Who, um, who handed the ancient Lanthian weapon of mass destruction to the trickster god just now?
Bud, were you too distracted by the cute demon-child? Or was it the charming full-body tongue bath that overrode your guardian golem programming with its fuzzy-wuzzy darlingness?
Oh I like Nudge, and this is a moment of celebratory victory, and they’re all getting along. But the work isn’t quite done yet, and Nudge is what she is. Which is not the best choice of creature to deliver a completed quest object to its destination.
I have to wonder though. Why does Nudge even care about all this stuff? Who got her to revive Tina? I doubt that was just chance. Surely Shelly didn’t tell her to do that as well? I have yet to see how Nudge got involved in all this in the first place. Bootstrapping can take you just so far.
What worries me about that is, is Paul just clearing the decks for a super-twisty, triple-loop. double inversion with a 720-degree heartline-spin thrill ride of a story coming up?
And if so – how high and steep is the first drop gonna be?
Every. Last. Doggoned. Time. Paul has done a series of expositions, it has always been a Major Setup that puts the biggest, scariest roller coaster to shame.
Every. Last. Time.
When he’s done exposition interspersed over time, it’s been character development.
We’re in for a hellaride, and I’m looking forward to this the same way ‘coaster addicts look forward to the newest, biggest, fastest, scariest ‘coaster 🙂
Isn’t that the very ‘style’ of Wapsisquare? That events are developed as they fall into place during a continually developing storyline, not that the comic is halted for a few updates of straight exposition with no advancement?
Just saying, Hanineal has a point that this should be revealed and explained during the course of events, not paused so we can read the cliffnotes. Otherwise, it just steals away numerous opportunities for quality development time.
Too soon to actually ‘complain’ though. Just a thought/concern that’s worth voicing, and isn’t necessarily negative/hurtful to the comic/author to voice it (in fact, the intent is meant to be helpful).
Weeks? Dream on. It’s taking a couple of week just to do the exposition, and it’s seriously abridged. I’m basing my months and years comments on his historical record.
Hmm? As confused as people were by the arc that showed Shelley as a sphinx, do you really think that Paul could have let all this information be “found out” over the course of months?
Half the reader base would be lost or bored.
As it stands, you have to remember that all the other characters, minus those three (and Phix and Tepoz) really didn’t have any idea what happened. Or at the least, Monica didn’t. You can’t have a major character out of the loop, not when they are as high strung as Monica is.
The story would have had to stop sooner or later to do exactly this, and explain Shelley’s new “status”, so what better time than now? Wrap up this bit of Shelley’s present state (and how it all came together in her past with the help of her at the time ‘future’ self) and move along. 🙂
I don’t see how this is harming any sense of mystery. I don’t see what the problem is. The information given in this update is essentially what we all figured out already. There might be a few pieces that were pure speculation, but all of this is essentially what I’d gotten from the previous comics (with a little help from savvy commenters like Fairportfan and eschmenk).
He’s just reinforcing what Shelly and Nudge say yesterday. But we still don’t know how Shelly told Nudge to do it. In person, via an intermediary? That is what I’m dying to know.
Shelly: “And I told her to do make sure of that” — the phrasing is a bit strained, not sure that it’s not missing a word or two, or has an extra word in there somewhere.
Heck, Fairport, if I got it in a week in advance, he could be throwing up color comics, lol. I have a feeling he might do them a day to 2 days in advance from when he posts them.
I think Monica is being way too calm about it. That comment of her’s is what you ask just to make sure you heard it correctly before you start reading the riot act to someone. I suspect Monica will consider causing Shelly to die on the vision quest was going to far. Big bang coming maybe.
My interpretation is that Monica is no longer easily spooked by the supernatural, but rather is fiercely protective of her friends. The beatdown on Nudge was a dangerous situation. Right now, Monica has realized that none of her friends are in any danger, so she has calmed down.
There was a reason Monica reacted that way back then = to save lives.
Tina told Shelly “Don’t kill her over here, kill her over there.” during a fit of Shelly-rage. Tina, being a demon, has some strong power of suggestion. As Monica stated, Tina saying that would have been enough to push Shelly to killing Nudge (or at least attempting). So Monica interceded and calmed the trio before any of them caused any other harm.
Perhaps. Or maybe M’s just getting used to other people running complicated schemes without letting her in on it. It’s not like it’s the first time, after all…
To me Monica’s calm has that “chipper-don’t-freak-out-in-front-of-everyone-even-though-you’re-really-freaked” look to it. As if she’s trying very hard to keep a smile pasted on her face and listen to what happened to Shelley to make sure she’s ok. And also trying not to freak that her best friend is/was a sphinx for 80k year in what was to her, the blink of an eye.
I think once she’s internally satisfied that Shelley is ‘ok’, she’ll still be in shock until the news and changes sink in better.
He’s the perfect one to cater the after-party, make sure everyone has their favorite drink EVER during the ‘what I did on my 80,000 year vacation’ slide show (there will be slides, right?) so everyone is nice and boozy for the “we’re so glad you’re back!” tear-fest at the end of the evening.
I’m just a sentimental old softy -snif-
To Fairportfan
With the amount of time I spend in confusion corner? All I can say is I hope that the couch is a hide-a-bed cause I sometimes spend days on end in here.
I question this aspect of the plot too. If we recall Brandi’s notes in her book during the Calendar machine arc, Shelly was not ‘guaranteed’ to be the key in every rotation, there were 2 other possible alternatives.
Not to mention the early inner monologues by Jin regarding earlier cycles of Shelly.
I just find it unlikely that all previous 56 versions of Shelly died by Shellinx or her Sphinx Woods trials. It just seems against established canon that Shelly would have even been involved in EVERY previous cycle.
I had that thought, too. However, it’s possible that previous Shellys were important to the Jin fixing but not to the calendar fixing. It’s the only way it makes sense to me. 🙂
Reading the strips where Brandi is consulting her book, it never seemed to me that Shelly was one of three different people that Monica was close to during various time loops, just that she went by different names in various loops. IIRC, Brandi’s notes mentioned a “Shelly”, “Michelle” or “Janet”. “Shelly” is a nickname for “Michelle” anyway, so it’s possible she just didn’t use a nickname some loops; as for the other, well, maybe her parents just named her something different a couple of times.
You may be correct, and that is a valid argument. But the presence of Janet in Monica’s life (albeit only 2 minor cameos) seems to work as a possible counter-argument that Shelly, Michelle, and Janet are 3 separate candidates.
You know, I like imagining other iterations of the Wapsi Square loop with Janet (from the Modern Art department) hanging around with Monica and Katherine and the rest. But those iterations weren’t the one on which the Calendar Machine got fixed.
If we can still trust Brandi’s book, it sounded like Brandi was making mistakes and figuring out things as she went along. It seems strange that they would have tried fixing the calendar by using the relic every single time. Nothing told them that it was the correct thing to do the final time. Brandi’s notes should have indicated that it hadn’t helped when they had tried it, so why wouldn’t they try something else?
OTOH, if it were somehow blatantly obvious every other time that they needed to use the relic to fix the calendar, and if Dafydd‘s interpretation is correct, they could have quickly learned that only someone named Shelly, etc., could use the relic. In that case, Brandi’s notes would have reflected that. The part about the relic would have needed to have been scratched by Brandi during the last loop and she would have somehow needed to have figured that Shelly (by whatever name) was still needed for a completely different reason for them to have done the correct thing this time, though.
Or was that another thing that Shelly “fixed” from the forest realm somehow?
Big time bootstrapping. I guess one could say, however, that Shelly as hedging her bets to be sure CG was created. Perhaps it would have happened anyway.
Now the question is, how did she know it would happen? Is it common knowledge that sphinx-human hybrid demons will combine if the host dies for a short period of time, or is this still special to Shelly?
This. It is the same logic behind how Jin has all her wealth and power.
Shelly had already experienced her entire life up until being ported to the Sphinx Forest, then started going through time in reverse order. Having the knowledge she did about what happened to both her and her previous cycles, Shelly made sure to inform the parties needed what to do at certain points to avoid a TIME PARADOX!
Now, what is curious is if Tina was going in reverse-time while the other Apos/Sphinxes were still going forward-time. This means Shelly could have learned EVERYTHING shortly after arriving in the Sphinx Forest, then years later teach the same people who taught her those very same topics, creating mini-paradoxes all over the place.
As if you had two concentric merry-go-rounds running in different directions – you step from one to the other, and then step back onto the first one several horses ahead of where you were before.
I guess this all depends on how you interpret the word paradox. Some people define a paradox as an action that prevents you from entering the time loop in the first place. Say for example if Shelly stayed in the time forest until Jin was a child and then caused her death somehow that would be a paradox because the factors that lead up to Shelly being in the time forest would never have happened. I am one of those people that also believes that all time loops that are caused by factors inside the loop would be considered examples of a paradox. So when Shelly in the time forest causes things to happen in real time that leads to her being in the time forest, that too is a paradox.
I agree with jjs56thiteration. At some point earlier than Shelly can affect, there was no need for Nudge to lead Shelly off and nothing to cause that need. Yet she does it anyway. Therefore, there would be a discontinuity in time.
The loop is internally consistent, but it’s not externally consistent. Nothing before earliest part of Shelly’s loop could cause the loop to exist.
Nearest parallel I can imagine comes from Harry Potter 3, when he thought his dead father was casting a Patronus, but later figures out he did it himself, and makes damn sure to do it so as not to alter his past.
It is still possible someone else is involved and pulling the strings. I have trouble believing the three of them are that sneaky by themselves. Good chance the idea was planted by someone else. Best guess is Phix, based on Shelly saying she learned as much by what Phix said as by what she didn’t say . But Shelly may have met others as well. From Maya, who is still lurking out there in the bushes, to the immortal politicians, to Brandi. This explains nothing but the little plan by these three. There are larger wheels still turning out there around this.
No doubt. I’m still expecting something monumental happening around the last of December, 2012. In the Wapsiverse, that is. The thing with Jin being only a part of something much larger. Who knows what will happen when Jin comes into synch. Timequakes? Planetary disruptions? Solar catastrophies? Galactic catastrophies? Cats and dogs, living together! Only the beginning folks, on-ly-the-beginning.
I vote for Maya.
She’s the only one who knows Jin’s specifications for the battery since Jin is effectively her creation, and Maya has had a very long time to plan what to do for Jin once the calendar machine was “fixed”.
We all are still assuming that the calendar machine is what caused the loops. Many statements lead to the conclusion but who says it has not been fixed before and a loop still happened. The CM was fixed early in the loop not on the 2012 date. It is possible that failing to fix Jin is what caused the loop? Just speculating and keeping this idea out there.
Possible, but Jin & May do not suffer memory-loss from the resets, and both seemed to indicate that the Calendar Machine was never successfully destroyed/reset in the past (before Jin went totally bonkers).
It is an interesting thought though, if the Calendar Machine’s ability wasn’t just restricted to a giant dishwasher, but in some form now bonded to May and/or the GGG due to May’s actions in the past.
I agree wth this completely and have said so in the past. As far as Jin being a witness to all of the repeats we need to remember that she was begining to see things as they got closer and closer to when they fixed the CM this time. She may not have very clear memories about what was happening from this time period in each of the repeats, she certainly wouldn’t be considered a reliable witness anyway. May was trapped in the demon realm the entire time and as such may not have witnessed much or even anything of the events that lead up to the previous resets. At this point Phix and Nudge are the only good witness to the resets and Nudge messing up “stays lost” and “steak sauce” means you would have to take anything she says about it with a grain of salt. Oh and of course depending on what Shellinx can see happening in the real time line she could be a witness of sorts as well.
Brandi is a very interesting person to consider given that we know about her book and that she was directly involved in so many important events, yet we still do not have a lot of information on her backstory, apart from what was revealed a couple of months ago when she related her experiences in the pit with Bud and Jin to the fly she released out the window. And since that episode also revealed her to be a compassionate being, one has to assume that anything Brandi did, even if it seems bad on the surface, was done for the greater good.
Maybe Phix told her.
Seems like the other Apos didn’t know but would stand to reason that Phix would know as the library might have had information on something similar.
I would of done more in the background and such, but his lines are so sketchy when it gets to stuff behind the characters it makes it kind of hard to work with. And, heh, if I could work faster, I’d have yesterdays posted whenever today’s was done, lol. I’d be a day late and a dollar short, but it’d be worth it to work on a comic I adore.
Eh, I really just based it on an older strip that had creepy girl in it. It didn’t have any real color to it, just a colored texture. So I took the darkness of that picture (her skin) and just added in the creepiest eyes I could think of. It’s no big deal, I can just go and fix it later. I still have it all saved and everything. I’m just glad photoshop has a group layers option or I’d have to search through over 100 layers-.-.
Hmmm, so that means if you color correct Shelly’s skin in that comic to normal skin tones (for her), CG’s skin color should come out whatever it’s supposed to be naturally.
Solbet — Gotta watch out for that Copyright thingie! Beautiful work, but I almost got my DA account killed because I posted some Wapsi strips I colored and wanted to display. The pics were pulled by the moderators and I got a nastygram out of it. Lesson learned. After that I only posted links within the old forum, now long gone, alas.
Funny image to see a 9-foot doggie-deity sitting on her haunches in M’s kitchen. I am just imagining what it might look if Nudge sat down in my kitchen…makes me giggle for a bit.. 😛
We had Drenthian sheep at the farm(a breed where both males&females have horns) ,and I have yet to see a Ram lick someone’s face ,or wag it’s tail (except for when they took a dump…)
For those not familiar with “Buffy” – Dawn was Buffy’s kid sister who first appeared in Episode One of Season Five – even though Buffy was clearly established as an only child in Seasons One through Five.
(BTW _ you can apparently watch almost the full run of “Buffy” – 142 or 145 episodes – free on IMDB.)
Not so much the look on her face as the hands clasped behind the back and the body-language that says she’s getting ready to move fast once she determines the most appropriate target(s).
Wait, but wasn’t Shelly, like, 12 when she went on her vision quest? Was that a different vision quest than the radioactive tree thing we saw a couple weeks ago? If so, how did the dying [note spelling] help? If not, how did 12-year-old Shelly look like 20-something-year-old Shelly?
Monica AND Shelly are alot more calmer than I would be.
No matter how much supernatural stuff you see…this lot would blow my mind and make me need a timeout. With muffins and vodka shots.
Oh, yeah. I can foresee a couple of scenarios, after Monica goes off like a bomb. Several minutes into Monica’s furious tirade, after she has blasted right through everyone’s attempt to calm her down, she jerks to a stop, nose to nose with a very large sphinx suddenly filling most of the room.
Or Shelly might just sit smiling, letting M rant, and thinking “God, I’ve missed this!” Shelly has matured, and there is a new depth of serenity to her.
I am beginning to suspect that Paul is specifically addressing a lot of our speculation in the past couple of comics. On top of clearing up several of our points of debate, I suspect that the steak sauce thing from yesterday was a subtle, but friendly jab at some of our more convoluted theories. As I said before, I suspect he has an important reason for clearing up as much of our confusion as possible, but now I’m speculating on the thinning of speculation fodder, and that just gives me a headache.
Good heavens, you just now figured it out? Gee, you’re slow!
Of course, he’s at the beginning of his personal looping through time, so here-and-now he’s rather callow and unformed. But we can point to the very moment when he decided to become Master of the Universe.
Hm. I’ve got to got to work, so I’ll provide the link later.
No, I meant Dietzel, and the link was to go to the Crimson Mantis page, where Dietzel is wearing that idiot suit Monica put him into. I was so tired I could not make the link work, so I gave up and went to bed.
Well, here’s something that can be done. Like LICD’s comics, you could have the comments for that comic linked to the forum, where you could look at the website if you’d like, or on the forums. Just a thought.
The problem is that people who stop by to read the comics won’t know there is another place to post. Not unless Paul puts a link in and I doubt he will want to do that for two reasons:
1) That would draw page hits away and that means lost revenue from advertising. People would just go directly to the forum site once they find out about it and not Paul’s website to post. We come here only once to read the comic, but come back to read and make posts.
2) He has no control over contents. It’s his brand and he should protect it as much as possible, insuring it has the presentation he wants it to have.
I’m intrigued by the creation of another ‘power block’ in the Wapsiverse. Shelly, Nudge, Jenny Cricket. Bud & Brandi. Jin and May. And poor Monica stuck in the middle of it all.
Why are none of Shelly’s friends mourning her, or even reacting? They’ve just been informed that “Their” Shelly is dead, that she died for Jin unwittingly, and she is now getting replaced with “Sphinx” Shelly…so…why is everyone just cool with that? I’m really hoping I missed this being addressed somewhere because otherwise, this comic just turned into being pretty cold and heartless.
No – this is their Shelly. The one we saw die was the one from the very first loop.
“Our” Shelly (Shelly57) went to the Wood Between the Worlds, and was trapped there for 80,000-plus years – in a pocket universe (i assume) in which time ran the opposite direction from ours.
After she’d been there 1450 years (in which time she apparently got in touch with her Inner Sphinx), she met Shelly56, who died in some manner – not necessarily from the plutonium.
And every 1450 years after that, she met another Shelly (each one from an earlier loop), until finally The Very First Shelly (Shelly01) popped in, died from the plutonium … and she was able to go home, arriving at basically the same time she’d left, 80,000-plus years earlier.
They already knew that this Shelly died on her vision quest. Jin said that she didn’t quite die here but lately the characters have been talking as if she actually died. In any case, if she did, it was only temporary. It’s the reason why Shelly punched Nudge in the coffee shop, but other than that, they’ve put it behind them.
The time continium had to be ‘restored’ with regards to SHelley, and she may have been the only motral with access to that realm, and who could handle the artifact and do what needed to be done.
Call it Fate, call it destiny, call it luck, some things are just meant to be. 🙂
It’s possible that the plutonium had to “marinate” a bit in the tree in order to reach the highly lethal (yet incredibly effective power source) level it has now. *shrugs* That’s at least what it seemed like to me when Shellynx was explaining it briefly to Shelly1.
That’s what I think also, but that hasn’t been established either. Nor has any of the other speculation presented in the comments.
All we know is she was in the forest for 80K some-odd years. In the final minutes of this stay, she allowed a Shelly to die charging the “battery” and she brought it back. A side note is that she had CG to protect and comfort her. In that regard, we know she took steps to make sure CG was created.
Perhaps this week more will be presented of her purpose and how/why it all happened.
As mentioned before, radiation doesn’t work that way. But Shelly’s been in a forest for 81,000 years; how much physics does she know? It’s close enough for now.
Are Tina and Bud still in the room? I’d be interested to see Tina’s reaction to a non-shape-shifted Nudge given their altercation at the coffee shop.
And bear in mind, Monica was foreshadowing a bit when she said Shelly, Nudge, and Tina would “always be there for each other” (although i cannot imagine she could have foreseen recent events)…well, we found out that was very true in the case of Shelly and Nudge, so Now I’d like to see Tina’s reaction.
Bud is apparently still in the room and I suspect just watching. That Nudge is alive shows she’s not so agitated that she would hit a monster who suddenly appears out of nowhere, but instead waits to see what happens next…
Tina should also still be in the room, but whether she’s still conscious or has fainted dead away is unknown.
Tepoz seems to have disappeared. Shelly is not reacting as if there were a male in the room. Or she’s gotten so used to being nude she’s not thinking about it anymore.
I don’t think Shelly was much of a prude even before all this happened. Looking at what little she was wearing for the canceled beach trip recently shows that. I believe she wore much the same sweatband bra when playing basketball with the boys as well. Heck, Monica even allowed Tepoz in the bathroom while she was taking a bath. Maybe he’s gay, who knows.
I thought Shelly’s vision quest was when she followed the rabbit (Nudge?) into the woods and *nearly* died. The recent episode in the forest seemed less like a vision and more like an alternate reality.
That was her vision quest – when she was about twelve or so.
She went out and was led astray by a coyote (Nudge), and died (sufficiently for the purposes of the magic, anyway), before Tochtli the rabbit (Jin, who was late, anyway, due to Monica’s incident with the bus, in which Tina 1.0 also died), who was supposed to be her spirit animal/guide, found her.
We now know that it was Shelly herself (pulling strings from the Wood Between the Worlds) who arranged her own (temporary) death in order to ensure the creation of Creepy Girl/Connie/Dawn, who protected her in the Wood Between the Worlds…
im convinced its the opposite way round.
will do a scan of the archives to see if i can find something later but i seem to recall Jin’s greeting to shelly as ‘poor baby are you lost?’ in the woods.
not something i would say if i was in a rush personally…
but it is something she would say if she wasn’t in a rush and had plenty of time…or she assumed she had plenty of time.
but monica however….getting there too late to stop her from rushing into traffic.
…but not to one who is dead or dieing. That’s another reason why it used to seem that Shelly didn’t really die on her vision quest. She might have been in shock and dreaming, but it doesn’t have the urgency of OMG! She’s dead! She’s open to the demon world! I need to resuscitate her!
@Fairportfan: Paula was talking about something that happened before CG even appeared in the comic. Anyone reading Wapsi Square before 2011 would have thought that Shelly didn’t die. It’s only been recently (starting in January, 2011 as far as I can tell) that any of the characters have started talking as if Shelly died. Once 2011 rolled around, all of the characters have been acting as if they had known all along. (The only hint to the contrary was CG acting as if Shelly might not remember, but Shelly didn’t seem surprised at all!) I can’t blame some of the readers for being confused by that.
BTW, how do we know that GC would be a reliable witness? She was part of Shelly’s mind and Shelly’s mind wouldn’t have been working very well at the time, even if Shelly wasn’t completely dead. How is she supposed to know what is happening while she is in the process of being formed? Jin, who was the rescuer, might have been the best judge. At least she was capable of being able to perform a rescue. Nudge should have been far away to make sure Jin didn’t notice her, so that probably rules her out.
But I’m not going to argue about it. As of January 2011, the characters are acting as if Shelly died. So that’s apparently what happened now.
Ths is the “Ooooh, poor baby. Are you lost?” comic. Shelly and Monica are talking and discovering that Tochtli was/is Jin. The scene is from Shelly’s memories. From a much later comic (which I can’t find ATM) Jin described that day from her point of view. She’s watching over Monica and has to protect her in the bus accident. That prevent Jin from being able to reach Shelly before Shelly pasts the threshold for death. I assume that Jin is in time to revive young Shelly. And then has that “Oooh, poor baby. Are you lost?” talk with young Shelly that adult Shelly remembers. So Shelly, Conscience and Jin are all correct. It all depends on your (their) point of view.
have you got the link where it says about monica dying first?
i cannot ever recall seeing that ..
ever.
same day yes
but jin was LATE for monica…
If she had been watching for her undestracted she would have heard monica trying to kill herself as she ran along…in the more recent strips monica only has to think to be heard…thinking “no no i wont listen to you” would get my attention…
so …
unless someone gives hard proof here…
I’d venture that her experience in the Time Forest wasn’t a vision given that she needed protection from the Apos by CG. That suggests that the sphinxy experience was definitely real.
Given that the CG is really part of Shelly, she could have suffered the same vision as Shelly. Nudge is agreeing, though.
I think the fact that Shelly’s and CG’s hair changed length and Shelly’s clothing is gone and CG can exist outside Shelly are more conclusive evidence that something must have happened. Of course, any magic powerful enough to do those things could also create visions, so even that has limits.
Just by the information given in the second panel above, it seems the whole reason for telling nudge to lead young Shelly into the wild was to create Creepy Girl, thus offering Shellinx protection from the other Apos while she led each of the other 56 Shellys through the meticulous process of transforming the relic into the power source that Nudge is now holding.
Rewally looking forward to what’s next, or what’s after Monica’s tantrum, if that indeed happens.
Ah. At last. Shelly’s smile is back, and she’s showing more expression. I thought all the joy and happiness might have been burned out of her in 80,000 years…
from the sounds of it, the only things that changed are Shelly turning into a sphinx and the relic becoming a power source. Shelly had plenty of visitors, and thus kept her sanity. She even retained some control over the plot apparently….
According to that, the boiler room was her domain, but she was stuck there.
IMO her ability to get out now could easily have something to do with CG’s hair length changing and matching Shelly’s new length and/or Shelly turning all the way into a sphinx.
so on top of all the resets, mishaps and mayhem, there is another universe in which Shelly 57 made it to the TTF, but she didn’t have CG… wonder how that turned out….
What i was saying is that according to CG’s statement, Shelly died … but that she wasn’t aware of it/didn’t remember.
(And, as i said above, CG is probably the closest thing to a Reliable Narrator who was actually involved that we have, and has no reason to lie to Shelly.)
Remember – Monica was not aware (until told) that she had died too, either.
So in both cases, Jin apparently revivified them; presumably what Shelly remembers in the strip you linked would be after Jin jump-started her.
I know from personal experience that it is possible to be knocked unconscious and not remember it – i still have a half-hour blank in my memory from putting the car in reverse to start backing out and waking up in the ambulance.
And that was a violent shock.
Death from exposure would sneak up on you; Shelly would likely have no memory of “falling asleep” – or if you did, you might, indeed, remember it as merely having fallen asleep and been wakened by “Tochtli”‘s voice…
So you think that Jin was merely repeating what Shelly told Jin after Jin revived her? Surely she would have realized that Shelly wouldn’t have such been a reliable witness, just as you did. Given that Jin’s version made it sound as if there might have been a malevolent supernatural reason for what happened to Shelly and it was Jin’s job to keep things running smoothly, wouldn’t it have been prudent for Jin to investigate a little? 😀
There really isn’t any answer to this. The way the character are talking about the vision quest this year is a somewhat different than the way they were talking about it several years ago. If you try to reconcile everything, you wind up with characters behaving in unlikely ways. Oh, well.
No. I think that Jin didn’t mention it but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I can’t recall – was it Jin who told Monica that she died? (Come to think, i think it was Tepoz.)
I haven’t the energy to go crawling back all that way, but i seem to recall that Jin talked to Monica about the accident … and i also seem to recall that she didn’t mention to Monica that she was dead, either.
I remember the same thing about Tepoz, but I don’t think we want to open that can of worms! IIRC, Tepoz was explaining how the GGGs got free will. According to him, Monica’s heart stopping counted as a sacrifice that enabled them to break free from Tepoz’s control. But Monica’s suicide / accident only happened in this timeline. If what Tepoz said was correct, then in all of the time loops the GGGs would have probably remained under Tepoz’s control (but drunk and happy) and probably wouldn’t have been able to try to fix the calendar machine unless Jin somehow found a different way to free them.
But Tepoz was such a tool, who knows when he knew what he was talking about and when he didn’t? He also said that Monica would take Jin’s place, which was totally wrong.
BTW, I wasn’t even talking about whether or not Shelly died in this thread. I’m talking about what Jin said caused whatever happened to Shelly to happen. Jin had made it sound as if Shelly saw or met something (not a coyote), rather than simply being lost for too long. For example, “She didn’t like what she found.” So, what did she find? Jin implied it had something to do with a rabbit, but apparently a different one than Jin/Tochtli.
IIRC, at during some interview near the end of the calendar machine arc, Paul said that he intended for the next one to be shorter. I think I had some doubts about that.
Ok, I’m still rather confused…did Shelly actually ‘die’ on that quest? Is this another one of those cases of someone transcending their time line and this Shelly is actually one of the Shelly’s from the past few goes of time before the Calendar reset the world? Or is this all the same Shelly and she just unlock some level of her memory and existence that had been hidden away?
Okay this is the same Shelly we know, and she did live 80,000-plus years as a sphinx between one heartbeat and the next in the “real” world.
Yes, according to Creepy Girl, she did die on her vision quest, but the Shelly we saw die in the Wood Between the Worlds was, in fact, the Shelly from the Very First time loop.
I think you meant that we saw Shelly Mk 02 die. Fifty six of 57 Shellys arrived (Shelly Mk 57 was one of them). Shelly Mk 01 would have been the most likely to not even try.
Shelly died on her vision quest back when she was a child, but Jin apparently got there in time to restart her heart, just as she did with Monica when she was ran out in front of the bus.
The Shelly we have been watching since she first appeared in Wapsi Square – Shelly 57, because this is the 57th (or some such) cycle caused by the resetting of the Calendar Machine – went to TreeRealm, stayed there for 80,000 years, turned into a Sphinx, watched the versions of herself from 56 to 1 (because time was running backwards in TreeRealm compared to the WS universe) die, eventually touched the relic, and wound up naked and with long hair in Monica’s living room.
The story of what happened during those 80,000 years, and how Shelly going back in time as TreeRealm moved backwards enabled her to mess with her own destiny, is coming out now.
I find it amazing and striking that somehow, in some way…Shelly wanted it this way.
It makes this the most epic of sacrifices. Instead of fixing this so it never happens, she willingly chooses this fate. True wisdom was gained from her time there and the most noble of actions.
Well, free will may not be directly involved (or it may) – in a bootstrap situation like this (whether you consider a bootstrap a paradox or not), the main reason that you do something is that you already did it earlier in the loop…
Shelly-1 (who is the Shelly we are seeing right now, the one who is a human-sphinx hybrid), went through the whole relic-find thing in a timeline that ended up in the first “reset”. That first reset happened because they didn’t realize what it took to destroy the calendar machine – they needed a second doorway.
Like I said yesterday: think of it like trying to play levels of Myst or Super Mario Brothers or whatever – you have to keep going until you finally get everything right. And now, they have the relic that will help with the original quest: fix Jin.
Only thing is, what happens if Jin is fixed? And how does Mayahuel fit into all this? And if they fail, does something worse than a calendar reset happen – like, say, complete and total destruction of the known universe?
I’m thinking something worse is going to happen if they succeed. If Maya could have fixed Jin while she was still human way back when, no big deal. But now, what happens when an all powerful golem suddenly snaps back into time sync? There may be a hundred thousand years of time energy stored in her. All of it being released at once and magnified by her golem power. The shock wave could send the entire galaxy back to the beginning of the whole thing. Lanthis reborn!
Oh man, I bet Tina is just freaking out over there. First suddenly Shelly turns into an 80,000 year old sphinx, then her companion appears (who has previously terrified Tina before, if I recall), then Nudge (who she has no great love for) poits in, and reveals she killed Shelly at Shelly’s behest! I really want to see her reaction tomorrow!
And Paul is running late again… or maybe just the web site? Doggone those lazy IT guys, no wait, I’m an IT guy so that can’t be the issue (not one of Paul’s IT guys)
Oh so he’s actually changed his update time? Well crap.
I’ve been reading Wapsi every night before bed at 12am for years. This is messing with my rhythm. DX
See! It’s SO simple, guys!
Ah. So now we know!
…Okay, now what?
Yes. So simple…
Who, um, who handed the ancient Lanthian weapon of mass destruction to the trickster god just now?
Bud, were you too distracted by the cute demon-child? Or was it the charming full-body tongue bath that overrode your guardian golem programming with its fuzzy-wuzzy darlingness?
DID SHE PICKPOCKET YOUR HATCH, BUD, WTF?
um, shelly / connie did?? they were all working together…
Oh I like Nudge, and this is a moment of celebratory victory, and they’re all getting along. But the work isn’t quite done yet, and Nudge is what she is. Which is not the best choice of creature to deliver a completed quest object to its destination.
Always remember: Hammerspace goes both ways.
I have to wonder though. Why does Nudge even care about all this stuff? Who got her to revive Tina? I doubt that was just chance. Surely Shelly didn’t tell her to do that as well? I have yet to see how Nudge got involved in all this in the first place. Bootstrapping can take you just so far.
Is there in truth, no mystery?
Will nothing be lived, but only expounded?
Be grateful. In the previous major arc it tooks months, nay, years for stuff like this to be brought out in the course of the story.
What worries me about that is, is Paul just clearing the decks for a super-twisty, triple-loop. double inversion with a 720-degree heartline-spin thrill ride of a story coming up?
And if so – how high and steep is the first drop gonna be?
That’s exactly what we need to be afraid of /anticipating.
Not so much fear, as having the dead-certainty he will
It’ s indeed “the great summer clearance”
AYUP.
Every. Last. Doggoned. Time. Paul has done a series of expositions, it has always been a Major Setup that puts the biggest, scariest roller coaster to shame.
Every. Last. Time.
When he’s done exposition interspersed over time, it’s been character development.
We’re in for a hellaride, and I’m looking forward to this the same way ‘coaster addicts look forward to the newest, biggest, fastest, scariest ‘coaster 🙂
Folks; hang on!
And Paul; thank you!
Isn’t that the very ‘style’ of Wapsisquare? That events are developed as they fall into place during a continually developing storyline, not that the comic is halted for a few updates of straight exposition with no advancement?
Just saying, Hanineal has a point that this should be revealed and explained during the course of events, not paused so we can read the cliffnotes. Otherwise, it just steals away numerous opportunities for quality development time.
Too soon to actually ‘complain’ though. Just a thought/concern that’s worth voicing, and isn’t necessarily negative/hurtful to the comic/author to voice it (in fact, the intent is meant to be helpful).
So you wouldn’t mind waiting months, or even years to find out what we just found out?
I was actually thinking over the next few WEEKS, not months.
This just seems like a big data dump to quell all the speculation and let Paul get on with the Next Interesting Development.
Weeks? Dream on. It’s taking a couple of week just to do the exposition, and it’s seriously abridged. I’m basing my months and years comments on his historical record.
You know what’s going to happen next.
They get the key into Jin’s “lock” or whatever, and find out – it doesn’t fit.
You’ll need the Atomic Thingy to Millennial Manipulator adapter; no sweat, you can pick up one for twenty talents down at Golem Depot.
Wait, Minneapolis doesn’t have a Golem Depot store? That means…road trip!
Hmm? As confused as people were by the arc that showed Shelley as a sphinx, do you really think that Paul could have let all this information be “found out” over the course of months?
Half the reader base would be lost or bored.
As it stands, you have to remember that all the other characters, minus those three (and Phix and Tepoz) really didn’t have any idea what happened. Or at the least, Monica didn’t. You can’t have a major character out of the loop, not when they are as high strung as Monica is.
The story would have had to stop sooner or later to do exactly this, and explain Shelley’s new “status”, so what better time than now? Wrap up this bit of Shelley’s present state (and how it all came together in her past with the help of her at the time ‘future’ self) and move along. 🙂
“Half the reader base would be lost or bored.”
well not the fans… they will get even further into speculating about what next… 🙂
And other readers can be kept entertained with a daily punchline and some cleavage. We haven’t had a bra joke in a while, so we’re due.
I don’t see how this is harming any sense of mystery. I don’t see what the problem is. The information given in this update is essentially what we all figured out already. There might be a few pieces that were pure speculation, but all of this is essentially what I’d gotten from the previous comics (with a little help from savvy commenters like Fairportfan and eschmenk).
Thanks! I appreciate the compliment. You don’t do so bad yourself.
Unfortunately I’ve been getting frustrated at the same time, so I am intentionally backing away some.
D-a-a-w-w-www.
Everyone is fun to read; some of the speculations lead me off on some truly weird tangents…
“I love it when a plan comes together…”
…Which is probably what Tepoz is saying right now.
After all the speculation yesterday, apparently Paul is going to answer all our questions.
He’s just reinforcing what Shelly and Nudge say yesterday. But we still don’t know how Shelly told Nudge to do it. In person, via an intermediary? That is what I’m dying to know.
Shelly: “And I told her to do make sure of that” — the phrasing is a bit strained, not sure that it’s not missing a word or two, or has an extra word in there somewhere.
I think the word “do” needs to come out of Shelly’s statement in panel 2.
D’oh! My stupid typing. *grumble* Just hit refresh. 🙂
*pats and hands a cookie to paul*
heh 😀 makes a change 😀
Perhaps you should send the comic to some of us for proofing before you expose it to the world.
About a week in advance, so we can be smugly all “I-know-something-you-don’t-know!” about it.
Like a Sphinx, maybe?
More like a Cheshire Cat that ate a canary.
Heck, Fairport, if I got it in a week in advance, he could be throwing up color comics, lol. I have a feeling he might do them a day to 2 days in advance from when he posts them.
Hmm. We all already knew all of this, but granted Monica did not.
Unsure how to feel about this ‘particular’ update. Didn’t really seem at all necessary, given yesterday’s update.
Also: “to do make sure” typo. Figured worth noting.
I think Monica is being way too calm about it. That comment of her’s is what you ask just to make sure you heard it correctly before you start reading the riot act to someone. I suspect Monica will consider causing Shelly to die on the vision quest was going to far. Big bang coming maybe.
I’m kinda thinking the same thing. I expected Monica to pitch a fit a god while back. She’s about due for a conniption.
*good
Exactly. Remember how Monica reacted when Tina and Shelly where putting the beat on Nudge.
My interpretation is that Monica is no longer easily spooked by the supernatural, but rather is fiercely protective of her friends. The beatdown on Nudge was a dangerous situation. Right now, Monica has realized that none of her friends are in any danger, so she has calmed down.
There was a reason Monica reacted that way back then = to save lives.
Tina told Shelly “Don’t kill her over here, kill her over there.” during a fit of Shelly-rage. Tina, being a demon, has some strong power of suggestion. As Monica stated, Tina saying that would have been enough to push Shelly to killing Nudge (or at least attempting). So Monica interceded and calmed the trio before any of them caused any other harm.
Perhaps. Or maybe M’s just getting used to other people running complicated schemes without letting her in on it. It’s not like it’s the first time, after all…
To me Monica’s calm has that “chipper-don’t-freak-out-in-front-of-everyone-even-though-you’re-really-freaked” look to it. As if she’s trying very hard to keep a smile pasted on her face and listen to what happened to Shelley to make sure she’s ok. And also trying not to freak that her best friend is/was a sphinx for 80k year in what was to her, the blink of an eye.
I think once she’s internally satisfied that Shelley is ‘ok’, she’ll still be in shock until the news and changes sink in better.
I think you’re right on the money there.
Yay for upcoming Monica fireworks (I hope)! 😛
Also, “dieing” should be spelled “dying”.
Duh, Monica. Get with the program. XD
Aww, hope there’s more Tepoz this week.
He’s the perfect one to cater the after-party, make sure everyone has their favorite drink EVER during the ‘what I did on my 80,000 year vacation’ slide show (there will be slides, right?) so everyone is nice and boozy for the “we’re so glad you’re back!” tear-fest at the end of the evening.
I’m just a sentimental old softy -snif-
“Party! Party! Party!…
OK. We’re all on the same page now. I’m still gonna sit over here in “Confusion Corner” but only because the chair’s are really comfy.
Try the couch.
(sob) Too soon, Fairportfan…
Hmm, tastes like old fabric. I’ll have a muffin, I think.
To Fairportfan
With the amount of time I spend in confusion corner? All I can say is I hope that the couch is a hide-a-bed cause I sometimes spend days on end in here.
so thats why I kept finding a blanket on my tail
So shelly has killed herself 57 times, and had another “person” kill her somewhere around the same number.
oww… brain… stop… throbbing
No. Only this time.
he means killed herself in the timeforest 56 times and killed herself via nudge in real life once.
Does this mean that she can be charged with 57 counts of suicide? Has that question ever been asked before in the history of mankind?
I question this aspect of the plot too. If we recall Brandi’s notes in her book during the Calendar machine arc, Shelly was not ‘guaranteed’ to be the key in every rotation, there were 2 other possible alternatives.
Not to mention the early inner monologues by Jin regarding earlier cycles of Shelly.
I just find it unlikely that all previous 56 versions of Shelly died by Shellinx or her Sphinx Woods trials. It just seems against established canon that Shelly would have even been involved in EVERY previous cycle.
I had that thought, too. However, it’s possible that previous Shellys were important to the Jin fixing but not to the calendar fixing. It’s the only way it makes sense to me. 🙂
Reading the strips where Brandi is consulting her book, it never seemed to me that Shelly was one of three different people that Monica was close to during various time loops, just that she went by different names in various loops. IIRC, Brandi’s notes mentioned a “Shelly”, “Michelle” or “Janet”. “Shelly” is a nickname for “Michelle” anyway, so it’s possible she just didn’t use a nickname some loops; as for the other, well, maybe her parents just named her something different a couple of times.
You may be correct, and that is a valid argument. But the presence of Janet in Monica’s life (albeit only 2 minor cameos) seems to work as a possible counter-argument that Shelly, Michelle, and Janet are 3 separate candidates.
Here’s Monica’s friend Janet: http://wapsisquare.com/comic/by-your-side/
I believe she also works at the Museum. So more of a co-worker/acquaintance.
At least this time around.
You know, I like imagining other iterations of the Wapsi Square loop with Janet (from the Modern Art department) hanging around with Monica and Katherine and the rest. But those iterations weren’t the one on which the Calendar Machine got fixed.
If we can still trust Brandi’s book, it sounded like Brandi was making mistakes and figuring out things as she went along. It seems strange that they would have tried fixing the calendar by using the relic every single time. Nothing told them that it was the correct thing to do the final time. Brandi’s notes should have indicated that it hadn’t helped when they had tried it, so why wouldn’t they try something else?
OTOH, if it were somehow blatantly obvious every other time that they needed to use the relic to fix the calendar, and if Dafydd‘s interpretation is correct, they could have quickly learned that only someone named Shelly, etc., could use the relic. In that case, Brandi’s notes would have reflected that. The part about the relic would have needed to have been scratched by Brandi during the last loop and she would have somehow needed to have figured that Shelly (by whatever name) was still needed for a completely different reason for them to have done the correct thing this time, though.
Or was that another thing that Shelly “fixed” from the forest realm somehow?
scratched by Brandi
scratched out by Brandi
Well, that’s better than being wiped out by Brandi.
Big time bootstrapping. I guess one could say, however, that Shelly as hedging her bets to be sure CG was created. Perhaps it would have happened anyway.
Now the question is, how did she know it would happen? Is it common knowledge that sphinx-human hybrid demons will combine if the host dies for a short period of time, or is this still special to Shelly?
She knew it because (for her) it had already happened before she told Nudge to do it.
This. It is the same logic behind how Jin has all her wealth and power.
Shelly had already experienced her entire life up until being ported to the Sphinx Forest, then started going through time in reverse order. Having the knowledge she did about what happened to both her and her previous cycles, Shelly made sure to inform the parties needed what to do at certain points to avoid a TIME PARADOX!
Now, what is curious is if Tina was going in reverse-time while the other Apos/Sphinxes were still going forward-time. This means Shelly could have learned EVERYTHING shortly after arriving in the Sphinx Forest, then years later teach the same people who taught her those very same topics, creating mini-paradoxes all over the place.
It’s only a paradox if the cause comes after the effect on the same timeline.
With the Forest moving in the opposite direction, it’s not a paradox, just a very elegant loop.
As if you had two concentric merry-go-rounds running in different directions – you step from one to the other, and then step back onto the first one several horses ahead of where you were before.
I guess this all depends on how you interpret the word paradox. Some people define a paradox as an action that prevents you from entering the time loop in the first place. Say for example if Shelly stayed in the time forest until Jin was a child and then caused her death somehow that would be a paradox because the factors that lead up to Shelly being in the time forest would never have happened. I am one of those people that also believes that all time loops that are caused by factors inside the loop would be considered examples of a paradox. So when Shelly in the time forest causes things to happen in real time that leads to her being in the time forest, that too is a paradox.
I agree with jjs56thiteration. At some point earlier than Shelly can affect, there was no need for Nudge to lead Shelly off and nothing to cause that need. Yet she does it anyway. Therefore, there would be a discontinuity in time.
The loop is internally consistent, but it’s not externally consistent. Nothing before earliest part of Shelly’s loop could cause the loop to exist.
Nearest parallel I can imagine comes from Harry Potter 3, when he thought his dead father was casting a Patronus, but later figures out he did it himself, and makes damn sure to do it so as not to alter his past.
Also, Bill and Ted…
It is still possible someone else is involved and pulling the strings. I have trouble believing the three of them are that sneaky by themselves. Good chance the idea was planted by someone else. Best guess is Phix, based on Shelly saying she learned as much by what Phix said as by what she didn’t say . But Shelly may have met others as well. From Maya, who is still lurking out there in the bushes, to the immortal politicians, to Brandi. This explains nothing but the little plan by these three. There are larger wheels still turning out there around this.
ah sorry zachariah
i didn’t read your post fully it seems and basically repeated what you said.
my appologies 🙂
No doubt. I’m still expecting something monumental happening around the last of December, 2012. In the Wapsiverse, that is. The thing with Jin being only a part of something much larger. Who knows what will happen when Jin comes into synch. Timequakes? Planetary disruptions? Solar catastrophies? Galactic catastrophies? Cats and dogs, living together! Only the beginning folks, on-ly-the-beginning.
Oh, and Jin owes Shelly big time now.
I could believe that.
I vote for Maya.
She’s the only one who knows Jin’s specifications for the battery since Jin is effectively her creation, and Maya has had a very long time to plan what to do for Jin once the calendar machine was “fixed”.
We all are still assuming that the calendar machine is what caused the loops. Many statements lead to the conclusion but who says it has not been fixed before and a loop still happened. The CM was fixed early in the loop not on the 2012 date. It is possible that failing to fix Jin is what caused the loop? Just speculating and keeping this idea out there.
Possible, but Jin & May do not suffer memory-loss from the resets, and both seemed to indicate that the Calendar Machine was never successfully destroyed/reset in the past (before Jin went totally bonkers).
It is an interesting thought though, if the Calendar Machine’s ability wasn’t just restricted to a giant dishwasher, but in some form now bonded to May and/or the GGG due to May’s actions in the past.
I agree wth this completely and have said so in the past. As far as Jin being a witness to all of the repeats we need to remember that she was begining to see things as they got closer and closer to when they fixed the CM this time. She may not have very clear memories about what was happening from this time period in each of the repeats, she certainly wouldn’t be considered a reliable witness anyway. May was trapped in the demon realm the entire time and as such may not have witnessed much or even anything of the events that lead up to the previous resets. At this point Phix and Nudge are the only good witness to the resets and Nudge messing up “stays lost” and “steak sauce” means you would have to take anything she says about it with a grain of salt. Oh and of course depending on what Shellinx can see happening in the real time line she could be a witness of sorts as well.
There’s also the little firewall girl to consider too. She is somewhere in all of this. Heck, she may even be the cause.
Brandi is a very interesting person to consider given that we know about her book and that she was directly involved in so many important events, yet we still do not have a lot of information on her backstory, apart from what was revealed a couple of months ago when she related her experiences in the pit with Bud and Jin to the fly she released out the window. And since that episode also revealed her to be a compassionate being, one has to assume that anything Brandi did, even if it seems bad on the surface, was done for the greater good.
Maybe Phix told her.
Seems like the other Apos didn’t know but would stand to reason that Phix would know as the library might have had information on something similar.
Which means it may have occured before.
(i’m seriously going to be slightly peeved if this isn’t first) I finally finished coloring the strip from last thursdays comic.
http://solbet.deviantart.com/art/Wapsi-Square-Comic-Colored-211215512
Not first. XD
Holy bleepity bleep people o.o. It took me only a few minutes to get that posted and I’m way off from first, lol.
The quick and the dead dude.
Gotta be quicker on the draw. XD
I recommend just posting to save your spot and then add the link by replying to yourself.
Fan-friggin-tastic!
Seconded.
I would of done more in the background and such, but his lines are so sketchy when it gets to stuff behind the characters it makes it kind of hard to work with. And, heh, if I could work faster, I’d have yesterdays posted whenever today’s was done, lol. I’d be a day late and a dollar short, but it’d be worth it to work on a comic I adore.
Just a question. Why did you give CG red eyes & black skin? It completely changes the relationship she has with Shelly.
She’s supposed to look like a 12 yr. old version of our favorite Sphinx hybrid, not like something that crawled out of the Pit.
Eh, I really just based it on an older strip that had creepy girl in it. It didn’t have any real color to it, just a colored texture. So I took the darkness of that picture (her skin) and just added in the creepiest eyes I could think of. It’s no big deal, I can just go and fix it later. I still have it all saved and everything. I’m just glad photoshop has a group layers option or I’d have to search through over 100 layers-.-.
Yes, layers rule!
If you’re referring to the strips i suspect you are, consider that Shelly is coloured a sort of off-slate-gray.
Hmmm, so that means if you color correct Shelly’s skin in that comic to normal skin tones (for her), CG’s skin color should come out whatever it’s supposed to be naturally.
Solbet — Gotta watch out for that Copyright thingie! Beautiful work, but I almost got my DA account killed because I posted some Wapsi strips I colored and wanted to display. The pics were pulled by the moderators and I got a nastygram out of it. Lesson learned. After that I only posted links within the old forum, now long gone, alas.
Aw phooey! The image won’t load when I click the link…it takes me to your DA site, but give me one of those broken image icons. 🙁
Try again – i got it okay.
awsome 😀
creepy looks terrifying 🙂
Ok, I recolored CG’s skin so it looks more flesh like. Here’s the update.
http://solbet.deviantart.com/art/Wapsi-Square-Comic-Colored-211215512
That is awesome! Very good job. I really see the relationship between Shelly and CG now.
Glad I saved the original version while it existed.
Funny image to see a 9-foot doggie-deity sitting on her haunches in M’s kitchen. I am just imagining what it might look if Nudge sat down in my kitchen…makes me giggle for a bit.. 😛
Are you really sure that Nudge is that ‘doggie deity’ when she could make a Bighorn Sheep ram jealous!
And wears horseshoes!
We had Drenthian sheep at the farm(a breed where both males&females have horns) ,and I have yet to see a Ram lick someone’s face ,or wag it’s tail (except for when they took a dump…)
Hence: Doggy-deity 😆
When you put it that way, diggie-deity makes perfect sense. 🙂
I see Nudge as a satyr figure. She mischievous & light-hearted, but still packs a mean kick.
Of course, the sphinxes can ( and do) still kick her ass…
I guess that’s the closest.
If it really is a doggy then Deitzel will be in love.
…or a battle over which one was alpha. I wouldn’t want to bet on which one would win. 😕
Dietzel already has the pizza girl.
Okay, CG’s name is “Dawn”, and when she and Shelly walk into the garage, Shelly’s dad is gonna ask “How was school today, Dawnie?”
“MOOOM!!!”
“If you get killed, I’m telling!”
*sigh*
i am slow
you be refering to buffy arn’t you 🙂
Is he? But then I wouldn’t know as I’ve never watched any movie or TV show with “Buffy” in the title. No, not even “Buffy Does Detroit”.
Neither have I. 🙂 Which is really kind of weird when you consider how into the supernatural stuff I was growing up…
“Buffy” is worth looking into. If you’ve got Netflix, check out Season One…
For those not familiar with “Buffy” – Dawn was Buffy’s kid sister who first appeared in Episode One of Season Five – even though Buffy was clearly established as an only child in Seasons One through Five.
(BTW _ you can apparently watch almost the full run of “Buffy” – 142 or 145 episodes – free on IMDB.)
I’ve seen that same look on my GF’s face: INCOMING!!!
Run! Duck! Hide! >_<
Not so much the look on her face as the hands clasped behind the back and the body-language that says she’s getting ready to move fast once she determines the most appropriate target(s).
Yeah…the “sweetness and innocence” look is more of a warning sign to people than a deception I’ve noticed. 🙂
Wait, but wasn’t Shelly, like, 12 when she went on her vision quest? Was that a different vision quest than the radioactive tree thing we saw a couple weeks ago? If so, how did the dying [note spelling] help? If not, how did 12-year-old Shelly look like 20-something-year-old Shelly?
Never mind — I re-read the strip and figured it out. Too damn early in the morning yet.
Yknow
Monica AND Shelly are alot more calmer than I would be.
No matter how much supernatural stuff you see…this lot would blow my mind and make me need a timeout. With muffins and vodka shots.
Well, Shelly has had 80,000-plus years to get used to the idea.
Monica, OTOH, being Latina-Irish, is getting all the facts, carefully making sure that she understands the situation and ramifications…
…before deciding which one to choke the ever-loving shit out of first.
Word.
Why do it herself when she can just say the magic word and have the GG’s go wrestlemania on their sorry tushes?
If you want something done right, do it yourself.
Because watching someone get strangled by someone else (who isn’t necessarily upset like you are) isn’t nearly as satisfying as doing it yourself. 😉
Oh, yeah. I can foresee a couple of scenarios, after Monica goes off like a bomb. Several minutes into Monica’s furious tirade, after she has blasted right through everyone’s attempt to calm her down, she jerks to a stop, nose to nose with a very large sphinx suddenly filling most of the room.
“Monica,” says Shelly, gently, “I said, that’s enough.”
Or Shelly might just sit smiling, letting M rant, and thinking “God, I’ve missed this!” Shelly has matured, and there is a new depth of serenity to her.
^^that, and the rest, Wholly agree.
Shelly is rather familiar with that trick.
From the downrange (so to speak) end.
that avatar
goes so well with that reply its uncanny 🙂
People can get used to anything, no matter how ridiculous.
I am beginning to suspect that Paul is specifically addressing a lot of our speculation in the past couple of comics. On top of clearing up several of our points of debate, I suspect that the steak sauce thing from yesterday was a subtle, but friendly jab at some of our more convoluted theories. As I said before, I suspect he has an important reason for clearing up as much of our confusion as possible, but now I’m speculating on the thinning of speculation fodder, and that just gives me a headache.
“Stare into the abyss long enough, and the abyss begins to stare back.” Or something close to that.
“…stares into you.”
@NOTDilbert was closer. The actual Nietzche quote is: If you stare into the Abyss long enough the Abyss stares back at you.
shux
Don’t care – not keeping score. 😉
I stared into the abyss, the abyss stared back, and I continued staring until the abyss finally blinked.
Give Casey two cookies, something for eyestrain, and an Irish Coffee!
I’m just curious, has anyone thought to create a friggen forum for WS? Seriously, it’d be easier to read over posts that way, lol.
There’s a Wiki:
http://wapsisquare.pbworks.com/w/page/7273570/Cast
I believe there is also a Wikipedia page as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=wapsi+square&fulltext=1&ns0=1&redirs=0
But no forum as such. Most prefer to post here, despite some shortcomings, to keep the comments with the comic.
Most use the RSS feed to keep up with things without having to go through every comment block looking for new ones.
Oh darn, I forgot and put 2 links in one post. Ah well, it’ll be up eventually.
Ha! The post is not even up yet and I have to make corrections and additions:
The wikipedia page is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapsi_Square
Oh My God!! I just read the wiki and I now know who’s behind it all.
The Great Planner, The Puppet Master, and The One Pulling Everyone’s Strings!
It’s All So Clear. Paul, you’re a Genius.
And another Wiki is:
http://wapsisquare.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
And something on that wiki just confirms my Epiphany.
I know the Name of The Power Behind It All.
Good heavens, you just now figured it out? Gee, you’re slow!
Of course, he’s at the beginning of his personal looping through time, so here-and-now he’s rather callow and unformed. But we can point to the very moment when he decided to become Master of the Universe.
Hm. I’ve got to got to work, so I’ll provide the link later.
i take it you mean dietzel
few peeps have speculated on that
not recently but in the past 🙂
that comment was at hanineal btw
i presume fatuncle might mean tepoz but not sure 🙂
…and, besides, the margins of this comic are too narrow.
You can also post any bizarre theories and strange speculation here, just so we have them all in one place.
My money’s on the betta fish Katherine has. It’s in league with the white mice.
No, I meant Dietzel, and the link was to go to the Crimson Mantis page, where Dietzel is wearing that idiot suit Monica put him into. I was so tired I could not make the link work, so I gave up and went to bed.
No – it was the Milk Board.
Oh, the Waspi Wiki needs so much work…
Well, here’s something that can be done. Like LICD’s comics, you could have the comments for that comic linked to the forum, where you could look at the website if you’d like, or on the forums. Just a thought.
The problem is that people who stop by to read the comics won’t know there is another place to post. Not unless Paul puts a link in and I doubt he will want to do that for two reasons:
1) That would draw page hits away and that means lost revenue from advertising. People would just go directly to the forum site once they find out about it and not Paul’s website to post. We come here only once to read the comic, but come back to read and make posts.
2) He has no control over contents. It’s his brand and he should protect it as much as possible, insuring it has the presentation he wants it to have.
I’m intrigued by the creation of another ‘power block’ in the Wapsiverse. Shelly, Nudge, Jenny Cricket. Bud & Brandi. Jin and May. And poor Monica stuck in the middle of it all.
She’s the Sun that the rest of them revolved around. Or at least the massive globes… maybe I shouldn’t have said that.
another reason why tina calls her sunshine i suspect 🙂
hssss
O.o
(realises what she said)
noooo…i ment the revolving round monica bit not the globes 🙂
Every universe needs a center…even the Wapsiverse. 😛
Why are none of Shelly’s friends mourning her, or even reacting? They’ve just been informed that “Their” Shelly is dead, that she died for Jin unwittingly, and she is now getting replaced with “Sphinx” Shelly…so…why is everyone just cool with that? I’m really hoping I missed this being addressed somewhere because otherwise, this comic just turned into being pretty cold and heartless.
This IS the same Shelly that was there just minutes ago. She’s regaining all her memories as she’s standing there.
No – this is their Shelly. The one we saw die was the one from the very first loop.
“Our” Shelly (Shelly57) went to the Wood Between the Worlds, and was trapped there for 80,000-plus years – in a pocket universe (i assume) in which time ran the opposite direction from ours.
After she’d been there 1450 years (in which time she apparently got in touch with her Inner Sphinx), she met Shelly56, who died in some manner – not necessarily from the plutonium.
And every 1450 years after that, she met another Shelly (each one from an earlier loop), until finally The Very First Shelly (Shelly01) popped in, died from the plutonium … and she was able to go home, arriving at basically the same time she’d left, 80,000-plus years earlier.
Same Shelly, but a touch more mature.
fuggin sake. I’ve seen less convoluted writing in a season of Dr. Who >_<!
Actually, that’s not saying much with the Moffat/Smith version (AU) they’ve got on the telly now.
They already knew that this Shelly died on her vision quest. Jin said that she didn’t quite die here but lately the characters have been talking as if she actually died. In any case, if she did, it was only temporary. It’s the reason why Shelly punched Nudge in the coffee shop, but other than that, they’ve put it behind them.
Perhaps she did die and Nudge brought her back. She was still dehydrated and such, so still near death (again) when Jin found her.
Jin’s description there sure doesn’t sound like the “Poor baby” panel, does it?
Seems like an awful lot of trouble and time just to get the plutonium out of the tree. I’m assuming there’s more to it than that.
The time continium had to be ‘restored’ with regards to SHelley, and she may have been the only motral with access to that realm, and who could handle the artifact and do what needed to be done.
Call it Fate, call it destiny, call it luck, some things are just meant to be. 🙂
Possibly, but that hasn’t been established.
It’s possible that the plutonium had to “marinate” a bit in the tree in order to reach the highly lethal (yet incredibly effective power source) level it has now. *shrugs* That’s at least what it seemed like to me when Shellynx was explaining it briefly to Shelly1.
That’s what I think also, but that hasn’t been established either. Nor has any of the other speculation presented in the comments.
All we know is she was in the forest for 80K some-odd years. In the final minutes of this stay, she allowed a Shelly to die charging the “battery” and she brought it back. A side note is that she had CG to protect and comfort her. In that regard, we know she took steps to make sure CG was created.
Perhaps this week more will be presented of her purpose and how/why it all happened.
As mentioned before, radiation doesn’t work that way. But Shelly’s been in a forest for 81,000 years; how much physics does she know? It’s close enough for now.
Well, Doc Brown already established that the less convoluted ways bear the danger of rabid Lybians mowing you down with semi-automatic rifles…
So their plan was a success; there’s zero rabid Lybians in Wapsi Square – well, not yet at least… 😀
No – those were in Egypt in what used to be a fruit market.
Bud dealt with them.
Even so Wapsi Square still isn’t in Egypt, is it? 😉
Are Tina and Bud still in the room? I’d be interested to see Tina’s reaction to a non-shape-shifted Nudge given their altercation at the coffee shop.
And bear in mind, Monica was foreshadowing a bit when she said Shelly, Nudge, and Tina would “always be there for each other” (although i cannot imagine she could have foreseen recent events)…well, we found out that was very true in the case of Shelly and Nudge, so Now I’d like to see Tina’s reaction.
Before Friday, if possible!
Bud is apparently still in the room and I suspect just watching. That Nudge is alive shows she’s not so agitated that she would hit a monster who suddenly appears out of nowhere, but instead waits to see what happens next…
Tina should also still be in the room, but whether she’s still conscious or has fainted dead away is unknown.
Tepoz seems to have disappeared. Shelly is not reacting as if there were a male in the room. Or she’s gotten so used to being nude she’s not thinking about it anymore.
And Nudge has the artifact…
I don’t think Shelly was much of a prude even before all this happened. Looking at what little she was wearing for the canceled beach trip recently shows that. I believe she wore much the same sweatband bra when playing basketball with the boys as well. Heck, Monica even allowed Tepoz in the bathroom while she was taking a bath. Maybe he’s gay, who knows.
We don’t even know if Tepoz is anatomically correct. Several of the girls do, as he got poited in from a bath to help Jin get sober…
I thought Shelly’s vision quest was when she followed the rabbit (Nudge?) into the woods and *nearly* died. The recent episode in the forest seemed less like a vision and more like an alternate reality.
That was her vision quest – when she was about twelve or so.
She went out and was led astray by a coyote (Nudge), and died (sufficiently for the purposes of the magic, anyway), before Tochtli the rabbit (Jin, who was late, anyway, due to Monica’s incident with the bus, in which Tina 1.0 also died), who was supposed to be her spirit animal/guide, found her.
We now know that it was Shelly herself (pulling strings from the Wood Between the Worlds) who arranged her own (temporary) death in order to ensure the creation of Creepy Girl/Connie/Dawn, who protected her in the Wood Between the Worlds…
im convinced its the opposite way round.
will do a scan of the archives to see if i can find something later but i seem to recall Jin’s greeting to shelly as ‘poor baby are you lost?’ in the woods.
not something i would say if i was in a rush personally…
but it is something she would say if she wasn’t in a rush and had plenty of time…or she assumed she had plenty of time.
but monica however….getting there too late to stop her from rushing into traffic.
If Jin made it there in plenty of time, then there’s no point to Nudge leading Shelly astray to delay it, and Shelly would have known that.
“Poor baby, are you lost?” sounds like something soothing you say to a child you’re afraid may be on the border (or past it) of hysteria.
…but not to one who is dead or dieing. That’s another reason why it used to seem that Shelly didn’t really die on her vision quest. She might have been in shock and dreaming, but it doesn’t have the urgency of OMG! She’s dead! She’s open to the demon world! I need to resuscitate her!
Well, as i pointed out, according to CG, who is, after all, intimately acquainted with the events in question, she did die.
@Fairportfan: Paula was talking about something that happened before CG even appeared in the comic. Anyone reading Wapsi Square before 2011 would have thought that Shelly didn’t die. It’s only been recently (starting in January, 2011 as far as I can tell) that any of the characters have started talking as if Shelly died. Once 2011 rolled around, all of the characters have been acting as if they had known all along. (The only hint to the contrary was CG acting as if Shelly might not remember, but Shelly didn’t seem surprised at all!) I can’t blame some of the readers for being confused by that.
BTW, how do we know that GC would be a reliable witness? She was part of Shelly’s mind and Shelly’s mind wouldn’t have been working very well at the time, even if Shelly wasn’t completely dead. How is she supposed to know what is happening while she is in the process of being formed? Jin, who was the rescuer, might have been the best judge. At least she was capable of being able to perform a rescue. Nudge should have been far away to make sure Jin didn’t notice her, so that probably rules her out.
But I’m not going to argue about it. As of January 2011, the characters are acting as if Shelly died. So that’s apparently what happened now.
It’s what always happened.
This: http://wapsisquare.com/comic/areyoulost-2/
Ths is the “Ooooh, poor baby. Are you lost?” comic. Shelly and Monica are talking and discovering that Tochtli was/is Jin. The scene is from Shelly’s memories. From a much later comic (which I can’t find ATM) Jin described that day from her point of view. She’s watching over Monica and has to protect her in the bus accident. That prevent Jin from being able to reach Shelly before Shelly pasts the threshold for death. I assume that Jin is in time to revive young Shelly. And then has that “Oooh, poor baby. Are you lost?” talk with young Shelly that adult Shelly remembers. So Shelly, Conscience and Jin are all correct. It all depends on your (their) point of view.
Right. That’s what i recall.
have you got the link where it says about monica dying first?
i cannot ever recall seeing that ..
ever.
same day yes
but jin was LATE for monica…
If she had been watching for her undestracted she would have heard monica trying to kill herself as she ran along…in the more recent strips monica only has to think to be heard…thinking “no no i wont listen to you” would get my attention…
so …
unless someone gives hard proof here…
I’d venture that her experience in the Time Forest wasn’t a vision given that she needed protection from the Apos by CG. That suggests that the sphinxy experience was definitely real.
Given that the CG is really part of Shelly, she could have suffered the same vision as Shelly. Nudge is agreeing, though.
I think the fact that Shelly’s and CG’s hair changed length and Shelly’s clothing is gone and CG can exist outside Shelly are more conclusive evidence that something must have happened. Of course, any magic powerful enough to do those things could also create visions, so even that has limits.
Or maybe the kitchen scene is a vision! 😛
Just by the information given in the second panel above, it seems the whole reason for telling nudge to lead young Shelly into the wild was to create Creepy Girl, thus offering Shellinx protection from the other Apos while she led each of the other 56 Shellys through the meticulous process of transforming the relic into the power source that Nudge is now holding.
Rewally looking forward to what’s next, or what’s after Monica’s tantrum, if that indeed happens.
Also, what do Tina and Bud think about all this??
Rewally? urgh.
As long as we don’t reBeaver, ‘sall good.
(Throws money in the pun jar)
Ah. At last. Shelly’s smile is back, and she’s showing more expression. I thought all the joy and happiness might have been burned out of her in 80,000 years…
from the sounds of it, the only things that changed are Shelly turning into a sphinx and the relic becoming a power source. Shelly had plenty of visitors, and thus kept her sanity. She even retained some control over the plot apparently….
CG being able to exist outside Shelly might not be all that minor, either. She couldn’t do that before.
Well, she didn’t. But that might simply be because she didn’t need to.
Word of God in this case.
Tessa found a comment by Paul here:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/look-at-the-time/
According to that, the boiler room was her domain, but she was stuck there.
IMO her ability to get out now could easily have something to do with CG’s hair length changing and matching Shelly’s new length and/or Shelly turning all the way into a sphinx.
Good to know; i don’t think it’s actually established in-story anywhere, but it make sense.
Someone is having waaaay too much fun
so on top of all the resets, mishaps and mayhem, there is another universe in which Shelly 57 made it to the TTF, but she didn’t have CG… wonder how that turned out….
Fairportfan from yesterday:
So why did Jin say what she said? (I didn’t say that Nudge said anything about it.)
Wasn’t talking about Nudge saying at that point.
What i was saying is that according to CG’s statement, Shelly died … but that she wasn’t aware of it/didn’t remember.
(And, as i said above, CG is probably the closest thing to a Reliable Narrator who was actually involved that we have, and has no reason to lie to Shelly.)
So Shelly’s account may be true – as she remembers it.
Remember – Monica was not aware (until told) that she had died too, either.
So in both cases, Jin apparently revivified them; presumably what Shelly remembers in the strip you linked would be after Jin jump-started her.
I know from personal experience that it is possible to be knocked unconscious and not remember it – i still have a half-hour blank in my memory from putting the car in reverse to start backing out and waking up in the ambulance.
And that was a violent shock.
Death from exposure would sneak up on you; Shelly would likely have no memory of “falling asleep” – or if you did, you might, indeed, remember it as merely having fallen asleep and been wakened by “Tochtli”‘s voice…
So you think that Jin was merely repeating what Shelly told Jin after Jin revived her? Surely she would have realized that Shelly wouldn’t have such been a reliable witness, just as you did. Given that Jin’s version made it sound as if there might have been a malevolent supernatural reason for what happened to Shelly and it was Jin’s job to keep things running smoothly, wouldn’t it have been prudent for Jin to investigate a little? 😀
There really isn’t any answer to this. The way the character are talking about the vision quest this year is a somewhat different than the way they were talking about it several years ago. If you try to reconcile everything, you wind up with characters behaving in unlikely ways. Oh, well.
No. I think that Jin didn’t mention it but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I can’t recall – was it Jin who told Monica that she died? (Come to think, i think it was Tepoz.)
I haven’t the energy to go crawling back all that way, but i seem to recall that Jin talked to Monica about the accident … and i also seem to recall that she didn’t mention to Monica that she was dead, either.
I remember the same thing about Tepoz, but I don’t think we want to open that can of worms! IIRC, Tepoz was explaining how the GGGs got free will. According to him, Monica’s heart stopping counted as a sacrifice that enabled them to break free from Tepoz’s control. But Monica’s suicide / accident only happened in this timeline. If what Tepoz said was correct, then in all of the time loops the GGGs would have probably remained under Tepoz’s control (but drunk and happy) and probably wouldn’t have been able to try to fix the calendar machine unless Jin somehow found a different way to free them.
But Tepoz was such a tool, who knows when he knew what he was talking about and when he didn’t? He also said that Monica would take Jin’s place, which was totally wrong.
BTW, I wasn’t even talking about whether or not Shelly died in this thread. I’m talking about what Jin said caused whatever happened to Shelly to happen. Jin had made it sound as if Shelly saw or met something (not a coyote), rather than simply being lost for too long. For example, “She didn’t like what she found.” So, what did she find? Jin implied it had something to do with a rabbit, but apparently a different one than Jin/Tochtli.
(I really would like some Word of God on this, if God happens to read this…)
All will be revealed October 21, 2011 my son…
The key to HELP fix Jin?…
Guys, I think we’ve just been run through a Preface. This is why I hate roller coasters and love fiction.
IIRC, at during some interview near the end of the calendar machine arc, Paul said that he intended for the next one to be shorter. I think I had some doubts about that.
Oh, good. Pablo will wrap up this storyline in less than 81,000 years. I feel so comforted by that. 🙂
Ok, I’m still rather confused…did Shelly actually ‘die’ on that quest? Is this another one of those cases of someone transcending their time line and this Shelly is actually one of the Shelly’s from the past few goes of time before the Calendar reset the world? Or is this all the same Shelly and she just unlock some level of her memory and existence that had been hidden away?
Yes.
Okay this is the same Shelly we know, and she did live 80,000-plus years as a sphinx between one heartbeat and the next in the “real” world.
Yes, according to Creepy Girl, she did die on her vision quest, but the Shelly we saw die in the Wood Between the Worlds was, in fact, the Shelly from the Very First time loop.
That is, CG says she did die on her vision quest.
And we have Shelly’s statements that the Shelly we saw die was, in fact, Shelly Mk 01. (Our Shelly being Shelly MK 57.)
I think you meant that we saw Shelly Mk 02 die. Fifty six of 57 Shellys arrived (Shelly Mk 57 was one of them). Shelly Mk 01 would have been the most likely to not even try.
Likely right, come to think.
Shelly died on her vision quest back when she was a child, but Jin apparently got there in time to restart her heart, just as she did with Monica when she was ran out in front of the bus.
The Shelly we have been watching since she first appeared in Wapsi Square – Shelly 57, because this is the 57th (or some such) cycle caused by the resetting of the Calendar Machine – went to TreeRealm, stayed there for 80,000 years, turned into a Sphinx, watched the versions of herself from 56 to 1 (because time was running backwards in TreeRealm compared to the WS universe) die, eventually touched the relic, and wound up naked and with long hair in Monica’s living room.
The story of what happened during those 80,000 years, and how Shelly going back in time as TreeRealm moved backwards enabled her to mess with her own destiny, is coming out now.
I find it amazing and striking that somehow, in some way…Shelly wanted it this way.
It makes this the most epic of sacrifices. Instead of fixing this so it never happens, she willingly chooses this fate. True wisdom was gained from her time there and the most noble of actions.
Well, free will may not be directly involved (or it may) – in a bootstrap situation like this (whether you consider a bootstrap a paradox or not), the main reason that you do something is that you already did it earlier in the loop…
I see Shelly’s eyes have brightened considerably. She no longer has that I’m-more-serious-than-a-heart-attack-so-don’t-mess-with-me scowl.
Well, I see Eee said essentially the same thing a few posts back. Obviously my RSS feed is not sending all the new posts. Not good.
Okay, my little crazy mid-week theory:
Shelly-1 (who is the Shelly we are seeing right now, the one who is a human-sphinx hybrid), went through the whole relic-find thing in a timeline that ended up in the first “reset”. That first reset happened because they didn’t realize what it took to destroy the calendar machine – they needed a second doorway.
Like I said yesterday: think of it like trying to play levels of Myst or Super Mario Brothers or whatever – you have to keep going until you finally get everything right. And now, they have the relic that will help with the original quest: fix Jin.
Only thing is, what happens if Jin is fixed? And how does Mayahuel fit into all this? And if they fail, does something worse than a calendar reset happen – like, say, complete and total destruction of the known universe?
I’m thinking something worse is going to happen if they succeed. If Maya could have fixed Jin while she was still human way back when, no big deal. But now, what happens when an all powerful golem suddenly snaps back into time sync? There may be a hundred thousand years of time energy stored in her. All of it being released at once and magnified by her golem power. The shock wave could send the entire galaxy back to the beginning of the whole thing. Lanthis reborn!
Looks like a long sit-down is in order. Somebody better go get a big bag of Purina Mythic-Chow. They’re gonna be talking through dinner.
Oh man, I bet Tina is just freaking out over there. First suddenly Shelly turns into an 80,000 year old sphinx, then her companion appears (who has previously terrified Tina before, if I recall), then Nudge (who she has no great love for) poits in, and reveals she killed Shelly at Shelly’s behest! I really want to see her reaction tomorrow!
*Whistles innocently*
*Trims Nails*
*Wonders what’s for breakfast tomorrow*
*Faints in confusion* 😛
And Paul is running late again… or maybe just the web site? Doggone those lazy IT guys, no wait, I’m an IT guy so that can’t be the issue (not one of Paul’s IT guys)
It’s just those guys in production who can’t hold a soldering iron with two hands full of superglue. 😉
Bah, humbug on 1:30 AM Eastern updates! That’s an extra 30 minutes of fretting and gnashing of teeth to find out what happens next!
Oh so he’s actually changed his update time? Well crap.
I’ve been reading Wapsi every night before bed at 12am for years. This is messing with my rhythm. DX
So in essence; you have to die in order to be re-born as a Para… 🤔🤨