Tina have talked about CLG in addition to that and CLG was sometimes visible to us, but I still don’t recall anything that showed that Tina was actually seeing her.
If you can identify specific strips, I would appreciate it.
Whoopsie, you’re right, I’m wrong. I was confusing Shelly’s nightmare, Tina’s reaction when she realized Jin was being haunted, and this still not completely explained appearance of Conscience (http://wapsisquare.com/comic/her-head/). Sorry.
Well, now that I have seen the next page, I know that Monica can see CLG. If Monica can see her, which seems inconstant with what we’ve been told about doorways in the past, I assume that Tina may have been able to see her, too.
I can see why CLG would creep Tina out, but it’s not about the way CLG behaves. It’s the simple fact that she exists and is basically the remnants of what used to be demons. That’s would create some existential issues for Tina and make Tina’s demons think about their possible mortality.
I’ve felt for a long time that Bud, Brandi, and Jin were the most potentially scary characters in this story, but CG is far and away the most disturbing.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. It just means that her existence opens possibilities that are frightening to me for the comic.
Don’t ask me to explain it, but they’re just there.
You don’t need to be able to speak to talk to yourself. Perhaps it should be called think to yourself. Nonetheless, when I “talk” to myself there is a voice. Just that the voice is in my head. No one else can hear it, but I can.
You know, I’ve often wondered how someone who doesn’t learn a language due to disability (think Helen Keller) thinks things. I think distinct sounds, words, and images, but if I’d never seen or heard anything, what would I think?
Helen Keller did learn a language–felt Sign language. But there is indication that the language areas of the brain are rather flexible, and can adapt to visual or auditory language as needed, especially in children.
CG is not tanned. Either she embodies the Native American side of Shelly or Welcome to the Dark Side Luke…
Actually CG would scare others quiet a bit. This is the uninhibited side of Shelly. Look at how calmly she watched Tina punch out Nudge. This one is stone cold and will do anything to protect Shelly. Especially after their bonding moment on the island.
“tanned” I mean. I don’t think she is ruthless though. On the contrary. It’s Shelly’s conscience. Shelly is a good, sweet person ,but was always marred by abandonment-issues.
Thw 80000-year solitude was an extreme form of therapy. With a bit of luck ,she’ll come out of this as the most stable of all the Wapsi clown-car.
Add to that her “sphinxness” and we have a very wise, powerful entity.
She can and will be. From the first time she was introduced she has been a dark and dangerous figure. Even Tina was taken back by her. Bud spent some time with here and wasn’t too happy about it. She has been shown holding a knife, or scissors, in a very threatening mannor a number of times. When and where did she turn into little miss harmless? The ID and EGO hide all sorts of dark things. The things Shelly does not want to face or admit to having as part of her. So yes I think CG can be a very dangerous person and scary.
the scissors were shellys
she cut her hair after her mum died so it was a form of defence.
would be natural for them to become a weapon.
the knife was again shellys fears becoming reality.
she had to stab monica.
creepy is apart from demons and more a part of shelly than demons. i think she is as dangerous as shelly is.
but perhaps no
creepy seems to be a good factor in keeping shellinx sane so she is good in away…
not that seeing a small version of yourself on a regular basis is sane or anything but well…could be worse ^^
Hahaha, oh man, I almost wanted it to end on the second panel, just with her saying “It was my companion…” and then I woulda been jumping up and down going “Creepy girl lives and she scares Sphinx’s away!” but not knowing for completely *shure* until tomorrow.
Who’s afraid of a little black haired girl? the kitties are… yes they are! aww
YAY SHE’S ALIVE 😀 (Relatively, demonly speaking of course.)
=)
Wonder what all those years does to a sphinx-hybrid’s demon… man the stories she can tell. *totally pulls up some popcorn for the rest of the week*
…. I’m getting the itch of worry though. Paul is being too nice – something super cliff hangery must be awaiting us Friday.
Maybe the Calendar Machine question I had before might get answered… let’s see! Go Paul! 😀
And obviously your characters, go Shelly, shelly demon girl (did she get a name?), Monica, Tina, Bud, and all the rest. 😀
Sidenote: Its going to be so adorable and happy/sad (if she reacts the happy/sad way) when she sees her police boyfriend again… they were really cute… she must’ve missed him so much… 🙂
We get anxious and stressed when we have a difficult storyline and we get anxious and stressed when we have a storyline which confirms speculations.
I am wondering if we are getting all these confirmations because Paul was a tad busy before the convention and doing strips of confirmations was easier than working out a looop-de-loop of storyline 😀
ya i think so but well alot of the webcomics i have read in the past – when theyre going to convention tend to put up filler art before and just after.
Paul never seems to so 😀
I have a couple of artist friends that regularly have tables at conventions. They try to take a day or two off of their day jobs before and after. Conventions are hard work.
If you think attending conventions is hard – try running one.
Or bidding for the SF WorldCon. (I dropped off the committee after we won the bid, but the bid (on a low-key level at first) began in 1976 for a WorldCon in 1986…
It’s an ancient “Get Fatuncle’s strickler-for-precise-grammar in a tizzy” -tongue. Specifically designed, after years of hard study of phonetics and symbolism (ehh..about 2 seconds ,to be honest) to get Fatuncle’ strickler for etc etc…
Call it a painful(to correct grammar-inclined minds, that is..), verbal poke.. 😛
I’m looking forward to an upcoming episode where Shelly visits Nudge in the library, in full Sphinx form!
Nudge: EEEEEEEK!!
Shelnix: Hello Nudge. I just wanted to say I’m not mad at you any more for trying to kill me back when I was a child on a Spirit Quest.
Nudge: Ah.. thank you?
Shelnix: I understand that you were just doing your job. There was more involved than what I knew at that time.
Nudge: Er — yes. Sorry about that.
Shelnix: OK then. But — If you ever, EVER, try anything like that again, I’m going to break your neck one vertebra at a time, starting at the tip of your tail and working my way up. Got it?
Hey her time worked in reverse to the callendermachine for 80k years, i wouldnt wonder if shelly actually gave the instruction respective manipulated jin to have all that happen.
I doubt it. The “Queen of Sorts” rogue demon implied that it was a previous Brandi’s idea. Monica repeated it recently. Shelly seemed to accept that. If it turns out that was wrong, hopefully Shelly will say something fairly soon. Unless she does, I will continue to assume it was Brandi.
I thought the ‘Queen of Sorts’ was Jin’s Doubt. She was the mastermind of the ‘Screw up the Calendar Machine plot’ that would have let the demon’s use the earth and all humans as their playtoys….
I’ve seen no evidence to point that way – in fact, Bud is the only one of the GGs that we know for sure knows who Nudge is – and that’s because we know Shelly told her after the brawl.
@Fairportfan: Assuming you are referring to not seeing evidence that a previous Brandi directed Nudge, keep in mind that the rogue queen said that Jin must never learn about what happened and the rest of the Wapsi characters have always acted as if that must be true for some reason. What Brandi currently knows is irrelevant because her memories were reset after she was involved. Bud said that she wasn’t even there when the previous Brandi figured out what needed to happen and there wouldn’t have been any need to tell Bud during this attempt, so it wouldn’t be surprising if she doesn’t know.
The evidence that a previous Brandi told Nudge what to do is this: Nudge apparently had to lead Shelly off for Shelly to have temporarily died, which turned her into an open doorway that she quickly closed. The rogue queen gave the previous Brandi’s “dabbling” credit for both Monica and “Muscle Butt” being turned into doorways. Later, Monica said, “All of us, we’re all part of multiple Brandi’s plan. We all had an important role.” Nudge, Shelly and Tina were all present at the time. If Monica’s explanation was supposed to calm down Shelly, she must have been talking about what Nudge did to Shelly. There wouldn’t have been any reason to bring up the previous Brandi being responsible for having Nudge motivate Tina’s demons to get Tina’s body out of the morgue, because Tina was grateful for that. What Tina was angry about had nothing to do with any previous Brandi.
Yeah, bubbly is all relative, I guess. I wouldn’t exactly compare her to another female, non-human webcomic character that has been described as bubbly.
Phix’s behavior has been very different from time to time. Maybe she really was acting like a bubbly in this case. Maybe Shelly had become so serious anything would come across as bubbly. Maybe Shelly’s memories are all messed up. Who knows, maybe it was really Jacqui pretending to be Phix.
I wonder if CG still contains the memories and experiences of the demons of which she is composed? If so, this 80,000ish years is hardly a blip to her/it. The demons that are her would already have been alive for many eons before our universe even came into existence.
She is now , but before that she was just “ye average bunch of demons”. Shelly coagulated them into one entity after her vision-quest. They are consequently tied to Shelly’s life-span.
CLG was separated from the demon realm and combined into one entity by Shelly, so there would be no way of going elsewhere when Shelly dies. That seems to be different than what happened with Tina’s demons, who apparently had their memories erased.
When Creepy has appeared before it has been a manifestation (albeit amusing) form of Shellys fears.
So when Creepy says ‘she’ doesn’t want to scare her Shellys friends I assume she really means Shellinx doesn’t want to scare her friends.
Which woud explain why she is being a tad…emotionless.
She’s never been a manifestation of Shelly’s fears. She’s always been a conglomerate of her demons, just one that -showed- Shelly those fears. She’s been, since we have known her, her own ‘person’ of a sort.
Keep in mind that demons in the wapsiverse are personal demons. They are the embodiment of the host’s physiological problems. CLG even said that she is Shelly’s conscience. She is inherently a part of Shelly’s mind.
Having said that, I think a lot of Shelly’s subdued reaction is because she is overwhelmed.
Given that Shelly was (pretty much) isolated in the Uhrwald/Time Forest for eons and eons, was that possibly why her demons had time to multiply, and then coalesce into a conscience?
Just that in the Time Forest, Shellinx also had a CG companion demon/conscience, who had all that time to evolve, possibly pick up other things from the “visiting” Shellys and their CGs, and so on. Remember, now that we have a new perspective, lots of facts change their significance.
@bmonk: I am thinking that there is very little time travel going on. I don’t think that Shelly was affected by the other loops, except for what came from Jin’s and Brandi’s knowledge of what to do this time, before she grabbed the relic. CLG had already coalesced and called herself Shelly’s conscience by then.
Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part, but I don’t want to see much time travel. It creates too many “anything can happen” situations.
…but it probably explains why Shelly didn’t adequately answer Monica’s question today.
——–
🙄 This bit ^^ belonged here and I just now, about 10 hours later, noticed that I replied to another one of my comments when I wrote it.
Anyway, I was trying to say that since CLG is really part of Shelly’s mind, Shelly’s non-response to Monica probably reflects CLG’s concern about scaring Monica and the others. As I said later, CLG may be motivated by Shelly’s fear of abandonment; I’m not sure of that.
Am I the only one who feels like a hungry bird under a slowly dripping eye-dropper of food? The suspense is driving me insane. I can’t wait to see where this goes.
Oooohhhhh! That couldn’t happen with most people, but something similar was a danger in Monica’s case. Shelly was like Monica in being able to be turned into a doorway when she temporarily died.
A sphinx controlled by demons would be a scary thing for them. CLG may be close enough to a demon to freak them out.
It may be a while before Shelly really settles down. She spent 80,000 some-odd years away after all. Heck, despite their natures, she may have made sphinxy friends while there. Maybe other beings as well. Carved out a life for herself. She could be torn between being here with the old friends and family she barely remembers anymore and the amazing life she led as a sphinx. She would no longer be trapped in other realms and possibly free to go where she wished. Probably with Phix’s help, of course. Can she be satisfied with her old mundane life? I don’t think I could.
Considering everything that’s transpired, I would hardly call Shelly’s life mundane. By the sounds of it, I would say Shelly’s only real friends while in TTF were Connie and Phix.
Yes, it’s had its exciting moments, but even she said she was sorry the CM fixing thing was over. She missed the excitement. It was back to working in the auto shop and the like.
Who knows how many creatures she met. She may have been fast friends with some. Heck, even the demon hunters might have been okay gals off duty.
maybe this version of Jin that has been with shelly spinx for 80k years is the part of jin she lost and cause jins mother to do everything she did.. to try and heal jin.
Ah, GOOD! Conscience is still around and was apparently with Shelly all that time! No wonder Shellinx was both so sane and cranky; 80,000 years of being snarked by your consolidated demons who know how to push your buttons…
I wonder why the Sphinxes were so scared of Conscience. Yes, she is – literally – unique, and we’ve seen she can be EXTREMELY frightening, but she’s never demonstrated offensive capacity… Maybe she just hasn’t had to let loose the thunder yet. Or it’s what she represented or might lead to that upset them.
Shelly needs to get her hair cut or styled, this drawn back, flat, lifeless ‘do doesn’t compliment her features.
Nah, not really. CG aka Young Shelly is really cute. “I don’t want to scare your friends” awwww..
Sphinxses are used to fight demons on a one-on-one basis. There is a distinct possibility that a compressed, single-bodied multi-entity demon can kick their buts.
Predators know on instinct when there is something bigger around. Cats go twice their size ,and completely haywire when smelling tiger or lion pee or dung. (we used it to keep cats from our veggie garden ,got it from the local zoo too..)
You could search for “lion manure” or something. We just asked for it at the local zoo. A 15 kilo-bag would be something like E5.-, say, $7.- or GBP4.- (part of it a donation to the zoo) STUNK LIKE HELL!!! even dried, the smell of rotting meat was overwhelming (don’t say You weren’t warned 😀 )
On that note: That was in the late 80’s .I have no idea if some recent environmental law hasn’t banned it by now .
It was overly rich in nitrates, and would kill a lot of greenery where applied. We just made a sort of a Lion-shit-wall around the patches. Was fun to see our cats sniffle, freeze on the spot, go all hair and scooting off like a rat on fire :d 😆 .. Not the most pleasant stuff.
If their reaction is anything like what a demon instinctly wants to do when a sphinx is nearby, I must applaud Tina’s composure.. 😛
If no Lion-poo available, any plant stinking of Lemon is quite effective .he detest the smell of lemon. Makes them sneeze..’s really funny to see.
that’s true
they treated him horrifically at the time
i cannot recall how i felt about him (other than i thought he was adorable) when i first saw monica and co being so horrid to him the first time but when you reread the archive they just come across as horrible bullies!
Well, don’t tricksters have to expect a certain amount of such treatment? Admittedly, sometimes it’s too much–but if you can’t stand the ripostes, don’t be a trickster.
He’s helpful without really helping and doesn’t always seem to be doing what’s in Monica’s best interest. He lies only by omission and can be a bit of a thorn in the side.
That’s not they way I would have described him. To me, he was a marginally competent peon usually doing about the best he could. If he did something that wasn’t in Monica’s best interest, it was because he thought that he needed to do it.
I’d like to think he’s getting up to something with Dietzel. Where should a pair of 18″ tall guys go for a good time in Minneapolis? Other than Brooke’s house.
Shelly said, “In my run ins with nature’s apex…” What did she mean by that? I assume the sphinxes? At first I thought she meant the Sacred Forest, but if she was trapped there, she wouldn’t have had multiple run ins with it. Is Phix specifically “nature’s apex”? If so, it would mean that she had multiple “run ins” with her. For some reason, Monica takes “nature’s apex” as plural even though it’s singular, and Shelly responds the same way, so I don’t think Shelly meant just Phix. But it could be that Monica switched subjects, given the strange way characters talk in the wapsiverse.
You know, looking at the pictures on the wall in the second panel and given the new information which has recently been imparted, I wonder if they are relatives of Phix?
The other thing is that they seem to be wearing regular human clothing. Other than the corset, I don’t think Monica’s demons did. I have a link above for when Jin’s demon visited Monica; she wasn’t wearing clothing, either. I don’t want to look for the other examples, but I don’t think the demons normally wear clothing. Tina’s demons didn’t even seem to have bodies (February 11, 2011).
Big question in my mind. Is Creepy Little Girl a Sphinx too? She is tied to Shelly’s life-span. In the tree land she would then have to be immortal as well. Hell of a package to confront a sphinx with.
Also one wonders who instructed nudge to lead her down the rabbit hole.
Another unanswered question, why was the Shelly series of girls doing playing hot potato with radioactive material?
We’ve been calling her Creepy Girl for so long we forget Paul never actually named her as such … until now. So Shelly calls it her companion. It may be time for an official nick name change. Compy?
I can understand what “theyr’re” was supposed to be a lot easier than I can understand why you tried to say, “They’re rerunning last of the summer wine on itv3.” Were they talking about fertilizing grapes? 😕
Tina named her “Creepy Girl”. Originally, she called her “a creepy little girl.” (See my 8:56 am comment for a link.) I say we keep going with CLG.
CG came out as recently as Nudge’s visit to Tina’s coffee shop, but I cannot really tell if she made herself visible to them.
I can see why she would frighten hardened demon hunters since she is probably an entity that is rare in their universe. But I don’t think she should fear letting herself be seen by the current crew, as she has proven herself helpful in their quest to destroy the calendar machine, as well as in convincing Shelly togo after the relic.
Another thing. What if she appeared as a sphinx as well. A fusion of demons in the form of a shinx would probably have caused massive confusion and indecision, probably even fear. Perhaps they would wonder, “Could this whatever-it-is kill us,” or worse, get inside of us?
Do you mean did Shelly appear as a sphinx? If they merely knew that CLG was in Shelly and Shelly was a sphinx, that would be enough to cause the concerns you are talking about.
I don’t know that CLG has any ability allow herself to be seen by others or to control what she would look like if she did.
No, I meant if CG appeared as a sphinx as well. A demon sphinx would be hard for sphinxes to figure out. I don’t think her child form would be especially creepy to sphinxes. Regular demons come in a variety of horrific shapes. Much worse than her.
We don’t know she doesn’t have that ability either. After all, she can manifest cartoon props as needed. Also here she seems to be controlling whether she will appear or not, despite being called by Shelly.
Yes, but most people don’t have enough of a connection with their demons for the demons to take over their hosts. Monica and Tina were unusual in that they did. Shelly seems to have had a similar connection. I doubt that the sphinxes are worried about CLG as much as the fact that she might be able to take over a sphinx. At least that’s my theory until I’m proven wrong.
Another possibility is that they can’t quite figure out what she is. She’s not quite a demon. That may be unsettling for them. I get the sense that they don’t like being thrown curve-balls.
I agree with your last paragraph…I imagine demon hunters live in a bit of a black-and-white world, so an anomaly like CG would breed fear.
SWM also has a point in that even if CG didn’t appear as a sphinx, having her associated with one might be quite frightening, like the physical manifestation of a disease they are afraid to catch.
Doh! All along I’ve been thinking that CLG said “I don’t want to scare your friends” because she worried for their sake. It just clicked that she might have meant “I don’t want to frighten them and cause them to abandon us.”
I never really saw her as being on the fence. Yes, she’s attractive to lesbians, but she seems more like a straight person who’s fine with her friend being a lesbian, but wouldn’t be one herself.
Right. Paul has never portrayed her as having lesbian tendencies. Just as being a social clutz, sending unintentional mixed signals to her lesbian friend.
Of course, one never knows. If she was exclusively in the company of female beings for 80,000 years I suppose attitudes could change.
If I remember correctly her fear of being hurt again caused that relationship to end before they got to that point… so had they stayed together, who knows what would have happened…
Keep in mind, this is the REAL Shelly. The 56 ones that came after her (including the ones we’ve seen here since her 2001 debut) were from different timelines. Think of her as ShellyPrime.
Creepy girl to the rescue!
So I’m guessing she reeeeeeeally got to know her conscience, quite well…
When shelly had to stab monica Creepy pulled out the worst thing to Shelly ever.
What would she have done to make Shellinx agree to let herself die so much.
I doubt anything phix said or didn’t say would have made shelly do anything but Creepy would have been on her case until she did.
Perhaps a picture of monica Bud Brandi and the rest writhing in flames as the world implodes due to the calender machines paradox?
I got it. Creepy Girl’s name? Jenny Cricket. 🙂
“…give a little whistle…”
Well, yeah..80000 years of relative solitude tends to have that effect.
Shelly’s real vision-quest wasn’t the one where she met Tochtli, but this, 80000-year banishment.
She’ll be the one to watch in the coming episodes. Together with her friendship with Tina.
Sooo, Phix is a daisy? I always felt she was a sweetie..C’mon, a non-violent Sphinx? She must be someone very good hearted and strong, to go against all sorts of mythical instincts.
Connie is the one who talked her into this in the first place:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/missing-the-poin/
And the next few…
So, the “little girl” they are rescuing is in fact Shellinx?
No That little girl is in Jin… Driving her more insane or maybe keeping her more balance. I am not sure what Jin’s little girl is, but she was sweep up in the first moments of the Chimera disaster that sweep the planet.
Maybe the ghost of all the victims haunt Jin, but the little girl is just the frontrunner. Jin has “seen” many ghosts before, but they could be just her insane imagination.
PBH
Aaaactually, should have started with this one….
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/became-sentient/
“I don’t wanna go!”
It’s strange, but that whole little exchange actually makes sense now, in retrospect.
“Companion” might actually be, essentially, a “backup copy” of Shelly over the millennia – one that kept Shel sane over all that time.
..but Creepy is a demon.
Kinda explains why she’s not a demon hunter. After spending 80k years in the company of one.
CG isn’t really a demon anymore. She’s now a Conscience that was created by melding all of a person’s demons into one being.
haha phix being bubbly lol
and woot CG lives
i can see how other sphinkes would fear CG
alot of em like to kill demons and here we have a sphink that compressed her demons into 1 entity
I have never imagined Phix described that way before.
Also, damn! I came and saw only four comments – and there’s five by the time I called them up. Pablo really does update this thing early, too; it’s 10:30 Pacific time.
Isn’t it just a relative description? (I.e., other sphinges are even more serious and aggressive than Phix.)
agreed. Phix is a daisy is relative to other Sphinx. (or however you spell the plural of Sphinx).
I think just the fact that a Sphinx has demons would freak them out.
yeah and CG is a type they may have never seen before
shell now embodies all 3 races a human thats a sphink and has a unique demon
This brings up the question; if sphinxes are born human, with demons, what happens when they turn demon hunter? Do they first kill their own demons?
Is that, perhaps, part of the process of becoming a sphinx? :/
And if that’s the case we have the reason CG has the sphinx corps rattled.
CG didn’t die.
Or perhaps they absorb them.
Sphinxes don’t hunt ALL demons. Only rogues.
Sphinxes don’t have demons – but humans do. And Shelly is half-human. When she went on her Vision Quest, all of her demons coalesced into one.
Boy, there’s some serious Spock-like things going on here with our Miss Wahnee.
I don’t think that’s quite the same Shelly we’ve known. I have a feeling that mistaking the new girl for Shelly is asking for pain.
I kept refreshing the page to see the next episode <3
AWWWWWW!! CG is so cute in that last panel!! XD
x2
Well that answers earlier questions about where CG was. Also might explain why after 80k years of solitude Shelly didn’t go too loopy. Now the next question: when are they going to get her something to wear?
I wonder what the team will make of CG.
so far only one of the group whos seen CG is tina when she got stuck in the boiler room i belive and it dosent look like CG wants to freak em out by revealing herself now
hmm is CG still bound by the demon laws not sure if revealing your self is aginst the rules
Ever since the end of the calender machine arc, demons can no longer manifest outside their host. Tina is the only exception to this rule. Creepy Girl however, is no longer a demon, and is not bound by their rules.
Indeed! It has been established that Creepy Girl is a consolidation of all of Shelly’s demons into an animate conscience. The demon hunters go after demons because they’re all one-dimensional and erratic. CG is a summation of Shelly’s demons (Id-Ego-Superego anyone?) and very much not “demonic” like the others!
Tina is the exception? Don’t think so… the only thing peculiar here is that Tina’s “host” is an actually dead body. But those demons don’t manifest “outside”. Oh, but they did? Just can’t recall if that was pre- or post-CM-“repair”.
(Can really remember the rule you mention, but that’s beside the point)
They didn’t manifest in front of others outside Tina’s body though. 🙂 Loophole!
“Creepy Girl however, is no longer a demon, and is not bound by their rules.”
It’s not a matter of being bound by their rules. It’s a matter of having the ability. The rogue demons were using Monica to break the rules. That ended when her doorway was closed. CLG never had access to Monica and has always been stuck inside Shelly because Shelly closed her doorway at the same time she created CLG.
nah, take look at Monica’s eye-line… it looks as though she is looking directly at CG right now. as for CG’s tan, i think that’s just a trick of the light, we usually see her in a darkened boiler room so when we see her elsewhere, it make her look different, kinda like a dark shirt and pants in a dark room, you can see that they are a dark color, but you cant really tell HOW black the pants are compared to the dark blue shirt. it’s only when they are both in the light that you can tell the difference… i think it’s the same principal here.
i thought it looked like monica was looking at her too but ill wait till tomarow to find out for sure
I think you’re right about that tan:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/the-one-time/
that eyeline is also going straight to Shelly.
I also believe that Creepy can be seen by Tina/nudge/phix as they deal with demons regularly.
I doubt that anyone else could as no one can see Monicas barring Tina and even then Tina just had the impression Monica was…split.
Bud (and I think Brandi and Jin) has seen demons before. She saw Tina for what she was immediately, and Monica introduced her to her bundle of demons ages ago…back when she first gave Bud the advice not to listen to what demons say.
ah yes you are right 🙂
i also remember when monica was explaining about her demons to the trio
they could see her
AND when doubt was left out of monica
but monica was a doorway to all the demons
shelly was a doorway but it was locked and she has her own personal demon.
but tina is also locked.
hmm
i dunno 😀
Tina saw (and named) CLG when she somehow got poited inside Shelly. I got the impression from her behavior that she hadn’t seen CLG before that point.
@Julie: There was some inconsistency about that, but usually Monica had control over whether or not her demons were able to manifest outside of her. The fact that she showed her demons to Bud to make a point indicates that Bud couldn’t normally see them. Jin apparently could, but that was because of the bridge that was created when Bud pointed Monica’s Doubt inside Jin.
Paula is correct, though, they needed to use Monica’s doorway to be able to manifest outside of her. I think Paul said in a comment that Monica is the only one who can see her demons now that it is closed.
“…no-one but Topper can see or hear them.”
Actually, i think CG can manifest so that others can see her.
Or at least an image of her.
All she needs to do is use CGI.
(CLANK)
CG isn’t a demon any more. She’s not bound to their laws. But she’s not immortal either.
@scantron I don’t think CG is visible to anyone else yet. I think that CG’s appearnace in the last panel is just to let us know she’s still around. And from what CG said, I don’t think she’s visble to anyone else as well.
Even as jaded as Monica is with the supernaterual, I think Monica would have reacted quite strongly if CG has just appeared in front of her.
Visible or not, I think Jin may know that she exists. Jin looked very satisfied when CLG talked Shelly into going to Ireland to get the relic. Jin seemed to touch Shelly at the start of that. That may have been Jin communicating with CLG.
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/dontfreak/
Heh. As usual when someone posta a link and i hop over to it, i clicked ahead a few strips, and came to what may be my all-time favourite in the “Silly” class…
When Bud lets it out, she really has a truly admirable line of snark…
You know, perhaps it’s time Shelly introduced CG to her friends. Monica should understand her since she has such a direct, intimate relationship with own personal demons.
I think that’s what she is doing. She is at least telling Monica about her
(I already paid for this one in another context, so i get a freebie)
The Scoobies will have a hard time accepting CG:
Shelly will try to introduce CG to the others and they’ll think it’s just CGI.
CAN Conscience manifest, though, to anyone but Shelly? Tina can see her, but Tina’s vision is not bound by the mortal plain and she can see lots of things. Since Conscience says she doesn’t want to scare the others that would suggest she might be able to, but we’ll have to see.
Monica might be freaked if a little girl suddenly appeared in front of her, particularly such a creepy little girl. Bud… I don’t know how she’d react.
Why do you think that Tina can see her, other than the time Tina was poited inside Shelly? The only other occasion that I can recall was merely a dream that Shelly was having. I may be wrong, but I think the other times that CLG was in front of Tina, Tina wasn’t actually seeing her.
Tina keeps getting flashes of Conscience, usually in her boiler room, usually when Shelly walks into the coffee shop, often under the heading “can you see me?”. Given that Tina reacts each time that happens, it’s clear it’s not just something we the audience see, she’s seeing it, too. The first few times it happened it rattled her, but since she spent that night trapped in the boiler room with her, it’s apparently just a surprise now, not a scare.
Your memory is different than mine. I think the time Tina was poited into Shelly was earliest Tina even knew CLG existed. This was just a dream, as far as we know. Shelly and Tina have talked about CLG in addition to that and CLG was sometimes visible to us, but I still don’t recall anything that showed that Tina was actually seeing her.
If you can identify specific strips, I would appreciate it.
Whoopsie, you’re right, I’m wrong. I was confusing Shelly’s nightmare, Tina’s reaction when she realized Jin was being haunted, and this still not completely explained appearance of Conscience (http://wapsisquare.com/comic/her-head/). Sorry.
But my research revealed something interesting. Tina has met Conscience, as we know (http://wapsisquare.com/comic/dontfreak/), she knows all about her (http://wapsisquare.com/comic/a-lot-in-common/)… and she’s scared of her (http://wapsisquare.com/comic/abitdisturbing/). If the Demon Collective AND the Sphinxes fear CLG, she must be dynamite…
Well, now that I have seen the next page, I know that Monica can see CLG. If Monica can see her, which seems inconstant with what we’ve been told about doorways in the past, I assume that Tina may have been able to see her, too.
I can see why CLG would creep Tina out, but it’s not about the way CLG behaves. It’s the simple fact that she exists and is basically the remnants of what used to be demons. That’s would create some existential issues for Tina and make Tina’s demons think about their possible mortality.
Nah shes to cute to scare.
unless she isn’t.
She isn’t
She is a manifestation of Shellys worst fears..that she failed to save her mom and that she told her mum she hated her before she died.
Maybe Creepy could have a word with Crispy. After all similar personalitys.
I’ve felt for a long time that Bud, Brandi, and Jin were the most potentially scary characters in this story, but CG is far and away the most disturbing.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. It just means that her existence opens possibilities that are frightening to me for the comic.
Don’t ask me to explain it, but they’re just there.
Explain, please.
🙂 <— Jerk
I get the feeling that the reasons are as yet too nebulous to explain well.
You never alone when you can talk to yourself 🙂
What if you are a mute or deaf?
You don’t need to be able to speak to talk to yourself. Perhaps it should be called think to yourself. Nonetheless, when I “talk” to myself there is a voice. Just that the voice is in my head. No one else can hear it, but I can.
You know, I’ve often wondered how someone who doesn’t learn a language due to disability (think Helen Keller) thinks things. I think distinct sounds, words, and images, but if I’d never seen or heard anything, what would I think?
Helen Keller did learn a language–felt Sign language. But there is indication that the language areas of the brain are rather flexible, and can adapt to visual or auditory language as needed, especially in children.
So even demon hunters fear Creepy Girl. Somehow I can’t say that I’m surprised.
alot of peeps fear the unknown.
would make sence for the sphinx to also.
Hehe the talk about comapnions reminded me on “Doctor who”. Well with her age and knowledge i bet shelly has this special timelord vibe too XD.
Ok little miss CG is here now what about the bunny?
Also since when is CG so hard tanned?
Well 1400 years of hard radiation can give you quitea tan. And I don’t think it was anywhere near as short a time as that.
CG is not tanned. Either she embodies the Native American side of Shelly or Welcome to the Dark Side Luke…
Actually CG would scare others quiet a bit. This is the uninhibited side of Shelly. Look at how calmly she watched Tina punch out Nudge. This one is stone cold and will do anything to protect Shelly. Especially after their bonding moment on the island.
bunny?
You know…Harvey. 🙂
😕 You must watch a bunch of old movies.
I love movies more than I love many things in life… 🙂
With any luck, you’ll get over that.
Harvey rocks! \m/
My favorite Jimmy Stewart movie…
This one and the next one…
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/04192005/
This one and the next eight…
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/wellletyoutwoalone/
She just is.
“tanned” I mean. I don’t think she is ruthless though. On the contrary. It’s Shelly’s conscience. Shelly is a good, sweet person ,but was always marred by abandonment-issues.
Thw 80000-year solitude was an extreme form of therapy. With a bit of luck ,she’ll come out of this as the most stable of all the Wapsi clown-car.
Add to that her “sphinxness” and we have a very wise, powerful entity.
She can and will be. From the first time she was introduced she has been a dark and dangerous figure. Even Tina was taken back by her. Bud spent some time with here and wasn’t too happy about it. She has been shown holding a knife, or scissors, in a very threatening mannor a number of times. When and where did she turn into little miss harmless? The ID and EGO hide all sorts of dark things. The things Shelly does not want to face or admit to having as part of her. So yes I think CG can be a very dangerous person and scary.
When did Bud spend time with CLG?
the scissors were shellys
she cut her hair after her mum died so it was a form of defence.
would be natural for them to become a weapon.
the knife was again shellys fears becoming reality.
she had to stab monica.
creepy is apart from demons and more a part of shelly than demons. i think she is as dangerous as shelly is.
but perhaps no
creepy seems to be a good factor in keeping shellinx sane so she is good in away…
not that seeing a small version of yourself on a regular basis is sane or anything but well…could be worse ^^
If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.
🙂
Hahaha, oh man, I almost wanted it to end on the second panel, just with her saying “It was my companion…” and then I woulda been jumping up and down going “Creepy girl lives and she scares Sphinx’s away!” but not knowing for completely *shure* until tomorrow.
Who’s afraid of a little black haired girl? the kitties are… yes they are! aww
YAY SHE’S ALIVE 😀 (Relatively, demonly speaking of course.)
=)
Wonder what all those years does to a sphinx-hybrid’s demon… man the stories she can tell. *totally pulls up some popcorn for the rest of the week*
…. I’m getting the itch of worry though. Paul is being too nice – something super cliff hangery must be awaiting us Friday.
Maybe the Calendar Machine question I had before might get answered… let’s see! Go Paul! 😀
And obviously your characters, go Shelly, shelly demon girl (did she get a name?), Monica, Tina, Bud, and all the rest. 😀
Sidenote: Its going to be so adorable and happy/sad (if she reacts the happy/sad way) when she sees her police boyfriend again… they were really cute… she must’ve missed him so much… 🙂
Yup
The poor man cannot win really with us.
We get anxious and stressed when we have a difficult storyline and we get anxious and stressed when we have a storyline which confirms speculations.
I am wondering if we are getting all these confirmations because Paul was a tad busy before the convention and doing strips of confirmations was easier than working out a looop-de-loop of storyline 😀
As I said yesterday, Paul is just clearing up all the confusion our wild-assed speculation has caused so he can get on with telling HIS story.
Isn’t the convention over?
ya i think so but well alot of the webcomics i have read in the past – when theyre going to convention tend to put up filler art before and just after.
Paul never seems to so 😀
I have a couple of artist friends that regularly have tables at conventions. They try to take a day or two off of their day jobs before and after. Conventions are hard work.
If you think attending conventions is hard – try running one.
Or bidding for the SF WorldCon. (I dropped off the committee after we won the bid, but the bid (on a low-key level at first) began in 1976 for a WorldCon in 1986…
I still want to give “Connie” a hug, a stuffed toy, and hot chocolate.
connie?
Conglomerate?
Conscience.
My god, someone else who actually spells the word correctly. (Fanning myself) I think I am going to swoon!
Eezee noww me olt men ,nozzing to ged al azvoczijus aboud…
*hents ovur hart duseese medeceenu*
@jay-em
what language is that?
It’s an ancient “Get Fatuncle’s strickler-for-precise-grammar in a tizzy” -tongue. Specifically designed, after years of hard study of phonetics and symbolism (ehh..about 2 seconds ,to be honest) to get Fatuncle’ strickler for etc etc…
Call it a painful(to correct grammar-inclined minds, that is..), verbal poke.. 😛
You almost broke my “It’s just the internet, leave it be” bone with that comment, Jay-Em… 🙂
@Paula I Can Has Cheezeburger LOL-speak
i can sort of read it
Easy now old man. nothing to get all ??? about…
*hands over heart disease medicine*
not sure on the 9th word.
Must admit. 4th reading of it and it seems kinda jagger.
(yknow the gus from girl genius)
Quoting AmriloJim’s .sig:
I’m looking forward to an upcoming episode where Shelly visits Nudge in the library, in full Sphinx form!
Nudge: EEEEEEEK!!
Shelnix: Hello Nudge. I just wanted to say I’m not mad at you any more for trying to kill me back when I was a child on a Spirit Quest.
Nudge: Ah.. thank you?
Shelnix: I understand that you were just doing your job. There was more involved than what I knew at that time.
Nudge: Er — yes. Sorry about that.
Shelnix: OK then. But — If you ever, EVER, try anything like that again, I’m going to break your neck one vertebra at a time, starting at the tip of your tail and working my way up. Got it?
Nudge: EEEEEEEK!!
Hey her time worked in reverse to the callendermachine for 80k years, i wouldnt wonder if shelly actually gave the instruction respective manipulated jin to have all that happen.
Yeah. I’ve suspected for a while that it was sphinx Shelly who told Nudge to lead fourteen-year-old Shelly astray.
I doubt it. The “Queen of Sorts” rogue demon implied that it was a previous Brandi’s idea. Monica repeated it recently. Shelly seemed to accept that. If it turns out that was wrong, hopefully Shelly will say something fairly soon. Unless she does, I will continue to assume it was Brandi.
I thought the ‘Queen of Sorts’ was Jin’s Doubt. She was the mastermind of the ‘Screw up the Calendar Machine plot’ that would have let the demon’s use the earth and all humans as their playtoys….
Yes, she was one of Jin’s demons. I don’t think that Monica was necessarily saying that it was a doubt demon, but you could read it that way. In any case, I don’t see why you are bringing up the demon’s role with Jin.
…or any of the other stuff.
I’ve seen no evidence to point that way – in fact, Bud is the only one of the GGs that we know for sure knows who Nudge is – and that’s because we know Shelly told her after the brawl.
@Fairportfan: Assuming you are referring to not seeing evidence that a previous Brandi directed Nudge, keep in mind that the rogue queen said that Jin must never learn about what happened and the rest of the Wapsi characters have always acted as if that must be true for some reason. What Brandi currently knows is irrelevant because her memories were reset after she was involved. Bud said that she wasn’t even there when the previous Brandi figured out what needed to happen and there wouldn’t have been any need to tell Bud during this attempt, so it wouldn’t be surprising if she doesn’t know.
The evidence that a previous Brandi told Nudge what to do is this: Nudge apparently had to lead Shelly off for Shelly to have temporarily died, which turned her into an open doorway that she quickly closed. The rogue queen gave the previous Brandi’s “dabbling” credit for both Monica and “Muscle Butt” being turned into doorways. Later, Monica said, “All of us, we’re all part of multiple Brandi’s plan. We all had an important role.” Nudge, Shelly and Tina were all present at the time. If Monica’s explanation was supposed to calm down Shelly, she must have been talking about what Nudge did to Shelly. There wouldn’t have been any reason to bring up the previous Brandi being responsible for having Nudge motivate Tina’s demons to get Tina’s body out of the morgue, because Tina was grateful for that. What Tina was angry about had nothing to do with any previous Brandi.
Yeah, Shelly could mess her up before, but I guess now she could make Nudge fudge of her.
ah but to quote the great Willy Wonka…would anyone buy it? The taste would be horrible :p
Sphinxes might like it.
chocolate covered or not?
I find it funny that compared to other Sphinx’s Phix is bubbly. It’s just silly, and make you scared to ever meet any of the others.
Yeah, bubbly is all relative, I guess. I wouldn’t exactly compare her to another female, non-human webcomic character that has been described as bubbly.
Perhaps a better term is “civilized.”
well she did say to herself that she disliked the ‘monster that she used to be’. That denotes a rise of civility of a sort
Phix’s behavior has been very different from time to time. Maybe she really was acting like a bubbly in this case. Maybe Shelly had become so serious anything would come across as bubbly. Maybe Shelly’s memories are all messed up. Who knows, maybe it was really Jacqui pretending to be Phix.
Shelly is saying that Phix is like that compared to the apos, not that she is, taken in the abstract…
I wonder if CG still contains the memories and experiences of the demons of which she is composed? If so, this 80,000ish years is hardly a blip to her/it. The demons that are her would already have been alive for many eons before our universe even came into existence.
That is or could be very scary. It also might explain her calmness and apparent maturity. Perhaps we can or will learn from CG. I like her!
Hmm
She has never expressed that but then again neither did Monicas either.
I have always taken Creepy to be like Tina however. Tied to this timeline and Shelly.
She is now , but before that she was just “ye average bunch of demons”. Shelly coagulated them into one entity after her vision-quest. They are consequently tied to Shelly’s life-span.
CLG was separated from the demon realm and combined into one entity by Shelly, so there would be no way of going elsewhere when Shelly dies. That seems to be different than what happened with Tina’s demons, who apparently had their memories erased.
Hmm
When Creepy has appeared before it has been a manifestation (albeit amusing) form of Shellys fears.
So when Creepy says ‘she’ doesn’t want to scare her Shellys friends I assume she really means Shellinx doesn’t want to scare her friends.
Which woud explain why she is being a tad…emotionless.
This is making my brain hurt, don’t you think Creepy is a bit more than just Shelly’s demons?
She’s never been a manifestation of Shelly’s fears. She’s always been a conglomerate of her demons, just one that -showed- Shelly those fears. She’s been, since we have known her, her own ‘person’ of a sort.
Keep in mind that demons in the wapsiverse are personal demons. They are the embodiment of the host’s physiological problems. CLG even said that she is Shelly’s conscience. She is inherently a part of Shelly’s mind.
Having said that, I think a lot of Shelly’s subdued reaction is because she is overwhelmed.
Given that Shelly was (pretty much) isolated in the Uhrwald/Time Forest for eons and eons, was that possibly why her demons had time to multiply, and then coalesce into a conscience?
?
they turned into her conscience years ago
during the ‘vision’ quest shelly went on.
or did you mean something else?
Just that in the Time Forest, Shellinx also had a CG companion demon/conscience, who had all that time to evolve, possibly pick up other things from the “visiting” Shellys and their CGs, and so on. Remember, now that we have a new perspective, lots of facts change their significance.
@bmonk: I am thinking that there is very little time travel going on. I don’t think that Shelly was affected by the other loops, except for what came from Jin’s and Brandi’s knowledge of what to do this time, before she grabbed the relic. CLG had already coalesced and called herself Shelly’s conscience by then.
Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part, but I don’t want to see much time travel. It creates too many “anything can happen” situations.
*thats* what i ment to say 🙂
thanks 😀
i have the communication skills of a gerbil sometimes 😀
…but it probably explains why Shelly didn’t adequately answer Monica’s question today.
——–
🙄 This bit ^^ belonged here and I just now, about 10 hours later, noticed that I replied to another one of my comments when I wrote it.
Anyway, I was trying to say that since CLG is really part of Shelly’s mind, Shelly’s non-response to Monica probably reflects CLG’s concern about scaring Monica and the others. As I said later, CLG may be motivated by Shelly’s fear of abandonment; I’m not sure of that.
Am I the only one who feels like a hungry bird under a slowly dripping eye-dropper of food? The suspense is driving me insane. I can’t wait to see where this goes.
*passes a seedcake to jordinyc*
Shelly’s dark passenger…
Which begs the question, now that Shelly’s a sphinx, what if CG took the controls? Maybe that’s what scared the other sphinx.
Oooohhhhh! That couldn’t happen with most people, but something similar was a danger in Monica’s case. Shelly was like Monica in being able to be turned into a doorway when she temporarily died.
A sphinx controlled by demons would be a scary thing for them. CLG may be close enough to a demon to freak them out.
…but it probably explains why Shelly didn’t adequately answer Monica’s question today.
🙄 My second comment didn’t belong here. It’s a continuation of a different comment.
Off-topic:
@Eshmenk and SoWhyMe: I replied to your comments from yesterday re: Gibbs Slap vs Magic Wands.
I don’t think my brain can handle much more awesomeness…
It may be a while before Shelly really settles down. She spent 80,000 some-odd years away after all. Heck, despite their natures, she may have made sphinxy friends while there. Maybe other beings as well. Carved out a life for herself. She could be torn between being here with the old friends and family she barely remembers anymore and the amazing life she led as a sphinx. She would no longer be trapped in other realms and possibly free to go where she wished. Probably with Phix’s help, of course. Can she be satisfied with her old mundane life? I don’t think I could.
Considering everything that’s transpired, I would hardly call Shelly’s life mundane. By the sounds of it, I would say Shelly’s only real friends while in TTF were Connie and Phix.
Yes, it’s had its exciting moments, but even she said she was sorry the CM fixing thing was over. She missed the excitement. It was back to working in the auto shop and the like.
Who knows how many creatures she met. She may have been fast friends with some. Heck, even the demon hunters might have been okay gals off duty.
Yay for CG!
maybe this version of Jin that has been with shelly spinx for 80k years is the part of jin she lost and cause jins mother to do everything she did.. to try and heal jin.
The fact that monica can now SEE CG is just a whole new level of interesting to this Shelinx deal! 😉
I wouldn’t assume that yet.
🙄 I meant I wouldn’t assume that Monica can see CLG. It’s normal for her to be visible to us without any indication that characters can see her.
Yes. I think that Shellys second “my companion.” is her way of introducing the group to her animate conscience. i.e. Creepy Girl.
I still love that “pixie with the rack” line!
Ah-haaaa.
I’m so lost.
Ah, GOOD! Conscience is still around and was apparently with Shelly all that time! No wonder Shellinx was both so sane and cranky; 80,000 years of being snarked by your consolidated demons who know how to push your buttons…
I wonder why the Sphinxes were so scared of Conscience. Yes, she is – literally – unique, and we’ve seen she can be EXTREMELY frightening, but she’s never demonstrated offensive capacity… Maybe she just hasn’t had to let loose the thunder yet. Or it’s what she represented or might lead to that upset them.
Shelly needs to get her hair cut or styled, this drawn back, flat, lifeless ‘do doesn’t compliment her features.
Ah! Well..hello there… Mind if I panic and start running…..?
*feet don’t fail me now..*
Nah, not really. CG aka Young Shelly is really cute. “I don’t want to scare your friends” awwww..
Sphinxses are used to fight demons on a one-on-one basis. There is a distinct possibility that a compressed, single-bodied multi-entity demon can kick their buts.
Predators know on instinct when there is something bigger around. Cats go twice their size ,and completely haywire when smelling tiger or lion pee or dung. (we used it to keep cats from our veggie garden ,got it from the local zoo too..)
wonder if you can get it from the internet..
seriously
been worrying what happens when i put my pumpkin seedlings in the garden with the cats around our house…
You could search for “lion manure” or something. We just asked for it at the local zoo. A 15 kilo-bag would be something like E5.-, say, $7.- or GBP4.- (part of it a donation to the zoo) STUNK LIKE HELL!!! even dried, the smell of rotting meat was overwhelming (don’t say You weren’t warned 😀 )
On that note: That was in the late 80’s .I have no idea if some recent environmental law hasn’t banned it by now .
It was overly rich in nitrates, and would kill a lot of greenery where applied. We just made a sort of a Lion-shit-wall around the patches. Was fun to see our cats sniffle, freeze on the spot, go all hair and scooting off like a rat on fire :d 😆 .. Not the most pleasant stuff.
If their reaction is anything like what a demon instinctly wants to do when a sphinx is nearby, I must applaud Tina’s composure.. 😛
If no Lion-poo available, any plant stinking of Lemon is quite effective .he detest the smell of lemon. Makes them sneeze..’s really funny to see.
All cat poo smells like rotting meat – cats have one of the least efficient digestive systems of an mammal.
ooh lemon is dooable…
Tina will re-freak when CG manifests…
And with all this happening I still yet wonder, where is Tepoz?
maybe he went back utah 🙂
loved him in his little suit 😀
He gets abused by the girls a lot. He’s probably staying off the radar for his own good.
that’s true
they treated him horrifically at the time
i cannot recall how i felt about him (other than i thought he was adorable) when i first saw monica and co being so horrid to him the first time but when you reread the archive they just come across as horrible bullies!
Well, don’t tricksters have to expect a certain amount of such treatment? Admittedly, sometimes it’s too much–but if you can’t stand the ripostes, don’t be a trickster.
i never took him for a trickster though
he always worked in the girls best interest
same as nudge
trickster to me is someone who manipulates someone for their own amusement – often to the detriement of their victim.
but thats possibly a personal terminology and not the correct one 😀
The cast page says:
That’s not they way I would have described him. To me, he was a marginally competent peon usually doing about the best he could. If he did something that wasn’t in Monica’s best interest, it was because he thought that he needed to do it.
I’d like to think he’s getting up to something with Dietzel. Where should a pair of 18″ tall guys go for a good time in Minneapolis? Other than Brooke’s house.
the pizza place 🙂
on another sunny island NOT destroyed by Bud, is my initial guess.
or heading out to point fingers at whoever started THIS little game.
or… he doesn’t exist anymore.
Shelly said, “In my run ins with nature’s apex…” What did she mean by that? I assume the sphinxes? At first I thought she meant the Sacred Forest, but if she was trapped there, she wouldn’t have had multiple run ins with it. Is Phix specifically “nature’s apex”? If so, it would mean that she had multiple “run ins” with her. For some reason, Monica takes “nature’s apex” as plural even though it’s singular, and Shelly responds the same way, so I don’t think Shelly meant just Phix. But it could be that Monica switched subjects, given the strange way characters talk in the wapsiverse.
Apex predator, a predator which sits at the top of a food chain
since they were brought in by the library to deal with things of a demonic things which resided in nature….
maybe demon-hunter sphinx?
It’s certainly seems meant to indicate apex predator, but I was surprised to read “Nature’s apex”– surely immortal sphinxes are super-natural?
Also, is the predation limited to demons? Are humans the rind or part of the meal, there?
Winston Rowntree in Subnormality examines the ethics of sentient predation in sphinxes a bit more directly.
Monica’s conclusion, FWIW.
Of course, Monica’s conclusion was never contradicted. This implies pretty much the same. Bud had pretty much the same impression.
You know, looking at the pictures on the wall in the second panel and given the new information which has recently been imparted, I wonder if they are relatives of Phix?
@the pictures behind phix
yknow
i know it sounds stupid ‘n everything but
to me they look like demons..
the faces at least
could be just the artistry at the time but .. always thought that..
phix having pictures of demons up when she was a demon hunter however..is…silly…
The other thing is that they seem to be wearing regular human clothing. Other than the corset, I don’t think Monica’s demons did. I have a link above for when Jin’s demon visited Monica; she wasn’t wearing clothing, either. I don’t want to look for the other examples, but I don’t think the demons normally wear clothing. Tina’s demons didn’t even seem to have bodies (February 11, 2011).
I think Paul’s idea is that they are natural in the Wapsiverse. Sorry for writing these thoughts separately.
i would have assumed a spider or shark to be top of the food chain however.
even if a firegirl can toss a shark a couple of miles.
maybe just the spider then.
ooh then again tina demons managed to kill that spider.
which makes them higher than a spider
and sphinx remove demons
so
okay they’re the top 😀
I think the top of the food chain are the little things, like maggots and viruses. We are prey to them, both before death and after.
“Bubbly, potted little daisy” LOL. I’ll keep that in mind when I remember Phix serving tea in bone china in her skull room behind the bookshelves
Big question in my mind. Is Creepy Little Girl a Sphinx too? She is tied to Shelly’s life-span. In the tree land she would then have to be immortal as well. Hell of a package to confront a sphinx with.
Also one wonders who instructed nudge to lead her down the rabbit hole.
Another unanswered question, why was the Shelly series of girls doing playing hot potato with radioactive material?
i would suppose yes as even tho she is appearing as shelly as a youngster shellinx said she has always been a sphinx.
or would it be so tied to her helplessness at the time that she is just a small child (even if she does have very adult knowledge)
good question 🙂
oh and shelly played with the radioactive goop as shellinx told them to *nods*
how why where it came from..dunno 😀
Remind me: who is CG?
ah.. CG is Creepy Girl.
Now I have another name to remember. Time to throw something out… uh.. is it important for me to remember that the earth revolves around the sun?
If not, then there goes that little thought.
some peeps been calling her connie – short for conscience (i asked earlier) – which may yet catch on – so may want to mentally bookmark that also 🙂
We’ve been calling her Creepy Girl for so long we forget Paul never actually named her as such … until now. So Shelly calls it her companion. It may be time for an official nick name change. Compy?
Darn! That should have gone with the thread above.
hmm
theyr’re rerunning last of the summer wine on itv3.
compy sounds to similar to compo to me 🙂
theyr’rehow the hell did that happen??they’re
I can understand what “theyr’re” was supposed to be a lot easier than I can understand why you tried to say, “They’re rerunning last of the summer wine on itv3.” Were they talking about fertilizing grapes? 😕
Tina named her “Creepy Girl”. Originally, she called her “a creepy little girl.” (See my 8:56 am comment for a link.) I say we keep going with CLG.
Last if the Summer Wine
its an old but fairly well known tv sitcom in the uk 🙂
…which has a character named Compo! I get it now! 😀
I was thinking that you were still thinking about manure and compost and urine and things like that. 😕
CG came out as recently as Nudge’s visit to Tina’s coffee shop, but I cannot really tell if she made herself visible to them.
I can see why she would frighten hardened demon hunters since she is probably an entity that is rare in their universe. But I don’t think she should fear letting herself be seen by the current crew, as she has proven herself helpful in their quest to destroy the calendar machine, as well as in convincing Shelly togo after the relic.
Another thing. What if she appeared as a sphinx as well. A fusion of demons in the form of a shinx would probably have caused massive confusion and indecision, probably even fear. Perhaps they would wonder, “Could this whatever-it-is kill us,” or worse, get inside of us?
Do you mean did Shelly appear as a sphinx? If they merely knew that CLG was in Shelly and Shelly was a sphinx, that would be enough to cause the concerns you are talking about.
I don’t know that CLG has any ability allow herself to be seen by others or to control what she would look like if she did.
No, I meant if CG appeared as a sphinx as well. A demon sphinx would be hard for sphinxes to figure out. I don’t think her child form would be especially creepy to sphinxes. Regular demons come in a variety of horrific shapes. Much worse than her.
We don’t know she doesn’t have that ability either. After all, she can manifest cartoon props as needed. Also here she seems to be controlling whether she will appear or not, despite being called by Shelly.
Yes, but most people don’t have enough of a connection with their demons for the demons to take over their hosts. Monica and Tina were unusual in that they did. Shelly seems to have had a similar connection. I doubt that the sphinxes are worried about CLG as much as the fact that she might be able to take over a sphinx. At least that’s my theory until I’m proven wrong.
Another possibility is that they can’t quite figure out what she is. She’s not quite a demon. That may be unsettling for them. I get the sense that they don’t like being thrown curve-balls.
I agree with your last paragraph…I imagine demon hunters live in a bit of a black-and-white world, so an anomaly like CG would breed fear.
SWM also has a point in that even if CG didn’t appear as a sphinx, having her associated with one might be quite frightening, like the physical manifestation of a disease they are afraid to catch.
“Ewwwww! Demon cooties!”
Sphinxes might find demon cooties to make excellent sprinkles for the tops of cookies. Don’t mention that to Monica however.
Doh! All along I’ve been thinking that CLG said “I don’t want to scare your friends” because she worried for their sake. It just clicked that she might have meant “I don’t want to frighten them and cause them to abandon us.”
I took it as her having good manners.
So is Shellinx a lesbian now? I know she was on the fence before, but 80.000 years could have turned her the other way.
I never really saw her as being on the fence. Yes, she’s attractive to lesbians, but she seems more like a straight person who’s fine with her friend being a lesbian, but wouldn’t be one herself.
Right. Paul has never portrayed her as having lesbian tendencies. Just as being a social clutz, sending unintentional mixed signals to her lesbian friend.
Of course, one never knows. If she was exclusively in the company of female beings for 80,000 years I suppose attitudes could change.
If I remember correctly her fear of being hurt again caused that relationship to end before they got to that point… so had they stayed together, who knows what would have happened…
I am honestly and truly still grieving over the fact that our Shelly is dead.
Whoever…this is, is 80000 years removed from our muscle girl, and I really hate it.
nah, she’ll be back to her old self in no time. a few pints of ice cream and a sleep over should do the trick…. 😆
You could also toss in an engine block for her to throw around if you wanted.
Keep in mind, this is the REAL Shelly. The 56 ones that came after her (including the ones we’ve seen here since her 2001 debut) were from different timelines. Think of her as ShellyPrime.
Why do I get the feeling this is a setup for a Subnormality crossover? 😉
Sphinx</a?
God, I hope not, that guy is such a piece of crap.
Curiouser and curiouser. Phix is a marshmallow. Creepy Girl scares the Sphinges. Tune in tomorrow for another exciting revelation!
So Shelly DID have a friend! HI CREEPY GIRL!
Is it just me, or is Shelly all the more schmexy because she’s a Sphinx?
Not more sexy to me. Just more interesting.
What can I say? I like exotic women. 😀