What drove it all home was the fact that we were all made to feel for the sacrifice over the course of the weekend.
This has overcome one of the most intractable faults in literature, the death trope. The reader need never care about harm coming to the hero, because its meaning will be subverted or diluted in order to serve the plot. The spring of disbelief from which we cheerfully, daily hang our own coming end.
But no death trope comes this time– readers can only fall into it out of the bad habits the rest of their reading has led them to expect. This time, for this character, it ceased to matter whether she was or wasn’t “real” or “ours”. We had to give a damn, because we knew her anyway. And that should be true for any other unjust death in the world. It might be Shelly. It might be you.
And so, this is a masterpiece. Congratulations, Paul. Looking forward to reading the rest.
true before she died i honestly wouldnt have listed shelly as one of my fav chars.
Tina and dietzel and tepoz are my fav with katherine running a creepy 2nd.
but seeing her die…hated it..
You have got to love an artist that has figured out a wonderfully devious time paradox. All of the Shelly’s are the same Shelly. She has been trapped in an infinite loop. Now she can leave the test with all of the knowledge and experience she has gained from 56 attempts. Now all we need is a time cop to give her a ticket for mucking up space time.
“You were the first”. And “Time runs opposite” There .Right there.
This is Shelly 1.
Sooooo…yay! “current-Shelly” lives. Time-travelling, Timey-Wimey stuff can get pretty complex. The idea of 2 timestreams running opposite is mindboggling.
I wonder though ,what the sphinx meant by “I can go home now” Sphinxes have homes? o_O
it explains where her strength came from… if there were ghosted memories, then her strength was ghosted from the sphinx her. and… it would explain the moment where there was confusion about her being a golem, and some certain things not affecting her. last thing to wonder, is if she’ll pop back as sphinx, or morph into it when angry or something…
But when/how would she have become a sphinx? Up until now, she’s been afraid of spiders and commitment. I can understand a Sphinx not wanting to be tied down, but spiders?
Yeah, but as far as she knows (going with the she-is-a-sphinx-somehow theory) she isn’t a sphinx. She’s just a person. She say’s she was the first to get there, but she’s the last Shelly. Time for her has been running backwards, which means…I don’t know. >_>
The calender machine is gone right? She said that time’s been running backwards for her, and she’s met 55 Shelly’s since she got there. If the calender machine isn’t causing the multiple Shelly’s…maybe reincarnation? This is mad confusing.
…makes as much sense as a human being afraid of a spider…
Hey…
Hey… either I just had a stroke, or just had a really good theory.
Sphinxes are guardians. Apotropaic ones more so. But what if we are going backwards on this? What if by guarding something you become sphinxlike?
This ShellySphinx has been guarding the tree… well, overseeing the accumulation of the bits for this artifact… for a very long time. (When she isn’t off burying Shellys. There has to be a very impressive Shelly Graveyard around here somewhere.)
I don’t really buy the sphinx as shelly thing, but I suppose it could be possible. Perhaps the sphinx transformed into a human shape at some point. That shape being Shelly. Somehow her shape self separated from her sphinx self (due to the calendar malfunction?) and her Shelly form was trapped on earth, with her sphinx form being trapped in the time tree world. The Shelly form doesn’t know what she is, but the sphinx does. Thus the meeting herself thing. Shelly is allowed to go to the tree world via the relic because she and the sphinx are one in the same. Maybe now, the sphinx can transform into Shelly again and go back, but with full knowledge of who she really is. Probably not at all close, but …
I think Shelly’s form altered over time as she went through iteration after iteration if herself coming there. Since time was caught in a loop due to the CM she had to wait for the loop to end before she could exit the loop. Poor programming method, but it happens.
Since this is a alternate space as Shelly figured it out she took on the guardian sphinx form. Now the loop has ended and she can return to here place in the time stream. There is going to be one radical change in Shelly after this as well. All those long years trapped there. It gave her a lot of time to think and figure things out. I imagine she will be much more mature adn wiser after that experience. Are the rest of them ready for her? I doubt it. To them she’s been gone for an instant only. Now she has all the knowledge form all the iterations and figuring things out.
or all that time with only CG to chat, and maybe what people call supernatural creatures (but are just evolutionary results of other realities where the rules are different and thus all fully natural) visiting, pushed the feral end and nutso side far forward so she is less civilized.
No, Sphinx Shelly is our Shelly. She said that time flows backwards in this place. The dead Shelly on the ground right now is the Shelly from the first iteration of the time loop.
no wait the sphink said she was the last one so she would be the shelly we know and maybe shes been stuck in the relic living out all 56 cycels backwards . and tomarow she’ll snap out of the trance and find only a few seconds has passed
No. That Sphinx is not Shelly. If I understand what she said. The is the Shelly from the first iteration of the CM cycles (i.e the CM was broken by May and it would be begin to reset time in 2012). Shelly of this time CM cycle will be meeting the the Sphinx for the first time from the Spinx’s point of view.
The way that things work in the realm is that the Sphinx got trapped in the realm, and then met Shelly from the 56th CM iteration (post CM being “fixed” aka smushed by Bud). That scenario is what we just witnessed.
On the next CM iteration (#2), Sphinx from Cycle 2 meets Shelly of cycle 55. CM cycle #3, Sphinx meet Shelly of cycle 54. CM cycle #4, Sphinx meets Shelly from cycle 53. The Sphinx was trapped in some strange form of time loop that has to be played out. That Sphinx has been trapped in that realm for over 50,000 years.
I don’t think the plutonium was lethal then. It was just ordinary plutonium. I think it needs to age, allowing it’s energy to feed back upon itself, while in that special tube, for some time before it becomes deadly.
Makes sense. The Sphinx only said she put it in the tree originally, but did not divulge which Shelly did that. She also put the sword in the stone, etc, so goodness knows what became of Shelly each time…or why time had to travel backwards…that’s the real mind-bender here, and makes me want to do some quantum mathematics to figure it out…
I think each cycle added another piece needed. Perhaps the first Shelly found the hilt. And the second figured out it needed radioisotopes for power. And perhaps a few figured out that they needed some way to enrich it. And maybe one came along with the idea of a sacred tree to hold it so it didn’t poison everything. And another invented the sword idea to get at it when the Pl had time enough to cook… Now, finally, in the 56th time through, all the pieces are in place. Or so we hope, cause there ain’t no gobacks now.
Actually 81,200 years. I see now. We just saw things from the sphinx’s POV. So the sphinx has been meeting the Shellys in reverse order, counting them down to this one, which, from her POV, is the Shelly from the very first loop. That would mean the very first meeting with the sphinx was actually from the present time. That also means the sphinx knows the outcome of that interaction with Shelly. Something we have yet to see since this was the first meeting (from the sphinx’s POV) and we see Shelly died in it. That might kind of explain why Shelly didn’t know the routine.
Now … how did the Sphinx know there would be only 56 loops and that this would be her last to have to endure? Perhaps, assuming Shelly survived her 56th meeting, she told the sphinx there would be 56 total. Since that was the first meeting for the Sphinx all she could do was wait until they all had run their course. Bummer.
You know, the past 3 weeks’ comics are a lot less WTFy now, if you read them and keep in mind Our Shelly = Sphynx. Then she’s just manipulating those she knows are already the failed dead.
The sphinx knows because her first Shelly (the modern, current one) told her that it happened 56 times.
The real question is what happens to Shelly56 (‘our’ Shelly)? Somebody has to set everything else up. Vials full of Scibabble Plutonium don’t just grow inside trees, you know…
Sphinx = ‘our’ Shelley. That’s how she knows there were 56 other versions that would come to be.
The only question about ‘our’ Shelley at this point is, unlike poor Sam Beckett, does she actually get to go home now?
I like the idea that the previous Shelley’s, which would have been 2, 3, 4, 5, etc to encounter the Sphinx which would have been from reality 56, 55, 54, 53, etc, set in motion more and more of the ‘quest’ as they entered the tree realm.
So ‘our’ Shelley as the Sphinx, which was 57 and the last one since the CM was already gone, became the guardian, the second to last (56) was the 2nd actual Shelley to visit the tree realm, etc. All adding some thing or the other until Shelley #57 (the prime, original Shelley) put it all together and died in the process.
Makes perfect sense! 🙂 Once you write down the numbers in the right order.
The thing that has me most befuddled is the “I kept meeting myself”, implying that Shelly and the Sphinx are one in the same, just traveling in time in opposite directions, but that is difficult to imagine (how does Shelly become a Sphinx or vice versa?), so my brain is refusing to accept the possibility…
doctor “why did you do that?”
river “why? your acting like we never have before”
doctor “we havent! well there is nothing like a first time”
walks off
river “or a last”
I don’t understand this meeting herself either. Does that mean there are 55 other copies of the sphinx there as well? Or did each copy get to leave, but stayed a while to fill in the new on on what was going on? Did they disappear upon meeting the new one? Maybe it has to do with whenever she tried to leave. She just kept ending up back in the same place no matter which way she tried to exit.
It’s simpler then that: The Sphinx comes from the earth timeline too. During one point in each of the cycles, she comes to the forest, to meet herself who has been there. Question is whether she goes back, her copy goes back, or what kind of loops happen there.
The real question is if she meets Shells this many times, why does she not recognize her at first? Who else comes to the forest?
Now that I’ve slept on it, I think I can guess a bit more, and you’re close to it. the Sphinx got there, and every time one of thye 56 Shelly’s appeared, she saw a copy of herself materialize and interact with each Shelly. Since we already saw the stack of skulls she pointed out to Shelly #1 here (I think we have established that this is the first of 56 Shellys), Shelly has been reduced to bones many times.
So since time is moving in the opposite direction for Shelly, how did Shelly #56 fare? Because THAT is the iteration that shall return to Earth with the relic.
Sheesh. You go to your friend’s apartment one day expecting a fun trip to the beach, and all of a sudden you’re in some backward adjunct universe dead of radiation poisoning after King Arthuring some steampunk sword and lumberjacking a Yggdrasil. But that’s life, amIright?
Okay…
The Sphinx is Shelly56 (the last or “our” Shelly). Time flows backwards here, and she was stuck here during the Shelly Countdown. Shelly1 just shuffled off; time is no longer looping, so she may be able to exit to the real world again.
Hopefully Phix can teach her that shapechange thing if she hasn’t figured it out already….
The way I imagine it:
-Shelly face zoom waking-up, face in same angle as Sphinx… going “huh?”or “Whadduh..”
-Combi- zoom of M, Tina and Bud. Eyes wide open, mouths agape.
-Cam swing back to Shelly face.. going “what???”
-Shelly looking down, seeing lion’s feet from under her camisole.
-Shelly zoom..going : NO..FRIGGIN’..WAY!!!.. eyes wide open,completely baffled. Then going: THIS IS SOOOO TOTALLY COOL!!!!
-Zoom-out Shelly mumbling: “But how do I get my normal feet back? I happen to like my feet..”
If so, the Shelly who reanimates in Monica’s living room is going to mentally be 80,000 years older, have seen 55 versions of herself die, and is probably going to be a bit disconcerted to be in a human body agian without wings or hindquarters.
I expect a period of major readjustment on all sides…
I think it’s going to be rather tearful on Shelly-sphinx’ side.
She’s free after years in what she perceived as a Hell, a punishment for something (fits in well with her still powerful guilt about her mother’s death) There’s going to be some serious crying, me thinks. Crying from relief, sadness about all the deaths she had to witness ,etc.
Let’s just hope that those aeons taught her to be more open about her feelings, not to hate herself so much, and trust her friends even more than she already did.
I guess so. And it’s a touching picture. It shows that Shelly-Sphinx(oooops did I just say that???) is a very sensitive person, despite the noise and posturing.
Isn’t the Sphinx just implying that they’re timelines are reveresed – a la The Doctor and River Song from Doctor Who – so the last Sphinx meets the first Shelly?
good god Paul, your story telling ability and the way it causes the readers to ponder it in such length is as always amazing, I hate how easily wrapped up I get in each part of the story.
also, did I call it when I said the sphinx looked like Shelly?
It seems like every year it just gets better and better. I guess all that ‘honing your craft over time’ stuff wasn’t just a way for my teachers to get me to turn in my work 🙂
The inclusion of fibs is what does it. I says that respectfuly, you cant give everything away at once is what I mean. There is no login in the last week that makes sense is more accurate. IF the sphinx is present Shelly, as seems to be the concensus, then why did Shelly 1, aka dead Shelly, come to the tree with the sword hilt that Present Shinx Shelly just found? If the comic was from Shelly Present POV then she would not be seeing a Shelly with a hilt would she? If this was Present Shelly just morphing in that is. There is where the confusion lies. It is possible that we have seen the present Shelly’s story and that Paul just did a skip of some 86,000 years to get to the end (that would be a long webcomic to write no?) but it seems likely that we have been slipped a story Mickey here and the sword hilt coming with Shelly 1 is going to be explained later.
Ahhh if the sword hilt is the portal to that place and each Shelly uses it… that is the sense I was seeking. Quite tricky there…
So the first Shelly would be empty handed as far as the hilt is concerned… but then how would all the other Shelly’s know what to bring if they never returned alive? Unless Jin was also going back and… would explain her going crazy… Losing her friend 56 times would drive a person nuts…
But somehow the loop HAD to be getting feedback or the iterations would all be the same… each Shelly coming back and dying without anything changing. But the sphinx stated clearly that each Shelly brought something new… so previous Shelly’s must have died back at home and Jin was instructing previous Shelly’s what to bring. That would make me go crazy alrighty. Right?
I take it we are looking at the work of a higher power, one that can create a sphinx from a mortal (We don’t know how a sphinx gets made do we?) and place said sphinx on a reverse-time stage for the specific purpose of directing the assembly of the artifact by said mortal’s earlier iterations.
Said higher power may not even be the designer of the artifact since the artifact seems to use some pretty mundane components and somebody coached the other Shellys and gave them the components.
But… are the sphinxes even corporeal? Or are they something our heroines see, but could be anything; maybe something like Nudge, for example… we know, after all, that Phix knows how to alter her appearance…
I’m pretty sure Monica’s boss would have noticed if Phix had just altered her appearance as soon as she tried walking into some confined space, like a doorway or the elevator…
Well from Paul’s comment, it sounds like Kramegame hit the nail on the head.
But I have to ask, am I the only one here that’s really affected by the fact that the Shelly we’ve all come to know has always been just a copy?
And I’m curious to know what point in her life Sphinx Shelly was trapped there. Because she possibly could not have ever met Officer Tight Buns or never experienced several things that the Shelly we’ve come to know did, IF I’m understanding this correctly. And will “Creepy Little Girl” still exist?
Yeah, but still, she’s likely about to be replaced with another “true Shelly”. And I’m still interested in whether or not they are the same person in terms of experiences and memories when in comes to the “real world” (where all the rest of the Wapsi crew are).
Because if I had a friend that I grew to care about and they were replaced by another version of themselves, even if they had all the same memories, I would still have trouble treating them as the friend I had. Because I had not come to know this other version…
Gah!! I think I just hurt my brain. Not sure if what I meant to say came across correctly. Final point is I’m not sure they are the exact same person (not counting the sphinx form of course) and I think it’s going to cause some issues, especially with Monica, that the Shelly that she cared about, that she became friends with, that they handed the artifact to, just died and will now be replaced with a version of herself that she’s technically never met.
Except that from what I’ve been able to piece together from the comments and the comic itself, the Shelly that’s dead is the Shelly from the very first timeline, and Shelly-Sphinx is the Shelly WE know. She’s been stuck there for a very long time, true, but it’s still the same Shelly that existed before she touched the sword’s hilt.
I think it cuts to Shelly’s face in the same position, some tears dripping, lying on the ground with her friends all worried around her. The sphinx’ face looks like I imagine Shelly to look when she’s in her 30’s.
I suddenly realized that “Home” to Sphinx-Shelly meant that she’ll be back in Wapsisquare amongst her friends, fully aware of what has actually transpired all those time-loops.
I just hope she don’t goes fruit-loop like Jin, knowing all those resets and failings..
Looks like it. That might be the only way out, the Sacred Grove might be one of those mystical realms where you have to die to leave. In which case all the dead Shellys didn’t die in reality, just there. Which might explain why Brandy’s book doesn’t have an instruction like “If Bud brings back some weird looking artifact from a German sub, NEVER EVER EVER let Shelly touch it!!! Even if you have to punch her out to stop her!”
Of course, if it DID kill all the previous Shellys in real life, that might explain why they could never fix the Calender Machine…
with all these shelly she must have been around to help with the calender machine
so why did brandi write a choice of 3 people including shelly?
or did shelly not have to be close to monica to be part of the fixit group?
I’m pretty sure that different loops saw several variations in the group. For example, in our iteration Amanda wasn’t part of the Calendar Machine group, but Shelly was; Brandi’s book strongly implies that it was tried the other way too.
Days like this are why I’ve largely given up trying to figure out this comic. I just follow from day to day, trusting that at some point there will be one big grand exposition piece.
There may be ninty million small expositions, but one huge one is…highly unlikely. Paul’s gotten too good at storytelling to resort to the infodump escape. 🙂
Okay, so from what i understand, the Sphinx was the last Shelly to discover the artifact in the real world, however, was the first Shelly in this world. She had to witness 55 other Shellys come to pass. The Shelly that just died was the first Shelly to exist on Earth, so basically before the first reset of the calender machine and Jin’s first attempt at fixing it. Now that there are no more living duplicates, the first Shelly, aka the Sphinx, can now return to earth, possibly in human form…as Shelly.
Basically, the “Sacred trees” are correcting a paradox created by the Calender Machine and Jin’s first attempt at fixing it. Since the CM was fixed on the 57th try, it would make sense that she would only meet 55 other Shellys, since this would close the loose ends of duplicate Shellys and time could become linear again. I feel this is the official end of the CM arc.
That’s how I saw it too… So umm basically Shelly is going to return to the world all creepy and scary and having watched herself died over and over. Why she’s a sphix now, I’m not sure. But Monica and the others are in for a huuuuuge surprise. Especially if she is still somewhat sphinxish.
I’m with you on this…it’s going to be interesting to see how this affects our Shelly.
And Paul…I read your confirmation of this theory…re-read the theory…and I still don’t get it. 😛
Maybe I’ll have to suspend my understandings of reality or something first. I never was good at understanding backwards running timelines (which would explain why even as a teen, of all the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony, I hated Bearing an Hourglass).
Are we looking at the root cause for the Calendar Machine’s demise? Could the group have been working on fixing Jin, Shelley (in that time loop, Jin’s best friend) dies, returning to the coffee shop as a corpse, and Jin tried to use the CM to go back and fix it. Her mom tries to stop her, a struggle ensues, and time loop wackyness is the result.
We are looking at a bootstrap paradox. Shelly couldn’t solve the puzzle until Shelly traveled back in time and gave Shelly the answer to the puzzle. This sort of logic will make your head hurt. Great storyline Paul! I am hanging on every panel you draw.
Enjoy those cookies, you guys, because I sure didn’t get that.
But I still have a question…if the Shelly that just died is the first to exist on earth, was the Shelly that we have known over the course of the comic ALSO the first Shelly to exist on earth, and therefore was the last to travel to the place of the trees? Has she therefore ALWAYS been a sphinx??
Depends on how one sees time in the Wapsi-verse : Either it is a string of pearls. Each pearl a new event-loop-bubble, but connected through a thread that exists outside of time ,yet goes right through it ,so it is always accessible (Demon- and sphinx realms exist outside of time a.f.a.i.k., hence their knowledge of the events and the loops)
ORRR.. it is a time “tree” ,where every different action births a new time “fruit”, not connected to the other fruits on the trees of time. (Multiple universe theory) With Sphinx-realms the actual overarching “super-time”, with a chronology that runs completely independent from our linear (wapsi) universe.
OK Now my mind is officially blown. The resemblance of Sphinx Shelly to Shell is now very telling. Especially Sphinx Shelly’s behavior in trying the 6-year explaination of what to do, and then losing her temper at (younger) herself. Even after 80,000 years, Shelly is still Shelly.
And the nature of the realm does beg the question, even though it’s time flows in reverse from the real world. How longer has Sphinx Shelly been trapped in the realm subjective time? 80,000+ years?
Just saw Paul’s confirmation. Okay, good. That eliminates some of the possibilities at least, and explains a lot. It also means Kramergame’s analysis should be the bible from which other theories should spring from this point on. I only wish I had seen it sooner. Ah well, lesson learned. Must try to show more restraint on the throwing out of theories.
woah, i appreciate the flattery, but I just understand space-time better than most people. I’m not the best analyst since I tend to think very very far away from the box…. and have been wrong on 90% of the theories I’ve written about this comic…
That’s how I saw it, too, but I thought it was only the 56th try…thus 56 Shellys. Minor detail, though.
This means that our perspective shifted without our noticing from the moment Shelly set foot in the forest: from ‘current Shelly’ (the sphinx) to the one I’ll call ‘Shelly prime.’ …sneaky.
It also means that Shelly now sees ‘roles’ everyone was cast into, or at least sees that such roles do exist, and are, in fact, quite important. Quite the character development, there…
can someone call the doctor? he might understand what’s going on. if not. call all eleven of them at once. that should do the trick. just watch out for number 7 he’s a bit manipulatif
I found Wapsi Square only 2 weeks ago and I have to say that it was sheer pleasure getting current! Of course now it’s real torture waiting day to day… Thanks!
Oh, I’m so glad someone figured out what was happening to Shelly… I was going in to catatonia trying to figure it out.
Aaaand…You broke the interwebs.. agai…….fzzzzzzz…fizzle….spit…..bzzzzzz..shshshshshshshshshshshs (cosmic background-noise)
HTML tags always end with a “slash-forward”+the function You called at the beginning. in this case Slash-forward “A” inbetween “” (let’s hope I coded right here 😛 )
Ok — Consolidating a lot of prior comments, and trying to untangle my brain here —
1. The Hilt is a time/dimension portal/artifact.
2. Treeland and Realworld both have linear time and have been through 56 cycles due to the calendar machine.
3. The Hilt targeted the other end of the cycle series when transporting from Realworld to Treeland.
4. Shelly56 visited Sphinx at the start of Treeland loop1 and had a wonderful conversation, I’m sure, which we haven’t seen, and continues to live in current Realworld Time.
5. Shelly55 visited loop2 and died, witnessed by Sphinx. Sphinx is aware of the prior visit.
6. Lather, rinse repeat 54 more times.
7. We’ve witnessed Shelly1 from the first ever Calendar Machine loop fulfilling her fate. Sphinx has witnessed this 54 prior times. Loop iterations complete, Time Paradox resolved, Calendar Machine destroyed, time marches on.
8. Is the Sphinx == Ghost Shelly? Not a clue how that happened. Unless….
With the first visit to Treeland, Shelly56 effectively went back in time 56 loops worth. She had the prior knowledge of many things and may have (carefully) planted the plutonium, etc) in the tree to wait there for the next loop and next visitation. However, she was stuck and transformed by means to be revealed, so becoming a Sphinx.
Possibly, Shelly has ALWAYS been a Sphinx, just trapped in Human form (a’la Phix’s visit to Minneapolis), but cursed/amnesiac/etc. This would help explain her strength and sensitivity to various spiritual stuff, like her Vision Quest where Jin/Tchtoli found and rescued her (time loop again?)
And the carousel man has us going around and ’round …
Gyroscopic time loops, goes do-se-do, wobbled, self-corrected, trundles on.
Shelly said she nearly died on her first vision quest. Jin pulled her out of that rabbit hole. Guess this was the real vision quest. Curious to see what rabbit pops out tomorrow.
so sphinxshelly aka 57 aka last to exist but first in the forest. (and i spose she is a sphinx as shelly knows sphinx as guardians and possibly subconciously chose it. like the staypuft marshmellow from ghostbusters?)
THIS Shelly now knows what its like to go through what Jin has gone through. Who better to help her? Cuz i’ve a feeling that no amount of artifacts can help that girl cope with what she’s been through and she’s less likely to spill her guts to phix and the rest than any ‘human’
Waittaminute! “Sphinxes as guardians”.. Didn’t Tepoz already hint at Shelly’s actual role in all of it? i.e. A Guardian? Many moons ago…
0_o
O_o
😯
Did Paul plan that long ahead…..????
you ever watch babylon 5?
yea
the storyline to that takes place over aaaages and the stuff from the first episode is tied into stuff from the last seasons episode etc 🙂
similar to wapsi it is.
my mind likes 😀
oooh so the sphinx was talking about tina!
tina was the one who gave 57th shelly the test about the coffee pot and then told her that’s how it would work.
*dances* we were right!!!
and also maybe this was the reason why Shelly couldn’t be Jins friend.
Sphinx shelly needed to stay in the forest until the calender machine had been destroyed.
if she had left sooner (cuz it seems like this 1st shelly came into the forest before the calender machine reset/trying to reset so she could help Jin who was her friend…or maybe it was a way to fix the calender machine which failed?) maybe the paradox would have imploded the universe and stuff?
*lightbulb pops into shards* Iiiiii…eeehhh..still don’t get the coffee-pot-incident .She crushed it, but it hurt like hell..How does that make her guardian-sphinx??
*slump back into confusion-corner-couch*
*halfway through florentine biscuit new lightbulb gets fixed in place*
Makes sense. Tina was the one that knew You’d have to rile-up Shelly to get her super strength to emerge. Buuuut..How did Tina contact Sphinx-Shelly???. Via one of the “Former-Shelly’s???
😯
Aaaaargh..I am lost again.. like with branes, strings and how they connect via 11 dimensional calculus: The moment You even begin to start to get a smidgen of a particle of a teensy-weensy atom of understanding, it slips away like fine ,dry silica-sand in a storm…grrrrr..
sphinx shelly = 57th shelly = shelly from the coffee shop who crushed the pot/shelly the one who plays guitar in fermented banana/shelly the one who we’ve known and loved all this time.
Dead shelly = 1st shelly = umm shelly from another time period who is prolly friends with Jin and in that timeframe the shelly who’s calender machine is still working.
Or… she crushed the coffee pot with no ill effect, but only after the fact when she saw what she did did she “think” that should have hurt? In essence, the pain she felt was psychosomatic.
….yeah. OK, so, I think I get it. However, that may just be the sleep deprivation. Maybe I’ll GET it tomorrow.
Know what? I don’t care either way. This is one helluva story, told by a helluva storyteller. Kudos, Mr. Taylor.
Hmmmmnnn…..so….that wall of skulls behind SphinxShelly there is from Shellys #2 through #55? Or have non-shellys (like perhaps that u-boat captain) been making it in there as well?
Michael Moorcock did this sort of thing years ago. There’s one book where Elric meets Corum for the first time but Corum already knows him, and there’s another book where the situation is reversed.
Thus bringing this chain of referential inference full cycle itseld – Stephen Moffatt cheerfully admits that that story was a large part of the influences that contributed to River Song’s creation.
Amazing. Both the day’s revelation and the conversation generated by it. In retrospect, I see the similarities in sense of humor and massive arms, but I would never have put it all together.
I don’t think the sphinx had to eat anything to survive. Nothing could hurt her there and that would mean she could not die of starvation either. She may not have even been hungry the whole time. Her body was just in stasis.
Nah, just a giant super-natural “Keep Away! Hazardous material!” -sign
That’s why I believe the Plutonium is, indeed, inside, And all we see here is a telling of the story as to how it got there. Plus it will explain Who, or rather what Shelly actually is.
Her “true” memories will flood back in. There’s obviously more to Shelly’s vision-quest than we are privy to know.
Okay…so all of my other confusion aside, what does this backwards time thing mean for the relic? Is it empty in real time now? Or is it a self-sustaining energy source housing (and shielding) a lethal dose of recycling plutionium?
i suspect shelly1-56 came here in order to save jin
(she mentioned before the calender machine was fizzled that she was broken and she would be again so chances are the others would have helped her)
56th shelly(or brandi) must have realised that they needed some sort of lethal dose of radiation so if this failed then it would be better to not be friends with Jin the next time round.
just a guess
but on thursday i guessed shelly would be the one kicking a hole in the sub and sinking it. next day she died so…well..my guesses suck.
but they’re fun to think about 🙂
Did she? I thought Brandi’s part in all this was only related to the fixing of the calendar machine, not the manipulation of all the people involved, just Shelly to get her to stab Monica.
I think just the opposite. The discovery of the sub would have happened every time (albiet seemingly serendipitously), thus the journey to time-tree land would have happened everytime, but only the last time would have been for Jin since she was still on a reasonably even keel because the CM was still functional. I would see the other 56 times she went there as part of a mission to help fix the CM and not Jin.
i did think was for the calender machine fixing also but well..im sure there was a comic about Jin getting unhinged towards 2012 as its roads less travelled (whatever that means) so suspect she would have gone slightlybarmy in all of the resets. 1-56. 57th was worse i suspect cuz she was on her own (which did make her open to Alan and dating him so thats good 🙂 )
the fact that they couldn’t be friends THIS time makes me wonder why not..
Good points. Even this time, when they finally did do something about the CM, Jin was flipping out. She really flipped out during the process and totally out of it right after it was all over.
Consider this possibility. They successfully fixed the CM every time but Jin flips out and Shelly and the rest trying to help Jin go into this loop where the last thing Shelly does is go and reset the CM back to a zero state in an effort to help Jin. Remember what first Shelly’s last words were “I need to go back. I need the calendar.”
But she also said that she was just trying to help someone…which I guess could have still related to the Calendar, but since they had waited in previous attempts and the artifact wasn’t involved with the “fixing the machine” process, I just assumed that anything involving the artifact would have been an early attempt to help Jin before the Calendar Machine was approached.
Well that explains why Shelly SPhinx always looked so annoyed. I would hate having to explain the same thing to myself fifty six times in a row and then have to wait for myself to understand.
Okay… that was… My mind has been blown. Beautiful comic.
Yeah.
What drove it all home was the fact that we were all made to feel for the sacrifice over the course of the weekend.
This has overcome one of the most intractable faults in literature, the death trope. The reader need never care about harm coming to the hero, because its meaning will be subverted or diluted in order to serve the plot. The spring of disbelief from which we cheerfully, daily hang our own coming end.
But no death trope comes this time– readers can only fall into it out of the bad habits the rest of their reading has led them to expect. This time, for this character, it ceased to matter whether she was or wasn’t “real” or “ours”. We had to give a damn, because we knew her anyway. And that should be true for any other unjust death in the world. It might be Shelly. It might be you.
And so, this is a masterpiece. Congratulations, Paul. Looking forward to reading the rest.
true before she died i honestly wouldnt have listed shelly as one of my fav chars.
Tina and dietzel and tepoz are my fav with katherine running a creepy 2nd.
but seeing her die…hated it..
….. *falls over on desk, drooling*
You have got to love an artist that has figured out a wonderfully devious time paradox. All of the Shelly’s are the same Shelly. She has been trapped in an infinite loop. Now she can leave the test with all of the knowledge and experience she has gained from 56 attempts. Now all we need is a time cop to give her a ticket for mucking up space time.
After all she is the Sphinx.
This is the 56th Shelly, so no earlier iteration, and this is the first time since the calendar machine was broken.
…She’s gone…
SOB
unless of course, this is actually the 1st Shelly, in which case the 56th Shelly, being on the “backwards” earth time, is still alive
YAY
Either way, this is very confusing and will create much banter today
SOB
I mean
YAY
“You were the first”. And “Time runs opposite” There .Right there.
This is Shelly 1.
Sooooo…yay! “current-Shelly” lives. Time-travelling, Timey-Wimey stuff can get pretty complex. The idea of 2 timestreams running opposite is mindboggling.
I wonder though ,what the sphinx meant by “I can go home now” Sphinxes have homes? o_O
I think the sphinx is Shelly.
No… the Sphinx is mom.
Ooh i like that theory….
Good point. That could very well be. Though it presents a paradox. Plus I doubt a sphinx would die as easily as Shelly’s mom did.
Phix told M they’d been through it 56 times before this one… so this is NOT current Shelly, it’s last time around Shelly. Huzzah!
No, she’s not gone. Sphinx Shelly was the first.
That makes no sense. Shelly is not a Sphinx.
it explains where her strength came from… if there were ghosted memories, then her strength was ghosted from the sphinx her. and… it would explain the moment where there was confusion about her being a golem, and some certain things not affecting her. last thing to wonder, is if she’ll pop back as sphinx, or morph into it when angry or something…
But when/how would she have become a sphinx? Up until now, she’s been afraid of spiders and commitment. I can understand a Sphinx not wanting to be tied down, but spiders?
Yeah, but as far as she knows (going with the she-is-a-sphinx-somehow theory) she isn’t a sphinx. She’s just a person. She say’s she was the first to get there, but she’s the last Shelly. Time for her has been running backwards, which means…I don’t know. >_>
The calender machine is gone right? She said that time’s been running backwards for her, and she’s met 55 Shelly’s since she got there. If the calender machine isn’t causing the multiple Shelly’s…maybe reincarnation? This is mad confusing.
…makes as much sense as a human being afraid of a spider…
Hey…
Hey… either I just had a stroke, or just had a really good theory.
Sphinxes are guardians. Apotropaic ones more so. But what if we are going backwards on this? What if by guarding something you become sphinxlike?
This ShellySphinx has been guarding the tree… well, overseeing the accumulation of the bits for this artifact… for a very long time. (When she isn’t off burying Shellys. There has to be a very impressive Shelly Graveyard around here somewhere.)
I seem to recall a stack of skulls.
I don’t really buy the sphinx as shelly thing, but I suppose it could be possible. Perhaps the sphinx transformed into a human shape at some point. That shape being Shelly. Somehow her shape self separated from her sphinx self (due to the calendar malfunction?) and her Shelly form was trapped on earth, with her sphinx form being trapped in the time tree world. The Shelly form doesn’t know what she is, but the sphinx does. Thus the meeting herself thing. Shelly is allowed to go to the tree world via the relic because she and the sphinx are one in the same. Maybe now, the sphinx can transform into Shelly again and go back, but with full knowledge of who she really is. Probably not at all close, but …
Check Paul’s reply to this comment…
I think Shelly’s form altered over time as she went through iteration after iteration if herself coming there. Since time was caught in a loop due to the CM she had to wait for the loop to end before she could exit the loop. Poor programming method, but it happens.
Since this is a alternate space as Shelly figured it out she took on the guardian sphinx form. Now the loop has ended and she can return to here place in the time stream. There is going to be one radical change in Shelly after this as well. All those long years trapped there. It gave her a lot of time to think and figure things out. I imagine she will be much more mature adn wiser after that experience. Are the rest of them ready for her? I doubt it. To them she’s been gone for an instant only. Now she has all the knowledge form all the iterations and figuring things out.
From The Devil’s DP Dictionary:
or all that time with only CG to chat, and maybe what people call supernatural creatures (but are just evolutionary results of other realities where the rules are different and thus all fully natural) visiting, pushed the feral end and nutso side far forward so she is less civilized.
Huh.
That’s all i got right now.
so the shelly we know is dead and the shelly/sphink is gona take her place?
No, Sphinx Shelly is our Shelly. She said that time flows backwards in this place. The dead Shelly on the ground right now is the Shelly from the first iteration of the time loop.
no wait the sphink said she was the last one so she would be the shelly we know and maybe shes been stuck in the relic living out all 56 cycels backwards . and tomarow she’ll snap out of the trance and find only a few seconds has passed
dang took to long to post you beat me to what i was gona say
No. That Sphinx is not Shelly. If I understand what she said. The is the Shelly from the first iteration of the CM cycles (i.e the CM was broken by May and it would be begin to reset time in 2012). Shelly of this time CM cycle will be meeting the the Sphinx for the first time from the Spinx’s point of view.
The way that things work in the realm is that the Sphinx got trapped in the realm, and then met Shelly from the 56th CM iteration (post CM being “fixed” aka smushed by Bud). That scenario is what we just witnessed.
On the next CM iteration (#2), Sphinx from Cycle 2 meets Shelly of cycle 55. CM cycle #3, Sphinx meet Shelly of cycle 54. CM cycle #4, Sphinx meets Shelly from cycle 53. The Sphinx was trapped in some strange form of time loop that has to be played out. That Sphinx has been trapped in that realm for over 50,000 years.
A previous iteration of Shelly had to put the plutonium in the tree originally, so would she not have been exposed to it and died as well?
(Prolly should’ve asked that over the weekend, but I was too upset)
I don’t think the plutonium was lethal then. It was just ordinary plutonium. I think it needs to age, allowing it’s energy to feed back upon itself, while in that special tube, for some time before it becomes deadly.
Makes sense. The Sphinx only said she put it in the tree originally, but did not divulge which Shelly did that. She also put the sword in the stone, etc, so goodness knows what became of Shelly each time…or why time had to travel backwards…that’s the real mind-bender here, and makes me want to do some quantum mathematics to figure it out…
I think each cycle added another piece needed. Perhaps the first Shelly found the hilt. And the second figured out it needed radioisotopes for power. And perhaps a few figured out that they needed some way to enrich it. And maybe one came along with the idea of a sacred tree to hold it so it didn’t poison everything. And another invented the sword idea to get at it when the Pl had time enough to cook… Now, finally, in the 56th time through, all the pieces are in place. Or so we hope, cause there ain’t no gobacks now.
Actually 81,200 years. I see now. We just saw things from the sphinx’s POV. So the sphinx has been meeting the Shellys in reverse order, counting them down to this one, which, from her POV, is the Shelly from the very first loop. That would mean the very first meeting with the sphinx was actually from the present time. That also means the sphinx knows the outcome of that interaction with Shelly. Something we have yet to see since this was the first meeting (from the sphinx’s POV) and we see Shelly died in it. That might kind of explain why Shelly didn’t know the routine.
Now … how did the Sphinx know there would be only 56 loops and that this would be her last to have to endure? Perhaps, assuming Shelly survived her 56th meeting, she told the sphinx there would be 56 total. Since that was the first meeting for the Sphinx all she could do was wait until they all had run their course. Bummer.
So next we need to see the encounter from Shelly’s POV, in the present.
You know, the past 3 weeks’ comics are a lot less WTFy now, if you read them and keep in mind Our Shelly = Sphynx. Then she’s just manipulating those she knows are already the failed dead.
Once again I creep myself out. 8/
The sphinx knows because her first Shelly (the modern, current one) told her that it happened 56 times.
The real question is what happens to Shelly56 (‘our’ Shelly)? Somebody has to set everything else up. Vials full of Scibabble Plutonium don’t just grow inside trees, you know…
Sphinx = ‘our’ Shelley. That’s how she knows there were 56 other versions that would come to be.
The only question about ‘our’ Shelley at this point is, unlike poor Sam Beckett, does she actually get to go home now?
I like the idea that the previous Shelley’s, which would have been 2, 3, 4, 5, etc to encounter the Sphinx which would have been from reality 56, 55, 54, 53, etc, set in motion more and more of the ‘quest’ as they entered the tree realm.
So ‘our’ Shelley as the Sphinx, which was 57 and the last one since the CM was already gone, became the guardian, the second to last (56) was the 2nd actual Shelley to visit the tree realm, etc. All adding some thing or the other until Shelley #57 (the prime, original Shelley) put it all together and died in the process.
Makes perfect sense! 🙂 Once you write down the numbers in the right order.
OK, I am totally without a clue.
Welcome to the club. I think I will sit here, quiet-like, and wait until tomorrow.
ditto
ive gone from WTF shes dead just just WTF.
The thing that has me most befuddled is the “I kept meeting myself”, implying that Shelly and the Sphinx are one in the same, just traveling in time in opposite directions, but that is difficult to imagine (how does Shelly become a Sphinx or vice versa?), so my brain is refusing to accept the possibility…
56 time loops in a mystaical forest will do strange things to ya i guess
See Shirow, M.: “The Sphinx In The Shell: Man-Feline Interface”?
That’s it! The spinx is River Song!
WHO? 😉
RIver Song
…or perhaps you were being smart-arse…
And Jin is the Tardis!
My BRAIN HURTS! 80
ah poor woman
doctor “why did you do that?”
river “why? your acting like we never have before”
doctor “we havent! well there is nothing like a first time”
walks off
river “or a last”
almost cried on that scene.
I don’t understand this meeting herself either. Does that mean there are 55 other copies of the sphinx there as well? Or did each copy get to leave, but stayed a while to fill in the new on on what was going on? Did they disappear upon meeting the new one? Maybe it has to do with whenever she tried to leave. She just kept ending up back in the same place no matter which way she tried to exit.
It’s simpler then that: The Sphinx comes from the earth timeline too. During one point in each of the cycles, she comes to the forest, to meet herself who has been there. Question is whether she goes back, her copy goes back, or what kind of loops happen there.
The real question is if she meets Shells this many times, why does she not recognize her at first? Who else comes to the forest?
most of the first bit was an act i think
Now that I’ve slept on it, I think I can guess a bit more, and you’re close to it. the Sphinx got there, and every time one of thye 56 Shelly’s appeared, she saw a copy of herself materialize and interact with each Shelly. Since we already saw the stack of skulls she pointed out to Shelly #1 here (I think we have established that this is the first of 56 Shellys), Shelly has been reduced to bones many times.
So since time is moving in the opposite direction for Shelly, how did Shelly #56 fare? Because THAT is the iteration that shall return to Earth with the relic.
Sheesh. You go to your friend’s apartment one day expecting a fun trip to the beach, and all of a sudden you’re in some backward adjunct universe dead of radiation poisoning after King Arthuring some steampunk sword and lumberjacking a Yggdrasil. But that’s life, amIright?
from what others have said she’s only been witnessing the deaths. OURshelly now has wings.
Well, Wapsi is a “Slice of supernatural life”.
What it says on the tin.
Look who’s talking… I faintly remember a college girl that’s transformed into a demon and back somewhere… 😛
np: Matthew Dear – Midnight Lovers (Asa Breed)
That would be Zebra Girl, correct?
What gave it away? 😉
It might bother Monica & the rest to have Shelley pop out of the trance with wings & lion’s legs.
Well, we shall, as always, see. Beautiful art BTW:
They might require a trip to the Library and talk to Phix about re-assuming human form.
OK so …
Well now…
OK, so if…
…
I got nothin
No, it’s simple, it’s that…
well, see, there’s…
and then…
……………………………….butterfly
Well, You know, it’s like..ehhh..You know…and stuff..
*pops back on designer-seat in confusion-corner, happily sipping his latte*
Why does it feel like we’re *opening* the week with a cliffhanger? How long ’till it’s Tuesday!?!?!?
Twenty-three hours and one minute.
Paul: 1; My Brain: zip.
Okay…
The Sphinx is Shelly56 (the last or “our” Shelly). Time flows backwards here, and she was stuck here during the Shelly Countdown. Shelly1 just shuffled off; time is no longer looping, so she may be able to exit to the real world again.
Hopefully Phix can teach her that shapechange thing if she hasn’t figured it out already….
Okay, that’s MY take on this….
Officer Buns better take his Viagra. She’s been without for a long time.
He might want to have some nitroglycerin tablets handy, too, the first time she ‘changes’.
I forsee an epidemic, EPIDEMIC, of spit-takes among all major characters (and most of the rest).
It makes a strange sort of sense when you read it again… it’s kinda scary. Also yeah, poor Officer Bunns, 81k years is a lot of repressed need…
The way I imagine it:
-Shelly face zoom waking-up, face in same angle as Sphinx… going “huh?”or “Whadduh..”
-Combi- zoom of M, Tina and Bud. Eyes wide open, mouths agape.
-Cam swing back to Shelly face.. going “what???”
-Shelly looking down, seeing lion’s feet from under her camisole.
-Shelly zoom..going : NO..FRIGGIN’..WAY!!!.. eyes wide open,completely baffled. Then going: THIS IS SOOOO TOTALLY COOL!!!!
-Zoom-out Shelly mumbling: “But how do I get my normal feet back? I happen to like my feet..”
😆
That’s my take on this, too.
If so, the Shelly who reanimates in Monica’s living room is going to mentally be 80,000 years older, have seen 55 versions of herself die, and is probably going to be a bit disconcerted to be in a human body agian without wings or hindquarters.
I expect a period of major readjustment on all sides…
I think it’s going to be rather tearful on Shelly-sphinx’ side.
She’s free after years in what she perceived as a Hell, a punishment for something (fits in well with her still powerful guilt about her mother’s death) There’s going to be some serious crying, me thinks. Crying from relief, sadness about all the deaths she had to witness ,etc.
Let’s just hope that those aeons taught her to be more open about her feelings, not to hate herself so much, and trust her friends even more than she already did.
Yup. Sphinx is Shelly, Shelly was the Sphinx.
If this is true, its awesome.
If this was (and I suspect it was) a pre-panned, long term, twist… then double that awesome with a side of HELL YEA!
I think I just realized the significance of Tina being present at the start of this arc. Her second encounter with a sphinx could be rather amusing.
Ok, so. The sphynx is cuddling the irradiated gooey mess of ex-Shelly. Am I the only one who finds this… disturbing?
Well her body might be like one of those memory foam pillows, squishing to conform to the sphinx’s head. Might be quite comfy.
Eww.
Comfy, though a bit smelly, given the fact that dying of radiation-poisoning usually involves a lot of throwing-up blood&bile…
if you knew you could leave after seeing yourself die 56 times wouldn’t you be cuddling the last one of you?
I guess so. And it’s a touching picture. It shows that Shelly-Sphinx(oooops did I just say that???) is a very sensitive person, despite the noise and posturing.
Looks more like she’s rubbing her forehead against our now-ex-Shelly’s raised hand…
@Faunticle: Yeah, that was definitely a hat out of a rabbit.
Not just “a hat’.. this is a complete friggin hat-factory , complete with several “hats ‘r us”-franchises…
😯
So, our Monday is the Sphinx’s Friday?
Wait, wait, wait……
My webcomic cousin is a sphinx?
Isn’t the Sphinx just implying that they’re timelines are reveresed – a la The Doctor and River Song from Doctor Who – so the last Sphinx meets the first Shelly?
good god Paul, your story telling ability and the way it causes the readers to ponder it in such length is as always amazing, I hate how easily wrapped up I get in each part of the story.
also, did I call it when I said the sphinx looked like Shelly?
It seems like every year it just gets better and better. I guess all that ‘honing your craft over time’ stuff wasn’t just a way for my teachers to get me to turn in my work 🙂
The inclusion of fibs is what does it. I says that respectfuly, you cant give everything away at once is what I mean. There is no login in the last week that makes sense is more accurate. IF the sphinx is present Shelly, as seems to be the concensus, then why did Shelly 1, aka dead Shelly, come to the tree with the sword hilt that Present Shinx Shelly just found? If the comic was from Shelly Present POV then she would not be seeing a Shelly with a hilt would she? If this was Present Shelly just morphing in that is. There is where the confusion lies. It is possible that we have seen the present Shelly’s story and that Paul just did a skip of some 86,000 years to get to the end (that would be a long webcomic to write no?) but it seems likely that we have been slipped a story Mickey here and the sword hilt coming with Shelly 1 is going to be explained later.
sigh Login = Logic… no logic
Ahhh if the sword hilt is the portal to that place and each Shelly uses it… that is the sense I was seeking. Quite tricky there…
So the first Shelly would be empty handed as far as the hilt is concerned… but then how would all the other Shelly’s know what to bring if they never returned alive? Unless Jin was also going back and… would explain her going crazy… Losing her friend 56 times would drive a person nuts…
But somehow the loop HAD to be getting feedback or the iterations would all be the same… each Shelly coming back and dying without anything changing. But the sphinx stated clearly that each Shelly brought something new… so previous Shelly’s must have died back at home and Jin was instructing previous Shelly’s what to bring. That would make me go crazy alrighty. Right?
I take it we are looking at the work of a higher power, one that can create a sphinx from a mortal (We don’t know how a sphinx gets made do we?) and place said sphinx on a reverse-time stage for the specific purpose of directing the assembly of the artifact by said mortal’s earlier iterations.
Said higher power may not even be the designer of the artifact since the artifact seems to use some pretty mundane components and somebody coached the other Shellys and gave them the components.
But… are the sphinxes even corporeal? Or are they something our heroines see, but could be anything; maybe something like Nudge, for example… we know, after all, that Phix knows how to alter her appearance…
I’m pretty sure Monica’s boss would have noticed if Phix had just altered her appearance as soon as she tried walking into some confined space, like a doorway or the elevator…
np: Mogwai – I Chose Horses (Mr. Beast)
See, a mommy sphinx loves a daddy sphinx very much, and…
When a sphinx finds a museum director who likes really tall women…
Dammit Paul…now I have to mop up, the back of my head just blew grey matter EVERYWHERE! LOL 😀
He does this on purpose. He likes watching us squirm and writhe in wonder D: It pleases him to no end, I’m sure of it!
of cause
it means he has done his job right 🙂
And he does it so well, too…
^_^
Buh?
Oh, so confused… *rubs temples*
Well from Paul’s comment, it sounds like Kramegame hit the nail on the head.
But I have to ask, am I the only one here that’s really affected by the fact that the Shelly we’ve all come to know has always been just a copy?
And I’m curious to know what point in her life Sphinx Shelly was trapped there. Because she possibly could not have ever met Officer Tight Buns or never experienced several things that the Shelly we’ve come to know did, IF I’m understanding this correctly. And will “Creepy Little Girl” still exist?
Oh, so confused….
Not a copy , but a true Shelly of a specific time-bubble.
Yeah, but still, she’s likely about to be replaced with another “true Shelly”. And I’m still interested in whether or not they are the same person in terms of experiences and memories when in comes to the “real world” (where all the rest of the Wapsi crew are).
Because if I had a friend that I grew to care about and they were replaced by another version of themselves, even if they had all the same memories, I would still have trouble treating them as the friend I had. Because I had not come to know this other version…
Gah!! I think I just hurt my brain. Not sure if what I meant to say came across correctly. Final point is I’m not sure they are the exact same person (not counting the sphinx form of course) and I think it’s going to cause some issues, especially with Monica, that the Shelly that she cared about, that she became friends with, that they handed the artifact to, just died and will now be replaced with a version of herself that she’s technically never met.
Except that from what I’ve been able to piece together from the comments and the comic itself, the Shelly that’s dead is the Shelly from the very first timeline, and Shelly-Sphinx is the Shelly WE know. She’s been stuck there for a very long time, true, but it’s still the same Shelly that existed before she touched the sword’s hilt.
Wow… That makes a lot more sense, but at the same time, it makes no sense at all.
DARN YOU PAUL!! XD
Did the sphinx just die now too?
possibly a fade out to reality.
or she could have died
tomorrow we might know..unless paul thinks its a good time for us to check in with the others of fermented banana.
I think it cuts to Shelly’s face in the same position, some tears dripping, lying on the ground with her friends all worried around her. The sphinx’ face looks like I imagine Shelly to look when she’s in her 30’s.
I suddenly realized that “Home” to Sphinx-Shelly meant that she’ll be back in Wapsisquare amongst her friends, fully aware of what has actually transpired all those time-loops.
I just hope she don’t goes fruit-loop like Jin, knowing all those resets and failings..
Thumbs up to that!
“Finally! I’m back!”
Hugs all around…
“Here that thing — don’t open it. It will kill you! I know because it killed me 56 times. Have I got a story for you guys!”
^^ Very likely too.
Found a use for the Bud Hatch…
Looks like it. That might be the only way out, the Sacred Grove might be one of those mystical realms where you have to die to leave. In which case all the dead Shellys didn’t die in reality, just there. Which might explain why Brandy’s book doesn’t have an instruction like “If Bud brings back some weird looking artifact from a German sub, NEVER EVER EVER let Shelly touch it!!! Even if you have to punch her out to stop her!”
Of course, if it DID kill all the previous Shellys in real life, that might explain why they could never fix the Calender Machine…
thinking on that
with all these shelly she must have been around to help with the calender machine
so why did brandi write a choice of 3 people including shelly?
or did shelly not have to be close to monica to be part of the fixit group?
I’m pretty sure that different loops saw several variations in the group. For example, in our iteration Amanda wasn’t part of the Calendar Machine group, but Shelly was; Brandi’s book strongly implies that it was tried the other way too.
I’m stumped. Befuddled. Stunned. Awed. And anxious to learn more.
*Grump, grump, grump.*
Days like this are why I’ve largely given up trying to figure out this comic. I just follow from day to day, trusting that at some point there will be one big grand exposition piece.
There won’t be.
There may be ninty million small expositions, but one huge one is…highly unlikely. Paul’s gotten too good at storytelling to resort to the infodump escape. 🙂
Okay, so from what i understand, the Sphinx was the last Shelly to discover the artifact in the real world, however, was the first Shelly in this world. She had to witness 55 other Shellys come to pass. The Shelly that just died was the first Shelly to exist on Earth, so basically before the first reset of the calender machine and Jin’s first attempt at fixing it. Now that there are no more living duplicates, the first Shelly, aka the Sphinx, can now return to earth, possibly in human form…as Shelly.
Basically, the “Sacred trees” are correcting a paradox created by the Calender Machine and Jin’s first attempt at fixing it. Since the CM was fixed on the 57th try, it would make sense that she would only meet 55 other Shellys, since this would close the loose ends of duplicate Shellys and time could become linear again. I feel this is the official end of the CM arc.
that sounded better in my head….i’m going to sleep now…
That’s how I saw it too… So umm basically Shelly is going to return to the world all creepy and scary and having watched herself died over and over. Why she’s a sphix now, I’m not sure. But Monica and the others are in for a huuuuuge surprise. Especially if she is still somewhat sphinxish.
I’m with you on this…it’s going to be interesting to see how this affects our Shelly.
And Paul…I read your confirmation of this theory…re-read the theory…and I still don’t get it. 😛
Maybe I’ll have to suspend my understandings of reality or something first. I never was good at understanding backwards running timelines (which would explain why even as a teen, of all the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony, I hated Bearing an Hourglass).
A cookie for you, and all others that got that. 🙂
Are we looking at the root cause for the Calendar Machine’s demise? Could the group have been working on fixing Jin, Shelley (in that time loop, Jin’s best friend) dies, returning to the coffee shop as a corpse, and Jin tried to use the CM to go back and fix it. Her mom tries to stop her, a struggle ensues, and time loop wackyness is the result.
Just a thought.
yaaaay! ~munches~ thanksh paul is good.
We are looking at a bootstrap paradox. Shelly couldn’t solve the puzzle until Shelly traveled back in time and gave Shelly the answer to the puzzle. This sort of logic will make your head hurt. Great storyline Paul! I am hanging on every panel you draw.
The bootstrap paradox.
Enjoy those cookies, you guys, because I sure didn’t get that.
But I still have a question…if the Shelly that just died is the first to exist on earth, was the Shelly that we have known over the course of the comic ALSO the first Shelly to exist on earth, and therefore was the last to travel to the place of the trees? Has she therefore ALWAYS been a sphinx??
It seems to me that the Shelly we’ve known over the course of this comic is the 57th Shelly to exist on Earth…I think…
Yes.
And no.
The world (and everything in it) created by each recycle of the Calendar Machine is The Only World There Is.
So there are either 57 Shellys (looked at one way) or just one – fifty-seven times.
Depends on how one sees time in the Wapsi-verse : Either it is a string of pearls. Each pearl a new event-loop-bubble, but connected through a thread that exists outside of time ,yet goes right through it ,so it is always accessible (Demon- and sphinx realms exist outside of time a.f.a.i.k., hence their knowledge of the events and the loops)
ORRR.. it is a time “tree” ,where every different action births a new time “fruit”, not connected to the other fruits on the trees of time. (Multiple universe theory) With Sphinx-realms the actual overarching “super-time”, with a chronology that runs completely independent from our linear (wapsi) universe.
Can I has a cookie too? I watched those other guys figure it out…
no cookie
we just get a cadbury finger
*crosses fingers for the link above to work*
OK Now my mind is officially blown. The resemblance of Sphinx Shelly to Shell is now very telling. Especially Sphinx Shelly’s behavior in trying the 6-year explaination of what to do, and then losing her temper at (younger) herself. Even after 80,000 years, Shelly is still Shelly.
And the nature of the realm does beg the question, even though it’s time flows in reverse from the real world. How longer has Sphinx Shelly been trapped in the realm subjective time? 80,000+ years?
Just saw Paul’s confirmation. Okay, good. That eliminates some of the possibilities at least, and explains a lot. It also means Kramergame’s analysis should be the bible from which other theories should spring from this point on. I only wish I had seen it sooner. Ah well, lesson learned. Must try to show more restraint on the throwing out of theories.
woah, i appreciate the flattery, but I just understand space-time better than most people. I’m not the best analyst since I tend to think very very far away from the box…. and have been wrong on 90% of the theories I’ve written about this comic…
Yay my first correct guess! NOMNOMNOM
mmm… smart cookies, my favorite! XD
I read this, and I still do not quite understand what is going on. mind confuse, think broke, brain dumb, derp….
gratz peeps who got it (and thanks paul for confirming 🙂 )
That’s how I saw it, too, but I thought it was only the 56th try…thus 56 Shellys. Minor detail, though.
This means that our perspective shifted without our noticing from the moment Shelly set foot in the forest: from ‘current Shelly’ (the sphinx) to the one I’ll call ‘Shelly prime.’ …sneaky.
It also means that Shelly now sees ‘roles’ everyone was cast into, or at least sees that such roles do exist, and are, in fact, quite important. Quite the character development, there…
can someone call the doctor? he might understand what’s going on. if not. call all eleven of them at once. that should do the trick. just watch out for number 7 he’s a bit manipulatif
You might also want to look out for number 1. He tended to be a bit sharp tongued an impatient with people who didn’t get it…
I have to say, after looking back, the Sphinx and Shelly do have the exact same face. I was too blinded by the whole sphinx thing to catch it.
Yes ,and No. Paul, cheeky fiend that he is. (let’s call him “nudge”) added some years to her face to throw us off.
Hey Paul,
I found Wapsi Square only 2 weeks ago and I have to say that it was sheer pleasure getting current! Of course now it’s real torture waiting day to day… Thanks!
Oh, I’m so glad someone figured out what was happening to Shelly… I was going in to catatonia trying to figure it out.
Howdy! 🙂 Welcome aboard and thanks much for the positive words!
Kudos to anyone who could read the entire archive in just two weeks without suffering from RSI and brain fade!
Meh… I’ve recently read it in two days. (Well, in printed form, anyway… :))
Half points for printed form. You don’t have to wait on the browser and/or page refreshes. But you do have how fast you read. So, still points.
dude. i read it in one day without trouble. and loved every minute of it. really great comic
“I can read that archive in five notes…”
Cool. Do Monica next!
with the power monica has and the short temper i suspect the forest would be turned into charcoal 😛
Um.
What’s Creepy Girl’s status now?
she’s prolly been the one keeping her sane..
.
The sword in the rock was her nose! Have you no heart?!8O
…and see what I did there? I made a link (if it works)!:D
Aw crap. How do you turn off the link stuff?
Aaaand…You broke the interwebs.. agai…….fzzzzzzz…fizzle….spit…..bzzzzzz..shshshshshshshshshshshs (cosmic background-noise)
HTML tags always end with a “slash-forward”+the function You called at the beginning. in this case Slash-forward “A” inbetween “” (let’s hope I coded right here 😛 )
ugh!
inbetween””Between “<“” and “>”.
Ok — Consolidating a lot of prior comments, and trying to untangle my brain here —
1. The Hilt is a time/dimension portal/artifact.
2. Treeland and Realworld both have linear time and have been through 56 cycles due to the calendar machine.
3. The Hilt targeted the other end of the cycle series when transporting from Realworld to Treeland.
4. Shelly56 visited Sphinx at the start of Treeland loop1 and had a wonderful conversation, I’m sure, which we haven’t seen, and continues to live in current Realworld Time.
5. Shelly55 visited loop2 and died, witnessed by Sphinx. Sphinx is aware of the prior visit.
6. Lather, rinse repeat 54 more times.
7. We’ve witnessed Shelly1 from the first ever Calendar Machine loop fulfilling her fate. Sphinx has witnessed this 54 prior times. Loop iterations complete, Time Paradox resolved, Calendar Machine destroyed, time marches on.
8. Is the Sphinx == Ghost Shelly? Not a clue how that happened. Unless….
With the first visit to Treeland, Shelly56 effectively went back in time 56 loops worth. She had the prior knowledge of many things and may have (carefully) planted the plutonium, etc) in the tree to wait there for the next loop and next visitation. However, she was stuck and transformed by means to be revealed, so becoming a Sphinx.
Possibly, Shelly has ALWAYS been a Sphinx, just trapped in Human form (a’la Phix’s visit to Minneapolis), but cursed/amnesiac/etc. This would help explain her strength and sensitivity to various spiritual stuff, like her Vision Quest where Jin/Tchtoli found and rescued her (time loop again?)
Wheels within wheels…
Well done PW! Salute!
Duh! Just re-read the lines “I was the first here..” and “I kept meeting myself”.
Somehow, Shelly became a Sphinx.
Or: Shelly has always been a sphinx, but we’ve only seen her as we know her in “our universe.”
my mind iz brokeded O_<
And the carousel man has us going around and ’round …
Gyroscopic time loops, goes do-se-do, wobbled, self-corrected, trundles on.
Shelly said she nearly died on her first vision quest. Jin pulled her out of that rabbit hole. Guess this was the real vision quest. Curious to see what rabbit pops out tomorrow.
HeeHee. Now I suddenly have the urge to go read The Space Child’s Mother Goose.
Hey, ho, says [Shelly]
She traveled until a trick in the track
Uncovered her own receding back.
Hi-ho, says [Shelly-belly]
Still, what’s daddy going to say when she doesn’t show up for work Monday?
Gah. It’s ‘Shelly-bean’ is what her dad calls her
okies
so sphinxshelly aka 57 aka last to exist but first in the forest. (and i spose she is a sphinx as shelly knows sphinx as guardians and possibly subconciously chose it. like the staypuft marshmellow from ghostbusters?)
THIS Shelly now knows what its like to go through what Jin has gone through. Who better to help her? Cuz i’ve a feeling that no amount of artifacts can help that girl cope with what she’s been through and she’s less likely to spill her guts to phix and the rest than any ‘human’
Waittaminute! “Sphinxes as guardians”.. Didn’t Tepoz already hint at Shelly’s actual role in all of it? i.e. A Guardian? Many moons ago…
0_o
O_o
😯
Did Paul plan that long ahead…..????
*FZZZZZZZ* brain goes in melt-down
you ever watch babylon 5?
yea
the storyline to that takes place over aaaages and the stuff from the first episode is tied into stuff from the last seasons episode etc 🙂
similar to wapsi it is.
my mind likes 😀
B5? …eeeehm..ahem… :redface: I even cancelled dates for it…….I am an evil geek..
Ever read Marvel Comics “Excalibur”? The kind of storyline setup bares a striking number of similarities… to… the… Wapsi… HAY?!?!
Somebody’s been stealing out of the Allen Davis handbook of comic writing. (Claremont is a hack).
we all thought she was guardian as she was guarding the 4 dolls at the time….
Toys on the floor, toys on the floor…
Actually a later version of Paul went back in time and told current Paul to add that detail.
haha
i like 😀
Have to admit I do too…
*lightbulb*
oooh so the sphinx was talking about tina!
tina was the one who gave 57th shelly the test about the coffee pot and then told her that’s how it would work.
*dances* we were right!!!
and also maybe this was the reason why Shelly couldn’t be Jins friend.
Sphinx shelly needed to stay in the forest until the calender machine had been destroyed.
if she had left sooner (cuz it seems like this 1st shelly came into the forest before the calender machine reset/trying to reset so she could help Jin who was her friend…or maybe it was a way to fix the calender machine which failed?) maybe the paradox would have imploded the universe and stuff?
*lightbulb pops into shards* Iiiiii…eeehhh..still don’t get the coffee-pot-incident .She crushed it, but it hurt like hell..How does that make her guardian-sphinx??
*slump back into confusion-corner-couch*
*halfway through florentine biscuit new lightbulb gets fixed in place*
Makes sense. Tina was the one that knew You’d have to rile-up Shelly to get her super strength to emerge. Buuuut..How did Tina contact Sphinx-Shelly???. Via one of the “Former-Shelly’s???
😯
Aaaaargh..I am lost again.. like with branes, strings and how they connect via 11 dimensional calculus: The moment You even begin to start to get a smidgen of a particle of a teensy-weensy atom of understanding, it slips away like fine ,dry silica-sand in a storm…grrrrr..
um
sphinx shelly = 57th shelly = shelly from the coffee shop who crushed the pot/shelly the one who plays guitar in fermented banana/shelly the one who we’ve known and loved all this time.
Dead shelly = 1st shelly = umm shelly from another time period who is prolly friends with Jin and in that timeframe the shelly who’s calender machine is still working.
She wasn’t in her aspect?
Maybe Sexy-Librarian-Phix could have done the same, with similar results?
Or… she crushed the coffee pot with no ill effect, but only after the fact when she saw what she did did she “think” that should have hurt? In essence, the pain she felt was psychosomatic.
….yeah. OK, so, I think I get it. However, that may just be the sleep deprivation. Maybe I’ll GET it tomorrow.
Know what? I don’t care either way. This is one helluva story, told by a helluva storyteller. Kudos, Mr. Taylor.
Beautiful! Absolutely Beautiful.! Poetic even..
Yet…It’s even more complex now .”My time runs opposite’????
The more we see, the bigger the riddle gets. Glorious!
Well, Sphinx Shelly DID say she was an executioner-
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/here-last/
Truely astounding work Paul!
Hmmmmnnn…..so….that wall of skulls behind SphinxShelly there is from Shellys #2 through #55? Or have non-shellys (like perhaps that u-boat captain) been making it in there as well?
Well, if he did drop in, he got back out with his skull attached, so he’s not one of them…
Ok Is this a veiled Dr. Who Reference? River and the Doctor run opposite times as well.
im really hoping there is a tardis in the next strip ^^
Michael Moorcock did this sort of thing years ago. There’s one book where Elric meets Corum for the first time but Corum already knows him, and there’s another book where the situation is reversed.
I second the motion.
(even if its hidden in the picture)
*facepalm
Merlin. And. Nimue. Makes perfect sense, really it does.
Wha?? O_o *lays head in lap and weeps softly*
T.H.White’s Merlin
supposed to link Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Once_and_Future_King
Also, the story the Time Traveler’s Wife also follows this basic plot. The time travelers lives out his marriage out of sequential order.
Thus bringing this chain of referential inference full cycle itseld – Stephen Moffatt cheerfully admits that that story was a large part of the influences that contributed to River Song’s creation.
im sure you can link that story to kevin bacon if you tried hard enough 😉
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon And I hope I got that coded right.
man the oracle of bacon is fun 😀
you can link EVERYONE to him 😀
There’s a guy in my scriptwriting class with a Bacon Number of 12 (as of February, when I didnt’ know what he was talking about).
Amazing. Both the day’s revelation and the conversation generated by it. In retrospect, I see the similarities in sense of humor and massive arms, but I would never have put it all together.
ditto
peeps been saying since we first saw the sphinx that it looked like shelly.
i wouldnt have gotten that .. ever
well maybe not ever – give or take 3/4 archive rereads and 20 years i may have gotten it.
OK, I know Plutonium is lethal (as is Cesium and Lawrencium) but I never expected it to rot someone that fast…WHA HOPPEN??? 😯
she hasn’t rotted
she’s just boiled and burned.
Bleh… Terrible way to die…
*Hannibal Lecter-mode on* Slsh.h.h…Yess, but she was great to have with dinner….
Ew. 81,000 years, and the only thing to eat is over-nuked Shelly? That’s nastier than convenience-store eggplant parmesan.
I don’t think the sphinx had to eat anything to survive. Nothing could hurt her there and that would mean she could not die of starvation either. She may not have even been hungry the whole time. Her body was just in stasis.
Don’t worry about the special effects – nothing that’s happened here is technically correct for radiation.
Wait…what? Shelly is the Sphinx?
And I just noticed the Shelly-is-thinking Not-lens-flare in panel 2! Yep, Sphynx is 97% probably Shelly!
So, what did Monica see before Shelley went in? Something from the future?
Nah, just a giant super-natural “Keep Away! Hazardous material!” -sign
That’s why I believe the Plutonium is, indeed, inside, And all we see here is a telling of the story as to how it got there. Plus it will explain Who, or rather what Shelly actually is.
Her “true” memories will flood back in. There’s obviously more to Shelly’s vision-quest than we are privy to know.
Okay…so all of my other confusion aside, what does this backwards time thing mean for the relic? Is it empty in real time now? Or is it a self-sustaining energy source housing (and shielding) a lethal dose of recycling plutionium?
id hazard a guess at 2nd
i suspect shelly1-56 came here in order to save jin
(she mentioned before the calender machine was fizzled that she was broken and she would be again so chances are the others would have helped her)
56th shelly(or brandi) must have realised that they needed some sort of lethal dose of radiation so if this failed then it would be better to not be friends with Jin the next time round.
just a guess
but on thursday i guessed shelly would be the one kicking a hole in the sub and sinking it. next day she died so…well..my guesses suck.
but they’re fun to think about 🙂
ah yes i remember
Brandi
was brandi setting this up
She was the one who told Jin not to be friends with anyone.
Brandi advice to Jin
*whew* took some time to flick through to find that.
The books. do they have the page titles on the pages?
Did she? I thought Brandi’s part in all this was only related to the fixing of the calendar machine, not the manipulation of all the people involved, just Shelly to get her to stab Monica.
I think just the opposite. The discovery of the sub would have happened every time (albiet seemingly serendipitously), thus the journey to time-tree land would have happened everytime, but only the last time would have been for Jin since she was still on a reasonably even keel because the CM was still functional. I would see the other 56 times she went there as part of a mission to help fix the CM and not Jin.
i did think was for the calender machine fixing also but well..im sure there was a comic about Jin getting unhinged towards 2012 as its roads less travelled (whatever that means) so suspect she would have gone slightlybarmy in all of the resets. 1-56. 57th was worse i suspect cuz she was on her own (which did make her open to Alan and dating him so thats good 🙂 )
the fact that they couldn’t be friends THIS time makes me wonder why not..
Good points. Even this time, when they finally did do something about the CM, Jin was flipping out. She really flipped out during the process and totally out of it right after it was all over.
Consider this possibility. They successfully fixed the CM every time but Jin flips out and Shelly and the rest trying to help Jin go into this loop where the last thing Shelly does is go and reset the CM back to a zero state in an effort to help Jin. Remember what first Shelly’s last words were “I need to go back. I need the calendar.”
But she also said that she was just trying to help someone…which I guess could have still related to the Calendar, but since they had waited in previous attempts and the artifact wasn’t involved with the “fixing the machine” process, I just assumed that anything involving the artifact would have been an early attempt to help Jin before the Calendar Machine was approached.
I’m not sure if anybody else has pointed this out, but does anybody else notice that this Sphinx looks exactly like Shelly?
now you’re being silly 😛
we’ve been calling her sphinxshelly all day 😛
Well that explains why Shelly SPhinx always looked so annoyed. I would hate having to explain the same thing to myself fifty six times in a row and then have to wait for myself to understand.
*tilt* 🙁
Me too XP