Or to her house somewhere that won’t make Amanda call the cops or think that she tried to have her killed. Remember the first men in black movie. How did Agent K prove that aliens exist? Did he chuck him into a pit of knife aliens or just take him the break room show him the worm aliens that smoke and drink coffee. The point is you don’t threaten someones life that you’re to convince that you’re sane.
Even if you swim like a hammer you won’t die from being dropped in a lake for three seconds. At worst you breathe in a lot of water, but you won’t die that fast. If the worst happened then M would be able to poit her to some where or some one who would be able to revive her.
ok, so I was wrong and most of the rest of you were right — Amanda did get poit’d into the water and poit’d back. That’s almost mean of M — but it does get the point across rather dramatically…
What Joe said! That was the first thing I noticed. Water’s a beeyatch to do and it looks perfect. I mean perfect! It instantly comes across as a thin sphere of water.
Oh dear. As people gain skills, there is a tendency to take them for granted, and likewise their use of those skills. That can make abusing them very, very easy because of nonchalance, not malice.
And M is on the line with this one. How can you trust someone who’s broken a trust with you? First, do no harm.
See, I think that in the end, though, this will help more than harm. Amanda is (now was, I suppose) so ground in reality that Mon couldn’t convince her to just listen.
Nothing like a sudden swim to loosen your grip on what you (think) is reality, eh? Besides, it’s probably a hot day.
Yeah, I’m kind of wavering back and forth on what Monica did as well. Looking back through the past week’s strips, you’re reminded of the trauma that M went through in the mental institution so doing something drastic to Amanda to prove there’s something bigger going on seems logical.
But on the other hand, you go and show your friend (who thinks you’re having a set-back in the sanity department) that you have the power to kill her.
I think that she’ll understand why Monica did it. She might start worrying that Monica would let the power go to her head and, given what we’ve just seen, she does have grounds to think that.
As Monica pointed out, Amanda is her rock. She’s the person she would need to point out when she’s gone too far, which is part of why it’s important that she got brought into this.
Here’s hoping Amanda is more forgiving than I. Between the expression, clothes is disarray, and the water that appears to be coming from her nose, and her pose looking mid-attempt at swimming for her life, I’d say she had about three seconds of thinking Monica might just have left her to drown.
I’d be just a little more than livid. If nothing else, Monica got her revenge. Now both are feeling hurt and betrayed by the other. Though maybe that’s just me, and Amanda will be more forgiving… Maybe.
Amanda looks more shocked than anything. I don’t think she’s had time to process what’s happened. Once she’s processed the information she might feel hurt and betrayed or she might be more understanding.
I didn’t see anything that particularly indicated that Phix wanted Amanda dealt in. What convinced you of that?
I also don’t think that Monica has any tendency to abuse her powers. She tried to avoid using them on Amanda, but was backed into a corner. I think M regarded this as an emergency where she had no choice.
Phix didn’t want Amanda “dealt in”; she didn’t want Tina to FORCE Monica to “deal Amanda in”. Monica needed to do it on her own.
That appears to be a common denominator to anyone who gets “taken to the library” – a person who already “holds a library card” (so to speak) has to willingly invite someone to the library themselves.
When Monica made the offer to Amanda, the reaction wasn’t what she expected. She was hurt, fearful, and then she saw her postcard of Lake Calhoun on her bulletin board. And that’s when her plan came together – “I’ll dunk Amanda for just a few seconds, and THEN we’ll talk about who’s crazy.”
Out of all her friends, I would think Amanda is going to be even more obstinate than Monica was in regards to the “supernatural,” just based on the aura reading that Tina did to figure out her coffee order. All the other main characters have at least had some sort of supernatural thing happen in their lives.
I hope that Amanda has good health insurance because dirty lakes make me think of all the nasties that could be lurking there (e.g. Weil’s Disease, Naegleria fowleri, etc).
Amanda’s hair looks funny when it’s wet… so very un-poofy. Nice water effects, Paul. Now it’s Amanda’s turn for a temporary mental breakdown (even if it’s just a small one)… her scientific world-view was shattered.
That is a bit strange… you don’t see unexposed studs in the wall in the rest of her “office” (Where in the world IS her office, anyways? I thought Kath was the one with the basement office, and M had one on the main floor?)
One wall of her office is unfinished. It may be the same wall that has a bank of electric fuse boxes on it. I hope soaking wet Amanda, shedding water everywhere, isn’t anywhere near THOSE.
As to where her office is: I suspect they converted a main floor storeroom into an office for her when she made Assistant.
Amanda isn’t the one who needs to talk. Monica is the one who needs to provide background explainations.
You gotta admit, that is a HANDY trick. Missionaries on the front step? *poit!*. Neighbor’s cat/dog/canary is howling at night? *poit!*. The sub-sub-sub-contracted yard work is running their leaf blowers at 7am on a Saturday? *poit!*
Calhoun Lake isn’t quite like most kettle lakes in the Midwest. It does have drainage into three or four other lakes, and they’re on the same water table as the Mississippi.
Well at least she won’t have to be soaking wet all day, as long as M can poit Amanda to her own bathroom to take off soggy stuff, take a shower, and dry off right. Also Lake Calhoun has a very high rating for water cleanliness and does allow swimming per the website.
I honestly think this won’t turn out good… All I can see is Amanda screaming hysterically: “GET AWAY FROM ME YOU @#$%&?! FREAK!!!”, etc. Scratch one friendship… of course, we don’t know what Paul has in mind until Monday (darn it!).
Personally, I think Amanda will get mad at first but come to understand why Monica did it. Sure she probably could have come up with a way to convince her without being so drastic if she had more time. But M didn’t have a lot of time to work with. Nobody believed her the first time when she told them about the voices in her head and she knows what happens then. I can see Amanda freaking out at first but then saying something like, “OK, I believe you but don’t you EVER do that again without my consent unless someone’s life is at stake!” I hope so anyway because I like Amanda as she is so far the only woman in this strip who isn’t kinda flakey in some way. Paul, I’ve been a fan of comics for close to 40 years now and I have rarely seen someone who can do facial expressions, body language and characterizations as well as you do. Most comics I’ve read in the past are like theatre; exaggerated movement and voice so the people in the back rows can keep up with what’s happening on stage. Yours is one of the few I’ve found that are more like film; with a camera you don’t need to exaggerate either because it is almost like you’re standing there with them. While your art is fairley stylised (and that is not a criticism, I like it) everybody comes across as real people despite all the crazy stuff. That’s the reason Wapsi Square is currently at the top of my favorites list. Great work and thanks for sharing it with the rest of us.
Ditto on the superb art and style! As I slowly work on my cartooning skills, shabby they may be, I keep coming back regularly to Wapsi Square and PW’s work to study posture, form, layout and inking style.
Sir — I’d put you up there with Harvey Kurtz, Preston Blair, and John Kricfalusi any day!
@Atomic – Agreed! Don’t forget story and characterization. I don’t think any of us would have fallen in love with Monica the way we have if she wasn’t tough, funny, and smart in plausible ways like she is. While the art is one of those ‘effortlessly simple’ styles (which means it’s really complex.), it is the writing and solid characters which really sell this comic.
(BTW – don’t feel bad about art. Mine is no better! Follow the link if you don’t believe!)
Actually, one of my posts above is properly formatted and all I did was use 2 lines between each paragraph.
Time for another set of tests.Let’s see if it’s the HTML or the actual lines. The gap between the first and second paras tests the new line rule, the gap between the 2nd and 3rd tests the break tag.And this tests the paragraph tag properly.
My take on Monica’s methods (which i think were a tad over-enthusiastic, but still funny) is that once upon a time, Monica was locked up “for her own good” by people who loved her and thought it would be “for her own good”.
In those days, she had no way to prove (to them … or to herself) that she wasn’t crazy.
And she still has some hurt (which she acknowledges) and anger (which i think she represses) about it.
Monica has been badly hurt by those she loves – with the best of intentions on their part – and she spent much of her childhood as the oddball who was, inevitably, ridiculed by her peers.
No matter how well you deal with it in later life, that leaves a mark.
And, so, now that she can prove what she says, and she hears Amanda basically repeating that same script, there is an element of lashing out in her choice of proof, but still not malicious nor harmful.
It’s deeper than latent desire for revenge though. Somewhere deep in Monica’s mind there is a part of her that’s thinking “This is rough, but it’s less than I went through and for a snapshot in time too, buck up already.”
In other words someone who learned that it’s ok to incarcerate someone because you love them is likely to become quite callous on some levels. It’s the world they’ve lived in after all.
I think the poiting was necessary. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Monica sees demons, has the Aztec god of alcohol running around her, has three ancient world destroyers as friends, was taught an extinct language by a golem passing as her dead grandmother, and saved the world from a busted time machine. These sort things require a major rewiring of reality as is commonly accepted.
If Monica is going to convince someone to do that rewiring, she needs to do something to break their current understanding completely. Poiting them does this. Poiting someone into a lake floods her senses overloading her thought process.
Poiting her back is actually counter productive. Even though she is soaking wet, she may try to dismiss the several seconds claiming it didn’t happen because her understanding of reality can’t support the event. Monica should have met her on the beach with a towel. It would have stretched out Amanda’s geographic displacement long enough to force a rewire.
The kind that Monica, Phix and the GGs do – because it’s in the story.
That’s why it’s called “fiction”.
All fiction creates its own universe – even if said universe looks precisely like the one we live in – with whatever ground rules and history the author wants to impose.
Good fiction then creates a world and self-consistent history (to the extent that its existence is relevant to the world of the story) amd from then on sticks rigidly to it.
That’s pretty much what Paul is doing here.
Other fiction – which can be fun to read, still, even if it’s full of Fridge Logic. But it’s still somewhat less than well-written.
Sure. Quantum teleportation is a well-known phenomena.
And a century ago, if you said that eating a certain fungus would cure most of the common diseases of the day, you’d be locked up.
Just because we don’t have the framework to describe it yet, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, y’now…
I took Biker Matt’s response to mean amplification of something from the real world, not from this story or fantasy in general. Still, even in Waspi Square, there is no form of teleportation already in place (Already there) upon which the poiting process could be based. The reality of the people in general who inhabit the city is the same reality as we experience. So unless he is talking about something like quantum teleportation, like StJason said, then I still don’t get what Matt thinks is actual supernatural. Even that is just a concept with no working model actually teleporting objects from point A to point B. There is no functioning teleportation machine in place in the real world or the Waspi world from which purely mental-based teleportation could be extrapolated (amplified). If we start talking about concepts or basing things on what other writers have come up with, then nothing is supernatural. Just preternatural, or just plain nonsense.
The teleportation mechanism that was in place in the Wapsi Universe is that one that the GGs and other immortals have been using for millennia. It’s there it <exists.
Re-read (or maybe read for the first time) what i said about universe-building.
All fiction takes place in an invented universe, simply by virtue of bing fiction (you know, not fact?). The universe fiction takes place in is 100% the author’s to modify in any way she wishes at whim.
Good authors introduce one piece of contra-factual bolonium (i forget who it was i first heard that term form in a talk she did an an SF convention.) and then, using handwavium where necessary to justify that bolonium, build a strictly-logical universe extrapolated from it.
Rather like non-euclidean geometry, which substitutes other assumptions for basic axioms of real-world geometry that are self-evident but unprovable and then builds a complete logical geometry from that.
So, Paul’s piece of bolonium is the existence of a supernatural (or preternatural, if you prefer) that functions by its own laws. I’m assuming that he knows what the laws of that supernatural are, or can come up with logically-consistent handwavium to justify ones he later creates – so far i see no evidence to the contrary.
There is no functioning teleportation machine in place in the real world or the Waspi world from which purely mental-based teleportation could be extrapolated.
Huh? If calculators didn’t exist, would it be impossible for me to do math?
I said that as a bilding block view. Like Vacuum tube, to transistor, to IC. Teleporter device, to to brain wave controlled teleporter device, to purely mind activated/controlled teleportation without a physical device.
Look, Fairportfan, you seem to just want to argue this while considering any POV but your own to be invalid. This, therefore, has become pointless. Feel free to carry on without me.
Not considering any POV to be invalid … without supporting evidence, anyway.
But you seem to have missed the difference between fantasy and the Real World™ (of which, judging by some of your comments to this strip you have little experience of).
And i really would like to know why you seem to feel that mental teleportation presupposes some “scientific”, physical form.
And i’s like an explanation for your apparent out-of-hand rejection of my own position.
BTW – you might be interested in knowing that (while my high-school’s classmate’s great-uncle quite rightly earned a Nobel for formulating the rules behind it and making a commercially-feasible device possible) the transistor effect was in use by US Navy radio operators when radio communications consisted solely of Morse Code…
Well, you’re right about that. I have very little first hand real world experience about much of anything. And what I do have, I’d rather forget. But I do know the difference between real and fantasy.
I’d read up on Teleportation articles (as hard science), and found that it’s already been done at the microscopic scale, eventually resolving into either one location or the other. As you scale things up, both the duration and distance reduce in proportion to the mass (so a dust mote would only normally cover a small distance and last for about a second). Replicate that effect for distance large enough, and you have real, human-scale (or larger) teleportation. The only question, then, would be where the energy source is coming from (in this case, it’s the stuff outside spacetime).
Re: “I’d read up on Teleportation articles (as hard science), and found that it’s already been done at the microscopic scale”
There are several possible things you could be referring to here. “tunneling, or “quantum teleportation” via entanglement, or possibly just the uncertainty principle wrt position and momentum. But to call any of these “teleportation at the microscopic scale” is quite misleading, despite the fact that one of them has come to be called “quantum teleportation”.
Taking “quantum teleportation” in particular, what’s being “teleported:” is a quantum state, not a particle. In particular, you have to move an entangled particle to the place you want to transport the state Move via a mundane move-through-the-intervening-space method. Then you can make that particle you moved aquire the state of a particle you left behind. And “the state” doesn’t include much. Further, if you try it with macroscopic objects, you’d have to assemble whatever you were transporting a particle at a time (unless you were trying to teleport the quantum state of a bose-einstein condensate or somesuch thing, which is a stranger thing even than a Golem Girl).
Basically, bottom line, there really isn’t anything that’s a precursor to the kind of poiting the Glyph Readers and their golems can do. Though possible something along the lines of “handwave mumble spacetime mumble handwave wormhole” would do the trick. But it’s still not much of a precursor, and certainly not anything that’s been done
Nah. She STILL doesn’t believe in the supernatural. If you were to ask her I’m sure she would say “all of the stuff I’ve seen has been repeatable, measurable and has followed the laws of cause and effect. It’s just a matter of having the tools to study it to take it from ‘magic’ to ‘science.'”
Actually, Amanda may still think that Monica should be committed when she finds out that Monica is friends with some of the entities that were trying to drive Monica to suicide. Parts of Tina’s collective are not innocent in that matter.
…Tina’s collective? Methoughts it was her own demons that Monica was running from…?
…And Jin was there too. Kinda interesting, that coincidence, eh? And yet, Tina describes Monica as ‘one of the girls we saved’. Hrm… I wonder what from?
When I get the time I’ll go through the archives and search for the strips that specified Tina’s demons inclusion in the events around Monica’s attempted suicide.
@jwhouk it was jin’s doubt we see chasing mon in the scenes. tina’s demons conspired to place her in the accident by directly controlling her in preparation for the key/dolls that close mon’s door.
**@UncleRice** Nice synopsis. But I think Amanda will get the message even though M poited her back. The look on her face already says “Blue Screen of Death.”
Unfortunately this just proved my point when I called it two days ago.
Welcome to the tar pit Amanda – let us hope you can pull free.
Monica has slipped a notch on my list.
Her actions are reminiscent of Jin.
Actually, I don’t think Amanda gave Monica any choice. Amanda is so deeply, thoroughly rooted in her own picture of what constitutes reality that nothing is is going to jar her perception of it, unless the demonstration involves something she can personally see/hear/feel/smell/taste to validate its authenticity. And what better place to engage all sensory input at once than Lake Calhoun. other than the Jersey Shore during a garbage strike, nothing else immediately leaps to *my* mind….
Yea, this ‘feels’ right. It’s the sort of thing people do to each other in the real world. My friends have dumped me out of a boat on a couple of occasions and they were just playing around. Amanda forced the issue here. It happens.
It could be argued that Monica should never have mentioned anything tied to this to her but that would qualify as odd behavior too. Going from chatty to close-mouthed about so much tends to show in a friendship.
It would have been a pretty arrogant to treat a friend too. The old ‘There is a lot of my work that I cannot speak about’ shtick wouldn’t work for long either. Monica works at a museum, not military intelligence. She’d end up having to cut Amanda out of much of her life by hiding it from her.
Anything you do to reset someone’s reality basics,is going to be torture, whether it’s dry, or drawn out. You’re ripping a bandaid off their world. We all know those choices.
Bad Monica, bad. I am certain that there were better, DRIER, options for introducing Amanda to the world of the supernatural. A quick trip to Bud, and a diamond-making demonstration, would have been just as sufficient; lets hope that Amanda is too surprised to be angry.
Well, my reaction would have been one of terror of the poiter. After that I would worry when she is going to do something else (and worse) to me. I would be in mortal fear of doing anything to upset her or make her angry at me. Our relationship would, thereafter, be one of master and slave.
But this is the comic world, and real people’s emotions have nothing to do with anything. I’m just glad Paul didn’t make us wait all weekend for today’s strip so we didn’t go on endlessly about “will she, or won’t she?”
Intellectual side wins: “Wow! I actually teleported. Let’s do that again.”
Fear/Anger wins: “You sent me in to the middle of a dirty lake?!? If I catch something then you’re going to pay my medical bills and then I never want to hear from you again!”
As for a master/slave relationship — if I felt that I was in that sort of relationship with the person I would simply remove myself from that person’s life. I’d promise to keep their secret but they would not hear from me ever again.
Monica and Amanda have been friends for years. There is a level of trust which would overcome any fears. I doubt Amanda would think that Monica would do such a thing so she would not be in such a relationship. However, I believe she has enough self confidence to do what I would do and remove herself from Monica’s life if Monica tried to have that kind of relationship.
I would feel like I could never remove myself. That, no matter where I was, she could reach out and poit me wherever she wished at any time. There would be this constant dread in my life which would drive me bonkers. I’m not saying Monica would treat her that way, but that would be my constant fear in a similar situation. Not to mention all the other boogy women such a fear could dredge up. Can she control my mind? Make me do bad things, to myself or others? What if she poited my heart out in a fit of rage? It would never end. Paranoia would grip me and never let go. Trust would be totally destroyed already.
In your case you are prioritising your model of human nature above your model of your friend’s personality. I suspect that Amanda would prioritise her model of Monica’s personality above any cynicism she may have.
People are adept at saying to themselves that bad things would never happen to them. For most people the concept of power corrupting has an implied “unless it’s me or somebody I know well” clause attached to it. Only seeing it happen to someone close to a person makes them question that clause.
Now that you mention it, I think after a while I might be worried about the heart scenario (or being poited into the space occupied by a wall). Not as a delibrate thing but if the person was especially tired, drunk, etc. You would not put a drunk person in charge of a car, why would you put them in charge of something that has a bigger impact.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying in the first paragraph. But then I’ve never experienced this lifelong friend thing, as Amanda and Monica have been, (or any real and deep friendship for that matter) so my outlook on things of this nature is limited. If not outright distorted.
People tend to think the best of the people they care about. So, unless their friend is known to be abusive, they would find it hard to believe their friend would act in such a fashion. People tend to give their loved ones (and close friends do count as loved ones) the benefit of the doubt.
Monica has not acted in an abusive fashion in the past so Amanda would find it to believe the Monica would act in an abusive fashion now. Therefore, Amanda is unlikely to fear her.
She has been shown proof that the world is not quite what she thought it was, but most frightening, still just as logical. And, it only took a quick dunk in duckwater to do it.
Me? I realized that when I first heard that somebody’s idea of a new sandwich was HAM on a BAGEL. When the bacon-flavored matzo hits the market, I’m hitching a ride with the dolphins off this rock.
staple sandwich:
Half a box of Bostich between two sheets of A4. Light brushing of Wite-out optional. Garnish with curly pencil shaving florets and a cold glass of toner.
When my sister was about fourteen or so the family were visiting relatives in Chicago. (I wasn’t there, i was off playing sailor in Uncle Sammy’s Canoe Club).
Despite being just third-generation native born Bohemian-American and having been born in the Midwest (Cleveland), she had lived since she was less than two in the rural South.
So they walked into a kosher deli and she ordered ham and swiss on rye…
I love post-dunking Amanda, but the layout leaves something to be desired. It took me a second glance to realize that Monica was counting down after she poited Amanda, not before.
Honestly I was still confused by the order until I read this thread in the comments. Uneven boxes always gets me. Plus the talk balloon overlapping into the one where Mon is talking made me think the two were happening around the same time. Oh well, makes more sense now.
Wait, can Amanda swim? I can’t, so I would probably be ready to kill Monica by boiling her in alcohol and serving her with some sage and a variety of onions.
The fact that she referred to a specific stroke makes me think that Amanda can swim. The fact that she asked the question makes me wonder whether Amanda’s done that much swimming recently (as far as Monica knows).
Olive oil would be better. But then, I prefer broiled or fried. Boiled human flesh is so bland. Umm … cough … not that I would know, of course … cough …
What can I say, I have limited actual culinary experience. I don’t even know what fava beans are. The only spices I’m familiar with are salt and pepper. If it can’t be done in the microwave or fit between 2 slices of bread, it’s someone else’s job.
I think Pablo was channeling Bill Cosby. Here is an excerpt of the routine.
Noah: You’ve got me here building this ark…and the neighbors are laughing…they’re saying there goes old Noah…and for what? That’s it! I quit!
PING
God: Noah, how long can you tread water?
Sigh. That was comedy.
At any rate, I think that M joining her on the POIT would’ve been a more effective move in garnering support. That said, it’d have been an interesting device for Amanda’s Celtic arm band to block the POIT, adding to the mounting doubt. It would’ve also forced M to POIT something or someone else (Of course, the whole arm band thing would have to be deciphered later).
SoWhyMe: A lakefront property (of any size) is considered a beach if it is sandy and if we are talking about the Great Lakes, they are hundreds of miles long and several hundred feet deep. In the majority of port cities, you cannot see the opposing side of the lake and there are miles of sandy beaches.
Okay, I’ll take your word for it in the technical sense. Just that any time I’ve ever heard anyone say they were going to a lake to siwm, they always say “we’re going to the lake.” Whereas, if they are going to the ocean, they always say “we’re going to the beach.” But then, I’ve never lived near a really large lake. Come to think about it, the Great Lakes are practically a small ocean.
They are inland seas – Lake Superior is the largest natural body of fresh water in the world, and at any given moment more than 1/2 the world’s liquid fresh water (i’ve heard numbers as high as 2/3 from some sources) is in the three (or two, depending on whether you ask the man in the street or a hydrologist) Great Lakes.
Lake Calhoun is no where near the size of ANY of the Great Lakes. You can see the Minneapolis skyline from the far shore of the lake. In fact, I think about three Lake Calhouns would fit inside the lake near my house, and I can definitely see across the water to the other shore.
And we have a very nice beach on the one end, thanks. That is, when it’s open and not underwater or closed due to e.coli bacteria.
No, she is not ready to talk. Dunk her again, Monica. Only this time, ve put der little pieces of bamboo under her fingernails, jah? Den ve dunk her again and again and again! Oh, she vill talk. Soon she vill be singing like a little bird…
The way Amanda’s been reacting has me a little puzzled; she’s usually pretty unruffled, and willing to take things like Dietzel’s behavior, or Tepoz, or what not, in stride. Sort of like how she stops and thinks about this: wapsisquare.com/comic/01232002 instead of dismissing it out of hand. But Pablo is a deft storyteller, and I’m sure it’ll all seem perfectly normal very soon 😉
Wow. To think that dunking someone could garner so much worry.
What happened was: Monica didn’t want Amanda to think she was crazy, so she gave her a good abrupt splash of water. Better than a slap in my opinion, especially when you consider that Amanda’s point of view abruptly went from Inside… to Outside… Holy crap I’m wet where the what the… to Inside again.
Why water? To let Amanda know that she didn’t just imagine it, since she’s now dripping on the carpet..
By the way, I think there was a subtle joke made at Amanda’s expense, considering her comment from last Monday about “Blow all segues out of the water”.
What REALLY would have been funny is if Monica would have said upon Amanda’s return from her “dip” in Calhoun Lake is if she’d said something like, “Now that your segue’s been blown, are you ready to talk?”
She could have taken her out side to the parking lot.
Parking lots have pesky cameras.
Or to her house somewhere that won’t make Amanda call the cops or think that she tried to have her killed. Remember the first men in black movie. How did Agent K prove that aliens exist? Did he chuck him into a pit of knife aliens or just take him the break room show him the worm aliens that smoke and drink coffee. The point is you don’t threaten someones life that you’re to convince that you’re sane.
It’s not threatening her life if Amanda can swim.
See Heather D’s post of 12:06 pm comment time.
Even if you swim like a hammer you won’t die from being dropped in a lake for three seconds. At worst you breathe in a lot of water, but you won’t die that fast. If the worst happened then M would be able to poit her to some where or some one who would be able to revive her.
i think that was more of a passive-aggressive punishment for thinking she was crazy
ok, so I was wrong and most of the rest of you were right — Amanda did get poit’d into the water and poit’d back. That’s almost mean of M — but it does get the point across rather dramatically…
Niiice water effects, man.
Was she right in the middle of a stroke?
The back stroke?
What Joe said! That was the first thing I noticed. Water’s a beeyatch to do and it looks perfect. I mean perfect! It instantly comes across as a thin sphere of water.
Oh dear. As people gain skills, there is a tendency to take them for granted, and likewise their use of those skills. That can make abusing them very, very easy because of nonchalance, not malice.
And M is on the line with this one. How can you trust someone who’s broken a trust with you? First, do no harm.
See, I think that in the end, though, this will help more than harm. Amanda is (now was, I suppose) so ground in reality that Mon couldn’t convince her to just listen.
Nothing like a sudden swim to loosen your grip on what you (think) is reality, eh? Besides, it’s probably a hot day.
Yeah, I’m kind of wavering back and forth on what Monica did as well. Looking back through the past week’s strips, you’re reminded of the trauma that M went through in the mental institution so doing something drastic to Amanda to prove there’s something bigger going on seems logical.
But on the other hand, you go and show your friend (who thinks you’re having a set-back in the sanity department) that you have the power to kill her.
I think that she’ll understand why Monica did it. She might start worrying that Monica would let the power go to her head and, given what we’ve just seen, she does have grounds to think that.
As Monica pointed out, Amanda is her rock. She’s the person she would need to point out when she’s gone too far, which is part of why it’s important that she got brought into this.
We all have the power to kill. Monica, however, has the power to get away with it.
Here’s hoping Amanda is more forgiving than I. Between the expression, clothes is disarray, and the water that appears to be coming from her nose, and her pose looking mid-attempt at swimming for her life, I’d say she had about three seconds of thinking Monica might just have left her to drown.
I’d be just a little more than livid. If nothing else, Monica got her revenge. Now both are feeling hurt and betrayed by the other. Though maybe that’s just me, and Amanda will be more forgiving… Maybe.
Amanda looks more shocked than anything. I don’t think she’s had time to process what’s happened. Once she’s processed the information she might feel hurt and betrayed or she might be more understanding.
I think that Monica probably has a pretty good hold on how Amanda will react.
I have a pretty good idea on how my friends will react in certain situations (though I can’t teleport them to the lake at a thought…. YET)
You do have a good point.
I think I know why Tina and Phix wanted Amanda dealt in. Amanda is the best person to keep Monica grounded.
She’s not there yet but she might have gone down the road that she accused Jin of doing — i.e. treating everyone around them like ants.
I didn’t see anything that particularly indicated that Phix wanted Amanda dealt in. What convinced you of that?
I also don’t think that Monica has any tendency to abuse her powers. She tried to avoid using them on Amanda, but was backed into a corner. I think M regarded this as an emergency where she had no choice.
Phix didn’t want Amanda “dealt in”; she didn’t want Tina to FORCE Monica to “deal Amanda in”. Monica needed to do it on her own.
That appears to be a common denominator to anyone who gets “taken to the library” – a person who already “holds a library card” (so to speak) has to willingly invite someone to the library themselves.
When Monica made the offer to Amanda, the reaction wasn’t what she expected. She was hurt, fearful, and then she saw her postcard of Lake Calhoun on her bulletin board. And that’s when her plan came together – “I’ll dunk Amanda for just a few seconds, and THEN we’ll talk about who’s crazy.”
(waiting for a Phix cookie for this one)
*cookie* 🙂
Welcome to the Club, Miss…
Agree with Joe England, by the way : very realistic AND fun 😉
She got her poit across, methinks…
I see what you did there
You bastard! You beat me to the poit!!! 😛
Actually Stjen had a chance to beat me to the poit, but alas did not take advantage…
Poit? You are soaking in it!
Water ya mean?
Looks like her Poit Logistics have gotten a lot better.
Who’s crazy now? 😛
Monica has gotten better at poiting. She must have been practicing.
…with her bra.
Perhaps because she didn’t poit herself, too?
Out of all her friends, I would think Amanda is going to be even more obstinate than Monica was in regards to the “supernatural,” just based on the aura reading that Tina did to figure out her coffee order. All the other main characters have at least had some sort of supernatural thing happen in their lives.
…and Amanda hasn’t?
(Now.)
Whether or not Amanda believes her now , that stunt could’ve turned out really bad if she got a lung full of water .
Love the water FX , BTW .
I hope that Amanda has good health insurance because dirty lakes make me think of all the nasties that could be lurking there (e.g. Weil’s Disease, Naegleria fowleri, etc).
Eh. No problem. If you get really, really, really good at poiting, then you can just poit the disease away!
But is Monica THAT good? I doubt it.
I have to agree with you there. They just shut down a part of the lake I was at last saturday because of e.coli and despite being fine I still wigged.
A lung full of water could be easily poited empty again. Jin prooved that before.
I’m not sure Monica has reached that level of finesse , yet .
…then she can get Jin to do it. Of all the ‘poit-ers’, she seems to be the most skilled.
Hahahaha
I sooo wish i could poit people like that.
Would solve soo many arguments 😀
I understand the surface of the sun is lovely this time of year…
Looks like the background changed too…change of venue?
Good point, maybe she poited them both to her basement so as not to get water everywhere in the library.
Her office.
*Grin* That was awesome, M! Do it again!
Amanda’s hair looks funny when it’s wet… so very un-poofy. Nice water effects, Paul. Now it’s Amanda’s turn for a temporary mental breakdown (even if it’s just a small one)… her scientific world-view was shattered.
That is a bit strange… you don’t see unexposed studs in the wall in the rest of her “office” (Where in the world IS her office, anyways? I thought Kath was the one with the basement office, and M had one on the main floor?)
DOH! The background is the same as in Thursday’s strip (look at the “How’s your backstroke?” background, compare it to today’s final panel).
One wall of her office is unfinished. It may be the same wall that has a bank of electric fuse boxes on it. I hope soaking wet Amanda, shedding water everywhere, isn’t anywhere near THOSE.
As to where her office is: I suspect they converted a main floor storeroom into an office for her when she made Assistant.
Amanda isn’t the one who needs to talk. Monica is the one who needs to provide background explainations.
You gotta admit, that is a HANDY trick. Missionaries on the front step? *poit!*. Neighbor’s cat/dog/canary is howling at night? *poit!*. The sub-sub-sub-contracted yard work is running their leaf blowers at 7am on a Saturday? *poit!*
You’re being kept up by a Canogatary? What sort of sick mad scientist neighbors do you have?
I couldn’t help laughing at that one.
Okay, I’m lost on the term… I googled it and only got one result (this page).
Holee-friggin-cow! Google has already cataloged this page?! Busy little creatures, those bots.
Biker Matt:Canogatary: a cat/dog/canary hybrid, notorious for howling at night.
I love it, M’s done messing around. “I don’t have time for you to think I’m crazy, so *bam, PROOF*. Ok, as I was saying…”
Now that’s what I call an effective demonstration!
I just hope that Amanda doesn’t catch anything.
Calhoun Lake isn’t quite like most kettle lakes in the Midwest. It does have drainage into three or four other lakes, and they’re on the same water table as the Mississippi.
Ugh. I wouldn’t swim there and I certainly wouldn’t eat any fish out of there or any of the chain of lakes.
Of course, Monica could just poit out any of the parasites that Amanda will end up with.
What body of water is Paul depicting when he shows the characters at the “beach”?
I always assumed it was Calhoun Beach. It was that here, for sure: http://wapsisquare.com/comic/calhounbeach/
Txmystic: Lake Calhoun. It has three or four beaches on its banks. It’s pretty popular for land-locked Minnesotans, especially during the summer.
I never think of lakes as having “beaches.” If it’s not the ocean, it’s just a shore.
They truck in sand or fine gravel. Sometimes a beach develops naturally, though.
If i can’t see the other side – it’s a beach.
That seems reckless!!
Think Monica’s been around Jin too long
And that’s her rite of initiation complete. now onto the hard stuff.
Next up – Answer a riddle from a sphinx!
…actually, considering how long she’s been around, it’s a wonder that Amanda hasn’t fallen into things yet.
Well at least she won’t have to be soaking wet all day, as long as M can poit Amanda to her own bathroom to take off soggy stuff, take a shower, and dry off right. Also Lake Calhoun has a very high rating for water cleanliness and does allow swimming per the website.
I honestly think this won’t turn out good… All I can see is Amanda screaming hysterically: “GET AWAY FROM ME YOU @#$%&?! FREAK!!!”, etc. Scratch one friendship… of course, we don’t know what Paul has in mind until Monday (darn it!).
That would be out of character for her, and out of character for the strip as a whole.
From the look on her face it’s more likely to be something to the effect of:
“Wha-What just happened?”
Wonder if there were any swimmers/other onlookers at the lake?
If it was only 3 secs, they may have dismissed Amanda as a hallucination.
Or start a new legend about the Lady of Lake Calhoun.
That could happen. 😉
Or an optical illusion/mistaken form
Personally, I think Amanda will get mad at first but come to understand why Monica did it. Sure she probably could have come up with a way to convince her without being so drastic if she had more time. But M didn’t have a lot of time to work with. Nobody believed her the first time when she told them about the voices in her head and she knows what happens then. I can see Amanda freaking out at first but then saying something like, “OK, I believe you but don’t you EVER do that again without my consent unless someone’s life is at stake!” I hope so anyway because I like Amanda as she is so far the only woman in this strip who isn’t kinda flakey in some way. Paul, I’ve been a fan of comics for close to 40 years now and I have rarely seen someone who can do facial expressions, body language and characterizations as well as you do. Most comics I’ve read in the past are like theatre; exaggerated movement and voice so the people in the back rows can keep up with what’s happening on stage. Yours is one of the few I’ve found that are more like film; with a camera you don’t need to exaggerate either because it is almost like you’re standing there with them. While your art is fairley stylised (and that is not a criticism, I like it) everybody comes across as real people despite all the crazy stuff. That’s the reason Wapsi Square is currently at the top of my favorites list. Great work and thanks for sharing it with the rest of us.
Ditto on the superb art and style! As I slowly work on my cartooning skills, shabby they may be, I keep coming back regularly to Wapsi Square and PW’s work to study posture, form, layout and inking style.
Sir — I’d put you up there with Harvey Kurtz, Preston Blair, and John Kricfalusi any day!
Kricfalusi, there’s a name I don’t see much any more. Ahh, Sody pop, where did you go.
@Atomic – Agreed! Don’t forget story and characterization. I don’t think any of us would have fallen in love with Monica the way we have if she wasn’t tough, funny, and smart in plausible ways like she is. While the art is one of those ‘effortlessly simple’ styles (which means it’s really complex.), it is the writing and solid characters which really sell this comic.
(BTW – don’t feel bad about art. Mine is no better! Follow the link if you don’t believe!)
Sorry about the wall of text but I can’t figure out how to get paragraphs on these posts.
This is a test.
If this works, then we will see these as separate paragraphs.
If html paragraph tags don’t work, we can always try the break tag.
As I am here.
Use either paragraph tags or break tags.
Ignore this as paragraph and break tags do NOT work but putting a line between one paragraph and the next does.
Actually, one of my posts above is properly formatted and all I did was use 2 lines between each paragraph.
Time for another set of tests.Let’s see if it’s the HTML or the actual lines. The gap between the first and second paras tests the new line rule, the gap between the 2nd and 3rd tests the break tag.And this tests the paragraph tag properly.
Forget about paragraph and break tags — just make sure that there are clear lines between paragraphs.
Thank you Francisco. I appreciate it.
Yes, Amanda – Monica has ways of making you talk.
🙂
I think it’s more making her listen.
Monica officiating a wet T-Shirt contest?
What’s wrong with this picture?
My take on Monica’s methods (which i think were a tad over-enthusiastic, but still funny) is that once upon a time, Monica was locked up “for her own good” by people who loved her and thought it would be “for her own good”.
In those days, she had no way to prove (to them … or to herself) that she wasn’t crazy.
And she still has some hurt (which she acknowledges) and anger (which i think she represses) about it.
Monica has been badly hurt by those she loves – with the best of intentions on their part – and she spent much of her childhood as the oddball who was, inevitably, ridiculed by her peers.
No matter how well you deal with it in later life, that leaves a mark.
And, so, now that she can prove what she says, and she hears Amanda basically repeating that same script, there is an element of lashing out in her choice of proof, but still not malicious nor harmful.
It’s deeper than latent desire for revenge though. Somewhere deep in Monica’s mind there is a part of her that’s thinking “This is rough, but it’s less than I went through and for a snapshot in time too, buck up already.”
In other words someone who learned that it’s ok to incarcerate someone because you love them is likely to become quite callous on some levels. It’s the world they’ve lived in after all.
It would be totally hilarious if Amanda poited Monica into the lake.
How’s that for a plot twist?
Being ridiculously fanboy-type serious here, i suspect that only people who can manipulate glyphs on some level can learn to poit.
She strikes me as a quick study. 😉
Or at least stand there with her face all scrunched up, trying to poit Monica.
Yeah. I’m thinking Amanda will immediately try and grasp the science behind poiting and try to recreate it for herself…
Dear Diary: today Monica found a new way to make me wet. Sincerely, Amanda
Wrong on sooo many levels — I love it!
EEEEEEvil….
Makey you wonder about past ways…
HA HA HAAAAA!!!
That was so cool … so mean, too. But how else to make her poit …
I mean point.
I think the poiting was necessary. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Monica sees demons, has the Aztec god of alcohol running around her, has three ancient world destroyers as friends, was taught an extinct language by a golem passing as her dead grandmother, and saved the world from a busted time machine. These sort things require a major rewiring of reality as is commonly accepted.
If Monica is going to convince someone to do that rewiring, she needs to do something to break their current understanding completely. Poiting them does this. Poiting someone into a lake floods her senses overloading her thought process.
Poiting her back is actually counter productive. Even though she is soaking wet, she may try to dismiss the several seconds claiming it didn’t happen because her understanding of reality can’t support the event. Monica should have met her on the beach with a towel. It would have stretched out Amanda’s geographic displacement long enough to force a rewire.
It’s how I would have done it, if I was Monica but, as redbeard pointed out yesterday, Amanda is more open than she seems at first.
Monica to Amanda in the next strip:
“I may have lied a bit about not believing in the supernatural.”
I still don’t consider it supernatural.
Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
actualy what you’re thinking of there is Gehm’s Corollary to Clarke’s Third Law: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
nope, re reading my own link, you’re right and i’m wrong, shutting up now
Then, what is supernatural in your view?
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
“Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to someone who dosen’t understand it.”-Florence’s corollary
Dusty 688 A big toothy grin for posting this! Oh, Doggy!
Stuff that actually breaks natural laws, rather than making amplified versions of what’s already there.
This ain’t supernatural… it’s Kilnertech.
What form of poiting is “already there?”
The kind that Monica, Phix and the GGs do – because it’s in the story.
That’s why it’s called “fiction”.
All fiction creates its own universe – even if said universe looks precisely like the one we live in – with whatever ground rules and history the author wants to impose.
Good fiction then creates a world and self-consistent history (to the extent that its existence is relevant to the world of the story) amd from then on sticks rigidly to it.
That’s pretty much what Paul is doing here.
Other fiction – which can be fun to read, still, even if it’s full of Fridge Logic. But it’s still somewhat less than well-written.
And, if you point it out, you either get “Hey
– it’s just a fantasy story!” responses – or no
real responses at all…
Sure. Quantum teleportation is a well-known phenomena.
And a century ago, if you said that eating a certain fungus would cure most of the common diseases of the day, you’d be locked up.
Just because we don’t have the framework to describe it yet, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, y’now…
I took Biker Matt’s response to mean amplification of something from the real world, not from this story or fantasy in general. Still, even in Waspi Square, there is no form of teleportation already in place (Already there) upon which the poiting process could be based. The reality of the people in general who inhabit the city is the same reality as we experience. So unless he is talking about something like quantum teleportation, like StJason said, then I still don’t get what Matt thinks is actual supernatural. Even that is just a concept with no working model actually teleporting objects from point A to point B. There is no functioning teleportation machine in place in the real world or the Waspi world from which purely mental-based teleportation could be extrapolated (amplified). If we start talking about concepts or basing things on what other writers have come up with, then nothing is supernatural. Just preternatural, or just plain nonsense.
The teleportation mechanism that was in place in the Wapsi Universe is that one that the GGs and other immortals have been using for millennia. It’s there it <exists.
Re-read (or maybe read for the first time) what i said about universe-building.
All fiction takes place in an invented universe, simply by virtue of bing fiction (you know, not fact?). The universe fiction takes place in is 100% the author’s to modify in any way she wishes at whim.
Good authors introduce one piece of contra-factual bolonium (i forget who it was i first heard that term form in a talk she did an an SF convention.) and then, using handwavium where necessary to justify that bolonium, build a strictly-logical universe extrapolated from it.
Rather like non-euclidean geometry, which substitutes other assumptions for basic axioms of real-world geometry that are self-evident but unprovable and then builds a complete logical geometry from that.
So, Paul’s piece of bolonium is the existence of a supernatural (or preternatural, if you prefer) that functions by its own laws. I’m assuming that he knows what the laws of that supernatural are, or can come up with logically-consistent handwavium to justify ones he later creates – so far i see no evidence to the contrary.
Huh? If calculators didn’t exist, would it be impossible for me to do math?
I said that as a bilding block view. Like Vacuum tube, to transistor, to IC. Teleporter device, to to brain wave controlled teleporter device, to purely mind activated/controlled teleportation without a physical device.
Look, Fairportfan, you seem to just want to argue this while considering any POV but your own to be invalid. This, therefore, has become pointless. Feel free to carry on without me.
Not considering any POV to be invalid … without supporting evidence, anyway.
But you seem to have missed the difference between fantasy and the Real World™ (of which, judging by some of your comments to this strip you have little experience of).
And i really would like to know why you seem to feel that mental teleportation presupposes some “scientific”, physical form.
And i’s like an explanation for your apparent out-of-hand rejection of my own position.
BTW – you might be interested in knowing that (while my high-school’s classmate’s great-uncle quite rightly earned a Nobel for formulating the rules behind it and making a commercially-feasible device possible) the transistor effect was in use by US Navy radio operators when radio communications consisted solely of Morse Code…
Well, you’re right about that. I have very little first hand real world experience about much of anything. And what I do have, I’d rather forget. But I do know the difference between real and fantasy.
I’d read up on Teleportation articles (as hard science), and found that it’s already been done at the microscopic scale, eventually resolving into either one location or the other. As you scale things up, both the duration and distance reduce in proportion to the mass (so a dust mote would only normally cover a small distance and last for about a second). Replicate that effect for distance large enough, and you have real, human-scale (or larger) teleportation. The only question, then, would be where the energy source is coming from (in this case, it’s the stuff outside spacetime).
Re: “I’d read up on Teleportation articles (as hard science), and found that it’s already been done at the microscopic scale”
There are several possible things you could be referring to here. “tunneling, or “quantum teleportation” via entanglement, or possibly just the uncertainty principle wrt position and momentum. But to call any of these “teleportation at the microscopic scale” is quite misleading, despite the fact that one of them has come to be called “quantum teleportation”.
Taking “quantum teleportation” in particular, what’s being “teleported:” is a quantum state, not a particle. In particular, you have to move an entangled particle to the place you want to transport the state Move via a mundane move-through-the-intervening-space method. Then you can make that particle you moved aquire the state of a particle you left behind. And “the state” doesn’t include much. Further, if you try it with macroscopic objects, you’d have to assemble whatever you were transporting a particle at a time (unless you were trying to teleport the quantum state of a bose-einstein condensate or somesuch thing, which is a stranger thing even than a Golem Girl).
Basically, bottom line, there really isn’t anything that’s a precursor to the kind of poiting the Glyph Readers and their golems can do. Though possible something along the lines of “handwave mumble spacetime mumble handwave wormhole” would do the trick. But it’s still not much of a precursor, and certainly not anything that’s been done
Farpointfan is referring to the trope of “Magic A is Magic A” (which, to spare you an hour of your time, I won’t link to).
Nah. She STILL doesn’t believe in the supernatural. If you were to ask her I’m sure she would say “all of the stuff I’ve seen has been repeatable, measurable and has followed the laws of cause and effect. It’s just a matter of having the tools to study it to take it from ‘magic’ to ‘science.'”
And you know what? She’d be right.
Actually, Amanda may still think that Monica should be committed when she finds out that Monica is friends with some of the entities that were trying to drive Monica to suicide. Parts of Tina’s collective are not innocent in that matter.
…Tina’s collective? Methoughts it was her own demons that Monica was running from…?
…And Jin was there too. Kinda interesting, that coincidence, eh? And yet, Tina describes Monica as ‘one of the girls we saved’. Hrm… I wonder what from?
When I get the time I’ll go through the archives and search for the strips that specified Tina’s demons inclusion in the events around Monica’s attempted suicide.
There was some collusion, but Monica was running from her own demons. That was Doubt, Vanity, Panic and Lust standing with Jin over her body.
@jwhouk it was jin’s doubt we see chasing mon in the scenes. tina’s demons conspired to place her in the accident by directly controlling her in preparation for the key/dolls that close mon’s door.
**@UncleRice** Nice synopsis. But I think Amanda will get the message even though M poited her back. The look on her face already says “Blue Screen of Death.”
Get a toothpick, Monica, we need to find her Hard Reset button. 😉
And TSMillar – I think Pablo knows where this is going. Should you wish to find out, stay tuned.
And just where would this button be? 😛
I hope we’re going somewhere with this, Taylor…In a general sense.
What am I supposed to infer from that comment?
…someone doesn’t have our faith in you. After nearly a DECADE of plotline… someone still doesn’t believe that you know what you are doing…
…Hey… you should *poit* them into the lake, too…
Unfortunately this just proved my point when I called it two days ago.
Welcome to the tar pit Amanda – let us hope you can pull free.
Monica has slipped a notch on my list.
Her actions are reminiscent of Jin.
I wonder which character is “drowning” now.
scoff scoff
Also, snort.
And a healthy snerk on top…
Actually, I don’t think Amanda gave Monica any choice. Amanda is so deeply, thoroughly rooted in her own picture of what constitutes reality that nothing is is going to jar her perception of it, unless the demonstration involves something she can personally see/hear/feel/smell/taste to validate its authenticity. And what better place to engage all sensory input at once than Lake Calhoun. other than the Jersey Shore during a garbage strike, nothing else immediately leaps to *my* mind….
Yea, this ‘feels’ right. It’s the sort of thing people do to each other in the real world. My friends have dumped me out of a boat on a couple of occasions and they were just playing around. Amanda forced the issue here. It happens.
It could be argued that Monica should never have mentioned anything tied to this to her but that would qualify as odd behavior too. Going from chatty to close-mouthed about so much tends to show in a friendship.
It would have been a pretty arrogant to treat a friend too. The old ‘There is a lot of my work that I cannot speak about’ shtick wouldn’t work for long either. Monica works at a museum, not military intelligence. She’d end up having to cut Amanda out of much of her life by hiding it from her.
I agree.
Anything you do to reset someone’s reality basics,is going to be torture, whether it’s dry, or drawn out. You’re ripping a bandaid off their world. We all know those choices.
Bad Monica, bad. I am certain that there were better, DRIER, options for introducing Amanda to the world of the supernatural. A quick trip to Bud, and a diamond-making demonstration, would have been just as sufficient; lets hope that Amanda is too surprised to be angry.
When considering Monica’s choices of demonstrations, please keep in mind that Monica is really pissed off.
Not pissed off. More like sad and scared. Like what happened when she found out what Tina essentially was (Zombie Demon conglomerate).
HA! I always thought Amanda was still wet behind the ears…
That’s even worse than one of mine! 😉
Amanda’s hair looks goooood wet.
True. Looks better than her usual no-hair-line coif.
Well, my reaction would have been one of terror of the poiter. After that I would worry when she is going to do something else (and worse) to me. I would be in mortal fear of doing anything to upset her or make her angry at me. Our relationship would, thereafter, be one of master and slave.
But this is the comic world, and real people’s emotions have nothing to do with anything. I’m just glad Paul didn’t make us wait all weekend for today’s strip so we didn’t go on endlessly about “will she, or won’t she?”
For me, it depends which side of me wins out:
Intellectual side wins: “Wow! I actually teleported. Let’s do that again.”
Fear/Anger wins: “You sent me in to the middle of a dirty lake?!? If I catch something then you’re going to pay my medical bills and then I never want to hear from you again!”
As for a master/slave relationship — if I felt that I was in that sort of relationship with the person I would simply remove myself from that person’s life. I’d promise to keep their secret but they would not hear from me ever again.
Monica and Amanda have been friends for years. There is a level of trust which would overcome any fears. I doubt Amanda would think that Monica would do such a thing so she would not be in such a relationship. However, I believe she has enough self confidence to do what I would do and remove herself from Monica’s life if Monica tried to have that kind of relationship.
I would feel like I could never remove myself. That, no matter where I was, she could reach out and poit me wherever she wished at any time. There would be this constant dread in my life which would drive me bonkers. I’m not saying Monica would treat her that way, but that would be my constant fear in a similar situation. Not to mention all the other boogy women such a fear could dredge up. Can she control my mind? Make me do bad things, to myself or others? What if she poited my heart out in a fit of rage? It would never end. Paranoia would grip me and never let go. Trust would be totally destroyed already.
In your case you are prioritising your model of human nature above your model of your friend’s personality. I suspect that Amanda would prioritise her model of Monica’s personality above any cynicism she may have.
People are adept at saying to themselves that bad things would never happen to them. For most people the concept of power corrupting has an implied “unless it’s me or somebody I know well” clause attached to it. Only seeing it happen to someone close to a person makes them question that clause.
Now that you mention it, I think after a while I might be worried about the heart scenario (or being poited into the space occupied by a wall). Not as a delibrate thing but if the person was especially tired, drunk, etc. You would not put a drunk person in charge of a car, why would you put them in charge of something that has a bigger impact.
Sorry, it should be a “?” at the end of the last sentence.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying in the first paragraph. But then I’ve never experienced this lifelong friend thing, as Amanda and Monica have been, (or any real and deep friendship for that matter) so my outlook on things of this nature is limited. If not outright distorted.
I’ll clarify my comments:
People tend to think the best of the people they care about. So, unless their friend is known to be abusive, they would find it hard to believe their friend would act in such a fashion. People tend to give their loved ones (and close friends do count as loved ones) the benefit of the doubt.
Monica has not acted in an abusive fashion in the past so Amanda would find it to believe the Monica would act in an abusive fashion now. Therefore, Amanda is unlikely to fear her.
She has been shown proof that the world is not quite what she thought it was, but most frightening, still just as logical. And, it only took a quick dunk in duckwater to do it.
Me? I realized that when I first heard that somebody’s idea of a new sandwich was HAM on a BAGEL. When the bacon-flavored matzo hits the market, I’m hitching a ride with the dolphins off this rock.
There used to be an incredibly good sandwich shop in Atlanta – there were well over 200 different sandwiches on their menu.
My favourite was “The Chutzpah” – lox, cream cheese, onion and canadian bacon open-face on a bagel.
Staple sandwich: Ham on rye with Swiss cheese.
Rye bread is Jewish (though the common variety isn’t “certified kosher”), and ham, obviously, isn’t kosher.
staple sandwich:
Half a box of Bostich between two sheets of A4. Light brushing of Wite-out optional. Garnish with curly pencil shaving florets and a cold glass of toner.
That’s rather hard on the teeth, ain’t it?
Bud can wash it down, no problem.
You can wash anything down with Bud.
But i still prefer actual beer.
Yeah, but beer doesn’t have racehorse legs.
Depends on what kind of rye bread.
My Bohemian grandmother made a heavy rye bread with caraway seeds that was to die for – crackly but thin crust, incredible flavour …
Pigs were lining up to die for the honour of their ham being eaten between two slices of the stuff.
When my sister was about fourteen or so the family were visiting relatives in Chicago. (I wasn’t there, i was off playing sailor in Uncle Sammy’s Canoe Club).
Despite being just third-generation native born Bohemian-American and having been born in the Midwest (Cleveland), she had lived since she was less than two in the rural South.
So they walked into a kosher deli and she ordered ham and swiss on rye…
So long, and thanks for all the fish…
Heh
Well, she did get the Answer.
Yes, but what’s the question?
“Should you piss off friends who can poit you into the middle of a lake?” sounds pretty relevant to me.
I love post-dunking Amanda, but the layout leaves something to be desired. It took me a second glance to realize that Monica was counting down after she poited Amanda, not before.
Yeah – me too.
Me three – so I took that second look. And gee whilikers – ! I figured it out!
wholly cow. I just now realized that that is correct order, and then saw this comment…
synchronicity, anyone?
Honestly I was still confused by the order until I read this thread in the comments. Uneven boxes always gets me. Plus the talk balloon overlapping into the one where Mon is talking made me think the two were happening around the same time. Oh well, makes more sense now.
Panel layout gave me no problem… though I have had practice with worse.
Wait, can Amanda swim? I can’t, so I would probably be ready to kill Monica by boiling her in alcohol and serving her with some sage and a variety of onions.
The fact that she referred to a specific stroke makes me think that Amanda can swim. The fact that she asked the question makes me wonder whether Amanda’s done that much swimming recently (as far as Monica knows).
Olive oil would be better. But then, I prefer broiled or fried. Boiled human flesh is so bland. Umm … cough … not that I would know, of course … cough …
What? No fava beans and a nice chianti?
Barbecued. Nothing beats barbecued pork . . er. .
Never mind.
Wrong white meat. We’re talkin’ about a bird, here.
Head cheese, lady fingers, and bloody marys; the choice of cannibals everywhere.
You forgot eyes cream.
But how else do you get rid of the bitterness in the meat?
What can I say, I have limited actual culinary experience. I don’t even know what fava beans are. The only spices I’m familiar with are salt and pepper. If it can’t be done in the microwave or fit between 2 slices of bread, it’s someone else’s job.
Years of therapy?
Oh. Monica….
/facepalm
Can just see the two fishermen sitting on the lake…
POITBLOOSH….splutter, splutterPOITSlosh
“Mikey, what the hell was that???”
“Dunno, but whatever it was, it took my bait, too!”
“I don’t know, but all of the men are smiling…”
No, I think they’re like those bird watchers in Pibgorn.
I think Pablo was channeling Bill Cosby. Here is an excerpt of the routine.
Noah: You’ve got me here building this ark…and the neighbors are laughing…they’re saying there goes old Noah…and for what? That’s it! I quit!
PING
God: Noah, how long can you tread water?
Sigh. That was comedy.
At any rate, I think that M joining her on the POIT would’ve been a more effective move in garnering support. That said, it’d have been an interesting device for Amanda’s Celtic arm band to block the POIT, adding to the mounting doubt. It would’ve also forced M to POIT something or someone else (Of course, the whole arm band thing would have to be deciphered later).
SoWhyMe: A lakefront property (of any size) is considered a beach if it is sandy and if we are talking about the Great Lakes, they are hundreds of miles long and several hundred feet deep. In the majority of port cities, you cannot see the opposing side of the lake and there are miles of sandy beaches.
Okay, I’ll take your word for it in the technical sense. Just that any time I’ve ever heard anyone say they were going to a lake to siwm, they always say “we’re going to the lake.” Whereas, if they are going to the ocean, they always say “we’re going to the beach.” But then, I’ve never lived near a really large lake. Come to think about it, the Great Lakes are practically a small ocean.
They are inland seas – Lake Superior is the largest natural body of fresh water in the world, and at any given moment more than 1/2 the world’s liquid fresh water (i’ve heard numbers as high as 2/3 from some sources) is in the three (or two, depending on whether you ask the man in the street or a hydrologist) Great Lakes.
Oops “… upper Great Lakes …”
Lake Calhoun is no where near the size of ANY of the Great Lakes. You can see the Minneapolis skyline from the far shore of the lake. In fact, I think about three Lake Calhouns would fit inside the lake near my house, and I can definitely see across the water to the other shore.
And we have a very nice beach on the one end, thanks. That is, when it’s open and not underwater or closed due to e.coli bacteria.
No, she is not ready to talk. Dunk her again, Monica. Only this time, ve put der little pieces of bamboo under her fingernails, jah? Den ve dunk her again and again and again! Oh, she vill talk. Soon she vill be singing like a little bird…
The way Amanda’s been reacting has me a little puzzled; she’s usually pretty unruffled, and willing to take things like Dietzel’s behavior, or Tepoz, or what not, in stride. Sort of like how she stops and thinks about this: wapsisquare.com/comic/01232002 instead of dismissing it out of hand. But Pablo is a deft storyteller, and I’m sure it’ll all seem perfectly normal very soon 😉
> Dietzel’s behavior, or Tepoz, or what not
When did Amanda meet ever see Tepoz?
( I was thinking she was thinking Monica was joking about Tepoz… and hadn’t actually met him. )
Eh, you’re right. I was mis-remembering. Guess it’d be good to re-read the old strips every so often… not least because they’re just that good 😉
Ever since i first saw this i’ve been thinking something was missing.
And now i know what it is.
The fish!
Like so (with apologies to Pablo).
LOL! 🙂
Niiiice, very niiiiice!
Well, at least it wasn’t an eel. Of course, Kait didn’t have any cleavage to use.
Is that a pearch in your cleavage, or are you just glad to see me?
Hey Joe,
where you goin’ with that
perch in your hand?
Wow. To think that dunking someone could garner so much worry.
What happened was: Monica didn’t want Amanda to think she was crazy, so she gave her a good abrupt splash of water. Better than a slap in my opinion, especially when you consider that Amanda’s point of view abruptly went from Inside… to Outside… Holy crap I’m wet where the what the… to Inside again.
Why water? To let Amanda know that she didn’t just imagine it, since she’s now dripping on the carpet..
Coming Monday
Amanda: “What! The! Hell!?!”
The problem is the Britney Spears Paradox: “You want crazy, I got yer crazy…”
By the way, I think there was a subtle joke made at Amanda’s expense, considering her comment from last Monday about “Blow all segues out of the water”.
What REALLY would have been funny is if Monica would have said upon Amanda’s return from her “dip” in Calhoun Lake is if she’d said something like, “Now that your segue’s been blown, are you ready to talk?”
Really should have brought her back into the bathroom, maybe even the bathtub if there isn’t a floor drain.