If the vault was built to the specifics of Robert Heinlein’s story “And He Built a Crooked House” it would not only be a teseract inside but have access to multiple dimensions. Hey I got it, the pun vault is part of the Library.
And if the vault is a library, in a library, then you have “L” space multiplied by itself which becomes behemothic in possibilities, and for those not familiar with “‘L’ Space” or the Discworld novels of Terry Pratchett, witlesspedia has a concise description at the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_dimensions_of_the_Discworld
I asked the same thing. The secret to not getting yourself killed as a trickster is to cultivate enough of an impulsive, inept persona that people think your stunts were really mistakes. Is Nudge that good? Probably not.
🙂 just ask phix for entry – your only problem is finding her….. 😛
Yes, RL libraries have internet, but it is like a cheap car rental… you dunno who else has been using it, its facilities are awful to non-existent, the mileage is awful…
far better to get your own, that you can extensively personalize… 🙂
Phix (sometimes), Nudge, Euryale – really, the supernatural folks don’t need clothes anyway except for the handy pockets. And apparently Justin looks just fine as he is.
If Justin is pegged out on his crazy meter then he has definetly come to the wrong place. Shelly give it up girl. Turn around, take Justin, and leave. There is now way to save it now. Especially once nudge starts pushing buttons.
Nah, it’s just Nudge’s bright&happy persona that lights-up the normally dark library. Probably because Phix is a rather dark persona, despite being a happy little daisy, compared to the rest of the apotropaic curmudgeons.
Again: there is nó such thing as coincidence in Wapsi Square.
Nice how the last frame shows that Nudge and Shelly are really -how do you say it?- intimately connected? I mean, like two sisters, or two friends that know each other really really well, and are very comfortable in each others company.
Luckily it was room tempature at the time. It would have really sucked if I hadn’t forgot about it for a half hour and inhaled it fresh from the stove hot.
Me, I’m usually involuntarily inhaling a rice or maize corn internally then snorting it out through my nose when I’ve gotta take a breath at the wrong moment… 😀
I believe you are right about this Jay-Em. A good enough friend to have helped in the creation of The Companion and gotten beat up for it and Nudge didn’t hold a grudge, understanding like a true friend. I suspected as much when Nudge asked if Shelly was okay and gave her a sluurp.
Looking at Shelly’s reaction, i’d say that in her 80,000 years of banishment, Nudge has been a very important bit of levity and humour for Shellinx.
I can imagine that Nudge’s crazy antics became very dear to poor, lonely Shellinx.
Phix’visits might have been enlightening, but she still is a bit of a dark character.
Nudge, on the other hand, is like the jester that really loves his King, but is not beyond pulling his leg.
When still part of Tina, Nudge was always the one to get the somewhat moody demons in gear, albeit by singing “On top of spaghetti”, and Nudge has shown nothing but love and dedication to the Wapsi-Gang.
But, well, as a pranker myself, there is NO way that she is able to resist an opportunity to prank people, but she only pranks the ones she actually likes.
Trickster she may be, but I think she did the two a good service.
Better to have lost their dignity here than in the streets of Minneapolis to someone who talks with their hands.
personally, i consider that a failure on Tsillah’s part. i would have set it up so that it was only MY hands that could dispel MY clothes, not just ANYBODIES hand-waving being able to dispel my clothes… especially the way she worded it to them: “wave YOUR hands…”
I hope Justin starts laughing. Treating this ongoing, massive train wreck like a joke may be the only way to survive. Especially since I expect things to continue like this for a while…
Or maybe she reached through it, or just saw through it. Still, it’s definitely not as substantial as real cloth. And who would expect shadows to be substantial anyway?
(Tune: “Starry starry night”)
Starry starry suit- we’ve shadows covering our rears
we wave our hands it dessapears, butotherwise they simply will not budge- we encounter Nudge
a she-goat who is loud and crude
and suddenly we both are nude because of her exited waving hands
I don’t understand- I’m no exibitionist
this situation has a raunchy twist- I don’t like what I see
the supernatural isn’t what I crave- but it won’t let me be
Starry starry suit- I don’t mean to be a prude
but Shelly and I both are nude with Nudge perusing all my private parts- tell me where I start? We can’t wear books or magazines or wander around so obscene while Nudge thinks of a centaur she once knew
this I’m telling you I feel like I ought to scream
or simply wake up from this dream
but there is no escape here
supernatural has me in it’s grasp, and that is what I fear
But Shelly I love you…. and know my love is true…
so if I truck my naked ass back through the looking glass
and face the loads of weirdness that I view,
you should remember Shelly, that I only would consider putting up with this for you…
Starry starry suit- Shelly wears the falling snow
where it went to I don’t know- Nudge waves her hand and it all dissapeared- there’s a draft upon my rear… my block and tackle’s in the breeze… hanging halfway to my knees… I’m thinking this is part of Nudge’s plan…
I don’t understand… why this all is happening?
Could it be the lump of flesh I bring? Why should I allow this to be?
But Shelly’s with me for the here and now…
nothing else can matter now…
One of my favorite tales. The lady is a poet who writes in prose – she makes words sing.
Have all but the last book of the series – haven’t checked to see if she’s written it yet …
For those who haven’t had the pleasure, I speak of Diane Duane. Look up most anything she has written. Spock’s World is a superb treatment of the genre.
Dave’s reference is to a major character in The Door Into Fire and its sequels.
+5 to you, FatUncle. Far too few people know of Diane’s work… and I agree, she’s great (and a nice person to meet, too… I had the pleasure of buying her and her husband Peter Morwood lunch at a con a few years ago and chatting for a couple of hours).
Last I heard, “The Door into Starlight” had not yet been written (I’ve been waiting patiently). I rank “The Door into Fire” along with “War For The Oaks” as the best two “first novels” I’ve ever read from new fantasy authors.
Well, hopefully Officer TB wasn’t a modest person. At the rate we’re going, who knows what Monica’s going to get to see once Shelly gets around to introducing her.
They’re certainly an invigorating part of the experience!
I’ve trolled through the on-line archives a couple of times (and re-read smaller sections as well), and I’ve also bought all of the dead-tree editions and read the story that way. I’m not sure which approach I like better… they’re not the same experience, and they really do complement one another. The strip “flows” more clearly from day to day when you read the book… but there’s an amazing depth of perspective that you can get only by reading the comments and discussions on-line.
And, of course, the books don’t have the sense of reader community, or the wonderful pun barrages.
well yeah… i love the comic and all, and even have all 6 dead tree volumes, but i would draw the line at a 500 page tome, with comics every 20-30 pages and the rest of the space is the comments… 😀
Doesn’t matter whether it was deliberate or not. It’s in character. And compared to the way they lost the previous set of clothes, this one’s in the joke category.
I’ve always felt that given a suitable environment, clothes should be optional. They’re a tool for specific purposes — sunscreen, insulation, keeping paint off the skin, that sort of thing — and a mode of decoration if you happen to want to play with them that way. And they do make hiding some reactions easier. Other than that, it’s all social conditioning.
I work in surgery. I see naked people all day long. There’s about 5-8% that are worth looking at, as properly porportioned young ladies seldom seem to need surgery.
And “worth looking at”… depends on your criteria. And depends on whether you’re particularly focusing on looking, as opposed to just not being freaked out about the fact that everyone has skin under their clothes.
A Centaur? Really?!?!
Consider where a male centaur keeps his genitals…
…. the same place a horse keeps ’em?? 😀
Yup, yup; I oughta know!
I just want to know how exactly Nudge knows how well centaurs are hung. 😉
Oh, I’m sure she’s horsed around with a few.
Psssssss..*click* KATHOOOM….!!! ( pun vault labourously opens )
I remember the old days when a jar was enough. Question, is the vault extra dimensional?
Well… apparently Officer Tight Buns is…
It’s a multi-dimensional tesseract-chamber by now.
If the vault was built to the specifics of Robert Heinlein’s story “And He Built a Crooked House” it would not only be a teseract inside but have access to multiple dimensions. Hey I got it, the pun vault is part of the Library.
Simpler, I believe, just to install a type of hammerspace as the Pun jar.
And if the vault is a library, in a library, then you have “L” space multiplied by itself which becomes behemothic in possibilities, and for those not familiar with “‘L’ Space” or the Discworld novels of Terry Pratchett, witlesspedia has a concise description at the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_dimensions_of_the_Discworld
Why must we be saddled with such egregious puns?
[drives car into pun vault]
Nudge is NINE FEET TALL.
the average human boyfriend would probably feel like humping someone’s little finger.
Don’t judge!
Well, I did predict he was Longinus.
..
…
You really don’t want that in the pun jar.
Badum-Kish!
(Snerk!!!)……………… I mean … Bad Girl Yamara
surely its….. 😀
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K8_jgiNqUc
lol A “spear” joke? That’s naughty!
Yup. Trickster.
Saw that one coming.
Yeah.. “hand-wavey-thing” executed juuúst a bit too expertly for it to be a coincidence.
Gotta love her though. Afa tricks go, she cannot help herself, but she has a góod heart. She almost sounds like a sweet aunt.
If she’s an aunt her name is Mame.
If she’s an aunt she’s definitely the ‘weird’ one.
They give the best Christmas gifts. 😉
Well, these days we know who Nudge’s sister is…
Saw it coming from a mile away. Knew full well that Nudge was going to do that. LOL
Yup… there’s *no* way that was an accident.
Judging from Officer TB’s facial expressions in Panel#1 and Panel#2, I think he saw it coming too.
Would this be a good time to point out that his other nickname is Officer Crotch-Rocket?
I was being rhetorical, of course it is.
Great. Not we gotta get Paul to introduce a Centaur into the Wapsi universe so we can get some context.
Use the Force of your imagination until then 🙂
Nah. That’s what Google is for.
If that happens, the poor guy will be stuck on the far right of every panel. This whole comic is left of centaur.
[leads fatted calf into pun vault]
MMMM, Steaks tonight ;-p
I bet you’ve been feeding that for *ages* for the chance to use that awful line….
Was that an Oops! or a Gotcha! I wonder…
I asked the same thing. The secret to not getting yourself killed as a trickster is to cultivate enough of an impulsive, inept persona that people think your stunts were really mistakes. Is Nudge that good? Probably not.
The demi-goddess who managed to outwit both the sphinxes and the Library? Yes, she’s that good.
Thát good, and then some…
So, you’re suggesting that Nudge is rather inept, at seeming to be too inept to be a real trickster?
That’s just exactly what she wants you to think!
yeah, an’ she wanted to see his junk! 😀
As excited as Nudge is…I would say that was an honest “OOPS!”
Because it’s Nudge, I have to wonder…but as someone who reacts like a 5 yr old to “sparklies” I understand the “oops” possibilities. 🙂
Well, Nudge has been compared to a ferret on crack, and we know how ferrets are about shiny things…
Clothes really do seem to be optional in The Library, don’t they? Not that they’ve had much of a say in keeping covered up so far.
Ta hell with the Internet. I’m getting me a library card.
Quote of the millenium.
LIKE!!!
Why choose? Most libraries offer some form of internet access these days.
🙂 just ask phix for entry – your only problem is finding her….. 😛
Yes, RL libraries have internet, but it is like a cheap car rental… you dunno who else has been using it, its facilities are awful to non-existent, the mileage is awful…
far better to get your own, that you can extensively personalize… 🙂
Not to mention it gets a coffee-shop aura without the coffee, and that’s just wrong.
Phix (sometimes), Nudge, Euryale – really, the supernatural folks don’t need clothes anyway except for the handy pockets. And apparently Justin looks just fine as he is.
If Justin is pegged out on his crazy meter then he has definetly come to the wrong place. Shelly give it up girl. Turn around, take Justin, and leave. There is now way to save it now. Especially once nudge starts pushing buttons.
I don’t even want to know which “buttons” she’d push.
Oh my… I guess that’s a THUMBS UP from Nudge!
Ah, Nudge just wants to make a good impression. Although in this case, I’m wonder who’s making the impression on whom?
Shelly: Embarrassed, but proud!
Love it!
So, I guess Justin is going to be the next Centaur-fold? *Empties wallet into punjar*
Wallet?!
Bank account!!
Goddammit, now I have J. Geils in my head.
I thought of “J Geils” when I read 9CWL today.
Probably Rough Riders Magazine.
Saw that coming. XD
Hahahahahaha! Oh Nudge…
And Justin is just looking at Nudge like he’s a wounded puppy thinking “Oh what could happen now?”
Hope the gift shop carries XL t-shirts. Or possibly robes and tunics…
If not Phix can teleport people.
I guess if shelly needs help finding a book then she can be nudged in the right direction….
of course she and her beau need to find some clothes first…. lol
Ooohkay…. And thére my coffee went.
Yup! IPads are coffee-resistand. One more experiment to scratch from the list.
A very important experiment when you read this comic. 🙂
Is it just me, or is it a little bright in the library?
Nah, it’s just Nudge’s bright&happy persona that lights-up the normally dark library. Probably because Phix is a rather dark persona, despite being a happy little daisy, compared to the rest of the apotropaic curmudgeons.
Again: there is nó such thing as coincidence in Wapsi Square.
“Oh my god — it’s full of Justin!”
Nice play on a 2001 Space Odyssey. *Pushes the pun jar down the bar towards you*
Uh…that wasn’t a pun…
Pun, double entendre, pay up the vault is insatiable.
Oopsy.
Oopsy Square??
[Scoots pun jar over.]
Nice how the last frame shows that Nudge and Shelly are really -how do you say it?- intimately connected? I mean, like two sisters, or two friends that know each other really really well, and are very comfortable in each others company.
Good point… and it does suggest that Nudge may have spent a fair bit of time visiting with Shelly in the Time Forest, over all those eons.
I still don’t quite see how that would be consistent with The Great Steak Sauce Malaprop, though. Somebody playing tricks on the Trickster, perhaps?
and hey… I KNOW what girls talk about in the toilet…. 😀 😀 😛
We don’t go quite so far as in the toilet.. as that would be nasty
hey I said **talk** 🙂
I’ve heard polish / spanish girls on the bus say intimate details about their BFs on the bus, when they think no-one knows the language… 🙂 🙂
I would think that was more the Trickster playing games with herself. Her ferret on crack imagination messing her up a bit.
LOL
So that’s what tea tastes like when it’s inhaled through my nose first, tyvfm-.-.
Unpleasant? 🙂
Luckily it was room tempature at the time. It would have really sucked if I hadn’t forgot about it for a half hour and inhaled it fresh from the stove hot.
Lucky it cooled, That would have been like candling your sinuses.
Or nicely iced…
Yeah, I have to keep reminding myself to put the coffee mug down when I open Wapsi.
Just tea?
Me, I’m usually involuntarily inhaling a rice or maize corn internally then snorting it out through my nose when I’ve gotta take a breath at the wrong moment… 😀
I believe you are right about this Jay-Em. A good enough friend to have helped in the creation of The Companion and gotten beat up for it and Nudge didn’t hold a grudge, understanding like a true friend. I suspected as much when Nudge asked if Shelly was okay and gave her a sluurp.
Looking at Shelly’s reaction, i’d say that in her 80,000 years of banishment, Nudge has been a very important bit of levity and humour for Shellinx.
I can imagine that Nudge’s crazy antics became very dear to poor, lonely Shellinx.
Phix’visits might have been enlightening, but she still is a bit of a dark character.
Nudge, on the other hand, is like the jester that really loves his King, but is not beyond pulling his leg.
When still part of Tina, Nudge was always the one to get the somewhat moody demons in gear, albeit by singing “On top of spaghetti”, and Nudge has shown nothing but love and dedication to the Wapsi-Gang.
But, well, as a pranker myself, there is NO way that she is able to resist an opportunity to prank people, but she only pranks the ones she actually likes.
Of all the things she could have said about Justin… Nudge can be good to a guy’s ego.
Sparklies + Naked = Awesome
Yet “vajazzle” is utterly hideous.
Trickster she may be, but I think she did the two a good service.
Better to have lost their dignity here than in the streets of Minneapolis to someone who talks with their hands.
Excellent point. 🙂
Well, that happened a lot sooner than I thought it would. 😀
But it was inevitable in some way or other…
Everybody has embarrassing friends.
Just thst Shelly’s are so much more so…
Divinely so?
Love her tail wagging in the first panel.
ah, my bf agrees with you.
Now I have to hit him.
Because he agrees with me?? Or because he likes a little tail?
*clink*
Most guys like a little tail, especially when it wags at them. . . .
[Slips a copy of “The Mouse’s Tail” into the pun jar]
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who noticed that. Nudge has the ‘friendly clumsy big dog’ thing going on in that panel.
personally, i consider that a failure on Tsillah’s part. i would have set it up so that it was only MY hands that could dispel MY clothes, not just ANYBODIES hand-waving being able to dispel my clothes… especially the way she worded it to them: “wave YOUR hands…”
Wouldn’t matter. Nudge’s hands are Special.
Hmm…offering a reasonable-sounding explanation that doesn’t really explain anything…
Yep, it’s a classic handwave.
…
…
…
Perhaps not.
(drops a freshly-spawned Cure materia in the pun jar).
Another classic hand wave would be the Jedi Mind Trick.
Good thing they are all but extinct.
These aren’t the naked paranormals you”re looking for.
The Jedi Wave is more common than you might think.
It’s a great video despite being so long. 🙂
I hope Justin starts laughing. Treating this ongoing, massive train wreck like a joke may be the only way to survive. Especially since I expect things to continue like this for a while…
heres my guess..
(off-screen) YIPE!
Phix: sorry about my ‘pet’… heres some ‘robes’ to wear… 🙂
Apparently Shadow clothing is removed by hand-waving. This could’ve happened no matter who got near them.
But, yeah, Nudge is fairly devious under that inept ditz persona.
Justin seems to have got her tail wagging at least. I look forward to her trying to get away with a *friendly puppy-dog* lick.
Or maybe she reached through it, or just saw through it. Still, it’s definitely not as substantial as real cloth. And who would expect shadows to be substantial anyway?
Justin’s face in the second panel…FAVORITE! 😀
I was thinking that it’s more “maybe I spoke too soon about whether or not this is all crazy”.
He still seems to be a bit in the self-loathing vein of supernatural.
My interpretation was something along the lines of, “This isn’t good…” 🙂
(Tune: “Starry starry night”)
Starry starry suit- we’ve shadows covering our rears
we wave our hands it dessapears, butotherwise they simply will not budge- we encounter Nudge
a she-goat who is loud and crude
and suddenly we both are nude because of her exited waving hands
I don’t understand- I’m no exibitionist
this situation has a raunchy twist- I don’t like what I see
the supernatural isn’t what I crave- but it won’t let me be
Ahhh good old tune.
Starry starry suit- I don’t mean to be a prude
but Shelly and I both are nude with Nudge perusing all my private parts- tell me where I start? We can’t wear books or magazines or wander around so obscene while Nudge thinks of a centaur she once knew
this I’m telling you I feel like I ought to scream
or simply wake up from this dream
but there is no escape here
supernatural has me in it’s grasp, and that is what I fear
But Shelly I love you…. and know my love is true…
so if I truck my naked ass back through the looking glass
and face the loads of weirdness that I view,
you should remember Shelly, that I only would consider putting up with this for you…
Starry starry suit- Shelly wears the falling snow
where it went to I don’t know- Nudge waves her hand and it all dissapeared- there’s a draft upon my rear… my block and tackle’s in the breeze… hanging halfway to my knees… I’m thinking this is part of Nudge’s plan…
I don’t understand… why this all is happening?
Could it be the lump of flesh I bring? Why should I allow this to be?
But Shelly’s with me for the here and now…
nothing else can matter now…
I’m thinking I need to gather those verses, learn the song on my banjo, get the band together and do a cut for YOUTUBE
Yes, PLEASE do! You’ve got a real talent for this stuff, Sarge!
Oh, my stars and garters!
-plink-
Okay, the results are in:
He’s a centaur.
You can tell by his voice, he’s not a Centaur. He’s just a little horse.
D’oh. Puns forever today.
His sinuses are stuffy – he has a colt.
Alright, you guys. Pony up!
[drops in a horseshoe for good luck.]
Cut out the “Eck!” whining, will you?
(drops in a bridle made out of the Night Mare’s own mane, courtesy of Segnbora)
One of my favorite tales. The lady is a poet who writes in prose – she makes words sing.
Have all but the last book of the series – haven’t checked to see if she’s written it yet …
For those who haven’t had the pleasure, I speak of Diane Duane. Look up most anything she has written. Spock’s World is a superb treatment of the genre.
Dave’s reference is to a major character in The Door Into Fire and its sequels.
+5 to you, FatUncle. Far too few people know of Diane’s work… and I agree, she’s great (and a nice person to meet, too… I had the pleasure of buying her and her husband Peter Morwood lunch at a con a few years ago and chatting for a couple of hours).
Last I heard, “The Door into Starlight” had not yet been written (I’ve been waiting patiently). I rank “The Door into Fire” along with “War For The Oaks” as the best two “first novels” I’ve ever read from new fantasy authors.
And War for the Oaks is in Kindle edition! Hot Diggity!
I adore Nudge’s wagging tail. She always seems so thrilled. :]
“Who knows what lurks in the heart of the shadow clothes? Man, Nudge knows!”
+++++
Either that, or, with apologies to R. Herrick:
WHENAS in shadows my Justin goes
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of his clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
Oh how that glittering taketh me!
Excellent Sir – a well done turn of praise !
poetry slam in the face…
Well Tsillah clearly fibbed. Said it took the wave of a hand to dispell the clothes when clearly it only took a little nudge…
Nudge isn’t that little.
(Neither, apparently, is “Little Justin”.)
Well, this DOES explain a few things… 🙂
And the fact that the clothes were made of Shadow was just handwaved away.
*tosses a decoder ring, gold toenail, and a Chuck E Cheese token from the 80s in*
Well, hopefully Officer TB wasn’t a modest person. At the rate we’re going, who knows what Monica’s going to get to see once Shelly gets around to introducing her.
monica is short. OTB is tall. i’m giggling at what’s gonna be damn near eye level at the little wench.
(i’m a sometimes-user of wheelchair. or as i put it “eye level for the best views!”)
Tears of laughter, I think.
And for her long-suffering SO who’s had to put up with all this abuse.
Wapsi Square where the comments are almost as good as the comic.
They’re certainly an invigorating part of the experience!
I’ve trolled through the on-line archives a couple of times (and re-read smaller sections as well), and I’ve also bought all of the dead-tree editions and read the story that way. I’m not sure which approach I like better… they’re not the same experience, and they really do complement one another. The strip “flows” more clearly from day to day when you read the book… but there’s an amazing depth of perspective that you can get only by reading the comments and discussions on-line.
And, of course, the books don’t have the sense of reader community, or the wonderful pun barrages.
well yeah… i love the comic and all, and even have all 6 dead tree volumes, but i would draw the line at a 500 page tome, with comics every 20-30 pages and the rest of the space is the comments… 😀
Funny thing – now Nudge is speaking as Dom Deluise in ‘Secret of NIMH’…
“Ooooh. Ohhh, YOU got a SPARKLIE!”
Somebody give her some string.
Good thing she’s not allergic to cats…
Just so long as her thumb’s not green under that fur.
Doesn’t matter whether it was deliberate or not. It’s in character. And compared to the way they lost the previous set of clothes, this one’s in the joke category.
I’ve always felt that given a suitable environment, clothes should be optional. They’re a tool for specific purposes — sunscreen, insulation, keeping paint off the skin, that sort of thing — and a mode of decoration if you happen to want to play with them that way. And they do make hiding some reactions easier. Other than that, it’s all social conditioning.
I work in surgery. I see naked people all day long. There’s about 5-8% that are worth looking at, as properly porportioned young ladies seldom seem to need surgery.
And “worth looking at”… depends on your criteria. And depends on whether you’re particularly focusing on looking, as opposed to just not being freaked out about the fact that everyone has skin under their clothes.
“Don’t know” right back atcha. If we saw each other naked more often, we’d desensitize.
Have we discovered WHAT he is yet? That kind of healing ability can’t be normal.
Being a Centaur myself, I can see considerable ‘Centaur’ in Justin…he may just be one!