We know Shelly was in ‘neverland’ for those 80k years, but from the rest of their perspective it’s only been a few minutes. Maybe, and just my guessing, Shelly had to actually change/evolve, which took that much time to actually happen, for Tina to see the change in aura?
Yup. If you didn’t know about the life cycle of butterflies, would you be likely to look at a crawly green caterpillar and see that it would someday become a bright-winged flutterby?
Well, Shelly might not have recognized it because shelly was so young. She recognized strength in Shelly, but it didn’t look the same as aged Sphinxes she’d seen, so she didn’t make the connection until Shelly came back older and more sphinxy.
My guess would be she can tell how ‘old’ Shelly just became in the same way she can tell she’s now a Sphinx. her physical body may not have aged 80k years, but her spirit/aura/whatever did.
I think the reason Tina didn’t know is because Shelly didn’t know. The aura is a reflection of what the person is thinking and feeling.
If a person is convinced that they are a sphinx, their aura would reflect that. If not, it wouldn’t. The same is true with Shelly’s age. Shelly knows that she is over 80,000 years old, so Tina knows.
maybe when Shelly touched the relic, time in the normal world stopped completely. It would explain why she never seemed to move at all during her physical transportation to sphinx-land.
Because it was recessive, and hadn’t been triggered/manifested itself.
Maybe it’s like allergies; i have a potentially lethal allergy to penicillin – which manifested so severely the first time (Navy boot camp, 1967) that i’ve never met a doctor since who thought it would be a good idea to test me to confirm that’s what it was.
But before it showed up, i had been given penicillin more than once previously, with no reaction at all.
Even if you carry the potential for allergy to something, you don’t normally have a problem the first time (or perhaps several times) you’re exposed – you have to be sensitised by exposure before you will react.
And until you’re sensitised, testing probably won’t reveal the potential.
Thus, until Shelly actually lived thousands of years in an environment with a very high thaumic field, she was only potentially a sphinx…
Conversely, it’s one of my less-favourite books; i almost didn’t finish it, something that has only once before (The Last Continent) happened with a Discworld book.
I can see Monica’s face now.
She’s probably all, “What the hell???”
I know I would be. XD
But hey, at least the idea that some people had about Shelly going all predator on Tina is wrong. She actually seems very collected.
Also interesting to see that Tina can apparently tell a being’s age at a glade. Which when you think about it, makes this way freakier for her. As far as she can tell, Shelly just went from 20 something to about 80,000 years in a split second.
Not sure we can assume she was alone, or even in the Sacred Forest the whole time. Shelly seems to have returned with encyclopedic knowledge, and smarts to know when to deploy it. That requires a lot of interaction over a lot of time.
I mean, even the internet doesn’t know who “Gisaultees” is, which I find a brilliant touch.
But unlike the Golem Girls, who are in some part frozen as 18 year olds, and Tina whose wisdom is that of a feral alien hive mind from a timeless dimension, Shelly has literally matured, and become an adult.
I think that’s what was behind her Cinco de Mayo 2011 pic, in the midst of the Sacred Grove sequence. Celebrating an anniversary, but with an attitude of confidence rather than abandon.
Quite the Bildungsroman for Ms. Wahnee, and what has made YA such a compelling genre for 200 years. Let’s see how this homecoming plays out.
Well, she was yelling at Shelly Alpha, but not initially. Maybe she just brings out the worst in herself. Actually, that’s a good insight into nostalgia for one’s youth.
On the other hand, cultural references such as Arthur, Yggdrasil, Odysseus, and Joss Whedon (yes I think that was a conscious ref) all seem to be taken in stride by Shellinx, while was stumping Shelly Alpha. Even the advanced mechanical information which would interest any Shelly was slightly beyond the human Shelly, but learned long before by Shellinx.
This education is coming from somewhere, and it may be the Library, but there may be additional sources as well. This tends to imply other beings visiting her.
But if she was as alone as some here assume, that would seriously warp her outlook and color her maturity. Reaching adulthood in prison, essentially.
I agree. She also knew something of the history of the trees and how they are regarded elsewhere. She was far more knowledgeable than the Shelly we knew had been.
It’s possible that some of the intermediate Shellys were more bookish and that Omega Shelly learned from them, but I doubt it. If one of the Shellys knew that she was a sphinx before she arrived, Jin would have probably known and remembered during the subsequent loops.
And as such, a very educational experience.
As one of our most famous writers once stated: If I ever were to meet myself, I would hope to be in good spirit.. (Multatuli)
Yeah, it could still be a mystery. Either the sphinxes Tina can detect are all ~80000 years old, and now Shellinx is setting off that radar, thus causing confusion, or, if she really HAS aged over 80000 years by being in the tree realm physically, the aging process is what brought the Sphinxiness out in Shelly
I suspect that if you are 80k years old mentally, the physical age is modifiable if for no other reason than the cells in your body are replace every 7 years or so. Down load an 80 K year old mind into an 80K second year old body, and that person will be whatever physical age they choose in a few minutes.
Yep. No doubt about it. It twas Tina freaking out. And continue to freak up. Seeing Shelly go from a 20-something human to a 80,000 sphinx in the blink of an eye.
And Shelly’s explanation begs the question, how did she know that about Sphinx and Human mating, withdrawing and the latent gene thing? Genetic memory? Or a conversation with one of her past selves? It looks like we have the beginning of a rip snorting week.
Who says that the Shellies are the only people to have visited the glade? Remember, Shellix’s first word was ‘human’ followed by ‘I remember you’. Kinda implies that there were other things going on to force a jog of the memory.
Exactly what I was thinking. That wall of skulls in Treeworld probably didn’t all come from the 56 Shellies. There’s been 1450 years worth of adventurers snooping around the supernatural boundaries, and that’s been on loop for 80k+ years. Someone else was bound to get in there,no? Maybe even another sphinx or two got in, but seeing as how treeworld seems to have been Shellinx’s protectorate (until it finished serving it’s purpose) she wasn’t allowed to come and go like others may have.
Uhm, does anyone remember the captain of the sunk sub? He *was* carrying it… he or some of his people probably touched it. And that’s just the final non-loop.
well who said CG lost her memories when she was compacted from a pack of demons and this info seems to be something demons would note or as others said sphinxes noticed a new member of the race and learned her a few things
Only if her mom was 100% sphynx. Shelly implies it’s a latent genetic thing…which, if I can guess well enough, means that multiple people in her family tree had to have sphynx genes, likely on both sides, which allowed the sphynx genes to pass down to Shelly. Humans have, what, 42 chromosone pairs, right? So I’d guess one or two pairs at most are sphynx and the rest are human.
And the genetic potential may be a single gene, or a complex of genes.
If it’s a single recessive, you’d have to get the same gene from both parents (unless it’s on the Y chromosome – cf. haemophilia).
If it’s a complex, you’d need to get the whole thing, but. possibly, all but a single gene might come from one parent. (This is not actually truly recessive, BTW.)
The fact that there seem to be very few sphinxes sort of argues for the genetic complex idea, i’d say. If you have to assemble perhaps a thousand or more genes, rather than simply two, i would expect the odds to be a lot higher.
Ok 2 quick confessions:
1. I watch too many cop shows. I record them and watch them marathon-style over the weekend. I have 10 hours of “Bones” in my head from Sunday.
2. We were supposed to study chromosomes and DNA in 6th grade. I didn’t. I read “Jurrassic Park.” My teacher passed me because I actually understood most of it. Now I wish I had paid more attention.
I came up with the “genetic complex” theory so quickly because i worked it out in some detail years ago to explain why some Galifreyans were Timelords and most weren’t.
(It also explained why Romana was so much better at Timelord stuff than the Doctor – because she had the full complex in strength and he had just barely enough of it to qualify. It was part of working out the background to a piece of fan fiction i never finished in which the Doctor’s latest regeneration has made him a physical duplicate of Sarah Jane.
(I wrote the first two pages, in which the Doctor is searching for Sarah Jane, up to the point where they first meet face-to-face, and outlined the rest. It was interesting, writing two pages of third-person narrative without using a single gendered pronoun…)
Human myostatin consists of two identical subunits, each consisting of 109 amino acid residues. Its total molecular weight is 25.0 kDa. The protein is made in an inactive form. For it to be activated, a protease cleaves the NH2-terminal, or “pro-domain” portion of the molecule, resulting in the now-active COOH-terminal dimer.
Hmmm. Maybe sometimes what’s diagnosed as a “myostatin deficiency” is just part of being a sphinx larva.
.
And most people like Shelly don’t live long enough to reach metamorphosis, and never become true adults, like some newts.
Hybrid Sphinxes are a lot like Hippogriffs. A hippogriff is half horse and half griffin, which in turn is half lion and half eagle. This makes a hippogriff one quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of mythology is full of surprises.
You’re right. Clearly he is up to something most sinister. Or, maybe he was replaced by an alternate universe doppelganger. Anyone else have any theories as to why Paul is explaining everything in such detail today. Plausible theories will not be tolerated.
Yeah, you’re right. Oooh, I know!!
Aliens abducted Paul, and the vegetable-brained, ooze-filled artificial replacement drone now has the keep cover by working on the comic. But it doesn’t have Paul’s shrewd brilliance at story-telling, and just decided to spew forth everything it found in Paul’s story notes. X3
Yeah, it looks like he decided to paste-in an explain-page ,so the time-travel-challenged (like me) have a breather to un-knot their brains, or rather reconnect their unraveled brains..
Ok, going for the implausible…
…Paul is not lying to us… in order to confound and confuse us… and cause us to create our own daily cliffhangers… Wait, that didn’t work.
Oh! I know! There’s a real live Shelly in the silent audience and he’s “ghost” writing her a guide book and/or her autobiography, but he can only explain things when that Shelly comments, under an assumed name, and uses the correct code word! That’s it, right?!
Maybe, before doing this page, he was shunted into a (more or less) 56-times time loop, becoming an all-wise sphinx in what was (to onlookers) a blink of an eye, and now he is only mean to demons, not the general run of readers?
Interesting. Implies that her family is sphinxs as well. They are a race apart now but used to be part ofo the general population. Just takes time or the right forces to cause the change. Almost like a change from catapellir to butterfly. The 80000 year effect came back with her, or she did live physically through it. Tina is a bit freaked but she isn’t losing it. Mostly confused and surprised as she cannot explain it. Cue Phix.
It might be possible her dad knows more about this then we think. If he knew about the sphinx recessive it could be why he got upset at Shelly for getting caught up in the doll as a kid. When she spent all day in a trance due to the doll, light, and a note. He might have been worried that it could have triggered a change. So Shelly could learn something interesting from talking to dad. It also means both parents carried it. For a recessive to show up it must come from both parents.
are they treated as equals ignored or looked down on as mutts
phix always seemed to like shelly even assumeing phix always new what shelly was though as stated before phix was a kind of activist before being traped in the library by nudge
@ danzier: It’s the Netherlands. Almost every city has one. I should know.
@yamara: O.O I was like: yay, schools out no more genetics for the day ^.^. I check up on wapsi square, read the comments, what do i see? someone talking genetecs fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.
no actually pretty funny timing, no hard feelings
WE can presume that the age of the being shows in their aura. That may be what freaked Tina out when she saw Phix. Tina didn’t remember meeting a Sphinx before, but she did see an aura of Phix that was older than dirt.
[i]Gulp! Um, I meant not offence, Phix. It was just an expression.[/i]
I appreciate the sites that have a note on which to use near the comment box. Like this one. Helps keep me from making that mistake. Even if I want to experiment with other HTML codes, at least I know which format to try…
My theory as to how age fits into Tina’s aura vision is that each experience a person has builds on their aura, even if it is merely the experience of being trapped alone for another day. As such, by observing the size and shape of a person’s aura, Tina can approximate their age. It is most likely not exact, but it is probably glaringly obvious for numbers this big.
I think of it like rings on a tree. Tina’s line should have been “But you’re so incredibly old now.”. My guess is that even Tina hasn’ t run into too many individuals that are this age. Plus by being a little less precise fewer of you would get hung up on the detail of the number that she is using and how she could know that.
It’s simple! Shelly was probably thinking about how long it’s been since she left. Shelly probably also was thinking about the things that happened in the 80,000 years, and that was enough to convince Tina that Shelly’s thoughts were accurate.
Well, somebody had to tell Shelly of her heritage, and Shelly had a lot of time on her hands to piece together what didn’t make sense when she was just a cub.
And now i realize how this poses even more questions. How did Shelly learn this information? Did someone tell her? Was it written down somewhere in Tree Land? Is this just in-sphinx-tive knowledge? *pays pun jar* Where does it come from?
But you are probably right. Her time in the tree realm allowed her access to this part of her genetic memory, thus imparting the knowledge and insphinx of her ancestors
I’m a long-time reader and fan of Piers Anthony (whose very name is a pun; there are many more in the works he writes). I think paying for puns is a necessity; unpaid-for puns seem to coagulate in the corners of society.
Taking everything at face value, I’d have to say that the only explanation for the above is that Shelly did indeed go physically to the tree realm, was stuck there for 80000 years while the time cycles were unwinding themselves, and the only way she survived was to access the genetic part of her that was immortal–the sphinx side. Hence her appearance before she was transported back. By then the transformation would have been long complete, prolly being completed before Shelly #56 showed up.
I don’t think Shelly(56) ever turned up. I suspect they only went after the Relic in the first few cycles and then realised that they didn’t need the Relic to “fix” the Calendar Machine.
Well, every cycle but one. This Shelly showed up, but wasn’t in a cycle. She was one of 56 to arrive. That means that a Shelly didn’t arrive from one of the 56 cycles.
And whatever genetic memory allowed for her to evolve HAD to have been in place before Shelly #1 showed up, because Shelly #1, also apparently always having been a sphinx, died from plutonium exposure, while Shellinx did not perish!
Ah – but each iterated Shelly could have had a slightly different genetic background.
Not enough to make her a different person, but, if my completely unsupported theory of sphinxiness )that it derives from a genetic complex involving possibly thousands of genes) were true, and just one or two different genes not being present (or being present) would cause one to not inherit sphinxitude.
And since there were variations between the various cycles, maybe this Shelly is the first time the genetic lottery paid off.
But then she wouldn’t have been a Shelly at all. If her ancestors were different, how would she have been the same person?
The parallel dimension stuff, which this is very similar to, never makes sense. Whatever causes the changes would probably cause many more changes, so the remaining similarities wouldn’t exist.
But the only sibs with identical gene sets are identical twins, and they are literally (albeit naturally-occurring) clones*.
I’ve surmised (as you must have noticed) that sphinxicity is a result of a gene complex (as opposed to one single recessive), involving possibly thousands of genes.
Given that the human genome includes about 2.9 billion gene pairs on twenty-three chromosomes and which of each pair a child gets from each parent is random … i can see only one of fifty-seven Shellys cashing a genetic lottery ticket. (See next comment.)
Sibs may be nearly identical as to looks, but vary in ways below the visible level – to the point that one of a pair of fraternal twins inherits something nasty and recessive and the other doesn’t.
So what i meant is that the other Shellys might have been substantially the same, but missing just one gene pair out of a thousand … the one actually controls the trigger for the metamorphosis.
Grrr. I meant to include a footnote – i put in the astertisk and then forgot – about the twin/clone thing.
On the tragically-short-lived SF comedy series Quark, the Barnstable twins played Betty and Betty, who were always arguing over which one was the clone.
Being identical twins, they actually clones…
(One of my favourite Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot-Interrogative moments occurred when i realised that the same week they appeared on Disney in ballerina costumes, the Barnstables also appeared, rather less demurely dressed, on the cover of Penthouse Variations…)
In recent years, even identical twins have been shown to have acquired genetic differences–in the epigenetic expression of your DNA. That is, as you live, different cells turn on or off different parts of your DNA, so that soon even identical twins (or clones) are not really identical.
Shelly (ours) was on Guard status, and certainly said that “she could not be killed” in that place. Like Phix in the library. Guardian Sphix = can not be killed here.
Radiation radiates at a fairly constant rate (hence the name) Distance pretty quickly reduces radiation (Inverse-square rule if I remember my high-school physics right), so being a bit away was probably enough. Whereas Shelly01 actually touched the vial.
Inverse cube rule. The radiation spreads in three dimensions. Twice the distance away means the radiation is diluted eight times (2 x 2 x 2). Standing three times the distance, you get 1/27 of the radiation for a given time.
A particle that would kill you on contact would be safe at arm’s length. Just don’t inhale it…
Nope–inverse square, like light or gravity. The idea is that the same amount of radiation/what-have-you is spread over a larger area: a sphere 1 m in radius has a surface of 4π ≈ 12.56637. If you are 2 m away, the sphere now has a surface area of 4×4π ≈ 50.2655, and the intensity is only 1/4.
D’oh!
bmonk et al, of course you’re right. I was thinking volume, but it’s the amount of radiation reaching the surface of the imaginary sphere that counts. Works for any shape, but the sphere appropriately describes the amount of radiation at a given distance from a point source.
Interesting thought in light of the new information….
what if Phix, was a long lost relative of Shelly?
And yes, i always had a feeling Tina could “read” ages off people, at least generally anyway… Shelly’s aura is probably blasting at Tina right now given that Shellinx is now about 78,550 years older than anyone else in the room…
80,000 years of developing an aura, and if it works how i think it does, then Shelly is going to need to do some major file compression before she can be around Tina without her crashing like this….
hehe, OTOH, both parties are handling this much better than we expected…no claws yet…:P 😆
Tina put a shirt on before Shelly entered Tree World, at roughly the same time Shelly put a shirt on. I believe it was off panel, between the strip where Shelly first touched the relic, and the strip when Shelly entered Tree World.
yes, and no. I don’t think Tina was going to mention the sphinx thing at that moment, she was going to say that she was 80,000 years old. I know the connection between Tina being demons and sphinxes hunting them, blah blah blah, but I feel that the sudden age difference would stand out much more than her being a Sphinx. Besides Shelly wasn’t thinking of her age when Tina noticed it, Shelly was warning Monica about the relic…
Love it! This is great! I think perhaps Tina didn’t see Shelly as she was until she became agitated and grabbed Monica.
“Yeah well, I’m 80,000 years old NOW! Since you talked me into holding that damn relic!”
I think maybe humans with this gene only turn into a sphinx if they can live long enough. Most die a normal human death at a normal age and never do turn. Thanks to her time in the forest, our Shelly lived long enough, and then some.
It becomes a chicken and egg question though. We were told sphinxes are born human, but now we’re told sphinxes and humans had sex long ago, resulting in the human-sphinx strain. That would tend to mean there were sphinxes before humans. So not all sphinxes came from humans then? At least not originally.
exactly, sphinxes started out as a separate race from humans, then when they learned how to turn into humans to hide perhaps, or just to show off…anyway, then they had sex, the genes were mixed into the pool… and the rest is history….
perhaps, there are sphinxes that don’t age no matter what realm they’re in, and feel that the sphinx hybrids are a massive sin or waste or something like that… would make for a good story arc anyway……
^^I was waiting for that. Bought “Ancient-Aliens” BRd from HC recently. Fun, but a lot of bogus conclusions. They sortof see an alien forefather in their bunions, if You let them.
Maybe Sphinxes and Demons are ancient adversaries from before man? Both stemming from a different realm?
SoWhyMe‘s point is that today’s page contradicts what Shelly said earlier. If sphinxes are born as humans, they couldn’t have existed before humans were born. Shelly should have said that some sphinxes were born as humans. Either that, or something changed and the original sphinxes stopped reproducing, so now it’s true that sphinxes are born as humans even though it wasn’t true before.
To me, it’s just an example of the sloppy way characters talk in this comic. You have to take anything a character says with a grain of salt. There is a good chance that they are wrong or don’t mean what they say.
Those of you who said Shelly was a Sphinx and/or that it was Tina screaming… you win a cookie.
I was at SpringCon both days this weekend because Paul forgot his original art. I did snag the latest Wapsi Square book on Saturday. On Sunday, I went through and purchased several examples with Phix/Nudge/Tina/Monica/etc… And… Shelly/Justin(a.k.a. Officer Tight Buns) in his first appearance along with the exploding gas grill.
Jabberwonky,
Just shoot Paul an email with the dates or titles of the original art you want and if he still has them, he might be willing to quote you a price with shipping.
They may have wanted to get from one place to another without anyone noticing? After all Phix used a human form to have a chat with Monica and then, later, have a chat with Tina.
…Just how hot would a Mr. Sphynx have to be to… wait, they’re built like tanks. Yeah, I guess the Mr. Sphynxes would have a shot. If the girl were desperate enough or out of options.
But I’d HATE to be Li’l Sphinxette’s mom. Imagine those tantrums….
I think it had to be female sphinxes with male humans. While female humans might get interested in a male sphinx, there is a little problem with barbs…
Teacher: Mrs. Wahnee, Shelly is a bright girl and we love having her in class, but if something can’t be done about this we will have no choice but to refer your daughter to the special education program.
Mrs. W.: About what?
The teacher points. Young shelly has climbed the curtains.
I cite Jennifer’s Body as a reference… some people besides her bestie had to know she was a monster or at least question why guys always seemed to disappear after dating her, but it didn’t stop them, nope….
From my brother’s collaboration with John Ringo, We Few (And, unlike a few other things in the series, i don’t know which of them to blame for this one):
Q: How do you get guys to find a kilo of fat attractive?
Your brother is one of my favorite Sci-Fi authors. I have the “We Few” series, and it’s one of the few series that has both made me cheer and cry. I have several other of his shorter series, including his Bahzell Bahnakson fantasy books (anxiously awaiting the next one of those, btw). But I haven’t yet started buying Honor Harrington. Basically because I figure I’ll like them as much as all his other books, and I can’t afford to buy 20+ books right now! 😉
@JustMe: Just hit the Baen Books website and dig in. Incredible stories.
@Fairportfan: Is it okay if I squee just a little to know that David’s your brother? I mean, I shook hands with Glenn Seaborg back in ’95 when he was touring an exhibition I was working on, but I’ve found your brother’s books more engaging than his writings…
If you’re talking about physical birth control then you have a point. If you’re talking about chemical birth control, it may not work on sphinxes. However, I suspect it wasn’t needed.
I think Phix wanted to meet Dr Fields solely so that she could make Monica think something had happened and take her seriously when she wanted to get rid of her to talk to Tina.
Not to point out the obvious, but Phix is an academic, and one that spends great amounts of time more or less alone. It might just be possible that she wanted a little Phix time, and the good doctor was smart, amusing, and attractive enough that it piqued her interests.
…Not everything is some crazy conspiracy, y’now…
eschmenk : oh, no, I’m certain the annex exists – among other things, Nudge walked over from the annex to the coffee shop, and like to have froze doing it.
I meant, I don’t think that Dr. Fields and Phix spent the night together. I
@Fatuncle. I realized that was your main thought, but Francisco‘s full statement was:
I think Phix wanted to meet Dr Fields solely so that she could make Monica think something had happened and take her seriously when she wanted to get rid of her to talk to Tina.
I think she wanted to meet Dr. Fields for a variety of reasons and that any decision to create an annex likely came out of her talks with him. If the visit was just to fool Monica, the bit about the annex probably was, too. That seems unlikely though, because Phix wouldn’t have known that she needed to fool Monica yet.
I’m not sure if Nudge came from the annex, though. It would be odd if she couldn’t just poit. Tricking someone would be a lot harder if you can’t choose how and where to meet them. She might have needed to poit to a secluded spot to keep from being observed, though.
Personally, I have no idea if Phix and Dr. Fields had anything more than a platonic relationship.
80K years is enough time to derive a lot of information from nothing but examination and experimentation without resorting to genetic memory. Even a single mind running continuously that long would be able to figure out a lot of things that would allow figuring out a lot of other things that in turn would allow the figuring out of a lot of other things, even if the mind was Shelly’s.
Everyone has the potential to learn everything in the universe. IQ tests are measuring the speed you learn at…I’d give Shelly a modest 104. So above average, but barely… I would say if she was given no outside information, and spent time in the tree realm meditating and unlocking the restraints normal society puts on our minds, I would say she would have figured that out in just under 500 years or so…but only if thats all she thought about…
…actually, IQ tests test how well you take IQ tests. Psychologists and educational researchers have been pushing against IQ tests for decades because they take a measurement that is useful for not much.
When she showed up in Monica’s living room, she spent the entire time in sphinx form, and there didn’t appear to be room to create a doorway big enough. In addition, this was before she opened up the annex. However, there was no *poit* sound effect, so we can’t be entirely sure that she poited, but it seems likely.
That was my read too. However, there may be other methods of transport, too. Longer and less convenient. Phix can move between different realms (she goes to and from the Library often, and went to the Demon realm (after it was sealed!) to renegotiate things and punish a few trouble makers.
Holy… I just realized. That means that Phix likely knew Mayuhel was in the demon realm, and had the ability to go after her… yet did not.
….ooooo…. I don’t want to be there when those two meet.
Phix’s ability to meddle might have been restricted to giving advice and books. And how big is the demon realm? Mayahuel and Phix might have never encountered each other at any point, assuming Phix ever went there before dealing with the rogue demons.
Er… Even if Phix could go to the demon realm, why would she? I don’t care how bad-#$% she is, even the best can be over-whelmed by sheer numbers.
She *is* a demon-hunter, or at least from a race of them. Her going there would be like testing a shark-bite suit in chum filled waters, only you didn’t bring the suit.
The only that has NOT be shown directly using glyph magic has been Tepoz, maybe. I’ll have to go through the books and see if I can find an on-screen use.
We haven’t seen Tepoz use glyph magic, but he can use it. Remember he added some glyphs to the GG’s bodies to make sure the a Glyph Reader wouldn’t be able to control them until a certain condition was met. That being a Glyph Reader self-sacrificing themselves. Monica’s incident with the bus (and Tina crashing, etc) her heart stopping for a time read as a sacrifice
While I would like to see a bit more of her to be sure, I tend to agree with you even though Shelly was one of my favorite characters to begin with. The thing I have always liked most about Shelly is that she has grown and changed more than anyone else over the course of the comic. This looks like even more growth, which, in my mind, is a good thing.
I don’t know about liking her better, but it makes her character infinitely more interesting to follow. The dramatic shift in her psyche will make for great story telling.
so… she’s had a while to get past her anger problems… her need to use someone without developing an emotional attachment… the moments of depression… and can now see the world with the wonder of a child again, which she failed to see before getting trapped… watching bugs crawling along… giving chase, shifting form without thinking, bringing the world media and religious nuts into play… allowing herself a moment of happiness, with no fear… and if mortal, means that she can grow old and die, she’ll obviously live a long long time, 80k years only grew her hair that long, or she’s been cutting it… if mortal means she can be killed by things in our world that other sphinx would shrug off, but still have the sphinx lifespan… yaknow, that stuff.
I suspect terms like “genes”, “species” and “hybrid” don’t mean exactly the same thing as what we think of in normal animal biology when it comes to the sphinx. Their obvious mosaic physiology tells me they don’t handle genetic information the way earthlings do. Since we see all these traits borrowed from other species as distinct parts and not some amalgam perhaps the “original” sphinx is some sort of core the parts are attached to, including the human.
(hit “post ” too quick)
You forgot the > after the slash “a” at the end “title is also not needed. after the last ” you can just type > title here and then
Not only that, but magic, plus the existence of other sapient “species” than just humans, means that all bets are off. We just don’t know what is really possible, and how attractive other species might be to us, or how interfertile they could be made to be.
Here’s how I look at it, although I’m probably wrong.
It’s a subjective/subjunctive backlooping timey-wimey thing. When our Shelly was pulled into the Clockwald, or whatever the forest of time is called, she had to sit through the 56 others in reverse order, each contributing a part, and failing at the same time, and learning from them as well. The Cycle had to complete, not get broken, for her to get back. The recessive genes step forward, and she changes as a strategic/adaptive tactic. She returns pretty much at the same moment she left, causing her faded memories to reboot, her curentpast self overlapping with her currentpresent self in the Now.
Meanwhile, ignoring that past paragraph of nonsense ramblings, Tina just saw Shelly age a few millenia, and change species, yet remain the same. With her vision, it must have looked like Walt Disney vomited on a paisely tablecloth.
Your assessment is sort of what I am thinking as well, that Shelly’s evolution while in the tree realm occurred as a result of unlocking genetic memory.
But the Walt Disney vomit on the paisley tablecloth is too much of a bad trip for anyone to endure…I’d be panicking, too…
The sphinx trait may have been a gene previously turned “off” that was triggered to turn back “on” by some aspect of the forest of time. Researchers often use this concept in determining the function (gene expression profiling) of a previously sequenced gene by turning a gene off or on. This is referred to as “gene knockout” and “gene knockin” respectively.
hmmm.. “uhr Wald’ Yeah! That’s the best..waay better than mine, the moment I typed “GlockenWald” it I got the vision of a forest made of bronze bells… BAAAAAD place to be in a hail-storm.. 😆
1450 years on a gallon of bloody entrails, or thereabout, for us in the rest of the world, using the normal ( heheheh) metric: 372,7 years on a liter of bloody hero-remains.
It’s a little known fact, but they also do run on black tea, though it is not recommended, and may cause sooty accumulations and a certain amount of backfiring…
oooh I do not want to stand behind a sphinx if it backfires.
Once, in a germansafaripark, the truck we werein had lions jumping on top of it….AND FART!!!!… 😯 .. I never EVER want to see a safari-park again, however ecological and educational it might be 😆
@Eshmenk: I went to school with a guy who interned at Disney. There’s a story they tell of a guy who masqueraded as Goofy who passed out from dehydration. The ambulance people bundled “Goofy” in, foam head and all, and weren’t able to do their jobs until the poor man was safely hidden away behind closed doors. Meanwhile, a replacement Goofy was dispatched within a few minutes to make sure no little kids thought Goofy was seriously hurt…
I’d be concerned my friends wouldn’t treat me the same either if it was revealed that I was actually a mythic monster.
But also, she’s been trapped in a near-never ending cycle of watching herself die over and over again, basically forgetting everything she was, and now she’s suddenly back, EXACTLY where she left off…
Yeah I wouldn’t be quite right either.
I wanna hug her too. And (despite not being a hairdresser) do her hair..it looks all limp, greasy and split. Will make her feel better too (If I know women…)
Would also be a nice moment of re-capping and re-bonding between best friends Monica and Shelly. Shelly is older, wiser and to M probably somewhat of an unknown factor now.
PLUS it gives us, poor rattled readers a breather to catch-up too.
I’m still clinging to the notion that sphinx-Shelly was talking to another sphinx just before she left the forest. It is this other sphinx who gave her all the information about the genetic stuff. It could have been creepy girl. If she/it also transformed into a sphinx to match Shelly, she may have known all that. She was, after all, a fused group of demons who lived an extremely long time and would know many things.
I’m more inclined to think that (if she was talking to someone other than herself) she was talking to CG, and CG didn’t necessarily have to transform into a sphinx along with Shelly.
Okay when Monica touched the relic she saw this vision. http://wapsisquare.com/comic/let-me-see/
She said that it looked Jin. http://wapsisquare.com/comic/owes-me-a-dollar/
But myself I thought it looked more like CG seen here. http://wapsisquare.com/comic/just-a-dream/
The timeline would work because in real time(RT) Monica touched it before Shelly but in tree time(TT) it was after Shelly touched it. My guess is that Monica could touch it now and not see anything, because in (TT) it is now befor Shelly touched it while in (RT) it is after Shelly touched it.
This time-forest is/was considered a ‘sacred’ place. That usually means pilgrims. I would think she had myriads of visitors during her stewardship of the forest. So, yeah, I think you’re right.
Hmph! Says you! I seriously doubt that dreaming I was James Bond (or more likely…that I was a Bond girl) every night would make me think the movies were less awesome! 😛
it was mentioned that shelly put the capsule in the tree… so, which her did it, and for what reason?
beyond that… *shelly falls asleep at work, after relearning how to fix cars, her dad comes in, finds the light on in the morning* ‘late night? wake up!’ *steps into the office, finds something non-human has collapsed the office chair, it rears up, eyes glinting, shows enormous fangs as it yawns* ‘hi, yeah, i fell asleep at work again, what? oh’ *slups into human form* ‘better? no? our entire family has sphinx blood yaknow, this could happen to you next, want a coffee? or an ambulance?’.
Hello? 911, yeah it’s Shelly again . . . Um could you send someone over to get my dad’s heart restarted . . . yeah another drama queen moment. Yeah I think he might need that O2 this time. . .
I know there’s a pun jar but how much is this gonna cost me?
Pappy Wahnee: “No. I am NOT going to faint, I am just happy I can finally give you our traditional Wahnee-flee-collar. You’re all grown up now.. {snif} My little girl ,finally.. {sniffle, sniffle} Your mother would have been sooo proud… Lookatyou.” *hugs*
Booming, echoing PA-voice :{Warning to all Wapsi-commenters : Keyboard gremlins on the loose, repeat, keyboard gremlins on the loose. Double-check all typing, keep a dictionary close-by… warning..Warning!!}
Be interesting to see if Shelly can manifest the full sphinx form back in the real world or if she is only able to ‘phix up’ in pocket side dimensions…
Yes. She hadn’t manifested her full hybrid nature at the age she was at her present demise.
The dialogue suggests that the specific time of Shelly’s life she goes to get the relic at has varied during the cycles of the calendar machine. Its certainly possible that during one of the cycles she was awakend to her sphynxhood, perhaps by phyx or some other outside entity, or who knows what, before going to that dimension as a protector.
Its like how you can’t specifically tell you’ll be bald at 50 when you’re 5.
Agreed. And I also think that this sudden knowledge of sphinx husbandry she’s exhibiting is proof that the Sphinxes might carry their cumulative knowledge and possibly their lore in genetic memory, kind of like an initiation into a scecret society or mystery school…once you’re in, you get the sevret knowledge.
Of course, Shelly being Shelly, she’s prolly oversharing without a thought to consequence… 🙂
Look at Tina’s words. She’s not worried about Shelly’s sphinxocity. It’s her sudden aging…she’s always known Shelly was a Prius…hybrid…she was the one to get her to squish it… http://wapsisquare.com/comic/squish-it/
Hmm..now You mention it.. It looks indeed as if the “age-thing” rattles Tina above all other things.
Maybe she was aware of Shelly’s “true nature” , but somehow also knew, through Shelly’s aura, that she would pose no danger, contrary to Phix, who had been quite the lethal demon-hunter, and produced an equally lethal aura.
Actually, Tina probably has a number of proto-sphinxes amongst her clientele. If it is a recessive trait distributed among the population, then it is probably like left-handedness for her. Just something that you notice every now and then.
I think the major thing that is rattling Tina is Shelly changing and aging in the blink of an eye. Remember that it’s been zero (or very little) time between Shelly “using” the Relic and then “BWAM!” no clothes, long hain, 80,000 Shelly.
I don’t read it that way. Tina’s concern in the first panel was addressed by Shelly in the second. Tina raised a different issue in the third.
Tina isn’t just reacting to one thing. She’s frighted and confused and her thoughts are probably jumbled right now. Monica is probably the same way. Bud doesn’t get rattled so easily, though.
Someone would have to know what Bud meant to answer that. Perhaps to Bud, being a sphinx is not supernatural. (If some people are just born as a sphinx thanks to a recessive gene, it would be perfectly natural.) Perhaps she didn’t know that Shelly was a sphinx in the first place. Who knows what she was thinking at the time?
I think it’s interesting to wonder what Paul was thinking. [url=http://wapsisquare.com/comic/that-hurt/#comment-30280]From the comments here[/url]:
CaptainTightPants:
I do not know why, but Shelly’s having powers now actually bothers me. It just seems too token, and it might have been nice having a fully human character after appearing to lose Owen and Lakshmi and Amanda’s long absence. Maybe that’s why she has suddenly reappeared, to fill the human void Shelly is leaving… Not to criticize. This is your work, I’m just saying it seems a bit odd to me.
Paul Taylor:
Who said that she has any powers?
The Old Wolf:
Tina. Tina is implying that Shelly has something unusual going on. At least that’s what I’m getting out of it.
Paul Taylor:
But don’t assume there’s anything supernatural. 🙂
Assuming that Paul had already decided that Shelly was a sphinx, I think that means that he doesn’t regard sphinx as being supernatural. In the Wapsiverse, they wouldn’t be. For that matter, would a god regard him/herself as being supernatural?
In any case, according to what Paul said back then, Bud was correct at the time she said it, whatever she was thinking and whether or not Paul thought Shelly was a sphinx at the time. 😎
The clue-by-4 finally dropped on my widdle head. I do believe you are right about Tina knowing Shelly was different. That gives carafe crushing a lot more meaning to me.
Y’know, reading this comic lately and all the comments each day too, I realize Paul must just read our speculations and just work off that story wise LOL
Nah but seriously, I can see how Shelly in the split second/blink of an eye went from 20’s something to living 80k in a sacred forest, probably time has a more unique meaning there than just reverse flow.
I mean Shelly appears there, aging isnt what we think of it and over the 80k years, the gene manifests itself over the unique properties of this realm. so after witnessing her death all those many times, finally returning and in our time, not a second has past….talk about a mind job!
Bring on the week! I want me some more reading….and more bewbs and muscle butt LOL 😀
And in one day, Paul wraps up what would otherwise have taken a week of exposition. Which implies that it is a fairly minor cusp, an event that needed to be finished in order to get on with the real story. Wow. Fasten your seat belts, guys!
If it has to be some sort of infernal torture-contraption, those with your feet hanging out are the worst ,especially when having long legs…… *shudder x 100*
One man’s torture…There’s a rolly-coaster at Fiesta Texas in San Antonio that used a magnetic driver to get you from 0 to 65 in less than 2 seconds. It is exhilarating! Every time I rode it I would be roaring with laughter at the first corner…
There used to be one at Ghost Mountain in Maggie Valley NC that didn’t use a launcher and didn’t use a chain hoist – it began by falling off the side of the mountain.
They closed it the year before i would have been able to get up there.
There used to be one at Ghost Mountain in Maggie Valley NC that didn’t use a launcher and didn’t use a chain hoist – it began by falling off the side of the mountain.
They closed it the year before i would have been able to get up there.
You know the odd thing? Roller-coasters have me break-out in bouts of serious fear-sweating and the shakes, just by looking at them.
However, put me on a ’97 CR 500cc 2-stroke SM (Big Red for those in the know) And I don’t even blink, while all I hear from my passenger is AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH IAMGONNADIEBUTIAMGONNAKILLYOUFIRST!!! over the amazing ruckus it makes.. impressive volumes can be reached by youngladies in distress. 😯
Kicking the damn-thing on, is an adventure in it’s own though..if done wrong, before You know it Your either
a)Launched
b)break an ankle
Aaand don’t even start about the mpg-numbers. I’ve seen military jets more frugal 😆
WaitAMinute. Shelley just spent 80,000 years alone, except for the occasional, very short, visit by an earlier version of herself, each of whom died horribly within a relatively short period of time. She’s been through all of that, and she’s still more-or-less sane and coherent? I can’t even begin to imagine her isolation, boredom and loneliness, and even by the tiny, faint glimmer of my imagination I can guess with great confidence that I would return neither coherent nor sane. If whatever prevented her from dying also kept her sane, that’s almost worse. Catatonia would at least be a respite from the centuries of waiting for your next incarnation to show up and die.
I wholeheartedly concur. Which would imply that the sphinx manifestation has enormous mental stability. Not all of the changes are physical, unless that stability is hardwired into the brain.
Sphinxes live a looooong time. I guess their minds are specifically wired for it.
I wouldn’t be too surprised if they got some sort of a “low-power” stasis-like condition they can invoke, but still stay alert, like a cat, that can go from snoozing away to full “crazy’ in the blink of an eye.
With the net- result for Shelly, thatthe only moment she was consciously alone ,was the time it took to go sphinx, in her case it could be after a short time, say a couple of days, after realizing what was going on.
let alone the fact that, as a human, she would have perished of hunger and thirst quite quickly, unless the trees bore some sort of fruit. Whiiiiiche…if there were fruits on the trees, could also trigger the latent sphinx-form.
Sphinxes seem to be linked to their realms, so the Glocken Wald triggered her transformation, while the other Shelly’s just didn’t live long enough to transform.
To be fair…she never said she’d been alone that whole time. She only recalled the times she’d met herself and seen her demise. Doesn’t mean she was always alone in there. There could be other ways to get to this sacred grove other than being Shelly. Otherwise the grove is pretty useless.
Just a thought. 🙂
I believe Shellinx’s intelligence and knowledge could not have been solely provided by brief encounters with twentysomething versions of herself. We have yet to find out what experiences she had to know so much.
Well keep in mind that Phix spent many thousands of years with only occasional interactions with whatever people, GGs, or anyone else who showed up, and she was more than just fine. She seemed peachy and had an interesting sense of humor.
Phix mentioned various encounters, people allowed to use the Library, and adventurer who weren’t. Plus she had the entirety of all written knowledge. We don’t know yet what Shelly Omega encountered when she began her 80k-year ordeal. But she has a learned some things in the meantime that suggest she has something like a Library card.
Indeed, I was also thinking of library annexes. Maybe Sphinx-realms are all connected with the library as a hub. Having something to read would ,in my case, really prevent me from going crazy when trapped in some weird realm as a mythical creature.
In a lot of legends the sphinxes were sage, deep thinkers, despite their bloody profession(“Cutting out” demons: Operation went well, Patient died)
Phix has been quite vague about all sorts of stuff. Combine that with the fact that most sphinxes of lore tend to be unable to speak in anything but riddles..
Well, let’s just say: There’s more to Phix and the Library than meets even the most scrutinizing eye.
For what it’s worth – here’s what I’ve been thinking:
I suppose you could look at this piece of relic from the sub as a “key”, for Shelly, just as the clock-winder/knife turned into a “key” for Monica. Shelly locked the relic onto the blade, turning it into a key of sorts, and un-locked the tree/door to get the plutonium insert for the power-source. That, in turn with Shelly’s death, unlocked whatever the block/lock was between the Shelly/Shellinx personas. This has brought about the realization by Shelly that she does have a reason for her various strengths, which are now shown not to be as freakish as she thought. Tina, our lovely demon barrista, couldn’t see what Shelly was, because Shelly hadn’t reached that self-realization/awakening yet herself. Shelly is now on her real journey of self-discovery. She may be a bit more contemplative while she works things our. Finding out “who”and “what” you are is a bit of a cage-rattler.
Now here’s another thing – during the calendar machine cycle Phix asked Monica and Shelly a riddle. Each answered their own way – Monica with “sunshine” and Shelly with “wind”. Each of these is one of the four elements – fire, air, earth and water. Or if you go with the Buddhist list – fire, air, earth, water and spirit. Could there be or should there need to be a complete set of these to assist in the aid of repairing Jin and defending the world/universe? If so, who are the two or three more representatives of earth, water and spirit?? And will these be needed to, again, defend the world/universe against the threat of whatever blew out the side of the German sub? And any other little problems that happen to be caused by the discovery/discoveries that will be made along the way?
Perhaps instead of Phix, Shelly will be the sphinx who asked the riddles of these two or three more elements.
Would it be too outlandish to think of Brandi as Earth, Bud as Water, and Tina as Spirit in that case? 🙂 After all, Brandi has that whole motherly thing going for her (Earth mother?) and Bud is very much a go with the flow thinker (plus she’s a dancer, and I’d attribute that skill with air or water)…then you’ve got Tina, a body filled with demons (what’s more spirit than that?)…
The Webcomic List monitors over 18,100 webcomics. You could probably find a comic that fits just about any description, including being very normal. Besides, how strange is Mary Worth, for example? (Yes, it’s a bit strange that someone can be nothing but a professional busybody for so long, but…)
I’m not surprised that Shelly turned out to be supernatural. Lifting ridiculously large weights with her toe isn’t normal.
I always thought that Amanda was the normal one. Shelly was always a little less than normal to me since she had insight into the whole Calendar Machine thing along with ehr uber-strength.
Yeah, Amanda was Monica’s anchor to the mundane reality. Shelly was the ‘normal’ in the know. Amanda has now progressed to the normal in the know and Shelly is now no longer normal, but supernatural. She’s been sphinxified. The dynamics of the group have changed. Who now is going to be the anchor to the normal? This is a five day a week treat. *sits back, drinks coffee and watches comments proliferate*
Is it just me, or does Tina seem to be freaking out simply because of Shelly’s age? Only Shelly herself mentions the sphinx part.
(Come to that, just how old IS Shelley now? Try as I might, I can’t find reference in previous strips as to exactly when the calendar machine started up/reset to.)
Paul’s dropped the clues in part comics. You just have to know where to look. The Calendar Machine reset time 56 times. Each CM cycle is 1450 years long. The ending of which previously has been on 12/12/12.
You do??? 😯 wow.. that’s quite the academic approach. 8)
I just have the luxury of all 5 books next to my iMac (+my trusty English dictionary), for easy reference. Flicking through a couple of high-quality paper pages is quite comfortable.
Yes, I also have a text file of all the comic titles which I can search for key words. It’s easy to get them from the yearly archives pages. Thing is, Paul didn’t start labeling them with descriptive words in their weblinks for the first couple years or so. I’ve not had the initiative to do so as yet either. And not all that are so labled are directly related to the contents. Still, it’s helpful.
There was a move afoot to transcribe the comics some years back and I have a copy of that as well, which can also help. But that stopped after the first couple of years too. I should probably convert it all into a database. At least I could populate it to some extent pretty much automatically.
when i read the first few comments,i couldn’t help to think,”A punett square would easily solve this.”But,we dont know what the genes are,so that idea is pretty much useless.
So, is Shelly immortal now? Frozen in time, like the golem girls and the demons? It looks like she didn’t need to keep up her body-building regimen in the grove. Her hair grew a little. Can she change her form at will, like Phix? Lots of questions.
Bet Monica’s starting to feel left out. She’s one of the only members of the main cast now who isn’t thousands and thousands of years old.
I think you may have tumbled into an even more important issue… Previously, Monica was worried about switching places with Jin and becoming immortal before tackling the Calendar Machine. While we weren’t shown anything like that happening – Jin stayed immortal – but DID anything happen to Monica? And there are questions about Tina’s continued existence as well (voiced by herself – or her group of demons) when she wondered what happens to her/them when the host body dies. Maybe it’s possible that Tina is immortal as well.
Obviously, Paul is wanting to make all the main cast immortal so he doesn’t have to draw them growing older!!!
CALLED IT! (Partly)… >D Sorry I’m usually never right about this comic… I’m gonna go get myself a cookie, or least half of one.
Now. Unanswered questions and hypothesis!
WHAT HAPPENED TO HER DEMON/LITTLE GIRL!?
Is she what kept her sane? Is she the one that taught her about being a Sphinx? Did she go one some crazy mystic journey (mentally) with said demon/little girl which led to her evolution, and demon/little girl leaving her (as I don’t know if a Sphinx could have a demon, even a hybrid)…
Shelly’s demon was always her own, right? It wasn’t brought on by others or etc during that crazy accident when they were little?
I would like to see the transformation process explained a bit. And how come the other shelly’s didn’t have their recessive gene snap into place – what made our Shelly (#56) snap into sphinx mode, thus saving her in that radiation forest?
And who/how/why brought the plutonium even into that realm? If it was another Shelly, wouldn’t she wear a suit, and thus live while in the forest…? A few techie questions I don’t know if he’ll go into… I wouldn’t mind a little side-log/story to explain this stuff if it can’t ever get drawn (more like please if you never explain it, please put it up elsewhere?)
Whelp. Least she can talk to Golem Girls, and Jin and have more in common. Tina’s collective mind was wiped before this timeline. Maybe her being this old and mystical is one of the keys to curing Jin’s crazy. 😀
Sorry just one more thing that’s been bugging me since day one in this forest. How did the other Shelly’s get here if they kept repeating time, thus time clock wasn’t fixed yet?
We only got to this point since we noticed the crazy in Jin truly after her mom was back and clock was fixed. What reason did every other Shelly have to go to this realm/find this relic? Unless there was more than one way?
I’m just curious… this relic wasn’t mentioned (I think) until we needed to fix Jin, and even then it seemed accidental. I forgot how this relic was brought up even now…. maybe it was still in Brandy (or was it Bud?)’s book of self-notes?
We don’t know what happened at this point in the cycle in other iterations – Jin’s crazy may well have expressed itself every previous time, too.
Perhaps previous Shellys went to the Time Forest to get the Jin-fixing-macguffin because the Scoobies thought that fixing the Calendar Machine (which they would be planning to do next year) would leave Jin non compos and were getting ready while they had time.
Okay I have expressed this view before but you are making the assumption that the CM wasn’t fixed before. Consider the possibility that it was “fixed” but that it didn’t fix crazy Jin. So Jin goes crazy and starts to destroy things the only thing anybody can think to do to stop Jin is to reset the CM and hope we come up with a different solution on the next go round. The only thing I can offer as proof is this link. http://wapsisquare.com/comic/all-hell-broke-loose/ Bud says “Brandi figured it out moments before fixing the machine.” If fixing the machine would have fixed Jin there would have been no need to repeat the cycle.
I always read Bud, when saying “moments before fixing the machine” as “moments before the attempt to fix the machine was made”, as evidenced by the fact that she said everyone got out too early (to complete the fix)…
But if you try it on a fully mature sphinx, you’d better hope it works–or you’ve got a really mad sphinx on hand with no known way to keep her in check.
……..
uhhhh, ….
……..
OK, first, this would imply that she was physically transported to the tree realm via the relic, if what Tina says is true.
But the big question in my ind then is why Tina didn’t recognize this before? She knew she was capable of great power, but…..why?
We know Shelly was in ‘neverland’ for those 80k years, but from the rest of their perspective it’s only been a few minutes. Maybe, and just my guessing, Shelly had to actually change/evolve, which took that much time to actually happen, for Tina to see the change in aura?
Yup. If you didn’t know about the life cycle of butterflies, would you be likely to look at a crawly green caterpillar and see that it would someday become a bright-winged flutterby?
Well, Shelly might not have recognized it because shelly was so young. She recognized strength in Shelly, but it didn’t look the same as aged Sphinxes she’d seen, so she didn’t make the connection until Shelly came back older and more sphinxy.
My guess would be she can tell how ‘old’ Shelly just became in the same way she can tell she’s now a Sphinx. her physical body may not have aged 80k years, but her spirit/aura/whatever did.
^^that seems pretty close..
I think the reason Tina didn’t know is because Shelly didn’t know. The aura is a reflection of what the person is thinking and feeling.
If a person is convinced that they are a sphinx, their aura would reflect that. If not, it wouldn’t. The same is true with Shelly’s age. Shelly knows that she is over 80,000 years old, so Tina knows.
maybe when Shelly touched the relic, time in the normal world stopped completely. It would explain why she never seemed to move at all during her physical transportation to sphinx-land.
Why would what Shelly said about time on Earth have been wrong?
Of course, from Omega Shelly’s perspective, time in what was originally her time-frame did stop.
If that’s true, then how come Tina was never able to see that before? What about the forest brought it out?
Sweet, sameBrain syndrome…:-)
Because it was recessive, and hadn’t been triggered/manifested itself.
Maybe it’s like allergies; i have a potentially lethal allergy to penicillin – which manifested so severely the first time (Navy boot camp, 1967) that i’ve never met a doctor since who thought it would be a good idea to test me to confirm that’s what it was.
But before it showed up, i had been given penicillin more than once previously, with no reaction at all.
Even if you carry the potential for allergy to something, you don’t normally have a problem the first time (or perhaps several times) you’re exposed – you have to be sensitised by exposure before you will react.
And until you’re sensitised, testing probably won’t reveal the potential.
Thus, until Shelly actually lived thousands of years in an environment with a very high thaumic field, she was only potentially a sphinx…
Thaumic field? Took a course in high energy magic at Unseen University, eh?
Nah – just dropped by for some football.
Wondered who’d pick up on that.
One of the better Discworld books. Lots of new, exciting characters, interesting lore, and plenty of pie!
Conversely, it’s one of my less-favourite books; i almost didn’t finish it, something that has only once before (The Last Continent) happened with a Discworld book.
You could learn enough at the nearest bar to the ‘over the wall’ point for the students…
You are asking two different questions. Tina knows now because Shelly knows now. The other question is why didn’t Shelly know before.
Cf. H.C.Andersen
I can see Monica’s face now.
She’s probably all, “What the hell???”
I know I would be. XD
But hey, at least the idea that some people had about Shelly going all predator on Tina is wrong. She actually seems very collected.
Also interesting to see that Tina can apparently tell a being’s age at a glade. Which when you think about it, makes this way freakier for her. As far as she can tell, Shelly just went from 20 something to about 80,000 years in a split second.
*glance
Stupid auto correct…
She did spend 80,000 years in a glade…
Not sure we can assume she was alone, or even in the Sacred Forest the whole time. Shelly seems to have returned with encyclopedic knowledge, and smarts to know when to deploy it. That requires a lot of interaction over a lot of time.
I mean, even the internet doesn’t know who “Gisaultees” is, which I find a brilliant touch.
But unlike the Golem Girls, who are in some part frozen as 18 year olds, and Tina whose wisdom is that of a feral alien hive mind from a timeless dimension, Shelly has literally matured, and become an adult.
I think that’s what was behind her Cinco de Mayo 2011 pic, in the midst of the Sacred Grove sequence. Celebrating an anniversary, but with an attitude of confidence rather than abandon.
Quite the Bildungsroman for Ms. Wahnee, and what has made YA such a compelling genre for 200 years. Let’s see how this homecoming plays out.
Actually, she does say she was trapped. But she’s gotten her learning from somewhere.
I’m not sure i can deal with the implications of a completely adult Shelly.
Well, she was yelling at Shelly Alpha, but not initially. Maybe she just brings out the worst in herself. Actually, that’s a good insight into nostalgia for one’s youth.
On the other hand, cultural references such as Arthur, Yggdrasil, Odysseus, and Joss Whedon (yes I think that was a conscious ref) all seem to be taken in stride by Shellinx, while was stumping Shelly Alpha. Even the advanced mechanical information which would interest any Shelly was slightly beyond the human Shelly, but learned long before by Shellinx.
This education is coming from somewhere, and it may be the Library, but there may be additional sources as well. This tends to imply other beings visiting her.
But if she was as alone as some here assume, that would seriously warp her outlook and color her maturity. Reaching adulthood in prison, essentially.
Hard core, Ms. Wahnee.
I agree. She also knew something of the history of the trees and how they are regarded elsewhere. She was far more knowledgeable than the Shelly we knew had been.
It’s possible that some of the intermediate Shellys were more bookish and that Omega Shelly learned from them, but I doubt it. If one of the Shellys knew that she was a sphinx before she arrived, Jin would have probably known and remembered during the subsequent loops.
@Fairportfan This (last panel) is indicative of a completely mature Shelly?
Physically mature.
Some of us get old and die long before we grow up.
(Errr … did i say “some of us“? Can’t think what i must have been thinking of.)
LOL that would imply that Auto-correct is following Wapsi Square as well.
@nerf-dweller the funny thing about that panel is she is yelling at herself!
And as such, a very educational experience.
As one of our most famous writers once stated: If I ever were to meet myself, I would hope to be in good spirit.. (Multatuli)
well this explaines the strength and her being refred to as a guardian from time to time by phix, wonder if she knew the whole time
but hmm is she physicly 80000 years old now or is tina just seeing the aura of a 80000 year old
Yeah, it could still be a mystery. Either the sphinxes Tina can detect are all ~80000 years old, and now Shellinx is setting off that radar, thus causing confusion, or, if she really HAS aged over 80000 years by being in the tree realm physically, the aging process is what brought the Sphinxiness out in Shelly
I suspect that if you are 80k years old mentally, the physical age is modifiable if for no other reason than the cells in your body are replace every 7 years or so. Down load an 80 K year old mind into an 80K second year old body, and that person will be whatever physical age they choose in a few minutes.
There! It’s official!
Yep. No doubt about it. It twas Tina freaking out. And continue to freak up. Seeing Shelly go from a 20-something human to a 80,000 sphinx in the blink of an eye.
And Shelly’s explanation begs the question, how did she know that about Sphinx and Human mating, withdrawing and the latent gene thing? Genetic memory? Or a conversation with one of her past selves? It looks like we have the beginning of a rip snorting week.
Yeah, Tina getting her age in the right ballpark comes from being able to see her aura. The BIGGER question is who taught Shelly about herself?
Who says that the Shellies are the only people to have visited the glade? Remember, Shellix’s first word was ‘human’ followed by ‘I remember you’. Kinda implies that there were other things going on to force a jog of the memory.
Exactly what I was thinking. That wall of skulls in Treeworld probably didn’t all come from the 56 Shellies. There’s been 1450 years worth of adventurers snooping around the supernatural boundaries, and that’s been on loop for 80k+ years. Someone else was bound to get in there,no? Maybe even another sphinx or two got in, but seeing as how treeworld seems to have been Shellinx’s protectorate (until it finished serving it’s purpose) she wasn’t allowed to come and go like others may have.
I tend to agree with you on this. All we know is that she met the other Shellys there, we don’t know that she didn’t meet anyone else.
Uhm, does anyone remember the captain of the sunk sub? He *was* carrying it… he or some of his people probably touched it. And that’s just the final non-loop.
well who said CG lost her memories when she was compacted from a pack of demons and this info seems to be something demons would note or as others said sphinxes noticed a new member of the race and learned her a few things
So, by my math, given the already hybridized nature of sphinxes, Shelly is… one sixth lion, one sixth bird, and four sixths human?
Only if her mom was 100% sphynx. Shelly implies it’s a latent genetic thing…which, if I can guess well enough, means that multiple people in her family tree had to have sphynx genes, likely on both sides, which allowed the sphynx genes to pass down to Shelly. Humans have, what, 42 chromosone pairs, right? So I’d guess one or two pairs at most are sphynx and the rest are human.
…Or I just watch waaaaaayy too many cop shows.
Pro’ly both 😉
Twenty-three pairs.
And the genetic potential may be a single gene, or a complex of genes.
If it’s a single recessive, you’d have to get the same gene from both parents (unless it’s on the Y chromosome – cf. haemophilia).
If it’s a complex, you’d need to get the whole thing, but. possibly, all but a single gene might come from one parent. (This is not actually truly recessive, BTW.)
The fact that there seem to be very few sphinxes sort of argues for the genetic complex idea, i’d say. If you have to assemble perhaps a thousand or more genes, rather than simply two, i would expect the odds to be a lot higher.
Yes! That! 😀
Ok 2 quick confessions:
1. I watch too many cop shows. I record them and watch them marathon-style over the weekend. I have 10 hours of “Bones” in my head from Sunday.
2. We were supposed to study chromosomes and DNA in 6th grade. I didn’t. I read “Jurrassic Park.” My teacher passed me because I actually understood most of it. Now I wish I had paid more attention.
That is all.
I came up with the “genetic complex” theory so quickly because i worked it out in some detail years ago to explain why some Galifreyans were Timelords and most weren’t.
(It also explained why Romana was so much better at Timelord stuff than the Doctor – because she had the full complex in strength and he had just barely enough of it to qualify. It was part of working out the background to a piece of fan fiction i never finished in which the Doctor’s latest regeneration has made him a physical duplicate of Sarah Jane.
(I wrote the first two pages, in which the Doctor is searching for Sarah Jane, up to the point where they first meet face-to-face, and outlined the rest. It was interesting, writing two pages of third-person narrative without using a single gendered pronoun…)
Shelly … has a bit of a temper and having been born with a myostatin deficiency, she can be physically intimidating.
Wikipedia, “Myostatin”:
Location (UCSC) Chr 2: 190.63 – 190.64 Mb
Human myostatin consists of two identical subunits, each consisting of 109 amino acid residues. Its total molecular weight is 25.0 kDa. The protein is made in an inactive form. For it to be activated, a protease cleaves the NH2-terminal, or “pro-domain” portion of the molecule, resulting in the now-active COOH-terminal dimer.
…
Also, see Genesis 6.
Hmmm. Maybe sometimes what’s diagnosed as a “myostatin deficiency” is just part of being a sphinx larva.
.
And most people like Shelly don’t live long enough to reach metamorphosis, and never become true adults, like some newts.
Hybrid Sphinxes are a lot like Hippogriffs. A hippogriff is half horse and half griffin, which in turn is half lion and half eagle. This makes a hippogriff one quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of mythology is full of surprises.
hsssss
Quit horsing around–and you’d better not be lion. We’re watching you like an eagle, you old wolf.
You owe the pun jar three hippogryphs, b.
what, What, WHAT? Clear explanations? No cliffhanger? OK Paul what are you up to?
You’re right. Clearly he is up to something most sinister. Or, maybe he was replaced by an alternate universe doppelganger. Anyone else have any theories as to why Paul is explaining everything in such detail today. Plausible theories will not be tolerated.
Could be that he felt bad for frying all those brains the last couple weeks. He’s giving the charred remains of our grey matter a break. XD
That can’t be it. That makes too much sense.
Yeah, you’re right. Oooh, I know!!
Aliens abducted Paul, and the vegetable-brained, ooze-filled artificial replacement drone now has the keep cover by working on the comic. But it doesn’t have Paul’s shrewd brilliance at story-telling, and just decided to spew forth everything it found in Paul’s story notes. X3
@ShadOBabe–Paul keeps notes that are legible to the aliens?! 😯
Psh, advanced intersellar race, duh!! They know everything. XD
I just wouldn’t have pegged Paul as that sloppy.
Yeah, it looks like he decided to paste-in an explain-page ,so the time-travel-challenged (like me) have a breather to un-knot their brains, or rather reconnect their unraveled brains..
Not so much “charred” as “mushed into pulp by an exeedingly efficient, industrial-sized blender” 😛
I felt a bit like Owen, when his brain tried to escape Lakshmi….
Or it could be Monday, with the cliffhangers reserved for Fridays.
He probably was replaced with his good alter-ego from the mirror universe… 🙂
Also, it’s hilarious that I get a Google ad for DNA testing…
Ok, going for the implausible…
…Paul is not lying to us… in order to confound and confuse us… and cause us to create our own daily cliffhangers… Wait, that didn’t work.
Oh! I know! There’s a real live Shelly in the silent audience and he’s “ghost” writing her a guide book and/or her autobiography, but he can only explain things when that Shelly comments, under an assumed name, and uses the correct code word! That’s it, right?!
Nah, he just pulled a hat out of a rabbit again. Making sense was the only thing we didn’t expect…
Yes! That much be it. So fiendishly clever.
Maybe, before doing this page, he was shunted into a (more or less) 56-times time loop, becoming an all-wise sphinx in what was (to onlookers) a blink of an eye, and now he is only mean to demons, not the general run of readers?
Interesting. Implies that her family is sphinxs as well. They are a race apart now but used to be part ofo the general population. Just takes time or the right forces to cause the change. Almost like a change from catapellir to butterfly. The 80000 year effect came back with her, or she did live physically through it. Tina is a bit freaked but she isn’t losing it. Mostly confused and surprised as she cannot explain it. Cue Phix.
If the gene’s recessive it just means her parents were at least carriers.
It might be possible her dad knows more about this then we think. If he knew about the sphinx recessive it could be why he got upset at Shelly for getting caught up in the doll as a kid. When she spent all day in a trance due to the doll, light, and a note. He might have been worried that it could have triggered a change. So Shelly could learn something interesting from talking to dad. It also means both parents carried it. For a recessive to show up it must come from both parents.
curius how pure sphinks see hybrids
are they treated as equals ignored or looked down on as mutts
phix always seemed to like shelly even assumeing phix always new what shelly was though as stated before phix was a kind of activist before being traped in the library by nudge
Oh. I just has a strange thought. Are Phix and Shelly related? Hrm…
lol shellys great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandmother haha
could be only paul would know
Wonder if that means all Native Americans are recessive Sphinx, only Cheyenne, or only the Wahnee family? Or none of the above?
More likely the gene is spread pretty uniformly through the world’s population.
And how did Tina know ShellySphinx is 80,000 years old?
Maybe she always knows how old someone is. It would sure save time when ‘carding’ them. Wonder if the sense is accurate enough to do birthdays?
Heh… She doesn’t card people. She doesn’t serve alcohol.
She’s a barista, a.k.a. a coffee server.
I know a coffee place where if you order off the “other” menu they have to card you.
…But enough about Amsterdam.
I thought that was Nijmegen?
@ danzier: It’s the Netherlands. Almost every city has one. I should know.
@yamara: O.O I was like: yay, schools out no more genetics for the day ^.^. I check up on wapsi square, read the comments, what do i see? someone talking genetecs fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.
no actually pretty funny timing, no hard feelings
@thedutchdevil Heck, Shelly brought up genetics. I just C&P’d from the cast page and Wikipedia.
@thedutchdevil: While that does sound like fun, I was aiming for a Tom Holt joke. I see it fell flat. Oh, well. 😉
WE can presume that the age of the being shows in their aura. That may be what freaked Tina out when she saw Phix. Tina didn’t remember meeting a Sphinx before, but she did see an aura of Phix that was older than dirt.
[i]Gulp! Um, I meant not offence, Phix. It was just an expression.[/i]
Crud. I need to stop using UBBS codes,
Yeah, I have the same trouble shifting between here and BigSoccer.
Oh, and I hope at least half the commenters here are hitting the vote button!
I appreciate the sites that have a note on which to use near the comment box. Like this one. Helps keep me from making that mistake. Even if I want to experiment with other HTML codes, at least I know which format to try…
Nope, she recognized Phix as a sphinx.
The conversation went:
Phix: It’s funny … you don’t need to remember me, I register on an instinctual level, don’t I?
Tina: Yes.
My theory as to how age fits into Tina’s aura vision is that each experience a person has builds on their aura, even if it is merely the experience of being trapped alone for another day. As such, by observing the size and shape of a person’s aura, Tina can approximate their age. It is most likely not exact, but it is probably glaringly obvious for numbers this big.
I think of it like rings on a tree. Tina’s line should have been “But you’re so incredibly old now.”. My guess is that even Tina hasn’ t run into too many individuals that are this age. Plus by being a little less precise fewer of you would get hung up on the detail of the number that she is using and how she could know that.
I theorize it’s to within a few weeks. I won’t be upset that she didn’t give me a free black forest mocha on my birthday. I promise.
It’s simple! Shelly was probably thinking about how long it’s been since she left. Shelly probably also was thinking about the things that happened in the 80,000 years, and that was enough to convince Tina that Shelly’s thoughts were accurate.
She doesn’t look a day over 36. . . . thousand. ^_^
…and why do I suddenly have a suspicion who mom is? (Hint: it’s NOT Phix.)
Well, somebody had to tell Shelly of her heritage, and Shelly had a lot of time on her hands to piece together what didn’t make sense when she was just a cub.
I have no idea…
With all that time looping, it’s more than possible that Shelly is her own ancestor…like Lazarus Long, or the main character in “–All You Zombies–“.
No, no, I think it’s someone else.
Someone who died (apparently), but came back.
Maybe… through a portal.
And now i realize how this poses even more questions. How did Shelly learn this information? Did someone tell her? Was it written down somewhere in Tree Land? Is this just in-sphinx-tive knowledge? *pays pun jar* Where does it come from?
first of all, grrrrrrrrrrr.
But you are probably right. Her time in the tree realm allowed her access to this part of her genetic memory, thus imparting the knowledge and insphinx of her ancestors
hides
HEY! HEY! HEY! No Hiding! you pun you pay! that’s the rules!
Exactly!! No sphlinxing away!! *plink*
A pun is kinda like a riddle. Sphinxes like riddles. Just sayin’.
Okay, yeah, that was boring. Might even manticore you to death.
*dejected plink*
Rules? Who made them? And when? Me? I love puns… and I love evil-comic.com (not just for the puns, but those, too).
If you’re not careful, we can send Nudge to give you some Nose Flicks!
[surreptitiously drops several rolls of quarters in the pun jar for back payments]
i agree. punning=paying
i get punned to death with puns by my friends on a daily basis
draws sword and shield
I’m a long-time reader and fan of Piers Anthony (whose very name is a pun; there are many more in the works he writes). I think paying for puns is a necessity; unpaid-for puns seem to coagulate in the corners of society.
Taking everything at face value, I’d have to say that the only explanation for the above is that Shelly did indeed go physically to the tree realm, was stuck there for 80000 years while the time cycles were unwinding themselves, and the only way she survived was to access the genetic part of her that was immortal–the sphinx side. Hence her appearance before she was transported back. By then the transformation would have been long complete, prolly being completed before Shelly #56 showed up.
I don’t think Shelly(56) ever turned up. I suspect they only went after the Relic in the first few cycles and then realised that they didn’t need the Relic to “fix” the Calendar Machine.
Nope – Shelly from every cycle apparently went.
Well, every cycle but one. This Shelly showed up, but wasn’t in a cycle. She was one of 56 to arrive. That means that a Shelly didn’t arrive from one of the 56 cycles.
And whatever genetic memory allowed for her to evolve HAD to have been in place before Shelly #1 showed up, because Shelly #1, also apparently always having been a sphinx, died from plutonium exposure, while Shellinx did not perish!
Ah – but each iterated Shelly could have had a slightly different genetic background.
Not enough to make her a different person, but, if my completely unsupported theory of sphinxiness )that it derives from a genetic complex involving possibly thousands of genes) were true, and just one or two different genes not being present (or being present) would cause one to not inherit sphinxitude.
And since there were variations between the various cycles, maybe this Shelly is the first time the genetic lottery paid off.
She got the Ace, they got the Black Queen.
But then she wouldn’t have been a Shelly at all. If her ancestors were different, how would she have been the same person?
The parallel dimension stuff, which this is very similar to, never makes sense. Whatever causes the changes would probably cause many more changes, so the remaining similarities wouldn’t exist.
Not saying her ancestors were different.
But the only sibs with identical gene sets are identical twins, and they are literally (albeit naturally-occurring) clones*.
I’ve surmised (as you must have noticed) that sphinxicity is a result of a gene complex (as opposed to one single recessive), involving possibly thousands of genes.
Given that the human genome includes about 2.9 billion gene pairs on twenty-three chromosomes and which of each pair a child gets from each parent is random … i can see only one of fifty-seven Shellys cashing a genetic lottery ticket. (See next comment.)
Consider that these two young ladies have the same parents but are rather different in many ways.
Sibs may be nearly identical as to looks, but vary in ways below the visible level – to the point that one of a pair of fraternal twins inherits something nasty and recessive and the other doesn’t.
So what i meant is that the other Shellys might have been substantially the same, but missing just one gene pair out of a thousand … the one actually controls the trigger for the metamorphosis.
…or it could just be magic.
Grrr. I meant to include a footnote – i put in the astertisk and then forgot – about the twin/clone thing.
On the tragically-short-lived SF comedy series Quark, the Barnstable twins played Betty and Betty, who were always arguing over which one was the clone.
Being identical twins, they actually clones…
(One of my favourite Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot-Interrogative moments occurred when i realised that the same week they appeared on Disney in ballerina costumes, the Barnstables also appeared, rather less demurely dressed, on the cover of Penthouse Variations…)
In recent years, even identical twins have been shown to have acquired genetic differences–in the epigenetic expression of your DNA. That is, as you live, different cells turn on or off different parts of your DNA, so that soon even identical twins (or clones) are not really identical.
Shelly (ours) was on Guard status, and certainly said that “she could not be killed” in that place. Like Phix in the library. Guardian Sphix = can not be killed here.
Radiation radiates at a fairly constant rate (hence the name) Distance pretty quickly reduces radiation (Inverse-square rule if I remember my high-school physics right), so being a bit away was probably enough. Whereas Shelly01 actually touched the vial.
Yep. Inverse square
… but irrelevant if she really couldn’t die or be harmed there, as she claimed.
Inverse cube rule. The radiation spreads in three dimensions. Twice the distance away means the radiation is diluted eight times (2 x 2 x 2). Standing three times the distance, you get 1/27 of the radiation for a given time.
A particle that would kill you on contact would be safe at arm’s length. Just don’t inhale it…
Nope–inverse square, like light or gravity. The idea is that the same amount of radiation/what-have-you is spread over a larger area: a sphere 1 m in radius has a surface of 4π ≈ 12.56637. If you are 2 m away, the sphere now has a surface area of 4×4π ≈ 50.2655, and the intensity is only 1/4.
I suppose I should expect math from a comic called Wapsi Square… 😀
D’oh!
bmonk et al, of course you’re right. I was thinking volume, but it’s the amount of radiation reaching the surface of the imaginary sphere that counts. Works for any shape, but the sphere appropriately describes the amount of radiation at a given distance from a point source.
Interesting thought in light of the new information….
what if Phix, was a long lost relative of Shelly?
And yes, i always had a feeling Tina could “read” ages off people, at least generally anyway… Shelly’s aura is probably blasting at Tina right now given that Shellinx is now about 78,550 years older than anyone else in the room…
80,000 years of developing an aura, and if it works how i think it does, then Shelly is going to need to do some major file compression before she can be around Tina without her crashing like this….
hehe, OTOH, both parties are handling this much better than we expected…no claws yet…:P 😆
grr…proof read then it submit… change that Shellinx to Shelly or she…
When did Tina put a shirt on?
Tina put a shirt on before Shelly entered Tree World, at roughly the same time Shelly put a shirt on. I believe it was off panel, between the strip where Shelly first touched the relic, and the strip when Shelly entered Tree World.
here:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/easier-said/
cause the one before is a beautiful shot of her back…
Not her whole back…
…dammit…
Yep, Tina (on the far right) is wearing a t-shirt in that top panel.
Wrong question. WHY is what you meant to say.
sulkily…..yes……
Well, Tina could read the age off of people if they were thinking about their age. That’s not the same as reading the age directly.
yes, and no. I don’t think Tina was going to mention the sphinx thing at that moment, she was going to say that she was 80,000 years old. I know the connection between Tina being demons and sphinxes hunting them, blah blah blah, but I feel that the sudden age difference would stand out much more than her being a Sphinx. Besides Shelly wasn’t thinking of her age when Tina noticed it, Shelly was warning Monica about the relic…
Love it! This is great! I think perhaps Tina didn’t see Shelly as she was until she became agitated and grabbed Monica.
“Yeah well, I’m 80,000 years old NOW! Since you talked me into holding that damn relic!”
I think maybe humans with this gene only turn into a sphinx if they can live long enough. Most die a normal human death at a normal age and never do turn. Thanks to her time in the forest, our Shelly lived long enough, and then some.
It becomes a chicken and egg question though. We were told sphinxes are born human, but now we’re told sphinxes and humans had sex long ago, resulting in the human-sphinx strain. That would tend to mean there were sphinxes before humans. So not all sphinxes came from humans then? At least not originally.
exactly, sphinxes started out as a separate race from humans, then when they learned how to turn into humans to hide perhaps, or just to show off…anyway, then they had sex, the genes were mixed into the pool… and the rest is history….
perhaps, there are sphinxes that don’t age no matter what realm they’re in, and feel that the sphinx hybrids are a massive sin or waste or something like that… would make for a good story arc anyway……
Angels and Nephilim…
^^I was waiting for that. Bought “Ancient-Aliens” BRd from HC recently. Fun, but a lot of bogus conclusions. They sortof see an alien forefather in their bunions, if You let them.
Maybe Sphinxes and Demons are ancient adversaries from before man? Both stemming from a different realm?
Nah..Now I am bogus-ly concluding too 😀
SoWhyMe‘s point is that today’s page contradicts what Shelly said earlier. If sphinxes are born as humans, they couldn’t have existed before humans were born. Shelly should have said that some sphinxes were born as humans. Either that, or something changed and the original sphinxes stopped reproducing, so now it’s true that sphinxes are born as humans even though it wasn’t true before.
To me, it’s just an example of the sloppy way characters talk in this comic. You have to take anything a character says with a grain of salt. There is a good chance that they are wrong or don’t mean what they say.
Kinda like people in RL?
Like elves and half-elves?
Or maybe more along the lines of orcs and uruk-hai? 😯
No, it wouldn’t be the same unless we were previously told that elves were born as humans.
Nobody talked Shelly into doing anything. She picked it up her ownself.
True dat! 🙂 I’m glad someone else remembered Shelly’s tendency to grab first and ask questions later.
Those of you who said Shelly was a Sphinx and/or that it was Tina screaming… you win a cookie.
I was at SpringCon both days this weekend because Paul forgot his original art. I did snag the latest Wapsi Square book on Saturday. On Sunday, I went through and purchased several examples with Phix/Nudge/Tina/Monica/etc… And… Shelly/Justin(a.k.a. Officer Tight Buns) in his first appearance along with the exploding gas grill.
Hey, it’s cheaper than ebay.
GD it! I have to schedule a trip home to coincide with one of these…
Jabberwonky,
Just shoot Paul an email with the dates or titles of the original art you want and if he still has them, he might be willing to quote you a price with shipping.
LOL It’d be more like ‘what cha got?’
Asking is free. “How much?”, depends on “How many?”.
And she doesn’t look a day over 25!
Welll..more like 30-something, but nothing that a good haircut ,a blow-dry and a manicure cannot phix….
.
.
.
😯
.
*plink*
.
Now that’s a weird typo 😆
When I first read that, I thought you typed “a good manticore can phix..”
…stupid mythic creatures on my brain….
Is that a Fomorian slip?
*plink*
So… Who made the first move on the other way back then – Humans or Sphynxes?
Probably humans. If it has boobs, even if it’s a monster, men will want to touch them.
Are we assuming that all Sphynxes are females? And why else would they take human form unless they wanted to get it on with us?
They may have wanted to get from one place to another without anyone noticing? After all Phix used a human form to have a chat with Monica and then, later, have a chat with Tina.
And what GLORIOUS human form she uses!!
If that’s representative of sphinxes in human form, the “get it on” is no problem whatsoever. 8)
Aaaand on that note..will “herr director” become a daddy very soon? 😛
…Just how hot would a Mr. Sphynx have to be to… wait, they’re built like tanks. Yeah, I guess the Mr. Sphynxes would have a shot. If the girl were desperate enough or out of options.
But I’d HATE to be Li’l Sphinxette’s mom. Imagine those tantrums….
Mwah, as with cats: keep a water spray close.
I think it had to be female sphinxes with male humans. While female humans might get interested in a male sphinx, there is a little problem with barbs…
Teacher: Mrs. Wahnee, Shelly is a bright girl and we love having her in class, but if something can’t be done about this we will have no choice but to refer your daughter to the special education program.
Mrs. W.: About what?
The teacher points. Young shelly has climbed the curtains.
Mrs. W. : Oh, not again!
___
And just for fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1qHVVbYG8Y
Not that you’re wrong about the boobs-monster thing…
Heh, mythological creatures aren’t often known for being chaste *coughsatyrscough*. And male Sphinxes do exist.
Androsphynx and Gynosphynx – provided the Monster Manuals took from the myth and didn’t create from whole cloth (again).
i can’t vouch for it personally, but it’s true.
I cite Jennifer’s Body as a reference… some people besides her bestie had to know she was a monster or at least question why guys always seemed to disappear after dating her, but it didn’t stop them, nope….
Here’s where I got that joke, BTW.
http://chzhistoriclols.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/funny-pictures-history-even-if-its-a-monster1.jpg
If only it were a joke…
Be grateful, otherwise we might never have anything to do with women.
In general, it makes sense. But… in specific… and no offence… but grab my chest and I’ll break your wrists.
Not a problem.
Upon looking at this in the morning, I realize I owe you an apology.
I’m sorry.
Don’t know if you’ll see this, but you don’t owe me an apology. I didn’t take any offense. I just saw it as a humorous remark.
From my brother’s collaboration with John Ringo, We Few (And, unlike a few other things in the series, i don’t know which of them to blame for this one):
Q: How do you get guys to find a kilo of fat attractive?
A: Put a nipple on it.
Your brother is one of my favorite Sci-Fi authors. I have the “We Few” series, and it’s one of the few series that has both made me cheer and cry. I have several other of his shorter series, including his Bahzell Bahnakson fantasy books (anxiously awaiting the next one of those, btw). But I haven’t yet started buying Honor Harrington. Basically because I figure I’ll like them as much as all his other books, and I can’t afford to buy 20+ books right now! 😉
@JustMe: Just hit the Baen Books website and dig in. Incredible stories.
@Fairportfan: Is it okay if I squee just a little to know that David’s your brother? I mean, I shook hands with Glenn Seaborg back in ’95 when he was touring an exhibition I was working on, but I’ve found your brother’s books more engaging than his writings…
Yeah, he writes some good stuff.
@SoWhyMe, do you have that demoto poster too? 😉
I’m not sure to which one you’re referring, I have several of them. Unless you mean the physical posters. I have none of those.
I just had a thought:
What does this mean for Dr Gregory Fields?
Probably nothing. We have birth control now.
If you’re talking about physical birth control then you have a point. If you’re talking about chemical birth control, it may not work on sphinxes. However, I suspect it wasn’t needed.
I think Phix wanted to meet Dr Fields solely so that she could make Monica think something had happened and take her seriously when she wanted to get rid of her to talk to Tina.
I’ve always had that opinion.
Not to point out the obvious, but Phix is an academic, and one that spends great amounts of time more or less alone. It might just be possible that she wanted a little Phix time, and the good doctor was smart, amusing, and attractive enough that it piqued her interests.
…Not everything is some crazy conspiracy, y’now…
Everything in Wapsiworld is.
So do you think that the annex never existed? That’s a question for both Francisco and FatUncle and anyone else who wants to answer.
Personally, I thought it did, but since it’s never been mentioned again, I’m not so sure.
eschmenk : oh, no, I’m certain the annex exists – among other things, Nudge walked over from the annex to the coffee shop, and like to have froze doing it.
I meant, I don’t think that Dr. Fields and Phix spent the night together. I
@Fatuncle. I realized that was your main thought, but Francisco‘s full statement was:
I think she wanted to meet Dr. Fields for a variety of reasons and that any decision to create an annex likely came out of her talks with him. If the visit was just to fool Monica, the bit about the annex probably was, too. That seems unlikely though, because Phix wouldn’t have known that she needed to fool Monica yet.
I’m not sure if Nudge came from the annex, though. It would be odd if she couldn’t just poit. Tricking someone would be a lot harder if you can’t choose how and where to meet them. She might have needed to poit to a secluded spot to keep from being observed, though.
Personally, I have no idea if Phix and Dr. Fields had anything more than a platonic relationship.
It means that, from a historical perspective, his experience is not unique.
Probably a near-future visit to Dr Gregory House… 😛
He needed a couple of cigarette breaks that evening?
Yup, and was, for the first time in his life- happy he clicked that spam-message for Canadian viagra 😆
Would be cute though, if Phix really developed a thing for Dr Gregory…
80K years is enough time to derive a lot of information from nothing but examination and experimentation without resorting to genetic memory. Even a single mind running continuously that long would be able to figure out a lot of things that would allow figuring out a lot of other things that in turn would allow the figuring out of a lot of other things, even if the mind was Shelly’s.
Everyone has the potential to learn everything in the universe. IQ tests are measuring the speed you learn at…I’d give Shelly a modest 104. So above average, but barely… I would say if she was given no outside information, and spent time in the tree realm meditating and unlocking the restraints normal society puts on our minds, I would say she would have figured that out in just under 500 years or so…but only if thats all she thought about…
…actually, IQ tests test how well you take IQ tests. Psychologists and educational researchers have been pushing against IQ tests for decades because they take a measurement that is useful for not much.
great, another thing my high school failed to teach me properly…
Another thought:
If Shelly’s a sphinx, can she now poit?
I had been wondering about that myself.
I doubt it. Phix can’t poit.
I believe Phix can; at least, it hasn’t been established that she cannot, and she has turned up in Monica’s world before the Library Annex opened.
Nudge can’t.
Perhaps you’re right, I just don’t recall her doing so. It was my view she got about via interdimensional doorways.
When she showed up in Monica’s living room, she spent the entire time in sphinx form, and there didn’t appear to be room to create a doorway big enough. In addition, this was before she opened up the annex. However, there was no *poit* sound effect, so we can’t be entirely sure that she poited, but it seems likely.
I assume the folks that can use glyph magic are the teleporters. AFAICT only the glyph magic users have show the ability to do so.
Well, and people created by glyph magic users…
That was my read too. However, there may be other methods of transport, too. Longer and less convenient. Phix can move between different realms (she goes to and from the Library often, and went to the Demon realm (after it was sealed!) to renegotiate things and punish a few trouble makers.
Holy… I just realized. That means that Phix likely knew Mayuhel was in the demon realm, and had the ability to go after her… yet did not.
….ooooo…. I don’t want to be there when those two meet.
Phix’s ability to meddle might have been restricted to giving advice and books. And how big is the demon realm? Mayahuel and Phix might have never encountered each other at any point, assuming Phix ever went there before dealing with the rogue demons.
Er… Even if Phix could go to the demon realm, why would she? I don’t care how bad-#$% she is, even the best can be over-whelmed by sheer numbers.
She *is* a demon-hunter, or at least from a race of them. Her going there would be like testing a shark-bite suit in chum filled waters, only you didn’t bring the suit.
Jin probably knew here mother was in the Demon Realm. But I think she forgot as the CM cycles progresses.
The only that has NOT be shown directly using glyph magic has been Tepoz, maybe. I’ll have to go through the books and see if I can find an on-screen use.
We haven’t seen Tepoz use glyph magic, but he can use it. Remember he added some glyphs to the GG’s bodies to make sure the a Glyph Reader wouldn’t be able to control them until a certain condition was met. That being a Glyph Reader self-sacrificing themselves. Monica’s incident with the bus (and Tina crashing, etc) her heart stopping for a time read as a sacrifice
Actually, I had my ‘gurk, gurk’ moment before I started to look. I remembered that it was Tepoz that separated them after the Chimera was shut down.
Topez has also [i]poited[/i] food and liquor into Monica, remember?
Whoops! wrong brackets! :rolls:
Whoops! Wrong quantity. 😛
I’m gonna catch hell next time I screw up. 😆
I’m probably in the minority on this, but I like her a lot better this way.
While I would like to see a bit more of her to be sure, I tend to agree with you even though Shelly was one of my favorite characters to begin with. The thing I have always liked most about Shelly is that she has grown and changed more than anyone else over the course of the comic. This looks like even more growth, which, in my mind, is a good thing.
I don’t know about liking her better, but it makes her character infinitely more interesting to follow. The dramatic shift in her psyche will make for great story telling.
so… she’s had a while to get past her anger problems… her need to use someone without developing an emotional attachment… the moments of depression… and can now see the world with the wonder of a child again, which she failed to see before getting trapped… watching bugs crawling along… giving chase, shifting form without thinking, bringing the world media and religious nuts into play… allowing herself a moment of happiness, with no fear… and if mortal, means that she can grow old and die, she’ll obviously live a long long time, 80k years only grew her hair that long, or she’s been cutting it… if mortal means she can be killed by things in our world that other sphinx would shrug off, but still have the sphinx lifespan… yaknow, that stuff.
Tamora Pierce’s “Tortall” books feature races known as “immortals” – they can die by violence or accident, but otherwise they’ll live forever.
I don’t think she’s introduced sphinxes, but she might have.
I would call that being ageless. Not immortal.
I suspect terms like “genes”, “species” and “hybrid” don’t mean exactly the same thing as what we think of in normal animal biology when it comes to the sphinx. Their obvious mosaic physiology tells me they don’t handle genetic information the way earthlings do. Since we see all these traits borrowed from other species as distinct parts and not some amalgam perhaps the “original” sphinx is some sort of core the parts are attached to, including the human.
“Mosaic” – i thought you were referring their noses.
…”to the shape of their noses”…
Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroineously–for Moses he noses his toeses aren’t roses, as Moses supposes his toeses to be. 😛
*blink* *blink*
I need Coffee ASAP!!! TINAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!
Yeah, I’ll buy you that one. Sorry.
Oh, and by my reasoning a sphinx can turn full lion or full eagle just as easily as full human.
Even if Phix or Shelly can’t poit maybe they can fly.
We have seen Phix fly in her sphinx form at least once.
Which shouldn’t be possible aerodynamically, she’d need collarbones about 5 m wide.
Thusly, I hereby conclude:
MAGIC!! Problem solved! *leaves lectern and sits down, pretty amazed by own insight*
Anne McCaffery’s dragons of Pern don’t really fly, even everybody (including the dragons) believes that they do.
What they actually do is levitate, and use their wings for propulsion and guidance.
Bumblebees. <a href="http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1076/is-it-aerodynamically-impossible-for-bumblebees-to-fly" title="They can fly.”>They can fly.</a href="http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1076/is-it-aerodynamically-impossible-for-bumblebees-to-fly" title="They can fly.”>
Dammit, how’d I break the interweb this time??? I swear I did that right!
Youn forgot the > in (let’s hope Wp
ordpress adheres to standard code)
(hit “post ” too quick)
You forgot the > after the slash “a” at the end “title is also not needed. after the last ” you can just type > title here and then
(lessee if wp likes this)
HOTDAMMIT it would be nice if WordPress kept to official HTML….gretvrrrrr… It doesn’t even recognize XMP..sheeesh..
I WILL crack this gdmn piece of manure..
Howdya like that…
well the point is that if sphinx & human were able to procreate, there must be physical and gene compatibility…
I you look at the unborn human baby, you will see our genetic similarity to other animals..
Not only that, but magic, plus the existence of other sapient “species” than just humans, means that all bets are off. We just don’t know what is really possible, and how attractive other species might be to us, or how interfertile they could be made to be.
Here’s how I look at it, although I’m probably wrong.
It’s a subjective/subjunctive backlooping timey-wimey thing. When our Shelly was pulled into the Clockwald, or whatever the forest of time is called, she had to sit through the 56 others in reverse order, each contributing a part, and failing at the same time, and learning from them as well. The Cycle had to complete, not get broken, for her to get back. The recessive genes step forward, and she changes as a strategic/adaptive tactic. She returns pretty much at the same moment she left, causing her faded memories to reboot, her curentpast self overlapping with her currentpresent self in the Now.
Meanwhile, ignoring that past paragraph of nonsense ramblings, Tina just saw Shelly age a few millenia, and change species, yet remain the same. With her vision, it must have looked like Walt Disney vomited on a paisely tablecloth.
Your assessment is sort of what I am thinking as well, that Shelly’s evolution while in the tree realm occurred as a result of unlocking genetic memory.
But the Walt Disney vomit on the paisley tablecloth is too much of a bad trip for anyone to endure…I’d be panicking, too…
You know, if you overlayed your gravatar with a see-through color wheel, it might have the same effect.
Please don’t turn into a sphynx and eat me for that comment.
The sphinx trait may have been a gene previously turned “off” that was triggered to turn back “on” by some aspect of the forest of time. Researchers often use this concept in determining the function (gene expression profiling) of a previously sequenced gene by turning a gene off or on. This is referred to as “gene knockout” and “gene knockin” respectively.
“Clockwald” hmmm likey!.. Make it “Glocken Wald” and we have a winner!!
Uhrwald? Zeitwald?
hmmm.. “uhr Wald’ Yeah! That’s the best..waay better than mine, the moment I typed “GlockenWald” it I got the vision of a forest made of bronze bells… BAAAAAD place to be in a hail-storm.. 😆
Not a fan of vomit (I’m a sympathetic “urper”), but Disney vomit on a paisley tablecloth might be worth a quick peek between my fingers…
It’s late. I’m tired. And so I wonder…
…what’s the mpg on a Human Sphynx Hybrid?
I can’t find the pun jar. I’ll pay it when Paul or whoever gets back from the bank.
1450 years on a gallon of bloody entrails, or thereabout, for us in the rest of the world, using the normal ( heheheh) metric: 372,7 years on a liter of bloody hero-remains.
It’s a little known fact, but they also do run on black tea, though it is not recommended, and may cause sooty accumulations and a certain amount of backfiring…
😀
oooh I do not want to stand behind a sphinx if it backfires.
Once, in a germansafaripark, the truck we werein had lions jumping on top of it….AND FART!!!!… 😯 .. I never EVER want to see a safari-park again, however ecological and educational it might be 😆
“When “Pirates of the Carribean” breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists!”
…as far as you know. Disney takes their PR work seriously. 😉
I hope the 😉 will keep me from being sued. 😕
@Eshmenk: I went to school with a guy who interned at Disney. There’s a story they tell of a guy who masqueraded as Goofy who passed out from dehydration. The ambulance people bundled “Goofy” in, foam head and all, and weren’t able to do their jobs until the poor man was safely hidden away behind closed doors. Meanwhile, a replacement Goofy was dispatched within a few minutes to make sure no little kids thought Goofy was seriously hurt…
Disney scares me.
..
*hugs shelly*
she looks so…i dunno.
like she thinks no one will like her no more or something 🙁
I’d be concerned my friends wouldn’t treat me the same either if it was revealed that I was actually a mythic monster.
But also, she’s been trapped in a near-never ending cycle of watching herself die over and over again, basically forgetting everything she was, and now she’s suddenly back, EXACTLY where she left off…
Yeah I wouldn’t be quite right either.
I wanna hug her too. And (despite not being a hairdresser) do her hair..it looks all limp, greasy and split. Will make her feel better too (If I know women…)
Chocolate, coffee, and hugs–the Make It All Better ™ package!
I know! I said it before, and I still think it’s important…Someone get that woman a haircut…STAT!!!
Would also be a nice moment of re-capping and re-bonding between best friends Monica and Shelly. Shelly is older, wiser and to M probably somewhat of an unknown factor now.
PLUS it gives us, poor rattled readers a breather to catch-up too.
If that’s not enough, how about a full day at a spa?
Someone help me get my jaw off the floor, please???
One jaw jack coming up!
I’m still clinging to the notion that sphinx-Shelly was talking to another sphinx just before she left the forest. It is this other sphinx who gave her all the information about the genetic stuff. It could have been creepy girl. If she/it also transformed into a sphinx to match Shelly, she may have known all that. She was, after all, a fused group of demons who lived an extremely long time and would know many things.
Yeah. Me too.
On the other hand, she had plenty of samples to perform experiments and dissections upon…
I’m more inclined to think that (if she was talking to someone other than herself) she was talking to CG, and CG didn’t necessarily have to transform into a sphinx along with Shelly.
That’s been suggested (by me, among others) – and i’d be equally willing to believe that that’s who she’s talking to.
Okay when Monica touched the relic she saw this vision.
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/let-me-see/
She said that it looked Jin.
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/owes-me-a-dollar/
But myself I thought it looked more like CG seen here.
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/just-a-dream/
The timeline would work because in real time(RT) Monica touched it before Shelly but in tree time(TT) it was after Shelly touched it. My guess is that Monica could touch it now and not see anything, because in (TT) it is now befor Shelly touched it while in (RT) it is after Shelly touched it.
This time-forest is/was considered a ‘sacred’ place. That usually means pilgrims. I would think she had myriads of visitors during her stewardship of the forest. So, yeah, I think you’re right.
I just had another thought:
This might explain why Shelly “always” found Tina a little creepy.
Why would she need anything more than the fact that Tina is creepy?
“Normal” people (well, as “normal” as is possible in the Wapsiverse) can’t see that.
I thought they could. Is Kevin not “normal”?
In any case, Shelly knows.
Well, as a Wapsi male there’s no guarantee that he’s actual human norm. Norm-ish, but norm-al? Snow cones in Hades.
that’s because the night before they were all out clubbin’ and as anyone knows, you put on make-up when you go out dancing…
…anyone said “It’s all a dream” yet? If so, sorry I skipped over it.
Yeah, that would totally deflate the awesomeness. If you dream that you’re James Bond every night, the movies are far less interesting.
Hmph! Says you! I seriously doubt that dreaming I was James Bond (or more likely…that I was a Bond girl) every night would make me think the movies were less awesome! 😛
“It’s all a dream” then you wake up….
.
.
.
then you find you are holding something you picked up in the dream… 🙂
it was mentioned that shelly put the capsule in the tree… so, which her did it, and for what reason?
beyond that… *shelly falls asleep at work, after relearning how to fix cars, her dad comes in, finds the light on in the morning* ‘late night? wake up!’ *steps into the office, finds something non-human has collapsed the office chair, it rears up, eyes glinting, shows enormous fangs as it yawns* ‘hi, yeah, i fell asleep at work again, what? oh’ *slups into human form* ‘better? no? our entire family has sphinx blood yaknow, this could happen to you next, want a coffee? or an ambulance?’.
Hello? 911, yeah it’s Shelly again . . . Um could you send someone over to get my dad’s heart restarted . . . yeah another drama queen moment. Yeah I think he might need that O2 this time. . .
I know there’s a pun jar but how much is this gonna cost me?
*Drives up front in an armoured car used for transporting money*
Here You are….
Ah, the pun jar is back.
Pays up from earlier puns and adds an extra $20 for Jay-Em’s coffee
@Ratcatcher: What, she doesn’t own a personal emergency defibrilator yet? 😉
Pappy Wahnee: “No. I am NOT going to faint, I am just happy I can finally give you our traditional Wahnee-flee-collar. You’re all grown up now.. {snif} My little girl ,finally.. {sniffle, sniffle} Your mother would have been sooo proud… Lookatyou.” *hugs*
😆
UGH!!! “Wahnee flea collar.
Booming, echoing PA-voice :{Warning to all Wapsi-commenters : Keyboard gremlins on the loose, repeat, keyboard gremlins on the loose. Double-check all typing, keep a dictionary close-by… warning..Warning!!}
*robot comes in waving arms and blaring sirens* DANGER WILL ROBINSON! DANGER! *looks around*
Oh…wrong set.
😛
😯 😕
Will Robinson do what?
Everyone else is. 🙄
“Hi, I’m a sphinx. Wahnee flee now?” (Where’s the pun jar? I’m broke… 😉
“Wahnee flee now?”
Hartz Mountain sells collars for that.
Yes–but they tick for three months…
Be interesting to see if Shelly can manifest the full sphinx form back in the real world or if she is only able to ‘phix up’ in pocket side dimensions…
If she always has been why has Tina never seen her as such before now?
Because before, Shelly was still a “catepiller.”
Yes. She hadn’t manifested her full hybrid nature at the age she was at her present demise.
The dialogue suggests that the specific time of Shelly’s life she goes to get the relic at has varied during the cycles of the calendar machine. Its certainly possible that during one of the cycles she was awakend to her sphynxhood, perhaps by phyx or some other outside entity, or who knows what, before going to that dimension as a protector.
Its like how you can’t specifically tell you’ll be bald at 50 when you’re 5.
Maybe going “sphinx” take a loooooong time, longer that a normal human life-span, even when the right genetic mix is there. 😕
Because Shelly didn’t know and therefore it wouldn’t be reflected in Shelly’s aura and there weren’t any physical signs for Tina to see.
Agreed. And I also think that this sudden knowledge of sphinx husbandry she’s exhibiting is proof that the Sphinxes might carry their cumulative knowledge and possibly their lore in genetic memory, kind of like an initiation into a scecret society or mystery school…once you’re in, you get the sevret knowledge.
Of course, Shelly being Shelly, she’s prolly oversharing without a thought to consequence… 🙂
“Sphinx husbandry” – what?
Is that what Officer Buns needs to be studying if he and Shelly are planning on getting married?
>plink<
137 comments by 4:30am Monday?
Yeah, we love this comic that much! LOL 😀
For the first two hours after it went up, we were averaging more than a comment per minute.
yes, I’m glad I was able to stick around for longer than usual after the update…
And over 200 by 7:30 am EDT.
And 350 or so by 4PM EDT.
Vote, people! Vote!
Then come comment. I didn’t want to work today anyway…
Shelly’s butt with a higher ROI. (Reduced Orgy Iindex)
Nice edit, but I liked the hands…even if it looked like an orgy, that would fit better with the ancient painting/frescoe motif I had in mind…
I guess I’ll have to use both…
Look at Tina’s words. She’s not worried about Shelly’s sphinxocity. It’s her sudden aging…she’s always known Shelly was a
Prius…hybrid…she was the one to get her to squish it…http://wapsisquare.com/comic/squish-it/
Hmm..now You mention it.. It looks indeed as if the “age-thing” rattles Tina above all other things.
Maybe she was aware of Shelly’s “true nature” , but somehow also knew, through Shelly’s aura, that she would pose no danger, contrary to Phix, who had been quite the lethal demon-hunter, and produced an equally lethal aura.
Actually, Tina probably has a number of proto-sphinxes amongst her clientele. If it is a recessive trait distributed among the population, then it is probably like left-handedness for her. Just something that you notice every now and then.
I think the major thing that is rattling Tina is Shelly changing and aging in the blink of an eye. Remember that it’s been zero (or very little) time between Shelly “using” the Relic and then “BWAM!” no clothes, long hain, 80,000 Shelly.
I don’t read it that way. Tina’s concern in the first panel was addressed by Shelly in the second. Tina raised a different issue in the third.
Tina isn’t just reacting to one thing. She’s frighted and confused and her thoughts are probably jumbled right now. Monica is probably the same way. Bud doesn’t get rattled so easily, though.
That’s my reading, too.
So does that mean that Bud was wrong here? http://wapsisquare.com/comic/too-late/ That she had no idea what Shelly really was?
Someone would have to know what Bud meant to answer that. Perhaps to Bud, being a sphinx is not supernatural. (If some people are just born as a sphinx thanks to a recessive gene, it would be perfectly natural.) Perhaps she didn’t know that Shelly was a sphinx in the first place. Who knows what she was thinking at the time?
I think she just thought that Shelly was human but Very Abnormally Freakishly Strong.
I think it’s interesting to wonder what Paul was thinking. [url=http://wapsisquare.com/comic/that-hurt/#comment-30280]From the comments here[/url]:
Assuming that Paul had already decided that Shelly was a sphinx, I think that means that he doesn’t regard sphinx as being supernatural. In the Wapsiverse, they wouldn’t be. For that matter, would a god regard him/herself as being supernatural?
In any case, according to what Paul said back then, Bud was correct at the time she said it, whatever she was thinking and whether or not Paul thought Shelly was a sphinx at the time. 😎
The clue-by-4 finally dropped on my widdle head. I do believe you are right about Tina knowing Shelly was different. That gives carafe crushing a lot more meaning to me.
Y’know, reading this comic lately and all the comments each day too, I realize Paul must just read our speculations and just work off that story wise LOL
Nah but seriously, I can see how Shelly in the split second/blink of an eye went from 20’s something to living 80k in a sacred forest, probably time has a more unique meaning there than just reverse flow.
I mean Shelly appears there, aging isnt what we think of it and over the 80k years, the gene manifests itself over the unique properties of this realm. so after witnessing her death all those many times, finally returning and in our time, not a second has past….talk about a mind job!
Bring on the week! I want me some more reading….and more bewbs and muscle butt LOL 😀
And in one day, Paul wraps up what would otherwise have taken a week of exposition. Which implies that it is a fairly minor cusp, an event that needed to be finished in order to get on with the real story. Wow. Fasten your seat belts, guys!
You’re implying this at midnight? Where you can’t see where you’re going and you feel lucky to make it out alive?! trembles in terror
If it has to be some sort of infernal torture-contraption, those with your feet hanging out are the worst ,especially when having long legs…… *shudder x 100*
One man’s torture…There’s a rolly-coaster at Fiesta Texas in San Antonio that used a magnetic driver to get you from 0 to 65 in less than 2 seconds. It is exhilarating! Every time I rode it I would be roaring with laughter at the first corner…
There used to be one at Ghost Mountain in Maggie Valley NC that didn’t use a launcher and didn’t use a chain hoist – it began by falling off the side of the mountain.
They closed it the year before i would have been able to get up there.
There used to be one at Ghost Mountain in Maggie Valley NC that didn’t use a launcher and didn’t use a chain hoist – it began by falling off the side of the mountain.
They closed it the year before i would have been able to get up there.
You know the odd thing? Roller-coasters have me break-out in bouts of serious fear-sweating and the shakes, just by looking at them.
However, put me on a ’97 CR 500cc 2-stroke SM (Big Red for those in the know) And I don’t even blink, while all I hear from my passenger is AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH IAMGONNADIEBUTIAMGONNAKILLYOUFIRST!!! over the amazing ruckus it makes.. impressive volumes can be reached by youngladies in distress. 😯
Kicking the damn-thing on, is an adventure in it’s own though..if done wrong, before You know it Your either
a)Launched
b)break an ankle
Aaand don’t even start about the mpg-numbers. I’ve seen military jets more frugal 😆
I’ve been on the one I linked…at midnight, on Christmas. I don’t like the things to begin with; I’ve been less scared by tornados.
WaitAMinute. Shelley just spent 80,000 years alone, except for the occasional, very short, visit by an earlier version of herself, each of whom died horribly within a relatively short period of time. She’s been through all of that, and she’s still more-or-less sane and coherent? I can’t even begin to imagine her isolation, boredom and loneliness, and even by the tiny, faint glimmer of my imagination I can guess with great confidence that I would return neither coherent nor sane. If whatever prevented her from dying also kept her sane, that’s almost worse. Catatonia would at least be a respite from the centuries of waiting for your next incarnation to show up and die.
I wholeheartedly concur. Which would imply that the sphinx manifestation has enormous mental stability. Not all of the changes are physical, unless that stability is hardwired into the brain.
Sphinxes live a looooong time. I guess their minds are specifically wired for it.
I wouldn’t be too surprised if they got some sort of a “low-power” stasis-like condition they can invoke, but still stay alert, like a cat, that can go from snoozing away to full “crazy’ in the blink of an eye.
With the net- result for Shelly, thatthe only moment she was consciously alone ,was the time it took to go sphinx, in her case it could be after a short time, say a couple of days, after realizing what was going on.
let alone the fact that, as a human, she would have perished of hunger and thirst quite quickly, unless the trees bore some sort of fruit. Whiiiiiche…if there were fruits on the trees, could also trigger the latent sphinx-form.
Sphinxes seem to be linked to their realms, so the Glocken Wald triggered her transformation, while the other Shelly’s just didn’t live long enough to transform.
She did seem a little out of it in the first panel where Shelley appeared. As if she’d just had to pull her mind together to deal with a rare visitor…
To be fair…she never said she’d been alone that whole time. She only recalled the times she’d met herself and seen her demise. Doesn’t mean she was always alone in there. There could be other ways to get to this sacred grove other than being Shelly. Otherwise the grove is pretty useless.
Just a thought. 🙂
I believe Shellinx’s intelligence and knowledge could not have been solely provided by brief encounters with twentysomething versions of herself. We have yet to find out what experiences she had to know so much.
Well keep in mind that Phix spent many thousands of years with only occasional interactions with whatever people, GGs, or anyone else who showed up, and she was more than just fine. She seemed peachy and had an interesting sense of humor.
It’s just a sphinx thing. 🙂
Phix mentioned various encounters, people allowed to use the Library, and adventurer who weren’t. Plus she had the entirety of all written knowledge. We don’t know yet what Shelly Omega encountered when she began her 80k-year ordeal. But she has a learned some things in the meantime that suggest she has something like a Library card.
Indeed, I was also thinking of library annexes. Maybe Sphinx-realms are all connected with the library as a hub. Having something to read would ,in my case, really prevent me from going crazy when trapped in some weird realm as a mythical creature.
In a lot of legends the sphinxes were sage, deep thinkers, despite their bloody profession(“Cutting out” demons: Operation went well, Patient died)
Phix has been quite vague about all sorts of stuff. Combine that with the fact that most sphinxes of lore tend to be unable to speak in anything but riddles..
Well, let’s just say: There’s more to Phix and the Library than meets even the most scrutinizing eye.
Damn Time Lords with your music and your Panopticons…Get off my lawn!
Tina: ‘But, you’re almost 80,000 years old!’
Shelly: ‘It has been a looooong day!’
For what it’s worth – here’s what I’ve been thinking:
I suppose you could look at this piece of relic from the sub as a “key”, for Shelly, just as the clock-winder/knife turned into a “key” for Monica. Shelly locked the relic onto the blade, turning it into a key of sorts, and un-locked the tree/door to get the plutonium insert for the power-source. That, in turn with Shelly’s death, unlocked whatever the block/lock was between the Shelly/Shellinx personas. This has brought about the realization by Shelly that she does have a reason for her various strengths, which are now shown not to be as freakish as she thought. Tina, our lovely demon barrista, couldn’t see what Shelly was, because Shelly hadn’t reached that self-realization/awakening yet herself. Shelly is now on her real journey of self-discovery. She may be a bit more contemplative while she works things our. Finding out “who”and “what” you are is a bit of a cage-rattler.
Now here’s another thing – during the calendar machine cycle Phix asked Monica and Shelly a riddle. Each answered their own way – Monica with “sunshine” and Shelly with “wind”. Each of these is one of the four elements – fire, air, earth and water. Or if you go with the Buddhist list – fire, air, earth, water and spirit. Could there be or should there need to be a complete set of these to assist in the aid of repairing Jin and defending the world/universe? If so, who are the two or three more representatives of earth, water and spirit?? And will these be needed to, again, defend the world/universe against the threat of whatever blew out the side of the German sub? And any other little problems that happen to be caused by the discovery/discoveries that will be made along the way?
Perhaps instead of Phix, Shelly will be the sphinx who asked the riddles of these two or three more elements.
Would it be too outlandish to think of Brandi as Earth, Bud as Water, and Tina as Spirit in that case? 🙂 After all, Brandi has that whole motherly thing going for her (Earth mother?) and Bud is very much a go with the flow thinker (plus she’s a dancer, and I’d attribute that skill with air or water)…then you’ve got Tina, a body filled with demons (what’s more spirit than that?)…
I had thought of those possibilities too. Especially since Brandi is so much the motherly type.
Damn it Paul, Shelly was suppose to be the “normal” one. Yes, she was really strong, but not supernatural.
I completely and totally 100% agree. This comic just gets stranger and less appealing.
On the contrary: The stranger, the merrier.
As far as not-strange goes, I doubt there is any comic that’s not strange.
The Webcomic List monitors over 18,100 webcomics. You could probably find a comic that fits just about any description, including being very normal. Besides, how strange is Mary Worth, for example? (Yes, it’s a bit strange that someone can be nothing but a professional busybody for so long, but…)
I’m not surprised that Shelly turned out to be supernatural. Lifting ridiculously large weights with her toe isn’t normal.
Mary Worth….wasn’t she cheating on Gil Thorp with Mark Trail over in Apartment 3-G?
scoff scoff
I always thought that Amanda was the normal one. Shelly was always a little less than normal to me since she had insight into the whole Calendar Machine thing along with ehr uber-strength.
Yeah, Amanda was Monica’s anchor to the mundane reality. Shelly was the ‘normal’ in the know. Amanda has now progressed to the normal in the know and Shelly is now no longer normal, but supernatural. She’s been sphinxified. The dynamics of the group have changed. Who now is going to be the anchor to the normal? This is a five day a week treat. *sits back, drinks coffee and watches comments proliferate*
Is it just me, or does Tina seem to be freaking out simply because of Shelly’s age? Only Shelly herself mentions the sphinx part.
(Come to that, just how old IS Shelley now? Try as I might, I can’t find reference in previous strips as to exactly when the calendar machine started up/reset to.)
Paul’s dropped the clues in part comics. You just have to know where to look. The Calendar Machine reset time 56 times. Each CM cycle is 1450 years long. The ending of which previously has been on 12/12/12.
Exactly: if you know where to look. Otherwise, it’s hours and hours of searching each of the strips. 😛
Which is why I keep a folder of links to key/pivotal comics in the series.
You do??? 😯 wow.. that’s quite the academic approach. 8)
I just have the luxury of all 5 books next to my iMac (+my trusty English dictionary), for easy reference. Flicking through a couple of high-quality paper pages is quite comfortable.
Yes, I also have a text file of all the comic titles which I can search for key words. It’s easy to get them from the yearly archives pages. Thing is, Paul didn’t start labeling them with descriptive words in their weblinks for the first couple years or so. I’ve not had the initiative to do so as yet either. And not all that are so labled are directly related to the contents. Still, it’s helpful.
There was a move afoot to transcribe the comics some years back and I have a copy of that as well, which can also help. But that stopped after the first couple of years too. I should probably convert it all into a database. At least I could populate it to some extent pretty much automatically.
when i read the first few comments,i couldn’t help to think,”A punett square would easily solve this.”But,we dont know what the genes are,so that idea is pretty much useless.
Obligatory:
Phix could be Shelly’s great great great great great great great great… great grandma.
So, is Shelly immortal now? Frozen in time, like the golem girls and the demons? It looks like she didn’t need to keep up her body-building regimen in the grove. Her hair grew a little. Can she change her form at will, like Phix? Lots of questions.
Bet Monica’s starting to feel left out. She’s one of the only members of the main cast now who isn’t thousands and thousands of years old.
I think you may have tumbled into an even more important issue… Previously, Monica was worried about switching places with Jin and becoming immortal before tackling the Calendar Machine. While we weren’t shown anything like that happening – Jin stayed immortal – but DID anything happen to Monica? And there are questions about Tina’s continued existence as well (voiced by herself – or her group of demons) when she wondered what happens to her/them when the host body dies. Maybe it’s possible that Tina is immortal as well.
Obviously, Paul is wanting to make all the main cast immortal so he doesn’t have to draw them growing older!!!
So it’s not solving the DaVinci Code. Bite me.
>CHOMP<
CALLED IT! (Partly)… >D Sorry I’m usually never right about this comic… I’m gonna go get myself a cookie, or least half of one.
Now. Unanswered questions and hypothesis!
WHAT HAPPENED TO HER DEMON/LITTLE GIRL!?
Is she what kept her sane? Is she the one that taught her about being a Sphinx? Did she go one some crazy mystic journey (mentally) with said demon/little girl which led to her evolution, and demon/little girl leaving her (as I don’t know if a Sphinx could have a demon, even a hybrid)…
Shelly’s demon was always her own, right? It wasn’t brought on by others or etc during that crazy accident when they were little?
I would like to see the transformation process explained a bit. And how come the other shelly’s didn’t have their recessive gene snap into place – what made our Shelly (#56) snap into sphinx mode, thus saving her in that radiation forest?
And who/how/why brought the plutonium even into that realm? If it was another Shelly, wouldn’t she wear a suit, and thus live while in the forest…? A few techie questions I don’t know if he’ll go into… I wouldn’t mind a little side-log/story to explain this stuff if it can’t ever get drawn (more like please if you never explain it, please put it up elsewhere?)
Whelp. Least she can talk to Golem Girls, and Jin and have more in common. Tina’s collective mind was wiped before this timeline. Maybe her being this old and mystical is one of the keys to curing Jin’s crazy. 😀
Sorry just one more thing that’s been bugging me since day one in this forest. How did the other Shelly’s get here if they kept repeating time, thus time clock wasn’t fixed yet?
We only got to this point since we noticed the crazy in Jin truly after her mom was back and clock was fixed. What reason did every other Shelly have to go to this realm/find this relic? Unless there was more than one way?
I’m just curious… this relic wasn’t mentioned (I think) until we needed to fix Jin, and even then it seemed accidental. I forgot how this relic was brought up even now…. maybe it was still in Brandy (or was it Bud?)’s book of self-notes?
We don’t know what happened at this point in the cycle in other iterations – Jin’s crazy may well have expressed itself every previous time, too.
Perhaps previous Shellys went to the Time Forest to get the Jin-fixing-macguffin because the Scoobies thought that fixing the Calendar Machine (which they would be planning to do next year) would leave Jin non compos and were getting ready while they had time.
Okay I have expressed this view before but you are making the assumption that the CM wasn’t fixed before. Consider the possibility that it was “fixed” but that it didn’t fix crazy Jin. So Jin goes crazy and starts to destroy things the only thing anybody can think to do to stop Jin is to reset the CM and hope we come up with a different solution on the next go round. The only thing I can offer as proof is this link. http://wapsisquare.com/comic/all-hell-broke-loose/ Bud says “Brandi figured it out moments before fixing the machine.” If fixing the machine would have fixed Jin there would have been no need to repeat the cycle.
I always read Bud, when saying “moments before fixing the machine” as “moments before the attempt to fix the machine was made”, as evidenced by the fact that she said everyone got out too early (to complete the fix)…
Yup, the famed “premature evacuation”..
Now that we know that Shelly is a Sphinx, we also know how to defeat rogue ones (at least temporarily)… Drop bowling balls on their heads.
OK, we know it works for a pre-sphinx.
But if you try it on a fully mature sphinx, you’d better hope it works–or you’ve got a really mad sphinx on hand with no known way to keep her in check.
And likely to return your bowling ball.
Overhand.
Or stuffing it “where the sun don’ shine” autsch!
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone suggest that the “time keeping forest” could have had this extra info. It sounded like a precursor of the library.