I was going by the fact that when the demons were talking to each other in the first comics this week the word balloons were shaky outlined with a squiggly tail like the last panel, when the demons are speaking out of turn through Tina they have greyed out text.
Though I guess I get what Tina’s saying. She’s done all sorts of loony stuff, the fact she forgot to set her alarm clock shouldn’t be that weird to Becky.
Though I’ll admit with all those demons inside her, forgetting to set her alarm probably doesn’t happen often because of all the people there to remember.
@Tessa: She did it once while we watched, to cause a distraction. Her excuse to Becky later was ‘slipped and fell’. There is apparently an incident in the past that happened off-camera; that one is the ‘ran over it while trying to parallel park’.
That is a matter of some wonder to me. How exactly DOES one run over your own arm while parallel parking?
Well, Becky just revealed she knows nothing about Tina’s background. If she had, she would not have even considered Tina was dead.
As to Tina’s statement of “You NEED help.” I believe Tina just saw Becky’s aura and the emphasis tells me Tina is surprised to discover Becky COULD need help.
@Valkeiper… the only way I could see that happening, is:
Driver is backing into the space at an angle, decides that s/he cannot see the vehicle behind adequately in the door or rear-view mirrors.
Driver opens the driver’s door so s/he can lean out to get a better view of what’s behind the car, leans too far and falls out (maybe accidentally jerks the wheel).
Driver does a pratfall onto pavement with one arm ending up stuck back under the car. Car, still in reverse with no foot on the brake, rolls backwards far enough to crush driver’s arm.
Yeah, it would be a “perfect storm” of all sorts of things going wrong, in order for this to happen. However, if you look at a lot of the classic disasters in history, you’ll find that a lot of them occur as the result of just this sort of concatenation of improbable bad events and circumstances.
Enough people, enough days, enough “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but I guess it really wasn’t!” misjudgments, and something this silly-sounding certainly will happen to someone. Just look at the Darwin Awards 🙂
Alternative scenario: some Humvee-driving australopithecine was so irate that Tina had taken the last parking space on the block, that he road-raged, grabbed her by the arm, and broke a bone. I doubt she would have been as sheepish about it, though, if this had been the case.
Dave – You basically described what almost happened to me!
In high school long ago before mandatory seat belts, I was in the school parking lot on a weekend using the middle row set of stripes to simulate parallel parking. I wanted to use the driver side stripes to gauge my distance from the “curb,” so I opened the door and leaned out to look down at how far over the stripe I was. As it was UNDER the car, I had to lean waaay over, and, You Guessed It — I fell out. Fortunately, I had put it in Park because I had finished my maneuver between the Pretend Curb Poles. Otherwise, had it been in gear (automatic tranny), it would have moved on/over me.
It would have been possible for Tina to fall out land on her back with arm overhead, and the lost grip on the wheel turned it just enough to have the front of the car roll toward her and over her arm. Ick.
Silly, yes — Impossible? Not by a long shot. Almost have the cast to prove it!
I’ve had alarm clocks that have malfunctioned. Didn’t ring even when they were set, stopped working during the night, went off at the wrong time… Clocks are not necessarily reliable, even if you take out the human element.
Even worse is setting your alarm for PM instead of AM and vice versa, which is a much easier mistake to make in my experience. It doesn’t go off when you intended so you’re late, then goes off later when you don’t expect it and scares the crap out of you. Ugh.
Yes. I turn off my alarm on Saturday, set it later for a class on Sunday, then set it early again for the work week. Lots of room for error here. Often my doubt demon gets me out of bed to double check. I’m sure he is amused at all the times I double check unnecessarily, but when I have forgotten, it comes in handy.
OK, who equipped the auxiliary Pun Jar with the waldos with those grabby little robotic fingers? They got the wallet out of my pocket, withdrew a “contribution”, and returned the wallet, all between one step and the next… and I was moving pretty quickly at the time. Damn, you guys are on to me for sure!
the balloon’s pointer arrow is all jaggy like when the demons were talking to each other. The ones with Tina and Becky talking are normal short arrow pointer things.
My first thought was “Project much, Tina?” But it’s clear now the Need Help is internal dialogue. Tina (the collective) had credited Nudge with getting them off the slab in the morgue, but now that she’s gone, things seem to be going down hill.
Thanks to Tina’s ability to see auras, her knowledge about the world through demonic eyes (even though her memory was wiped thanks to breaking Demon Law) and all of that, she tends to have insight on the people around her. Just like how she knows what the “perfect drink” is for each person even the first time she meets them.
I think she is looking at Becky and seeing someone who is a bit too concerned over her. First time ever Tina forgets to set the alarm and rather than figure it’s a one-time fluke it must mean something’s wrong? Add to that whatever she might be seeing in Becky’s aura right now …
Yeah, there’s more to this. Besides, it’s Wapsi … there’s *always* more. 😀 Here in the Square our motto is (thank you Paul Harvey) “and now you know … the REST of the story …”
well, ‘straight’ can also mean ‘opposite of crooked’ and ‘crooked’ usually means ‘of a criminal tendency’; so the character we have been introduced to so far all DO seem to be ‘straight’ (not of criminal tendency)…
…with the possible exception of Nudge (who does seem to have broken some laws relevant to her kind, but has been… ‘disciplined’).
You guys may have noticed I usually never read/post on wed/thur strips. It’s because I usually read from work, work the night shift, and have tues/wed nights off.
Here I am, on what is essentially my “sunday morning” … going NUTS wondering what the new strip is, wondering what 300-500 comments have been made that I will just HAVE to sift through (can’t resist, no way I can just skip them) and it will be too late to respond to any of them in a timely manner …
So I had to pull up the website and check. No webcomic in the last ten years has ever made me do that. At best some have made me pull them up weekly (rather than catching up every 6-9 months) and even recently only a handful have gotten to my “daily read list”. Yours is the first where I just could not wait to read it. And good though the comments may be, they are there because your readers are inspired by what you do.
I always save Wapsi for last! Kinda like I always eat a cupcake from the bottom up – the cake AND frosting are best saved for the last few, delicious bites.
For me, Wapsi is usually the first thing I whip up after my PC booted at work. The new strip usually appears while I commute to work, but I’m usually able to resist looking at it on my phone. (I live in Central Europe, I have no idea what Paul’s US upload time is… Here it happens somewhere around 8 in the morning.) A great way to start the day 🙂
-Becky silently has a “thing”for Tina, and is thusly more worried than she’ll admit. =Doubtful.
-Tina’s recent turmoil, losing Nudge, getting confronted with her inner-beast, getting scared witless due to Phix’shenanigans to flush-out Nudge.
Still unnerved by Shellinx. =the most likely
I can imagine that the recent happenings sort of got The Collective in disarray, starting to forget stuff.
Actually you could be on to something, JayEm. Becky might have a thing for Tina, in the form of a deep (maybe even unhealthy) attraction on a friendship level even if not a romantic one.
You know what I mean, along the lines of some of the sickeningly sweet … uh what do you call a female version of a bro-mance? … you see IRL. Or some go even further, into Fatal Attraction territory.
Anyway, Becky seems to be a very introvert person, with a grouchy facade put up. She might think her feelings are safely hid, but then Tina can read auras…
And I agree with you, there may be love/afefction, it doesn’t need to be sexual or romantic.
BFFs in the female world are generally two-way feelings, so I don’t think that this is quite the right term for how Becky’s acting. 🙂
I always called my obsessions (that I wanted to be close friends with or had a certain amount of attraction to) my “girl-crushes.” I don’t know that this is a generally used term, but it works for me. 😛
Gives an all new meaning to “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”.
And, in this case, Rule 34 dictates that somewhere, someone just drew it. And some fanboy in an undisclosed location just feinted and he’ll never know why …
Hm. HMMM. Becky’s concern might seem excessive, but if she knows who Tina 1.0 was – the daughter of a drug lord to was ready to testify against her father, then disappeared – she MIGHT have reason to be worried at any unexpected change in Tina’s routine…
Becky has, in fact, been around in the background for pretty much the whole time that Tina and Mucho Mocha have been portrayed. Could it be that she’s more than she seems? Somebody who has been keeping an eye on her over time, either because of Tina’s drug-lord-daddy background or her demonic re-animation?
I hear ya, Sir Lathe! Every time we get deeply into speculation, Paul seems to delight in triggering a catapult and hurling his Flying Cow of Plot Twist into our midst.
It sure is fun to speculate, though, even though we’re most often wrong in our guesses.
I was thinking that maybe Becky’s presence is a way to inform us that, in light of everything that’s happened to Tina recently, the Tina collective is slowly disintegrating.
Hmm… to me Becky seems a bit apprehensive- her eyes are glancing around the room and she is tense/guarded? The fact Tina looked/acted a tad goofy in the first panel may have her on edge… Becky to my recollection is always reasonably businesslike and serious so something out of order such as Tina not being on time has put her a bit out of sorts…
Sounds like we will have to wait for Becky to work up a sound idea for how to sound the depths of Tina’s delirium while trying to keep from sounding off on what she may be thinking… toon in tomorrow!
1: Anyone who is serious about getting up on time has at least two alarm clocks, one of which is mechanical and the the other battery powered, and neither of which can be reached from the bed…
2: It’s a pity that a black and white cartoon character with freckles tends to look like a smallpox scar victim… sigh
“Anyone”? Some people (like me) are light enough sleepers that a single alarm clock within reach is enough to get them up in one try. Of course I had to find the one with the most annoying alarm in the world to make it work…
These different fonts are messing with me. For some reason, I only really noticed it until now. I was thinking Tina was just being weird until a took a peek in the archives.
Also, she looks very goofy in the first panel, the “special” demon being predominant.
She does?
I think one of the demons was talking to the rest of the demons on that one, not addressing Becky.
Nope. If it was just one demon talking, it’d be grey text.
I was going by the fact that when the demons were talking to each other in the first comics this week the word balloons were shaky outlined with a squiggly tail like the last panel, when the demons are speaking out of turn through Tina they have greyed out text.
Though I guess I get what Tina’s saying. She’s done all sorts of loony stuff, the fact she forgot to set her alarm clock shouldn’t be that weird to Becky.
Though I’ll admit with all those demons inside her, forgetting to set her alarm probably doesn’t happen often because of all the people there to remember.
Yeah. Someone who managed to run over her own wrist parallel parking and Becky’s worrying because she’s late to work?
That is the story she tells people. I don’t buy it.
Wasn’t she specifically lying? Didn’t she break her arm as a distraction for something… Grrr I wish I could find the page.
Nope, nevermind, different incident she referenced after she broke her wrist as a distraction.
@Tessa: She did it once while we watched, to cause a distraction. Her excuse to Becky later was ‘slipped and fell’. There is apparently an incident in the past that happened off-camera; that one is the ‘ran over it while trying to parallel park’.
@ Tessa: You remembered!
AKA, the Noode Incident!
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoodleIncident
That is a matter of some wonder to me. How exactly DOES one run over your own arm while parallel parking?
Well, Becky just revealed she knows nothing about Tina’s background. If she had, she would not have even considered Tina was dead.
As to Tina’s statement of “You NEED help.” I believe Tina just saw Becky’s aura and the emphasis tells me Tina is surprised to discover Becky COULD need help.
Paul may be throwing is a ringer, Becky needing help may be as “in there are a ton of customer waiting for their morning caffeine infusion”.
@Valkeiper… the only way I could see that happening, is:
Driver is backing into the space at an angle, decides that s/he cannot see the vehicle behind adequately in the door or rear-view mirrors.
Driver opens the driver’s door so s/he can lean out to get a better view of what’s behind the car, leans too far and falls out (maybe accidentally jerks the wheel).
Driver does a pratfall onto pavement with one arm ending up stuck back under the car. Car, still in reverse with no foot on the brake, rolls backwards far enough to crush driver’s arm.
Yeah, it would be a “perfect storm” of all sorts of things going wrong, in order for this to happen. However, if you look at a lot of the classic disasters in history, you’ll find that a lot of them occur as the result of just this sort of concatenation of improbable bad events and circumstances.
Enough people, enough days, enough “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but I guess it really wasn’t!” misjudgments, and something this silly-sounding certainly will happen to someone. Just look at the Darwin Awards 🙂
Alternative scenario: some Humvee-driving australopithecine was so irate that Tina had taken the last parking space on the block, that he road-raged, grabbed her by the arm, and broke a bone. I doubt she would have been as sheepish about it, though, if this had been the case.
Dave – You basically described what almost happened to me!
In high school long ago before mandatory seat belts, I was in the school parking lot on a weekend using the middle row set of stripes to simulate parallel parking. I wanted to use the driver side stripes to gauge my distance from the “curb,” so I opened the door and leaned out to look down at how far over the stripe I was. As it was UNDER the car, I had to lean waaay over, and, You Guessed It — I fell out. Fortunately, I had put it in Park because I had finished my maneuver between the Pretend Curb Poles. Otherwise, had it been in gear (automatic tranny), it would have moved on/over me.
It would have been possible for Tina to fall out land on her back with arm overhead, and the lost grip on the wheel turned it just enough to have the front of the car roll toward her and over her arm. Ick.
Silly, yes — Impossible? Not by a long shot. Almost have the cast to prove it!
er, have you never seen how bad a *Committee* decision is?? they spend so much time discussing it, it *never* gets done!! 🙂
Its the old tale of anybody, somebody, and nobody…:P
anybody could have just set the alarm, they all said somebody had, but nobody thought to check it *was* set…. 🙂 🙂
In that case, what happened to Tina’s Doubt? Isn’t she the one who’s supposed to annoy you until you make sure you did what you were supposed to do?
I refer you to “Did you remember to lock the front door?” “Aw, come on~!” (don’t know how to post links)
Uh, do you mean MONICA’S doubt?
That scene with the “Did you remember to lock the door?” thing was with Monica.
I realize that, but I would assume that’s kind of the Doubt demons’ job, regardless of the host.
The committee that made the camel was trying for a horse.
Especially considering Tina really *did* forget to set the alarm. Becky’s not shaving with Occam’s Razor.
I think she means, “Wow, you walked all the way to my house because I wasn’t at the shop yet, you must need advice like your house is on fire!” o.O
This one has so many possibilities. I just can’t wait to see where Paul is taking us here.
[…]
Sometimes I forget to set my alarm. It’s not that uncommon, especially for the easily distracted.
In this case, however, worrying that Tina might have died is quite reasonable.
do I detect sarcasm though??
I’ve had alarm clocks that have malfunctioned. Didn’t ring even when they were set, stopped working during the night, went off at the wrong time… Clocks are not necessarily reliable, even if you take out the human element.
Even worse is setting your alarm for PM instead of AM and vice versa, which is a much easier mistake to make in my experience. It doesn’t go off when you intended so you’re late, then goes off later when you don’t expect it and scares the crap out of you. Ugh.
Yes. I turn off my alarm on Saturday, set it later for a class on Sunday, then set it early again for the work week. Lots of room for error here. Often my doubt demon gets me out of bed to double check. I’m sure he is amused at all the times I double check unnecessarily, but when I have forgotten, it comes in handy.
Something is coming. Something big. My intuition is telling me. Well, that and the fact that this is a Thursday comic.
Obviously, she thinks that Tina’s preggers, because she’s “showing” a baby bump.
Only thing is, it’s MOVING…
shaddup! 🙂 it just the strain of the demons, and them eating too much pizza!! 😀
“Just trying to get my inner demons inline.”
…and i thought my stepdaughter was obsessive-compulsive.
…How LATE was she, anyways?
She wasn’t there when Beckie got there. That was late enough.
I think we had agreed that’s she’s been late for about ten years?
(grins, ducks, runs)
Haha, nobody can escape… the PUN VAULT!
Run all you want, there’s an auxiliary pun jar by the door, you can pay on your way out mister. 😛
OK, who equipped the auxiliary Pun Jar with the waldos with those grabby little robotic fingers? They got the wallet out of my pocket, withdrew a “contribution”, and returned the wallet, all between one step and the next… and I was moving pretty quickly at the time. Damn, you guys are on to me for sure!
* whistles innocently while pushing ACME ROBOT HANDS box behind the couch
>.>
<.<
“Also, I already died years ago… so what?”
“Geeze, you need help.”
Is Tina asking, or telling?
the balloon’s pointer arrow is all jaggy like when the demons were talking to each other. The ones with Tina and Becky talking are normal short arrow pointer things.
Yes — good catch!
My first thought was “Project much, Tina?” But it’s clear now the Need Help is internal dialogue. Tina (the collective) had credited Nudge with getting them off the slab in the morgue, but now that she’s gone, things seem to be going down hill.
Perhaps a visit to the library is needed?
Thanks to Tina’s ability to see auras, her knowledge about the world through demonic eyes (even though her memory was wiped thanks to breaking Demon Law) and all of that, she tends to have insight on the people around her. Just like how she knows what the “perfect drink” is for each person even the first time she meets them.
I think she is looking at Becky and seeing someone who is a bit too concerned over her. First time ever Tina forgets to set the alarm and rather than figure it’s a one-time fluke it must mean something’s wrong? Add to that whatever she might be seeing in Becky’s aura right now …
Yeah, there’s more to this. Besides, it’s Wapsi … there’s *always* more. 😀 Here in the Square our motto is (thank you Paul Harvey) “and now you know … the REST of the story …”
You know, all of the Wapsi characters we have specific knowledge of appear to be straight.
So far.
Hmmm
What about Shelly’s friend, Heather? I’m fairly sure she’s gay.
I knew i was gonna regret saying it that way. Forgot about Heather.
well, ‘straight’ can also mean ‘opposite of crooked’ and ‘crooked’ usually means ‘of a criminal tendency’; so the character we have been introduced to so far all DO seem to be ‘straight’ (not of criminal tendency)…
…with the possible exception of Nudge (who does seem to have broken some laws relevant to her kind, but has been… ‘disciplined’).
That’s what I’m thinking, too. Can’t wait for tomorrow…
BTW Paul, congrats.
You guys may have noticed I usually never read/post on wed/thur strips. It’s because I usually read from work, work the night shift, and have tues/wed nights off.
Here I am, on what is essentially my “sunday morning” … going NUTS wondering what the new strip is, wondering what 300-500 comments have been made that I will just HAVE to sift through (can’t resist, no way I can just skip them) and it will be too late to respond to any of them in a timely manner …
So I had to pull up the website and check. No webcomic in the last ten years has ever made me do that. At best some have made me pull them up weekly (rather than catching up every 6-9 months) and even recently only a handful have gotten to my “daily read list”. Yours is the first where I just could not wait to read it. And good though the comments may be, they are there because your readers are inspired by what you do.
BRAVO. 😉
It is addictive, isn’t it? And reading through the comments is definitely part of the attraction.
Well, that and the well-thumbed copies of the Utne Reader over in Confusion Corner. 🙂
I always save Wapsi for last! Kinda like I always eat a cupcake from the bottom up – the cake AND frosting are best saved for the last few, delicious bites.
For me, Wapsi is usually the first thing I whip up after my PC booted at work. The new strip usually appears while I commute to work, but I’m usually able to resist looking at it on my phone. (I live in Central Europe, I have no idea what Paul’s US upload time is… Here it happens somewhere around 8 in the morning.) A great way to start the day 🙂
It tends to be up by 0230 Eastern US time, though I’ve seen it as early as 0100 Eastern.
YMMV!
I can see 2 possible ways this turns out:
-Becky silently has a “thing”for Tina, and is thusly more worried than she’ll admit. =Doubtful.
-Tina’s recent turmoil, losing Nudge, getting confronted with her inner-beast, getting scared witless due to Phix’shenanigans to flush-out Nudge.
Still unnerved by Shellinx. =the most likely
I can imagine that the recent happenings sort of got The Collective in disarray, starting to forget stuff.
Actually you could be on to something, JayEm. Becky might have a thing for Tina, in the form of a deep (maybe even unhealthy) attraction on a friendship level even if not a romantic one.
You know what I mean, along the lines of some of the sickeningly sweet … uh what do you call a female version of a bro-mance? … you see IRL. Or some go even further, into Fatal Attraction territory.
or even she is not as human as she seems????
Dunno… BFF? 🙂
Anyway, Becky seems to be a very introvert person, with a grouchy facade put up. She might think her feelings are safely hid, but then Tina can read auras…
And I agree with you, there may be love/afefction, it doesn’t need to be sexual or romantic.
BFFs in the female world are generally two-way feelings, so I don’t think that this is quite the right term for how Becky’s acting. 🙂
I always called my obsessions (that I wanted to be close friends with or had a certain amount of attraction to) my “girl-crushes.” I don’t know that this is a generally used term, but it works for me. 😛
I believe “Girl-Crush” is the correct term. It might apply with Becky here as well.
Yeah, I think girl-crush sounds about right for what I was looking for, thanks!
Tina looks very hyped up in the first panel, but puts on serious face in the third. I suppose she can transition so quickly because of the collective?
And kinda noticed her eartails from the first panel disappeared in the third. Too bad, I liked the wild, just barely got it in a ponytail look on her.
Tina, getting tired of the 3rd degree show’s off the tentacles in a menacing manner to Becky to try to scare her off.
Becky, in turn, reveals she’s C’Thulu. Details at 11:00
Ok, that made me giggle. 🙂
Gives an all new meaning to “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”.
And, in this case, Rule 34 dictates that somewhere, someone just drew it. And some fanboy in an undisclosed location just feinted and he’ll never know why …
Hm. HMMM. Becky’s concern might seem excessive, but if she knows who Tina 1.0 was – the daughter of a drug lord to was ready to testify against her father, then disappeared – she MIGHT have reason to be worried at any unexpected change in Tina’s routine…
Becky has, in fact, been around in the background for pretty much the whole time that Tina and Mucho Mocha have been portrayed. Could it be that she’s more than she seems? Somebody who has been keeping an eye on her over time, either because of Tina’s drug-lord-daddy background or her demonic re-animation?
Maybe she’s a WiB who doesn’t wear black.
She doesn’t wear black all the time. Sometimes she does.
So, WitSec or a MiB. Hmm, I’d lean toward MiB, possibly one of the underhill (fair folk) crew?
Unlike many other series that have some resemblence of predictability, I’m not even going to try to figure out what the heck is going to happen next…
I hear ya, Sir Lathe! Every time we get deeply into speculation, Paul seems to delight in triggering a catapult and hurling his Flying Cow of Plot Twist into our midst.
It sure is fun to speculate, though, even though we’re most often wrong in our guesses.
“Flying Cow of Plot Twist,” okay, I’m not going to lie, I laughed at that.
“Sir Lathe”-Cool!
Plotline sense tingling…
I was thinking that maybe Becky’s presence is a way to inform us that, in light of everything that’s happened to Tina recently, the Tina collective is slowly disintegrating.
With my glasses covered in wood dust I thought it read “Flying Cow of Plop Twist”. Hmmm, sounds a little more than an unpleasent sticky situation….
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/09122001/
Maybe that’s all Tina’s demons need to do!
Maybe she needs to talk to somebody who has some experience being occupied by a collection of demons.
Now, do we know anybody with such experience? I know there just HAS TO BE… right?
We do know of a singular being made up of multiple souls – but the Chimera isn’t the sort of creature that’s into long philosophical conversations.
Perhaps Becky is a hairy protective monster type… a Phixian Undercover Newb assigned to watch her for the library. Speculation is such fun.
Hmm… to me Becky seems a bit apprehensive- her eyes are glancing around the room and she is tense/guarded? The fact Tina looked/acted a tad goofy in the first panel may have her on edge… Becky to my recollection is always reasonably businesslike and serious so something out of order such as Tina not being on time has put her a bit out of sorts…
Perhaps the scones didn’t bake up right today, and she’s concerned about dealing with a breakfast-deprived customer/employer?
Sounds like we will have to wait for Becky to work up a sound idea for how to sound the depths of Tina’s delirium while trying to keep from sounding off on what she may be thinking… toon in tomorrow!
1: Anyone who is serious about getting up on time has at least two alarm clocks, one of which is mechanical and the the other battery powered, and neither of which can be reached from the bed…
2: It’s a pity that a black and white cartoon character with freckles tends to look like a smallpox scar victim… sigh
“Anyone”? Some people (like me) are light enough sleepers that a single alarm clock within reach is enough to get them up in one try. Of course I had to find the one with the most annoying alarm in the world to make it work…
There’s one for sale somewhere that jumps off the table and rolls around the room daring you to turn the damn thing off!
Wish I had the link for you.
These different fonts are messing with me. For some reason, I only really noticed it until now. I was thinking Tina was just being weird until a took a peek in the archives.
Also, she looks very goofy in the first panel, the “special” demon being predominant.