@illiad – I’ll never been intentionally hit in the boob…and I know it hurts like a beast. 😛 I’m just saying that they can be weapons in and of themselves (imagine someone being a little too close by during that braless pirouette and wonder how hard a smack to the head or body that would be).
But I don’t think Monica was complaining about her knees hurting. Of course, depending on how delayed the pain was, Monica might be able to retaliate first.
hm, good question about delayed reaction… if you punch something, you are prepared for it… dunno about the bust.. some may be less/ more sensitive??
consider ‘busty heart’ on xfactor.. 😀 😀
But then it maybe mostly silicon, or a good padded bra!! 🙂
With all due respect, that was not the case when Yoda and Dooku went the rounds. Every time I see that bit I think of a grasshopper on crack, and I suspect Creepy Girl could get medieval on Monica’s ass if she wanted to.
illiad is right…just refer back to the comic where Monica poited Shelly to the Library (I think that’s where they went). There was some serious compression going on when she stood up against someone else…and I can guarantee she’d have been in one of her super-bras since they’d been out in public.
Probably due to the connection hinted back during Nudge’s human-form reveal, that Nudge was the coyote that helped trigger Shelly’s spirit quest and created her companion.
Nudge never really was given much of a chance to talk back then (thanks to both Shelly and Tina), so if Nudge ever had any actual plan for Shelly we’re yet to see it. And now that Shelly’s aged another 80,000 years and ‘grown’ into a legitimate Sphinx, I’m sure that puts a kink in any such plan.
So, in short, I have no idea. (>^_^)>
Unrelated: Yeah, first time back since the Calendar Machine ark. Nice to see the strip still going strong.
Nudge may have, indeed, been manipulating this ever since the vision quest. Perhaps on orders from someone else as she indicated during the big punch out.
Is this an earlier Nudge? The Nudge we know wears clothes now, last time we checked.
Oh, and we now know for sure she can poit. Unless someone else poited her there.
I was wondering if it was a later nudge – don’t her horns seem to be considerably longer than the last time we saw her in this form? (Or am I just misremembering?)
i only recently got the demon-calender-room-story-arc
from reading the comments 😛
thats ages ago. year ago?
so even if it takes you a couple of hours its gotta be quicker than 365 days 😀
only trouble is .. the brain may implode before it finishes.
my brain was having trouble with it and i was getting it in small doses. (one 400comment page a day)
Nudge claimed to be acting under orders when she manipulated Shelly’s vision quest – someone suggested the other day that those orders might have come from older Shelly. An interesting possibility…
She’s not. I’m guessing she is concerned about CG. Nudge was the one that lured Shelly into the woods for her vision quest so Nudge would have been there when CG was “born”.
One has to wonder does Nudge live inside or outside the loop like Phix does. If she does then she knows Selly has not returned from previous visits to the forest and had doubts about this loops visit. The question is why? Could Nudge feel guilt about the vision quest? Could she actually have been a friend to Shelly in the past? Why would a trickster even care? Typical Paul. Nothing but more questions.
Yeah, I’m going with Shelly telling Nudge to lead her to the vision quest so that she would create Connie and have her for the stay in the Sacred Forest.
How could this be possible? As far as I know, Shelly #57 went on the vision quest, so how would Shelly tell Nudge to go lure herself into the forest after the fact? From the context of the earlier strips in the time forest, Shellinx admits that it took a few cycles of having earlier Shellys visit before she even realized time was reversed in the time forest, so even if it were possible, it would have been too late to go back (forward in the earth sense of time) to access Shelly #57 at the time of her vision quest.
You are saying it impossible for Shelly to do something in the past while so has been in a transdimensional space for 80,000 who’s time vector is opposites of the Earth’s dimension time vector. That resulting in Shelly living through every CM cycle in reverse, and returning back the Earth dimension 1 yoctosecond later. RRRReallly?
Well, if it was possible for Shelly to realize time was moving backwards, move back up the time chain to inform Nudge to go get her younger earth self and lure her into the wild, then why couldn’t she just as easily have accelerated the 80000 years instead of having to wait and evolve into a sphinx?
My point is, that she would have had to know the time vector was reversed before meeting the first Shelly (#56), and she says here that it took her awhile to realize what was going on, i.e. the time reversal. So by the time she realized it, Shelly #57 was no longer accessible, and all the earlier Shellys are dead. In today’s comic, she explicitly says, when she dies, CG will die. Therefore, CG had to be borne of Shelly #57, which unless you convince me otherwise, was inaccessible to Shelly once she realized what was going on.
Paula ^^ was posted before your comment arrived. ‘Twas a continuation of my thought.
You are coirrect, but I will find it difficult to accept, for the reason I state above, if Shelly is indeed the one who told Nudge to lure Shelly into her vision quest.
Let us speak no more of this, we shall speak only of LOVE…
To me the biggest issue is why did the rogue queen demon gloat that a previous Brandi was responsible for it if Shelly was the one who told Nudge? Also, Nudge didn’t contradict Monica when Monica calmed down Shelly by talking about Nudge being part of multiple Brandi’s plans.
Have we given any thought to the idea that it might be Maya pulling the strings? Even trapped in the demon world she still was talking to people in the loops. Bud hinted that she had heard from her. So has Jin. Maya started this whole mess but trapped in the demon world she missed out on all the fun and games. I wonder if she is not playing an even deeper game thatn anyone suspects? This lady strikes me as someone who never does anything for one reason only.
“Awhile” is an imprecise word. Shelly 57 (Shelly Omega) would have to have become aware of her sphinx nature within a human lifetime; i.e. well within her first 1450 years. (It’s possible that she didn’t change and wasn’t told, but that would be against the likelihood of the info presented.)
Conscience (Creepy Girl) being an amalgamation of previously timeless demons may have much more information about how things play out. (Not responsible for Shelly’s death, so would keep its memories.) She’s certainly always acted that way.
Nudge has been a fugitive from the Library since at least the 6th Century BC (the century before Sophocles wrote the Oedipus plays)– therefore she’s been on Earth and stuck in the time resets, too. She didn’t like being trapped in the Library, why would a time loop appeal to her? (Her interest in demons may stem from a desire to re-access timeless states.)
Since Shelly 57 would certainly be aware of herself being a sphinx within the period of Earth 57, and likely to have learned of the reversed arrow of time in the Time Forest within that time, this only leaves the issue of how Shelly gets the information to Nudge.
…
@eschmenk
The Rogue Queen had only seen Brandi fail before. Having given up timelessness, she had become distracted from the possibilities that she herself could fail. But already the world was different than the ones she had ridden before.
Brandi 56 is the mastermind of the 57th iteration’s response to the CM resets. In previous iterations, a living Tina was being pushed around by her demons. Shelly’s demons were not Conscience, but legion. Nudge was free to do all kinds of other things while not hiding in Tina’s shell, or helping to compress Shelly’s demons.
Perhaps with those demons and tricksters neutralized, the Rogue Queen did not have enough support to prevent a rebellion at the ritual. Fewer demons would be a blind spot to the Queen, as the resets would refresh her retinue against sphinx attacks. But to subvert the agendas of select demons would be enough–indeed, they rallied to the girls’ aid.
Brandi 56 also seems to have felt it was intrinsic for Maya to be removed from the Demon World. So important that she risked her next iteration’s violence by keeping it secret until the deed was completed.
I said we should now only speak of LOVE on this thread…
But since we’re not, 😉
Yes, “awhile” can be interpreted differently…she followed “awhile” with “I kept meeting myself”, which I take to mean that the multiple meetings of herself as part of “awhile”, which of course makes it impossible to go back and send Nudge to fetch the younger earthly Shelly Omega…
(brag point: 1/3 of the film was filmed on location in my town, and I swear Mr. Depp rode to the set in the car next to mine every moring for a month.)
😀
No, he sat in back. My daughter (4-5 at the time) waved to him every day. The car was a black 1920s fully restored …something. Most of the cars in the film were on loan from area collectors and it was one of those. They were filming on Main St. north of the bridge, and the then-best hotel in town was on the south side. The cars were used to transport everyone from the hotel to the set. They were usually within seconds of the same time every day.
Now me–I was just driving my daughter to preschool. 😉
If you google “Oshkosh WI Public Enemies” you get a bunch of really good info; things this big are like 100-year floods. The library seems to have the most consise and well-presented info. (http://www.oshkoshpubliclibrary.org/research/publicenemies) Everyone was sad when the film company left–partly because they were gone, and partly because the city looked so much better with the set dressing. 😉 Most of that was a giant billboard hiding the alien impaler sundial, a bit of work turning a music store -back- into a Walgreens, and awnings up and down the street. Oh, and rubber cobblestones on the street itself–left an imprint for over a year.
Yep. And i’ll take it further and say that, looking back, she knew what was going to happen (what had already happened, in a sense) before it happened.
Maybe…because every time it happened before, Shelly didn’t come back. If Phix kept her in the dark about why, or if Nudge couldn’t visit Backwards Time Forest and find out for herself what was happening (probably both).
That sounds like something Phix might do as a gouge at Nudge – Lying by Omission, just to see her squirm.
That also depends on just how involved Nudge was in previous timelines. The other 56 incarnations of Shelly may have just been able to just the cross-portal due to Shelly being part-sphinx, unlike the rest of the crew.
Based upon Tina’s own comments, “the rats running the ship” hasn’t occurred in the other timelines, at least not in the same capacity as this cycle, so Nudge may or may not have ever gotten entwined with the crew in said previous cycles.
@fairportfan: Don’t forget that the previous Brandi knew that she needed Tina out of the morgue so Tina could bring the key to Minneapolis. Brandi telling Nudge to do that is very consistent with the idea that Nudge was doing everything under Brandi’s instructions.
You’ve never addressed why the rogue demon gave credit to the previous Brandi for Shelly being turned into the doorway if it was due to Shelly directing Nudge while in the Forest realm, instead.
I know that we haven’t seen any indication that Brandi is particularly competent, but Bud had no problems imagining Brandi figuring out what needed to happen.
Brandi has been smart enough to outsmart herself. We don’t just have Bud’s word, we have others’ reactions to the plan that Brandi 56 has hid from Brandi 57. The consequences of not hiding the plan from herself, or doing it poorly, were glimpsed while they were waiting for Bud to return from the Demon World. That’s the chimeric Brandi that Brandi 56 knew she had to avoid unleashing. (Also that “time before last” that Phix mentioned suggests that Brandi 55 lost it big time over the Calendar ritual.)
So she’s told herself to do craft projects and go bowling. This makes her look to the reader like a strategic welterweight, but it’s perfectly good time travel strategy. So far, Brandi has had to stay out of her own way; I’d be happy to see an instance where she can finally let her mind out into the open again.
I just found this. Assuming this is Nudge talking, I think it shows that Nudge was doing a lot more than simply hiding because she might have tipped Phix off.
@Yamara: Good point, but Brandi hasn’t shown much interest or ability with respect to fixing Jin’s problem, either. Maybe Brandi doesn’t think she could do much, therefore she doesn’t try. IDK. I would like to see more out of her, too.
I think there is a remote possibility that Brandi’s plan wasn’t really Brandi’s plan. Perhaps Nudge or someone else forged Brandi’s book and the plan was originated by Maya or someone else. That seems like a bit of a stretch, though.
What worries me more, is that this is another one of those “what timeline and/or loop did Nudge get involved besides the current one” -riddles that’s gonna change the pea that is my brain, into mashed peas ,ready to be canned… 😥 😛
If Nudge was trying to hide there or came frequently to visit, it would explain why Shelly got so many visits from the sphinxes, but OTOH, if Shelly was getting a lot of visits from the sphinxes, it might have kept Nudge away.
@Julie: It kind of dependson how free to move up and down time Nudge is. Also, Nudge, since her ‘new’ employment at the Library, may have just recently read Brandi’s Journals – which, if kept meticulously by Brandi, would say 56 times “and Shelly disappeared with the Relic, and never came back.” And Phix, just to keep the wind up in Nudge, would say nothing about visits to the Sacred Grove, and its Guardian sphinx – and Some Random Sphinx is not what Nudge wants to run into….
This is how a time paradox works. You can’t really think of one event happening before any other event because each event is dependent on setting up the events that lead up to it happening. Shelly is trapped in the time forest because when Shelly was in the time forrest she put everything into place that would trap her in the time forrest. So I think you are right the individual that told Nudge to lead Shelly astray was probably a Sphinx trapped in time forrest.
and yea i know shellinx was the first one there then 55-54-53etc but…
will try to explain this.
the first minute shelly #1 would entered the forest..shellinx would have been in the forest for 80k years
BUT time works backwards there so its possible for earth time to create something in the past for it to only appear in the future time tree forest.
My guess is that the relic would have to operate independent of the time loop the same way that Jin does. Time loops are like Möbius strips. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip
Paula–the long special where there was a space-time anomaly that was bigger in the past and smaller in the present, and all the Enterprises (and whatever ship Dr. Crusher-Picard was boss of) had to shoot the anomaly at the same relative time?
still think its great when Q takes picard to the begining of human time and the anomoly is huge and Q points out the single celled microbe and says “look look watch…ooh nothing happened.”
which is when picard realises that humans came from that single cell thingy and they’re basically doomed
I notice CG has very long hair in that strip. Much longer than Shelly’s. If anything, Shelly has now caught up with CG had all along, as opposed to the other way around. My point being CG does not change to look like Shelly but is her own entity in that regard.
CG always had the long hair that Shelly had as a little girl until Shelly used the artifact. Even though Shelly aged, CG didn’t seem to.
Both Shelly and CG returned from the tree realm with hair as long as Shelly would have had after being in the tree realm about one year or so. Perhaps Shelly switched to her sphinx form at that point, which may have stopped Shelly’s hair from growing. Perhaps it also caused a change in CG at that point which caused her hair to match Shelly’s hair length at that point. Another change in CG once she returned is that she can manifest outside Shelly now. Tessa found an earlier comment where Paul said that CG couldn’t do that at the time, so appearing outside Shelly must be another new development. That doesn’t have to be connected to her new hair length, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were.
I don’t think she has, either. Although Monica or Shelly probably told her about her. Fortunately Bud is too balanced to blast first, ask questions later, even if a nine foot tall horned creature suddenly appears right in front of her, shouting.
“Brought” her, mayhap – Bud to introduce a wild card to derail the upcoming Connie/Monica cat fight?
(While Bud has never been seen to meet Nudge as an individual, she may have been told about her, or even met her on a trip to the Library? Or somewhere else off-panel?)
few options one of the others braught her here, phik or shelly did it . or nudge did it and this is just a slip up by paul forgeting he said she couldnt
with all the forwards and back wards and sides ways that goes on here it would be a small thing to slip on
No doubt, but it’s likely a book (or books) on how to develop one’s inate natural ability to poit. Sort of like a book on developing one’s singing ability. First you need to have the gift of song. Same with shape shifting.
Originally, Monica couldn’t poit either. Then, without much introduction as to how, Monica debuted she had the ability and since then has gotten rather adept with it.
Nudge could have easily learned to poit offscreen the same way Monica did (offscreen I mean, not the same method Monica used necessarily).
I tend to think the ability to poit is built in and selective, like Shelly’s sphinxness. It just comes out with the right conditions. I’m not at all sure it can be learned as such, only refined if you already have it.
I think Phix did it for her.
The library is outside of time(loops) Maybe Nudge sensed Shelly go off the radar for a loooong time.
Thinking a bit further: Maybe, just maybe Nudge was also one of the visitors of Shellinx, they became friends, probably saw Shellinx or Pre-Sphinx Shelly, go throeuh depression, rage etc. felt pity, and was worried if she’d ever get back to the fixed time line?
Maybe (to go even further) Nudge is the one that initially brought Shelly books about shape-shifting and thanx to Nudge ,Shellinx came into being to fulfill a role that is yet to be unveiled.. 😯
oooghkay.. that is about as much speculation as I can currently muster 😆
nudge “is she back yet?”
phix “i dont know”
nudge “is she okay??”
phix “i dont know”
nudge “do you think she is okay but not back yet??”
phix “i dont know”
nudge “do you think she back but not okay?”
phix *poits nudge and glares at library* “work together you said…your fault”
Orrr;
-Nudge: I she back yet?? Is she back yet?? *nervously pacing*
-Phix: Wha? Oh ,You mean Shel-…NOW STOP THAT BLIGHTED PACING!!! You are making me nervous..
-Nudge: Buuuut..is she back Yet? I couldn’t sense her for a bit ,but there’s something off wth the time-span..
-Phix: Hm hm Indeed, bloody 81000 years of off-ness I’d say.
-Nudge: *eyes almost popping out of her head* WHAAAT???
-Phix: Are You saying You are worried that another little scheme of yours went belly-up, like the woopie cushion on my sofa? Orr the bucket of paint on the cabinet of “The comprehensive works on entomology for nit-pickers”??? Orr the “Pre-socrates for the really bored” that You booby-trapped with a spring-loaded pudding-cannon?? *glares at Nudge menacingly over her spectacles*
-Nudge: No NOOO! *indignant huffing* I like her, and I like that foul-mouthed tyke that’s with her..I just worry. There’s something wrong..
-Phix: Very well ,have a look then, I am currently on my 8056th volume of Vogon poetry, and have no patience left for Your nerve-wrecking pacing an babbling… [makes “shoo” movement with hand} *poit*
Now..where was I ? Oh Yes *starts reciting again*
“How Thregroth Browrth Iodeerd Shrammical..
“Onth Waringysht Froghost Bravogtrysh…”
“Oh How I Gorlorned Grizly Fremish….”
Ugh..This is utterly bad indeed. Is she gone? *looks around* Ah, at last *starts scratching behind her ears with her real-leg..* Aaahhh..that’s better. Hrm..and again I have to get a flea-collar. Buggered Nudge and her love for stray sphinxes with terrible personal hygiene..”
The original 1st distichon had me catatonic for a month, and killed several species of endangered insects, so I made Google translate it into mesopotamian, then in classic greek and then in Elmer Fudd -just to make sure- (hope no-one noticed the sudden black-out in Google head-quarters)
I basically took the “sting” out…..By the way, why is there a construction-crew out side, trying to remove the city? They’re kind of ugly dudes too.
That also explains why Nudge couldn’t tell Shelly that she sent Nudge to waylay her during the vision quest. It would have given away too much information which had to be kept secret for everything to work out. All she could say was “someone” sent her.
She’s either learned how to ‘poit’, or someone else sent her. Probably Phix. Who I would expect to be along directly, unless she wants to wait to see what Shelly does…
If Phix joins the party, then we will just need Jin and Brandi, and maybe Katherine and Amanda, and we’ll have the whole set. Maybe they can find a new beach and all go and spend the day relaxing and helping Shelly recall things like how to drive and what her SSN is…
What the…. and I thought Vogon poetry was about the worst thing the universe had to offer. (and by the by..the sex-pistols did the “loudly cussing while playing a band-saw in C-flat” much better. They actually couldn’t play..made it more convincing 😆 )
Yeah, Vogon poetry recited to death metal would probably be the worst…
But, um, I like Dropkick Murphies. Not all of their songs, mind you–but Fields of Athenrie and Finnigan’s Wake and Boys on the Dock are all good. Sou’Bostan, yay!
Nudge showing up. As if she felt guilty about something? I wonder how much Nudge knew about Shelly’s extended vacation. And what will Shelly’s reaction be towards Nudge? Forgiveness? Or…*ding*…Round Two?
If it is Round Two, Nudge won’t have a chance. We’ve seen what an angry sphinx (even in human form) can do to her. Hell even Tina was able to beat her down as a human.
I guess so, but that was a rather different case. Phix was able to hold onto her anger for that long because she was trapped and Nudge was at fault. Her surroundings reminded her of her grudge every waking moment. Shelly on the other hand was informed that Nudge’s actions against her were necessary, and planned by someone else, and then was trapped for 80,000 years due to circumstances that were not Nudge’s fault. Somehow, I can’t see her still holding a grudge.
personally i think revenge is a dish that is best served with potatoes and a following of cherry pie and cream for desert. After eating that you wouldn’t really CARE about the revenge 😀
Right. I’ll take my revenge medium rare. Revenge Tartare or Revenge Vichyssoise just isn’t very good. I mean what do the Klingons know? They probably eat road kill on a regular basis. Raw.
The phase “Revenge is a dish best served cold” refers to not taking an immediate action after a wrong. Such as in a western (movie) coming home and discovering your families been killed by Indians, your grabbing your gun and going to hunt those responsible down. That would be an example a hot/heated revenge, And example of a a cold revenge is taking years to get your revenge. Possible building up an elaborate revenge scheme. Or ingratiating yourself into the life of your target and then stabbing them in the proverbial back during a crisis.
I’m still hoping the Shellys that died, died only in TreeRealm and not in reality. If it goes “Shelly touches relic, falls down dead” in previous cycles, you’d think Jin would eventually prevent her touching the relic since she might need Shelly for the CM. But if it goes “Shelly touches relic, yanks back and starts shouting about meeting a Sphinx that looks like her in a place full of trees and dying there, but still lives”, then Jin might let this keep happening to try to find out what’s going on.
Unless someone told Jin what was happening and all the Shellys HAD to die…
That’s the trippy thing about those Groundhog Day-type loops. Were those really resettings, or creating actual splinter lines with a real permanent death each time? Was the Time-Wald a place for the resettings to anchor to, with a Shelly-death triggering the next go-around, or…. Actually it was, bad example.
I’m not sure all the Shelly’s died. At least not from radiation. The time forest tree in which the plutonium was hidden could only be cut down once. This is because the forest realm didn’t reset, it was continuous in the face of earth resets.
Perhaps they died of something else, like a sphinx. If every Shelly’s visit was a one-way trip, like our Shelly’s was, the forest would be up to it’s knotholes in Shellys. Possibly in sphinx form.
I don’t know why, but it seems as if everyone is trying to keep Maya out of this. Bud thought she would be of any help. In the page before that, Monica said that the relic was possibly kept secret from glyph readers, which could either be because it was being kept secret from Maya or because Maya decided that other glyph readers should keep away from it. Earlier, Jin waited until Maya was gone for the day before telling Monica that she needed help. It’s as if everyone is trying to keep her in the dark.
There are a ton of things about Maya that don’t make any sense so far. I don’t know what’s going on with her.
Despite what Bud thinks, it’s still odd, plot-wise, that no one consults Maya on anything. Even if she didn’t have all the answers, it would seem she would have a great deal of first-hand knowledge which the crew could use in filling in some of the blanks. She should be the go-to person/being in all this.
This indicates that they talked to her a least a little, but yes, it seems strange that they haven’t involved her more. It’s not even clear that whoever talked to Maya even revealed why they were asking. Jin seems to have a surprising lack of curiosity, too. If Brandi is so smart, why aren’t they using her analytical abilities? And if Brandi is so motherly, why hasn’t she ever acted like she gives a damn about Jin’s mental health? I could go on and on….
I suppose where Maya is concerned, Bud did have an opportunity to talk with her at length during the rescue from the Demom realm. It appeared she had been in there for quite a while. Perhaps years for all we know. So she may know quite a lot about what Maya does and doesn’t know about things. Also, one would assume Jin talked with her at length about that stuff as well.
Regardless, considering how she was willing to place the entire galaxy in jeopardy, creating a monster of a machine, to fix her daughter, you would think she would be in the thick of it now as well. It’s as if she just doesn’t care anymore or has given up. Perhaps it will all be made clearer later.
I forgot about Bud having had time to talk about what happened to Maya while still in the demon realm. If that’s the only time anyone but Jin talked to Maya, then no one but Jin talked to her after they realized that Jin would have problems without the calendar machine around.
I thought I remembered Monica deciding to not talk to Maya, but I couldn’t find it before. Here it is and on the next page. I have no idea why Monica wouldn’t want to talk to both Maya and Phix nor why Maya wouldn’t choose to get involved, even if Monica didn’t seek her out. BTW, I don’t remember Monica even talking to Phix about Jin after the calendar machine was destroyed.
Maybe Maya is doing something behind the scenes. I don’t know. I would like to have these things explained, too.
chances are monica might still feel a tad angry that maya pretended to be her dead aunt – created a element of doubt in her head strong enough to end up trying to make herself kill herself and be locked up as insane.
whilst jin DID save monica – it was maya teachings that made her demons able to be so powerful i suspect.
@Paula: Actually, that was her dead great-grandmother, I think. The simple fact that she really thought she had been talking to her didn’t help. People weren’t going to trust her and she wasn’t going to trust herself. I don’t think that had any other effect on the demons, though. Monica already was a porthole, which was why Maya was able to talk to her in the first place.
It could also be that Maya said things to Bud while still in the demon realm that made Bud not trust her. Perhaps Bud talked to Monica about that. All we have now are very vague statements like what Bud said in the first panel here. “Something tells me.” Thanks for all the detail! 🙄 😆
Oh, that’s right, Bud has one of those compartments too. I was thinking only Jin had one but I just remembered Brandi used to sleep in Bud’s. Better yet.
I’m pretty sure only Bud has been seen to have a belly hatch. (We still don’t know why she has one.) Maybe it’s a standard feature but she’s the only one of the three who uses it; likewise, Brandi is the only Golem Girl who hasn’t breathed fire, but she’s also never needed to.
I think that Bud’s hatch may have been created by Tepoz poiting the portal cloth into Bud. As far as I know this is the first time it was used. There needed to be a way for someone passing through the cloth to get outside Bud, I guess. In Shelly’s case, the pattern was at the surface, so a hatch wasn’t needed. I’m not sure how Tina, Bud, Maya and Monica managed to get through Shelly’s shirts, though.
That’s true. Bud is the only one who seems to have a hatch to her compartment. Anyway, revised sentence: It needs to be put in a safe and the safe needs to be put inside Bud. Which would be better than entrusting it to Jin in the first place.
Then again, it could be safer still if placed into a location without a hatch (via poiting). In that case Brandi might be the best choice.
I keep thinking of this as the obvious example of Bud’s hatch, but I’m pretty sure Eschmenk is correct about its first appearance. It’s also part of one of the best comedy sequences Wapsi Square has ever had. “Hey, look! Bananas!”
I wonder if Bud still has the hatch. It might have disappeared after the portal cloth was removed if it was merely there to allow the portal cloth to function. 😕
So did Nudge “make” CG for Shelly during the vision quest so Shelly would have a protector/companion while in the tree zone? She was good at manipulating demons. Perhaps she can shape them as well.
Right, but I’m thinking Nudge took her to near death (or even actual death) to get the demons to leave and become accessible so they could be “moulded” into CG. Shelly’s soul/sprit may have played a part as well.
Shelly simply followed Nudge on her vision quest. Shelly almost died from exposure, with Jin saving her before she did die. Nudge was, at best, only indirectly responsible for the creation of Conscience.
On the other hand, it would be mildly intreaging to watch Jin and CG argue about the technicalities of death. You know, the heart-stop versus the amount of time with no oxygen to the brain versus the possiblity of time of spirit departure… 😯
I can’t quite get a handle on Nudge.
Is she genuinely concerned about Shelly because of what she did (yet to be revealed), or is she still being the Trickster and manipulating somebody with a show of concern?
Really? Why would you think that? The last we saw, Shelly was going to try to kill her. We don’t yet know if Nudge visited her in the forest. Despite everything, I would say Phix is the closest to a friend Nudge has. Nudge certainly likes Phix: http://wapsisquare.com/comic/go-well/
I’m going with Shelly being Nudge best buds because Shelly and Tina have become good friends.
Until recently Nudge was a part of Tina.
So Nudge and Shelly are friends.
Unfortunatly Shelly didnt know this and tried to punch her lights out but well…I am unsure if Shelly really knew about Nudge before she tried.
That would be “manipulating” in quite the risky way. The 1st time she showed her face, it got a re-furbishing. NOW Shelly is a sphinx too. She probably could kill Nudge with one blow. (I doubt if demi-gods can survive be-heading..) And Tina is also still around…
Nah.. Nudge is (for a change) honest in her concern. Remember, she isn’t evil, she just happens to like a good prank. She also felt bad about the whole Phix-affair.
This whole comic has 2 running themes: Love& Redemption. very Classic. It’s found everywhere in it’s 10-year run.
With Tina and Shelly becoming friends it was Shelly and Nudge also becoming friends. (even if she beat her up later)
Nudge however looks absolutly terrified in this pannel.
Maybe the apos sphinx turned up in the forest and found shellinx missing and informed phix/nudge.
I still wonder at monicas hostility.
Perhaps she is really angry at herself at ‘letting’ this happen to her friend and is taking it out on the smallest person she can.
I hope she never babysits :p
Oh and why do peeps think phix and nudge have been working with each other on the shelly vision quest?
I seem to recall someone saying Brandi set that quest up.
I spose Brandi could have been working with nudge at the time. Who knows, maybe Tina always had contact with Nudge but nudge wasn’t as vocal in the past until she told the conglomerate to shift.
If they were working together on anything it would have to be after Phix knocked Nudge out of Tina. She was hunting for her the whole time before that.
Actually, it’s only supposition that Brandi sent Nudge to mess with Shelly’s vision quest.
All we know is that someone – someone who Nudge apparently feared/respected, from the way she told Shelly about it – told Nudge to lead Shelly astray on her quest.
I suspect that it was Shelly herself, since the reason for it appears to have been to create Connie, and we have no reason to believe that Brandi even knows about Nudge, much less Connie.
Another thing that i should have mentionedis that there are only two possible reasons to send Nudge to lead Shelly astray:
1) To kill her, get her out of the picture.
or
2) to kill her temporarily, in order to create Connie.
(1) is, i submit, unlikely to be something Brandi would want to do. It would also require whoever sent Nudge to know that Nudge existed, and we don’t know yet that Brandi knows about that, though i suspect she didn’t/doesn’t.
And (2) is unlikely to have been Brandi because of the reasons above, plus requiring the knowledge that Connie would be created.
And the only person i can think of who might want to create Connie, would know that Shelly dying on her quest would do so, and would be in a position to tell Nudge what to do before she needed to do it … would be someone either outside tim (i.e., Phix – but Phix doesn’t fit, because she’d be more likely to try to strangle Nudge than to give her errands to run) …
Or someone who knew in advance that it would happen, because for her it already had happened, in her past – which was everyone else’s future … someone who needed Connie to be created so that she wouldn’t go crazy in 80,000-plus years alone … Shelly herself.
It’s an interesting theory, but I just do not see how Shellinx would have been able to initiate a change in her own past. It smells too much like retcon, and I know you eschew that kind of thing…
Yes, time paradoxes are fun science fiction, but the mechanism by which your time travel examples are based (time belt, gate, etc.) are missing here. And Shelly did not seem to know that time was reversed in the time forest until it was too late to send Nudge to coax Shelly #57 into the wild (I commented this above as well). Hence, in the absence of a time-travel mechanism suddnely appearing, the only way to have Shelly be the one to send Nudge is a retcon.
But, regardless of the mechanism by which a person travels to the past and intervenes, the point is that it does weird things to causality. The mechanism here is not the same–certainly it’s not controllable in the same way as the examples cited–but the effect is similar in the end.
Reason #2 was real. Brandi needed Shelly to do her part. CLG helped ensure that. Maybe Shelly’s demons would have prevented that.
Reason #3 might be to keep Jin occupied so she couldn’t prevent the suicide/accident involving Monica and Tina. There could be other reasons that we haven’t been told about.
Also don’t forget that the previous Brandi was left alone with the calendar machine. Bud said that as if that were important. If we are now to understand that this wasn’t important and that the previous Brandi didn’t have amazing abilities to figure things out and didn’t act very different than the Brandi we know, that all would amount to a retcon, IMO. Yes, it could be that the characters were wrong and the obvious way to interpret things was the wrong way, which was the case with Phix’s backstory, but I wouldn’t be happy about it.
Perhaps the previous Brandi managed to somehow use the calendar machine to communicate with Shelly through the timekeeping function of the forest or maybe she used Nudge as a messenger. Who knows?
I have a candidate for a third option; Mayahuel.
She’s actually the only one sophisticated enough in Lanthian science to know that Connie could be created and we know she could reach out of the demon realm sometimes because she taught Monica to read glyphs.
Or, reason # 3) Someone knew they might need more than one doorway to the demon realm. Intended or not, Shelly’s NDE made her ‘a walking doorway’ (as previously cited).
The problem with that is that Shelly closed off the doorway immediately, as I understand it. Closing off the doorway completely is what created CLG or at least what completely separated CLG and her boiler room from the demon realm. I realize that Jin said that they were both “walking doorways”, but Paul confirmed that the reason that only Monica’s doorway needed to be locked was because Shelly had completely closed hers off. Perhaps Jin simply didn’t know that Shelly did it. Although Jin’s “rogue queen” demon gloated about Shelly’s doorway being opened thanks to previous Brandi’s “dabbling” she never talked about actually using it. She only talked about using Monica’s.
I was about to propose the opposite idea from yours, actually. Reason #3 (or #4) would have been to close Shelly’s “porthole” by opening it to a doorway that Shelly would completely close off. That overlaps with reason #2 (creating CLG), but there is more to it than that. With just a porthole open, more demons would have been able to spy on the plan, because they would have known what Shelly knew. If the rogue demons found out, that would have ruined Brandi’s plan. Apparently Bud doesn’t have demons, so there was no danger of demons finding out by spying on her.
Another possibility was that there was a danger that Maya, not knowing any better, would have done the wrong thing while communicating with Shelly. With Shelly’s porthole widened into a doorway, then completely closed, Maya was completely cut off from Shelly. She was cut off from Monica by the rogue queen demon as soon as that demon recognized the potential of the doorway.
Monica’s demons knew about the plan because they had been told somehow, but apparently they could be trusted. Apparently they were needed to manipulate Monica to do what was necessary. Monica didn’t know about the plan, though, so no other demons could find out by spying on her.
ah thought i had missed something with the brandi thing. i knew she set up somethings so when peeps said she had set up the vision quest i just took it as fact 😀
It may be more then supposition that Brandi was the one that told Nudge to get Shelly to follow her. I found his little tidbit from the archives. Jin’s Doubt telling Monica it was Brandi that figured out that certain people were doorways for demons. “And with her (Brandi) dabbling…You and Muscle Butt are now doorways,”
Yes, that’s what I’ve been referring to. I’ve been saying “rogue queen” because, although it’s one of Jin’s demons, it’s not certain that it is a doubt demon. The real issue there is not what it’s supposed to be doing as Jin’s demon; it’s the illegal activity that it’s engaging in.
I am waiting for Shelly to get into bed with her boyfriend Officer Hunkypants. THAT will be interesting, especially if her companion shows up! How to explain?
“Heh-Lo, meet my little sister. Oh, I didn’t mention her? She’s here to stay with us.”
You would think Shelly would have been a bit self concious when having sex since CG would be there as well. Maybe we’ll find out Justin has a CG (creepy guy) as well. He can give them money for the movies so he and Shelly can be alone.
Ooh. I like that! And while they’re at it , they could also scare away that strange man with the long coat that hangs around at the playground very effectively….. 😛
My guess is that right next to Nudge we will find Phix, who’s just a tad calmer. But they both know about Shelly’s long stay in the tree-zone and are worried if she indeed came back with her wits about and body intact, after all we saw her being disoriented at first.
Y’know, I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I mean, this right here is more conversation and social interaction all at once than Shelly has had in 80 millennia. It’s like an impromptu Welcome Back party, except everyone’s more confused than anything else. All of a sudden she’s back on Earth, after literally ages of being stuck in a lonesome planescape watching a tree. Any second now she’s going to have some kind of freak out. She’ll be calmly answering questions regarding her mental state when BOOM! “HOLY GOD I NEED ALCOHOL! GET ME ALCOHOL AND FRENCH FRIES AND TELEVISION AND MEN AND SEX AND ROCK MUSIC AND WALKS IN THE PARK AND THE INTERNET AND RECREATIONAL DRUGS AND POLITICS AND MAIL AND COMFY SWEATERS AND PONIES AND SIMON PEGG MOVIES AND AND AND AND AND” you know, that sort of thing.
Maybe. But “the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” This is Shelly’s past. And while she’s recognized her ancient friends, and remembers their importance and their sacrifices, Earth may be as alien to Shelly as revisiting a foreign country as an adult that you only recall from earliest childhood.
And seriously, Shelly and the internet? Even if she did snap back to tween anger mode, that’s not exactly a love affair to last across the eons…
ah but that was in 2005
september 2006 facebook went global (according to yahoo answers
the whole answer is
US high schools could sign up from September 2005, then it began to spread worldwide, reaching UK universities the following month.
As of September 2006, Facebook was opened to the general internet public, ie. anyone with an email address who was 13 years or over.
*looks nervously around * Uuuhh.. ohhkay.. Now please sit down and have a cofee eclaire..people are starting to think that the confusion-corner has been reserved by the local loony-bin for their yearly day-out… 😆
But Yeah..must be nice to have a right prediction once in a while…[snif].. Tina *meek voice* can I have another Latte, I am gonna sulk for a bit… 😛
i think they might think that about confusion corner anyway what with our talk of multiple shellys. the wars between 56 and 57. real or imaginary planes of existance. etc 😀
aww you’ve been right LOADS jay-em 🙂
most people have here tbh 😀
just i was wingeing yesterday bout never getting anything right ^^
It did trigger a couple of small earth-quakes in Turkey though. (Just got a message from a friend of mine that lives in Antalya..)
You sure You’re not a golem?
DAAAWWWW.. nudge is worrieeeeed.. She is so worried that she didn’t even take the time to change into her guman-shape. Guess she still feels terrible about having lead young Shelly to her death.. pluuuuss…Apparently Nudge knows Shell’s been missing in action for quite some (parallel) time, and seems to consider Shelly still a friend ,despite the row at Mucho Mocha.
No, I think it’s the same length as when she first returned. It actually looked quite a bit shorter when she sat down with the towel around her, but I don’t think that was intentional.
CG’s hair is shorter than it always used to be, though. Also, she is now visible to other people.
I was going to say something after 300 comments, but then I found yours.
Just another feather in Paul’s writing cap that the usual wolf-whistlers are all arguing about time travel and long term relationships instead of hooting about the topless Shelly in panel one.
This may be something she’ll have to get used to again.
Bud: You have to wear clothes out of doors. Shelly: Oh– yeah. Sorry. I knew that. Thanks. Bud: Just repaying it forward.
This last couple of weeks has been so awesome I forgot to read Girl Genius this week O.O
I’m now totally addicted to Wapsi.
Oh, Has anyone considered that time running backwards might mean Nudge was also one of Shelly’s visitors?
With that said, gonna be funny if Shelly grabs Nudge for a big “OMG there you are! I’m back!” hug.
Well, yeah – it’s one of the things that i considered in proposing that it was Shelly herself (in her sphinx form) who told Nudge to lead her astray on her vision quest.
As things develop, I’ll be most interested to see who knew what, and when. Although with this time paradox thing running, as was mentioned above, it may be another “By his Bootstraps” thing when there really is no identifiable point in time that this whole event began. *tilt*
To those who wander this strange place called ‘the internet’ or sometimes the ‘interweb’ Brain bleach is a truly vital thing. Second only to tea and biscuits with friends.
Although the American-English and English languages use the same word for biscuit to refer to two distinctly different modern edible foods, early hard biscuits (North American: cookies), were derived from a twice-baked bread, whereas the North American biscuit is similar to a savoury European scone.
however just to confuse you .. we have biscuits and cookies…
SoWhyMe, the American biscuit is pretty close to the British scone – but the Brits are baffled that anyone would pour gravy on a scone and have it for breakfast.
Well, luckily scones and clotted cream are the same allover the world (hmmm..scones..warm, fresh from the oven.. :drool: )
Over here (mainland Europe) a biscuit is a cookie too. The larger ones are called “San Francisco’s” here. It’s those darn Yanks that insisted on cutting all ties with GB, and to confuse the rest of the world, adopted different Gallons, different biscuits, different MPG-ratings, forgot all about metrics, use different toma(h)to’s, different neighbo(u)rs, different colo(u)rs and on, and on… 😉
😆
i’ve always wondered what US call your female underwear?
i mean in england we call them knickers and pants (unless you describe the type in which case tanga thong etc) but in us pants seem to be err trousers?
first time i heard ‘take your pants off’ in an american sitcom it ment something completly different to me in a jaw-dropping kind of way. I think it was on ‘family ties’ also so .. yea.
@Paula: US definitions
*Pants=the outer layer of cloth on the legs. Trousers are usually thought of as suit-pants only.
*Underwear, panties, tighty-whities, boxers, briefs, & “commando”= generic to specific, worn against the skin, under the pants. Panties are for girls; the rest are guys’, and “commando” is none at all.
*Trunk of car=storage compartment in back
*cookies=sugary treats that are usually rather hard, kind of like cake but gummier.
*biscuits=bread made of the same stuff as pancakes, but mixed to be drier, and not sweet. Often crumbly. Enjoyed with gravy mostly in the south, and the gravy is usually very meaty and spicy. (Not on my yum list, btw.)
Edit: Biscuits & gravy = not on my yum list. Biscuits themselves are, though. My mom used a recipe like this (substitute butter for shortening) when I was little.
hmm
thinking on it we have panties also.
but i’ve always taken them to be the flimsy sort.
heh our car trunk is called a boot.
which is why its a ‘car boot’ and not just a boot
since we have a type of footwear ALSO called a boot.
wonder why its trunk however.
trunk refers to the end of a persons behind (too much junk in the trunk) or a car ‘boot’
but its also the nose of an elephant.
yknow if we actually met extraterresteral-aliens and tried to explain the english language to them followed by the american/english language…chances are they would distroy the planet from being annoyed with us 😛
hard enough in my home town where belvoir is prounced ‘beaver’
Heh. Half the towns in Wisconsin are either French or Native names that nobody says right, but which are fun to say anyway. Like Wauwatosa and Oconomowoc. 😉
A bust of Nudge??? Hmmm…*pondering* Maybe I’ll put my years in Academy of Fine Arts into practice, and make me one.. Haven’t done any sculpting for a loong time.
Nudge has quite interesting visuals…hmmm…*scratching chin ,already making design in head*
Aaand to show what’s possible with the cheapest paper-clay and some paint:
Yup, home-made with paper clay (called “Darwi” overhere. I cannot work with Fimo, and wax & bronze-casting is a bit too expensive)over metal-wire skeletons. Painted with acrylics.
Had my teacher in sculpting-class scratch his head. It wasn’t exactly according to his vision of “sculpting” yet wasn’t as kitchy as Jeff-Koons-junk too.. Teachers at art-school are a bit like sphinxes. They too fear things they cannot comprehend.
Pffft.. the “innovative spirit” of artistry -at least at an academy-of-arts- level, is highly overrated.
Buut, to be fair, I passed with flying colours.
PS. I am already constructing Nudge’s skeleton. I go for Shy-Nudge-with over-bite. overbite It’s sooo cuuute..)
My compliments. Those are very nice. I’m sure everyone here is anxiously awaiting the results of your skill in creating a Nudge bust (a Nust?). Wapsi fans may just press you to make a mold and duplicate them for sale. If not you, perhaps you could pass off the task to an enterprising soul you know.
Thanx for the compliments.
I pondered the bust for a while, but went for the full figure. It’s going to be about 10 inch= for a 9-something foot Nudge, about 11th scale.
Bigger would be problematic for the material I use.
Hmm..maybe I’ll post links of the progress. Lemme mull on that for a while.
And Yes, it will only be for myself. I do not want to get in the quagmire of copyright-law and such.. 😉
Yeah, she is. As I’ve said quite a few strips ago, Shelly is Ah-day Mah-tawn, “Only Girl” in Comanche. When you’re the only in the family, boy or girl, you tend to be brought up a little bratty. So CG is that part of Shelly.
Although, if the kid is treated special, despite having brothers and sisters, sometimes “ah-day” is used derisively. We’ve all known the type.
I don’t know about anybody else, but I wouldn’t be all that surprised if Bud looks at Nudge with a peculiar look on her face, then yells, “STINKY?” Their personalities seemed to be rather similar, anyway. If not that, I wouldn’t be surprised if Nudge somehow helped Bud find the artifact.
Phix is the one to defined Nudge as a trickster. Nudge has always claimed to be more than than just a mischievous trickster. Being able to physically toss submarines around is another thing, though.
If that were Nudge, it might explain the fin that octopuses aren’t supposed to have and the surprisingly long apparent life.
Sorry, not buying it — we only just recently had a scene wherein Nudged researched the method of shapeshifting, and did so for the first time. If I weren’t so tired, I would find and link to it. It was just before Tina beat the snot out of her.
You probably meant this page. I must be reading that page differently than you. I think she was merely talking of having difficulty impersonating humans well enough, rather than not being able to shape shift at all. How could she have appeared as a coyote to Shelly if she couldn’t shape shift? How would she know where her skills were relatively weak if she hadn’t done it before?
IIRC, you were the one to point out that real octopuses don’t have the fin that Stinky had. Assuming that Paul knows what octopuses look like, that may have been an intentional clue.
Tina rather notably defines her as a trickster here, and Nudge cops to being able to appear as Coyote, the quintessential NA trickster.
I believe Nudge was merely defending the ethics of tricksterdom while being waled on by Phix. She reveals truths, but it is not always what the seeker wishes to find. (Oedipus, you’ll note, came up in that conversation.)
Yes, but Nudge told Monica that she was protecting her and being a guardian goes well beyond the role of a trickster. Two pages earlier, Tina/Nudge seemed to be vacuuming some sort of blackness out of Monica (Paul hinted that it wasn’t going the other way). Also, on April 7-8, 2010, the collective complained that Nudge was too quick to try to rescue people and Nudge defined herself as a “not-so-subtle nudge that folks need from time to time.” That doesn’t sound like a trickster, either.
I think Tina was just so angry that she said what was going to get Nudge in the most trouble with Shelly. It was true, but not the whole truth.
Actually, all that is very tricksterly. Including, standing myself corrected, moving the sub–a lot of these gods would move rivers and mountains when it suited them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster
Paul’s comment regarding the ink squiggles between Monica’s pants and Tina’s hand on 2010.04.19 is actually a model of trickster unrevealingness: “You’re assuming it’s coming from Tina and not being attracted to her. ;)” Note those squiggles also lead separately up to his signature! I think those are just artistic license to create mood, until we see otherwise. Paul’s bordered Tina with flowers on a previous occasion, and I don’t think that meant they were literally growing around her.
But reviewing those pages makes me wonder something new: Why did Nudge give out her name then? (Shelly even underscores this on 2010.04.27, with sarcasm.) I think she wanted to get caught and returned to the Library under the appearance of duress; she certainly seems to be happy there.
Well, I guess it depends on what kind of trickster. I tend to think of tricksters as causing mischief merely for the fun of it. Nudge has been purposeful and not all that tricky when we’ve see her. To me, that amounts to being more than a trickster, but sometimes mythological tricksters did that.
I think the blackness in the scene I mentioned was symbolic and represented the negativity that Phix was removing from Monica. Monica was overall much more eager to help Jin afterward, although she still wasn’t that consistent while she talked with Shelly.
I’m not sure if Nudge actually wanted to be caught or just cared less. If she was assigned a role to play with respect to the calendar machine, that role was over.
locked-in-demons (i presume like tina) and apos are very similar.
they both like things to be in their right place and how it always is.
very odd.
perhaps this is why demons (like monica doubt) and apos don’t get along. non-locked demons would run riot given the chance, changing their minds each second.
I don’t think that’s it at all. That was in the past. I think Nudge’s expression just means that she is concerned for Shelly’s well-being. It matches what she is saying.
That doesn’t mean that she will get a friendly reception, though. They will have new reasons to be pissed at Nudge if Nudge knew what would happen and even more if Nudge helped bring it about.
Personally, I’d like to see CG go after Nudge, given that Nudge is 9 feet tall. 😆
Actually, that’s a sting, but people call it a rimshot. A true rimshot involves the drummer hitting the rim and head of a drum simultaneously. You might have been thinking of rimfire ammunition, which sometimes is loaded with shot.
Ya know it makes sense… Phix and Nudge would not know of this until after it happened… and with time going backwards they could do full on visits for 80,000 years and never have a clue before Shelly started and thus this is the first time they have to talk to the rest. Maybe?
My guess is that Nudge felt Shelly die and even if she knew it was going to had happened it still freaked her out.
And as for the Shellimental, finally, someone shorter than Monica! So if someone says ‘pick on someone your own size’ she doesn’t have to look to Deitzel!
Several people have speculated that the previous Brandi’s plan was really thought up by Maya from the demon realm or Shelly from the forest realm. I actually thought of the possibility of Maya myself. However, Brandi and Bud considered the idea that Brandi’s book wasn’t really written by Brandi and rejected it. It’s possible, I suppose, for Nudge to have forged Brandi’s book very cleverly or for Brandi to have cooperated with either Maya or Shelly, but those ideas seem like a long shots to me.
i wonder if they actually did
i mean to work with brandi they would have had to have the ‘real’ tina working with brandi
i wonder if it was brandi who got the first tina to go against her father. or was she doing that anyway and in the process met Brandi who let her know that what she was doing wouldn’t matter in the long run but she has the chance to save millions of lives.
Would love to know tina’s story. the full enchalada
or maybe even shelly met her.
possible being in a band would have made her a target for drug pushers who ‘may’ have been working for tina’s father.
so many scenarios but since Tinademons had to come to the twin-cities i suspect she didn’t live there previously and Shelly is the only one i know who goes outside the city.
unless the guy whos joke monica had to laugh at was actually a drugs baron.
However, you may be right. On August 28, 2009, in the “underjinsnose” strip, Shelly says that Brandi’s book says that Tina had been working with a past Brandi. That could mean the full Tina 1.0, not just her demons. However, Shelly also said that Brandi worked with demons a couple of sentences later.
I’m not sure about what you are talking about in the other comment. I vaguely remember Monica faking laughs at some sort of benefit or party held at the museum, but that’s all.
Which makes me wonder, did any of the various incarnations of the crew get sucked into the demon realm? If so, it seems to me they would still be there since they would be outside time and the CM resets.
Another 355 posts. You know, there are only about a half dozen or so posters who create 90% or more of the posts here. I’m beginning to wonder if we’re not overdoing it a bit?
Aaaaaaaaannnnd……
…here’s Nudge.
So, any bets on whether Nudge is talking about Shelly, or Connie?
who’s connie?
CLG
Nudge is back! And looking very frazzled!!
She had to come in hunched over because she’s 9 feet tall.
Why do I have a feeling that Nudge’s arrival will do a lot more harm than good?
Guess a lot depends on whether Tina’s done freaking out, or if Nudge’ll take her up a notch. Hope there aren’t any freshly painted walls nearby! 🙂
She just had to horn in.
Just had to ram that in, didn’t ewe?
Looks like Phix did visit her in the past from now. And apparently let it slip to Nudge.
Phix and Nudge have clearly known one another for a very long time, and worked together to the point of… conspirators, maybe?
CG and M look like they’re ready to throw down again.
We can but hope.
My money’s on M. Since they are about the same height, the difference will come from… ummmm… let’s call it “reach” 🙂
Are you saying that Connie won’t be able to get close enough to Monica to throw any effective punches?
The punches don’t have to hit her head to be effective.
Yes, but comfortably so 😛
Actually, he’s saying that Monica … sticks far enough out that Creepy Girl doesn’t have to get as close.
Casey: I think M is experienced enough to protect them… do not underestimate ‘short’ girls, they make up for it in strength!! 🙂
Protect them? If you’re talking about her rack then your statement should be “I think M is experienced enough to use them as weapons.” 😛
so never been punched there then?? ref:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/braless-pirouettes
OTOH:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/05122005/
@illiad – I’ll never been intentionally hit in the boob…and I know it hurts like a beast. 😛 I’m just saying that they can be weapons in and of themselves (imagine someone being a little too close by during that braless pirouette and wonder how hard a smack to the head or body that would be).
I was hit in the head by an unrestrained G-cup once. No concussion, but I did see stars. And sprained my neck, too.
But I don’t think Monica was complaining about her knees hurting. Of course, depending on how delayed the pain was, Monica might be able to retaliate first.
its possible she still has her bikini on under that t-shirt. i don’t think they have as much construction as her bra do 🙂
urm
^– was sposed to be tagged on at the end of the comments. not randomly in the middle..
hm, good question about delayed reaction… if you punch something, you are prepared for it… dunno about the bust.. some may be less/ more sensitive??
consider ‘busty heart’ on xfactor.. 😀 😀
But then it maybe mostly silicon, or a good padded bra!! 🙂
With all due respect, that was not the case when Yoda and Dooku went the rounds. Every time I see that bit I think of a grasshopper on crack, and I suspect Creepy Girl could get medieval on Monica’s ass if she wanted to.
Considering past comments regarding the construction of Monica’s bras, CG might find herself hitting something that feels like armor plating.
hm, yes.. but it is surely designed for ‘tension’ strength, not compression from outside??
illiad is right…just refer back to the comic where Monica poited Shelly to the Library (I think that’s where they went). There was some serious compression going on when she stood up against someone else…and I can guarantee she’d have been in one of her super-bras since they’d been out in public.
OK. I guess I have to bring it up since I haven’t found mention of it by any one else yet.
PURPLE NURPLES !!!
Just saying, ALL of us VUNERABLE !!!
OTOH, Tina said that Monica’s cups felt like a combat helmet.
Turns out we were right regarding the demon hunters fearing something they cannot understand. But why is Nudge so concerned about Shelly?
Probably due to the connection hinted back during Nudge’s human-form reveal, that Nudge was the coyote that helped trigger Shelly’s spirit quest and created her companion.
Nudge never really was given much of a chance to talk back then (thanks to both Shelly and Tina), so if Nudge ever had any actual plan for Shelly we’re yet to see it. And now that Shelly’s aged another 80,000 years and ‘grown’ into a legitimate Sphinx, I’m sure that puts a kink in any such plan.
So, in short, I have no idea. (>^_^)>
Unrelated: Yeah, first time back since the Calendar Machine ark. Nice to see the strip still going strong.
if nudge had this planed how do you know her being how do you know this isnt how she planed it to turn out
Nudge may have, indeed, been manipulating this ever since the vision quest. Perhaps on orders from someone else as she indicated during the big punch out.
Is this an earlier Nudge? The Nudge we know wears clothes now, last time we checked.
Oh, and we now know for sure she can poit. Unless someone else poited her there.
pretty sure its our nudge she was just into big a hurry to remeber to change shapes
I suppose Nudge like Phix can choose how she wants to appear. Either clothed and demi-human or in her natural state.
Another blanket please Bud.
Why? She has her fur.
Ah well, Casy just pointed out where Paul had said Nudge can’t point, so someone else did point here there.
This also means there is a 9 feet tall Nudge in Monica’s living room. Hopefully she has 10 feet ceilings.
I was wondering if it was a later nudge – don’t her horns seem to be considerably longer than the last time we saw her in this form? (Or am I just misremembering?)
Hope you’re read and caught up. Otherwise, you have really been missing out.
I am. In Tina fashion, I got myself a cup of tea, a pet on my lap, and sat in front of my laptop reading the last missed year’s worth of strips.
welcome back 😀 make sure you read the comments of the most recent arc … it will frazzle your brain but bring you up to speed very quick 😀
Paula: Bring you up to speed very quickly??? How quick is it to read 200++ comments per page?? 😉
i only recently got the demon-calender-room-story-arc
from reading the comments 😛
thats ages ago. year ago?
so even if it takes you a couple of hours its gotta be quicker than 365 days 😀
only trouble is .. the brain may implode before it finishes.
my brain was having trouble with it and i was getting it in small doses. (one 400comment page a day)
Nudge claimed to be acting under orders when she manipulated Shelly’s vision quest – someone suggested the other day that those orders might have come from older Shelly. An interesting possibility…
She’s not. I’m guessing she is concerned about CG. Nudge was the one that lured Shelly into the woods for her vision quest so Nudge would have been there when CG was “born”.
One has to wonder does Nudge live inside or outside the loop like Phix does. If she does then she knows Selly has not returned from previous visits to the forest and had doubts about this loops visit. The question is why? Could Nudge feel guilt about the vision quest? Could she actually have been a friend to Shelly in the past? Why would a trickster even care? Typical Paul. Nothing but more questions.
I’m still holding out for Shelly being the one who told Nudge to lead her astray all those years ago.
Ohhhhhhh…. Nice! Hadn’t thought of that.
Hmm, been thinking that too. Apparently Brandi isn’t the only one who leaves herself crosstime sticky notes.
Yeah, I’m going with Shelly telling Nudge to lead her to the vision quest so that she would create Connie and have her for the stay in the Sacred Forest.
But I’ve got a bad track record for predictions.
You’ve got a great track record for predictions! You make them by the hundred!
Oh … you mean, correct predictions …
Come to think about it, I have to agree. Either that or Phix has her paws in it rather deeper than we are lead to believe… *scratches chin*
How could this be possible? As far as I know, Shelly #57 went on the vision quest, so how would Shelly tell Nudge to go lure herself into the forest after the fact? From the context of the earlier strips in the time forest, Shellinx admits that it took a few cycles of having earlier Shellys visit before she even realized time was reversed in the time forest, so even if it were possible, it would have been too late to go back (forward in the earth sense of time) to access Shelly #57 at the time of her vision quest.
You are saying it impossible for Shelly to do something in the past while so has been in a transdimensional space for 80,000 who’s time vector is opposites of the Earth’s dimension time vector. That resulting in Shelly living through every CM cycle in reverse, and returning back the Earth dimension 1 yoctosecond later. RRRReallly?
Well, if it was possible for Shelly to realize time was moving backwards, move back up the time chain to inform Nudge to go get her younger earth self and lure her into the wild, then why couldn’t she just as easily have accelerated the 80000 years instead of having to wait and evolve into a sphinx?
RRRReallly…
i think nerf means
if you gonna stretch your mind to believe one thing – might as well encompass everything 😀
My point is, that she would have had to know the time vector was reversed before meeting the first Shelly (#56), and she says here that it took her awhile to realize what was going on, i.e. the time reversal. So by the time she realized it, Shelly #57 was no longer accessible, and all the earlier Shellys are dead. In today’s comic, she explicitly says, when she dies, CG will die. Therefore, CG had to be borne of Shelly #57, which unless you convince me otherwise, was inaccessible to Shelly once she realized what was going on.
Paula ^^ was posted before your comment arrived. ‘Twas a continuation of my thought.
You are coirrect, but I will find it difficult to accept, for the reason I state above, if Shelly is indeed the one who told Nudge to lure Shelly into her vision quest.
Let us speak no more of this, we shall speak only of LOVE…
To me the biggest issue is why did the rogue queen demon gloat that a previous Brandi was responsible for it if Shelly was the one who told Nudge? Also, Nudge didn’t contradict Monica when Monica calmed down Shelly by talking about Nudge being part of multiple Brandi’s plans.
Have we given any thought to the idea that it might be Maya pulling the strings? Even trapped in the demon world she still was talking to people in the loops. Bud hinted that she had heard from her. So has Jin. Maya started this whole mess but trapped in the demon world she missed out on all the fun and games. I wonder if she is not playing an even deeper game thatn anyone suspects? This lady strikes me as someone who never does anything for one reason only.
@txmystic
“Awhile” is an imprecise word. Shelly 57 (Shelly Omega) would have to have become aware of her sphinx nature within a human lifetime; i.e. well within her first 1450 years. (It’s possible that she didn’t change and wasn’t told, but that would be against the likelihood of the info presented.)
Conscience (Creepy Girl) being an amalgamation of previously timeless demons may have much more information about how things play out. (Not responsible for Shelly’s death, so would keep its memories.) She’s certainly always acted that way.
Nudge has been a fugitive from the Library since at least the 6th Century BC (the century before Sophocles wrote the Oedipus plays)– therefore she’s been on Earth and stuck in the time resets, too. She didn’t like being trapped in the Library, why would a time loop appeal to her? (Her interest in demons may stem from a desire to re-access timeless states.)
Since Shelly 57 would certainly be aware of herself being a sphinx within the period of Earth 57, and likely to have learned of the reversed arrow of time in the Time Forest within that time, this only leaves the issue of how Shelly gets the information to Nudge.
…
@eschmenk
The Rogue Queen had only seen Brandi fail before. Having given up timelessness, she had become distracted from the possibilities that she herself could fail. But already the world was different than the ones she had ridden before.
Brandi 56 is the mastermind of the 57th iteration’s response to the CM resets. In previous iterations, a living Tina was being pushed around by her demons. Shelly’s demons were not Conscience, but legion. Nudge was free to do all kinds of other things while not hiding in Tina’s shell, or helping to compress Shelly’s demons.
Perhaps with those demons and tricksters neutralized, the Rogue Queen did not have enough support to prevent a rebellion at the ritual. Fewer demons would be a blind spot to the Queen, as the resets would refresh her retinue against sphinx attacks. But to subvert the agendas of select demons would be enough–indeed, they rallied to the girls’ aid.
Brandi 56 also seems to have felt it was intrinsic for Maya to be removed from the Demon World. So important that she risked her next iteration’s violence by keeping it secret until the deed was completed.
…
@Zachariaha
Yeah. But the question in my mind is simple.
What’s Maya doing right now?
Yamara
I said we should now only speak of LOVE on this thread…
But since we’re not, 😉
Yes, “awhile” can be interpreted differently…she followed “awhile” with “I kept meeting myself”, which I take to mean that the multiple meetings of herself as part of “awhile”, which of course makes it impossible to go back and send Nudge to fetch the younger earthly Shelly Omega…
well its simple really…
‘awhile’ is slightly more than ‘in a minute’ , a lot more than ‘in a sec’ , and a lot less than ‘soon’ … 🙂
Love
personally like the Ladybird one 🙂
@Paula: President Johnson’s wife? 😉 That’s another difference. We call them ladybugs.
And look at Connie and M staring each other down XD
Neither one is going to give an inch.
Connie: *You blink*
M: *NO! You blink first!*
The tension between those two is almost palpable.
Neither has an inch to spare. (>^_^)>
Sorry, but Panel#1 emphasizes those two’s height compared to the rest. I just had to make that joke.
When did we start calling CG Connie? I missed that somewhere.
its recent
some peeps call her CLG. some (like me) creepy. some connie.
Is Nudge talking about Shelly or Tina?
Gotta be Shelly. Tina hasn’t been gone…
Maybe both. “Is Shelly back?” “Is Tina alright?
I mean, Shelly is a Sphinx now. Nudge might not have known how she would react to tina.
CG and Monica are still in a standoff, like two passive-aggressive tigers circling each other, ready to pounce with sarcasm…
you can almost hear them growling at each other 😀
sarcastic growling…
😀
which would swiftly turn into pirate impressions 🙂
Arrr you?
ya 🙂
M – Grr
C – Arrgh (like in the forest)
M grr
C arrgh
M arrgh
C arrgh
M arrr
C arrr
thats when they will bond over discussions of johnny depp 🙂
He is a much hotter pirate than a gangster.
(brag point: 1/3 of the film was filmed on location in my town, and I swear Mr. Depp rode to the set in the car next to mine every moring for a month.)
ooh
was it a limo
did he drive?
was he shaven or not?
did you get his autograph?
etc any other fangirlquestions you may make up 😀
😀
No, he sat in back. My daughter (4-5 at the time) waved to him every day. The car was a black 1920s fully restored …something. Most of the cars in the film were on loan from area collectors and it was one of those. They were filming on Main St. north of the bridge, and the then-best hotel in town was on the south side. The cars were used to transport everyone from the hotel to the set. They were usually within seconds of the same time every day.
Now me–I was just driving my daughter to preschool. 😉
If you google “Oshkosh WI Public Enemies” you get a bunch of really good info; things this big are like 100-year floods. The library seems to have the most consise and well-presented info. (http://www.oshkoshpubliclibrary.org/research/publicenemies) Everyone was sad when the film company left–partly because they were gone, and partly because the city looked so much better with the set dressing. 😉 Most of that was a giant billboard hiding the alien impaler sundial, a bit of work turning a music store -back- into a Walgreens, and awnings up and down the street. Oh, and rubber cobblestones on the street itself–left an imprint for over a year.
woot nudge
and by her reaction im going with she knows shelly just spent 80k years in the forest
Yep. And i’ll take it further and say that, looking back, she knew what was going to happen (what had already happened, in a sense) before it happened.
And she wasn’t happy about it.
Maybe…because every time it happened before, Shelly didn’t come back. If Phix kept her in the dark about why, or if Nudge couldn’t visit Backwards Time Forest and find out for herself what was happening (probably both).
That sounds like something Phix might do as a gouge at Nudge – Lying by Omission, just to see her squirm.
That also depends on just how involved Nudge was in previous timelines. The other 56 incarnations of Shelly may have just been able to just the cross-portal due to Shelly being part-sphinx, unlike the rest of the crew.
Based upon Tina’s own comments, “the rats running the ship” hasn’t occurred in the other timelines, at least not in the same capacity as this cycle, so Nudge may or may not have ever gotten entwined with the crew in said previous cycles.
Think about the timing – Tina and Monica (in the same accident) and Shelly all died on the same day.
And Nudge, having taken an active hand in things and perhaps revealed herself to Phix, needed a place to hide.
Very quick trip to the Mexico City morgue, and …
@fairportfan: Don’t forget that the previous Brandi knew that she needed Tina out of the morgue so Tina could bring the key to Minneapolis. Brandi telling Nudge to do that is very consistent with the idea that Nudge was doing everything under Brandi’s instructions.
You’ve never addressed why the rogue demon gave credit to the previous Brandi for Shelly being turned into the doorway if it was due to Shelly directing Nudge while in the Forest realm, instead.
I know that we haven’t seen any indication that Brandi is particularly competent, but Bud had no problems imagining Brandi figuring out what needed to happen.
…what Bud says here.
It seems completely inconsistent with what we’ve seen of Brandi, but I’m willing to take Bud’s word for it.
🙄 I really wish we could edit our comments. 😕
But 56 Shelly’s did in fact make the journey to the Sacred Forest.. We saw the last (first) Shelly to make the trip and die from radiation exposure.
Tina was “compelled” to come to the twin cities.
… and she felt it was important to bring the clock and key with her.
Brandi has been smart enough to outsmart herself. We don’t just have Bud’s word, we have others’ reactions to the plan that Brandi 56 has hid from Brandi 57. The consequences of not hiding the plan from herself, or doing it poorly, were glimpsed while they were waiting for Bud to return from the Demon World. That’s the chimeric Brandi that Brandi 56 knew she had to avoid unleashing. (Also that “time before last” that Phix mentioned suggests that Brandi 55 lost it big time over the Calendar ritual.)
So she’s told herself to do craft projects and go bowling. This makes her look to the reader like a strategic welterweight, but it’s perfectly good time travel strategy. So far, Brandi has had to stay out of her own way; I’d be happy to see an instance where she can finally let her mind out into the open again.
I just found this. Assuming this is Nudge talking, I think it shows that Nudge was doing a lot more than simply hiding because she might have tipped Phix off.
@Yamara: Good point, but Brandi hasn’t shown much interest or ability with respect to fixing Jin’s problem, either. Maybe Brandi doesn’t think she could do much, therefore she doesn’t try. IDK. I would like to see more out of her, too.
I think there is a remote possibility that Brandi’s plan wasn’t really Brandi’s plan. Perhaps Nudge or someone else forged Brandi’s book and the plan was originated by Maya or someone else. That seems like a bit of a stretch, though.
@NOTDilbert – Umm…but I thought Phix wasn’t aware of where Nudge was back then…or am I misunderstanding your comment?
^^That.
What worries me more, is that this is another one of those “what timeline and/or loop did Nudge get involved besides the current one” -riddles that’s gonna change the pea that is my brain, into mashed peas ,ready to be canned… 😥 😛
If Nudge was trying to hide there or came frequently to visit, it would explain why Shelly got so many visits from the sphinxes, but OTOH, if Shelly was getting a lot of visits from the sphinxes, it might have kept Nudge away.
@Julie: It kind of dependson how free to move up and down time Nudge is. Also, Nudge, since her ‘new’ employment at the Library, may have just recently read Brandi’s Journals – which, if kept meticulously by Brandi, would say 56 times “and Shelly disappeared with the Relic, and never came back.” And Phix, just to keep the wind up in Nudge, would say nothing about visits to the Sacred Grove, and its Guardian sphinx – and Some Random Sphinx is not what Nudge wants to run into….
This is how a time paradox works. You can’t really think of one event happening before any other event because each event is dependent on setting up the events that lead up to it happening. Shelly is trapped in the time forest because when Shelly was in the time forrest she put everything into place that would trap her in the time forrest. So I think you are right the individual that told Nudge to lead Shelly astray was probably a Sphinx trapped in time forrest.
i always assumed it was shelly#1 which set up the time forest.
without that 1st one entering the last wouldn’t have had to ..
kinda thing.
and yea i know shellinx was the first one there then 55-54-53etc but…
will try to explain this.
the first minute shelly #1 would entered the forest..shellinx would have been in the forest for 80k years
BUT time works backwards there so its possible for earth time to create something in the past for it to only appear in the future time tree forest.
get me?
for the star trek fans
think the next generation worm hole when the Q continum tried to distroy humanity by creating something in the future to affect the past.
My guess is that the relic would have to operate independent of the time loop the same way that Jin does. Time loops are like Möbius strips. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip
Sorry that previous comment is completely disjointed and is clearly in the wrong spot.
Paula–the long special where there was a space-time anomaly that was bigger in the past and smaller in the present, and all the Enterprises (and whatever ship Dr. Crusher-Picard was boss of) had to shoot the anomaly at the same relative time?
Yeah, I can see that working…
yup thats the one 🙂
still think its great when Q takes picard to the begining of human time and the anomoly is huge and Q points out the single celled microbe and says “look look watch…ooh nothing happened.”
which is when picard realises that humans came from that single cell thingy and they’re basically doomed
LOL!! Oh, man… it’s moments like these where I realize how much I LOVE this comic.
Great entry Nudge!! XD
Quite so. No matter how much we speculate, Paul always throws in something totally unexpected, yet related to what’s going on.
Yep. Just enough to make you go, “Wait, what?” on a regular basis. Which keeps you coming back, because it never gets old.
nah
she would have freaked out years ago if that were the case.
Tina only just mentions Shelly is shellinx a couple of strips ago.
oh for the love of…
that comment was for Proleboi
*sigh* im sure these comments move…
@Paula: Good point. 🙂
Unexpected? (gently laughs) Hindsight is always clear, isn’t it? If I’m re-reading and the following strip correctly, the rats running the ship knew Shelly was a sphinx some time ago, the implication being that they learned it from Nudge (who’d been evicted by Phix a few strips before).
Oops. I should avoid markup, methinks 🙂
So what do we call the companion? The Shellimental?
-JRS
CG which short for “Creepy Girl” is her normal moniker but lately she has been getting Connie which is short for “Conscience” as well.
We could call her SeeGee.
No. It’s Creepy Girl. Tina has the naming rights
I notice CG has very long hair in that strip. Much longer than Shelly’s. If anything, Shelly has now caught up with CG had all along, as opposed to the other way around. My point being CG does not change to look like Shelly but is her own entity in that regard.
CG always had the long hair that Shelly had as a little girl until Shelly used the artifact. Even though Shelly aged, CG didn’t seem to.
Both Shelly and CG returned from the tree realm with hair as long as Shelly would have had after being in the tree realm about one year or so. Perhaps Shelly switched to her sphinx form at that point, which may have stopped Shelly’s hair from growing. Perhaps it also caused a change in CG at that point which caused her hair to match Shelly’s hair length at that point. Another change in CG once she returned is that she can manifest outside Shelly now. Tessa found an earlier comment where Paul said that CG couldn’t do that at the time, so appearing outside Shelly must be another new development. That doesn’t have to be connected to her new hair length, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were.
Great pic of Nudge! I really love this comic!
This may throw Bud off. I don’t believe she has met Nudge as yet.
she has kinda
in tina
not outside however 🙂
but i assume shelly did tell bud about nudge when they discussed when shelly nearly killed her 😀
I don’t think she has, either. Although Monica or Shelly probably told her about her. Fortunately Bud is too balanced to blast first, ask questions later, even if a nine foot tall horned creature suddenly appears right in front of her, shouting.
I hope.
One thing worth noting. Paul said in the comments to this strip that Nudge can’t poit. So, how did she get here? Someone must have sent her, but who?
“Brought” her, mayhap – Bud to introduce a wild card to derail the upcoming Connie/Monica cat fight?
(While Bud has never been seen to meet Nudge as an individual, she may have been told about her, or even met her on a trip to the Library? Or somewhere else off-panel?)
few options one of the others braught her here, phik or shelly did it . or nudge did it and this is just a slip up by paul forgeting he said she couldnt
with all the forwards and back wards and sides ways that goes on here it would be a small thing to slip on
He said that she didn’t know how to. He did not say that she couldn’t learn.
I am sure there is an instruction book on poiting in The Library. After all, there was one on shape shifting.
No doubt, but it’s likely a book (or books) on how to develop one’s inate natural ability to poit. Sort of like a book on developing one’s singing ability. First you need to have the gift of song. Same with shape shifting.
Originally, Monica couldn’t poit either. Then, without much introduction as to how, Monica debuted she had the ability and since then has gotten rather adept with it.
Nudge could have easily learned to poit offscreen the same way Monica did (offscreen I mean, not the same method Monica used necessarily).
I tend to think the ability to poit is built in and selective, like Shelly’s sphinxness. It just comes out with the right conditions. I’m not at all sure it can be learned as such, only refined if you already have it.
I think Phix did it for her.
The library is outside of time(loops) Maybe Nudge sensed Shelly go off the radar for a loooong time.
Thinking a bit further: Maybe, just maybe Nudge was also one of the visitors of Shellinx, they became friends, probably saw Shellinx or Pre-Sphinx Shelly, go throeuh depression, rage etc. felt pity, and was worried if she’d ever get back to the fixed time line?
Maybe (to go even further) Nudge is the one that initially brought Shelly books about shape-shifting and thanx to Nudge ,Shellinx came into being to fulfill a role that is yet to be unveiled.. 😯
oooghkay.. that is about as much speculation as I can currently muster 😆
….And I just went cross-eyed! Just in time for Memorial Day Weekend.
i can imagine the conversation thusly
nudge “is she back yet?”
phix “i dont know”
nudge “is she okay??”
phix “i dont know”
nudge “do you think she is okay but not back yet??”
phix “i dont know”
nudge “do you think she back but not okay?”
phix *poits nudge and glares at library* “work together you said…your fault”
That sounds about right.
Orrr;
-Nudge: I she back yet?? Is she back yet?? *nervously pacing*
-Phix: Wha? Oh ,You mean Shel-…NOW STOP THAT BLIGHTED PACING!!! You are making me nervous..
-Nudge: Buuuut..is she back Yet? I couldn’t sense her for a bit ,but there’s something off wth the time-span..
-Phix: Hm hm Indeed, bloody 81000 years of off-ness I’d say.
-Nudge: *eyes almost popping out of her head* WHAAAT???
-Phix: Are You saying You are worried that another little scheme of yours went belly-up, like the woopie cushion on my sofa? Orr the bucket of paint on the cabinet of “The comprehensive works on entomology for nit-pickers”??? Orr the “Pre-socrates for the really bored” that You booby-trapped with a spring-loaded pudding-cannon?? *glares at Nudge menacingly over her spectacles*
-Nudge: No NOOO! *indignant huffing* I like her, and I like that foul-mouthed tyke that’s with her..I just worry. There’s something wrong..
-Phix: Very well ,have a look then, I am currently on my 8056th volume of Vogon poetry, and have no patience left for Your nerve-wrecking pacing an babbling… [makes “shoo” movement with hand} *poit*
Now..where was I ? Oh Yes *starts reciting again*
“How Thregroth Browrth Iodeerd Shrammical..
“Onth Waringysht Froghost Bravogtrysh…”
“Oh How I Gorlorned Grizly Fremish….”
Ugh..This is utterly bad indeed. Is she gone? *looks around* Ah, at last *starts scratching behind her ears with her real-leg..* Aaahhh..that’s better. Hrm..and again I have to get a flea-collar. Buggered Nudge and her love for stray sphinxes with terrible personal hygiene..”
Or something like that. 😆 😛
Jay-Em…
…you must have some guts, there. You just wrote Vogon poetry, making you the leading suspect in the future deaths of all of the rest of us. 😉
@ DANZIER
I re-worked it into a less dangerous form.
The original 1st distichon had me catatonic for a month, and killed several species of endangered insects, so I made Google translate it into mesopotamian, then in classic greek and then in Elmer Fudd -just to make sure- (hope no-one noticed the sudden black-out in Google head-quarters)
I basically took the “sting” out…..By the way, why is there a construction-crew out side, trying to remove the city? They’re kind of ugly dudes too.
*scurries off to get towel*
That also explains why Nudge couldn’t tell Shelly that she sent Nudge to waylay her during the vision quest. It would have given away too much information which had to be kept secret for everything to work out. All she could say was “someone” sent her.
She’s either learned how to ‘poit’, or someone else sent her. Probably Phix. Who I would expect to be along directly, unless she wants to wait to see what Shelly does…
If Phix joins the party, then we will just need Jin and Brandi, and maybe Katherine and Amanda, and we’ll have the whole set. Maybe they can find a new beach and all go and spend the day relaxing and helping Shelly recall things like how to drive and what her SSN is…
@ Eee Oooh I like that idea .Could be great fun ,and a possibility for Nudge&Phix to elaborate on their roles in the “Shellinx-Affair”
I was hoping someone would notice that! 😀 It’s akin to relying on one’s mom to drive them to the mall. XD
So, Phix did it? That’s the closest I can think of to a mother for Nudge.
Hmmm…yet again proving that very little in your comic is an accident…and leaving us wondering if Phix would do that kind of favor for Nudge…
Not a favor to Nudge, but, as Paula pointed out, more likely a way to get rid of an annoyance for a while.
^^ very likely.. :p
You mean you haven’t installed a subway system in the Wapsi universe yet?
I’d be a little scared of riding a sub-etherial Wapsi metro line… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjOSZf5JV5M
What the…. and I thought Vogon poetry was about the worst thing the universe had to offer. (and by the by..the sex-pistols did the “loudly cussing while playing a band-saw in C-flat” much better. They actually couldn’t play..made it more convincing 😆 )
Yeah, Vogon poetry recited to death metal would probably be the worst…
But, um, I like Dropkick Murphies. Not all of their songs, mind you–but Fields of Athenrie and Finnigan’s Wake and Boys on the Dock are all good. Sou’Bostan, yay!
Yes, I spelled Boston wrong on purpose.
hides in shame anyway
I thought it was Baastin, where they pak ya kaah.
Pahk yah cah, go to tha bah, have a beeah… 😉
Nudge showing up. As if she felt guilty about something? I wonder how much Nudge knew about Shelly’s extended vacation. And what will Shelly’s reaction be towards Nudge? Forgiveness? Or…*ding*…Round Two?
I think she knew everything (see my comment a ways further up).
And i think she knew it all because Shelly told her what to do.
(I’ve {sort of} given up on Tina’s choker. I have to have some weirdo theory to annoy people with.)
If it is Round Two, Nudge won’t have a chance. We’ve seen what an angry sphinx (even in human form) can do to her. Hell even Tina was able to beat her down as a human.
I’m not 100% sure – looking back – that Nudge was even trying to defend herself from Tina.
Sure, she’s a trickster, but she was part of Tina for years, and she knows that Tina had a Very Bad Time because of her.
I.e., she feels guilty.
Somehow I don’t think that the result will be round two. Shelly has had 80,000 years to cool off, and no one has the patience to be angry that long.
As a sphinx, Phix was able to hold a grudge for a good long time. Maybe Shelly has just been refining her anger.
Yes, she’s cooled off. But remember, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”
I guess so, but that was a rather different case. Phix was able to hold onto her anger for that long because she was trapped and Nudge was at fault. Her surroundings reminded her of her grudge every waking moment. Shelly on the other hand was informed that Nudge’s actions against her were necessary, and planned by someone else, and then was trapped for 80,000 years due to circumstances that were not Nudge’s fault. Somehow, I can’t see her still holding a grudge.
i never understood that phrase
personally i think revenge is a dish that is best served with potatoes and a following of cherry pie and cream for desert. After eating that you wouldn’t really CARE about the revenge 😀
Right. I’ll take my revenge medium rare. Revenge Tartare or Revenge Vichyssoise just isn’t very good. I mean what do the Klingons know? They probably eat road kill on a regular basis. Raw.
Ewww.
I am in favor of Paula’s revenge dinner. 🙂 When will it be ready to eat?
Ooookay.. And now I am hungry for revenge.
Well, if you’re in a hurry, there’s always McRevenge.
I prefer Revenge King…or if i want a sit-down regvenge, I might go to T.G.I. Revenge
The phase “Revenge is a dish best served cold” refers to not taking an immediate action after a wrong. Such as in a western (movie) coming home and discovering your families been killed by Indians, your grabbing your gun and going to hunt those responsible down. That would be an example a hot/heated revenge, And example of a a cold revenge is taking years to get your revenge. Possible building up an elaborate revenge scheme. Or ingratiating yourself into the life of your target and then stabbing them in the proverbial back during a crisis.
Get the unabridged version of Count of Monte Cristo…very good example of that.
Also, the Monte Cristo sandwich is being featured as tonight’s special at T.G.I. Revenge, so perhaps, I’ll duck out and grab one…
I always thought Revenge was right up there with Peas Porridge In The Pot Nine Days Old. I can cook ’em but I don’t want to eat ’em.
Revenge is a dish best served ‘A La Cart’? Just take what you need!
prelude to the other shoe being dropped and the Wapsi girls to find out that Shelly is dead 🙁
She isn’t.
That Shelly right there in the first panel is our own, original Shelly we’ve been following since 2001.
But, if You insist: There are about 50-something dead Shelly’s.
I’m still hoping the Shellys that died, died only in TreeRealm and not in reality. If it goes “Shelly touches relic, falls down dead” in previous cycles, you’d think Jin would eventually prevent her touching the relic since she might need Shelly for the CM. But if it goes “Shelly touches relic, yanks back and starts shouting about meeting a Sphinx that looks like her in a place full of trees and dying there, but still lives”, then Jin might let this keep happening to try to find out what’s going on.
Unless someone told Jin what was happening and all the Shellys HAD to die…
That’s the trippy thing about those Groundhog Day-type loops. Were those really resettings, or creating actual splinter lines with a real permanent death each time? Was the Time-Wald a place for the resettings to anchor to, with a Shelly-death triggering the next go-around, or…. Actually it was, bad example.
I’m not sure all the Shelly’s died. At least not from radiation. The time forest tree in which the plutonium was hidden could only be cut down once. This is because the forest realm didn’t reset, it was continuous in the face of earth resets.
Perhaps they died of something else, like a sphinx. If every Shelly’s visit was a one-way trip, like our Shelly’s was, the forest would be up to it’s knotholes in Shellys. Possibly in sphinx form.
Whether or not the Shellys died in the Time Forest, their native Earth had its spacetime crushed back into its state of existence circa AD 560.
So I would have to say they all died in “reality” along every living thing in their galaxy.
oooohh.. BUGGER!! 😯 You’re right.. Forgot all about that teensy-weensy, little detail..
Yep. Golems who aren’t Jin included. So please allow me to ask again…
What’s Maya doing right now?
I don’t know why, but it seems as if everyone is trying to keep Maya out of this. Bud thought she would be of any help. In the page before that, Monica said that the relic was possibly kept secret from glyph readers, which could either be because it was being kept secret from Maya or because Maya decided that other glyph readers should keep away from it. Earlier, Jin waited until Maya was gone for the day before telling Monica that she needed help. It’s as if everyone is trying to keep her in the dark.
There are a ton of things about Maya that don’t make any sense so far. I don’t know what’s going on with her.
Despite what Bud thinks, it’s still odd, plot-wise, that no one consults Maya on anything. Even if she didn’t have all the answers, it would seem she would have a great deal of first-hand knowledge which the crew could use in filling in some of the blanks. She should be the go-to person/being in all this.
This indicates that they talked to her a least a little, but yes, it seems strange that they haven’t involved her more. It’s not even clear that whoever talked to Maya even revealed why they were asking. Jin seems to have a surprising lack of curiosity, too. If Brandi is so smart, why aren’t they using her analytical abilities? And if Brandi is so motherly, why hasn’t she ever acted like she gives a damn about Jin’s mental health? I could go on and on….
I suppose where Maya is concerned, Bud did have an opportunity to talk with her at length during the rescue from the Demom realm. It appeared she had been in there for quite a while. Perhaps years for all we know. So she may know quite a lot about what Maya does and doesn’t know about things. Also, one would assume Jin talked with her at length about that stuff as well.
Regardless, considering how she was willing to place the entire galaxy in jeopardy, creating a monster of a machine, to fix her daughter, you would think she would be in the thick of it now as well. It’s as if she just doesn’t care anymore or has given up. Perhaps it will all be made clearer later.
I forgot about Bud having had time to talk about what happened to Maya while still in the demon realm. If that’s the only time anyone but Jin talked to Maya, then no one but Jin talked to her after they realized that Jin would have problems without the calendar machine around.
I thought I remembered Monica deciding to not talk to Maya, but I couldn’t find it before. Here it is and on the next page. I have no idea why Monica wouldn’t want to talk to both Maya and Phix nor why Maya wouldn’t choose to get involved, even if Monica didn’t seek her out. BTW, I don’t remember Monica even talking to Phix about Jin after the calendar machine was destroyed.
Maybe Maya is doing something behind the scenes. I don’t know. I would like to have these things explained, too.
chances are monica might still feel a tad angry that maya pretended to be her dead aunt – created a element of doubt in her head strong enough to end up trying to make herself kill herself and be locked up as insane.
whilst jin DID save monica – it was maya teachings that made her demons able to be so powerful i suspect.
@Paula: Actually, that was her dead great-grandmother, I think. The simple fact that she really thought she had been talking to her didn’t help. People weren’t going to trust her and she wasn’t going to trust herself. I don’t think that had any other effect on the demons, though. Monica already was a porthole, which was why Maya was able to talk to her in the first place.
It could also be that Maya said things to Bud while still in the demon realm that made Bud not trust her. Perhaps Bud talked to Monica about that. All we have now are very vague statements like what Bud said in the first panel here. “Something tells me.” Thanks for all the detail! 🙄 😆
Well we are only missing a few members of the cast.
(why do I get a strange feeling that somethings about to be resolved?)
Could be that it’s Friday and Paul is giving us a low-fat cliffhanger. Could be that Nudge’s sudden appearance and concern raises some questions.
Could be the nuclear-powered relic that’s lying around that everyone has forgotten about!
mm low fat cliff-hanger.
Just as tasty as the normal fat ones but with half the suspense and anxiety 😀
😀 😀
This forum seriously needs a “Like” button for comments. +1 to Paula’s comment.
That thing is way too dangerous to be left lying around for long. It needs to be put in a safe, and the safe needs to be put inside Jin.
i wonder if its in bud.
it seems to have vanished after bud last touched it.
Oh, that’s right, Bud has one of those compartments too. I was thinking only Jin had one but I just remembered Brandi used to sleep in Bud’s. Better yet.
I’m pretty sure only Bud has been seen to have a belly hatch. (We still don’t know why she has one.) Maybe it’s a standard feature but she’s the only one of the three who uses it; likewise, Brandi is the only Golem Girl who hasn’t breathed fire, but she’s also never needed to.
Well, he didn’t say “hatch”, he said “compartment”. The lack of a hatch seemed to cause some problems, as a matter of fact. 😆
I think that Bud’s hatch may have been created by Tepoz poiting the portal cloth into Bud. As far as I know this is the first time it was used. There needed to be a way for someone passing through the cloth to get outside Bud, I guess. In Shelly’s case, the pattern was at the surface, so a hatch wasn’t needed. I’m not sure how Tina, Bud, Maya and Monica managed to get through Shelly’s shirts, though.
That’s true. Bud is the only one who seems to have a hatch to her compartment. Anyway, revised sentence: It needs to be put in a safe and the safe needs to be put inside Bud. Which would be better than entrusting it to Jin in the first place.
Then again, it could be safer still if placed into a location without a hatch (via poiting). In that case Brandi might be the best choice.
I keep thinking of this as the obvious example of Bud’s hatch, but I’m pretty sure Eschmenk is correct about its first appearance. It’s also part of one of the best comedy sequences Wapsi Square has ever had. “Hey, look! Bananas!”
Yes, and I spent more time than I probably should have trying to find the whipped cream one and this one (where Bud’s hatch was stuck or locked?) to make sure they were later dates.
I wonder if Bud still has the hatch. It might have disappeared after the portal cloth was removed if it was merely there to allow the portal cloth to function. 😕
she definatly still has the hatch
if you remember when brandi woke up inside bud she was the one who told her ‘nothing was in there any more’
Yes, now that you mention it, I remember.
So did Nudge “make” CG for Shelly during the vision quest so Shelly would have a protector/companion while in the tree zone? She was good at manipulating demons. Perhaps she can shape them as well.
Mmmm… I’m not sure. I don’t think so. It’s always been said that Shelly compressed her demons into one entity, which made CG.
But it’s possible that Nudge triggered or was the ultimate cause of this.
Right, but I’m thinking Nudge took her to near death (or even actual death) to get the demons to leave and become accessible so they could be “moulded” into CG. Shelly’s soul/sprit may have played a part as well.
Jin always said Shellys vision quest went too far.
Perhaps the too far was just far enough?
Nice idea. Tho it makes me like nudge even more (if thats even possible. damn paul making me like trickster peeps 😛 )
O.o
Tepoz mentions the vision quest…im sure he does..
something about shellys animal being coincidently a rabbit..
but he also says it as tho something went wrong so..meh kills my tepoz didit theory.
Bud is awfully calm…
considering…
Connie tells Shelly that she actually died.
See my comment a few further down (a reply to this one) as to why i think that Nudge did it, under orders from Shelly (the sphinx) herself.
Your link isn’t right. I think you probable meant this.
I still think what Brandi knows now is irrelevant, because her memory was erased every time the calendar machine was reset.
Shelly simply followed Nudge on her vision quest. Shelly almost died from exposure, with Jin saving her before she did die. Nudge was, at best, only indirectly responsible for the creation of Conscience.
Nope. She died. Connie tells her so.
…and Jin said she didn’t.
I think it’s kind of pointless to argue about that.
On the other hand, it would be mildly intreaging to watch Jin and CG argue about the technicalities of death. You know, the heart-stop versus the amount of time with no oxygen to the brain versus the possiblity of time of spirit departure… 😯
Two things:
1. I expect Phix to be along directly.
2. When all is said and done, Shelly can say, “Well since you all wanted to go swimming, I know a nice beach with some really beautiful trees…” Poit!
Hey, that’s MY beach! No fair, I don’t want my island blown up too!
I can’t quite get a handle on Nudge.
Is she genuinely concerned about Shelly because of what she did (yet to be revealed), or is she still being the Trickster and manipulating somebody with a show of concern?
shelly is the closest thing to a friend nudge has least I think so
Really? Why would you think that? The last we saw, Shelly was going to try to kill her. We don’t yet know if Nudge visited her in the forest. Despite everything, I would say Phix is the closest to a friend Nudge has. Nudge certainly likes Phix:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/go-well/
I’m going with Shelly being Nudge best buds because Shelly and Tina have become good friends.
Until recently Nudge was a part of Tina.
So Nudge and Shelly are friends.
Unfortunatly Shelly didnt know this and tried to punch her lights out but well…I am unsure if Shelly really knew about Nudge before she tried.
That would be “manipulating” in quite the risky way. The 1st time she showed her face, it got a re-furbishing. NOW Shelly is a sphinx too. She probably could kill Nudge with one blow. (I doubt if demi-gods can survive be-heading..) And Tina is also still around…
Nah.. Nudge is (for a change) honest in her concern. Remember, she isn’t evil, she just happens to like a good prank. She also felt bad about the whole Phix-affair.
This whole comic has 2 running themes: Love& Redemption. very Classic. It’s found everywhere in it’s 10-year run.
With Tina and Shelly becoming friends it was Shelly and Nudge also becoming friends. (even if she beat her up later)
Nudge however looks absolutly terrified in this pannel.
Maybe the apos sphinx turned up in the forest and found shellinx missing and informed phix/nudge.
I still wonder at monicas hostility.
Perhaps she is really angry at herself at ‘letting’ this happen to her friend and is taking it out on the smallest person she can.
I hope she never babysits :p
Oh and why do peeps think phix and nudge have been working with each other on the shelly vision quest?
I seem to recall someone saying Brandi set that quest up.
I spose Brandi could have been working with nudge at the time. Who knows, maybe Tina always had contact with Nudge but nudge wasn’t as vocal in the past until she told the conglomerate to shift.
oh and i read previious comments wrong
peeps say nudge and phix been working together in regards to the forest not vision quest.
my bad 🙂
If they were working together on anything it would have to be after Phix knocked Nudge out of Tina. She was hunting for her the whole time before that.
Actually, it’s only supposition that Brandi sent Nudge to mess with Shelly’s vision quest.
All we know is that someone – someone who Nudge apparently feared/respected, from the way she told Shelly about it – told Nudge to lead Shelly astray on her quest.
I suspect that it was Shelly herself, since the reason for it appears to have been to create Connie, and we have no reason to believe that Brandi even knows about Nudge, much less Connie.
Another thing that i should have mentionedis that there are only two possible reasons to send Nudge to lead Shelly astray:
1) To kill her, get her out of the picture.
or
2) to kill her temporarily, in order to create Connie.
(1) is, i submit, unlikely to be something Brandi would want to do. It would also require whoever sent Nudge to know that Nudge existed, and we don’t know yet that Brandi knows about that, though i suspect she didn’t/doesn’t.
And (2) is unlikely to have been Brandi because of the reasons above, plus requiring the knowledge that Connie would be created.
And the only person i can think of who might want to create Connie, would know that Shelly dying on her quest would do so, and would be in a position to tell Nudge what to do before she needed to do it … would be someone either outside tim (i.e., Phix – but Phix doesn’t fit, because she’d be more likely to try to strangle Nudge than to give her errands to run) …
Or someone who knew in advance that it would happen, because for her it already had happened, in her past – which was everyone else’s future … someone who needed Connie to be created so that she wouldn’t go crazy in 80,000-plus years alone … Shelly herself.
I would go along with option #2.
That is to say, your last paragraph.
It’s an interesting theory, but I just do not see how Shellinx would have been able to initiate a change in her own past. It smells too much like retcon, and I know you eschew that kind of thing…
No – it’s not a retcon – it’s the bootstrap effect/paradox.
… or perhaps an – All You Zombies – situation.
… or maybe she’s folding herself…
Yes, time paradoxes are fun science fiction, but the mechanism by which your time travel examples are based (time belt, gate, etc.) are missing here. And Shelly did not seem to know that time was reversed in the time forest until it was too late to send Nudge to coax Shelly #57 into the wild (I commented this above as well). Hence, in the absence of a time-travel mechanism suddnely appearing, the only way to have Shelly be the one to send Nudge is a retcon.
But, regardless of the mechanism by which a person travels to the past and intervenes, the point is that it does weird things to causality. The mechanism here is not the same–certainly it’s not controllable in the same way as the examples cited–but the effect is similar in the end.
number 2 is nicer and more probable 😀
wonder if it was Tepoz?
ooh maybe thats how Paul wil bring him back into the strip
<3 tepoz <3
Reason #2 was real. Brandi needed Shelly to do her part. CLG helped ensure that. Maybe Shelly’s demons would have prevented that.
Reason #3 might be to keep Jin occupied so she couldn’t prevent the suicide/accident involving Monica and Tina. There could be other reasons that we haven’t been told about.
Also don’t forget that the previous Brandi was left alone with the calendar machine. Bud said that as if that were important. If we are now to understand that this wasn’t important and that the previous Brandi didn’t have amazing abilities to figure things out and didn’t act very different than the Brandi we know, that all would amount to a retcon, IMO. Yes, it could be that the characters were wrong and the obvious way to interpret things was the wrong way, which was the case with Phix’s backstory, but I wouldn’t be happy about it.
Perhaps the previous Brandi managed to somehow use the calendar machine to communicate with Shelly through the timekeeping function of the forest or maybe she used Nudge as a messenger. Who knows?
Nudge would know.
I have a candidate for a third option; Mayahuel.
She’s actually the only one sophisticated enough in Lanthian science to know that Connie could be created and we know she could reach out of the demon realm sometimes because she taught Monica to read glyphs.
Or, reason # 3) Someone knew they might need more than one doorway to the demon realm. Intended or not, Shelly’s NDE made her ‘a walking doorway’ (as previously cited).
The problem with that is that Shelly closed off the doorway immediately, as I understand it. Closing off the doorway completely is what created CLG or at least what completely separated CLG and her boiler room from the demon realm. I realize that Jin said that they were both “walking doorways”, but Paul confirmed that the reason that only Monica’s doorway needed to be locked was because Shelly had completely closed hers off. Perhaps Jin simply didn’t know that Shelly did it. Although Jin’s “rogue queen” demon gloated about Shelly’s doorway being opened thanks to previous Brandi’s “dabbling” she never talked about actually using it. She only talked about using Monica’s.
I was about to propose the opposite idea from yours, actually. Reason #3 (or #4) would have been to close Shelly’s “porthole” by opening it to a doorway that Shelly would completely close off. That overlaps with reason #2 (creating CLG), but there is more to it than that. With just a porthole open, more demons would have been able to spy on the plan, because they would have known what Shelly knew. If the rogue demons found out, that would have ruined Brandi’s plan. Apparently Bud doesn’t have demons, so there was no danger of demons finding out by spying on her.
Another possibility was that there was a danger that Maya, not knowing any better, would have done the wrong thing while communicating with Shelly. With Shelly’s porthole widened into a doorway, then completely closed, Maya was completely cut off from Shelly. She was cut off from Monica by the rogue queen demon as soon as that demon recognized the potential of the doorway.
Monica’s demons knew about the plan because they had been told somehow, but apparently they could be trusted. Apparently they were needed to manipulate Monica to do what was necessary. Monica didn’t know about the plan, though, so no other demons could find out by spying on her.
ah thought i had missed something with the brandi thing. i knew she set up somethings so when peeps said she had set up the vision quest i just took it as fact 😀
It may be more then supposition that Brandi was the one that told Nudge to get Shelly to follow her. I found his little tidbit from the archives. Jin’s Doubt telling Monica it was Brandi that figured out that certain people were doorways for demons. “And with her (Brandi) dabbling…You and Muscle Butt are now doorways,”
Yes, that’s what I’ve been referring to. I’ve been saying “rogue queen” because, although it’s one of Jin’s demons, it’s not certain that it is a doubt demon. The real issue there is not what it’s supposed to be doing as Jin’s demon; it’s the illegal activity that it’s engaging in.
That seems to be something that Monica and the other character believed, based on Monica including Nudge as being part of Multiple Brandi’s plan.
I am waiting for Shelly to get into bed with her boyfriend Officer Hunkypants. THAT will be interesting, especially if her companion shows up! How to explain?
“Heh-Lo, meet my little sister. Oh, I didn’t mention her? She’s here to stay with us.”
You would think Shelly would have been a bit self concious when having sex since CG would be there as well. Maybe we’ll find out Justin has a CG (creepy guy) as well. He can give them money for the movies so he and Shelly can be alone.
Why do I think those two would go see Saw?
If they went to the playground instead, they could seesaw, AND swing, slide, ride the merry-go-round, etc. 😉
Ooh. I like that! And while they’re at it , they could also scare away that strange man with the long coat that hangs around at the playground very effectively….. 😛
My guess is that right next to Nudge we will find Phix, who’s just a tad calmer. But they both know about Shelly’s long stay in the tree-zone and are worried if she indeed came back with her wits about and body intact, after all we saw her being disoriented at first.
Seems logic. Phix is somewhat up-tight, so, an emotional outburst like Nudge’s is unlikely.
I would looove to see the interaction if Phix is also there!
One thing I’ll say for Nudge: She knows how to make an entrance.
Y’know, I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I mean, this right here is more conversation and social interaction all at once than Shelly has had in 80 millennia. It’s like an impromptu Welcome Back party, except everyone’s more confused than anything else. All of a sudden she’s back on Earth, after literally ages of being stuck in a lonesome planescape watching a tree. Any second now she’s going to have some kind of freak out. She’ll be calmly answering questions regarding her mental state when BOOM! “HOLY GOD I NEED ALCOHOL! GET ME ALCOHOL AND FRENCH FRIES AND TELEVISION AND MEN AND SEX AND ROCK MUSIC AND WALKS IN THE PARK AND THE INTERNET AND RECREATIONAL DRUGS AND POLITICS AND MAIL AND COMFY SWEATERS AND PONIES AND SIMON PEGG MOVIES AND AND AND AND AND” you know, that sort of thing.
shes 80k years old
maybe she just wants a nap.
pensioners do and they are only 65 😛
You know, that wall of text instantly made me think of Winston Rowntree until I looked up at the avatar… 😉
But yeah, that’s what I would have expected of “old” (i.e. young) Shelly, but 80k years do take their toll I’d assume…
To quote my dad again:
“Id: I WANT PIE RIGHT NOW!!!
Maybe. But “the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” This is Shelly’s past. And while she’s recognized her ancient friends, and remembers their importance and their sacrifices, Earth may be as alien to Shelly as revisiting a foreign country as an adult that you only recall from earliest childhood.
And seriously, Shelly and the internet? Even if she did snap back to tween anger mode, that’s not exactly a love affair to last across the eons…
ah but that was in 2005
september 2006 facebook went global (according to yahoo answers
the whole answer is
US high schools could sign up from September 2005, then it began to spread worldwide, reaching UK universities the following month.
As of September 2006, Facebook was opened to the general internet public, ie. anyone with an email address who was 13 years or over.
kind of like skynet really isn’t it.
Is she Back is She Ok?
*Blink*
Cue Scooby Doo sound effect
S-S-S-SPHINX!!!
Run Away!!!
i don’t know why but every time i read that comment i am reminded of the krill in ‘finding nemo’
Swim away!!!
Paula
May 25, 2011 at 1:41 am | # | Reply
alot of peeps fear the unknown.
would make sence for the sphinx to also.
… I was right!!!!
*does happy dance*
go me! 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀
and yea.. being right once in a million posts makes it right to be so chuffed and to do a happy dance 😀
*looks nervously around * Uuuhh.. ohhkay.. Now please sit down and have a cofee eclaire..people are starting to think that the confusion-corner has been reserved by the local loony-bin for their yearly day-out… 😆
But Yeah..must be nice to have a right prediction once in a while…[snif].. Tina *meek voice* can I have another Latte, I am gonna sulk for a bit… 😛
i think they might think that about confusion corner anyway what with our talk of multiple shellys. the wars between 56 and 57. real or imaginary planes of existance. etc 😀
aww you’ve been right LOADS jay-em 🙂
most people have here tbh 😀
just i was wingeing yesterday bout never getting anything right ^^
Thnx that was sweet. 8) I feel better already. But Your ideas jump-started the better speculations :thumbs:
No, no more coffee anything for Paula.
Um . . . Jay-Em what makes you think it isn’t?
Shush! I’d like to keep the illusion up for myself……
reading yesterdays comments..i got a couple of more thngs right too..not that im counting or anything 😀
*grins like a cheshire cat*
Don’t give Paul any suggestions on what else to add to the mix…I already need a playbook to keep up…
(manticore)
im still hoping for the ‘shelly beats up the submarine’ guess i made but i doubt that will be correct 😀
It’s ok, Paula–I was dancing the other day just for not breaking the interwebs. 😉
It did trigger a couple of small earth-quakes in Turkey though. (Just got a message from a friend of mine that lives in Antalya..)
You sure You’re not a golem?
DAAAWWWW.. nudge is worrieeeeed.. She is so worried that she didn’t even take the time to change into her guman-shape. Guess she still feels terrible about having lead young Shelly to her death.. pluuuuss…Apparently Nudge knows Shell’s been missing in action for quite some (parallel) time, and seems to consider Shelly still a friend ,despite the row at Mucho Mocha.
Nudge ,NUdge, NUDGe NUDGE!!! *crowd goes wild*
Guman shape? 🙂 What’s a guman?
It’s a critter that lives next to my “H” on my keyboard… 😆 😛
i actually thought a guman was real 😛
like mexican or american.
nudge in human looked exotic..gumanish 😀
Hows about a mid-1500s Lake Michigan area resident?
“By the shores of Gitchee Guman”…
Plink, Plonk, Plunk
I thought it was reference to Sturgeon’s classic “More Than Guman”…
What is it about little Tykes with a serious potty-mouth… CG makes me giggle every time she let’s loose another one… 😆
Tina and Nudge: Round 2?
Conscience and Monica: Round 1?
Is Shelly’s hair getting shorter???
“Is Shelly’s hair getting shorter???”
No, I think it’s the same length as when she first returned. It actually looked quite a bit shorter when she sat down with the towel around her, but I don’t think that was intentional.
CG’s hair is shorter than it always used to be, though. Also, she is now visible to other people.
So am I the only one noticing that Shelly is topless here? She was given a blanket, which is now only around her waste.
I was going to say something after 300 comments, but then I found yours.
Just another feather in Paul’s writing cap that the usual wolf-whistlers are all arguing about time travel and long term relationships instead of hooting about the topless Shelly in panel one.
This may be something she’ll have to get used to again.
Bud: You have to wear clothes out of doors.
Shelly: Oh– yeah. Sorry. I knew that. Thanks.
Bud: Just repaying it forward.
This last couple of weeks has been so awesome I forgot to read Girl Genius this week O.O
I’m now totally addicted to Wapsi.
Oh, Has anyone considered that time running backwards might mean Nudge was also one of Shelly’s visitors?
With that said, gonna be funny if Shelly grabs Nudge for a big “OMG there you are! I’m back!” hug.
Well, yeah – it’s one of the things that i considered in proposing that it was Shelly herself (in her sphinx form) who told Nudge to lead her astray on her vision quest.
@Jesti Put them both on RSS feed like I do! Never miss a comic again.
As things develop, I’ll be most interested to see who knew what, and when. Although with this time paradox thing running, as was mentioned above, it may be another “By his Bootstraps” thing when there really is no identifiable point in time that this whole event began. *tilt*
PS: I hate Fridays.
But how else will we ever get to 1000 posts before the next page appears???
With Nudge’s pop-in I had a vision of “Is is secret? Is it safe?”
of cause!!
when i saw it i thought it was familiar 😀
nudge is gandelf!
less beard and more horn…
hmm..
like a balrog/human cross maybe…
yea..lets not go there…
I need this: (TV TROPES LINK) http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrainBleach
To those who wander this strange place called ‘the internet’ or sometimes the ‘interweb’ Brain bleach is a truly vital thing. Second only to tea and biscuits with friends.
If cookies are called biscuits, what do the British the things we call biscuits?
Wikepedia says
Although the American-English and English languages use the same word for biscuit to refer to two distinctly different modern edible foods, early hard biscuits (North American: cookies), were derived from a twice-baked bread, whereas the North American biscuit is similar to a savoury European scone.
however just to confuse you .. we have biscuits and cookies…
SoWhyMe, the American biscuit is pretty close to the British scone – but the Brits are baffled that anyone would pour gravy on a scone and have it for breakfast.
hehe 😀
sorry 😀
Well, luckily scones and clotted cream are the same allover the world (hmmm..scones..warm, fresh from the oven.. :drool: )
Over here (mainland Europe) a biscuit is a cookie too. The larger ones are called “San Francisco’s” here. It’s those darn Yanks that insisted on cutting all ties with GB, and to confuse the rest of the world, adopted different Gallons, different biscuits, different MPG-ratings, forgot all about metrics, use different toma(h)to’s, different neighbo(u)rs, different colo(u)rs and on, and on… 😉
😆
No one said that the British can’t copy Noah Webster‘s improvements. 😉
One thing that’s interesting is that the distinction between elevator and lift seems to be reversed.
I’d never heard of clotted cream until I read in previous comments. Never had any either. I’m sure it’s yummy though.
i’ve always wondered what US call your female underwear?
i mean in england we call them knickers and pants (unless you describe the type in which case tanga thong etc) but in us pants seem to be err trousers?
first time i heard ‘take your pants off’ in an american sitcom it ment something completly different to me in a jaw-dropping kind of way. I think it was on ‘family ties’ also so .. yea.
@Paula: Knickers = panties. Trousers = pants or trousers (men) or slacks (women).
@Paula: US definitions
*Pants=the outer layer of cloth on the legs. Trousers are usually thought of as suit-pants only.
*Underwear, panties, tighty-whities, boxers, briefs, & “commando”= generic to specific, worn against the skin, under the pants. Panties are for girls; the rest are guys’, and “commando” is none at all.
*Trunk of car=storage compartment in back
*cookies=sugary treats that are usually rather hard, kind of like cake but gummier.
*biscuits=bread made of the same stuff as pancakes, but mixed to be drier, and not sweet. Often crumbly. Enjoyed with gravy mostly in the south, and the gravy is usually very meaty and spicy. (Not on my yum list, btw.)
That’s all I can think of right away. 😉
Edit: Biscuits & gravy = not on my yum list. Biscuits themselves are, though. My mom used a recipe like this (substitute butter for shortening) when I was little.
hmm
thinking on it we have panties also.
but i’ve always taken them to be the flimsy sort.
heh our car trunk is called a boot.
which is why its a ‘car boot’ and not just a boot
since we have a type of footwear ALSO called a boot.
wonder why its trunk however.
trunk refers to the end of a persons behind (too much junk in the trunk) or a car ‘boot’
but its also the nose of an elephant.
yknow if we actually met extraterresteral-aliens and tried to explain the english language to them followed by the american/english language…chances are they would distroy the planet from being annoyed with us 😛
hard enough in my home town where belvoir is prounced ‘beaver’
I thought Biscuits and Gravy were a Vaudeville act…
No, you’re thinking of the British act, “Scones and Sauce.”
Heh. Half the towns in Wisconsin are either French or Native names that nobody says right, but which are fun to say anyway. Like Wauwatosa and Oconomowoc. 😉
thats true
now if it was a dumpling i would understand. but a scone…no…
not even a cheese scone..
Sure is a lot of glass front cabinets in that kitchen for someone with a rack like Nudge…
I’d be more worried about her horns.
*ba-dum pish!
Hmm, if you were hunting Nudges, which rack would you put on the wall?
Obviously, a bust of nudge would require her horns too.
A bust of Nudge??? Hmmm…*pondering* Maybe I’ll put my years in Academy of Fine Arts into practice, and make me one.. Haven’t done any sculpting for a loong time.
Nudge has quite interesting visuals…hmmm…*scratching chin ,already making design in head*
Aaand to show what’s possible with the cheapest paper-clay and some paint:
ooof.. forgot the link..
here : Rogue and Rahne
ooh
very nice jay-em
Did you make those Jay-Em?
Wow, Jay, impressive…
Yup, home-made with paper clay (called “Darwi” overhere. I cannot work with Fimo, and wax & bronze-casting is a bit too expensive)over metal-wire skeletons. Painted with acrylics.
Had my teacher in sculpting-class scratch his head. It wasn’t exactly according to his vision of “sculpting” yet wasn’t as kitchy as Jeff-Koons-junk too.. Teachers at art-school are a bit like sphinxes. They too fear things they cannot comprehend.
Pffft.. the “innovative spirit” of artistry -at least at an academy-of-arts- level, is highly overrated.
Buut, to be fair, I passed with flying colours.
PS. I am already constructing Nudge’s skeleton. I go for Shy-Nudge-with over-bite. overbite It’s sooo cuuute..)
My compliments. Those are very nice. I’m sure everyone here is anxiously awaiting the results of your skill in creating a Nudge bust (a Nust?). Wapsi fans may just press you to make a mold and duplicate them for sale. If not you, perhaps you could pass off the task to an enterprising soul you know.
Ah, but then you’d have to get Paul’s permission and negoitate royalties and all and that. Oh well, it was just a thought.
Thanx for the compliments.
I pondered the bust for a while, but went for the full figure. It’s going to be about 10 inch= for a 9-something foot Nudge, about 11th scale.
Bigger would be problematic for the material I use.
Hmm..maybe I’ll post links of the progress. Lemme mull on that for a while.
And Yes, it will only be for myself. I do not want to get in the quagmire of copyright-law and such.. 😉
you could make two and send one to paul 🙂
i’m sure he wouldn’t mind 🙂
Monica needs to chill, what I like to call, the Hell out. Staring down a 81,000 year old demon child like that its jus… nevermind
She will, the moment she realizes CG=Shelly, but at her brattiest.
Yeah, she is. As I’ve said quite a few strips ago, Shelly is Ah-day Mah-tawn, “Only Girl” in Comanche. When you’re the only in the family, boy or girl, you tend to be brought up a little bratty. So CG is that part of Shelly.
Although, if the kid is treated special, despite having brothers and sisters, sometimes “ah-day” is used derisively. We’ve all known the type.
I don’t know about anybody else, but I wouldn’t be all that surprised if Bud looks at Nudge with a peculiar look on her face, then yells, “STINKY?” Their personalities seemed to be rather similar, anyway. If not that, I wouldn’t be surprised if Nudge somehow helped Bud find the artifact.
Hauling up a Nazi sub is a bit more than mere tricksterdom, but I like the insight to the possibility.
Phix is the one to defined Nudge as a trickster. Nudge has always claimed to be more than than just a mischievous trickster. Being able to physically toss submarines around is another thing, though.
If that were Nudge, it might explain the fin that octopuses aren’t supposed to have and the surprisingly long apparent life.
Sorry, not buying it — we only just recently had a scene wherein Nudged researched the method of shapeshifting, and did so for the first time. If I weren’t so tired, I would find and link to it. It was just before Tina beat the snot out of her.
You probably meant this page. I must be reading that page differently than you. I think she was merely talking of having difficulty impersonating humans well enough, rather than not being able to shape shift at all. How could she have appeared as a coyote to Shelly if she couldn’t shape shift? How would she know where her skills were relatively weak if she hadn’t done it before?
IIRC, you were the one to point out that real octopuses don’t have the fin that Stinky had. Assuming that Paul knows what octopuses look like, that may have been an intentional clue.
Tina rather notably defines her as a trickster here, and Nudge cops to being able to appear as Coyote, the quintessential NA trickster.
I believe Nudge was merely defending the ethics of tricksterdom while being waled on by Phix. She reveals truths, but it is not always what the seeker wishes to find. (Oedipus, you’ll note, came up in that conversation.)
Yes, but Nudge told Monica that she was protecting her and being a guardian goes well beyond the role of a trickster. Two pages earlier, Tina/Nudge seemed to be vacuuming some sort of blackness out of Monica (Paul hinted that it wasn’t going the other way). Also, on April 7-8, 2010, the collective complained that Nudge was too quick to try to rescue people and Nudge defined herself as a “not-so-subtle nudge that folks need from time to time.” That doesn’t sound like a trickster, either.
I think Tina was just so angry that she said what was going to get Nudge in the most trouble with Shelly. It was true, but not the whole truth.
Actually, all that is very tricksterly. Including, standing myself corrected, moving the sub–a lot of these gods would move rivers and mountains when it suited them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster
Paul’s comment regarding the ink squiggles between Monica’s pants and Tina’s hand on 2010.04.19 is actually a model of trickster unrevealingness: “You’re assuming it’s coming from Tina and not being attracted to her. ;)” Note those squiggles also lead separately up to his signature! I think those are just artistic license to create mood, until we see otherwise. Paul’s bordered Tina with flowers on a previous occasion, and I don’t think that meant they were literally growing around her.
But reviewing those pages makes me wonder something new: Why did Nudge give out her name then? (Shelly even underscores this on 2010.04.27, with sarcasm.) I think she wanted to get caught and returned to the Library under the appearance of duress; she certainly seems to be happy there.
Well, I guess it depends on what kind of trickster. I tend to think of tricksters as causing mischief merely for the fun of it. Nudge has been purposeful and not all that tricky when we’ve see her. To me, that amounts to being more than a trickster, but sometimes mythological tricksters did that.
I think the blackness in the scene I mentioned was symbolic and represented the negativity that Phix was removing from Monica. Monica was overall much more eager to help Jin afterward, although she still wasn’t that consistent while she talked with Shelly.
I’m not sure if Nudge actually wanted to be caught or just cared less. If she was assigned a role to play with respect to the calendar machine, that role was over.
odd
that link
locked-in-demons (i presume like tina) and apos are very similar.
they both like things to be in their right place and how it always is.
very odd.
perhaps this is why demons (like monica doubt) and apos don’t get along. non-locked demons would run riot given the chance, changing their minds each second.
Love the “Are you still mad?” face on Nudge
I don’t think that’s it at all. That was in the past. I think Nudge’s expression just means that she is concerned for Shelly’s well-being. It matches what she is saying.
That doesn’t mean that she will get a friendly reception, though. They will have new reasons to be pissed at Nudge if Nudge knew what would happen and even more if Nudge helped bring it about.
Personally, I’d like to see CG go after Nudge, given that Nudge is 9 feet tall. 😆
Maybe she turns into a CG-sized sphynx. “I call her – Mini-Me!”
haha
i so want to see that now 😀
Mini-Me and Bigglesworth in one package!
What if Nudge’s concern is for CG and not Shelly?
it’d be funny if Nudge and Connie were penpals at one point
Nobody else seems to have noticed this:
The difference between the Apo-sphynxes and the regular sphynxes is that APOS WEAR PANTS!
oh
pooped pants..
i see what you did 😀
You know why, don’t you?
Apo’s have feline fronts and human backsides….
<a href="http://instantrimshot.com/classic/?sound=rimshot"<Ba bump chsshh
thats a rimshot hmm
i always classed that sound as … something else
for some reason always thought a rimshot had something to do with a gun…
Actually, that’s a sting, but people call it a rimshot. A true rimshot involves the drummer hitting the rim and head of a drum simultaneously. You might have been thinking of rimfire ammunition, which sometimes is loaded with shot.
Traditionally, you use a sting on a ‘good’ punchline, a rim shot on a bad one…
Ya know it makes sense… Phix and Nudge would not know of this until after it happened… and with time going backwards they could do full on visits for 80,000 years and never have a clue before Shelly started and thus this is the first time they have to talk to the rest. Maybe?
My guess is that Nudge felt Shelly die and even if she knew it was going to had happened it still freaked her out.
And as for the Shellimental, finally, someone shorter than Monica! So if someone says ‘pick on someone your own size’ she doesn’t have to look to Deitzel!
Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Phix appeared too ,and CG ran towards them, happily shouting: “Gramma Phiiiix! Auntie Nuuudge!! yayyy!” 😆
yes. would be awsome 😀
Seconded, that would be funny.
Several people have speculated that the previous Brandi’s plan was really thought up by Maya from the demon realm or Shelly from the forest realm. I actually thought of the possibility of Maya myself. However, Brandi and Bud considered the idea that Brandi’s book wasn’t really written by Brandi and rejected it. It’s possible, I suppose, for Nudge to have forged Brandi’s book very cleverly or for Brandi to have cooperated with either Maya or Shelly, but those ideas seem like a long shots to me.
But we do know that Brandi worked with Tina’s demons in an earlier loop and apparently Tina’s demons came up with ideas back then that she doesn’t even know about now….
i wonder if they actually did
i mean to work with brandi they would have had to have the ‘real’ tina working with brandi
i wonder if it was brandi who got the first tina to go against her father. or was she doing that anyway and in the process met Brandi who let her know that what she was doing wouldn’t matter in the long run but she has the chance to save millions of lives.
Would love to know tina’s story. the full enchalada
or maybe even shelly met her.
possible being in a band would have made her a target for drug pushers who ‘may’ have been working for tina’s father.
so many scenarios but since Tinademons had to come to the twin-cities i suspect she didn’t live there previously and Shelly is the only one i know who goes outside the city.
unless the guy whos joke monica had to laugh at was actually a drugs baron.
I’m not sure about that. Monica didn’t know what her demons were up to, so I’m not sure that Tina would have necessarily known, either. Jin’s “rogue queen” demon said that Monica’s and Tina’s demons conspired. Several days later she gave credit to Brandi for the results.
However, you may be right. On August 28, 2009, in the “underjinsnose” strip, Shelly says that Brandi’s book says that Tina had been working with a past Brandi. That could mean the full Tina 1.0, not just her demons. However, Shelly also said that Brandi worked with demons a couple of sentences later.
I’m not sure about what you are talking about in the other comment. I vaguely remember Monica faking laughs at some sort of benefit or party held at the museum, but that’s all.
At some point Tina said that Tina 1.0 had been living in Miami. That’s were Tina retrieved her diaries.
[archive mind attack]
err
holy crap did they kill monica on a previous go around???
(and yea nothing to do with this comic .. just yknow…followed the link on a previous comment and realised this…)
Not necessarily. Something went wrong, though.
Which makes me wonder, did any of the various incarnations of the crew get sucked into the demon realm? If so, it seems to me they would still be there since they would be outside time and the CM resets.
Another 355 posts. You know, there are only about a half dozen or so posters who create 90% or more of the posts here. I’m beginning to wonder if we’re not overdoing it a bit?
its good really (tries to justify her part of 90% of posting)
more peeps are getting more relaxed here.
lots of nice peeps 🙂
forums with little to no posts are the ones where people are scared to chat.