Well, technically you wouldn’t have to fix it…I mean, it’s a comic, and that’s dialogue. You can’t expect everyone to speak using proper grammar and such all the time.
Paul, Thank you for your dedication to grammatical excellence and your rapid response to the fans who contribute by pointing out those rare occasional errors that slip past!
I am about halfway in binging through the archives and have been enjoying the journey.
Yes, “technically you wouldn’t have to fix” the errors, but there are some webcomics where the grammar is so sloppy that they ruin an otherwise good story line.
Your true diligence is greatly appreciated.
Ah, how to untangle the Gordian Knot that is Jin’s mind by now… Slightly bent to begin with but now after how many thousand years of attempts and failures?
What an elegant way to put it. I have thought from the beginning that Jin has had a dreadful burden to bear. A self-imposed burden, at that.
More than eighty thousand years. Stubborn little thing, isn’t she?
By the way, thanks for the pointer to why the calendar machine was built in the first place. I’d wondered. I also wonder if this might be at the root of Jin’s determination to destroy it – it was built for her.
Unless I misread it, this strip implies the motive for the calendar machine being built. http://wapsisquare.com/comic/i-feel-frightened/
Mayahuel designed the machine, and had a hand in building it, and I suspect her primary motive was to get Jin in sync with time – no matter what she told anyone else.
The calendar was started before they became golems. Then the priests of Lanthas took the calendar and control of the city. This is when Maya had the idea on how to get the calendar back by becoming a golem and infiltrating the priests.
Thanks, Paul, this makes more sense…such that Jin, in an effort to keep getting back to the point where she could stop the calendar machine, had to willingly and consciously sacrifice herself 56 times!
I hope I get it right eventually! So what are the “untold legions of herself” that Jin sacrificed referring to? That each time the calendar reset she lost a life full of friends and relationships that she had to give up on and start all over again?
It could be. It at least implies that the time machine might have kept Jin in synch while it existed. It could also be that Jin’s problems motivated Maya to study time, so when the politicians decided they wanted a time machine, she knew how to design one. Maybe Maya became an expert for other reasons, but an early experiment with manipulating time broke Jin or Jin might have been playing with something in Maya’s lab.
I’d like to think Maya had good motivations, though. She seemed to be a nice person.
Mayahuel seems to have had good intentions, at least as far as Jin was concerned, but her powers and skills appear to exceed her foresight. But then, that can be said of anyone, can’t it?
The calendar machine may have had other functions besides rendering immortal anyone present when it was activated. I cannot remember if that has been discussed yet. Something that the priests were very interested in, at any rate. I would not think that immortality would be something that would be immediately apparent.
( Immortality seems to have been an accidental side effect, not something intended. I might be dead wrong about that, of course. When we think time machine, most of us think of a travel device, a portal. To the Lanthians, the term might have meant something altogether different. )
Life would be boring? Having hot sex with a cop handcuffed to your bed is boring? I wish my life was as “boring”, as opposed to the boring I am faced with at the present.
So how does one go about trying to help someone whose psyche is more messed up than the entire series of Lost?
And May spent just as much time in the demon world as Jin did looping through time in the “real” world trying to destroy the machine. What could that have been like?
I don’t think there is any way to know. Time doesn’t work the same way in the demon realm as it does in ours. When Bud went into the demon realm to destroy the calendar and retrieve Mayahuel, she didn’t have any idea how much time had passed in the “real” world. It’s also why Bud could destroy the time machine in the demon realm.
Bud’s “reconaissance” into the demon realm was the only data point we have, and it implied the time is compressed in the real world relative to the demonic realm. I’d hate to assume a linear relationship based on this, such that Maya would have had to spend a multiple of the years Jin spent looping stuck in the demon realm. But since there is no way to know, it might be random or at least nonlinear. In any case, the fact that maya’s first words were about being able to smell dirt again implies a fairly long stay….
May may have spent more time there – remember that Bud was gone a few minutes from Monica and Shelly’s viewpoint when she went into the demon realm to bring May out … but from her standpoint it was a lot longer.
Technically, Jin was 18 when she sneaked in and saw Maya start up the calendar machine. She stopped aging at that point. I don’t think much more time passed before she was turned into a golem, though.
This should be an interesting sojourn into the nature of mental instability. Especially when your patient could wipe out the solar system if she gets pissed…
I wonder if Mayahuel’s “exploring’ might entail a search fr a more modern fix to Jin’s problem of feeling fractured. And i find it both odd and frightening to think that the feeling persists even after her transformation into a golem…who are these voices?
The nose piece on her glasses, perhaps? I haven’t figured out that thing on Tepoztecal’s nose. Considering how many times he’s been smacked upside the head, it might be a Band Aid.
So, what kind of coffee drink is Monica carrying? Has she tried it yet?
What does “Jin has sacrificed untold legions of herself” mean? I guess being sent back in time would be sacrificing who you have become in the meantime. It must have been traumatic, anyway.
I think I’ve just figured some things out. Phix implied that Mayahuel had been able to appear to Monica because Monica was a doorway. Paul said the same thing in the comments. However, Mayahuel appeared to Monica before Monica was hit by the bus. According to Jin’s demon, the trauma of getting hit changed Monica from a porthole to a doorway. Jin more clearly said that Shelly was turned into a doorway at the same time, but for slightly different reasons.
The apparent contradiction in Monica’s case could be due to vagueness about what constitutes a “doorway”. Perhaps she was open enough for demons and Maya to appear to just her originally (porthole / small doorway), but when she was hit by the bus, the opening became large enough for the rogue demons to get through well enough to influence others. This strip implied that she could have been opened even more. It’s really just a matter of how useful of a communication link she had become.
There was an apparent contradiction in Shelly’s case, too. Jin made it seem as if Shelly still was as much of a doorway as Monica was at the time, but the rogue demons didn’t use Shelly like they used Monica and there wasn’t any need to lock Shelly, unlike Monica. Bud needed to use the portal cloth to get back from the demon realm and with Shelly’s tattoo destroyed, the demon’s couldn’t follow. It could be that Shelly’s doorway was opened just as wide as Monica’s, but Shelly, unlike Monica, quickly seized complete control of the communication link and blocked all communication through it. Technically it may still exist, but it is useless for any demons. As a side effect, Shelly’s demons were completely disconnected from the demon realm and somehow combined into Shelly’s conscience. Jin might not have known that Shelly had done this or just didn’t mention it to Monica. Apparently, even Shelly didn’t understand what happened. She thought she still had multiple demons recently and was completely confused when her conscience appeared to her. In Monica’s case, Jin’s demon could block communications from the demon side and Monica could control who could appear to her, but apparently rogue demons could slip past Monica and influence others without Monica knowing about it.
How did she “sacrifice herself”, though? That’s the part I don’t understand. Each loop was 1450 years long, but at least it didn’t go back 12,500 years to when she was the token sacrifice that prevented the priests from controlling the chimera. She lost her mother each time, and her effort was wasted, but I don’t know why that would be called sacrificing herself.
She only really sacrificed herself once, Monica is more referring to all the potential lives that she lived and never really being able to commit to any of them.
That is also evident in the way she’s mildly let down that Tina no longer collects antique teapots, and her resistance to allowing herself to get close to Alan, lest she lose a relationship with him if the calendar machine was not destroyed…have we seen him since?
I’ve been going back and rereading from the beginning, taking notes.
Originally, the only connection the bus event had to anything was that it counted as a blood sacrifice, which had something to do with the golem girls. Tepoz had added a line of glyphs to their bodies to prevent them being controlled by any single “scribe” or glyph-reader, but this charm or ward had some sort of loophole involving said sacrifice, which was fulfilled by Monica’s heart stopping.
Thus, when Monica later invoked the golem girls via speaking glyphs, they were bonded to her, in a way. After that point they were no longer drunk, and they were given free will, which they then used to choose Monica as the only person they would ever obey.
Naturally, as the story has gone on and evolved, the writing has shifted. I’m gonna keep working at rereading and when I compile a full set of notes, I’ll be able to figure out how to smooth any possible contradictions. *winks*
Good idea!. I’ll be interested in seeing what you come up with. Take good notes. It’s easy to miss stuff. I just spotted the full connection between this page and this one, three weeks later.
BTW, this is the way I understood the issue with the GGG’s picking Monica: Monica’s heart stopping briefly counted as a blood sacrifice. That gave them free will, which probably broke the charm, but since Tepoz was keeping them drunk, happy and hidden, it didn’t matter. When Tepoz finally summoned them, they were impressed by Monica, because she was a glyph reader. They used their free will to break away from Tepoz and choose Monica. Without Tepoz keeping them drunk, they sobered up.
—
Here is a not particularly great idea about Jin sacrificing untold legions of herself. [url=http://wapsisquare.com/comic/notthereyet/]She saved many people[/url]. Did she do it by standing in for sacrificial victims, knowing that she really wouldn’t die, but suffering anyway? Bud sent part of herself with Monica once, so could it be that Jin sent parts of herself to be killed as sacrifices somehow?
I love the way having survived the calendar lunacy, Shelly seems to have broken free of many self-constraints, and apparently hot sex has relaxed her enough to face this new ‘adventure’ with amazing aplomb – I’m jealous 😉
Clerk: “Name please?”
Jin: “Jin”
Clerk: “Is that first or last?”
Jin: “Only. We didn’t have the tradition of surnames back then.”
Clerk: “Okaaaaaay. Sex.”
Jin: “Self-evident, I’d like to think. Oh, but I guess you can scratch gender dismorphia off my problem list. I’m a lady, and happy to be.”
Clerk: “Well, this IS a psychiatrist’s office. Still, that makes the paperwork easier. Age?”
Jin: “Hang on… let me get my calculator… hmm… Something in the ballpark of 90,000 years.”
Clerk: “…”
Jin: “Yeah, I know. The fun part? That’s not at all related to the problems I’m here for.”
Clerk: “I can’t wait to tell the doc about you!”
Paul:
Minor edit – the first panel – the second use of the word need, should be either needed or needs.
And by all means, feel free to erase this kind of post …
Oops! All fixed. 🙂
Well, technically you wouldn’t have to fix it…I mean, it’s a comic, and that’s dialogue. You can’t expect everyone to speak using proper grammar and such all the time.
Paul, Thank you for your dedication to grammatical excellence and your rapid response to the fans who contribute by pointing out those rare occasional errors that slip past!
I am about halfway in binging through the archives and have been enjoying the journey.
Yes, “technically you wouldn’t have to fix” the errors, but there are some webcomics where the grammar is so sloppy that they ruin an otherwise good story line.
Your true diligence is greatly appreciated.
Ah, how to untangle the Gordian Knot that is Jin’s mind by now… Slightly bent to begin with but now after how many thousand years of attempts and failures?
Where to begin….
“Jin has sacrificed untold legions of herself – ”
What an elegant way to put it. I have thought from the beginning that Jin has had a dreadful burden to bear. A self-imposed burden, at that.
More than eighty thousand years. Stubborn little thing, isn’t she?
By the way, thanks for the pointer to why the calendar machine was built in the first place. I’d wondered. I also wonder if this might be at the root of Jin’s determination to destroy it – it was built for her.
Yes, the fact that she can function at all at this point is a minor miracle…and where is this calendar machine pointer of which you speak, Fatuncle?
Unless I misread it, this strip implies the motive for the calendar machine being built.
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/i-feel-frightened/
Mayahuel designed the machine, and had a hand in building it, and I suspect her primary motive was to get Jin in sync with time – no matter what she told anyone else.
And just for clarity, the starting of the calendar machine took place after Jin, Brandi and Bud had already become golems? When did May become one?
The calendar was started before they became golems. Then the priests of Lanthas took the calendar and control of the city. This is when Maya had the idea on how to get the calendar back by becoming a golem and infiltrating the priests.
Thanks, Paul, this makes more sense…such that Jin, in an effort to keep getting back to the point where she could stop the calendar machine, had to willingly and consciously sacrifice herself 56 times!
No, she only went back to the time when Mayahuel tried to destroy the calendar. That happened much later.
I hope I get it right eventually! So what are the “untold legions of herself” that Jin sacrificed referring to? That each time the calendar reset she lost a life full of friends and relationships that she had to give up on and start all over again?
“That each time the calendar reset she lost a life full of friends and relationships that she had to give up on and start all over again?”
Exactly! 🙂
It could be. It at least implies that the time machine might have kept Jin in synch while it existed. It could also be that Jin’s problems motivated Maya to study time, so when the politicians decided they wanted a time machine, she knew how to design one. Maybe Maya became an expert for other reasons, but an early experiment with manipulating time broke Jin or Jin might have been playing with something in Maya’s lab.
I’d like to think Maya had good motivations, though. She seemed to be a nice person.
Mayahuel seems to have had good intentions, at least as far as Jin was concerned, but her powers and skills appear to exceed her foresight. But then, that can be said of anyone, can’t it?
The calendar machine may have had other functions besides rendering immortal anyone present when it was activated. I cannot remember if that has been discussed yet. Something that the priests were very interested in, at any rate. I would not think that immortality would be something that would be immediately apparent.
( Immortality seems to have been an accidental side effect, not something intended. I might be dead wrong about that, of course. When we think time machine, most of us think of a travel device, a portal. To the Lanthians, the term might have meant something altogether different. )
She wasn’t a nice person. She was a murdering, manipulative bitch. She may have deeply cared about her daughter, but that’s about it.
And Jin is going to get help from my girl Tina ? This is going to be interesting . Veeeeddy interestink .
And Katherine. And maybe Phix. This could get very… strange…
I know being a teenager is a bad time in your life, but going through it several thousand times in a row?
Life would be boring? Having hot sex with a cop handcuffed to your bed is boring? I wish my life was as “boring”, as opposed to the boring I am faced with at the present.
So how does one go about trying to help someone whose psyche is more messed up than the entire series of Lost?
God only knows. No precedent, no guidelines, and dealing with a power that can snuff out the world like a candle … brrrr.
One hopes that Mayahuel can and will offer some insight, though she has a history of having power without the wisdom to use it.
And May spent just as much time in the demon world as Jin did looping through time in the “real” world trying to destroy the machine. What could that have been like?
I flinch away from thinking about it.
I don’t think there is any way to know. Time doesn’t work the same way in the demon realm as it does in ours. When Bud went into the demon realm to destroy the calendar and retrieve Mayahuel, she didn’t have any idea how much time had passed in the “real” world. It’s also why Bud could destroy the time machine in the demon realm.
Bud’s “reconaissance” into the demon realm was the only data point we have, and it implied the time is compressed in the real world relative to the demonic realm. I’d hate to assume a linear relationship based on this, such that Maya would have had to spend a multiple of the years Jin spent looping stuck in the demon realm. But since there is no way to know, it might be random or at least nonlinear. In any case, the fact that maya’s first words were about being able to smell dirt again implies a fairly long stay….
May may have spent more time there – remember that Bud was gone a few minutes from Monica and Shelly’s viewpoint when she went into the demon realm to bring May out … but from her standpoint it was a lot longer.
Jin broken! Well then I hope that they can fix her.
Waitaminute! Jin’s 18?? O.o
Z
The template from which the golem that is now Jin was made was an 18 year old girl, yes. As were Bud and Brandi.
Technically, Jin was 18 when she sneaked in and saw Maya start up the calendar machine. She stopped aging at that point. I don’t think much more time passed before she was turned into a golem, though.
Ooooh. Now wonder Jin’s more than a little bit less than all there…
This should be an interesting sojourn into the nature of mental instability. Especially when your patient could wipe out the solar system if she gets pissed…
Or just loses track of what’s real.
The way things have built up, I’m a little surprised they haven’t simply gone for a quick Phix 😀
frantically opening windows
Dreadful pun. Wish I’d thought of it!
Phix is still “touring” the museum, no?
“Touring”? Yeah, that’s it … Phix and the curator have been “touring” … 😉
Jin, sending therapists into therapy 30 seconds into the first visit.
Those that don’t end up in a catatonic state, curled into a fetal position.
Would you rather be Jin’s therapist … or Thorax’s?
Heheh . Somehow , I imagine a therapist would end up talking to Thorax , about their problems .
I want Thorax to be my therapist…
I wonder if Mayahuel’s “exploring’ might entail a search fr a more modern fix to Jin’s problem of feeling fractured. And i find it both odd and frightening to think that the feeling persists even after her transformation into a golem…who are these voices?
Somehow, the way that Monica is drawn in the first panel reminds me of a certain little blue guy … can’t put my finger on why, though …
The nose piece on her glasses, perhaps? I haven’t figured out that thing on Tepoztecal’s nose. Considering how many times he’s been smacked upside the head, it might be a Band Aid.
Shame they didn’t participate in Boobquake… but that would have detracted from the story. So all is forgiven.
So, what kind of coffee drink is Monica carrying? Has she tried it yet?
What does “Jin has sacrificed untold legions of herself” mean? I guess being sent back in time would be sacrificing who you have become in the meantime. It must have been traumatic, anyway.
I think I’ve just figured some things out. Phix implied that Mayahuel had been able to appear to Monica because Monica was a doorway. Paul said the same thing in the comments. However, Mayahuel appeared to Monica before Monica was hit by the bus. According to Jin’s demon, the trauma of getting hit changed Monica from a porthole to a doorway. Jin more clearly said that Shelly was turned into a doorway at the same time, but for slightly different reasons.
The apparent contradiction in Monica’s case could be due to vagueness about what constitutes a “doorway”. Perhaps she was open enough for demons and Maya to appear to just her originally (porthole / small doorway), but when she was hit by the bus, the opening became large enough for the rogue demons to get through well enough to influence others. This strip implied that she could have been opened even more. It’s really just a matter of how useful of a communication link she had become.
There was an apparent contradiction in Shelly’s case, too. Jin made it seem as if Shelly still was as much of a doorway as Monica was at the time, but the rogue demons didn’t use Shelly like they used Monica and there wasn’t any need to lock Shelly, unlike Monica. Bud needed to use the portal cloth to get back from the demon realm and with Shelly’s tattoo destroyed, the demon’s couldn’t follow. It could be that Shelly’s doorway was opened just as wide as Monica’s, but Shelly, unlike Monica, quickly seized complete control of the communication link and blocked all communication through it. Technically it may still exist, but it is useless for any demons. As a side effect, Shelly’s demons were completely disconnected from the demon realm and somehow combined into Shelly’s conscience. Jin might not have known that Shelly had done this or just didn’t mention it to Monica. Apparently, even Shelly didn’t understand what happened. She thought she still had multiple demons recently and was completely confused when her conscience appeared to her. In Monica’s case, Jin’s demon could block communications from the demon side and Monica could control who could appear to her, but apparently rogue demons could slip past Monica and influence others without Monica knowing about it.
This makes sense to me at the moment, anyway.
Jin has lived (and remembered it) through every single loop of the calendar.
“Untold legions” may be a bit hyperbolic, but she “sacrificed herself” at least once each loop.
How did she “sacrifice herself”, though? That’s the part I don’t understand. Each loop was 1450 years long, but at least it didn’t go back 12,500 years to when she was the token sacrifice that prevented the priests from controlling the chimera. She lost her mother each time, and her effort was wasted, but I don’t know why that would be called sacrificing herself.
Back to my first comment, here is more about Monica and Shelly being doorways, which was news to Shelly. Here is another example of Jin not knowing that communication through Shelly had been shut down.
She only really sacrificed herself once, Monica is more referring to all the potential lives that she lived and never really being able to commit to any of them.
Now that’s what I call service…i ask a question on another thread above, and get it answered immediately upon scrolling down.
Awesome! 😀
That is also evident in the way she’s mildly let down that Tina no longer collects antique teapots, and her resistance to allowing herself to get close to Alan, lest she lose a relationship with him if the calendar machine was not destroyed…have we seen him since?
Okay, i meant that, essentially each loop is another take on her sacrifice…
Had Jin seen Alan “before”…?
I’ve been going back and rereading from the beginning, taking notes.
Originally, the only connection the bus event had to anything was that it counted as a blood sacrifice, which had something to do with the golem girls. Tepoz had added a line of glyphs to their bodies to prevent them being controlled by any single “scribe” or glyph-reader, but this charm or ward had some sort of loophole involving said sacrifice, which was fulfilled by Monica’s heart stopping.
Thus, when Monica later invoked the golem girls via speaking glyphs, they were bonded to her, in a way. After that point they were no longer drunk, and they were given free will, which they then used to choose Monica as the only person they would ever obey.
Naturally, as the story has gone on and evolved, the writing has shifted. I’m gonna keep working at rereading and when I compile a full set of notes, I’ll be able to figure out how to smooth any possible contradictions. *winks*
~D.
Good idea!. I’ll be interested in seeing what you come up with. Take good notes. It’s easy to miss stuff. I just spotted the full connection between this page and this one, three weeks later.
BTW, this is the way I understood the issue with the GGG’s picking Monica: Monica’s heart stopping briefly counted as a blood sacrifice. That gave them free will, which probably broke the charm, but since Tepoz was keeping them drunk, happy and hidden, it didn’t matter. When Tepoz finally summoned them, they were impressed by Monica, because she was a glyph reader. They used their free will to break away from Tepoz and choose Monica. Without Tepoz keeping them drunk, they sobered up.
—
Here is a not particularly great idea about Jin sacrificing untold legions of herself. [url=http://wapsisquare.com/comic/notthereyet/]She saved many people[/url]. Did she do it by standing in for sacrificial victims, knowing that she really wouldn’t die, but suffering anyway? Bud sent part of herself with Monica once, so could it be that Jin sent parts of herself to be killed as sacrifices somehow?
Nevermind the last paragraph. That’s been answered.
Speaking of boobquakes…
I love the way having survived the calendar lunacy, Shelly seems to have broken free of many self-constraints, and apparently hot sex has relaxed her enough to face this new ‘adventure’ with amazing aplomb – I’m jealous 😉
Clerk: “Name please?”
Jin: “Jin”
Clerk: “Is that first or last?”
Jin: “Only. We didn’t have the tradition of surnames back then.”
Clerk: “Okaaaaaay. Sex.”
Jin: “Self-evident, I’d like to think. Oh, but I guess you can scratch gender dismorphia off my problem list. I’m a lady, and happy to be.”
Clerk: “Well, this IS a psychiatrist’s office. Still, that makes the paperwork easier. Age?”
Jin: “Hang on… let me get my calculator… hmm… Something in the ballpark of 90,000 years.”
Clerk: “…”
Jin: “Yeah, I know. The fun part? That’s not at all related to the problems I’m here for.”
Clerk: “I can’t wait to tell the doc about you!”