but that was Tina’s BODY, not the demon’s themselves. this is CLG crying here, which i believe IS the first time we’ve seen any of them cry, as Casey says.
Hurm. I’ll concede that That’s bod was shedding tears and that binging a mortal form likely contributed to the collective’s distress, but the fact remains that Tina, a coven of demons, cried in Avery human way. And it weren’t no sniffling, neither. She was full on blubbering. Which is more than understandable, considering she was coming down from the adrenaline spike when she thought Phix was going to kill her.
Sad thing is, Old Wolf, Connie is acting more human than I wish some of our fellow so-called humans would. At least she seems to be passionate about some things. All too many of our fellow denizens on this rock seem to only care about when their tv shows are going to be on and when is pizza night.
Ok, someone try to explain this to me. Th e”doorway” angle always had me a bit confused. Were M and Shelly doorways for the entire spirit world? (So Tina’s soul had to go through Shelly?) Or is there something I overlooked?
Monica has always been a doorway for the demons ever since she became a glyph reader. When she almost died it completely opened beyond her control. The same near death experience happened to Shelly but it seems like Connie blocked Shelly’s door and kept it for herself. Tina 1.0 demons caused her death and blocked the door for her soul to escape, or be released not sure which. This is the Crime demon group Tina commited and what she is being punished for, the death of Tina 1.0. So there might be three dorways here, not two. Wheather more than demons can use the door has not been determined but demons can use them. In fact most demons can problably use the doorway they have to each individual they attach to but no other demons can use it. Monica was special as demon could use it.
I did! And clotted cream too….. (best place to enjoy scones&cream for real: Watersmeet, near Lynmouth, in summer. Little birds even hop on Your table, begging for crumbs..so cuuuuúte..)
Yeah. I commented yesterday that it wouldn’t be surprising to see the two separate “demons grouping together” threads/themes (Tina and Connie) converge at some point…
… and the very next day we learn that they converged years ago (in a way I for one had certainly not anticipated).
Remind me never to play tennis with Paul. Serving to him would be scary… he’s got one hell of a return!
Truth is like a hydra … answer one question, two grow in it’s place. Only ends when you stop cutting (finding answers).
And after so many years, is it any wonder, then, why someone like Bud would just say to hell with it and forgo the quest for truth in favor of instead having a blast tormenting a local tight-bunned police officer? Or, for that matter, yearn for mortality like Jin did (end of life means end of new questions)?
The battle is fun, for some, but eventually your metaphorical “arms” get tired and you just want some peace and quiet …
Hmm, seems that someone (Jin?) recruited Companion as a sleeper agent. ‘You weren’t supposed to go…..’ kind of implies knowledge of what they WERE supposed to do – and that this wasn’t it….
If I understand the timing (if the day of Monica’s accident and Tina’s death was the same day Shelly almost died on visionquest… I hadn’t realized that) there was no Companion to recruit… just Shelly’s personal pack of demons.
If I’ve got that right (possibly not), they tried to “block the door” to death, to keep Monica and Shelly alive… Tina died, her soul tried to go through the doorway… FOOM. Collision. That was the stressful event which fused Shelly’s demons… and Tina’s soul?… creating Connie.
No wonder the sphinxes were confused.
This definitely adds more complexity to Nudge’s role. We knew that she had acted at Shellyinx’s request, to lure young Shelly into the wilderness and nearly die, thus creating Connie… but the fact that Tina was part of the price is a surprise. Yes, Nudge may have decided to reanimate Tina in part to try to stick to her “I’m a trickster but I don’t really hurt people” philosophy.
I may be misinterpreting what’s being said and implied here… am I off target?
Timing is not really an issue.
If Shellynx could contact Nudge, Connie could do stuff in our world/at the edge/wherever she’d block the doorway.
Demons aren’t subject to time. When Connie was created, she was subject to time. Then Shelly(nx) spent 50-odd cycles in a forest outside of time, screwing up the entire idea of chronology.
I don’t go anywhere outside of comments to chat…though I imagine it would be entertaining to sit back and watch some members of this group just spout off the various ideas and theories they have. 🙂
I don’t see why Connie is so insistent about the term “coven” being used. It can’t be out of a lack of respectful fear… why if I were confonted by a covey of demons I’d certainly quail in horror!
(*clinkclink* – pays for Yarner as well as myself)
The term ‘coven’ here means a gathering of beings to accomplish a purpose. The number involved need not be 13, that is more witchcraft related, but the fact they worked together is important.
Covey does not carry the context of working together, coven does. IE: A coven of demons, a covey of piegons, a covey of girls. Sorry but most uses of covey does relate to birds!
I think it’s a last-ditch effort to deflect the conversation, trying to get Shelly onto a semantic “toe-may-toe” / “toe-maa-toe” argument, and to forget her whole train of thought about her and Tina’s demons issues.
Also, I’m seeing this as Tina becoming complete again in the long run. I don’t know how, and I have no clue how many deep fried chickens need to be sacrificed, but I have a feeling it’s going that course.
Well, Connie’s the model for the Collective, should Tinasoul return. They may just have to get their act more together; maybe Phix thinks she can give them a final squeeze.
There’s the issue of the eyes, of course. Tinasoul would probably not be able manifest those at will.
Like the term “spiritual spackle”. First time I took my Wife to a Mexican restaraunt and she saw the refried beans on her plate, I called it ‘spackle’ and we call it that anytime we go out and order it as we smile quietly to ourselves.
I think Tina’s soul was trying to “die” normally… go through a gateway to whatever the afterlife is… was blocked by Shelly’s demons, and became enmeshed with and fused to them.
Dunno if the soul is intact, or if it was “consumed” in the process of creating Connie (e.g. as Fred was destroyed during Illyria’s resurrection), but in any case Tina’s soul seems to have played an important role in Connie’s coming into being as a single entity.
Perhaps “soul” is the “glue” which enables a group of independent psychological impulses to truly act as a single entity.
Okay, Phix has admitted to having something to do with Tina being as she is. We know Nudge came in after the soul left, so she had a hand in it. Jin didn’t really say she did, and kind of leaned towards that she didn’t, but there’s a chance she did. I think, but I could be wrong, that Brandi also played a part. Now CG may or may not have also had a spoon in the pot?
You know, it’s a good thing the Tina collective can’t hurt humans, supposedly (she did threaten Shelly as I recall). But honestly, I think she’d be within her right to tell them to go somewhere— really burning hot.
Frankly, though, I’m confused a bit, so I guess I’ll wait out the weekend in anticipatory ignorance until the next one.
You can add me to the confusion couch as well. Maybe it’s like Binky, and can carry unlimited amounts of people. Because my poor li’l head is all in a tizzy over this. :p
Its not really a “couch” if I remember correctly. Its more like an ever-expanding breakfast nook in Mucho Mocha. Front row seats to most of the action, and awesome baked goods.
Yes. I believe the designer was M.C.Escher, and it extends into several directions of hyperspace, so it doesn’t get too big in any direction. However, you do have to watch out for the squirrels if you sit in THAT direction. (I think they were doing swing dancing last I looked.)
Did you include more than one URL in your comment? Comments from known posters with zero or one URL are usually auto-approved, but any comment with two or more requires Paul’s OK.
It’s possible that there are certain words which trigger a need for moderator approval… I don’t know for sure about that. Saying [____] or [_____] is usually safe, but [___] seems to raise a yellow flag at least part of the time.
And we have an arcade now! A couple Neo-Geo machines “fell off the truck”, I donated my PS3 and “found” (he’ll never miss it anyway) an Xbox 360 – and slipped a new account into the system at work to get us 50mbps broadband. Makes these weekend cliffhangers easier when you can discuss possible storylines while fragging each other in a deathmatch.
Tina had the *possibility* to hurt humans, that is why she was watched by Phix, and heavily threatened, to make sure mistakes did not happen… the recent instance of Tina caring for a human, ( I guess without harming others?) despite her thinking Phix would punish her for breaking a rule, shows that she can be trusted… 🙂
Really? I thought Phix was watching Tina 2.0 because she suspected Nudge might be involved, but didn’t have any proof until Nudge gave herself away. But again, I will preface or conclude all my comments with “I could be wrong.”
The demons that made Tina 1.0 slam into that bus would have to be judged and a suitable punishment meted out. If Phix were the judge/executioner, she would have known that the convicts would bear the brunt of the Pottery Barn rule*, and be tied to their brutal work until they rotted away with it.
Phix would not have known Nudge would step in** and use her demigod powers to raise the body, hide within it, and train the convicts as puppeteers. So when they encountered one another again in Minneapolis, Phix started putting one and twelve together… then took them apart, after the Calendar was out of commission.
—
*Maybe it’s a real rule at the Sphinx Pottery Barn.
**Or Phix was really sly at setting a trap! She may have had all she needed to know from Shellynx’s writings tn the Library. But Nudge seems to have declared victory over Phix upon her return to the Library.
We’ve had 57 or so cycles of these events occurring. Based on Jin’s ramblings. Brandi’s book, Phix’s teasings, and Shelly’s bodycount, Cycle#57 (assuming that is the current cycle) is not the first time Monica, Shelly, Tina, and possibly others became what they are now.
Then there’s the fact that 2 cycles can exist in the same space and time (Shelly#1 and Shelly#57 in the Forest, if no #2 – #56 & #57 at other times through the millenia).
So, does this mean there are numerous iterations of the same ‘soul’ for each individual? And upon each past reset, what happened to the current souls still alive? Is there a pantheon of Monicas and Shellys waiting on the “other side”?
Yes, Tina said this was the first runthrough for the rats running the ship….
… which now seems to tie in to something I’d wondered about… why only Shelly #57 had a Companion and thus was able to survive in the Forest. If Tina’s soul was an essential part in creating Connie, and Tina’s death had never been set up in any of the earlier cycles…?
Could be that Tina is one of the great unsung heroes in the fixing of the Calendar Machine problem. Without her (unwitting) sacrifice, Connie would not have existed, to urge Shelly57 to do what was necessary and stab M with the key at the critical moment.
Given that the task of creating CLG was given to Nudge by Shellynx, and Nudge is also the one responsible for spurring the reanimation of Tina 2.0/2.1, seems like we know who has the answers if CLG can’t/won’t provide.
Problem with Nudge is, how much was intentional, and how much was either spur-of-the-moment or for-the-lulz?
Not so sure I’d trust Tina on that. None of the demons (aside from Nudge) had any memory of events prior to the accident. It seems highly unlikely they’d remember past cycles.
Given how desperate Jin’s Doubt was to exit the demon plane and wander around humanity (something, according to Nudge and Sphinx, not an uncommon act for demons to attempt) and both Tina’s and CLG’s assertions that once they die, the demons probably will as well, we really have no way to track if this has happened to Tina (or one of the alternate candidates, per Brandi’s book) in a past cycle.
Not to mention how Brandi#56 had timed it just perfect for Tina’s demons to chase Monica in front of that bus, and how Jin was there just in time to rescue her. For both Brandi and Jin to have their timing that precise, seems like that event in the cycles has happened more than once before.
i’d say it was more of a Shellynx / Nudge timing, the only thing that Jin really had to know was the precise location of both of them, in order to Poit from Monica in Mexico, to wherever Shelly was when she went on her vision-quest… but that does tend to put some doubt into Tina’s claim of the first time around because “Jin would never allow it to happen in the first place”, i mean, if she wasn’t going to let it happen, then how/why was she keeping that close of a watch on both of them, to know where Shelly was on her vision quest, and at the same time, Monica in the market in Mexico?
Huh, for a second there i thought of Clue… “And, the murderer is: Tina 1.0, in the Market, with a Bus”…
It is worse than you think. The calendar machine cycle is nested inside the Shellinx in the forest is cycle. Fortunately is would have been a different Jin in each of the Shellinx interations, so Jin doesn’t remember all of those too.
Shelly here is coming to the answer of a profound question of cosmology and ethics, by way of engineering. She’s eliminated reincarnation as a system, but proven that souls exist, over the course of this conversation.
These entities must operate in a system, and it isn’t reincarnation. We also know that the Time Forest showed her proofs of what the operation actually was.
At the very least, the Time Forest showed her her own mortality 56 times, and to know that each of these Shellys had souls that went somewhere post mortem is to know that the 56 lost iterations of Earth were not full of people living in vain. A knowledge commensurate with the sacrifices she has made and purposes she has been striving to achieve.
But it seems that Shelly has all the clues for the operation of human souls in Wapsiverse. Her ability to turn back into herself may prove the clincher: What if souls are unique quantum states crossing all habitable universes, exploring every possible iteration of history? All Shellys would share the same Shellysoul.
That would make for one helluva demon Ferris wheel.
I’d have to say that the Soul itself is infinite, so different temporal incarnations sharing the same soul would make more sense in that light.
If you break a piece off of Infinity, what do you get but two infinite pieces? It’s the very notion that helps drive a homunculus.
It’s also not something that would get in the way of reincarnation, as it’s quite possible, that the end goal of the soul is to gain X amount of information, and when the perfect balance is reached to be stored elsewhere.
Like say a Library. Where that knowledge becomes available to beings like Phix.
The whole Soul forgetting the past post-reincarnation would be so as not to upset the balance of the “book” form. As the perfected form is what matters and any deviation from that form would be undesirable.
Also, this brings up several questions. Why would the soul have to go through a doorway? Weren’t they rare? What about before they were born? Actually, both of them are closed now… So yeah, I’m confused.
Probably because at that EXACT instant, Monica was “dead” and unusable as a doorway back, but Shelly was technically still alive, granted she was probably in the last few seconds of life, but still “alive”, and Tina’s soul would have tried to get from the doorway-that-was-Shelly, then ?poit? (how DO Demons travel around in our realm anyways?…) back down to the accident scene in Mexico to try and re-inhabit her body before she became totally dead, but instead was delayed by / fused into CLG…
OOH! just had a thought….
Tina 1.0 may still be in the demon realm as a dis-embodied spirit!, if we find that she ISN’T fused into CLG, she could have been traveling from Mexico to Shelly’s location via the demon realm, and been “bounced” back into the demon realm as a supposed “Demon” who was trying to use Shelly to enter our world, and THAT’S why CLG is a Guilty Conscience… she imagines the kind of conditions that May went through, and knows it to be MUCH, MUCH worse for Tina 1.0…
Specifically, Tina 1.0 and Monica were both “dead” at the same time, at opposite ends of the bus. Bus hit Monica, Tina hits bus. Nudge appears to Shelly previously to inspire the vision quest, and Shelly starts questing on the same day and the bus collisions.
So:
– Jin “rescues” Monica at the front of the bus.
– Tina 1.0 succumbs at the back of the bus.
– Shelly is going into shock from exposure some great distance away while all this is going on.
– With Monica safe, Jin rushes to rescue Shelly.
— During that interval, Shelly’s demons interfere with Tina 1.0’s death, and so preventing a natural revival .
— Nudge inhabits Tina’s corpse in the morgue (some time later), takes charge of the remaining demons, thus creating Tina 2.0.
That seems to be how this plays out. It suggests the process of Shelly’s demons acting upon Tina 1.0 required unified, coordinated behavior, and that may have been the catalyst to form Connie as a whole from a group.
So — Did Connie “Kill” Tina 1.0 by “exorcising” her soul, leaving only the other demons? Nudge, not Connie got them to get off the slab. At a minimum, an hour or more would have elapsed from the accident scene, body recovery, and transport to the morgue. Jin was tending to Shelly by this point.
Connie vs Tina 1.0’s soul? A grudge match? Other machinations? Somebody else (Brandi?) doing an end run on Jin? Phix using Connie as a back up plan to set up the Monica/Jin/Shelly love/hate triangle?
I have often wondered how many things can be controlled under strictly monitored scientific conditions…especially those things that are rarely occurring to begin with.
Okay now I’m wondering if Tina’s soul didn’t somehow get caught in this coven of demons that makes up Shelly’s angry little Connie who is basically the angry little girl that was Shelly after her mothers death.
And the demons that make up the entity that we all know as everyone’s favorite demonic barista Tina, which were left to run things without purpose, plan, or agenda till they made an active decision for themselves as to how they were going to live.
Tina is a warden of sorts. Offering little cryptic snippets wisdom or information on the side with a coffee order to her customers who go about their day until it finally dawns on them as to what the need to know or they respond on an instinctual level and change their course of action…….I dunno. I could way the hell off base here. *heads back to bed*
They were “In the Way”… Ehhrrmm.. That means that Tina’s soul is stil wandering around? Or did the coven “adopt” Tina’s soul and parked it amongst themselves, or alongside Shelly’s soul?
Which means that Shelly and Tina are “soulmates” in a somewhat warped way….
..I need to sit down.. Brain went *kurrunkk..tick..ting..tick..ting* and is now rebooting.
*slumps for a bit and starts shuffling towards “confusion corner”*
I have read this webcomic for 4 plus years. I find it is getting harder and hard to make one character out from the other. I know that this is Shelley, but in the last panel I find it near impossible to tell if that isn’t Jin.
The best distinguishing feature between these two particular characters, is their noses. Jin’s is a pert little button with a slightly upturned end, while Shelly has a pretty classic Native American “roman” nose with a pronounced bridge. These only show up in a profile view, of course.
Occasionally Jin is seen with what is for an Asian a real honker. Chalk it up to the art style. And of course, Shelly has her biceps and Tina her choker.
Dunno, those winnings might be in probate because he was betting on Connie being Tina’s soul, not a conglomeration of demons with Tina’s soul being the Krazy Glue (extra KRAZY) that held them together in one new melted-together form.
But I’d support divvying out a portion of the pot as a sort of “damn you were CLOSE” payout. 😀
(was going to say “shelling out”, but it’s Shelly’s CLG we’re talking about, I heard the pun jar snickering at me … so I changed it …)
I think this strongly implies that Tina 1.0’s soul is now part of the collective that makes up Creepy Girl. This could have been the essential element that makes her what she is.
That’s what I’m starting to get now that I’ve slept on it a little. The fusion of demons was created by a catalyst, which may in fact have been Tina 1.0’s soul, who is now more or less the central theme/figure behind CG. Though kind of makes me feel bad in that if looked at from a different angle, she had to abandon her own demons, let alone her body. Seems like Tina’s demons are the ones being manipulated by everybody else.
I’m also curious in that some time back, around when Tina 2.0 outed herself as being a collective, she mentioned finding Tina 1.0’s diary but couldn’t decipher it. Monica said it was probably shorthand and she’d help her out, but I don’t think the journal was ever mentioned again.
It’s also interesting to note that the first time Tina met Connie (the day Monica mis-pointed while drunk, and Tina was “locked in a boiler room with a creepy little girl” overnight), Tina showed no sign of recognizing Connie at all. Ditto for their subsequent encounter(s) (e.g. upon Shelly’s return from the Time Forest) – Tina saw Connie but didn’t say “Hey, we’re soul sisters!”
This suggests that Tina 1.0’s soul, if now part of Connie, is not “obvious on the surface” even to the Tina demon collective.
Stewpots and salad bowls, eh? I’ll see you, and raise you an herb potpourri. Shelly is the sage, and we know that the Forest provided the thyme… if Paul tells us that Connie’s true name is Parsley (and that she’s really Rosemary’s Baby) we’ll be ready for dinner.
@Julie… I’m beginning to suspect bmonk’s powers of suggestion as being well beyond the Jedi mind trick level, and possibly to be of demonic-influence grade. Fortunately for bmonk, no one has actually been harmed yet.
Wasn’t there some mention of communicating through time with the dead as we began the whole Shellynx story arc? I also vaguely recall mention of the little girl who died in the plasma wall in the GG backstory arc, who might be wandering around the demon realm a very angry and disturbed little entity. Or something like that.
We’re starting into a new story arc for which Shellynx’s story was merely the prolog, IMHO. That story seems to be centering around Tina 2.1, her missing soul, Conny, Shellynx, and OTB. Supporting characters look to be The Shadow Girl with the hell hounds, Euryale, Jin, and Monica. Phix will have a major role, I think.
But who knows? I was wrong all the time in my predictions about Errant Story…
Aaand my mind is blown… Even I didn’t think of that and I honestly should have, clearly I’ve been out of the game for far to long if I missed a detail like that.
What has amazed me, is how well these bootlegger-turn surprises have been engineered, story-telling-wise.
They aren’t the classic “contradict what was said before” retcons, nor do they seem to be arbitrary plot lurches. They really feel like pieces of the big puzzle that were present all along… we just didn’t see them. Sort of a Purloined Letter / Chekhov’s Gun all in one. In the present case, Connie’s nature and Tina 1.0’s fate have been open issues for quite a while, but we didn’t see that the “negative space” of these two adjoining bits, made up one new piece in the puzzle as now seems may be the case.
I can’t recall another author as good at this… I imagine it must require some fiercely detailed advance planning and plotting to pull it off. Perhaps there’s an occasional tactical advantage to being one who is dealing with OCD, as Paul recently said he is?
It’s sure not boring to be on the receiving end of these revelations, even if it’s quite mindblowing at times. It’s like suddenly realizing that China is bigger than you believed, that Vietnam never really existed, and that every Trinh you know is Wong.
(drops a tin-plated exposition into the Pun Jar… hey, it’s a family heirloom)
That’s part of it, I think. Connie is outside of all of their recognized categories, and their traditional rules of behavior simply don’t fit. She now seems to be a three-way hybrid… demon, human soul, and human-sphinx. If sphinxes are big on the concept of Law, and they can’t figure out a precedent for dealing with Connie which wouldn’t break one of their own codes (e.g. not harming a human soul, as you say), they could be stuck… unable to act.
With the way that CG is very , um… Vocal… about her disapproval of the situation, i’ll bet that that’s her reason for still looking (and acting) like she did when she got created… she herself has a guilty conscience over what happened to Tina 1.0, (if that’s possible?) and it’s that ?trauma? / PTSD that’s preventing her from progressing to the same mental age/body image as Shelly herself is now. remember how long it took Shelly to finally let go of the anger and pain of her mom’s passing… i think that in the next few weeks CG will finally release the anger and pain of Tina 1.0’s passing (and what part she played in that event) and voop! she’ll look and act much more mature, ie. just like Shelly’s currently acts…
You know that in 80K years a person could recover from PTSD even if she was just an agglomoration of personal daeons held together with a soul from another person.
Wow, it took three days, but I just read it from end to end… an amazing journey and fabulous art. Thank you for taking my mind to places I never thought I’d see!
Ain’t it great? I agree, thanks Paul! A little Wapsi in the morning makes the real world that much more bearable. And the comments with all the speculation, gesticulation, and efforts to reduce the obfuscation are at times just as entertaining! Kudos to all!
any one else notice that shelly is kind of taking joy in playing with the “demon’s” guilt? she is genuinely upset that she blocked tina from coming back into her body, and shelly just keeps going
I don’t think it’s a sick pleasure, but rather more a sense of self-satisfaction as she works towards an answer – much like how her mentor (Phix) does the same thing, with very similar facial expressions to boot.
So, let me get this straight.
Phix and Shelly forge Connie using Tina 1.0’s loose soul as a flux and Monica’s glyph heat?
Then Nudge, acting as a catalyst, barely bonds together Tina 2.0 using demons as a substitute for Tina’s missing soul.
Then Phix extracts Nudge creating Tina 2.1?
Whoa… Just thought of something… If Tina’s soul was blocked then it remained on Earth… Maybe it had to find somewhere to dwell, and the only place it could find was… her Muneca del Dia de los Muertos, which is why Tina 2.0/2.1 was talking to it?
As I learned in an old Batman comic that any representation of a person, if done too exactly, crosses magical realms and damage done to one does it to the other. If that’s the case, then a representation of a person may also be enough to hold a soul…
Perhaps it’s a kind of quantum existence, occupying all of them and none of them at the same time until acted upon.
Even a living memory could be counted as such an “image”, so, in a way, none of us have truly left this earth until we are forgotten.
Actually the thought that popped in my head was from Harry Potter. The part where Harry looks at his trading card of Dumbledore again and the face is gone.
“Where’d he go?”
“Well, you can’t expect him to hang around all day, now, can you?”
Along with what SWM and Dave said, there was a specific reference (by Phix, I think, but might have been Shelly) to the other sphinxes not knowing how to classify Connie and as a result just staying away from her because her mere existence was worrisome for them.
I don’t think we’ve ever seen a demon cry before.
We saw Tina cry after her Nudgeectomy.
but that was Tina’s BODY, not the demon’s themselves. this is CLG crying here, which i believe IS the first time we’ve seen any of them cry, as Casey says.
Hurm. I’ll concede that That’s bod was shedding tears and that binging a mortal form likely contributed to the collective’s distress, but the fact remains that Tina, a coven of demons, cried in Avery human way. And it weren’t no sniffling, neither. She was full on blubbering. Which is more than understandable, considering she was coming down from the adrenaline spike when she thought Phix was going to kill her.
Dammit. “That Tina “and “being in”. I hate my phone.
Then the emotions from the newly-released 2.1 Collective must have massively overwhelming.
♬ Feelings, woa woa woa, feelings… ♬
Looks like demons are a lot more human than we gave them credit for.
Sad thing is, Old Wolf, Connie is acting more human than I wish some of our fellow so-called humans would. At least she seems to be passionate about some things. All too many of our fellow denizens on this rock seem to only care about when their tv shows are going to be on and when is pizza night.
And they wonder why we call them sheeple …
@SWM
>.<
OK, damn you, that one made my brain hurt, just a little.
Hmm… now where are we going? And what’s the cliffhanger going to be?
Not so much a cliffhanger as a doorblocker?
Oh. Oh, my. We always expected that Tina 1.0’s soul had gone on in the usual way when she died. Connie, I think you have some explaining to do.
Dum-duum-duuuuuuuuuum
Alternatively — Sound of Shoe Dropping.
Patiently awaits other shoe….
Ok, someone try to explain this to me. Th e”doorway” angle always had me a bit confused. Were M and Shelly doorways for the entire spirit world? (So Tina’s soul had to go through Shelly?) Or is there something I overlooked?
Monica has always been a doorway for the demons ever since she became a glyph reader. When she almost died it completely opened beyond her control. The same near death experience happened to Shelly but it seems like Connie blocked Shelly’s door and kept it for herself. Tina 1.0 demons caused her death and blocked the door for her soul to escape, or be released not sure which. This is the Crime demon group Tina commited and what she is being punished for, the death of Tina 1.0. So there might be three dorways here, not two. Wheather more than demons can use the door has not been determined but demons can use them. In fact most demons can problably use the doorway they have to each individual they attach to but no other demons can use it. Monica was special as demon could use it.
So when Connie blocked Shelly-when-she-was-a-doorway and Tina had her accident, does that mean Tina’s soul is hogtied to a chair in the boiler room?
Soooo . . . If Monica is the first demonic door blocker, does that make Tina the Beta blocker?
Womp Womp.
Dare I make reference to “door knockers”?
Sounds more like Tina’s demons, or the ones that made up Tina 2.0, blocked Monica and the demons that became CG blocked Shelly.
I wonder if this may be what Phix was talking about when she said Tina was being punished, but Tina couldn’t remember what for.
TO THE CONFUSION COUCH!
I brought Bacardi and Ginger Ale. Did anybody bring any scones?
I did! And clotted cream too….. (best place to enjoy scones&cream for real: Watersmeet, near Lynmouth, in summer. Little birds even hop on Your table, begging for crumbs..so cuuuuúte..)
Screw my doctor-mandated diet! I want some of what’s being served in the corner! 😀
Bringing in some oatmeal raising cookies courtesy of my wife.
Please don’t forget the fresh strawberrys ..
I’ll bring an entree – can’t stand too many sweets alone. Everyone ok with Spaghetti and Confusion Balls?
I bought enough to tide us over the weekend. Meanwhile – who wants to play find the other shoe? :3
Waiting for the other shoe to drop, as in Arthur’s “Obstinate Uncle Otis”?
BTW, it appears, Shelly has a guilty conscience.
….and the Pun Jar is right over there.
That’s not a pun, it’s literal.
That’s why it’s a pun. Connie clearly made a conscience choice. (clink)
That’s the best pun I’ve seen in a long time. Kudos!
Oh, boy. I didn’t see that one coming.
Wow.
Yeah, this explains a lot… and opens up even more questions!
Classic Wapsi fare … you answer one thing, and suddenly the meaning of life seems like an easier enigma.
Yeah. I commented yesterday that it wouldn’t be surprising to see the two separate “demons grouping together” threads/themes (Tina and Connie) converge at some point…
… and the very next day we learn that they converged years ago (in a way I for one had certainly not anticipated).
Remind me never to play tennis with Paul. Serving to him would be scary… he’s got one hell of a return!
Truth is like a hydra … answer one question, two grow in it’s place. Only ends when you stop cutting (finding answers).
And after so many years, is it any wonder, then, why someone like Bud would just say to hell with it and forgo the quest for truth in favor of instead having a blast tormenting a local tight-bunned police officer? Or, for that matter, yearn for mortality like Jin did (end of life means end of new questions)?
The battle is fun, for some, but eventually your metaphorical “arms” get tired and you just want some peace and quiet …
Hmm, seems that someone (Jin?) recruited Companion as a sleeper agent. ‘You weren’t supposed to go…..’ kind of implies knowledge of what they WERE supposed to do – and that this wasn’t it….
Or Nudge – which may explain why Nudge felt compelled to intervene and get Tina moving again. Wow.
If I understand the timing (if the day of Monica’s accident and Tina’s death was the same day Shelly almost died on visionquest… I hadn’t realized that) there was no Companion to recruit… just Shelly’s personal pack of demons.
If I’ve got that right (possibly not), they tried to “block the door” to death, to keep Monica and Shelly alive… Tina died, her soul tried to go through the doorway… FOOM. Collision. That was the stressful event which fused Shelly’s demons… and Tina’s soul?… creating Connie.
No wonder the sphinxes were confused.
This definitely adds more complexity to Nudge’s role. We knew that she had acted at Shellyinx’s request, to lure young Shelly into the wilderness and nearly die, thus creating Connie… but the fact that Tina was part of the price is a surprise. Yes, Nudge may have decided to reanimate Tina in part to try to stick to her “I’m a trickster but I don’t really hurt people” philosophy.
I may be misinterpreting what’s being said and implied here… am I off target?
Timing is not really an issue.
If Shellynx could contact Nudge, Connie could do stuff in our world/at the edge/wherever she’d block the doorway.
Demons aren’t subject to time. When Connie was created, she was subject to time. Then Shelly(nx) spent 50-odd cycles in a forest outside of time, screwing up the entire idea of chronology.
I think that Jin, in causing her past issues with the Calendar Machine, kept letting the wrong people die.
Three “bodies” died that day, all with demons and souls. Two souls and two sets of demons remained intact – but not in the same bodies.
Guess what happened to the third soul/demons?
That’s certainly how I’m interpreting this…though I’ve learned to wait for the revelation that tells me I was wrong. 😛
Super awesome explanation – I had never thought of it like this. Where do you guys talk about this outside of comments?
Gonna hunt down a forum somewhere now. :3
I don’t go anywhere outside of comments to chat…though I imagine it would be entertaining to sit back and watch some members of this group just spout off the various ideas and theories they have. 🙂
I don’t see why Connie is so insistent about the term “coven” being used. It can’t be out of a lack of respectful fear… why if I were confonted by a covey of demons I’d certainly quail in horror!
(*clinkclink* – pays for Yarner as well as myself)
The term ‘coven’ here means a gathering of beings to accomplish a purpose. The number involved need not be 13, that is more witchcraft related, but the fact they worked together is important.
..but ‘covey’ means a small group of people or things… ??
Covey does not carry the context of working together, coven does. IE: A coven of demons, a covey of piegons, a covey of girls. Sorry but most uses of covey does relate to birds!
And if you’re English (with a capitol E), that’s a very subtle pun.
Huh. It left off my donation to the pun jar. (clunk)
Perhaps she just thinks proper terminology is important. We’ve seen the term coven used before in this context, I think by Tina…
I think it’s a last-ditch effort to deflect the conversation, trying to get Shelly onto a semantic “toe-may-toe” / “toe-maa-toe” argument, and to forget her whole train of thought about her and Tina’s demons issues.
You say tomato, I say Vodka. :p
[Plink. Plink.] (Just my 2 cents.)
Bloody Mary that was bad.
*clink*
It’s only bad when you have too many. But, if you’ve brought the fire-water, I can get the juice.
ooo… that was harsh…
Anyway, thanks man, I’ll buy next time 🙂
Ooh-Hoo!
Well my heart knows me better than I know myself
So I’m gonna let it do all the talking
(Ooh-Hoo, Ooh-Hoo)
I came across a place in the middle of nowhere
With a big black sphinx and a timeless tree
(Ooh-Hoo, Ooh-Hoo)
Miss Tunstall just called – pay the pun jar.
clever. 😀
I think Tina’s soul can be referred to as “spiritual spackle” at this junction.
Also, I’m seeing this as Tina becoming complete again in the long run. I don’t know how, and I have no clue how many deep fried chickens need to be sacrificed, but I have a feeling it’s going that course.
Does that mean eyes will go back to normal? If so, I want no part of it. I love Tina’s eyes!
Well, Connie’s the model for the Collective, should Tinasoul return. They may just have to get their act more together; maybe Phix thinks she can give them a final squeeze.
There’s the issue of the eyes, of course. Tinasoul would probably not be able manifest those at will.
Like the term “spiritual spackle”. First time I took my Wife to a Mexican restaraunt and she saw the refried beans on her plate, I called it ‘spackle’ and we call it that anytime we go out and order it as we smile quietly to ourselves.
I think Tina’s soul was trying to “die” normally… go through a gateway to whatever the afterlife is… was blocked by Shelly’s demons, and became enmeshed with and fused to them.
Dunno if the soul is intact, or if it was “consumed” in the process of creating Connie (e.g. as Fred was destroyed during Illyria’s resurrection), but in any case Tina’s soul seems to have played an important role in Connie’s coming into being as a single entity.
Perhaps “soul” is the “glue” which enables a group of independent psychological impulses to truly act as a single entity.
so Shelly somehow got Tina’s soul, as part of Creepy Girl??
And what is the definition of ‘soul’ ??
would a human-made android like Data (ST:NG) have one?? its gotta happen *sometime* in RL… :p
“I teleported home one night
with Ron and Sid and Meg
Ron stole Meggie’s heart away
and I got Sidney’s leg”
– Douglas Adams
Okay, Phix has admitted to having something to do with Tina being as she is. We know Nudge came in after the soul left, so she had a hand in it. Jin didn’t really say she did, and kind of leaned towards that she didn’t, but there’s a chance she did. I think, but I could be wrong, that Brandi also played a part. Now CG may or may not have also had a spoon in the pot?
You know, it’s a good thing the Tina collective can’t hurt humans, supposedly (she did threaten Shelly as I recall). But honestly, I think she’d be within her right to tell them to go somewhere— really burning hot.
Frankly, though, I’m confused a bit, so I guess I’ll wait out the weekend in anticipatory ignorance until the next one.
Boy, this confusion couch is getting awfully crowded today!
You can add me to the confusion couch as well. Maybe it’s like Binky, and can carry unlimited amounts of people. Because my poor li’l head is all in a tizzy over this. :p
Its not really a “couch” if I remember correctly. Its more like an ever-expanding breakfast nook in Mucho Mocha. Front row seats to most of the action, and awesome baked goods.
I was just told that my comment is awaiting moderation… 3 years on this comic and I haven’t seen that once. What did I say?
Yes. I believe the designer was M.C.Escher, and it extends into several directions of hyperspace, so it doesn’t get too big in any direction. However, you do have to watch out for the squirrels if you sit in THAT direction. (I think they were doing swing dancing last I looked.)
Did you include more than one URL in your comment? Comments from known posters with zero or one URL are usually auto-approved, but any comment with two or more requires Paul’s OK.
It’s possible that there are certain words which trigger a need for moderator approval… I don’t know for sure about that. Saying [____] or [_____] is usually safe, but [___] seems to raise a yellow flag at least part of the time.
And we have an arcade now! A couple Neo-Geo machines “fell off the truck”, I donated my PS3 and “found” (he’ll never miss it anyway) an Xbox 360 – and slipped a new account into the system at work to get us 50mbps broadband. Makes these weekend cliffhangers easier when you can discuss possible storylines while fragging each other in a deathmatch.
You’re welcome! 😀
Tina had the *possibility* to hurt humans, that is why she was watched by Phix, and heavily threatened, to make sure mistakes did not happen… the recent instance of Tina caring for a human, ( I guess without harming others?) despite her thinking Phix would punish her for breaking a rule, shows that she can be trusted… 🙂
Really? I thought Phix was watching Tina 2.0 because she suspected Nudge might be involved, but didn’t have any proof until Nudge gave herself away. But again, I will preface or conclude all my comments with “I could be wrong.”
The demons that made Tina 1.0 slam into that bus would have to be judged and a suitable punishment meted out. If Phix were the judge/executioner, she would have known that the convicts would bear the brunt of the Pottery Barn rule*, and be tied to their brutal work until they rotted away with it.
Phix would not have known Nudge would step in** and use her demigod powers to raise the body, hide within it, and train the convicts as puppeteers. So when they encountered one another again in Minneapolis, Phix started putting one and twelve together… then took them apart, after the Calendar was out of commission.
—
*Maybe it’s a real rule at the Sphinx Pottery Barn.
**Or Phix was really sly at setting a trap! She may have had all she needed to know from Shellynx’s writings tn the Library. But Nudge seems to have declared victory over Phix upon her return to the Library.
It is delightful, though, to read a line like “Until a few thousand years ago, I didn’t believe in demons.”
Not the sort of comment you tend to overhear at the average weekend party, for certain.
I agree. Right up there with, “Please hand me that piano” or “I think that pizza fish is upside down.”
in a disappointed tone “If it wasn’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.”
Gonna be a looooooong weekend.
Shelly looks kinda Phixish in that last panel.
“The Colonel’s Lady and Judy O’Grady are sisters under the skin…”
They don’t call her the sage of the forrest for nothing. This is ancient Shelly overriding modern Shelly, I think.
Come to think of it, We never saw a picture of Shellys’ Mom. Could Phix be…? Hmmmmm. Nah, Too Obvious.
Wow. Almost as good as wondering who (or what) Brandark’s mother was…
dammit. that one always makes me cry.
The better question:
We’ve had 57 or so cycles of these events occurring. Based on Jin’s ramblings. Brandi’s book, Phix’s teasings, and Shelly’s bodycount, Cycle#57 (assuming that is the current cycle) is not the first time Monica, Shelly, Tina, and possibly others became what they are now.
Then there’s the fact that 2 cycles can exist in the same space and time (Shelly#1 and Shelly#57 in the Forest, if no #2 – #56 & #57 at other times through the millenia).
So, does this mean there are numerous iterations of the same ‘soul’ for each individual? And upon each past reset, what happened to the current souls still alive? Is there a pantheon of Monicas and Shellys waiting on the “other side”?
And… Oh no I’ve gone cross-eyed.
Actually, wasn’t it stated this is the first time Tina is what she was?
Yes, Tina said this was the first runthrough for the rats running the ship….
… which now seems to tie in to something I’d wondered about… why only Shelly #57 had a Companion and thus was able to survive in the Forest. If Tina’s soul was an essential part in creating Connie, and Tina’s death had never been set up in any of the earlier cycles…?
Could be that Tina is one of the great unsung heroes in the fixing of the Calendar Machine problem. Without her (unwitting) sacrifice, Connie would not have existed, to urge Shelly57 to do what was necessary and stab M with the key at the critical moment.
Given that the task of creating CLG was given to Nudge by Shellynx, and Nudge is also the one responsible for spurring the reanimation of Tina 2.0/2.1, seems like we know who has the answers if CLG can’t/won’t provide.
Problem with Nudge is, how much was intentional, and how much was either spur-of-the-moment or for-the-lulz?
And how much was that-woulda-been-really-cool-if-I’d-planned-it-that-way-so-I’ma-tell-everyone-that-I-did?
Not so sure I’d trust Tina on that. None of the demons (aside from Nudge) had any memory of events prior to the accident. It seems highly unlikely they’d remember past cycles.
Given how desperate Jin’s Doubt was to exit the demon plane and wander around humanity (something, according to Nudge and Sphinx, not an uncommon act for demons to attempt) and both Tina’s and CLG’s assertions that once they die, the demons probably will as well, we really have no way to track if this has happened to Tina (or one of the alternate candidates, per Brandi’s book) in a past cycle.
Not to mention how Brandi#56 had timed it just perfect for Tina’s demons to chase Monica in front of that bus, and how Jin was there just in time to rescue her. For both Brandi and Jin to have their timing that precise, seems like that event in the cycles has happened more than once before.
i’d say it was more of a Shellynx / Nudge timing, the only thing that Jin really had to know was the precise location of both of them, in order to Poit from Monica in Mexico, to wherever Shelly was when she went on her vision-quest… but that does tend to put some doubt into Tina’s claim of the first time around because “Jin would never allow it to happen in the first place”, i mean, if she wasn’t going to let it happen, then how/why was she keeping that close of a watch on both of them, to know where Shelly was on her vision quest, and at the same time, Monica in the market in Mexico?
Huh, for a second there i thought of Clue… “And, the murderer is: Tina 1.0, in the Market, with a Bus”…
Don’t forget Nudges reference to Heinz ’57’ Steaksauce.
Ah Yes… the SECRET PLAN… one which Jin I’m sure was NOT clued in to, in order to keep both hers and Monica’s Demons in the dark…
It is worse than you think. The calendar machine cycle is nested inside the Shellinx in the forest is cycle. Fortunately is would have been a different Jin in each of the Shellinx interations, so Jin doesn’t remember all of those too.
To answer Sonicthunder’s better question…
Shelly here is coming to the answer of a profound question of cosmology and ethics, by way of engineering. She’s eliminated reincarnation as a system, but proven that souls exist, over the course of this conversation.
These entities must operate in a system, and it isn’t reincarnation. We also know that the Time Forest showed her proofs of what the operation actually was.
At the very least, the Time Forest showed her her own mortality 56 times, and to know that each of these Shellys had souls that went somewhere post mortem is to know that the 56 lost iterations of Earth were not full of people living in vain. A knowledge commensurate with the sacrifices she has made and purposes she has been striving to achieve.
But it seems that Shelly has all the clues for the operation of human souls in Wapsiverse. Her ability to turn back into herself may prove the clincher: What if souls are unique quantum states crossing all habitable universes, exploring every possible iteration of history? All Shellys would share the same Shellysoul.
That would make for one helluva demon Ferris wheel.
I’d have to say that the Soul itself is infinite, so different temporal incarnations sharing the same soul would make more sense in that light.
If you break a piece off of Infinity, what do you get but two infinite pieces? It’s the very notion that helps drive a homunculus.
It’s also not something that would get in the way of reincarnation, as it’s quite possible, that the end goal of the soul is to gain X amount of information, and when the perfect balance is reached to be stored elsewhere.
Like say a Library. Where that knowledge becomes available to beings like Phix.
The whole Soul forgetting the past post-reincarnation would be so as not to upset the balance of the “book” form. As the perfected form is what matters and any deviation from that form would be undesirable.
I wonder why Tina’s soul wanted to go through Shelly when M was like 3 feet away.
Also, this brings up several questions. Why would the soul have to go through a doorway? Weren’t they rare? What about before they were born? Actually, both of them are closed now… So yeah, I’m confused.
Quick answer: How close to Jin do you want to be when she’s PO’ed to the max and half scared out of her mind?
Long answer: I don’t know, but I am looking forward to finding out!
Probably because at that EXACT instant, Monica was “dead” and unusable as a doorway back, but Shelly was technically still alive, granted she was probably in the last few seconds of life, but still “alive”, and Tina’s soul would have tried to get from the doorway-that-was-Shelly, then ?poit? (how DO Demons travel around in our realm anyways?…) back down to the accident scene in Mexico to try and re-inhabit her body before she became totally dead, but instead was delayed by / fused into CLG…
OOH! just had a thought….
Tina 1.0 may still be in the demon realm as a dis-embodied spirit!, if we find that she ISN’T fused into CLG, she could have been traveling from Mexico to Shelly’s location via the demon realm, and been “bounced” back into the demon realm as a supposed “Demon” who was trying to use Shelly to enter our world, and THAT’S why CLG is a Guilty Conscience… she imagines the kind of conditions that May went through, and knows it to be MUCH, MUCH worse for Tina 1.0…
scantrontb, I see we were both writing at the same time. I like your version too!
Specifically, Tina 1.0 and Monica were both “dead” at the same time, at opposite ends of the bus. Bus hit Monica, Tina hits bus. Nudge appears to Shelly previously to inspire the vision quest, and Shelly starts questing on the same day and the bus collisions.
So:
– Jin “rescues” Monica at the front of the bus.
– Tina 1.0 succumbs at the back of the bus.
– Shelly is going into shock from exposure some great distance away while all this is going on.
– With Monica safe, Jin rushes to rescue Shelly.
— During that interval, Shelly’s demons interfere with Tina 1.0’s death, and so preventing a natural revival .
— Nudge inhabits Tina’s corpse in the morgue (some time later), takes charge of the remaining demons, thus creating Tina 2.0.
That seems to be how this plays out. It suggests the process of Shelly’s demons acting upon Tina 1.0 required unified, coordinated behavior, and that may have been the catalyst to form Connie as a whole from a group.
So — Did Connie “Kill” Tina 1.0 by “exorcising” her soul, leaving only the other demons? Nudge, not Connie got them to get off the slab. At a minimum, an hour or more would have elapsed from the accident scene, body recovery, and transport to the morgue. Jin was tending to Shelly by this point.
Connie vs Tina 1.0’s soul? A grudge match? Other machinations? Somebody else (Brandi?) doing an end run on Jin? Phix using Connie as a back up plan to set up the Monica/Jin/Shelly love/hate triangle?
Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets!
My theory? When you’re talking about doorways used by souls, I’d imagine that location (space) is irrelevant. 🙂
I have often wondered how many things can be controlled under strictly monitored scientific conditions…especially those things that are rarely occurring to begin with.
Then again, some people are just batty. 😛
Okay now I’m wondering if Tina’s soul didn’t somehow get caught in this coven of demons that makes up Shelly’s angry little Connie who is basically the angry little girl that was Shelly after her mothers death.
And the demons that make up the entity that we all know as everyone’s favorite demonic barista Tina, which were left to run things without purpose, plan, or agenda till they made an active decision for themselves as to how they were going to live.
Tina is a warden of sorts. Offering little cryptic snippets wisdom or information on the side with a coffee order to her customers who go about their day until it finally dawns on them as to what the need to know or they respond on an instinctual level and change their course of action…….I dunno. I could way the hell off base here. *heads back to bed*
Stop. Poking. My. SECRETS!
Is what she is not saying.
oh good! I’m not the only one blinking on that one.
I feel better now. 😉
They were “In the Way”… Ehhrrmm.. That means that Tina’s soul is stil wandering around? Or did the coven “adopt” Tina’s soul and parked it amongst themselves, or alongside Shelly’s soul?
Which means that Shelly and Tina are “soulmates” in a somewhat warped way….
..I need to sit down.. Brain went *kurrunkk..tick..ting..tick..ting* and is now rebooting.
*slumps for a bit and starts shuffling towards “confusion corner”*
Yep, there seems to be a distinct possibility for that…
Absolutely mindblowing.
You see me just fine, don’t you?
Mark her.
I have read this webcomic for 4 plus years. I find it is getting harder and hard to make one character out from the other. I know that this is Shelley, but in the last panel I find it near impossible to tell if that isn’t Jin.
The best distinguishing feature between these two particular characters, is their noses. Jin’s is a pert little button with a slightly upturned end, while Shelly has a pretty classic Native American “roman” nose with a pronounced bridge. These only show up in a profile view, of course.
I’ve had the same confusion between ’em myself.
Occasionally Jin is seen with what is for an Asian a real honker. Chalk it up to the art style. And of course, Shelly has her biceps and Tina her choker.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh……….
Assuming this plays out as most downthreaders expect, what are you going to buy with all your winnings?
Or upthreaders for that matter.
Mere forums are for wimps.
Dunno, those winnings might be in probate because he was betting on Connie being Tina’s soul, not a conglomeration of demons with Tina’s soul being the Krazy Glue (extra KRAZY) that held them together in one new melted-together form.
But I’d support divvying out a portion of the pot as a sort of “damn you were CLOSE” payout. 😀
(was going to say “shelling out”, but it’s Shelly’s CLG we’re talking about, I heard the pun jar snickering at me … so I changed it …)
This. Is. AWESOME! 🙂
Have you noticed how recently connie has started to show sphinx features on her face, do you think she can fully turn into a Sphinx too?
We talked about that a couple of pages ago.
I think this strongly implies that Tina 1.0’s soul is now part of the collective that makes up Creepy Girl. This could have been the essential element that makes her what she is.
That’s what I’m starting to get now that I’ve slept on it a little. The fusion of demons was created by a catalyst, which may in fact have been Tina 1.0’s soul, who is now more or less the central theme/figure behind CG. Though kind of makes me feel bad in that if looked at from a different angle, she had to abandon her own demons, let alone her body. Seems like Tina’s demons are the ones being manipulated by everybody else.
I’m also curious in that some time back, around when Tina 2.0 outed herself as being a collective, she mentioned finding Tina 1.0’s diary but couldn’t decipher it. Monica said it was probably shorthand and she’d help her out, but I don’t think the journal was ever mentioned again.
It’s also interesting to note that the first time Tina met Connie (the day Monica mis-pointed while drunk, and Tina was “locked in a boiler room with a creepy little girl” overnight), Tina showed no sign of recognizing Connie at all. Ditto for their subsequent encounter(s) (e.g. upon Shelly’s return from the Time Forest) – Tina saw Connie but didn’t say “Hey, we’re soul sisters!”
This suggests that Tina 1.0’s soul, if now part of Connie, is not “obvious on the surface” even to the Tina demon collective.
Connie’s more of a melting pot than salad bowl conglomeration of demons. 🙂 Tina’s the salad version.
Stewpots and salad bowls, eh? I’ll see you, and raise you an herb potpourri. Shelly is the sage, and we know that the Forest provided the thyme… if Paul tells us that Connie’s true name is Parsley (and that she’s really Rosemary’s Baby) we’ll be ready for dinner.
I once had a recipe for lamb using those four herbs–so at the appropriate place in the directions, I included, “Stop humming ‘Scarborough Fair”.
What SWM said. I started humming it myself after reading that post.
Stop it! 😛
bmonk, your powers of suggestion are flat out evil! 😛
I, OTOH, am now (and have been) whistling Fairport Convention’s version of “John Barleycorn Must Die”.
Regarding “Scarborough Fair” – one of the greatest moments on “The Muppet Show” came when Paul Simon was singing it in a medieval faire setting.
A gypsy comes up to him.
“Show me your lifeline.”
Simon does.
“Sing fast.”
@Julie… I’m beginning to suspect bmonk’s powers of suggestion as being well beyond the Jedi mind trick level, and possibly to be of demonic-influence grade. Fortunately for bmonk, no one has actually been harmed yet.
“Yet.”
Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!
I don’t know, “Covey” seems appropriate and cromulent to the situation.
Could Connie use Tina’s Day of the Dead doll as a shikigami/golem/shabti if this is anywhere in the direction I think it’s looking in?
Coven is appropriate for Connie.
Covey is more like Tina considering the trials of getting it together in the morning.
Given Connie’s current distress, perhaps she’s a Flummox of demons?
“Covey” predates “coven” by at least 150 years. They refer to partridges and witches, respectively.
“Demon” is much more ancient, deriving from the ProtoIndoEuropean word meaning “to divide”. So a gathering of demons would be a Whole.
Wasn’t there some mention of communicating through time with the dead as we began the whole Shellynx story arc? I also vaguely recall mention of the little girl who died in the plasma wall in the GG backstory arc, who might be wandering around the demon realm a very angry and disturbed little entity. Or something like that.
We’re starting into a new story arc for which Shellynx’s story was merely the prolog, IMHO. That story seems to be centering around Tina 2.1, her missing soul, Conny, Shellynx, and OTB. Supporting characters look to be The Shadow Girl with the hell hounds, Euryale, Jin, and Monica. Phix will have a major role, I think.
But who knows? I was wrong all the time in my predictions about Errant Story…
-JRS
Aaand my mind is blown… Even I didn’t think of that and I honestly should have, clearly I’ve been out of the game for far to long if I missed a detail like that.
I don’t think anyone who has posted here today has said that they saw this one coming.
Paul did it again 🙂
What has amazed me, is how well these bootlegger-turn surprises have been engineered, story-telling-wise.
They aren’t the classic “contradict what was said before” retcons, nor do they seem to be arbitrary plot lurches. They really feel like pieces of the big puzzle that were present all along… we just didn’t see them. Sort of a Purloined Letter / Chekhov’s Gun all in one. In the present case, Connie’s nature and Tina 1.0’s fate have been open issues for quite a while, but we didn’t see that the “negative space” of these two adjoining bits, made up one new piece in the puzzle as now seems may be the case.
I can’t recall another author as good at this… I imagine it must require some fiercely detailed advance planning and plotting to pull it off. Perhaps there’s an occasional tactical advantage to being one who is dealing with OCD, as Paul recently said he is?
It’s sure not boring to be on the receiving end of these revelations, even if it’s quite mindblowing at times. It’s like suddenly realizing that China is bigger than you believed, that Vietnam never really existed, and that every Trinh you know is Wong.
(drops a tin-plated exposition into the Pun Jar… hey, it’s a family heirloom)
Or else an endlessly inventive author, who loves convoluted stories, and leaves hooks for later development and use.
Are you sure you don’t have a jeweled Chinese Finger trap, a la the Addams Family, to toss in? You know, it’s good to keep your Han in.
Those are some of the best solo amusements.
jwhouk @ October 30 2009:
“The little girl is out. And I’m still betting that it’s Tina’s soul.”
jwhouk has been too modest!
Close link. Just in case.
That’s part of it, I think. Connie is outside of all of their recognized categories, and their traditional rules of behavior simply don’t fit. She now seems to be a three-way hybrid… demon, human soul, and human-sphinx. If sphinxes are big on the concept of Law, and they can’t figure out a precedent for dealing with Connie which wouldn’t break one of their own codes (e.g. not harming a human soul, as you say), they could be stuck… unable to act.
With the way that CG is very , um… Vocal… about her disapproval of the situation, i’ll bet that that’s her reason for still looking (and acting) like she did when she got created… she herself has a guilty conscience over what happened to Tina 1.0, (if that’s possible?) and it’s that ?trauma? / PTSD that’s preventing her from progressing to the same mental age/body image as Shelly herself is now. remember how long it took Shelly to finally let go of the anger and pain of her mom’s passing… i think that in the next few weeks CG will finally release the anger and pain of Tina 1.0’s passing (and what part she played in that event) and voop! she’ll look and act much more mature, ie. just like Shelly’s currently acts…
You know that in 80K years a person could recover from PTSD even if she was just an agglomoration of personal daeons held together with a soul from another person.
Wow, it took three days, but I just read it from end to end… an amazing journey and fabulous art. Thank you for taking my mind to places I never thought I’d see!
*end gushing*
Ain’t it great? I agree, thanks Paul! A little Wapsi in the morning makes the real world that much more bearable. And the comments with all the speculation, gesticulation, and efforts to reduce the obfuscation are at times just as entertaining! Kudos to all!
And the books help it make even more sense! Get thee hence to:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/pablowapsi
and purchase forthwith, that thy may further enjoy and cross reference the ongoing saga!
I admit that I am *really* confused about what’s going on right now ;^^
Aren’t we all? And I even wonder about Paul sometimes.
any one else notice that shelly is kind of taking joy in playing with the “demon’s” guilt? she is genuinely upset that she blocked tina from coming back into her body, and shelly just keeps going
I don’t think it’s a sick pleasure, but rather more a sense of self-satisfaction as she works towards an answer – much like how her mentor (Phix) does the same thing, with very similar facial expressions to boot.
So, let me get this straight.
Phix and Shelly forge Connie using Tina 1.0’s loose soul as a flux and Monica’s glyph heat?
Then Nudge, acting as a catalyst, barely bonds together Tina 2.0 using demons as a substitute for Tina’s missing soul.
Then Phix extracts Nudge creating Tina 2.1?
Whoa… Just thought of something… If Tina’s soul was blocked then it remained on Earth… Maybe it had to find somewhere to dwell, and the only place it could find was… her Muneca del Dia de los Muertos, which is why Tina 2.0/2.1 was talking to it?
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/yet-to-do/
Your supposition is as good as any I’ve seen. Interesting possibility.
As I learned in an old Batman comic that any representation of a person, if done too exactly, crosses magical realms and damage done to one does it to the other. If that’s the case, then a representation of a person may also be enough to hold a soul…
Yeah, I’m reaching, but hey, it’s Batman.
Perhaps it’s a kind of quantum existence, occupying all of them and none of them at the same time until acted upon.
Even a living memory could be counted as such an “image”, so, in a way, none of us have truly left this earth until we are forgotten.
Oh, that question was answered back in 1953.
If there are multiple waxworks of a person available, the soul naturally travels to the one having the greatest Price.
madame tussauds had better look out, then…. 😮
Actually the thought that popped in my head was from Harry Potter. The part where Harry looks at his trading card of Dumbledore again and the face is gone.
“Where’d he go?”
“Well, you can’t expect him to hang around all day, now, can you?”
Along with what SWM and Dave said, there was a specific reference (by Phix, I think, but might have been Shelly) to the other sphinxes not knowing how to classify Connie and as a result just staying away from her because her mere existence was worrisome for them.