Would have been very easy to loose them in the bus accident….and she did say she had dental work, as well as reconstructive surgery, when she got back to Miami….
They could simply be some manner of animal fangs, artificial or real. Both CAN be found, if one knows where to look. So can jewelry featuring either. Or, they could just be beads manufactured to look like fangs. Or just beads that coincidentally look like fangs. XD
Great strip today. You’ve got wonderful expressions, nice sense of environment, and a ton of exposition. And, of course, the girls look cute enough to start another whirlwind of possessiveness amongst your fans.
Shelly forgot that every prior iteration ended with the calendar machine resetting… this time it was obliterated and that’s partially why Jin’s gone cuckoo…
Right. This is after the point at which everything started over again in the cyclic universe before the machine was destroyed; we’ve never been here before.
Close… It’s still in the time frame of the previous iterations, but the context is different, as it’s the first time they attempted a premature calendar machine end, so now they’re attempting a different solution.
As it’s an alternate solution to how the CM was helping Jin, it’s possible to have run across something like this before, but I guess we’ll just have to see.
You are always your own worst critic. Bud is a lot smarter than she gives herself credit for.
She is working her up the ladder to being my favorite character. Not that it’s far, she’s tied for number two with Tina…
Bud has been my favourite character for quite a while – she’s the most damaged of the GGs (well, damaged by her experiences, as opposed to Jin, who was apparently always a bit off-center),but, in some ways, she’s the most human of the three.
The lamp is one of the things that make me love Bud the way I do. The wallpaper of her and the old home is one that spends a lot of time on my desktop.
Right. It normally didn’t reset until 2012. We don’t know quite what happened to those involved in the previous times, but it wasn’t good. Also Tina would probably have been alive doing whatever she did (unless the drug dealers bumped her off). No coffee shop though. Probably not even involved at all. She’s kind of a wild card now.
I was just thinking that. Time kept reseting at that point. Everything that’s happened since then this time is a first for everyone. So this little quest is new territory I would think.
That’s what I was thinking – until the machine was fixed/destroyed, all work was on the calendar machine. They never reached the point past that at which Jin’s problem became the next goal.
Say rather that Shelly’s understanding of this time and these events is not as complete as say Monica’s or even Jin’s. The idea of replicating events 50 or 60 times is pretty hard to forget. It feels rather realistic for her to assume that this may have happened before. Dare I say she might even be trying to comfort herself… “Yeah, I have done this before… right?”
No, the time resetting thing was always on 12/21/12, but even so up until that time they were always working on “fixing” the machine and not on “fixing” Jin. So, even though they have been through these dates 56 times before, this is the first time through for this scenario.
Time is fluid and fluid is chaotic so therefore Time is chaotic? Aka nonlinear and thus trackable only after the fact and then incompletey. Especially for entities that reside within the system they are trying to predict/measure. Sounds fun!
It’s not that difficult of a concept. Imagine time as a river. You can only measure the water in front of you, while you are in front of it. For example, Niagara Falls records the volume of water that flows over it per minute. However, they can’t say exactly where that water came from or where it is going to go, all they know is the amount that flows over the falls.
I see our current place in the flow of time as riders on that flow. We are swept along with the flow. Only by standing on the bottom and letting the water flow past us would we become immortal. Going onto the “banks” would allow us to be out of the stream completely and time travel. To the future anyway. Jump back in when time has flowed past to where we want to explore. To get to the past we would have to be able to outrun the speed of the flow, moving down the bank and jumping back in at some point in the past. Which brings up the question, at what “velocity” does time flow? Also, does time have a smallest increment? If so, are there seemingly dead spaces between those increments? Perhaps space is shared? In one instant we are here, then gone for many instants, then back again. Sorta like computer multiprocessing but going even farther. We’re removed from space and put on hold somewhere while other universes are put in the same space and run for their instant. Time is so fascinating.
“dead spaces between those increments?” hey its anybody’s guess… even physicists are arguing about it – consider the ‘double slit’ experiment…
They seem to agree on ‘matter’ though.. they say if all the ‘dead space’ is removed from your body, it will only be the size of a sugar cube!!
The bottom panel over-lapping the above is a nice touch, but the white space cutout to give it room is something one doesn’t see typically. It caught my eye and got me thinking about it. I thought, “Huh, I would have expected Paul to just overlay Tina directly on top of the other panels, no cutout involved, but I guess he wanted to ensure clarity.”
Any comment? Curious to know what you were thinking when you chose to overlay it that way. Oh, and oddly enough, I think I noticed it in particular because I was unconsiously comparing it to the border work of Aaron Diaz in his comic Dresden Codak (and you can take that as a compliment!).
The clock in in the first panels, over Tina’s right shoulder. In the last panel, worked into the background, all around Tina, there are several eyes. I think I’ve picked out 6 eyes.
My guess is that it is a gauge, not a clock, although I don’t know why it would have two hands. Tina’s fist seems to be covering another one in the third panel.
I think the background in the bottom panel is just for atmosphere. I wouldn’t read anything into it.
I wonder if the flavor of the day has finally changed. 😀
Well “rats steering the ship” in the last pannelish picture could also be a bit self-refferencial as she for herself isnt controled by the calenders repetition or nudge thus that conglomerate of demons is in charge.
The creepy(s) over her shoulder could now symbolize said demons to empathise that still more then one being is controlling her body.
I’m not sure she’s right about the ‘let alone twice’ comment, though. Admittedly, Jin had nothing to do with the creation of Tina 2.0, that was Brandi and Tina’s demons working together. And she probably would have prevented Tina 1.0’s death if she could, having lost enough friends along the way. But I don’t recall Jin being very anti-demon, and Tina 2.0 played a necessary role in fixing the Calendar Machine, so Jin might have had no choice but to allow it. Phix. Phix is the one who should have come down on the rats steering the ship, but as I’ve posted before, the only way I can see Tina 1.0 getting the ‘clock key’ was through Phix…
Brandi and Tina’s demons caught Jin off guard this time. They timed the bus incident for when Jin was busy saving Shelly. It would be much harder to catch Jin so off guard a second time.
I just now spotted my mistake! I meant Monica‘s and Tina’s demons. They and probably Nudge were following a plan concocted by one or more previous Brandis.
Actually it was Nudges doing. She was the one, for whatever reason, who picked Tina to inhabit and rouse from the morgue slab. I don’t think Brandi or her demons had anything to do with it.
What I wonder is why Jin had to manipulate all those people to have the dolls, the key, and the hammer in their possession, passing them from generation to generation? Why didn’t Jin just gather them up at some point and keep them herself? Seems like that would be a lot less work and a much greater certainty of having them when they were needed. It’s not like any of the objects shaped the owners over the years in some way to make them more suitable for the task.
Because Jin needed a total of five people to do this, and would you have done exactly what she needed you to do if she just came up to you and *asked*?
Maybe, but I don’t see how having the objects would make them more inclined to do it. There were 4 who had to be there because of their unique abilities. The 3 golems and Monica. All of them were default people so to speak. Monica was roped into it because of her ability as a glyph reader and a “sacrifice.” None of them really had a choice. Their selection had nothing to do with the objects they had, so Jin could have taken them early on for safe keeping. Tina didn’t even go, so her keeping the key really wasn’t necessary in any event. Shelly was there for the muscle. I suppose she had a unique ability in her great strength. Otherwise anyone could have done that job. I don’t know if her vision quest had anything to do with anything either. Perhaps, so she may have had to be the one for that job as well. My point is that possessing the objects didn’t figure into who would be chosen for the mission in the end, their special abilities did.
With 55 previous attempts at it, maybe Jin has tried keeping the sacred objects until the last moment. It must have been like playing the longest, most frustrating version of Myst ever produced. Every time you try something a little different to try and finish the puzzle.
And I agree with Lizziebabe, how much convincing would you need from a crazy lady that time was broken, but only I can see it? I don’t know that I could have been convinced to shank my best friend in the skull on that advice…
nope, that sandbar is far too close to the shoreline… But then, if some eccentric millionaire can helicopter it out ‘discretely’ , then I dunno… It may just be its a very busy place, so one more ‘copter wont be noticed…
Yes, that’s a whole other kettle of fish…but she appears to be wanting to break out into new terrtory, much like Tina is doing today, so the symmetry is not lost on me…
The rats may be steering the ship, but that is one damn good-looking boat!
Oh, hells, yeah!
I thought it was the motion of the ocean 😛
Ride the tsunami!
Too much Tina cuteness!
And who’s teeth are on the necklace?
Ditto on both.
whoa, Indy-Tina Jones!! 😀 😀
Her own, maybe? The originals? Real canines are still kinda pointy.
Would have been very easy to loose them in the bus accident….and she did say she had dental work, as well as reconstructive surgery, when she got back to Miami….
I think that she said that in order to explain the fangs, rather than that it actually happened.
They look suspiciously like this. Which would be Funny considering the context.
INU-YASHA
They could simply be some manner of animal fangs, artificial or real. Both CAN be found, if one knows where to look. So can jewelry featuring either. Or, they could just be beads manufactured to look like fangs. Or just beads that coincidentally look like fangs. XD
In other words, I wouldn’t read too much into it.
Great strip today. You’ve got wonderful expressions, nice sense of environment, and a ton of exposition. And, of course, the girls look cute enough to start another whirlwind of possessiveness amongst your fans.
Shelly forgot that every prior iteration ended with the calendar machine resetting… this time it was obliterated and that’s partially why Jin’s gone cuckoo…
Right. This is after the point at which everything started over again in the cyclic universe before the machine was destroyed; we’ve never been here before.
Paul?
Close… It’s still in the time frame of the previous iterations, but the context is different, as it’s the first time they attempted a premature calendar machine end, so now they’re attempting a different solution.
As it’s an alternate solution to how the CM was helping Jin, it’s possible to have run across something like this before, but I guess we’ll just have to see.
Interesting that, despite her claims to not being all that smart (comparatively), it’s Bud working with Monica on the theoretical stuff.
You are always your own worst critic. Bud is a lot smarter than she gives herself credit for.
She is working her up the ladder to being my favorite character. Not that it’s far, she’s tied for number two with Tina…
Bud has been my favourite character for quite a while – she’s the most damaged of the GGs (well, damaged by her experiences, as opposed to Jin, who was apparently always a bit off-center),but, in some ways, she’s the most human of the three.
The bit with the little lamp is such an “Awwww!” moment…
(See next comment)
…especially when we look at this followup a couple of days later…
(more)
…and, finally, this conclusion to the mini-arc…
Thanks for those links, they reminded me again why I like Bud so much.
The lamp is one of the things that make me love Bud the way I do. The wallpaper of her and the old home is one that spends a lot of time on my desktop.
Right. It normally didn’t reset until 2012. We don’t know quite what happened to those involved in the previous times, but it wasn’t good. Also Tina would probably have been alive doing whatever she did (unless the drug dealers bumped her off). No coffee shop though. Probably not even involved at all. She’s kind of a wild card now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7shwZWNjFy8
Baa-ha-ha-ha…..Love the Zim…
I was just thinking that. Time kept reseting at that point. Everything that’s happened since then this time is a first for everyone. So this little quest is new territory I would think.
That’s what I was thinking – until the machine was fixed/destroyed, all work was on the calendar machine. They never reached the point past that at which Jin’s problem became the next goal.
Agreed.
Because the Calendar machine was never fixed before, Jin never broke before.
The world now has a nice, orderly starched and ironed timeline. Don’t spill hot chocolate on it the first time you wear it out of the house.
Say rather that Shelly’s understanding of this time and these events is not as complete as say Monica’s or even Jin’s. The idea of replicating events 50 or 60 times is pretty hard to forget. It feels rather realistic for her to assume that this may have happened before. Dare I say she might even be trying to comfort herself… “Yeah, I have done this before… right?”
No, the time resetting thing was always on 12/21/12, but even so up until that time they were always working on “fixing” the machine and not on “fixing” Jin. So, even though they have been through these dates 56 times before, this is the first time through for this scenario.
Correct. 🙂
Kinda like time was trapped in it’s cycle, endlessly circling until given a lil ‘Nudge’.
And if a little nudge can have such a big effect, that makes it a chaotic system?
Time is fluid and fluid is chaotic so therefore Time is chaotic? Aka nonlinear and thus trackable only after the fact and then incompletey. Especially for entities that reside within the system they are trying to predict/measure. Sounds fun!
My head is hurting. . .
It’s not that difficult of a concept. Imagine time as a river. You can only measure the water in front of you, while you are in front of it. For example, Niagara Falls records the volume of water that flows over it per minute. However, they can’t say exactly where that water came from or where it is going to go, all they know is the amount that flows over the falls.
I see our current place in the flow of time as riders on that flow. We are swept along with the flow. Only by standing on the bottom and letting the water flow past us would we become immortal. Going onto the “banks” would allow us to be out of the stream completely and time travel. To the future anyway. Jump back in when time has flowed past to where we want to explore. To get to the past we would have to be able to outrun the speed of the flow, moving down the bank and jumping back in at some point in the past. Which brings up the question, at what “velocity” does time flow? Also, does time have a smallest increment? If so, are there seemingly dead spaces between those increments? Perhaps space is shared? In one instant we are here, then gone for many instants, then back again. Sorta like computer multiprocessing but going even farther. We’re removed from space and put on hold somewhere while other universes are put in the same space and run for their instant. Time is so fascinating.
“dead spaces between those increments?” hey its anybody’s guess… even physicists are arguing about it – consider the ‘double slit’ experiment…
They seem to agree on ‘matter’ though.. they say if all the ‘dead space’ is removed from your body, it will only be the size of a sugar cube!!
science link here (flash) 🙂
http://htwins.net/scale/
drag the slider to show sizes from the smallest to the largest.. 😮
And I, for one, am looking forward to two things on the way:
1. Visiting the Biblothiki Annex, and
2. Nudge visiting Monica, et al!
For me, it’s Tina and Nudge meeting as two seperate entities. Well, two seperate entities and multiple personalities…
Paul, artistic question.
The bottom panel over-lapping the above is a nice touch, but the white space cutout to give it room is something one doesn’t see typically. It caught my eye and got me thinking about it. I thought, “Huh, I would have expected Paul to just overlay Tina directly on top of the other panels, no cutout involved, but I guess he wanted to ensure clarity.”
Any comment? Curious to know what you were thinking when you chose to overlay it that way. Oh, and oddly enough, I think I noticed it in particular because I was unconsiously comparing it to the border work of Aaron Diaz in his comic Dresden Codak (and you can take that as a compliment!).
~D.
As an artistic statement, it screams that Tina is “breaking through” Shelly’s misguided thinking about this being a repeat.
Or perhaps you’re reading way too much into it.
I really wanted Tina to be set apart from everything else, including the reality of the Wapsi world.
Yah – the BG to that panel sort of emphasises that.
Awesome Tina for the win!
Awesome Tina is Awesome.
😀
But, what’s with the creepy eye over her left shoulder? Is our favoite demonic barista under surveillance? Besides the trenchcoat wearing Apos?
It’s a clock and it’s 7:05 AM
The clock in in the first panels, over Tina’s right shoulder. In the last panel, worked into the background, all around Tina, there are several eyes. I think I’ve picked out 6 eyes.
My guess is that it is a gauge, not a clock, although I don’t know why it would have two hands. Tina’s fist seems to be covering another one in the third panel.
I think the background in the bottom panel is just for atmosphere. I wouldn’t read anything into it.
I wonder if the flavor of the day has finally changed. 😀
Well “rats steering the ship” in the last pannelish picture could also be a bit self-refferencial as she for herself isnt controled by the calenders repetition or nudge thus that conglomerate of demons is in charge.
The creepy(s) over her shoulder could now symbolize said demons to empathise that still more then one being is controlling her body.
Good point, Tina.
Whoa, Tina is WORKING it!
I’m not sure she’s right about the ‘let alone twice’ comment, though. Admittedly, Jin had nothing to do with the creation of Tina 2.0, that was Brandi and Tina’s demons working together. And she probably would have prevented Tina 1.0’s death if she could, having lost enough friends along the way. But I don’t recall Jin being very anti-demon, and Tina 2.0 played a necessary role in fixing the Calendar Machine, so Jin might have had no choice but to allow it. Phix. Phix is the one who should have come down on the rats steering the ship, but as I’ve posted before, the only way I can see Tina 1.0 getting the ‘clock key’ was through Phix…
Brandi and Tina’s demons caught Jin off guard this time. They timed the bus incident for when Jin was busy saving Shelly. It would be much harder to catch Jin so off guard a second time.
I just now spotted my mistake! I meant Monica‘s and Tina’s demons. They and probably Nudge were following a plan concocted by one or more previous Brandis.
Actually it was Nudges doing. She was the one, for whatever reason, who picked Tina to inhabit and rouse from the morgue slab. I don’t think Brandi or her demons had anything to do with it.
What I wonder is why Jin had to manipulate all those people to have the dolls, the key, and the hammer in their possession, passing them from generation to generation? Why didn’t Jin just gather them up at some point and keep them herself? Seems like that would be a lot less work and a much greater certainty of having them when they were needed. It’s not like any of the objects shaped the owners over the years in some way to make them more suitable for the task.
Because Jin needed a total of five people to do this, and would you have done exactly what she needed you to do if she just came up to you and *asked*?
Maybe, but I don’t see how having the objects would make them more inclined to do it. There were 4 who had to be there because of their unique abilities. The 3 golems and Monica. All of them were default people so to speak. Monica was roped into it because of her ability as a glyph reader and a “sacrifice.” None of them really had a choice. Their selection had nothing to do with the objects they had, so Jin could have taken them early on for safe keeping. Tina didn’t even go, so her keeping the key really wasn’t necessary in any event. Shelly was there for the muscle. I suppose she had a unique ability in her great strength. Otherwise anyone could have done that job. I don’t know if her vision quest had anything to do with anything either. Perhaps, so she may have had to be the one for that job as well. My point is that possessing the objects didn’t figure into who would be chosen for the mission in the end, their special abilities did.
Actually, Jin didn’t know until the golem design first appeared on Monica’s face whether it would be Monica or Shelly who would be the key.
With 55 previous attempts at it, maybe Jin has tried keeping the sacred objects until the last moment. It must have been like playing the longest, most frustrating version of Myst ever produced. Every time you try something a little different to try and finish the puzzle.
And I agree with Lizziebabe, how much convincing would you need from a crazy lady that time was broken, but only I can see it? I don’t know that I could have been convinced to shank my best friend in the skull on that advice…
Tina’s making sure she earns a invite to the next Bermuda Triangle Beach Bash.
The more the merrier!
we found the girls sandbar! http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/01/25/vo.piano.sandbar.wsvn?hpt=C2
Too far west. 😉 I think it was probably one of the tiny islands around Bermuda between Bermuda and FL.
nope, that sandbar is far too close to the shoreline… But then, if some eccentric millionaire can helicopter it out ‘discretely’ , then I dunno… It may just be its a very busy place, so one more ‘copter wont be noticed…
Tina looks so spunky in the last panel!
For sensuality portrayed with simplicity but with an impact, check out pib’s dancer’s walk in the first two panels of today’s Pibgorn.
Yes, that’s a whole other kettle of fish…but she appears to be wanting to break out into new terrtory, much like Tina is doing today, so the symmetry is not lost on me…
I love the way Brooke used silhouette to convey Pib’s strut…