So Shelly is Merlin. Living this land in reverse. Trying to be the wise one advising others of their future mistakes. Living to be able to see them make them anyway despite her advice. A desitny almost seemingly without end and a sentence shoved onto an innocent. So sad yet poetic in a way.
Our Shelly is indeed the sphinx and alive. Don’t know how well she is.
I said this wasn’t the end. I had no way of knowing how it would work out, but I felt confident Pablo wouldn’t give us some trite demise. I’ve come to expect much better than that. And he delivered!
I will be very sad if this is indeed the way it all goes down in the end… kinda makes me hate Shelly, who used to be my favorite character. Monica was willing to put her life on the line for the sake of the world, but Shelly is willing to kill someone innocent to save herself.
Not how I see it at all… but in the end that is the case isnt it? Was she playing them knowing that they didn’t have long to go anyway as per the reset? And was she consoled by the other 56 or dd they all die with her or what?
Where is the feedback loop here? How did those other Shelly’s know what to bring and did they all die there or did they go back to get caught in the reset? The clearer my understanding of this story the more questions I have.
i cant imagine shelly just killing off people like that
i suspect the 56th shelly who bought in the radiation tube, died of natural causes. who knows maybe each time a shelly died something happened in the forest.
Or maybe just something freaky happens. I.e find a way to kill em off or they die in more gruesome deaths.
It was fast this death and she didnt seem to feel much pain (as it was over so quick) so maybe its the easier of two choices?
(oh and she possibly died before she hid the tube after all..sphinxshelly can hide the tube in the tree, say it was shelly who did it and not be lying)
Is she really saving herself by letting an innocent person die? Or was she allowing older versions of herself to die in order to have things happen that needed to happen in order to save someone else (i.e. Jin)?
I think the going home bit is not related to the past versions living or dying, but a result of reaching the end of a long repeating cycle.
And yes, allowing the deaths of innocents is sad (no matter the end reason). Is it more acceptible when you know that said innocent won’t live past a calendar reset? I guess that’s a slippery slope, but I’d say it is…especially if you’re working towards the same goal as those innocents…and those innocents are all you.
Every loop through, the various travelers tried different things, sometimes drastically altering the course of history. Unless you believe that genetic code is all that makes up an individual, each Shelly was a different person.
only Paul knows what is really happening in the future of Wapsi. we can only connect the dots as to what has occured previously and guess at future outcomes.
If tomorrows will be sphinxshelly-57 returning to her body then well..1-56 returned to their body..dead
Jin would have seen/known shelly dies 56 times…
Hence her rather grating way of treating Shelly in the beginning. Jin desperately tried to keep her distance, knowing the pain of losing Shelly again, that would otherwise follow.
It makes here even more of a tragical character. All powerful, but so deeply broken. Luckily it all seems to go the right way for her. At least she got her mom back. I could only wish. 🙁
Poor sphinx. Stuck there all that time with nothing but trees. It’s a wonder she is as sane as she was. At least Phix was in the greatest library of all time. Always something to read and think about. Phix also had visitors (other than the girls) from time to time. She could even pop out for a short time. I wonder if this sphinx had drawn faces on some of the trees and talked to them? Sort of like “Wilson” and Tom Hanks.
So *shakes head bl-bl-bl-bl-bl!* Now that I’ve had a chance to reset my brain from it’s previous Tilt: If Shelly No. 1 (or 56, as the case may be) gets to go home, does she go back to “our” Shelly’s body, with full knowledge of 56 cycles but nothing of the current one, or to her own? Dangit, I want to see what Monica and Tina and Bud have been seeing during this whole time. Does Shelly vanish? What? What? What? *shakes head bl-bl-bl-bl-bl!*
OK so Shelly of the post CM cycle was the last one to hold the relic and travel to the Tree-Realm. But due to the backward time flow of the Tree-Realm, post CM cycle Shelly was the first Shelly to enter the Tree-Realm and because stuck. Perhaps due to the CM time resets. So what we have seen the past week or so is Shelly from loop #1 enter the Tree-Realm as the last one. So post CM cycle Shell (aka Sphinx Shelly can finally return to the real world.
Now the questions that need to be asked: How did Shelly actually travel to the Tree-Realm? Is it an astral projection sort of thing? Did Shelly appear in the body of the Sphinx when she got trapped in the Tree-Realm? If so she’s just returning her astral self back to her body in the real world. Will our Shelly have the full memory of her time in the Tree-Realm or just the highlights?
Time is running backwards here. Which means that this sphinx witnessed the 56 iterations of the CM loops in reverse. We are witnessing the conversation between herself and the Shelly from the 1st CM iteration, and thus the first of many failures to destroy the CM.
But we just saw Shelly take posession of the artifact and come into this realm after the destruction of the calendar machine, so I would expect to see Shelly#56 meeting Sphinx #1. Instead, we see the death of Shelly#1 and the lamentations of Sphinx #56.
Yours is the same theory as Kramegame’s above, and Paul has seemed to confirm it.
But for this theory to be true, she would have had to enter the sacred tree realm as Sphinx#1, meeting Shelly #55, hence her confusion at meeting herself over and over again…and 81000 years later, we have the scene that starts here.
But as one can clearly see, she is entering the realm as Shelly #1, because she left her friends in the middle of saying “Easier said than done”. So if the scene in the apartment where Shelly is grabbing the relic and transporting to the sacred tree realm takes place AFTER the destruction of the calendar machine, we have a paradox.
I’d feel much better about this theory of Sphinx==Shelly if the last panel in the “Easier Said” comic did not show Shelly explicitly entering the tree realm as Shelly, and therefore Shelly #1.
The sphinx didn’t say time ran backwards, she said “opposite.” That’s different. That can mean simply that the time loops are occuring in reverse order, but still play out in such a manner that they run their course forwards.
I agree with SoWhyMe, that it is the order that is backwards, and not time itself, especially because if linear time is still valid in the tree realm, Shelly/Sohinx would have to wait ~1446 years between visits, with nothing to happen in between (?).
But the paradox still remains to be explained…the only way for Shelly with the relic to become Sphinx #1 is for the “Easier said” comic to not explicitly shoe Shelly entering the tree realm as Shelly #1. That is a paradox and it still bugs me.
OK, let me ask a different way. Sphinx says she was the first to arrive in the place of the trees. From where/when did she come?? Because it ain’t from the post-calendar-machine era, unless someone wants to explain the “Easier Said” comic to me (link is in my second comment on this thread).
(The tab on the left is this comment page, the one on the right is the front page at wapsisquare.com.) See the funky little coloured square in the tab where a favicon ought be?
Ok, read through the majority of the comments and the “correct” conclusion. I think I get it, probably not the exact details but the concept as a whole as 1st Shelly (Sphinx) is looping all the way around until she’s back to where she began and can leave the tree realm. The points of is Shelly a Sphinx would explain a lot of odd goings on surrounding Shelly. Can’t wait for tomorrow. 🙂
Read all the comments as of 12:22PM Pacific time. Boggle. I did say yesterday Paul would throw us major twists – I just didn’t know how major 😛
Shelly is a sphinx?!? So… her deceased mother and her father are sphinxes too, or do sphinxes generate/perpetuate some other way, or??? Then there’s the scary girl, the combining of Shelly/Sphinxes'(?) demons and how that relates to Sphinxdom and the vision quest and rabbit/Jin and Tepoz and o_O
As far as Shelly/Sphinx(?!?) “allowing the deaths of innocents” and thereby being a “not nice person”, it seems to me that this was a “had to/no choice” to reach the point of breaking the time loop – not allow prior/future(?!?) Shellys to die keeps the loop repeating – I think >_<
Now I have to wait at least another 9 hours to get the next quantum physics twist/spin/color to evaporate my melted brain – OY!
Damned good work, Paul; words just don't suffice to express my admiration and respect for your story-telling, character development, plots within plots.
From what I understand:
Okay, so Sphinx Shelly is actually “our” shelly (the one we’ve seen with Monica & Co, destroyed the Calendar Machine, etc.)? And she touched the artifact, and 81,000+ years have gone by (backwards) until cycle #1 Shelly finally shows up (who we mistakenly thought was our shelly). And, what, did Shelly 56 come up with the plutonium plan or did Sphinx Shelly work backwards with her other Shelly’s to prepare the plutonium sword? Well, whatever, it seems Shelly #1 needs to finally “die” (which already happened when the calendar reset in our world, I guess) for Sphinx Shelly to come back.
So, okay, I get that. Mind = blown. Tickled pinked by the mystery that Shelly is a Sphinx, I wonder how she figured it out? And I hope she acts a little more grown up than she has been before being stuck in a time-goes-reverse pocket universe. O_o I wonder who else knows about Shelly’s stuck-in-backwards-time thing. Jin?
Btw, been a longtime fan of Wapsi, first time posting a comment. Love the intricate story. The pacing is so good, I can’t help but admire the weekend cliff-hangers, even as I want to pull out my hair in frustration at being left hangin’!
A. All of the other “hers” would end there lives in a few months no mater what when the calender reset. So, it could be said that it was better to die in helping to further the Quest, than just to stop being in the reset.
B. Not all of the Shelly’s need have died in this place. Some of the others could have, MUST have been able to come and go to do the tasks that Quest Giver Spinx-Shelly assigned them.
C. This is the place of the vision quest. SS would have seen a younger version of herself, as well as Jin (an a chance to pass on instructions, maybe?). This would have been the “first time for the cycle”.
D. Every “second visit” would have been different. Each would have had a unique task set to perform.
E. Not every Shelly had to make a second visit. This is the significance of SS stating that the Shelly we saw was on her second trip.
F. Time travel (sooprise, sooprise, sooprise) had to have been a part of some of the Shelly’s tasks. Both within there own loop and the final break out time line.
G. Each Shelly would have had a limited time within her own time loop to make or do some thing before the CM reset.
H. There had to be some kind of outside communication out side of the above. To much complexity and mystical stuff going on to be chalked up to one person trapped in a blind box, no matter how long she has to think.
I. SS MUST have learned “Magic” (or what ever). She has had restrictions placed on her in this place, however. Who placed those restrictions is in question.
J. The influence of a “Higher Power” has been proposed by others. This Power must also limited in some way. Otherwise, this level of indirectness would be unnecessary. (Point of fact: this level of indirectness is bordering on Rube Goldburg)
RE; J.
The Rube Goldberg effect may simply be the result of the designer having to work with the material at hand.
We have no idea what is involved with the workings of Lanthian Magic/Technology.
Just think of what you would have to do to build an automobile from scratch.
C. This is the place of the vision quest. SS would have seen a younger version of herself, as well as Jin (an a chance to pass on instructions, maybe?). This would have been the “first time for the cycle”.
Oh ho.
I said a couple of days ago that we may very well know who told Nudge to lead Shelly astray on her vision quest – Shelly herself.
And this iteration of Shelly is the first to come here twice in one cycle because of that.
NICE! I forgot that the Sphinx mentioned that it had not been a complete cycle since she’d last seen Shelly…but again, for there to be no paradox, that would have to be Shelly from the 56th iteration, in which the calendar machine was destroyed, in which case Shelly #1 could NOT have come to this place after her…
But she indicates she regenerated every loop (“Whereas I was the last of 56”) so I don’t think she was outside of the time loops. Phix was in the library which was out of the loops. Perhaps even the time tree forest is outside of the time loops as well, but, for whatever reason, the sphinx was not. Maybe because Shelly also was not outside the loop.
She was the last of 56 Shellys, but stayed in the forest for the whole run. She was there contstantly outside the loops while, starting with the Shelly we know and love, they ran through 55 iterations, dieing or reseting as the case may be…
Still don’t think so. The sphinx said she was the last of 56 and then said the dead Shelly was the first [of 56]. Talking about the two as separate beings where regeneration is concerned.
She’s seen fifty-five other Shellys since she’s been there. They were separate regenerations – each one was a unique being from a different cycle of the loops.
It’s just IMHO, but I think the last Shelly is the mastermind of that angle on the story. She’s the one feeding her other iterations the info on what and where to do things.
As I said a few day ago, just as a joke, ‘A story arc where SHELLY is the mastermind?”
I said that a couple of strips ago, whenever it was that we were apparently told that Shelly told the sphinx how to manipulate her to do the right thing.
how many times has the world been reset?
for some reason i keep saying this is shelly-57 mainly because phix said 56 repeats. 1st year wouldnt have been counted?
ok, off by a factor of 10+. Point is, she still has been forced to think for a thousand lifetimes. At this point, only the Artist knows what our Shelly is capable of.
Phix said they repeated the last 1450 years 56 times. That means before the first reset, we would be in the first 1450 year period and Shelly-1 would have existed during that time. Technically it should be Shelly-0, but, like the way we look at time since Jesus (there is no year zero), we will call her Shelly-1. Shelly-1 exists during the 1st 1450 period and before the 1st reset. Thus, Shelly-56 should exist during the 56th 1450 period (the last one). We were heading toward the 56th reset and 57th 1450 year period, but we will never get there as such since the CM is gone. There will be no Shelly-57.
So Shelly 56 that we all spent a decade with is now a piece of toilet paper that just sorta whimsically got flushed out of boredom, but it’s ok, there’s still that first piece from the roll that we forgot to throw away, we’ll use that instead from now on. Why am I reminded of Earth Final Conflict? .. and Torchwood for that matter.
Don’t think so. We just saw what happened with Shelly01. We don’t know yet what happened with Shelly56, and it’s Shelly56 we have come to know. She is the version we saw depart from Monica’s house. There has been much speculation on that count.
Of course we are assuming Paul was showing what was happening from the latest cycle (from Bud finding Stinky and the sub and on). If all that was also part of a retelling of the first cycle too, then who knows. We will just have to wait and see.
Ouch. Ouch. My head hurts. Even after reading Kramegame’s explanation and Paul’s confirmation and the other essays following it, it’s still too many for me. More cookies for those who were able to analyze this.
Remember, this is a time loop we’re talking about. All fifty-seven iterations begin at the same instant and fifty-six of them also end at the same instant. Nobody’s first, nobody’s last; it’s just fifty-seven concurrent versions of reality.
We can order these realities according to a mapping of one character carrying memories from the end of one to the beginning of another. If we pick Jin as our ordering standard, it’s the reverse order from if we pick Shelly as our ordering standard.
Shelly-the-Sphinx carrying memories from the end of each loop to the beginning of another is no weirder and no more out-of-sequence than Jin doing the same; it’s only that the sequences are linked together differently from these two different subjective points of view.
Anyway, look at it from Shelly’s POV (the Shelly we knew, from Jin’s fifty-seventh trip through the loop); her buddies, with a little of her help, fix the calendar machine on the fifty-seventh iteration.
Then this weird artifact is found, she touches it in the course of trying to help Jin, and she gets transported to this world where trees grow and somehow becomes a sphinx guardian.
She cannot leave, she cannot die, and so she’s there ten-thousand-odd years with no clue what’s going on — and then one day, out of the blue and probably surprising the hell out of Sphinx-Shelly, another Shelly shows up, trying to help a Golem-girl who destroyed the world Ten-thousand-odd years ago and has been sent back in time fifty-five times.
That Shelly dies, we don’t know how, there in the tree-world with the Shelly-Sphinx. Heck, some of the Shellys might even have died of old age. Ten-thousand-odd years later, another one pops up, trying to help a Golem-girl who destroyed the world ten-thousand-odd years ago and who has also been sent back in time fifty-four times….
At this point the Shelly-Sphinx has probably figured out that the grove isn’t looping, but that Shellys from the end of each calendar cycle are coming, and that they seem to be coming first from the worlds where Jin remembers the greatest number of cycles.
Ellipsis, to the Shelly we just saw, who took the artifact trying to find a way help a Golem-girl who maybe destroyed the world ten-thousand-odd years back, but who is now trying to break the calendar to prevent time from looping, or ending. This Shelly came from the iteration of the time loop where Jin had no memory of other loops. And finally, her job was done.
All of these Shellys were on a quest to help Jin. But they could only have succeeded once, because post calendar-breakage there was only one Jin to be helped. So Shelly-the-Sphinx had to witness fifty-six heartbreaking, preordained failures, manipulating the Shellys along the way so as to try to create exactly one success.
The concurrent timelines is an interesting possibility. Such a concept would indeed allow them to be ordered in any way needed. Thing is, the events in one timeline depend on what happened in the previous. This is because Jin was the mastermind behind insuring everyone got into the correct position for the assult on the CM. That means what she tried in one timeline led her to make changes in the next timeline in hopes of correcting her mistakes. Thus, each timeline depends on the previous and they could not have occurred simultaneously.
I do, however agree, if Jin could regenerate each iteration yet retain her memories, then it’s possible the sphinx in time tree land could as well.
So if Shelly 1 goes back to take the place of Shelly 56, will she remember her cop boyfriend, or anything else that the latest iteration did in her life?
Paradoxes being what they are you have to consider that the artifact that Shelly used to get here requires Shelly to explain to previous incarnations how to gather and assemble the parts of the artifacts and leave the clues for each to follow. It could even be that the artifact is what is causing time to run backwards for Shelly sphinx. The difference from Jin remembering past run throughs of the CM reset is that Shelly has to explain the steps that need to be followed in reverse order. Sort of like explaining to someone the steps of building a house and having to start with how to put the roof on before putting up the rafters because her time is running backwards. It becomes a very confusing thing to manage and could account for why it took her some time to figure out what was happening. And there is the paradox, without traveling to this point with the artifact she can’t tell the previous Shellys how to assemble the artifact. Like I said it can make your head hurt.
Ellipsis, to the Shelly we just saw, who took the artifact trying to find a way help a Golem-girl who maybe destroyed the world ten-thousand-odd years back, but who is now trying to break the calendar to prevent time from looping, or ending. This Shelly came from the iteration of the time loop where Jin had no memory of other loops. And finally, her job was done.
Took me a second to parse that – let me make sure i got it.
You mean that, since this Shelly came from the Very First loop, “her” Jin would have no memory of loops because at that point, there had been no loops, right?
Shelly actually died for real at her vision quest..but didn’t know she died… 😯 Darn..forgot that little snippet. That is quite pivotal here.. This Shelly could have been through some sort of post-“death through vision-quest” transformation ,and became a sphinx?
Ugh! I give-up. I’ll throw the towel in the ring, wave a large white flag, and have me some more coffee in the confusion-corner.
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
-Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, radio serial, 1978.
…
The Ultimate Question to Adams’ Ultimate Answer of Life, The Universe and Everything is in the last panel of the comic I posted the link to above.
…
“I am the closest thing this Earth has to the mythical conscience.”
There’s a story (by Fredric Brown, perhaps) in which a team of sociologists conduct a massive analysis of humour – why things are funny, why we even have a sense of humour, where it comes from and so on.
At the end, one of them reads a printout from the gigantic computer that’s been crunching the data, and it says that it’s analysis indicates that humans were given the sense of humour as part of a test by Superior Beings.
And that, now that humans had solved the question of humour, it would be taken away and something else put in its place.
That is 57 when she grabbed the artifact the last time that is when everything stopped for all of the rest of them and began running backwards for her.
No, jordinyc, it means the Shelly we’ve been following since 2001 has become the sphinx, and all the OTHER Shellies are dead (or de-threaded due to reset).
I don’t think so. It’s Shelly56, BTW, not 57. If the sphinx is a version of Shelly, then we could think of her as Shelly00, but I’m not sold on that notion as yet. Anyway, she would predate any earth Shelly.
We don’t know what has happened to our Shelly, Shelly56. We just saw what happened to Shelly01 as shown from the time tree land POV. Two things are taking place in the story. One, from the TTF (Time Tree Forest) POV, Shelly01 has just arrived, done her thing as we saw, and died. At nearly the same “moment” as Shelly01 arrived from TTFs POV, From the earth’s (and our casts) POV, Shelly56 left to go to the TTF to meet the sphinx for the first time. We have yet to see what happens to her, but it may be presumed that, at some point, she would be telling the sphinx all about why she is there and what’s going on. After that, only Paul knows what will happen and when. Perhaps the sphinx will tell future Shellys what to do to setup the plutonium. This might come from advanced knowledge the sphinx possessed, not Shelly. The sphinx trying to help the cause in her own way.
Anyway, it would be Shelly56, the final earth Shelly, who should be returning at some point. She is the one we all have known for these past years.
@SoWhyMe: unless Paul has pulled a Narnia. This means that the time in TTF, as you called it, while moving backwards is moving infinitely faster than time on earth. Much like the children in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, what had been 80 years in Narnia, was only a few moments on earth. Who is to say that isn’t the case here? ( though with a few more zeros attached ) Since the Sphinx is the last Shelly, she is more than likely the one who was holding the artifact when we entered the TTF.
In this thread, please, I beg beg beg of you, NO NUMBERS! No 57, no 56, no 1, no 0, no 00. So how do we differentiate Shellys? SIMPLE:
We call the Shelly who dies is Kenny
We call the Shelly Sphinx is Simba
We call the Shelly we’ve all been following is Xena
So here’s what seems to be the consensus:
* Kenny is not Xena.
* We just saw what happened to Kenny.
* We don’t know what happened to Xena.
* Xena, Simba, or both will return to the Wapsi universe/spacetimeplane/whatever
That’s where I was at midnight this AM, but it does not explain the line “I kept meeting myself”, implying that Shelly and the Sphinx are indeed the same. But it still is not clear what region/time of the Wapsiverse the Sphinx came into the realm of the trees to witness the death of 56 Shellys.
Ok well there is just one thing that confused me the most about this whole thing, and it’s why Shelly needed that artifact in the first place. What I mean is, if this is the first time they successfully fixed/destroyed the calendar machine, does that not mean that it’s an entirely new timeline than the last 56 times? Meaning that whatever is happening now has never happened before because they never actually fixed the calendar machine.
So then my question is, what happened in other time loops after they failed to fix the machine? This artifact is now being introduced to fix Jin, after they have started a new timeline by fixing the machine. So doesn’t that mean that Shelly would have never discovered this artifact because she never had to fix Jin? If she did have to use this artifact in the past, then why, and was it after the calendar adventure? I thought failing to fix the calendar was the end in past timelines.
this artifact was of lanthian origin or more clearly already built but unpowered when the CM cycles started and based on the fact that shell from the first reset was after it considered a way to either fix the CM or stabilize jin ala lost girl in the mirror scene so she could fix the CM AKA sought before the attempt. yes failure to fix the CM was resultant in reset.
So Shelly is Merlin. Living this land in reverse. Trying to be the wise one advising others of their future mistakes. Living to be able to see them make them anyway despite her advice. A desitny almost seemingly without end and a sentence shoved onto an innocent. So sad yet poetic in a way.
Our Shelly is indeed the sphinx and alive. Don’t know how well she is.
I said this wasn’t the end. I had no way of knowing how it would work out, but I felt confident Pablo wouldn’t give us some trite demise. I’ve come to expect much better than that. And he delivered!
Amazing stuff…
hi hi
I will be very sad if this is indeed the way it all goes down in the end… kinda makes me hate Shelly, who used to be my favorite character. Monica was willing to put her life on the line for the sake of the world, but Shelly is willing to kill someone innocent to save herself.
Not how I see it at all… but in the end that is the case isnt it? Was she playing them knowing that they didn’t have long to go anyway as per the reset? And was she consoled by the other 56 or dd they all die with her or what?
Where is the feedback loop here? How did those other Shelly’s know what to bring and did they all die there or did they go back to get caught in the reset? The clearer my understanding of this story the more questions I have.
i cant imagine shelly just killing off people like that
i suspect the 56th shelly who bought in the radiation tube, died of natural causes. who knows maybe each time a shelly died something happened in the forest.
Or maybe just something freaky happens. I.e find a way to kill em off or they die in more gruesome deaths.
It was fast this death and she didnt seem to feel much pain (as it was over so quick) so maybe its the easier of two choices?
(oh and she possibly died before she hid the tube after all..sphinxshelly can hide the tube in the tree, say it was shelly who did it and not be lying)
Is she really saving herself by letting an innocent person die? Or was she allowing older versions of herself to die in order to have things happen that needed to happen in order to save someone else (i.e. Jin)?
I think the going home bit is not related to the past versions living or dying, but a result of reaching the end of a long repeating cycle.
And yes, allowing the deaths of innocents is sad (no matter the end reason). Is it more acceptible when you know that said innocent won’t live past a calendar reset? I guess that’s a slippery slope, but I’d say it is…especially if you’re working towards the same goal as those innocents…and those innocents are all you.
hi hi
Every loop through, the various travelers tried different things, sometimes drastically altering the course of history. Unless you believe that genetic code is all that makes up an individual, each Shelly was a different person.
But they were smart enough to do a Game Save every time before they activated the Infinite Improbability Drive…
True, and yet Shelly might not have perceived it that way. I know I’d still assume I was me…even if I wasn’t much like the me I know.
Uh-oh! I just realized I should have been reading the comments backwards!
Hehe, it’s hard to keep up with the comments when there’s over a hundred a day. 🙂
Do you use the RSS feed? That helps a lot. Though it seems to miss some at times.
if it helps
most of it is hypothetical 🙂
only Paul knows what is really happening in the future of Wapsi. we can only connect the dots as to what has occured previously and guess at future outcomes.
Except for ShellySphinx: she can only connect the dots of future outcomes, and guess at what happened previously.
just a grim thought
If tomorrows will be sphinxshelly-57 returning to her body then well..1-56 returned to their body..dead
Jin would have seen/known shelly dies 56 times…
Hence her rather grating way of treating Shelly in the beginning. Jin desperately tried to keep her distance, knowing the pain of losing Shelly again, that would otherwise follow.
It makes here even more of a tragical character. All powerful, but so deeply broken. Luckily it all seems to go the right way for her. At least she got her mom back. I could only wish. 🙁
Poor sphinx. Stuck there all that time with nothing but trees. It’s a wonder she is as sane as she was. At least Phix was in the greatest library of all time. Always something to read and think about. Phix also had visitors (other than the girls) from time to time. She could even pop out for a short time. I wonder if this sphinx had drawn faces on some of the trees and talked to them? Sort of like “Wilson” and Tom Hanks.
So *shakes head bl-bl-bl-bl-bl!* Now that I’ve had a chance to reset my brain from it’s previous Tilt: If Shelly No. 1 (or 56, as the case may be) gets to go home, does she go back to “our” Shelly’s body, with full knowledge of 56 cycles but nothing of the current one, or to her own? Dangit, I want to see what Monica and Tina and Bud have been seeing during this whole time. Does Shelly vanish? What? What? What? *shakes head bl-bl-bl-bl-bl!*
OK so Shelly of the post CM cycle was the last one to hold the relic and travel to the Tree-Realm. But due to the backward time flow of the Tree-Realm, post CM cycle Shelly was the first Shelly to enter the Tree-Realm and because stuck. Perhaps due to the CM time resets. So what we have seen the past week or so is Shelly from loop #1 enter the Tree-Realm as the last one. So post CM cycle Shell (aka Sphinx Shelly can finally return to the real world.
Now the questions that need to be asked: How did Shelly actually travel to the Tree-Realm? Is it an astral projection sort of thing? Did Shelly appear in the body of the Sphinx when she got trapped in the Tree-Realm? If so she’s just returning her astral self back to her body in the real world. Will our Shelly have the full memory of her time in the Tree-Realm or just the highlights?
Dang it!!! I want it to be Tuesday already.
thgis whole thing is a paradox.
Time is running backwards here. Which means that this sphinx witnessed the 56 iterations of the CM loops in reverse. We are witnessing the conversation between herself and the Shelly from the 1st CM iteration, and thus the first of many failures to destroy the CM.
But we just saw Shelly take posession of the artifact and come into this realm after the destruction of the calendar machine, so I would expect to see Shelly#56 meeting Sphinx #1. Instead, we see the death of Shelly#1 and the lamentations of Sphinx #56.
What gives?
i think sphinx 1 is shelly 57.
we just saw her touch the artifact
then the story jumped to when shelly no#1 touched it and met shelly-57-sphinx
Yours is the same theory as Kramegame’s above, and Paul has seemed to confirm it.
But for this theory to be true, she would have had to enter the sacred tree realm as Sphinx#1, meeting Shelly #55, hence her confusion at meeting herself over and over again…and 81000 years later, we have the scene that starts here.
But as one can clearly see, she is entering the realm as Shelly #1, because she left her friends in the middle of saying “Easier said than done”. So if the scene in the apartment where Shelly is grabbing the relic and transporting to the sacred tree realm takes place AFTER the destruction of the calendar machine, we have a paradox.
I’d feel much better about this theory of Sphinx==Shelly if the last panel in the “Easier Said” comic did not show Shelly explicitly entering the tree realm as Shelly, and therefore Shelly #1.
Time runs backwards in the Time Keeping tree realm. They will back into the time loops.
The sphinx didn’t say time ran backwards, she said “opposite.” That’s different. That can mean simply that the time loops are occuring in reverse order, but still play out in such a manner that they run their course forwards.
If you could read it in the sacred forest, that’s what it would say…
I agree with SoWhyMe, that it is the order that is backwards, and not time itself, especially because if linear time is still valid in the tree realm, Shelly/Sohinx would have to wait ~1446 years between visits, with nothing to happen in between (?).
But the paradox still remains to be explained…the only way for Shelly with the relic to become Sphinx #1 is for the “Easier said” comic to not explicitly shoe Shelly entering the tree realm as Shelly #1. That is a paradox and it still bugs me.
She’s immortal. She’s lived the entire 81,000-plus years there.
With luck those memories will blur a bit for her when she’s back to being Just Shelly again.
If she is Just Shelly again.
OK, let me ask a different way. Sphinx says she was the first to arrive in the place of the trees. From where/when did she come?? Because it ain’t from the post-calendar-machine era, unless someone wants to explain the “Easier Said” comic to me (link is in my second comment on this thread).
On a note not related to today’s strip, but to WS as a whole:
What the hell is that favicon?
A favicon ( /ˈfævɪˌkɒn/; short for favorites icon)
umm what?
mine doesn’t have one. just a blank page?
Depends on your browser – Opera (which i use) and {i think} Firefix display it in the title bar; IE puts it on the favourites/bookmarks list.
Here’s what i see in Opera, slightly enlarged.
(The tab on the left is this comment page, the one on the right is the front page at wapsisquare.com.) See the funky little coloured square in the tab where a favicon ought be?
Interesting; I’m using Firefox and not seeing any special icon for Wapsi Square.
Right. My Firefox doesn’t show it either.
But it’s still there in Opera…
Try this. Go here (the index of my online reviews originally written for Amazon). See if you see a favicon there…
The favicon you should see there is this guy‘s head…
(Posted separately because of the more-than-one-link-in-a-posr-sends-you-to-moderation-hell policy of this system.)
I see an icon for the reviews page, yes.
Ok, read through the majority of the comments and the “correct” conclusion. I think I get it, probably not the exact details but the concept as a whole as 1st Shelly (Sphinx) is looping all the way around until she’s back to where she began and can leave the tree realm. The points of is Shelly a Sphinx would explain a lot of odd goings on surrounding Shelly. Can’t wait for tomorrow. 🙂
ahh
so your saying
because the 1st one entered it created the 57th sphinxstateshelly?
nifty
1st cursed the lot.
I know the answer, just not for a few decades ago when I’m going to have been someone else.
Total. Brain. Meltdown. O_o
Read all the comments as of 12:22PM Pacific time. Boggle. I did say yesterday Paul would throw us major twists – I just didn’t know how major 😛
Shelly is a sphinx?!? So… her deceased mother and her father are sphinxes too, or do sphinxes generate/perpetuate some other way, or??? Then there’s the scary girl, the combining of Shelly/Sphinxes'(?) demons and how that relates to Sphinxdom and the vision quest and rabbit/Jin and Tepoz and o_O
As far as Shelly/Sphinx(?!?) “allowing the deaths of innocents” and thereby being a “not nice person”, it seems to me that this was a “had to/no choice” to reach the point of breaking the time loop – not allow prior/future(?!?) Shellys to die keeps the loop repeating – I think >_<
Now I have to wait at least another 9 hours to get the next quantum physics twist/spin/color to evaporate my melted brain – OY!
Damned good work, Paul; words just don't suffice to express my admiration and respect for your story-telling, character development, plots within plots.
From what I understand:
Okay, so Sphinx Shelly is actually “our” shelly (the one we’ve seen with Monica & Co, destroyed the Calendar Machine, etc.)? And she touched the artifact, and 81,000+ years have gone by (backwards) until cycle #1 Shelly finally shows up (who we mistakenly thought was our shelly). And, what, did Shelly 56 come up with the plutonium plan or did Sphinx Shelly work backwards with her other Shelly’s to prepare the plutonium sword? Well, whatever, it seems Shelly #1 needs to finally “die” (which already happened when the calendar reset in our world, I guess) for Sphinx Shelly to come back.
So, okay, I get that. Mind = blown. Tickled pinked by the mystery that Shelly is a Sphinx, I wonder how she figured it out? And I hope she acts a little more grown up than she has been before being stuck in a time-goes-reverse pocket universe. O_o I wonder who else knows about Shelly’s stuck-in-backwards-time thing. Jin?
Btw, been a longtime fan of Wapsi, first time posting a comment. Love the intricate story. The pacing is so good, I can’t help but admire the weekend cliff-hangers, even as I want to pull out my hair in frustration at being left hangin’!
A. All of the other “hers” would end there lives in a few months no mater what when the calender reset. So, it could be said that it was better to die in helping to further the Quest, than just to stop being in the reset.
B. Not all of the Shelly’s need have died in this place. Some of the others could have, MUST have been able to come and go to do the tasks that Quest Giver Spinx-Shelly assigned them.
C. This is the place of the vision quest. SS would have seen a younger version of herself, as well as Jin (an a chance to pass on instructions, maybe?). This would have been the “first time for the cycle”.
D. Every “second visit” would have been different. Each would have had a unique task set to perform.
E. Not every Shelly had to make a second visit. This is the significance of SS stating that the Shelly we saw was on her second trip.
F. Time travel (sooprise, sooprise, sooprise) had to have been a part of some of the Shelly’s tasks. Both within there own loop and the final break out time line.
G. Each Shelly would have had a limited time within her own time loop to make or do some thing before the CM reset.
H. There had to be some kind of outside communication out side of the above. To much complexity and mystical stuff going on to be chalked up to one person trapped in a blind box, no matter how long she has to think.
I. SS MUST have learned “Magic” (or what ever). She has had restrictions placed on her in this place, however. Who placed those restrictions is in question.
J. The influence of a “Higher Power” has been proposed by others. This Power must also limited in some way. Otherwise, this level of indirectness would be unnecessary. (Point of fact: this level of indirectness is bordering on Rube Goldburg)
RE; J.
The Rube Goldberg effect may simply be the result of the designer having to work with the material at hand.
We have no idea what is involved with the workings of Lanthian Magic/Technology.
Just think of what you would have to do to build an automobile from scratch.
Oh ho.
I said a couple of days ago that we may very well know who told Nudge to lead Shelly astray on her vision quest – Shelly herself.
And this iteration of Shelly is the first to come here twice in one cycle because of that.
NICE! I forgot that the Sphinx mentioned that it had not been a complete cycle since she’d last seen Shelly…but again, for there to be no paradox, that would have to be Shelly from the 56th iteration, in which the calendar machine was destroyed, in which case Shelly #1 could NOT have come to this place after her…
If this was sphinx 56, how did she maintain a continuity of thought from the first to the last? Phix was the same sphinx through every time loop.
Phix was outside of the time loop, as I think Shelly/Sphinx was…
But she indicates she regenerated every loop (“Whereas I was the last of 56”) so I don’t think she was outside of the time loops. Phix was in the library which was out of the loops. Perhaps even the time tree forest is outside of the time loops as well, but, for whatever reason, the sphinx was not. Maybe because Shelly also was not outside the loop.
She was the last of 56 Shellys, but stayed in the forest for the whole run. She was there contstantly outside the loops while, starting with the Shelly we know and love, they ran through 55 iterations, dieing or reseting as the case may be…
Still don’t think so. The sphinx said she was the last of 56 and then said the dead Shelly was the first [of 56]. Talking about the two as separate beings where regeneration is concerned.
She’s seen fifty-five other Shellys since she’s been there. They were separate regenerations – each one was a unique being from a different cycle of the loops.
Have we met the someone who told Nudge to lead Shelly deeper into the woods?
Doh!
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/demigod/
The way things are going it may have been a previous Shelly who told Nudge to do it to later Shelly.
It’s just IMHO, but I think the last Shelly is the mastermind of that angle on the story. She’s the one feeding her other iterations the info on what and where to do things.
As I said a few day ago, just as a joke, ‘A story arc where SHELLY is the mastermind?”
I said that a couple of strips ago, whenever it was that we were apparently told that Shelly told the sphinx how to manipulate her to do the right thing.
My only question is – Was Shelly always a sphinx, or did her 81,000 years in the sacred time keeping forest transform her into a sphinx?
I’m guessing the latter… though the former seems possible considering her strength… maybe in her 80,000 years she figured out why she was so strong…
Um, so was Creepy Girl the Banshee Monica saw? I mean, imminent death in family.
how many times has the world been reset?
for some reason i keep saying this is shelly-57 mainly because phix said 56 repeats. 1st year wouldnt have been counted?
How old is she? a million years or so? and nothing to do but think and watch that d^$% tree grow! Maybe she figured out how to shapeshift on her own.
Going by the chronology we’ve been given in earlier stories – 81,000 years and change.
ok, off by a factor of 10+. Point is, she still has been forced to think for a thousand lifetimes. At this point, only the Artist knows what our Shelly is capable of.
think AND work out… she could probably compete with the GGGs now….
So you’re not going to kill off Monica too, right?
Phix said they repeated the last 1450 years 56 times. That means before the first reset, we would be in the first 1450 year period and Shelly-1 would have existed during that time. Technically it should be Shelly-0, but, like the way we look at time since Jesus (there is no year zero), we will call her Shelly-1. Shelly-1 exists during the 1st 1450 period and before the 1st reset. Thus, Shelly-56 should exist during the 56th 1450 period (the last one). We were heading toward the 56th reset and 57th 1450 year period, but we will never get there as such since the CM is gone. There will be no Shelly-57.
Shoot, that should have gone with Paula’s post, just above.
So Shelly 56 that we all spent a decade with is now a piece of toilet paper that just sorta whimsically got flushed out of boredom, but it’s ok, there’s still that first piece from the roll that we forgot to throw away, we’ll use that instead from now on. Why am I reminded of Earth Final Conflict? .. and Torchwood for that matter.
Don’t think so. We just saw what happened with Shelly01. We don’t know yet what happened with Shelly56, and it’s Shelly56 we have come to know. She is the version we saw depart from Monica’s house. There has been much speculation on that count.
Of course we are assuming Paul was showing what was happening from the latest cycle (from Bud finding Stinky and the sub and on). If all that was also part of a retelling of the first cycle too, then who knows. We will just have to wait and see.
Nope. Shelly 56 is the sphinx.
ah okies
not sure why i was saying 57:)
even the comic says 56 twice 🙂
think thinking bout this comic today made my brain go splodey
Ouch. Ouch. My head hurts. Even after reading Kramegame’s explanation and Paul’s confirmation and the other essays following it, it’s still too many for me. More cookies for those who were able to analyze this.
Remember, this is a time loop we’re talking about. All fifty-seven iterations begin at the same instant and fifty-six of them also end at the same instant. Nobody’s first, nobody’s last; it’s just fifty-seven concurrent versions of reality.
We can order these realities according to a mapping of one character carrying memories from the end of one to the beginning of another. If we pick Jin as our ordering standard, it’s the reverse order from if we pick Shelly as our ordering standard.
Shelly-the-Sphinx carrying memories from the end of each loop to the beginning of another is no weirder and no more out-of-sequence than Jin doing the same; it’s only that the sequences are linked together differently from these two different subjective points of view.
Anyway, look at it from Shelly’s POV (the Shelly we knew, from Jin’s fifty-seventh trip through the loop); her buddies, with a little of her help, fix the calendar machine on the fifty-seventh iteration.
Then this weird artifact is found, she touches it in the course of trying to help Jin, and she gets transported to this world where trees grow and somehow becomes a sphinx guardian.
She cannot leave, she cannot die, and so she’s there ten-thousand-odd years with no clue what’s going on — and then one day, out of the blue and probably surprising the hell out of Sphinx-Shelly, another Shelly shows up, trying to help a Golem-girl who destroyed the world Ten-thousand-odd years ago and has been sent back in time fifty-five times.
That Shelly dies, we don’t know how, there in the tree-world with the Shelly-Sphinx. Heck, some of the Shellys might even have died of old age. Ten-thousand-odd years later, another one pops up, trying to help a Golem-girl who destroyed the world ten-thousand-odd years ago and who has also been sent back in time fifty-four times….
At this point the Shelly-Sphinx has probably figured out that the grove isn’t looping, but that Shellys from the end of each calendar cycle are coming, and that they seem to be coming first from the worlds where Jin remembers the greatest number of cycles.
Ellipsis, to the Shelly we just saw, who took the artifact trying to find a way help a Golem-girl who maybe destroyed the world ten-thousand-odd years back, but who is now trying to break the calendar to prevent time from looping, or ending. This Shelly came from the iteration of the time loop where Jin had no memory of other loops. And finally, her job was done.
All of these Shellys were on a quest to help Jin. But they could only have succeeded once, because post calendar-breakage there was only one Jin to be helped. So Shelly-the-Sphinx had to witness fifty-six heartbreaking, preordained failures, manipulating the Shellys along the way so as to try to create exactly one success.
Which, we suppose, she did.
The concurrent timelines is an interesting possibility. Such a concept would indeed allow them to be ordered in any way needed. Thing is, the events in one timeline depend on what happened in the previous. This is because Jin was the mastermind behind insuring everyone got into the correct position for the assult on the CM. That means what she tried in one timeline led her to make changes in the next timeline in hopes of correcting her mistakes. Thus, each timeline depends on the previous and they could not have occurred simultaneously.
I do, however agree, if Jin could regenerate each iteration yet retain her memories, then it’s possible the sphinx in time tree land could as well.
So if Shelly 1 goes back to take the place of Shelly 56, will she remember her cop boyfriend, or anything else that the latest iteration did in her life?
Shelly 1 is the dead one. I’m not sure if the sphinx is Shelly 55, or the Shelly (56) we’ve gotten to know over the past decade…
Paradoxes being what they are you have to consider that the artifact that Shelly used to get here requires Shelly to explain to previous incarnations how to gather and assemble the parts of the artifacts and leave the clues for each to follow. It could even be that the artifact is what is causing time to run backwards for Shelly sphinx. The difference from Jin remembering past run throughs of the CM reset is that Shelly has to explain the steps that need to be followed in reverse order. Sort of like explaining to someone the steps of building a house and having to start with how to put the roof on before putting up the rafters because her time is running backwards. It becomes a very confusing thing to manage and could account for why it took her some time to figure out what was happening. And there is the paradox, without traveling to this point with the artifact she can’t tell the previous Shellys how to assemble the artifact. Like I said it can make your head hurt.
Thor’s Theory: Hit with a hammer hard enought, it’ll eventually stop wriggling.
Shelly’s Dad: Deadblow, ball-peen, rubber mallet. Whatever. Just get engine back in and the hood straightened out.
… and if life is just a highway, then the soul is just a car. Objects in the rearview mirror may appear closer than they are …
Read some more theories. Ow. Headhurts. No more sugar cookies. I need protein and a turkey meatloaf sandwich sounds good right now.
When I see objects in the rearview mirror of life, I just drive faster so they never catch up again. Failing that, I stop and back over them.
Took me a second to parse that – let me make sure i got it.
You mean that, since this Shelly came from the Very First loop, “her” Jin would have no memory of loops because at that point, there had been no loops, right?
Mmmm.
That was supposed to be a response to Orsi.
misplacement aside, that is correct.
I think it’s coming up on the time for Karl-Heinz Rasch to take that ship-to-shore call from Tricia McMillan.
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/missing-the-poin/
Shelly actually died for real at her vision quest..but didn’t know she died… 😯 Darn..forgot that little snippet.
That is quite pivotal here.. This Shelly could have been through some sort of post-“death through vision-quest” transformation ,and became a sphinx?
Ugh! I give-up. I’ll throw the towel in the ring, wave a large white flag, and have me some more coffee in the confusion-corner.
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
-Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, radio serial, 1978.
…
The Ultimate Question to Adams’ Ultimate Answer of Life, The Universe and Everything is in the last panel of the comic I posted the link to above.
…
“I am the closest thing this Earth has to the mythical conscience.”
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/puts-up-with-you/
There’s a story (by Fredric Brown, perhaps) in which a team of sociologists conduct a massive analysis of humour – why things are funny, why we even have a sense of humour, where it comes from and so on.
At the end, one of them reads a printout from the gigantic computer that’s been crunching the data, and it says that it’s analysis indicates that humans were given the sense of humour as part of a test by Superior Beings.
And that, now that humans had solved the question of humour, it would be taken away and something else put in its place.
Also – read Ray Lafferty’s Land of the Great Horses…
Issac Asimov, “Jokester”. The only native human humor was the pun, which is why we groan at them, but laugh at everything else.
…
U-296
Fate
Listed as missing in the approaches to the Northern Channel on 12 March, 1945 in the approximate position 55.30N, 07W. …
42 dead (all hands lost).
http://www.uboat.net/boats/u296.htm
OK so how far off am I here?
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z298/jordinyc/Wapsi57.png
Dang. Whether or not you have the details perfectly right, that’s quite the graphic. Huge respect.
Indeed, I don’t think I’d be able to put it in graph form like that. well done!
You are close but Shelly 57 is the sphinx watching everything run backwards. Shelly 1 is dead from massive radiation poisoning or something like that.
OK, so 57 and 1 have a Doctor & River relationship. That still doesn’t answer the questoin:
Which Shelly is this:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/scares-me-more/
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/squish-it/
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/attentiongrabber/
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/hold-on-to-your-ass/
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/12092002/
Is that 57 or 1 ? or a different one?
That is 57 when she grabbed the artifact the last time that is when everything stopped for all of the rest of them and began running backwards for her.
OK so basically the Shelly we’ve been following since 2001 is now dead, period.
No, jordinyc, it means the Shelly we’ve been following since 2001 has become the sphinx, and all the OTHER Shellies are dead (or de-threaded due to reset).
I don’t think so. It’s Shelly56, BTW, not 57. If the sphinx is a version of Shelly, then we could think of her as Shelly00, but I’m not sold on that notion as yet. Anyway, she would predate any earth Shelly.
We don’t know what has happened to our Shelly, Shelly56. We just saw what happened to Shelly01 as shown from the time tree land POV. Two things are taking place in the story. One, from the TTF (Time Tree Forest) POV, Shelly01 has just arrived, done her thing as we saw, and died. At nearly the same “moment” as Shelly01 arrived from TTFs POV, From the earth’s (and our casts) POV, Shelly56 left to go to the TTF to meet the sphinx for the first time. We have yet to see what happens to her, but it may be presumed that, at some point, she would be telling the sphinx all about why she is there and what’s going on. After that, only Paul knows what will happen and when. Perhaps the sphinx will tell future Shellys what to do to setup the plutonium. This might come from advanced knowledge the sphinx possessed, not Shelly. The sphinx trying to help the cause in her own way.
Anyway, it would be Shelly56, the final earth Shelly, who should be returning at some point. She is the one we all have known for these past years.
@SoWhyMe: unless Paul has pulled a Narnia. This means that the time in TTF, as you called it, while moving backwards is moving infinitely faster than time on earth. Much like the children in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, what had been 80 years in Narnia, was only a few moments on earth. Who is to say that isn’t the case here? ( though with a few more zeros attached ) Since the Sphinx is the last Shelly, she is more than likely the one who was holding the artifact when we entered the TTF.
No look at yesterday’s page. The sphinx said that she is #56, not #57.
I think this comment was intended for somewhere on tomorrow’s page.
*giggles*
i love it 😀
man paul has to be pleased when his comic causes people to create graphs 😀
No.
Not Shelley.
Please?
OK let’s try this again …
In this thread, please, I beg beg beg of you, NO NUMBERS! No 57, no 56, no 1, no 0, no 00. So how do we differentiate Shellys? SIMPLE:
We call the Shelly who dies is Kenny
We call the Shelly Sphinx is Simba
We call the Shelly we’ve all been following is Xena
So here’s what seems to be the consensus:
* Kenny is not Xena.
* We just saw what happened to Kenny.
* We don’t know what happened to Xena.
* Xena, Simba, or both will return to the Wapsi universe/spacetimeplane/whatever
That’s where I was at midnight this AM, but it does not explain the line “I kept meeting myself”, implying that Shelly and the Sphinx are indeed the same. But it still is not clear what region/time of the Wapsiverse the Sphinx came into the realm of the trees to witness the death of 56 Shellys.
Damn you Midnight CDT, where are you?
OK now he’s just messing with us. XD
Damn! I miss one day and all hell breaks lose with a Monday cliff hanger.
56 Shellys and nothing wrong (sung to the tune of “57 channels (and nothin’ on)” by the Boss)
Ok well there is just one thing that confused me the most about this whole thing, and it’s why Shelly needed that artifact in the first place. What I mean is, if this is the first time they successfully fixed/destroyed the calendar machine, does that not mean that it’s an entirely new timeline than the last 56 times? Meaning that whatever is happening now has never happened before because they never actually fixed the calendar machine.
So then my question is, what happened in other time loops after they failed to fix the machine? This artifact is now being introduced to fix Jin, after they have started a new timeline by fixing the machine. So doesn’t that mean that Shelly would have never discovered this artifact because she never had to fix Jin? If she did have to use this artifact in the past, then why, and was it after the calendar adventure? I thought failing to fix the calendar was the end in past timelines.
this artifact was of lanthian origin or more clearly already built but unpowered when the CM cycles started and based on the fact that shell from the first reset was after it considered a way to either fix the CM or stabilize jin ala lost girl in the mirror scene so she could fix the CM AKA sought before the attempt. yes failure to fix the CM was resultant in reset.
So I was right!
Shelly had a lot MORE in common with Phix than she thought she did.